British Comedy Guide

Skimpy In The Navy (1949)

Short from "All At Sea" written by and starring Hal Monty, who I'd never heard of - it seems he wrote this and one other in 1949 and was never to be seen on the silver screen again, and the mystery now is how this 42 year old comedy actor from Glasgow came to die in 1967 in Vietnam at the height of the war.

His sidekick was a young Max Bygraves, and I noticed Arthur Mullard as a lumbering pugilist and a barely unrecognisable Patricia Hayes.

Fairly mundane slapstick affair involving soaking each other with mops when they were on the deck of a ship and a silly boxing match, which ironically actually mentioned the much funnier Charlie Chaplin one, when too he put a horseshoe in his boxing glove.

Ah! This is where 'All At Sea' comes from? I'd not managed to work that out. Thanks!

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