Will Hay (I)

Blitz flicks: Will Hay's war effort

His best-known comedies may have been behind him, but the era of the Blitz found Will Hay moving to Ealing Studios for a series of hilarious wartime features blending puns, pranks and propaganda.

Will Hay's new direction: My Learned Friend

Comedian Will Hay's final film is a dark legal farce that paved the way for Ealing's later black comedies The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts And Coronets.

Will Hay: Britain's bumbling star of the screen & skies

It's 80 years since Gainsborough Pictures released the comedy Boys Will Be Boys, the movie that finally established ex-music hall performer Will Hay as a British film name - during that same year of 1935 he also published an accomplished astronomy book Through My Telescope. Hay was now a rising star in both senses of the word and in 1936 film exhibitors would vote him one of the UK's Top Ten film performers.

Marcel Varnel: Oh, Mr Porter!

It's easier to make the British laugh than to make the French even smile. Yet, one of the biggest successes at the Paris Cinémathèque in the late 80s was a retrospective of British comedy curated by Bertrand Tavernier. Among the discoveries for the French was Will Hay, who, with his henchmen Graham Moffatt (the fat boy) and Moore Marriott (the wizened old codger), perfectly represented a certain type of bumbling British humour.

There was an old-fashioned whiff about Don't (which in honour of his staunch service I shall rechristen If You Go Down In The Woods Today With Fred) that was positively Bisto. If Will Hay had made it, it might have worked.