Charles Frend (1949)
‘This is the story of how Welsh Wales came to town,’ a voice – a Welsh voice – announces at the start. The camera then makes the long-distance journey across a railway station sign – HAFODUWCHBENCEUBWLLYMARCHOGCOCH. It’s the first reminder in this Ealing comedy, and far from the last, that the Welsh, their language and culture are endearingly funny – that’s the idea, anyway. The Jones brothers Dai (Donald Houston) and Twm (Meredith Williams), coal miners from the place with the marathon name, win a pitmen’s productivity contest organised by the Echo, a London newspaper. The prize is £100 each plus best seats in the house for the England-Wales rugby international at Twickenham. No sooner has the good news reached the colliery than Dai and Twm are dashing to catch the overnight train to London for the match next day.
In the hurry and confusion, Dai and Twm miss their instructions for rendezvousing with the Echo at Paddington, where a journalist called Whimple (Alec Guinness) and a photographer (Mackenzie Ward) are waiting to take the brothers to Fleet Street to collect their cash and tickets. When the photographer asks how they’ll recognise the prizewinners Whimple assures him, ‘It’s all taken care of – they’ll be wearing leeks’. Cue the arrival of a trainload of Welsh rugby fans, most of them with said vegetable decorating hats or jackets. Whimple seeks the help of the station announcer (Desmond Walter-Ellis), who is floored by the name of the brothers’ home town. He asks ‘Mr Thomas and Mr David Jones from Wales’ to report to the stationmaster’s office. You get the picture.
There are plenty of names on the screenplay credit – Charles Frend, Leslie Norman (who also produced, with Michael Balcon) and the novelist Richard Hughes, as well as, more remarkably, two real Welsh people – Clifford Evans, who devised the story, and Diana Morgan, credited with ‘additional dialogue’. The year after this film, Morgan co-wrote Dance Hall, a much better Ealing picture and, not insignificantly, a drama – free, in other words, of the comedies’ insistence on the humour of regional peculiarity and the near ubiquity in them of bumbling parochialism, regardless of setting. The latter dilutes a main premise of A Run for Your Money. Fair enough that Dai and Twm are innocents abroad – on their first visit to England, let alone London – but the Echo personnel don’t belong in the metropolis either. Miffed that he has to show the Welshmen the sights of the capital and go to a rugby match, Whimple solemnly reminds his photographer colleague, ‘I am a gardening correspondent’. Why would a Fleet Street newspaper entrust the climax to its nationwide competition to someone like Whimple – vain, clueless and despised by the Echo‘s editor (Clive Morton)? The set-up smacks, rather, of a little local paper, staffed by a couple of jack-of-all-trades.
Before Dai leaves Wales, his girlfriend Bronwen (Julie Milton), secretary to the colliery boss Davies (Peter Edwards), warns him about London women. As they breakfast in a café near Paddington, Dai talks loudly and unguardedly about the money he and Twm have won. At a nearby table, a young woman (Moira Lister) pricks up her ears. Her name is Jo, she’s a con artist and, after the brothers are accidentally separated, Dai spends most of the rest of the day as her potential prey. Twm, meanwhile, bumps into an old acquaintance, Huw (Hugh Griffith). Ten years ago, they won an eisteddfod musical competition together – Huw is a chief singer and harpist – but it seems they’ve never seen each other since. I didn’t understand how Huw had become a beggar on the London streets – or how he managed to improve his appearance after his first scene. When Twm first catches sight of him, Huw’s a grimy vagrant. When it’s clear he’s in the film for the duration, he remains unruly and eccentric but turns noticeably cleaner.
Once Huw, with Twm’s help, has retrieved his Welsh harp from the pawn shop where it’s been gathering dust, he doesn’t let it go – not on a pub crawl with Twm, not on a busy Tube train, not in the crowds leaving Twickenham (where the pair arrives too late for the match). In the film’s closing scene, Dai, Twm, and Huw arrive back at Hafoduwchbenceubwllymarchogcoch station. The harp is still with them and Dai is still wearing the bowler hat his boss Davies lent him for the trip. The bowler’s against-the-odds survival in London, like that of the musical instrument, makes for plenty of pretty basic visual comedy but the two objects are one of the more expressive details in A Run for Your Money. Holding on to these comic totems at all costs reflects the Welshmen’s duty and determination to stay true to themselves.
Dai shows an almost sixth sense for doing the right thing, whether buying Bronwen a diamond ring or getting dragged by Jo into an up-itself gown shop. Barney (Leslie Perrins), Jo’s partner in crime, tries to sell him a ring with a fake stone but Dai’s instinct secures the genuine article – it takes one to know one. At the dress shop, Jo looks stunning in an outfit called, according to the manageress Mrs Pargiter (Joyce Grenfell), ‘Desire under the Elms’; Dai decides not to buy because the dress wouldn’t be right for Bronwen ‘at the chapel social’. Donald Houston captures Dai’s emotional openness very well: never blind to Jo’s good looks, he always knows where his loyalties lie. Or nearly always. The integrity of Houston’s acting makes Dai’s brief capitulation to Jo, when she takes him back to her flat and relieves him of his cash, all the more unconvincing. But at least the theft triggers an amusing climactic chase – the literal fulfilment of the film’s title – all the way back to Paddington and the night express home.
Several of the cast are better than the script deserves. Moira Lister, although she telegraphs Jo’s ulterior motives when she’s buttering Dai up, also gives her an interesting brittleness. Like Donald Houston, Meredith Edwards makes his character’s guileless enthusiasm genuinely appealing. It would be hard to enjoy Hugh Griffith’s turn as much as he seems to be doing but he is good value. Even Alec Guinness can’t do much with Whimple yet you’re always aware things would have been worse with almost anyone else in this role. Joyce Grenfell’s Mrs Pargiter, whose gruesome attempts to sound casually chic are undermined by her wonky vowels, belongs in a comedy sketch but that’s OK: she is on screen for only a couple of minutes. As might be expected, Charles Frend lays on the Welsh male voice choir-singing thick but that’s an upside of the relentless Cymric clichés. After the big build-up, the rugby match comes and goes very quickly. But a shot of leeks thrown exultantly into the air lets us know the result.
26 January 2021
