February

After being cast as Dave Willis’s companion in Save a Little Sunshine (1938) and Me and My Pal (1939) and, obliged not to sing, as Formby’s girl in the 1939 Come On George!, Pat Kirkwood had gone on to Band Waggon (1940). Theatre work occupied the rest of the war until her first leading film role in Flight from Folly. Kirkwood gives it a passing mention in her autobiography, recalling only that its producer-director Herbert Mason was one of the few directors who didn’t end up screaming at her.

The Warner Bros/First National production was written by Basil Woon, Lesley Storm and Katherine Strueby from a story by Edward Goulding. Sue Brown (Kirkwood), a stage performer but working as a nurse, takes on the charge of neurotic composer-cum-playboy Clinton (Hugh Sinclair), joining him in Majorca (‘The Majorca’ was the film’s big number) where he attempts reconciliation with his first wife, before deciding Sue is the better option. Edmundo Ros and His Band, the speciality act Halamar and Konarski, and the idiosyncratic comedy of Sydney Howard in his last screen role provide diversion.

The Daily Mail critic offered up the film as ‘a tremulous but definite step towards a school of British musicals’, on what grounds we can only guess, with the film now believed lost. At the same time, it criticised the designs, exploring ‘new regions of banal ugliness’, among which the star danced a rhumba that ‘evoked Haringay rather more than Havana’. The Manchester Guardian voted the picture ‘unworthy’ of Kirkwood’s ‘limited but genuine talent’, while Halliwell found it a ‘leadenly titled and played variation on Random Harvest with dreary musical numbers’.

Kirkwood’s stage career skidded through several musicals, all commercially unsuccessful: Chrysanthemum, Noël Coward’s Ace of Clubs, Roundabout and Wonderful Town. Her film career ended in 1956 with a biopic of male impersonator Vesta Tilley, After the Ball.

March

Butcher’s For You Alone remains one of the year’s most interesting entries, commended by Today’s Cinema: ‘The passage of time deals kindly with a picture of this pattern – an expertly confected blend of wholesome sentiment, light-hearted comedy, moving pathos and well-loved music.’