Old Mother Riley, Headmistress (1950, UK)

In this version of the Old Mother Riley series, our heroine is a laundry worker. A customer comes in with a complaint about recent work and Mother Riley launches into an obnoxious tirade against her. Meanwhile her daughter Kitty, a music teacher at a girls' school, gets the sack.

All is not lost, however, because it is suddenly revealed that a rich relative of Mother Riley has died, and left the laundry where she works to her in a legacy.

Using the laundry as collateral, she gets a loan to buy out the school, and Kitty's job is saved. Shady businessmen come on the scene and try to buy her out, but they have an ulterior motive, which is soon revealed.

The film is poor entertainment, although the plot is more developed than some of the films in the series. Some members of the Luton Girls' Choir play the schoolgirls; the choir -- famous at the time -- disbanded in 1976.

The Mother Riley character was never an attractive one, and at this distance it is very difficult to see why it was so popular; but popular it was, following on from a very successful music hall career in which Arthur Lucan played the truculent old crone, and his wife Kitty McShane played her daughter.

HF September 2006

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