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Lord Blaydon (Cecil Kellaway) has taken up residence in his English country estate. Lady Blaydon (Nellie Ferguson) and their daughter Patricia (Shirley Ann Richards) have adapted well to the new surroundings, but his Lordship finds it hard to cope with the butler Jarms (Harvey Adams), and an oppressive family history characterised by centuries of Blaydon men dying in great English battles. Jarms offers his new master a 60-year-old whisky, while the Blaydons await a social visit from their neighbours, Lord and Lady Denvee (Frank Harvey and Bobbie Hunt). By the time they arrive, with the solicitor Mr Potter (Leslie Victor), Lord Blaydon is considerably the worse for wear.
Curator’s notes
This is probably the routine that made Cecil Kellaway an international star. It’s the first time in the film that we see clearly how good an actor he was, particularly in comic roles. His impression of a koala remains a classic moment in Australian cinema, but the routine is perfectly timed throughout. His mention of 'varlets’ and the Battle of Sissy refer to tales of his ancestors at the Battle of Cressy, recounted earlier in the evening by Jarms the butler.
Hubert’s imbibing has an unconscious sense of inadequacy beneath it – he has not been a great soldier, as his forebears were. The scene is also meant to show that his wife and daughter have bought into the snobbery of upper-class English life in a big way. Patricia’s gown is enough to give us a sense of her galloping schoolgirl’s delusions of grandeur (although the character she plays is supposed to be 22). This was Shirley Ann Richards’s first role, at the age of 19. She too would go to Hollywood, where she had a short but not unsuccessful career, as Ann Richards. Between 1942 and 1952, when she retired, she appeared in a dozen films, several by major directors (King Vidor’s An American Romance, from 1944, was one). She became a poet in later life and died in California in August 2006.
