The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)

School comedies were quite a staple of the British film industry in the 50s and The Happiest Days of Your Life is one of the best of the breed.

Nutbourne College is a not-very-prestigious boys’ boarding school somewhere in England. The headmaster, Wetherby Pond (Alastair Sim), is desperately keen to move on to greener pastures and is hoping to secure an appointment as headmaster of the much more up-market Harlingham School. His staff at Nutbourne College are not overly dedicated. Any idealism they have have had about the teaching profession has well and truly dissipated. They greet the advent of a new term with resignation, little knowing the catastrophe that is about to break upon their heads.

The Ministry is still sorting out the muddle caused by wartime evacuations of schools. It is necessary, as a temporary measure, for some schools to share premises. Unfortunately some pen-pusher at the Ministry has decided that Nutbourne College is going to have to share its premises with St Swithin’s. This would be a minor nightmare in itself for Wetherby Pond and his staff, having to find accommodation for an extra hundred boys in addition to the normal complement of 117 boys. What causes it to become a major nightmare is that St Swithin’s is a girls’ boarding school, so instead of a hundred extra boys they have to cope with a hundred girls.

You do have to remember that this was 1950, a time when the idea of co-educational schools was still considered to be dangerous lunacy.

Wetherby Pond fondly imagines that he can somehow prevent his school from being overrun by the girls but he has reckoned without the formidable headmistress of St Swithin’s, Muriel Whitchurch (Margaret Rutherford).

The entire Nutbourne kitchen staff walks off the job. Miss Whitchurch feels that this should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a disaster. It will be a chance for the advanced cookery girls to show what they can do. Unfortunately it turns out that the girls’ cookery skills do not extend to cooking edible meals.

The only thing that could make things worse would be for the parents to descend upon the school en masse, and this of course is what is about to happen. Actually there’s one other thing needed to complete the nightmare - the governors of Harlingham School pay a surprise visit to check up on Pond’s suitability for the job at Harlingham. So both groups are simultaneously inspecting the school and the Harlingham people have to be

Somehow the Harlingham people have to be prevented from seeing any of the St Swithin’s girls and the St Swithin’s parents have to be kept unaware of the presence of the Nutbourne boys.

Surprisingly the children and the teachers all agree to pull together to make the deception work.

While the tone of this movie is not dissimilar to that of the St Trinian’s movies there is a difference. While the girls of St Trinian’s are savages and hardened criminals both the girls and boys in The Happiest Days of Your Life really are trying to be on their best behaviour.

The end result is chaos, and very funny chaos. This is pure farce, done superbly.

This is a Sidney Gilliat-Frank Launder production with Launder directing and co-writing the script. Gilliat and Launder were aiming to take on Ealing Studios at their own game, comedy, and they did so with considerable success. Apart from the St Trinian’s movies Gilliat and Launder wrote the outstanding 1956 Alistair Sim comedy The Green Man.

It goes without saying that Margaret Rutherford and Alastair Sim, both perfectly cast, are in dazzling form. Equally good are Joyce Grenfell as the love-starved St Swithin’s sports mistress and Richard Wattis as the cynical Nutbourne mathematics master.

The Studiocanal DVD offers a fine transfer and some extras - an interview with Margaret Rutherford’s biographer, an appreciation of cartoonist Ronald Searle (who did the opening titles) and a brief appreciation of the film.

The Happiest Days of Your Life is obviously a must-see for Margaret Rutherford and Alistair Sim fans. It’s good-natured and very very funny. Highly recommended.

And if you're in the mood for more glorious school mayhem check out my review of the equally delightful Sidney Gilliat-Frank Launder production The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954).