by Stephen Vagg
The 1935 Dad and Dave sequel
The history of Cinesound Productions falls roughly into three phases. Phase one was its initial slate of hits, starting brilliantly with On Our Selection, followed by two more blockbusters (The Squatter’s Daughter, The Silence of Dean Maitland), then the stumble of Strike Me Lucky.
Then Hall shut down the studio and went to America for several months to study techniques, recruit talent and buy equipment. His return initiated phase two, starting with Thoroughbred and Orphan of the Wilderness – a string of films that were more sophisticated and polished, marking a sharp increase in quality, ending with the declaration of war and Dad Rudd MP. Phase three was the war and subsequent years, with its slick documentaries and shorts but no features apart from subcontracted Smithy.
Grandad Rudd, a sequel to On Our Selection, came at the end of phase one – it was made immediately after Strike Me Lucky, but before Hall’s trip to Hollywood and is thus not as accomplished technically as his phase two output; it is also probably the least well known of the four Dad and Dave movies that Hall made.
The movie was, like On Our Selection, based on a stage play which was, also like On Our Selection, adapted by Bert Bailey from Steele Rudd’s stories. Grandad Rudd was set years after the events of On Our Selection and follows the continuity of that play, so Dad is prosperous, while Dave is married and about to become a father (later Dad and Dave movies realised that there was more fun to be had with Dave being single, so they rebooted this timeline). The play of Grandad Rudd had, unsurprisingly, many of the same elements as On Our Selection – a pretty Rudd girl (only here, Dad’s granddaughter rather than daughter) involved in a love triangle with a good boy and bad boy, a melodramatic plot involving the bad boy, a dopey son (only here, instead of Dave, there’s another son called Dan) having a romance with a dopey woman, and squabbles between the Rudds and troublesome neighbours.
The success of On Our Selection made it natural that Ken Hall would want to make a sequel, and the existence of the Grandad Rudd stage version made it natural that it would be filmed. However, the 1935 movie is easily the weakest of the Hall/Rudd films. The other three put Dad Rudd under all sorts of genuine stress (Depression, threats of bankruptcy, corruption) but this one doesn’t, so Dad’s constant irascibility is annoying more than fun. Also, it gives all the bulk of what might be called “Dave duties” (i.e being dim, annoying Dad, romancing an equally thick female) to Dan rather than Dave, and while George Lloyd, who plays Dan, is a fine performer, he simply is not as engaging as Fred McDonald’s Dave; in Lloyd’s defence, the character of Dan is basically the same as Dave. The melodramatic plot of On Our Selection had huge stakes, revolving around a murder, while in Grandad Rudd the stakes are smaller, concerning a revelation of bigamy (there’s a reason why the On Our Selection play gets revived while Grandad Rudd rarely is). Furthermore, the pretty Rudd girl in Grandad Rudd (played by Elaine Hammil) is easily the weakest in the series, suckered in by the baddy despite Dad’s warnings, lacking any of the high spirits and smarts we get from other Rudd girls.
On the sunny side, Grandad Rudd looks very good, the acting is (on the whole) polished, the directing is confident, and there are strong comedy pieces, notably one with a runaway tractor, and the climactic cricket game. Ken Hall had a softness for scenes with little kids running around talking strine and there’s a bunch in here too. The film is enjoyable enough and made money at the box office. The issue with Grandad Rudd is that it had so much more potential – one wishes that there had been more scenes of, say, Dad babysitting his grandkids and getting involved in a wedding, and less scenes with Dan.
Hall soon realised that his writers (George Parker and Vic Roberts) were not much good and became more serious about the scripting process. He got to learn from his mistakes and the glory of Phase Two was about to begin.
The author would like to thank Graham Shirley and Simon Drake of the National Film and Sound Archive for their assistance with this piece. Unless specified, all opinions are those of the author.
