1942.Director:Will Hay & Basil Dearden. Producer:Michael Balcon
Sreenplay:Angus Macphaill ~ John Dighton
(Based on an idea by Bernard Miles and Reg Groves)
Editor:Ray Pitt. Assistant Producer:S.C.Balcon
Art Director:Tom Morahan. Production Supervisor:John Croydon
Musical Direction:Bretton Byrd. Photography:Ernest Palmer
A Ealing Picture. Distributed by United Artists. 79min

Made at Ealing Studios during the war years and maybe reflecting the seriousness of the day within it's comic framework we find Hay being commandeered by the war office. He has a double in the shape of a nazi spy named Muller who as been captured by the war office. They want Hay to swap places with Muller so he can spy on the Germans.

Hay is dropped behind enemy lines and is instructed to bring back details of a secret weapon that the Germans are developing which is a gasfire bomb.

On his arrival in Germany Hay is appointed to lecture a class of nazi youths, on how to act in the correct manner when they are sent to England as secret agents, so to avoid arousing suspicion. Hay assures his class that the two fingered V-sign is one of respect in England and he soon as them making this gesture to a portrait of their leader Adolf Hitler.

Hay attends a function in which he is to meet an eminent Geman professor who knows the secrets of the bomb. He plans to get the professor drunk, so that he can obtain the information that he needs. He only succeeds in getting himself and the German professor blind drunk. He confides to the professor that he is a British agent. All his British mannerisms are easily recognised by three of his class, who turn out to be sympathetic Austrians and they help him to obtain the secret gasfire bomb from the clutches of the German army.

With the Austrians in tow, Hay makes his escape by aeroplane, of which he takes the controls after the pilot is overcome by Hay's pupils after he refused to fly them to England. Aeronautical acrobatics ensue with farcical consequences which culminates with our gang crash landing into a tree outside the War Office in London.

Mission Accomplished.

 

Will Hay with Charles Hawtrey
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
Will Hay (William Potts/Muller) ~ Charles Hawtrey (Max) ~ Frank Pettingell (Professor Hoffman)
Julien Mitchell (General Von Glotz) ~ Peter Ustinov (Krauss) ~ Barry Morse (Kurt)
Leslie Harcourt (Vagel) ~ Peter Croft (Hans) ~ Ann Firth (Lena) ~ Ray Lovell (Schmidt)
Jeremy Hawk (ADC) ~ Aubrey Mallalieu (Rector) ~ John Williams (Major Bishop)
Lawrence O'Madden (Colonel Truscott)