The 'Maggie'

I've watched and enjoyed most of Ealing's classic comedies several times over the years but, along with THE MAGNET (1950), the film under review was one which had eluded me thus far. The main reason for this, perhaps, is the fact that THE MAGGIE is hardly ever discussed when the studio's golden age is mentioned which is even more remarkable when one realizes that the film was nominated for 3 major British Film Awards in its day; having now caught up with it, all I can say is that it has been unjustly neglected for far too long.

This amiably droll little film, full of the typically wry but gentle humor found in British comedies of its time, deals with a wealthy American businessman (an ideally-cast Paul Douglas) who is tricked by a group of old Scottish seamen (headed by a terrific Alex Mackenzie, whose first film this was, as the skipper) into chartering their ramshackle boat to carry a cargo of valuable furniture to his new summer residence in the British isles which he purchased as a surprise to his wife.

The trouble is that Douglas, forever expecting promptness and efficiency from his subordinates, is hardly equipped to cope with the devious plans of the wily Scots who treasure their own jolly company and a good stiff drink above everything else…as the various detours they take along the way - poaching, pub-hopping, a 100-year birthday party, visits to nearby cousins, etc. - prove only too well to the increasingly exasperated Yankee. The cast is rounded out by some old reliables like Geoffrey Keen and an unrecognizably young Andrew Keir and valuable contributions are also provided by Hubert Clegg (as Douglas' befuddled secretary) and the child Tommy Kearins (as Mackenzie's fiercely loyal cabin boy).

Ultimately, while perhaps not among Ealing's or director Alexander Mackendrick's very best, THE MAGGIE is certainly very enjoyable in itself and can now be seen as not only a worthy companion piece to Ealing's WHISKY GALORE! (1949) - also directed by Mackendrick and dealing with the crafty Sots, not to mention my own personal favorite among the Ealing comedies - but also another of those fondly-remembered British comedies dealing with motor vehicles of some kind like Ealing's own THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953; trains) and GENEVIEVE (1953; motor cars).

Once more, Optimum Releasing included a short featurette with film historian George Perry and, unfortunately, as had been the case with IT ALWAYS RAINS ON Sunday (1947), I again encountered some playback problems during the course of the film on my Pioneer DVD player but, as usual, my cheap HB model came to the rescue.

I don't recollect seeing any mention of it in the credits of the film nor in any of the comments on this site however "The Maggie" is very obviously based on "The Vital Spark".

Neil Munro wrote "The Vital Spark" in 1906, the collected tales of Master Mariner Para Handy and his Clyde puffer The Vital Spark which he had previously had published as articles in the Looker On column of the Glasgow Evening News. On board were McPhail the engineer, Dougie the deck hand and Sunny Jim the cabin boy. Neil Munro went on to write more columns and collated these into two further books detailing Para Handy's exploits and misdeeds while travelling the coastline of Scotland. Much later writer Stuart Donald took up the baton and wrote three further volumes of Para Handy's tales, a brave thing to do considering the place in Scottish popular culture.

The BBC Scotland made a small run of TV programmes in the late 1960's and early 1970's which were revisited in 1994 by Gregor Fisher (Rab C Nesbitt and the Baldy Man) in the two series of "The Tales of Para Handy".

Anyone familiar with Neil Munro's work would recognise the characters on board The Maggie in an instant. They may have different names but the characters are identical.

THE 'MAGGIE' rehearses a theme highly familiar to most Ealing comedies, that of the powerful person being outwitted by ordinary citizens. The theme recurs time and again, notably in WHISKY GALORE! and PASSPORT TO PİMLICO (both 1949) and THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953).

In Alexander Mackendrick's droll comedy, the threatening force is personified by Calvin B. Marshal (Paul Douglas), a thickset American with an expensive camel-hair overcoat and domineering manner. He terrorizes hapless bureaucrat Pusey (Hubert Gregg) who obviously tries his best to do his job properly but proves highly unworthy of the task. Pitted against these two are the crew of the eponymous "Maggie," an aging "puffer" carrying Cargo along the Scottish waterways, even though its engine is clapped out, its metalwork falling apart, and its maximum speed is about six miles per hour. The skipper, a canny character if there was one (Alex Mackenzie) spends much of his time in local hostelries along the way, but proves more than a match for Marshal. The true source of the film's morality is provided by Dougie (Tommy Kearins) who looks after Marshal where needed, but doesn't shy away from criticizing the American where appropriate.

Given the nature of the story, it's not surprising to find that the screenwriter is William Rose, an American also responsible for the huge hit GENEVIEVE (1953), another likable comedy that shows an old "puffer" - this time a vintage car - triumphing over adversity. THE MAGGIE is sensitively photographed by Gordon Dines, with a fine sense of the Highland landscape, and how it determines the way people lived at that time. Compared to Marshal's life, their sense of values might have seemed antiquated, but they possessed the kind of community and good fellowship that seems markedly absent from Marshal's world.

THE MAGGIE is certainly a sentimental piece of work, especially at the end, but is nonetheless well worth looking at as an evocation of a long-lost world.

At 5th July 2001. Further to my previous review of "The Maggie" Tommy Kearins, Dougie the wee boy in the film, is alive and well and living in retirement in Scotland at age 63. He tells me that he was selected for the role after being spotted in the Scouts "Gang Show" working backstage. After being interviewed by Ealing he spent 3 months making the film in 1953 and recalls he was paid over 3 times what his father made in the Clyde shipyards. He still takes a keen interest in the old "puffers" like "The Maggie" and hopes to attend a get- together of enthusiasts at the crinan canal in a few weeks time. The Maggie was actually two boats in the film, the "Boer" and the "Inca". Phil Hatfield.

I feel extremely fortunate to have finally caught up with this beguiling little film. Good enough to rank among Ealing's best works, it has undoubtedly improved with age, giving us a snapshot of a time before technology shrank and homogenized our world.

It's worth noting that this film is the work of screenwriter William Rose, who had created the delightful Genevieve a year earlier, and would go on, amazingly, to pen It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World some ten years later, and win an Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner a few years after that.

It's unfortunate that movie fans track actors and directors so much more closely than writers. The Maggie, no less than his other works, proves that Rose deserves to be remembered one of the great geniuses of film comedy.