Saloon Bar – 1940 | 76mins | Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Walter Forde‘s Saloon Bar, had a beery background. A film version of a stage whodunit by Frank Harvey Jr, it suffered from a verbose script by Angus MacPhail and John Dighton, and a pedestrian pace. The leading character is portrayed by Gordon Harker, the ultimate stage cockney, who plays a bookmaker with a penchant for amateur detective work. A murder is committed, and everyone falls under suspicion. Hero and heroine Gordon Harker and Elizabeth Allen solve the mystery with becoming modesty.

The atmosphere of the pub in which much of the action is confined is reasonably well-drawn, with its gallery of regular customers including the habitué glued to his chair (Mervyn Johns). As if echoing Forde’s previous film, there is another pub in the neighbourhood which has been facelifted by its owners into an art deco orgy of chrome and mirrors. But the film is very obviously a lift from a stage play.

Extract© George Perry: Forever Ealing.