I’ve been (mostly) enjoying watching some of the old British films with Alistair Sim in a key role. Mostly to look for a really good clip of his wonderful voice, in which he’s not too Scottish, to clone for Chatterbox TTS. For what it’s worth, here is my ranking:<\/p>\n
**** Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday<\/em>. 1939. Sim’s breakthrough as a co-star, the best of the three Inspector Hornleigh comedy-mystery movies. A good fun film. I’ve been (mostly) enjoying watching some of the old British films with Alistair Sim in a key role. Mostly to look for a really good clip of his wonderful voice, in which he’s not too Scottish, to clone for Chatterbox TTS. For what it’s worth, here is my ranking: **** Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday. 1939. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19762"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19770,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19762\/revisions\/19770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n***** Cottage to Let<\/em>. 1941. Excellent comedy-mystery film, don’t let the dull title fool you. A very young George Cole ‘steals the stage’.
\n** Green for Danger<\/em>. 1946. A serious hospital murder-mystery, gripping but the abundant 1940s histrionics get a bit wearing.
\n***** Hue and Cry<\/em>. 1947. Excellent children’s ‘bombsite Britain’ comedy-crime movie, Sim is wonderful.
\n***** London Belongs to Me<\/em>. 1948. Excellent, but the focus is firmly on Richard Attenborough.
\n**** The Happiest Days of Your Life<\/em>. 1950. A fine pre-St. Trinians<\/em> boarding-school comedy movie, with a strong focus on Sim as the wily headmaster.
\n*** Laughter in Paradise<\/em>. 1951. Quite reasonable and watchable comedy, but note that Sim is only a quarter of the movie.
\n** Folly to Be Wise<\/em>. 1952. If you like histrionic stage farces, this may appeal. Otherwise skip.
\n**** The Belles of St. Trinian’s<\/em>. 1954. The first St. Trinians school movie, and the best of the four.
\n*** Geordie<\/em>. 1955. A Scottish drama with fine landscape and touches of comedy. Sim has a low-key performance as The Laird (Geordie’s boss).
\n**** The Green Man<\/em>. 1956. An excellently dark comedic part for Sim, as an assassin. Far-fetched, but very watchable and the support from George Cole is perfectly pitched.
\n* Left Right and Centre<\/em>. 1959. Tiresome and rather bog-standard local by-election comedy-satire, from what I saw. I gave up half way through.
\n** The Millionairess<\/em>. 1960. Strange and rather tiresome adaptation of a George Bernard Shaw play. The focus is not on Sim. Again, I gave up half way through.
\n*** School for Scoundrels<\/em>. 1960. Very watchable sprightly 1950s-style British comedy, with Sim and Terry Thomas supporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"