Harry is a cheap spiv with a pencil moustache, who is usually seen wearing a trench coat and trilby hat. The shoulders on the coat are so wide that he almost looks as if he's left the coat hanger inside it, while the hat is invariably pulled down over his eyes to disguise his face, making it comically obvious that he's up to no good. Harry seems to be permanently skulking somewhere in the school grounds and can usually be summoned with a strong whistle. When he finds out that a policewoman has been sent to the school undercover he is indignant: "It's a blooming nerve! Ain't been no murders 'ere. Not so far." Sim was already established as a favourite of Launder and Gilliat, appearing in their dramas Waterloo Road and London Belongs to Me and their thriller Green for Danger, as well as their 1950s comedies The Happiest Days of Your Life and Folly to be Wise, and later Geordie, The Green Man and Left, Right and Centre.

For the 2007 film, see St Trinian's (film). For the actual progressive school, see St Trinnean's School. Cover of a modern re-issue of St Trinian's drawings Prominent among the older girls is Georgina, played by James Mason's daughter Portland Mason, in her penultimate film before she retired from acting. Portland, apparently named after Portland Hoffa and not the city in Oregon, was about 17 at the time the film was made. St Trinian's is depicted as an unorthodox girls' school where the younger girls wreak havoc and the older girls express their femininity overtly, turning their shapeless schoolgirl dress into something sexy and risqué by the standards of the times. St Trinian's is often invoked in discussions about groups of schoolgirls running amok. [ citation needed] During his BBC interview [8] Searle agreed that the cruelty depicted at St Trinian's derived partly from his captivity during World War II but stressed that he included it only because the ignoble aspect to warfare in general had become more widely known. Launder does a near-perfect job of bringing the girls onto the silver screen. The film's tempo keeps to a fast trot and sometimes breaks into a gallop. His comedic timing is excellent. When the Civil Servants dance, he keeps his distance and films them in full, adding to the funniness of the sketch. But if somebody is whispering, he goes for a close-up, and you feel like you're sharing the joke - once again adding power to the humour.

Broadcasts

Goodwin, Stephen (October 22, 1998). "Revealed: belles of the real St Trinians". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24 . Retrieved April 23, 2017. In the films the school became embroiled in various shady enterprises, thanks mainly to Flash, and, as a result, was always threatened with closure by the Ministry. (In the last of the original four, this became the "Ministry of Schools", possibly because of fears of a libel action from a real Minister of Education.) The first four films form a chronological quartet, and were produced by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. They had earlier produced The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a stylistically similar school comedy, starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Richard Wattis, Guy Middleton, and Bernadette O'Farrell, all of whom later appeared in the St Trinian's series, often playing similar characters. There were some great actors involved and they all do well with the script. I might have come up with an alternative to the "Dance" idea, but actually it did grow on me. That Malcolm Arnold had a playful side and a sense of humour wasn't a great surprise, given that his works included "A Grand Overture for Orchestra, Organ, Rifles, Three Hoovers and an Electric Floor Polisher", a parody of a grand 19th century overture, written for the Hoffnung Music Festival.

The action gets more frantic and less amusing as it goes along and, by the end of the whole thing, I'd pretty much lost interest in it. The cast are reasonably good. The girls are in two camps – the young thugs and the sexy `girls' (albeit it they are happily in their 20's). The support cast includes good performances from George Cole (complete with cheeky chappy music in case you didn't get it). Parker and Grenfell are OK but their stuff on the island doesn't really wash. Barker and Walters are fine, as is a cameo from Le Mesurier, but Sid James is pretty wasted.

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JOHN WAYNE HEADS BOX-OFFICE POLL". The Mercury. Hobart, Tasmania. 31 December 1954. p.6 . Retrieved 24 April 2012– via National Library of Australia. This is a repeat of Alastair Sim's line as Miss Fritton in The Belles of St. Trinian'sthat "I cannot afford to have continual arson about in my school!"

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The music for the film was written by the English composer Malcolm Arnold. The music was arranged as a concert suite for orchestra with piano four hands by Christopher Palmer. [8] [9] The suite was performed at the BBC Proms in 2003 and 2021. [10] [11] Reception [ edit ] Box office [ edit ] Ronald Searle appeared in a cameo role as a visiting parent. [2] Roger Delgado plays the Sultan's aide. [4] It was also the first film appearance of Barbara Windsor, then a teenager. [5] Production [ edit ] If it's not as fun as `Belles' or `Blue Murder', `Pure Hell' does have its good points. Cecil Parker's down-at-heel headmaster is a major asset to the movie, while it's nice to see the likes of Sid James, Denis Price and Liz Frazer make an appearance.