Say It with Flowers (1934 film)

For the novel by Gladys Mitchell, see Say It with Flowers (novel). For the Swedish film, see Say It with Flowers (1952 film).

Say It with Flowers is a 1934 British musical film directed by John Baxter and starring Mary Clare, Ben Field and George Carney.^[1] The screenplay concerns a group of London shopkeepers who hold a benefit concert in a local pub to raise money for a woman to visit the seaside for her health. The film is notable for the performances of several real music hall stars Florrie Forde, Charles Coborn and Marie Kendall.

Say It with Flowers
Directed by	John Baxter
Written by	H. Fowler Mear Wallace Orton
Produced by	Julius Hagen
Starring	Mary Clare Ben Field George Carney
Cinematography	Sydney Blythe
Edited by	Michael C. Chorlton
Music by	Colin Wark
Production company	Twickenham Studios
Distributed by	Radio Pictures
Release date	1934 (1934)
Running time	71 min
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Synopsis

The film is set in a street market in the Old Kent Road. One of the stallholders, Kate, is a flower seller who many of the leading music hall stars buy their flowers from. When Kate falls ill and visits the Doctor she is prescribed a stay at the seaside to restore her health. However, she is too ill to work to pay for her visit. Her fellow stallholders rally round, and secretly organise a concert at a nearby pub to help raise the money. They approach all the great musical hall performers (many from the golden era of musical hall) who have used her stall over the years. The concert is successfully staged and Kate is able to head to the seaside.^[2]

Cast

• Mary Clare as Kate Bishop
• Ben Field as Joe Bishop
• George Carney as Bill Woods
• Mark Daly as Scotty MacDonald
• Edgar Driver as Titch
• Freddie Watts as Steve
• Edwin Ellis as Ted
• Wilson Coleman as Doctor
• Roddy Hughes as Sam, the Newspaper Seller
• Florrie Forde as herself
• Charles Coborn as himself
• Marie Kendall as herself

Reception

Picturegoer Weekly reviewed the film favourably observing "there is more entertainment in this unambitous film... than in many alleged super-productions".^[3] In his book The Age of the Dream Palace Jeffrey Richards highlighted the film's genuine sympathy with the lives of the ordinary people it is portraying.^[4]

References

1. BFI.org
2. Richards p. 300–302
3. Shafer p. 167
4. Richards p. 300–302

External links

• Say It with Flowers at IMDb

Bibliography

• Richards, Jeffrey. The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in Britain 1930–1939. Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1984.
• Shafer, Stephen C. British popular films, 1929–1939: The Cinema of Reassurance. Routledge. 1997.