The Belles of St Trinian's

1954 - Dir: Frank Launder - 1 hr 27 mins

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27^th December, 2011

“The Happiest Days of Your Life” (1950) was such a huge success that a follow-up was inevitable - and Ronald Searle's much-loved cartoons about the riotous, thankfully fictional girls' school St Trinian's provided the perfect inspiration. Searle was heavily involved with the screenplay and this, the first in the series, is probably the closest the film makers ever got to the strange world inside the cartoonist’s head. The main titles are drawn by Searle. “The Belles of St Trinian's” reunited Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell and threw in a bevy of 1950s character actors. The standout is George Cole as Flash Harry, Arthur Daley's spiritual ancestor, but there's sterling support from Hermione Baddeley, Irene Handl, Beryl Reid, Joan Sims and Sid James, while cameos include Searle and his wife and editor Kaye Webb as concerned parents. St Trinian's is presided over the genial Miss Millicent Fritton (Sim in drag), whose philosophy is summed up as: "in other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared".

Four sequels followed - “Blue Murder at St Trinian's” (1957), “The Pure Hell of St Trinian's” (1960), “The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery” (1966) and “The Wildcats of St Trinian's” (1980). Launder directed them all but they could be said to be flogging the proverbial dead horse as the idea ran out of steam. Even deader were the two updated sequels “St Trinians” (2007) and “St Trinian’s II” (2009) which starred such talents as David Tennent and Colin Firth… they really must have been short of cash!