I don’t know much about the Welsh, and it was only upon seeing 1949’s A Run for Your Money that I realized they don’t seem to be represented on film very often. Newspapers of the time said the Welsh were not happy with how they are portrayed here, and I can understand that.
If they were as portrayed here, this would be a country of friendly but rather dense hayseeds. Apparently, the leek (you know, that onion-like vegetable) is an important national symbol for them. But I doubt they go around wearing them in a jacket pocket all the time. Does the phrase “taking a leak” mean something entirely different in Welsh—like, you actually transporting a leek from one place to another?
And yet, I found much of the humor at their expense to be quite gentle. Take for instance the outrageously long town names they are famous for. When the picture begins, the narration starts with “Our story begins in…” while the screen shows straight-on shot of a sign saying “HAFOD”. Then the sign pans to the right and pans and pans some more, until we see the full name of the town is like 50 characters long.
Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards play brothers who work in the mines of this town. They have won 100 pounds each and tickets to a rugby match in London, where England will face-off against Wales.
Alec Guinness plays a newspaper columnist tasked with welcoming the brothers at the London train station to give them their money and tickets. I always love seeing Guinness in early British comedies like this, but this is a small role and he isn’t given much to do.
All he has to do is find the men with leeks in their jacket pocket. No surprise our protagonists cannot be found by Guinness in the sea of Welshmen at the station, each with a leek in their pocket. Further complications ensue from a gold-digger overhearing the brothers discussing the prize money. Then there’s a fellow countryman whom one of the brothers finds busking on the street, and he enlists them in an effort to reclaim his harp from a pawnshop.
By the end of the picture, the brothers have missed the rugby match, and will be pursued by con artists, a Welsh man carrying a harp nearly as tall as himself, Guinness and a dog. Through a great deal of the film, one of the brothers wears one bowler hat stuck on top of another and that is actually (at least, as concerns the plot) one of the more sensible elements to be found here.
A Run for Your Money is an Ealing comedy from the late 40’s, so I was a shoe-in to enjoy this. It isn’t among the studio’s best output, but it is a welcome addition to their canon. Alas, the best moments aren’t until the final third, but then, you can’t really see that part without watching all that comes before it, can you?
Dir: Charles Frend
Starring: Donald Houston, Meredith Edwards, Moira Lister
Watched on Network UK blu-ray (region B)