Cavalcade of Variety

Just as film students in the emergent Soviet Union were forced by the lack of raw film stock to cannibalise old movies to practice upon, so F.W.Baker, head of production at Butcher's Films here rose to the wartime challenge twenty years later of providing 'new' product for cinemas by occasionally cutting from a few pre-War variety acts strung together to footage shot by veteran director Thomas Bentley of ventriloquist Peter Brough sharing a 'gox' at the theatre with his dummy Jimmy where this is supposedly being staged.

Billy Cotton looks almost the same age as I remember him on TV nearly thirty years later. Despite a fleeting topical reference by Brough to the invasion of Holland ("I expect they'll be freed soon") the age of the material being used is betrayed by the thirties hairstyles worn by most of the young women on stage being ogled by Jimmy.