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Two Cities film studio, headed by Filippo Del Giudice, had been formed in England in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. Del Giudice had announced that the company would focus on prestige films (much like the American studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Yet with Great Britain at war, the company ended up churning out patriotic films and light comedies on time and on budget, like English Without Tears (1944), which was retitled Her Man Gilbey for the American market when it was released in 1949. The latter title was a deliberate reference to the Carole Lombard/William Powell classic screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936), which featured the similar theme of a rich girl falling in love with a butler. For English Without Tears, the heiress was played by Penelope Dudley-Ward and the butler by Michael Wilding, soon to arrive in the United States and a few years away from his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor.

With a script by Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald, who had worked together on Two Cities' hit film French Without Tears (1940), and Harold French directing, English Without Tears tells the story of Tom Gilbey (Wilding), butler to the eccentric Lady Christabel (Margaret Rutherford), who spends her time campaigning for the rights of British birds. Her niece, Joan Heseltine (Ward) has an unrequited crush on Gilbey, a proper third-generation butler who knows his place. Everything changes when the war breaks out; the rights of British birds fly out the window and British class-consciousness goes with it. The battle against the Nazis must take center stage, and so Gilbey leaves to join the service. A few years later, he returns as a second lieutenant and finally falls in love with Joan, who is now surrounded by foreign officers and a lot of male attention. Lady Christabel has opened her home to refugees and must adapt to the breakdown in social conventions. Also in the cast was a young Peggy Cummins, (who would shortly depart for Hollywood and a contract with 20th Century-Fox), Lilli Palmer and Claude Dauphin.

Making films during wartime and its resulting restrictions and hardships was a difficult process. English Without Tears was made despite all this, plus the fact that Rex Harrison, the preferred choice to play Gilbey, and Anthony Asquith the desired director, were both unavailable. Michael Wilding replaced Harrison and Harold French took on the directing assignment, but French was unhappy with the result, calling it a "mishmash" that suffered because de Grunwald, and not Rattigan, had written the majority of the script. Producer Sydney Box was also displeased with being called away from working on The Way Ahead (1944) to help out, along with William Sassoon as co-producer, although in a subordinate role. Box wanted to scrap the story altogether, and replace it with one he had written, Close Quarters. However, studio head Del Giudice refused to start over; he thought that the film only required a few edits. Box remained on the production, although he threatened to quit twice. His final verdict on English Without Tears was that it was "a pretty useless film except as a highly polished bromide to accompany back-stalls petting parties."

When the film was released in Britain in August 1944, the critics didn't agree with Box. Although The Glasgow Herald compared it unfavorably to French Without Tears, noting that Anthony Asquith's "light, witty touch" was missing from this film, they praised Wilding as "pleasant as the embodiment of the joke and Penelope Ward is charming as the trimmings to it. Roland Culver is beautifully suave in a small part, and Margaret Rutherford has a nice bit of philanthropic lunacy to do."

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Film Review, The Glasgow Herald 30 Oct 44
The Internet Movie Database
Murphy, Robert Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939-48 Spicer, Andrew Sydney Box