Dandy Dick (1935)

Will Hay wears a dog collar, but he's sadly not masquerading as a clergyman in this early film of his before he hit his stride with Gainsborough.

Despite a few exteriors (notably a couple of scenes involving a plane piloted by a dashing young Edmond Knight) it remains a garrulous piece of canned theatre in which the characters just stand around talking; with Hay playing an amiable ditherer rather than the seedy authority figure he later became.

There are hints at what delights lay in store in one of the council members being called 'Harbottle'. The real Harbottle, Moore Marriott, is actually in it, albeit briefly; the eponymous Dandy Dick being a racehorse upon whom the plot turns but who appears even more briefly than Marriott had.