Charley Moon is a 1956 British musical film directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Max Bygraves, Dennis Price and Shirley Eaton. The screenplay and lyrics are by Leslie Bricusse. The story is based on Reginald Arkell's novel of the same name.

Plot summary

Charley Moon is a country boy who, after a national service stint in the army, becomes a small-time music-hall performer. After a few lucky breaks, he finds himself popular and the star of a musical hit in London's West End. Initially successful, Moon soon decides that showbiz is a facile occupation, and he longs to return to his childhood home. He eventually finds himself back where he started.

Cast

Production

It was filmed at Pinewood Studios, and on location in Upton Grey and Greywell, Hampshire.

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This faltering attempt at a British musical chiefly makes one regret the lost efficiency and certainty, the unaffected freshness of British musicals of the early 'thirties, like Evergreen. The script is slack and wandering; the back-stage music hall atmosphere is embarrassingly phoney; the characters are mainly threadbare types – comic vicar, comic ham, comic temperamental star, comic north country impresario, comic Yiddish agent, loveable village personalities. The numbers are very casually staged and derive – distantly – from the more intimate style of the early 'thirties or the "advanced" realist-stylised manner of the late 'forties. The great misfortune of the whole thing is that Max Bygraves is most sympathetic and really talented, and that the story, fairly done, might have had genuine charm." The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Offering fewer insights into the loneliness of the long-distance performer than, say, John Osborne's The Entertainer, the film nevertheless has a ring of authenticity."