Really fun, bright British comedy about three showgirls on the make, full of energy and bright Frank Launder script. Launder wrote this without Gilliat; it was interesting to contrast this with Girl in the News, which was also directed by Carol Reed starring Margaret Lockwood but was written by Gilliat without Launder. This was a better movie, a lot more fun - and made me wonder if Launder was a better writer than Gilliat. Of course it simply maybe personal taste, the source novel, anything... But it seems Launder was better at comedy. You can definitely feel The Lady Vanishes here more than in Girl in the News.
Anyway Margaret Lockwood is bright and vivacious in Lady Vanishes mode as a bright young thing who flees finishing school and winds up on stage. Her cronies include Renee Houston and an achingly young Lili Palmer. Everyone is good as is the support cast including Naunton Wayne.
The film feels influenced by those Warner Bros musicals of the early 1930s with girl's minds on money and doddering old men interested in sex. This makes it refreshingly adult. There are a few musical numbers but it's not really a musical.
The girls run around in their underwear a lot, Houston and Palmer have a cat fight, Wayne is a drunken burglar, Hugh Sinclair is the noble who Lockwood falls in love with. This romance is a little abrupt - Sinclair comes into the piece too late and is too sketchy a figure. It was the biggest flaw of the film for me. But Reed and the writers have such affection for their characters this is a hard movie to dislike and I found it a delightful surprise.
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