Those were the days...

1953: The ‘wicked little satire’ shot on the Clyde

ONE day in September 1953, hundreds of people gathered on Glasgow’s Suspension Bridge and Jamaica Bridge to watch film scenes being shot on the Clyde. The Bulletin said the film in question was about puffers, and was known as The Highland Fling. By the time the film was released, however, its name had changed to The Maggie. It was directed for Ealing Studios by Alexander Mackendrick, whose other films would include Whisky Galore!, The Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit, and, in Hollywood, Sweet Smell of Success, a movie often seen as his masterpiece.

The Maggie was about the wily skipper (Alex Mackenzie) of a dilapidated old puffer who lures a wealthy American (Paul Douglas) into entrusting him, and the vessel, with a valuable cargo.

“Ostensibly,” said a Radio Times review, “this most underestimated of Ealing comedies is a cross between Whisky Galore! and The Titfield Thunderbolt – a whimsical story about a crew of canny Clydebankers giving a brash American a torrid time after being assigned to carry his property aboard their clapped-out steamer. Don’t be fooled, however, by the leisurely pace, the gentle humour and the relatively good-natured conclusion. In reality, it’s a wicked little satire on the mutual contempt that underlies Euro-american relations, and few could have handled it with such incisive insight as American-born Scot Alexander Mackendrick.”

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