This film introduced me to a British institution I was not familiar with, as the title says Holiday Camp. It's kind of like a cruise ship on land with organized activities like one where guests stay in various cabins. This film also introduced the Huggett family to the British movie-going public. The Huggetts are parents Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison, son Peter Hammond and daughter Hazel Court. Like Ma and Pa Kettle who were introduced in The Egg And I, the Huggetts would go on to a few feature films and were a great favorite in the United Kingdom.But they were second billed here to Flora Robson a kindly spinster woman who lost her true love during the first World War and who is rooming with a young woman Jeanette Tregarthen. Tregarthen is also pregnant but only her boyfriend Emrys Jones knows. Tregarthen's aunt Beatrice Varley a hatchet faced old harridan is there as well. Robson's performance as a woman who does a great kindness to Jones and Tregarthen is the highlight of the film. She was quite touching.Also billed above the Huggetts is Dennis Price whose character is something along the lines of David Niven's Major in Separate Tables. But Price is a lot more sinister.Young Peter Hammond gets good and taken by a pair of card sharps who work these camps, but those two get a nice comeuppance and Hammond learns a life lesson. Hammond is also bunking with Jimmy Hanley who played a lot of young juvenile leads in the 40s and 50s in British films. He takes an interest in Hazel Court and Hanley would also appear in future Huggett films.This was a nice family comedy with a touch of drama and pathos and I can see why the Huggetts were so popular in the United Kingdom.

HOLIDAY CAMP is an important 1947 British film for several reasons. First off, it documents the rise of a British institution, the holiday camp, a place where the working class flocked in the years after World War II to enjoy the countryside and various activities like swimming and biking and dancing. The holiday camp planned all kinds of outdoors activities for people who otherwise never got out of the city.The films comprises several plot lines. The Huggett family (they would spin off into their own film series) epitomizes the working class family on the way up. They still hold to old morals and traditions but they are thrust into the post-war world where beauty contests and having a good time are now the norm. We also see a lonely spinster whose life has been wasted in pining for a boy who never came back from World War I and taking care of an ailing mother. Another plot follows a caddish womanizer who also seems to have a secret.Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison are the parents. Peter Hammond is the hapless son, and Hazel Court the war widow with a baby. Flora Robson is the spinster who lets go of the past and finds a new purpose in life. Dennis Price is the cad with a secret.But it's Esma Cannon, the tiny (4 ft 10) actress who steals the film as Elsie Dawson, an endlessly cheerful old maid who throws herself into life and into the pursuit of "Mr. Right" even though the odds are against her. She chases after Dennis Price, takes part in every camp activity (including a swim-suit beauty contest), and cheers up everyone around her. The ending of the film and Elsie's fate are quite shocking.All of the stars are excellent. Co-stars include Esmond Knight as the "voice" of the camp (via loudspeakers), Jimmy Hanley as a possible son-in-law for the Huggetts, Yvonne Owen as a sharp-tongued friend, Beatrice Varley as a bitter old aunt, Emrys Jones and Jeannette Tregarthen as the troubled young couple, Susan Shaw as Patsy, Jane Hylton as the camp receptionist, Diana Dors as a dancer, and Patricia Roc in a cameo as herself.But it's Esma Cannon who you'll remember from this great film.

The first of the Huggett series is actually not a full-blown comedy at all. It's best described as a comedy drama with the accent decidedly cast on the latter quality. In fact, it has a rather nasty twist in its tail – which brings it firmly into the film noir category. On the plus side, it's expertly acted by a first-rate cast in which Hazel Court and Jack Warner shine, and in which the director and his players manage to overcome most (though not all) of the twists in a somewhat clumsily constructed screenplay. On the negative front, true-to-life episodes are forced to jostle with comedy, romance and (briefly) horror. In fact, to re-iterate the splendid wording of Claytons TV commercial, Holiday Camp is the portmanteau film you have when you're not having a portmanteau film.

My first inkling of Esma Cannon was in the BBC t.v. comedy series "The Rag Trade" from the early 1960s in which she played a comic "put upon" machinist.She was a funny comedienne with her 4'10" height and way of speaking.In "Holiday Camp" she again plays a lonely spinster on the look out for a beau.Unfortunately a confidence trickster and "Mannequin" murderer, "Sq. Ldr. Hardwick" (Dennis Price), takes her out for a walk down a remote country lane and although we don't see her end in the film, we have to presume she became his next victim.Bear in mind this was a 1947 family film and the British Board of Film Censors would have clamped down hard on any graphic sex & violence."Holiday Camp" has quite a cast and although Charlie Chester & Patricia Roc get star billing you only see them (as themselves) for very short scenes.The real stars are Jack Warner & Kathleen Harrison as working class parents Mr Joe & Mrs Ethel Huggett along with their daughter,Hazel Court as Joan Huggett who has a toddler in tow.I did not hear whether she was a war widow or had an unfortunate accident but she finds a boyfriend in the shape of Jimmy Hanley (Jimmy Gardner) who has been left a "Dear John" letter by his former girlfriend.There are some nice period touches like sweet rationing (Britain did not finally come off it until 1955 and I vividly remember my parents stocking up our rations so we could go away on holiday with our chocolate/butterscotch etc, (I was born in 1946).Of course contraception was not mentioned and a previous reviewer mentioned it was daring of Sydney Box (the screenplay writer) to include a subplot of a pregnant unmarried girl Valerie Thompson (Jeannete Tregathen) whose musical boyfriend Michael Halliday (Emrys Jones) cannot afford to keep them both.Which brings me to Dame Flora Robson.I was surprised to see her in this type of film as she normally appeared in serious drama but even a Shakespearean actress wants some light relief occasionally.She plays Esther Harman a woman who lost track of her boyfriend in 1918 and supposed him dead with the millions of others.She keeps a photograph of them as young lovers in her handbag.Due to a very unlikely coincidence (which only happens in films), it happens her old lover, Esmond Knight, is now married with two boys and working (although blind as a result of a mine) as the holiday camp announcer.Although she meets him in his office, she does not divulge who she is as she realises he is a happy man.Rather Esther becomes a sympathetic mother-type figure to Valerie and admonishes Valerie's very disapproving aunt played by Gainsborough stalwart Beatrice Varley for not lending her support to her niece's desperate need.Another subplot involves the perils of engaging cardsharps in pontoon, but Jack Warner thankfully comes to the rescue.Beauty parades, swimming, wonky bicycles, dances, entertainment on the stage, communal eating etc. its all there.I am so glad my parents took me & my two sisters down to the coast and avoided organised entertainment!!