No doubt influenced by the success of Pygmalion producer/director Gaby Pascal followed up three years later with a second GBS polemic masquerading as a play, in this case that old chestnut God versus Mammon best out of three, Major Barbara. Wendy Hiller had scored a personal triumph as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion so here she is again as the eponymous Salvation Army lass whose father happens conveniently to be a munitions manufacturer. One of the problems with Shaw in this vein is that he tended to animate cyphers rather than create flesh-and-blood characters and here a group of actors from stage and screen do what they can with what they are given to work with. There's little discernible chemistry between Hiller and Rex Harrison, Robert Morley pays homage to Charles Laughton, Emlyn Williams phones it in and it's left to stage actress Marie Lohr to provide a touch of class. Elsewhere Bobby Newton offers a prototype Bill Sikes (possibly encouraged by Editor David Lean who also gets a co-director credit. Stanley Holloway gets a strangely long opening sequence for an uncredited role and in her film debut Deborah Kerr gives little indication of the durable career to come. A curio more than anything else.
Review of Major Barbara
