My Friend the King
1932 film by Michael Powell
My Friend the King is a lost 1932 British comedy film, directed by Michael Powell and starring Jerry Verno. It was written by John Jefferson Farjeon.
The film was a follow-up to Two Crowded Hours (1931), Powell's directorial debut, with comedian Verno reprising his role as a chirpy Cockney taxi driver who gets mixed up in shady doings. This film however was less well-received, with Powell recalling it as "a complete failure", also noting that he worked on six films during 1932 and that "they couldn't all be good...and they weren't".
Preservation status
The British Film Institute has classed My Friend the King as a lost film. Its National Archive holds a collection of stills but no film or video materials. It is one of eleven quota quickies directed by Powell between 1931 and 1936 of which no print is known to survive.
Plot
Taxi driver Jim befriends Ruritanian child King Ludwig while the latter is on a visit to London. A plot is afoot by sinister forces to kidnap Ludwig, and Jim becomes caught up in the drama. After the child is abducted Jim uses all his ingenuity, including cross-dressing as a countess and becoming involved in a car chase, to rescue him from his captors.
The public source identifies “My Friend the King” as 1932 film by Michael Powell. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Friend, King and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6945523. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1931 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “My Friend the King” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.