The Night We Dropped a Clanger
1959 film by Darcy Conyers
The Night We Dropped a Clanger (released in the US as Make Mine a Double), is a 1959 black and white British comedy film directed by Darcy Conyers and starring Brian Rix, Cecil Parker, William Hartnell and Leslie Phillips. It was written by John Chapman.
The title comes from the British expression "to drop a clanger", meaning to make a big mistake. It links in the title to the secondary meaning of "clang", the noise of a metallic object hitting the floor.
A British secret agent is sent on a secret operation in occupied France during the Second World War but a diversionary tactic turns into a farcical tale of mistaken identity.
Andrew Sachs made his film debut in a minor role.
Plot
When mysterious, unpiloted, midget aircraft start landing in southern England during the Second World War, secret agent Wing Commander Blenkinsop, VC and bar, is chosen for a top-secret mission to occupied France to investigate. Meanwhile, as a diversionary tactic to deceive the Germans, his exact look-alike, Aircraftsman [sic] Atwood, is reluctantly recruited to go to North Africa. However, through a farcical mixup, Blenkinsop finds himself in Africa and Atwood ends up in France.
By far more luck than judgement, Atwood returns to England in one of the buzz bombs and, with everyone (including Blenkinsop's girlfriend Lulu) believing he is Blenkinsop, he becomes a national hero, while the real Blenkinsop desperately tries to regain his identity and his life.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Night We Dropped a Clanger” as 1959 film by Darcy Conyers. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1959 film by Darcy Conyers. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7754124. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Night We Dropped a Clanger” 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.