Poor Old Bill
1931 film directed by Monty Banks
Poor Old Bill is a 1931 British comedy film directed by Monty Banks and starring Leslie Fuller, Iris Ashley and Syd Courtenay. It marked the film debut of a very young Peter Lawford, playing the child of the main character, Bill (Leslie Fuller).
Premise
A man sponges off an old comrade from the First World War who believes he has saved his life during the war, although this ultimately proves not to be true.
Cast
Leslie Fuller as Bill
Iris Ashley as Emily
Syd Courtenay as Harry
Peter Lawford as Horace
Hal Gordon as Jack
Robert Brooks Turner as Mick
Dick Francis as Constable
Critical reception
TV Guide gave the film one out of four stars, calling it an "Interesting conception for a farce," but concluded that, "Unfortunately, the idea is carried on much too long, stretching what little material there is."
References
Bibliography
Sutton, David R. A chorus of raspberries: British film comedy 1929–1939. University of Exeter Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-85989-603-0.
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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 Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7228805. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1929, 1939 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Poor Old Bill” 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.