Radio Pirates
1935 film by Ivar Campbell
Radio Pirates, also known as Big Ben Calling, is a 1935 British musical film directed by Ivar Campbell and starring Leslie French, Mary Lawson and Enid Stamp-Taylor. It was written by Donovan Pedelty, with music and lyrics by Mark Lubbock, and made at Shepperton Studios.
Plot
To save themselves from financial ruin, the owner of a radio shop and his friends start a pirate radio station. The police pursue them and they end up in the tower of Big Ben.
Cast
Leslie French as Leslie
Mary Lawson as Mary
Willie Jenkins as Billy Brooks
Enid Stamp-Taylor
Hughie Green
Kenneth Kove
Roy Fox and his band as themselves
Teddy Brown
Edgar Driver (uncredited)
Frederick Lloyd (uncredited)
John Turnbull (uncredited)
Fanny Wright (uncredited)
Sally Gray (uncredited)
Reception
Kine Weekly wrote: "Happy, friendly radio musical romance, a trifle loose in construction but admirably presented and richer in ideas and ingenuity than many of its successful predecessors."
Picturegoer wrote: "Net a very well constructed story, but one which has some ingenuity of idea, bright gags, and good 'turns' ... Hughie Green gives some exceedingly clever imitations, and both Roy Fox and his Band and Teddy Brown are in excellent form.
The public source identifies “Radio Pirates” as 1935 film by Ivar Campbell. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Radio, Pirates 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 May 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19876290. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Radio Pirates” 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.