Roland Young

St Benny the Dip

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Lionel Stander, Dick Haymes, Roland Young

I didn’t know, going into St Benny the Dip, that a “dip” is a pickpocket. In these circles the dip is the one who goes in for the goods, the “stall” having provided a distraction, while the “mule” is the one to whom the hot item is swiftly transferred, in case the dip is caught in the act. That established, into the film, which doesn’t seem to be about pickpockets at all, though it is about street criminals. When we meet Benny (Dick Haymes) the smooth, Matthew (Roland Young) the plausible and Monk (Lionel Stander) the operator, they are midway through a gambling sting, trying to bilk a high roller, when the police … Read more

And Then There Were None

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Barry Fitzgerald and cast

There have been many, many adaptations of Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None, but for pure, straightforward storytelling at pace, it hard to beat this one, from 1945. It writes the book on the “elimination whodunit”, when one character after another is killed, with Christie keeping the speculation going as to who actually did it right up to the point when there are only two possible choices left. As so often with Christie, she withholds some vital piece of information from the audience, and then delivers it at the end with a ta-daa flourish. This is exactly the sort of plotting that drives some people into Christie’s arms and others out … Read more

Topper

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Cary Grant, Roland Young, Constance Bennett

Dying is a lot of fun in the Topper films, a trio of light-hearted comedies kicking off in 1937 with Topper, which starred Constance Bennett, Cary Grant and Roland Young, then continued in 1938 with Topper Takes a Trip and bowed out in 1941 with Topper Returns. From the star names you might expect Cary Grant to be playing Topper but in fact it’s Roland Young, a specialist at fuddy-duddy roles, as the banker whose painfully ordered domestic existence is skittled by the arrival in his life of two ghosts – played by Grant and Bennett. They play the Kerbys, a fun-loving, hard-partying, vair vair rich couple clearly inspired by The Thin Man’s … Read more