Thank you, Penfold. I'm not too surprised, as to date I only found three precise reviews of DARBY AND JOAN:
- Monthly Film Bulletin, March 1937
- Picturegoer Weekly, July 24, 1937
- Film Weekly, July 24, 1937
I have xeroxes from these three. A fourth one was published in Kinematograph Weekly (March 4, 1937) but I have no access to it, living in France.
I was thinking more specifically to "trade movie magazines", like "The Daily Film Renter". Some years ago I found some old issues and all of them were profusely illustrated with ads, sometimes in full-page and in color, as for "Crimes at the Dark House" for instance. (Curiously, in this ad, the director's credit was given to David Macdonald, not George King - and in the movie itself nobody is credited as director!
Some movies, strangely, were never reviewed or even mentioned in a magazine like Monthly Film Bulletin. For instance, they never published a review of the first Tod Slaughter movie, "Maria Marten or The Murder in the Red Barn", althought I found two British ones (Kine Weekly, April 11, 1935 and Picture Show, July 27, 1935) and no less than eleven American reviews!
Another Tod Slaughter movie, "Soldiers Without Uniform", a 1941 featurette, isn't even mentioned in the British Film Catalogue 1895-1985. Denis Gifford told me this title was totally unknown to him. But it WAS made, and even submitted for certificate on December 16, 1941. It got an "U" from the BBFC. The producer (and probably director) was Widgey R. Newman, and the scheduled distributor, General Film Distributors. But it was apparently never released, even under another title. Ellen Pollock, Ian Fleming, and Margaret Yarde co-starred with Slaughter in this one. The running time was 33'19" (2,999 ft). What became of this featurette? nobody knows - apparently. I even wrote to Rank, as they inherited the GFD materials, and they didn't find anything in their archives - and I can believe them, as they were quite helpful in telling me that another short, "Bothered By a Beard", was given by them to the BFI decades ago. I only found a very short mention of "Soldiers Without Uniform" in an US magazine, "Billboard", in an article on then current British productions.
The title is also mentioned in two David Quinlan books, "British Sound Films - The Studio Years 1928-1959" and "The Illustrated Directory of Film Stars".
Maybe could I consult a clairvoyant to locate these lost prints...
