Me and Marlborough (1935)

When inn-keeper "Kit" (Cicely Courtneidge) discovers that her new husband has been pressed into the army of Queen Anne on the evening following her wedding, she sets about trying to retrieve him from his new, precarious, position. Dressed as a man, she gets herself posted to the front and through cunning manipulation of her rather dopey superiors - including the Duke of Marlborough (Tom Walls) himself - she proves more than a match for them, and the opposing French. It's a whimsy of a film, this - a vehicle for a haughty Courteneidge with competent, if not exactly hysterically funny, support from a cast that indulge both her style and the pretty lacklustre writing. It has some humour, and demonstrates well that women were in no way inferior to their men folks, but the joke really does wear thin and the ending (somewhat tied by history) is never really in question. The star has a decent go at a Noel Gay number which proves she can hold a tune, just not one of his best!