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Todd has never had a hit of such potential dimensions. Having gotten Around the World, he is now sitting on top of it. His plans? Says the man who is pushing 50 as if he intends to knock it over: "As soon as the excitement dies down, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. I worked for it, I owe it to myself and nobody is going to deprive me of it."
Wee Geordie (Gilliat & Launder; George K. Arthur). "ARE YOU UNDERSIZED? LET ME MAKE A DIFFERENT MAN OF YOU!" Wee Geordie's heart gave a glorious thump as he read the ad in the Drumfechan Clarion. He was undersized indeed; so wee a bairn of ten years old was hardly to be seen in all the glen. At school he had to stand on a box to reach the blackboard, and when he went walking with bonny Jean, she was half a head taller than he. That very night, with the courage of desperation, the thrifty young Scotsman scraped his last bob from the back of the bureau drawer and sent off for the Henry Samson Body-Building Course.
It came; or rather, the first lesson came-a fine, fat envelope that proved to contain a small booklet of simple exercises and a mighty stack of inspirational literature ("Today I may be frail and weak,But soon I shall be tough as teak").
Wee Geordie was inspired, and away he rushed, as fast as his skinny little legs would carry him, down "the royal road to health and fitness." To the horror of his parents, the road seemed to be paved with Lsd. To the certain delight of millions of moviegoers, it has also been pot-holed by British Moviemakers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder with some grand comic surprises.
Ten years passed, ten years of unremitting sweat, in which Wee Geordie threw a sockful of good shillings after bad exercises. And what had he got to show for all of his trouble? Well, as a matter of fact, he was just about 6 ft. 6 and hard as bricks. Whether by the grace of God or the works of Henry Samson, Wee Geordie (Bill Travers) turned out to be the biggest and the brawest laddie from Ecclefechan to Papa Westray. He was a nice, gentle giant-or, depending on the point of view, a big dumb ox. He thought of nothing but his muscles, and as far as bonny Jean (Norah Gorsen) could tell, he would rather grab a bar bell than a girl.
One day Henry Samson wrote Geordie a letter that contained a revolutionary proposal: now that you have all that muscle, why not use it for some practical purpose? "In Scotland," Samson went on, "the tendency is to throw things. I think you should throw something. Geordie." Geordie was electrified. He promptly picked up a sledge hammer and threw it halfway to the coast of Norway. The laird (Alastair Sim) happened at the time to be stalking a capercaillie in the gorse, saw the thing go flying by, and nigh jumped out of his baggy tweeds. In no time at all, Geordie was winding up for his first throw at the Drumfechan games.