Playmates

Will Hay and M’lita Dolores play a pair of spoiled brats squabbling over a menagerie of mechanical toys.

Mechanical toys were all the rage in the 1920s, featuring in various newsreel items aimed at lucky kids - or rather their parents. Wacky though they are, the toys are upstaged in this Gaumont cinemagazine item by the squabbling antics of comic star Will Hay and music hall favourite M’lita Dolores, who play a pair of spoiled brats (both were in their thirties at this point). The skit came from a variety show called Listening In, performed at London’s Apollo Theatre in August 1922.