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scans_dailyIn another break with my tradition, I'm going to be posting something far from my usual subject matter... schoolgirls, and naughty, naughty schoolgirls at that!
But not just ANY schoolgirls, these are the schoolgirls who make the SAS squirm in terror, the legendary, the feared, the awe inspiring, the bowel knotting....
"In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared!" - Miss Millicent Fritton (Headmistress, St Trinians Academy for Ladies)
St Trinians is probably the second most famous fictional boarding school in British fiction, and was first until Hogwarts came onto the scene.
Created by noted British cartoonist Ronald Searle in the 1940's, St Trinian's was the antithesis of the Enid Blyton type of girls Boarding School in children's fiction, dull trite places where teachers had your best interest at heart, sportsmanship would always triumph, fellowship and friendship conquered all and closet lesbianism abounded (Well, if you read between the lines). Dreadful, twee books filled the shelves of the young...
Searle though, with a sort of Charles Addams-esque appreciation that the really, REALLY warped can also be hilarious, took those conventions and turning them upside down, shaking them until their dinner money cascaded out of their pockets. HIS schoolgirls were unashamed, anarchic MONSTERS. They would make any school bully you care to mention bow in respect (Well, respect, or because they'd just kicked him in the gonads whilst making off with his wallet).
St Trinians was the embodiment of "Survival of the fittest", along with a touch of "Survival of the better armed"
Shared dormitories encouraged fellowship and teamwork...
NOTHING was sacred; the arts...
The DARK arts....
And as for the parents!
And what made it so much fun as a concept wasn't that the "gels" were ghastly, they undoubtedly weere, but that's what the teachers WANTED! They weren't disciplining the girls, they were, in their own haphazard way, TRAINING them,
Even if discipline can be a real chose sometimes
See what I mean about the Charle's Addams feel to these?
No discourse on St Trinians is complete without a mention of the marvellous movies from the 1950's (and a couple in the 1960's) with a role call of the creme de la creme of British film comedy at the time; One of my all time favourite actors of any genre, Alastair Sim in rarely better form as BOTH Millicent Fritton (one of THE best female impersonations the movies have ever seen) and her ne'er do well brother Clarence (and considering how bad Millicent is, consider what Clarence must be like to be the ne'er-do-well), Joyce Grenfell (as a engagigly desperate "Jolly hockey sticks" teacher who seems to have wandered in from an Enid Blyton book and suffers for it), George Cole (as the magnifcently sleazy combination odd job man, fence and bookie Flash Harry), and Hermione Baddeley, Beryl Reid, Irene Handl and Joan Sims as assorted shades of disturbed/disturbing teachers...
The film-makers took the cartoons and added in a few things to increase the mass appeal of the films; whilst the Fourth Form girls were like the Searle cartoons, scruffy, anarchic pre-pubescent engines of chaos and mass destruction, the Sixth Form were the epitome of the naughty, busty schoolgirl (all played by girls well into their late teens or early twenties, this WAS the 1950's) who were quite prepared to use seduction AND violence to get their own way (Britteny Spears in "Hit Me Baby One More Time" doesn't even come CLOSE).
But at the core, they all upheld the values of the School, as epitomised by their school song (composed by Malcolm Arnold and lyrics by Sidney Gilliat)
Maidens of St Trinian's, gird your armour on.
Grab the nearest weapon; never mind which one.
The battle's to the strongest; might is always right.
Trample on the weakest; glory in their plight.
St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Our battle cry.
St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Will never die.
Stride towards your fortune boldly on your way,
Never once forgetting there's one born every day.
Let our motto be broadcast: "Get your blow in first!"
She who draws the sword last always comes off worst.
And look, you can sing along if you like!
There was an over-sexed attempt to revive the franchise in 1980, about which the less said the better, and more recently a successful revival in 2007, with Rupert Everett as Miss Fritton, and Colin Firth as the only male teacher on staff. A sequel (With David Tennant as the villain of the piece) is just appearing in the UK this week.
They have a school song too which I can't embed, but you can find here. It's very different, performed by girl-band "Girls Aloud" (There's a school-cast version too, but this is clearer), and has a rather fun ska-sound to it that I like more than I probably should.
Some time after he'd started writing the St Trinians series, and growing slightly jaded with them for a while, Searle was approached to provide illustrations for the a book based on a series of Punch magazine columns that Geoffrey Williams had written. The result were the first person adventures of Nigel Molesworth, the "pride" of St Trinians brother school, St. Custards.
These books, which reflect the level of grammar and spelling which Molesworth has throughout the entire run (It's not quite Finnegans Wake, but it's up there)
And I thoroughly recommend them. For the purposes of this community though, as the images were designed for illustrating text rather than telling a story in and of themselves, they don't lend themselves to the single panel cartoons of St Trinians, but they do have a certain charm all their own... This is Molesworth leading a charge, for example
But there are some decent single panel entries, like preparing for Father Christmas to arrive when he didn't bring you wnat you wanted the year before...
But let us end with an ode to Saint Trinians
But not just ANY schoolgirls, these are the schoolgirls who make the SAS squirm in terror, the legendary, the feared, the awe inspiring, the bowel knotting....
"In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared!" - Miss Millicent Fritton (Headmistress, St Trinians Academy for Ladies)
St Trinians is probably the second most famous fictional boarding school in British fiction, and was first until Hogwarts came onto the scene.
Created by noted British cartoonist Ronald Searle in the 1940's, St Trinian's was the antithesis of the Enid Blyton type of girls Boarding School in children's fiction, dull trite places where teachers had your best interest at heart, sportsmanship would always triumph, fellowship and friendship conquered all and closet lesbianism abounded (Well, if you read between the lines). Dreadful, twee books filled the shelves of the young...
Searle though, with a sort of Charles Addams-esque appreciation that the really, REALLY warped can also be hilarious, took those conventions and turning them upside down, shaking them until their dinner money cascaded out of their pockets. HIS schoolgirls were unashamed, anarchic MONSTERS. They would make any school bully you care to mention bow in respect (Well, respect, or because they'd just kicked him in the gonads whilst making off with his wallet).
St Trinians was the embodiment of "Survival of the fittest", along with a touch of "Survival of the better armed"
Shared dormitories encouraged fellowship and teamwork...
NOTHING was sacred; the arts...
The DARK arts....
And as for the parents!
And what made it so much fun as a concept wasn't that the "gels" were ghastly, they undoubtedly weere, but that's what the teachers WANTED! They weren't disciplining the girls, they were, in their own haphazard way, TRAINING them,
Even if discipline can be a real chose sometimes
See what I mean about the Charle's Addams feel to these?
No discourse on St Trinians is complete without a mention of the marvellous movies from the 1950's (and a couple in the 1960's) with a role call of the creme de la creme of British film comedy at the time; One of my all time favourite actors of any genre, Alastair Sim in rarely better form as BOTH Millicent Fritton (one of THE best female impersonations the movies have ever seen) and her ne'er do well brother Clarence (and considering how bad Millicent is, consider what Clarence must be like to be the ne'er-do-well), Joyce Grenfell (as a engagigly desperate "Jolly hockey sticks" teacher who seems to have wandered in from an Enid Blyton book and suffers for it), George Cole (as the magnifcently sleazy combination odd job man, fence and bookie Flash Harry), and Hermione Baddeley, Beryl Reid, Irene Handl and Joan Sims as assorted shades of disturbed/disturbing teachers...
The film-makers took the cartoons and added in a few things to increase the mass appeal of the films; whilst the Fourth Form girls were like the Searle cartoons, scruffy, anarchic pre-pubescent engines of chaos and mass destruction, the Sixth Form were the epitome of the naughty, busty schoolgirl (all played by girls well into their late teens or early twenties, this WAS the 1950's) who were quite prepared to use seduction AND violence to get their own way (Britteny Spears in "Hit Me Baby One More Time" doesn't even come CLOSE).
But at the core, they all upheld the values of the School, as epitomised by their school song (composed by Malcolm Arnold and lyrics by Sidney Gilliat)
Maidens of St Trinian's, gird your armour on.
Grab the nearest weapon; never mind which one.
The battle's to the strongest; might is always right.
Trample on the weakest; glory in their plight.
St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Our battle cry.
St Trinian's! St Trinian's! Will never die.
Stride towards your fortune boldly on your way,
Never once forgetting there's one born every day.
Let our motto be broadcast: "Get your blow in first!"
She who draws the sword last always comes off worst.
And look, you can sing along if you like!
There was an over-sexed attempt to revive the franchise in 1980, about which the less said the better, and more recently a successful revival in 2007, with Rupert Everett as Miss Fritton, and Colin Firth as the only male teacher on staff. A sequel (With David Tennant as the villain of the piece) is just appearing in the UK this week.
They have a school song too which I can't embed, but you can find here. It's very different, performed by girl-band "Girls Aloud" (There's a school-cast version too, but this is clearer), and has a rather fun ska-sound to it that I like more than I probably should.
Some time after he'd started writing the St Trinians series, and growing slightly jaded with them for a while, Searle was approached to provide illustrations for the a book based on a series of Punch magazine columns that Geoffrey Williams had written. The result were the first person adventures of Nigel Molesworth, the "pride" of St Trinians brother school, St. Custards.
These books, which reflect the level of grammar and spelling which Molesworth has throughout the entire run (It's not quite Finnegans Wake, but it's up there)
- "Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents"
- "How to be Topp: A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All There is to Kno about Space"
- "Whizz for Atomms: A Guide to Survival in the 20th Century for Fellow Pupils, their Doting Maters, Pompous Paters and Any Others who are Interest"
- "Back in the Jug Agane"
And I thoroughly recommend them. For the purposes of this community though, as the images were designed for illustrating text rather than telling a story in and of themselves, they don't lend themselves to the single panel cartoons of St Trinians, but they do have a certain charm all their own... This is Molesworth leading a charge, for example
But there are some decent single panel entries, like preparing for Father Christmas to arrive when he didn't bring you wnat you wanted the year before...
But let us end with an ode to Saint Trinians
no subject
Date: 2009-12-15 02:02 pm (UTC)