[5] While serving in the Australian Army in France in 1918, soldiers Chic and Joe steal some rum from the quartermaster's store.
They later help British intelligence pass on some false battle plans to a German spy and are rewarded with ten days' leave in England.
"[10] Subscribers included W. R. Kemball, managing director of the Fuller-Kemball-Hayward circuit, the leading- exhibiting combine in New Zealand.
In December 1933 he finished his first short, "The Long Lost Son," an original comedy sketch by Joe Valli who starred alongside Charlie Albert.
[19] The movie was released on a double bill with an Effee film, Harmony Row (1932) and was a success at the box office.
He told the Victorian Talking Pictures Producers Association that "without some security [of screening venues] his company could not seriously consider continuing.
[26]The Bulletin wrote "It belongs to the Bruce Bairnsfather school of humor, with a dash of Steele Rudd and a spice of romantic melodrama thrown in for makeweight... On its unsophisticated plane the film is replete with matter for hilarity, and leaves the spectator in the comfortable assurance that the art of the film is in no immediate danger of growing up under the management of its present entrepreneurs.
The photography is fine, and the fact that the film was made in Melbourne, though it deals with France and England, is concealed with remarkable ingenuity.
"[27] Variety described it as "useless for anywhere else but Australia," adding that it "commences along splendid dramatic lines, but finally becomes poor slapstick" in which "acting in the early scenes is very good, but with the introduction of the comedy element picture fades."
"[28] Everyones called it " an entertaining mixture of comedy and romantic drama... Technically, the picture is first-rate, and the comedy of Pat Hanna, George Moon, Alfred Frith and Joe Valli kept the crowded audience in roars of laughter, the dialogue often being completely drowned.
The big punch comes in the final scene, wherein Pat Hanna and Joe Valli, Digger guests at an English house, are forced to drink milk and barley water, while their pal, George Moon, revels in beer.
[33][34] In 1950 Hanna said he was still making money out of his films[35] and in 1952 Diggers in Blighty and Harmony Row broke box office records in Warrnambool.