The Maggie

The 'Maggie' (U.S. title: High and Dry; also known as Highland Fling) is a 1954 British comedy film directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starring Paul Douglas, Alex Mackenzie and James Copeland.

At the offices of a shipping company in Glasgow, he overhears Mr Pusey, an Englishman complete with bowler hat and umbrella, trying to arrange transportation of some personal items of furniture for his boss, American Calvin B. Marshall.

At one point, when Marshall threatens to buy the boat from the owner, MacTaggart's sister, and sell it for scrap, Dougie releases a folding table on him, knocking him unconscious.

At one of the unscheduled stops, the crew attend the hundredth birthday party of an islander, and Marshall chats with a nineteen-year-old girl who is pondering her future.

The film uses real place names as far as the Crinan Canal, then switches to fictional placenames once they get through it (apart from Oban, Applecross and Portree).

William Rose's script provides some ingeniously contrived escapades, has, on the whole, excellent dialogue, but allows the pace to fall off a little in the final sequences. ...

(Mackendrick's first film, with a similar setting and theme), is more firmly directed, and marks a welcome return to form among Ealing comedies.

Fine camera work highlights the natural scenery.. ... General technical credits are up to standard although a little more scissoring in later stages would be an asset.

"[10] The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Ostensibly, this most underestimated of Ealing comedies is a whimsical story about a crew of canny Clydebankers giving a brash American a torrid time after being assigned to carry his property aboard their clapped-out steamer.

This is a wicked little satire on the mutual contempt that underlies Euro-American relations, and few could have handled it with such incisive insight as American-born Scot Alexander Mackendrick.

[12][13] Issued in the UK on VHS in 2002, a DVD followed in 2006 and was included alongside three other films in The Definitive Ealing Studios Collection: Volume Four.