Something Always Happens

Directed by Michael Powell, Something Always Happens (1934) is one of 23 "quota quickies" he was hired to helm for Teddington Studios, all of which were typically one-hour features needed to satisfy a legal requirement that cinemas in England exhibit a certain quota of British movies.

The film's producer Irving Asher was an American who oversaw film production at Warner Brothers' British Studios. According to Powell in his autobiography, "A Life in Movies," Irving "had to make about 20 films a year to fulfill his British quota ... He went back to California each year with the head of his scenario department, raided the story department at Burbank and came back to Teddington with perhaps 50 scripts that had already been turned into films by those satanic mills and were already playing at Palaces and flea-pits all around the world, many of them with big stars like Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. Everything was run like a machine at Burbank and the average length of a script was 80 pages ... All that Irving had to do was hand the script to his story department, who cut it down to 50 pages and handed it over to a director like me. This was how tight little dramas like my Crown v. Stevens (1936), or comedies like "Something Always Happens"... arrived on the British screen. I made six or seven of these for Irving, slotting them in between other assignments. Jerry [Jackson] and he, both young Americans both in the quota-quickie business, were good friends. They carved me up between them, dovetailing their schedules so that I could work for both of them."

When Peter pushes over the fruit cart vendor and goes to duck through a doorway, a clear moving shadow of the boom microphone is visible to the left of the doorway.