The Baby and the Battleship Reviews

Mills and Attenborough are two sailors on liberty in Naples. Attenborough takes Mills to meet Gastoni, a simple baker's daughter. Gastoni is not allowed out of the house unless she can take care of her baby brother. Attenborough and Gastoni dance at a club while Mills watches the child. A fight breaks out, and after the punches are thrown, Mills has the baby and nowhere to leave him. Attenborough returns with Gastoni to learn that the ship has sailed with Mills and the baby (Martyn Garrett) aboard. The rest of the movie is devoted to Mills's attempts to keep the baby a secret aboard the battleship. There are several well-known second bananas in the movie, notably Jeffries (CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG and a slew of movies since 1952), Jackson (who became internationally famous as the butler in the TV series "Upstairs, Downstairs"), Forbes (who went on to become a writer-director with a history of inconsistent material), and John Le Mesurier.