Mr Drake's Duck

Plot

Mr. Drake inherits Green Acres Farm in Sussex and moves there with his American bride Penny. A misunderstanding leaves Penny owning 60 ducks, and one begins laying radioactive eggs. The army declares the farm a prohibited area, imprisoning all inhabitants, and launches Operation Chickweed to find the duck.

Production

The film began as a radio sketch by Ian Messiter called The Atomic Egg. Val Guest wrote a treatment for Yolande Donlan under the title Mrs Drake's Duck, but the name changed once Douglas Fairbanks Jr joined the cast. Nat Cohen provided funding. Guest later claimed a lawsuit against Disney for their 1971 film The Million Dollar Duck was successful.

Reception

Picturegoer described the film as amusing and ingenious, though a trifle slow in construction, praising Yolande Donlan and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Picture Show called it an original and nonsensical comedy with delightfully acted leads and gorgeously funny character cameos. Variety noted that Val Guest's script and direction overcame plot trivialities to ensure box office success in Britain, with American prospects heightened by Fairbanks's name; the yarn was typical English humor poking fun at the army and officialdom, seen through American eyes for an Anglo-American flavor.

Variety singled out Wilfrid Hyde-White as a civil servant, Howard Marion-Crawford as the major, Jon Pertwee as the dour form foreman, Reginald Beckwith as a bank manager, and A. E. Matthews as a War Office brigadier. A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote that the film provides chuckles and good-natured gibes at the British armed services and civil servants, laboring one joke but producing enough laughs to be a pleasant if slight lampoon.