The war had finally come to an end in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan, and as Balcon had seen a role for cinema during the years of hostilities, he now recognised just as vital a function for it during peacetime. He sat down and wrote a clear manifesto as to what he believed post-war British cinema should strive to be:
The need is great for a projection of the true Briton to the rest of the world … Britain as a leader in social reform, in the defeat of social injustices and a champion of civil liberties. Britain as a patron and parent of great writing, painting and music. Britain as a questing explorer, adventurer and trader. Britain as the home of great industry and craftsmanship. Britain as a mighty military power standing alone and undaunted against terrifying aggression … fiction films which portray contemporary life in Britain in different sections of our society, films with an outdoor background of the British scene, screen adaptations of our literary classics, films reflecting the post-war aspirations not of governments or parties, but of individuals.
Balcon’s statement, which appeared in a cinema trade magazine at the time, was a rallying cry worthy of Churchill. And he believed every word of it. For Balcon the only sort of nationalism worth a damn was cultural nationalism and that definitely applied to films, and films that were absolutely rooted in the soil of the country, truly indigenous British films.
However, the film-making landscape in Britain had changed dramatically over the last six years, most notably the emergence of J. Arthur Rank whose company had a virtual monopoly over the industry, controlling two of the three main cinema chains (Gaumont and Odeon), along with the studios at Pinewood, Denham, Shepherd’s Bush and Islington. He also had controlling interests in distribution, production and equipment suppliers. Balcon knew that if Ealing was to survive and get its films shown, he would have to come to some kind of arrangement with Rank.
The eventual deal, brilliantly negotiated by the reliable Reginald Baker, couldn’t have worked out any better for Ealing. Rank would offer substantial financial support and guaranteed distribution for Ealing films as first features in its cinemas, and Ealing would retain its independence; Rank agreed not to interfere in any creative matters. It was an arrangement that lasted eleven years. ‘The contract certainly cushioned Ealing against the possibility of financial disaster,’ Balcon wrote. ‘And in terms of achievement those years proved to be the most rewarding of my life, as it was during them that the best Ealing films were made.’
Certainly Dead of Night (1945) numbers amongst the studio’s greatest achievements: acclaimed American writer and critic James Agee called it, ‘One of the most successful blends of laughter, terror and outrage that I can remember.’ It is an anthology of spooky tales based around an architect, played by Mervyn Johns, who drives out to an isolated country house and encounters a group of people who he’s seen before, but only in his dreams. These premonitions encourage everyone present to tell a story of their own brush with supernatural occurrences.
It had begun life as an attempt to put on screen a number of tales from the celebrated ghost story writer M.R. James, but when this became impractical (the stories were deemed too difficult to visualise), the idea of doing a portmanteau film remained. It was a good way of showcasing the creative team that had been built up at Ealing over the years, with each story handled by a separate director – Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. The clever script was courtesy of John Baines and Angus MacPhail, who also adapted Hitchcock’s Spellbound in the same year, with additional dialogue from Tibby Clarke. It was very much a cooperative effort with two units shooting simultaneously, a healthy rivalry between both of them, and the whole thing completed in just four weeks.
Making his directorial debut on Dead of Night was Robert Hamer. Born in 1911 in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, he got a First in Mathematics at Cambridge and his skill with numbers never left him, according to Ken Westbury. ‘He could work out the most incredibly complicated sums in his head on the spot. He was a lovely man,’ he added. With the emphasis at Ealing always on the need to save time and money, Balcon never heard anyone put the studio’s economic situation better than Hamer one day on the set when he called his crew over for a pep talk. ‘Time on the studio floor costs us one shilling and four pennies a second. A cinema seat brings us an average of four pence. This means that for every second we lose in production we have to attract four more customers to make up for it.’
More than any other director, Hamer knew the high cost of every minute working on the floor and if he asked for something that wasn’t actually there ready for him he would always say the same thing to his assistant: ‘How long will it take to get?’ And if the reply was fifteen minutes, he would know exactly how much fifteen minutes of shooting time on that particular film’s budget cost, and would reply with either, ‘I’ll wait for it’ or ‘It’s not worth it, I’ll do without.’
Such was his dazzling intelligence and memory that Balcon believed Hamer had the talent to become a university don; he could read a newspaper column upside down and repeat it verbatim and do The Times crossword in ten minutes. But his love was movies and after Cambridge he began his career in films as a cutting-room assistant for Gaumont-British studios in 1934. A year later he joined London Films at Denham, working for Alexander Korda. The start of the war saw Hamer with the GPO Film Unit under Cavalcanti, and when Cavalcanti moved to Ealing he recruited Hamer as an editor.
Given the fact that Hamer was the novice on Dead of Night, it is his segment that is by far the best in the film, about an antique mirror with a dark history that drives a man to attempt to kill his wife. The shot in which the man looks into the mirror and sees an ancient room staring back at him would, of course, today be easily accomplished using optical effects. Back then, the art department had to build an entire set beyond the mirror to achieve the desired look.
Without doubt, the best-remembered sequence is Michael Redgrave’s haunting performance as a deranged ventriloquist who believes that his dummy, Hugo, is alive. Prior to the film, Redgrave worked with ventriloquist Peter Brough of radio’s Educating Archie to advise on the kind of ‘cheeky chappie’ persona he wanted for Hugo. The effect is chilling. Maurice Selwyn’s abiding memory of working on that film is the presence of Redgrave: ‘Even when he was having lunch he insisted on remaining in character.’
The film’s famous twist ending of the recurring dream was already in the script, but during a preview of the rough cut it was a projectionist, who always liked to comment on the pictures, who said, ‘Why don’t you carry on, it ought to go on longer at the end.’ Everyone looked at him and said, ‘What a marvellous idea, how right you are.’ And that’s exactly what now happens. The whole of the beginning of the film of the architect making his way to the house is repeated under the end titles instead of just leaving it with him realising he’s been there before. This kind of thing was symptomatic of the way anyone at Ealing could make suggestions, from one of the directors to somebody relatively low on the ladder.
Hugely influential on British horror cinema, Dead of Night was also significant for being Douglas Slocombe’s debut as director of photography, after which he rose to become Ealing’s main cameraman, and subsequently one of the best in the business. ‘He was a very nice chap,’ recalls Maurice. ‘And always somehow found the petrol to drive his car. He lived a long way from the studios and he had this large American-style car that he somehow got the petrol for despite petrol rationing. He was a very friendly and approachable guy. You were not allowed to smoke in the stages spacing but people like Dougie invariably had a fag between his fingers.’
Slocombe had begun as a news cameraman during the early years of the war in Europe. ‘He went to Poland before the war to shoot still photography for Life magazine,’ says Ken Westbury. ‘And some producer saw this stuff and said, this is great, it’s got to be put on film. So he gave Dougie a 16mm camera, and it was right at the time war was declared. So Dougie shot this stuff and just managed to get out of Poland in time.’
One incident Slocombe liked to recall was when he managed to get inside a Nazi rally. His camera was an American model, the Imo camera, which made a fearsome racket when it started up, so as Slocombe began to film Goebbels up on the stage speaking, the noise interrupted the fearsome Minister of Propaganda and he stopped mid-sentence.
All the stormtroopers looked around hurriedly to see what the commotion was and one could see that they were earmarking my position so they could sort me out afterwards. Then suddenly everybody stood up and called out ‘Heil Hitler’ and so I bent double, held my camera and marched underneath these outstretched arms to the exit where I beat a hasty retreat.
It was Cavalcanti who invited Slocombe to Ealing after his war footage had been used in several documentaries. Beginning work at Ealing without any formal training whatsoever, Slocombe’s first tentative steps in learning how to do the job was as camera operator for Wilkie Cooper on Champagne Charlie. Slocombe later admitted he did rather badly at it. Ken Westbury was clapper loader on that film and still wryly recalls a huge blunder Slocombe made. A mock-up of a variety music hall had been built on one of the stages and Slocombe’s camera was placed right at the back in order to achieve a wide shot of the whole theatre and the proscenium arch. ‘The next day in rushes everyone noticed that the boom swinger was clearly in the shot, there he was, right at the front of the stage. God knows how that happened; he must have just got up at the last minute. Nobody noticed it at the time. Sometimes you do accidentally get a microphone in a shot, but not the operator as well!’ The entire sequence had to be reshot the following day, much to Slocombe’s embarrassment.
Having proved his ability with ‘The Haunted Mirror’ segment of Dead of Night, Robert Hamer was given his first full feature to direct, a slice of costume melodrama played out against the background of Victorian Brighton called Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945). For the pivotal role of Pearl, the frustrated wife of a drunk and abusive tavern keeper who persuades a chemist’s son (Gordon Jackson) to act as accomplice in a murder plot, Hamer cast Googie Withers, who had been working in films since the mid-1930s. Born in India to a British naval captain and a Dutch mother, as a child back in England Googie took dancing lessons and persuaded her parents to send her to the Italia Conti school. At the age of seventeen she began appearing as a chorus girl in West End shows before getting opportunities in films, mostly quota quickies playing too many bubbly blondes. It was Michael Powell who changed her career, casting her as a Dutch resistance leader in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942).
During the war years Googie appeared in concert parties entertaining the troops. ‘They were sent overseas to Belgium,’ recalls Googie’s daughter Joanna McCallum. ‘And they were virtually on the front line playing in this huge auditorium. My mother was on her way to the stage when there was a direct hit, and it was full of American servicemen, it was dreadful. My mother was one of the very few people who survived it, she was thrown against the back wall by the blast.’
Returning to London in 1943, Googie appeared in a stage production of J. B. Priestley’s They Came to a City, which brings together nine characters from across British society who are transported to a mysterious walled city. What they find inside, according to their class and prejudices, is either a socialist utopia or a hell starved of ambition and riches. When Ealing decided to adapt the play to the screen the following year, most of the original stage cast were asked to recreate their roles, including Googie. It was her first Ealing film, after which Hamer cast her in Dead of Night, then again in Pink String and Sealing Wax. It was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. ‘My mother thought that Bob Hamer was a wonderfully talented director,’ says Joanna. ‘Not only was he very good technically but he also was magnificent with actors. He would coach performances out of the actors and be very patient, then he’d push a little bit further. My mother said it was really special working with him, both my parents had huge admiration for him.’
Following the success of Dead of Night, Michael Redgrave returned to Ealing for The Captive Heart (1946), playing a Czech captain who, in an attempt to escape the Gestapo, takes on the identity of a dead British officer. Taken prisoner, he is forced to keep up the masquerade, even to the extent of corresponding with the dead man’s widow, who is cruelly led to believe her husband is still alive. After his release he finally must face the widow, played by Rachel Kempson, Redgrave’s wife in real life, and confess the truth. ‘It was a very emotional scene,’ remembers Maurice Selwyn.
And the set was cleared except for essential people. When Michael Redgrave explains what he’s done and Rachel Kempson replies, so you misled me all these years, I thought it was my husband writing to me, that sort of dialogue, she stood there, spoke those very emotive words in a heartrending fashion and as she did so her tears came quite naturally, it was a quite remarkable moment. And when Basil Dearden said Cut, there were a few seconds of silence and then the crew applauded the artist, and you rarely ever saw that happen.
One rather less successful performance was given by an actress playing another wife welcoming her husband back from a prisoner-of-war camp. Naturally Dearden wanted the actress to show in her face an overwhelming feeling of love and yearning as her husband walked up the front path, but take after take he wasn’t getting the required performance. In the end Dearden called time on the scene and ordered all the outtakes to be printed to see if he could salvage something. Sure enough, after one of the numerous takes when Dearden had cried ‘Cut’, an anonymous voice announced, ‘Tea’s up!’ and the actress’s face lit up and produced exactly the right expression.
The inspiration behind the film came from Balcon’s own wife whose work with the British Red Cross saw her dealing with the repatriation of prisoners of war and wounded soldiers. One day she told her husband of the remarkable stories some of these men were telling her and that perhaps this might be a good basis for a picture. Ealing regular Angus MacPhail worked on the script with Guy Morgan, a former film critic of the Daily Express who had himself been a prisoner of war. A modest success, the film drew high praise from some critics: ‘A warm, emotional, intensely human document, entitled to rate amongst the best twenty films of the last ten years,’ said the News of the World.
Making his film debut in The Captive Heart was Derek Bond, who would appear in several more Ealing films. An actor in repertory theatre before the war, Bond was on leave, having been wounded in North Africa, when he was invited to a cocktail party. There he met Diana Morgan, a scriptwriter at Ealing, who took a keen interest in his acting past. ‘Ealing are having a terrible problem casting young men,’ she complained. ‘And they are stuck on their next film. Why don’t you come over and make a film test?’ This was when the war was still on and Bond argued that the War Office would never release him from the army. ‘They might,’ said Diana. ‘After all, you’ve been in action and been wounded. It’s not as if you’re a dodger.’
The test went well but, as Bond predicted, the War Office refused to release him. ‘Never mind,’ said Balcon. ‘How would you like to come under contract to us when you get out of the army?’ It almost seemed too good to be true, but Bond was taken into Balcon’s office and a contract was drawn up on the spot.
It was ironic that Bond’s first Ealing film after his demobilisation was set in a prisoner-of-war camp, because when he re-joined his battalion for the advance into Italy, he was captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW. Like many ex-POWs, Bond had sworn never to set foot back in Germany, and now here he was again. Ealing had been given permission by the British army of occupation to film at a real camp, Marlag near Bremen, only six weeks after the Nazis had abandoned it. ‘The place was perfect because most of the buildings were still there,’ recalls Tony Rimmington. ‘Although the art department had to construct an extra guard tower and a couple of sentry boxes, but a lot of it was still standing; the gates, searchlights, the lot.’ Bond found it a decidedly eerie feeling walking through the gates of that camp on the first day of shooting. ‘All the debris left by the departing POWs was littered about – small heaters, homemade frying pans and other artefacts made from Red Cross parcel tins.’
The unit was also supplied with soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and The Black Watch to act as extras. ‘They were a very tough bunch indeed and rather bolshie, as they all wanted to be sent home,’ Bond recalled. Some of these men had fought at El Alamein and in Europe and didn’t take kindly to being ordered about by film types. ‘Their mood wasn’t helped by Dearden trying to do a “Monty” and wearing both regimental badges in his beret. This and the monotony of repeating shots over and over again almost brought them to the point of mutiny.’
The action of the story took place on the first Christmas of the war and for one long shot Dearden wanted the whole camp under a blanket of snow. They were shooting at the height of summer so the army fire service obligingly sprayed the whole place with foam, which from a distance looked wholly authentic. Unfortunately, just as cameras were about to roll the rain came down and ruined the effect. They tried again the next day, only this time a burst of sunshine dried up the foam and the wind blew it all away. Finally, on the fourth day conditions were perfect and the shot was captured.
With the backing of the powerful Rank organisation, Ealing settled down into what became a routine production pattern. ‘It took about eight to ten weeks to shoot a film, they very seldom went over that,’ confirms Norman Dorme. ‘And there wasn’t much of a gap in-between films either, usually a few weeks of preparation and then they’d go straight into the next one. I’m sure the preparation was going on even while they were doing something else. Still, it’s not like today when they spend six months or more preparing a film.’
During these lulls in production the staff were all retained. While at other studios workers were essentially freelance, which meant that when a particular film was finished your job was finished too, that didn’t happen at Ealing; the staff would still come in every day. ‘We’d just sit around and wait for the next film,’ recalls Ken Westbury. ‘Maybe there would be the odd day with an artist’s test or perhaps a day of shooting inserts, pages of a book, stuff like that. But for the most part we’d just wait and then prepare for the next production.’ Sometimes films did overlap each other, but it was rare for two films to be in production at the same time due to lack of studio space and also the fact that it was largely the same crew on each film. ‘So you needed people to finish on one film because they were going to be needed on another one,’ says Ken.
And there was always an end-of-shoot party, usually held on the studio’s smallest stage, which was Stage 1. ‘They were lavish parties under the standards of that time,’ says Tony Rimmington. ‘It was mostly beer, very little spirits.’ And when the film was ready to go on release there was always a screening beforehand for the crew and staff. ‘Usually it was in the Odeon, Northfields,’ says Norman, ‘just down the road from the studio, on a Sunday morning.’
Studio staff tended to arrive from 8 a.m. onwards; actors though were usually in Make-up by 7 a.m., and the working day finished at 6 p.m. It wasn’t unusual for the art department to work on Sundays, since there were always slightly more things to do and get finished. ‘It was partly a sort of panic they got into,’ says Norman. ‘That you’re two weeks away from shooting and you’re building a set or you’re still designing it or haven’t made up your mind or the director’s changed something. There were always things that pop up. So it was normal to come in on a Sunday and we would be the only ones at the studio apart from maybe the cutting rooms who seemed to be there a lot.’
Norman remembers bumping into Tibby Clarke quite often on a Sunday.
We’d always end up in the canteen, with Tibby, making tea for ourselves. In those days you didn’t have a kettle in your office, you went down to the canteen and if there was nobody there you had to make it yourself. And I do remember Tibby was often there. He had his own office in the front block. He was a very nice man.
With its base of operations in England secure for the immediate future, Ealing began what turned out to be the first of several films it would make overseas. In 1944 Balcon had been asked by the Ministry of Information to make a film highlighting Australia’s contribution to the war effort, which it was felt had not been sufficiently recognised. Harry Watt, due to his documentary experience and reputation as a bit of an adventurer, was duly dispatched down under to look for suitable story material. With an assistant, Watt rented two tiny offices in a Sydney office block, which they shared with Ealing’s Australian head of distribution, ‘who had long ago decided we were mad,’ Watt recalled.
We were besieged by the usual masses of crackpots who turn up when they hear a film is going to be made. The passages were crowded with children showing off their dancing and in the street outside men waited with performing dogs and horse dealers paraded their wares. Films were a rarity in Australia and our lives were made a hell.
In pursuit of a good story Watt travelled the country for something like five months and in the Northern Territories was told about a great cattle drive back in 1942, when, in a bid to protect food supplies, 100,000 heads of cattle were driven across the north of Australia in case the Japanese invaded. Watt cabled Balcon that he thought this would make the basis of a terrific adventure movie and it was given an immediate go-ahead. Watt himself wrote the script for what would become The Overlanders (1946).
For his star Watt chose Chips Rafferty, regarded then by many as the personification of the stereotypical rugged, straightforward and laconic Aussie male. The supporting cast was made up of mainly regional actors and local people. This is something that Watt did a lot of when he filmed abroad: take three or four actors from the UK and then cast the rest of the film from the local amateur societies. ‘And they were just as good as taking some bum from the Charing Cross Road.’ In one important role, Watt had wanted to cast a young British-born Australian actor by the name of Peter Finch, but was warned off him with tales of bad behaviour and hell-raising. It was a decision Watt later regretted. ‘Finch was my man but, of course, I couldn’t see it.’
The search for a leading actress took Watt all over Australia, but in the end the right person was found purely by accident. Daphne Campbell was a twenty-one-year-old army nurse on leave in Sydney when she was asked as a favour to make a delivery to a local film company. The secretary took one look at her and asked, ‘Can you ride a horse?’ Daphne had grown up in Orange in New South Wales and rode a horse the five-mile trek to school every morning. Interviewed by Watt, Daphne made a test and was instantly hired, despite having no previous acting experience. After a few phone calls, including to the prime minister, it was agreed that Daphne could temporarily leave the Services without pay in order to make the film.
Government assistance was to prove invaluable, without which The Overlanders would have been practically impossible to make. Watt and his team were given the use of army camps, army food and cooks, army vehicles and Air Force aeroplanes to take them to far-flung locations. Still, Watt complained that making the film was something of a nightmare. Part of the problem was the fact there was no real infrastructure for film in the country, a lot of the things they needed had to be virtually started from scratch. Film equipment was also in scarce supply and items such mic booms and dollies had to be improvised. Of the thirty-five strong crew and cast, only six had worked on a movie before.
Most of the location shooting took place around Alice Springs where conditions were tough. At one point a horse fell on Chips Rafferty, injuring him slightly. In another incident someone almost lost an eye using a stock whip. In a bid for almost total authenticity, the actors were encouraged to perform as many of the horse riding and physical action scenes themselves, notably the scenes of driving the cattle through rivers that were known to be infested with crocodiles; Watt assured his actors these were not man-eating.
When The Overlanders opened, its success at the box office both delighted and baffled Balcon, since none of the players were known to British audiences. ‘I wonder if the sight of so much beef on the hoof didn’t have a certain appeal to a meat-starved population.’ Even better, the cattle used in the film were later sold for a handsome profit.
As for Daphne Campbell, her endearing performance caught the attention of Hollywood and she was offered a seven-year contract from both United Artists and MGM. She turned them down flat. During filming she had fallen in love with a young pilot recently returned from long and esteemed service in the Air Force and wanted to start a family. It was a decision she never regretted.
Back at Ealing, many technicians and members of staff had returned to their jobs after war duty, while some of the younger ones were being called up for National Service. Ken Westbury got his conscription papers and, after basic training, found himself in Berlin at the start of 1946. His memories of the city at that time was of a wasteland, a shattered place with everything in near ruins. One day he and a pal came across Hitler’s bunker and found it totally unguarded, so went inside for a quick look around. ‘We never got right down into the deep depths of it, it was full of water and almost pitch black, once you’d walked down a few steps you couldn’t see very much. The garden was all burnt, I remember.’ After a tour in Palestine, Ken returned to Ealing, who felt obliged to take him and his colleagues back, even though legally they didn’t have to. ‘Nobody had signed letters or legally constructed contracts,’ says Robert Winter, who was in the Royal Army Medical Corps and did his National Service in India and Johannesburg. ‘Which is difficult to believe, especially these days when everybody has a lawyer sitting on their right-hand side whatever they do. Often you just turned up and they’d say, oh, are you back then?’
In the case of Norman Dorme, things were a little different since he served on oil tankers going down the American coast as part of the Merchant Navy, which Ealing didn’t count as one of the main Services and so it was up in the air that he would be allowed back in. ‘Luckily, the personnel manager at Ealing was an ex-Merchant Navy skipper and said, “I’m not having any of that, the Merchant Navy is the same as anything else,” and so I went straight back in. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise.’