Ealing had always made comedies, right back to the days of Basil Dean, whether with Gracie Fields, George Formby, or later Will Hay. Yet Hue and Cry (1947) is seen by many, not least by Balcon himself, as really the first of the classic Ealing comedy films, quite an irony since, according to Norman Dorme, it was originally made purely as a children’s film. Only when it was finished did people realise its quality and it was released as a main feature. How much truth there is to this story is debatable, but certainly this must have been a rumour going round the studio.
Directed by Charles Crichton, who had proved his comedy credentials handling an amusing golf tale in Dead of Night, much of Hue and Cry was filmed amidst the war-torn buildings and bomb sites of London with not a tower block in sight becoming, in the words of cameraman Douglas Slocombe, ‘not just a piece of fiction, but a historic record of the times’. Young Cockney actor Harry Fowler plays the leader of a gang of south London kids who discover that their favourite blood-and-thunder comic is being used by crooks to send coded messages about future robberies. Naturally the police don’t believe a word of it so the boys decide to go it alone and catch the villains themselves. Jack Warner plays the main heavy and his gang members were made up of real-life wrestlers. And there’s a glorious cameo from Alastair Sim as the comic’s eccentric author. But this knockabout comedy belongs to Fowler and his fellow scruffs, and turned out to be a huge success and well received by critics. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it, ‘English to the backbone’.
The script was courtesy of Tibby Clarke, who, like Crichton, was taking his first stab at comedy, something he had wanted to try ever since arriving at Ealing, given his previous career as a journalist of comedic prose in The Evening News. Curiously the film began life back to front, so to speak, when associate producer Henry Cornelius had a picture in his mind of some kind of climactic chase or situation involving boys from all over London. ‘I’d like our final sequence to give the impression that for one glorious hour boys have taken over the city.’ It was up to Clarke to fit a scenario around this wondrous thought. He brainstormed for a week with no luck until, by chance, walking along the street he saw a young kid engrossed in a comic book and the idea was born.
There’s a lovely moment during that climactic scrap on a bombsite between the kids and the crooks when a cab arrives and in, quick succession, a whole bunch of children roll out of it one by one. It was hoped that the taxi could stop at a spot where it was possible to hide an infinite number of people who could then flood out almost in cartoon fashion. Instead they did the shot for real and Crichton managed to cram in, probably very uncomfortably, almost twenty kids. Harry Fowler later talked of Crichton’s supreme technical ability as a director but that it was Cornelius who was better at handling the child actors, ‘taking their inhibitions out of them so that they gave great performances’.
In amongst that cast of kids was a fourteen-year-old by the name of Ray Cooney, who went on to become a hugely popular playwright and actor. His biggest success, Run for Your Wife (1983), ran for nine years in London’s West End. At the time he was still in school but desperate to leave to pursue a career in the entertainment world. ‘My parents had scrimped and saved to send me to a public school and I said, it’s pointless doing that, me passing exams, because all I want to do is go into the theatre.’ Back then you could leave school at the age of fourteen and Cooney pleaded with his parents to let him go. ‘We sat down with the headmaster and the deal was, if I could get a professional job in my school holidays everybody would agree to me leaving school. So I traipsed round all the agents and, finally, about a week before the holidays were up, I got this tiny one line in Hue and Cry.’
Cooney was hired predominantly as a crowd artist and filmed for a day at Ealing Studios and five days on location. ‘There’s a sequence where there’s a lot of kids heading down the street and I’m in amongst that lot.’ Looking back all these years later at what was his start in show business, Cooney remembers it as great fun. ‘I was just so goggle-eyed meeting all these famous people. I don’t think I dared speak to Alastair Sim, but I spoke to Jack Warner. I do remember being a little nervous though on my first day; after all, I’d never done anything like this before. I didn’t have any training.’
Hue and Cry was followed by a rather too earnest adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby (1947), starring Derek Bond in the title role. Despite a pedigree supporting cast, which included Cedric Hardwicke, Stanley Holloway, Sybil Thorndike and Bernard Miles, it didn’t find favour with the public, having been released fresh upon the heels of David Lean’s vastly superior screen version of Dickens’ Great Expectations.
It was directed by Cavalcanti, who Maurice Selwyn recalls had a peculiar working method. ‘He would always half-shout the word action, like ac-TION! His face would go red very often as he yelled it. Even if it was an emotional or intimate scene, where a quiet action would have done the trick, Cavalcanti was always – ac-TION!!’ A fine director, Cavalcanti did have problems with his English and made sure that the movements of his cameras and the actors were clearly marked in the script prior to his arrival on the floor in order to spare himself the ordeal of trying to explain his ideas to the crew. He also clashed occasionally with the unions. Bernard Miles later revealed an astonishing impasse one day on the set of Nicholas Nickleby. There was a book lying on the floor of the set and Cavalcanti asked his first assistant, Jack Martin, to remove it. ‘Jack replied that we couldn’t touch it because there were no Props people available and if anyone else touched it there’d be a strike. They had to send a car to Wembley to fetch a Props man to move the thing, while shooting just stopped.’
Calvalcanti’s association with Ealing ended after Nicholas Nickleby. He didn’t think his services were being amply rewarded and decided to go freelance. His departure hit Balcon hard. ‘I think Cav was enormous,’ Crichton later admitted. ‘I think he was the really creative thing about Ealing. He always was talking about the necessity for truth, he was always looking for sincerity. I think he had an enormous influence.’ Especially over the studio’s team of directors, many of whom he had been personally responsible for recruiting. As Monja Danischewsky later commented, if Balcon was the father figure to his directors, Cavalcanti was the nanny who brought them all up.
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By the late 1940s, Ealing had established such a coveted position in the film industry that many hopefuls with a strong desire to become directors chose the studio as their number one destination. For some it was more difficult to get an interview than others. Fortunately for Christopher Barry, fresh out of the RAF in 1947, his father knew Michael Balcon through their membership of the Savile Club, a gentlemen’s meeting place in the heart of Mayfair, and he managed to arrange an interview. ‘Halfway through our meeting Balcon said to me, “Can you write? Your father can!” My dad was editor of the News Chronicle from around 1937 to 1949 when he resigned to run the Festival of Britain. I replied I didn’t know – never tried – and with that Mickey Balcon gave me a job as a trainee scriptwriter and reader.’
Christopher started on £4 a week under Stella Jonckheere, who headed the script department. ‘She would give me books to read and complimentary tickets to plays and I would write up a synopsis of the plots and characters with my rating the possibility of each making a screenplay. My timing was left to me within the studio working hours but I worked conscientiously.’ Christopher can’t remember from his short time with the script department any suggestions he made that eventually ended up as Ealing films, but novels of all kinds, from thrillers to comedies were always being sent into the office. ‘Although on the whole the studio’s own established writers, producers and directors came up with their own ideas and stories.’
This was pretty much the norm; hardly any outside material was accepted, it was largely all done in house. As Balcon said: ‘Basically our best films started with a blank sheet of paper and an idea.’ This had been the practice in the golden days of Hollywood when studios kept writers working on site. ‘And this is how it was done at Ealing,’ says Tony Rimmington.
A script would be written by say Tibby Clarke and then that script would be copied and distributed to all heads of department with a slip of paper saying something along the lines of, do you like this script or don’t you like this script. After a week or two they were all returned to Michael Balcon and the board members and I gather that if the scripts had been liked they were put into production. Simple as that. It was unique. I don’t know of any other studio that did that.
Christopher recalls that his first office at Ealing was far from glamorous.
It was a Nissen hut at the rear of the studio complex against Walpole Park fence, shared with two storyboard artists, Pat Furse and Ken Norrington, who were often visited by Sandy Mackendrick. Sometimes other people were put into the hut. It was a very happy milieu, seldom bothered by the suits, but on one occasion I had moved my chair out into the glorious sunshine and removed my shirt only to be embarrassed by a surprise visit from Michael Balcon himself.
Though his dealings with Balcon were infrequent and fleeting, Christopher liked him and valued the status and reputation he had built for himself within the studio’s set up.
His presence permeated the working atmosphere of the whole place. He was stern and yet very democratic and approachable. He was greatly respected and would tour the premises daily visiting the stages, workshops and all areas stopping to chat and banter with long-standing employees.
From a personal point of view, Christopher always appreciated Balcon’s gesture of granting him extra leave for his honeymoon, no matter that it was unpaid, and time off (paid this time) after a death in the family.
The spring of 1947 saw another new arrival at Ealing. Joan Parcell was still at school when a neighbour, who just happened to work at the studio, told her of a vacancy in the mail room. Interviewed by the head of personnel, Joan got the job and was allowed to leave school six weeks early. ‘I was incredibly excited but I’m sure I was nervous, too, because this was my first job. I’d never worked before. It sounds ridiculous but I didn’t even have a proper coat or jacket, so for the first few weeks I wore my school blazer.’ Living in nearby Hanwell, Joan cycled to work. ‘I even went home for lunch every day because it took me twenty minutes to get home, twenty minutes to eat my lunch and twenty minutes to get back, so for a long time that’s what I did.’
The mail room was situated in the front administrative block near the gates. ‘That’s where I used to get in; there was a little side door. Only the big noises, as I called them, were allowed through the front door, people like Michael Balcon and other directors of the company.’ Most mornings Joan would see Balcon arrive and if she was lucky she might even get to exchange a few quick words with him. ‘He was the God of the place, he really was.’ Balcon’s office was just across the entrance hall from where the mail room was located. It was not particularly grand and sparsely furnished, with wood panelling, and Balcon liked his desk pushed back towards the window so he could see who was coming through the door. When Maureen Jympson came to work at Ealing she paid the odd visit to it. ‘I remember it being like somebody’s old home, that they’d lived there many, many years. It had that feeling to it.’ But generally few of the regular staff were allowed inside.
Joan was never allowed in there but did quite often bring over letters and parcels to his secretaries’ office.
Michael, in fact, had two secretaries working for him. His main secretary was an older lady and she looked after this garden that you could only reach through French windows in the office. It was enclosed by a wall, I think, because you couldn’t see it from anywhere else in the studio. It was an English garden, quite large and very pretty. There was a beehive in it, too.
As for the mail room, Joan remembers it being small and narrow with barely enough space for a couple of stools. She worked alone in there, sorting out the letters that needed sending on and collecting and organising the mail for the errand boy to deliver around the studio. ‘I guess for someone coming straight from school I had quite a bit of responsibility.’
If any problem arose, she could always ask Robin Adair for help. She remembers him fondly. ‘He was quite a character, and quite a large man. He was disciplined, though, but always very friendly with me and to everybody, in fact, and everyone at the studio liked him. But yes, he was disciplined, he had everyone there under control.’
Robin Adair took his job manning the front gate very seriously, and although he had a little cubby hole where he could sit, rest and maybe put his feet up, he seemed always to be standing rigidly to attention, carefully vetting people in and out, so Robert Winter recalls.
He stood on that front gate in all weathers. And because there were no visitors allowed in the studios he would know if people were trying to get in to have a look around. If he saw somebody who was an extra or a supporting artist he’d recognise them straightaway and sign them in. If he didn’t recognise you he’d go, ‘Is this your picture? Are you working on this picture? No? Well, get out of the studio.’ That’s how it was.
After a brief spell in the mail room, Joan went to work in the general manager’s office as a junior secretary. The general manager was a man by the name of Hal Mason who, according to Balcon, came from a family of well-known trapeze artists. After years working around theatres and film studios, along with a bit of acting with touring companies, Mason joined Ealing during the war and was to become one of Balcon’s most trusted lieutenants, as he wrote: ‘The whole organisation and physical control of the films came under Hal Mason’s charge.’
Joan remembers Mason as ‘a very nice man. I liked him very much’. But she could see that he was literally at Balcon’s beck and call. Whenever Balcon got in touch with the office, which was frequently, Mason would stop whatever he was doing and make his way to see Balcon without delay.
Next, Joan ran the transport department for quite a few years.
Every day we had what they called a ‘town car’ and that car would run all over London with whatever anybody wanted them to do. They’d pick up Wardrobe or take film to laboratories, things like that. It wasn’t a difficult job; in fact you did quite well out of it because the drivers, who were all self-employed, were always very nice to me so I would hire them. In those days when you couldn’t buy nylon they would find nylons for me; that kind of thing went on.
Norman Dorme seems to recall there were two studio cars, both Buicks, that were at one’s disposal. ‘If you needed to go to London or a location, you’d get the production office to lay on one of these cars, with a chauffeur who wore a black hat. I had to go out once to measure up one of those blue police boxes and you’d sit in the back of this car and feel rather grand being driven around.’ Cars in general were a pretty rare sight around the Ealing lot, largely due to the fact, hard as it is to believe today, that not many people actually owned one. ‘There was only one car that I can remember being parked at Ealing under the art department window and that belonged to the lighting cameraman,’ recalls Norman. Of course the likes of Balcon were chauffeur-driven in every day. Later on, cars became much more common and it was something of a status symbol to have one’s name on a section of wall where you could park it.
Next on the Ealing production slate was The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947), another starring vehicle for Googie Withers met with indifferent critical praise. ‘One reviewer at the time,’ recalls Googie’s daughter Joanna McCallum, ‘after praising the visual quality of the film and care with which it was made, wrote that – viewing it was rather like watching a village cricket match on a lovely summer’s day, nodding off now and then, and waking up to see that Googie Withers was still batting.’
Googie plays a headstrong young Edwardian woman who inherits her father’s farm on Romney Marsh and, to the scandal of the local farming community, insists on running the place herself. Graced with fine photography from Douglas Slocombe, the film makes fine sweeping use of its Romney locations but the unit was plagued by foul weather. ‘They were going to shoot out there originally for about four weeks,’ claims Joanna McCallum. ‘But because of the atrocious weather, it just rained and rained, the schedule stretched and stretched and they were unable to film and just sat around most of the time in old pre-war limousines playing cards. My father John McCallum and Chips Rafferty, who had a part in the film and were old mates, ended up playing chess all the time.’
McCallum was cast by director Charles Frend as a neighbouring farmer who, at the close of the film, Googie ends up marrying. McCallum and Googie had never worked together before, indeed had never met prior to filming, but during those weeks on Romney Marsh they fell in love and later married. Their daughter Joanna was named after Googie’s character in the film.
McCallum was born in Australia but was sent with his two brothers to be educated in England. With a promising university education before him, McCallum chucked that in to go to RADA, and was a young actor at Stratford-upon-Avon when war was declared, and he returned with his brothers to fight with the Australian forces. McCallum and Googie were two extraordinary people perhaps destined to meet; Googie, who had miraculously escaped death, and McCallum, who was shot at by the Japanese and had bullets taken out of his leg without anaesthetic. ‘And then they end up playing in romantic comedies and things like that together,’ says Joanna.
Googie was a well-known star by this time; McCallum had seen some of her films out in the jungle. When he returned to England, his agent first got him a film opposite Phyllis Calvert within two weeks. Next up was Joanna Godden. ‘He’d already seen Googie,’ says Joanna. ‘Because she was on stage, just before, doing Private Lives, so he went and had a little peek, saw her twice, and decided he liked her very much. But he said to me, waiting to actually meet her in the hotel where they were staying at on location was nerve-wracking. There he was; downstairs, pacing around, and he said the minute she came down that staircase with all this vitality, she was fizzing always with energy and electricity, he was rather smitten.’
Their first scene together was actually a quarrel, but that didn’t seem to put a dampener on things. And for Joanna, of course, The Loves of Joanna Godden means something very special. ‘I love the fact that I can see them when they were young. And they were sexy together on screen. They did have a great chemistry.’
Quickly Ealing sought to exploit this chemistry by casting them together again in another film, although Balcon was nervous about what the newspapers might say about the relationship. ‘He was very relieved when my parents eventually got engaged,’ says Joanna. ‘Mikey Balcon was such a moral man that the idea of the two of them living together was simply terrible.’
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), directed by Robert Hamer, though highly revered today, was an uncharacteristically bleak film by Ealing standards. As the Monthly Film Bulletin moaned: ‘Though the background of this film is carefully done, and direction and acting good, it is a sordid and dreary affair.’ Indeed, when the film opened there were protests from the inhabitants of Bethnal Green, where the story is set, who complained that their lives were made to seem more miserable than they actually were. Googie plays a bored working-class housewife who shelters an ex-lover (McCallum), now an escaped murderer on the run.
Hamer had wanted from the start to make as much of the film as he could on location. ‘I want to do this out in the streets where it all happens.’ The film’s highly atmospheric climax is a night-time chase through the deserted, wet streets of Bethnal Green, ending up at a train yard where the actors were required to do their own stunts, as Googie later recalled: ‘We took awful risks – going under moving trains and running on top of them, things like that.’ It would prove to be her last film for the studio, but she and McCallum always had happy memories of the place. ‘I can remember my father saying working at Ealing was like working for a really good repertory company or a small business,’ says Joanna. ‘It was very inclusive.’