The success of The Overlanders had encouraged Balcon that the public wanted to see more ‘open space’ films shot in Australia. To this end he acquired a lease on a studio outside Sydney called Pagewood, which had been closed for a decade but which was still the best equipped in the country. Harry Watt was again dispatched down under and the result was Eureka Stockade (1949), which told the story of one of the great defining events in Australian history – the miners’ resistance in Ballarat in 1854. It was a big production, the most expensive film yet attempted in Australia, with some seventy speaking parts and several hundred extras, mostly drafted in from the army.
Watt had spent months researching the story, comparing all of the written accounts, visiting Ballarat to talk to the descendants of some of the original miners, and amassing detailed material about life on the goldfields. But his presence in Australia was not welcome in some quarters, particularly the press. Word had got out about the low wages paid on The Overlanders, regardless of the fact that Watt had a moderate budget of only £40,000 to play with and he had to buy 500 heads of cattle out of that. Chips Rafferty, for instance, had been paid just £30 a week, but the press failed to mention that this was Rafferty’s own choice. Watt had asked him what he wanted and Chips had replied, “£30 a week, if I have that my wife and I will be fine.” The press also failed to mention that Watt himself was only paid £40 a week. Still, when he arrived in Australia to start work the press were on his back, as he later recalled.
Because the film had done well financially the press said, Harry Watt, the man who exploited the Australian actors and technicians has arrived back. He is a pure exploiter. And they started a campaign against me in the newspapers, they would ring me up at four in the morning trying to start an argument to get some quotes. Then I realised if you shut your mouth and refuse to say anything the thing dies in three days. And that’s exactly what happened.
But it did leave a bad atmosphere hanging over the production.
Then, just a few weeks away from shooting, the British government passed a short-lived law that slapped a 75 per cent duty on imported films. Watt was livid when he heard that his picture, even though it was being financed out of England, fell under this new tax rule, as a result of it being made in the Commonwealth. A deal would have to be thrashed out in order for Eureka Stockade to be classified as a British film made abroad. Watt later complained: ‘For months Les Norman, my assistant director, and I sat on our arses waiting while the Board of Trade read the script from end to end and worked out line by line, and word by word, which lines had to be played by British actors to make its quota.’
As the leader of the rebellion Watt once again called on the services of Chips Rafferty, now a big star following the success of The Overlanders. And having previously been warned off using Peter Finch, Watt was determined to use him this time in the role of a pacifist miner. Finch thoroughly enjoyed working on the movie, especially the company of the many aborigines on the unit, who taught the young actor how to throw a boomerang and handle spears; Finch would go off hunting rabbits on his own.
Relations with the press were just as fraught on Ealing’s next Australian venture, Bitter Springs (1950), directed by Ralph Smart, when the Sydney Morning Herald reported the poor treatment of aborigine cast members, who, it claimed, were made to travel in covered railway goods vans without seating, sanitation or toilet facilities.
Harry Watt had grown tired of the outback experience after Eureka Stockade, which had been plagued by shooting delays thanks to atrocious weather conditions. ‘We were ready to shoot,’ recalled Watt. ‘And it rained for three weeks.’ Roads turned into quagmires, sets were washed away and the miners’ tent city was twice blown to the ground. At one point Watt was seen heading out into the woods with a rifle. He was going out to see if he could shoot himself a rabbit, but some of the crew rushed after him thinking he was going to shoot himself because he was so depressed. It got so bad that Watt suggested to Balcon that they abandon the film until the following year, but by that time so much money had been spent he was told to carry on.
The film’s failure at the box office also did much to dampen Watt’s spirits, as was its handling by Balcon, who after a screening declared it to be too long and wanted it reduced to 100 minutes. The main casualty ended up being Peter Finch, most of whose performance ended up on the cutting room floor.
Back at the studio, Ealing was about to embark upon a series of comedies that would all be released within three months of each other and whose success did much to establish the studio’s reputation around the world as the purveyor of a very definite type of English humour: Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore and Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Passport to Pimlico (1949) came about after Tibby Clarke read a newspaper article concerning Princess Juliana of Holland, who while exiled in Canada during the war became pregnant, thus raising concerns that the baby would not be eligible to sit on the throne due to having been born overseas. The problem was solved when the accommodating Canadian government passed an act of parliament making the delivery room Dutch territory. The plot of Passport to Pimlico, which Clarke always believed was the best he ever came up with, and the script for which he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1950, concerns the inhabitants of a London street who discover some buried treasure and ancient documents proving they are really part of the old Duchy of Burgundy. When the government tries to claim the treasure for the Crown, the Burgundians declare their independence, thus freeing them from the stringent rationing that had been in place since the war. The film beautifully captures those most quintessential English traits of individualism, tolerance and compromise. In the words of the grocer’s wife in the film, upon learning she and all her neighbours are now foreigners, declares: ‘We were always English, and we will always be English, and it’s just because we’re English we’re sticking out for our right to be Burgundians.’
Henry Cornelius was given the task of bringing Clarke’s marvellous concept to the screen, making his feature debut. Born in South Africa, Cornelius worked for Alexander Korda before returning home to fulfil a dream of making films in his native land. Faring badly, when war broke out and he was deemed unfit for military duty, Cornelius was determined to get back to England and underwent a dangerous journey by ship at the height of the U-boat scare. Ronnie Taylor was a focus puller on Passport to Pimlico and believes Cornelius was the perfect choice to make the film, having already been associate producer on several Ealing pictures. ‘He was a lovely, fairly elderly man but with a great sense of humour. I remember him as a very jokey kind of character, which came across in the film.’
Barbara Murray, a young actress, then just 18 years old, making her film debut, didn’t exactly see things the same way. She didn’t get on with Cornelius and working for him became a chore. Yes he was a brilliant man, she admitted, but he was also a perfectionist, ruthlessly determined to get exactly the shots he wanted at all costs. Nor did it help that he chewed on raw cabbage all day. And there was his temper. ‘He had a vicious tongue,’ revealed Barbara. ‘And he would humiliate you in front of the extras.’
Ronnie Taylor also worked on the second unit that always attracted a large number of spectators whenever they arrived to start shooting. ‘We did have to control the crowds sometimes who came down to watch us. It was something quite new to see a film crew out in the street.’
Back in those days you didn’t need permission to shoot anywhere in London. ‘There was no bureaucracy or form filling or haggling with local councils,’ says Ken Westbury. ‘All you did was tell the police where you were going to be and just started filming.’ It really was that simple. An assistant would call upon the local police station to say, “We want to film’, and the constable on duty would reply, ‘Well go ahead, but don’t expect any help from us and if you get to be a nuisance we’ll move you on.’ If you were lucky you might perhaps get a couple of off-duty policemen to stand by the set to handle any traffic.
Like Hue and Cry, Passport to Pimlico relied heavily on location work. Not in Pimlico, strangely enough, but Lambeth, on a bombsite off the Lambeth Road. ‘The thing that always amazed me about London at that time was the bomb damage, how much of it was still there,’ says Norman Dorme.
It took years and years to finally clean it up. At the end of the war with the Merchant Navy I was in Rotterdam, and that city had been bombed flat by the Allies, and I can remember looking out over the city and all the rubble had been cleared away. Back in London, all they did about these big holes in the ground was build a brick wall around them to stop people falling in, that’s about all that ever happened and they just left it for year after year after year.
Cornelius skilfully cast his movie and there are delightful performances from Stanley Holloway as a shopkeeper-cum-councillor (in a role originally offered to Jack Warner, who couldn’t take it due to prior film commitments) and especially Margaret Rutherford as an eccentric professor specialising in Burgundian history, wearing one of the long capes that would become her fashion trademark. Cornelius’s first choice for that role had been Alistair Sim, but when he proved unavailable various replacements were discussed until Cornelius hit upon the idea of the character being a woman. When he later saw the film, Tibby Clarke was surprised to notice that the professor’s change of sex had necessitated the alteration of not one single line of dialogue.
While the film was in post-production, at its final mixing stage, the government ceased rationing on many items and a despondent murmur ran round the studio that the public would regard the film as outdated. Peter Musgrave recalls that it was Cornelius who came to the rescue by ordering a brief insert to be added just after the main titles which read: ‘Dedicated to the memory of — ’ before cutting to a shot of a laurel wreath surrounding an image of ration coupons and a clothing ration book. ‘If you view the film or a DVD you will notice that the title music runs out early leaving the insert silent; that’s because it was added after the music had all been recorded to the original timings. I saw the film in a public cinema soon after it came out and the audience laughed right away!’
The final touch to an instant classic was a whimsical score by French composer Georges Auric, who had already scored a number of Ealing films, including Dead of Night and Hue and Cry. Auric composed with remarkable speed, in part due to his fondness for opium, which may have stemmed from his association with Jean Cocteau, who was widely known to use opiates for artistic inspiration. Auric never became addicted, merely a casual and controlled smoker, and liked to boast to friends back in France that when working for Ealing or on other film assignments in London, he was able to maintain a steady supply of the drug in the form of a special dispensation personally sanctioned by King George VI.
Ealing’s musical director, Ernest Irving, was one of the studio’s great characters. He had been with the studio since the Basil Dean era and was approaching his sixties when Balcon took over. It always amused Balcon that Irving was a musicologist and classical scholar, and yet he kept his apartment in a complete mess. He remained, though, a die-hard traditionalist, once ordering the London Philharmonic Orchestra to, ‘remove all the metal junk with which modern orchestral string instruments are bedizened and to substitute gut (strings), as used in the days of our forefathers.’ Irving always arrived for the recording sessions immaculately dressed in an off-white tropical suit and his tie from the Savage Club, one of the leading bohemian gentleman’s clubs in London. On one occasion it was believed that Irving, who suffered from arthritis, would not be able to conduct a session. A replacement conductor was brought in and as he took his place on the rostrum, facing the orchestra ready to start, the doors burst open and Irving was brought in on a stretcher, complete with white suit and tie. Propped up in a chair, he was able to complete the session.
Because Robert Winter played the piano and could read music he was often assigned the job of taking the film clips down to Stage 3B, where he would project them for the London Philharmonic to rehearse and finally record the music. This led to an almighty bust-up one day with Irving.
He was convinced that the music didn’t fit the picture and wanted to know why. He pulled me over and said, ‘What the hell have you been doing? Have you been re-editing it?’ Of course I hadn’t, I wasn’t the editor, I was just an assistant. Anyway, he had a real go at me, I must have been about twenty-two at the time, and I was so angry I blasted back, ‘I’m not staying here for you to be rude to me,’ and walked out. That left nobody else to work the projector and there was the London Philharmonic, something like sixty musicians, together with a choir, with nothing to do.
Finally the error was discovered; Irving had himself mis-timed all the music cues.
When he discovered the problem, I was sent a large box of Black and White Marcovich cigarettes, along with his apologies, and asked to return immediately because they had this bloody great orchestra getting paid and not doing anything. We actually became good friends as a result, and he later gifted me a month of lessons with Louis Kentner, the concert pianist. I liked Ernest, he was a great chess player and lived in a large apartment right next to the studio so was always around.
Upon release, Passport to Pimlico was highly praised by the critics. ‘Every line, every gag, is a little masterpiece of wit; each character, and indeed every individual member of the cast, provides a gem of comedy acting at its highest and best,’ raved the Monthly Film Bulletin, which went on: ‘Too much cannot be said in praise of this film, since it is genuinely funny and the humour and pace never flag.’ And this from the celebrated C. A. Lejeune in the Observer: ‘One of the most felicitous and funny films since the age of the René Clair comedies.’
It also did substantially well at the box office, easily recouping its production costs. This was fortunate since the film had gone over schedule and over budget, largely due to poor weather conditions. Balcon also felt that some of the delays were due to Cornelius’ lack of directorial experience and according to Barbara Murray there was an awful lot of friction between the two men during production. ‘Cornelius and Michael Balcon used to have the most terrible set-tos at the studio, which I used to secretly enjoy because you love to see a bully taken down.’ Afterwards Balcon tried to persuade Cornelius that his talents perhaps lay more in producing and he should give up his ambition to be a director. Only years later did Balcon feel his lack of faith in Cornelius was an error of judgement. Indeed, so distraught was Cornelius by this that he walked out on the studio and never made another film for them.
There is another story that, on the back of the success of Passport to Pimlico, Cornelius demanded a raise, never a wise tactic with the frugal Balcon, and when he was turned down flat then promptly quit. Whatever the real reason, Cornelius formed his own production company and made The Galloping Major (1951), a sub-Ealing comedy about an ex-army officer who bands together with friends and neighbours to buy a racehorse, which unfortunately stiffed at the box office. Not long after, Cornelius pitched a comedy script to Balcon: it was about two couples involved in a veteran automobile rally from London to Brighton. Balcon found merit in the idea but his schedule for that year was already full so sent Cornelius over to Rank, who immediately recognised its potential and put it into production. Genevieve went on to become the second most popular film in British cinemas during 1953.
This wasn’t the only British comedy classic that fell through Balcon’s fingers. At one point the studio owned the film rights to Kingsley Amis’s much-acclaimed novel Lucky Jim. The only problem was Balcon didn’t particularly care for it and was only too happy to sell it to the Boulting brothers.