At the time of its release, The Long Arm (1956) wasn’t seen as anything significant, just a routinely efficient police drama about a team of British bobbies, led by Jack Hawkins, trying to solve a complex case involving a series of burglaries. It was, however, the very last picture made at Ealing Studios under Balcon’s rule.
Michael Birkett was second assistant on the film and his lasting memory of it was working with Hawkins.
Jack was everybody’s favourite, a sweet man. I liked him very much. He once showed me a letter he’d been sent by a watch firm saying would he be kind enough the next time he was in a movie, instead of saying the time is such and such, would he say instead, the time by my Seiko watch or whatever is … And Jack gave me this letter and was totally outraged by it. Jack was very nice. We all loved Jack.
Appearing in a small role as a policeman was a young actor by the name of Nicholas Parsons, who would go on to have one of the longest careers in show business, still gainfully employed by producers at the age of ninety as the perennial host of BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute. Nicholas found Ealing, ‘A pleasant atmosphere to work in and very well run’. More importantly, he saw the studio’s film output as a very real evocation of the characters and people who used to inhabit these islands.
The Ealing films certainly reflected Britain as it was in those days. They recreated an image. I was young during the war and things changed dramatically as the years progressed and we came into the 60s and all that breaking down of all kinds of old-fashioned attitudes and ideals and laws and the new freedom people found. But up till then I think those Ealing comedies were very faithful in reproducing the British way of life.
So all those chirpy Cockneys, working-class barmaids, scruffy urchins and dunderheaded public officials weren’t a bunch of caricatures after all. ‘I think they were very faithful reproductions of the terribly typical British characters that existed in our society before and during the war. And the public recognised those characters; they were themselves, their neighbours, their friends. That’s why those Ealing films were so popular, especially the comedies.’
But things were already changing. The gentle traditions espoused in such films as Passport to Pimlico and The Titfield Thunderbolt were already becoming an anachronism. In an increasingly cynical world, Balcon’s aim for every Ealing film to have some sense of national pride wasn’t going to wash any more. Perhaps Balcon didn’t have much desire to reflect the changes in British society. However, by the mid-1950s it wasn’t only Ealing’s outlook that was in jeopardy but its very existence.
With Balcon and Reginald Baker approaching their sixties, both men had begun to feel the strain of the huge loan they had taken out with the National Film Finance Corporation. And as the financial implications for Ealing continued to prey on Balcon’s mind, rumours began to spread around the studio about its future. What’s interesting is that some people were told what was happening, while others remained completely in the dark. Maureen Jympson was one of the first to leave early in 1955.
It was beginning to wind down and a lot of us were beginning to think, maybe we should look for other jobs. And that’s when my husband decided to go freelance, and he left and I followed suit. We were aware that it was going to be sold. It was a tragedy really. There were rumours that the council was trying to buy the studio to build houses on it or a developer was trying to get hold of it, but that never happened, thank God. I was very sad to leave, and I look back on my time at Ealing with great fondness. It was just a nice place to look forward to going to every day. But by then it was all coming to bits anyway; people were beginning to go their separate ways.
Over in the art department Tony Rimmington remembers them all being told the year before that it was closing down. ‘We knew we were for the high jump. About six months before it closed, a load of strangers rolled in and started sticking green and red pieces of tape all over the furniture and fittings. It was going up for sale.’
Rex Hipple was one of those who recalls not hearing the rumours about Ealing closing, or maybe had just not given them any credence. ‘The only thing I remember happening, we were running the daily rushes for The Long Arm and suddenly these folk were all over the place like a swarm of bees and they were taking an inventory of the facilities. I never even thought about Ealing closing.’
In 1955 the BBC made an offer of £350,000 to buy the studio and Balcon accepted. With the money, he was able to pay back the NFFC loan. Ken Westbury can still recall the day the news broke.
We were still shooting The Long Arm on 3A stage and there was a meeting called for one lunch hour and Hal Mason announced that it was closing down. It was quite a shock to a lot of people. The management said that people would be told whether or not they were being kept on. Cameraman Gordon Dines came over to us and said, ‘Don’t worry boys, you’re all OK.’
It’s strange to think that it was Hal Mason and not Balcon himself who announced the closure of the studio to its staff. It was a kind of moral cowardice on Balcon’s part not to explain face to face to his workers, many of whom had been loyal to him and the studio for many years, what was happening and why. Instead he delegated the job to Hal Mason.
Interestingly, Norman Dorme has a completely different take on why Balcon had to sell up.
It was all to do with his second-in-command, Major Reginald Baker. At Ealing he was known by everyone as Major Baker, he always kept his wartime bloody title. Major Baker had a son who was a Conservative MP, but was also an embezzler and stole money from people like Sir Bernard Docker, the industrialist, and other well-known people. All this happened just before the studio closed. And Major Baker, who was half owner of the studio, took all his money out to pay back the huge sums that his son had stolen. And that’s why the studio collapsed, on the stupidity of one person. Anyway, that was the rumour that was going round.
Whatever the truth, Ealing Studios didn’t go out with a bang; instead it ended with a whimper. ‘It just sort of faded away,’ says Ken Westbury. Like the earlier closure of Denham in 1952, Ealing closed down bit by bit. ‘If people weren’t actually working on something, they were free to go before it closed,’ recalls Betty Collins. ‘If they’d got a job somewhere else, nobody was going to stop them from moving on.’ The facilities simply ground to a halt. ‘The construction shops and other departments suddenly went silent because there was nothing being produced,’ says Rex Hipple.
Tony Rimmington remained until the very last day and remembers the impact it had on those left behind. ‘Jack Shampan, the chief draughtsman, he was in tears. You would have thought that they had closed it purely to spite him because he devoted himself to that place. “I gave so much,” he was saying. “I spent nights here working on those sets.” Now it was closing.’ Others, like Rex Hipple, believe that maybe it was time for things to come to an end. ‘I think Balcon had done his time. I think he’d had enough. And he didn’t want to compete with television. It broke our hearts when Ealing closed, but at the same time it was very understandable that he’d felt he’d done enough.’
Many of Ealing’s staff went to work at other studios or turned freelance. Jack Shampan worked regularly in film and television, notably on the classic fantasy TV series The Prisoner where he was to create much of the distinctive ‘look’ of that show with his eye-catching set designs. Tony Rimmington got head-hunted by Rank and enjoyed a long and varied career as a draughtsman on such films as Lawrence of Arabia, Superman, Aliens, The Battle of Britain, A Bridge Too Far and Doctor Zhivago. Sadly Tony passed away just a few days after I visited him at his home where he was kind enough to share his memories of Ealing.
When David Peers was told that in a few weeks’ time there wouldn’t be a job for him at Ealing, he decided to switch his allegiance totally, and came out of the film world and made commercials for television before working for Lew Grade at Elstree. As for Joan Parcell, she got a job at Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) and later worked as a production secretary on the films Lolita (1962), Billy Budd (1962) and Lord Jim (1965), before emigrating to Australia.
For many of Ealing’s former employees, their professional careers were never to be quite the same again. ‘None of the other studios were like Ealing,’ confirms Norman Dorme.
I later worked at Pinewood and Shepperton, nice places, but they didn’t have that special quality that made Ealing special. When you were at these other studios you worked with a small team, maybe only two or three people. There were plenty of other people around, but they had nothing to do with you. At Ealing everybody was sort of connected, every department was connected. You knew everybody and everybody knew you. It was a family, a film-making community.
Rex Hipple stayed on at the studio and was taken on by the BBC. It was a strange experience working at Ealing without it being Ealing, as it were. ‘It was different. It had lost its humanity in a sense, it became part of a massive organisation, the individuality had just disappeared.’ Ken Westbury was also hired by the BBC as a camera assistant. ‘I found out that all those little things I’d learnt at Ealing from people like Sandy Mackendrick and Dougie Slocombe I could put into operation. That was what Ealing represented to me, it was my university. That’s where I did my studying and where I graduated from.’
Within a year the BBC had promoted Ken to a cameraman and there followed a highly successful career that saw him still employed at the network into the late 1990s, working on a myriad of productions, including Play for Today, Pennies from Heaven, Bergerac, Silent Witness and The Singing Detective.
Sometime in 1969 Ken was walking near the canteen when he saw Michael Balcon coming towards him, looking a bit lost. Ken went up to him. ‘Sir Michael, nice to see you.’ He was there to meet someone about doing a television interview. ‘So I took him into the canteen. “Sir Michael, come in, sit down,” I said. “I’ll get someone to look after you.” I don’t think he’d ever been in the canteen before, apart from his own private dining room, which had a different entrance, I think.’ One of the ladies working at the BBC used to be a waitress in the canteen and would take tea up to Balcon’s office. Ken grabbed her and told her that Michael Balcon was here and could she get a tray of coffee and bring it to his table. ‘He was quite pleased to see someone else he knew. And we sat there talking for quite a while. He was at a complete loss as to where he was, so I’m sure he’d never been in that canteen before.’
Just prior to Balcon leaving Ealing back in 1955, Sir George Barnes, controller of television and a personal friend, informed Balcon of his intention to put up a plaque honouring Ealing and asked what the wording on it should be. After much deliberation, Balcon decided that the right words should be: ‘Here during a quarter of a century many films were made projecting Britain and the British character.’