The Picture Show Annual (1949)

began to realise why the house was such a bargain when his wife’s companion, played by Margaret Lockwood, became possessed by the spirit of the unhappy girl who haunted the house. It was this film in which Dennis Price created an impression as Margaret’s suitor. In the same year, too, we saw the redoubtable Flanagan and Allen, who at the London Palladium had been helping men on leave and those left behind to forget their troubles and laugh at the fooling of the Crazy Gang, in Dreaming. The Way to the Stars was one of the year’s outstanding productions. It was the story of an R.A.F. camp, which began with a camera tour of the place, deserted and lifeless, with just one or two reminders of the men who had once lived—and died—there. Then it told their story. It introduced two newcomers, Jean Simmons, who made a brief appearance at a camp concert, singing, and Trevor Howard, who was killed off early in the film. In 1946 Trevor Howard co-starred with Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, and with Deborah Kerr in / See a Dark Stranger, an amusing comedy in which Deborah Kerr played the part of an Irish g^rl who came to England to continue a one-woman war against us. 1946 introduced us to yet another newcomer—at least, a comparative newcomer, although he had made one or two appearances in Australian films— Chips Rafferty. He made a tremendous hit in The Overlanders, the film whose stars had scarcely seen the inside of a studio aU the time the film was being made. A British production unit had been sent by Michael Balcon to Australia to make the film, which dealt with the ov'erland drive of several thousand head of cattle from the threat of Japanese invasion. Chips Rafferty, who came over here to appear as the shepherd respon- sible for much of the trouble in Googie Withers’ life in The Loves of Joanna Godden, returned to Australia to star in another film for Ealing Studios. The same year we saw at last the long-heralded Ccesar and Cleopatra, on which an incredible amount of time and money had been lavished. With Claude Rains as the great Roman general, Caesar, Vivien Leigh as the crafty, capricious, child-queen of Egypt and Stewart Granger as Apollodorus, the handsome merchant; with gigantic sets, superb Technicolor photography and gorgeous costumes, it was the most expensive film yet produced. There was another Technicolor film shown the same year— London Town, a lavish musical film, which was obviously meant as a challenge to those so slickly produced by Hollywood. It introduced film audiences to a new comedian, Sid Field, and to the music-hall favourite Tessie O’Shea. Pinewood came back into the picture again, for there I Know Where I’m G.oing was made, starring Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey. Roger Livesey was also seen in A Matter of Life and Death, that strange and unusual film which starred David Niven as the R.A.F. pilot who is believed to be killed in a crash and then, through a celestial error, is enabled to plead for an extension of his life on earth before a celestial court. In 1947, with the war two years behind, and the prospects of entering the hereafter not quite so immediate and speculation about them not so eng^rossing, films set their feet firmly on the earth. Hue and Cry was one of the liveliest and brightest turned out for many a day—it is the only film which shows the uses to which London s blitzed sites are being put by London’s children. They have become their playgrounds. And Hue and Cry was a gorgeous romp in which a gang of dockland children pursued and caught a gang of fur thieves who used a thriller series in a boys’ magazine to give members of their gang their instructions. Three novels, set in the period of the early nineteen- hundreds, were among the best films— Master of Bankdam, from Thomas Armstrong’s The Crowthers of Bank dam, the story of a Yorkshire woollen manufactur ing family. The Loves of Joanna Godden. Sheila Kaye- Smith’s novel of the sheep-farmers of Romney Marsh, and A Man About the House, Francis Brett Young’s dramatic nove’ of two spinster sisters who inherit an Italian mansion—to say nothing of the major-domo, in which role Kieron Moore became a star overnight. This year, by the way, marked the fiftieth consecutive year of film production at the Nettlefold Studios at Walton (formerly the Hepworth Studios, where, in a house called " The Rosary,” Cecil Hepworth first started producing in 1897), where Master of Bankdam was made. Other worthwhile films included Odd Man Out, a powerful drama of a hunted man, in which James Mason gave one of the best performances of his career, and introduced us to lovely Irish Kathleen Ryan as his lead- ing lady; The Man Within, set in the eighteenth century, which .was notable for Richard Attenborough’s per- formance as a thoroughgoing coward who found his courage in the strength of a woman’s belief; and a really fine version of Dickens’s Great Expectations. 1948 will be remembered as the year that started, for the first time in the history of the screen, with no Holly- wood films entering this country, because of the tax imposition, which, however, was later partly lifted. January saw the reopening of the Warner Studios at Teddington, with Stage 2 completely rebuilt to the original design. Edward Dryhurst had already begun producing Noose there with two American stars, Joseph Calleia and Carole Landis, when the official opien- ing took place. Danny Kaye was guest of honour, and a host of stars who had made films there before the bombing, were also guests. The studios are chiefly being used by independent producers, although Warners themselves intend to make one or two pictures there. -Associated British Studios at Elstree celebrated their 2ist birthday in July. After considerable post-war renovation, they had begun work again with My Brother Jonathan, thereby relieving the strain on the httle Welwyn studios, where all their wartime production had taken place, and which, despite a host of handicaps, manag^ to turn out films of the calibre of Piccadilly Incident. It was at the Elstree studios (then British International) that the first George Bernard Shaw film was made—a version of How he Lied to her Husband. Producer Anatole de Grunwald moved to the Shepperton studios as soon as Bonnie Prince Charlie had been con- cluded, to make The Winslow Boy, with Anthony Asquith directing, Robert Donat starring. Uneasy Terms, made at the National Studios, Elstree, was the first of Peter Cheyney’s popular detective stories to be filmed. This article would not be complete without a reference to the man whose name, unknown in film circles in 1933, is now the most-talked-of in the film world—J. Arthur Rank. During the intervening years, he has become the most p>owerful single figure in the British film industry. It was in 1933 that Rank, finding the great milling combine he ran insufficient to occupy his energy, entered the film world by the church door— he start^ the Religious Film Society, which made films for Methodists. Two years later, astutely seeing that distribution and exhibition were the keys to successful production, he went into partnership with C. M. Woolf, an independent distributor. The following year, he invested in Universal, and this gave him his first chance of entering the American market. Then, in order to guarantee that any film he produced would have a reasonable prospect of being shown here, he gained control of the Odeon and Gaumont British theatres. Then he started producing in earnest. By the end of the war, he owned or controlled some sixty per cent, of the entire British industry, from production groups and studios, to cinema equipment firms, and his Eiagle-Lion distribution company covered the world. Rank allows his producers a great deal of freedom. Once a month they meet at a dinner to discuss films. He sees the rough scripts of all his pictures, and often alters them himself. Once he has okayed the budget for the film, however, he does not interfere until the picture is ready to be previewed. And he does not put his producers under contract—he prefers that they should feel free to leave him when they want to. Very few, so far, have done so. The excellent results from this freedom of action are shown by the films that have been made under his control, including Henry V, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Blue Lagoon, Hamlet, Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill, and Oliver Twist,