Ealing Studios – beyond the laughter

Mention Ealing Studios and you immediately think of comedy. And when you think of Ealing comedies you think about the dozen or so films which came out of Ealing in the post war era between 1949 (Ealing’s annus mirabilis which saw the release of three of those comedies: Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore and Kind Hearts and Coronets) and – 1955 the year in which The Ladykillers – the last and – I for one would argue – the greatest of the Ealing Comedies- was released. That same year Ealing Studios was sold to the BBC and the Ealing story as we know it was all but over.

Ealing still rates (just about) as the oldest studios in the world in continuous use for film making. Built originally in the silent era in 1902, in addition to its Ealing ‘comedy’ period it was also instrumental during the 1930s in bringing us the films of Gracie Fields and George Formby, whose money spinning talents kept it afloat, and paid for a series of box office flops directed by Ealing’s very own Svengali and generally all round nasty piece of work, Basil Dean. His Associated Talking Pictures became Ealing Studios and was taken over by the legendary Sir Michael Balcon in 1938, when Dean’s backers finally lost patience with him.

The rest, as they say, his local history; but alongside the ‘comedies’ Ealing, during the war and after, also produced a string of highly successful – and profitable – dramas, war, romance, horror, and adventure movies including The Proud Valley (1940) with Paul Robeson; Saraband for Dead Lovers (1945) it’s first Technicolour film; the highly influential portmanteau horror Dead of Night (1945); British noir It Always Rains on Sunday (1947); the great grandparent of every police procedural since –The Blue Lamp (1950); and the classic war film The Cruel Sea (1953). It also famously missed the chance to put Audrey Hepburn under contract, but that’s another story.

So by 1958 it was all over, but for a short and dazzling decade or so Ealing produced a stunningly wide range of films which were exported successful all over the globe, and so have become a touch stone for everything many people think of a typically ‘British’. But it’s the comedies we all love – and who can blame us? I just think it’s worth remembering that there’s more to Ealing Studios than laughter however loud, long and happy that laughter may be.

Nigel Lawrence