Gainsborough Pictures
Gainsborough Pictures was a British film production company that ran its own film studio in London from 1924 to 1950 . Gainsborough was best known for melodramas , which were produced in the 1940s and were among the biggest box office hits in British cinema . Previously, Gainsborough Pictures was a producer of B-films , including some of the most successful British comedies of the time. The studio also released early directorial work by Alfred Hitchcock , particularly The Tenant and A Lady Vanishes .
History of the studio
The early years
Gainsborough Pictures was founded in 1924 by the young film producer Michael Balcon . A former power station of the Great Northern & City Railway , which was already used as a studio by the American production company Famous Players-Lasky, was taken over as a production facility in the London borough of Islington . The hallmark of Gainsborough Pictures was, based on Thomas Gainsborough's painting Portrait of Mrs. Sarah Siddons, an oval picture frame in which a smiling lady, played by the actress Glennis Lorimer, bowed.
In the year it was founded, Balcon signed a cooperation agreement with the German UFA , which led to Gainsborough directors and actors visiting and filming in the UFA's studios. The first joint film was made in 1925, The Princess and the Violinist , directed by Graham Cutts in Babelsberg . Alfred Hitchcock acted as screenwriter and assistant director for this film, who was soon promoted to full director by Balcon. Graham Cutt's next directorial work, the crime thriller The Rat of Paris , was Gainsborough's first success and made Ivor Novello a film star in the tradition of Rudolph Valentino .
With Novello as the main actor, Alfred Hitchcock shot Der Mieter in 1927 , his first British film after two productions in Germany. The tenant established Hitchcock's reputation as a thriller specialist and became Gainsborough's most successful silent film. In the spring of 1927 Gainsborough Pictures was taken over by Gaumont-British . Gaumont thus became the largest film production company in the United Kingdom, Balcon rose as head of Gainsborough and Gaumont-British to one of the most influential producers.
As a subsidiary of Gaumont-British, Gainsborough used Islington Studios only for the production of B-Movies, while the more prestigious films were produced by Gaumont itself at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush . Even after the introduction of the sound film, contacts with German cinema were maintained. After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in the German Reich many exiles found employment with Balcon and actors like Elisabeth Bergner and Fritz Kortner appeared in films by Gaumont-British / Gainsborough with.
In 1936 Balcon left Gaumont-British / Gainsborough. Maurice Ostrer, who had already taken over the management of Gainsborough Pictures Ltd together with Balcon and CM Woolf in 1928, became the new head of Gaumont-British / Gainsborough and appointed Ted Black as the new studio manager for Gainsborough.
From the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, Gainsborough celebrated its greatest success with film comedies that were tailored to former Music Hall stars. Will Hay , who had moved from British International Pictures to Gainsborough in 1935 , became the studio's first star comedian, followed in 1937 by the six-member Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey from 1940. Hay and then Askey were often featured in their films by the duo Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt supported. Between 1937 and 1941, the Frenchman Marcel Varnel was the studio's most important comedy director, among the writers was the later director Val Guest . Major comedies included Oh, Mr Porter! (1937) with the trio Hay, Marriott and Moffatt, The Frozen Limits (1939) with Crazy Gang and the horror comedy The Ghost Train (1941) with Askey and Richard Murdoch.
When in 1937 Gaumont-British had to give up its studios in Shepherd's Bush for economic reasons, Gainsborough Pictures also established itself as a production facility for more complex projects. This is how Alfred Hitchcock's A Lady Vanishes in Islington came about and was published by Gainsborough.
With the beginning of the Second World War , the entire film production was moved back to the Lime Grove Studios, as the striking fireplace in Islington was all too easy a target for German fighter pilots. At Gaumont-British / Gainsborough there was another change in management when the film mogul J. Arthur Rank gained influence and finally in 1941 the Rank organization took over the entire group.
Success with costume films
During the Second World War, Gainsborough Pictures rose to become one of the leading British film studios. Light comedies, musicals and war dramas such as Frank Launders and Sidney Gilliats Millions Like Us contributed to the success . Above all, however, Gainsborough owed its rise to the melodramas that were written between 1943 and 1947. The first "Gainsborough melodrama" is Leslie Arliss ' costume film The Lord in Gray , with which the main actors Margaret Lockwood , Phyllis Calvert , James Mason and Stewart Granger became stars overnight. The film became notorious for a scene at the end of James Mason whipping Margaret Lockwood to death with a riding crop in a fit of madness. In 1944 Anthony Asquiths Gaslicht und Schatten followed , which skilfully varied the given formula with heroic female figures, noble men and elements of British Gothicism .
Even if Gainsborough's melodramas were criticized, they became big hits with mostly female audiences. The Gentleman in Gray and Gaslight and Shadow were among the most successful films in their release years; The film Die Frau ohne Herz , published at the end of 1945 , in which Margaret Lockwood mimes a chaste wife during the day in order to frighten the surrounding area at night as the leader of a band of robbers, is one of the ten most-watched films of all time, with more than 18 million viewers In the United Kingdom. The film was based in the basic constellation on Gainsborough's Madonna of the Seven Moons from 1944, in which Phyllis Calvert leads a double life in Renaissance Italy and which had also been a great financial success.
The overwhelming success of the melodramas led to renewed changes in the management of the studio. Ted Black, who wanted to stick to the tried and tested mixture of different film genres, was ousted by Maurice Ostrer, who preferred to continue the new path with women-oriented films. Black eventually left Gainsborough Pictures in late 1943 for Alexander Kordas London Films . American journalist and screenwriter RJ Minney and actor Harold Huth became Gainsborough's senior producers.
Ostrer's course resulted in Gainsborough becoming a reliable blockbuster producer, but overall the studio's productivity decreased as it specialized in costume films. In 1946 only two films were finally completed, Arthur Crabtree's Dangerous Journey and the biopic Paganini . J. Arthur Rank reacted to the disappointing results of Gainsborough Pictures and got involved in company politics for the first time. He forced Ostrer to resign and installed Sydney Box as the new head of the studio.
Box had previously won an Oscar for best original screenplay for the independently produced film The Last Veil . This film, in which Ann Todd rises to the world-famous pianist under the iron hand of her impresario, played by James Mason, looked like a typical "Gainsborough melodrama", which is why Box appeared as a suitable candidate for a continuation of the tried and tested course. But under Sydney Box only one more melodrama, the 1947 film Gypsy Blood , was completed. A year later, Maurice Ostrer, RJ Minney and Leslie Arliss failed with their self-produced costume drama Idol of Paris ; post-war audiences had lost interest in these types of films.
End of the studio
Under Sydney Box, Gainsborough Pictures made another change of course. Despite the commercial success of The Last Veil , Box preferred social realism and focused on films with a contemporary focus. In addition to social dramas, Box also had comedies, thrillers and sophisticated literary adaptations such as an adaptation of William Somerset Maugham's Quartet (1948). In his first year as head of the studio, 14 different films were released.
The success that Gainsborough had under Ostrer, however, Sydney Box could not repeat. In addition to the changing public taste, Gainsborough suffered from the departure of important employees. Box not only had to hire new producers, but also had to find a replacement for director Leslie Arliss. He found the replacement in his personal environment: his sister Betty Box became a producer at Gainsborough, his wife Muriel took over the management of the script department. The young documentary filmmaker Ken Annakin became his preferred director.
Films like the comedy Miranda (1948) or the three films about the Huggett family starring a young Petula Clark were moderate successes but proved profitable due to their low production costs. With the period films Christoph Columbus and Vom sündigen Poeten , the latter with Dennis Price as Lord Byron , Box landed two lossy flops in 1949, which contributed to the end of Gainsborough Pictures.
Rank's corporate empire was already weakened when a serious crisis struck the British film industry in early 1949. The dispute over the taxation of American films in the United Kingdom initially led to an embargo by the American film studios and then to a flooding of the British film market with American films, as a result of which domestic film production lost important market shares. In 1949 the Rank Organization had to report a loss of 16 million pounds. Rank responded by streamlining film production. The studios in Sheperd's Bush were sold to the BBC , Rank concentrated film production on Pinewood Studios .
At the beginning of 1950 the studios in Islington were also closed, making Gainsborough Pictures a thing of the past. Gainsborough's Islington building remained idle for decades before being converted into an apartment building in 2001 .
literature
- Pam Cook: Gainsborough Pictures . Cassell, London 1997, ISBN 0-304-33708-0 .
- Jörg Helbig: History of British Film . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-01510-6 .
- Robert Murphy: Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain, 1939-1949 . Routledge, London 1992, ISBN 0-415-07684-6 .
Web links
- Gainsborough Pictures (1924-51) . BFI Screenonline (English)
- Gainsborough Pictures in Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Rachael Low: The History of the British Film Vol. IV, 1918-1929 . Routledge, London 1997, ISBN 0-415-15451-0 , p. 166.
- ^ Rachael Low: The History of the British Film Vol. IV, 1918-1929 . Routledge, London 1997, ISBN 0-415-15451-0 , p. 169.
- ^ Robert Murphy: British Cinema and the Second World War . Continuum, London 2000, ISBN 0-8264-5138-1 , p. 13.
- ^ Marcia Landy: Melodrama and Femininity in Second World War British Cinema . In: Robert Murphy: The British Cinema Book . British Film Institute, London 2001, ISBN 0-85170-852-8 , pp. 121-122.
- ^ The Ultimate Film Chart . ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. British Film Institute; Retrieved May 27, 2010.
- ^ Robert Murphy: Realism and Tinsel . Pp. 34-35.
- ^ Robert Murphy: Realism and Tinsel . P. 121.
- ↑ Andrew Spicer: Sydney Box . Manchester University Press, Manchester 2006, ISBN 0-7190-5999-2 , p. 83.
- ^ Geoffrey Macnab: J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry . Routledge, London 1993, ISBN 0-415-07272-7 , p. 216.
- ↑ Where the lady vanished . In: The Guardian , January 15, 2001.
