The importance of being Ealing

By Susan King

Dec. 1, 2002 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Though its heyday lasted less than two decades, England’s scrappy Ealing Studios produced some of the greatest and most influential films of the 1940s and ‘50s including such skillfully crafted comedies as “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “The Lavender Hill Mob,” “The Man in the White Suit” and “The Ladykillers,” all of which starred Alec Guinness.

“Forever Ealing,” a documentary premiering Thursday on Turner Classic Movies, celebrates the history and influence of the movie studio located just outside London. Daniel Day-Lewis, whose grandfather, Sir Michael Balcon, ran the studio during its golden era, narrates the documentary, which features interviews with such Ealing actors as Richard Attenborough, John Mills, Googie Withers and John McCallum and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. Contemporary filmmakers Terry Gilliam, John Landis, Stephen Frears and Martin Scorsese discuss the legacy of Ealing. TCM also will air 17 Ealing movies every Thursday through Dec. 26.

“World War II gave them sort of a focus,” says Frears, a lifelong fan of Ealing who worked at the studio when the BBC owned it. “They made a lot of war films and there were a lot of clever people there. They started writing about postwar England in these rather charming comic terms.”

Frears describes the studio as a “nursery” with Balcon as the nanny who cultivated and nurtured the talent, which included such versatile directors as Charles Crichton, Alexander Mackendrick and Robert Hamer.

Mackendrick, whom Frears knew, had a hard time coping outside Ealing’s gates. He had come to America after “The Ladykillers” and directed the 1957 drama “Sweet Smell of Success.” Though now considered a classic, it was a box-office failure. By the late ‘60s, he gave up directing to teach the craft at CalArts.

“Ealing just absolutely suited his temperament,” Frears says. “But once he got out of the nursery he couldn’t really cope. He couldn’t cope unless nanny was there sort of holding his hand ... and encouraging his brilliance.”

The studio began in 1902 and celebrated its 100th anniversary this year with the release of the comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the first film to be produced by the studio’s new head, Barnaby Thompson.

During its pivotal years, Ealing was a “cottage industry,” says the documentary’s producer, Caroline Thomas.

“People worked in different roles. Charles Crichton started as an editor and worked his way up to being a director. They all sort of mixed and matched and really learned their craft. And the Red Lion pub across the road from Ealing, it was very much where they would meet after work and discussions would carry on well into the night. It was a very social, quite hedonistic group of people. I think it was a very creative place.”

Balcon, she says, was a wonderful mix of being a “real sort of businessman who could deal with the finances and distribution and then just a real catalyst in terms of putting the right people together.”

A different world emerged

The documentary features many clips from Ealing films, including the seminal horror anthology “Dead of Night,” the war film “The Cruel Sea” and the action drama “Scott of the Antarctic.” The bulk of the clips, though, highlight the “Ealing comedies” that put the studio and star Guinness on the map -- 1949’s “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” in which Guinness played several members of a snobby family, each of whom is eventually murdered by a disowned relative; 1951’s crime caper farce “The Lavender Hill Mob,” for which he received his first Oscar nomination; and the 1955 black comedy “The Ladykillers,” in which Guinness plays the psychopathic leader of a group of cutthroat thieves outwitted by a little old lady.

Balcon sold the studio in 1956. “It was due to economics,” Frears says. “You also could say that the world they described came to an end really. A new lot of films were waiting to come through.”

“People have their creative heyday,” Thomas says. “I am a great believer that the magic sort of burns for a while. But I think it’s nigh on impossible to keep working with the same bunch of people. There was also a change in sensibility politically. London in the ‘50s was becoming much more multicultural. The one thing about Ealing is it doesn’t really reflect any sort of multicultural aspects at all. It’s very much imperial Britain, isn’t it?”

‘Forever Ealing’

When: Thursday at 5 and 8 p.m.

Channel: Turner Classic Movies

Also

What: “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” “Passport to Pimlico” and “The Feminine Touch”

When: Thursday, 6 p.m., 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. respectively

Channel: Turner Classic Movies