by Stephen Vagg
When things really started to wobble.
The year of 1958 was a tricky one for the Rank Organisation – as discussed in an earlier piece, it started off with the company having to sack 300 workers and cancelling a bunch of films. Moreover, it was becoming clear that Rank’s attempt to expand into America via its own distribution network was not working out.
Still, managing director John Davis remained optimistic and Rank was committed to its filmmaking program, investing in seventeen movies (by our count) released in 1958.
Twelve of these were from Rank Organisation Film Productions Ltd (the studio’s official production arm) with five from independent companies, which Rank would finance. In our previous pieces on Rank, we’ve been focusing on those from Rank’s official production arm, but we’re going to start mixing it up now, as there was so much crossover.
Anyway, the seventeen 1958 films comprised of:
– four comedies: a Norman Wisdom vehicle (The Square Peg), a sequel to Whiskey Galore! (Rockets Galore!), an Ian Carmichael vehicle made two years prior (The Big Money), two gentle romantic-ish comedies centred around a male star (Bachelor of Hearts, Rooney);
– two children’s movies (Innocent Sinners, Heart of a Child);
– three historical dramas (The Gentleman and the Gypsy, A Tale of Two Cities, A Night to Remember);
– two war films (Carve Her Name with Pride, Sea of Sand);
– three women’s pictures (The Wind Cannot Read, Passionate Summer, Nor the Moon by Night);
– three thrillers (Floods of Fear, Sea Fury, Violent Playground).
Let’s look at the comedies first.
Norman Wisdom aficionados consider The Square Peg among the best screen works of that comic; we’re not so across his career that we can make that call, but the movie certainly gave Wisdom the chance to play a character with more of a spine, plus an opportunity to display his versatility via a double role; the public responded enthusiastically and The Square Peg was Wisdom’s biggest hit for a while, proving that it’s never too late to improve. Wisdom sometimes chafed at Rank’s restrictions, but the studio really did well by him.
As if to compensate for this success was Rockets Galore!, a sequel that no one asked for to Whiskey Galore!, a film released almost a decade prior. The original had been made by Ealing Studios, a mini-company financed by Rank that operated independently in its own little fiefdom; Ealing and Rank got divorced in 1956, with Ealing subsequently joining MGM, but in the property settlement, Rank got sequel rights to Whiskey Galore! It wasn’t worth it. Rank tried yet again with its contract players Donald Sinden and Jeanie Carson and yet again the public didn’t really care; there are bright moments, and nice colour, but Michael Relph wasn’t as good a director as he was a producer.
The Big Money was so hated by John Davis, Managing Director of Rank, that he refused to release it. Two years later, producer Hugh Stewart (who made the Wisdom films) had the film recut and extra scenes added and it was released, to little acclaim, although Australia’s Robert Helpmann is fun as the villain. Incidentally, the movie had a strong idea (an innocent man in a criminal family) but stuffed its execution – like so many Rank movies, it’s badly written, with inadequate stars: Ian Carmichael is annoying and Belinda Lee (as the love interest, a role offered to Diana Dors) seems bored.
Bachelor of Hearts was made by Independent Artists, a company that producer Julian Wintle established after the success of The One Who Got Away with Hardy Kruger. Bachelor also starred Kruger, although this one was a comedy, a fish-out-water- tale (originally developed for Richard Attenborough along the lines of The Guinea Pig about a working class kid at Cambridge, changed to be about a German). The film is notable for the people on it who would go on to do better work, including writers Leslie Bricusse and Frederick Raphael, and extras Barbara Steele and Peter Cook. The colour and locations are nice. The public didn’t like Bachelor of Hearts much on release, but the movie always seemed to be on television back in the day.
Rooney was an odd duck – a gentle comedy-drama about a dustman in Dublin who is good at Gaelic football and finds love. It was based on a novel by Catherine Cookson, which was set in Newcastle, but Rank changed the location on the grounds that the Irish are more popular than Novocastrians. A very light film, not well remembered today, it was actually quite popular in Ireland and Britain – in part, one assumes, due to the affability of star John Gregson, who we think was a very under-rated star of this period; he was in some failures (True as a Turtle, Miracle of Soho) but a lot of hits too (The Captain’s Paradise, Sea of Sand, Above Against the Waves, Battle of the River Plate).
The two children’s films both aimed to recapture the success of The Little Kidnappers. Innocent Sinners even had the same writer and director as that movie, Phil Leacock and Neil Paterson, but the magic eluded them again (as it had on their other collaboration, High Tide at Noon); the film is made with skill and has lovely elements, especially in the second half, but no one went to see it. The same fate befell Heart of a Child, a boy and his dog tale in Austria which isn’t very good; who wants to see Donald Pleasance soften at the love of a boy for his dog? The latter movie was made by Sydney Box, former head of production at Gainsborough, who was under contract to Rank; Box’s name always pops up in the history of British movies from this period, but he seemed to make a lot of not-very-good films. We think that he mostly coasted on the reputation of his one big hit, The Seventh Veil, although that might be unfair (Andrew Spicer’s biography of him is well worth reading).
The two war films, both made by independent companies, were deserved hits. Sea of Sand was a solid guys-on-a-mission flick with Michael Craig, John Gregson and Richard Attenborough, produced by the Tempean team of Robert Baker and Monty Berman, who specialised in B pictures. The movie is famous today in part because, during its filming, Attenborough and Craig bitched about how they were sick of always starring in war movies, which led to them making their own films, starting with The Angry Silence. Having said that, Sea of Sand holds up on its own merits as a decent movie, well directed by Guy Green, part of the late ‘50s desert-sploitation war cycle (The Black Tent, Ice Cold in Alex, No Time to Die).
Carve Her Name with Pride, from producer Daniel Angel and director Lewis Gilbert, was an excellent true-life tale of Violette Szabo, anchored by superb work from Virginia McKenna, Rank’s only female success story of the late ‘50s. Arguably this was as much a woman’s picture as a war movie, since more than half the running time is dedicated to Szabo’s domestic life: this makes what happens at the end even more thrilling and heart wrenching. Gilbert said that better casting for Szabo would have been Diana Dors, which blew our minds as big Dors fans – if that had happened, Carve would have launched Dors to the top rank and she might have become the genuine star that she should have been. Still, McKenna is fantastic; also strong is Paul Scofield as her second love interest. Rank had rotten luck with its female focused movies as a whole, but knew how to make one if it took place in wartime, such as this, A Town Like Alice, Conspiracy of Hearts and the film below…
The Wind Cannot Read was an inter-racial terminal illness weepy set during World War Two, which became a big hit off the back of its perfectly cast male lead, Dirk Bogarde. The project had been developed by David Lean, who helped write the script and cast a female lead, but was unable to come to terms with Rank; he sold them the rights and went off to make Bridge on the River Kwai while The Wind Cannot Read was eventually done by the team of Ralph Thomas and Betty Box. The resulting film is very good, but the fact that Rank could not deal with Lean was harmful in the long run – the biggest studio in Britain should have been able to work with the best directors, but it is significant that they all (Carol Reed, Alfred Hitchcock, the Boultings, Launder and Gilliat) sought finance elsewhere.
The Wind Cannot Read was based on a novel by Richard Mason, who also wrote the source novel for Passionate Friends, starring the husband and wife team of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. The film was developed at Ealing years ago by director Robert Hamer, but Michael Balcon was scared of its sexy content; Rank picked it up and used director Rudolph Carter. It was a big flop – McKenna’s popularity with the public clearly had limits. Nonetheless, it was a great loss that she eventually parted ways with the studio (due to a combination of pregnancies and her unwillingness to do films on offer) – McKenna was a perfect female star for Rank and had a great warmth and ability to connect with audiences, far more than most of the studio’s late ‘50s female contract stars (Carson, Lee, Betta St John, Anne Heywood, Muriel Pavlow, Susan Beaumont).
Not the Moon by Night was a mess, with traditional Rank strengths (South African location filming, colour, attractive actors) and weaknesses (story, over reliance on contract players). The film had a troubled production, with various cast and crew getting injured, the crew rebelling, and star Belinda Lee attempting suicide because her married lover wouldn’t leave his wife. All of that was more exciting than what’s on screen, although it did result in one of Lee’s best British performances, and the pictures are pretty.
The thrillers were an interesting mix; all were very good, but none got the audiences that they deserved. Floods of Fear was shot in Britain but set in America. Extremely well done technically, and quite a good little thriller from Charles Crichton, it’s just… what’s the point? Why make a film set in America about Americans where your imported American star is someone known for musical comedies rather than action (Howard Keel)? This was not a mistake that other British studios made – like, say, Warwick Pictures who routinely imported American stars, but ones who specialised in action (eg Alan Ladd, Victor Mature) and usually gave their stories a specifically British slant. Rank was not good enough to tackle Hollywood head on.
Sea Fury is a splendid melodrama from Cy Endfield, reuniting with Stanley Baker from Hell Fury, and throwing in Victor McLaglen and Luciana Paluzzi. It was not a great success either – maybe it needed a war background, which we also think would have helped Rank’s earlier sea melodrama, Passage Home; it is unlikely the imported stars McLagle and Paluzzi meant that much at the box office, either. Still, this is a lot of fun to watch. Endfield had made two entertaining films for Rank (Sea Fury, Hell Drivers) but his big hit was Zulu, one of the many (many) examples of filmmakers who had their biggest successes away from John Davis.
Baker also starred in Violent Playground, a juvenile delinquent drama with an electrifying performance from David McCallum. It was from the old Ealing team of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph, who also made Rockets Galore! There is much to admire here, particularly (once again) some excellent location work, marred by (once again) story problems. It is our belief that if Violent Playground had focused on McCallum’s character, this would have been a beloved teen crime classic, but like so many Ealing (and Rank) films, it gets weighed down by the tut-tutting “wisdom” of its middle-aged characters (cop, priest, teacher). The film also may have been more popular had it tackled its social issues within a murder mystery plot – this was the technique Relph and Dearden would later use to great success in Sapphire and Victim. Still, it is worth seeing for McCallum and the Liverpool setting.
The three historical melodramas were all big swings by Rank. The Gypsy and Gentleman was an attempt at the old style Gainsborough melodramas, with an imported star (Melinda Mercouri), new Rank star (Keith Michell, after Michael Craig wouldn’t do it) and top director (Joseph Losey). There’s actually no reason why this shouldn’t have worked, but the result was a mess. It has so much good stuff going for it, but the plotting is poor, and the characters are unclear; it doesn’t understand what made Gainsborough melodramas work (like pretty much every attempt at Gainsborough melodrama made post-Maurice Ostrer). Losey hated working for Rank, who liked to interfere, in contrast with Nat Cohen who left him alone. The movie’s financial failure would have been disappointing, but not surprising.
The next two, however, would have really hurt.
Rank had great hopes for A Tale of Two Cities and A Night to Remember, deservedly. Both had healthy budgets, the studio’s biggest stars (Dirk Borgarde and Kenneth More respectively), reliable directors (Ralph Thomas, Roy Baker), excellent source material (Charles Dickens, Walter Lord). And both movies were superbly done, among the best things that Rank ever did, particularly A Night to Remember. The studio was confident that both would do well. But if you want God to laugh, tell him your plans… both flopped in America, and failed to recoup their costs.
It is perhaps not that weird in hindsight that the films did not do well in America – both stories were downbeat, had recently been done as live plays on American television, and featured stars not established in America. It is less clear why Tale of Two Cities did poorly in Britain; A Night to Remember was a local hit, but not up there with a Doctor comedy – it did not recoup its cost until 2001. These two films are a tribute to the whole Rank Organisation, but their financial performance must have shattered the studio.
In September 195,8 the Rank Organisation announced that it had lost £1,264,000 on films, causing the group’s profit to drop from £5 million to £1.8 million. Various films were cancelled, including Anna, which would have reunited Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan immediately after Gigi, and Lawrence of Arabia with Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Asquith and Terence Rattigan (Rattigan repurposed this material for the stage play Ross).
Rank must have found 1958 a frustrating year. The studio tried really hard to upscale, but couldn’t change its DNA. It remainded on solid commercial ground with Norman Wisdom comedies, war movies, and a tearjerking melodrama with a war background. It was unable to consistently make successful children’s films. It could turn out a decent thriller and excellent historical movies, but audiences did not come, or at least not in sufficient numbers to cover the costs.
The studio had become a little better at handling stars, providing good vehicles for Dirk Bogarde, Kenneth More, Norman Wisdom, Virginia McKenna and John Gregson. On the flipside, its dogged insistence that some of its contract players (Michael Craig, Belinda Lee, Donald Sinden, Anne Heywood) were stars didn’t help, neither did the studio’s passion for European stars and third-rank American names (Hardy Kruger, Melinda Mercouri, Howard Keel, Victor McLaglen, Luciana Paluzzi, Carl Mohner).
John Davis wound up releasing a bunch of its contract stars in 1958 – these included actors like Belinda Lee, Patrick MCGoohan and Mary Ure, who would achieve fame outside the studio. It also parted ways with, amazingly, Alec Guiness, who shed ties with the studio after Rank refused to fund The Horse’s Mouth. Guiness claimed that John Davis “told me that I was a funny man and if I ever made a serious film, it would finish me off.” Maybe Rank dodged a bullet with The Horse’s Mouth but Guinness had been one of the biggest British stars for over a decade, and was still a draw in America – he deserved to be treated with respect. Davis appears to have been threatened by top line talent.
We’ve got a lot of affection for the Rank films of 1958. It includes genuinely terrific films (Tale of Two Cities, A Night to Remember, The Wind Cannot Read, Carve Her Name with Pride), some solid programmers (The Square Peg, Sea Fury, Floors of Fear, Rooney), and several endearingly dopey colourful bits of fluff (Nor the Moon by Night, Bachelor of Hearts). But there was no denying the studio’s confidence was knocked around, particularly by A Night to Remember and Tale of Two Cities.
What’s next for the man with the gong? Stay tuned.
Read our earlier pieces on Rank: 1957, 1956, Group Film Productions and British Film-Makers
