by Stephen Vagg
In early 1969, Associated British was taken over by a bigger entertainment conglomerate EMI, run by Bernard Delfont. Since Associated British half-owned Cohen’s company, this meant that Cohen was now in partnership with EMI. Cohen’s career had gone a little quiet in the late sixties, with the complete collapse of the “B” market that had been so lucrative for him. The EMI take-over would revitalise his career.
Bernard Delfont’s background was in live theatre, but he was genuinely enthusiastic about the possibilities of EMI entering filmmaking (perhaps prompted by sibling rivalry – Delfont’s brother, Lew Grade, was also moving into that space via his company ITC). The takeover of Associated British meant EMI now had access to a studio, distribution operation, cinemas and talent.
With American money pulling out of the British film industry in the late sixties, and the Rank organisation cutting back on filmmaking, there was an opportunity for EMI to quickly dominate local production. More than one article in 1969 referred to EMI and Delfont as the “saviour” of the British film industry. Delfont admired Cohen’s success – the two men went way back – and he allowed Cohen to continue to make movies thorough his own unit, which eventually (though not immediately) changed its name from Anglo-Amalgamated to Anglo-EMI.
Delfont then complicated things by announcing the actual person in charge of EMI Films would be actor-writer-director-producer Bryan Forbes [left], who was appointed head of production. This essentially led to EMI Films having two competing fiefdoms, both nominally independent – Cohen’s and Forbes’. It is likely Delfont did this to ensure some healthy inter-company competition (or he may have simply hired the two men without thinking about it too hard. That happens in big business more than corporations like to admit).
“Right from the start of Bryan Forbes joining the company, there was a sharp distinction between his films and mine,” admitted Cohen later. “If Bryan had a cocktail party to announce his programme, then I had a cocktail party a few weeks later for mine, too.” This was true – Forbes announced his program in November 1969 and Cohen followed with his a few days later. Cohen said the average cost of films made by his company would be around £300,000, adding that it would be cheaper to hire local talent now that the Americans had left. The Daily Telegraph predicted, “with Forbes’ talent, Cohen’s chemistry and Mr Delfont’s showman courage, EMI may have the British film industry in its pocket.”
We have written about Forbes’ time at EMI and there will be some repetition in this piece. Basically, Forbes made (or, more accurately, closely supervised) twelve films during his time at EMI: three thrillers (Eyewitness, And Soon the Darkness, The Man Who Haunted Himself), two creepy romances about middle-aged men trying to shack up with younger women based on TV plays (Hoffman, Dulcima), three tragic romances (A Fine and Private Place, The Go-Between, The Raging Moon), a ballet based on a hugely popular series of books (Tales of Beatrice Potter), a comedy from a best-selling novel (The Breaking of Bumbo), an animal film (Mr Frobush and the Penguins) and a family movie based on a classic novel (The Railway Children). While Forbes was head of EMI, the company made other movies (Forbes himself put the total figure at eighteen) but the above twelve were the ones which had his fingerprints all over them (he wrote and directed The Raging Moon). If you’re interested in this period, Paul Moody’s book on EMI Films is the one to read; academic Laura Mayne has also done important work in this area.
Cohen began making movies for EMI before Forbes’ arrival – as covered in Part Three, his company, Anglo-Amalgamated, was already well established at Associated British, so when EMI took over the latter, he simply transferred over his existing projects.
Cohen’s early EMI films were almost all exclusively comedies based on pre-existing IP (Spring and Port Wine, Some Will Some Won’t, Entertaining Mr Sloane, All the Way Up) with one exception, a documentary (The Body). None of the movies cost too much – they were budgeted with a view to being able to recoup their costs domestically, which was an old Cohen trait.
These early EMI movies from Cohen were, however, different in tone from the comedies of Peter Rogers (particularly the Carry On films), which had been so lucrative for Cohen in the past – also as discussed in Part Three, Cohen had fired Rogers in 1966 when he got (to quote Rogers) “a touch of culture up the arse”.
Aside from Some Will Some Won’t, Cohen’s “early EMI” comedies were on the cultural side – closer to, say, Billy Liar or Nothing but the Best than Carry on Constable or Watch Your Stern.
Cohen’s Spring and Port Wine, the first film greenlit by Bernard Delfont at EMI, was based on a hugely popular play by Bill Naughton (Alfie, The Family Way), that had run in the West End for years. The producers were Memorial Enterprises, Albert Finney’s should-be-known-better-than-it-is production company that he operated with Michael Medwin. The stars were James Mason, in “I’m acting” mode, and Susan George, who Cohen had also used in All Neat in Black Stockings and who EMI would soon feature in Eyewitness – they may have been hoping that she’d be a new Julie Christie/Carol White. The film of Spring and Port Wine got nice enough reviews but did not make the impact of the stage play – like All Neat in Black Stockings it feels as though perhaps it was made a few years too late.
Cohen’s second film for EMI, Entertaining Mr Sloane, came out of an unusual (and often overlooked) chapter in his career. In 1962, Cohen took over the lease for London’s Arts Theatre, a very trendy, cutting-edge space for the time, which pumped out a lot of exciting new plays. Cohen called it “an experimental ground, a talent source for cinema”; he renamed it the New Arts, and had Michael Codron, famed British theatrical producer, appointed as its managing director. The New Arts was a critical darling, seen to be at the forefront of British theatrical culture; Cohen’s involvement in it may have contributed to his aforementioned uncharacteristic mid-sixties disdain for the Carry On series. According to Cordon’s biographer, Cohen was Cordon’s regular “angel investor” in productions, and the two of them had a big success with the Terence Frisby play There’s a Girl in My Soup (although it was the Boultings who made the film version, not Cohen).
Anyway, one of the plays that debuted at the New Arts was Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane, which lost money but was acclaimed enough to be transferred to the West End where it became a (controversial) sensation. Cohen financed the talky film version, which was the directorial debut of Douglas Hickox (who went on to an entirely decent career that included Theatre of Blood). The movie of Entertaining Mr Sloane was not a hit, although it has developed a cult, in part because its matter of fact depiction of, ahem, diverse sexuality was so advanced for its time. Aficionados seem to prefer it to the film of Orton’s Loot, made the same year, though neither did well at the box office. Still, Sloane was a brave, artistic choice for Cohen, another of the (many) rebuttals that he made “safe” movies.
All the Way Up was also based on an acclaimed play – David Turner’s Semi-Detached, which had been a hit on stage with Leonard Rossiter, then flopped with Laurence Olivier. For the film version, Cohen had Warren Mitchell, hot off his success as Alf Garnett in ‘Til Death Us Do Part, though not hot enough for many people to go to this movie in the cinema. It’s an analysis of the class system, along the lines of Nothing but the Best – possibly another Cohen film from this period that was made too late to have impact.
Some Will Some Won’t, starring Ronnie Corbett, was a remake of a 1951 Associated British film, Laughter in Paradise. It was shot in March 1969 but not released until September 1970, indicating that EMI were not that keen on the end result, and the public did not flock. The opening scene has an old man with fuzzy white hair climb a clock tower, reminiscent of Back to the Future.
In 1969, it was announced that Cohen’s Anglo-Amalgamated would handle the UK distribution for Two Gentlemen Sharing, a Ted Kotcheff-directed, Evan Jones-written look at race relations. This film was originally financed by Paramount, who disliked the final product and sold off the film to AIP and Anglo-Amalgamated. EMI must not have liked this one either – the film doesn’t appear to have been released in the UK.
So, Cohen’s first four efforts for EMI (five, if you count Two Gentlemen Sharing) had all been disappointing. When you consider the movies that Cohen made immediately prior to the EMI merger included All Neat in Black Stockings and Shalako, it seems the impresario was having something of a cold streak at the end of the decade.
However, the documentary Cohen had backed, The Body, turned out to be a success, highly acclaimed and widely seen around the world (MGM distributed in the US). This film was produced by Ken Loach’s television producing partner Tony Garnett (who’d been forced out of Poor Cow by Joe Janni) and directed by Roy Battersby – demonstrating again that (a) Cohen had a knack for backing talent (b) if a film’s got sex in it you’re in with a chance at the box office (the movie is educational but there’s a scene where a man and a woman have sex on camera). The movie is bold, interesting, complex – not that well remembered today for some reason, but a remarkable piece of work. Tony Garnett later wrote in his memoirs: “Doing a film with Nat in those days was different from making a film today. You shook his hand in the morning and could go out to spend his money the same afternoon. Over the years I got used to going to Samuelson’s, the camera business in Cricklewood, and saying to Sydney Samuelson, ‘We’re doing a film for Uncle Nat’, mention that Chris Menges — or Charles Stewart — was shooting and add, ‘and we will need . . .’ I could have walked out with anything, just on Nat’s word. The production and distribution agreement might not be signed until after the film was delivered but the money was always there, meeting the cash-flow estimate every week.
“He made me put up the whole of my fee as first call on any overage. Considering that represented my total earnings for the year, it concentrated the mind. But when the film was delivered under budget, he always threw in a bonus, although one had not been negotiated. London then was a handshake town, more like a village. Media law virtually didn’t exist. There was no demand for film lawyers, except to service Hollywood studios in London.”
Cohen decided to give up highbrow comedy and go lowbrow once more. Peter Rogers’ producer wife, Betty Box, was unable to secure finance from the Rank Organisation for a film she and director Ralph Thomas wanted to make about a man who has a penis transplant: Percy. She approached Cohen, who eagerly agreed to finance, and was richly rewarded: Percy was one of the most successful films at the 1971 British box office, leading to a sequel, Percy’s Progress. (Monty Python’s Michael Palin and Terry Jones did some work on the script.)
Cohen also financed Up Pompeii, a hugely fun big-screen adaptation of a popular sitcom starring Frankie Howerd. “I am convinced the key to recapturing large cinema audiences is a good, uproarious comedy,” said Cohen. The market for film adaptations of sitcoms had been established in Britain with Til Death Us do Part in 1968 and Cohen jumped on the bandwagon. Producer Ned Sherrin wrote in his memoirs, “We belonged firmly in Nat’s ‘a giggle, a girl and a few innuendoes’ compartment of British filmmaking.” The fact that it was a theatrical movie allowed for the addition of nudity. This paid off at the box office, leading to two sequels, Up the Chastity Belt and Up the Front.
As a change of pace, Cohen made Villain. This was a crime film, a genre that Cohen had worked in since he started making movies back in 1950. Cohen crime films could be “As” or “Bs”; Villain was firmly in the former camp, starring Richard Burton as a gay, neurotic, mother’s boy gangster. The movie flopped in America but was a hit in Britain, although the fact that Cohen had to give away so much of the money to Burton in terms of a percentage may have limited its profitability for EMI. It’s a gutsy, gripping film with a fearless performance from Burton.
Cohen’s most atypical film among his early EMI output was Family Life, which he made out of respect for producer Tony Garnett (The Body) and director Ken Loach (Poor Cow). According to Garnett, Cohen accurately summarised the film’s story as “a mad girl goes into a mental hospital and goes madder. An unhappy ending. No laughs, no sex.” He told the producer, “You and Ken, you know, we could make a lot of money with you. If you weren’t such a bunch of bloody communists.”
Nonetheless, Cohen helped finance the film, giving Loach and Garnett complete artistic freedom. Family Life is a masterpiece, a remarkable, emotionally devastating work that’s gutsier than anything Bryan Forbes made at EMI. Unfortunately, the movie’s commercial reception was lukewarm and Cohen would not finance any more Loach films, although he regarded the director as a “genius”. Loach’s next feature wouldn’t be made until 1978.
Both Cohen and Forbes laid claim to EMI’s The Go-Between, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Alan Bates and Julie Christie. This was the studio’s most critically acclaimed film of 1971, winning the Palm d’Or at Cannes and making a profit (though it took some time to get there) – it also seemed to inspire a lot of Australian period films in the 1970s. The Go-Between feels more “Forbes” than “Cohen”, although Cohen had previously made three pictures with Losey (The Sleeping Tiger, Intimate Stranger, The Criminal) and had financed the films that turned Alan Bates and Julie Christie into stars (A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar/Darling), so there’s every chance that Cohen would have green-lit it had he been in charge of EMI. But look, let’s give executive credit for the film to Forbes – Forbes certainly did.
The Go-Between was one of several movies that EMI made in partnership with MGM – the others included Get Carter and The Boyfriend. The two companies had joined forces in April 1970 when MGM decided to shut its own studio at Boreham Wood and move its operations into EMI’s home at Elstree Studios.
From everything we’ve read, MGM didn’t have much to do with The Go-Between – indeed, MGM’s president James T. Aubrey sold off the studio’s interest in the film to Columbia). Likewise, EMI didn’t have that much to do with Get Carter or The Boyfriend – those two movies were set up under Robert Littman who was running MGM’s operations in England. Forbes even made a point of distancing himself from The Boyfriend in his memoirs, calling it “one mistake they could not lay at my door”.
Both Get Carter and The Boyfriend, however, have come to be regarded as classics – Get Carter was an instant hit, remade by MGM as Hit Man, and beloved by the new lad movement. The Boyfriend was regarded as a flop, even by its director Ken Russell – but the film actually turned a tidy profit; it’s a great film. Get Carter’s great too. So’s The Go Between…. that’s a very good run of films.
Indeed, it’s a tremendous shame that the MGM-EMI collaboration didn’t last. The relationship could have suited both – MGM would have access to British talent and material, and EMI could benefit from American distribution and money; both studios badly needed such things at the time. In April 1971, Robert Littman announced MGM-EMI would make at least two major films a year, with possible future projects including Trilby and Svengali with Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards, and a new version of Trader Horn. However, not long after making The Boyfriend, MGM pulled out of England and stopped making movies there. This essentially forced EMI into a ghetto of low budget films unless they wanted to “bet the farm” on a blockbuster.
While Cohen did not have that much to do with the MGM-EMI movies, he did appear to have been involved in bringing Hammer Films to EMI. Since the 1950s, Hammer had been a great rival of Cohen’s Anglo-Amalgamated; the two companies shared many things in common, in particular, a passion for low production budgets along with an international outlook, and spending much of the early 1950s making crime movies with imported B-list Americans.
Hammer’s chairman, Sir James Carreras, shared many similarities with Nat Cohen: both liked a pretty girl, were heavily involved in the Variety Club, and were great deal makers who spent most of their time financing and selling movies, and not a lot of time “on the floor”.
When Anglo broke away from the pack in 1957 with The Tommy Steele Story, so too did Hammer with Curse of Frankenstein and its ensuing horror cycle.
Over the years, Carreras and Cohen had seemed wary of going head-to-head with each other too often – Hammer made a few comedies, but nothing like the volume churned out by Anglo; Anglo produced a few horror movies but nothing like the amount from Hammer. James Carreras never had Anglo’s artistic ambition – there were no British new wave efforts under Carreras – but Hammer had more of a cohesive style, helping make it one of the most beloved studios in the world.
Cohen and Carreras were very much in each other’s orbit, though. Tudor Gates, who wrote some ‘70s Hammer films, said Cohen “introduced a lot of leading ladies to us.” This was sleazy, but in Cohen’s defence, one of those leadings ladies was Ingrid Pitt who was such a spectacular success in the Hammer film The Vampire Lovers.
Hammer traditionally obtained much of its finance from Hollywood. When American money pulled out of Britain in the late 1960s, Hammer was forced to look for local funds, and Carreras did deals with the two British majors, EMI and Rank. Bryan Forbes told Dennis Meikle that the EMI-Hammer arrangement “was very much an ‘old pals act’ between Delfont and Jimmy Carreras. The cost of these films came out of the very slender resources at my disposal and meant that I had to cancel other films which I would have preferred and which, I think, might have more materially contributed to the commercial success of my program.”
Forbes added “I can’t say that I greeted them [the Hammer movies] with any particular enthusiasm because I felt that the Hammer genre was coming to the end of its natural life, and, indeed, the box office receipts of these films reflected this.”
The Hammer horror films made at EMI included The Horror of Frankenstein, Scars of Dracula, Lust of a Vampire, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Fear into Night, Straight On til Morning, and Demons of the Mind. Fans have varying opinions about Hammer’s ‘70s output –some of these movies were dreadful, genuine low points for one of the greatest studios of all time. But some were really fun – Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Dr Jekyll and Demons of the Mind. None were big hits on release, as Forbes pointed out – but all have continued to be constantly watched in some form (TV, DVD, revivals) and all proved lucrative in the long run.
Hammer did provide EMI with a big fat “right here right now” hit with a feature film version of the sitcom On the Buses. This was a phenomenon, the second most popular film at the British box office in 1971. Paul Moody called it “a Cohen production through and through, and made as part of the deal that had been struck between him and Hammer.” Considering this was Hammer’s first comedy since 1961’s Watch it Sailor, it is not hard to imagine that Cohen pushed Hammer to make this (although Hammer executive Brian Lawrence claims it was his idea). The movie led to two sequels, Mutiny on the Buses and Holiday on the Buses, and along with Up Pompeii really kicked off the mania for big screen adaptations of sitcoms.
Bryan Forbes’ output at EMI had resulted in two critical and commercial successes (The Railway Children, The Tales of Beatrix Potter), one critical success that quickly became profitable (The Go-Between), one critical success that probably became profitable (The Raging Moon). The rest were critical and financial disappointments, some of which were high profile because of their stars (The Man Who Haunted Himself, Hoffman). Some films became cult favourites (The Man Who Haunted Himself again, And Soon the Darkness). Three of Forbes’ films were unmitigated disasters: A Fine and Private Place was cancelled (by Forbes) during shooting and never completed, The Breaking of Bumbo was never released in cinemas because EMI disliked it, and Mr Forbush and the Penguins saw its director and leading lady fired and replaced during shooting, resulting in extensive (and expensive) reshoots not rewarded when the movie eventually hit cinemas.
Forbes asked for more money from EMI to make movies, didn’t get it and sooked off, resigning on 24 March 1971. (He may have been in shock from the death of his friend, director Basil Dearden, in a car accident on 23 March.)
In later years, Forbes frequently bagged Cohen in interviews and in writing, criticising Cohen for not knowing who Beatrix Potter was and wanting Forbes’ job himself, comparing Cohen unflatteringly to the “giant” of Earl St John (head of production at the Rank Organisation), calling Cohen someone who “treat films as just another commodity” and who “would have been just as happy” if he’d made “gloves or plastic toilet rings”, and claiming the “bold experiment” of hiring Forbes “had been allowed to fail”. Forbes says that on his last day at EMI, Cohen invited him in for drink and told Forbes his “big mistake” was “you threw your lot in with Delfont instead of with me” adding “it could have been different my way.” This is an enigmatic statement – we are not exactly sure what it means, except maybe that Forbes could’ve taken Cohen’s advice, which was probably true.
Forbes’ frustration is understandable because he was unable to make all the films he wanted to at EMI, and it would have hurt that Cohen’s films (or Cohen-associated films, such as those from Hammer) took money and attention away from Forbes’ projects. But the fact is that Forbes was able to make a dozen movies at EMI, which is pretty good. He did some impressive things at the studio, but in the end, made too many silly mistakes, like green lighting films with too little story and miscast leads, wasting time on studio admin shenanigans which could have been delegated to someone else, letting complete newbies make a movie in Antarctica, running off to make his own film when he needed to be looking after a film studio, and making movies without checking whether his own company’s cinema chain would show it.
Bryan Forbes was probably never really suited to run a movie studio. His tastes were too genteel, his experience too focused on production as opposed to administration, distribution, and exhibition. In hindsight, Delfont might have been better off giving the job of running EMI Films to Cohen and carving out an independent unit for Forbes where he could focus on making, say, three films a year. (In fairness, possibly Delfont tried to do that.) Because Cohen’s films comfortably outperformed Forbes’ movies at EMI – not just commercially (Percy, The Body, Villain, Up Pompeii) but also in terms of the artistic risks they took (The Body, Family Life, Villain, Entertaining Mr Sloane, All the Way Up).
In April 1971, Delfont appointed Nat Cohen to be head of production at EMI. Since the Rank organisation’s film output was becoming increasingly limited, he was the only real person in London who could greenlight a movie. He had become the most powerful person in the British film industry. It would ultimately end his career.
Part one covered Cohen from his beginnings as a cinema owner and maker of B pictures with Stuart Levy, while part two explored how he took musicals, comedies and horror films to become one of the most prolific filmmakers in the country. Part three encompassed the years when his company, Anglo-Amalgamated, was part owned by the entertainment conglomerate Associated British, focusing on his contribution to the British new wave and death of Stuart Levy.
