by Stephen Vagg
A history of the production arm of Rank Organisation
This piece is a sequel to British Film-Makers (BFM). Like BFM, Group Film Productions was a short-lived company that operated as the main production arm for the Rank Organisation in the 1950s – indeed, Group succeeded BFM in that role – although Rank also financed movies through other companies as well (particularly Ealing, London Independent and Two Cities).
The main difference between BFM and Group was the former’s movies were partly financed by the government’s National Film Finance Corporation, and thus its projects had to be, in effect, government approved; Group’s movies were entirely financed by Rank. Well, almost entirely – Rank’s earnings were topped up by the Eady Levy, a tax on tickets which was returned to producers.
BFM made 14 films between 1952 and 1953. Group made, we think, twenty films between 1953 and 1955, after which it was succeeded by another company, Rank Film Productions. We decided to give Group Film its own specific piece, as twenty movies is a nice, tight slate to examine. As with the BFM article, a lot of the research here is taken from the book by Sue Harper and Vince Porter, British cinema of the 1950s: the decline of deference.
Group’s twenty films were all released between 1953 and 1955 and comprised of the following:
– two comedy vehicles for established comedy movie stars (Man of the Moment, Up to His Neck);
– four comedies based on hit stage plays (Fast and Loose, As Long as They’re Happy, Simon and Laura, All for Mary);
– six comedies based on novels (A Day to Remember, The Million Pound Note, You Know What Sailors Are, Value for Money, An Alligator Named Daisy, Doctor in the House);
– two sequels to successful earlier comedies (Mad About Men, Doctor at Sea) (Doctor at Sea being also based on a novel);
– two imperial adventure stories (The Seekers, Simba);
– three melodramas (The Young Lovers, Passage Home, The Woman for Joe);
– a children’s film (The Little Kidnappers).
Group’s output was slightly different from BFM. The proportion of comedies increased from fifty percent to nearly three quarters – which reflected both (a) Rank’s preference for inexpensive, non-controversial movies and (b) the box office success it enjoyed with films like Genevieve, Trouble in Store and The Card. There were no thrillers, which had dominated BFM’s slate to minimal box office returns, although Passage Home was a little bit thriller-y, and Rank financed some thrillers through other companies (eg Ealing with The Ship that Died of Shame and The Night My Number Came Up). There were no war films either, which was surprising, considering how popular such movies were – however, again, Rank did finance some through other companies (eg London Independent with Above Us the Waves, Two Cities with The Purple Plain, Ealing with The Divided Heart).
The two specifically constructed comedy star vehicles were Man of the Moment with Norman Wisdom and Up to His Neck [left] with Ronald Shiner. Wisdom’s first two movies had been made for Two Cities; we have no idea why his third was for Group, but he was Rank’s blue chip box office attraction until the late 1960s – Man of the Moment gave his fans what they wanted. Ronald Shiner was also popular, although his appeal faded much sooner than Wisdom’s; Up to His Neck was made from the same creative team, essentially, as BFM’s Top of the Form and was a similarly tired rehash of 1930s British comedies. Both films – which oddly have similar elements, including British innocents getting involved in the affairs of Pacific Islanders – are only for fans of the stars. (Rank’s other big comedy star, Alec Guinness, made To Paris with Love for Two Cities during this period.)
The four Group Film Production comedies based on hit stage plays all featured actors who Rank were trying to build into stars. Fast and Loose, a clunky adaptation of the 1920s stage farce A Cuckoo in the Nest, featured Kay Kendall (hot off Genevieve) and Brian Reece (who had done Seven Year Itch on stage in London). Simon and Laura, a satire of television, also starred Kendall alongside Ian Carmichael and Australia’s own Peter Finch, who had been signed to a long term contract by Rank. Both are pretty dire as movies – Finch’s performance in Simon and Laura was a career low, although the film’s treatment of television is at least novel.
All for Mary had Kathleen Harrison, David Tomlinson and Nigel Patrick, and is based around one joke (a nanny treats her former charges, now grown men, like children); we are not sure if anyone remembers Harrison or Patrick, but they were stars at the time. The photography is lovely, the fun mild. Incidentally, All for Mary and Simon and Laura were directed by women, Wendy Toye and Muriel Box respectively, although the films were weighted, like most Rank productions, towards the male characters.
As Long as They’re Happy featured Jack Buchanan and three new (movie) faces playing his daughters: Janette Scott, Susan Stephen and Jean Carson (stage plays about bewildered fathers of madcap daughters are almost their own subgenre – Cecil Kellaway appeared in a heap in Australia in the 1930s). The film features several songs, making it a kind of musical, a genre that was more popular in Britain in the 1950s than is commonly remembered (eg The Dancing Years, Happy Go Lovely, It’s Great to be Young, The Tommy Steele Story all did well at the box office). The film is a spoof of Johnny Ray type singers, making it one of only two films in this entire slate that feels vaguely contemporary, even if “Rank Organisation land” is as artificial and studio-bound as any MGM confection. Diana Dors steals the film in her one short appearance and makes you wish she had a bigger role – Stephen, Scott and especially Carson are all clearly talented, but they don’t pop on screen like Dors. One of the final subplots has Carson’s beatnik boyfriend Nigel Green shaving off his beard and getting a regular job – characters selling out their dreams and conforming was a recurring feature of this slate.
Five of the six Group comedies based on novels were generally unexceptional. An Alligator Named Daisy and Value for Money were both smart enough to feature Diana Dors and dumb enough to misuse her – both films have the male lead (Donald Sinden and John Gregson respectively) torn between Dors and a duller co-star and picking the latter (Jean Carson and Susan Stephen). Dors was, like Kay Kendall, lightning in a bottle but the studio really didn’t know how to use her; her great movies – The Weak and the Wicked, Yield to the Night, A Kid for Two Farthings – were made at other studios; the same was true for Kendall, aside from Genevieve (Les Girls, The Reluctant Debutante, The Constant Husband). Incidentally, An Alligator Named Daisy was another semi musical with Carson singing a few songs – it’s a shame that Rank didn’t commit to make a proper one, since it had the technical facilities do them; it might have been scared off by the cost. Still, several of these Group Film Production efforts had songs inserted into them (such as Diane Cilento singing in The Woman for Joe which we will discuss later).
You Know What Sailors Are and A Day to Remember both starred Donald Sinden, and neither received with much enthusiasm; like all Rank comedies they have an endearing desire to please and technical competency (the colour and sets in Sailors are gorgeous), but the movies lack something – part of this was the presence of Sinden, who Rank relentlessly pushed during this period but never became a movie star, although an excellent actor.
The Million Pound Note, from a story by Mark Twain, must have been a real disappointment for Rank, who secured the services of Gregory Peck, then at his peak, to star (it was part of a two picture deal with the actor – the second one, The Purple Plain, was made through Two Cities). The movie was a box office fizzler, which we put down to two reasons; first was Peck’s casting – he could play comedy (eg Roman Holiday) but is simply too tall, handsome and charismatic to play a man whose fortunes are transformed by a million pound cheque (someone that good looking would get invited into high society already); the film cries out for a scrappy underdog type to play the lead role like Alec Guinness. Secondly, the script was poorly plotted, failing to milk all the possibilities in the basic idea.
Having watched all the movies from Group Film Productions, we would say that their biggest issues were these two things – miscast stars and poor plotting. BFM and Group had some recurring screenwriters (Bill Fairchild, Robin Estridge, Jill Craige) but they simply weren’t as good as the cream of the crop at Ealing (William Rose, TEB Clarke).
In fairness, all sins were wiped out by the sixth of these movies: Doctor in the House. This was from the novel by Richard Gordon via the team of Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, whose previous efforts for Rank had ranged from the mildly successful (The Clouded Yellow, Appointment with Venus) to the forgettable (A Day to Remember, The Venetian Bird). Doctor in the House was a phenomenon, the biggest hit of 1954, launching Dirk Bogarde from the second rank of British stardom to its peak, and confirming the appeal of Kenneth More and Kay Kendall (although it did not do much for Donald Sinden who was also in the cast). Looking back, the film benefited greatly from luck – right subject, story, writer (Nicholas Phipps), cast, producer-director, release date – but luck is preparation meets opportunity, and Rank deserves credit for giving the filmmakers the opportunity.
A sequel quickly ensued, Doctor at Sea, featuring Bogarde and Brigitte Bardot (one of many European starlets imported to help Rank movies in Europe); it was the second biggest hit of 1955. The “doctor” series remained Rank’s other blue chip franchise until the end of the 1960s. The early movies in the series are breezy, uncomplicated fun, achieving a lightness of tone and charm that the other Group Film Production comedies could never quite reach.
An example of this was Mad about Men, a sequel to the 1948 film Miranda. Despite being from Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, and starring Glynis Johns and Margaret Rutherford, who were in the original, the film doesn’t click the way Doctor in the House or Doctor at Sea did (or Miranda, for that matter). It’s a particular shame because Mad about Men is the sole film out of the twenty movies from Group where the action is driven by a female character. It has a decent central idea (Miranda dislikes her lookalike cousin’s finances and tries to find her a better match by seducing other men) but is totally undermined by sloppy plotting that throws away opportunities wholesale (like having another mermaid and keeping her in the grotto). Donald Sinden is in this one too.
As mentioned, Group Film Productions did not make any war films, but it did produce two adventure movies set in Britain’s colonial outposts – a genre that had been lucrative for other Rank financed companies (eg Ealing – The Overlanders, Where No Vultures Fly, Pinnacle – The Planter’s Wife). The Seekers is silly but watchable and fascinating in its depiction of 19th century New Zealand, complete with a horny Tondeleyo-like sexpot who lures Jack Hawkins away from Glynis Johns; there is splendid location footage and a genuinely surprising ending where (spoilers) all the white leads are killed by Maoris.
Simba was, like The Planter’s Wife, an attempt to come to terms with decolonisation, set in Kenya during the Mau Mau (it’s the other contemporary film, along with As Long as They’re Happy). The studio uncovered a new female star in Virgina McKenna and Earl Cameron is excellent, but Dirk Bogarde was badly miscast in a film that either needed Jack Hawkins or to be rewritten for Bogarde.
The Seekers was reasonably popular at the British box office, Simba not so much, but Rank must have been happy with the results because that company would go all-in on imperial adventures in the late 1950s (Robbery Under Arms, Ferry to Hong Kong, Campbell’s Kingdom, Northwest Frontier, Nor the Moon by Night, The Wind Cannot Read).
The three melodramas are interesting especially as Rank’s earlier attempts at that genre had been financially unsuccessful eg BFM with It Started in Paradise. We think that Earl St John, Rank’s head of production, was sensitive to criticism that the organisation did not make films for and about women, so tried to come up with some women-skewing films (yes, that is a terrible expression, but it will do for shorthand). Thus, Diane Cilento was the object of a love triangle in The Woman for Joe (with George Baker and Jimmy Karoubi) and Passage Home (Peter Finch and Anthony Steel) while Young Lovers concerned American David Knight falling in love with East European Odile Versois behind the Iron Curtain.
None of these films did well at the box office – The Woman for Joe and Passage Home had great potential but were poorly made. Young Lovers was excellently made, something of a hidden gem, but no one went to see it; maybe it would have had more of an audience with recognisable stars (for instance, Dirk Bogarde and Mai Zetterling who would have been more suitable here than in, say, Desperate Moment).
We will also add that in all three films, the female characters were fairly passive – there was something in Rank’s DNA of this era that couldn’t see women as active creatures (aside from Mad about Men), and we believe that it cost them financially. (Rank also had money in a version of Romeo and Juliet that was made through an Italian company, and Personal Affair with Gene Tierney for Two Cities; both flopped.)
The critics’ darling (and unexpected hit) of Group Films Production was the children’s film, The Little Kidnappers, a superb account of two boys who have moved to Canada and deal with their gruff grandfather. The story was only filmed due to the personal intervention of J Arthur Rank, chairman of the Rank Organisation, who was a northerner and presumably related to this story of a tight, taciturn Scot in Nova Scotia who learns to love his grandkids without ever saying the words directly; Rank’s faith was rewarded by a wonderful movie and genuine hit, one of the best movies the company ever financed. Incidentally, Rank had a strong record of making movies about children through Ealing (Hue and Cry, Mandy) and the Children’s Film Foundation (Bush Christmas).
So, what to think of the output of Group Film Productions?
Commercially, it likely made a healthy profit, due to the success of the Wisdom and Doctor movies; Rank never had much luck breaking into the American market, but its films did well in Commonwealth countries. And the fact that Rank continued to invest enthusiastically in movies for the next few years is indicative that it was happy with what Group achieved.
Rank was clearly comfortable with comedy – perhaps too comfortable, 14 out of 20 is a lot, and most of them were generic and bland. Its non comedy output was more interesting – there were stories of young people having premarital sex (The Young Lovers), three-dimensional little person characters (The Woman for Joe), and racial tensions (The Little Kidnappers, Simba, The Seekers).
The studio might have been better off making less movies overall and pouring more funds into bigger movies – say, an adaptation of a classic novel; the method British Lion were using to great success around this time. In fairness, a few big flops could have really derailed the company, which had almost happened to Rank in the late 1940s, whereas the cheap nature of its comedies would have minimised any risk of loss. Furthermore, the incredible success of Man of the Moment, Doctor in the House and Doctor at Sea, made Group Film Productions’ business model hard to argue with.
Group Film Productions’ record of using stars was mixed. It did very well by Norman Wisdom and Ronald Shiner, and turned Bogarde into a giant name via Doctor in the House. Against this, the studio misused the potential of genuine stars that it had under contract like Diana Dors, Brigitte Bardot, Diane Cilento, Kay Kendall, Kenneth More and Peter Finch; all these actors were really something special, and would have long careers (except Kendall who died young), but Rank did not always show them off to their best and/or was slow to recognise their potential. For instance, Kenneth More wanted to make You Know What Sailors Are after Genevieve had been made, yet not released, but the studio would not meet his (not very high) price and instead went for Donald Sinden, who Rank repeatedly tried to convince the nation was a movie star.
The technical quality of the films was consistently high – the sets, the gorgeous colour, the photography. The acting of the support parts was usually solid.
We wish these movies were better, but there is one really top class film – The Little Kidnappers – and a handful of really entertaining ones (Doctor in the House, Doctor at Sea, Young Lovers, The Seekers) and some “brave tries” (Simba). That’s not bad, though.
