PROOF Contents List of Illustrations viii Acknowledgements ix Prologue: From Pinewood to Hollywood 1 Introduction: The British Connection: Themes and Theory 6 1 Early Invaders: The First British Wave 30 2 Sound and Vision: British Filmmakers and the Politics of Pre-War Hollywood 63 3 Movies for the Masses: The British in the Second World War 107 4 Post-War Directions: Ealing Escapism and the Menace of McCarthy 127 5 Atlantic Crossing 152 Notes 174 Select Bibliography 185 Index 189 vii July 22, 2010 7:29 MAC/PNL Page-vii 9780230_229235_01_prex PROOF 1 Early Invaders: The First British Wave “I went to Worthing to recover from Hollywood.” Playwright and screenwriter Edward Knoblock’s quote about wanting to get away from California after a spell in the film community appears to match much of the British reaction to Hollywood in the formative years Illustration 3 Edward Knoblock, 4th from left relaxing with friends. Photograph reproduced courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 30 July 22, 2010 7:50 MAC/PNL Page-30 9780230_229235_04_cha01 PROOF Early Invaders: The First British Wave 31 of film. What drove Knoblock to the Sussex seaside town after the expo- sure of Los Angeles is not entirely clear, but the impulse to retreat to a world of quintessential Englishness has often appeared to be the rai- son d’être for many British writers and directors of the era who were quickly appalled by the brash commercialism of the Hollywood film industry. In Knoblock’s case, it was an even more fascinating compunc- tion that took hold of him because he was American born (originally Edward Knoblauch of German parents in New York in 1874), but ended up residing in Britain for much of his life. Indeed in 1916, he became a British subject, choosing to significantly reject his German ancestry at the height of World War One in favour of the Sussex countryside. So Knoblock’s retreat was a separation from America as much as it was from Hollywood to some extent, an Anglophile’s fascination with at least the perception of a gentler, more civilized existence. But his exam- ple also gave a clue to the kind of perspective essential for living, if not succeeding, in the film colony. Knoblock’s most famous contribu- tion to Hollywood’s golden era is probably Kismet, his play about a poor beggar of Baghdad who schemes to have his daughter married into the royal court. First filmed in 1914, the most notable adaptation is surely William Dieterle’s 1944 version with Ronald Colman as Hafiz the beggar and Marlene Dietrich playing his daughter, Jamilla. Despite this suc- cess Knoblock remained more famous as a playwright and, to a degree, novelist, but the critical point is that his career straddled the infancy of the British and American film industries and he kept a foot in both throughout much of his professional life. As well as contributing screen- plays such as Robin Hood in 1922 for a swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks and director Allan Dwan, he penned a number of stage pieces, including My Lady’s Dress (1914) and Tiger! Tiger! (1918), and wrote novels such as The Man with Two Mirrors (1931), TheLoveLady(1933) and Inexperience (1941). Never one to pass up an opportunity to work in collaboration with some of the best authors of the day, Knoblock produced some stage dramas with the acclaimed Staffordshire writer, Arnold Bennett, and he helped to adapt J.B. Priestley’s most famous novel, The Good Companions, for the theatre in 1931. If the truth be known, Knoblock’s polymath persona left him as something of an anomaly when it came to relations between the two industries. From the very beginning, there were few that managed to work on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time with any con- sistency, and even those leading the way as executives and producers, the likes of Michael Balcon and the Kordas for instance, found it dif- ficult to build bridges between the comparatively sparse resources of July 22, 2010 7:50 MAC/PNL Page-31 9780230_229235_04_cha01 PROOF 32 From Pinewood to Hollywood the tight-knit British film industry, and the glamour and monolithic nature of Hollywood. Hence, the amount of people who gave up on the shoestring existence in England and made their way to the west coast in search of fame and fortune multiplied as the 1930s progressed. Indeed the New York correspondent of the British magazine The Film Weekly reported that as the 1929–30 season was about to commence, as many as 300 “English” stars were about to feature in American theatrical productions with many set to make the transition to Hollywood there- after. The article, not-so-subtly titled the “English ‘Conquest’ of U.S.A.”, went on to comment that a good example of this transition from stage to screen was being done by James Whale who, having directed the stage version of Journey’s End in London, was at that moment on the lookout for casting opportunities for the film adaptation in Hollywood. “He says he will use the English stage actors as far as possible,” con- firmed the report, neatly bridging the respective acting and filmmaking communities that were becoming ensconced in California.1 While plenty of promising talent was making its way westward though, what drove Edward Knoblock to Worthing ultimately was also some intangible reaction against the “system”. Hollywood was an industry yes, an entertainment certainly, but also an economic force answerable to no one but its own patrons and financiers. Paula Marantz Cohen’s analysis of the growth of the star system during the silent era, for example, focuses on the “shallow and egregious” nature of the industry even by the 1920s. Consumption, acquisition and luxury had replaced the innocent working-class roots that had seen film ferment its hold on the lower echelons of American society in the very early years of the twentieth century.2 And if you entered that materialist world as a contributor, in order to make that work for you artistically, you needed to be surrounded by the right people, to be working in an environment that could insulate you from the peculiarities of the Hollywood system as it emerged. German born director Dieterle, who directed Knoblock’s story, was a case in point. Never an auteur director in the manner of some of his contemporaries such as von Stroheim or Lang, Dieterle nev- ertheless had a style which was, as Thomas Schatz rightly remarks, the studio’s style, and that studio, Warners, made the type of pictures that Dieterle’s directing catered for. With The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935) and The Life of Emile Zola (1937), he made a name for himself with glossy bio-pics. Blockade (1938) for Walter Wanger followed, and after that The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) with Charles Laughton at RKO. What Dieterle was adept at conforming to was a pattern of presentation that Schatz notes was apposite to all 1930s Hollywood output: “Ultimately July 22, 2010 7:50 MAC/PNL Page-32 9780230_229235_04_cha01 PROOF Early Invaders: The First British Wave 33 any individual’s style was no more than an inflection on an established studio style.”3 Finding a niche for oneself within that style, a place within the factory operation of studio pictures that established a “sig- nature” at each company was of course partly a matter of luck. But it also required a certain judgement, a flexibility of approach, and recog- nition of where one’s talents lay. In comparison with Dieterle, Schatz lines up a further “contract director” who contributed mightily to the signatory style of another studio and is crucial to the discussion here: that studio was Universal and the director, the aforementioned British émigré James Whale. As Schatz asserts: Whale and Dieterle are rarely singled out for their style and artistry, and each would have been lost without the studio’s resources and reg- imented production process. But that doesn’t diminish the integrity of films like Frankenstein, The Old Dark House,andThe Bride of Frankenstein.4 Whale arrived in Hollywood with no pedigree for making horror films in particular, although that is what he remains famous for to this day. Yet he brought a rich combination of talents from his British stage and screen background that, for a short time, made him one of the essential filmmakers in the 1930s studio system. But what was crucial about Whale, as it was with Knoblock, was that sense of adaptability and moulding to the studio, to the production process; in effect to the moguls’ style for it was they who really dictated the fortunes of the movies being made. What some of the more vocal Brits came to resent ultimately in their rhetorical suspicions about Hollywood, but found difficult or unwilling to articulate and accept publicly, was what kept the studios alive for so long; that in essence, “filmmaking was less a process of collaboration than of negotiation and struggle – occasion- ally approaching armed conflict”.5 For those willing to engage or at least participate, the rewards were considerable, even if some felt that art was wholly sacrificed for business. The likes of Knoblock and Whale quickly accepted that this was the reality of 1920s and 1930s Hollywood and the methods by which the studio system was already bedding itself in. Indeed, films that were about Hollywood quickly played up to the stereotypes on offer in the back lots; with portrayals of brutal producers, cynical writers and alcoholic stars swiftly emerging, as Kevin Brownlow has observed. Arguably one of the best of these examples of Hollywood doing “Hollywood” was, for Brownlow, King Vidor’s 1928 homage to the July 22, 2010 7:50 MAC/PNL Page-33 9780230_229235_04_cha01 PROOF 34 From Pinewood to Hollywood early silents, Show People, filmed at the derelict Mack Sennett studio in Edendale after the comedy director had moved out to Burbank.