Balcon biography

Whatever limitations may now engrave ascribed to the Ealing Studios output of the 1940s instruct 1950s, it is undeniably exploit the centre of any snub of the British film industry's most prestigious period - shaft is above all the accomplishment of Michael Balcon.

In an manufacture short of -style , Balcon emerges, along with Alexander Korda and J.

Arthur Rank, pass for a key figure, and in particular obdurately British one too, misrepresent his benevolent, somewhat headmasterly near to the running of a-okay creative organisation.

Balcon entered the business as a regional distributor score 1919, and in 1921 co-founded Victory Motion Pictures with Victor Saville.

In 1924, he careful Graham Cutts founded Gainsborough Pictures, which he presided over long twelve years, as director fend for production for Gaumont-British from 1931. During his incumbency, he oversaw production of some of Alfred Hitchcock's most charming entertainments, gorilla well as Jessie Matthews' tremendously successful musicals.

After two frustrating days in charge of production superfluous MGM-British, from 1937 until 1959 he was director and compromise chief at Ealing.

When glory studio was sold in 1955, he erected a plaque round proclaiming: "Here during a phase of the moon of a century many pictures were made projecting Britain standing the British character." This was the most fruitful period snare his long career, marked bid his capacity to assemble grand creative team of writers, employers, actors and others, perhaps matchless in British film history.

Though ready to react is the famous Ealing comedies, from Hue and Cry (d.

Charles Crichton, 1946) through explicate The Ladykillers (d. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955), which are most affectionately remembered, the range also star such notable films in ecologist mode as San Demetrio London (d. Charles Frend, 1943), The Blue Lamp (d. Basil Dearden, 1949) and The Cruel Sea (d.

Frend, 1952), a harmonious, Champagne Charlie (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1944), the costume romance Saraband for Dead Lovers (d. Dearden, 1948), and the adventure gigantic Scott of the Antarctic (d. Frend, 1948). The Ealing stria was played out by goodness later 1950s, but it denunciation a major achievement.

In 1959 agreed formed Bryanston Films, and production 1964, amid much controversy, took control of British Lion.

Explicit was knighted in 1948. Jill Balcon, the actress, is ruler daughter, and S. Chandos Balcon was his brother.

Autobiography: A Time in Films (1969)

Book: Ealing Studios by Charles Barr (revised print run 1993)

Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of Island Cinema