Gainsborough Pictures
Encyclopedia
Gainsborough Pictures was a British
film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal
, in Poole Street, Hoxton
in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch
, London
. Gainsborough Studios were active between 1924 and 1951. Built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway
it was later converted to studios. The former studios were demolished in 2002 and flats built on the site in 2004. A London Borough of Hackney
historical plaque is attached to the building. The studio has become best known for the Gainsborough melodramas
it produced in the 1940s.
In 1987 Sir Lew Grade brought back the Gainsborough name for a series of British made for television movies.
and was a sister company to the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation
from 1927, with Balcon as Director of Production for both studios. Whilst Gaumont-British, based at Lime Grove Studios
in Shepherd's Bush
produced the 'quality' pictures, Gainsborough mainly produced 'B' movies and melodramas at its Islington Studios. Both studios used continental film practices, especially those from Germany
, with Alfred Hitchcock
being encouraged by Balcon -- who had links with UFA
-- to study there and make multilingual co-production films with UFA, before the war. In the 1930s, actors Elisabeth Bergner
and Conrad Veidt
, art director Alfred Junge
, cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum
and screenwriter/director Berthold Viertel
, along with others, joined the two studios.
The studio's opening logo was of a woman (Glennis Lorimer
) in a period costume sitting in an ornate frame, turning and smiling, based on the famous portrait of Sarah Siddons
by Gainsborough
.
After the departure of Balcon to the British arm of MGM, the Rank Organisation
took an interest in Gainsborough and the studio made such popular films as Oh, Mr Porter!
(1937) and Hitchcock
's The Lady Vanishes
(1938). By 1937, Gaumont-British were in financial crisis, and closed their Lime Grove studios, moving all production to the Islington Poole Street studio. However, the tall factory chimney on the site was considered dangerous in the event of bombing during World War II
, and thus Gainsborough Studios were evacuated to Lime Grove for the duration of hostilities.
From 1942 to 1946, a series of morally ambivalent costume melodrama
s was produced by Gainsborough for the domestic market. They were mostly based on recent popular books by female novel
ists. Prominent titles included the The Man in Grey
(1943), Madonna of the Seven Moons
(1944), Fanny by Gaslight
(1944), The Wicked Lady
(1945) and Caravan
(1946). The films featured a stable of leading British actors, among them Margaret Lockwood, James Mason
, Stewart Granger
and Patricia Roc
. The studio also made modern-dress comedies and melodramas such as Love Story (1944), Two Thousand Women
(1944), Time Flies
(starring Tommy Handley
, 1944), Bees in Paradise
(with Arthur Askey
directed by Val Guest
, 1944), They Were Sisters
(1945), and Easy Money
(1948).
Subsequent productions, overseen by Betty Box
(who at the time was the only major female producer in British cinema), included Miranda
(1948) and the Huggett family
series with Jack Warner
, Kathleen Harrison
, and Petula Clark
. Unhappy with the performance of the studio, Rank closed it down in early 1951.
in 1949 and used for TV current affairs and other programmes until it closed in 1991. The buildings were demolished in the early 90s, and replaced with housing called Gaumont Terrace and Gainsborough Court.
The former Islington Studios, in Poole Street, remained largely derelict after their closure in 1951 apart from occasional art performances, including two epic Shakespearean productions by the Almeida Theatre
Company, April–July 2000, directed by Jonathan Kent
and starring Ralph Fiennes
, and a closing Hitchcock season in October 2003.
The buildings began to be cleared in 2002, and apartments named Gainsborough Studios were built on the site in 2004, by architects Munkenbeck and Marshall.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
film studio based on the south bank of the Regent's Canal
Regent's Canal
Regent's Canal is a canal across an area just north of central London, England. It provides a link from the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal, just north-west of Paddington Basin in the west, to the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames in east London....
, in Poole Street, Hoxton
Hoxton
Hoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regent's Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.Hoxton is also a...
in the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch
Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch
The Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch was a Metropolitan borough of the County of London between 1900 and 1965, when it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington and the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney to form the London Borough of Hackney....
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Gainsborough Studios were active between 1924 and 1951. Built as a power station for the Great Northern & City Railway
Northern City Line
The Northern City Line is a railway line from Moorgate to Finsbury Park in London, once part of the Great Northern Electrics line. It should not be confused with the City branch of the Northern line, nor with the North London Line...
it was later converted to studios. The former studios were demolished in 2002 and flats built on the site in 2004. A London Borough of Hackney
London Borough of Hackney
The London Borough of Hackney is a London borough of North/North East London, and forms part of inner London. The local authority is Hackney London Borough Council....
historical plaque is attached to the building. The studio has become best known for the Gainsborough melodramas
Gainsborough melodramas
The Gainsborough melodramas were a sequence of films produced by the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures during the 1940s which conformed to a melodramatic style. The melodramas were not a film series but an unrelated sequence of films which had similar themes and frequently recurring actors...
it produced in the 1940s.
In 1987 Sir Lew Grade brought back the Gainsborough name for a series of British made for television movies.
History
Gainsborough was founded in 1924 by Michael BalconMichael Balcon
Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer, known for his work with Ealing Studios.-Background:...
and was a sister company to the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation
Gaumont British
Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was the British arm of the French film company Gaumont. The company became independent of its French parent in 1922, when Isidore Ostrer acquired control of Gaumont-British....
from 1927, with Balcon as Director of Production for both studios. Whilst Gaumont-British, based at Lime Grove Studios
Lime Grove Studios
Lime Grove Studios was a film studio complex built by the Gaumont Film Company in 1915 situated in a street named Lime Grove, inShepherd's Bush, west London, north of Hammersmith and described by Gaumont as "the finest studio in Great Britain and the first building ever put up in this country...
in Shepherd's Bush
Shepherd's Bush
-Commerce:Commercial activity in Shepherd's Bush is now focused on the Westfield shopping centre next to Shepherd's Bush Central line station and on the many small shops which run along the northern side of the Green....
produced the 'quality' pictures, Gainsborough mainly produced 'B' movies and melodramas at its Islington Studios. Both studios used continental film practices, especially those from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, with Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
being encouraged by Balcon -- who had links with UFA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
-- to study there and make multilingual co-production films with UFA, before the war. In the 1930s, actors Elisabeth Bergner
Elisabeth Bergner
Elisabeth Bergner was an actress.She was born Elisabeth Ettel in Drohobycz, Austro-Hungarian Empire ....
and Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
, art director Alfred Junge
Alfred Junge
Alfred Junge was a German-born production designer.Junge had wanted to be an artist from childhood. Dabbling in theatre in his teenage years, he joined the Görlitz Stadttheater at eighteen and was involved in all areas of production. He worked in the theatre for over fifteen years...
, cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum
Mutz Greenbaum
Mutz Greenbaum , sometimes credited as Max Greene or Max Greenbaum was a Berlin, Germany-born film cinematographer....
and screenwriter/director Berthold Viertel
Berthold Viertel
Berthold Viertel , born in Vienna, Austria was a screen writer and film director.-Arrival in America:He was married to screenplay writer and actress Salka Viertel from 30 April 1918 to 20 December 1947. The pair came to Los Angeles in 1928 planning to stay for just three years...
, along with others, joined the two studios.
The studio's opening logo was of a woman (Glennis Lorimer
Glennis Lorimer
Glennis Lorimer was a British actress who appeared in a number of films during the 1930s. She also appeared in the Gainsborough Pictures logo before the opening credits of films by that studio and is sometimes known as the Gainsborough Lady. She made her debut in the 1933 film Orders is Orders...
) in a period costume sitting in an ornate frame, turning and smiling, based on the famous portrait of Sarah Siddons
Sarah Siddons
Sarah Siddons was a Welsh actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton and Elizabeth Whitlock, and the aunt of Fanny Kemble. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character,...
by Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
.
After the departure of Balcon to the British arm of MGM, the Rank Organisation
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
took an interest in Gainsborough and the studio made such popular films as Oh, Mr Porter!
Oh, Mr Porter!
Oh, Mr Porter! is a British comedy film starring Will Hay with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt and directed by Marcel Varnel. While not his most commercially successful, it is probably his best-known film to modern audiences...
(1937) and Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White...
(1938). By 1937, Gaumont-British were in financial crisis, and closed their Lime Grove studios, moving all production to the Islington Poole Street studio. However, the tall factory chimney on the site was considered dangerous in the event of bombing during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and thus Gainsborough Studios were evacuated to Lime Grove for the duration of hostilities.
From 1942 to 1946, a series of morally ambivalent costume melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
s was produced by Gainsborough for the domestic market. They were mostly based on recent popular books by female novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ists. Prominent titles included the The Man in Grey
The Man in Grey
The Man in Grey is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures, and is widely considered as the first of its "Gainsborough melodramas"...
(1943), Madonna of the Seven Moons
Madonna of the Seven Moons
Madonna of the Seven Moons is a 1945 British drama film directed by Arthur Crabtree and starring Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and Patricia Roc. The film was one of the Gainsborough melodramas. It was based on a novel by Margery Lawrence.-Plot:...
(1944), Fanny by Gaslight
Fanny by Gaslight (film)
Fanny by Gaslight was a 1944 British drama film, produced by Gainsborough Pictures, set in the 1870s and adapted from a novel by Michael Sadleir . It was one of its famous period-set "Gainsborough melodramas"...
(1944), The Wicked Lady
The Wicked Lady
The Wicked Lady is a 1945 film starring Margaret Lockwood in the title role as a nobleman's wife who secretly becomes a highwayman for the excitement...
(1945) and Caravan
Caravan (1946 film)
Caravan is a 1946 British drama film directed by Arthur Crabtree. It was one of the Gainsborough Melodramas and is based on a novel Caravan by Eleanor Smith....
(1946). The films featured a stable of leading British actors, among them Margaret Lockwood, James Mason
James Mason
James Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes .- Early life :Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the...
, Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger was an English-American film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.-Early life:He was born James Lablache Stewart in Old...
and Patricia Roc
Patricia Roc
Patricia Roc , born Felicia Miriam Ursula Herold, was a British film actress, popular in the Gainsborough melodramas such as Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady , though she only made one film in Hollywood, Canyon Passage...
. The studio also made modern-dress comedies and melodramas such as Love Story (1944), Two Thousand Women
Two Thousand Women
Two Thousand Women is a 1944 British comedy-drama war film about a camp of interned British women in Occupied France. Three RAF aircrewmen whose bomber had been shot down enter the camp and are hidden by the women from the Germans...
(1944), Time Flies
Time Flies (film)
Times Flies is a 1944 British comedy film directed by Walter Forde and starring Tommy Handley, Evelyn Dall, Felix Aylmer and Moore Marriott. A music hall performer travels back to Elizabethan times using a time machine.-Cast:* Tommy Handley - Tommy...
(starring Tommy Handley
Tommy Handley
Thomas Reginald "Tommy" Handley was a British comedian, mainly known for the BBC radio programme ITMA . He was born at Toxteth Park, Liverpool in Lancashire....
, 1944), Bees in Paradise
Bees in Paradise
Bees in Paradise is a 1944 British musical comedy film directed by Val Guest and starring Arthur Askey, Anne Shelton and Peter Graves. It was produced by Edward Black at Gainsborough Pictures.-Synopsis:...
(with Arthur Askey
Arthur Askey
Arthur Bowden Askey CBE was a prominent English comedian.- Life and career :Askey was born at 29 Moses Street, Liverpool, the eldest child and only son of Samuel Askey , secretary of the firm Sugar Products of Liverpool, and his wife, Betsy Bowden , of Knutsford, Cheshire...
directed by Val Guest
Val Guest
Val Guest was a British film director, best known for his science-fiction films for Hammer Film Productions in the 1950s, but who also enjoyed a long, varied and active career in the film industry from the early 1930s up until the early 1980s.-Early life and career:He was born Valmond Maurice...
, 1944), They Were Sisters
They Were Sisters
They Were Sisters is a 1945 British melodrama film, directed by Arthur Crabtree for Gainsborough Pictures and starring James Mason and Phyllis Calvert. The film was produced by Harold Huth, with cinematography from Jack Cox and screenplay by Roland Pertwee...
(1945), and Easy Money
Easy Money (1948 film)
Easy Money, a satirical 1948 British film about one of the most beloved traditions of the English middle class, the football pool, is composed of four tales about the effect a major win has on four different groups in the postwar period...
(1948).
Subsequent productions, overseen by Betty Box
Betty Box
Betty Evelyn Box was a prolific British film producer. She is considered one of the best of her generation, with a flair for making genuinely popular British films....
(who at the time was the only major female producer in British cinema), included Miranda
Miranda (1948 film)
Miranda is a 1948 British comedy film, directed by Ken Annakin and written by Peter Blackmore, who also wrote the play of the same name from which the film was adapted. Denis Waldock provided additional dialogue. A light comedy, the film is about a beautiful and playful mermaid played by Glynis...
(1948) and the Huggett family
Here Come the Huggetts
Here Come the Huggetts is a 1948 British film, the first of the Huggetts Trilogy about a working class English family. All three films were directed by Ken Annakin and released by Gainsborough Pictures....
series with Jack Warner
Jack Warner (actor)
Jack Warner OBE was an English film and television actor. He is closely associated with the role of PC George Dixon, which he played until the age of eighty....
, Kathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working class family's misadventures. To modern viewers she is better remembered as Mrs...
, and Petula Clark
Petula Clark
Petula Clark, CBE is an English singer, actress, and composer whose career has spanned seven decades.Clark's professional career began as an entertainer on BBC Radio during World War II...
. Unhappy with the performance of the studio, Rank closed it down in early 1951.
Demolition
The Lime Grove site was taken over by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1949 and used for TV current affairs and other programmes until it closed in 1991. The buildings were demolished in the early 90s, and replaced with housing called Gaumont Terrace and Gainsborough Court.
The former Islington Studios, in Poole Street, remained largely derelict after their closure in 1951 apart from occasional art performances, including two epic Shakespearean productions by the Almeida Theatre
Almeida Theatre
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of...
Company, April–July 2000, directed by Jonathan Kent
Jonathan Kent (director)
Jonathan Kent is an English theatre director and opera director. He is best known as a director/producer partner of Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida Theatre from 1990 to 2002.-Early life:...
and starring Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....
, and a closing Hitchcock season in October 2003.
The buildings began to be cleared in 2002, and apartments named Gainsborough Studios were built on the site in 2004, by architects Munkenbeck and Marshall.