Setting the Film Studio Stage

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book’s main themes and approaches, setting out the key questions it engages with regarding Pinewood’s history and reputation. Relevant literature on Pinewood and film studios is surveyed as context for the book’s film-historical-materialist methodology combined with a ‘tectonic’ approach applied in the context of film studio analysis. The chapter presents a brief early history and information about Pinewood’s foundation in 1936, its development as a studio facility, and its experience of being requisitioned during the Second World War. The chapter sets out how the book’s particular structure and ‘pivot’ focus produces a micro history which offers new insights into the material, cultural, and social role of film studios during a key period of British film history.

This book investigates how Pinewood came to be Britain’s most renowned and enduring major film studio. Focusing on the immediate years following the Second World War, it presents a revisionist, micro history organised around pivotal thematic areas which were crucial to understanding the studios’ ongoing activities and sustainability during a period of severe economic constraints. In 1936 the film industry’s expansion was reflected in the foundation of two new state-of-the-art studios by different producer-entrepreneurs: Alexander Korda’s Denham Studios, and J. Arthur Rank’s Pinewood Studios. Built to last at a time when ambitions for the British film industry were high, both studios however had very different lifespans. From 1939 they were jointly controlled by J. Arthur Rank as D & P Studios, but rather than tie their fates more firmly together, Denham was closed as operating film studios in 1952. Pinewood, by contrast, was retained as a major production facility and today is a large, premier film studio complex used by filmmakers from all over the world. Pinewood’s endurance is the focus of this book, but Denham’s closure is in its shadow as a key strategic move by the Rank Organisation which in part enabled Pinewood to survive. Looking into Pinewood’s structural operation, its facilities, and personnel in a pivotal period of its history also helps to explain its longevity.

While Pinewood has featured in historical accounts of the period, particularly with reference to films produced by the Rank Organisation, this book foregrounds the studios as material infrastructure.¹ As a study of cultures of management and labour organisation, new technologies, and innovative production methods, it presents new research into Pinewood’s ultimate survival. A materialist-focused history of Pinewood foregrounds the roles that technologies, working practices, and leisure activities organised at the studios played in forming and sustaining Pinewood’s studio culture over time. A central question addressed is how new practices and cultures of technological innovation became embedded in the studios’ very fabric. In addition, some key films produced at Pinewood in 1946–1950 inform the analysis to demonstrate how filmmaking practices and aesthetic approaches changed during a challenging period of economic recession for the film industry.

Existing books about British film studios tend to be the well-illustrated, coffee-table variety which deal with films and genres, rather than concentrating on the studios as physical infrastructures, creative hubs, and communities of workers.² It is only in recent years that research into film studios has become a more complex subject for academic analysis. This has been energised by research which conceptualises early studios in Hollywood as multi-functional architectural spaces which framed, facilitated, and enacted imaginative responses to the environment and technological change.³ By focusing on studios as heterotopic spaces Brian R. Jacobson observes that ‘studios offered key sites for exploring the nature of modern space and spatial experience by juxtaposing simulated versions of any and all real spaces in a single location’.⁴ While In the Studio, an edited collection, deals with a wider corpus of countries, including my own chapter on Pinewood Studios, it remains the case that studio studies are still an underdeveloped area; the overwhelming focus has been on Hollywood rather than Europe.⁵

This book’s methodology is based on the idea of ‘tectonics’ as applied to the case of film studios. This offers a route to understanding their multiple, stratified, and shifting experiences as structures embedded within their local geographies but which changed, often significantly, over time and according to circumstance.⁶ As an architectural term tectonics also highlights inter-relationships between design, structure, construction, and constructional craft, as well as a building’s ‘narrative capacity…primarily with respect to itself, but also as a part of a more general circumstance (physical, social, political, economic etc.)’.⁷ These integrative elements of tectonic theory which highlight ‘the interwoven relationship between space, function, structure, context, symbolism, representation and construction’ provide a framework within which to consider Pinewood as imbricated within, and generative of, resilient economic structures, technologies, and workplace cultures.⁸ Pinewood’s story is thus orientated towards how its physical, spatial, and technological characteristics, combined with an ability to adapt these according to circumstance, contributed towards its longevity as well as having a profound impact on the people who worked there and the films they produced.

In addition to facilitating deeper understandings of the place, space, and function of film studios, histories grounded in material processes and phenomena bring to light lesser-known films which have eluded academic analysis. As this book demonstrates, these were significant for technical and other reasons at the time of their production and release, as evidenced by detailed accounts in the trade press and fan magazines of visits to studio sets which tracked new processes and methods. This alerts us to the potential of re-evaluating often overlooked information, what I term ‘studio relay’, an idea which is expanded upon in Chapters 3 and 4, as located in familiar historical sources such as the Kinematograph Weekly and Film Industry, British trade papers which frequently published reports on production processes and technologies. Reportage of new studio techniques became part of a film’s attraction when the details of sets, equipment, and innovative technical methods used for scenes and sequences were highlighted. This approach overcomes dualisms between representation and technology to probe more deeply into the profoundly interdependent logic of that relationship. It also highlights the contribution of workers whose skills and ingenuity are typically overshadowed by attention to roles such as director. In taking advantage of the turn towards Production Studies and greater appreciation of collaboration in film production, this book introduces new names and activities to British film history.⁹ During the years under investigation, Pinewood thus serves as a model of this kind of analysis while seeking to connect a specific group of films to its structural foundations and operational systems.

Pinewood’s Foundation and Design

As a means of introducing Pinewood as a studio structure it is necessary to outline its early history and architectural properties. The opening of new studios including the British and Dominion facilities at Elstree in 1929, Shepperton Studios in 1931, and Denham and Pinewood in 1936 constituted a major shift in the ambitions of the British film industry.¹⁰ Buoyed by the expansion promoted by the Cinematograph Films Act 1927, and after adjusting to the introduction of sound, there was sufficient confidence to build Denham (seven stages with a total floor area of 110,500 sq. ft.) and Pinewood (five stages with a total floor area of 72,000 sq. ft.) as major new facilities which were instrumental in shifting the centre of importance in terms of the location of British studios ‘a whole compass point from the north to the west of London’.¹¹ The West offered fog-free spaces, spacious land, gardens, and stately houses that could be used as sets. This opportunity was taken up by Charles Boot, chairman and managing director of a building company who in 1935 acquired a country estate not far from Denham in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, where he co-developed a new studio project with flour mill entrepreneur and religious filmmaker J. Arthur Rank who became the first chairman of Pinewood Studios Ltd.

Pinewood was designed by consulting architect A. F. B. Anderson, later known for theatre reconstruction work, and H. S. Scroxton who was responsible for architecture and construction of works. Anderson worked in the same practice as Robert Atkinson who designed many iconic Art Deco buildings. Art Deco was not however chosen for Pinewood which relied on its visual identity and ‘fantastic functionality’ on the historic splendour of Heatherden Hall, the large Victorian mansion with an elegant columned frontage on the 100 acres estate purchased by Charles Boot.¹² In this sense there was somewhat of a schism between the decorative Hall and the workings of a modern film studio. Pinewood did not replicate Denham’s modernist, tectonic integration of exterior and interior.¹³ The new studio was also more isolated than Denham, with no nearby railway line or public bus route. The studios were located well back from the main road on the parkland north of Heatherden Hall. After passing through a double lodge workers and visitors encountered a marble figure of Prometheus which symbolised the spirit of invention therein. The luxurious mansion, complete with a Turkish bath, library, music room, gymnasium, swimming pool, and beautiful gardens, was the location of the Pinewood Club as illustrated in Fig. 1.1, a residential and social club ‘for members of both sexes and their friends, interested and/or engaged in the development and advancement of the British Film Industry’.¹⁴

Fig. 1.1

Bathers in the Pinewood Club, c. 1936. Alamy stock images

The three-storey administrative block adjoining Heatherden Hall had a board room panelled with the inlaid, gilded library from the RMS Mauretania, the ocean liner scrapped in 1935. Pinewood’s self-conscious ‘narrative’ emphasised luxury, harmony, and beauty and was thus slightly different from Denham’s modern, streamlined character. The importance of establishing a congenial atmosphere was stressed by Richard Norton, a former banker and managing director of Pinewood:

Every care and consideration has been used to make what is ostensibly an industrial centre a harmonious whole with its inspiring surroundings, but I take pride and pleasure in being able to state with confidence that producers, stars and staff can live, eat and work under comfortable, healthy and beautiful conditions, that cannot be found in any other studio in the world…These new studios have in some curious way developed a definite personality of their own, and I shall do everything possible to foster their glamour, a quality hitherto non-existent in our film world.¹⁵

The studios’ opening was well-publicised, including in an American trade almanac which announced its features as the ‘most modern in the world’ but also featuring details of the Pinewood Club.¹⁶ The aesthetic incongruity between Heatherden Hall’s grandeur, the administrative block, and the complex of sprawling, factory-link buildings can be seen from a mid-1930s aerial map in Fig. 1.2.

Fig. 1.2

Pinewood Studios, 1936. Alamy stock images

The idyllic pastoral surroundings, country mansion, and luxurious club connoted a traditional ‘personality’, or image of Englishness, whereas the streamlined, Art Deco façade and Korda’s network of émigré professionals associated Denham more with a modernist, cosmopolitan ethos. Graham McCallum, a sound engineer who worked at Denham, Pinewood, and Elstree in the late 1930s, recalled that Denham’s sound department had a reputation for being ‘a bit snooty’ on account of Korda’s reputation and extensive press coverage of the many ambitious films made at Denham.¹⁷ Rank, on the other hand, was an entrepreneur interested in producing and distributing religious films, a background that could not compare with Korda’s glittering reputation as the director of Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), a box-office success in Britain and, unusually for a British film, also in America.¹⁸

A survey of productions for 1936–1938 shows that the 31 feature films produced at Denham and 49 at Pinewood tended to reflect the studios’ different images. Denham’s films were marked by an emphasis on spectacle, pageantry, and internationalism, many with high budgets and employing émigré professionals. Five films were shot in Technicolor, compared with only one at Pinewood. At Denham more use was made of the studio lots for exterior sets than at Pinewood, and foreign locations were also used such as India for The Drum (Zoltan Korda, 1938) and the Italian Alpines for The Challenge (Milton Rosmer and Luis Trenker, 1938). Denham’s expansive image as expressed by its long, narrow layout, and extensive exterior lots was conducive to the ambition of its pre-war output, even if this involved financial over-extension and accusations of mismanagement from the Prudential. The Prudential Assurance Company had heavily invested in Korda’s London Film Productions in 1934 and thereafter closely monitored its management and finances.¹⁹ Pinewood’s productions, by contrast, tended to be lower-budget and less likely to use exterior lots or location shooting. The Observer’s film critic C. A. Lejeune described it as ‘the neatest studio I have ever seen; a small but shining model factory in the heart of a model village’.²⁰ The emphasis on musical comedy, musicals, crime thrillers, and use of British stars from radio and popular theatre connoted a domestic, studio-based ethos that was facilitated by Pinewood’s compact layout and self-contained stages which enabled studio-based realism that on occasion showcased feats of technical ingenuity.

One of its largest stages, for example, was used for the Grand Hotel set and sequence which featured a spectacular ‘impossible from human vision’ long crane shot in Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1937) that ranged from a distance of 145 feet across a crowded dance floor to an extreme close-up of the villain’s twitching eyes as he plays the drums on the stage. This celebrated shot was described as ‘a technical triumph necessitating the use of a special lens and mount which were invented for the occasion by the Gaumont-British camera department’.²¹ Pinewood’s large 110 × 165 ft. stage enabled state-of-the-art technology to be showcased, even if the bespoke lens was not actually produced at the studio. Its generous capacity, particularly when compared with the largest stage (85 × 136 ft.) at the Gaumont-British studios at Lime Grove, made Pinewood the obvious studio to make the best use of the latest technology for this spectacular sequence.²² Pinewood’s reputation for facilitating technical innovation was thus in place at its very beginnings.

Boot took a personal interest in planning Pinewood following discussions with academic and politician Sir Auckland Geddes about designing the ideal studio in Britain.²³ Hollywood’s studios were researched and Jack Okey, who had been involved in Denham’s design, was consulted during the process. In addition, the Ufa studios in Berlin were studied by James B. Sloan, former production manager for Basil Dean and British National, who advised on Pinewood’s technical equipment and became its first general manager. Sloan had experience working in Europe, particularly as production manager and adviser to Rex Ingram in the Victorine Studios in Nice. These influences tended to be downplayed, the British trade press preferring to cite Hollywood’s studios as offering lessons on design and planning.²⁴ In an influential report on British studios in 1945 Helmut Junge was however critical of the Warners studios at Burbank as too spread out, referring to the complex as a ‘great jumble of buildings’ with too much duplication of stores and offices as the number of stages increased, the newer ones inconveniently located some distance from the central workshop.²⁵

Junge considered Pinewood to be closer to the ideal studio than Denham in several respects, even though Denham had more stages. He was particularly impressed by Pinewood’s more compact layout and unit production principle whereby each unit had its own separate dressing rooms, offices, and camera room. Rank realised that to be successful studios had to facilitate several productions at the same time, renting studio space as well as being available to units connected with the Rank Organisation. Norton described it as a ‘service studio for producers who wish to avail themselves of its unique and ideal conditions and organisation’.²⁶ Denham’s heavy reliance on films produced by London Film Productions resulted in financial losses, and the studio’s design did not so readily accommodate many different units producing films simultaneously. Norton soon formed Pinebrook, a low-budget film production company intended to fill the studios; Pinewood also provided space for resident companies including British and Dominion, Herbert Wilcox, British National and British Paramount. Pinewood’s compact layout was a visible manifestation of how its architecture facilitated its longevity, enabling its own narrative as a resilient, enduring film studio to persist, deepen, and extend to the present day.

As illustrated in the studios’ plan in Fig. 1.3 Pinewood had five main stages, three of them measuring 165 × 110 ft., with one divided into two smaller stages of 110 × 83 ft., and a fifth stage that was separate from this grouping. The total floor space was 72,000 sq. ft. Two of the large stages had a floor tank which could be flooded or heated as required, a very useful feature Denham lacked. The three large stages also had a central pit which facilitated working with sets on two levels and the central position of the property store gave immediate and equal access to all stages. These were constructed on a steel skeleton framework with solid concrete walls and sound-proofed ceilings. Each stage was air-conditioned by rotary fans mounted on the roof, and fog and dust filters were provided. Pinewood had its own powerhouse but unlike Denham this was more favourably located away from the art department and stages. The cutting rooms were near to the review theatre, another advantage over Denham. The system of covered ways between the workshops and stages facilitated quick, easy access between spaces and protection from bad weather.

Fig. 1.3

Pinewood layout from Edward Carrick, Designing for Films (London: The Studio Publications, 1949 edition), p. 17

Pinewood was not however perfect since stage five’s position, cut-off from the four grouped stages, made it less convenient for use in conjunction with the others. The carpenter’s shop was located alongside one of the big stages, a position that risked the transference of noise and dirt. A final drawback identified by Junge was that because the scene dock and timber store were close to the road leading out through the site’s main entrance, lorries passing the nearby dressing rooms, administrative, and club buildings created noise.²⁷ Like Denham, the workers’ canteen and the restaurant were at opposite ends of the complex. Similar ‘class conscious’ dining arrangements at Ealing were commented on by production manager and assistant director Erica Masters, when recalling past conditions in studios with cinematographer Sydney Samuelson, who remarked that Pinewood still had two canteens separating staff in 1995. From this perspective, the worldview associated with Heatherden Hall reflected broader social class distinctions.²⁸ The contrast between the Hall’s ornate Victorian architecture and the studio complex’s modern, inner fabric may have created tensions within the ‘harmonious whole’ described above by Norton.

Post-war Pinewood and Chapter Outline

Pinewood was requisitioned in the Second World War. Commercial feature film production ceased but the studios were used by the Crown Film Unit, the Army Film and Photographic Unit, and the RAF Film Production Unit. Pinewood was also used as a subsidiary Mint for coin striking and for storage by the Ministry of Food.²⁹ Denham had been permitted to continue commercial feature film production during the war, in part because of its reputation as Britain’s premier studio. On the other hand, the contribution made by Pinewood as a factory for war propaganda gave it a strategic status and enabled some levels of experimentation to continue. After the war Pinewood’s de-requisition was held up somewhat by its designation as a Protected Area for secret work and the slow pace of the Crown Film Unit’s post-war relocation to Beaconsfield studios. Pinewood was however back in commercial operation at the end of 1945. An interest in investigating new technologies was evident from a series of visits made by technicians to Hollywood’s studios in 1945. Chapter 2 discusses these in detail, how they aimed to gather information and insights to inform Pinewood’s post-war policies around equipment and studio infrastructures. The resulting debates influenced the development of key areas such as special effects, art direction practices, and the use of time saving, cost-cutting methods, and equipment. The impact on the slate of films produced at Pinewood in 1946–1950 under the umbrella of the Independent Producers provides an opportunity in Chapters 3 and 4 to track how Pinewood’s post-war culture evolved as a more streamlined, economical style of filmmaking. While this resembled the mid-range budgeted type of films produced before the Second World War, the adoption of newer, more efficient modes was key to Pinewood’s identity, an idea that connects prevailing studio practices to the types of films produced. While the ‘quality’ films produced by the Independent Producers represented an extraordinarily rich period in terms of the range of themes and genres they tackled, the chapters demonstrate how the desire to rationalise production methods was an important aspect of this trajectory; innovation was not necessarily compromised by economy. Many fascinating details of these developments were ‘relayed’ by studio correspondents reporting in the trade press.

An important aspect of Pinewood’s evolving culture was how management sought to impose a set of new practices and economies. These attempts are analysed in Chapter 5 alongside trade union organisation and activity. It is argued that the studios were able to function with a degree of independence from managerial control. To some extent producers and workers were able to negotiate change on acceptable, though still relatively stringent, terms. The existence of a vibrant studio culture outside of working hours is documented in Chapter 6. It draws on the Pinewood Merry-Go-Round, a newly discovered primary source, which is a rare surviving example of a film studio magazine, produced at Pinewood by employees in 1946–1947. The magazine articulated Pinewood’s culture as a social enterprise as well as provided insights into its various working spaces. It brings to life the reality of being a studio employee, the day-to-day activities that are rarely described in film histories. The Pinewood Merry-Go-Round provides a rare glimpse into how studio employees bonded through sports and social clubs, musical and film groups, organising a Christmas pantomime, putting on art exhibitions, writing short stories, sharing studio gossip, and reporting issues of concern such as transport to work and long working hours. Chapter 7 brings together the arguments advanced in the book concerning how a materialist, tectonic focus on a major, surviving film studio during pivotal years of its lifetime set in train an infrastructure that contributed to its longevity as a major international film studio that is still operating as a ‘world famous iconic studio’.³⁰