Ealing Studios

Ealing Studios is most known for comedies, but in actual fact their productions greatly evolved over the years and they have produced a variety of movies. Balcon was dedicated to making British movies that were “absolutely rooted in the soil of this country”. Balcon set up a great team of producers and directors, most of who were hired originally as editors then promoted. He also had the foresight to bring in two directors Harry Watt and Alberto Calvalcanti who had experience making documentary films, these enabled movies produced during World War II to have a sense of realism. This was evident with such movies as Went the Day Well (1942) and Watts Nine Men.  After the war Ealing Studios still concentrated on dramas like The Overlanders (1946), Scott of the Antartic (1948) but was still able to release comedy movies. With movies such as Whiskey Galore (1949) and Kind Hearts and Coronets did Ealing establish its comedic reputation, its true that they had more flopped than were successful but the best became more memorable than the dramas Ealing produced, such as The Ladykillers (1955).

Ealing Films and its studios embodied a 20 year span of continued movie making through the 1940’s and 1950’s. They were fortunate enough to retain long standing employees, Basil Dearden (director) worked for Ealing for more than 10 years and directed 18 movies between 1942 and 1956 which covered different genres of movies compared to some counterparts this is a significant amount of work. 

By 2000, Ealing Studios were bought for ten million pounds by a consortium which included Fragile Films, Manhattan Loft Company (a property developer) and The Idea Factory (a digital development company). Up until this point Ealing Studio had been used as a training facility by the National Film and Television School.