Ealing Comedy

The Ealing comedies is an informal name for a series of comedy films produced by the London-based Ealing Studios during the period 1947 to 1957. Hue and Cry (1947) is generally considered to be the earliest of the cycle, and Barnacle Bill (1957) the last, although some sources list Davy (also 1957) as the final Ealing comedy.

Relatively few comedy films were made at Ealing Studios until several years after World War II. The 1939 film Cheer Boys Cheer featuring the rivalry between two brewing companies, one big and modernist the other small and traditional, has been characterised as a prototype of later films. One of the few other films that can be seen as a direct precursor to the Ealing comedies is Saloon Bar (1940), in which the regulars of a public house join forces to clear the name of the barmaid's boyfriend who has been accused of murder. Other wartime comedies featuring actors such as Tommy Trinder, Will Hay and George Formby were generally in a broader music hall tradition and had little in common with the later Ealing comedy films. Ealing made no comedy films at all in 1945 and 1946.

T.E.B. Clarke wrote the screenplay for Hue and Cry (1947), about a group of schoolboys who confront a criminal gang, which proved to be a critical and commercial success. It was followed by three films with Celtic themes: Another Shore (1948), about the fantasies of a bored Dublin customs official, A Run for Your Money (1949), depicting the adventures of two inexperienced Welshman in London for an important rugby international, and Whisky Galore! (1949) about Scottish islanders during the Second World War who discover that a freighter with a large cargo of whisky has run aground.

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