Edward Black (producer)
Edward Black was a British film producer, best known for being head of production at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which time he oversaw production of the Gainsborough melodramas. He also produced such classic films as The Lady Vanishes.
Black has been called "one of the unsung heroes of the British film industry" and "one of the greatest figures in British film history, the maker of stars like Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, John Mills and Stewart Granger. He was also one of the very few producers whose films, over a considerable period, made money." In 1946 Mason called Black "the one good production executive" that J. Arthur Rank had.
Frank Launder called Black "a great showman and yet he had a great feeling for scripts and spent more time on them than anyone I have ever known. His experimental films used to come off as successful as his others." A 1947 profile called him "one of the most important of the Back Room Boys in British films" who "probably found more stars than anyone else in British films."
Black specialized in making comedies, thrillers and low-budget musicals. He had considerable success producing comedy vehicles for stars such as Will Hay and Arthur Askey. He also made early films from Carol Reed and Alfred Hitchcock and was an early supporter of writer directors Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder.
According to Robert Murphy, "Black concentrated on making films for British audiences. Like his brother George at the London Palladium, Ted had an almost superstitious faith in his ability to divine popular taste and was wary about involving himself with anything that might dilute it."
Alfred Roome, a film editor at Gainsborough, said: "We often wondered why Ted Black didn't mix with the elite of his profession. I don't think he ever went to a premiere, star parties and the like. One day he explained his apparent aloofness. He said he didn't want to get contaminated by people outside his band of entertainment. 'If I mix with the intellectual lot, it'll impair my judgement', he said."
Black helped promote new stars like Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Phyllis Calvert. He also employed variety performers like Will Hay, Will Fyffe and The Crazy Gang, and the comedian Arthur Askey.
Black was very strong in promoting writers. Frank Launder said: "Ted believed in writers. To him the screenplay was the be-all and end- all. He enjoyed script conferences and went in for them wholesale, which made it pretty arduous going for the script editor as well as the writers and directors."
Early life
Black was the third son of George Black, a property master at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, who became a cinema owner. George Black became a manager of a touring waxworks show then travelling cinema; in 1905 he set up the Monkwearmouth Picture Hall in Sounderland - this was one of the first permanent cinemas in Britain. He bought two more before he died in 1910. His sons Ted, George and Alfred built up the cinema to a circuit of thirteen cinemas in the Tyneside area. In 1919 they sold them and set about establishing another circuit. In 1928 they told this to the General Theatre Corporation. When that was taken over by Gaumont-British, Ted became a cinema circuit manager.In 1930 he went into production.
Gaumont British
In 1930 Black became an assistant production manager at Shepherd's Bush and then studio manager at Islington. At Islington, he became an associate producer working closely with Michael Balcon.In 1935 Black and Sidney Gilliat were associate producers on Tudor Rose starring Nova Pilmbeam. Black's earliest films included Where There's a Will a comedy starring Will Hay and co-written by Sidney Gilliat and Leslie Arliss, men who would all be crucial to Black's career. Black also made The Man Who Lived Again starring Boris Karloff, visiting from Hollywood, co-written by Gilliat and directed by Robert Stevenson.
Head of Studio
Gaumont-British had studios at Shepherd's Bush and Islington and owned companies such as Gainsborough. In December 1936, Michael Balcon left Gaumont-British for MGM and Ted Black took over his job as head of the studio along with Maurice Ostrer. Gaumont British was in financial crisis around this time and in 1937 Shepherd's Bush studios and Gaumont-British Distributors were closed. However, the company continued as a production center thanks to a deal with C.M. Woolf and J. Arthur Rank's General Film Distributors. Black's films helped restore the studio to a firm financial footing.Historian Geoffrey MacNab wrote "Black, from a circus background, was determinedly unpretentious, with a showman's touch and the desire to make films about people outside London high society." According to historian Patrick McGilligan, "Rather than pining after Hollywood names, Black placed his bets on English personalities. Rather than cobbling together star vehicles, he promoted a solid script as the basis of a well-made film... Unlike Balcon, Black delighted in script conferences." Another film historian, John Russell Taylor, wrote " Black believed in the importance of the script - Gainsborough was the only British company that had a regular scenario department along Hollywood lines — the importance of the director... and above all, the importance of the star."
Black's next film with Hay, Good Morning, Boys! was a large hit, directed by Marcel Varnel, who made several films for Black. The script was co-written by Val Guest who also worked regularly for the producer. Guest later called Black "a very helpful producer...You had an enormous feeling of being backed up whatever you did. If any problem arose Ted would solve it. In all the producers that I have had in my gnarled career, only two producers have given me the feeling I am completely backed up no matter what happened, one was Ted Black and the other was Michael Carreras. You felt absolutely safe no matter what."
Black followed this with another comedy, O-Kay for Sound, the first movie from The Crazy Gang, a comedy group that had worked with Black's brother George, the impresario at the London Palladium.
Black alo made Said O'Reilly to McNab with Will Mahoney and Will Fyffe with Hay. The story of Oh, Mr Porter was written by Frank Launder. A 1937 article said Black "has done a singularly good job of work on British pictures... He is one of the few British producers who believe that a film is thought of, born, and finished in a typewriter and that the actual production on the floor is secondary."
Kinematograph Weekly later wrote Black "was responsible in the 1930's for the unbroken succession of comedy hits from Islington, in which Jack Hulbert, Will Hay, Gordon Harker and Moore Marriott made their screen names."
Margaret Lockwood and Other Stars
Black produced the drama Doctor Syn starring George Arliss. In 1940, Arliss wrote about Black:He is so entirely unlike a movie boss: he doesn't seem to interfere with anyone. It is only by degrees you find out that he has everything under his hand and that he really directs the movements of every department. He is very like a mere businessman, one who believes that it is of no use to lay in a stock of goods that can never produce any return; and that the making of canned pictures should be controlled with the Kune care as the preparation of any other earned goods intended for public consumption. Unless I am much mistaken, Edward Black is going to show us how pictures made in England can be made to pay.
The female lead of Doctor Syn was Margaret Lockwood, who impressed Black so much he signed her to a three-year contract. Black then set about building Lockwood into a star, saying "she has something with which every girl in the suburbs can identify herself." Black was determined to create a star system at Gaumont and Lockwood was key to these plans. He put her in other films such as Owd Bob with Fyffe directed by Robert Stevenson; Bank Holiday directed by Carol Reed; Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes ; and A Girl Must Live with Reed. Later on he would use Lockwood in Night Train to Munich with Reed from a script by Launder and Gilliat, The Girl in the News, Dear Octopus, The Man in Grey and Give Us the Moon.
Black was keen to increase his stable of comedy stars and signed deals with comics such as Tom Walls, the Crazy Grang. He produced Strange Boarders with Walls, Convict 99 with Hay, Alf's Button Afloat with the Crazy Gang, The Man with 100 Faces with Walls, Hey! Hey! U.S.A! with Hay, and Old Bones of the River with Hay.
A 1938 article called Black "the man who makes the British film stars. A modest man, not very ambitious, content to spend £40,000 on a film where others would pass with £100,000."
Alfred Hitchcock
had two films left on a contract with Gaumont when Black became head of the studio. The first film Black made with Hitchcock was Young and Innocent starring Nova Pilbeam. According to Hitchcock's biographer, Patrick McGillian, "Black was an unabashed Hitchcock fan. He and his brother were both longtime acquaintances of the director; now Black made it his business to be helpful, clearing all obstacles from Hitchcock's path and stretching the budget wherever possible. He took over as Hitchcock's buffer with the Ostrers. The two films Hitchcock made with Black as his producer are among his most enjoyable."The film was not hugely popular and Sidney Gilliat said that the Ostrers wanted to did not want to proceed with a second Hitchcock movie in order to save the studio money. However, Black pushed for a second film, The Lady Vanishes. Black had bought the rights to the original novel, "The Wheel Spins", and developed the screenplay with Launder and Gilliatt as a project for director Roy William Neill. This project was delayed, so Black gave the project to Hitchcock. The producer also assigned two actors he had under contract to play the leads, Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood. The film became a classic. It also launched the comedy team of Basil Radford and Nauhton Wayne who went on to star in several more movies as a duo.