Whisky Galore! (1949 film)


Whisky Galore! is a 1949 British comedy film produced by Ealing Studios, starring Basil Radford, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood and Gordon Jackson. It was the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick; the screenplay was by Compton Mackenzie, an adaptation of his 1947 novel Whisky Galore, and Angus MacPhail. The story—based on a true event, the running aground of the SS Politician—concerns a shipwreck off a fictional Scottish island, the inhabitants of which have run out of whisky because of wartime rationing. The islanders find out the ship is carrying 50,000 cases of whisky, some of which they salvage, against the opposition of the local Customs and Excise men.
It was filmed on the island of Barra; the weather was so poor that the production over-ran its 10-week schedule by five weeks, and the film went £20,000 over budget. Michael Balcon, the head of the studio, was unimpressed by the initial cut of the film, and one of Ealing's directors, Charles Crichton, added footage and re-edited the film before its release. Like other Ealing comedies, Whisky Galore! explores the actions of a small insular group facing and overcoming a more powerful opponent. An unspoken sense of community runs through the film, and the story reflects a time when the British Empire was weakening.
Whisky Galore! was well received on release. It came out in the same year as Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets, leading to 1949 being remembered as one of the peak years of the Ealing comedies. In the US, where Whisky Galore! was renamed Tight Little Island, the film became the first from the studios to achieve box office success. It was followed by a sequel, Rockets Galore! in 1957. Whisky Galore! has since been adapted for the stage, and a remake was released in 2016.

Plot

The inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of Todday in the Outer Hebrides are largely unaffected by wartime rationing until 1943, when the supply of whisky runs out. As a result, gloom descends on the disconsolate islanders. In the midst of this catastrophe, Sergeant Odd returns on leave from the army to court Peggy, the daughter of the local shopkeeper, Joseph Macroon. Odd had previously assisted with setting up the island's Home Guard unit. Meanwhile, Macroon's other daughter, Catriona, has just become engaged to a meek schoolteacher, George Campbell, although Campbell's stern, domineering mother refuses to give her approval.
During a night-time fog, the freighter SS Cabinet Minister runs aground near Todday and begins to sink. Two local inhabitants, the Biffer and Sammy MacCodrun, row out to lend assistance, and learn from its departing crew that the cargo consists of 50,000 cases of whisky. They quickly spread the news.
Captain Waggett, the stuffy English commander of the local Home Guard, orders Odd to guard the cargo, but Macroon casually remarks that, by long-standing custom, a man cannot marry without hosting a rèiteach—a Scottish betrothal ceremony—in which whisky must be served. Taking the hint, the sergeant allows himself to be overpowered, and the locals manage to offload many cases before the ship goes down. Campbell, sent to his room by his mother for a prior transgression, is persuaded to leave through the window and assist with the salvage by MacCodrun. This proves fortunate, as Campbell rescues the Biffer when he is trapped in the sinking freighter. The whisky also gives the previously teetotal Campbell the courage to stand up to his mother and insist that he will marry Catriona.
A battle of wits ensues between Waggett, who wants to confiscate the salvaged cargo, and the islanders. Waggett brings in Macroon's old Customs and Excise nemesis, Mr Farquharson, and his men to search for the whisky. Forewarned, islanders manage to hide the bottles in ingenious places, including the ammunition cases that Waggett ships off the island. When the whisky is discovered in the cases, Waggett is recalled by his superiors on the mainland to explain himself, leaving the locals triumphant.

Cast

  • Basil Radford as Captain Paul Waggett
  • Joan Greenwood as Peggy Macroon
  • James Robertson Justice as Dr Maclaren
  • Gordon Jackson as George Campbell
  • Wylie Watson as Joseph Macroon
  • Catherine Lacey as Mrs Waggett
  • Jean Cadell as Mrs Campbell
  • Bruce Seton as Sergeant Odd
  • Henry Mollison as Mr Farquharson
  • Morland Graham as the Biffer
  • John Gregson as Sammy MacCodrun
  • Gabrielle Blunt as Catriona Macroon
  • Duncan Macrae as Angus MacCormac
  • Compton Mackenzie as Captain Buncher

    Production

Pre-production

Whisky Galore! was produced by Michael Balcon, the head of Ealing Studios; he appointed Monja Danischewsky as the associate producer. Danischewsky had been employed in the studio's advertising department, but was becoming bored by the work and was considering a position in Fleet Street; Whisky Galore! was his first job in production. The film was produced at the same time as Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets, and with the studio's directors all working on other projects, Danischewsky asked Balcon if Alexander Mackendrick, one of Ealing's production design team, could direct the work. Balcon did not want novices as producer and director, and persuaded Danischewsky to select someone else. They asked Ronald Neame to direct, but he turned the offer down and Mackendrick was given the opportunity to make his debut as a director. With studio space limited by the other films being produced, Balcon insisted that the film had to be made on location.
The screenplay was written by Compton Mackenzie and Angus MacPhail, based on Mackenzie's novel; Mackenzie received £500 for the rights to the book and a further £1,000 because of the film's profitability. Mackendrick and Danischewsky also worked on the script before further input from the writers Elwyn Ambrose and Donald Campbell and the actor James Robertson Justice, who also appeared in the film. The film and novel's story was based on an incident in the Second World War, when the cargo ship SS Politician ran aground in 1941 off the north coast of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. Local inhabitants from the island and from nearby South Uist heard that the ship was carrying 22,000 cases of whisky; they rescued up to 7,000 cases from the wreck before it sank. Mackenzie, a Home Guard commander on the island, took no action against the removal of the whisky or those who took it; Charles McColl and Ivan Gledhill, the local Customs and Excise officers, undertook raids and arrested many of those who had looted whisky.
The plot underwent some modification and condensation from the novel, a lot of the background being removed; in particular, much of the religious aspect of the novel was left out, the novel's Protestant Great Todday and Roman Catholic Little Todday being merged into the single island of Todday. Mackenzie was annoyed with aspects of the adaptation and, referring to the removal of the religious divide, described the production as "nother of my books gone west".
Alastair Sim was offered the role of Joseph Macroon in the film, but turned it down to avoid being typecast as "a professional Scotsman". It had been Mackenzie's ambition to appear in a film, and he was given the role of Captain Buncher, the master of SS Cabinet Minister, as Politician was renamed in the book and film. Most of the cast were Scottish—with the exception of two of the lead actors, Basil Radford and Joan Greenwood—and many of the islanders from Barra were used as extras.
In May 1950 the British Film Institute's monthly publication, Sight & Sound, estimated the film's budget to be around £100,000. The following month, Balcon wrote to the magazine to complain that "Your estimate of the cost is wrong by more than a thousand or two". He also stated in his letter that the film "over-ran its budget by the unprecedented figure of 60 per cent to 70 per cent". Roger Hutchinson, who wrote a history of the sinking of Politician, states that the budget was £60,000.

Filming

Filming began in July 1948 on the island of Barra; a unit of 80 staff from Ealing was on location. As most of the established production staff were working on other films at Ealing, many of Mackendrick's team were inexperienced. On what was supposed to be the first day of filming, Mackendrick threw away the script and had Mackenzie and MacPhail rewrite it over two days. For a box of cigars, Mackenzie was persuaded to add material to the script from his 1943 novel Keep the Home Guard Turning. He played no part after the initial filming: according to the film historian Colin McArthur, Mackenzie had an "impatient disengagement from the filming and marketing". The summer of 1948 brought heavy rain and gales and the shoot ran five weeks over its planned 10-week schedule and the film went £20,000 over budget.
The church hall on the island was converted into a makeshift studio, which included basic soundproofing. Nearly everything had to be brought from the mainland for filming and many of the sets had been prefabricated in Ealing; the islanders were perplexed by some of the items the crew brought with them, such as the artificial rocks they added to the already rock-strewn landscape. The studio also had to send out three cases of dummy whisky bottles, as the island was short of the real equivalent because of rationing. The location shooting meant the use of a mobile studio unit for filming. This was one of the earliest uses by a British studio.
With only one small hotel on the island, the cast were housed with the islanders, which had the advantage that it helped the actors pick up the local accent for the film. One local, who was adept at Scottish dancing, stood in as the body double for Greenwood in the rèiteach scene; Greenwood, who had trained as a ballet dancer, could not master the steps of the reel, and the feet of one of the islanders were filmed.
There was tension between Danischewsky and Mackendrick during filming, which led to disagreements; this included a difference of opinion concerning the moral tone of the film. Mackendrick sympathised with the high-minded attempts of the pompous Waggett to foil the looting, while Danischewsky's sympathy lay with the islanders and their removal of the drink. Mackendrick later said: "I began to realise that the most Scottish character in Whisky Galore! is Waggett the Englishman. He is the only Calvinist, puritan figure – and all the other characters aren't Scots at all: they're Irish!"
Mackendrick was unhappy with the film; as the cast and crew were preparing to return to London, he told Gordon Jackson that the film would "probably turn out to be a dull documentary on island life". He later said "It looks like a home movie. It doesn't look like it was done by a professional at all. And it wasn't".