Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's film is a 1951 heist comedy from Britain's Ealing Studios, "The Lavender Hill Mob".

It was directed by Charles Crichton from an original screenplay by T.E.B.

Clarke.

"The Lavender Hill Mob" stars Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway, with support from Sid James, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding and John Gregson.

Henry Holland, no relation, lives the life of a wealthy British ex-patriot in Rio de Janeiro, where he hobnobs with the rich and influential.

At a night club, he tells a fellow Briton the story of how he came to be in this enviable situation.

Henry spent most of his life working as a clerk in a London bank, where he was entrusted with supervising gold bullion deliveries for 20 years.

He developed a reputation as an honest and reliable employee who was somewhat prone to too much worry over suspicious cars following the armored van carrying the bullion.

But beneath his bland exterior, Henry was developing a plot to rob a shipment of bullion and use his ill-gotten gains to live a life of luxury overseas.

The only hitch in his plan was how to smuggle the stolen bullion out of the country, since there is no hope disposing of it on the black market in Britain.

One evening, Henry meets a new lodger moving into his boarding house in Lavender Hill.

The new boarder is Alfred Pendlebury, an artist who also manufactures and sells souvenirs for holiday destinations all over the world.

Pendlebury makes the souvenirs at a foundry where base metals are melted down and poured into molds.

Among his most popular souvenirs are gold-plated models of the Eiffel tower, models sold at the tower itself in Paris.

Suddenly Henry realizes he finally has the chance to execute his plan.

All he needs are accomplices to help pull off the heist and, as it turns out, the presence of mind to keep his head and alter the detail of his scheme as fate throws one obstacle after another into his path.

Screenwriter T.E.B.

Clarke has the great distinction of being responsible for the screen plays for both the first and the last of what are considered the classic Ealing Studios comedies of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Born Thomas Ernest Bennett Clarke in 1907, but almost universally known as Tibby, Clarke also wrote eleven novels and four works of non-fiction.

He first came to Ealing as a publicity agent in the late '30s after working as a door-to-door salesman and a promoter of a temperance group, apart from reluctantly being caught up in a military coup in Argentina.

Clarke also wrote a newspaper humor column prior to the Second World War.

When that war broke out, Clarke wanted to serve in the army but was turned down, so became a policeman instead.

The screenplays he began writing after the war, both comedies and dramas, often involve crime of one kind or another.

Clarke's comedies for Ealing studios began with "Hue and Cry" in 1947, a light-hearted boys' adventure directed by Charles Crichton about a group of teenagers who attempt to solve a series of crimes in a London still recovering from the Blitz during the Second World War.

His next comedy was "Passport to Pimlico" in 1949, once again focusing on post-war London, and starring Stanley Holloway, Hermione Baddeley and Margaret Rutherford.

"The Magnet" was released in 1950, "The Lavender Hill Mob" in 1951, and "The Titfield Thunderbolt", also directed by Charles Crichton, in 1953.

Clarke's final screenplay for Ealing's 1957 "Barnacle Bill", released interesting the United States with the title "All at Sea" was in fact produced after Ealing Studios had been sold to the BBC for television production in 1955.

Scott Anthony said of Clarke, in an essay for the British Film Institute, a sense of anarchy lurks in the shadows of even his mildest conceits.

Random happenstance, ludicrous, menacing, or both, is tightly woven into his scripts.

Anthony attributed this in part to Clarke's membership in the generation that grew up in the chaotic aftermath of the 1930s economic slump, when dreams of sudden wealth must have had a particular appeal.

But there was also a sense of the instability of things, of circumstances outside one's control that lead to unexpected and often hilarious consequences.

All of Clarke's comedies, as one writer put it, feature a careful, logical development from a slightly absurd premise to a farcical conclusion.

Director Charles Crichton claimed "The Lavender Hill Mob" was the direct descendant of another very different Ealing Studios picture, also written by Tibby Clarke, the 1950 police procedural, "The Blue Lamp".

That drama reflected the influence of social realism and film noir, following the story of a young thug played by Dirk Bogarde, who kills a policeman during a robbery.

Michael Balcon, who ran Ealing, urged Clarke to formulate another story in the same vein.

While doing research for a film that was ultimately released as "Pool of London" in 1951, Clarke saw armored vans in London's financial district and a very ordinary looking little man who supervised the operation.

Clarke came up with the idea of this unprepossessing clerk plotting to rob his own bank.

As a result, he was soon taken off the production team for "Pool of London" and put to work on the screenplay for what would become "The Lavender Hill Mob".

The trouble was, Clarke wasn't sure how such a man might pull off such a robbery, so he did something that seems both crazy and imminently logical at the same time.

He asked the Bank of England how someone might do just that.

The bank set up a special committee to advise Clarke on the mechanics of the robbery.

The problem remained, however, of how the stolen bullion might be smuggled out of the country since it would be impossible to use or dispose of in Britain.

But again, the Bank of England came to the rescue.

A bank official came up with the idea of melting down the bullion and using it to make metal souvenirs.

All that remained for Clarke was to develop the series of complications that lead to the criminals' downfall.

[light music] The plot of "The Lavender Hill Mob" required a good deal of location shooting both in London and in Paris.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower is the location of Holland and Pendlebury's mad dash to catch the English schoolgirls and reclaim the golden souvenir towers.

The London scenes include an Underground station, the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, an RAF airstrip, and a series of notable London streets and buildings, first during the heist and later during the final chase.

These scenes also show the remains of the devastation visited on London by the Blitz.

[light music] Alec Guinness came to the lead role of Henry Holland at an interesting point in his career.

After considerable success with roles in the Ealing comedies, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "A Run for Your Money", both in 1949, Guinness turned to more serious roles in two films released the following year.

He played the lead in a dark comedy, "Last Holiday", and the part of Benjamin Disraeli in 20th Century Fox's historical fiction, "The Mudlark" starring Irene Dunne as Queen Victoria.

Neither film was a success.

Back in his element at Ealing, Guinness considered how best to play the lead character in "The Lavender Hill Mob".

"I see Holland as a man given to hand-washing gestures," he said.

"He should somehow point out the incongruity of a person like Holland seeing himself as the boss of a gang."

"It might be a good way to get the effect right if he were to have difficulties in pronouncing his Rs."

Although his final approach to Holland was somewhat different, it earned Guinness's first nomination for an Academy Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role.

He lost to Gary Cooper for the western, "High Noon".

Screenwriter Tibby Clarke was more fortunate.

He won the Academy Award for best original screenplay.

Clarke said years later that he had originally wanted Henry Holland to get away with the crime and his ill-gotten gains.

But the Lord Chamberlain's office demanded that Holland be brought to justice by the police.

Although there was not generally a rule in British filmmaking that criminals could not be allowed to succeed, there was such a rule under the Production Code then in force in the United States.

If Clarke had insisted on his original ending, "The Lavender Hill Mob" would've lost its chance for an American release.

As it was, the movie was a major hit in the US and all over the world, making it one of Ealing Studio's most successful films.

[light music] It was also the major motion picture debut of a young actress who appears briefly at the beginning of the movie as Chiquita.

Alec Guinness had seen her on stage and arranged for her to appear.

She later went on to have considerable success in motion pictures, and if you recognized her, you know why.

Chiquita was played by that icon of film and fashion, Audrey Hepburn.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.