The Years of the Lion

By JOHN and ROY BOULTING MHE harlot of the arts is in trouble again. The I independent one . . . that is, the one who is not tied to the best houses on the best beats.

We refer, of course, to the present plight of the independent British film producer in a world where, as Nicholas Davenport recently pointed out in these columns, crisis is an occupational hazard. It is a world in which, without the pro- tection of the Big Boys, one is in constant danger of being carved up, bought up or broken up.

For the sake of clarity, we must go back to 1944. In that year, Parliament's attention was drawn to the growing powers of the two great combines, Rank and ABC. As producers, dis- tributors, studio and laboratory owners, but prin- cipally as exhibitors, both combines had already achieved a massive hold on the film industry. At that time they gave—to a Coalition Government and a predominantly Conservative Parliament— undertakings that they would not increase their already extensive chains of cinemas.

Unhappily, these undertakings were far too little and came much too late; by 1948 the squeeze was on. British Lion Films, already the principal supporter of independent British production, was in dire straits.

Now it was the turn of a Labour Government to act. It had urgent reasons for doing so. Every British film shown meant a saving in dollar pay- ments to Hollywood. What is more, the Govern- ment was drawing approximately forty millions a year in cinema entertainments tax.

With a gesture of logic, the Labour Cabinet decided to feed back with one hand a fraction of the money they had been draining away with the other. In 1948, they set up the National Film Finance Corporation for the express purpose of aiding British Lion with an immediate loan of £3,000,000.

That fraction proved insufficient. A post-war public was eager for rival distractions and pleasures denied them during war and post-war austerities. Television especially was the new phenomenon. Never again would the cinema be the one form of cheap popular entertainment. Cinema-going, as a habit, was going—fast.

In just seven years—by 1955—the £3 millions pumped. into British Lion was sunk without trace. Two sad lines were ruled in the ledger. The British Lion Film Corporation went bust.

Meanwhile, what of the two combines? They, too, had lost enormously on the production swings. But they had the cinema roundabouts—in other words, their circuits—to ensure substantial profits. Now their grip on the industry was fast becoming a stranglehold.. . .

Still the Government persisted. A new com- pany, British Lion Films, was set up, and nourished with £600,000, lent to it through the National Film Finance Corporation. This time it was the turn of a Tory Government to recognise What its two predecessors—Coalition and Labour —had come to realise : the vital need for a healthy competition against monopoly if the independent film-makers were to survive.

During the next three years, refloated, British Lion ploughed through waters littered with the Wreckage of smaller vessels. And by 1958 was, itself, seen to be listing heavily, with more than half of the new capital washed overboard. ..

• At this critical moment David Kingsley took ' over. As the highly successful Managing Director of the National Film Finance Corporation, he

had been brooding for some time on the pos- sibility of a rescue operation. His only fear : was it too late? Into the board-room of British Lion he invited four producers whose films, distributed by British Lion, had for several years proved most consistently successful. His approach was Churchillian: toil, sweat and, even then, the prospect of disaster at the end. The four film- makers said 'Snap.'

This reckless decision was celebrated by a dinner party at Claridges, presided over by Sir Nutcombe Hume, KBE, Chairman of the NFFC, and attended by high-ranking officials of the Board of Trade, the directorate of the NFFC and their wives and, inexplicably, a Vice- Admiral (Retired). (Was he there to instruct on the drill that follows the order to abandon ship?) The new directors were toasted in champagne. Sir Nutcombe, heavy jowled, close-cropped and portentous in manner, the very personification of financial prudence and sagacity, offered stirring words : 'It will be a happy ship . . . (one eye cocked at the Admiral) . . . you are all perform- ing a public service . . . we wish you well.'

The memory of this convivial and heartening evening had hardly faded when the five new boys, grappling with the enormous problems of recon- struction, learned quite by chance that Sir Nut- combe and his colleagues were busily engaged in trying to sell the company into other hands— and, presumably, the five directors with it. The shock was intense. But relief soon followed when news percolated from NFFC headquarters in Soho Square that the negotiations had collapsed. Alas, Sir Nutcombe was not so easily to be de- flected from his principles,' even if they did, at• times, carry a whiff of laissez-faire and the nine- teenth century. 'I cannot conceal my conviction that HMG has no business to be in British Lion.' And off he traipsed again with the corn- pany, metaphorically, under his arm, leaving five directors now in a state of bewilderment. Within weeks Sir Nutcombe, like the lady in Noel Coward's song, was 'at it again.'

Early in 1959, the directors confronted Sir Nutcombe across a board-room table, and told him that further attempts to sell the company would be regarded by them as a breach of faith and a personal betrayal to be resisted. Sir Nut- combe, after some seconds in silent contempla- tion of the ceiling, granted a period of truce. No further attempt to sell would be made . . . for the moment.

Late in 1959, the story took a new twist. Kingsley's successor at the NFFC, John Terry, had produced a private and painfully pessimistic report on the position and prospects of British Lion. His conclusions were at total variance with the working directors' evaluation of the com- pany's situation. Much, they felt, had already been accomplished. The distribution machine had been streamlined, the studios modernised and its policies changed; and it number of promising films were in production or preparation. As important, new groupings of independent film- makers were now coalescing around Lion, thus increasing the number of films available. As well, energetic young blood had been injected into the company's activities at all levels. Throughout the organisation morale was rising perceptibly. Only at the NFFC headquarters was morale, unhappily, at its lowest ebb.

The effect of Terry's gloomy prognostications

was predictable. The NFFC nominee on and Chairman of the Board of Lion at this time was Douglas Collins, a scent manufacturer. 'Nut' and the Board of Trade, he reported, were on a selling jag—this time for keeps. The alternatives, he in- sisted, must be faced: 'Buy the company your- selves—or be bought. For many reasons, "Nut" and the others would prefer you to buy it.'

Pleading and protesting, the five directors were once again dragged from their work to deal with this renewed attack in the rear. They had always regarded the Government's presence in Lion as being a principal guarantee of reason- able treatment at the hands of the combines. Without it, the battle would almost certainly prove too unequal. But if Sir Nutcombe were to succeed, they might easily find themselves the employees of a new and, perhaps uncongenial private owner. Yet the prospect of abandoning an enterprise that by now was promising well, did not appeal to them. Reluctantly, they agreed to negotiate.

Talks went on for weeks with accountants and tax experts having a field day. The NFFC's price was £611,000. Over a long and wearying period, the manner and time of payment were worked out; and when all this had been agreed, those genial pall-bearers of industry, the lawyers, started their long and tedious procession towards completion.

Through the spring, summer and autumn of 1960 it moved at majestic pace towards the portals of the Board of Trade. Here, the Presi- dent, the Right Honourable Reginald Maudling, was to give his formal blessing to arrangements initiated during his predecessor's term of office.

No such blessing was given. Perhaps the President, more perceptive than Mr. Terry, had already, to paraphrase a Master, discerned, 'the first gleam of victory touching the helmets of the warriors,' for, through late 1959 and 1960 the company accounts were already being writ- ten in black instead of red. Earlier, rather than later, the broad, if precarious uplands of profit had been reached.

The sale was vetoed. The five directors were advised to return to the NFFC and start negotiations afresh to buy—at a higher price!

The feelings of the directors were crystallised in a letter addressed to the President on October 6, 1960: `. . From all this you will have gathered that we are greatly confused and bewildered. We have been asked to buy; we have agreed a deal and the deal has been rejected. We have asked to be left alone to run the company in a manner which we consider to be in everybody's interests and we have been told that we can have no guarantee that the company will not be sold over our heads. Indeed, negotiations with other people have been conducted at various times from with- in a few weeks of our joining the company. We have asked the Board of Trade to tell us what they consider to be an appropriate price and they have told us to go back and talk with the very people who are palpably in no position to give us any answer other than the one they have already given us.

`... Could you possibly find the time in which to tell us just where we stand and, more im- portant, where you stand?'

The following PS was added: 'Our one and rather doubtful consolation: we may have acquired the basis for a first-rate satirical film about the Board of Trade.'

Where did the President stand? They week, soon to find ou•t.

[To be concluded next week.]