The Daily Mail National Film Award (1946-1951) and the British Film Festival of 1946

[MarcDavidJacobs]

(Forgive me if I am here printing information which is posted elsewhere, but as I was unable to find it anywhere else on the 'net or within these forums, I thought I would take a chance in presenting it. I was thinking of perhaps making it into a real article, but there are too many gaps and it's far too anarchic I think, so I'm simply posting it and leaving it open to whatever corrections and — I do hope — additions anyone here might have for it. My thanks for your collective indulgence.)



Sources: Peter Noble's article The Year In British Films in his British Film Yearbook 1947-1948; Daily Mail Film Award Annual 1948; The British Film Annual: Daily Mail 1949 Film Award. (The later two books are the only volumes I can find which were released to commemorate these landmark awards. If anyone is aware of any further volumes, I should very much like to hear about them.) Reference is also made, in the section on the 1946 British Film Festival, to sections of John Huntley's excellent 1947 volume British Film Music.



In the introductory article by Cecil Wilson, Film Votes For The Million, in the Daily Mail Film Award Annual 1948, he states that 'The Daily Mail inaugurated the National Film Award at the end of 1945 for a threefold purpose: to mark the golden jubilee of the cinema in Britain; to acknowledge the new prestige of British films, won in the worst days of the war; to give filmgoers - and there are thirty million attendances every week - an opportunity they had never had before of choosing their favourite British film and players.' Thus began what was the first (albeit shortlived) major film award to be given specifically for British films, clearly designed to take up a position as the equal of the Oscar, but with the votes decided upon popularly, in the style of a film magazine award, although, as will be seen, on an infinitely more massive scope. Such magazine awards had, of course, existed in Britain for over a decade; the particularly populist Film Weekly Award had been introduced in 1929 (when it was given to the Ivor Novello picture of the previous year, The Constant Nymph), and the Picturegoer followed suit a few years after. But in breaking the first news of the plans for the awards, Lord Rothermere 'said the National Film Award had been planned as the best means of deciding democratically which film and stars were the public's favourites - a wiser course, he thought, than putting the responsibility on one person or committee', as reported by Wilson. Even more significantly, Lord Rothermere had sought with this Award to gain support from the film industry itself, and in so doing had secured the not insubstantial backing and endorsements of such figures as J Arthur Rank and Sir Alexander Korda.



It should be noted that these first announcements, the balloting and even the awards ceremony itself all preceded the creation of the British Film Institute (in November 1946), as well as the BAFTAs (first awarded in 1947, and of course eventually to take up the 'British Oscar' mantle, although they would not give awards to actors and actresses until after a number of years).



All in all, it appears that there were only six years of the award, from 1946 to 1951, covering films first from 1939-1945, and then from 1946 to 1950. Following are the details as I have them of the first three ceremonies, which are the only ones about which I have so far been able to track down detailed information. (I am certain that contemporary issues of The Daily Mail must have had quite a lot of information about these last years of the award, as well as information as to why it was abandoned, but as I am at present in the US, I have yet to be able to access a full archive of it, for these years or any others from the time of the Awards.)



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1946 Award (films of 1939-1945) and the first British Film Festival



Eligible: Any and all British feature films released 'during the war period, i.e. any general release from 3rd September 1939 to 3rd September 1945'; any actors or actresses 'of any nationality' who had been in at least one of those films. As described in the article Film Votes For The Million by Cecil Wilson in the 1948 Film Award Annual, the reason for granting eligibility to films from any year of the war, and not just 1945, was that 'it would have been unfair, it was felt, to discriminate between these years when, throughout the war, British studios had excelled themselves in face of bombardment, shortages of manpower, studio space and equipment and, in fact, every conceivable difficulty'.

Voting Period: 11th February-3rd March 1946

Total Votes Received: 547,767



In Peter Noble's book, he gives details of an inauguratory event, held on 3rd March 1946 to mark the final date of voting, which he refers to as 'the first British Film Festival ever held. This took place at the Leicester Square Theatre before an audience of two thousand guests, representative of the leading film interests, public life and the man in the street. A programme was given of excerpts from outstanding British films', the details of which are as follows, in his description:



Two episodes from The Way To The Stars, played by John Mills, Michael Redgrave and Rosamund John.

The speech 'England May Save Herself' from The Young Mr Pitt, spoken by Robert Donat.

The verbal duet from 49th Parallel between Eric Portman and Anton Walbrook

Two episodes from The Man In Grey, played by Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood.

The dialogue from This Happy Breed, played by John Mills and Jean Kent (taking the part originally played in the film by Kay Walsh).

The railway carriage scene from The Way Ahead, with Stanley Holloway, Raymond Huntley, and Hugh Burden.

A scene from Millions Like Us, played by Anne Crawford and Eric Portman.

The film Champagne Charlie was represented by many of its songs sung by Tommy Trinder and Stanley Holloway.

The First Of The Few was dramatically represented by the sound track of the film which brought back the voice of the late Leslie Howard, playing the part of Mitchell, the designer of the Spitfire.



In the discography of the book British Film Music (1947), there is a reference to two records made by Columbia of this event for commercial release. While missing a number of items from Noble's list, it does include a pair of extra musical items worth mentioning. Its full list of the 'series of reconstructed scenes from British film made between 1939 and 1945', along with credits also listed for some of the creative forces involved are as follows:



( a ) March from the film Desert Victory (William Alwyn).

( b ) Scene from The Way Ahead with Raymond Huntley, Stanley Holloway and Hugh Burden.

( c ) Scenes from The Way To The Stars with Michael Redgrave, Rosamund John and John Mills.

( d ) George Formby sings 'Get Cracking'.

( e ) Scene from The Man In Grey with Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert.

( f ) Scenes from 49th Parallel with Eric Portman and Anton Walbrook.

( g ) Scene from The Young Mr Pitt with Robert Donat.

Music from the films played by a symphony orchestra directed by Sidney Torch. Script and production by Harry Alan Towers.



(I might note incidentally that these Columbia recordings appear to have been issued on a CD entitled Movietime Scrapbook. Its final track is called British Film Festival Of 1946, Scenes From Notable British Pictures Of The War, With Commentary And Orchestral Accompaniment [a bit of a mouthful!], and appears to be about eighteen-and-a-half minutes long. I haven't actually seen a copy of this CD, though, so I can't confirm exactly what its contents are.)



As regards Formby's appearance (which Peter Noble does not even mention), this further from the British Film Music book, in its section on the British musical: 'Nothing seemed more out-of-place during the British Film Festival at the Leicester Square Theatre in 1946 than the appearance of George Formby with his song 'Get Cracking'. Although Formby has turned out a steady stream of films every year, despite the fact that he has often been Britain's Number One comedian of the screen in numerous nation-wide polls, yet to many London cinemagoers he is little more than a name. Very rarely are his films given a West End showing, and often not even a general release. [His films] have, nevertheless, played their part in the general comedy-with music pattern. Like Gene Autry, Formby is a small-town star, a great hit up North and in the country cinemas where his infectious, irrepressible style has won for him a considerable following. His work in providing entertainment to such audiences makes him a unique figure in British cinema for which he provides two pictures annually with absolute consistency.'



One further section on the showings at the festival can also be found in the British Music Film book, in its chapter on The Industrial, Cartoon And Newsreel Film's third section, regarding newsreels: 'At the British Film Festival of 1946, a number of extracts from wartime newsreels were shown and the two outstanding items were those in which music had been used rather cleverly. The first was based on the popular song 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby', and the tune was fitted to a newsreel sequence of a Hitler-Mussolini meeting. Originally designed by British Movietone for a Ministry of Information picture, the rapid development of the war suddenly put this item out-of-date and the Ministry abandoned the project. Newsreel chief, Gerald Sanger, however, bought back the Hitler-Mussolini bit from the M.O.I. and put it into the film vaults; when the British Film Festival was convened, it was brought out and given its premiere showing at the Leicester Square Theatre and was a great success. Coupled with it was the Panzer Ballet, another Movietone speciality. In the dark days of 1940 a newsreel of German troops doing the goose-step in triumphant style was taken from a Nazi eleven-reel documentary and to it was added the music of 'The Lambeth Walk'. The individual frames of the German newsreel were reversed and advanced in cartoon fashion and the finished effect on the screen was one of the biggest laughs I have ever experienced in newsreel work. To the lilting tune of Noel Gay's 'Lambeth Walk' the stern body of Nazi goose-steppers go dancing through the streets like robots on the spree in a highly amusing manner. Out of Hitler's grim documentary studios had come this record of the triumph of power and destruction that was to herald in the world domination of the Nordic race as represented by the Nazi régime, a film designed to show the decadent democracies and the numbed neutrals that resistance to the German mechanised hordes was useless. Through various channels, a copy of the film came to England; from England it went out again to every country in the world as the Panzer Ballet, answering Germany with a weapon that they did not possess in their military organisation - a sense of humour. Eventually the German newsreel men got their film back, complete with the 'Lambeth Walk', and in a private cinema in Berlin at the Goebbel's [sic] Ministry of Propaganda, Hitler and his chiefs sat down to watch a British newsreel that, even in those days of Nazi triumph at its peak, must have given them something to think about.

Both these items were the work of Charles Ridley, an independent music and story editor still working for Movietone News; the music tracks were synchronised and recorded by Norman Leevers.'

Since the 'eleven-reel documentary' mentioned as having been the source of the goose-step footage could, to my mind at least, be nothing else but The Triumph Of The Will, this produces the curious coincidence that Leni Riefenstahl was, however unintentionally, probably the only female director whose work was exhibited at this first British Film Festival!



Results of the balloting for the first National Film Awards themselves were not announced until seven weeks later, on 25th April 1946. These were as follows:



Films

1st Place: The Way To The Stars (1945)

2nd Place: The Man In Grey (1943)

3rd Place: Madonna Of The Seven Moons (1944)

4th Place: They Were Sisters (1945)

5th Place: Henry V (1944)

6th Place: This Happy Breed (1944)

7th Place: Love Story (1944)

8th Place: In Which We Serve (1942)

9th Place: The Way Ahead (1944)

10th Place: Dangerous Moonlight (1941)

11th Place: 49th Parallel (1941)

12th Place: Waterloo Road (1945)

13th Place: The First Of The Few (1942)

14th Place: Blithe Spirit (1945)

15th Place: The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943)

16th Place: Fanny By Gaslight (1944)

17th Place: I Live In Grosvenor Square (1945)

18th Place: The Young Mr Pitt (1942)

19th Place: Hatter's Castle (1941)

20th Place: Millions Like Us (1943)



No precise numbers are given for any film in any of the sources mentioned, but Peter Noble does indicate that The Way To The Stars beat The Man In Grey by a majority of four thousand votes. Interestingly enough, no films from either 1939 or 1940 were in the top twenty, despite such worthwhile contenders as French Without Tears, The Stars Look Down, Contraband, Night Train To Munich, Gaslight, Convoy and The Thief Of Bagdad. But, then, one can only allow for so much inclusiveness, and considering that now any and all films considered Oscar contenders are released no earlier than November in the US, it is only right for Noble to say that the voting still 'showed a remarkable memory on the part of British cinemagoers', with a full third of the films in the top twenty were between three and five years old. Also impressive that such a large number of voters should return results with two Powell and Pressburger films (the eligible films being through A Canterbury Tale) and every one of the David Lean/Noel Coward films to that date (Lean's next two films also being in the top five of the two subsequent Award years). Indeed, even Lean's work as an editor is represented in 49th Parallel...and not forgetting dear Ronald Neame's cinematography on all these as well. Quite a strong feeling surrounding the then-recently-deceased Leslie Howard, too, although his films's performances in the poll are somewhat surprising. The First Of The Few, of which he was director, producer and star, places lower than 49th Parallel, in which he has a small (though crucial) part in the latter half, and both are even further down from In Which We Serve, to which he contributes a few lines of narration. (Of course I point this out only facetiously. In any event, it could be argued that at least Laurence Olivier was not subject to the same fate, as his directing/producing/acting turn in Henry V just managed to beat out his two or three lines of narration for This Happy Breed by a single place.) Surprising, perhaps, how low a ranking I Live In Grosvenor Square gets, considering that the Anna Neagle-Herbert Wilcox combination was to dominate the remaining five years of the Awards, as far as the best films were concerned.

I think I count Stewart Granger and John Mills as the most well-represented actors here, with all five films in which Granger had had a major role to date represented (The Man In Grey, Fanny By Gaslight, Love Story, Madonna Of The Seven Moons and Waterloo Road), and another five for the far-more-prolific Mills (The Young Mr Pitt, In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed, Waterloo Road and The Way To The Stars). Five, too, for Phyllis Calvert (The Young Mr Pitt, The Man In Grey, Fanny By Gaslight, Madonna Of The Seven Moons and They Were Sisters). Not surprisingly, they all performed quite well in the actors/actresses rankings, although none of them actually won out. In any event, I suppose there's probably somebody with six or more films represented here, but I haven't spotted them just yet.



Actors

1st Place: James Mason (84,905 votes)

2nd Place: John Mills

3rd Place: Stewart Granger

4th Place: Laurence Olivier

5th Place: Robert Donat

6th Place: Rex Harrison

7th Place: Leslie Howard

8th Place: Michael Redgrave

9th Place: Anton Walbrook

10th Place: David Niven

11th Place: Eric Portman

12th Place: Robert Newton



No precise numbers are given for other places than first, with Noble merely noting that Mason held 'a considerable lead'. Leslie Howard was, as mentioned, being nominated posthumously.



Actresses

1st Place: Margaret Lockwood (54,588 votes)

2nd Place: Phyllis Calvert (53,756 votes)

3rd Place: Patricia Roc

4th Place: Rosamond John

5th Place: Ann Todd

6th Place: Celia Johnson

7th Place: Deborah Kerr

8th Place: Anna Neagle

9th Place: Wendy Hiller

10th Place: Jean Kent

11th Place: Renee Asherson

12th Place: Margaret Rutherford



Wendy Hiller's ninth-place placement is nothing short of astonishing, considering that she had made only Major Barbara in the time-period covered by the award, and that that film was nearly five years old and hadn't even placed in the top twenty. This might have something to do, though, with the fact that I Know Where I'm Going!, while not actually within the general release dates proscribed for the awards timeframe, had come out between then and the balloting, and no doubt influenced voters. A similar effect probably explains Celia's Johnson's arriving in the top half dozen; despite her frankly unrivalled performances in In Which We Serve and This Happy Breed (and, for all I know, Dear Octopus), I can't imagine it unlikely that she is being awarded here for late 1945's Brief Encounter, which would also secure her fifth place ranking the following year. (And if you think I'm being picky about this whole eligibility-dates thing, just see what happened to John Mills the following year.)



The awards themselves were called the Silver Stars, whose design ('a figure surmounting a globe and holding aloft a star') had itself been decided by a public competition, which was won by 'Miss Juliet Brothers, a twenty-one year old junior mistress at Brentwood Girls's School, Southport, Lancashire'. Three of these were presented by Lord and Lady Rothermere on 21st June 1946 at Dorchester Hotel. Pictures appear in both Noble's Yearbook and the Daily Mail publications themselves of Mason and Lockwood being handed their Silver Stars by Lady Rothermere, although nowhere does one appear of the acceptance of the Film award. Indeed, the only evidence I have seen for who actually did accept these awards on behalf of the winning films is one from 1948, with Herbert Wilcox (standing alongside Margaret Lockwood and John Mills with their Silver Stars), the director of that year's prize film, The Courtneys Of Curzon Street. Presumably, then, it might have been Anthony Asquith who accepted the award in 1946 on behalf of The Way To The Stars. An account published two years after this first ceremony, in the Daily Mail Film Award Annual 1948, describes briefly the frenetic atmosphere of this initial awards ceremony: 'For hours fans thronged Park Lane for a glimpse of their favourites; Margaret Lockwood had to be almost carried in through the crush round the Dorchester's doors.'



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1947 Award (films of 1945-1946)



Eligible: British feature films which had a general release between 4th September 1945 and 30th December 1946. This time, unlike the year before, an actual list of the forty-four films which were considered to have been within those dates was published. The list is as follows, release dates being in 1946 except when noted: A Girl In A Million, Appointment With Crime, Bedelia, Beware Of Pity, Brief Encounter (1945), Caesar And Cleopatra, The Captive Heart, Caravan, Carnival, Dead Of Night (1945), The Echo Murders (1945), Gaiety George, George In Civvy Street, Here Comes The Sun (1945), Home Sweet Home (1945), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), I'll Turn To You, I See A Dark Stranger, Latin Quarter (1945), Lisbon Story, London Town, The Magic Bow, Meet The Navy, Men Of Two Worlds, Murder In Reverse (1945), Night Boat To Dublin, The Overlanders, Perfect Strangers (1945), Piccadilly Incident, Pink String And Sealing Wax (1945), Quiet Weekend, The Rake's Progress (1945), School For Secrets, The Seventh Veil (1945), Spring Song, Theirs Is The Glory, They Knew Mr Knight (1945), This Man Is Mine, The Trojan Brothers, Under New Management, Waltz Time (1945), Wanted For Murder, The Wicked Lady (1945) and The Years Between. As noted in detail below, nominations for awards for actors and actresses were strictly limited to those who had appeared in one of these forty-four films.

Voting Period: 1st-28th February 1947, and 'launched in the New Year of 1947 with a series of film exhibitions'. 'The campaign aimed at double the first year's total of votes. Two thousand cinemas became polling booths and five million voting forms were distributed among them. Similar forms appeared in the Daily Mail and in two weekly film magazines; votes were also accepted by postcard. At all the two thousand cinemas a special film trailer was shown to explain the voting procedure.'

Total Eligible Votes Received: 2,204,539. 'Altogether, more than 250,000 votes were rejected for not complying with the rules. Some were written in more than one hand, others typewritten except for the signature. There were also batches of votes all bearing the same handwriting and votes carrying no name and address.'



Results of the voting were announced on 12th April 1947, and were as follows:



Films

1st Place: Piccadilly Incident (1946)

2nd Place: The Wicked Lady (1945)

3rd Place: The Seventh Veil (1945)

4th Place: The Captive Heart (1946)

5th Place: Brief Encounter (1945)

6th Place: The Rake's Progress (1945)



No details as to the numbers of votes received by any film are given. Unfortunately, in any of the three sources mentioned I have only been able to find the first six places for the 1947 awards. It does seem worth noting that despite films of 1945 making up only a third of the eligible films, they have taken two-thirds of the top six; then again, the British Film Catalogue lists all of these bar The Seventh Veil as having been released in December of 1945, and Peter Noble's Yearbook even considers the general releases of all three to have not been until early 1946.



Actors

1st Place: James Mason (194,035 votes)

2nd Place: Michael Wilding

3rd Place: Stewart Granger

4th Place: Rex Harrison

5th Place: Michael Redgrave

[6th Place, disqualified: John Mills]

6th Place: Eric Portman



According to Cecil Wilson, 'In the first Award the choice of film was so wide that almost every British star was eligible for a vote. In the second, many favourites were ruled out by not having appeared in any of the forty-four qualifying films. This accounted for quite a proportion of the rejected votes. John Mills, for example, polled a number sufficient to have placed him sixth on the list had he been eligible. But, there being no John Mills picture in the list, all these votes were invalid.' This, in light of the fact that Great Expectations should theoretically have been one of the nominated films, but it was apparently considered that it was not on general release until after the new year, and it was duly part of the nominations list for films of 1947. Fortunately, Mills would get his own back in the year following, when his appearance in no fewer than three qualifying films (Great Expectations, So Well Remembered, and The October Man) would gain him quite a satisfying turnout at the polls. On the other hand, Michael Wilding, here runner up only to the previous year's winner, James Mason, had not even placed in the first dozen of actors the year before, and doubtless owes his success here to his role in the award-winning Piccadilly Incident (and perhaps for Carnival, which was also released that year). Eric Portman, improving his place from eleventh the previous year, would fail to make the first ten of the following year, despite appearing in Dear Murderer; Michael Redgrave would also be excluded from the next year's list, despite Fame Is The Spur (or perhaps, more accurately, because of The Man Within). Rex Harrison, in the meanwhile, had gone to Hollywood, and was excluded from that year's voting for having appeared in no British films.



Actresses

1st Place: Margaret Lockwood (166,024 votes)

2nd Place: Anna Neagle

3rd Place: Ann Todd

4th Place: Phyllis Calvert

5th Place: Celia Johnson

6th Place: Patricia Roc



The report of the results in 1949 seems to imply that Margaret Lockwood's majority was a very considerable one over Anna Neagle. Wilson's article mentions further that 'Phyllis Calvert, the first year's runner-up, had as close a fight with Ann Todd for third place as in her tussle with Margaret Lockwood for the lead the year before. Finally, Miss Todd secured third place (compared with fifth place in 1946) by a margin of only a hundred and fifteen votes - so narrow a margin that the two stars were credited with the same percentage of the total.' Neither Todd nor Celia Johnson would appear in the following year's list of top ten actresses, but this was due to neither having appeared in qualifying films for that year.



The awards were presented again by Lord and Lady Rothermere at the Dorchester, on 29th April 1947. Wilson reports: 'James Mason, no longer with the Rank group, was in New York, but, as a proof of their still friendly relations, Mr Rank accepted the Silver Star on his behalf and delivered it to him a few weeks later in the United States. In a speech recorded there to his British electors who had voted him his Star, Mr Mason said modestly: "I disagree with you, but I love you all the more for thinking as you do." Mr Rank commented: "It doesn't matter what group he acts for. As long as a great actor like James Mason plays in British pictures it will be fine."' Of course, Mason had by then already made Odd Man Out and The Upturned Glass, which were in fact to be his final British films of that period.



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1948 Award (films of 1947)



Eligible: Fifty-six specific films, generally released in 1947 (the first time the films were limited to a single year). In addition to the publicity campaign outlined in the section on the 1947 Award, this year saw publication of the Daily Mail Film Award Annual 1948 book, produced by Winchester Publications and edited by Jeffrey Truby, with a celebratory article, entitled British Films Grow Up, by Norah Alexander, which covers (a bit fitfully) the history of the wartime years and immediately post-war atmosphere for British filmmaking and filmmakers, and is lavishly illustrated with portraits of notable producers, directors and stars of the era (including, amongst the predictable stars, such industry people as Filippo del Giudice, Maurice Ostrer, Alberto Cavalcanti, David Lean [twice], Sydney and Muriel Box, Carol Reed, Anthony Asquith, Anatole de Grunewald, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, Michael Balcon, Harry Watt and Herbert Wilcox). In the main part of the book, the fifty-six films are given three pages each (quite democratically), all of which lovingly detailed and quite separate in character from any other pages on any other film. Cast and crew are listed and anywhere from six to a dozen stills are used to illustrate the film's story and stars. An extremely thorough synopsis is given of each film, presumably to help those who had already seen them (as they often give away every single imaginable detail of the plot) decide which they had liked most. These are, as mentioned, quite thorough, although there is at least one notable exception to this: in the synopsis of A Matter Of Life And Death, it is implied that Carter's bail-out from the plane leads immediately to his surgery and trial! This entails giving a laughably inaccurate description of the role of Dr Reeves, which I will refrain from quoting for the benefit of those who have not seen the film. The fifty-six films listed in the book, and eligible for the award, were: Black Memory, Black Narcissus, Brighton Rock, The Brothers, Bush Christmas, Captain Boycott, The Courtneys Of Curzon Street, Dancing With Crime, Dear Murderer, Dual Alibi, The End Of The River, Fame Is The Spur, Frieda, The Ghosts Of Berkeley Square, Great Expectations, Green Fingers, Green For Danger, The Hills Of Donegal, Holiday Camp, Hue And Cry, Hungry Hill, An Ideal Husband, It Always Rains On Sunday, Jassy, The Loves Of Joanna Godden, The Man Within, A Man About The House, The Master Of Bankdam, A Matter Of Life And Death, Meet Me At Dawn, Mine Own Executioner, Mrs Fitzherbert, The Mysterious Mr Nicholson, Nicholas Nickelby, The October Man, Odd Man Out, The Root Of All Evil, School For Danger, Send For Paul Temple, The Shop At Sly Corner, The Silver Darlings, So Well Remembered, Take My Life, Temptation Harbour, They Made Me A Fugitive, The Turners Of Prospect Road, Uncle Silas, The Upturned Glass, When The Bough Breaks, When You Come Home, While I Live, While The Sun Shines, White Cradle Inn, The White Unicorn, The Woman In The Hall and Woman To Woman. As with the year before, when Theirs Is The Glory had been included, it is worth noting that this list does include a documentary feature, School For Danger.

Voting Period: 'For five weeks early in 1948, the public went to the polls. In two thousand cinemas, in the home, and through various newspapers, ballot forms were filled up to choose the outstanding British films and players of 1947. Some cinemas ran short of forms within a few days. Their managers's agitated demands for extra supplies could not be met owing to Government restrictions on paper. Other managers reported queues of patrons anxious to record their votes.'

Total Eligible Votes Received: 2,781,751. 'Entries came in from twenty-three countries - from such diverse lands as France and the Gold Coast, the USA and Turkey, Iceland and Persia, South Africa and Sweden - proof, surely, of the world-wide prestige gained by British films.'



At some (unspecified) date before the Awards Presentation, another British Film Festival was held at the Odeon Theatre, Leicester Square. The event is summarised quite briefly in a single paragraph in the British Film Annual, but apparently involved 'thirty-five stars' who were brought 'to re-enact scenes from their best films. For an hour and a half, their performances were broadcast to tens of millions of people, while thousands stood for hours outside the theatre to watch the players - and Ambassadors, Ministers and the famous in all professions - arrive and depart.' Sadly, no further detail is given, although this is probably the British Film Festival which was heavily excerpted in British Pathe newsreels, and can be seen, in parts, on their website.



The results of the 1948 Awards, announced after nine weeks of ballot-scrutinising by sixteen accountants, were as follows:



Films

1st Place: The Courtneys Of Curzon Street

2nd Place: Great Expectations

3rd Place: Odd Man Out

4th Place: Jassy

5th Place: A Matter Of Life And Death

6th Place: Holiday Camp

7th Place: The White Unicorn

8th Place: The October Man

9th Place: It Always Rains On Sunday

10th Place: Frieda



Actors

1st Place: John Mills

2nd Place: Michael Wilding

3rd Place: James Mason

4th Place: Dennis Price

5th Place: Stewart Granger

6th Place: David Niven

7th Place: Trevor Howard

8th Place: Jack Warner

9th Place: John McCallum

10th Place: David Farrar



Actresses

1st Place: Margaret Lockwood (186,215 votes)

2nd Place: Anna Neagle (171,992 votes)

3rd Place: Patricia Roc

4th Place: Jean Simmons

5th Place: Googie Withers

6th Place: Joan Greenwood

7th Place: Sally Gray

8th Place: Mai Zetterling

9th Place: Valerie Hobson

10th Place: Phyllis Calvert



The British Film Annual mentions that Jean Simmons and Googie Withers were 'almost tied for fourth and fifth places'. Beyond these numbers, no indication of exact votes are given for any other awards, save that John Mills apparently won by 'an unprecedented majority' in putting paid to Mason's previous two years at the top of the ranks. A bevy of new names appear in both the actor and actress categories, all more or less corresponding to one of the top ten films of the year - Mai Zetterling (of Frieda) placing higher than one-time runner-up Phyllis Calvert being perhaps the most striking example. The long-overdue Trevor Howard, making his first appearance here, is a very welcome exception, along with Sally Gray. Both had been in the nominated film They Made Me A Fugitive, whose actors were apparently far more highly-regarded than it was.



The awards, as always, were presented at the Dorchester by Lord and Lady Rothermere, in early May 1949. An interesting addition, though, was that of the guest of honour, then President of the Board of Trade: a certain Mr Harold Wilson, who the Film Annual describes as 'triumphantly emphatic', and who certainly doesn't look it in the accompanying still of him onstage, delivering his speech far from the seated Margaret Lockwood (looking on, with an air of semi-rapt attention) and a cross-legged John Mills (looking somewhere, semi-conscious). His 'emphatic' address is almost-as-emphatically excerpted: 'The awards are awards not merely to the public's choice of top performances in Britain, but to the best performances in the world.... There is no doubt that the British film industry today stands first and foremost among the film industries of the whole world.' The above-mentioned photo is captioned '"British films are best", the President of the Board of Trade declares at the 1948 Presentation'.



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1948 Empire Film Award



As discussed in the 1949 Film Award Annual book, there was this year for the first time a separate vote organised specifically outside of the UK, but along the same lines as the National Film Award. This was the Empire Film Award, organised by the Overseas Daily Mail in Canada. In the Annual, it is mentioned that it was 'intended to extend the Empire Award to other Dominions', but I have not found proof that this intention was carried out. As regards nominees for this award, it would presumably consist of the same films, actors and actresses eligible for the National Film Award that year, although this does seem somewhat unlikely since probably not all the films had yet been released overseas; in any event, no information to the contrary is mentioned.



The results were:



Films

1st Place: Great Expectations

2nd Place: Odd Man Out

3rd Place: Black Narcissus



A ranking of impressive taste and farsightedness, considering that Black Narcissus had not even made the top ten in the UK version of the Award!



Actors

1st Place: James Mason

2nd Place: John Mills

3rd Place: Stewart Granger



Actresses

1st Place: Margaret Lockwood

2nd Place: Deborah Kerr

3rd Place: Phyllis Calvert



A significantly different story from the British equivalent for that year, as a single glance back will indicate. Although, apparently, Lockwood was ever Lockwood, no matter which the country.



---



1949 Award (films of 1948)



Eligible: Fifty-four films, given their general release in 1948. The Daily Mail's 1949 Film Award volume was now more grandly re-titled The British Film Annual, and like its 1948 counterpart, contained handsomely-illustrated plotlines and cast/crew lists of each of these films. Unlike its predecessor, though, it did not do so equally. Where that volume gave three pages to each and every film, this gives two pages to a number of apparently ill-regarded films (including Another Shore, Here Come The Huggetts, Counterblast, Broken Journey, Snowbound, Night Beat, The Greed Of William Hart, The Three Weird Sisters, and others), and as many as six pages to the large, 'prestige' films that it presumably considered more deserving (Hamlet, The Red Shoes, Oliver Twist, and Spring In Park Lane, which would eventually win it), and whose stars are accorded large, full-page stills. Most are given three pages, with a few 'upper-middle'-tier contenders (Anna Karenina, The Winslow Boy and, oddly, My Brother Jonathan among them...as well as, appropriately enough, Quartet) granted four. For the first time, the Film Annual also includes capsule biographies of, first, all twenty of the best actors and actresses as voted in the 1948 Awards (all with small photographs), as well as a further forty-five 'other distinguished players in British films' (thirty-five with small photographs), from Richard Attenborough to Kay Walsh. The list is surprisingly prescient, as it includes two theatrical notables who comparatively had yet to make their mark in films: Dame Edith Evans, whose debut in The Queen Of Spades had not yet been released, and Alec Guinness, who had been in only Great Expectations and Oilver Twist up to that time. (Neither, however, is granted a photograph.)

The full list of the fifty-four nominated films was: Against The Wind, Anna Karenina, Another Shore, Blanche Fury, The Blind Goddess, Bond Street, Broken Journey, The Calendar, Call Of The Blood, Calling Paul Temple, Corridor Of Mirrors, Counterblast, Daughter Of Darkness, Daybreak, Easy Money, Escape, Esther Waters, The Fallen Idol, The First Gentleman, Good Time Girl, The Greed Of William Hart, The Guinea Pig, Hamlet, Here Come The Huggetts, Idol Of Paris, Just William's Luck, London Belongs To Me, Look Before You Love, The Mark Of Cain, Miranda, Mr Perrin And Mr Traill, My Brother Jonathan, My Brother's Keeper, My Sister And I, Night Beat, Noose, No Room At The Inn, Oliver Twist, Once A Jolly Swagman, One Night With You, Quartet, The Red Shoes, Saraband For Dead Lovers, The Small Voice, Snowbound, So Evil My Love, Spring In Park Lane, This Was A Woman, The Three Weird Sisters, Uneasy Terms, Vice Versa, The Weaker Sex, The Winslow Boy and Woman Hater.



Sadly, as I have yet to find any comprehensive source material about these awards past these nominations, this is about as detailed as it gets for the final three years of it. Indeed, it is only from The British Film Catalogue that I discovered that the National Film Award lasted only until 1951, and fortunately that volume does at least cite the final winners for Best Film:



1949 Award: Spring In Park Lane (1948)

1950 Award: The Hasty Heart (1949)

1951 Award: Odette (1950)



Furthermore, in John Mills's autobiography, Up In The Clouds, Gentlemen Please, he specifically mentions that he 'was voted Top Actor of the Year in the National Film Awards for 1948 and 1949'. The 'List Of Awards' forming an appendix to the book mentions his winning a 'Nationwide Film Award' for Best Actor for every year from 1948 to 1951, and one might safely assume that at least some, if not necessary all, of these were from the Daily Mail, since the exact same description is also given for an award he won in 1956. (One might also mention in passing that the book is not exactly a bastion of accurate reportage regarding anyone or anything besides John Mills; for instance, at least in the edition I have, Mills praises, for his work on Tunes Of Glory, 'Ronnie Neame, who made his debut as a director in this film'!)



Naturally, I have no substantial evidence as to why the Daily Mail closed their pioneering annual competition; perhaps the increasing stature of the BAFTAs rendered it obsolete? As much as I admire its beginnings, my personal view is that any Award that gave its Best Film prize to a Ronald Reagan/Patricia Neal vehicle in the year of Passport To Pimlico, Whisky Galore!, Kind Hearts And Coronets, The Third Man, Scott Of The Antarctic and even The History Of Mr Polly deserved to be put out of its misery. Or perhaps it was that (The Hasty Heart aside) the Daily Mail organisers, seeing the release of The Lady With A Lamp in October 1951, considered the 1952 Award too much of a foregone conclusion and, the ending spoiled, simply threw in the towel in advance....



—Marc-David

[Brief Encounter]

This is great stuff, which I need to read later on in detail... thanks

[MarcDavidJacobs]

name='Brief Encounter' timestamp='1285511866' post='477658']

This is great stuff, which I need to read later on in detail... thanks

Thank you very much! I hope you enjoy it. I know there's quite a lot of it to get through!



A note, though: have just tried to edit the post, but my statute of limitations for doing this must have expired. In any event, there's a reference early on that the creation of the British Film Institute was in November 1946, which is absolute rubbish. This should, of course, read 'the British Film Academy'; this, in addition to actually being accurate, also makes much more sense in light of its context, regarding what would become the BAFTAs, etc..