The Lavender Hill Mob

Alec Guinness - Holland
Stanley Holloway - Pendlebury
Sid James - Lackery
Alfie Bass - Shorty
Majorie Fielding - Mrs Chalk
Edie Martin - Miss Evesham
Ronald Adam - Bank official
Clive Morton - Police Sgt
John Gregson - Farrow
Sidney Tafler - Stallholder

The Lavender Hill Mob was one of Ealing's most successful pictures. It starred Alec Guinness as the long-serving bank employee, Holland, Stanley Holloway as the souvenir manufacturer, Pendlebury, and Sidney James and Alfie Bass as a pair of crooks recruited to make the caper work. Who could resist Holloway's response as Guinness expounds his dazzling plan for making off with the bullion: 'By Jove, Holland - it's a good job we're both honest men. 'The plan was largely concocted by the Bank of England itself, to whom Clarke had turned for advice on how to steal a million pounds' worth of gold, having explained that his eccentric request was on behalf of a film. To his delight an ad hoc committee was quickly brought together to work out a way in which the Bank could be robbed. It seems astonishing by today's security-conscious standards, and it was to be hoped that fresh precautions were made after the film's release to prevent real-life imitators.

Inevitably the robbery, which was planned to occur while the bullion was in transit between refinery and vaults, goes wrong, not least because the absent-minded Pendlebury gets arrested in the middle of it for stealing a painting off a market stall. But the chief downfall is caused by a consignment of gold Eiffel Towers getting mixed up with genuine souvenirs on the sales stand of the landmark itself. A batch of English schoolgirls buy them, and Holland and Pendlebury have to chase them back to England to recover them. The last one ends up in a police exhibition, and the now intrepid criminals steal a police car to make their escape, frustrating the hunt by broadcasting false messages from it, eventually causing a three-way collision (the chase sequence is a parody of that in one of Ealing's own films, the police drama The Blue Lamp, released early in the preceding year, 1950). Holland escapes, and appears to be narrating the story in a balmy South American paradise to an interested companion. It is only at the end of the film that we realise he is a Scotland Yard detective sent to bring Holland back - the usual sop to the censor, for the audience would certainly have preferred the mild little thief to have got away with it. The luscious dark-haired girl in the Brazilian setting who looks strikingly familiar is Audrey Hepburn, doing a couple of days' bit-part work at Ealing when she was still an unknown. To nobody's credit there, she was not spotted as star material, but then Ealing always had a weak reputation where women were concerned.

One of the curious things about The Lavender Hill Mob (the title refers to the seedy South London district between Battersea and Clapham where Holland lives in a dreary boarding-house) was that its running time was a mere seventy-eight minutes, instead of the ninety-plus that was normal for a first feature. The idea for The Lavender Hill Mob came to Tibby Clarke when he was researching material for a serious Ealing film called Pool of London. John Eldridge, who had originated the proposal for the latter film, which was to be a slice-of-life drama centred on dockland, suggested including a villain in the form of a Bank of England employee who uses his privileged position to steal bullion. The more Clarke thought about it, the more humorous the idea seemed; and the chance discovery of a forgotten souvenir from Paris, a gold-painted miniature Eiffel Tower, was all he needed. He immediately scribbled down the outline for a comedy film about a Bank of England employee smuggling bullion abroad in the shape of Birmingham-made tourist knick-knacks. The following morning he took it to Michael Balcon, who wanted to know how Pool of London was getting on. The chief erupted in rage when told that the river had been taken out and the story transformed into a comedy about stolen bullion. Clarke retreated, making sure that the outline was left on Balcon's desk. A couple of hours later Balcon sent for him and, as though nothing had happened earlier, told him that the proposed story was very promising, that Clarke should discuss it with Charlie Crichton, and that Jack Whittingham would take over from him on the original Pool of London, which was probably more his thing anyway. It is a good illustration the Ealing team attitude which could enable switches to be made without causing jealous tantrums.
Extract© George Perry: Forever Ealing.