The new company's main function was not film production but the provision
of distribution and financial guarantees for independent producers.
Among those appointed to a re-organised board of directors were practical
film-makers such as Roy
and John Boulting,
Frank Launder and Sidney
Gilliat, all of whom were to make a number of films at the studios.
These included Sidney Gilliat's The
Constant Husband (1954) and Left,
Right And Centre (1959) ; Frank Launder's Geordie
(1955) and Blue Murder
At St Trinians (1957); the Boulting Brother’s Seven
Days To Noon (1950), Private's
Progress (1956) and I'm
Alright Jack (1959). The films made at Shepperton in the 1950s and
1960s reflected the influence of the strong independent producers and
directors who used the studios, rather than the paternal dominance of
former head Alexander Korda.
Richard Attenborough
and Bryan Forbes arrived to create
Beaver Films, and adopted a new policy of deferred payment for the artists
which enabled the film The
Angry Silence (1960) to be made for the astonishingly-low sum of
£97,000. Bryan Forbes went on to write and direct another Shepperton
production in 1962, The
L-Shaped Room (1962), produced by Richard Attenborough and James
Woolf. The Angry Silence and The L Shaped Room were examples of films
that echoed the social and economic changes that had stirred the late
1950s and 1960s, reality became the essence of the `New Wave' school.
Films of this genre made at Shepperton included Room
At The Top (1958), directed by Jack
Clayton; John Schlesinger's
A Kind Of Loving
(1962); Billy Liar
(1963) and Darling
(1965). Early in 1961, there was a new departure as British Lion and
Columbia formed BLC Films to be responsible for marketing the films
of both companies in the UK, an arrangement that lasted until 1967.
In 1963, the company announced that £600,000 of the government
loan had been paid off.
However, in 1964, the government sold the company back into private
enterprise to a group headed by Michael
Balcon. Profits dropped in the first year and in 1965 Lord Goodman
succeeded Balcon as chairman. Nevertheless, a number of notable films
were produced at the studio during that decade including two Pink Panther
films and Day Of
The Jackal (1973) directed by Fred Zinnemann. In 1978-9 there was
tight security on the stages at Shepperton for Alien (1979), a science-fiction
film with a difference directed by Ridley Scott. From 1970, Richard
Attenborough made some of his finest films at Shepperton; these included
Young Winston (1972), Gandhi
(1982) and Cry Freedom (1987). In 1984, the manor of Littleton acquired
a new owner when Lee International paid £3.6m for the studios.
The Lee Group invested a considerable sum of money in refurbishing the
facilities, and plans were drawn up for new workshops that were built
in 1987.
