The Genres that made Hammer - Part One: An Origin Story
By the end of the 1950s Hammer had become closely identified with horror, an association that endures well over half a century later. But the company’s early days were characterised by a profusion of genres, a wartime hiatus and a hugely successful comeback that was achieved through a focus on a single type of film, plus a Special Agent who played rough… As Hammer continues to celebrate its 90th anniversary, we examine its origins through the prism of genre and a few long-forgotten gems.
In part one we look at the studio’s genesis and its extraordinary pre-war productions.
When The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) was first released, the world’s collective mind was blown by the fact the UK could produce a half-decent movie. Americans had been pleasantly surprised by a few British efforts in the past. Early thrillers like The Lodger (1927) and Picadilly (1929) had been well-received, but there’d been nothing like the adulation received by Alexander Korda’s light-hearted biopic.
It became the first non-US movie to win an Academy Award, with Charles Laughton scooping the Oscar for Best Actor, and the first English film to receive a Best Picture nomination. More than this, the very public success of The Private Life encouraged investment in the British film industry and convinced many that its movies could be successful and lucrative. The quota system, set-up during the previous decade, already ensured that UK cinemas were forced to show a significant percentage of homegrown films, and it’s estimated that by the mid-30s, 18 million people a week went ‘to the pictures’.
Charles Laughton with his onscreen (and off-screen) wife, Elsa Lanchester, in a scene from The Private Life of Henry VIII.
All this made England in 1934 a very fertile ground for film production. There was hope. There was belief. And there was Will Hinds. A former jeweller, theatre-owner and comedian, many still knew him by his stage name – Will Hammer, which in retrospect sounds less like a name, and more like a statement of intent. Ambitious, adaptable and armed with a ‘can do’ attitude, he decided to be part of the cinematic gold rush and registered his own film company in November, 1934. Hammer Productions Ltd was born.
The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1934) proved a canny choice of comedy to launch the organisation. Its title was an obvious allusion to Korda’s success and domestically at least, its star, Leonard Henry, was already a household name. Hammer’s marketing material described him as ‘the ace wireless comedian’ and his popularity served as a useful draw in a crowded market. His comic skills were clearly well mined here, with the Monthly Film Bulletin praising his ‘likeable character in his first film’.
Hammer’s first leads… Leonard Henry and Betty Frankiss in The Public Life of Henry the Ninth.
The work is now deemed to be lost and so, of course, it’s impossible to watch and fully appreciate. But reviews and marketing material make it clear The Public Life of Henry the Ninth was a bubbling, boisterous, unpretentious piece of entertainment. It would be twenty years before Hammer’s Dracula bared his fangs, but this plucky little comedy certainly went for the jugular in terms of attaining a likeability quotient. It’s got the lot. Romance, redemption, plenty of humour, stage-show routines, charismatic leads, a rags-to-riches plotline and feel-good music. Fresh from his days in vaudeville, Will Hinds evidently knew what the public wanted, and he gave it to them writ large.
Shot in a couple of weeks, completed in January, 1935 and released six months later, the film was distributed by big hitters MGM and delivered Hammer Productions Ltd their first success. It was the best of times.
If the company’s first venture was, tonally at least, the complete opposite of the movies it would later become synonymous with, Hammer’s second effort, The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (1936), feels very much an antecedent of their horror classics. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric thriller that benefits hugely from Denison Clift’s quick, slick direction and a script that’s disinclined to let a page pass without incident. Movies of the 1930s have many enduring qualities, but even classic chillers like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932) may feel a little slow to contemporary audiences.
Poster artwork for The Mystery of the Mary Celeste which set sail as Phantom Ship in the US.
Not so The Mystery of the Mary Celeste. Shorn of several scenes and released in the US as Phantom Ship, it clips along at a fair old pace, hurtling full-steam ahead with thrills, mystery and suspense, especially after the vessel leaves port, bound for hell on its final, fatal voyage.
The story begins with a love triangle and two men wooing Sarah, an affluent young woman who still says things like, ‘Mother would never let me.’ A pair of sailors are vying for her hand in marriage and she plumps for Captain Benjamin Briggs, a silky voiced mariner who insists there’s no bad language on his ship, but isn’t averse a spot of onboard murder when it seems prudent. After Sarah accepts his proposal he wastes no time trying to persuade her that a long journey on a commercial craft full of desperate scoundrels is a terrific idea for a honeymoon.
She’s understandably reticent. ‘Months and months away from home… The storms [and] danger…The only woman among those men! I’m really afraid, Benjamin!’
But he remains adamant. ‘I’ll take great care of you, Sarah!’ Spoiler alert: he won’t. ‘Oh, you’ll love the sea!’ She really won’t. ‘There’s something about it!’ Here at least, he’s correct, but not in a good way.
Once the brigantine sets sail with the Captain, his bride and a fabulous mixture of half-crazed sea dogs aboard, the film emerges as a kind of maritime And Then There Were None. But whereas Christie’s novel gives us characters who (by and large) are attempting to get along in a nightmarish situation, the Mary Celeste is populated by rogues and ruffians, cowards and killers. Good men at sea with the detritus of humanity; bad men sinking under the weight of their own amorality. All of them stalked by an unknown murderer they can’t escape from. It makes for compelling viewing.
A publicity shot of Bela Lugosi looking suitably intense as he faces a boatload of troubles in The Mystery of the Mary Celeste.
Hammer pulled off quite a coup in securing Hollywood legend Bela Lugosi for one of the starring roles. Most famous for his portrayal of the eponymous Dracula (1931), he’s on top form here as a haunted, mysterious old sailor who feels like the human equivalent of the albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, although in truth, every soul aboard is cursed.
The piece is a mesh of genres, at once a psychological thriller, cracking adventure yarn, dark mystery and supernatural horror. And forget any notion of those cosy 30s melodramas. This trip into terror is punctuated by moments of unexpected viciousness, cruelty and almost palpable despair. When Lugosi’s character is forced to take a shipmate’s life we’re reminded that such barbarism inflicts a huge mental toll, even on these hardened seafarers. ‘I killed a man,’ he sobs. And when the Captain tries to console him, his anguish feels too great to bear. ‘I killed my fellow man!’ he admits, as if the act has ended his own life, too.
Lugosi brought the film prestige and helped it sell in the States. It was another hit for Hammer and it could be argued that The Mystery of the Mary Celeste stands as the studio’s first minor classic. The review in Today’s Cinema was typical, declaring ‘…full marks should be awarded [to] this Hammer production.’
Bela Lugosi (left), his wife Lillian Lugosi and director Denison Clift. Lillian later married a man called Waldo who worked with Hammer on a couple of movies in the 50s…
The mid-30s also gave us Alfred Hitchcock’s smash hit, The 39 Steps (1935), released by the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation within months of The Public Life of Henry the Ninth landing in cinemas. A couple of years earlier, Gaumont’s studio head, Michael Balcon, had visited the set of Waltzes from Vienna (1934), an operetta film that Hitchcock openly acknowledged as the nadir of his career. He talked enthusiastically to his boss about a thriller he was keen to shoot and the perceptive Balcon signed Hitchcock to a multipicture contract. The story in question evolved into The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Clearly a cut above the above the average thriller, the director was then trusted with a substantially bigger budget for The 39 Steps. That adaptation of John Buchan’s (very different) novel became a box office belter on both sides of the Atlantic.
There is a comparative pertinence to all this because Gaumont-British, Balcon and Hitchcock were smart enough to see that they’d stumbled across a winning formula. So why change it? The following years saw Hitch hone his skills as thriller-director par excellence, working with G-B to deliver the studio major successes within the same genre: Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), Young and Innocent (1937) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) made money and reputations, and ultimately led to Hitchcock being poached by Hollywood.
If Hammer had taken note they may have chosen to repeat the success of The Mystery of the Mary Celeste by producing another thriller, or perhaps another drama thick with supernatural suspense. It’s interesting to conjecture how this could have shaped the studio’s future.
In this alternate universe, could we have seen a Hammer Frankenstein beavering away in his lab in the late 30s? A 40s Dracula? A Curse of the Early 50s Werewolf? It’s unlikely but not inconceivable that the so-called Hammer House of Horrors could have opened its doors in pre-war Britain and perhaps produced series of B movies featuring set characters along the lines of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes movies, or slightly higher budget outings, mimicking the likes of the sixteen Charlie Chan films that Warner Oland starred in for Fox from 1931 onwards.
But following The Mystery of the Mary Celeste Hammer changed course again with Song of Freedom (1936), a musical drama set in Africa and England in the 18th and 20th centuries. Its star, the iconic Paul Robeson, had approval over the movie’s final cut – a deference that was almost unique at the time. It’s a serious, thought-provoking work that its lead seemed pleased to have been a part of. He called it, ‘…a kind of test piece. It gives me a real part for the first time … The story presents me as a real man – no more romanticised than a white man would be in a similar role. It is the first step in my effort to break down the prejudice that somehow Negroes must always be ‘different’ on the screen.’
Again, the film performed well in the US and UK, and critics were positive, saving the lion’s share of the praise for Robeson. The Star called it, ‘A picture with artistic value, dignity and a ring of truth, as well as inspiration.’ The Daily Mirror was more direct, stating, ‘I would go miles to hear Paul Robeson sing.’
Another genre conquered? Another genre abandoned. 1936 also saw Hammer release Sporting Love, a ‘sporting comedy’ starring Stanley Lupino who mugs his way through proceedings and generally behaves as if he’s on a bonus for every time he overacts. The reviewer for British Horse Racing Movies was unimpressed, criticising its ‘very disjointed plot, shoddy camera work and dreadful editing throughout’. Contemporary critics were kinder. ‘In no respect is the film polished,’ the Monthly Film Bulletin conceded in November 1936, ‘but it’s rollicking good humour and pace are sufficient compensation in a farce of this kind.’
In fairness, this brisky, breezy comedy clocks in at 46 minutes and can be seen as a typical quota quickie. But it performed poorly and plans for a sequel of sorts were cancelled. Any hope of a horseracing-related series fell at the first hurdle, and Lupino never returned to the Hammer stables.
Stanley Lupino, the star of Hammer’s Sporting Love.
The studio’s other release that year was The Bank Messenger Mystery (1936). Again, it’s deemed a ‘lost film’ and little information survives about the work. The one-line synopsis normally runs something like, ‘A cashier feels he’s been unjustly fired from his job at the bank and conspires with two thieves to rob it in revenge.’ It’s hard to tell what kind of experience it offered. Going from its premise it could have had The League of Gentlemen (1960) vibes, or perhaps it was a gentler heist movie, finding more of a parallel with The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), another in the genre that focuses on a dissatisfied bank clerk who uses his insider knowledge to plan and execute an audacious robbery, aided by a pair of professional thieves.
We may never know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.
Hammer had gambled and spent relatively large amounts on its early titles. Song of Freedom reportedly had a vast budget to match its grand cinematic ambition, and stars like Robeson, Lugosi and even Leonard Henry didn’t come cheap. The producers didn’t play it safe, either, and in a sense that’s laudable. A full-sized replica of the Mary Celeste was constructed at Nettlefold Studios for their second film, for example, and it resulted in some magnificent scenes. But what looked sensational on screen seldom looked as good in the debit column of company ledgers.
It should be stressed that Hammer’s problems weren’t all self-inflicted. After a period of relative prosperity, by 1937 the UK film industry was reeling. As Sarah Street observed in British National Cinema, ‘Rising expenditure and over-optimistic expectations of expansion into the American market caused a financial crisis in 1937, after an all-time high of 192 films were released in 1936. Of the 640 British production companies registered between 1925 and 1936, only 20 were still active in 1937.’
Hammer ‘discontinued’ in 1937 and the upshot was simple. Following the production of five wildly different films, plus a number of shorts, the company ceased production entirely, and at that point it must have felt as if Hammer had faded to black forever. It was the worst of times.
George Mozart (born David John Gillings) was one of Hammer’s founding directors and appeared in several of its pre-war features.
It’s difficult to ascertain why it had chosen to develop such dissimilar projects. It’s possible Will Hinds’s time in variety had influenced his thought process. In his old line of work, audiences had wanted, quite literally, variety. What would be more logical than to take that understanding and make it manifest in a diverse portfolio of films? Or perhaps the company heads had simply seized opportunities as they’d arisen. Lugosi’s availability for The Mystery of the Marie Celeste when other, larger studios were circling the project. The chance to work with the talented Paul Robeson. An opportunity to bang out a quota quickie with Lupino.
Or maybe it was mere whim, or even a belief that producing the best material would be enough. Back in the 30s Hammer never developed what would today be called a consistent brand identity. Who knows if such a thing would have helped or even hindered their progress?
But when the resurrection came, things would be very, very different.
Anthony Hinds (on the right), photographed here with Freddie Francis during the shoot of Hammer’s Paranoiac (1963).
Around the time of The Public Life of Henry the Ninth, Will Hinds had gone into business with cinema-owner, Enrique Carreras. They formed Exclusive Films, a picture distribution outfit that had been akin to a sister company to Hammer. Soon after the war ended, Enrique’s son, James, and Will’s son, Anthony, rejoined the organisation. The latter in particular would eventually become a key figure in British cinema, although in the mid-40s they were both just taking it one step at a time. Step one: revive Hammer to capitalise on the boom in cinema-attendance and the demand for UK movies. Step two: get it right, this time.
Lavish budgets were out. A proliferation of genres - a thing of the past. Prudent planning was in. And the future was crime.
COMING SOON! High heels and low-budget murder… Mystery, glamour and intrigue as the studio goes radio-active in part two of The Genres that made Hammer.
