Feature by ANDREW PIXLEY
Cybermen bypass the security at Ealing Studios main gate in a publicity photo for The Moonbase (1967).
“The BBC is now the biggest single user of film in the world,” proclaimed the BBC Handbook 1961, “and the Ealing Film Studios alone produces the equivalent of 140 full-length feature films a year.” In the rapidly expanding television industry of the early 1950s film was in great demand, most notably for news coverage but also for inserts on live sitcoms and dramas. On 19 October 1955, the Corporation announced its acquisition of the Ealing Studios at Ealing Green, five miles west of the planned Television Centre at White City. Ealings first film stage had opened in 1907; subsequently taken over by Associated Talking Pictures, it was rebuilt with four stages by 1931. It was here that producer Michael Balcon would oversee such classic Ealing-branded films as King Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).