They Came to a City

They Came to a City , J.B. Priestley's socialist allegory play, was first performed in1942 as the first production of the People's Entertainment Society, a left-wing theater organization formed to give the public a voice in the commercial theater. It toured for a while in the British provinces and then had a long run at the Globe Theatre, London. When the play was published in 1950, Priestley explained his reasons for its creation. "During the war I was impressed by the very different attitudes of mind that people had to any Post-War changes, which were then being widely discussed. It seemed to me there was a play in this." Writer Sidney Cole thought the play would make a great film, and it was he who convinced Ealing Studios head Michael Balcon. Basil Dearden was assigned direct and write the script with Cole. Unlike many authors, Priestley was fine with the minor changes Cole and Dearden made to his story; however, he was not happy with the casting of John Clements as the leading man. Clements was also unhappy when he was not allowed to speak the last lines of the play, a quote from Walt Whitman that inspired the title. "I dreamed in a dream I saw a City, invisible to the attack of the whole of the rest of the Earth. I dreamed that it was a new city of Friends." According to the National Film Archive, Ealing made the film as a "first attempt to carry out socialist propaganda in the British feature film." The plot takes a back seat to the message. A highly diverse group of people find themselves walking into darkness and emerging on the other end at the edge of a mysterious city. After making the decision to enter, they see that the city is a socialist utopia. Each of the group, including a waitress (Googie Withers), a seaman (Clements), the Strittons - a hen-pecked bank employee and his wife (Raymond Huntley and Renée Gadd), Lady Loxfield (Mabel Terry Lewis) and her daughter, Philippa (Frances Rowe), Mrs. Barley,a cleaning lady (Ada Reed), Sir George Gedney (A.E. Matthews) and a businessman, Mr. Cudworth (Norman Shelley), has to make their own decision whether to stay or to return to their old lives. Priestley himself makes a cameo appearance in the epilogue. Production began during the first week of 1944 at Ealing, and finished only six weeks later. Because of the war-time restrictions, sets were kept to a minimum. According to The Glasgow Herald , although the entire stage cast of the London run was used, they found it hard at first to adapt from stage to screen, despite their previous experience in films. They Came to a City was released in London in August 1944, and went into general in September with good reviews. The Glasgow Herald called They Came to a City "one of the best films that British studios have produced. [...] This is something worth making an effort to see - not merely as a matter of national pride in a production which, with extreme simplicity, beats most of Hollywood's million-dollar circuses into a cock hat - but because it is something somewhat new in cinema art, because it is beautifully acted, and because, if you like to think, this should start you off." Although the critics liked the film, it did not attract big box-office returns, but because the budget was only £24,000, Ealing was not badly harmed by the experiment. By Lorraine LoBianco SOURCES: Barr, Charles Ealing Studios Burton, Alan, and O'Sullivan, Tim The Cinema of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph "Film Director's Visit" The Glasgow Herald 1 Aug 44 The Internet Movie Database Johnson, Dr. Keith M. "The Great Ealing Film Challenge 29: They Came to a City" Huffington Post 20 Dec 11 Perry, George Forever Ealing "They Came to a City: Priestley's Play as a Film" The Glasgow Herald 9 Jan 45