This Month

The second installment of TCM's remarkable "Lost and Found" series is comprised of films made at London's famed Teddington Studios by Warner Bros. First National during the period 1932-1943. The series includes the U.S. premieres of two early works from director Michael Powell of The Red Shoes (1948) fame – the drama Something Always Happens (1934) starring Ian Hunter, and the crime thriller Crown vs. Stevens (1936) starring Beatrix Thompson. The other premieres are Crime Unlimited (1935) starring Lilli Palmer, Man of the Moment (1935) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., The Peterville Diamond (1942) starring Anne Crawford and The Dark Tower (1943) starring David Farrar. In the photo above is Jack Warner (of Warner Bros. in Hollywood) on the right and Teddington producer/director Irving Asher on the left.

Known as "quota quickies," these films were shot at a fast pace on low budgets to meet the demands of the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, created by the United Kingdom Parliament to require a yearly quota of British-made movies and hopefully counter Hollywood's dominance of the cinema world. (Never considered a success, the Act was modified over the years and repealed in 1960.) The films made at Teddington during its Warner Bros. era were strictly for the U.K. market, and most were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Of more than 100 such films, only 33 are known to survive.

Many distinguished actors worked at Teddington during its Warner Bros. period; also represented in the TCM series are Michael Redgrave in Sons of the Sea (1941), Richard Greene in Flying Fortress (1942) and John Gielgud in The Prime Minster (1941). Among those films considered permanently lost, one of the most historically significant is 1934's Murder in Monte Carlo, in which a young actor named Errol Flynn so impressed Warner Bros. executives that they dispatched him to Hollywood.

Teddington Studios has a long and interesting history dating to the 1880s. It became a production center for feature films in 1916 and was leased, then purchased, by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s. In 1944, during the dwindling days of World War II, a German rocket exploded on the property, causing extensive damage. Eventually reconstructed, the studios would become home to Thames Television, and today the facility remains an important media center.

by Roger Fristoe