This film from early in the production history of Ealing Studios under the stewardship of Michael Balcon has been ‘passed over’ to a certain extent by Ealing historians who have argued that it is quite conventional and does not feature strong performances. I discovered the film on the ‘Ealing Rarities’ Volume 11 discs and I was pleasantly surprised. I found it an enjoyable watch and I was intrigued by the famous names in both the cast and crew/’creatives’ lists. The film was presumably shot just before war broke out in 1939 and premiered in London on New Year’s Day 1940 before a general release in March 1940. The production company is listed as ‘CAPAD, produced and recorded at Ealing Studios’ and produced by Michael Balcon. I’m struggling to work out exactly what Capad was but it seems to be a producers company which included J. Arthur Rank, Stephen Courtauld, Reg Baker and Michael Balcon as directors at various times. It was established as a new company in 1938 but is not listed in the Kine Yearbook for 1945. From my research, Associated Talking Pictures (ATP) remained the owner of Ealing Studios after appointing Balcon in 1938 but Balcon himself promoted the brand of ‘Ealing’.

[]The opening title over the townscape of Teignmouth’|?
During the the transition to Ealing, Balcon found himself with a number of key personnel who he had known at Gainsborough, Gaumont-British or ATP including three  frontline directors, Walter Forde, Pen Tennyson and Robert Stevenson. Stevenson directed Return to Yesterday which starred his wife Anna Lee opposite the long established British star Clive Brook. The story is conventional certainly but then most genre pictures are. Like many British films of the 1930s it was adapted from a stage play, in this case by Robert Morley, ‘Goodness, How Sad’. It was adapted by Robert Stevenson, Roland Pertwee and Angus MacPhail (who would become strongly associated with Ealing’s 1940s productions and also later worked on Hitchcock’s scripts). Clive Brook plays Richard Maine, a big Hollywood star who has returned for a visit to the UK where his career began. Mobbed by crowds in London he smuggles himself onto a Great Western express out of Paddington. Meanwhile in the (fictional) Devon seaside resort of ‘Torracombe’ (filmed in Teignmouth) a young couple are excited by their next play in the theatre on the pier – literally the ‘end of the pier’ show. The young man, Peter, has written the play and it is his first to be performed. His girlfriend Carol (Anna Lee) will play the lead. Unfortunately the producer is a difficult character trying to dupe the troupe and take more than his share of the takings. The leading man has had enough and leaves. Will the rest of the troupe rally round and find a new leading man after the producer/director has left?

Anna Lee as Carol, the ingenue in the theatre company
Peter (David Tree), the young playwright with the producer/director Morrison (David Horne)

You can probably work out the rest of the plot. Maine the star is having a mid-life crisis and leaves the train near to Torracombe where his career started, hoping to be revived by briefly re-living his time in the actor’s boarding house. Will he take on the leading role in the pier show and will he attempt to seduce Carol? Well, what do you think? The film is just less than 70 minutes long so it is essentially a second feature. This does mean that things move pretty quickly and the show’s opening night must take place in a couple of days with Maine being the focus of a search by his manager with a new Hollywood shoot about to begin. The geography doesn’t make sense – Maine should be in Southampton to sail on the RMS Queen Mary, but initially that’s skipped over. Partly that’s because the railway sequences are shot on the scenic route around Dawlish when the train travels on the narrow strip between the cliffs and the sea. In fact, the photography overall is very good in the hands of Ronald Neame, not yet thirty but already a seasoned cinematographer and later to become an award-winning producer and director.

Clive Brook incognito as an unknown actor with Alf Goddard, on of the pier theatre staff
The familiar face of ATP/Ealing regular Garry Marsh as the drunk in the pier troupe
Dame May Whitty learning her lines but also pondering how to help Carol and Peter

Part of my pleasure in watching the film is to be offered the image of the pier theatre company, the summer version of the ‘rep’ company in each major town which provided the launch pad for many future stars of stage and screen. In this company there are several well known character actors and two names I recognised straight away. Garry Marsh plays the actor who can’t get through the day without a swig from his hip flask. Marsh was an instantly recognisable figure, a roly poly man in his late thirties at this point he would go on to rack up over 130 film and TV roles. Dame May Whitty was a Liverpool lass given her Dame honour for entertaining troops in the First World War. She was in her 70s when she played the title character, Miss Foy, in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938). In Return to Yesterday she gives a wonderful performance opposite Clive Brook advising him on what to do in the final scenes as regards young Carol. She is utterly convincing whereas Brook is forced to play the double role of the Hollywood star masquerading as a humble older actor/decent human being. Some critics thought Brook was too old for the part (he was 52 when he played the part – no age for a star these days) but I think he is well cast. My real anger is directed at the critics who thought Anna Lee was ‘colourless’. Playing ten years younger as the 19 year-old Carol she expresses the vitality and enthusiasm we might expect. Of course, I am biased in that when she left with her husband (a pacifist) for Hollywood after shooting this film she would become a leading member of John Ford’s stock company, appearing first in his third Oscar winning film, How Green was My Valley (US 1941). Robert Stevenson became an important director for Disney when the small studio began to branch out into live action features in the 1950s. Before that, Stevenson was constantly in work as a director, including the Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine version of Jane Eyre in 1943.

Released as a second feature on the Odeon circuit in 1940 (image from the Duke of Yorks cinema in Brighton)
A stock image of the crowds at Paddington station. The location footage used in the film, especially re the rail sequences, looks forward to Ealing’s wartime and productions and especially its early post-war productions.

The print on the Network DVD is very good. The names on the credit lists for cast and crew suggest an A picture whereas the running time confirms a ‘B’. I recommend it as an entertaining diversion proving Balcon had something to work on when he accepted the Ealing job. You can find the film online in prints of varying quality on the free streamers.