''The Blue Lamp'' is a 1950 British
police procedural
The police show, or police crime drama, is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of a police officer or department as the protagonist(s), as contrasted with other genres that focus on eithe ...
film directed by
Basil Dearden and starring
Jack Warner as PC Dixon,
Jimmy Hanley as newcomer PC Mitchell, and
Dirk Bogarde
Sir Dirk Bogarde (born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde; 28 March 1921 – 8 May 1999) was an English actor, novelist and screenwriter. Initially a matinée idol in films such as ''Doctor in the House'' (1954) for the Rank Orga ...
as criminal Tom Riley. The title refers to the blue lamps that traditionally hung outside British
police station
A police station (sometimes called a "station house" or just "house") is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, al ...
s (and often still do). The film became the inspiration for the 1955–1976 TV series ''
Dixon of Dock Green
''Dixon of Dock Green'' was a BBC police procedural television series about daily life at a fictional London police station, with the emphasis on petty crime, successfully controlled through common sense and human understanding. It ran from 19 ...
'', where Jack Warner continued to play PC Dixon until he was 80 years old (even though Dixon's murder is the central plot of the original film).
The screenplay was written by ex-policeman
T.E.B. Clarke
Thomas Ernest Bennett "Tibby" Clarke, OBE (7 June 1907 – 11 February 1989) was a film screenwriter who wrote several of the Ealing Studios comedies.
Clarke's scripts always feature careful logical development from a slightly absurd premise t ...
. The film is an early example of the "
social realism
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
" films that emerged later in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes using a partial documentary-like approach. There are also cinematic influences of the
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
genre, particularly in underworld scenes featuring Bogarde's Tom Riley, such as the pool rooms and in and around the theatre, making deliberate use of genre trademarks like slow moving low camera angles and stark lighting. The plot, however, follows a simple moral structure in which the police are the honest guardians of a decent society, battling the disorganised crime of a few unruly youths. The film was set in London, and partly shot on locations there.
Plot
The action mostly takes place in the
Paddington
Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Padd ...
area of London and is set in July 1949, a few years after the end of the Second World War.
PC George Dixon, a long-serving traditional "copper" who is due to retire shortly, supervises a new recruit, Andy Mitchell, introducing him to the night beat.
Dixon is a classic
Ealing
Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan.
Ealing was hi ...
"ordinary" hero, but also anachronistic, unprepared and unable to answer the violence of Tom Riley. Called to the scene of a robbery at a local cinema, Dixon finds himself face-to-face with Riley, a desperate youth armed with a
revolver. Dixon tries to talk Riley into surrendering the weapon, but Riley panics and fires. Dixon dies in hospital some hours later.
On his beat, Mitchell notices a little girl playing with a revolver, which turns out to be the discarded murder weapon. The child is eventually persuaded to lead police to the spot where she found it. Police painstakingly drag a canal and come up with a raincoat that is traced to Diana Lewis' father, who remembers loaning it to Riley.
In his arrogance, Riley goes to Police Headquarters to provide a false alibi for himself. All this accomplishes is to convince the police to place him under 24-hour watch.
Riley is caught with the help of professional criminals and dog-track bookmakers who identify the murderer as he tries to hide in the crowd at
White City White City may refer to:
Places Australia
* White City, Perth, an amusement park on the Perth foreshore
* White City railway station, a former railway station
* White City Stadium (Sydney), a tennis centre in Sydney
* White City FC, a football c ...
greyhound track in west London. The kudos of arresting Riley falls to young Andy Mitchell.
Cast
*
Jack Warner as PC George Dixon
*
Jimmy Hanley as PC Andy Mitchell
*
Dirk Bogarde
Sir Dirk Bogarde (born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde; 28 March 1921 – 8 May 1999) was an English actor, novelist and screenwriter. Initially a matinée idol in films such as ''Doctor in the House'' (1954) for the Rank Orga ...
as Tom Riley
*
Robert Flemyng as Det. Sgt. Roberts
*
Bernard Lee
John Bernard Lee (10 January 190816 January 1981) was an English actor, best known for his role as M in the first eleven Eon-produced James Bond films. Lee's film career spanned the years 1934 to 1979, though he had appeared on stage from ...
as Det. Insp. Cherry
*
Peggy Evans as Diana Lewis
*
Patric Doonan as Spud
*
Bruce Seton as PC Campbell
*
Meredith Edwards as PC Hughes
*
Clive Morton as Sgt. Brooks
*
William Mervyn as Chief Inspector Hammond
*
Frederick Piper as Alf Lewis
*
Dora Bryan as Maisie
*
Gladys Henson as Mrs. Dixon
*
Tessie O'Shea as herself
*
Sam Kydd
Samuel John Kydd (15 February 1915 – 26 March 1982) was a British-Irish actor. His best-known roles were in two major British television series of the 1960s, as the smuggler Orlando O'Connor in ''Crane'' and its sequel '' Orlando''. He als ...
as Bookmakers Assistant White City (uncredited)
*
Anthony Steel as Police Constable (uncredited)
The ensemble cast also included uncredited actors who later became better known in film, television and radio, including
Alma Cogan
Alma Angela Cohen Cogan (19 May 1932 – 26 October 1966) was an English singer of traditional pop in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed the "Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era.
C ...
,
Glyn Houston
Glyn Houston (23 October 1925 – 30 June 2019) was a Welsh actor best known for his television work. He was the younger brother of film actor Donald Houston.
Early life
Glyndwr Desmond Houston was born at 10 Thomas Street, Tonypandy, Glamorg ...
,
Jennifer Jayne,
Glen Michael,
Arthur Mullard
Arthur Ernest Mullard ( né Mullord; 19 September 1910His obituary in ''The Times'' gives his date of birth as 10 November 1910 but conflicts with the birthdate given in his death registration. His year of birth appears as 1908, 1910, 1912 and ...
,
Norman Shelley,
Rosemary Nicols
Rosemary Nicols (born Rosemary Claxton; 28 October 1941, in Bradford, England) is a British actress. She comes from a theatrical family and was the author of the 1967 book ''The Loving Adventures of Jaby''.
Biography
She was educated at Haberd ...
(in her film debut as a street urchin) and
Campbell Singer
Campbell Singer (born Jacob Kobel Singer; 16 March 1909 – 16 February 1976) was a British character actor who featured in a number of stage, film and television roles during his long career. He was also a playwright and dramatist.
Life
He was ...
.
Production
Diana Dors
Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; 23 October 19314 May 1984) was an English actress and singer.
Dors came to public notice as a blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren. Dors was ...
says the role of "Diana" was written for her, hence the character's name, but then the director decided to use a "waif type" instead and so
Peggy Evans was cast.
The production had the full co-operation of the
Metropolitan Police, and the crew were thus able to use the real-life former Paddington Green Police Station, then at 64 Harrow Road, London W9 and
New Scotland Yard for location work. Most of the other outdoor scenes were filmed in inner west London, principally the Harrow Road precincts between Paddington and
Westbourne Park. George Dixon is named after producer
Michael Balcon
Sir Michael Elias Balcon (19 May 1896 – 17 October 1977) was an English film producer known for his leadership of Ealing Studios in West London from 1938 to 1955. Under his direction, the studio became one of the most important British film ...
's former school in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...
.
Locations used
The original blue lamp was transferred to the new Paddington Green Police Station. It is still outside the front of the station and was restored in the early 21st century. Most of the locations around the police station are unrecognisable now due to building of the
Marylebone
Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary.
An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it m ...
flyover. The police station at 325 Harrow Road, not far from the site of the Coliseum Cinema (324–326 Harrow Road), which is also shown in the film, has a reproduction blue lamp at its entrance.
The Metropolitan Theatre of Varieties, featured prominently at the start of the film, was demolished because it was thought likely that the Marylebone
flyover would need the site, although that turned out not to be the case. It is now the site of
Paddington Green Police Station. The scene involving a robbery on a
jeweller's shop was filmed at the nearby branch of national chain,
F. Hinds (then at 290 Edgware Road). This was also knocked down when the flyover was built.
The scenes of the cinema robbery were filmed at the Coliseum Cinema on Harrow Road, next to the
Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. It is the principal navigable waterway between London and the Midlands. Starting in London, one arm runs to Leicester and another ends in Birmingham, with the latter s ...
bridge. The cinema was probably built in 1922, was closed in 1956 and later demolished. The site is now occupied by an office of Paddington Churches
Housing Association
In Ireland and the United Kingdom, housing associations are private, non-profit making organisations that provide low-cost " social housing" for people in need of a home. Any budget surplus is used to maintain existing housing and to help fi ...
.
Some of the streets used, or seen, in the film include:
Harrow Road
The Harrow Road is an ancient route in North West London which runs from Paddington in a northwesterly direction towards Harrow. It is also the name given to the immediate surrounding area of Queens Park and Kensal Green, straddling the NW10 ...
W2 and W9, Bishop's Bridge Road W2, Westbourne Terrace Bridge Road W9, Delamere Terrace, Blomfield Road, Formosa Street, Lord Hill's Road, Kinnaird Street and Senior Street W2,
Ladbroke Grove
Ladbroke Grove () is an area and a road in West London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, passing through Kensal Green and Notting Hill, running north–south between Harrow Road and Holland Park Avenue.
It is also a name given t ...
W10,
Portobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is ...
W11,
Latimer Road, Sterne Street W12 and Hythe Road NW10. The church which features prominently towards the end is
St Mary Magdalene, Senior Street W2. Most of the streets around the church were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the new Warwick Estate in
Little Venice. Tom Riley's home was in the run-down street of Amberley Mews, north of the canal, and is now the site of Ellwood Court, part of the Amberley Estate. It is from this mews that Riley walks into Formosa Street, then crosses the Halfpenny Bridge. He then goes into Diana Lewis's flat on the corner of Delamere Terrace and Lord Hill's Road where he attacks her and is chased out by the following detective. Then follows one of the first extended car chases in British film. The route of the chase is as follows: Senior Street W2, Clarendon Crescent W2, Harrow Road W9, Ladbroke Grove W10, Portobello Road W11, Ladbroke Grove W10, Royal Crescent W10, Portland Road W10, Penzance Place W10, Freston Road W10, Hythe Road NW10, Sterne Street W12 – then a chase on foot into Wood Lane and then to
White City Stadium. Most of the chase is a logical following of Riley's car apart from when the car goes from Hythe Road NW10 into Sterne Street – Hythe Road in 1949 was a dead end.
Reception
Critical
''The Blue Lamp'' premiered on 20 January 1950 at the
Odeon Leicester Square in London,
[The Times, 20 Jan. 1950, page 10: ''Picture Theatres – Odeon, Leicester Square: The Blue Lamp'']
Linked 2015-04-22 and the reviewer for ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...
'' found the depiction of the police work very plausible and realistic, and praised the performances of Dirk Bogarde and Peggy Evans, but found Jack Warner's and Jimmy Hanley's two policemen portrayed in a too traditional way: "There is an indefinable feel of the theatrical backcloth behind their words and actions ... The sense that the policemen they are acting are not policemen as they really are, but policemen as an indulgent tradition has chosen to think they are, will not be banished."
In the context of a campaign against perceived "middle-class complacency" in British film-making, ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' editor
Gavin Lambert
Gavin Lambert (23 July 1924 – 17 July 2005) was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film indust ...
(writing under a pseudonym) attacked the film's "specious brand of mediocrity" and suggested the film was "boring and parochial", views which caused outrage.
Writing for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide ...
'' in 2007, Andrew Pulver called the film "the most successful example of the rough-and-tough Brit crime thriller of the immediate postwar period."
Box-office
The film had the highest audiences in Britain for a British film that year. According to ''
Kinematograph Weekly'' the "biggest winners" at the box office in 1950 Britain were ''The Blue Lamp'', ''
The Happiest Days of Your Life'', ''
Annie Get Your Gun'', ''
The Wooden Horse'', ''
Treasure Island
''Treasure Island'' (originally titled ''The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys''Hammond, J. R. 1984. "Treasure Island." In ''A Robert Louis Stevenson Companion'', Palgrave Macmillan Literary Companions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. .) is an adventure n ...
'' and ''
Odette''.
Awards
The film won the 1951
BAFTA Award for Best British Film and was nominated for the
Golden Lion at the 1950
Venice Film Festival
The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival h ...
.
Legacy
In 1951, a stage play of the same name was written by
Willis and Read. It ran for 32 performances at the
Hippodrome
The hippodrome ( el, ἱππόδρομος) was an ancient Greek stadium for horse racing and chariot racing. The name is derived from the Greek words ''hippos'' (ἵππος; "horse") and ''dromos'' (δρόμος; "course"). The term is used ...
in London. It also played the
Hippodrome
The hippodrome ( el, ἱππόδρομος) was an ancient Greek stadium for horse racing and chariot racing. The name is derived from the Greek words ''hippos'' (ἵππος; "horse") and ''dromos'' (δρόμος; "course"). The term is used ...
in Bristol. In 1952, the play ran for 192 performances in a summer season at the
Grand Theatre, Blackpool, Lancashire.
Gordon Harker took the role of George Dixon, while Jack Warner played Chief Inspector Cherry.
Several of the characters and actors were carried over into the TV series ''
Dixon of Dock Green
''Dixon of Dock Green'' was a BBC police procedural television series about daily life at a fictional London police station, with the emphasis on petty crime, successfully controlled through common sense and human understanding. It ran from 19 ...
'', including the resurrected Dixon, still played by
Warner
Warner can refer to:
People
* Warner (writer)
* Warner (given name)
* Warner (surname)
Fictional characters
* Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner, stars of the animated television series ''Animaniacs''
* Aaron Warner, a character in '' Shatter Me ...
. The series ran on
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced t ...
(
BBC1
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins ...
) for twenty-one years from 1955 to 1976, with Warner being over eighty by the time of its conclusion.
In 1988, Arthur Ellis's
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...
BBC Two
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...
play ''The Black and Blue Lamp'' had the film characters of Riley (
Sean Chapman) and PC "Taffy" Hughes (
Karl Johnson)
transported forwards in time into an episode of ''The Filth'', a gritty contemporary police television series, replacing their modern-day counterparts.
''
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier'' by
Alan Moore
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', '' V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman:'' ''The Killing Joke'', and ''From Hell ...
and
Kevin O'Neill has one panel suggesting a George Dixon died in August 1898, the time-period given for the first two graphic novels, as well as ''
The War of the Worlds
''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by ''Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by '' Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appearance in hardcover was i ...
''.
There is a real George Dixon (1820–98) who was a Victorian politician whom
Balcon's school was named after.
In 2010, the BBC Television drama ''
Ashes to Ashes'' concluded with a short clip of George Dixon, referring to the similarity to Dixon's death in ''The Blue Lamp'' and subsequent resurrection for the television series and the underlying plot of the show.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
''The Blue Lamp'' location shotsat Reelstreets
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blue Lamp, The
1950 films
1950s crime thriller films
1950s police procedural films
British crime thriller films
British black-and-white films
Police detective films
Films set in London
Films shot in London
Cultural depictions of Metropolitan Police officers
Best British Film BAFTA Award winners
Films directed by Basil Dearden
Films produced by Michael Balcon
Films with screenplays by T. E. B. Clarke
Films with screenplays by Ted Willis, Baron Willis
Ealing Studios films
Films adapted into television shows
Films and television featuring Greyhound racing
Films set in 1949
Social realism in film
Greyhound racing films
1950s English-language films
1950s British films