Dance Hall Review

• 14th Jan 2013

Among Studiocanal’s re-mastered and re-released Ealing films includes their latest offering, Dance Hall (1950). The story follows four young working-class girls who work as lathe turners in a factory during the day and at weekends they look forward to dancing at the Palais with dreams of becoming ballroom champions. In the meantime the girls endure the normal boyfriend troubles including Eve (Natasha Parry) who’s boyfriend, Phil (Donald Houston) can’t stand his girl spending her time at the Palais, especially as he can’t dance. That’s all there is to the story really. Plot wise there is really nothing to this film but as a piece of social history it is of great interest. The premise is not really much different than the kind of musical dramas that were being churned out by Hollywood, but what shows this film up in sharp relief is the gritty working-class backgrounds and low aspirations of its protagonists. Overall the film is fairly dull for the most apart, only really enlivening in the last 15 minutes when the final showdown arrives when Phil threatens to divorce Eve through her suspected infidelity with a brash womanizing American, Alec (Bonar Colleano) with the inevitable final showdown taking place in the Palais.

On its release the film was not so well received, mostly due to similar reasons stated above. Over the years though the film has grown in status, but not because the film has been recognized as a classic but rather for social historical reasons. The film was made 5 years after the war when ration books were still in place (at one point in the film Eve comes home from the Palais to her jealous new husband to find that he has eaten through several tins of baked beans and a tinned pie which elicits her wrath for wasting rations), factory women and centrally young people going out to a dance in pre-teen, pre rock and roll Britain. Significantly though, unusually for an Ealing film women are central to the story, working-class women at that. During the Second World War there were many films in which women had a central role (The Gentle Sex and Millions Like Us, both 1943, spring to mind) and Ealing’s Michael Balcon was against women director’s at the studio. However, a good cast and crew, as usual with the studio are behind the scenes: director and regular to Ealing comedies, Charles Crichton is in the director’s seat, Seth Holt edited the film and the scriptwriters included E.V.H. Emmett who really gave the music background to the story, while Alexander Mackendrick, fresh from directing Whiskey Galore the previous year adds support to the script. But perhaps most significantly Diana Morgan writes the majority of the script focusing on the lives and concerns of the women and gives the film the feminist slant.

Another aspect to films of this era I have always found fascinating are the locations around post war London and this film is no different. Although the location is supposed to be the Chiswick Palais it is actually the Hammersmith Palais, perhaps one of the most famous dance halls in West London and one can at times see the Palais’ full name on the back of the building, Palais de Danse. This building was one of West London’s most important venues for the working-class and I remember going here to see some memorable gigs in the 1980s and 90s and was also the subject of a song by The Clash, ‘White Man in the Hammersmith Palais’. Sadly the Hammersmith Palais was pulled down last summer.

The cast too is made up of unknowns who would become household names in some of their earliest performances: Britain’s own Marilyn Monroe in the shape of Diana Dors, a barely recognizable Petula Clark as well as a host of great British character actors in small and large parts including Donald Houston, Sydney Tafler as the Palais’ manager, Ted Heath and his Orchestra, perhaps one of the most famous big band leader at the time, as well as Bonar Colleano, the American actor with the broad Brooklyn accent who made his career in Britain and would go on to star in Ealing’s Pool of London after this film. This may be not be one of Ealing’s finest moments but it is one that has grown in interest over the years and it carries its working-class credentials even if the leading lady really comes across as a deb. The extras on the disc include a slideshow of cast studio portraits and behind the scenes shots and a 10 minute talk on the film by Ealing and British film historian Charles Barr.

Chris Hick