 Thomas Ernest Bennett Clarke (known almost universally as 'Tibby') was one of
the key architects of the iconic cycle of comedies made at Ealing Studios from
the late 1940s to the early 50s, still among the most cherished films in the
canon of British cinema.
Clarke was Ealing's most prolific writer of comedies, and his output included
some of the most enduring, from the film that kickstarted the cycle, Hue and Cry
(d. Charles Crichton, 1946), to Passport to Pimlico (d. Henry Cornelius, 1949)
and The Titfield Thunderbolt (d. Crichton, 1953). His biggest success came with
the Alec Guinness-starring crime caper The Lavender Hill Mob (d. Crichton,
1951). But of the 15 films he wrote at Ealing, just under half - seven - were
comedies.
For a publicity officer who arrived at Ealing in his mid-thirties, his
belated apprenticeship in film proved as fruitful as it was unexpected. His
original scenarios tended to be rooted in his own personal experiences. Passport
to Pimlico sprang out of an interest in collecting arcane laws he had developed
as a policeman. The Rainbow Jacket (d. Basil Dearden, 1954) was born of his
lifelong fascination with horseracing (the film also gave him an excuse to buy a
racehorse). After his son got into trouble for persuading another child to swap
an expensive toy for 'an invisible watch', Clarke penned The Magnet (d. Charles
Frend, 1950), in which a boy obtains a magnet by the same trick and then finds
his attempts to make amends continually thwarted. It might also be pertinent to
The Lavender Hill Mob that Clarke's father worked for a company dealing in
goldmines.
As well as providing him with anecdotal pegs on which to hang his scripts,
there is a sense that these early Ealing films not only capture something of
Clarke's personal stamp, but also the wider worldview of the generation that
grew up in the chaotic aftermath of the 1930s economic slump. His arrival at
Ealing followed dispiriting stints as a door-to-door salesman, a Temperance
movement propagandist and a policeman and a disastrous sojourn to Argentina in
the midst of a military coup (he had been trying to book a ticket to Spain and
apparently ended up in Rosario by mistake). Consequently, while Clarke might
have grown up in the cloistered environment of Frinton-on-Sea and attended
Charterhouse, a sense of anarchy lurks in the shadows of even his mildest
conceits. Although historian Charles Barr, in his definitive Ealing account,
positioned Clarke at the cosier end of the Ealing spectrum, random happenstance
(ludicrous, menacing, or both) is tightly woven into his scripts.
Perhaps his greatest influence on British film and television was born of a
sustained period of writer's block. Without a project of his own, he was asked
to put his police background to use in the adaptation of an unproduced original
play by Ted Willis. In 1948, Clarke had written Against the Wind (d. Crichton,
1948) a commercially unsuccessful attempt to subvert the heroic conventions of
the war film. In The Blue Lamp (d. Dearden, 1950) he attempted to give the
police thriller a similar twist. The film's opening half hour saw star Jack
Warner (playing PC Dixon) killed off, allowing a then little-known Dirk
Bogarde's vicious young villain to take centre stage. Dearden's film proved to
be a hit that came with a 21-year half-life. Ironically, The Blue Lamp's murky
and slightly paranoid world became the source of the long-running and,
ultimately, slightly anodyne TV spin-off Dixon of Dock Green (BBC, 1955-76).
The second phase of Clarke's career followed Ealing's 1955 sale to the BBC.
Working for Harold Hecht, James Hill and Burt Lancaster, he began to supplement
British assignments with work in Hollywood. His police background helped land
him the job of scripting Scotland Yard thriller Gideon's Day (US, 1958) for John
Ford. Literary adaptations, including A Tale of Two Cities (d. Ralph Thomas,
1958) and Sons and Lovers (d. Jack Cardiff, 1960), became another stock in
trade.
Whether by cause or by consequence, his 'professional' period curtailed the
development of further original scripts, and with that some of his enthusiasm
for contemporary cinema. "Since I have to enjoy what I write, I doubt I should
be able to provide the kind of scripts chiefly in demand these days," Clarke
reflected in his autobiography, "if a film of any importance spares me the blood
and orgasms, the chances are that it will nevertheless be an intolerably slow
product of a director determined to be classed as an artist rather than an
entertainer."
Alongside his work in film, he produced a number of novels (a film version of
his book Two and Two make Five gave Benny Hill his big screen debut), as well as
unusual pieces of non-fiction such as Intimate Relations or Sixty Years a
Bastard (1971). One of his last works, Murder at the Buckingham Palace (1981),
provided 'documentary' evidence of a murder in the Royal household supposedly
covered up in 1935. He received an OBE in 1952.
Scott Anthony
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FILM & TV CREDITS
