The Lavender Hill Mob, now being adapted for the stage (Report, 15 June), is arguably the purest and least cynical of the great Ealing comedies, as well as the studio’s only Oscar winner for TEB Clarke’s screenplay. However, it started life as a serious crime drama about a gold bullion robbery. As I recall in my biography of the film’s director, Charles Crichton, Clarke changed tack after finding, in a drawer at home, a gold-coloured Eiffel Tower he’d once been given as a souvenir from Paris. Two hours later he’d penned a new 500-word outline. The studio chief Michael Balcon, initially outraged, told him, “Show it to Charlie Crichton, and see how he likes it,” and the rest is history.
Quentin Falk
Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire
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