The Black Sheep of Whitehall

William Thomson "Will" Hay was an English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer. He was born in Stockton-on-Tees, in north east England, to William R. Hay and his wife Elizabeth, but moved to Suffolk at an early age. Hay was educated at Gardner Street Higher Grade School in... Pendleton, a suburb of Salford — then in Lancashire, but now within Greater Manchester. Hay was trained as an engineer and joined a firm of engineers, but at the age of 21 he gave up that profession for the stage. Starting in Manchester as a juggler, self-taught after seeing W C Fields doing it in a film, later he took up acting. He had a relatively brief screen career: by the time he made his first film he was in his mid-40s and an established music hall artist, and his last role came less than a decade later. But between 1934 and 1943 he was a prolific and popular film comedian. He was credited on several films as a writer or co-ordinator, and was arguably the dominant "author" of all the films in which he appeared, in that they were built around his persona and depended on the character and routines he had developed over years on the stage.
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Basil Dearden was an English film director. Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor. He first began working as a director at Ealing... Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out and My Learned Friend . He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night and directed the linking narrative and the "Hearse Driver" segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp , probably the most frequently shown of Dearden's Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.
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