Following text from Sir Michael Balcon's "Michael Balcon presents... A Lifetime of Films" © Hutchinson & Co., 1969 (currently out of print). 

Following text from Kenneth More's "Happy Go Lucky" © Kenneth More 1959, Robert Hale Ltd. (currently out of print). Mr. More is a wonderful storyteller, but his versions of events are often at odds with the recollections of others.

"Cornelius?" I asked.

"Yes. Henry Cornelius."

The name meant nothing to me. Suddenly I remembered; he had directed that test for Scott of The Antarctic at Ealing. 

[Quentin Falk points out that  More had played a "spit and a cough" in the director's The Galloping Major a year earlier, so it seems highly unlikely that the name Henry Cornelius would "mean nothing" to More!]

Corny came up. Born in South Africa and educated in Germany and France, he was the enfant terrible of the film world of pre-Hitler Berlin. He worked on The Drum and The Four Feathers as film editor, and since our last meeting had directed the top Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico. Now he had formed his own independent company.

But when I asked him if he had been out front, he said: "No."

"You've seen the play already then?"

"As a matter-of-fact I haven't. This sort of show isn't my cup of tea at all."

I was at a loss. I couldn't help asking: "What is it you want?"

"I'd like you to be in a film I'm making," he said. "The test you did for Scott showed me that you have the qualities I need."

He went on to explain that he had been offered the outline of a story which he liked so much that he snapped it up within 48 hours. "The plot," said Corny, "centers on the veteran cars annual rally from London to Brighton."

"What do you want me to play?" I asked.

"Ambrose Claverhouse -- brash, bouncy, girl-chasing; an extrovert."

"Comedy?"

"Character comedy."

All four get to Brighton, but Ambrose and Alan quarrel, the outcome being a 100 pound wager as to which of them can drive back to Westminster Bridge first.

[Dinah Sheridan says the children on the zebra crossing was a last-minute inspiration on the part of Henry Cornelius.]

He gave me the script. I put it on my knee, glanced at the title -- Genevieve -- and started reading.

"We'll be doing it in Technicolor at Pinewood," Corny went on, persuasively. "Larry Adler is composing the music."

I hadn't finished the second page before I realized that the film was for me. "This is marvelous," I said. "I've got to be in it!"

"Of course," said Corny. "And you will be too. I'm a very determined man. The part has been written with you in mind."

[Dinah Sheridan says the director's first choice for the part was Guy Middleton]

Then I started to think of the obstacles, all the difficulties that would crop up. "I've just been married," I said. "We're moving house at any moment and I'm appearing in this play!"

But every objection I raised, Corny knocked down.

Moving house? The best removal firm in London would be called in; it would lay on a fleet of vans and we wouldn't have to lift a finger. Getting from the studio to the theater? He would personally arrange for a superfast car to do the journey at record speed.

"But what about [More's wife] Bill?" I asked. "How will she manage on her own? I won't have time to see anything of her at all if I do a film as well as a play."

"Don't worry," said Corny blandly. "She can visit you at the studio. We serve lovely meals in the canteen." Lovely meals in the canteen!

"Anyway," said Corny, "come and have lunch tomorrow with me and Kay Kendall. She is to be your girlfriend, Rosalind, in the film".

"Quentin Falk: The vivacious Kay Kendall (born Justine McCarthy), though only 26, had made an earlier bid for stardom in the film London Town.

Kenneth More: As far as Katie was concerned, it was to be her second bid for stardom. Once the youngest-ever member of the Palladium chorus line, she starred at the age of 17 in London Town, perhaps the biggest screen flop of all time. She had seemed set for a golden career; then suddenly everything was finished. It was the most shattering experience anyone could have. But she had guts; she went into rep, did TV and gradually charmed her way back into the films.

The three of us met in Rule's, in Maiden Lane, for the maddest lunch I can remember. Corny opened his briefcase and brought out sheets and sheets of foolscap on our "family backgrounds." I, as Ambrose, was the son of a kidney pill manufacturer; Katie learned that Rosalind's grandfather had crossed the Alps at the age of three.

We roared with laughter. We were in fits.

"What on earth does it matter who our relatives were?" we asked. "Either you want us to play these parts or you don't!"

But Corny didn't work like that. He was very painstaking. He believed in what I suppose could be called The Method.

We must have had one glass too many of the burgundy because Katie and I ended the meal by promising to do the film.

For me, Genevieve was a bid for stardom too. I remembered what Bill had told me once, when I confided in her my hopes for the future.

"You'll never be a star," she said, "until you've had a part with real personality in it."

Was Ambrose Claverhouse, the hearty terror of the highways, the answer? I signed a contract with Corny for £2,500.

The snag that probably none of us fully realized when we entered the film so gaily was that three-quarters of the shooting was on outdoor location. The 57 day production schedule lasted from October to February, right through some of the bitterest weather of the year.

Christopher Challis: George Gunn [a Technicolor representative] had persuaded Henry that, in spite of the money problem, the extra cost of filming in colour was more than worthwhile as, at that time, it was still a great attraction at the box office.
 

Planned to be filmed almost entirely outdoors... weather was obviously a big hazard and Henry explained that he could not afford to wait for ideal conditions. 'If there is enough light to get a bare exposure, I just have to shoot. I know it's asking a lot, but there is no other way I can make the picture.'  

The whole circus was at the mercy of the driver in the cab of the Queen Mary, who often proved difficult to communicate with. Another truck followed with mock-ups of the other cars, ready to be switched at a moment's notice. For forward-looking shots, another flat truck was used. The driving cab was removed, further mock-ups made to disguise what little we saw of the bonnet and a period steering wheel and windscreen fitted, all of which had to be changed each time we switched cars.

Marjorie's costumes for Dinah, I recall, included a dress in chocolate, coffee and strawberry, which gave the appearance of a very delectable Neapolitan ice.

My rival in the film, in our grueling, jolting journey was John Gregson, a burly, tousle-haired Liverpudlian who like myself was in the Royal Navy during the war, but in minesweepers.

In Genevieve, John achieved the no mean feat of driving from London to Brighton and back without a full driving license! He took a course of lessons, but there wasn't time to pass his test before filming began. In all, he did about 100 miles at the wheel, with the police turning of the blindest of the blind eyes.

John preened himself, admitted that he was indeed John Gregson and prepared to whip out his fountain pen for an autograph. But little girl hadn't finished her questions.

"Weren't you in Venetian Bird?"

John nodded.

"And didn't you bash Richard Todd on the back of the head?"

"Well, yes," John admitted. "That's right."

"Then I'll never see one of your pictures again as long as I live!" With that, she swept off.

We had another moment of humour, completely unrehearsed and certainly not in the script, which all happened because Corny was such a perfectionist. He had to have everything right. Every single scene had to be filmed time and time again, just to be absolutely sure.

This wasn't too bad in the studio, but it was perfect hell out of doors. One morning -- about 7:00 it was, and dreadfully cold -- Kate and I had to do a shot in which we drove down the road towards the camera.

We did it once, but Corny wasn't satisfied. We did it again, but that wasn't right; a hair had got in the gate of the camera. We did it a third time -- and a fourth. On each occasion, the repeat performance meant driving half a mile back up the road again and turning round.

The weather grew even worse. A fine penetrating drizzle came down, soaking us through. We couldn't wear macs or any other kind of protection because it was supposed to be fine weather.

The more times we kept on doing the journey, the more frozen and cross Katie became. When we had done the scene for the fifth time, and Corny said: "Let's have just one more!" Katie grabbed the parasol which was in a long wicker basket running down the side of the car. Holding the parasol both hands, she started to whack Corny over the head with it.

"You're a rotten little so-and-so!" She screamed. "You're a miserable, dried up little man!"

[Dinah Sheridan says that she was actually the one on the receiving end of Kay Kendall's outburst]

I thought she was joking. It was colossal fun seeing Corny being brained. I roared my head off.

But it was no joke. It was genuine. Katie had really gone. She was hysterical. The terrible cold weather, added to the normal tension of filming, had got her down.

I shouldn't have laughed. In a few more days I was feeling the same way myself.

If for any reason the producer goes over his budget, more money is needed to finish the job. This might mean 20,000 pounds or more. Insurance companies, however, give protection against this, and for a premium they will, if the worst happens, step in and help the producer by supplying "end money," as it's called. They're on a pretty good wicket, I think, and don't have to pay out very often.

An exception, though, was Corny. He always ran over. He went on and on, persevering until he got what he believed was right. He never compromised. He never cut anything out. He never shortened anything.

Eventually with Genevieve, we reached a stage where the insurance company was financing us. It didn't like paying out. To save a bit here and save a bit there, it had little men prowling around the studio, switching off lights that weren't needed. During the final weeks shooting they watched electricity meters like hawks. It was as bad as having the bailiffs in.

I was at home one day and they telephoned and said, "We've got Kay here, doing her lines... and she can't laugh. She is quite incapable of producing a natural hysterical laugh. Could you come over to the studio and help her?" Much to my delight, I got an extra day's pay to go over to Pinewood Studios - about a fifty-minute drive - and produce, with Kay, hysterical laughter. Then I had to stop, and she had to go on.

In the scene in the Brighton hotel room, the loud argument between Alan and Wendy provokes an awful banging on the wall from the very annoyed people next door. The sound of this banging was added later. When they filmed the scene, I had to react to nothing. All I knew was that it was in the script. Alan leaves for the garage; the banging starts up on the wall again, and I take a brown paper bag, blow it up, and explode it onto the wall. And then there's a scream from the other side of the wall -- obviously, I'd stopped the banging. What few people know is that during the re-recording sessions, they asked me to perform the scream! So that's me you're hearing from the other side!

 And Larry said, yes, he'd love to do it, too, but he couldn't do it for nothing. And so he lowered his price quite a bit. And they said, "Now, look, we said we don't have any money!" And he said, oh dear, I really want to do this, and I've got such a good idea for it... I'll do it for a two-and-a-half percent interest in the film. Which made him the only one -- except for Henry Cornelius and the Rank Organisation -- who got anything out of it at all. We got 2,500 pounds, and that was it - we've never had another penny. But Larry still gets two-and-a-half percent!

Quentin Falk: As if confirming the worst -- apparently, the "front office" didn't like the finished film -- the opening at the Odeon, Leicester Square was,  according to Keith Robertson of Rank Film Distributors (now RFD's director of administration), then still General Film Distributors, "a non-event." It was, at first, very coolly received. 

Christopher Challis: The first showing of the completed film was in the preview theatre at Technicolor. As the lights came up at the end, Earl St. John, the American head of production, who had expressed little interest in the film during its making, rose to his feet and observed to Henry, and the rest of us who made the movie, 'We may get a few car nuts to go along and see it in this country, but it won't do business anywhere else.'

Quentin Falk: But somehow, with the word-of-mouth, it took off and the results were amazing. In those days it took about 18 months for a film to go through the sequence of six-day bookings, three-day bookings, Sunday nights...

"We didn't let Genevieve go to Sunday nights, we put it out as a reissue double bill with our other big hit, Doctor in the House. We'd always had double feature programs, but it was always a first feature and a B-picture. This was the first of its kind -- "the Doc and the Crock" -- and it proved to be one of the most successful double programs we've ever put on."

Full of now-classic moments like Kay Kendall's impromptu trumpet solo, the creaking bed rocked by the chimes of the huge clock opposite, and More telling Kay to get out and push the recalcitrant Spyker, not to mention wonderful cameos by Geoffrey Keen as a traffic policeman and Joyce Grenfell as a hotel proprietress, plus Larry Adler's fine harmonica score, no wonder Genevieve was named Best British Film of 1953. It also, perhaps surprisingly for something so quintessentially English, earned two Oscar nominations, for William Rose's deft screenplay and Muir Matheson's music direction.

Sadly, only one of the starring quartet is still alive today: Dinah Sheridan. Kay Kendall died in 1959 (a year after Henry Cornelius), John Gregson in 1975 and Kenneth More in 1982.

As Miss Sheridan reflected: "It's very sad. I'm very much the lone survivor -- if you don't count Genevieve herself. She will be our epitaph."

Sir Michael Balcon: Despite the variety of films we made over the years, I suppose it is the comedies with which Ealing will always be identified. Even as late as 1967, an American correspondent of The Times, commenting on a letter from a number of American governors, senators, congressman, chancellors of universities, etc., on means of preserving the historic relationship between [the United Kingdom and United States], said: "the old Ealing studio comedies, which are still appearing on television late-night shows, have done more for the relationship than any official program could have done."

Corny and the enchanting Kay Kendall are, alas, dead long before their time but Genevieve will remain in the hearts of all the fans of their generation. Meanwhile Bill Rose, now a naturalized British subject, has done a lot of work for Hollywood and has among his more recent credits such important script as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, for which he deservedly won an Oscar, for the best original screenplay, in 1968.