They Were Sisters *** (1945, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert, Dulcie Gray, Anne Crawford, Hugh Sinclair, Peter Murray-Hill) – Classic Movie Review 11,976

Director Arthur Crabtree’s 1945 British black and white melodrama film They Were Sisters is based on a 1943 novel by Dorothy Whipple, and stars James Mason, Phyllis Calvert, Dulcie Gray, Anne Crawford, Hugh Sinclair and Peter Murray-Hill.

The sisters in question are nice Lucy (Phyllis Calvert), tipsy Charlotte (Dulcie Gray) and vain Vera (Anne Crawford) in Gainsborough Pictures studio’s amusingly overwrought tale of marriage woes.

The women’s performances are very decent, but the magnetic Mason easily upstages everybody as Geoffrey Lee, a bullying bounder who drives his wife Dulcie to distraction.

It co-stars the spouses of both Mason and Calvert. Mason’s then wife Pamela Kellino is also in the cast, playing his daughter! And that is despite being only seven years younger than Mason. It is Peter Murray-Hill’s 12th and last film. By the 1950s he had become a book publisher. He was married to Phyllis Calvert from 1941 until his death in 1957.

Fuelled by Mason’s popularity, They Were Sisters was one of the biggest hits of the year at the British box office, though 1945’s biggest UK hit was Mason’s The Seventh Veil.

The film is produced by Maurice Ostrer and Harold Huth, with the screenplay by Roland Pertwee and Katherine Strueby, and black and white cinematography by Jack E Cox.

A general view of part of London Road in Guildford, Surrey, with the cinema showing the film They Were Sisters (1945).

One of the Gainsborough melodramas, it is noted for frank depiction of the then virtually taboo topic of marital abuse, as Charlotte (Dulcie Gray) suffers emotional abuse by her brutal husband Geoffrey (James Mason), who humiliates her in front of their three children. It is also noted for its near-contemporary setting, from the end of the First World War to the late-1930s, rather than being the usual Gainsborough costume drama.

Mason recalled that at the time he was drinking to deal with frustration over his role and his typecasting, and acted most of his sadistic role with a permanent hangover,

The cast are James Mason as Geoffrey Lee, Phyllis Calvert as Lucy Moore, Dulcie Gray as Charlotte Lee, Anne Crawford as Vera Sargeant, Hugh Sinclair as Terry Crawford, Peter Murray-Hill as William Moore, Barry Livesey as Brian Sargeant, Pamela Kellino as Margaret Lee, Ann Stephens as Judith Lee, Brian Nissen as John Watson, David Horne as Mr. Field, Joss Ambler as Blakemore, Roland Pertwee as Sir Hamish Nair, Amy Veness as Mrs Pursley, Thorley Walters as Channing, John Gilpin as Stephen Lee, Brefni O’Rorke as Coroner, Helen Stephens as Sarah Sargeant, Roy Russell as Lethbridge, Edie Martin as Cook, Dora Sevening as Janet, and Helen Goss as Webster.

They Were Sisters is directed by Arthur Crabtree, runs 115 minutes, is made by Gainsborough Pictures, is released by General Film Distributors, is written by Roland Pertwee and Katherine Strueby, is shot in black and white by Jack E Cox, is produced by Maurice Ostrer (executive producer) and Harold Huth, is scored by Hubert Bath and Louis Levy, and designed by David Rawnsley.

Born Pamela Helen Ostrer, Pamela Kellino [Pamela Mason] is the daughter of Helen and Isidore Ostrer, a rich Jewish industrialist and banker who became president of the Gaumont British Picture Corporation in the early 1920s. Pamela left school at nine and married cinematographer Roy Kellino aged 18 in 1934, taking the name Pamela Kellino. In 1935, she met James Mason on the set of his second film, Troubled Waters, on which her husband Roy was a cinematographer. She married Mason in 1940.

British film executive Maurice Ostrer (1896–1975) is best known for overseeing the Gainsborough melodramas as head of production at Gainsborough Studios from 1943 to 1946. Seven of the ten films Maurice Ostrer was directly responsible for executive producer were big box-office successes, and this is one of them.

Maurice Ostrer’s films as executive producer: Love Story (1944), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944), A Place of One’s Own (1944), They Were Sisters (1945), I’ll Be Your Sweetheart (1945), The Wicked Lady (1945), The Magic Bow (1946), Caravan (1946), The Root of All Evil (1947), and Idol of Paris (1948).

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 11,976

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