Son of a Stranger: a forgotten British B-movie from the industrious Danziger brothers

“Nobody makes ‘em cheaper!” was the slogan of the Danzigers. The American producing duo churned out TV series and second features in Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s, with their sights firmly set on selling their wares back home. Their low-budget model proved so effective that television expert and former BFI staffer Tise Vahimagi declared them “the most financially successful independent TV production company in the UK in the 1950s”.

Edward J. and Harry Lee Danziger had worked in the American film industry in the late 1940s before moving to Britain around 1951. After renting studio space at Riverside and Shepperton for a few years, the brothers purchased an old aero engine testing complex in Elstree, turning it into a studio with six sound stages and outdoor location sites in the grounds. Among the 200 staff were many young trainees, and the Danzigers built a loyal team of technicians who felt supported and encouraged; Nicolas Roeg did part of his apprenticeship on two Danziger features in the late 1950s.

While the crew flourished, some actors considered making a Danziger picture to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Despite this, they attracted some surprisingly good talent, among them Donald Wolfit, Glynis Johns, John Justin, William Hartnell and Christopher Lee.

Writer Brian Clemens, celebrated for his work on such cult TV series as The Avengers, was a Danziger employee for several years and recalled the brothers’ somewhat dodgy business dealings, describing them as “astute American entrepreneurs… not the Mafia but close”. In 1958 they bought the Gordon Hotels Group and set up their offices in the plush surroundings of the Mayfair Hotel.

But at the studio, speed and economy were the name of the game, and every low-budget cliché was observed. Pages were literally torn out of scripts to trim shooting and running time, and there were several reports of actors audibly breaking wind during a take, the director carrying on regardless to avoid expensive reshoots. Each TV episode had to be shot in two and a half days, while features had schedules of 8 to 10 days. 

The Danzigers focused on contemporary crime dramas, which were easy to sell and were cheap on sets and costumes. However, they did occasionally dabble in other genres, often reflecting cinematic trends. They ventured into science fiction with Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and Satellite in the Sky (1956), dipped into historical drama with the TV series Richard the Lionheart (1962 to 1963) and even essayed a theatrical adaptation, filming Agatha Christie’s play The Spider’s Web in 1960, in colour no less.

Their 1957 second feature (B-movie) Son of a Stranger is ostensibly a crime melodrama, but it also taps into the contemporary vogue for social realism, featuring a central character who is a very angry young man. Tom is a working-class lad who never knew his father, concocting a fantasy around his parentage that offers an escape from his situation. The film opens as he comes out of prison and returns to his sick mother, planning to resume a life of crime. His mother refuses to tell him who his father is before she dies but, when he finds a clue among her possessions, he sets off to try and find him. 

Though a tearaway, seemingly uneducated and rejecting all attempts to help him, Tom has a poetic side, imagining the home of his absent father with a lawn “like a carpet” running down to a river. His life is built around this illusion and desire for a better life: “When I look in through the window of a swanky house,” he says, “I know that’s where I belong and whoever my father is, that’s the way he lives.”

Ideally cast as Tom is James Kenney, who found fame in the play Master Crook, followed by its 1953 film version, Cosh Boy. Kenney was the fifth generation of a theatrical family and was less of a cosh boy and more of a posh boy, having been educated at Tiffin School and studying stage craft at Italia Conti.

Opposite him is former child star Ann Stephens. Her major screen debut came in 1942 with roles in The Young Mr. Pitt and In Which We Serve, but her best film role was Betty Kane in the 1951 Josephine Tey adaptation The Franchise Affair. Son of a Stranger was one of her last screen appearances, and after this her story becomes hazy. There are reports on the internet that she died in 1966, but no death certificate exists, at least in the UK.

Stephens plays Tom’s devoted girlfriend Joanie, described in the script as “a pretty girl with a pleasant honest expression. She would look even better if she rubbed the make-up off her face and stopped aping her favourite film star.” The spare but emotive screenplay was by Stanley Miller. From starting out with the Danzigers he went on to have a long career in television, with credits for several broadcasters, including the BBC and ATV. He later returned to the big screen, co-writing the 1974 horror film Symptoms directed by José Ramón Larraz.

Bringing the script to life was the Danzigers’ star director Ernest Morris, considered the safest pair of hands at New Elstree Studios. Morris’s credits began with a role in set construction on 1935 prison drama King of the Damned, and by 1945 he was third assistant director on Gainsborough melodrama Madonna of the Seven Moons. He gradually worked his way through second to first assistant director over the next couple of years, where he shadowed the likes of Francis Searle, Muriel Box and Maclean Rogers until the Danzigers gave him the opportunity to take the reins on 1950s TV series The Vise.

Morris is the epitome of an artisanal film director: efficient and workmanlike, he got the production done on time and within budget. He generated a positive working environment, and the crew found him patient and supportive with less experienced staff. There was no time for artiness – as one former Danziger employee remarked “he wasn’t David Lean” – but he did exhibit some flair: for instance, using effective shots of Tom’s feet trudging the countryside in search of his father to mark the passing of time. Brian Clemens painted an evocative image of Morris as a chain smoker who never used an ashtray, his clothes always adorned with a long trail of ash, as if he’d been in a volcanic eruption.

By the early 1960s, the Danzigers’ profits were waning and New Elstree was sold off in 1965 for £300,000. The brothers had already divested themselves of the hotel group, though a function room at the Mayfair Hotel still bears the name ‘The Danziger Suite’.

Their roughly 10-year UK venture had produced around 400 TV episodes and more than 50 second features and, as Vahimagi observed, “Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, their [productions] seemed to be on screens everywhere, their pervasive presence forming a part of virtually every British filmgoer’s and television viewer’s experience during those years.”

Sadly, their feature films are difficult to see today; while no masterpieces, they’re always entertaining and testify to the brothers’ drive and business nous that kept the industry competitive and provided employment for many British technicians and creatives.

The BFI National Archive holds two 35mm prints of Son of a Stranger, which came in from United International Pictures in 1989. One of these is available to watch via the archive research service; there’s also a copy of the script preserved by Screencraft (formerly Special Collections), available for researchers to access at the Conservation Centre in Berkhamsted.