London Film Productions

London Films Productions is a British film and television production company founded in 1932 by Alexander Korda and from 1936 based at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire, near London. The company's productions included The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Things to Come (1936), Rembrandt (1936), and The Four Feathers (1939). The facility at Denham was taken over in 1939 by Rank and merged with Pinewood to form D & P Studios. The outbreak of war necessitated that The Thief of Bagdad (1940) be completed in California, although Korda's handful of American-made films still displayed Big Ben as their opening corporate logo. After a restructuring of Korda's UK operations in the late 1940s, London Films were made at Shepperton. One of these was The Third Man (1949). The company's film The Sound Barrier (1952) won the Academy Award for Best Sound. Central Television bought the Korda Film Library from London Films in 1986. More than 30 years after Korda died in January 1956, the company was acquired by investor Johan Eliasch in 1990 and returned to active film-making in 1991 with Morgan Mason as the chief executive. Titles produced included: Lady Chatterley (tv serial, 1993), directed by Ken Russell and starring Joely Richardson and Sean Bean, Resort to Murder (tv serial, 1995), starring Ben Chaplin, Best of Friends (1991), starring Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller and Patrick McGoohan, and Scarlet Pimpernel (1999), starring Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern.