''Convoy'' is a 1940 British

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about navy, naval, air force, air, or army, land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle s ...

, produced by

Ealing Studios Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in west London, England. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on th ...

, directed by

Pen Tennyson Frederick Penrose "Pen" Tennyson (26 August 1912 – 7 July 1941) was a British film director whose promising career was cut short when he died in a plane crash. Tennyson gained experience as an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock in several ...

and starring

Clive Brook Clifford Hardman "Clive" Brook (1 June 1887 – 17 November 1974) was an English stage and film actor. After making his first screen appearance in 1920, Brook emerged as a leading British actor in the early 1920s. After moving to the Unit ...

, John Clements and Edward Chapman. ''Convoy'' was Tennyson's last film before he was killed in an aircraft crash, while serving in the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

Plot

cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several operational roles from search-and-destroy to ocean escort to sea ...

, HMS ''Apollo,'' commanded by Captain Tom Armitage returns to base to find all leave has been cancelled and they are to start out straight away for a special mission. Supplemented with a new first officer, Lieutenant Cranford who turns out to have caused the captain's divorce a few years earlier, they are sent to meet a convoy in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

and escort it safely into British coastal waters. One stubborn freighter captain from the SS ''Seaflower'', who has a cargo hold full of Polish refugees, mainly Jews, lags the main convoy and is stopped by a

U-boat U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...

. At first they bluff their way past claiming to be a neutral ship. However they are tailed by the U-boat as they try to join the convoy. They telegram the Navy to send a destroyer to help them, emphasising that they have two British women on board. The navy refuses to either acknowledge or to help, saying it will jeopardise the main convoy. Seaflower is then captured by a U-boat which sets a trap for the convoy escort. One of the passengers is Lucy Armitage, the former wife of the cruiser's captain, as well as the former lover of the first officer. A reconnaissance aircraft sent from the British, finds the freighter and the German fleet, but the pilot and co-pilot are shot and the aircraft falls in the sea. The Germans make use of this, sending urgent messages from the freighter, claiming it is sinking and naming her as one of the passengers. When the first officer takes the bait and tries to send a destroyer to the freighter's rescue, the captain locks him up, as all ships must protect the convoy. Eventually, a North Sea patrol destroyer comes to the rescue, sinking the U-boat and escorts the freighter to the convoy, where the captain and his ex-wife meet and come to an understanding. However, the German pocket battleship ''

Deutschland Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen constituent states have a total population of over 84 m ...

'' soon appears. Although his cruiser is hopelessly outgunned, the captain decides to attack in order to keep the battleship away from the convoy until British

battleships A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...

arrive. During the battle, the captain and his wife's former lover reconcile before the latter dies flooding the magazine in order to save the ship. The British battleships arrive at the last minute.

Cast

as Captain Tom Armitage * John Clements as 1st Officer - Lt David Cranford * Edward Chapman as Capt Eckersley * Judy Campbell as Lucy Armitage * Penelope Dudley-Ward as Mabel *

Edward Rigby Edward Coke MC (5 February 1879 – 5 April 1951), known professionally as Edward Rigby, was a British character actor. Early life Rigby was born at Ashford, Kent, England, the second son of Dr William Harriott Coke and his wife, Mary Elizabe ...

as Mr Matthews *Charles Williams as Shorty Howard * Allan Jeayes as Cmdr. Blount *

Michael Wilding Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding (23 July 1912 – 8 July 1979) was an English stage, television, and film actor. He is best known for a series of films he made with Anna Neagle; he also made two films with Alfred Hitchcock, '' Under Capric ...

as Dot * Harold Warrender as Lt. Cmdr. Martin *

David Hutcheson David Hutcheson (14 June 1905 – 18 February 1976) was a British character actor. He made his film debut in ''Fast and Loose'' in 1930 and played his only lead role in 1934's '' Romance in Rhythm''. He went on to specialise in hooray henrys, si ...

as Capt Sandeman * George Carney as Bates *Al Millen as Knowles *

Charles Farrell Charles David Farrell (August 9, 1900 – May 6, 1990) was an American film actor whose height was in the 1920s and 1930s and the Mayor of Palm Springs from 1947 to 1955. Farrell was known for his onscreen romances with actress Janet Gaynor ...

as Walker *

John Laurie John Paton Laurie (25 March 1897 – 23 June 1980) was a Scottish stage, film, and television actor. He appeared in scores of feature films with directors including Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Michael Powell and Laurence Olivier, generally p ...

as Gates *

George Benson George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American jazz fusion guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the ...

as Parker *

Hay Petrie David Hay Petrie (16 July 1895 – 30 July 1948) was a Scottish actor noted for playing eccentric characters, among them Quilp in ''The Old Curiosity Shop'' (1934), the McLaggen in '' The Ghost Goes West'' (1935) and Uncle Pumblechook in ''Grea ...

as Minesweeper skipper *

Mervyn Johns David Mervyn Johns (18 February 18996 September 1992) was a Welsh stage, film and television actor who became a fixture of British films during the Second World War. Johns appeared extensively on screen and stage with over 100 credits between 1 ...

as Minesweeper's mate *

Albert Lieven Albert Lieven (born Albert Fritz Liévin; 22 June 1906 – 22 December 1971) was a German actor. Early life Lieven was born in Olsztynek, Hohenstein, German Empire. His father was the head physician of the Tuberculosis sanatorium Hohenstein, ...

as U-boat commander *

John Wengraf John Wengraf (23 April 1897 – 4 May 1974) was an Austrian actor. Early years Wengraf was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Career Wengraf became a matinee idol in the 1930s, and was director of the Vienna State Theatre. He emigrated to Brit ...

as Cmdr. Deutschland *

Edward Lexy Edward Lexy (18 February 1897, in London – 31 January 1970, in Dublin) was a British actor. He was born Edward Little. Career He made his London stage début in 1936, and his first film the following year. His film roles were a mixture of s ...

as Merchantman skipper *

John Glyn-Jones John Glyn-Jones (28 August 1908 – 21 January 1997) was a British stage, radio, television and film actor. His father, William Glyn-Jones, was a Member of Parliament and he was educated at Bishop's Stortford College and Oxford University. He ...

as Merchantman's mate * Patrick Holt as Holt *

Stewart Granger Stewart Granger (born James Lablache Stewart; 6 May 1913 – 16 August 1993) was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame thr ...

as Sutton *

Anton Diffring Anton Diffring (born Alfred Pollack; 20 October 1916 – 19 May 1989) was a German actor. He had an extensive film and television career in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1980s, latterly appearing in international films. Primarily a c ...

as U-boat officer (uncredited)

Production

Writer and director Pen Tennyson served in the

Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve The Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) is one of the two volunteer reserve forces of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. Together with the Royal Marines Reserve, they form the Maritime Reserve. The present RNR was formed by merging the original ...

(RNVR) at the time of the production of ''Convoy''. To gain some experience in convoy conditions, he was given an exemption in order to be assigned to , then stationed on convoy duty.

Soundtrack

The music in ''Convoy'' is by Ernest Irving and includes a slowed down version of "

Rule, Britannia! "Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the 1740 poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in the same year. It is most strongly associated with the Royal Navy, but is also used by th ...

Background

In many scenes, the actors are clearly standing in front of screens and in one scene the

pennant number In the Royal Navy and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, ships are identified by pennant number (an internationalisation of ''pendant number'', which it was called before 1948). Historically, naval ships flew a flag that iden ...

41 supposedly on the side of HMS ''Apollo'' is seen but the image has been reversed. However the only actual ship in service during the Second World War with pennant number 41 was the V-class destroyer . ''Deutschland'' was the lead ship of the heavy cruisers (termed pocket battleships by the British) which also included '' Admiral Sheer'' and '' Graf Spee''. ''Deutschland'' was renamed ''Lutzow'' in January 1940 after the loss of ''Graf Spee'' in the Battle of the River Plate and sunk as a target ship by the Russian navy in 1947.

Reception

''Convoy'' premiered at the New Gallery Cinema in London on 5 July 1940, as part of a

double bill The double feature is a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theaters would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subject reel ...

with '' The Saint's Double Trouble''."Picture Theatres: New Gallery; Clive Brook, John Clemens in 'Convoy'."
''The Times'', 5 July 1940, p. 6. Retrieved: 9 August 2019. The reviewer in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' in his review of ''Convoy'', wrote that "this film up to a point succeeds in giving some idea of the work implied in the title. The pity is that it did not go farther, risk the charge of being labelled documentary". but concluded that the film "has some substantial merits to set against its lack of austerer virtues." After ''Convoy'' had opened at the

Rialto The Rialto is a central area of Venice, Italy, in the ''sestiere'' of San Polo. It is, and has been for many centuries, the financial and commercial heart of the city. Rialto is known for its prominent markets as well as for the monumental Ria ...

in New York City in January 1941,

Theodore Strauss Theodore Strauss (December 27, 1912 – October 30, 2009) was an American writer and filmmaker. Biography Strauss was born in Oklahoma on December 27, 1912."In memoriam". ''Writers Guild of America West Journal''. Vol. 14, Iss. 1. p. 56. He w ...

, the reviewer in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote, "if the film fails in its frankly propagandistic mission it is because of spurious craftsmanship and because it is a little too self-consciously heroic. ... The actors, including Clive Brook and John Clements, are all so teddibly British in the face of grave danger that their calm becomes unconvincing."

Box Office

''Convoy'' earned at least £50,000 outside England. According to ''Kinematograph Weekly'' it was the most popular British film of 1940 in Britain.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

* Evans, Alun. ''Brassey's Guide to War Films''. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2000. . * Halliwell, Leslie. ''Leslie Halliwell's Film Guide''. New York: Harper & Roe, 1989. . * Sweet, Matthew. ''Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema''. London: Faber & Faber, 2005. .

External links

''Convoy''
at the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

* {{Pen Tennyson 1940 films 1940s war drama films British black-and-white films British war drama films Ealing Studios films 1940s English-language films Films set in England Royal Navy in World War II films British seafaring films 1940 drama films Films with screenplays by Patrick Kirwan Films directed by Pen Tennyson Films with screenplays by Pen Tennyson British World War II films 1940s British films Films scored by Ernest Irving English-language war drama films