The Prudential Group Archive: Alexander Korda, London Film Productions and Denham Studios

Abstract

This article examines the Prudential Group Archive, a valuable resource for the study of London Film Productions (LFP), the British film company founded by Alexander Korda in 1932. The Prudential, a long-established British life insurance and financial services company, invested in LFP at a time when the British film industry was expanding, and Denham Studios was built as a major production facility in 1936. The primary sources generated through this connection provide a rare opportunity to study the financial operation of a major film company as well as to evaluate the strategies that were put in place by the Prudential to monitor its progress throughout its time as an investor which ended in 1945. The article uses the archive to gain insights into the Prudential’s motives for backing the film industry, the building of Denham, the management of Korda and LFP and the impact of the Second World War. It is demonstrated how the archives provide a unique resource for understanding the pressures on film production in the 1930s, as well as highlighting rarely glimpsed material, infrastructural and collaborative aspects of film history such as the practical operation of studios during the Second World War when they were affected by bomb damage, requisitioning and labour shortages. Unlike archives relating to the British film industry which predominantly deal with film personalities and film titles, the Prudential Group Archive documents the crucial importance of the financial aspects of film production. The article also points to documentation in other collections that can productively be interrelated with the Prudential’s archives.