The Man in Grey

The novel was published in 1941. The New York Times thought it was old fashioned but enjoyed the depiction of the era saying it created a "lively scene for a sad story."[5] The book was a best seller in the US, selling more than 100,000 copies in 1942.[6]

Margaret Lockwood later wrote that when she heard about the project, she read the novel and thought she would be ideal for the role of Clarissa. She was not pleased to be cast as Hesther, writing in her memoirs, "true, I had played that unpleasant little piece in The Stars Look Down after many misgivings. But Hesther was a different matter. She was downright wicked."[7] She says she was persuaded by Carol Reed's advice to not "bother about the number of pages in a part, but think about the motivation." Lockwood "didn't like the motivation - but it was a 'meaty' part."[7]

Lockwood says that James Mason's role was originally offered to Eric Portman who turned it down.[8] The climax was graphic for its time with Mason's brutal beating of Lockwood's cowering villainess using his walking stick.

Lockwood was the only one of the four leads to be a star when the film was made. She told a journalist at the time:

It is a part Hollywood would have given to a star like Bette Davis. I intend... to 'give it a go.' Its Regency settings are away from the war. It has plenty of emotional, dramatic quality, yet it calls for subtlety. It is a role I can handle well under English direction, for British studios don't concentrate on glamorising stars to such an extent that they become camera-conscious, thinking only of whether they are at the right angle to the camera.[9]

Lockwood said the second male lead was not cast "right up to the day before shooting began... lots of young men had been tried out, all unsuccessfully."[7] Stewart Granger was appearing in a production of Rebecca on stage when he was called in to audition. He says he had been recommended to the producers by Robert Donat, with whom Granger had just appeared on stage in To Dream Again. Granger was the last of the four leads cast and was paid £1,000 for 12 weeks work. "I'd have played the part for nothing", he later wrote in his memoirs. "It was such a chance."[10]

Lockwood said "as I watched him walk nervously across the set I knew instinctively he [Granger] would get the part.. He was rather an extraordinary young man in those days. He had what seemed to be an enormous inferiority complex, which came out sometimes in a flow of bad language, and at other times in round abuse of everybody, because he hadn't done his piece as well as we wanted."[7]

The film was shot in Gainsborough Studios. Phyllis Calvert was pregnant during filming.[11]

Phyllis Calvert later said Leslie Arliss was "not at all" responsible for the eventual success of the film:

He was a lazy director; he had got a wonderful job there and he just sat back... Ted Black was the one who would watch it, cut it, and know exactly what the audience would take. I don't say he wanted to do really good films, but he knew where the money was and he made all those escapist films during the war.[12]

According to Calvert, one time Arliss was late for a scene between Calvert and Granger so they directed themselves, and "Arlissing about" became a "Gainsborough byword for slackness."[13]

James Mason later described his performance as "atrocious".[14]

The film was a massive hit in the UK, turning the four lead actors into stars.[15] Phyllis Calvert later recalled it "had two West End premieres. It had one premiere, got terrible notices, went through the provinces and made so much money that it had to come back to London."[12]

It was the seventh most popular movie at the British box office in 1943.[16] According to Kinematograph Weekly it came after In Which We Serve, Casablanca, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Hello Frisco Hello and The Black Swan[17]

It was the tenth most seen movie of the year in Australia.[18] The movie was also successful when released in France in 1945[4] and in Germany.[19]

In 1946 readers of the Daily Mail voted it their second most favourite British film of 1939–45.[20]

Screenonline wrote that it was "easy to see why" the film was so well received:

It caught the national mood quite brilliantly, by fusing elements of previously successful "women's pictures" such as Rebecca (US, d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), Gaslight (d. Thorold Dickinson, 1940) and of course Gone With The Wind (US, d. Victor Fleming, 1939) with a surprisingly distinctive formula of its own, blending authentic star appeal (James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, the then newcomer Stewart Granger) with a plot whose novelettish surface concealed an intricate labyrinth of contrasts and doublings: good against evil, obedience against rebellion, male against female and class against class. The ingredients of virtually all the subsequent Gainsborough melodramas can be clearly seen taking root here.[21]

The movie was one of several films from the Rank organisation released in the United States by Universal. It was not as popular in the United States.

The Monthly Film Bulletin called the film " an elaborately produced version of Lady Eleanor Smith's novel, which, while good entertainment, is not outstanding, except in so far as it shows a British studio's competence to make this type of lavish literary production which hitherto only Hollywood has been able to do with consistent success. Acting, settings, camerawork, and direction all reach the highest technical standards."[22]

Filmink says "[I]t was all done with intensity, conviction and flair and completely worked on its own trashy, melodramatic level... Lockwood, a delightful ingenue in comedies and thrillers and competent actor in drama, turned out to be a superb villainess in melodrama, all flaring nostrils, heaving cleavage and intense stares."[23]