In February 1927 the secretary of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), Stephen Tallents, called together the board’s first film caucus, at which he presented a scenario written by Rudyard Kipling and Walter Creighton for a feature-length fiction film that, it was hoped, would be ‘suitable at its finished stage for distribution on its merits in the ordinary commercial way’ (Swann, 1989, 26). Although the Empire Marketing Board sanctioned One Family and a John Grierson ‘film on herring fishing’ – Drifters – as its first two productions, the Treasury was initially reluctant to fund the films. It finally approved both films on 27 April 1928 at a meeting in Whitehall attended by Tallents and Leo Amery, the Secretary of State for the Dominions (Aitken, 1990, 104).

However, as Paul Swann noted, One Family was ‘dogged by difficulties throughout its production’ and after a lengthy filming process during 1929, a sound track was hastily added early in 1930 in response to the growing commercial demand for sound films. Swann concluded that ‘the film had disaster written all over it even before its completion, and the fate of the film had been discussed with monotonous regularity at successive meetings of the EMB Film Committee’ (Swann, 1989, 34).

One Family was premiered at the Palace Theatre in London on 7 July 1930 and was advertised as ‘the gala presentation of the great Empire talking film’. A poster in Bioscope – with the tagline ‘A dream of real things’ – explained that the premiere would be preceded by music from a band of Irish guards and would lead to an initial ‘premiere run of one week’ (Bioscope, 2 July 1930, 2). However, the film was a spectacular commercial failure, with Swann suggesting that the money generated from commercial bookings – £334 – did not ‘even pay for the cost of the band hired for the premiere of the film’ (Swann, 1989, 35). J.H. Thomas, the Secretary of State for the Dominions, revealed in the House of Commons in 1931 that the film had cost £15,740, which comprised most of the EMB’s film budget for three years, while in 1936 his successor Malcolm McDonald noted that ‘its gross receipts to date… amount to £2,865’, with these receipts covering 24 theatrical and 21 non-theatrical bookings along with the sale of exhibition rights to Canada (Hansard, 28 April 1931 and 31 March 1936). In 1939 a further discussion in the Commons revealed that the film had not been viewed in the past two years and was not available for exhibition, even though A Southern April - a short documentary made by Creighton from off cuts while filming in South Africa – was distributed by the Empire Film Library (Hansard, 5 June 1939). In a 1950 discussion of the Quota Act, Lieutenant-Colonel Elliot referred to One Family as ‘the greatest flop you ever saw in your life’ (Hansard, 30 March 1950).

One Family certainly did not benefit from comparisons with Grierson’s highly acclaimed, commercially successful and still iconic Drifters. Robert Herring, film critic for the Manchester Guardian, contrasted the traditionalism and the ‘flimsily whimsical’ narrative of One Family with the seriousness and convictions of the Soviet productions favoured by Grierson. ‘The minute I think of the story, and the body of men solemnly thinking they can offer such a flippancy to the public’, wrote Herring, ‘I get so angry I lose all sense of proportion’ (Stollery, 2000, 159 and Swann, 1989, 35). Sir Arthur Elton also noted the ‘very old fashioned’ nature of One Family – ‘society ladies playing Britannia, and the Empire Cake, Buckingham Palace and so forth’ – while filmmaker Harry Watt dismissed the film as ‘abysmally vomit-making’ (Sight and Sound, Summer 1972, 149).

Grierson explained the failings as he saw them in 1931, stating that ‘the “dreams of real things” which Creighton made was not quite the dream which the film public was accustomed to turn over in their minds. Symbol does not flourish in these post-Victorian days and One Family was full of symbols. The lesson we learned was that cinema can only at peril depart from the dreams and aspirations of common people’ (‘Annual Report on the activities of the EMB Film Unit’, 1931).

One Family followed existing EMB campaigns and adopted language used in other media. In 1924, the Women’s Unionist Organisation had urged families to ‘make your Christmas pudding this year an Empire pudding’ and had provided a recipe listing ingredients from throughout the Empire (The Times, 5 December 1924, 12). By 1926, The Timeswas reporting on the EMB’s publicity campaigns – ‘the Empire is self-sufficient for all manner of Christmas fare’ – and advertisements in 1927 contained a recipe, listing the country of origin for each ingredient, for an Empire Christmas pudding supplied to the EMB by ‘The King’s Chef, Mr Cedard, with Their Majesties’ gracious consent’ (The Times, 24 December 1926, 7 and 11 November 1927, 11).

The title One Family also borrowed heavily from existing Empire Marketing Board publicity. EMB posters in 1927 had exclaimed ‘The Empire is One Large Family. God Bless us Every One’, while in 1931 posters urged ‘Keep Trade in the Family’ and ‘Remember your Cousins’ (Mackenzie, 1986, 217).