The Gainsborough melodramas were a sequence of films produced by the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures during the 1940s which conformed to a melodramatic style. The melodramas were not a film series but an unrelated sequence of films which had similar themes and frequently recurring actors who played similar characters in each. The popularity of the films with audiences peaked in the immediate post-war years, but production of such films lasted until the end of Gainsborough in 1949.
The first film in the sequence was the The Man in Grey (based on a novel of the same name) which proved to be a major success on its release in 1943 and led to a number of similar pictures being made often based on melodramatic period novels. The films were initially received with critical hostility, but in subsequent years they have become the subject of more favourable study. They have become synonymous with the studios, in a manner that resembles the Ealing Comedies despite the fact that Gainsborough made films in a variety of genres over several decades.
A large number of actors appeared in the films but they are particularly associated with James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger, Patricia Roc, Jean Kent, Dennis Price and Dulcie Gray. Leslie Arliss directed several of the most successful films. Other directors included Arthur Crabtree, Anthony Asquith and Bernard Knowles.
At the height of the melodramas' popularity James Mason and Margaret Lockwood were respectively voted the most popular British male and female actor.
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