"Dramas with a documentary background and comedies about ordinary people with the stray eccentric among them; films about daydreamers, mild anarchists, little men who long to kick the boss in the teeth." That's how the typical output of England's Ealing Studios in its heyday was described by Sir Michael Balcon, the studios' chief of production during the years 1936-59. Balcon was responsible for such unadorned Ealing dramas as The Cruel Sea (1953) and, most notably, the droll movies that became internationally celebrated as the "Ealing comedies" and practically defined British humor. Among the best-remembered of the latter are Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), all featuring Alec Guinness, who quickly became a star with his comic genius and amazing ability to transform his appearance from character to character.

TCM's tribute to the studios once credited with forming "the pinnacle of the most astonishing British film production ever seen" includes the U.S. television premiere of the documentary Forever Ealing (2002), along with TCM premieres of more than a dozen Ealing productions.

Ealing, still located at Ealing Green in West London, can lay claim to being the world’s oldest movie studio. Originally acquired by British film pioneer Will Barker in 1902, the site was taken over by Basil Dean's Associated Talking Pictures in the early 1930s and was established as Ealing Studios in 1936. The British Broadcasting Company bought Ealing in 1959, and filmed its television productions there for the next two decades. In recent times, Ealing has once again become home to high-profile movies, including this year's Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

Ealing's golden era began with the release of the whimsical comedy Passport to Pimlico (1949), featuring Stanley Holloway as a genial grocer who becomes the head of a new government in a section of London that it is discovered to belong to France. The same year Guinness won international recognition for the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which he plays eight successors to a dukedom, all of whom become murder victims.