Kind Hearts and Coronets was shot at Ealing Studios with some location work done at Leeds Castle in Kent, England. The postcard-perfect castle doubled in the film as Chalfont, the D'Ascoyne family retreat.

Director Robert Hamer and Alec Guinness got along extremely well during the shoot and formed a friendship that would last for many years to come. "Robert and I spoke the same language and laughed at the same things," said Guinness in his 1985 memoir Blessings in Disguise. "He was finely-tuned, full of wicked glee, and was marvelous to actors - appreciative and encouraging."

Guinness took his extensive role very seriously, always showing up to work every day thoroughly professional and prepared. Playing eight different roles did come with its challenges, however. "Quick transformation from one character to another has a disturbing effect," he told Collier's magazine in 1952. "I had to ask myself from time to time: 'Which one am I now?' I had fearful visions of looking like one of the characters and thinking and speaking like one of the others. It would have been quite disastrous to have faced the cameras in the make-up of the suffragette and spoken like the admiral."

The impressive trick in the film where Alec Guinness appears as six D'Ascoyne family members at the same time in one shot was a painstaking process since special effects techniques were still somewhat primitive at the time. As Garry O'Connor, author of the 2002 book Alec Guinness: A Life, explains: "The lens was laboriously shuttered and finely adjusted to open in part for each new impersonation. It took three days at Ealing to shoot the requisite number of fifteen-second shots, while at any moment the composite picture could have been ruined if Alec had not complied with the technical complexities of the placings."

In his memoir Blessings in Disguise, Alec Guinness reflected upon his gratitude towards Michael Balcon and Ealing Studios for advancing his career, but noted - tongue-in-cheek - that it seemed that people at the studio often tried to kill him. "Of course I knew they weren't really trying to kill me; it just struck me only that they were rather casual about my safety," he said. One such example occurred on the set of Kind Hearts and Coronets. "During Kind Hearts and Coronets I was required to make a balloon ascent dressed as Lady Agatha D'Ascoyne, in Edwardian clothes," explained Guinness. "It was to take place on an afternoon from a field near Pinewood Studios. The weather was sunny, with a warm westerly breeze and I was enchanted at the idea of going up in a balloon. The only anxiety I had was about insurance, which I guessed would be inadequate to support my wife and young son should there be an accident. Accordingly I spoke to the producers about it. 'You're well covered,' they said, and when I asked for how much I think they told me 10,000 pounds. I decided it wasn't nearly enough and informed them I wouldn't go up more than fifteen feet in the air unless they raised the insurance to 50,000 pounds. They were very huffy and said, 'You will have Belgium's greatest balloonist concealed in the basket with you so you can't possibly come to any harm.' They refused to increase the insurance so when we came to do the shot I insisted on being let down shortly after we had risen from the ground. Contempt was written on all faces. Belgium's greatest balloonist was dressed and be-wigged as Lady Agatha and sailed away. And away. At speed. And then out of sight. The wind took over and the poor man was found some fifty miles away, floundering in a long skirt in the Thames estuary where he had been forced to ditch."

by Andrea Passafiume