The Rank Organisation Davis cut staff, reduced budgets and concentrated film production at Pinewood. Other studio facilities (in Islington) were closed, sold (Lime Grove Studios) or leased (Denham). The Rank Organisation closed Independent Producers Ltd. The policies of Davis alienated many in the industry, in particular they led film director David Lean, responsible for some of Rank's most critically and financially successful films, to look elsewhere for backing. In 1949, the company bought the Bush Radio manufacturing facility and began to diversify its interests. In the early 1960s Rank took over Murphy Radio to form the Rank Bush Murphy Group (which was eventually
Lime Grove Studios success in the United States (where it was distributed by Universal Pictures). The studios prospered under Gaumont-British, and in 1941 were bought by the Rank Organisation. By then Rank had a substantial interest in Gainsborough Pictures, and "The Wicked Lady" (1945), among other Gainsborough melodramas, was shot at Lime Grove. In 1949 the BBC bought Lime Grove Studios as a "temporary measure"—because they were to build Television Centre at nearby White City—and began converting them from film to television use, reopening them on 21 May 1950. Lime Grove would be used for many BBC Television programmes over the next forty-two