Anthony Havelock-Allan production was a film adaptation of Coward's 1939 play This Happy Breed, which was produced by Coward, directed by Lean, and shot by Neame. All three partners — Havelock-Allan, Lean and Neame — collaborated on the script. The exact same combination of talents created the 1945 film adaptation of Coward's comedy "Blithe Spirit". The quartet then produced the classic "Brief Encounter", with Havelock-Allan and Neame sharing producing duties with Coward, with Coward helping write the script, an adaption of his 1936 one-act play "Still Life". The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival while lead Celia
Post Mortem (Coward play) "shallow", lacking in "real experience", and which "muddled the issues … I might have done better if I had given more time to it, and less vehemence." When the play was first published, "The Daily Mirror" wrote, "A fearful study in disillusionment! … The misery is, if I may use a vulgarism, laid on very thick. But there are passion and brave satire in this play. Mr. Coward is to be congratulated. He is always renewing himself. I am afraid, however, that, for the stage, "Post Mortem" is really too depressing to make another "Journey's End." T. E. Lawrence considered