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Producer/screenwriter/director Michael Relph is the son of veteran British actor George Relph (most fondly remembered as the vicar in 1955's The Titfield Thunderbolt). The younger Relph started out as an assistant director at the Gaumont studios in 1932. As art director and set designer at the ever-growing Ealing Studios in the 1940s, Relph was able to achieve maximum opulence at minimum cost in films like Champagne Charlie (1944) and Nicholas Nickelby (1947). Relph worked almost exclusively with filmmaker Basil Dearden from 1947 to 1969, usually in the capacity of producer. He and Dearden co-directed five films, the best of which was 1955's The Ship That Died of Shame, and he also directed three late-1950s efforts on his own. After 1970, Michael Relph's output diminished, petering out altogether in 1982.