J. Cronin. He established himself as a leading man in Britain in a series of films: The Patient Vanishes (1941); Hatter's Castle (1941) with Robert Newton and Deborah Kerr; The Night Has Eyes (1941); Alibi (1942) with Margaret Lockwood; Secret Mission (1942); Thunder Rock (1942) with Michael Redgrave; and The Bells Go Down (1943) with Tommy Trinder. Mason became hugely popular for his brooding anti-heroes, and occasional outright villains, in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, starting with The Man in Grey (1943). The film was a huge hit and launched him and co-stars Lockwood, Stewart Granger and Phyllis Calvert, to top level stars. Mason starred in two war time dramas, They Met in the Dark (1943) and Candlelight in Algeria (1944), then returned to Gainsborough melodrama with Fanny By Gaslight (1944) with Granger and Calvert; it was another big hit. Mason starred in Hotel Reserve (1944), a thriller, then did a ghost story for Gainsborough with Lockwood, A Place of One's Own (1945). Far more popular was a melodrama, They Were Sisters (1945). Sydney Box cast Mason in a psychodrama about musicians, The Seventh Veil (1945) as the tyrannical guardian of pianist Ann Todd. It was a huge success in Britain and the US and demand for Mason was at a fever pitch. Exhibitors voted him the most popular star in Britain in each year between 1944 and 1947. They also thought he was the most popular international star in 1946; he dropped to second place the following year. He was the most popular male star in Canada in 1948. Mason had a relatively minor role in The Wicked Lady (1945) with Lockwood, a big hit. Mason then received his best reviews to date playing a mortally wounded IRA bank robber on the run in Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). Mason was able to turn producer with Sydney Box on The Upturned Glass (1947), which starred Mason with a script by Mason's wife. It was not particularly successful. Neither was Bathsheba, a play the Masons did on Broadway. 1949–1957: Hollywood stardom Mason went to Hollywood for his first film, Caught (1949), directed by Max Ophüls. Mason then played Gustave Flaubert in MGM's Madame Bovary (1949). He did another with Ophüls, The Reckless Moment (1949), and followed that with East Side, West Side (1949) with Barbara Stanwyck at MGM and One Way Street (1950) at Universal. He