returned to the stage whilst also developing a successful film career. He appeared in Herbert Wilcox's The Courtneys of Curzon Street (1947), playing a colonel alongside Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding and Daphne Slater; the film was a major success and became the biggest hit at the British box office of 1947. He developed a reputation for playing "solid, dependable characters such as policemen, serving officers or officials" in films such as The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), The Blue Lamp (1950), Last Holiday (1950), Cage of Gold (1950), Mr. Denning Drives North (1952), White Corridors (1951), The Yellow Balloon (1953), Beat the Devil (1953), and Father Brown (1954), and commanders, colonels, or brigadiers in films such as Morning Departure (1950), Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951), Appointment with Venus (1951), and many more. In John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953), Terence Pettigrew considers Lee to have been instrumental to the climax of the film, remarking that it was "left to Bernard Lee to inject a badly needed touch of earthiness at the end." In total, Lee appeared in over one hundred films during his career. During the 1950s, Lee had a long run on stage, appearing as Able Seaman Turner in Seagulls Over Sorrento, a role he later reprised in the film of the same name with Gene Kelly (released in the US as Crest of the Wave). Lee starred opposite Gregory Peck in The Purple Plain (1954), playing a Royal Air Force medical officer based in Burma during the late Second World War and portrayed Captain Patrick Dove in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's war film The Battle of the River Plate (1956), based upon the battle of the same name. He starred alongside John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch. George Lovell remarked that Captain Patrick Dove was played "ponderously by Bernard Lee, but he forms a much closer bond with the battleship's commander, Captain Langsdorff (Peter Finch)." The film was the fourth most popular film in Britain in 1957. Other films of this period include The Spanish Gardener (1956), Dunkirk (1958), Beyond This Place (1959), Whistle Down the Wind (1961), and The L-Shaped Room (1962). James Bond series In 1962 Lee was cast in the role that The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema described as his best remembered, playing the character of M, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)—and the superior of James Bond—in