HP Voices

Find out why Bruce Forsyth nearly became a newsagent. Listen to Brian Tesler's interview at 01-34-30 to find out why.

It’s not often that a film or TV programme has a direct, measurable political impact, and perhaps today, with the sheer volume of audio-visual content coming at us from all directions, it can’t happen. But once upon a time it could, and here in Britain we have two celebrated examples from the ‘60s: the Tony Garnett / Ken Loach 1966 TV play Cathy Come Home highlighted the reality of homelessness and helped launch the charity Shelter; and the Basil Dearden / Michael Relph 1961 film Victim helped pave the way for the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and the decriminalisation of homosexuality. 

Michael Bond passed away three weeks ago, but when I visited the statue of Paddington Bear at Paddington Station yesterday, it was still an intimate little shrine, festooned with flowers and jars of marmalade. There is definitely a ‘national treasure’ here somewhere, but I’m not entirely clear whether it’s Paddington Bear or Michael Bond. Or maybe a sort of composite of them both?

Although our memories of Michael today are inseparable from the figure of Paddington, there was a Michael before Paddington. When A Bear Called Paddington was published in 1958, Michael was a Cameraman at the BBC studios in Lime Grove. He had been working for the BBC for over a decade, and he would continue to work for them for almost another decade before finally deciding to become a full-time writer.

The death of Roger Moore last month triggered a wave of nostalgia, with the main focus inevitably on his seven film performances as James Bond. His were the funniest and silliest of the Bond movies. The plots, the villains, the fights, the gadgets, the seductions, were classic kitsch: cheesy and tacky, yet knowing and ironic. And Moore, with his matinee idol looks and oh-so-expressive eyebrow, was just the man to personify the package, a mocking celebration of Britain’s ‘70s and ‘80s delusions about itself. And the fans loved him for it. Maybe it was rubbish, but it was our rubbish.

The ‘Girls Like Us: British Women and WWII Cinema’ season continues at the National Film Theatre in May with more great films on offer. As in April, and despite the fact that these 1940s films have been selected for their strong female content, all of them were directed by men. But, also as in April, if we look more closely we will still find women in key roles not just on screen but also behind the camera.

The latest batch of History Project interviews uploaded to our website this month include:

Interview number 532  Peter Graham Scott  Peter was an film producer, film director and screenwriter. One of the producers and directors who shaped British television drama in its formative years, He was a key figure in television drama in the seventies and eighties and was responsible for top rating series including The Avengers, Mogul, The Troubleshooters, and, most successfully, The Onedin Line, which ran for 9 years. He was much admired by fellow directors as well as actors and was renowned for his film editing skills, which he had honed in the forties while working for J Arthur Rank on films such as Brighton Rock.

In April and May 2017 the National Film Theatre is running a season of films under the heading'Girls Like Us: British Women and WWII Cinema'. There are some real treasures here. Some of the April titles – Went the Day Well?, Millions Like Us, In Which We Serve – are relatively well-known. But – to my enduring shame, I’m sure - I have never seen Demi-Paradise, or The Gentle Sex, or Unpublished Story. I can’t wait.

This month – March 2017 – the National Film Theatre is showcasing Ken Russell’s 1971 production of The Boy Friend, focusing in particular on the production design and costume design that gave it its particular 1920s/1960s crossover look.

The Boy Friend sits right in the middle of Russell’s purple patch, stretching from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, when he produced much of his most enduring work. In the early 1960s he was in television, producing idiosyncratic documentaries, including several on composers – Bartok, Debussy, Prokoviev - for the BBC ‘Monitor’ series. From 1967 he moved into film with Billion Dollar Brain, followed in 1969 by Women In Love which won him an Oscar nomination, and Glenda Jackson an Oscar.

In February 2017 the National Film Theatre (NFT) has been screening Robert Hamer’s 1947 classic It Always Rains On Sunday – a dark and complex domestic thriller from Ealing Studios, from a time before it became overwhelmingly associated with ‘Ealing Comedies’. (The first ‘Ealing Comedy’, Hue and Cry, was in fact produced in the same year).

It Always Rains On Sunday stars Googie Withers in perhaps her finest role. In a bleak portrayal of post-war East End working class life, she plays Rose, a woman with a past, forced to choose between a decent but unexciting husband and family, and a glamorous but dangerous old flame who turns up out of the blue, on the run from the law. I won’t say more: if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for a morally-compromised treat.

On 14 December 2016 the History Project screened our documentary, Women in West London Film Laboratories. The documentary is of particular interest to members because it draws upon interviews from the History Project collection, as well as archival footage and interviews we conducted. For those who weren't at the meeting here is a link. Do let us have your comments.

WOMEN IN WEST LONDON FILM LABORATORIES, 1960-2000 (ANDREW DAWSON AND SEAN P. HOLMES, 2016) 39 minutes

Women in West London Film Laboratories documents the bittersweet experience of women in West London film laboratories. It is the first and might be the last attempt to visually record the lives of lab women.