The year as we all know is 2025 and I am hoping to be back in this wonderful cinema tonight or tomorrow night to see ‘Gladiator2’ at this very fifties style cinema in the Adelaide Hills, Australia.  This article appeared way back in 2012 –  so now I am back again quite a few years later

They seem to show one film per month here – usually up to date releases but it is the cinema itself and its style that influences me to post this item.

Upstairs is the seating area – as the picture below –  and it is very reminiscent of the old style cinema experience – very quaint and very good.    They also have a  wide screen if needed so the older Cinemascope films could easily be viewed here.

Patrons are seated on comfortable seats ( some double seats)  in an art décor hall with the novelty of an interval in the middle of the movie. A canteen is available. Patrons will find a quaint ticket box from where to purchase their tickets.

The art deco Lobethal Centennial Hall foundation stone was laid on 8 August in 1936 on the centenary of the proclamation of the state of South Australia. It took another 60 years before the hall was finished with store room, two large change rooms with heating, two showers and extra toilets in 2002. The terrazzo floor at the front of the hall was the first of its kind in South Australia.

Initially, local people assisted in the furnishing by buying double seats for ₤1 with a name plate on the seat acknowledging their contribution. You can still find the name plates on the seats. The Onkaparinga Woollen Mill donated the money to the Centennial Hall committee to help build the toilets inside the hall, and renovate the original seating. The seat upholstery was replaced with lush fabric by a local upholsterer and the backs of the seats were revarnished.

Black and white silent movies were first shown in the Hall from 1919 and in 1932 the Talkies came to town.     There is still evidence of shops that were once in the front of Centennial Hall until 1993.

There was a lull in movie showing in the early 1990s but now the cinema is functioning well and regularly.

Awaiting the film.

The film will start shortly – below.

What can I say about Richard Todd who epitomises the fifties era and who starred  in so many well remembered films throughout that decade.  More than any other British actor his career  dominated the British cinema at that time.

He is probably best known – in England at least – for this role as Guy Gibson in the very famous The Dambusters although I for one think of him more for The Story of Robin Hood – that brilliantly ‘Made in England’  Walt Disney film of 1952.

 Above: Richard Todd as Robin Hood in the Walt Disney 1952 Technicolor film

It is difficult to imagine any other actor playing Guy Gibson – in fact he has become so well known for this part that I do think that if most people were shown a picture of both Guy Gibson and Richard Todd and be asked which one they thought was Guy Gibson  – most would point to Richard Todd.    Some of this film (certainly the shot above) was filmed in Lincolnshire, and over twenty years later Richard and his family came to live in the county eventually settling for many years in Little Ponton,  Nr Grantham.  This is not far away from the magnificent Lincoln Cathedral which featured in a wonderful aerial shot in The Dambusters.

 Lincoln Cathedral – Absolutely Magnificent !!!

The Dambusters had much of the filming done around Scampton and Kirton Lindsey in Lincolnshire – which of course is where they flew the mission from.

The Dambusters is a true story in which the men of 617 Squadron are sent to bomb three key dams in the Ruhr Valley with the famous bouncing bomb.   The film shows the young bomber crews training and eventually the mission itself but prior to this we see Barnes Wallis trying to perfect the bouncing bomb and persuade the political and military personnel that it will do the job, we see the practise runs by the bombers  and eventually the final frightening raids on the dams.   As war films go this one is on a par with the very best.

The performances by Richard Todd as Guy Gibson and Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis are superb and this is a classic film.

Richard Todd.

I am sure we will come back to this man again and again on this site.   He had a really incredible life – he was born in Ireland in 1919 but came to school in England where he became seriously ill with a heart complaint. He recovered and much against his parents wishes he developed an interest in Theatre –  initially in writing plays which he never did.  However he must have shown a talent for acting and had  started in that career when war broke out.   He was one of the very first to parachute into Northern France when the invasion started, fighting to take control of Pegasus Bridge.   After the war he had decided on a change of career but was persuaded to go back to Dundee Rep where he had been a founding member. Here he met his wife  and then in a short time got a film test and got the part as the star of the film.   Whilst there he was spotted by someone which led to his taking the key role in The Hasty Heart playing alongide Patricia Neal and Ronald Reagan – who became a lifelong friend of his and from then on his film career just took off and he was signed up by Walt Disney for three very good period films prior to The Dam Busters.   His career on a world scale from 1949 was meteoric largely because The Hasty Heart had been so popular in the USA.   It even got him a One Film a Year contract with 20th Century Fox. So the fifties saw Richard Todd – in film terms – at the very height of his long career.

There is much much more to this astonishing life story which we will come to,  I hope,  in a later post.

What a lovely lovely film this is.  It takes us all back to a much simpler age – now gone – and enables us to enjoy a wonderful,  colourful 90 minutes or so – punctuated throughout by a haunting theme played on the Golden Trumpet by Eddie Calvert – it is a theme that I think fits the film perfectly.

This charming and timeless film follows  the adventures of two small children who run off from home to watch the coronation in London in1953 and along the way meet up with many characters who are played by a lot of British stars of the period and later come to that.  The film is fascinating for anyone who likes recent British history and it gives a snapshot of the fun and excitement of the coronation in a county that only 8 years earlier had seen the end of the Second World War

John and Julie is that rare thing, a self-contained trip into a very different time and place.

Such actors as Megs Jenkins, Peter Sellers, Andrew Cruikshank ( later to be famous as Dr.Cameron on TV ) Moira Lister, Wilfrid Hyde White, Sid James and that wonderful character actor Colin Gordon all appear to add to the fun.

Neither Colin Gibson nor Lesley Dudley the child stars of this film, continues in the acting profession as far as I can see – and yet they were both so good and convincing in their respective title roles.

I really love this film and watched it years ago with my daughters and we still look at it from time to time – nowadays though with our grandaughters.

The Man with the Golden Trumpet” as he was called,  Eddie Calvert  came up through the Brass bands of Northern England to top the bill at Variety theatres throughout the U.K and overseas.  He had major  hits such as  “Oh mein Papa”,”Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” and this one “John and Julie” as well as “Zambezi” “Mandy” and another film theme from “The Man with the Golden Arm”

I don’t know why I have just plucked this one out of my memory – certainly not a favourite or even very well known BUT it is quite interesting and keeps you guessing until the final ‘ludicrous’ frames.

A Scotsman named Gerald MacTeam played by Richard Carlson  abruptly breaks off his engagement to  Kitty when he learns that his uncle has died and he has inherited a castle in the Scottish highlands.

He moves there to live with the castle servants but his girl friend Kitty refuses to accept the broken engagement and travels with her aunt see him at the castle.

Gerald seems to have aged in this short time and somehow seems changed and odd.

Kitty and her aunt venture into The Maze – above.

There follows a series of strange events in around the castle and the castle maze. One night, Kitty and her aunt steal a key to their bedroom door (which is always locked from the outside) and sneak out into the mysterious maze.

There they discover Gerald and the servants out in the maze with …………..

Above – The Maze

Above characters look shocked

Well.   I had better not spoil the plot as the film moves towards its terrifying – not to say ludicrous – climax !!

I do think that this one could be remade today with a bigger budget and the benefit of today’s techniques –  it would be good. It is quite an unusual story and the fact that it is set in a Scottish Castle seems to give it an added eerie feel. It is very much a film where, on first seeing it, you are asking yourself just what is this all about – and I think that few would guess !!!

I hadn’t realised this but maybe should have known – this film was made in Hollywood.

I did rather like this comment about the film from someone who had seen it and had written this below :-

For most of its running time, “The Maze” is a nicely made chiller. Its well directed by William Cameron Menzies (who also made the cult classic “Invaders From Mars” and worked on “The Thief of Baghdad”), who creates a brooding and chilling Gothic atmosphere. There’s no shortage of horror stories set in old castles and while this film doesn’t add anything new to the setting,  it manages to use the familiar location quite well.   The screenplay is often very sombre, and the performance by Richard Carlson in the lead is quite accomplished.  Veronica Hurst is captivating and genteel in the role and still in love with Richard Carlson.   I won’t ruin it for you, but simply put the climax is one of the most  ludicrous things ever put on film.   The film was quite involving and then it completely spins around and gives us this bizarre ending.  The writers obviously put some thought into it, and it had  great potential to be a tragic conclusion.

The 3D story of a man  hiding a family secret in his forbidding castle -there are even bats in the belfry! It moves leisurely until the final extraordinary conclusion in The Maze.

 “The Maze” is  a decent enough movie.

Veronica Hurst

She was in Angels One Five, Laughter in Paradies and quite a bit later in the very scary ‘Peeping Tom’

The  old Regal Cinema at Wymondham in Norfolk  shows old films from time to time and in 2010  Angels One Five was the film and the star guest who appeared was Veronica Hurst.

Richard Carlson

He had previously appeard in King Solomons Mines 1950 with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr and later was to star in another Hollywood horror classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon – also in 3D.   I will always remember watching this late one night on TV and my daughter Karen, who was a little girl at the time,  woke up and came through to watch it with me.      It frightened her so much that she recalls it to this day.

He also was in It came from Outer Space again 1953 – almost a hat trick of horror films at this time in the fifties. He made a lot of films in his career.

He died in 1977 at the age of 65

Above – Richard Carlson looks for The Creature from the Black Lagoon 1954 – also in 3D

We will certainly come back to this film !!!

One person who wrote abount this film had been at a Hollywwod 3D event and described the film as being  so much fun to watch  with an audience, the print was excellent and the 3-D perfect.

The performances were described as being over the top which all  added to the fun, the surprise ending (that we aren’t supposed to share with fellow movie goers at least according to the movie trailer and poster) had people ………. – Well,  I had better not say or I might give away the ending

This is a classic old type horror film with the added dimension of 3-D (complete with cobwebs and bats coming out of the screen) 

It was descibed as ‘an entertaining romp into 50’s horror.’  Maybe that sums it up perfectly !!!

The art of Matte Painting in films really fascinates me.

Imagine a location which had open fields and a hill with horse riders going up the hill. The story calls for a castle on the hill BUT there is none – so a castle is painted on to a glass in front of the camera and exactly and painstakingly matched up to the action below. The result on screen is that we see the riders heading up hill toward the castle which we see as a wonderful shot when half of the picture or more is painted.

Above: Matte Shots by Peter Ellenshaw on ‘Darby O’Gill’ – a film with astonishing special effects set in Ireland – Filmed in Hollywood.

Being able to marry painted backgrounds on glass to real action foregrounds opened up a new world to film makers.  To get it right this is a very complex operatioin requiring  hours of painstaking labour with many retakes to obtain perfection.

Peter Ellenshaw was the Matte genius that Walt Disney signed up on a lifetime contract to work on his films starting with Treasure Island in 1950. He made a career out of mixing fantasy with reality to make make-believe worlds come to life

Walt Disney began to make period feature movies in England – from funds which were effectively ‘locked in’ to this country after the war.   He used English actors in his films  Treasure Island, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose, and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue.  Peter Ellenshaw joined Disney at this time and  worked on all four. He began as a matte artist and special effects artist, and later in his career became a production designer. It was the start of a long association with Walt Disney.  Over the next four decades, Ellenshaw worked on the largest and most-challenging projects the Disney studios made—and won two Academy Awards for his work.

He was born in England  in 1913.   A neighbour Walter Percy Day a famous matte artist of his time, discovered Ellenshaw’s talent and took him on as an assistant. Mattes are realistic paintings done on glass and then matched to live action shots – the result can be breathtaking – see below The Black Narcissus which was done by Percy Day

Above – The incredible matte painting on Black Narcissus done by Percy Day.

During his amazing film career, Ellenshaw has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

Ellenshaw regarded Walt Disney as a source of inspiration and a wonderful friend.         “Walt had the ability to communicate with artists.” Recalls Ellenshaw. “He’d talk to you on your level – artist to artist. He used to say, ‘I can’t draw, Peter.  ‘ But he had the soul of an artist, and he had a wonderful way on transferring his enthusiasm to you.”

In 1964Peter  Ellenshaw won the Best Special Visual Effects Academy Award  for his astounding matte work in Walt Disney’s beloved line-action musical-fantasy Mary Poppins  and in this he created some beautiful vistas of Victorian London which gave a wonderful style to the film.

On Mary Poppins above – the top picture shows the small segment of the picture  that had  David Tomlinson walking on a wet studio floor BUT the lower one shows how we saw the film on screen – he is walking through a London Park – Thanks to a matte painting and we never knew !!!

In 1993, Ellenshaw was officially designated a “Disney Legend” by The Walt Disney Company.

Black Narcissus    –   The above shots just shows how good this process was – The top picture shows how the film was shot in the studio and below – the matte painting around the action then takes us to a Himalayan Convent with the wind whistling around us –  Astonishing but so real.

Percy Day.

Maybe I should have the title to this post  Percy Day – Matte Artist Genius because he certainly was and taught Peter Ellenshaw  all he knew. Percy Day had worked on silent films and found some fame here.    Much later he worked for Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger on such films as  ‘I know Where I’m Going’ (1945) which contains a sequence in which the hero and heroine’s boat gets sucked into the Corryvreckan whirlapool.   In his autobiography Powell recalled that Day created the whirlpool out of plastic material resembling gelatine, mounted on an eccentric arm which could be whirled around at varying speeds in a tank of water filmed with a high-speed camera running in reverse.

Incredibly Black Narcissus ( 1947) was shot entirely on the Pinewood Studios backlot with matte of the Himalayan mountain range painted by Percy Day and his assistants and illustarted above.

Black Narcissus was voted in a 2005 poll organised by The Times newspaper as the best British film of all time.

 Another matte above – Anyone like me with a fear of heights would go dizzy on viewing this on the large cinema screen.

These films were enhanced by this wonderfully thought out process.

Louis Armstrong ( OR as he was billed  MR. Louis Armstrong ) opens the film singing the song ‘High Society’ on a bus travelling to the wedding destination where we will meet Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Celeste Holm and many others.

Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly)  who, having been through one marriage to likable musician C.K. Dexter Haven (Bing Crosby)  is about to enter another with a rather stuffy, boring social climber.    Dexter and Mike Connor (Frank Sinatra)  a reporter covering the wedding  help Tracy  realise whom she really should marry.

Who could ever forget Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby singing ‘What a swell Party this is’   with that memorable line –  ‘Have you heard it’s in the stars -Next July we collide with Mars’

Grace Kelly (12 November 1929–14 September 1982)

One of the most beautiful women in movies or indeed anywhere come to that although her film career was very short it was very memorable.

Even more than thirty years after Grace Kelly’s  untimely death she remains an embodiment of beauty and glamour both royally and on film.

Admirers recognise her as the embodiment of how we percieve royalty  to be – as well as a critically-acclaimed actress and the elegant consort of  Monaco,  a loyal friend  and of course  loving mother.

Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia USA  to John and Margaret Kelly.  John Kelly her father, was a wealthy contractor.  At a young age,  Grace decided she wanted to become an actress, and studied acting – mainly in the theatre at that time – at New York City’s American Academy of Dramatic Art and worked as a stage actress and model before moving to Hollywood.   During her time in New York Grace  appeared on the covers of magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Redbook and even promoted Old Gold cigarettes.

Grace made her film debut  in a minor supporting role, but then starred in legendary western High Noon in which she played a Quaker bride alongside Gary Cooper.

Grace next  appeared in Mogambo along with Clark Gable.  Rumours had it that she had a romantic involvement with him during the making of this film

They were out in East Africa together for a number of weeks while filming – Will probably come back to Mogambo in a later post.  For this part she got an  Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

 Above – Clark Gable and Grace Kelly in Mogambo

She then sparked  the interest of director Alfred Hitchcock, who made  Grace into his ideal of the elegant, beautiful blonde and then cast her in three of his finest films of the fifties  –  Dial M for Murder,  Rear Window  and To Catch a Thief.

She also made Green Fire in 1954 with Stewart Granger but apparently she was somewhat less than impressed by him.

The Country Girl  then won her the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role of 1954.

Grace received a golden record for the hit song True Love from High Society.

Above: Grace Kelly

Later that year, she married Prince Rainier Grimaldi III of Monaco to become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.  She gave up her successful acting career in which she had made only eleven films –  very few really for such a well remembered actress although I do think that she was very lucky to be chosen for the films she appeared in and the Directors and Actors she worked with.

She had three children –  Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Grace died on 14 September 1982 after her car went off a road in the cliffs of Monaco.

Norman , a lowly stock clerk at Burridge’s department store,   has fallen in in love with another employee, Sally Wilson played by Lana Morris  but he hasn’t been able to pluck up the courage to let her know how he feels. When he falls out  with the new head of the store, Augustus Freeman  played by his long time film straight man Jerry Desmonde he is promptly fired. As he is leaving the store he sees an older lady (Margaret Rutherford) seemingly struggling with a very lareg suitcase and he goes to help her . Freeman sees Norman assisting a “customer” and rehires him.

Meanwhile, Peggy Drew played by Moira Lister the store’s personnel manager is plotting to rob the store along with her boyfriend Gerald (Derek Bond) . Norman is fired and rehired again and again but his escapades somehow manage to benefit the store.

He thwarts the robbery in the end and wins the girl but not before some ‘intersting’ escapades.

Lana Morris

Lana Morris was described as a  bright-eyed brunette who  brought a refreshing liveliness and sense of humour to British films in the Fifties.

For some reason that I cannot rationalise I love Denham Film Studios – probably because as a child we would holiday down in St.Albans and would travel to Windsor on many occasions, always in my Dad’s car,   and we would  pass by these studios. Films were very much of interest to us all at the time and we sort of viewed these studios as a magic place which in a way it was.  Sadly though by the time of our journeys everything was coming to an end there – in fact the very last film was made in the summer of 1951.

The Studios were built in 1936 and the founder Alexander Korda planned to outsize anything Hollywood could offer and he nearly pulled it off.   The Second World War  came at the wrong time for this venture though.

Denham Film Studios – below

Situated on a 165 acre site near to the village of  Denham in Buckinghamshire  it was at the time  the largest facility of its kind in the UK and Europe.    In the picture above you can see behind  the River Colne and to the left the Denham lake.  These areas proved ideal locations for such films as The History of Mr. Polly and Treasure Island.

Something remains of the studios though in that a short ten minute film called A Day at Denham – and a Link is below to enable you to see it:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9y2YGbacZM.

 Ken Annakin directed the very last film made at Denham in the summer of 1951.  In his autobiography he writes ‘ I drove through the gates of Denham Studios, gazing in awe at the four large sound stages which had been built by Sir Alexander Korda, for his great series of British movies from The Private Lives of Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) through The Thief of Baghdad (Conrad Veidt and Sabu) to Things to Come (H.G.Wells).

Two of the stages were over 200 ft long and both would be filled by enormous sets for his film.

During this time Princess Elizabeth our future Queen visited Denham and watched some of the scenes being filmed and was taken round  the outside sets by Walt Disney who came over to England during that summer to oversee the filming.

Alexander Korda’s house in Denham – below

Below is the house in Denham Village which was owned by Alexander Korda and his wife Merle Oberon and which was later purchased  by John Mills and his wife.

The studios were known by various names during their lifetime including London Film Studios, the home of Korda’s London Films  and later the D&P Studios after the merger with Pinewood which is just up the road.

A place that had been a dream factory is now virtually gone except for the Rank factory on  the front.   The vast majority of it was demolished around 1976. That would have been a very sad time for film fans the world over.

Six Days to Bellus ….

Five Days to Bellus ….

Four Days to Bellus …..         and so the tension builds as Bellus is on collision course with the Earth.

I remember this film being released when I was at junior school and recall my fascination with it at the time and maybe even now.   There was some kind of colour strip preview in the press or whatever releases they did and there was a picture of a very large planet – Bellus – coming in to collide with the earth – it certainly scared me at the time.

This was another George Pal special effects film but apparently the budget was so low that they had to use  an enlarged print when the spaceship lands in the new world and it did not look at all realistic. It should have been a good quality matte painting – Oh for a Peter Ellenshaw working on this film – we would have seen something really special and then I think the film could have been a classic.

 When Worlds Collide is a 1951 science fiction film starring Richard Derr  and Barbara Rush.     Here we have  a ninety minute adventure as new star Bellus is discovered, but found to be on a collision course with Earth.  There is though  a slight chance of  avoiding certain  destruction by building a spaceship to journey  to planet Zyra in orbit around Bellus.    Millionaire, Sydney Stanton, played by John Hoyt   funds the escape project and attempts to pull all the strings.  As they all go to board the spaceship  Dr. Cole Hendron,  played by Larry Keating  prevents Stanton along with himself from embarking.   Stanton attempts to walk in a desperate and vain effort to board as the ship blasts off.  When Worlds Collide is filmed in Technicolor.

Above – The New World

See the Trailer to When Worlds Collide on this link below :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VXeT-yHNcFI

Barbara Rush we have already mentioned in a previous post – Harry Black. This though was one of her very first films  and she looked good in it.

Richard Derr

This film gave him perhaps his only starring role but he had acted from the early forties and continued into the eighties initially in film and then a lot of TV. He looks to have appeared in nearly all the US TV series that we used to see such as Charlies Angels, Cannon, The Outer Limits, Streets of San Fransisco, Perry Mason, The Phil Silvers Show, Starsky and Hutch, Barnaby Jones, Dallas, and Star Trek.

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee !

The film was effectively  three television episodes stitched together.   It remains to this day Walt Disney’s most successful television film project.  The Davy Crockett phenonemon sparked a national (and later transatlantic) craze for all things related to the character.

The success of the film prompted Walt Disney to create a prequel entitled Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

Actor Fess Parker  became so identified with the role that in 1964 he starred in a successful television series Danel Boone about another American frontiersman.

Davy Crockett took the world by storm in 1956. All the young lads in England at least ran around in Davy Crockett hats and the song from the film was on the radio all the time.

Above – Picture of the Fess Parker Hotel, Santa Barbara.

Fess Parker was never that comfortable with the role. He didn’t care for horse riding and wearing buckskin made him uncomfortable. He was himself more at home in a lounge suit in the modern day world and was quite sophisticated. However fate sometimes casts you into a different mould and that certainly happened here.  He invested his earnings very shrewdly and purchased a lot of property and land in and around Santa Barbara which was a bit out of the way in those days.  Another actor who had discovered the area had been the wonderful English film actor Ronald Colman who had purchased the San Ysidro Hotel near there and in fact retired and died there in 1958.Fess Parker’s investments really paid off – he did still own the Fess Parker Hotel right down close to the beach there – which is now run by a hotel chain. He bought a farm close by and created a vineyard and became an international supplier and expert on wine.

Fess Parker died of natural causes on March 18, 2010, at his home in Santa Ynez, California, near the Fess Parker Winery.

He was buried with his parents in Santa Barbara Cemetery, in Santa Barbara, California.

Buddy Ebsen

Played Davy Crockett’s sidekick in the series but had originally been a song and dance man – and actually had been cast as the scarecrow and then switched to play the Tin Man by MGM in The Wizard of Oz  but he suffered a paint allergy and had to withdraw from the classic film.

Above – Buddy Ebsen in an earlier western with Rex Allen. 

He later became well known for his role as Jed Clampett in The Beverley Hillbillies and after this he played the title role in the 1970s TV detective series Barnaby Jones. He died in 2003.

Walt Disney

This is someone who  we will be coming back to again and again on this Blog because he in many ways he defined the film industry with his ability to pull out the unexpected and the successful and who could combine so many talents in  order to reach the final product which he instinctively knew that his audience would want.

My own view is that it was his visit to England in 1950 for Treasure Island and then The Story of Robin Hood  that coincided with the company moving forward into very profitable times.  I think the films he made here – particularly those two – proved a very lucky break for him and it then catapulted him into Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea  and Davy Crockett among others.

But it was the two films at Denham Film Studios here in England with its huge area sloping down to the River Colne,  that I am going so far as to say, were THE most important ones he ever made.

Below – Another view of the Fess Parker Hotel, Santa Barbara.