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In the late Fifties, filmmakers John and Roy Boulting, along with Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, took over total control when Shepperton entered the British Lion era. Many of the now classic Boulting comedies were made dur- ing this highly productive period including Private’s Progress, Brothers-In-Law, Lucky Jim, Carlton Browne Of The FO, Happy Is The Bride, and Heaven’s Above. The Launder- Gilliat team responded with Left, Right And Centre and The Bridal Path. Ian Carmichael established his reputation under the Boulting banner in several of these British- to-the-core romps, most notably I’m All Right, Jack starring Peter Seller s as militant shop steward Fred Kite. Both Carmichael and Sellers headed the star roster of British Lion’s contract artistes at this time, including some left over from the earlier Korda period.
Others notables included
Tony Britten, Laurence Harvey, Margaret Leighton, Denholm Elliott, Diane Cilento, Heather Sears, Ian Bannen, Virginia Gaskell, Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, Terry Thomas and Elizabeth Sellars. PR veteran Ken Green was put in charge of these various con- tract artistes’ personal publicity.
Bryan Forbes and Richard Attenborough teamed up to make The Angry Silence, while Laurence Olivier (no stranger to Shepperton) played the seedy comic Archie Rice in Osborne’s The Entertainer. Comedy held sway in 1972 with filming of the big screen version of the TV hit Dad’s Army, directed by the late Norman Cohen.
Over the years, Shepperton has played host to everything from St. Trinian’s, those outra- geously sexy schoolgirls created in the pen-and-ink cartoons of Ronald Searle, to the bumbling antics of Peter Sellers as French flic Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the Pink Panther series; Olivier’s hunchbacked Richard lll; Ken Russell’s vision of Lisztomania starring Roger Daltrey as the world’s first ‘pop’ music idol and the Crazy Gang made their last film here - Life Is A Circus. Musicals varied from Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard to Spiceworld: The Movie starring, yes 5 Spices!.
The great Charlie Chaplin
chose Shepperton in 1957 for A King ln New York, as did Walt Disney for Greyfriars Bobby and The Horsemasters in 1961.
Historical pageants were vividly bought to life on the stu- dio’s stages for A Man For All Seasons, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Becket, Cromwell, Anne Of The Thousand Days and Mary, Queen Of Scots, chosen as the Royal Film Performance for 1972.
The monster makers took over in the early Seventies led by Amicus, the company headed by the Americans Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, who made twenty-five of their horror movies at Shepperton. They were the clos- est rivals to Britain’s Hammer Films who, incidentally, turned to comedy at Shepperton for A Weekend With Lulu, a caravan caper teaming Bob Monkhouse, Leslie Phillips and Shirley Eaton.
From across the Atlantic, American International Pictures also made the studio their British base during the Sixties with Vincent Price starring in several of his British set pieces, including Masque Of the Red Death, The Oblong Box, Scream And Scream Again and Cry Of the Banshee, and Boris Karloff shot his last film, Die, Monster, Die.
In 1970, AlP went upmarket with Emily Bronte’s classic Wuthering Heights, starring a future 007, Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff. Another prehistoric romp from Amicus followed in 1975 with The Land That Time Forgot, based on Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burrough’s novel, star- ring TV’s Doug McClure rescuing tasty Susan Penhaligon from the jaws of ravenous dinosaurs and giant pre-world pterodactyls.
Fred Zinnemann returned to Shepperton for The Day of the Jackal, while John Huston made Moulin Rouge and The African Queen. Otto Preminger burnt Jean Seberg at Shepperton’s stake as his Saint Joan. Joan Collins joined the veteran duo of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby on The Road To Hong Kong.
Gregor y Peck starred in the Guns Of Navarone with a star cast as long as your arm and Woody Allen made his only British film appearance at Shepperton in the multi-starrer James Bond spoof, Casino Royale, which boasted no
fewer than five directors: John Huston, Robert Parrish, Joe McGrath, Val Guest and Richard Talmadge.Bon viveur Peter Ustinov was a portly Caliph for the 1970 Thief Of Baghdad, wit h Roddy McDowall and Terence Stamp.
Distinguished productions included Stanley Kubrick (Doctor Strangelove), Jack Clayton (Room At the Top, The Innocents and T h e P u m p k i n E at e r ) , S i r C a r o l Reed (The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, A Kid For Two Farthings, Trapeze) and David Lean’s final film (A Passage To India). Christopher Miles, (Priest Of Love) and classics such as The Winslow Boy, The Wooden Horse, The Red Beret, The Tales Of Hoffman, The Colditz Story, Summer Madness, I Am A Camera, Cockleshell Heroes, Hobson’s Choice, The Victors, Oliver!, Scrooge, Young Winston, The Elephant Man, The Servant, Room At The Top, Gandhi, Out Of Africa and Cry Freedom.
Lord Attenborough chose the studio for his Chaplin biopic, fol- l o w e d b y S h ad o w l an d s . N e i l J o r d a n m a d e T h e C o m p an y O f Wolves and The Crying Game. Kenneth Branagh shot Henry V, Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at Shepperton.
More international prestige was garnered by The Madness Of King George, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Carrington, Restoration and Mrs. Dalloway, and two action-adventures with major Hollywood stars Mel Gibson (Braveheart) and Kevin Costner (Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves), while Sylvester Stallone became quite simply, Judge Dredd.
Shepperton under the stew- ardship of the great filmaking brothers Ridley (Alien, Blade Runner) and Tony (Top Gun) Scott is set to thrive. Probably more than any other British stu- dio, Shepperton has attracted pro- duction siblings, first with the Kordas (Alexander, Vincent and Zoltan), then the Boulting twins during the British Lion period in the Fifties, and now the Scotts.
“By creating an environment which fully understands the needs of filmmakers everywhere, we hope to encourage movie direc- tors from all over the globe to regard Shepperton as an attractive
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