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ARDMORE STUDIOS
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it’s not so much justified as essential. Ardmore has now been totally upgraded technically wise and fully refurbished to ensure we are able to cope with the whole cross-section of production.”
The most recent reconstruction was just last year when a former workshop area was transformed into a new ‘E’ sound stage with 6,300 square feet plus accompanying dressing room and make-up facilities.
This now joins ‘A’ Stage with 8,000 sq ft, incorporat- ing an underground tank and camera pit, ‘B’ Stage with 8,000 sq ft, ‘C’ Stage with 3,000 sq ft and ‘D’ Stage, the biggest at 15,000 sq ft.
The work was made especially necessary because Moriarty had two big TV series on site. One was BBC’s popular Ballykissangel, which Ardmore has housed for three seasons at 9-10 months at a time, and the other, an ambitious children’s show for American television called Mystic Knights, produced by Saban. “That sort of steady flow has been crucial for us,” he says. “We like to play up the glamorous side of the industry, but the reality is, we are a facto- ry making film and like any factory you need some- thing to keep the conveyor belt going.”
With those shows and films such as Angela’s Ashes and Dancing At Lughnasa the last couple of years have been very busy but then, don’t you know
it, a period of inactivity suddenly broke out. “There were times this past summer,” Moriarty now reflects, “when if someone had knocked at the door I would have told them they could start when they wanted. It’s such a strange business because now just a few months on from that I’m having to juggle to accom- modate everyone.”
A simple call in to the Ardmore switchboard merely hints at the various projects at differing stages of production. For starters, there’s Steve (The Advent ures Of Pinocchio) Barron’s new live- action/animatronic fantasy Rat, and Barry (Rain Man, Wag The Dog) Levinson’s latest Everlasting Piece.
Film studios are much like nightclubs; once you are inside, you quickly forget which country you are in. There are certain exceptions to this rule, but the only one I know about is Ireland.” The
speaker was Sir Peter Ustinov, that most cos- mopolitan of actors and inveterate globetrot- ter talking about Ardmore where he has worked on at least three occasions (for The Last Remake Of Beau Geste, The Purple Taxi and The Old Curiosity Shop).
Ireland has always provided an attractive background for international film-makers, especially from across the Atlantic but until the late 1950s the country with so much local talent to offer in the shape of actors, writers and directors seemed sadly to lack a national identity of its own as a permanent base for the film community.
All that changed just over 40 years ago with the birth of Ardmore, whose opening cer- emony was conducted by the then Minister of Industry and Commerce, while the studio now benefits from the full co-operation of the Irish Army (which certainly was put to good use by Mel Gibson when he was sensibly persuaded over to Ireland to shoot his award winning
Braveheart), as well as the police and all gov- ernment civil service departments.
The first three productions to come out of Ardmore were very Irish in content, each with a Hollywood star supported by a wealth of homegrown talents from Dublin’s world- renowned Abbey Theatre. I was personally involved from the start in my role as chief pub- licity writer for British Lion Films, the UK dis- tributors in 1958 of Sally’s Irish Rogue (star- ring Julie Harris), Broth Of a Boy (with Hollywood’s Oscar-wining Irishman Bar r y Fitzgerald), and Home Is The Hero (with hard man Arthur Kennedy).
All were made at Ardmore by indepen- dent producer Emmet Dalton using a nucleus of both English and Irish technicians. Dalton went on to produce a further four films at the studio: This Other Eden (starring his daughter Audrey Dalton opposite Leslie Phillips), Lies My Father Told Me (Betsy Blair), The Middle Of Nowhere (John Cassavet es, Elizabet h Sellars, David Farrar), and The Devil’s Agent (Peter Van Eyck, Marianne Koch, McDonald Carey with Christopher Lee, Billie Whitelaw and Peter Cushing completing a truly cos- mopolitan cast). From the early Sixties on, as
Ardmore’s reputation grew so did the Hollywood and international producing/direct- ing talents descending regularly on the studio. Indeed the studio might have been described as an outpost of Tinseltown with its stages kept busy with the likes of Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, Rod Steiger, Fred Astaire, Kim Novak, Lee Remick, Aldo Ray, Stuart Whitman, Paul Newman, Pat Boone, Don Mur ray, Laurence Harvey, Sean Connery, James Mason, David Niven, Deborah Ker r, Rod Taylor, George Peppard and Ursula Andress - just a few of the many.
Add to that list such illustrious names as
Sir Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sir Peter Ustinov, Glynis Johns, Helen Mirren, Julie Christie, Sarah Miles, Anne Heywood, Sir John M i l l s , C h ar l o t t e R am p l i n g , J u l i a R o b e r t s , Michael York, Margaret Lockwood, Sir Michael Redgrave, Dennis Price, Ben Kingsley, Joanna Lumley, Maggie Smith and Meryl Streep.
Shake Hands With The Devil, starring James Cagney, was the first major film to be shot at Ardmore, which occupies the site of a former country estate. Bearing all the require- ments of a complete and fully-equipped film- making centre, in 1964 the producers of Ballad
In Blue (Ray Charles. Dawn Addams) found the studio ideal for five weeks of interior shooting while London and Paris served as principal locations for the film, directed by Paul Henreid.
Other classic films based there include: A Terrible Beauty (Robert Mitchum), Term Of Trial (Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret), The Running Man (Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick), Of Human Bondage (Laurence Harvey, Kim Novak), Young Cassidy (on which cinematog- rapher Jack Cardiff deputised for director John Ford), The Blue Max (James Mason, George Peppard), The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (Richard Burton, Claire Bloom), The Mackintosh Man (Paul Newman), Darling Lili (Rock Hudson, Julie Andrews), The List Of Adrian Messenger (George C Scott, Kirk Douglas), Country Dance (Peter O’Toole), Quackser Fortune Has A Cousin In The Bronx (Gene Wilder, Margot Kidder), Black Beauty (Mark Lester) and Stanley Kubrick’s ravishing and erotic Barry Lyndon, with Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson.
A particular triumph for the Ardmore artisans was the triple Oscar-winning The Lion In Winter, co-starring Peter O’Toole, Katharine
Photos: stills from Dancing at Lughnasa; My Left Foot; Braveheart (All courtesy BFI Stills & Posters).
Stills courtesy BFI Stills & Posters/Moviestore Collection/Iain McAsh/Graffiti/Foyer/All copyright owners acknowledged where known.
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ARDMORE
ARDMORE