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Although nestling on one of the The Saint’s Return), Honor Blackman (The John Ireland came when he walked
Glass Cage), Kay Kendall (Wings Of Danger) and the ever delectable Eunice Gayson (To Have And To Hold).
Directors who worked during the stu- dio’s most prolific period included Montgomery Tully, Ken Hughes, Francis Searle, Val Guest and Terence Fisher (who came into his own with the Dracula and Frankenstein sequels).
“Bray was one of the happiest studios I’ve ever worked in,” according to veteran writer-director Val Guest. “We all knew each other and were like a big family.” In London last summer from his home in Palm Springs, Val told me of how he became a ‘regular’ at Bray in the mid-1950’s.
“I met Ben Lyon in the street and he said he was going to do these two films, Life With the Lyons and The Lyons In Paris at the studio with his wife, Bebe Daniels, and their two grown-up children, Richard and Barbara. They were both family comedies made for Exclusive. There wasn’t much money, but we did manage to get to Paris for the second film. Then I wrote and direct- ed a thriller, Break In the Circle, also for Exclusive at Bray, starring Forrest Tucker with the Hungarian actress Eva Bartok.
“I wasn’t interested in the horror
genre at all,” Guest admits. “It all began with The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955. I hadn’t even seen Nigel Kneale’s original TV series although my wife (American actress Yolande Donlan) had. We were going on hol- iday to Tangier and Hammer producer Tony Hinds was at the airport with a stack of fourteen or fifteen of the television scripts, and asked me to turn them into a feature film.”
Guest’s cinematic re-working of The Quatermass Xperiment proved a runaway success, paving the way for his succeeding Hammer assignments including Quatermass ll, The Men Of Sherwood Forest, The Abominable Snowman, The Camp On Blood Island and Yesterday’s Enemy.
In my own case, The Glass Cage was in full production for my first Bray visit. A memorable introduction to Hollywood star
loveliest stretches of the Thames, with its riverside site between Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton, for most people the
compact Bray Studios with its four stages and underwater tanks will always be remembered for much darker reasons. For here, along with the neighbouring Gothic Oakley Court, of the fiercesome turrets and gargoyles, the original Hammer House of Horrors was born.
The house which forms the main stu- dio building was known as Down Place, Water Oakley, and belonged to l7th century bookseller Jacob Tonson, literary founder of the Kit-Kat Club within its premises, and named after publican Christopher Catt who supplied mutton pies to its thirty-nine members. Much has happened since then, including the appearance of the ghostly apparition known as the Blue Lady. A fitting residence for the Hammer horror-makers who purchased the house when it ceased to be a private residence in 1949. It became Bray Studios in 1951 remaining under the same ownership for the following sixteen years until vacated by Hammer in 1966.
Even today the studio resembles a well- run country club or yacht marina, and strangers to the area have often
found themselves on the waterside
frontage while asking passing tech-
nicians for details of membership.
My earliest memories of Bray, between 1953/55, actually pre-date the horror era when Exclusive Films, as the company was then known, were regularly churning out low-budget thrillers in association with their American partners, Robert Lippert Productions.
The beginning of the ‘Fifties
thus saw many Hollywood stars
making the Transatlantic cross-
ing, where they enjoyed the stu-
dio’s typically British ambience.
From this period, I can recall see-
ing Lizabeth Scott, Paul Henreid,
Robert Preston, George Brent,
Richard Carlson, Zachary Scott,
Cesar Romero, Dane Clark,
Barbara Payt on, Louis (The
Saint) Hayward, Alex Nicol, Tom
Conway, Hillary Brooke, Paulette Goddard, Eva Bartok, Dan Duryea, Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges, Howard Duff, Brian Donlevy, Don Taylor, John Ireland and Forrest Tucker, to name but a few.
In 1951, Robert Preston arrived for Cloudburst, the first Exclusive film to be shot at Bray. It was followed by Whispering Smith Hits London, The Last Page, Wings Of Danger, Stolen Face, Lady In the Fog, Mantrap, The Gambler And the Lady, Four-Sided Triangle, Spaceways, The Flanagan Boy, The Saint’s Return, Thirty- Six Hours, Face the Music, Blood Orange, The House Across the Lake, The Stranger Came Home, Five Days, Men Of Sherwood Forest, Mask Of Dust, Third Party Risk, Murder By Proxy, The Glass Cage and Break In the Circle.
Early appearances in Bray films were made by Diana Dors (The Last Page and
over and swatted a fly off my head with a rolled-up copy of the local newspaper, The Maidenhead Advertiser, whose reporter and photographers became familiar faces on the set. Also on call that day were char- acter actors Eric Pohlmann, Ferdy Mayne, Geoffrey Keen and Sidney James, all fre- quent members of the Bray ‘rep’. There was also the towering figure of Ber nar d Bresslaw (who still spelt his surname as Bresslau), later to become the star of Hammer comedies as Popeye in I Only Arsked and The Ugly Duckling. Many of the supporting players were signed for their circus skills, while American actress Valerie Vernon had a magnificent butterfly tattooed across her back, flapping its wings whenever she moved her shoulderblades.
Break In the Circle was only the sec- ond of Hammer’s films to be shot in colour, so I had to change footwear with one of the extras playing a Hamburg policeman who was noticably wearing brown shoes which eagle-eyed cinemagoers would surely have been quick to spot. My regulation black best suited the roles!
For The Quatermass Xperiment I was one of the crowd players staring up at the darkening sky (day for night), opposite the
old garage in Bray village, supposedly watching for the crash landing of the rocketship carrying ill-fated lone space traveller Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) back to create havoc on our planet.
The inhabitants of Bray were long accustomed to seeing famous stars their midst from the nearby studio.
For Women Without Men stat- uesque blonde American leading lady Beverly Michaels was joined by Brit co- stars Joan Rice, Valerie White and Thora Hird (not then a Dame!) for loca- tion shooting at St. Michael’s Parish Church, immortalised by the poem The Vicar of Bray.
Another popular location from the Exclusive days were the arches behind Windsor’s Rail Station, now part of a shopping mall, but which can now be seen in all its black-and-white glory in TV re-runs of Break In the Circle, and with Richard Wordsworth painfully transmuting from human form into vegetable matter in The
Quatermass Xperiment.
All this, and much more, was captured
by veteran unit stillsman Johnny Jay, whose superb photography remains today as a per- manent pictorial record of the Exclusive/Hammer early years at Bray. And visiting Hollywood celebrities were always assured of a warm welcome at the Hind’s Head, the friendly local hostelry.
From supporting features, the compa- ny then turned to the lucrative horror mar- ket, bringing international stardom to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, along with director Terence Fisher, whose flourishing career under the Exclusive banner had begun with The Last Page in 1951.
Seven years later he came into his own with Dracula and The Revenge Of Frankenstein, bringing the Hammer name to a worlwide audience. Under his guid-
Hollywood star Beverly Michaels with Iain F McAsh and Thora Hird outside Bray Parish Church on location for Hammer’s 1955 production of the prison drama, Women Without Men.
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Stills courtesy BFI Stills & Posters/Moviestore Collection/Iain McAsh/Graffiti/Foyer/All copyright owners acknowledged where known.