The world film encyclopedia (1933)

Round the Studios 38 7 old days. True, Universal City has a million-dollar developing and printing factory, a scenario department of thirty-five famous writers, a post office, and a golf course. Still, veterans sigh for the days when Universal City was a harum-scarum, haphazard movie-factory, with stars rising in a night and falling in a dsLy, cowboys firing pistols in the streets, and mad ventures turning in a breath to triumphs. Great Britain Beaconsfield By! fish Lion Film Corporation, Ltd., Beaconsfield, Bucks. FILi\IS have brought the hum of modern industry to old, sleepy places. Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, was a typical English country town, with its wide main crossing, its two main streets empty at most times, and its cluster of quiet weathered houses dreaming under the midday sun. The British Lion Corporation came, and its studio rose to stir the town to activity. To-day Beaconsfield mothers bring their babies to act in child scenes at the studio (there were fifty of them there one day during the summer). Beaconsfield boys go to see what film stars do to earn their salaries. The studio is, in effect, a single production unit, under one high roof ridge, but there is ample floor space for all film requirements. Alongside the main building there is a row of flat-roofed workshops, containing plasterers', propert}^ carpenters', and scenery rooms. Separated from the main block by a concrete causeway are projection theatre, offices, and a row of film vaults. The whole studio stands in a wide tract of grassland surrounded by a high fence. This space is frequently used when a film necessitates the building of extensive exterior sets. It is essentially a breezy studio, although, these days a sense of sadness still hangs over the place. For the British Lion studios will never be quite the same as they were when Edgar Wallace, the merriest, the most cheerful of all those mcrr}'' film-makers, was alive, and the ruling genius of the studios. He was, of course, chairman of the British Lion Film Corporation, as well as the author of some of its most successful films. Such films as The Flying Squad originally brought fame to Beaconsfield, when made in silent form ; and the talkie version, together with Tlie Old Man, Whiieface, The Frightened Lady, and other Wallace thrillers, met with the same success. Beaconsfield is not a pretentious studio. It is not built of white marble and chromium, and the cafe does not run with champaigne. But some of the finest of Britain's films have been made there, and there exists in this country no more efficient and cheerful band of film-makers. Ealing Green Associated Radio Pictures, Ltd., Ealing Green, London, W.$. JUST as the Gaumont-British studio stands where it stood in 1914, on one of England's original studio sites, so A.R.P., at Ealing, have built their up-to-date studio not twenty yards from what remains of the