Another week has gone but I find time passes quickly, even when self isolating. I have been catching up on a stack of unread books, including biographies of Olivia de Havilland, Bette Davis and George Raft, plus a number of unwatched DVDs.

I am about to view a 1950s film entitled The Strange World Of Planet X, which was shot at what is now the BBC Elstree Centre in the late 1950s. The hero was played by fading Hollywood star Forrest Tucker and the plot involves an alien and a mad scientist. Low budget British movies in those days would import old Tinseltown names for a few days filming in the hope it would help the box office.

Today our cyber walk down Memory Lane takes us back to Elstree Studios in 1954 to see what was happening. It turns out to be a slim year for the studio with only four productions, but one was a classic. Of course that was The Dam Busters, starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. I think the film stands up very well except for the special effects - and who does not know the theme tune?

The movie was not a big hit in the important American market but was very popular in the UK. For the last few years there has been talk of a remake and last I heard the rights were with Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, with a new script written by Stephen Fry. However, it seems to have gone on the back burner and no doubt some of the real life 617 squadron crew, who were Canadian, will be played by Americans to boost the box office appeal.

The other big film shooting at Elstree that year was Moby Dick, for which Warner Brothers, which co-owned the studio, built an outdoor effects tank with sky backing and a giant reservoir tank from which water could be pumped in and out. The latter was demolished to make way for Tesco. The effects tank in recent years was the base of the Big Brother house and is now the proposed site for two new giant sound stages. From memory the sky backing was taken down as it interfered with the large exterior hotel set built by Kubrick for The Shining. By that time the tank was rarely used.

Years later I was in contact with the star of the film, Gregory Peck, who told me he enjoyed working at the studio where he had also made part of Captain Horatio Hornblower a couple of years earlier. During the Save Our Studio campaign Greg sent me a photo of himself signed 'from an Elstree veteran good luck'.

Greg told me "In Moby Dick the famed Orson Welles came to the studio to be a guest star in the picture. He strangely liked to have a false nose in his screen appearances, saying it helped him with the character! "

The two forgotten films shot at Elstree in 1954 still had good casts. The first starred Dirk Bogarde and was called For Better For Worse. At this time Dirk mainly starred in Rank films and was known as the 'darling of the Odeons', which was the cinema chain Rank owned. Women swooned over his screen appearances and it was a closely guarded secret that he was gay, which at that time would have destroyed their box office star.

I met him twice towards the end of his life and I felt he was a slightly embittered man. I guess he was a prisoner of his own image and of the era in which he lived.

Lastly came Lilacs In The Spring with the unlikely pairing of the drink and drug womaniser Errol Flynn with the prim and proper Dame Anna Neagle. A match made in heaven and how did the filming go? Well, that is a tale for another day. Until next time remember when, not if, this time passes we will do a conga down Memory Lane!

  • Paul Welsh MBE is a Borehamwood writer and historian of Elstree Studios