Elstree Calling
An unofficial website dedicated to Elstree Studios
Ice Cold At Alex:
With the death of John Maxwell, the original saviour of Elstree Studios, in 1940, only time would tell what the future would be for the studios.
Although not everyone who passes the John Maxwell Building, whether they be working at or visiting Elstree Studios, knows of his contribution to the history of Elstree, they owe him a great deal.
It could be said that the expression "winds of change", made in a speech by the then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan on February 3, 1960, could almost have been uttered at British International Pictures (BIP) at the end of the Second World War.
Warner Brothers then owned a greater part of Maxwell's estate, having brought the remaining shares from his wife, and a new board subsequently made the decision to rebuild the old BIP Studios, now known as ABPC.
With new stages and other studios buildings set to dominate the Borehamwood-based site, the decision was also taken to bring in new talent to work in every department of the rebuilt complex. The responsibility to find new actors and actresses to work in front of the camera became the responsibility of Robert Lennard, who had originally worked as a casting director at BIP before the war.
September 1948 would mark a milestone in the town. With building at the site finally complete, cinema-goers desperate for their fix of post-war film entertainmeny were treated to Man on the Run, starring Derek Farr and Kenneth Moore.
Films that would subsequently take their turn in front of the camera included The Hasty Heart, which included then future US president Ronald Regan in the cast, Stage Fright, in which Alfred Hitchcock made a brief return to his old stomping ground, and Ivor Novello's musical, The Dancing Years.
Cienma-goers still had an appetite to see films which war-related themes, and in the Fifties, A.B.P.C. produced several titles that used aspects of the Second World War for their scenarios.
The films that stood out in that period included the 1954 picture The Dam Busters, It's Great to Be Young, made a year later starring John Mills, and the same actor's 1958 film, Ice Cold in Alex.
Mills often recalled over the years a famous annecdote about the scene towards the very end of that movie in which, following a journey across the desert, his character, Captain Anson, finally gets to grips with that much-desired ice cold lager in Alex.
The property master on the scenes filmed at Elstree revealed that he had tried various liquid concoctions to try and replicate lager, but had sadly failed.
The director, Lee Thompson, responded by announcing Mills would be faced with a real glass of lager. But due to various technical problems, there followed six takes and six pints to get the take required. Mills became totally plastered in the process.
Members of the crew were required to put the actor to bed in his dressing room in order to give him chance to sleep of the effects of the drink. No wonder Mills continued to claim for the rest of his life that it was the "happiest and most enjoyable morning I have ever spent in any film studio".
© Paul Burton 2008
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