HISTORY OF BEACONSFIELD STUDIOS
The Studios were built in 1921 by George Clark Productions who moved from Soho to get away from the smog. The first production was a two-reeler comedy, The Beauty and the Beast written, directed and starring Guy Newall. Various productions followed until 1924 when all British studios went quiet. The finger of blame was pointed at the Americans for dumping their films on Britain; a quota was called for and in 1928 the Films Bill limited foreign films to 22.5% of the market. There was a rush of production activity and among new start-ups was The British Lion Film Corporation Ltd., with Edgar Wallace, the prolific thriller writer, as Chairman. As Wallace lived down the road in Bourne End, the company purchased Beaconsfield Film Studios.
Wallace's story The Ringer was the new company's first production followed, in 1930, by Beaconsfield Studios' first talkie, The Squeaker, directed by Wallace himself, with sound by RCA Photophone. Wallace then left for Hollywood to write King Kong for the then unheard-of sum of £800 per week.
Between 1929 and 1939 those who came through the studio gates at Beaconsfield included John Gielgud, Sir Gerald Du Maurier, Emlyn Williams, Paul Robeson, Ben Lyon, Bebe Lyon, Gracie Fields, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews, Ray Milland, Herbert Wilcox, Val Guest, Hughie Green (as a boy actor), Sid Cole, David Lean (as an editor), Basil Dean, Carol Reed (as a writer), John Galsworthy, A.A.Milne and George Bernard Shaw. By 1939 another distribution crisis had hit the Industry and the Ministry of Works requisitioned the studios for Rotax to make aircraft engine magnetos for the war effort.
In 1946, Alexander Korda bought British Lion. He kept the company but sold the freehold of the Studios to King's College Cambridge. The Crown Film Unit, with many of the staff from the GPO Blackheath Unit, moved in and the government spent a lavish £146,000 on refurbishment and equipment. 75 films a year were produced for the Central Office of Information by filmmakers who included John Grierson, Humphrey Jennings and Lotte Reiniger. In 1949, Following yet another exhibition crisis in the UK film industry, the Board of Trade introduced the Eady Levy, a tax on box office takings that was redistributed to British film producers as a mechanism to boost British production.
The Crown Film Unit was wound up in 1951, but meanwhile the National Film Finance Corporation had set up Group 3, under chairman Michael Balcon (of Ealing Comedies fame), with a brief to encourage new British talent. They moved into Beaconsfield in 1953 and out again in 1955 when it was decided that a studio base was unjustifiable.
The producer Peter Rogers took over Beaconsfield Films Ltd in 1956, making The Tommy Steele Story (1957) before moving to Pinewood to launch the Carry On series. Television first ventured into Beaconsfield when Screen Gems Inc rented space in 1957-58 for their Ivanhoe TV series, starring Roger Moore. Next to take a lease on the studios were Independent Artistes who hosted a respectable run of British films including Tiger Bay, Blind Date, Battle Of The Sexes, Never Let Go, The Bulldog Breed, VIP, Crooks Anonymous, The Fast Lady, Father Came Too, This Sporting Life and The Wrong Arm Of The Law.
1963 brought yet another production/distribution/exhibition crisis (all those popular films from the USA!) and in 1964 Independent Artistes departed. The final feature film based at the studios was Press For Time shot in 1966, with Norman Wisdom in his last starting role. The studios were then leased to the North Thames Gas Board, who used the premises as a warehouse.
1971 saw a revival in the Studios' fortunes, when the NFTS purchased the freehold from Kings College with a grant from the Rank Organisation, making it the only UK film school with its own, purpose-built, film and TV studios and facilities. The studios set up by George Clark Productions have grown over the past eighty-five years both in scale and sophistication. Today, Beaconsfield Studios comprises film and television stages, animation and production design studios, edit suites, sound post-production facilities, a music recording studio and a dubbing theatre, all furnished with new generation digital equipment equivalent to that used at the highest level in today's film and television industry.
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