2:49pm Friday 25th August 2006
By Times reporter
They sometimes preferred baked beans on toast to haute cuisine.
And during filming breaks they could often be seen sipping milk rather than champagne. Yet this wealthy group could buy almost anything they wanted.
They were the Beatles and they were probably responsible for bringing international recognition to Twickenham Film Studios in 1964, according to author Patricia Warren in her book British Film Studios.
Hundreds of screaming fans stormed the gates when the Beatles filmed A Hard Day's Night at the studios in The Barons, St Margaret's.
Caroline Tipple, administration and facilities manager at Twickenham Film Studios, said when The Beatles were filming there were absolute crowds and executive director Guido Coen and his colleagues had to learn crowd control. "Fans were hiding themselves in workshops and in the grounds and a couple of girls hitchhiked from Scotland to see the Beatles," said Ms Tipple. "They possibly remade our name."
Four years ago, some relatively new pictures of the Beatles were discovered in a back room at Dundee University. One shows the Fab Four outside stage two at Twickenham Film Studios when they were taking a break and drinking milk, said Ms Tipple. "They didn't want any fuss and ate in the canteen, liking things like beans on toast," she said.
As well as filming the Beatles' first Twickenham film, director Richard Lester went on to direct Help! in 1965.
Many scenes from The Beatles' films were shot in the Twickenham area. Ringo Starr drank a pint in Twickenham's Turks Head pub during A Hard Day's Night and all four Beatles were seen disappearing into four terraced houses on Ailsa Road, St Margaret's during Help! The four houses were then transformed into one enormous Beatle mansion but the interior was actually a set at Twickenham Film Studios, according to the Twickenham Museum website.
The history of Twickenham Film Studios began in 1912 when Dr Ralph Jupp, who founded the London Film Company, was seeking a site for studios.
According to The Advertiser newspaper of April 1980, he chanced upon a disused roller skating rink at St Margaret's. The owners were happy to provide a long lease, provided the floor remained intact.
Coconut matting was put down and St Margaret's Studios, as they were called then, were in operation. Their first release was The House of Temperley and at that time the studio was the largest in the UK.
Well-known Hollywood directors Harold Shaw and George Loane Tucker were hired and the services of actor/manager John East were also acquired. Aware of competition from other established film companies such as British and Colonial, the London Film Company decided to put the emphasis on stylish productions, said Ms Warren.
For the first year they produced a steady flow of films which included Lillian Logan in Bachelor's Love Story. The London Film Company gained a reputation for well made pictures, most of which were based on popular novels or plays.
By 1914 the First World War was in progress and American films flooded the home market resulting in Twickenham Film Studios suffering heavy losses in 1915-16, said Ms Warren.
The studio was leased to other companies and in 1920 it was sold to the Alliance Company whose short-lived output included Ivor Novello in The Bohemian Girl made in 1922, according to The Twickenham Museum website.
The passing of the Cinematographic Film Act in 1928, with a quota set for the number of British made films to be shown in cinemas, saw a surge in film-making. Hamburg-born film producer Julius Hagen secured the lease of the studio and renamed it Twickenham Film Studios, a name which has remained to the present day.
Hagen was then faced with the arrival of talking pictures. He won a contract with Warner Brothers in 1929 which proved a success and gained the studios a reputation for quality and quantity.
In her book Ms Warren said: "Quite apart from the many technical problems experienced by all studios with the coming of sound, Twickenham backed onto a railway line.
A roof look-out had to be employed to signal the approach of a train via a red light to the studio below and filming would cease until the green all-clear was given."
During the 1930s, well-known British stage actors of the day were cast in the films - among them John Mills and John Garrick. The studio produced 20 films in 1933 alone.
The studio was bombed during World War Two and filming was stopped. Throughout the 1950s the studio focused mainly on early television productions as it struggled to regain its former success.
The appointment of Mr Coen in 1959 resulted in the development of the studio's international profile beginning with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which starred Albert Finney as the defiant factory worker lashing out at his working-class background and future. The director, Karel Reisz, came back to Twickenham in 1980 to make The French Lieutenant's Woman.
But it was A Hard Day's Night which attracted the most attention and its success ensured the Beatles continued their association with Twickenham Film Studios.
Ms Tipple said normally all the studio's post production work was major films.
Currently Sir Richard Attenborough is finishing a film at Twickenham.
The movie mogul has premises at the studios and when Princess Diana made a private visit, she was shown around by Sir Richard. "He has had a permanent office with us for a long time," said Ms Tipple.
Sir Richard's latest film at Twickenham Film Studios is Closing the Ring, the romantic story of a US pilot who crash landed in Northern Ireland during World War Two.
With his dying breath, the airman made the Irishman who found him promise to return his ring to his girlfriend. It took the Irish hero 50 years to complete his quest.
Ms Tipple said the first six Hercule Poirot films were filmed there and the interiors were shot on the Twickenham Film Studios' stages.
The list of stars who have performed at the studio reads like a Who's Who of celebrities. Miss Tipple reeled off the names of John Cleese, Mel Gibson, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers, Vanessa Redgrave, Wham!, Toyah Wilcox, Simply Red and the Spice Girls.
"We have a car driver or several drivers to pick up artists, they come in very early in the morning for make up," she said.
"We are not very visible and we don't promote ourselves too much. We do have VIPs coming and going but as Warren Beatty said: I like it here because I can just close the doors and be private'," said Miss Tipple who has been at the studios for 28 years.
A huge amount of props are used and prop master Laurie Miller said they often hired items like guns and swords or antique props but, pointing to a hall stand in the prop room, said: "That hall stand was supplied by me."
Ms Tipple said in addition to the three stages at Twickenham, there were two dubbing studios for post production and sound effects.
And for sound effects, the balance had to be right and you couldn't have music drowning out voices or incredibly loud footsteps in a quiet scene Steve Single, a re-recording mixer at Twickenham for nearly 10 years, said dialogue was the most important aspect and everything else fitted around that.
In explosion sequences the effects had to be very loud to give a sense of fright and fear. "A real gunshot is a poor source of sound," he said.
Sarah Hillman, a filming officer for Richmond council, said they found film locations, or helped to find locations, for companies wishing to film in the area.
"A production team goes into studios such as Twickenham and uses them as production offices for maybe a drama series for three to six months at a time but if they need a location they give us a call because with studios as a base they want to travel as little as possible," she said.
Richmond Theatre, Richmond Green, Ham House, the civic centre, Teddington library and borough schools such as Waldegrave and St James have all been used for TV or film, said Miss Hillman.
"We market the borough as a location for film makers and to raise income for the council. We are used a lot but one of the problems is the flight path. It is very difficult to record dialogue outside with planes passing over every 90 seconds."
And she said they worked closely with residents to ensure as little aggravation as possible was caused by film making.
Other productions at Twickenham include Gandhi, Blade Runner, An American Werewolf in London, A Fish Called Wanda, Men Behaving Badly, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Far Pavilions.
Just finished is a production by Hartswood Films called Fear, Stress and Anger With box-office hits to its name like Alfie, the Eagle has Landed and Shirley Valentine, together with the kudos of the Beatles' films, it would seem the once quoted words of Mr Coen were prophetic: "We stand on our record."
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