Elstree Film Studios

Thanks to Joe McIntyre for inspiring me to start this page, as a handy way of accumulating information. We both seem to be involved in projects in which Elstree keeps cropping up!

This is at an early stage of development and I'm still trying to resolve various puzzles and apparent contradications.

Many famous film and TV productions are associated with the place.

I'll list as many as I can, as I come across the info.

In the 1960s it was in use by ITC/ATV and ABC, producing shows such as The Prisoner and The Avengers. It's still used for James Bond movies.

Hammer Films are based at one of the sites. They used the now-gone Bray studios between 1951 and 1966.

Part of the studios was sold off to a property developer in the 1970s but then the local council found it had originally leased the land to the studio on the condition it be a film studio providing local employment. The council (Hertsmead?) and developer came to an agreement and part of the sold-off site reverted to the council, which now runs it as part of the studios.

The BBC used part of the studios for a while from the 1980s to at least the end of the 1990s; for instance for Top of The Pops and for drama productions such as Eastenders. Their long-time film critic Barry Norman occasionally reminiscesdabout it, taken there as a child by his father Leslie, who was an editor and later director at Elstree in the 1940s-1960s.

The Buggles 1980 album The Age of Plastic had a track called Elstree about the studio and that the BBC were now there.

The Raiders of the Lost Ark films used the studios.

Some other studios

MGM Borehamwood

Bray

Thames valley, SE of Maidenhead; closed ?1966

Denham

NW of London, NW of Uxbridge

I went past the studios about 1986 and the sign was still up but there was no sign of any activity

Ealing

W London, S of Wembley

As of 2003 new management are trying to revive its glory days unde rMichael Balcon, recreating the sense of a tight community of creative people with a sense of continuity.

Pinewood

?W of London

Shepperton

SW of London, W of Walton-on-Thames