50s starlets information wanted for BBC documentary!

[Moor Larkin]

The researcher is looking to interview anyone who 'attended' (was put through) the Rank Charm School. Christopher Lee was one of those people.

Was he? I cannot think of a single Rank film he appeared in............

He was more of a Danziger man wasn't he? Until Hammer Time came along.

I've never come across him mentioned in tales from the days when Rank was charming the world. He said he worked at Highbury Studios in 1947, but that was not where Rank cultivated their stars of the future. It closed down in 1949 I think and was known for $20,000 dollar quickies, not proper movies.

[CaptainWaggett]

Was he? I cannot think of a single Rank film he appeared in............

He was more of a Danziger man wasn't he? Until Hammer Time came along.

I've never come across him mentioned in tales from the days when Rank was charming the world. He said he worked at Highbury Studios in 1947, but that was not where Rank cultivated their stars of the future. It closed down in 1949 I think and was known for $20,000 dollar quickies, not proper movies.

Attending the Charm School and actually making films were two quite different things

Hooray for Pinewood: Celebrating seventy years of movie making - Features - Films - The Independent


BFI Screenonline: Lee, Christopher (1922-) Biography

Christopher Lee

[dremble wedge]

He said he worked at Highbury Studios in 1947, but that was not where Rank cultivated their stars of the future.

Yes it was. That was where the Company of Youth was based and the 'pupils' learnt to comport themselves, did breathing exercises etc. There's a splendid picture of Sir Christopher and his classmates in a 1946 fencing class at the school on p17 of Jonathan Rigby's Christopher Lee: The Authorised Screen History. (Sir Christopher is duelling with Pete Murray, the lessons must have worked, a few years later he was duelling with Errol Flynn ).

Many of the Rank charmers from this time can be seen in Penny and the Pownall Case which is available on DVD.

Other possible sources of information could be Philip Saville who started out as an actor there before moving into directing and screenwriter Norman Hudis who wrote some press for Rank around that time.

[Moor Larkin]

He said he worked at Highbury Studios in 1947, but that was not where Rank cultivated their stars of the future.

Yes it was. That was where the Company of Youth was based and the 'pupils' learnt to comport themselves, did breathing exercises etc. There's a splendid picture of Sir Christopher and his classmates in a 1946 fencing class at the school on p17 of Jonathan Rigby's Christopher Lee: The Authorised Screen History.

Many of the Rank charmers from this time can be seen in Penny and the Pownall Case which is available on DVD.

Other possible sources of information could be Philip Saville who started out as an actor there before moving into directing and screenwriter Norman Hudis who wrote some press for Rank around that time.

Yes, I see what you mean. I think I am confusing the *Charm School*, which only lasted until 1950 with what I have tended to loosely think of as being a charm school for the Rank Contract stars of the Fifties. The two were rather different. Nobody directly emerged from the Charm School other than Diana and Dirk (although some others certasinly went there, as you say). I recall reading Michael Craig talking of himself as being a Starling, but he was selected via the repertory scene in 1954, and obviously by then Rank were more interested in making money from these proven actors, rather than plucking *actors* more randomly, and then training them to become *stars*.

A can of worms, but it explains why I have never really thought of Sir Christopher as being a product of the Fifties Rank machine, as say Belinda Lee was, but whereas he did go the Forties Charm School, she didn't.

(Sir Christopher is duelling with Pete Murray, the lessons must have worked, a few years later he was duelling with Errol Flynn ).

Not well enough, he said he got his finger broken in that, as I recall......

[dremble wedge]

Not well enough, he said he got his finger broken in that, as I recall......

Due to it being filmed "after lunch" supposedly

[Gerald Lovell]

When Errol Flynn and Christopher Lee had a rematch a while later for a television production, as the swords were drawn but before they started, Errol said to him, "Now remember, sport, it was an accident . . ."

[Moor Larkin]

A charming interview with Belinda Lee, made for ABC television's Film Fanfare in 1956 here:
FILM FANFARE - NO 20 - SECTIONS 2 & 3 - British Pathe

Some footage shows Belinda with Eunice Gayson on the beach at Venice, plus one or two glimpses of the likes of Anthony Steel and Ian Carmichael and mentions of someone called Tony Wright (the Torso).

The clips starts with a quite bizzarely chaotic *Quiz*, but it is interesting to catch a brief glimpse of Wolf Mankowitz in his early pomp, and he sounds refreshingly *modern*, compared to the other somewhat stilted Fifties people on the show.

[seanflynn76]

I was wondering if there was any update on the documentry as I haven't seen anything advertised. Please let us know if the documentry was made and when it will be shown

Thank you in advance.