Death of Phillip Jenkinson

[Barry90039]

I knew Philip Jenkinson extremely well. Given the interest shown here, I thought I'd share some recollections.

I grew up in south London in the '70s, where my best friend at school was Phil's son Lee. Phil's movie collection at the time must have consisted of about two thousand five hundred titles on 16mm, yet it was the quality of the library that was even more notable than the size of it. Phil was a voracious film collector but also a true connoisseur; in his house in Blackheath he had a properly-built screening room with sealed-off projection. This was where I spent much of my teenage years and where Lee, and later, Phil (after he recovered from rather a long "lost weekend" that left him indisposed for much of 1974-1976) showed me almost every significant Hollywood movie of "the golden age", i.e. pre-seventies American cinema. We went through the entire collection, director by director, genre by genre: Ford, Hawks, Cukor, Hitchcock, Welles, Busby Berkeley, Mamoulian, Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder, Wellman, Lang, in fact every important American film-maker with virtually no exceptions. Phil Jenkinson possessed astonishing rarities, such as perfect technicolor, Panavision prints of "Vertigo" and "Rear Window" when they were out of distribution for many years. He also loved and possessed hundreds of B-movies, introducing me to the work of genre directors like Sirk and Val Lewton (whose oeuvre Phil owned in its entirety). It was the greatest film school imaginable, in south London, no less. Phil adored musicals, westerns, film noir, comedy; this was where I first watched all of the Marx Brothers' films, all the classic silent comedies and every so-called "screwball" comedy of the 1940s. It was before video; you could neither rent films on videocasette nor record them off the TV. Phil's attitude to non-American cinema was more sceptical; in fact, any form of artsiness or pretention generally provoked hilarious, lengthy, profane torrents of abuse. However, he showed me Lindsay Anderson's astonishingly good "This Sporting Life" and many French thrillers by Melville et al. He had, and screened for me, every movie made by Jean Renoir and Jean Cocteau. He even had a lot of classic American TV; I remember rolling around Phil's sofa crying with laughter when he first ran comedy bits from Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows". When I met Sid Caesar in Los Angeles in the early '90s, I told him about Phil and, because even Sid had no record of those early broadcasts, I asked Phil to run off a VHS copy to give to the delighted comedy genius for his birthday.

Learning about movies at Phil Jenkinson's feet in the pre-video age made me extraordinarily, precociously film-literate. It qualified me to write bumptious but well-informed film criticism at Cambridge in the early eighties when film was beginning to be seen as, if not exactly an academic pursuit, then worthy of academic scrutiny. And Phil's preference for American film was soon reflected in the larger culture, too, as Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman and Godard were joined -- arguably even replaced -- on the podium not just by Hitchcock, who had always been the token "American" director in this company, but by Ford, Welles, Nick Ray and even the very young Martin Scorsese. Thanks to having seen it many times at Phil's house, I knew Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" to be a neglected classic, so I wrote about it in the university arts magazine after which it was booked at the Arts Cinema for a week-long run, where it played to packed houses every night.

Phil steered me into a career in the movies, not only by giving me the most privileged education in cinema imaginable but by believing I could succeed, a belief not held by my parents at that time. For this reason, the Jenkinsons -- Phil, Lee and Phil's beautiful, long-suffering English rose of a wife, Sally -- became a substitute family for me. After I learned to drive and all through my twenties, in fact right up until I emigrated to America in 1987, I spent two or three evenings a week, often until very, very late, watching movies at the Jenkinsons. By the mid-80s Lee had acquired a rock and roll lifestyle; the "straps", as the screenings became known because it was as though you were strapped to your chair while Phil held forth, very eloquently but also at bladder-straining length, took on a somewhat bohemian flavour. I brought every girlfriend I had to a strap or two; it was a necessary rite-of-passage. If she didn't like these people or this activity, the relationship was probably doomed. Most of them passed with flying colours, as it was difficult not to warm to Phil and enjoy watching superb movies while Sally made the tea and chimed in with acerbic, often very funny, commentary of her own (on Joan Crawford: "she was good at emoting in mink")

By the late eighties video arrived with a vengeance. Phil understood its convenience --and, at about a hundred and eighty pounds, welcomed the break from hauling huge cans of 16mm film up two flights of stairs from his garage across the way -- but the romance of film collecting was at an end. No longer was he invited to screen movies for Ringo Starr or lend them to Bob Monkhouse. Phil's collection was the product of very specific circumstances; for example, while Phil was working as the presenter of "Film Night" for the BBC, Warner Brothers offered him their entire UK-housed stockpile of 16mm prints after their TV license deal expired rather than pay to ship them back to Burbank; that's how Phil got to own, and I got to watch, every gangster movie made for Warners in the heyday of Jimmy Cagney, every Bette Davis weepie, in fact, everything made at the studio from "The Roaring Twenties" to "Bonnie and Clyde"

Oh, and how could I have forgotten to mention that Phil owned every foot of film shot by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's cinema-propagandist-in-chief, who, in her mid-eighties and dressed in spandex leggings, showed up in Blackheath one winter's night to see Phil's mint-condition print of "Olympische Spiele", in all it's bonkers glory, for the first time since the mid-1940s?

Phil's last years were not easy. He did not take well to obscurity. The once-magnificent film library was sold off after it ceased to provide a regular income. Sally, whose grace and common sense anchored the family, died, far too young, of cancer in the late '90s, after which the centre ceased to hold. Phil experienced a slow, painful decline, yet, for a hypochondriac ex-alcoholic, barely-reformed '60s party animal who smoked thirty Silk Cut a day for fifty years, he lived a long and productive life. My own would have been quite different if Phil hadn't been in it. When I received an email last week, from his nephew, titled simply "Phil", I knew what I was about to read before opening it. I had always loved Phil and suspected that I could never repay all the kindness, generosity and hospitality he bestowed on me for years; now I know I can't.

[Captzeppos]

I, too, visited Phil in Blackheath during the 1980s and watched a number of rare movies and extracts in his house. I'd always remembered the two-part interview he did with producer James Algar in 1967 for the BBC. Algar had worked for many years at the Disney Studios and spoke in depth about Walt who had died a couple months earlier. Phil's interest and knowledge on cinema ensured that the programme had access to some wonderful and little-seen extracts from the Disney movies. When I was researching a book on Disney many years later, Phil kindly lent me the interview on videotape.

I also remember my wife and I watching a beautiful 16mm print of "There's No Business Like Show Business" at his home and attending a fascinating lecture that he gave at the Blackheath Concert Halls on rare cinema extracts, one of which was home movie footage of Stan Laurel visiting relatives in his home town.

People don't realise that it was Phil's vintage movie spot on Film Night that helped rekindle interest in many old movie genres including the amazing Busby Berkeley musicals.

He also wrote some excellent cineaste articles for the local Blackheath Guide during the 1980s and 90s.

[vanmunchen]

Thank you for the wonderful reminiscence Barry. I always enjoyed seeing Philip on Film Night. No presenter has ever come close to his knowledge about film and I never understood why he disappeared from TV screens.

[Barry90039]

Thanks, vanmunchen. To address your point: Phil disappeared from TV screens because he was too naughty and wayward for the BBC. Before he became a much-loved Blackheath eccentric in the last 30 years of his life, when he had money and success in the '60s and early '70s, he was "eccentric" on a more heroic scale. The BBC was very hierarchical and authoritarian in those days and there were limits to the anti-authoritarian behavior it was prepared to tolerate in its employees. Phil, like his son Lee, had absolutely no innate respect for authority and zero understanding of how it operated; certainly he never learned to play the game like many of the other ambitious northerners the Beeb welcomed into its ranks for the first time in the early '60s (Parkinson, Harty, etc.) Phil once threw a BBC telephone through a BBC window (without opening the window first.) He was cheeky, opinionated and drank like a fish. He liked the ladies (and vice versa). And the final straw was when Phil, invited to one of the Queen's garden parties, an honour taken very seriously by the BBC, told the higher-ups of his intention to bring a woman other than his wife, a big no-no. You could be on the outs with your wife, living apart for years, you might have attempted to murder her or be sleeping with ten other women, but if you were still married to her, that was the person you took if invited to a garden party by the Queen. Phil considered this preposterous and an insult to his date and made his position very clear within Broadcast House. I can't remember if Phil went to the garden party or not, or with whom, but it was the end of Phil the TV presenter.

To his credit, Phil cleaned up in about 1976 and remained lovably bonkers but without the ugliness and pain of the booze. It took great strength of character to do it, and he did, but he never worked for the BBC again, I don't think, although he may still have had his radio Times column and/or his gig cutting video to music for The Old Grey Whistle test, I can't remember.

[theuofc]

I knew Philip Jenkinson extremely well. Given the interest shown here, I thought I'd share some recollections.
..............................
I had always loved Phil and suspected that I could never repay all the kindness, generosity and hospitality he bestowed on me for years; now I know I can't.

Hello, Barry,

Your magical memories of Philip Jenkinson are one of the reasons BritMovie just has to survive. Where else would we have a chance to read this.

Thank you.

Barbara

[Barry90039]

You're very kind, Barbara, thank you.

I might write a tribute to Phil for The Spectator, or some other UK publication that may be interested in carrying such a piece, I'll keep you posted here.

[Westengland]

Hello, Barry,

Your magical memories of Philip Jenkinson are one of the reasons BritMovie just has to survive. Where else would we have a chance to read this.

Thank you.

Barbara

Exactly - answer: one or two other sites out of all of them, if that.

Note that Britmovie is the only source for any news about PJ's death and personal memories of him at the time of writing (I wonder what kind of obit the BBC will produce, when they do?).

[orpheum2]

thanks for the memories.I recall that for his spot on late night line up he was billed as Film Junkinson.Also i recall a spoof that he and Tony bilbow cooked up.they claimed to have found lost footage of a non existant British actor.they had doctored film to make it look as if it were 40 years old.I did wonder when i saw him at the NFT why he looked so bloated and now i know why.

[John Hodson]

I knew Philip Jenkinson extremely well. Given the interest shown here, I thought I'd share some recollections.

Truly wonderful Barry; my heartfelt condolences and sincere thanks. Philip was a huge influence on me as a young film buff; his passions became mine.

[aphra]

Exactly - answer: one or two other sites out of all of them, if that.

Note that Britmovie is the only source for any news about PJ's death and personal memories of him at the time of writing (I wonder what kind of obit the BBC will produce, when they do?).

The Independent ran an obituary for Phil on the day of his funeral, last Friday.

Here is the URL

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ob...p-7582571.html

[AdrianTurner]

Thanks very much for that, Barry. I knew Phil slightly when I was at the Everyman in Hampstead and later at the NFT. I was very moved by your reminiscences - Phil was part of an elite group and while they may not have got on with one another, or even known one another, people like him, such as Kevin Brownlow, Bill Everson, John Kobal, John Huntley, Joel Finler, Barrie Patterson, David Meeker and a few others were custodians of the cinema in the era before video made us all archivists.

[CaptainWaggett]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ob...p-7582571.html

Philip Jenkinson was a film archivist and journalist who presented the television show Late Night Line-Up, in which he played viewers' requests for clips from old movies. He was particularly fond of the wildly imaginative musical routines staged by Busby Berkeley in films such as 42nd Street, Dames and Footlight Parade, and brought the breathtaking work of Berkeley (whom he insisted on pronouncing "Barkley") to a new generation. He conducted an acclaimed series of talks for the British Film Institute, where he served for a period as governor, on the history of the musical, as well as interviewing for television such legendary figures as Ramon Novarro, John Ford and Gloria Swanson. In 1977 his fame was such that he was one of seven BBC frontmen who performed "There is Nothing Like a Dame", dressed in sailor suits, on The Morecambe & Wise Show.
His personal archive of 16mm prints was so extensive that he had to rent garages to store it, and through his company Filmfinders he would research and provide clips for documentaries and advertisements, though his business suffered with the increasingly strict enforcement of copyright laws.
Born in 1935 in Sale, Cheshire, he won a talent competition as a child doing George Formby impersonations, which led to radio work in Manchester. He used the money for elocution lessons, as regional accents were considered a handicap in those days. Prone to asthma, he was frequently kept home from school, and a sympathetic family milkman gave him a 9.5mm projector, which started his interest in films. Given money by his mother to go swimming, he would instead go to the cinema.
His boyhood friend Alan Howden, who was later to become head of film purchasing at the BBC, also acquired a projector, and recalls that this meant they could screen films without interruption for reel changes. "We showed a 90-minute version of Metropolis to half our school class in my house."
On leaving school, Jenkinson worked as a projectionist before quitting to join the Library Theatre in Manchester where he hoped to become an actor, but found himself working primarily as a stage manager. There he met his future wife, Sally Jay, a scenic designer. Deciding he had little future as an actor, he took a job with Contemporary Pictures in London, rising from general assistant to a key position.
In 1967, while lecturing on vintage cinema at the St Martin's School of Art, he was seen by Mike Appleton, the producer of the BBC's Late Night Line-Up. This pioneering show was scheduled nightly at the end of programming, so it was open-ended. "I initially signed a contract for six months, which grew and grew," he recalled. "I ended up staying for five years. Film Night came out of Late Night Line-Up. It started with me and Tony Bilbow. Tony reviewed the new films while I related the new films to ones made earlier, linking them with either a director or a star or the style; something they had in common."
Jenkinson put together film sequences for programmes including The Old Grey Whistle Test, and wrote a column about the week's film schedule for the Radio Times, sometimes composing it in rhyming couplets, displaying a keen wit and imagination. His loquacious style and mannered delivery were parodied in Monty Python, with a sketch in which he was played by Eric Idle.
Jenkinson's 13 talks on the history of the film musical, given at the National Film Theatre in 1971 and accompanied by myriad extracts, was a great success. The same year, director Ken Russell hired him as a consultant on The Boy Friend, which included several pastiche Busby Berkeley numbers, complete with kaleidoscopic overhead shots.
Jenkinson had become part of a group of film lovers, which included Kevin Brownlow and William K Everson, intent on preserving movie heritage. He began to amass an impressive collection including Mack Sennett silents and early Laurel and Hardy, and he founded Filmfinders, locating footage and movie extracts for producers.
He was immensely generous with his precious film stock. Peter Armitage, the editor of Film magazine, had a 16mm projector in his house, and on weekends I would drive to his home in Orpington, making a detour to Phil's house in Blackheath, where he would entrust to me several cans of film usually containing two rare movies, which Peter would show to his family and friends.
Later, with the advent of VHS, Jenkinson would give friends gifts of tapes with an exhilarating selection of rare musical extracts. Barry Brown, producer of Film Night, described him as "generous to a fault" but also temperamental and exasperating in his effusive use of clichés and such sweeping statements as: "This is the most dramatic scene ever filmed." "But viewers loved him", said Brown, "and each week his postbag was enormous."
For Film Night, distributors provided clips to promote their new films, along with extracts from their older ones, so long as the programme was non-critical, but when Bilbow and Jenkinson started to criticise the films, permission was rescinded. In 1975, a new controller of BBC2, unhappy with the hosts, told Brown to fire them, and new, younger replacements were found. But the revised show was not a success and Film Night ended the following year.
In 1987 Jenkinson compiled a series of six programmes, The Great Trailer Show. Trailers, since they are for promotion, are not considered to be subject to copyright. Tyne Tees Television showed four of the shows, but Jenkinson withdrew the last two after being threatened with a massive lawsuit and then, dogged by ill health, he disappeared fairly rapidly and became somewhat reclusive.
Tom Vallance
Philip Jenkinson, film archivist and television presenter: born Sale, Cheshire 17 August 1935; married Sally Jay (deceased, two sons); died 11 March 2012.

[Nick Dando]

The Guardian has now published its obituary of Phillip Jenkinson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/...ilip-jenkinson

Nick

[Westengland]

The Guardian has now published its obituary of Phillip Jenkinson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/...ilip-jenkinson

Nick

The obituarist, Brian Baxter: "He was one of the elite band of devotees who believed that films should both be preserved and shown to audiences...".

Neither The Guardian's nor The Independent's obits are really satisfactory - especially read with a personal memoir such as the one by Barry90039 above. I wonder if the BBC will ever do a programme about PJ - and then one mainly about his knowledge of films and use of them, rather than his private life.

[Nick Dando]

Here's a letter published in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...bituary-letter

Nick

[Rangebuster]

I had many dealings with Philip and, yes, he could be most charming and generous. But he had a stubborn side and this led to the axing of The Great Trailer Show. Warners were threatening to take action if he showed a trailer from one of the Hammer Dracula movies and he couriered a copy of it for me to look at it. I suggested that he didn't go ahead with it as Warners were obviously looking for a fight but he decided to take them on.... Warners frightened the life out of Channel 4 and this resulted in the whole series being binned.

[Izquierda]

Hi, I have joined the forum specifically to comment on this thread.

For some reason I was thinking of Philip Jenkinson only the other day and googled his name. I was terribly upset to hear he had passed away, especially as I had obviously missed the news at the time, in March.

I have so enjoyed reading about him on this forum, especially Barry's and Captzeppo's recollections and would like to add mine, which are probably a bit offbeat!

I was a teenager living in the north in the early 70s and like a lot of young girls a bit prone to mad crushes. I recall seeing Philip on Film Night one time and thinking how nice he was - he had such an enthusiasm as a presenter, a twinkle in his eye, and I was rather captivated. So I wrote a fan letter to him at the BBC and that started an intermittent correspondence between us. He sent me signed photos, a signed copy of his book "Celluloid Rock" Christmas cards and occasional notes in reply to my letters.

I have been up into my loft this afternoon and found some of these relics and felt quite emotional - one of the photos is inscribed "always your friend". I must have been about 15-16 at the time, and Philip in his early forties (similar age to my parents) but there was nothing at all improper - he was just so kind to me. I was amused by Barry's mention of the "lost weekend" period as that would have co-incided with the time we were in contact.

I cut out his Radio Times columns and saved them and eagerly looked forward to the Christmas editions where there were pages of his "previews". Do any of you remember the ones he wrote in rhyme?

Like others on this thread, it was this interest in Philip and affection for him which fired my interest in films, and I learned a lot about "old" films, particularly stuff like the Marx Brothers, Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire films.

I remember being heartbroken when Film Night ended and after that, as we know, he was rarely seen on TV. The correspondence eventually fizzled out, I guess, as I "grew up" but I did meet him once in the late 70s when he gave a lecture in my home town - I waited behind to see him and of course he remembered me and was totally charming.

It's been heartwarming to read other people's recollections of him - he sounds to have been a very generous friend and host - I cannot seem to find any tribute from the BBC on the internet - did anyone see any mention in the Radio Times? Maybe one of us should write in?

I have a copy of Monty Python's Holy Grail on DVD which has as an extra the "Film Night" special screened in December 1974 which features Philip and Tony Bilbow interviewing the Pythons which is, for me, a lovely reminder of those crazy teenage days!

[Arfur Teacake]

Hi Izquierda
What a nice story of yours.
It is a shame the way Philip was treated,but it seems he was too passionate about his subject to fit in with the BBC and the 'keep your nose down and read the script' Barry Norman is now only remembered.

Another show Philip was involved in was called 'Disco2' which was an ancestor to the well remembered 'Old Grey Whistle Test'.
When rock groups could not make the studio I believe it was Philip that pioneered synchronizing very old silent movies to play along with the music track.
I dont think Disco2 exists anymore? and therefore another part of Philip's contributions erased from history.

He was also involved in Bob Monkhouse's 'Mad Movies' a show which helped me escape for half an hour some problematic times I was going through.

[Izquierda]

Hi Arfur, thanks so much for your reply to my post, great to hear from you and having seen your location do hope all is well with you!
Yes I think that was something about Philip that appealed to me - that he was a maverick, not one for toeing the line, although at the time for me it was a shame because we got to see less and less of him on TV.
I do very vaguely remember Disco2. Also what I remember is Philip telling me how much he liked Led Zeppelin and I am sure that was around the time Physical Graffiti was released (1976?)
The song that stands out in my mind as being on Whistle Test with one of Philip's old films synchronised was Led Zep's track Trampled Underfoot - I am going to look on youtube for this.
There are also, on youtube, one or two clips of Philip taking part in Rutland Weekend TV in 1975/6 with Eric Idle.
Not wishing to make this too personal, but my "friendship" with Philip certainly helped me through some rather lonely days as a bit of a "misfit" teenager....
Warmest wishes to all on the thread - hope you are safe and well Arfur!

[Izquierda]

Here is the youtube link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_lA9...feature=fvwrel