Interesting, Stanley. Very, very interesting!

For the Betjeman fans:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBhTSnr2Gh8

(Betjeman reads his poem Executive. Some lines are different from the printed poem in the collection A Nip in the Air!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dI8SYa8Szo

(Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith read Death in Leamington (so touching!))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDrQkg8lOGc

(John Betjeman's television film Branch Line Railway ("People hate things well made. It gives them a guilty conscience.")

Many thanks pim, absolutely wonderful, I can take lots more of this.  Railways and Romance.

My great grandpa was at one time a boiler maker for GWR at Swindon.

Thanks for those Pim. I've just spent some very happy minutes watching those, albeit mingled with some sadness.  Branch Lane is a Requiem for Railways

Nothing to do with GPO or Betjeman but referring to railways.  A few years ago I saw a film which I thought was called The Titchfield Thunderbolt.  However, looking on You Tube the clips there are in colour and I am sure what I saw was in black and white?  Can anyone help out or am I totally confused? 

Mort, just checked, it was the first Ealing Comedy to be filmed in Technicolour.  I am confusing it with Will Hay's "Oh Mr. Porter" <doh emoticom>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZfQNvbSPF0&feature=related

Foxed me there, Mort.    I haven't seen 'Titfield Thunderbolt' for yonks, although it was always fondly recalled by Stanley Holloway in several chats I had with him about his career when we were on tour.  My first hunch is that Jack MacGowran played the drunk.   Ring any bells?   The film was made in 1952 and I'm sure that Wilfrid Lawson would have been first choice for the role but they'd have been lucky to get him on the wagon, far less the engine, by this time.   However, Stanley did confirm the anecdote about Rex Harrison when they co-starred in 'My Fair Lady' on Broadway.   Rex was his usual autocratic self and, as they were leaving the theatre, after a matinee, it was pouring with rain and Rex made a bee-lined for a taxi.  An autograph hunter asked for his signature and he curtly dismissed her saying he was in a hurry.   Well, she set about him with her umbrella as Stanley and Julie Andrews approached.   Stanley could be very quick witted and exclaimed,   "Well, that the first time a fan has hit the shit!".   A few years later, Dame Julie also hooted when recalling this incident.    Rex was quite convinced that her songs were only in the show to give him time to change his costume.   And you should have heard the rapid expletives when Stewart Granger heard the name of Rex Harrison.

Perhaps we've slipped into a siding with the GPO Film Unit Collection but their inspiration is also to be found in developments under discussion here and I hope that I may continue to diverge on the theme of Metro-Land, discussed earlier.

I've just spent several days, interspersed with relaxation and activity in the garden, transferring an off-air video, which included Metro-Land, to DVD.    I'm usually fastidious about labelling off-air material but failed to do so on this occasion and have placed the recording date for BBC 4's Tube Night as mid-July, as they also trailered The Proms and the forthcoming Maestro series.    Indeed, I'd probably resorted to a video recorder if I was also recording a Prom on my DVD machine.   Stop digging!

   Tube Night produced four documentaries of sheer delight and historical value over three consecutive hours.   1.  Metro-Land (1973)   2  Arena - Underground (2007)   3  Heart of the Angel (1989) and
4  London Tube Map (1987).    I'm sure that several of these titles are already stirring memories.

I discussed Metro-Land, in an earlier thread, and would like to add a few riders.    In the final sequences, John Betjeman begins to weary about the consequences of continuing development.  He cites the outrage in Amersham when a concrete house was built, in a Y shape, overlooking the town.  This started an architectural style known as 'modern' (does it require an additional 'e'?).   With a sense of foreboding, he added his final comments with regret and resignation,  "The owner soon woke-up with developers in his backyard.    "Goodbye, high hopes and over-confidence.  Goodbye, England."

This series of Time-Shift was produced by the astute Ed Mirzoeff whose own time was, alas, dwindling.
The final sequence has Betjeman viewing undeveloped land at the point where the Metro line ended.  Mirzoeff ran the end credits in total silence.   Yes, you've got it.   The current lot of vandals at the BEEB imposed a voice-over at a crucial point,  "Next, this evening on BBC 4...".    I can imagine the sheer look of disbelief if Messrs Betjeman and Mirzoeff were watching from afar.

Arena-Underground (57 mins) followed and provided a potted version of its developments, right up to the atrocities of 7/7 and the shooting of an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, at Stockwell.    I warmed to the quiet comments of  behavioural psychologist who spoke about the improbability of people ever wanting to travel hundreds of feet below the surface - "a place where people wouldn't enter otherwise".   This leads to the cut-off stimulation we acquire, other than speculating about others - who are they? where are they going?        They even managed to locate a woman who hadn't visited Hampstead underground for 60 years.   As a schoolgirl, she made a rapid descent with her parents, at the height of the blitz and, carrying a pillow and a blanket, they sought refuge on the platform, with hundreds of others, until the first train at 6am.   The Ministry of Home Security issued leaflets and posters imploring the public not to do this and the Communist Party issued a pamphlet encouraging the practice!  The  camera caught the woman, Margaret, at the right moment when she was deeply affected by the experience.   "I've just gone back a long, long way - but I can feel it."     You can't stage the beauty and  quality of spontaneity here, even with a practiced professional.

I enjoyed, too, several sequences of footage at the Lost Property Office, Baker Street - they even coped with a container of someone's ashes, left behind on the tube.   Shots of London pea-soupers, the Festival of Britain and the 1953 Coronation.   Glad to see again the entrance to Swan & Edgar from the Piccadilly booking hall.   The trauma of the 1975 Moorgate train crash, the look of detachment by shattered passengers.   The irritation of "All change" during the IRA activities.   The King's Cross fire of 1987.   The irony of the train driver on the Northern 'misery line':    "The Northern Line will be running normally today so you can expect delays to all destinations."   

I'll wind-up for now as I daren't risk losing this posting by a clumsy tap on the wrong key.    In the meantime, talk among yourselves!