1946 'Holiday Camp'

 

Shirley started work at Gainsborough Pictures on the 30th September 1946. Arriving at the studios on Monday morning, she was told immediately join the crew filming ‘Holiday Camp’ up at Butlin’s in Filey. So, the next morning, Oct 1st, and with great trepidation - “I feel worried about the whole thing” – she set off by train from King’s Cross.

Unfortunately there is very little information in Shirley’s diaries and letters during the month or so they were shooting on location in Filey and staying in a hotel just up the coast in Scarborough. She was probably too busy or too stressed. But we do know, from various snippets, that the weather was generally awful, that the hotel was empty of guests apart from some members of the film crew; that the staff of the hotel left in the evening after dinner leaving the crew to themselves. 

The situation here [at the Wessex Hotel] is slightly ludicrous. We are the only ones in the hotel – the staff have gone except for about four essential people. But at night the Manager goes home, and the porter goes out, the kitchen staff go, and we make our own tea, etc. And the film still pays the full price of 10 guineas!! I think it’s a bit thick. The boys also make the fire in the lounge and the early morning tea – helping the girl in the kitchen. The trouble is we have an incompetent Unit Manager otherwise these things would be sorted out.

The filming of ‘Holiday Camp’ continued back in the studios on 18th November, and, much later, Shirley wrote about some of her experiences there in a letter to her friend Peter, who was in the Royal Navy and posted in the Eastern Mediterranean stopping Jewish refugee ships from reaching Palestine. 

18th February 1947 – Letter to Peter

How often in the past few weeks I’ve thought of you in the warmth of the Med – and  how I’ve envied you. Particularly one exceptionally cold week when we had an exterior set in the studio – Flamborough Head actually – and had 3 wind machines going!! The set looked as much like Flamborough Head as I look like Betty Grable! You know how flat – and rather desolate looking it really is. Well naturally that isn’t picturesque enough for films – so there were little hillocks – and trees – and bushes – and long grass – oh yes, and tinkling streams!!

 

Everything but the kitchen stove – and I think even that was round a corner. And these 3 wind machines on our backs. I felt sorry for myself, but even sorrier for the actors who had to wear thin summer dresses and shirts. They could hardly say their lines, their teeth were chattering so. We also had a luvvly (sic) murder on this set – which I found most amusing because when the villain grabbed the girl – and we numerous rehearsals and takes – her dress used to rise up and all we could see were pink bloomers which she was wearing to keep warm. As the camera was shooting to waist level - it didn’t matter- but the unit found it very hard to keep straight faces. The grass was built up on  rostrums, and a plaster cliff face went down to the floor. I am still new enough to film to find amusing the little cameos that go on just out of the camera view – through a hole in the plaster cliff two men connecting electric cables, etc. – another man catching the water that trickles down into a big bath – a man pulling bits of silver paper on strings so it looks like the water sparkling in the moonlight – bits of grass stuck on the ends of the camera tracks which show in pictures. I don’t always notice these things because I’m usually stuck up in the middle of things by the camera – but on this set I used to keep to floor level as much as possible (to keep out of the wind-machines) and they seemed more obvious.

The film as a whole went quite well for me. There were one or two slip-ups – some which didn’t notice – and others which I rectified without anybody noticing it first! I had one or two nights at the very beginning of the first week when I cried myself to sleep and thought I simply can’t go on – but that passed over. But if anyone realised how much I was learning as I went along – they most certainly wouldn’t have contemplated giving me the film. However, that is something of the past, I hope.

Throughout her life, Shirley was notorious for not being an early riser. Throughout my childhood it was always our father who made us breakfast and got us off to school. So it is no surprise to find, in the same letter, a reference to her morning habits.

…..if I know I MUST get up – I get up. Now when I don’t HAVE to be in early, I can no more get up at 6.45 than I can fly! I loathe getting out of bed at any time of the day – and it doesn’t really make much difference whether it’s 6.45 or 12.45 (which it usually is at the weekends now). At the beginning of the film I always got in on time – 8 o’clock – but as I became more confident, I got later and later until I was just scraping in in time for the first shot – about 9 o’clock. I used to slink in, and as I had to keep a diary of what went on from 8 onwards, I had to ask various people what they had been doing in the morning…..and some of the boys were maddeningly non-committal (as a joke of course – not maliciously).

Shooting on ‘Holiday Camp’ finished in February 1947. In January Shirley already knew that the next film she would be working on would be ‘The Rescue’ (finally released in 1948 as 'Broken Journey' ) also directed by Ken Annakin. The film, about an air crash in the Alps, would be partly shot on location in Switzerland (actually it turned out to be France) but Shirley was told she wouldn’t be going.

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NEXT: 1947 THE RESCUE / BROKEN JOURNEY
 

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