Spring and the film crews are back in Chorlton

Well it’s that time of year again, just as we head towards spring there will be a film crew somewhere in Chorlton and usually on Beech Road.
Now I know it is going on this week because the crew and the vans and equipment are there in the car park of the Irish Centre. Looking out across the Rec you can see the bus with all its lights on late into the night and listen to the sound of the generator, which starts up around six in the morning and can be clearly heard again in the quiet of the evening.

Sometimes it is for the television and sometimes it will be a film. I say this because every time we have family up from London and across from Italy we show them Looking for Eric, and one of us, usually me keeps up a running commentary of where the shots were taken, which is fine but also a little frustrating as from the park bench on the Rec you just miss out seeing our house.

So not even Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame then.

Now I have often wondered when the first crew appeared I can remember the shop front of what is now the Gallery on Beech Road but was then the barber’s being blown out in a scene from some long forgotten TV programme, and being puzzled by the London bus and hackney cab along with the name Bulman above the entrance to the building beside the Methodist Chapel, until it became clear they were shooting an episode of the show.

So being a historian I did begin to wonder when the first film crew appeared here in Chorlton. Now I am prepared to be proved wrong but I rather think it was in 1949 when Mancunian Films came down from their studio on Dickenson Road.

The film was Bella’s Birthday and was a short film made up of out-takes from School for Randle and they came down and staged a short clip of Frank Randle accompanied by Dan Young, Alec Pleon and Maudie Edwards who played Bella walking into the pub. You can read more about Mancunian Films at http://www.itsahotun.com/Mancunian_Shorts.html

Now I have no idea of what is being filmed but in the nature of these things I will be sitting at home one day and there will be a familiar location.

Pictures; from the collections of Tony Walker, Chris Lee and the North West Film Archive