Dorset On Screen: A Report On The Use Of Dorset As A Film-TV Location For The British Film Centenary 1996

This 1996 report was done as a review of developments since 1990, when the first agencies promoting Britain as a film and television location went into operation, and the first tie-in national promotion appeared which utilized film and tv location filming in tourism. The national history of these agencies was detailed in my 1992 brief for the Arts Council's "Towards A National Arts & Media Strategy" public consultation. (To view, or print this 1992 brief, "An Introduction To Screen Commissions," click here.)

IN 1990, the first national promotion recognizing the role of film and tv location filming in tourism appeared, in the form of the British Tourism Authority's brochure, co-sponsored by Shell, "The Movie Map." This was reissued in updated form in 1996, to commemorate the British Film Centenary 1896-1996, and so provides a framework for reviewing progress to date. Given its long use as a location, Dorset has been poorly represented on the "Movie Map." This usage goes right back to before World War One when Britain's film pioneer Hepworth had exploited it every summer as an all-purpose scenic location, filming for example in 1913 his £10,000 super-production of Hamlet here, using the Lulworth area to represent Denmark and building a lathe-and-plaster Elsinore Castle on the clifftop. After World War One, a Hollywood producer exploring Britain for the best site to establish a British "Hollywood" announced the most suitable spot would be Bournemouth — a lead sadly but typically not followed up. Hollywood had flourished as a filming centre due largely to the diversity of its surrounding landscape. Similarly, due to Dorset's diversity of landscape and architecture, the county can be considered Britain's original "heritage backlot" locations area.

During the pre-television period it saw continuing use by British filmmakers. This includes locally-shot screen adaptations of novels by the area's most famous author, Thomas Hardy, dating back to 1915. The "locations-backlot" use of Dorset continued into the television era. As well as many stories with English settings shot here, from "swashbuckler" costume dramas to Hardy adaptations, through the 1970 and 1980s television had continued to use Dorset, to represent not only English but foreign landscapes (such as a tropical Pacific island in Tenko *) — even otherworld landscapes (Dr Who, Blake's 7). BBC-TV in particular exploited Dorset, but in 1990, several series which used Dorset as a location for exterior scenes ended. One was the drama serial Howard's Way (1986-90) which had often used Hurn to portray various airports, and had become the basis of a Southampton tourism initiative ("Howard's Way" cruises and weekend breaks). The sitcom Don't Wait Up with Nigel Havers et al, which used "upper" Bournemouth as its anonymous suburban setting, ended after 6 years. The popular BBC sitcom Brush Strokes with Karl Howman (since 1989 exterior-filmed largely in Charminster) ended shortly after this, soon followed by its locally-shot short-lived spinoff, Mulberry (which filmed exteriors in Westbourne, etc). *

For representation of the Dorset countryside, the major showcase to date is listed but in a way that slights it, having only one of its twenty or so Dorset locations listed. Far From The Madding Crowd was listed in the 1990 edition as shot in Devizes and Weymouth. The market-fair, the Corn Exchange, and a church scene were shot in Devizes (which has a large market square), and a few scenes were indeed shot in the adjacent countryside, but virtually all of the film was shot in Dorset, a fact documented by published accounts, e.g. by the Hardy Society. The range of Dorset locations used stretches from Horton Tower in the east to Abbotsbury and Eggardon in the west, and from Shaftesbury in the north to Lulworth in the south. The new edition of The Movie Map, as Jeremy Miles complained recently in the Echo, lists it however as shot "on location in Devizes, Wiltshire, in the vale of Pewsey on the edge of Salisbury Plain and in Weymouth, Dorset."

Only two other films are listed as filmed in Dorset. One is of course The French Lieutenant's Woman, which now also has an obscure listing for Weymouth added (?), but the film's central "star" location-locale of Lyme Regis is only mentioned in passing in a list of locations. ("Filmed on location in historic Lyme Regis and Weymouth, Dorset and at Kingswear in Devon just across the Dart estuary from Dartmouth with its famous naval background." This naval background being irrelevant to the story, this entry seems devised for Dartmouth tourism.) The only other local-interest film listed is Restoration, which among other locations used Mapperton and Forde Abbey, but the Movie Map legend, unusually, does not identify in which County these two historic houses may be found.

Sleuth, whose sole location was the tourism attraction of Athelhampton House, and was listed in the 1990 Movie Map, has been dropped. There is still no listing for major local-interest shoots such as Tom Jones (largely shot at Cerne Abbas and Cranborne, but still listed as shot entirely in North Somerset); the 1969 Goodbye Mr Chips filmed at Sherborne, only the studio-shot 1939 version being listed; the recent public-school drama The Browning Version (Milton Abbey and Sherborne); BBC's Persuasion (a successful cinema release in the US) or the US production of Jane Austen's Emma (Evershot as Austen's Highbury); or the unprecedented US television hit Gulliver's Travels, which in America drew 57 million viewers in 1995 and was shown on Channel 4 at Easter 1996 (scenes on Dorset coast).

The original Movie Map's inaccuracies had prompted me to write a 6pp Advisory in 1990 to the British Film Commission, who then disowned the Map's mistakes, but almost all of which reappear in the new edition along with new ones. However, the Bournemouth Echo for the colour centrefold of its July 1st weekend edition of its special Film-Centenary supplement produced, with my help, a retrospective article, "Rich History Of Dorset On Film," keyed to a Dorset "Movie Map" which corrected some of these deficiencies, though it was limited to cinema rather than tv productions, and ironically tied in with a Movie Map giveaway offer. However I declined to be photographed and interviewed for a sidebar piece on the town's local problem of attracting shoots when situated at the edge of two screen commissions' jurisdictions, and this was dropped.
In regard to the status of the handling of enquiries about Dorset locations, a disturbing situation came to light when in personal conversation with a Dorset Tourism Information Centre official, I discovered that film companies were bypassing the regional film-commission infrastructure as they wanted to talk directly to people with personal knowledge of area resources. Apparently it is still routine practise for locations scouts to use the "How May We Help You?" pamphlet of all the TICs and simply phone around inquiring about local ruined churches or whatever is needed. To make matters worse, the result was that, during the tourist season, these enquiries were often being handled by young TIC summer staff. (The film project mentioned was probably an adaptation of Henry James's Portrait Of A Lady, which could have been one of two productions announced in 1994 as then in development, and which could now be considered another lost opportunity).*

A recent development in the attempt at information-provision is Dorset's becoming the first County to go on the Internet. Included in the coverage was a "page" on historic Dorset locations, compiled after an information request from the USA. It contains an odd selection of 20 films from 1942 through 1995-6, ending with the new Gulliver's Travels, which included scenes shot on the Dorset coast portraying both England (as in the final panorama) and (intercut with scenes shot in Portugal) the shores of several fabled lands. The major local-interest cinema release of 1996 (actually made for the Film Centenary), Restoration, however was not included. And unfortunately, the selection is misguided and most of the entries contain mistakes; a claim for some films listed as having been shot here is dubious, some evidently confused with other productions, while more important films are omitted.

* Tenko was partly filmed in Dorset, at a disused quarry near Moreton.

* Mulberry The house seen in exteriors was High House near Wimborne, and scenes were also shot in the vicinity e.g. Throop Mill, including some in Bournemouth, at Westbourne Arcade. 

Waiting For God took its title from an old nickname for Bournemouth, and had town exteriors filmed there, though the retirement home [pictured left] which was the sitcom's central setting was actually in Oxfordshire - possibly to reduce the prospect of litigation by angry Bournemouth care-home owners.

* The Green Man: As far as I've been able to discover, it was shot at UpCerne Manor and nearby Dominey's Yard, and in the surrounding countryside [NW of Dorchester].

TVS's 'Inspector Wexford' series starring George Baker often shot scenes locally.

Ken Russell's then wife, actress Hetty Baines, dances on a mockup of the Cerne Giant created near Worth Matravers for his Channel 4 Erotic Tales episode "The Insatiable Mrs Kirsch."

* Monty Python’s Flying Circus: The Monty Python team had filmed scenes in Dorset from the outset. The scene with the bearded castaway who gasps the one word “It’s...” which sets up the opening titles of each episode was shot on Studland Beach.

* Far From The Madding Crowd, 1967: The classic 1967 all-location version was shot at over 20 sites around Dorset. Although a key local-interest film, many TV and even 35mm prints are tatty and incomplete, as are many video and DVD versions, which are also not in widescreen.

* Echo Letter-Of-The Week: The Echo published my Sep. '94 letter of complaint, reproduced below, under the humorous headline “Nude Female Space Vampires Were Here” - a reference to part of Tobe Hooper’s SF-horror film Life Force being shot locally. (In fact it just used the model of central London which in the mid-1980s stood at Tuckton as a background in some special-effects scenes.)

Nude Female Space Vampires Were Here
Dear Editor:
THE concern of your September 9 editorial “Screening Dorset” - and accompanying article on the formation of the South West Film Commission is somewhat misplaced. Your concern that such an agency could attract films showing the wrong sort of tourism image, based on the premise that filming up to now has been of authentic Dorset stories, is doubly incorrect.
Location matching, which includes being able to shoot foreign-set films around a local production centre is essential. Dorset has been “doubling” foreign locales since Hollywood itself was established. The British film pioneer Hepworth used to come down here every year — you can see a clip of his 1913 Hamlet at the Museum of the Moving Image in London, for which a plaster Elsinore was built at Lulworth. In fact the official History of British Film says that in the 1920s a Hollywood producer announced Bournemouth would be the best base for a British Hollywood. Incidentally despite some disastrous early adaptations, Thomas Hardy was, unlike many of his more snobbish supporters, supportive of British cinema.
Since silent days, in films, TV drama and commercials, Dorset countryside had stood in for many other locales around England and the world — France, the Sahara, a Pacific desert island, even the wastelands of other planets in TV sci-fi. Location managers have long also been attracted by Dorset’s varied urban architecture. Dorset towns have stood in for Trondheim, London, Newcastle and even Hollywood itself.
Regarding your concern that rundown suburbs might be used for thrillers, a scene involving someone being thrown out a window was filmed across the road from me for the Hampshire-set TV detective serial Inspector Wexford. The idea of any negative impact on tourism is naive. An X-rated horror about nude female space vampires was filmed partly in Christchurch by the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I doubt that even our many film students know this.
The real problem is what is not shot here. Stories set or part-set here — but not filmed here — include Separate Tables, Lawrence Of Arabia, Lillie, Tess, Howard’s End and The Remains of The Day. The fact is that Dorset is no longer competitive, for elsewhere around Britain are over a dozen regional and even municipal screen commissions which assist film and TV producers with their location work. This type of agency, incidentally has been around in America since 1948.
The idea of such an agency covering Dorset is not, in fact, new as you suggest. A SouthWest Film Commission was first announced at the launch of the umbrella agency, the British Film Commission, in London in March 1992, where I heard the BFC Commissioner refer to certain parts of England being - organisationally - “black holes.”
Though Bournemouth would have been the ideal base, because there was no local initiative, the SWFC was built around the successful Bath Film Office, an initiative at once rewarded with the locations for Remains Of The Day being relocated mainly to Avon (the novel ends in Weymouth).
This is a trend that will continue. An adaptation of The Woodlanders of Charnel 4 announced in the trade papers for 1995 does not list any Dorset locations.
Kenneth Branagh last year expressed on Radio 4 interest in filming Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native and this should have been at once followed up with offers of cost-saving location assistance. (You mention Four Weddings And A Funeral as if it were a great success here, but apart from an early motorway signpost shot, Dorset is uncredited and anonymous.)
Before the SWFC was organized, a 1990 ITV “Xmas movie” production of Lorna Doone was all filmed in Scotland to the horror and the fury of the West Country Tourism Board. As The Independent recently pointed out re Scotland’s current success here, a major foreign film ‘shoot’ is equivalent to a major export order for Britain. If the next large-screen Thomas Hardy film is shot in Scotland or Wales or Ireland or anywhere else, there will a lot of be embarrassed explaining to do. 

*  Famous Five series: In the event, the 1990s series was largely shot farther down in the West Country. The 1970s Southern-TV version had been shot in the New Forest area, probably the source of the confusion below.

* Five Go Mad In Dorset: In retrospect it seems unlikely this was shot in the New Forest (what I had been told). A Channel 4 documentary on The Comic Strip troupe says that director Peter Richardson always insisted on dragging the group down to distant Devon locations, a factor in the group’s breakup as these were so far from London the others could not appear in stage plays etc. BBC1's Comedy Map Of Britain in Feb 07 narrated how Five Go Mad In Dorset was shot in the Staverton area near Totnes and the South Devon steam railway, the location being chosen as the director's parents lived there.) The campaign to have Blyton's Famous Five films made using authentic locales etc. is being ongoing, via Viv Endicott of Ginger Pop Promotions of Corfe, which sells Blyton souvenir items.

* The African Queen – press reports it was part-filmed in the Frome marshes have proved impossible to verify, as does a tie-in report that Bogart practiced his tiller-work on the Wick Ferry!  

* The Browning Version: locations are still being incorrectly reported for this. 

* Clarissa and Middlemarch: there are references to both dramas having some scenes shot in Dorset.

* Inspector Morse: there is now a plaque in the Lyme Regis hotel commemorating the sequence dropped from the TV version, where in the novel Morse stays on holiday.

The Skull Beneath The Skin: This does not seem to have been produced after all, through four episodes were made of ITV’s ‘Cordelia Grey’ detective series An Unsuitable Job for a Woman in 1997.

The Heroes Of Telemark: A 1965 Norwegian resistance drama starring Kirk Douglas, this received local press coverage in 1995-6 , with reader input recalling how its dockside scenes were filmed using Poole's opposing new and old quays portraying a Norwegian and then a British port. 

The BBC's Prince And The Pauper used Christchurch Priory as a Tudor-era Westminster Abbey for its finale.

* The Return Of The Native: this US-financed Hallmark TV production may have killed off Branagh’s announced interest.

Location doubling: Ridley Scott's 'Bike Boy' ad for Hovis, remade in 1993, used Shafestbury's cobbled Gold Hill to portray a northern town scene, and in the process made it an internationally-recognized landmark.

* The Scarlet Tunic: the film was made in west Dorset using a local crew, and was admired for its photography and scenery on its release, but received little distribution.

* Announced TV Adaptations: The BBC did film their Tom Jones partly in Dorset, at Mapperton Manor. Left unproduced were A Pair Of Blue Eyes, Branagh's Return Of The Native, and Wessex Tales, and the announced Mayor Of Casterbridge “adaptation from the same producer-director team that made Jude". However an ITV version of The Mayor Of Casterbridge, starring Ciaran Hinds, did get made, and was shot largely in Dorset. ITV’s Far From The Madding Crowd was shot in Yorkshire.

The notoriously inaccurate British Tourist Authority Movie Map of 1990, whose misinformation is still with us today.

* “Bournemouth, Hants" - Where One Foot In The Grave was shot, according to the BTA, who were evidently unaware in 1990 that Bournemouth had ceased to be part of Hampshire in 1974.

The most common mistaken claim for a film having been shot in Dorset when it wasn't must be the 1955 Fritz Lang version of Moonfleet, the novel being largely set here. The film's one location exterior, the escape up the Zig-Zag path at White Nothe, is patently a California beach. It was the 1984 BBC version that was filmed here, the 1955 film's only local connection being that star Stewart Granger grew up in Bournemouth.

The French Lieutenant's Woman: one of the most famous shots in film history, this is in fact a studio shot of Meryl Streep, cut in over shots of a male stunt double in a hooded cape on Lyme Regis's Cobb. Waves breaking over the Cobb made an on-location close-up impractical.

Another neglected local production, the 1969 three-hour musical version of Goodbye Mr Chips, starring Peter O'Toole, Petula Clark, and "The Boys Of Sherborne School."

The 1996 version of the British Tourist Authority's Movie Map, containing almost all the mistakes of the 1990 edition, plus some new ones.