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Hollywood’s little cousin in Merton
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| Merton Park Studios in 1966, shortly before it ceased production. |
With household names like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Arthur Askey and James Mason, you need not be a film buff to appreciate the faded glamour of the film studios that, in its heyday, hosted them all.
An impressive array of talent appeared at the Merton Park Studios, at Long Lodge in Kingston Road, a creative hub short on space but not ambition.
About 130 second feature films or B-movies, mostly crime-based, were made at the studios, with production reaching its peak in the early 1960s.
Part of Long Lodge, where the studios were based, was leased to Publicity Films in 1934 with the rest of the premises occupied by the Brocklesby family.
In 1939, the family left and the whole building was taken over by Merton Park Studios and its associated companies.
During the war, training and propaganda films were made, giving way to information, education and advertising afterwards.
Later features such as the Edgar Wallace mysteries, the Scotland Yard series and its successor Scales of Justice, hosted by Edgar Lustgarten, were successful despite their tight budget.
The actors used often went on to fame, if not better paid work, elsewhere.
A young Stanley Baker graced Merton Park before he moved on to The Guns of Navarone and Zulu.
Among other later greats you might have spotted if you had hung around the front gate with your autograph book was a young scriptwriter called Michael Winner, in the days before he found fame as a director with the Death Wish series and Esure adverts.
A prudent approach to film-making meant that parts of the borough were often used as sites for location filming.
Thought perfectly suited for police car chases was the section of London Road in Morden underneath the bridge near Morden South station, as can be witnessed in 1962's Never Back Losers.
The number of films made annually fell from 13 in 1961 to just one, the last made, in 1967, which was Payment in Kind, starring John Thaw.
The studio closed and the operation decamped to Bushey, Hertfordshire, but the film library remained until 1976 when Long Lodge was sold and the grounds developed for housing with the house becoming a set of offices, now home to Bedford Insurance.
However, its past as Hollywood's little British cousin is commemorated by plaques from the British Film Institute and Merton Council, the latter also noting its earlier history as the home and workshop of pre-Raphaelite artist Frederic Shields, a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
9:59am Friday 11th November 2005
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