Author Topic: Anyone remember this film ?  (Read 3537 times)

Offline awemawson

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Anyone remember this film ?
« on: June 14, 2019, 08:55:35 AM »
I remember being very inspired many years ago by what really was a rather sad film, sorry cannot remember the title but I'm hoping someone else can.

Set in Northern UK a chap, presumably a foundry worker, had either been laid off or had had to retire. All his working life he had wanted to make his wife a very fancy set of Bedhead / Bed foot panels - highly decorative and from cast iron - he was obsessed by it but no one would let him.

Living in a tiny terraced house he built a brick cupola in the equally tiny back yard (it was a yard complete with Privy not a garden) and at long last achieved his life long ambition.

Of course no one else really appreciated his work, and on his death at the end of the film, it was seen in what was obviously an area of WW2 bombed out housing that had been bulldozed, and children were bouncing up and down on it and breaking it up.

The bomb site scene probably dates it to the 1950's or 60's

Anyone remember it, or better still can put a name to it?

Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline naffsharpe (Nathan)

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2019, 05:00:34 PM »
Sounds like it could be my (birth) neck of the woods in West Hartlepool. I'm a youngster at 64 yrs old but have talked to my older cousins and half siblings and they can remember the townscape you describe. I was born in town at home /Cameron's Hospital but we moved from Burn Valley to Wingate quite early in my life. My cousins and half siblings were brought up initially in the type of housing you describe, my father who owned his own business , could afford more salubrious housing. It could also be Redcar/Midboro/Consett etc.
Nathan.

Offline awemawson

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2019, 05:07:35 PM »
Sadly I remember several Northern Cities  - Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds - with large areas laid waste. My own infants school in Leeds had a 'playground' that was piles of shattered bricks.

Of course it wasn't just the North - Plymouth, Southampton, London all took a pounding as did many other places.
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline Pete W.

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2019, 04:52:10 AM »
I remember going to visit a friend in Greater Manchester, this was back in the 1970s.  We drove through an area where the old 'back-to-back' housing was being demolished, prior to redevelopment.  The demolition technique was quite simple - a pair of crawler tractors driving up parallel streets towing a loop of steel cable!

Where the demolition was complete and the debris cleared, the ground was bare and level and there were just the kerbs to mark the edges of the road.  There were no visual cues at all above ground level not even street lamps.  It made for quite an eerie driving experience!  Difficult to estimate the distance to the next junction! 
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Pete W.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you haven't seen the latest design change-note!

Offline hermetic

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #4 on: June 18, 2019, 03:12:38 PM »
Leeds Andrew? By eck lad, arm fre Pudsey wear't pigeons fly backard te keep soot outa't eeys!
Man who says it cannot be done should not disturb man doing it! https://www.youtube.com/user/philhermetic/videos?

Offline awemawson

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2019, 03:30:55 PM »
There used to be a superb military surplus shop in Pudsey - I remember my Father buying a play tent there for me (aged 5) made out of parachute silk - so that must have been 1955  :bugeye:
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline hermetic

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2019, 05:24:39 AM »
I dont believe it!!! I had one of those as well, I will ask my mum what it was called!! My dad loved that shop too!
Man who says it cannot be done should not disturb man doing it! https://www.youtube.com/user/philhermetic/videos?

Offline awemawson

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #7 on: June 19, 2019, 06:54:53 AM »
My Father had an office in Bradford and we lived in Leeds so he went past every day in the car (series 1 1949 Tickford SWB Landrover now worth a fortune! *). On those rare times when we went with him - probably school holidays I suppose - he didn't stand a chance - we HAD to stop. I can remember getting first world war candle lanterns with a slit window, loads of optics - prisms, lenses etc - and a load of aluminium aircraft solenoid valves that we sawed up to recover the solenoids to operate the points on our Hornby Double O train layout. It was an absolute Aladdin's Cave. The war wasn't that long over and presumably the government was unloading as much as possible to pay off the lend-lease debt. I have a feeling that my older brother is still using those solenoids as he has the (now much extended) layout !

(* Identical to the picture but ours was NNW514 - sold for £50 by my brother back in the 1960's  :bang: )
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline Fergus OMore

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #8 on: June 20, 2019, 03:26:26 AM »
I've just turned 89 years and can go back in time when the lads came back from Dunkirk and the village nurse was cutting the blood blisters that matted their grey army socks.
I remember in the days prior to DDay the Inns of Court regiment, then a reconnaissance lot training to come off landing craft and the final news that  this lightly armoured crowd had been literally wiped out as the faced a Panzer unit!
I recall KGV and HMS Victorious being built  and one was camouflaged as a merchant ship as it lay being fitted out before it sailed secretly to pound Bismarck into submission.

I recall- at 7 years HMS Manchester lining its guns off the Tyne long before it was attacked by Swordfish who mistook it for Bismarck.

I recall being machine gunned prior to going out with my ex sapper father to tackle incendiaries and later to inspect a dud bomb whivh wasn't.

Goldstar31 is Royal Air Force 31 Squadron( the Goldstars) and I recall seeing John Mills in the film Morning Departure and with a couple of days, flying in Devon C1 VP-981 the AOC in C's to try to help submarine HMS Truculent that was rammed and sunk off Sheerness.

No fiction like 'The Machine Gunners' which seemingly was written by  a classmate of mine.

Any one reall the Stars look Down- a film of mining. I went home to find my father in the family tin bath and my mother tenderly removing the grease and filth from his back as he had slipped and fallen on an endless rope in the coal mine.

Forgive me- but I might have come a long since- but mine is sadly real

Offline mcostello

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #9 on: June 20, 2019, 12:41:19 PM »
Wow, real History. Chat on if allowed by this Board.
High Speed steel in a Carbide world.

Offline hermetic

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #10 on: June 20, 2019, 01:40:06 PM »
Andrew, Mum can't remember, (but she is 87) but I have had a flash of inspiration, was it called Pudsey Bazaar? My dad got a 12v variac and a two way lever switch and built a  model train controller with it, all ex RAF parts according to the markings, and I still have them!
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Offline awemawson

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Re: Anyone remember this film ?
« Reply #11 on: June 20, 2019, 02:00:12 PM »
Quite possibly, but I was only 9 when we left Leeds, so that's a couple of years ago and memories are rather ethereal  :lol:
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex