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33* Scrooge, Alfie, Blade Runner ...

Writer's picture: Dave GobleDave Goble

Updated: Feb 25, 2024

... and much more. And it's still going. Located in St. Margarets, Twickenham Film Studios have been used for some well known film and TV productions. A potted history follows, including a nod to a minor altercation with a security guard.



Employed by various motion picture and television companies for over a hundred years, it was established in 1913 by the London Film Company on the site of a former ice-rink. Upon construction it was the largest film studio in the UK, and that year the company produced it’s first silent film there, namely The House of Temperley, based upon the 1986 novel Rodney Stone by Arthur Conan Doyle. A leading producer during WWI, in 1920 - just seven years after being built – the London Film Company went out of business and the studios were sold off and used for various independent productions.


During the 1930s the studio was run by Julius Hagen who built up his business making Quota Quickies, (low-cost, low-quality, quickly-made films), for major American studios who were required by law to produce a certain number of British films each year to be allowed to release their pictures into the lucrative British market.


But Hagen had bigger ideas. He became interested in producing more serious and expensive films, like Scrooge in 1935. It was the first sound version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, excluding a lost 1928 short subject. Hicks had previously played the role of Scrooge on the stage more than 2,000 times, starting in 1901, and again in a 1913 British silent film version. This was the first film to be released by the Twickenham Film Distributors Ltd., founded by Julius Hagen and Arthur Clavering. It was the end of quickies for Hagen, who went on to spend £100,000 rebuilding and modernising the studios, and broke with his established distributors so as to distribute his own films. This proved a mistake as the major American studios blocked his entry into their market, while his films failed to gain access in the British market. In 1937 he went bankrupt as part of a wider slump in British filmmaking that year, bringing an end to his reign at Twickenham. Things got worse, and in 1938, he died a ruined man.


Then along came WWII, during which the studios took a direct hit from a bomb and suffered substantial damage.

After the war, in 1946, Alfred Shipman formed Alliance Film Studios Limited, controlling Riverside, Southall and Twickenham Film Studios. After his death in 1956 his two sons took control of the studios. Successful films included Light Up The Sky and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

In 1959 Guido Coen was invited to join Twickenham as Studio and Production Controller. He had been Executive Assistant to the managing Director of Two Cities Films from 1941 until 1949, during which time they made such classics as ‘In Which We Serve’, ‘Blythe Spirit’, ‘The Way Ahead’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Henry V’ and ‘The Way to the Stars’. As well as his main role, he also produced many films for the Shipman Group, and his considerable experience and natural charm set the studios on a new path.


In 1961 a new, ultra-modern Recording Theatre, headed up by Stephen Dalby, was opened, immediately attracting films from Europe and the USA. Under the experienced, intuitive guidance of Coen, Twickenham Film Studios was thriving again, and film-makers once more began to make their films there. The Richard Attenborough Theatre in said location is named after the actor who lived locally and had his production offices at the studios.

Films made at Twickenham Studios in the ‘60s include A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) by The Beatles, plus their promotional film for Hey Jude (1968). Also Alfie with Michael Caine was made there in 1966, and The Italian Job in 1969 featuring Caine and Noel Coward.


“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.”


In the ‘70s The Beatles used the studios while rehearsing the album Let It Be. A film made of some of the sessions was released with the record in 1970.

In the ‘80s the studio was used for The Mirror Crack’d, An American Werewolf in London (1981), Blade Runner (1982), A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Shirley Valentine (1989).


Other films that have used the facilities, production and post production, include:


  • The Crucible (1996)

  • Spice World (1997)

  • Sweet Revenge (1988)

  • The Others (2001)

  • Reign of Fire (2002)

  • Nicholas Nickleby (2002)

  • In America (2002)

  • Imagining Argentina (2003)

  • Calendar Girls (2003)

  • Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

  • Wimbledon (2004)

In 1996 Guido Coen retired but carried on in a consultancy role. He died in 2010.

In February 2012, just a year before its centenary, it was announced that due to the studio going into administration it would have to close. Industry luminaries including Steven Spielberg, David Cronenberg and Stephen Daldry threw their support behind a campaign to stop the closure of one of the UK’s oldest studios. It was saved, however, by a mystery buyer who acquired it in August that year - that buyer turning out to be Sunny Vohra, a businessman and self-confessed movie lover.


Most recent use of the studios includes the thriller Before I Go To Sleep featuring Colin Firth and Kidman (again) which was shot there in 2013, and British TV dramas and comedies Crims, (never heard of it), Josh, (never heard of it), and Inside No. 9, (heard of it).


Twickenham Film Studios continues to build on past successes, being recently involved in projects including Shanghai, Sleuth, Love In The Time Of Cholera, 1408 and Elizabeth the Golden Age. It was reported in Variety on March 2nd 2020 that the studios are in line for major investment following a £50m deal that has seen property developer General Projects and urban regeneration specialists The Creative District Improvement Company take a 50% stake acquired from studios owner Sunny Vohra who will continue as chairman, and who holds the remaining 50% stake.


FYI in taking my "bike" photo shown on entry to this post I was taken by surprise when I was approached by an irate and rather burly security guard loudly demanding I must not take photographs of the studios. I had already taken a few, and they seemed unremarkable and harmless at that. Quickly I weighed things up: He was on one side of a 6' high iron barred gate (to the right of said photograph), I was on the other; he had no bike, I did. And so, as you can see, the photograph survived, with a backstory rather more interesting than the picture itself.



*** March 2024 update: Most recently the studios carried out script-to-screen work on Ten Percent, the British remake of French series Call My Agent. Other latest work includes Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, Top Gun: Maverick, Alien: Covenant, Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, Last Night in Soho and House of Gucci.


Vohra has now sold a 50% stake in the business, and was quoted as follows:


“Twickenham Studios was saved from liquidators and demolition by myself and a group of like-minded film-buffs approximately 10 years ago. Now we all look forward towards worldwide expansion and growth between our current management and the APX Group team.”


APX Group are a US and European fund that has been snapping up media assets on both sides of the Atlantic. In March 2023 Vohra acquired a 6.95% stake in APX Corporation, the parent company of the APX Group Media fund, joining its board and acquisition committee. He states his intention to remain chairman of the studio.


Red arrow: The studio gate where the security guard and I “met”


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