Films

...or is it REALLY about Marsden?

It could be said that it all started in West Yorkshire, after all it was in 1887 that Louis Le Prince, a French photographer working in Leeds, managed to create a few moving images of his back garden and, a few months later, did the same on Leeds Bridge. The moving picture was born - but then Le Prince mysteriously disappeared in 1890 and it was the Lumiere brothers who came to be hailed as the fathers of cinematography.

The first commercial showing of moving pictures in Great Britain took place in London in February 1896 but it's probable that the first film show out 'in the sticks' (using the Lumiere brothers' 'Machine') was at the Peoples' Palace music hall in Bradford just a couple of months later. The National Media Museum (formerly the National Museum of Photography, Film and TV) ironically now stands on this site.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Making moving pictures soon became all the rage and film companies sprang up across West Yorkshire. In other words, people were making pictures in Holmfirth long before they made them in Hollywood! As time went on the cameras moved out of the studios and film makers from further afield made their way 'up north,' looking for new locations.

Today, West Yorkshire's villages and towns continue to play a starring role in TV productions and film crews regularly descend on the area. Long-running series like A Touch of Frost and Emmerdale make it difficult to name every location used in the area - and there's many a celebrated film or television series that is now long forgotten - but why not read on to find out more about some of the bits of Kirklees, Calderdale, Bradford and Wakefield which have made West Yorkshire a star of the big and small screens? You might even discover that somewhere near you has played a starring role!

In Bradford ...

In the very early years Bradford was certainly the cinematic capital of Yorkshire. Film makers the Riley Brothers made films in Bradford and they also had branches in New York and Boston, but it was a film made in 1963 that really put the city on the movie-making map.

Bradford's 'Billy Liar' plaque

Billy Liar, considered by many to be one of the greatest British films of the 1960s, was shot entirely on location in Bradford. Tom Courtenay plays Billy, the undertaker's clerk, a compulsive liar who spends his days fantasising. The location of Billy's office can still be found in Southgate - look out for the plaque unveiled by the film's director John Schlesinger in 1996. The atmospheric Undercliffe Cemetery and Bradford's War and Queen Victoria memorials are among the city centre locations also used in the film.

Bradford also stars in Room at the Top. Now seen as one of the first of the British 'kitchen sink' dramas, back in 1959, when it was released the film was billed as a "savage story of lust and ambition". Laurence Harvey stars as 'angry young man,' Joe Lampton, the ambitious young accountant who gets involved with the boss's daughter as well as an older, married woman, with predictably tragic consequences. Simone Signoret won as Oscar for her performance as Lampton's lover. Some of the most pivotal scenes in the film take place in the Boy and Barrel pub in James Gate but Ivegate, Kirkgate and Westgate also feature. The film was based on the novel by Bingley librarian John Braine.

Tom Courtenay was back in Bradford in 1986, this time with Albert Finney, to play the title role in The Dresser. Finney is an old-style actor manager who has brought his touring company of players to a provincial theatre. The Alhambra provided a splendid location.

In recent years Bradford's screen image has often been far from glamorous. Writer Andrea Dunbar grew up in Buttershaw and the adaptation of her play, Rita, Sue and Bob Too - about two schoolgirls who have a fling with a married man - is set there. Band of Gold, a television drama series about prostitution, was set around Lumb Lane in Manningham.

A star in itself: Bradford Alhambra

Of course, such is the fame of the Bronte sisters that it was only natural that from the beginning attempts would be made to film their novels but although they may have lived in Haworth, few of their books have been filmed in the area. It is unlikely that Laurence Olivier went much beyond a Hollywood lot when he played Heathcliff in what is still the most celebrated celluloid version of Wuthering Heights, released in 1939. The Haworth moors were recreated at great expense among the Californian hills. However a later version starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes did use East Riddlesden Hall, just outside Keighley, as a location.

It was 1970's The Railway Children that ensured that movie makers would keep on coming back to Keighley. Even today when you take a ride on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway you may find yourself looking out of the window wondering if a young Jenny Agutter will run alongside the train, waving. The railway was used again, to very different effect, by Pink Floyd and director Alan Parker in the 1982 film The Wall - based on the best-selling (and rather depressing) album of the same name. Born and Bred, starring James Bolam, has been one of the most recent television productions to use the railway, even though the series is set in Lancashire!

Blow Dry, scripted by Simon Beaufoy (who also wrote The Full Monty) sets out to tell the story of a Keighley hairdresser, played by Alan Rickman, but the film-makers preferred to use locations in Dewsbury and Batley.

TV and film legend: A KWVR train

And then, of course, there's Emmerdale, the country's second-longest running television soap opera. Over the years many day-trippers have poured into the village of Esholt hoping to recognise the odd cottage, and character, or have a drink in the Woolpack. Sadly for them, these days the series is made elsewhere on a closed set.

Finally, and right up to date, top comedian and Doctor Who assistant Catherine Tate can now be added to the list of stars who've headed onto the big screen via Bradford. Tate stars in the title role in Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution, a 2007 film which tells the story of a most unusual journey - from Bingley to East Germany and back during the Cold War! As always, West Yorkshire's one of the stars...

In Calderdale...

Calderdale would now seem to be THE popular place to make films. Gibson Mill at Hardcastle Crags was recently transformed into the grim Dotheboys Hall for a big-screen version of the Dickens classic Nicholas Nickleby. Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson and Jamie 'Billy Elliot' Bell were among the actors involved in the project.

Scene from A Day Out

The best-known film of recent years to feature Halifax was very definitely set in South Yorkshire. In Brassed Off the Grimley Colliery Brass Band, with a little help from members of the real-life Grimethorpe Band, travel to Halifax's Piece Hall to take part in the regional heats of the National Brass Band competition. Star Tara Fitzgerald certainly did not hide her feelings about Grimethorpe but we have no idea what she thought of Halifax. The Piece Hall has featured in many other films over the years including The Dresser and Room At The Top.

The 1979 film Yanks, starring Richard Gere (below) and Vanessa Redgrave filmed at Southowram Bank and the 1991 version of Wuthering Heights also used Shibden Hall as a location.

Todmorden has featured in many television productions, including the long-running 1980s police series Juliet Bravo and drama series Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. The latter was based on the award-winning novel by Jeanette Winterson telling the story of a young girl raised in a repressive Pentecostal home by an overpowering mother. When Jess, the girl, leaves the fire and brimstone of home at the age of 16 she falls in love with a young woman. The part of Jess was played by the actress Charlotte Coleman (below) who sadly died suddenly in 2001.

Television crews have also been in Todmorden to film the BBC's darkly hilarious comedy The League Of Gentlemen.

Scene from Sparkhouse

One of the most memorable of the dramas filmed for the small screen over the years is A Day Out, made in 1972 and written by West Yorkshire's very own Alan Bennett. It features a group of cyclists who, in 1911, leave the soot and smoke of Halifax behind them to go for a day's bike ride in the country. One of the cyclists finds it difficult to keep up because of a disability. At the end of the film this cyclist visits a war memorial inscribed with the names of his fellow cyclists.

Then, in 2002, the BBC's drama series Sparkhouse was filmed around Hebden Bridge and set in present day Yorkshire, but based on Emile Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Written by Sally Wainwright of At Home with the Braithwaites fame and starring Sarah Smart, Joe McFadden, Alun Armstrong, Celia Imrie and Nicholas Farell, it was the classic tale with a twist - the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff are reversed!

In Kirklees...

It sometimes seems that you can't travel around the valleys around Huddersfield without falling over television crews!

For nearly thirty years Last of the Summer Wine has been something of a showcase for the Holme and Colne Valleys and has also served to put Holmfirth firmly on the tourist map. Bill Owen who played Compo made the area his second home and is buried in nearby Upperthong. The pub featured in the series is the White Horse Inn in Jackson Bridge.

Last of the Summer wine

It ís a very different group of villagers that feature in The League of Gentlemen. Although most of the filming has taken place in Derbyshire some believe the series is actually about Marsden folk. Scenes were filmed around Holmfirth and Marsden - many a walker has been surprised to see the set for the 'Local Shop' up on the moor.

You don't have to be much of a detective to realise that the fictional Skelthwaite (Where The Heart Is) is actually Slaithwaite. The health centre is in Marsden and the hospital shots are, we think, Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. Marsden also became Wokenwell in the police series of the same name with the tiny Sair Inn in Linthwaite playing the part of the local pub.

Thornton Lodge in Huddersfield was also used in an advert for an insurance company a few years ago, and Dewsbury has featured in Emmerdale, The Darling Buds of May and A Touch of Frost.

Historic: Holmfirth Picturedrome

While Oakwell Hall was used as a film location as long ago as 1921, for a silent version of Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, we need to go back to Holmfirth to find out where it all began. It was here that the Bamforths used to produce their famous saucy seaside postcards but before this they made movies using local people as actors. They showed these at the Valley Cinema - now the Picturedrome.

In Wakefield...

Back in the 1960s the film This Sporting Life seemed to be remarkably tough and uncompromising. It was shot around Wakefield and, in particular, Wakefield Trinity Rugby League Club. The film tells the story of Frank Machin, a young and ambitious coal miner, who is on his way up as a rugby league star. Richard Harris, who plays Machin, has said he considers this to be his finest role. He certainly gives a powerful and convincing performance. Rachel Roberts is also unforgettable as Machin's widowed landlady with whom he has a futile affair.

This Sporting Life: Wakefield Trinity

Based on a novel by David Storey who had grown up in Wakefield, and directed by Lindsay Anderson, this was the last of the gritty northern dramas which had begun (in film at least) with Room at the Top. The film was critically acclaimed but the 'swinging' sixties had begun and its themes of class and society now seemed out of date

Rugby League was also the setting for Alan Plater's Trinity Tales, first transmitted in 1975. This was an updating of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Six fans from a West Yorkshire rugby league club travel to Wembley for the Challenge Cup Final and pass the time by telling stories. Plater also wrote the Beiderbecke Affair, a popular and quirky romantic drama series which used locations around the city and starred James Bolam and Barbara Flynn.

And, finally, Emmerdale's courtroom scenes are filmed in Wakefield Town Hall!