BIG FIRE AT ELSTREE STUDIOS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 117, 11 February 1936, Page 9

BIG FIRE AT ELSTREE STUDIOS

Estimated Damage, £500,000

TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE OUT OF WORK

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.

London, February 9.

Breaking out at 2 a.m., fire gutted the studios of the British and Dominions Film Corporation and severely damaged the studios of British International Films at Elstree. The British and Dominions studios cost £350,000 to construct. Three new films were destroyed.

Two thousand people will be temporarily thrown out of work. All day actors and actresses who had been participating in productions disconsolately watched the firemen clambering over the smouldering ruins. The damage is estmated at £500,000.

Mr. Herbert Wilcox, managing director of British and Dominions Films, pronounces the fire as the most serious in the history of the industry. The salvage covers many cameras, much plant, and negatives worth £750,000.

Six complete stages, three in each studio, were destroyed.

Pyjama-clad men and girls from adjacent houses, despite the bitter cold, joined the crowds watching the devastation in the early morning.

Though they were sprayed with shattered glass and flashing explosions and the continuous collapse of the walls, roofs, decorations and equipment, hundreds of firemen eventually fought the blaze, against which one engine and six men contended for 45 minutes before the arrival of a second engine. Film production at the studios will not be interrupted, as nine stages were not destroyed. Both film companies are fully insured. The British and Dominions Film Corporation’s Imperial Studios at Boreham Wood, Elstree, twelve miles from London, occupy an area of about 30 acres. There were three stages, two of a floor area of 7,500 square feet, and the other of 6600 square feet. About 20 films are produced each year. The first Tom Walls and Ralph Lynn film, “Rookery Nook,” was a notable production of the studio, and a recent success, “Escape Me Never,” also came from these studios. The British International Films' (now the Associated British Picture Corporation, Limited) studios are known as “Elstree Studios,” and cover 60 acre*. There were twelve stages, the largest of a floor area of 30,000 square feet, and the others ranging from 1800 to 7500 square feet Beneath the largest is the only aquatic studio tank at Elstree. The buildings include a restaurant seating 300. Elstree Studios constantly employ 2500 people, and the actors, supernumeraries, etc., casually employed, total 25,000 a year. The output is 30 film> a year, and among the company’s successes were the first British talkie, “Blackmail,” “My Wife’s Family," “The Middle Watch,” and “Heart’s Desire." TURIN THEATRE BURNT Turin, February 9. The Royal Theatre, which ranks second to La Scala Theatre, Milan, was destroyed by a fire which broke out at noon.