SAFETY IN BRITISH FILM STUDIOS

Southland Times, Issue 23987, 30 November 1939, Page 14

SAFETY IN BRITISH FILM STUDIOS

A report is circulating among film people that British films, during the war, may be made by mobile units touring the country in vans—operating one month, say, in the North of Ireland, another in the Lake district—each unit entirely self-contained and comprehensive, travelling its own actors.

Such a plan, of course, is feasible, writes the film correspondent of The Observer, London. Odder things have happened and are happening daily. Films with a small cast and a quick schedule might conceivably be made in this way. What is more, cut free of the red tape of studio organization, they might prove to be both virile and economic.

Whether or not this rumour turns out to have any basis in fact, I don’t for one moment anticipate that production in the existing studios will stop. Conditions were very different during the last war. British studios then were generally the flimsiest affairs, often glass-roofed, like gigantic conservatories. Some of them were mere barns, hastily thrown together. The best had the solidity of the average village hall. “NO BETTER SHELTER” Today, I should ask no better air raid shelter than a British film studio. I have seen most of them, and I marvel at what the studio staffs have done in less than a year of preparation. One or two studios, indeed, are regarded as so secure that they have been taken over for the storage of city records and Government documents.

Tie ground floor stage of one studio has been recognized as the official air raid shelter for a crowded area. There, at the sound of the siren, you may find the children from the local fish-and-chip shop rubbing shoulders with a £5O a turn comedian.

At another studio the voluntary fire brigade and ambulance unit has been accepted for years as the smartest and best-equipped outfit in the district. A third, which, so far, has received no official recognition from the local A.R.P. authorities, is equipped with underground shelters that could house more than 3000 people comfortably in case of emergency. Planned by the studios for the benefit of its own employees, these shelters are open to any passerby, and look like becoming the sanctuary for every householder within hurrying distance.

The studio in question was fortunate in starting life with underground ducts for air-conditioning the stages that resemble, in a small way, the labyrinth of the Paris sewers. Equipment in the ducts themselves, and slight structural alterations in the exits and entrances have turned them into almost ideal air raid shelters.

There are six bf these ducts, each roughly 300 feet long and 10 feet wide. Thirteen feet or more below the ground, they are dry, concrete-lined, and airconditioned. All the air that enters is washed by a screen of water-jets, cold in summer, warm in winter, passing through at the rate of 100,000 cubic feet a minute.

At an interval of every few feet along the ducts heavy wood and felt screens have been erected to break the force of splinters. An alternative lighting plant has been installed in case the main power fails, and for the last extremity the shelters are stocked with candles. THE CENTRAL CHAMBER Wooden benches line the walls. There are barrels of water, paper drinkingcups, and a supply of food. In the central chamber, like a miniature Piccadilly Circus Underground station, where the ducts join, there is a first-aid post with a nursing sister permanently in charge, shining steel cabinets of firstaid accessories, stretchers, and all sorts of surgical appliances. Fully-trained Red Cross and St. John Ambulance helpers are stationed in every duct. There are fire-fighters and decontamination squads, men with picks, and men with long-handled shovels. At the first threat of a raid the enormous dynamos in the power-house are cut off. Every studio worker, already trained in A.R.P. drill, makes his way to his allotted duct. The fireproof doors to the various film stages are promptly closed. A system of field telephones is manned at three key-points on the studio lot, so that emergency fire-fighting, demolition, dr decontamination squads can be sent to any point at a moment’s notice. The A.R.P. organization, which numbers something like 60 members, is entirely drawn from voluntary studio workers, who have given up their evenings during the last year to attending lectures and preparing for any such emergency. The studio itself has provided equipment, gas-proof and decontamination suits, steel helmets, and thousands of sandbags for vulnerable stations. ,