Film City

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 25

Film City

Beautiful Studios in Mushroom Elstree STARS IN THEIR HOMES 1 “ ' ! | day —not very -far off, | | it is believed —the name | ! of Elstree will be as familiar J j to the world as that of Holly- I | wood, and the nations will j I talk as wonderingly of Bore- j j ham 'Wood as to-day they ' | talk, of Beverley Hills. 1 . J i WO years ago Boreham Wood slumbered almost undisturbed by the bustle of busy life, for -all that London roared but ten miles away. Today you will marvel at the wakefulness of the village, says the “Daily Mail.” It has begun to grow up into a town. Round about the great film studios scores of new houses and shops are clustering, and more and still more are soon to appear. Every morning hundreds of men and women and girls pour into the village from the railway station, and hundreds more crowd into it by motorcar and omnibus—and vanish within the vast studios. Not far from the studios there is an area which is to be the site of a “film garden city,” where screen actors and actresses will live in houses as fine as those inhabited by the elite of Hollywood. It is by virtue of this “film city” that Boreham Wood hopes to vie with Beverley Hills. Several “stars” have already installed themselves in lavishly equipped houses and bungalows near the studios. Village Actors Boreham Wood would be the strangest village in the kingdom to the eyes of a visitor who came here ignorant of the fact that it is “filmland.” At any hour of the day, and often at night, he might come face to face with a stern-faced “judge,” robed and bewigged; an "exquisite” in faultless dress clothes; a clown with scarletpainted nose; and, it might be, he would catch a glimpse of beautiful women wearing Paris gowns and “diamonds” that glittered—in the sunlight! Quite recently several of the village shopkeepers appeared in a film, because it was found that they “looked their parts.” To put them thoroughly at their ease, the film company had duplicates of their shops built in the studio, and sgw to it that their name* were painted above their shops.