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The real story behind Circlorama
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The 70mm Newsletter
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Written by:
Stanley Long |
Date:
14 September 2006 |
Stanley
Long (on the left) and the camera rig on a boat on the Thames c1963.
Circlorama was bought to England from Russia in 1962 by two entrepreneurs,
Leonard Urry,and Leon Heppner. A special cinema was built to house the
attraction in Denman Street just behind Piccadilly Circus. It opened to
mediocre business. A further site was opened up in Piccadilly Circus to
feed the audience into the theatre, this proved to make only a slight
difference to the takings. The cost of the operation reputedly was
exceeding £250,000.
I was approached by Leonard Urry who I had known for some 5 years. It
turned out that the operation was being funded by an eccentric multi
millionaire by the name of Henry De Vere Clifton and to him it was a
toy. He only went to the cinema once unbeknown to Leonard and Leon and
had paid 3/6 to see his own show which he pronounced as boring, being a
very heavy handed Russian propaganda film. He immediately instructed
Leonard Urry to have a film made which had more excitement. I was
summoned to meet Henry De Vere Clifton who it turned out occupied a
permanent penthouse suite at the Ritz hotel in Piccadilly. When I
arrived at his hotel I was shown into his bedroom, and there sitting
upright in an enormous four poster bed was the man himself, he was a
elderly man of about 80yrs and he sported a long grey beard, he reminded
me of a Rip-Van Winkle character, he then proceeded to tell me in a very
strange voice what he wanted for his new ‘toy’ ,. He rather surprised me
by asking if I knew anything about Hobgoblins, he made no explanation as
to why, and as the conversation was strange anyway, I didn’t go into it
any further.
On reporting back to Leonard Urry I was told that it had been decided
that I was to make a new film for Circlorama. I said that I would need
to make a test and agreed a price for this and proceeded to design a
large aluminium plate to hold eleven 35mm Arriflex cameras with mains
sync motors attached. With great difficulty (it was 1963 and Samuelson’s
were just starting their hire company) we managed to collect eleven
cameras one Sunday morning. We fixed the cameras on a boat and set off
down the Thames in the direction of Houses of Parliament and Tower
Bridge. The test was in B&W and was shown the following Monday morning
at the Circlorama cinema and was a great success. Following this I had a
meeting with Urry and he asked me to prepare a budget for a 20 minute
film. It was obvious that for technical reasons we had to purchase
eleven 35mm cameras and equipment to do this (this was to do with the
importance of keeping the framing constant throughout the film).
The budget proved to be astronomical and it was decided that in view of
there only being one cinema and that Russia would be unlikely to be
interested, I was asked if I had any ideas on how to cut the budget. I
suggested a rather radical solution. That we shot on 16mm and change all
the projectors from 35mm to 16mm! After much deliberation and ho ha it
was decided to go ahead on this basis. Eleven 16mm French Beaulieu
cameras were purchased and I proceeded with the production of "Circlorama
Cavalcade".
The story of the production is interesting which I will
tell you about
later and the erection of the portable cinema built by Harkness and
placed at the end of Blackpool pier. My adventure in dismantling this
and transporting it to the Kelvin Hall Glasgow and arranging for it to
be erected by the riggers of the Billy Smart Circus is a riot! And the
eventual bankruptcy of Circlorama. I will reveal later what happened to
the cameras and the equipment as I was a major creditor together with
Technicolor and served on the inspection committee during the
liquidation.
Copyright 2006 Stanley Long.
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Further
in 70mm reading:
The real story of Circlorama
Memories of Circlorama
More about Circlorama
CircleVision
360
Kinopanorama
Internet link:
stanleylong.com
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28-07-24 |
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