In
post war Britain, during the period 1945 to the mid-sixties, cinema was
the most popular form of entertainment and the Rank Organisation, the
dominant force in film production and distribution. The explosion of new
Rank productions however, posed an unusual problem, there were to few
young, up and coming actors. The Company of Youth, swiftly nicknamed by
the press “The Charm School”, created by the Organisation to
find, train, and publicise new talent, provided the solution.
Established adjacent to Rank's experimental Highbury studio in a disused
church hall, under the aegis of Olive Dodds, the Organisation's Director
of Artistes, the school trained its pupils in every thing from voice production
to fencing, and through it's portals passed some of the young hopefuls
who were later to attain world-wide stardom including:
Diana Dors,
Shirley Eaton, Christopher Lee, Kay Kendal, Pete Murray, and Anthony
Steele.
Rewind Production's one hour
documentary, The Rank School of Charmers,
narrated by George Baker, written by Emlyn Harris and produced by Neil
Rosser, opens the doors to the school and delves behind the scenes to
investigate the academy's idiosyncratic methods, its eccentic pedagogues,
and the stepping stones to stardom it allegedly provided.
Rank
school starlets stepping out.
Amongst
the line-up in this publicity still from the 1951 film 'Lady
Godiva Rides Again', are Diana Dors (fifth from the left) and,
appearing in her first movie, Joan Collins (at the end of the
line on the right).
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Enlivened
with first-hand interviews from amongst others Olive Dodds, film
producer Betty Box, legendary portrait photographer Cornel Lucas,
and a multitude of stars including; Sir Richard Attenborough,
Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Diana Dors, David McCallum,
Barbara Murray, Sir John Mills and Bill Owen, and featuring classic
Rank film clips, archive material, and music soundtracks, The
Rank School of Charmers aired 11th August 1998 on BBC
Radio 2.
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tales.co.uk 1998 