5 FILMS WITH LONDON PLACE NAMES IN THE TITLE

1.Limehouse BLues, 1934
This minor piece of 1930s Hollywood hokum plays on the long-held belief that Limehouse, London's first Chinatown, was nothing but a centre of opium-smoking, white slavery and strange, oriental vices. It stars George Raft as a half-Chinese gangster from New York who travels to London and takes over as the local crime boss. Ironically, thirty-four years later, on one of the occasions when George Raft wanted to travel to London in real life, he was banned from entry into Britain because of his Mafia connections.
2.The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, 1939
A friendly match becomes less friendly when the team's star player is murdered and a Scotland Yard detective, played by Leslie Banks, arrives at Highbury to investigate. Members of the championship-winning Arsenal side of the period, most of them looking acutely uncomfortable, appear in the movie. The film has minor cult status and is shown from time to time at the National Film Theatre (NFT).
3.Passport to Pimlico, 1949
The Ealing comedy, about locals declaring independence after discovering an ancient treaty proving that Pimlico is legally a part of Burgundy, not of Britain, has long been considered a classic. Most of the film was not actually shot in Pimlico but south of the river in Lambeth, where the film-makers built sets amid the bomb-damaged surrounds of Hercules Road. (See also 9 Fictional Addresses, p. 215)
4.We Are the Lambeth Boys, 1958
This documentary, directed by Karel Reisz, was part of the 'Free Cinema' movement of the 1950s, a term which was coined by Lindsay Anderson to describe a season of short films shown at the National Film Theatre. Unscripted and made outside the confines of the major studios, several of the films attempted to show everyday life in '50s London. Anderson's own movie, Every Day Except Christmas, was about a day and a night in the life of the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market, and Momma Don't Allow was filmed in a London jazz club. We Are the Lambeth Boys was shot over a period of a few weeks in the summer of 1958 at a youth club in Kennington. Morrissey makes use of some dialogue from the film in the lyrics of his song 'Spring-heeled Jim'.
5. Notting HiLL, 1999
Much of the film was shot on location in Notting Hill. The bookshop which William Thacker (Hugh Grant) owns and where he meets the film star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is in Portobello Road, the couple go to the Coronet Cinema in Notting Hill Gate on their first date and their marriage reception takes place in the Zen Garden of the Hempel Hotel in Craven Hill Gardens. Most famously, the blue door on Thacker's home, which he opens to find photographers camped on his doorstep, was on a house in Westbourne Park Road, then owned by the film's writer and director, Richard Curtis.
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