by Stephen Vagg
Years before Richard Branson became the best-known virgin in the world, slapping the name on everything from airlines to cinema chains, there was the production company Virgin Films. No, not Branson’s Virgin Films, which thrived briefly in the 1980s, but another one. Its aims were low, and so was the quality, but it managed to turn out seven films which did say something about Britain. One or two even made money.
The company was established by Ned Sherrin [left] and Terry Glinwood, neither of whom are particularly famous names, at least not in Australia, but both were men with long histories in British show business.
Sherrin had a background in television production, best known for the series That was the Week That Was; he had moved successfully into films with the sex-war comedy The Virgin Soldiers (1969). Glinwood was an accountant who had been production controller and associate producer on classy movies such as Repulsion, Cul-De-Sac and Privilege. The two men worked together on Every Home Should Have One (1970), a low-budget comedy which Sherrin produced and Glinwood associate produced. Starring Marty Feldman as an advertising man, it was financed by British Lion and Columbia (who’d had a success with the 1968 TV adaptation of Til Death Us Do Part), and was one of the most popular movies at the British box office in 1970.
Sherrin and Glinwood decided to establish their own company, Virgin Films to make a series of low-budget films along the same lines, i.e. comedies which might recover its costs in Britain alone. Sherrin wrote in his memoirs that his policy was “making as many films as possible.” The use of the term “Virgin” in the company was presumably in honour of The Virgin Soldiers, although it also fit the sex-mad saucy British cinema of the time.
Virgin’s first movie was Up Pompeii (1971), an adaptation of the popular sitcom with Frankie Howerd. Finance came from a number of sources, including Nat Cohen of EMI and Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood via his company Associated London Films (run by Berl Vertue) – the latter in particular would be very tight with Virgin. Up Pompeii is a lot of fun, helped by some bright acting, left over sets and costumes from Anthony and Cleopatra (1971), and nudity to justify turning a sitcom into a movie. The film was one of the biggest hits of the year in Britain (other local pictures in the top ten that year were On the Buses, There’s a Girl in My Soup, Percy, Beatrix Potter, The Last Valley and The Railway Children – the British film industry of 1971 provided a lot of variety; indeed, it never displayed such an ability to dominate the local box office again).
There were two sequels to Up Pompeii. Up the Chastity Belt (1971) had Howerd in the Middle Ages, and was another hit, though not as large as the first movie. It was followed by Up the Front (1972), set during the far less fun period of World War One; despite the presence of Zsa Zsa Gabor as Mata Hari, the movie was a commercial disappointment, which Sherrin attributed to it being put into production too quickly – although another reason may have been that WWI is a little too gloomy and traumatic in the memory for a comedy. Each of these films cost just over £200,000 and were shot in six weeks under the direction of Bob Kellett, an unpretentious journeyman who was Virgin’s main director.
In between the Up movies, Virgin (and Kellett) made Girl Stroke Boy (1971), an adaptation of a flop stage play about a married couple (Joan Greenwood and Michael Hordern), whose white son (Clive Francis) invites his black “lady friend” home only for the audience to twig that “she” is a “he” (Peter Straker). The movie has one joke – the parents can’t figure it out – which is dragged out far, far too long and the script badly needs another complication, but Girl Stroke Boy is remarkably progressive in its depiction of sexuality (or perhaps not, considering Sherrin was gay): the gay couple are shown in a very positive light as having a clearly loving and supportive relationship, and if at the end of the film they [SPOILERS] don’t bother telling mum the truth, that is very true to character.
Virgin made Rentadick (1972) from Rank, originally a script by none other than John Cleese and Graham Chapman, hot off Monty Python’s Flying Circus but years before The Holy Grail turned them into film stars. Cleese and Chapman developed the script – originally called Rentasleuth – with David Frost, and wanted Charles Crichton to direct; they assembled a cast including Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. Frost could not raise finance, so he sold the project to Nat Sherrin, who wanted to give the job of directing to Jim Clark, who had made Every Home Should Have One. Cleese and Chapman were upset Sherrin would not use Crichton (who had helped them develop the script and who Cleese especially greatly admired); they not only left the project, they asked for their names to be removed from the credits, and the cast dropped out. Sherrin had the script rewritten, added new cast (and title) and raised finance from Rank. The movie was a critical and commercial flop, though Cleese did credit the traumatic experience with ensuring he had Crichton on Fish Called Wanda (1988).
Virgin’s penultimate movie was The Alf Garnett Saga (1972), the second film spin off of the TV sitcom Til Death Us Do Part; it did not do as well as the first spin off, possibly because it came out too late, though fans of the series might enjoy it. By this stage, Robert Stigwood had brought a controlling interest in Virgin Films, which gave the company extra finance, and for a time at least held out the promise that Virgin could transform itself into a proper mini major – like, say, Anglo Amalgamated or Enigma Films.
Sherrin and Glinwood wanted to move into more prestigious films, and adapted Peter Nichols’ comedy play The National Heath (1973). Jack Gold was brought in to direct this one, even though he’d never made any comedies – Sherrin wanted the job to go to Australian Michael Blakemore, who directed the stage production, but was overruled. British reviews were very strong, better than for any other Virgin production, but the film didn’t seem to make much headway commercially. We haven’t seen it – maybe it’s great.
Virgin Films tried to get other projects going. Some of these sounded ropey but others had huge potential such as Peter Pan with songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon from a script by Tom Stoppard, and an adaptation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat. However, Sherrin and Glinwood could never get the money. After making a short called The Cobblers of Umbrage (1973), a spoof of The Archers, Virgin Films wound up, and Sherrin and Glinwood went on to other pursuits – both, as we mentioned, had long careers.
So – what to make of the 1970s Virgin Films? Seven comedies, some did well, others vanished. It tried. Rentadick was a major missed opportunity. Up Pompeii was enjoyable. In hindsight, the company probably should have gone even lower common denominator. It was very hard to make movies in Britain as the seventies went on. But they had a go. Good for Virgin.
