SOUTHPORT’S HOLLYWOOD
Barry McCann delves into the history of the former Palace Hotel and its potential attraction as a major film studio.
SOUTHPORT has always been a favourite location with film and TV makers. And at the close of the 1960s it nearly gained its very own film studio, one that could have become a Hollywood of northern England while, at the same time, preserving a heritage building sadly long since gone.
The Palace Hotel, on the seafront of neighbouring Birkdale, was a towering 75-bedroom building occupying a 20-acre site. Opened in 1866, it was developed by the Southport Hotel Company at a cost of £60,000, raised mainly by Manchester merchants. It boasted magnificent reception areas, bowling greens, croquet lawns,
archery fields, ballrooms and its own 650-feet long promenade.
It was rumoured the hotel had been mistakenly built the wrong way round to face inland instead of the seafront, causing architect William Mangnall to commit suicide by jumping off its roof. However, there is no evidence to support this and Mangnall actually died from consumption two years after its opening.
In 1881, the Palace was refurbished as a hydro hotel with a variety of baths and a pipe installed to draw water from the sea. A new wing was added and the bedroom count increased to 220, while the grounds were reduced to five acres. The Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway (SCLER) built an adjacent railway station in 1884, and electric lighting was later installed in the hotel, produced by a steam-driven generator.
By the 1930s, the Palace had become a successful resort hotel and 1,000-bedroom conference centre, renowned for croquet on the lawns, dancing and evening concerts, Sunday afternoon orchestral teas and tennis. Stars such as Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable stayed there and, in 1962, it hosted a concert by The Beatles.
In 1942, it was taken over by the American Red Cross and used as a place of rest and recreation for the United States Army Air Force.
During the following three years more
15,000 personnel recuperated there or rested between bombing raids on Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Palace remained in business until the 1960s, when the loss of the local rail link and advent of cheaper foreign holidays saw its fortunes dwindle. Its final owners, Heddon Hotels, went into liquidation and the Palace closed down in 1967.
However, that was not quite the end of the story.
By 1968, the availability of the building came to the attention of movie producer Tony Tenser, who had stayed there some years earlier. His London-based company Tigon had grown from low-budget exploitation films to more mainstream products, particularly in the horror genre. In fact, he had just enjoyed a controversial success with
Witchfinder General, starring Vincent Price in what is considered his best-performed role.
Tigon had decided to embark on a comedy entitled What’s Good For The Goose, about a bank clerk sent to a conference in Southport, where he becomes infatuated with the psychedelic lifestyle that was fashionable at the time. It was devised as an uncharacteristic vehicle for Norman Wisdom to re-direct his film career, which was in the doldrums by this point.
The Palace had been used as a location for a film once before, back in 1915 for Ultus: The Man from the Dead, but Tenser had more than just location work in mind. He decided to utilise the Palace as a production base and makeshift studio, while cast and crew were accommodated in its bedrooms.
The only thing it lacked was a screening room to review the day’s rushes, for which Tenser managed to charter a local cinema.
With the Palace lending itself so well to film production, Tenser scheduled another feature to be shot there, The Haunted House of Horror starring Frankie Avalon. The plot concerned a group of teenagers holding a séance in an abandoned old house, for which sets were built within the Palace, while its corridors, cellars and stairs were used for other scenes.
Again it proved a self-contained production and this gave Tenser the idea of turning the Palace into a permanent production village for Tigon.
“It was ideal; there was more than enough space for all the facilities you need in a studio and the location was perfect,” he later explained. “I went to see the local council with a deal; if they put up half the money we would guarantee sufficient work through Tigon to ensure that it never lost money. The council turned it down, saying they didn’t go into commercial ventures. It was a great shame.”
Despite this disappointment, Tenser was clearly taken with Southport and made his home there in 1978, where he remained until his death in 2007.
With no other ventures forthcoming, the hotel was sold for redevelopment as a housing estate and the dream of a Southport Hollywood went with it. Of course, it is impossible to speculate whether it would have taken off as such, especially as Tigon produced just another dozen films until closing up shop in 1974. However, a production facility not only with studio space and accommodation, but surrounded by coastal and countryside location, would have made it the only type of its kind in the country. As such it could well have attracted other film companies.
The Palace building was demolished in 1969, but one remnant of it still stands. Originally the hotel’s coach house, it was later converted into a watering hole for non-residents and continues to this day as a pub called The Fisherman’s Rest.