Action!: Film and TV at Young’s

In this month’s blog post about the Young’s collection, we will take a look at some of the film and TV productions that were filmed at the Ram brewery and nearby Young’s pubs. As a major employer in South West London, Young’s often received attention from major broadcast outlets such as the BBC and ITV who filmed news reports at the brewery as well as segments for documentaries relating to brewing and other aspects of London life. One example was a 1974 ITV programme showing how horses at the brewery were looked after. You can see this film via this YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYhzvNx-N7E

As well as providing content for the main UK broadcasters, Young’s also hosted a number of film productions over the years. In 1969, a scene from the film The Magic Christian was shot outside the Duke’s Head pub in Putney. This rarely seen 60s oddity is about an eccentric billionaire who adopts a young homeless man and then  demonstrates to his new son  how his vast wealth can be used to manipulate people via increasingly outlandish and bizarre means.  The photos below shows stars Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr and Spike Milligan during filming with a Young’s dray and horses in the background.

In 1976, Hollywood actor Robert Mitchum spent a day filming in South-West London for a film titled Death Came Suddenly before moving on to Amsterdam and Hong Kong to shoot the rest of the film (It was eventually released under the title  The Amsterdam Kill the following year). The completed film shows a caption with the legend “Wandsworth, London” and a shot of Robert Mitchum entering the Brewery Tap pub. This photo shows him relaxing at the Brewery Tap after the day’s filming was complete. One local newspaper article from the time claimed that Mitchum drank at least five pints of Young’s Special during his visit!

Another film production visited Wandsworth in 1985 when the cast and crew for Honest, Decent & True shot some scenes for the film at the Ram brewery. Filmed for the BBC’s Screen Two strand and broadcast the following year, the film tells the story of an advertising agency’s attempts to create a campaign for a new lager by a long established brewery. The brewing hall and one of the fermenting tanks can be seen briefly near the start of the film. This photo shows some of the film’s cast, including Richard E. Grant and Adrian Edmonson, inspecting a keg inside the brewing hall.

From left to right: actors Tony Portacio, Jill Cary, Richard E Grant, Thomas Wheatley and Adrian Edmonson.

Other productions that have filmed at Young’s pubs include The Sweeney in 1975 where some of the action was shot at the Dog and Fox pub in Wimbledon and This Is Your Life in 1987 where satirist Willie Rushton was surprised by host Eamonn Andrews (disguised as a drayman) while Rushton was attending a party to mark the 21^st anniversary of the Pub of the Year award at the Orange Tree pub in Richmond. According to the report in the brewery’s then recently launched newsletter Ram News,  Rushton received another surprise while filming the main segment of the programme at the Thames Television studios in nearby Teddington when a horse-drawn dray came into the studio to deliver a cask of Young’s beer to the star. These examples demonstrate how the Young’s brand was represented in the film and TV landscape of the time and also acted as one way of keeping the brand in the public eye.

The project is very generously funded by the William Allen Young Charitable Trust, a charity funded and run by Young and Co.’s Brewery, P.L.C.  In the course of the project, records from Young & Co.’s Brewery and subsidiary companies will be appraised, catalogued, conserved, repackaged, and made accessible to researchers.