Forest Gate - the new Hollywood?

 ... or so went the question in a recent Guardian feature on E7 - see last week's blog for details. And perhaps it had a point. The district can "claim" a clutch of current ground breaking film headline grabbers, who follow in a fine local tradition, as we show, below.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Well, as if to live up to the "New Hollywood" billing, the Bafta award for Leading Actor last night went to .... Chiwetel Ejiofor for his role in the "Best film" Twelve Years a Slave.

Chiwetel was born on 10 July 1977 in Forest Gate.

His parents left Nigeria after the civil war, in the early 1970's, and moved to England. His father Arinze was a doctor, his mother worked in a chemist's shop, locally. During the 1980's the family moved to Brixton.


A smiling, Bafta-winning, Forest Gate-born,
Crystal Palace-supporting, Chiwetel Ejiofor

In 1988, when Ejiofor was 11, tragedy struck the family during a trip to Nigeria for a wedding,. After the celebrations, Arinze and Chiwe, as he is familiarly known, were driving to Lagos when their car was involved in a head-on crash with a lorry. Arinze was killed, but Chiwe, badly injured and unconscious, survived.

He was educated at the prestigious fee-paying Dulwich College, in South London, where some of the local good taste affected him and he became a life-long Crystal Palace FC supporter.

After leaving school, he went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and within three months he was offered the lead in Steven Spielberg's Amistad - and hasn't looked back since. Last night is surely just one more step in an illustrious career.  With good fortune in place of birth and good taste in football team, could it be anything else?

Idris Elba

Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom was shortlisted in the Best British Movie category of the Baftas last night and leading actor Idris Elba can claim a Forest Gate connection too. Idris was born in Hackney in 1972 to mixed Sierra Leone and Ghanaian parents, but spent most of his childhood and school days in Canning Town.


Idris Elba - local boy plays Nelson Mandela

He began to make his mark, seriously, in film when he got a leading role in the major US drama, The Wire, in 2002. He has moved on through significant roles until he was cast to play Mandela in the recent biopic.

The movie was premiered in London in November on the day Mandela died.  Idris was in town for the premier and stopped off at his uncle's garage in Dames Road, E7 before heading to the West End for the premier.



Idris visits family business
in Dames Road, last November.
Photo courtesy Newham Recorder

We are deeply indebted to the Newham Recorder for having had the presence of mind to record the visit and fully acknowledge their ownership of the photograph, above, that celebrated the occasion of yet another local boy making good.

Ben Drew - Ill Manors

We have featured Forest Gate boy, Ben Drew - more widely known as Plan B, before on this site (see here). He is perhaps most recognised as a hip-hop/rapper/song writer with a string of hits, prominent among them the exceptional album The Defamation of Strickland Banks and its smash single Stay Too Long.

Ben has, additionally, carved out a career in film; having appeared in Harry Brown in 2010 and as DC Carter in The Sweeney in 2012.


Ben Drew, on location, shooting Ill Manors

More recently he made his film directing debut, also in 2012, in Ill Manors, a grimy, violent film of sub plots. The themes are based around drugs and marginalised youth, all set - in, yes ... Forest Gate - that fast emerging local Hollywood.  Much of the action of the movie took place in the now closed Earl of Essex pub, on Romford Road.


Now closed Earl of Essex on Romford
Road, scene of much of the action
in Ill Manors

Bryan Forbes (1926 - 2013)

One of Forest Gate's most famous sons, Bryan Forbes, the dynamic actor, novelist screen-writer, producer and director of films such as Whistle Down The Wind, The L-Shaped Room and The Stepford Wives died last year, aged 86 (obituary here).

From his birth (as John Theobald Clarke) in 1926, to his evacuation as a 13-year-old in 1939, he was brought up in a terraced house in Cranmer Road - one of several obliterated in the early days of the Blitz.



Cranmer Road's very own Bryan Forbes

His grandparents lived in Odessa Road, and he was a pupil at Godwin Road Junior School where he won a scholarship to the former West Ham Secondary School - now Stratford School in Upton Lane.

Writing for the now defunct Forest Gate Times in 2001 he recalled a happy and carefree childhood in E7 ("to me they will always be halcyon days"): playing on Wanstead Flats, being captivated by the local movie theatre - the Splendide Cinema in Forest Lane - on a site now occupied by the Community School (see here for details of the cinema) and spending his pocket money on bits of Meccano at Pattison's Toy Bazaar and Doll's Hospital opposite the station.

Anna Neagle (1904 - 1986)

Anna was born Florence Marjorie Robertson on 20 October 1904 in Glenparke Road, Forest Gate. Her family later moved to Upton Lane. She attended Park Primary school and became one of the biggest and brightest film stars of her day.

Neagle proved to be a box-office money spinner in British films for over 25 years. She was noted for providing glamour and sophistication to war-torn London audiences with her lightweight musicals, comedies and historical dramas.

Forest Gate - born, Anna Neagle

She won several awards as Britain's favourite actress and biggest female box-office draw. Almost all of her films were produced and directed by Herbert Wilcox whom she married in 1943.

In her historical dramas, she was renowned for her portrayals of real-life British heroines, including Nell Gwynn (Nell Gwynn, 1934), Queen Victoria (Victoria the Great, 1937, and Sixty Glorious Years, 1938).

Neagle and Wilcox then began an association with Hollywood. Their first American film was Nurse Edith Cavell (1939),another performance of a true-life British heroine, which had a significant impact for audiences on the eve of war.
She followed these with three musical comedies, all based on once-popular stage plays: Irene (1940), followed by No, No, Nanette (1940) in which she sang Tea for Two and finally Sunny (1941). Neagle and Wilcox's last American film was Forever and a Day (1943), a tale of a London family house from 1804 to the 1940 blitz.

Returning to Britain, Anna Neagle added another real-life British heroines to her gallery, as aviator Amy Johnson in They Flew Alone. She starred in a number of further biopics, playing roles of Odette, Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria and Nell Gwynne (each for a second time). She starred in a number of quintessentially English films, featuring titles such as Mayfair, The Piccadilly Incident (best film of 1947) and Spring in Park Lane (best film 1949).

Neagle spent much of the early 1950s on the stage, but by the time she returned to films in the middle of the decade found that her fame and ability to attract good roles had faded.

She was a distant cousin of the Queen, via her descent from the illegitimate daughter of Queen Victoria's uncle, and lived in Brighton for many years with Herbert Wilcox. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1969 and died in Surrey in 1986 after a long illness. She is buried in the same grave as her husband and parents in the City of London cemetery.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)



The unmistakable, Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Poor Sir Alfred - the nearly man! He was born just to the west of Forest Gate, at 517 Leytonstone High Road - on the site of what is now a Jet service station - opposite the Homebase store.  There is a Waltham Forest blue plaque on the wall of the petrol station, commemorating the fact, and of course there is the Sir Alfred Hitchcock pub, about half a mile away on Whipps Cross Road (see photos).


517 High Road, Leytonstone
- site of Alfred Hitchcock's birth


Waltham Forest Blue Plaque, at the service
station, marking site of Alfred Hitchcock's birth

Hitchcock clearly benefited from the Forest Gate air wafting over, as he emerged to be probably Britain's best ever film director, and one of the world's most distinguished cinematic movie makers of all time.


And the Whipps Cross Road pub named after him

E7 movie makers, one and all - we salute you.


Hollywood's Walk of Fame - Woodgrange Road next?

How long before there is a Walk of Fame on Woodgrange Road??

They lie among us

 Forest Gate is, of course, surrounded and populated by cemeteries.  In the first of two pieces on the subject, we look at the City of London Cemetery - which although not in E7, dominates our borders - and some of its more famous occupants.

Four cemeteries were built in our area between 1856 (The City of London one) and 1890 (Woodgrange Park, on Romford Road). They sprung up in response to the rapid growth of London in the middle of the nineteenth century and the resultant chronic overcrowding of the old city church graveyards.  Added to this were public health concerns and legislation about disease being spread by putrefying bodies in the over-crowded city.

Forest Gate was an ideal location.  The area was developing rapidly, itself, because of the growth of railways and its proximity to the city.  Added to this, land was relatively cheap here and of course the Romford Road was one of the major highways out of London, having been the route of the Roman London to Colchester Road.

The Victorian buildings in the cemetery are still in good condition, in what is the second largest London cemetery, after St Pancras and Islington. (see photo).  The mastermind behind the cemetery was William Haywood, who earlier in his career had worked with the famous Joseph Bazlegette on the impressive Abbey House Pumping Station. His ashes lie in a Gothic mausoleum near the gates of the cemetery.
 

City of London Cemetery

The Corporation of London paid £31,000 for 200 acres of farmland near Epping Forest from Lord Wellesley in 1853 and began construction immediately.  They spent £45,000 on constructing the fine graveyard - £20,000 over budget, because of the splendid buildings, iron furniture and imaginative layout. They had planned on building a railway station to serve the cemetery, but couldn't find co-funders and had, in any case run out of money.

The first burial took place in 1856 and over half a million have taken place since. One of the major early tasks was to accommodate the re internment of bodies from 22 City churches, which had either been demolished or suffered from serious overcrowding.  A full list of these can be found in the splendid book London Cemeteries by Hugh Mellor, upon which some of this article relies.

Some of the noteworthy grave transfers include the communal plague pits, re interred remains from Christ's Hospital burial ground, Newgate Street, redeveloped by the Post Office in 1903 and the remains of Newgate prison burial ground, demolished in 1900 to make way for the Old Bailey.

Among the more striking constructions within the cemetery are the Haywood's monument, covering the re interred remains from Holborn churchyard, placed there in 1871.and the memorial to musician and music teacher Gladys Spencer (1931), with the figure draped over a piano.


Haywood's monument, over re interred remains from Holborn churchyard



Memorial to Gladys Spencer (1931)

The cemetery's more celebrated occupants include:
Lieutenant George Drewry VC (1894 - 1918).  George was very much a local boy, having been born at 58 Claremont Road, the son of Thomas and Mary.  He attended Merchant Taylors' School in the City of London. He was 20 years old and serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy on HMS Hussar when he won his Victoria Cross, during the Gallipoli Landings on 25 April 1915.


George Drewry VC (1894 - 1918)

The citation in the London Gazette on 16 August 1915 reads: "Midshipman Drewry assisted Commander Unwin in the work of securing the barges under heavy rifle and maxim fire. He was wounded in the head, but continued his work and twice subsequently attempted to swim from barge to barge with a line. The King has been graciously pleased to approve of the grant of Victoria Cross to Midshipman Drewry, RNR for conspicuous acts of bravery mentioned in the foregoing despatch."


George Drewry's grave

Drewery later achieved the rank of Lieutenant, but on 2 August 1918 was accidentally killed while on active service on HM Trawler William Jackson, at Scapa Flow. A block fell from a derrick and fractured his skull. His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Imperial war Museum.

Elizabeth Everest (d. 1895) had been Winston Churchill's nanny,who contributed to the construct of her monument. Churchill's parents hired her to care for the young Winston, who called her "Woomany" (!).
 
He was later to say: "My nurse was my confidante. Mrs Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants.  It was to her that I poured out all my troubles. She was his constant companion in childhood and they wrote to each other regularly while he was at school.


Elizabeth Everest d 1895

When Churchill learnt that Mrs. Everest was gravely ill he rushed to her beside. He was the only member of his family to attend to her, and upon her death provided the tombstone for her grave. "She had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole twenty years I had lived.I shall never know such a friend again."

His son, Randolph, wrote in the first volume of the biography of his father, "For many years afterwards he paid an annual sum to the local florist for the upkeep of the grave."


Elizabeth Everest's grave

Percy Thompson (1890 - 1922) the husband of Edith Thompson, who with her lover, Frederick Bywaters was hanged for his murder, in a case that became a cause celebre.  The Thompsons were married at St Barnabas Church, Manor Park in 1916.  Edith became infatuated with Bywaters, a younger man, who soon moved in with the couple, and an affair commenced.
 
Following a violent confrontation between Percy Thompson and Bywaters over the affair, Bywaters was thrown out of the home and returned to sea, as a sailor, during which time he continued a "love letter" correspondence with Edith.
On Bywaters' return from sea, Percy Thomson was stabbed to death.  Edith told the police that she felt Bywaters was the culprit and confided the details of their affair to them. Like Bywaters, she was arrested for the murder, but the only evidence against her was the love letters, which were offered as circumstantial evidence of her guilt.

Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters

The trial took place at the Old Bailey and Bywaters, while admitting his guilt pleaded the innocence on Edith. Ignoring her barrister's advice Edith gave evidence, where she proved to be an unreliable witness and was exposed for providing a tissue of lies. The couple were both found guilty and were sentenced to be hanged.

A million people signed a petition against her death sentence and she became the first woman to be executed in Britain since 1907, on 9 January 1923 in Holloway.  The pair were executed simultaneously - he at Pentonville.  Their bodies were buried in the respective prison cemeteries.

Press cutting announcing hanging of Edith Thompson

Thompson's executioner, John Ellis, later committed suicide, having claimed that Edith's execution had preyed on his mind and caused him to be depressed. Edith Thompson was one of only 17 women to have been judicially hanged in Britain.

Sgts Charles Tucker, Robert Bentley and PC Choate(all d. 1910). All three were shot dead by alleged Russian anarchists attempting a jewel robbery, in what became known as the Houndsditch Murders, in Aldgate, on 16 December 1910.  Two of the perpetrators were later cornered and died in the infamous siege Sidney Street, when Home Secretary, Winston Churchill was photographed leading the police raid on the house where they were holed up. 

Memorial cards to Tucker, Bentley and Choate



PC Choate

The Houndsditch murders, and woundings of other shot policemen,  provoked national outrage and prompted a message from the King to the widows, reading: "The King has heard with the greatest concern of the murder of three constables belonging to the city Police, and he requests you to express to their widows and families his sincere sympathy and his assurance that he feels most deeply for them in their sorrow..."


Sgt Bentley


Sgt Tucker

The killed policemen were accorded a near "state" funeral,  as illustrated by the photograph, below, of the cortege leaving St Paul's Cathedral.


"State" funeral of murdered policemen at St Paul's

Sir Herbert Wilcox (1892 - 1977) and Anna Neagle (1904 - 1986) Wilcox was a film producer, several of whose most successful films starred his wife, Anna Neagle. She was born Florence Marjorie Robertson on 20 October 1904 in Glenparke Road, Forest Gate.  Her family later moved to Upton Lane.  She attended Park Primary school.  She became one of the biggest and brightest "film stars" of her day.


Anna Neagle - 1904 - 1986

Anna was a distant cousin of the Queen, via her descent from the illegitimate daughter of Queen Victoria's uncle. She lived in Brighton for many years with her film director husband, Herbert Wilcox.  She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1969.  She died in Surrey in 1986 after a long illness and is buried in the dame grave as her husband and parents in the City of London cemetery.

We will return to  more detailed accounts of the lives of some of the people in this feature in a later postings on E7-NowAndThen.