Alfie (1966)

[gerald lovell]

The title character departs a motorway cafe in style.

[rob49152]

'style' would be getting into the police box and have it vanish 

[hb88banzai]

I had occasion to watch Alfie last night when Turner Classic Movies had it on. And may I say - Doh! How is it that none of us saw this before?

Remember back when just about every shot posted that had a rural Police Box next to a highway had at least one person chime in with "Isn't that Barnet By-Pass?" It was almost a running joke until, of course, when it finally turned out to be the case with the clip from "HG Wells' Invisible Man - The Rocket (1959)", which showed the Box before the widening of the By-Pass. Well, when seeing this whole clip from Alfie, that's what went through my mind - isn't that Barnet?

And you know what, it is! Yep, that's right, this pretty much has to be Barnet. The proximity to the highway - orientation to the highway - the nature of the highway itself - proximity to the entry road - proximity to the big sign - size and shape of the sign - telephone pole immediately behind the Box, etc. You can't see it in this capture, but earlier in the shot (when the box first comes into view) we get a look at the area a little to the left of the Box and can see that the ground rises just the way it did at the Barnet By Pass site before removal, even including some brush.  

It all seems to check out - this is the Barnet By Pass Box in 1965. They simply juxtaposed the shot with the roadside cafe scene where you could see a similar stretch of highway out the window and made it seem that they were pulling out of the cafe/truckstop parking lot as they passed the Box when in fact they were pulling onto the By-Pass from Rowley Lane.

Note that the film was released in 1966 (premiering in the UK in March), but filming was undoubtedly done the previous year. By the look of the grass this pickup shot was filmed in the Spring or early Summer.

So, this is almost certainly a shot of Barnet (S63) back in mid 1965 when it was in full service - here in dark blue and much better maintained, as was the grassy area where it stood. Certainly a far cry from the conditions 15 years later.



EDIT: Went back and looked at the clip again and compared the background features with what few photos we have of the Barnet Box looking east and even the spacing, size and shapes of the clumps of trees seem to match up quite well with the relative viewing angles. The spacing of the carriageways and the slight increase in elevation from the near curb to the far side of the southbound lanes also match.

In looking at current street views, the background is largely obscured now with trees and is a little altered to the north due to the new elevated walkway, but you can see that the general lay of the land is the same, with the same dip in the distance rising on the right and the same slight climb from Rowley Lane to the highway. There's a change to the topography of the strip of land the Box was on, particularly to area towards Rowley Lane, but that's due to the grading for the ramps leading up to the new walkway.

From what I've been able to find on line the Barnet By-Pass was actually made dual-carriageway in 1965, so this must have been filmed immediately after completion of the conversion on this stretch of highway. That explains why everything looks new, freshly painted and well trimmed.

[hb88banzai]

Well, now things get a bit more interesting. It's possible, as things turn out, that there just may have been a doppelganger for the Barnet Site.

I finally located where the roadside cafe scene in Alfie was filmed and there was a Box nearby. The cafe was the Busy Bee Cafe on the Watford By-Pass (Elton Way/North Western Ave.) near the junction with Aldenham Road (aka Hartspring Lane at the intersection), nominally in Watford. The cafe was a very popular hangout for both truckers and motorcycle clubs/Rockers in the 50s and 60s before the extension of the M1 took over much of the traffic in the area. Currently on the approximate site of the original Busy Bee (which closed in 1968) is the Hilton National Hotel.

The Box in question is S3 --

   S3    Box       13-Jan-36    27 Aug 70    Southwest corner of junction of North Western Avenue and Hartspring Lane    Aldenham    Edgware    Resited

Though the description puts the Box on a crossroads (the current roundabout wasn't there) on the other side of the By-Pass 100-200 yards west of the Cafe (the clip would have it just east of it if taken at face value) it also says that it was resited, so it's possible that by 1965 it was sitting outside the Cafe itself on the north side of the By-Pass as pictured. Though it's very difficult to tell where the Cafe actually stood and what the lay of the land looked like back in the day (I haven't been able to find any photos of the Cafe in situ with the surrounding area), the current entrances to the Hotel are very similar to the clip (though the By-Pass itself is narrower). So, in short, there is a slim chance that this clip is actually of the area outside the Cafe and not on the Barnet By-Pass (S63 being about 5 miles east as the crow flies).

[petewilson]

I think you are right banzai.....
I remember visiting the Barnet by Pass box back in the late 70's and I don't remember that sort of side turning and also the "main"road was a lot wider!

Pete

[hb88banzai]

By side turning if you mean the coming from the left, then up to the road and back left, then actually yes, Barnet does have that. I went back and checked how it looked in real life (via street view) vs. the maps post dual-carriage conversion and it has very much the same topography, right down to the round corner. So really could be either based on that.

Problem is that Barnet is, as you say, very wide, but at the same time Watford just might never have been quite wide enough near the Cafe, and I'm not sure that section was dual carriage either (it isn't properly divided now - just a striped median the cafe side of the Circle with only one lane in each direction - and the 1945 Google Earth views are inconclusive, and too early anyway). North of the Circle it does fit, however, as it is dual carriageway (though the median is pretty narrow) and has two lanes in each direction. It's possible this layout continued south of Aldenham Road/Hartspring Lane before the Circle was built (some time after 1945).

Wish we had some wide shots of that cafe and its parking lot around the same time frame.

[hb88banzai]

For comparison - the original shot from Alfie --



And here's the current street view of the Barnet (S63) Box Site from near the same equivalent angle as the Alfie shot that first sold me on the idea that this was Barnet (bear in mind the really wide wide-angle lens they use in street view) --



URL:  http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=rowley+Lane,+London&hl=en&ll=51.672542,-0.239264&spn=0.002009,0.010546&sll=51.429672,-0.353225&sspn=0.00398,0.008014&hnear=Rowley+Ln,+Hertfordshire+WD6,+United+Kingdom&t=m&layer=c&cbll=51.672592,-0.239227&panoid=3Ewycy12M4W_Lx7Y0ROPKg&cbp=12,89.18,,0,8.63&z=17

Note that nearly all the raised ground level this side of the elevated walkway is new, graded when they built it to form the foundation and approaching path.

Can't get back into the field behind the camera to get the same POV with a more correct longer lens (and Google's view is higher up due to being on top of a van), but they are still very, very close. The road in the foreground continues on as Holmshill Lane for about a hundred yards to the left from the camera's position before turning away from the By-Pass, while the same road continues in the other direction as Rowley Lane to the south. Back before the conversion to dual carriageway they joined the By-Pass separately a number of yards apart on opposite sides of the Box, so in 1965 this combined entrance would have been very new indeed.

Currently at this spot the Barnet By-Pass is three lanes in each direction with an additional on-ramp merging lane that vanishes just past the walkway, while in Alfie I count two lanes in each direction with the same type of merging lane going away just past the Box, but the center divider looks like it might be wider than Barnet's is now, so it's still possible that it's the same roadway, just that it's been further widened in the interim.

The entire lead-up to the cafe scene is on a dual-carriageway road of the same parameters as this clip, so the question is whether the S3/Busy Bee Cafe area of the Watford By-Pass was ever a divided roadway with two lanes in each direction. If not, then by elimination this would almost have to be Barnet. Conversely, if Barnet was always three lanes in each direction post-conversion to dual carriageway, then by elimination it probably wasn't Barnet.

Unfortunately, I taped over Alfie so this is now by memory.

[hb88banzai]

Here's a blowup of the only shot we have of the Barnet Box with a decent view of the By-Pass, post conversion --



Looks like two lanes in each direction to me (with the third (merge) lane ending just past the Box as in the Alfie shot) and with a wider median verge meaning it probably has been widened since then. So, it appears Barnet can't be eliminated as a possibility.

[hb88banzai]

Nope - just got confirmation that this could not be S3.

I've located both where the Busy Bee Cafe was and where the Box stood. Box S3 near the Busy Bee Cafe was on the other side of the crossroads and on the other side of North Western Avenue, and was there from at least 1959 until removal. Not sure precisely when the roundabout was built, but it was some time between 1959 and 1971, with the Box's "resiting" being when the Box was moved to allow the stretch of North Western Avenue north of the new roundabout to be made into a dual carriageway (noting that the stretch actually in front of the Cafe has apparently never been converted).

The Box was not on the corner as the Met List had it, but rather a little bit up the highway, which is similar to the shot. That said, the Site nonetheless bore only a very, very loose resemblance to the clip. The only way to get anything like what is seen in the film would be to shoot a car coming from Hart Spring Lane and turning north on North Western Avenue, but there would have been trees and a building in the way as there are now (though the trees would have been shorter). Note also that if the roundabout had been constructed by 1965 the grassy circle in the middle of the roundabout would have been visible in the clip as well.

There was also a footpath immediately behind the Box (as seen from the highway) running parallel to the roadway before the widening, and immediately in front of the Box running parallel afterwards. Instead, the clip from Alfie seems to show a short stretch of paving running between the Box and the curb of the highway.

So, it seems the first impressions were correct - this most likely really is the Barnet By-Pass Box - S63. Defies all logic as to why they didn't just film the Jaguar pulling out of the Busy Bee's actual driveway rather than going many miles to the northeast to shoot pickups on the Barnet By-Pass, but such is the film industry.

[petewilson]

Yes I think this is definately S63
Take a look at this photo of the Barnet By Pass Box,
the road sign, road and telegraph pole are the same!
(even down to the light on the road sign which was rather unusual!)

Pete