Discussions surrounding the identification of 4 studio owned Police Box Props

[darren79]

As it would seem that the Pinewood box was not the Cushing prop -(judging from the new deductive reasoning)

- the box featured in Pinewood Studios film 'Make Mine Mink' would appear to be the Pinewood box, the glass panes match.




Edit by DomVar

Tony Farrell answered this as a P.S. on a reply about the auction so I'm putting the text here so the conversation flow remains.

P.S., yes Darren "Make Mine Mink" was made by Pinewood and as such, it is logical to state that we are seeing the top of the same box which appeared in "Too Many Crooks" and "Nobody Runs Forever" and - if I'm correct - which was ultimately blown up in The New Avengers!

[Rassilons Rod]

Let me know, of course, if I've made any mistakes or if there's anything important that needs adding...

But a summary of Tony's fantastic research is here:

Studio	Seen In	Current Status
Ealing	1951 - The Lavender Hill Mob 1993 - 30 Years in the TARDIS Goodnight Sweetheart	??
Elstree	1965 - Gideon's Way	The Who Shop
Pinewood	1959 - Too Many Crooks 1960 - Make Mine Mink 1968 - Nobody Runs Forever 1976 - The New Avengers, episode "Target"	Destroyed - 1976
Shepperton	1965 - Doctor Who and the Daleks (AARU) 1965 - Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD (AARU)	Possibly up for sale

[Rassilons Rod]

Can anyone tell me which episode of Goodnight Sweetheart the Ealing box was in?

Update:

Studio	Seen In	Current Status
Ealing	1951 - The Lavender Hill Mob 1993 - 30 Years in the TARDIS Goodnight Sweetheart	Unknown
Elstree	1965 - Gideon's Way	The Who Shop
Pinewood	1959 - Too Many Crooks 1960 - Make Mine Mink 1968 - Nobody Runs Forever 1976 - The New Avengers, episode "Target"	Destroyed - 1976
Shepperton	1965 - Doctor Who and the Daleks (AARU) 1966 - Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD (AARU)	Unknown

[tony farrell]

Yes, it was in series two's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"!

I'll send further info for your table by private message.

T

[darren79]

Also for the Ealing Box:

Crime Traveller - Episode 6: Death Minister 1997

[galacticprobe]

Seriously - someone should tell them politely and send a photo... as someone could end up massively out of pocket!

After looking closely at this TARDIS, I have a very strong feeling I've seen it before. Actually I think we all have... in an eBay auction not very long ago. The description of the TARDIS in this auction is almost identical to the one in the eBay auction, and the TARDIS looks exactly like the one in the eBay auction.

The telling would be if Roberta Tovey's signature is inside it as that's what the eBay seller used to promote his TARDIS along with this very same description. What I'm thinking now is that some poor sod got suckered into paying £5,000 at the eBay auction, and then realized after the fact that he'd been had. (This, in spite of all the reports to eBay of misrepresentation of the item, eBay allowed the auction to continue.)

Now that buyer is thinking there's another sucker out there so desperate to get his hands on a "real" (as in screen/publicity-used) TARDIS, that he'll pay these prices... and not know he's been duped until it's too late (and the first sucker reselling this will also make a few thousand quid on top of recouping his payout from when he bought it).

Dino.

[Rassilons Rod]

Yes, it was in series two's "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"!

Cheers!

P.S., Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD wasn't made in 19656!!

Bugger! Thats why I so often hate doing things by phone... that was meant to be a correction from 1965

Also for the Ealing Box:

Crime Traveller - Episode 6: Death Minister 1997

Nice one!

Update:

Studio	Seen In	Current Status
Ealing	1951 - The Lavender Hill Mob 1993 - 30 Years in the TARDIS 1995 - Goodnight Sweetheart, episode "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" 1997 - Crime Traveller, episode "Death Minister"	Unknown
Elstree	1965 - Gideon's Way	The Who Shop
Pinewood	1959 - Too Many Crooks 1960 - Make Mine Mink 1968 - Nobody Runs Forever 1976 - The New Avengers, episode "Target"	Destroyed - 1976
Shepperton	1965 - Doctor Who and the Daleks (AARU) 1966 - Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD (AARU)	Unknown

[darren79]

It would be interesting to see any screen-grabs from the shows you mention as this would make identifying the boxes/Tardises concerned.

To get you started, here is the box used in the Mike and Bernie Winters Show from August 1966:



T

BINGO!!!!

The Gettyimages caption says 1968.



The Cushing box survived beyond the films! Note the window marks:

[tony farrell]

Excellent find Darren and excellent spot regarding the scuff marks on the window frame!

Getty has the date wrong however - this episode was transmitted on ITV on Saturday 13 August 1966 at 8.25 PM (it was preceded by The Addams Family "Lurch learns to Dance" and followed by the 9 o'clock news).

Oddly, the Mike and Bernie Winters TV Show was produced by ABC Television which was owned by The Associated British Corporation who owned Elstree Studios (where the Mike and Bernie Winters show was recorded). You'd have thought that they would have used their own Police Box!  

T

[darren79]

Cheers, Tony. I was so excited when I found it  

As Mike and Bernie seemed to have so many iterations of their shows and IMDB was more confusing than helpful, I guessed that 1968 might be wrong. I found a reference that one of their shows was recorded at Pinewood but this might have been around 1972 due to the producers name mentioned. I've not managed to find the black and white photo that director Kevin Davies originally shared. I'd love to see the sketch in question if it survived and especially if it was in colour! It's still nice to know that the box did have more life than just the Dalek films but what happened to it afterwards..?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an aside: it's a rather cosmetic detail so not very helpful but I don't know if anyone noticed the St. John's Ambulance Association sticker. The 'Pinewood' box has the simpler version with 'Brigade' (although it's the wrong way up in Nobody Runs Forever) whereas the Cushing box has the more elaborate 'Association' version with horses.

[galacticprobe]

As an aside: it's a rather cosmetic detail so not very helpful but I don't know if anyone noticed the St. John's Ambulance Association sticker. The 'Pinewood' box has the simpler version with 'Brigade' (although it's the wrong way up in Nobody Runs Forever) whereas the Cushing box has the more elaborate 'Association' version with horses.

Good spot on that as well, Darren! Also, if you notice the cross on the bottom of the Pinewood 'Brigade Logo' box, it's the "exploded" cross (or so it looks in these images), whereas on the Cushing Box there is just the small black dot as seen on real Met Box St. John Logos. (That 'Brigade' logo also looks like it's got a small black dot on either side of that exploded cross. That extra feature isn't on any Met Box St. John logo.)

Great eyes, you have there, Darren!

Dino.

[classic who]

Great photo find darren79, and the info on the SJA badge.

I should point out that the two series of Mike and Bernie Winters in 66 and 68 were recorded at Teddington Studios, as was Cribbins in 69, so if, as it appears, the Cushing Box was used in the Winters shows, but the Pinewood Box in Cribbins, it might suggest that the Cushing Box had been disposed of by 69/70.


As an aside, the Winters sketch I originally referred to, called Dr Shmoo, was from the series Blackpool Night Out, in 64, and confirms my memory that it was a box that was knocked up in 5 minutes!

As you can see here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rC6yLqcgRA&feature=player_embedded#t=55

[Dalekoracle]

The old studios out at Teddington Lock are long gone, but in the day were the home of Thames / ITV.
The various productions would have used a number of different prop suppliers for their productions, and the use of the Pinewood box in 1969 should not be taken as an indiction that the Cushing box had been disposed of.
It would be down to a particular productions designer to source the props required for filming of any TV show in studio

Mark

[tony farrell]

I should point out that the two series of Mike and Bernie Winters in 66 and 68 were recorded at Teddington Studios, as was Cribbins in 69, so if, as it appears, the Cushing Box was used in the Winters shows, but the Pinewood Box in Cribbins, it might suggest that the Cushing Box had been disposed of by 69/70.

Interesting comment Classic Who. The Mike and Bernie Winters Show ran from 1966 to 1973 but I can't find any reference to it being made at Teddington. May I ask your source for your statement?

As regards the second part of your comment that because the Pinewood Box appears to have been used by ABC (and its successor, Thames) Television in Cribbins, here I agree with Mark; it doesn't really follow that the Aaru/Shepperton Studios Box may have been disposed of by 1969/1970. All that can be really stated is that ABC chose to hire the Pinewood Box on that occasion. Which is curious; why hire in a Police Box at all when ABC Television's parent company (The Associated British (Cinema) Corporation) owned Elstree Studios which - as we know - had its own Police Box?

It's interesting to note that as the Met Boxes were decommissioned in the early 1970s, at least two the major film studios also disposed of their stock of Police Box props. Pinewood literally blew theirs up, Elstree sold theirs whilst ownership of Ealing Studios had already passed to the BBC.

Of the four major studios, this only leaves the Shepperton Box unaccounted for:

Shepperton went bankrupt in 1974 and auctioned off many of their props (including the Dalek Saucer which was bought by Zoran Perisic who created the flying sequences for the Christopher Reeve "Superman" films (it seems that Zoran still has the Saucer)).
Unfortunately, the Aaru Police Box wasn't listed in the auction so, either the Box was no longer at Shepperton in October 1974 or, like the remainder of the studios' properties, it's ownership passed to Pinewood Studios who bought Shepperton at that time.

Just as 'nature abhors a vacuum', I don't like gaps in my knowledge. The British are great record-keepers. Parliament has documents which date back over a thousand years; Pinewood will have a record of what it bought from Shepperton in 1974 and the Shepperton and Elstree Studios archives are now the property of Studio Canal.

Whatever happened to the Aaru Box will be recorded somewhere - it's just a case of finding it.  

T

[classic who]

Apart from Doctor Who and it's production history,  general television production history is another area of mine.

ABC shows were recorded at Teddington, such as the first three VT series of The Avengers, when it moved over to film, it was made at the ABPC studios, where many of the ITC filmed series were also made.

When ABC and A-R were brought together in 1968, Thames was the result, which continued to use Teddington.

All of Mike And Bernie Winters series were made by ABC/Thames, although their 1973 series was ATV, and made at Elstree TV Studios.

Cribbins was also made by Thames, it is quite likely that they simply hired the boxes from wherever they could get them, but an, admittedly, slight possibility that they may have tried to get the same Box as used in the Winters shows, but if it wasn't around anymore, had to get the Pinewood one instead, I hope that bit is wrong of course, as I would like to think the Cushing Box is still around!