Harold Baim
Encyclopedia
Harold Baim was a British film producer, director and writer. He was born in Leeds in 1914; he died in Reading in 1996.
According to his family Harold Baim left Leeds after the death of his father in 1929. Moving to London in 1931, Baim originally wanted to be a journalist but instead got a job working the clapperboard for film producers at MGM and Renown Pictures. Baim then worked for film producer and distributor George Minter and moved on to Columbia Pictures selling their films to the Odeon, ABC and Gaumont cinema chains.
Baim was a prolific producer of 35mm short films, creating over 300 titles in his lifetime. The subjects of his early films, made by his company The Federated Film Corporation, were released in the 1940s and featured well known music hall
and variety theatre acts such as Wilson, Keppel and Betty
. His later and more well known films were mainly travelogues filmed in England, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, America and Asia as well as music compilations featuring footage of well-known pop music
acts of the era.
All but three of the Baim titles released after 1957 are in colour, many in wide-screen formats. A project to restore and digitise the surviving films was started in 1999 by The Baim Collection Limited. After twelve years work seventy-two of the surviving one-hundred and twenty-two titles are available on Beta SP or Digibeta. Fourteen of the titles are available in high definition, twelve restored and graded for television transmission. These films are also available as broadcast quality digital files. More than one hundred films are thought lost.
Twelve of the films were transferred to high definition for transmission on Sky Arts
1 and 2, including the two music films Swinging UK and UK Swings Again. A certain amount of restoration has been undertaken as part of the transfer to HD which was done by Deluxe Soho at 142 Wardour Street, London. Standard definition versions of the two music films and a double DVD release of seventeen other films are also available on a commercial DVD release from Strike Force Entertainment, part of Cherry Red Records. The other ten titles which may be found from time-to-time on Sky Arts are: Floating Fortress, Delta 8-3, S.S. France, Girls Girls Girls!, Big City, Pete Murray Takes You To Nottingham, Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham, Get 'Em Off, Playground Spectacular and Jugglers and Acrobats. Many of these titles are available to view anytime online using the SkyPlayer.
BBC Television Entertainment Department produced a programme entitled Harold Baim's Britain on Film featuring 30 minutes of clips from twenty-three of the British films. Part of their "On Film" series it was first broadcast on BBC 4 on 27 July 2011. The BBC press release says the documentary:
The programme was received enthusiastically by reviewers in The Telegraph, The Independent, The London Evening Standard and The Mirror.
The Baim Collection continues to search for lost prints and negatives of over one hundred missing titles produced by Harold Baim. Many of the missing films were produced between 1945 and 1957 were presumably shot using nitrocellulose
(cellulose nitrate) film stock. This film base
is notoriously unstable and can spontaneously burst into flames. Any surviving film made by Harold Baim in this early period on nitrate stock will have been copied onto safety film. This is probably the case for Science Is Golden, which was returned to The Baim Collection Limited in 2010. A 16mm black-and-white print of the film, which was released in 1949, was discovered in a school cupboard and was returned by the Department of English and Media at Anglia Ruskin University
in Cambridge. The film features Professor Low, who shows how to make "home made" explosives for use in "magic tricks" and also shows a very early domestic microwave oven and other household labour-saving gadgets for the home, accompanied by the unique Harold Baim script.
The travelogues are perhaps the best known and best remembered of Baim's output. The commentaries to these were provided by famous actors and broadcasters of the period. Some of the most well-known examples include Telly Savalas
looks at Birmingham
and Peter Murray takes you to Coventry
. Other titles used the voice-over talents of Valentine Dyall
, David Gell
, Peter Dimmock
, Terry Wogan
, Ed Bishop
, Franklin Englemann, Kenneth MacCleod and Nicholas Parsons
.
The legacy of Baim's short films give us a valuable contemporary record of the 20th century; particularly of the 1960s and '70s. By pointing his camera at the seemingly mundane he has left a unique body of work in colour on 35mm featuring subjects rarely sought out by contemporary filmmakers.
Baim applied a consistent formula to the creation of his films. No one addresses the camera; the camera becomes the narrator's 'eyes' as they interpret the scene. The majority of the films rely on the unseen narrator's voice-over and very few of the colour films have any lip-sync at all. Wherever he went from Alsace to Aberdeen, (alliteration was a well-used device in the Baim formula) he took the same consistent approach in introducing his subjects to the audience. He often opened a travelogue by featuring transport facilities such as motorways, bus stations and airports (a particular favourite). Then he’d record the old town and educate the audience with a bit of history; this would then contrast well with new "sophisticated" office blocks and shopping centres such as Birmingham's Bull Ring; "the shopper’s paradise”. The shadow of World War Two looms large in the films. Many images showing the rebuilding of London as a result of the Blitz are featured in two films not seen since their original release in the early 1960s Big City and One Square Mile. These two films contain beautiful 35mm shots of the emerging high rise buildings which are now an established architectural characteristic of the City of London. Baim also featured local industries in his films such as the oil industry in Aberdeen or lace-making in Nottingham. Before closing a film there would be a recap and some information about day trips on offer and the narrator often makes a promise to return. The overseas travel depicted was a world away from the holiday aspirations experienced by the every day British cinema-goer who, at the time, was much more likely to have ventured no further afield than the British seaside.
Baim provided an early career boost for Michael Winner
who directed and scripted a number of the Baim films in the early 1960s, including Floating Fortress concerning life on HMS Victorious and the popular comedy about modern manners Behave Yourself. This is one of the few films in which actors speak and is only one of three shot in black and white, the others being Playing the Game, a comic look at the game of golf released in 1967 and A Pocket Full of Rye. Winner makes a fleeting appearance in the title sequence of Behave Yourself. Also amongst the Winner titles is the feature-length musical The Cool Mikado
starring Frankie Howerd
and Tommy Cooper
based on the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan
. An unrestored copy of this film has been released on DVD by Strike Force Entertainment.
Several 'B' features were also made by Baim, including the haunted house thriller Night Comes Too Soon (aka The Ghost of Rashmon Hall) and The Fantastic World of Film a compilation of early silent American comedy films.
The Baim short films are quota quickies, originally created for the British cinema and mainly made for distribution with United Artists features enabling the chain to meet legal requirements for the minimum number of UK-made productions shown.
A radio documentary on Baim's films, entitled Telly Savalas and the Quota Quickies, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4
on 26 April 2008. Presenter Laurie Taylor investigated Baim's film legacy through the productions Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham, Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth, and Telly Savalas Looks at Aberdeen.
The radio programme together with more detailed information and films clips are available on the Baim Films website.
According to his family Harold Baim left Leeds after the death of his father in 1929. Moving to London in 1931, Baim originally wanted to be a journalist but instead got a job working the clapperboard for film producers at MGM and Renown Pictures. Baim then worked for film producer and distributor George Minter and moved on to Columbia Pictures selling their films to the Odeon, ABC and Gaumont cinema chains.
Baim was a prolific producer of 35mm short films, creating over 300 titles in his lifetime. The subjects of his early films, made by his company The Federated Film Corporation, were released in the 1940s and featured well known music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
and variety theatre acts such as Wilson, Keppel and Betty
Wilson, Keppel and Betty
Wilson, Keppel and Betty were a popular British music hall act in the middle decades of the 20th century who capitalised on the trend for Egyptian imagery following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Their stage act, called the "sand dance", was a parody of Egyptian postures, combined with...
. His later and more well known films were mainly travelogues filmed in England, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, America and Asia as well as music compilations featuring footage of well-known pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
acts of the era.
All but three of the Baim titles released after 1957 are in colour, many in wide-screen formats. A project to restore and digitise the surviving films was started in 1999 by The Baim Collection Limited. After twelve years work seventy-two of the surviving one-hundred and twenty-two titles are available on Beta SP or Digibeta. Fourteen of the titles are available in high definition, twelve restored and graded for television transmission. These films are also available as broadcast quality digital files. More than one hundred films are thought lost.
Twelve of the films were transferred to high definition for transmission on Sky Arts
Sky Arts
Sky Arts and Sky Arts HD is the brand name for a group of art-oriented television channels offering 18 hours a day of programmes dedicated to highbrow arts, including theatrical performances, movies, documentaries and music...
1 and 2, including the two music films Swinging UK and UK Swings Again. A certain amount of restoration has been undertaken as part of the transfer to HD which was done by Deluxe Soho at 142 Wardour Street, London. Standard definition versions of the two music films and a double DVD release of seventeen other films are also available on a commercial DVD release from Strike Force Entertainment, part of Cherry Red Records. The other ten titles which may be found from time-to-time on Sky Arts are: Floating Fortress, Delta 8-3, S.S. France, Girls Girls Girls!, Big City, Pete Murray Takes You To Nottingham, Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham, Get 'Em Off, Playground Spectacular and Jugglers and Acrobats. Many of these titles are available to view anytime online using the SkyPlayer.
BBC Television Entertainment Department produced a programme entitled Harold Baim's Britain on Film featuring 30 minutes of clips from twenty-three of the British films. Part of their "On Film" series it was first broadcast on BBC 4 on 27 July 2011. The BBC press release says the documentary:
The programme was received enthusiastically by reviewers in The Telegraph, The Independent, The London Evening Standard and The Mirror.
The Baim Collection continues to search for lost prints and negatives of over one hundred missing titles produced by Harold Baim. Many of the missing films were produced between 1945 and 1957 were presumably shot using nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to nitric acid or another powerful nitrating agent. When used as a propellant or low-order explosive, it is also known as guncotton...
(cellulose nitrate) film stock. This film base
Film base
A film base is a transparent substrate which acts as a support medium for the photosensitive emulsion that lies atop it. Despite the numerous layers and coatings associated with the emulsion layer, the base generally accounts for the vast majority of the thickness of any given film stock...
is notoriously unstable and can spontaneously burst into flames. Any surviving film made by Harold Baim in this early period on nitrate stock will have been copied onto safety film. This is probably the case for Science Is Golden, which was returned to The Baim Collection Limited in 2010. A 16mm black-and-white print of the film, which was released in 1949, was discovered in a school cupboard and was returned by the Department of English and Media at Anglia Ruskin University
Anglia Ruskin University
Anglia Ruskin University is one of the largest universities in Eastern England, United Kingdom, with a total student population of around 30,000.-History:...
in Cambridge. The film features Professor Low, who shows how to make "home made" explosives for use in "magic tricks" and also shows a very early domestic microwave oven and other household labour-saving gadgets for the home, accompanied by the unique Harold Baim script.
The travelogues are perhaps the best known and best remembered of Baim's output. The commentaries to these were provided by famous actors and broadcasters of the period. Some of the most well-known examples include Telly Savalas
Telly Savalas
Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz...
looks at Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and Peter Murray takes you to Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
. Other titles used the voice-over talents of Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall was an English character actor, the son of veteran actor Franklin Dyall. Dyall was especially popular as a voice actor, due to his very distinctive sepulchral voice, he was known for many years as "The Man in Black", narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment With Fear.In...
, David Gell
David Gell
David Gell was a DJ on Radio Luxembourg, and later on the BBC Light Programme, Radio One, and Radio Two.Born in Canada on 23 August 1929, he worked for radio station CFAC in Calgary before relocating to Europe....
, Peter Dimmock
Peter Dimmock
Peter Harold Dimmock CBE, CVO is a pioneering former sports broadcaster of British television during its formative years in the 1950s. He was the first host of the BBC's long-running Grandstand and also the first host of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards.-Early life and career:Dimmock...
, Terry Wogan
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan, KBE, DL , or also known as Terry Wogan, is a veteran Irish radio and television broadcaster who holds dual Irish and British citizenship. Wogan has worked for the BBC in the United Kingdom for most of his career...
, Ed Bishop
Ed Bishop
Ed Bishop was an American film, television, stage and radio actor based in Britain.-Early life:Bishop served in the US Army from 8 October 1952 to 24 September 1954, working as a disc jockey with the Armed Forces Radio at St. Johns in Newfoundland...
, Franklin Englemann, Kenneth MacCleod and Nicholas Parsons
Nicholas Parsons
Nicholas Parsons OBE is a British actor and radio and television presenter.-Early life:...
.
The legacy of Baim's short films give us a valuable contemporary record of the 20th century; particularly of the 1960s and '70s. By pointing his camera at the seemingly mundane he has left a unique body of work in colour on 35mm featuring subjects rarely sought out by contemporary filmmakers.
Baim applied a consistent formula to the creation of his films. No one addresses the camera; the camera becomes the narrator's 'eyes' as they interpret the scene. The majority of the films rely on the unseen narrator's voice-over and very few of the colour films have any lip-sync at all. Wherever he went from Alsace to Aberdeen, (alliteration was a well-used device in the Baim formula) he took the same consistent approach in introducing his subjects to the audience. He often opened a travelogue by featuring transport facilities such as motorways, bus stations and airports (a particular favourite). Then he’d record the old town and educate the audience with a bit of history; this would then contrast well with new "sophisticated" office blocks and shopping centres such as Birmingham's Bull Ring; "the shopper’s paradise”. The shadow of World War Two looms large in the films. Many images showing the rebuilding of London as a result of the Blitz are featured in two films not seen since their original release in the early 1960s Big City and One Square Mile. These two films contain beautiful 35mm shots of the emerging high rise buildings which are now an established architectural characteristic of the City of London. Baim also featured local industries in his films such as the oil industry in Aberdeen or lace-making in Nottingham. Before closing a film there would be a recap and some information about day trips on offer and the narrator often makes a promise to return. The overseas travel depicted was a world away from the holiday aspirations experienced by the every day British cinema-goer who, at the time, was much more likely to have ventured no further afield than the British seaside.
Baim provided an early career boost for Michael Winner
Michael Winner
Michael Robert Winner is a British film director and producer, active in both Europe and the United States, also known as a food critic for the Sunday Times.-Early life and early career :...
who directed and scripted a number of the Baim films in the early 1960s, including Floating Fortress concerning life on HMS Victorious and the popular comedy about modern manners Behave Yourself. This is one of the few films in which actors speak and is only one of three shot in black and white, the others being Playing the Game, a comic look at the game of golf released in 1967 and A Pocket Full of Rye. Winner makes a fleeting appearance in the title sequence of Behave Yourself. Also amongst the Winner titles is the feature-length musical The Cool Mikado
The Cool Mikado
The Cool Mikado is a British musical film made in 1962, directed by Michael Winner, and produced by Harold Baim, with music arranged by Martin Slavin and John Barry. It starred Frankie Howerd as Ko-Ko, Lionel Blair and Stubby Kaye...
starring Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
and Tommy Cooper
Tommy Cooper
Thomas Frederick "Tommy" Cooper was a very popular British prop comedian and magician from Caerphilly, Wales.Cooper was a member of The Magic Circle, and respected by traditional magicians...
based on the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
. An unrestored copy of this film has been released on DVD by Strike Force Entertainment.
Several 'B' features were also made by Baim, including the haunted house thriller Night Comes Too Soon (aka The Ghost of Rashmon Hall) and The Fantastic World of Film a compilation of early silent American comedy films.
The Baim short films are quota quickies, originally created for the British cinema and mainly made for distribution with United Artists features enabling the chain to meet legal requirements for the minimum number of UK-made productions shown.
A radio documentary on Baim's films, entitled Telly Savalas and the Quota Quickies, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
on 26 April 2008. Presenter Laurie Taylor investigated Baim's film legacy through the productions Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham, Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth, and Telly Savalas Looks at Aberdeen.
The radio programme together with more detailed information and films clips are available on the Baim Films website.