Pinewood to be honored with an `Outstanding Contribution` award at 2009 BAFTAs

It is where the Titanic sank and Willie Wonka had his chocolate factory, where Vesper Lynd drowned in the James Bond film Casino Royale and Barbara Windsor's bra flew off in Carry On Camping. For more than 80 years Pinewood Studios has been at the heart of British film-making, an institution whose role in creating some of the world's most memorable movies has often gone unsung; this weekend it will be honoured with a special award at the Baftas - reports Times Online.

Together with Shepperton, its one-time rival turned sister studio, it is to be presented with an award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the Orange British Academy Film Awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House.

When Ivan Dunleavy, Pinewood Shepperton's chief executive, steps up to accept the award on Sunday night, he could — if he was in a Kate Winslet frame of mind — have plenty of people to thank. Some 1,500 films have been made at the two studios, from early efforts that have failed to stand the test of time — is there anyone out there who remembers The Scarab Murder Mystery (1936)? — to modern popular successes such as Mamma Mia! and Slumdog Millionaire.

More than anything, though, Pinewood is associated with the two franchises which helped to keep the British film industry afloat from the Fifties to the Seventies — Carry On and James Bond. All but two of the Bond films were made at Pinewood, and in the 007 arena Pinewood has the largest sound stage in Europe. It is not just used for Bond movies, however: in recent years it has doubled as the Louvre for The Da Vinci Code, the Chocolate River Room for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a Greek fishing Village for Mamma Mia!

From the beginning Pinewood was seen as a competitor with the big Hollywood studios; even the name was a conscious reference to the American dream factory. It was founded by an unlikely triumvirate of J. Arthur Rank, the Methodist flour magnate, Lady Yule, an eccentric jute heiress, and Sir Charles Boot, a Sheffield building tycoon, who in 1935 bought Heatherden Hall in Buckinghamshire with a view to turning it into a film studio.

It was not until after the war that it first enjoyed real success, with such British classics as Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus, in which Pinewood doubled for the Himalayas. According to Morris Bright, author of Pinewood Studios: 70 Years of Fabulous Film-making, such hits helped to get the British industry taken seriously abroad. “Until then the British film industry had been regarded a bit cheap and parochial,” he said. “These films showed that we not only produced great actors, but also had the talent to produce memorable films as well.”

In the lean years that followed, when television started to cut into cinema audiences, Pinewood responded by churning out low-budget crowd-pleasers, including the Doctor In The House series, the Norman Wisdom films and, most profitably, the Carry On series. The spirit of make-do-and-mend which characterised such film-making can be best summed up in Carry On Camping, where the dismal autumn weather during shooting meant that that campsite where Barbara Windsor famously lost her bikini top looked anything but verdant. The director Gerald Thomas solved the problem by spraying the backlot green.

Pinewood's grounds and house often appeared in the movies. Keen-eyed viewers may notice a similarity between the Indian High Commission in Carry On Up The Khyber and the SPECTRE base in From Russia With Love: they are both Heatherden Hall.

In 2000 the studio was sold by the Rank Group to an investment group headed by Michael Grade and Ivan Dunleavy for £62 million. It merged with Shepperton and later Teddington Studios, and embarked on a strategy of supplementing the film work with television production, making shows such as The Weakest Link. It has plans for expansion, and will this spring submit a planning application to build 17 street scenes, from Paris to New York.

But do the studios still have the magic? Undoubtedly, says Finola Dwyer, chair of the Bafta film committee. “They are a real backbone of the industry,” she said. “They may be a little faded round the edges, but there is such history that you feel it the moment you walk in through the gate. There is great nostalgia and affection and pride when you work there. They are great studios.”

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