Say Hello to Yesterday

A couple of years ago I mentioned watching a movie called "Say Hello to Yesterday," from 1970, starring Jean Simmons and Leonard Whiting. It's the story of an unhappy married woman and a boisterous young man who meet on a train and have a daylong affair in London, and it includes lots of terrific footage of the city from that time period.

I was watching parts of it again recently, and wondering about some of the filming locations. The opening scenes, for example, take place on a middle-class housing estate, and I was curious to learn which estate it was. Turns out there's a whole web page (of course!) devoted to the streetscapes depicted in the film, and showing them then and now.

The housing estate from the opening scenes is in Slough, west of Heathrow. I'd already recognized some other locations, like Victoria station and Holland Park. But I learned from the web page that one is just a few minutes' walk from where I work -- an apartment building called London House, on Avenue Road near Regent's Park. This is supposedly the site of the empty apartment where the woman and the boy (as they are known throughout the movie) have their tryst.

I went over there yesterday on my lunch break. As you can see above, the building itself isn't all that remarkable. But it has some nice mid-century touches:

Here's a screen capture of the scene where Simmons and Whiting's characters arrive at the building. They walk through a covered entrance patio, seen here through the large glass windows of the lobby, toward the main doors.

And here's that entrance patio today, looking pretty much the same except for the addition of a ramp near the stairs.

In the movie, as they enter the building, the characters pass through a glass door next to an indoor/outdoor pond. Behind them on the right you can see a marble slab with some writing on it.

Here's the slab today, along with a modified pool and fountain. From it we learn that London House was erected in 1967, and the architects were E. S. Boyer and Partners.

In the lobby, Whiting's character talks to the doorman while Simmons goes on to the elevators. You can see a kind of groovy tile mural to the right.

The mural is still there and looking good. Amazing to think of all the comings and goings it has witnessed in the intervening half-century. (Incidentally, Leonard Whiting is the only member of the credited cast of the movie who's still alive. He was 20 at the time, and just a few years past his memorable role as Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet." Simmons was about 40.)

Anyway, it was a fun lunchtime outing, and interesting to find a filming location so nearby -- especially since most of the rest of the movie was filmed down in Kensington and Chelsea. I wonder why they picked this particular building?