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Tuesday November 5th 2024

The Battle of the Sexes | 1959

The Battle Of The Sexes filming location: Princes Street, Edinburgh
The Battle Of The Sexes filming location: the impressive view from The House of Macpherson: Princes Street, Edinburgh

Blackish comedy based on a James Thurber story, and filmed by veteran director Charles Crichton, who later made A Fish Called Wanda. Efficiency expert Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings), both American and female, is dispatched to shake up traditional Scottish tartan weaving company, The House of MacPherson.

She arrives in Edinburgh at Waverley Station, just off the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street, which you probably saw as one of the few genuine Edinburgh locations of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting.

The House of MacPherson itself is 45 George Street, a couple of blocks north from Princes Street, between Frederick and Dundas Streets, but the film plays with the city’s geography, giving it a photogenic view across Princes Street to Waverley Bridge and the Balmoral Hotel.

The Battle Of The Sexes filming location: Lawnmarket, Edinburgh
The Battle Of The Sexes filming location: Mr Martin at the tobacconist: Lawnmarket, Edinburgh

The tobacconist shop, where Mr. Martin (Peter Sellers) buys cigarettes, is on Lawnmarket, in front of St Giles Cathedral.

The car shunt was filmed on Grassmarket at King Stable’s Road, beneath the imposing Edinburgh Castle.

The supposedly ‘remote Scottish Highlands’, where the crofters work, was actually filmed in Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park, about a mile east of the Castle.