Victim | 1961

'Victim' in the West End

Victim has so many locations with interesting stories in London's West End that we're using the quick jump-to format and giving other locations a separate section.

Groundbreaking in its day, the first British film to mention the word 'homosexual', uses plenty of locations which provide a fascinating snapshot of the capital at the very beginning of a revolutionary decade.

▶ These West End scenes centre around an ornate Victorian pub called ‘Chequers’. Famously, this is based on The Salisbury, 90 St Martin’s Lane, WC2, in the heart of the capital’s Theatreland which was once well-known as a gay hangout.

In 1961, male homosexuality was completely illegal in Britain so obviously no establishment could be labelled or advertised as a “gay bar”. Everything was conveyed by word of mouth.

It’s generally claimed, and until recently I believed, that the ‘Chequers’ scenes really were filmed in The Salisbury. Watching the film again, it’s obviously a studio recreation of the pub’s distinctive brass and glass interior, with its mirrors and extravagant lamps held aloft by bronze nymphs.

This is understandable – to have closed down a large central London pub to film a drama about homosexuality with a big star like Dirk Bogarde, would have been ruinous to the business.

The vague location of the pub is indicated and would have been obvious to those “in the know”.

The entrance to The Salisbury is actually glimpsed, with beer barrels being delivered as barrister Melville Farr approaches a bookshop supposedly on St Martin’s Court, but the pub is not identified as 'Chequers'. It's interesting to see that the elaborate decoration over the main entrance, nowadays feast of black and gold, was back then painted plain white, and there's the now-obligatory outdoor seating area.

When The Salisbury's genuine interior has made screen appearances, it's pointedly not as a gay bar. Aunt Augusta (Maggie Smith) lives above it in the 1972 adaptation of Graham Greene's Travels With My Aunt (possibly a crafty joke from gay director George Cukor) and it's also the theatrical hangout visited by Archie Rice (Laurence Olivier) during his brief trip to London in Tony Richardson's film of The Entertainer.

Catering to playgoers and tourists, The Salisbury is no longer a gay bar though naturally it remains highly theatrical. ⏏

▶ The pub grandly occupies the corner of St Martin's Lane and St Martin’s Court, which is seen regularly throughout the film. It's one of two small pedestrian streets linking Charing Cross Road to St Martin’s Lane, both of which were once home to many small bookshops.

Although the other street, Cecil Court a block south, is still lined with shops, St Martin’s Court has changed visually. Its north side is taken up, as it always has been, with the sides of two back to-back theatres, Wyndham’s Theatre which faces Charing Cross Road, and the Noel Coward Theatre on St Martin’s Lane, but the small shops along the south side have gradually been absorbed by famous seafood restaurant J Sheekey.

You can see the sign for Sheekey in the film when it was just one of many local small businesses, but the restaurant has since expanded to occupy a long stretch of St Martin’s Court, fronted by the inevitable covered outdoor seating area as London becomes more and more an outdoor city.

The bookshop run by the heartbroken Harold Doe (Norman Bird) and unwittingly used as the drop point by the blackmailers, is clearly intended to be one of these lost shops. Presumably to avoid the association with any particular shop, the entrance to ‘Doe’s’ is a studio set.

A tiny offshoot of St Martin's Court runs north between the rear stage doors of Wyndhams and the Noel Coward Theatre and this was where the phone box from which Barrett calls once stood. This alleyway is featured again more recently, standing in for the stage door entrance of the old ’Talk of the Town’ nightclub where Judy Garland (Renee Zellweger) is performing in Rupert Goold's 2019 biopic Judy.

As Eddy walks along Charing Cross Road toward 'Chequers', you can actually see the real Talk of the Town (which is now The Hippodrome Casino) in the background. He's already passed St Martin's Court, which leads to The Salisbury, and is approaching Cecil Court – presumably to avoid identifying the real location of the pub. ⏏

▶ In 1961, what is now the Noel Coward Theatre was the New Theatre and, as you can see in the film, the musical Oliver!, which opened in June 1960, was beginning its six-year run with posters announcing cast members Ron Moody and Georgia Brown.

It’s in the doorway of this theatre that Det Harris and Farr wait to see what happens to the money-drop at the bookshop towards the end of the film. ⏏

▶ The pillared frontage of St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, is also featured a couple of times, particularly when PH (Hilton Edwards) and his associate are off to post their letters. This makes sense if you remember that alongside the church then stood the huge and famous Trafalgar Square Post Office – which is now a restaurant. ⏏

▶ And this just leaves ‘Harry’s’, the gents hairdresser where the meek and terrified Harry is threatened by the blackmailer. This was 2 Earlham Street alongside the Marquis of Granby Pub. The premises has now been completely redeveloped as a news agent but the Marquis of Granby lives on as the BrewDog Seven Dials at Cambridge Circus, WC2.

Another glimpse of West End history – as a new era of musicals was beginning with Oliver!, at the Palace Theatre, looming over Cambridge Circus in the background, illuminated signs advertise the now unfashionable and almost forgotten Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song. ⏏

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