Harriet At Play - 70s Butlins Documentary
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- The recent death of an old mate prompted me to upload this. Terry Maisey was a great film editor and colleague at HTV in Bristol in the 70s and 80s.
This half hour doc, shot on 16mm, was part of a series directed by Tony Palmer and is a brilliant piece of film-making.
The last few minutes is one of the most poignant and creative sequences of television ever created, the power of which had a huge influence on my career in TV. The programme caused a real stir in the press when it was first transmitted and is something which I'm sure Butlins would rather forget.
I know Terry was really proud of this little programme and hopefully it'll carry his memory far into the future.
The whole series of 'Harriet' is now available as a DVD for just £10 by emailing isolde@btinternet.com
The film didn't get across the main draw for many.. Kids could roam all over the camp without their parents all day long doing what the hell they liked. It was gloriously feral. I went to Butlins Minehead with school aged 9 in 1978 and we never saw the teachers apart from they would appear hungover at breakfast and take the register. One boy found a stinky skeleton of a dog on the beach and dragged it round in a carrier bag all week and they only noticed when we were lined up to get the coach home.😂
Sounds like fun...
This is the sort of post I come here for. Thanks for posting, Sarah.
😂😂😂
@Mothball
Wonderful story!.. I'm not from England.
But when I was a kid it was much the same. We ran wild.
On afternoon I was walking along with a sick pigeon in a shoe box.
An old man with a wad of bills came up to me and offered me a tenner for whatever was in the box....money meant nothing to me at the time, so he was denied with prejudice.
My friends questioned my sanity.
Next time I opened the box the poor thing was dead.
I had a great childhood with regards to freedom.
We kids lived in a society of our own.
Those were the days
My parents took us to butlins Minehead through the 60s and 70s. Since I have been holidaying all over the world. I always say my Butlins holidays were the best. Thank you for this nostalgic treat. X
Worked there Xmas 1991, nothing like this buzz
No adopted children or children of mixed race in the Happy Family competition??? That sounded absolutely nuts! And the worker stated those requirements with such conviction. Geez Louise! Unbelievable.
Never judge history by moder standards.. as hard as that may be. The world moved along and will further. That's what my mum Brian tells me.
Met a fantastic Yorkshire girl in 66 at Clacton so my one and only visit was pure magic plus England won the world cup the day we arrived, never to be forgotten holiday.
A double whammy then.
I met a Yorkshire lass in 1977 at Butlins Filey .caught up with her on friends re United and now FB .So still in touch .
Loved Butlins ,I went to most of the camps including Clacton ,bognor , Minehead,Filey , Yarmouth
My folks live in Clacton and the camp is long gone ,a housing estate sits on the old site .You can still see parts of the old fence here and there though ,and the beach gate I believe is still there
Absolute CLASSIC! Puts you in the Time and Place so vividly.
This film was amazing, and your friend was a brilliant editor (and so right to be proud of this). Thank you *so* much for posting it!!
Never seen this before! For sure it has been cleverly filmed and edited to get a definate point of view across. I am sure Butlins would have hated this when it was broadcast, as they also probably also hated Jimmy Perry's 'Hi-De-Hi" comedy ! That wide angle lens right up against the faces really works to create a claustrophobic atmosphere. However, desipite this documentary, Butlins was a magic place for so many people who went there on holiday every year. And of course this is a timepiece of attitudes that prevailed in the 70's - enough said on that topic. It being shot on 16mm real film also adds greatly to the atmosphere - would not nearly be as as effective if shot on video tape. Thanks for sharing this with us!
What a brilliant documentary. Shot in a way very ahead of its time!
Love this, love the eerie undertone with the editing, it's powerful!
9:32. How times have changed. Shame the prejudice is still there today.
How terrible that families with adopted children couldn’t participate in the Happy Family competition
That broke my heart. Thankfully, things have changed.
That’d never happen today. Imagine it being 2 mums or 2 dads back then?😂
I worked at mine head in 81 for a month end of summer I was a Porter cleaner there was a love ly red coat who I liked very much but I didn’t have the nerve to ask her out I think she new because when I left at the end of my time there she was stood by the coach as we pulled out and she blew me a kiss I was gutted 🥲
Lol
So strange seeing my nan on there judging on the panel
Of the happy families!? WOW!
For it’s time the editing and camera work is amazing. I also love how the colour to the film gives an undertone to the film
Cheers for uploading this.I'm really enjoying it.
The music, the opening credits, the hair and clothes and just the general atmosphere all point to this being made in 1974, or thereabouts.
Spot on...
@@MikeKleinsteuberThank you Mike.
Do you happen to have any of the other five episodes from this series?Do they still exist?
I might be wrong but I get a sense TonyP. is not exactly proud to have this series on his C.V...just an observation.
@@PeasGravenySadly I don't. I had this one digitized quite early on as I loved it so much. I'm not certain what happened to the film library at HTV where all the others would have been stored in. However, none of the others (I think there were 4 or 5) were a patch on this one. Tony was a good documentary maker when he was angry with the subject or had a personal involvement. I think he really liked this doc. If you like this one try finding his 'All You Need is Love', a series about the Beatles which is great. His 'Miss World' was tremendous too. He went totally off the rails however when he moved over to drama. He just couldn't hack it imo and fell foul of 'the Peter principle'. He should have stayed doing docs. I think he started out as an assistant to Ken Russell at the Beeb and in some ways tried to emulate him but there was only ever going to be one Ken Russell.
@@MikeKleinsteuberI agree, his 'pop' music series were mostly very good .I always wanted to chin him,however,for the mess he made of filming the final Cream shows in '68, and also for his appearance in the clip linked below wherin Tony can be seen directing a TV show whilst simultaneously trying,and succeeding in being a massive a-hole (at the request of the documentary director,no doubt!)
ua-cam.com/video/kDgWRppfVZQ/v-deo.html
@@MikeKleinsteuber Filming likely started in 1974, but the series wasn't shown until 1976.
I ran across this video while searching for monorail videos and I was instantly captivated. Truly ahead of it's time with soundtrack and cinematography.
During the early 90s my parents would take us to Butlins Skegness, once a year.
The strongest and most vivid memories I have are of redcoat interactions; when she was taken aback by the comment that some visitors just want to interact with a redcoat, that made me smile.
I miss those days and as much as I have fond memories, a kind of sadness washes over me, knowing that I may never have such experiences again.
it's a shame what's happened to the great british holiday park, they're on their knees now. Walk With Me Tim did a great series where he visited all the Pontins parks and honestly they look as though the business has already packed up and moved on. it's sad because these places were always supposed to be accessible for working class families and give a good value for money, but they can't balance the costs with the experience anymore. international travel is a lot cheaper than it used to be as well, partly because the airline companies have been dead in the water since 2008 and are just trying to keep passenger numbers up. you can get coupons and deals and find a weekend in amsterdam/vienna/perpignan/barcelona for like 100 euros, it's hard to compete with that. on the other hand if you just want to spend a week sitting in the sun drinking whilst your kids entertain themselves, you don't have to go to spain for that!
Oh my God did she just say you can't have a black child with a white mother. SHOCKING😮
This was the 70s. What IS shocking is that many Trump supporters would say say the same today....
This was amazing! Thank you so much for posting it.
Sparks and Butlins... wonderful.
Butlins Hitler lookalike competition 1974.
How times have changed, long gone are the camp & corny hol parks & competitions, the goal now seems to be centre parc style family holidays, they've already begun the transition, not sure if it will pan out tho, Butlin veterans & their families love tradition & don't like change, that began when Sir Billys wife sold out, Good video thanks for sharing.
Woh - profound ending. I wasn't expecting such immense gravitas. Superb.
Yes, it knocked me for 6 when I first saw it in 1974...Glad you liked it...
8:49 - "To be spoken to by a Red Coat for some people is a great achievment"
An absolutly serious statement by a Red Coat to a trainee Red Coat!!!
Cannot believe the comments about Bi-racial and or foster children. - quite sad even for the time
i picked up on that aint like that now tho thank god
Ahhh I was a redcoat in the 1998 and it was hard work 8-midnight! Dancing singing, smiling, signing postcards!!!!!! Competitions so fun! I loved it x
This is both a refreshingly honest and at times somewhat unsettling look at a peculiar aspect of 70s British culture.
The seedy jokes and games are an essential part of the regimented fun of the holiday camp experience.
The superb lighting and camerawork emphasises this dissonance.
regimented fun - hahaha - love the contradiction in terms necessary to describe it
This is radio butlin calling all 2nd sitting guests the time is 9 o clock & breakfast will be served at 9.30..... never forget that sentence as long as i live, happy memories
Very interesting, although I don't get all the sinister music.
Me neither.
that wasnt sinister music that was The Who brilliant punk music i was still a small baby then harriet was married to the lead singer
Well, that guy judging the kids Picture of Health contest was creepy af
Something very Biden about him. How could the parents let their children take part?! Its quite alarming that parents couldn't see the potential dangerous situations they allowed their children to be in back then? While some were building lovely memories, some where having just the worse time! 😕
@ 0:11 That’s a 2 second footage of Schiff’s Wild Mouse.
Did you notice that??? 9:25 ..Happy family contest ..
Interviewer ... "How do you decide what makes a happy family"
Red Coat .... " We obviously don't want a mother and father that's got a white and a black child"...lol ..."and we can't have foster children or adopted children "
Shows our changing attitudes but unlike the BBC, I think you need to be able to see stuff like that in order to learn from the past. Something many activists don't understand. You can't re-write history.
Brilliant 👏 🤣🤣🤣
Great times, I was a child of the 70s and I remember it being a wonderful time compared with life now. The only thing I have noticed watching this is that people seemed to be very ugly back then😬
🤣🤣🤣
It's the lighting I think. The host was smashing though.
Scruffy men's hair and sideburns, generally dreadful poorly tailored scruffy fashion(with some exceptions), not anyway near as much attention to grooming and designer accessories made people appear uglier in the 1970's than in the 1960's and later decades (although they were not immune from fashion disasters like man perms and shell suits). But if you met face to face or superimposed today's fashions and grooming back then or did 70's fashion plus grooming now people weren't worse looking than now - I was age ten through nineteen in the 1970's so experienced it all. Then again you had nowhere near as many overweight or obese people.
🤣🤣🤣
No hideous tats on women or tribal crap all over men`s arms, legs and necks
i went to north wales butlins in 83 waiting for jim Saville to pop up adults saying lets see your muscles to a child whos topless couldn't do that today that's wrong then and now :)
I hope that's not Savile in the video talking to the kids taking part in the Great Picture of Health Competition.
research jimmy saville he was an occultist and not who you think he was/// into the darkside and followed alistor crowley//
Ugh Jimmy Savile turning up to that. Creepy.
I went to Pwllheli Butlins a couple of times when I was about 5 and 6. 1974/75…Can’t really remember much, but after watching this I’m glad. I have never seen so many ugly and weird looking people. My anxiety levels have just gone through the roof 🫣
same. is it butlins or the buttfugly munch bunch asylum?
i love the drinking allowed rule not sure about the rule no black and whites, no addopted children must be blood line that was the british 70s for you. its no where like that now i think we have learned since then
Great days,Iv seen Sir Billy Butlin,At clacton on sea ,Camp,In a nice jag car,Was there hot summer of 76,,Killer heat,I was at skegness when ballroom Went up in smoke,It was me who raised the alam,The escorlator was on fire,and the windows were filling up with smoke,i had a instant kodak camra,took pics,still was a great time,
Fab video thanks for posting but now its my idea of holiday from hell yet loved going to Butlins back in the sixties/seventies how times have changed
Great film.....
"What made you come ?" "Well it certainly wasn't a picture of you..."
Fantastic Video .
The ending I suppose is a real juxtaposition position of what Butlins was really like back in the day.
Highly regimented entertainment is almost dictated at you .
After being awoken by the tannoy announcement instructing you to attend breakfast whilst you depart your glorified barracks.
But the irony is as a child of the seventies, I absolutely loved Butlins.
Skegness, Barry Island , Clacton on Sea , Minehead, Pwllheli, Bognor Regis and Filey.
Glorious Summers .
A Swimming pool , A Monorail that one could spend all day going round and round and round and endless Spotted Dick and Custard.
The feature did make me think about how cringe worthy awkward it sometimes was .
But those were some of the best holidays I ever had.
When we defeat new world order maybe we can go back to something like the 70s.wouldnt that be something!
thanks for sharing , a fantastic documentary , a rreal eye opener about the period and marvelously edited and filmed.
Fantastic documentary. Brought back lots of memories for me. It captured Butlins in the 70's as it really was. And what a great ending, as good as any other horror movie ;)
Great documentary on a British institution. All those that went to Butlins between the war and the 1980s would probably say nothing bad against it. This is brilliant and reeks of the 1970s good and bad. Happy families competition would not allow mixed race or fostered kids. God seems like it was Butlitz not Butlins. But Minehead was one of the better camps too. I went to them all in the UK just did not go to the one outside Dublin. Don't know why as my family were Irish immigrants. Probably didn't want to go 'home.'
People like to be 'ordered about ... they want to be told what to do and when to do it,' oh my God she was so right. Yet the 1970s were supposed to the really radical with the trade unions in charge ... weren't they? Seems like the English liked to show what they could do as well.
Some of those compares are a bid dodgy. They would be prosecuted today for some of those comments and their jokes are terrible.
I stayed there in the mid sixties when I was 12. Nothing much has changed in this film.
I don't think there were any significant changes to Minehead until 1986
i remember going to minehead around 1970 when i was 4 and all the kids chased captain blood around the camp and i was scared ,i needed the toilet and my older brother took me ,goes in then out the cubicle comes captain blood and i screamed and literally s**t myself, best place i suppose 😂
great film of minehead..best i've seen
I'm a 16mm film fanatic and this one is absolutely superb. The camera work and editing is trully excellent - wish I'd been involved with making it but I wasn't born at the time!
Out of interest, how can you tell its 16mm film?
@@lawrencel1668 All on-location work was shot on film back then and 16mm was the standard film format used by all the broadcast companies. It has a look all of its own, quite different from 35mm cinema film.
@Frank De Ruiter absolutely Frank. The extensive use of a wideangle lens gives this film an unusual / pioneering style for the time. I like it..
that was a lovely half hour , finely photographed wide angle lens gave the feeling of being there , and what a lovely host Harriet was then. is there a recorded history of the shows Harriet did?
Harriet Crawley did six of these films, the others being Harriet At War, Harriet At Sea, Harriet At The Circus, Harriet At The Opera and Harriet In A Balloon.They were filmed in 1974 and 1975 and screened on TV in 1976. I can't find uploads of any of the other episodes so far.Maybe they no longer exist.
@@PeasGraveny can't find them ?
@@TheInnacityI've hunted around but the only thing I managed to find was a reference by the B.F.I. to the various episodes and a similar mention in a Tony Palmer 'filmography'. Strangely Harriet is not credited anywhere (not even in the closing credits of the show) and I only found out what her surname was from the uploader. I did find out that by the 1980's Harry had become an MP and had transformed into the stereotypical aristocratic Tory Lady!
People actually spent time and money enduring this nightmare. Ghastly.
This town ain't big enough for the both of us. And it ain't me who's gonna leave!
That was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
Very interesting and a wonderful host commentating and working hard being a redcoat. I don't know what the awful music was at the end. It seems to be trying to say something but not saying it. A bit creepy.
The bit with the kids in swimming attire was creepy 😳
Great film, Harriet was lovely.
99% homogeneity= happiness
Goof grief. Brilliant film. Ghastly subject.
Fear and loathing in Minehead the retro film by Terry Gilliam
9:33 oh what a lovely redcoatfull of love! Elitism in Skeggy gone nuts
would love to know what these "redcoats" are doing now etc
They look like prison camps
"People are like sheep" sounds like the British Public now and then!
I don’t think the happy families comment was against mixed race families, she said one white and one black child, therefore meaning step siblings, adopted and fostered children don’t constitute a “real” happy family 🤣🤣🤣
I can't get enough of British nostalgia. America's too big, it will never be quaint like this.
The problem is we revel in it a little too much and we need to move on. We're starting to create a living museum...
@@MikeKleinsteuber oh dear.....i hope not!
Fond memories of working at Butlins
I was wanting to see inside the chalets
I looked this up in the newspapers. It was one of a series of 6 programmes featuring Harriet Crawley, the others were "at the circus", "at the fete", "at sea", "at the opera" and "at war". The "at play'" episode first aired on HTV on 3 July 1976. I've not been able to find any sign of any controversy over it.
However, I found a news item in "The Stage" of 25 July 1974, saying that the series had started being made. So filming probably started in 1974 but the series definitely wasn't aired until 1976.
@@dannynosdetectiveinstinct9170 Correct. I think Patrick Dromgoole (the then MD of HTV) had to wait to get a slot in the national ITV schedule, rather than just tx it locally. ITV was generally carved up by the big boys and local stations like HTV just picked up the crumbs when they could. As you can see, in this case it took two years.
@@MikeKleinsteuber Not all the local ITV franchises seem to have shown it. HTV had the first broadcast in this case, and some of the others picked it up too, but not all of them. They didn't show it at the same time or on the same day.
@@dannynosdetectiveinstinct9170 Thanks for the info. Interesting. It was a great series, though Tony Palmer was a much better director when he didn't like the subject, like in this, Harriet At Play prog. The others didn't quite have the same 'bite'....
@@MikeKleinsteuber Are any of those others available Mike? I also wonder if there is any kind of HTV archive as I would like to find out more about this film.
I've never been to a butlins
This is my only way in
you and me both, kid. we're reaching for the stars thanks to the YT time machine
Love this stuff, still going to Minehead now, 30 years later 😂
Me too. 50 yrs later for me though...
Great memories. I was 'Radio Butlins' in 1969 at Minehead. My day 6.30am wake up call at my Chalet by Security Staff, shifts shared between two of us (should have been three,) till 11.00pm. Staff accommodation very basic, pay minimal and at the end of the season represented Butlins in a Red Coat group at the Horse of the Year Show at the "Butlins Cup" award. Being a Red Coat was a great way to spend a Summer.
Mike, this is a fantastic film, many thanks for uploading. The way the use of cinematography, editing and especially music transforms it into something really telling and profound is something that modern documentary filmmakers could take note of the next time they produce yet another production-line borefest. Do you happen to know any more about the film as there is virtually no info online. Is any of the rest of the series around and as good as this? The 'Sieg Heils' at the end are a bit much mind, ha ha.
I realised also that I was at this Minehead Butlins around this time - I went with the cub scouts out of season and stayed in one of those 'prison camp' chalets.
Not sure where it comes from but there is a slightly better quality upload of 'Harriet at Play' here: ua-cam.com/video/bFmlT52b2ho/v-deo.html&ab_channel=TheYesterdayMachine
Used to go Skegness Butlins with my parents and sis back in the seventies. How I would love to go back to that time again. Watching this is actually quite sad as you see a time now long gone.
The editing in this is amazing for the time A WORKING CLASS HERO IS SOMETHING TO BE 😊
'for the time' is an interesting phrase cos in reality, other than a few notable exceptions I think editing and documentary film making has actually gone backwards. We're generally much less sophisticated today. If you like editing like this try Julien Temple's doc on The Glastonbury Festival. It's a brilliant piece of work and looks at the history of it. But the structure is very interesting. And to change the context somewhat, watch the movie '21 grams' as that has probably the best structure of any movie I've seen. Completely different to this of course but if you like one, I think you'd probably like the other....
@@MikeKleinsteuber What I was going to say. Lots of 'for its time' comments here yet this just a great film for any time! The camerawork, editing and use of music is outstanding. And it draws on a lineage of such experiments going right back to the 30s.Sadly TV documentaries now would not dare do what is done here because they are too reverent of the subject matter, and would never be as inventive or make a point about the seediness (I am reminded of Andersons 'O Dreamland' about Margate). We have undoubtedly gone backwards with tedious talking heads, commentary and a totally formulaic way of presenting just about anything..Though as you say there is the odd theatrical gem. Can't think of when I last saw a documentary as good as this on TV.
Yikes. Shuddering at the views of race and talk of foster kids etc not being part of the family. Reflective of the time. I love butlins though and I know that was what people believed at the times. It seems shocking now though
Eerie undertone? Why? Bizarre. Great days, wonderful memories. 😎
Have been to minehead a few times in the last few years. On the surface its unrecognisable from those days but I suspect if you know where to look there are still traces of the old camp.
Can u 8magine a holiday compere now saying to a young llad nice chest you've got there. How innocent times were. On the surface that is.
Is this meant to have sound ?
The HTV ident is the only silent part
23.35 Today thru would all be playing on their phones.
who is the presenter in this doc?
Harriet Crawley
Always good to hear 'Wheezy Anna' (at 14:18). Arf!
@2:14 - "A Redcoat's life starts at 8.30 in the morning and it ends at quarter to twelve." So WTF is her point ?? I wish I only had to work 3.15 hours every day !
She means 11.45 pm at night. 23:45 to be precise.
different times indeed, some of which would be taboo now, oh well that is progress i suppose!
I'm not to good at being ordered about so ,
This was proberly not my era
F*ck me the 70s were grim.
Some of the 70s was grim, with all the strikes and power cuts. Butlin's was great fun though.
If you had 9000 english at holiday camp now there would be one massive punch up and they would be slagging each other off
Idea - heaven turns out to be a seventies holiday camp.
Two young lads singing a Gary Glitter song. Different times......
oh please happy a red coat talked to you , i had one ask me to marry him , he dated me the whole two weeks ,he was a proper gent ... till we were alone
I don't think the documentary maker liked Butlins very much, that end was brutal🤣
LOL but true
Great film. Some creepy characters in amongst the "entertainment".
Now would get all that On a Spanish holiday?
These holiday camps need bringing back.
Lived in Bognor Regis not far from But,ins went a few times just to look around with my nieces.
I think this is at Minehead.
Fantastic video, i always wanted to go when i was a kid , but our holidays was a day in Blackpool.
Sinister!
That's what I love about it !
@@MikeKleinsteuber yes I did, it reminded me of a clockwork orange!
@@gavinward1235 LOL
16.13. Kids singing a gary glitter song.
A working class hero is something to be x
Is that Arthur Smith at 2:45?