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The Knack location, Melrose Terrace, Hammersmith  

The Knack location: the “White Pad”: Melrose Terrace, Hammersmith

THE KNACK... AND HOW TO GET IT filming locations


CREDITS
THE KNACK... AND HOW TO GET IT, 1965
dir:
Richard Lester

Rita Tushingham
Michael Crawford
Ray Brooks
Donal Donnelly
“Please restrict your comments to one word.”.

Flashy, surreal filming of Ann Jellicoe’s stylised stage play, set in a very swinging sixties London. It's undeniably dated, and some of the attitudes are disturbing today (particularly the idea of rape as a bit of a joke), but today's music videos still show the influence of its ground-breaking, bleached-out, rapid-fire pixilated style.

The titular ’knack’ is the ability of smoothie Tolen (Ray Brooks) to seduce every female in the vicinity. Gauche schoolteacher Colin (Michael Crawford) is eager to acquire this skill, until naive Northerner Nancy Jones (Rita Tushingham) puts a spanner in the works. She arrives in London at
Victoria Coach Station, Buckingham Palace Road, SW1. On seeing Buckingham Palace, she wonders if it might be the YWCA she's looking for. Given the look of this dullest of royal palaces, you can hardly blame her.

The street scenes are around west London, in
Shepherd’s Bush and Notting Hill Gate. Colin teaches at Holland Park School, Airlie Road, of Campden Hill Road. Along with Nancy and their mate Tom (Donal Donnelly – who you might recognise as Archbishop Gilday in Godfather III), he pushes an iron bedstead through London. Orsino Restaurant, Penzance Place, used to be a pub. Here, Nancy and Colin push the bedstead around the exterior of the bar , while Tom nips through the pub, acquiring a stack of bottles and ashtrays. This sight gag, and its location, are leftover from Richard Lester's previous film, A Hard Day's Night.

Clifton Villas, alongside Warwick Avenue Underground Station (Bakerloo Line), is where Nancy feigns pregnancy, by shoving her shopping into her coat, in order to get to cross the busy road.

The waterskiing at the swimming pool is
Ruislip Lido, Ruislip, west London.

The wildly sexist fantasy
, with queues of fabulously Sixties ‘dolly birds’ queuing up for the attentions of Tolen's rival, is at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington for the privilege of his attentions. See more of this Victorian gem in Alfred Hitchcock's own 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The famous ‘White Pad’, where much of the movie is set, and which was taken over as the film’s base, is
1 Melrose Terrace at Shepherd’s Bush Road, W6.



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FILMING LOCATIONS FOR THE KNACK
London
 
TRAVEL


London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport

Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, South Kensington (box office: 020.7589.8212)
 
ASSOCIATED FILMS


Richard Lester brought his freewheeling, surreal style to the Beatles' two Sixties feature films, A Hard Day's Night and Help!.

See more of Swinging Sixties London in Alfie and Blow Up.

 
 

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