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My Beautiful Laundrette: The
beautiful 'laundrette': Wilcox Road, Wandsworth
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MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
filming locations |
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CREDITS |
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“Where
are those two buggers?”
Yes, yes, I know the correct spelling is launderette.
Take it up with writer Hanif Kureishi.
And
my red face? Well, in the original edition of my London
location guide I somehow managed to leave out
this eighties classic completely. However, Movie London makes amends.
Young
Asian entrepreneur Omar (Gordon
Warnecke) employs old school pal, and one-time
racist, Johnny (Daniel
Day Lewis) to make sock-washing a feelgood experience
in this little gem of a movie, which captures so much
of the spirit of 80s Britain.
It's
set around Wandsworth,
south London, though the home of Omar and his world-weary dad (Roshan Seth) is 239 Queenstown Road at Ravenet Street in Battersea.
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My Beautiful Laundrette: home to Omar and his dad: Queenstown Road, Battersea |
The
railway bridge, under which Omar first sees Johnny with his racist pals, is
over Stewarts Road,
near Ascalon Street, Wandsworth, SW8.
In
reality, ‘Powders' launderette itself used to be Low Gear second hand store, but has since gone through several incarnations. It’s 11 Wilcox
Road, SW8, off Wandsworth Road, which was, at the time, two doors away from... a launderette.
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
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TRAVEL
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London:
Flights: Heathrow
Airport; Gatwick
Airport
Wandsworth: the nearest
tube to Wilcox Road is Vauxhall, Victoria Line
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ASSOCIATED
FILMS |
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Three
controversial British classics of the early
seventies had scenes filmed in Wandsworth. Just
north of Wandsworth
Town Station on Old
York Road, Chas (James
Fox) phones his one-time boss in Performance.
5 Spencer Park
is the home of the dreadfully earnest Hodson
family in John
Schlesinger’s Sunday,
Bloody Sunday – the first mainstream
film to take its characters’ homosexuality
completely for granted. The film crew, hitherto
assuming that the relationship between Peter
Finch and Murray Head was uncle and nephew,
were supposedly a bit taken aback by the full-on,
tongues-and-all, smacker. But, most famously,
the northern subway beneath the huge circular
advertising installation on Trinity
Road is where the Alex and the ‘droogs’
attack the Irish tramp at the beginning of A
Clockwork Orange.
More recently, director Stephen
Frears himself returned to Wandsworth: Wandsworth
Town Hall, High Street, provided
the lavish lobby of the ‘Baltic Hotel’
in Dirty Pretty Things
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