Goodbye Mr Chips | 1939
- Locations |
- Derbyshire
- DIRECTOR |
- Sam Wood
The classic tearjerker, from James Hilton’s novel, following the life of a shy schoolmaster from 1870 to World War I, was made by MGM with an American director, Sam Wood, but it was filmed in England.
Exterior shots of ‘Brookfield School’ are of Repton School, Repton, between Derby and Burton-upon-Trent, Derbyshire.
Repton is a boys’ public school (for non-UK readers, that’s – confusingly – a fee-paying, private boarding school) founded in 1557.
School interiors were filmed at Denham Studios, which stood in the village of Denham, Buckinghamshire. Founded by Alexander Korda in 1936, classics such as David Lean’s Brief Encounter and Great Expectations, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Thief of Bagdad and A Matter of Life and Death were filmed here.
In 1952, the studio closed down but it continued for several years as a musical recording studio – soundtracks for Vertigo, Superman and Star Wars were recorded here – until 1981 when the buildings were demolished, apart from the Grade II-listed Processing Laboratory, which designed by Bauhaus founder, architect Walter Gropius.
