RECREATION BEFORE REPATRIATION AT BOMBAY [Allocated Title]

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  • Title: RECREATION BEFORE REPATRIATION AT BOMBAY [Allocated Title]
  • Film Number: ABY 177
  • Other titles: ROYAL AIR FORCE OPERATIONS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR [Allocated Series Title]
  • Summary: Airmen enjoy some time on leave in Bombay (Mumbai), India, while awaiting embarkation for return to the United Kingdom
  • Description: Indian countryside seen from a moving train including a ramshackle village and a scrub-covered rocky valley. View along the side of the train as it rounds a bend. Airmen lean out from carriage windows with Indian children begging below. Men step off the train. Men wash themselves at a trough on the platform. A man buys tea from a 'char wallah'. A serviceman in glasses gives his luggage to some local Indian bearers to carry. A carriage is marked 'G.I.P' ('Great Indian Peninsula'). A soldier wearing the cap badge of the Seaforth Highlanders gives something to an Indian. View from the moving train; a station platform with a London Underground-style circular roundel (the location is not legible). Further along the platform a rectangular sign reads 'Sandhurst Road'. Airmen and women in swimming costume on Juhu Beach, Bombay. Men play with a ball in the water. Men in swimming trunks watch local fishermen at work; they appear to have had a good catch. Men watch a snake charmer. Rooftops at Worli Transit Camp. Two men on a balcony; a sign reads 'No.3 Release Embarkation Centre Worli'. A parade of shops at a Worli bazaar; two airmen stop outside the 'Indo-Burma Store' and examine some clothing. A number of signs advertising various helpful services such as 'Clothes altered to fit you' and 'Parcel service to UK' can be read. In a concert hall Monty Banks, acting as compere, introduces his wife, singer and comedienne Gracie Fields. Fields performs and the audience applaud enthusiastically. At an open-air swimming pool a man bounces several times on a diving board before making a rather underwhelming effort at a dive. General view of the pool.
  • Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM
  • Featured Period: 1939-1945
  • Production Date: 1945-10-19
  • Production Country: GB
  • Production Details: Air Ministry, Directorate of Public Relations (Production sponsor) Royal Air Force Film Production Unit (Production company) Goozee, S (Production individual)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations: Fields, Gracie (person) Entertainments National Service Association (regiment/service) British Army, Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany's) (regiment/service)
  • Keywords: Bombay, West India, India (geography) Repatriation (event) Home Front, India, Second World War (event) Welfare and recreational activities and services, Burma 1942-1945, Second World War (event)
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Silent
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Footage: 389 ft; Running time: 5 minutes
  • HD Media:
  • Notes: No dates on slates, date above from dopesheet. The Great Indian Peninsula Railway company was formed in 1845, one of the first railway companies in India. It operated the first passenger service in India, in April 1853, and has since been incorporated into the Central zone of Indian Railways. Sandhurst Road station apparently named for Lord Sandhurst, Governor of Bombay 1895-1900, and is still in existence as part of the Mumbai Suburban Railway. Monty Banks (1897-1950) was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena, Italy, and had previously worked as a comedy actor in silent films and then as a director. In 1941 he directed Laurel and Hardy in their propaganda-comedy 'Great Guns'. Gracie Fields (1898-1979) achieved great success as a music hall performer in the 1920s before enjoying similar success in films. Marrying Banks in 1940 obliged her to move to North America as Banks, an Italian national, would otherwise have been interned as an enemy alien. Despite the harm this did to her reputation she nonetheless embarked on several tours performing for Allied servicemen, often in far-flung places. Extensive film coverage of airmen arriving in Bombay can be seen at ABY 73. See related items.
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    ABY 177

  • Related IWM Collections Objects:

    ABY 73 (SO THIS IS INDIA [Allocated Title]) ABY 182 (SEA REPATRIATION FROM BOMBAY TO SOUTHAMPTON ABOARD HMT OTRANTO [Allocated Title])
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