THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

Image result for The Battle of the Sexes 1959 movie

GB
1959
1hr 24mins
Dir: Charles Crichton
Starring: Peter Sellers and Constance Cummings

An American efficiency expert causes upset to a Scottish tweed manufacturer

This comedy is based on the James Thurber short story The Catbird Seat and features a number of railway images early on. These include a ‘stock shot’ of the platforms of London Paddington station at night with plenty of coaching stock present but no locomotives, a distant view of a steam-hauled train passing through Princes Street Gardens on the approach to Edinburgh Waverley, and two ‘stock footage’ shots of streamlined LMS ‘Coronation’ Class 4-6-2’s passing through Carnforth, as taken from Brief Encounter (1945 – qv). There are also a number of distant views of the roofline of Edinburgh Waverley station throughout the film, but seeing that the station is in a cutting, no trains can be seen.

The large flat ‘area’ visible from the bottom left hand corner upwards is in fact the roof of Edinburgh Waverley station
London Paddington at night. The origin of this stock shot is not yet known, but it also appeared in The October Man (1947), The Flying Scot (1957), The Devil’s Daffodil (1961) and Serena (1962).
This is the first of the reused images from the 1945 classic Brief Encounter
This is the second of the Brief Encounter stock shots. The loco is a streamlined ‘Coronation’, erroneous of course for a film from 1959 as the last ‘Coronation’ lost its streamlined casing in 1949.
The train passing through Princes Street Gardens. Photographed from The Mound, Waverley station is behind the camera, Castle Hill is to the left, and the Parish Church of St Cuthbert is on the skyline.