We’re delighted to have just acquired a very rare and beautiful early-1960s publicity brochure produced by Associated British Studios — a wonderful piece of studio-era marketing design and a real time-capsule of Elstree in its ABPC heyday.

The album is especially unusual: it contains 16 removable publicity photographs of British film stars, along with 5 removable film poster reproductions, each mounted on stiff card pages with pockets and printed descriptions. It even includes a fold-out studio plan, offering a rare glimpse of how the site was presented to the industry and press at the time.

The featured stars include:

Richard Todd, Sylvia Syms, Charlie Drake, Tony Hancock, Millicent Martin, Carole Lesley, Paul Massie, George Baker, Peter Arne, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, Alan White, Sarah Branch, John Lee, Kim Tracy and John Turner.

The films represented are:

Tommy the Toreador, Bottoms Up!, School for Scoundrels, Follow That Horse, and Sands of the Desert.

Objects like this matter because they show how Elstree presented itself to the world — its stars, its films, and its confidence as a major production centre in British cinema. We’re thrilled to preserve it as part of the growing Elstree Project archive.

(And yes… every photo and poster is still intact.)

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A small note: The Elstree Project is an entirely unfunded initiative. Acquiring and preserving historic material like this involves real costs, but ensures these objects are not lost. If you’d like to support this important work and help safeguard Elstree’s film and television history, donations and support are always gratefully received.