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The first studio was set up in Borehamwood just before the First World War. Film making took off in the inter-war period and there were several different studios in operation.
Its heyday was probably when MGM owned the largest studio in the 1950s, making films with a host of top Hollywood stars including Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman.
By the 1980s British film making was in decline, and Canon sold the only remaining film studio to Brent Walker . Much of the lot was sold for re-development, which spawned a new housing estate (with streets named after British studios like Pinewood and Ealing and stars like Ray Milland and Margaret Rutherford), a new Tesco superstore and an office complex.
A 'Save Our Studios' campaign was launched in the 1990s under local Town Councillor and Studio historian Paul Welsh MBE, with the support of many old stars. Hertsmere Borough Council stepped in and bought the remaining studio. It was then given to a private run company to manage the studios.
The BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation BBC is primarily a national publicly-funded broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, which also has some international services. Some of the international services (such as BBC cable TV in America, Canada and elsewhere also run a studio in the town, called Elstree Television Centre. This is best-known as the home of Eastenders. Top of the PopsTop of the Pops is a long-running British music chart television programme shown each week on BBC ONE and now on BBC Kids in Canada. Each programme consists of half an hour of performances of some of that week's best-selling popular music. It began on New has also been made there. Before the BBC moved in, the site was used by ATVAssociated Television Network Limited (ATV was a British television company formed by Lew Grade's Associated Communications Corporation and ITC Entertainment. Grade originally called the company Associated Broadcasting Company (ABC), possibly in imitation under the direction of Lew GradeLew Grade, Baron Grade (birth name Louis Winogradsky ( December 25, 1906 December 13, 1998) was an influential showbusiness impresario and television company executive in the United Kingdom. His interests included Pye Records and ATV. He is best known by. As part of the 1981 ITV contract negociations that led to the creation of CentralCentral Independent Television or to give it its familiar name, Central Television is a British Independent Television company that took over from ATV in 1982. Despite a new logo and on-air image, the company was a continuation of ATV in many respects, ha the studios had to be sold, although Central used the studios for the first few years of its existence until its new Nottingham studios were ready. The Muppet Show and the first series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet were filmed at the studios in its ITV days.
Many newcomers to the town are surprised to discover that, in spite of the word "Elstree" in their names, both of the operational studios are in the Borehamwood part of the town. Indeed, this was true of nearly all of the former studios too. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the railway line runs along the boundary between Elstree and Borehamwood. When the studios were at their most active, the station building was on the Elstree side, and the Train station was called just "Elstree". (Nowadays, the building is on the Borehamwood side, and the station is called "Elstree and Borehamwood".) The second reason is that the local telephone exchange was also called just "Elstree". Before the advent of subscriber trunk dialling, a person wanting to make a call to a studio would ask the telephone operator for, say, "Elstree 1234". It would therefore be natural for anyone visiting the town to make a film to think that the whole town was called Elstree.