A summer afternoon on Chelsea's Kings Road - 1967, including shots of Sammy Davis Jnr. arriving in a black Rolls Royce, and opening with a glimpse of the Chelsea Fruit & Vegetable man, with his horse-drawn cart, in Paradise Walk ...
Wonderful reminder of how things were. I was 17 then. I notice how slim people look. Before the arrival of fast food!! It all looks so much fun. Lucky to have enjoyed those times.
Yes,before migration brought qualified engineers,chemists,doctors and all sorts of other professions to our shores,who,unable to get jobs in the professions they actually were qualified for instead opened a shop selling a version of the nations ethnic food which proved surprisingly popular with the British people around them but anyone who remembers the standard lacklustre home cooking of the late 1950s will understand why people found this tasty food so exciting. So that's why our high streets are now full of "fast food" or "junk food" shops. The one thing you can do is cook food and sell it so they did and do and much of it is good but not "cheap" at all like fat people claim,the "I'm so poor I have to eat fast food I can't afford to buy healthy food".
Turning 17 in 1967 I remember we were all filled with optimism - our world was getting better and better and we lived in the best country in the world, University education was free for the top 10% and the Tech Colleges with Industry provided apprenticeships for the rest. We were well off and we could afford to buy a house with a bit of saving. Above all teenage life was exciting - the girls were great (and by the end of the sixties on the pill) - the music was just fantastic - we did not have to fight like or our Fathers and Grandfathers - we were going onwards and upwards - a fantastic time to grow up.
Could not agree more. I left school and immediately started an apprenticeship with one day a week in college ( paid for by the govt.) , being British was cool and we exported our music- fashions and machinery all over the world. As you can see our girls were so beautiful.
Then along came. The 70’s and the three day week Power cuts, bin strikes Jimmy Saville and chums breast cancer epidemic inflation cost of living crisis Unemployment and then……. To break the depression….PUNK ROCK and kings rd rocked once more 😂
Look at it....,all we needed was the Small Faces singing Itchy Coo Park with Steve Marriott belting out "it's all too beautiful" ....because it really was!
What a wonderful film. Brings back great memories. How times have changed so much, and for the worse. People were so much happier then. Things weren't perfect, but, when I look at London now, I just despair.
Me too, lived here all my life, am 42 and desperate to join other white English Londoners in fleeing but family ties trapping me here for a few more years yet.
@Jackfrost Actually I was looking at the film, and at first I couldn't work out what was different about the streets in those days, and it dawned on me, it was how clean everything was.
Thank you for this lovely film. I used to love going up to Kings Road and was 16yrs old then. I remember buying a dress from Lord Kitchener & visiting Stop the Shop. Plus not too expensive to go for a snack lunch & beautiful coffee. I am glad I went then as 10 yrs ago visited Kings Road and all the lovely old shop fronts had been replaced by modern ones.
JT.. It must have been so sad to see, as you obviously had so many happy memories going shopping and going to great coffee shops etc. I was 15 in 1967 and wish I had have visited London at that time as it was certainly the trendiest place to be ,most certainly as a teenager.
I was born and raised just down the road in Fulham and my dad often drove us through the Kings Road to get to various places. This film has taken me right back to my childhood and has, on the one hand, warmed my heart and on the other hand, saddened me beyond belief.
You're old. Sorry, you just going to have to deal with it like all of the rest of us eventually do. Were you seriously expecting a place to stay the same over 60 years?
@@th8257 Your curt salutation suggests that you are hoping for an equally rude response. Yes, I am certain that I am considerably older than you are and that your perception of old age is somewhat skewed, but I am sure that once you reach retirement age, you will probably be sad at some of the changes; of course that is if there is still a world. Peace and love, as the old sixties saying goes.
I was born in Fulham also just next to bishops park in 1968 I remember the kings rd and Fulham of the 70s 1960 to 1980 seems such an incredible era compared to now
Stephen Smith when Britain led the whole world in fashion and music, and cars,it truly was Great Britain. Deliberate policy to get rid of manufacturing industries, split close knit communities up,then since 1993 allow incessant vast numbers to flood in at our expense (us tax payers ) We now feel like foreigners in our own country but to tell the truth we get called racists.
Depends how old you are. Everyone from every generation imagines the era they were young in was best. Especially when they get old and live in the past. The 60s, like every other era, had huge amounts of problems.
So lovely...what happy times those were. I was just 18 when that was shot. Wearing flowers in my hair, and just about to go to Drama School. Not a care in the world.
My dad was in his early 20s that year and he hated the late 60s because he could see things started to go downhill, particularly with the drugs and hippie scene, which was all manufactured. The arrival of the Beatles and Rolling Stones ruined what was going good. I know most people will disagree, but they are only thinking about the late 60s because it is talked about so much.
@@Embracing01 The Beatles and Rolling Stones started in the early 1960s. I did not like either of them. My favourite bands were mod bands like The Move, The Who and The Small Faces. The hippie scene was not big in the UK, that was just a few people copying what was going on in the US.
@@hefellump1 Shame to hear that Henry. Where did you move to, please? I moved 39 years ago from the heart of South East London just 11 miles to the very edge of S E London and Kent.
As it so happens, I was actually there that day and saw Sammy Davis Jnr. looking down on the scene from a balcony above a restaurant bar. And I have to tell you that his celebrity status drew such a crowd that it blocked the traffic in both directions. Hence, the police presence that eventually showed up to deal with the situation.
This is lovely to see, I was just a child back then, but i do still have clear memories of this era, my mother and I would dress similar, I merely wore the smaller size of whatever she wore . From dresses, poncho's to hats and bags. A lovely choice of music to accompany this summer video footage , with the ' theme from a summer place' Gorgeous memories of much kinder respectful times. 💐👌🤩
Takes me right back, the fashion, the brights colours and beautiful patterns. Men were letting their hair grow a little longer but still definitely keeping it smart and stylish, unlike 69-70 when the smart look was gone.
I was 17 in May of '67. We use to go to The Chelsea Kitchen in the evening and have "Spag Boll" for 3/6. (three shillings and six pence - roughly 30p ) Saturday afternoon on the Kings Road was The place to be.
A few months later i made a 8 mm film with my brother and father touring round chester , bromborugh, woodside, I made a huge The End sign for the film which I have still got lovely times with my parents and Grandparents which are no longer here with me I miss them greatly .....made film Jan 1968
Just when you thought it couldn't get any groovier, Sammy Davis Jr. Appears! I mean it was definitely him. This film is really beautiful. I'm glad these people experienced such happiness.
"These people" were experiencing the same joys, losses, worries, hardships as any other human being then or now. Why should they be any "happier" than someone who walked down the Kings this afternoon??? What an astonishingly naive comment
My grandparents look back on this time in absolute fondness;I don’t blame them. They could go on holiday, have one parent working, own a home, still had community cohesion, etc.
Oh yes. The Big Con. Women were told non stop that cooking was boring drudgery and your baby was a boring companion who couldn't provide you with that intellectually stimulating conversation you would get from work colleagues (those bozos and jerks you found out they were). You needed to "Gedda Job" to not only prove you were a valid human being but so that while your husband's wage paid all the bills,all that boring stuff your "extra pin money" gave your family a higher standard of living and yours was the only family in the street who went to that strange and exotic far off land of Spain,had the newest model of car and was having a fridge/freezer delivered. You were definitely worth emulating. So loads of women fell for The Big Con and walked into the cage. I was a pre-teen kid at the time so I saw it happening and as the radio was always on in our house and on radio 4 or it's equivalent all the political rhetoric went into my brain so I well recall the "vibe" of the time that unrecordable "spirit of the age" that carries certain ideas in the ether and disseminates them. So what happened. Once women stopped cooking (!),men took over and suddenly it was AMAZING and ART and they got to be STARS with tv shows,lucrative contracts and famed restaurants. See anything a woman does that is "boring" a can make a lucrative career out of. And of course once a critical mass were inside the cage,THEY sprung the trap door so no escape and suddenly you realized those work colleagues were bozos and jerks and definitely NO a source of intellectual stimulation and suddenly that money wasn't extra anymore. They'd shifted the kaleidoscope and now you both needed to work just to barely pay the bills. The real value of wages went down and down and you missed your baby who you had to pay someone else to look after. So more fool you ,ladies for walking into the trap and falling for The Con.
@@janebaker966 Jane I do know what you mean. I lived those years too. It was we women ourselves who fought so hard for equality. But we shot ourselves in the foot!!! I see my daughter struggling with her full-time job and keeping a happy, comfortable home for her little girl and husband. Husband's wage would never sustain the household, though it's only a modest one, both of them work so hard --- running, just to stand still. They would never be able to afford childcare which I do gladly, along with my husband. It's bloody hard work, we're late sixties and early seventies but we're the best carers for her because we love her and therefore have her best interests at heart. Yes, we women stitched ourselves up like a kipper I'm afraid!
Guess what! Everybody looks back on their younger days like that because being old is totally shit. That does not mean that it was a better era. It means that the old live in the past. The sixties had huge problems. Explosion in crime. Serious economic problems that made Britain the "sick man of Europe". Social attitudes that would curdle milk. If the sixties were so great, why did Mary Whitehouse hate them so much at the time?
To think I was a child then, but I remember the fashions and how the world was then. So different from today, not perfect of course but still better. 😊
No security cameras, no social media, freedom of speech and expression, a good and fair police force, and looking forward to a better world, where's that time machine when you want it
So glad I lived through this wonderful time in England. All gone now. I feel sorry for the young who will never experience such care free optimism and happiness. 😞😢
It's funny, every generation who ever lived seems to think that the time they were young in was best, especially when they get old and can't remember what it was actually like. It's almost like they're bitter and resentful and jealous of people younger than them.
I was born in 1979. But really wish I had lived as a teenager in the 1960s, from what family members have told me and what see it looked a great time to be alive, people just looked happy,,, great looking women too. Sigh
How mellow, magical and friendly i was back then...like another world. Same with all the cine films my dad too of that era into the early 70's, on holiday here, there and everywhere.
@FarRight WhiteGuy There were plenty of things wrong with society back then too. From smoking in buildings and airplanes, political dividedness was still very polarizing back then (maybe not quite to the extent of today's with the help of social media but still), racism was starting to decline around this time but was still very much prevalent and women didn't have as many rights and opportunities as men. Safety was starting to be enforced but that didn't change the fact that many people didn't use seatbelts (became mandatory in '68 in the US, most countries have a similar timeline) and that cars were coffins on wheels alongside reduced regulations and rules on the road. Lead paint was used on walls and asbestos was used in insulation among thousands of other things that were once deemed safe that proved harmful and/or cancerous later on. I agree with you for the most part and I would actually prefer to live in the 60's; but just wanted to shed light on the fact that no particular time in history was 'perfect' or close-to.
@FarRight WhiteGuy Read my last sentence. I was just letting you know/reminding you that not everything was perfect back then. There's lots of things that have improved since and also worsened since and that there is no perfect era. If you were alive in those days, come on. Think, there's lots of things that you found annoying and bothersome at the time (and you have to dig for in memory) but you remember all the good things about the 'good times' no problem. The outlook is subjective because it changes with perspective, experiences and the heaviness of nostalgia. I'm trying to bring facts and make a more objective statement even though I agree with you.
We shared a bed sitter on EARL'S Court Rd. Went to find tube station Chelsea? Decided to walk towards the river Thames lol Met Michael Caine and Sammy Davis Jnr surrounded by flash cameras in the middle of Kings Rd Chelsea.What a day that was.
I was so into this stuff growing up. Though I never engaged in the lifestyle, I loved seeing the clothes and especially hearing the music. For a kid from Brownsville, this was like another world!
I am now 77 years old. Lived through that wonderful life back then. What happened after that was a text book lesson on how vindictive politicians have destroyed our world.
There was a naive, child-like optimism in those days, which unfortunately didn't survive the 70s. This film shows what the world could've been like if things had gone differently....and better.
The neighbourhood I born in, in 1961 in what was Essex , but is now East London, was almost countryside, now it's totally suburban, and where I live in North West London is still suburban in the neighbourhood I live in, but our high street is become increasingly urban.
Wow imagine Sgt Pepper belting from turntables around the City. Life then seemed to have so much colour . I was only 4 when this was filmed - wish I had been 18.
My mum was a dressmaker for one of the top London fashion houses in the sixties until I was born in 68 and was full on part of the “swinging sixties”. She’s a pensioner now but it’s so heartwarming to see the the young vibrant world that she lived in before I was born… I’ll have to show this to my grandchildren to so they can get an idea that their great Nan (my mum) wasn’t just always an old lady….
Thanks for the footage, Hamish. So pleased you captured the time: was living in Richmond and would go to the Art House cinema in Kings Road ‘65 and ‘66. And, oh the style in your film, wow, London really was where it was at then: clothes, music and those guys in the Mini Mike! Governments telling us to wear sear belts.Lucky to have lifted through that time. 👌👌🤗
The young lady at 5:58 is absolutely gorgeous. 🤩 Amazing to think she is in her 70’s if still with us today. Yes 100% to so many comments about no fat people.
There are still gorgeous women today, just that you don't see many. People are fat because they can't afford proper, healthy nutritious foods that most of the people in that film could afford. Most of the food on the supermarket shelves is full of GMOs and other crap.
I loved London…& England then. I can’t find the words to express how sad I am that it’s all virtually gone. Just one big ghastly mess…today is truly is the beginning of the end…
What rubbish!!. I knew London in the 60s. Lived there til I was 30. I am 71 now and go back regularly. My son lives there..he has lived both in the East End and in Hammersmith. He loves it, I still love it. Of course it has changed. But it is still a wonderful city.
@@dontknowreally you replying too me?? Rubbish comments yourself. You guys either go to nice parts of London/your heads buried in the sand. TRY living in Hayes, forest gate or white chapel for a week then come back and tell me how that works out for u. People like you make me laugh. your the same people that go nice parts of london and that is why you think whole of london is nice…
Before all that cultural enrichment was around, people bathed once a week in 6 inches of water, the toilet paper was non absorbant sheets in a box and you ate boiled meat and gammon on Sundays.
@@andrewmurray5542 😆 no friend. Own it. Visitors and Brits from the colonies who came to the UK were astounded with the poor levels of personal hygiene. Look it up.
I was only 3 years of age in 1967 but, hey, I am so happy to have been there(: In the early 80s I became a Mod-psychedelic (you know, the new Mod-psychedelia phase) and always dreamt of being able to travel back in time to 1967.
Oh for the safety of those times, when mugging hadn't started & people were glad to help friends & strangers alike. Girls never felt threatened to be on their own, but those halcyon days are long gone !
London is thriving city foreigners and blacks were there in those days the racist camera man hides London's diversity. Many black from the windrush and asian were in the country and before this invasion there were many Irish, french and Jewish settlers in London.
@@brainsmith3931 Of course, but It’s all about numbers, Brian. Can you honestly tell me, London is a safer and better place now, than it was back then? Due to, of course, to a reversal of demography. By the way, racism wasn’t even a word back then. Now, like all overused words and phrases, means nowt, because of people like you, throwing it around like confetti
@ Bogo Mipps This was my heyday, having arrived in London in January 1967. Our flat was just off the King's Road, cnr of Rosemoor and Rawlings. Thank you for putting this on RU-vid.
Takes me back to them days in Chelsea, what fun times they were. Grew up in Guinness Buildings in Draycott Draycott Avenue during the war and left 1967 the memories are so clear in my mind
Loved every second of this, its as if everyone all agreed to meet in the Kings Road for one big party, and encapsulate the period perfectly, a sense of excitement with something in the air, just for that afternoon.
I have to say I consider London was just about the coolest place to be in the sixties and seventies, look at the people then too facing nuclear war, the IRA, wildcat strikes but they were HAPPY nevertheless... go down any street in London today and see the faces today... rare to see a smile and most looking like a bulldog chewing a wasp.
on the other hand we weren't totally self obsessed, disinterested in others and addled by spending too much time in a dark room on own with social media...
My friend who is 4 years older than me,those four years make a huge difference,she was one of those hip,young chicks in the open top sports car just picked up by boyfriend on late Friday afternoon after work,on the King's Rd for a weekend in Chichester area. She was there. I didn't know her then. While she was a swinging hip 19 year old chick in the coolest part of London I was a distinctly unhip 15 year old in my first job. In our home city,a city which cool,hip,creative young Londoners are now flocking to. Putting house prices up!
The people in this film are naturally cool, interesting and at ease with themselves. They aren’t barking down mobile phones and taking selfies every five minutes ! There was a higher ideal in pop culture about making the world a better place and being kinder to one another ; unlike today where kids are stabbing one another and wearing hoods over their faces. I guess that crop or generation back then where unique. We seemed to have regressed to a more vicious and unpleasant mindset from less enlightened times.
@@philipwilliams2310 It's been engineered to be like that through our governments (puppets really). Society has gone downhill because it's been allowed to go downhill. You can thank the late 60s for the drugs thanks to bands like the Rolling Stones and The Beatles.
Yeah but didn’t have mobile phones then and if you did you would of all been using them. Soz but not ever think was perfect in the 1960s as my nanny told me. She said it depend on who you was and were you live and what class u was in. But good thing back then was there wasnt to many foreigners back then and the ones that was here behaved themself and didnt act like victims. Now when you go in london its like a foreign land and no one speeks english… So sad it all changed and in a bad way……. …
The first thing i notice when watching any videos from back in the day is there is no one obese!! I was only 2 in 1967 but London was the hippiest place to be. I love the 60's now for the fashion, cars, music and i see a number of Jaguar E Type Cars which if you are lucky enough to own one they can fetch £60,000 Plus
@@andyelliott8027 i cannot remember the last time I saw an EType until around 2 months ago when I was stuck in traffic one morning and I looked over the road and blow me one was parked on the drive in carmen red and it is soft top It’s just so beautiful I see it every time I drive past the drive If I win the lottery £1 million then I would buy one
@@joanne26 My dad had an E-Type, only a replica though lol. I sold it 3 years ago for just over 5 grand lol. Yes they fetch alot of money today, prices are going through the roof with many good examples fetching around £150-200k. You could buy a nice detached house where I live for that money.
Is this London, I can't believe how clean and beautiful it was back then well dressed people. Today it seems we have gone back to the stone age with garbage all around
Wild...I was born and raised in Chelsea at 1989 I'm now 33 and I'm still there 2 mins from the kings road and so many parts of it I can see in this video like john Lewis what was to become don't safeways even the bus numbers are still the same I can tell exactly what building's are still here...truly magical 😂✌🏻🇬🇧
The only non whites in the film were three young stylish British born Indian girls @2.51 who fitted in with everyone else. I wish I could go to 1967 and stay there.
Funny, I've been at Kings Road, the same day Mr. Bain made that film. I know it, because I made fotos of people , I saw in that film. And I have a shot of Sammy Davie jr. . So, it must have been the same day. I'm 75 years old by now and I spent an au-pair year in 1967 in Londo. Happiest time I had in my whole life
I give in to the temptation to look at these old films but it is nearly always a source of sadness. It is better not to dwell on the past. It may look nice,but one forgets that life is never perfect and there were problems back then too.
Who would believe from this wonderful film that one day London would be an absolute shithole and that day is now. The best part about London is the journey out of there now .
@@daisychain3007 Stop talking out your backside. Tell me where it has been gentrified . It looks more like Islamabad these days . White londoners are the minority now . Gentrified my ass .
Mrs. Blair, in The Courts of Justice, fighting for asylum seekers from rich Arab families but their cause and her fees coming from the "legal aid register" That was the thin edge of the wedge! That took away OUR country!!!
I loved seeing that thank you. I was 14 then. I think I saw a glimpse of Lionel Blair in the crowd when Sammy Davis appeared, that is poignant as he has died this week.
