The owner of this and other 'Telly visits...' films has confirmed to me that Telly never set foot in Brum, Aberdeen or Portsmouth. I doubt he'd even seen the footage before doing the commentary. Looking forward to full coverage of the over 40s disco at some point
Telly Savalas looks at Birmingham is definitely accurate. He's looking at it on a screen, wondering how he ended up narrating travelogues for British industrial cities.
He should have walked past the old HP Sauce factory, that would have took his breath away. As cringe inducing as this is it also makes me nostalgic for my childhood, I always found a day out in town back in the 60s and 70s to be exciting, loved a trip to the open spaces like the Lickey Hills and Cannon Hill or been left outside The Upper Grounds pub with a Vimto and Bag of crisps while my uncles were inside enjoying a few pre match pints.
Although it takes a real stretch of the imagination to picture Telly Savalas shopping in the Bull Ring, it's not so hard to imagine him supping a pint in one of the 'British pubs'.
This is wonderful. Brings back memories of my first ever ride on an escalator in a department store in Birmingham in the 60s (my grandparents lived in Harborne, where the air smelled of chocolate from the Bourneville factory nearby). I was terrified of the Bull Ring though.
Which is ironic, given that the music and general style of the film says late '60s/early 70's, but looking at the traffic, it couldn't have been filmed before about '78 and might possibly be as late as 1980!
"Now remember, Mr Savalas, you are still under oath. Did you really spend hours in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens"? "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me, baby."
They showed the full half-hour version of this today on Sky Arts 2 HD. Whatever your opinion of Birmingham, it was nostalgic to watch it all again and it was a regular cinematic feature of the early and mid 1980's.
I just don't get what they were thinking. And then, the 'view that nearly took his breath away', I can just imagine the guy who shot it thinking, 'Oh fuck me, they can't use this!'
Apparently these films made a lot of money for their producers. Cinema owners were always crying out for quality shorts to run before the main feature. As Savalas was on the Number 1 TV show in the World - it was an easy sell.
Great memories. Pity it's not the whole film. Quite a lot of it is about Broadway, the well known Birmingham suburb. I've always wondered what Dee Birmingham and her family were like....
Birmingham. Suffered the same fate as London. A sprawling mess - overcrowded, rubbish and graffiti everywhere. I can't believe people pay such high prices to live in such a muck of a city.
Just one more reason to *like / loathe / hate / love the 70's. He wasn't laughing hysterically though the voice over, so I'm assuming he didn't actually visit the place. Unintentional comic genius :) *Delete as applicable
@@mesmarriott127 Well before make crap comments about Birmingham try visiting it and see how it has changed and modernized, at least foreign tourists appreciate Birmingham
Next Week, Telly looks at Middlesborough. "Da first thing that hit me baby, was all that polluted air and the views.....of industrial chimneys, crumbling streets, and Muslims everywhere."
"This is the view that almost took my breath away!" 🤣 I'm sure many would agree, just not for quite the same reasons!!!😏Telly Savalas has clearly had a fair bit to drink to get beer-goggles for Brum!! The cheesy 70s soundtrack does its best to inject excitement and drama into 'inspiring' scenes of motorways, flyovers and endless expanses of concrete, but just makes the whole thing even more unintentionally funny!!!🤣
And I guess I can answer my own question: The music is by De Wolfe, they've helpfully provided this playlist with the music from this film (www.dewolfemusic.com/search.php#/?id=4757738&code=e1dCvO ) and that particular piece is called Giant Dwarf.
Did Kojak ever go to Birmingham? Driven through it a few times & the driving there is absolutely terrible despite what Kojak says about its 'revolutionary' road system.
