Richard Gere to Monty Python – 6 films you forgot were made in Bradford

The district has always provided a great backdrop for movies and here are a few you may have forgotten were filmed here.

Room at The Top – 1959

Room at the Top is thought to be the first of the British New Wave of Kitchen sink realism film dramas. It was filmed at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, with extensive location work in Halifax.

Some scenes were filmed in Bradford, notably with Joe travelling on a bus and spotting Susan in a lingerie shop and the outside of the amateur dramatics theatre.

The film stars Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears. It also features Prunella Scales, who plays a council office worker and would go on to play Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers.

Billy Liar – 1963

This comedy-drama film based on the 1959 novel by journalist Keith Waterhouse.

Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay) lives in Yorkshire and works as an undertakers' clerk overseen by Mr Shadrack (Leonard Rossiter).

Billy wishes to get away from his stifling job and family life. To escape the boredom of his humdrum existence, he constantly daydreams and fantasises, often picturing himself as the ruler and military hero of an imaginary country called Ambrosia. He also makes up stories about himself and his family, causing him to be nicknamed Billy Liar.

The film also features Bingley-born Rodney Bewes.

Yanks – 1979

The drama starring Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave is set during the Second World War in Northern England.

The film depicts the relationships between American soldiers stationed in semi-rural England and the local population during the build-up to Operation Overlord in 1944. In particular, three romances between US service personnel and local women.

Fairytale: A True Story – 1997

A film loosely based on the Cottingley Fairies starring Harvey Keitel and Peter O’Toole.

It is set in 1917 in England, and follows two children who take a photograph soon believed to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies.

Monty Python’s Meaning of Life – 1983

Footage from the funny men’s movie was filmed in Lister Park. The grounds of Cartwright Hall was used as a location for the dancing nurses singing ‘Every Sperm Is Sacred’.

It was the last film to feature all six Python members before Graham Chapman's death in 1989.

The film returned to the sketch format made famous by their 1970s TV sketch show.

East Is East – 1999

This British comedy-drama film is set in Salford, in 1971, in a mixed-ethnicity British household headed by Pakistani father George (Om Puri, pictured above) and an English mother, Ella (Linda Bassett).

Oak Lane is shown in film when the family visit Bradford.