Oh! What An Extraordinary Legacy

As the film celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Jacqui Bealing dips into the Attenborough Archive at The Keep to find out why Oh! What a Lovely War is so special to the people of Sussex.

- Jacqui Bealing

Fifty years ago Sussex was a battleground. Trenches were dug in Sheepcote Valley, generals planned military tactics on Brighton’s West Pier, and thousands of wooden crosses covered the hills of Ovingdean.

Unlike World War I, filming for Richard Attenborough’s spectacular and haunting version of Joan Littlewood’s hit stage musical Oh! What a Lovely War was over within three months. But, like the atrocities it parodied through the original wartime songs and written accounts, its legacy lives on.

Lord Attenborough’s directorial debut was heralded a triumph when it opened in 1969. The Times said it had “the kiss of immortality”. The Sunday Express’s reviewer described it as “the most heartbreaking comment on the waste of human life I have ever seen”. Its satirical, anti-war message particularly chimed with popular opinion. This was the era of protests against the Vietnam War, which had become seen as similarly tragic and futile. It was also a cinematic extravaganza, with an elite cast that included Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde and Vanessa Redgrave.

Details of how the film was made form part of the vast archive of Richard Attenborough’s work papers, which are housed at The Keep in Falmer as part of the University of Sussex’s Special Collections. Dozens of boxes, now available for viewing, contain the call sheets, correspondence, production photographs and ephemera of the film that was largely shot in Brighton and the surrounding countryside.

Actor John Mills, who with thriller writer Len Deighton had come up with the idea of setting the show on a seaside pier for the cinema, approached Lord Attenborough to see if he would be interested in directing it.