Churchill quotes should always be handled with care (more than I offered!) as some of his famous speeches exist in several formats being re-delivered – sometimes by an actor – for radio (sometimes after delivery in the House).

For anyone interested the actor who was sometimes called in by the BBC to recite the Churchill speeches was Norman Shelley, who up till that time was most famous for being the first person to play Winnie the Pooh on BBC radio.

As Churchill gave a lot of his speeches to Parliament, and as no recordings were allowed then to be made in the Houses of Parliament, if the BBC wanted to broadcast a political speedch, the speaker was usually asked to come into the studio later and re-read it for the air. However Churchill as PM considered his time too precious and he was not willing to repeat his speeches for radio so he asked the BBC to get someone else to do it. So a few speeches including alledgedly the “We’ll fight them on the beaches” speech were recorded for Norman Shelley. It’s thought some of the speeches Winnie recorded to send to the USA were also actually Shelley. Of course after the war when he had more time Winnie did actually record many of his speeches for posterity. But there are no original Parliamentary speeches by him , only hose recorded shortly after by Shelley or well after the war by Winnie himself. The only wartime speeches which are genuine are those that were done specifcically as a live broadcast on radio or recorded at a live event such as the functions the PM attended at places like the USA, Canada, Harrow, etc.

The real Winston was very pleased with the Shelley recordings apparently. It was of course top secret and few staff ever knew about Shelley standing in. He later revealed the story and most disbelieved him, till after his death when a recording turned up with an official label explaining the speech was Shelley as Churchill. So now its accepted as fact.

See here for a photo of one at Ohakea
http://rnzaf.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Postwar&thread=7570&page=1

For the nay-sayers out there, Peter Jackson just appeared on New Zealand’s “Campbell Live” programme being interviewed, and he confirmed that if all goes to plan they start filming for Dambusters in 2010, and he also confirmed (again) that there are currently ten Lancaster replicas sitting in a warehouse in Wellington.

Now – I’ll ask again for goodness sake – can a moderator please change the tabloid-style lying title of this thread?

I agree with Dave Homewood on this was interested to see the interview with Stephen Fry in his link. My ears perked up when Fry said he had visited Peter Jacksons collection of aircraft which included some Lancasters. Does this mean then more have now been built? It seems foolish to invest all this money in building these aircraft to ‘back burner’ the project. I shall remain on the fence on this one until either a) the film is released or b) there is official word from PJ himself.

Martin

From the many reports I have seen , as well as word on the street here, the film has been on the back burner because Mr Jackson has been busy making The Lovely Bones,which has just premiered, and Tintin, which is about to debut. He has other projects on the go too, and the Weta workshops guys have had oodles of work on the go for many films. Getting all their schedules sorted so the appropriate time can be allocated to concentrate on the shooting and post-production must be an immense task, and rather than rushing it and making a bad film, I believe they’re doing the right thing.

However it’s clear they have been working on building the replica aircraft, that is well reported and photos of them have surfaced. They are also apparently sorting out some new filming technology which will likely be used in the making of it, including new 3-D cameras according to reports. Some reports have said that actual filming will likely begin in 2010 sometime.

I would speculate that the online report that started this thread off (which never mentioned cancellation of the project at all!! The thread title should have been changed by a moderator!!) is jumping to conclusions without doing any real research, and many people here have jumped with it.