Clubs in Film: 'Members Only' (1965)

This is a real gem: ‘Members Only’ is a 1965 colour newsreel looking at London private members’ clubs, as part of the Rank Organisation’s Look at Life series of film shorts, screened in cinemas before main features.

‘Look at Life: Members Only’ (1965). Click on the above image to play the video.

Not only is it a window into another age, but this 9-minute short gives an admirably broad cross-section of the sheer range of clubs that London offered in the 1960s.

We start with a glimpse at what director-narrator Michael Ingrams calls “the seamy end of the scale”: the informal drinking clubs, casinos and theatrical clubs littered across the West End.

We then move to the rather more grandiose traditional West End clubs, starting with the Athenaeum on Pall Mall. There are then in-depth glimpses at the interiors of two of the larger establishments, the National Liberal Club (NLC) and the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). This is significant. I recently noted how the 1956 film The Man Who Never Was, with its short scene in the old In & Out clubhouse, was the first instance of cameras being allowed to film inside London Clubland - but getting no further than the lobby. Here, we are offered a vivid glimpse of everyday life in these clubs, with the members milling around. (One of the members glimpsed in the NLC is someone I knew in his later years.)

The Smoking Room of the National Liberal Club in 1965. Many of the Club’s Victorian-wallpapered walls and Burmantoft-tiled pillars had been whitewashed over during a 1951 refurbishment, in an attempt at modernisation, and they remained this way until the late 1980s. The 1950s lighting had also been installed at this time.

The first detailed look is at the National Liberal Club on Whitehall Place. Differences from this period include many of the walls and pillars having been covered in whitewash (a design decision taken during a 1951 refurbushment, only reversed in the late 1980s); the presence of bedrooms (which were lost in the 1987 sale of the building to the Royal Horseguards Hotel next door); and the presence of the Gladstone Library (whose books were sold off in 1976, and whose space was also lost in 1987 - it is now an events space operated by the hotel). However, other aspects are still recognisable today: many of the paintings shown are still displayed in the Club; the main staircase is essentially the same today, with only the carpet a slightly paler shade of red; the view from the terrace is essentially unchanged (only with the addition of the London Eye opposite, and the Golden Jubilee Bridges wrapped around the Hungerford Bridge); and some of the furniture is still there, such as the distinctive copper-topped coffee tables in the Smoking Room.

The Gladstone Library of the National Liberal Club in 1965, when it was still part of the Club. Its internal appearance had not fundamentally changed since its completion in the 1890s.

One curious detail is the narrator’s observation:

“It may not be there for long. So valuable is the site that a property deal has been mooted, but a new club would be incorporated in any new building.”

This relates to a scheme advanced in the early 1960s by the NLC’s own committee. A number of traditional Victorian clubs, faced with ruinous upkeep costs on historic buildings that had not been maintained, had opted to demolish their own clubhouse and build a modern clubhouse on the site instead: examples included the Army & Navy Club on Pall Mall in 1957, the Constitutional Club on Northumberland Avenue in 1959, and the Junior Carlton Club on Pall Mall in 1963. In the latter two cases, the Club built an office block on the site, with clubrooms in the penthouse atop, allowing them to generate income by leasing out office space in the building below. It was this model which the NLC’s committee wished to pursue - but was foiled later in 1965, by the new Westminster City Council refusing planning permission.

The main ground-floor Bar of the National Liberal Club in 1965. Originally designed as a public-access conference room for lady guests, called the Cumberland Room, it is now the main lobby of the Royal Horseguards Hotel.

An intriguing aside shows well-known character actors Fred Emney and Sydney Tafler entering the NLC en route to the Savage Club. When the newsreel was made, the Savage Club was coming to the end of the first of two stints of being hosted by the NLC, this one from 1963-5. Given the expectation at the time that the NLC would demolish its own building sometime around 1965, the Savage Club had made alternative plans, and moved to King Street in Covent Garden. The Savage Club would return again to the National Liberal Club, from 1990-2021. (They are currently in the process of opening a clubhouse of their own in Covent Garden, with significant planning, licensing and building work having been undertaken.)

Actors Sydney Tafler (left) and Fred Emney (right) head to the Savage Club, passing through the National Liberal Club’s entrance. Note the chamber visible through the arch at the right-of-centre: this was blocked off when the building was partitioned in the 1980s.

We then see inside the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, described as “Possibly the most successful club in London, certainly the one with the biggest membership,” with some 16,000 members at the time. We meet a distinctive member of staff who had already been in post for over a quarter-century by this point, described in Piers Brendon’s history of the RAC:

“The head porter, a flamboyant Irishman called John Quinn, ran everything with brio and panache. Magnificently smart, he seemed to ‘exude authority’ and it sometimes seemed that ‘he owned the place.’ He reputedly knew all the members’ names and, standing by the front door to greet those coming in for lunch, he resembled an archbishop welcoming a congregation at a cathedral before a morning service.”

Head porter John Quinn, who reputedly knew the names and faces of all 16,000 RAC members, greets incoming members at the Club in 1965.

The RAC itself shared a clip from this newsreel four years ago, observing “We still have the ‘fine swimming pool’, squash courts, Turkish Baths and restaurants”. Indeed, much of what is seen onscreen is essentially unchanged today, the main differences being more art hung up in the central atrium today; the conversion of the onscreen Dining Room to what is now the Drawing Room; the conversion of the onscreen Smoking Room into what is now the ‘Brooklands’ brasserie; the retirement of the ticker-tape machine for incoming news/stock prices/racing results; and a modernisation of the Turkish baths - with the practice seen here of nude members swigging ale from silver tankards by ashtrays in the Turkish baths being a thing of the past. The Club’s own branch of the Post Office (a facility the NLC also once had) is also a thing of the past, the kiosk now vending club-branded merchandise.

The RAC’s pool in 1965, seen from the poolside restaurant which had a rather more formal dress code at the time.

We then move onto one of the smarter gambling clubs of the era: Crockford’s. Not the original 19th century namesake, but a later establishment which was based at 16 Carlton House Terrace from 1934-82. Although it was a 20th century club in a 19th century house, the croupier is seen donning 18th century court dress. Meanwhile, the men are seen wearing a combination of dinner jackets and business suits, while the women wear formal dresses (one with jewellery), suggesting this scene was filmed in the Club’s busiest period, in the after-dinner hours. Summing up this section of the documentary, the narrator tells us:

“These are the clubs of the rich, the well-connected, the powerful.”

The revived Crockford’s in 1965, with all attention on the gaming table.

We then move to a look at the more informal drinking clubs of Soho. Henry Jeffreys has written an excellent Substack introduction to them here. They were very much the outcome of Britain’s old licensing laws - especially the “temporary” wartime measures of 1915, which remained in place until 1988/2005, and which meant that it was impossible to order a drink in a normal pub before 11am, between 3pm and 5:30pm, or after 11pm. Accordingly, daytime drinkers and late-night drinkers were catered for in a flourishing profusion of drinking clubs of varying degrees of salubriousness, which structured themselves as private members’ clubs, so that they could argue to the licensing authorities that they were not open to the public.

The crowd at the Colony Room Club in 1965. The young man on the left with the long fringe draped over half his face is a young Barry Humphries, then already a well-known actor, comedian and writer in London.

The newsreel focuses on the legendary Colony Room Club on Dean Street, with its lurid green walls, bustling atmosphere, live jazz piano, and an assortment of “artists, writers and musicians.” We see the proprietor Muriel Belcher (the narrator’s reference to her “barbed wit” politely skirting over her well-known predilection for profanity), Francis Bacon, and even a young Barry Humphries (Humphries had a lifelong passion for the arts - his private art collection was recently sold at Christie’s). We are told that:

“Drink is far more expensive [here] than at any of dozens of perfectly comfortable public houses within a few hundred yards, yet against all reason, business booms.”

We also get a glimpse of a jazz club, the short-lived Annie’s Room in Covent Garden, with star cabaret provided by its proprietor, the actor-singer Annie Ross. It had only just opened the previous year when ‘Members Only’ was shot in 1965, and it closed down by 1968, so the film captures a particular moment in time. Nevertheless, it managed to attract significant star power, including the UK live performance debut of Nina Simone. It is far closer in spirit to a nightclub, but the narration makes clear that it was run as a private members’ club, with the 2-guineas-and-10-shillings-a-year full membership fee comparing favourably to the 20-guineas-a-year full membership fee cited for the National Liberal Club.

While ‘Members Only’ was conceived and delivered as a sanitised travelogue bordering on an advertorial, its historical value is considerable. It gives us a vivid insight into club life in glorious technicolour, with location filming showing the members going about their business. It gives us much more than a look at buildings with empty rooms: it gives a vibrant, warts-and-all glimpse of mid-1960s club culture. And if the members of traditional clubs look distinctly “pale, male and stale” - something visibly contrasted onscreen with the informal Soho clubs, which showed a noticeable diversity of ethnicity, age and gender - then that is because that was what traditional Clubland looked like in 1965.

You can buy the full ‘Look at Life’ series of shorts on Network DVD - with a fully restored version of ‘Members Only’ on Volume 5. (The version on YouTube is unrestored, with obvious damage to the film in some sections.) However, since Network DVD went into liquidation in 2023, you can no longer purchase the DVD directly from them. Copies are still available from other sellers.

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