If the gangster classic Get Carter easily takes the plaudits as the finest movie shot on location in our part of the world, a subsequent crime offering also filmed on Tyneside was released to the world this week 35 years ago.
For several months during 1987, Newcastle city centre had been home to a crew of moviemakers and a collection of big-name actors as a curious local public looked on. Stormy Monday enjoyed a lavish premiere in New York City on April 22, 1988, finally arriving in British cinemas early the following year.
Taking its name from the signature song of American blues man T Bone Walker - Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad) - the film did have its moments. The use of Newcastle as a dramatic backdrop, the employment of local extras, and the appearance of a marching juvenile jazz band in one scene all echoed Get Carter - but the $4m production would prove to be far less enduring than its illustrious 1971 predecessor.
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Directed by Mike Figgis, the thriller tells the story of nightclub owner Mr Finney, played by none less than Wallsend-born Sting, who tries to keep his club in the face of a hostile takeover attempt by a shady American businessman Francis Cosmo, played by Tommy Lee Jones.
Hollywood actress Melanie Griffith and young British star Sean Bean play lovers, Kate and Brendan, who help Sting fight his battle - but perhaps the real stars are the hundreds of local extras. Figgis even cast well-known street photographer Jimmy Forsyth as a newspaper seller, while the popular Italian Job restaurant on Dean Street was closed for several weeks as filming took place there.
The Hollywood careers of Jones and Griffith had stalled in the mid 80s and the film would give the pair a boost. In the same year, Griffith made the romantic comedy Working Girl, which grossed more than $100m at the box office, and for which she was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actress category. The New York-born star - who has been married at different times to Don Johnson and Antonio Banderas - rented a plush house in Darras Hall during the filming of Stormy Monday.
She told the Evening Chronicle: “Newcastle is so pretty and the people are great. I am seriously considering buying a place here. It really is a wonderful city with all the old buildings. We just don’t have them in America. I have done a little sight-seeing and I want to drive to Durham to see the wonderful cathedral.”
The only problem for the 30-year-old actress was the North East weather. She said of one scene: “It was freezing cold and I just had a thin black dress on. I just couldn’t get warm and, to be honest, I think that’s the hardest thing I have had to do.”
But what did the critics make of the film? Influential Time Out magazine said of Stormy Monday: "Mix American gangsters, molls and majorettes with Polish avant-garde jazz musicians against a Newcastle background - and what you've got is a curious homage to B movie Hollywood and the rain-washed neon of the pulps."
The American film review website, Rotten Tomatoes, meanwhile, gives the movie a 73% rating, and declares it a “tautly constructed, deftly executed crime thriller set in economically depressed Newcastle, England. Former jazz musician Mike Figgis, who also wrote the script and composed the score, tells its story using subtle shadings of character and a vivid evocation of its Newcastle setting rather than through violent action.”
When the Tyneside premiere of Stormy Monday finally took place at Gateshead's AMC cinema in January 1989, director Mike Figgis and a host of local dignitaries were in attendance but there was no sign of the film's stars. The mayor of Gateshead, delivering his verdict, noted: "I enjoyed it, but I hope audiences don't think Tyneside is as violent as it is portrayed."
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