FORTY years ago, Bournemouth and Poole stood in for Hollywood when director Ken Russell was shooting his controversial biopic of silent star Rudolph Valentino.

For a couple of weeks, Dorset welcomed one of the world’s greatest ballet dancers, Rudolf Nureyev, who was starring in Valentino, with a cast including Leslie Caron, Michelle Phillips and Felicity Kendal.

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum became the interior of Valentino’s Hollywood home, with its art gallery block as the apartment of his lover Alla Nazimova.

Russell’s widow Lisi Tribble Russell says the director was a fan of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and that he loved the museum, which they visited together in later years.

Duncan Walker, curator of the Russell-Cotes, says staff there are fascinated by the movie, which shows the house before an extensive restoration. In one publicity photo, Nurveyev stands on an antique rug which was later worn away by the thousands of visitors to a touring display of Princess Diana’s wedding dress in 1982.

Russell and his team held auditions for extras at the museum and the nearby Marsham Court Hotel on Sunday September 19, before shooting there from September 22 to October 1. Filming overran, pushing up the fee to the museum from £1,000 to £1,500.

Call sheets from the time show Nureyev and Phillips staying at the Royal Bath, with Felicity Kendal at the Marsham Court.

Nureyev’s co-star Michelle Phillips, formerly a member of the Mamas and the Papas, took a special interest in Bournemouth, according to a press release from the time.

Her family originated from the area and she was keen to trace her family tree, so she acquired an illustrated book on Poole as well as The History of Kinson and The Gentle Smuggler by Joan Pitts, about the Kinson smuggler Isaac Gulliver.

Among locals who remembers the shooting is Barbara Davis of Canford Cliffs, who is in a scene filmed at the Grand Cinema in Westbourne, where Felicity Kendal’s character watches Valentino on screen.

“I’m a member of Bournemouth Natural Science Society and they sent out letters to see if anyone wanted to take part,” said Barbara.

After being kitted out in 1920s clothes at the Royal Bath, they were taken to the Grand.

“Ken Russell was there, standing in front and directing the audience to look at the screen. We had to pretend we were adoring Valentino,” she said.

Bron Littlewood, later a Bournemouth councillor and a stalwart of All Saints Dramatic Company in Southbourne, was a “slip of a thing” when she was picked to be Felicity Kendal’s stand-in.

She remembers a cold morning’s shooting at Emery Down in the New Forest.

“We waited for ages and eventually a limousine drew up and Rudolf Nureyev, dressed in a fur coat and hat, stepped out.

“He sniffed the air, declared ‘Too cold!’, got back in the car and was driven away.

“Nevertheless it was a brilliant experience and my father kept the call sheet which had ‘Bron Littlewood for Felicity Kendal’ printed on it for many years.”

Entertainer David Medina was an extra and remembers filming in the Forest being held up because there was too much moisture on the trees.

He also remembers the shooting of a scene at St Ann’s Hospital in Canford Cliffs, which was Valentino’s driveway in the film. Nureyev objected to driving an enclosed car with two dogs.

“He wouldn’t do it. There was a hell of a row. They got back on the phone to Beaulieu and they brought up an open Bugatti. Then he couldn’t drive it,” he said.

Jennie Linden, now living on the Isle of Wight, played the actress Agnes Ayres in the film. It was a small role for a star of Russell’s Women In Love, but Russell believed she looked like Ayres.

She remembers Nureyev being “not excessively charming”.

She said of Russell: “You got your good days and bad days and he wasn’t straightforward to work with and he was quite temperamental. I should think those temperaments clashed, with him and Nureyev.”

The X-rated film attracted a lot of attention for its sex scenes, even earning a pictorial in Playboy.

Duncan Walker can point to the dining table and the floor where some of the racier scenes took place. “There aren’t many places whose curators can say they’ve had Rudolf Nureyev’s bottom on their gallery floor,” he said.

Jennie Linden recalls similar antics at Elstree Studios. “Nureyev decided on the set he was going to wear very little and when the tea break came, the tea lady came onto the set and then she went straight off,” she said.

“She had apparently gone off in a huff and said ‘Until that man puts some clothes on, I’m not coming back on that set’.”

Valentino was a commercial disappointment and was slated by critics.

“It killed his career,” said Russell’s widow Lisi.

“He regretted a lot about that film, mainly because Nureyev was so difficult to work with. He really had a difficult time directing him because he had such an enormous ego and Ken felt he was cruel to the others, quite unnecessarily.”

But she adds: “The last time I saw it with Ken was in 2010. He had always said it was a painful memory and we saw it together again and he turned to me and said, ‘It’s a masterpiece’.”

  • Valentino is available on a Blu-ray/DVD combination set from the BFI.