The film has not been shown again on TV since 1972. The last three minutes of Royal Family comes back from the edge of declaring that all its viewers should be grateful serfs, and tries once again to sell the family as an odd mixture of divinely ordained and folksy. One incredibly brave or stupid aide says the large dogs at one ambassadorial residence were “more spectacular than corgis, aren’t they?”, The queen says, “Well, they look spectacular. (If the queen is ever hung over, can the piper be told to pipe down? A ROYAL TV documentary banned by the Queen nearly 50 years ago was leaked in full yesterday — to the embarrassment of Buckingham Palace. A lot of the film shows the glamour of royal tours and the inside of the palace as more akin to an office job—if that office job involved appearing to screaming crowds and deciding which fabulous tiara to wear. Do they seem like a regular family having a barbecue? Shooting began on June 8, 1968 at the annual Trooping of the Colour ceremony and in total there were 75 days of shooting, in 172 different locations. Banned royal family documentary from 1969 is leaked on YouTube. It is extremely difficult, sometimes to keep a straight face when he said to me, there's a gorilla coming in. she says. The focus on her son may have been another element of the queen’s disapproval, the sense the documentary is placing her reign to the side in preparation for his. Princess Diana and Charles talked about their marital woes on screen in the 1990s. A royal documentary relegated to the archives nearly 50 years ago briefly resurfaced last week, creating a stir among royal watchers and experts. Prince Philip tells a story about how he found the queen’s father, the former King George VI, hacking away at a rhododendron bush, wearing a bearskin cap. I had the most appalling trouble.” If not an actual gorilla, who this person was is not made clear (some have said she is referring to the then-American ambassador). This was the swinging '60s with free love in the air and the House of Windsor was starting to look decidedly stuffy. It aired on June 21, 1969, and was viewed by over 350 million people. After it aired, the monarch reportedly requested it never be broadcast again. It does very simple things, pointing out to an audience who had never seen it for themselves that Buckingham Palace isn’t a long palace, as it seems from the Mall, but a square, with a hollowed out central courtyard. In recent days, despite the BBC rushing to slap copyright restrictions on it, the film has turned up in various channels on YouTube. Queen Elizabeth’s former press secretary shares what really happened behind the scenes of the film. The BBC banned the 1969 documentary “Royal Family” from ever being shown again. For the first time cameras were given special access for a whole year, the film royal family was a phenomenon totally rude word. Intriguingly, the narration posits the weekly meeting of prime minister (then Harold Wilson) and the queen as “the moment democracy and monarchy meet,” as if the two are not only different but mutually exclusive entities. Royal Family is a lot of wheezing sounds of traffic and transport, of the royals and their flunkies in perpetual transit, as if their central purpose is of being somewhere to be seen and then quickly hopping on an exclusive means of transit and doing exactly the same somewhere else. In the film, which was the focus of an episode in season three of "The Crown," you can see Queen Elizabeth II travel on a private jet, greet President Nixon, and hang out with her children. The real question: Why is the British public broadcaster still in such slavish service to the royal family in preventing its broadcast? ), “While she is head of the services, no would-be dictator can turn the army against the people.” (Again, who says? Prince Andrew, who seems as bullish at 9 as he does as an adult, and Edward have a snowball fight. "I saw it in 1969 when it was first … The queen is obviously media-savvy; more than once we see scanning newspapers. And still this has not yet happened. London (CNN) An infamous 1969 fly-on-the-wall documentary about the British royal family, supposedly banned by Queen Elizabeth II for decades … In South America, traveling on the royal plane, she looks at all the photographs of herself, the blanket fawning coverage, and is not elated—just her usual clipped self. In 1969, BBC's documentary, 'Royal Family,' aimed to show them as real people in their own homes rather than the lofty unreachable figureheads of an archaic institution. Former President Richard Nixon creepily dominates a conversation with the queen, Philip, Prince Charles, and Princess Anne. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io, Gillian Anderson on Calls for The Crown Disclaimer, Elizabeth Debicki Is "Terrified" of Playing Diana, Watch Emma Corrin's Reaction to Her Nomination, Gillian Anderson's BTS Photos of The Crown, Emma Corrin Is Leaving "Posh English" Roles Behind, Sarah Ferguson Reacts to Season 4 of The Crown. I asked when I arrived, ‘Where’s the king?’ They said, ‘Oh, he’s in the garden.’ I went outside and there was nothing to be seen but a lot of terribly rude words and language coming out of a rhododendron bush. It isn’t surprising that the royal family demanded it be buried, but it is surprising that the BBC, a public broadcaster, capitulated to such a request—and still does so to this day. Flanders says that no one can know what Charles makes of his royal destiny. Her own father was similar, the queen says. “Afterwards tears poured down her cheeks.”. The documentary makes clear that a key component of working royalty is things done to a maximized scale. Throughout the documentary you realize the queen’s favorite word in interactions with others is the all-purpose “Interesting.”, The meetings that to her are prosaic are anything but. Another wrote: "If the Queen and Royal Family do not want the 1969 documentary to be shown, then it shouldn't be. And the last thing you needed was greater access. The director was BBC’s head of documentaries and former army officer Richard Cawston and the schedule was expansive. The 90-minute film, called “Royal Family,” trailed senior members of the British royal family in 1968 and 1969. You may be able to find it, you may not. And pure gold is Her Majesty, purse in hand, buying an ice-cream in a local corner shop for a four-year-old Prince Edward as recompense after Prince Charles’s cello string snapped and painfully pinged Edward’s tender cheek in an earlier frame. Just so everyone knows their place, Flanders says: “His right to office goes back to a political election four months before. “So I said, ‘What an extraordinary remark to make.’ It’s very unkind about anybody.”. Three thousand guests trail into Buckingham Palace’s garden for one of the queen’s summer garden parties. ), One royal who was 100% against the documentary was Princess Anne. So it was quite an interesting time,” he adds. Also, what kind of power and place does the royal family have? This content is imported from YouTube. “The attention that had been brought on one ever since one was a child, you just didn’t want any more. Imelda Staunton to Play the Queen in 'The Crown', UK Minister to Ask for Fiction Label on The Crown, The Best Photos of Prince Charles & Princess Anne, A reporter and writer based in Australia, Rieden has covered the royal family extensively and is the author of. Royal Family. All of these family get-togethers feature muttering, halting, very posh conversation, and gales of unexplained laughter. Anonymous The most important thing I learned from watching The Crown is that the BRF is a complete waste of time, money and resources. The royal family has done everything they can to contain the 110-minute documentary showcasing a day in the life of the immediate royal family members, which aired on BBC (and later ITV) in … ), “While she is head of state, no generals can take over the government.” (Well, they could if they toppled the monarchy too. He then says the queen looks like Carmen Miranda in another picture wearing extravagant headwear. “While the queen occupies the highest office of state, no one else can,” we are told. The queen will chair the meetings until he turns 21, we are told. Again, we sense the documentary’s intent: to show this as a moment of transition, as he sits with his own “council,” deciding things about the Duchy of Cornwall. Edward lies on the top of a vehicle waiting for a barbecue lunch to be served at Balmoral. Her right to office goes back to the grandfather of Alfred the Great.”, On meeting the royals, Nixon is nothing like any of the dignitaries we have seen on screen so far. They’re not nearly so nice.”. For the public though, what was most fascinating, was the opportunity to see and hear the royals for the first time. Today, thanks to TV and social media, we know each member of the royal family’s voice and mannerisms intimately and we can even catch what they say under their breath. Way close. The documentary is less overtly deferential than the more sonorous royal coverage that followed, but it is still resolutely pro-royal, making a series of claims about the royal family as a bulwark against tyranny and the ultimate arbiter of British democracy. wild, mischief-making, bitter, and also deeply loyal, over the methods of BBC interviewer Martin Bashir has shown. It may not quite be in the league of definitive proof of the Loch Ness Monster, but finally seeing the long-buried and banned 1969 documentary Royal Family is revelatory—not … She talks to her guests with that halting politeness of hers. The queen reportedly banned the BBC documentary after regretting letting cameras in. This was an intimate study which, for the first time ever dusted, off the stardust, the pomp and ceremony, to present the royal family in private domestic situations talking not to an interviewer but to each other. The film attracted over 30 million viewers in the United Kingdom. She automatically knows to step back, to know that place. One of the most intimate looks ever at the British royal family was shown to the public in the 1960s—but has been reportedly sitting in a vault ever since. But if he needs help, there is 1,000 years of family experience to call on.”. The extraordinarily intimate BBC documentary first aired in 1969 and it showed members of the Royal Family carrying out mundane duties - including … “I was delighted with it, actually. And then Nixon is gone. Queen Elizabeth jokes about meeting a person who is gorilla-ish, or maybe an actual gorilla. The fly-on-the-wall BBC documentary, titled Royal Family, aired in 1969 and offered an unprecedented look inside the life of Queen Elizabeth and her family… Royal Family shows the institution as a conveyor belt, and a ruthlessly well executed machine of well-pressed clothes and serene smiling in the service of soft diplomacy. She and Philip, we learn, shook hands 2,500 times on that trip. In 1969, millions of Britons were given a rare glimpse behind royal walls for the first time, thanks to an intimate television documentary that followed the Queen and her family as they went about their daily lives. We do not know.) Perhaps this didactic manifesto may have also helped bury Royal Family as time and society evolved. We see the queen awarding a medal to the poet Robert Graves, one of 200-300 “audiences” she has every year, which are set rituals brought to an end when the queen uses a buzzer to signal it so. Heseltine was the breath of fresh air in the Palace trying to demystify and prove that his charges weren’t rare creatures to be stared at from afar but living, breathing—often quite jolly—human beings. It is strange, at this moment when the documentary itself introduces thorny ideas of the monarchy’s power in a democracy, that then-president Richard Nixon is shown coming to the palace. The documentary is the kind of history teacher dutifully relaying dates, statistics, and facts, while also rumbling with inner passion. It had very few critics at the time; one or two stuffy lord lieutenants in England and one or two [TV] critics, people like Bernard Levin [the late, famously controversial journalist who wrote for The Times and The Sunday Times] who thought it was an awful mistake. Some scenes in the documentary seem stage-managed, like the family watching TV that The Crown skewered. Well, Charles chose other routes of self-enlightenment, beginning with the writings of Sir Laurens van der Post and progressing through romantic disasters, eventual happiness, and a variety of political, environmental, and cultural causes and engagements. A groundbreaking fly-on-the wall documentary about the royal family from 1969 – which had been hidden for 50 years – has resurfaced in full on the internet before being swiftly removed. The queen takes her kids to look at some gorgeous black (Labrador?) For a moment, you want her to scan the letters and go, “You know, I don’t think this is going to work out,” and ring the buzzer of doom. We see the queen go to George Strachan, the grocery near Balmoral, with a young Prince Edward. A groundbreaking fly-on-the wall documentary about the royal family from 1969 – which had been hidden for 50 years – has resurfaced in full on … All scenes had to be approved by a committee of TV executives that was chaired by Prince Philip. The rest, including the reels of film from the cutting room floor, are hidden away. The film was considered a triumph, certainly in terms of TV viewing figures, which were phenomenal—40 million worldwide including 68% of the adult British public. The documentary then suddenly makes a concluding, alarmist case for the absolute power of the queen. Subject: Re:Rare 1969 documentary about British royal family leaks online !! “While she is head of the law, no politician can take over the courts.” (Hmm, but how would the royal family stop such a thing? People Magazine reported that the fly-on-the-wall BBC documentary, titled 'Royal Family', aired in 1969 and offered an unprecedented look inside the life of Queen Elizabeth and her family. In episode 4 of The Crown season 3, viewers get to see the dramatized version of the real-life 1969 BBC documentary, Royal Family. But it is also one of those moments in the film, all about the queen and her children, which have a tentative sweetness. Hulton Archive/GettyQueen Elizabeth jokes about meeting a person who is gorilla-ish, or maybe an actual gorilla. puppies. In June of 1969, the BBC aired a documentary titled “Royal Family” that didn’t go over well with Buckingham Palace. (Ninety seconds of the documentary were released for an exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery in 2011, and these can be spied on YouTube. As the national anthem plays, she stands there in a yellow dress staring at the crowd and they stare back. The documentary is both a time capsule and a little too current. These scenes may be staged, but the queen looks to be stumbling to a happy place of fleeting joy as a result of it. He is now 72 and still waiting for his time on the throne. One hopes she’s more than once got to her desk, looked at a red box, and thought “fuck it” and instead of signing her documents with her “Elizabeth R” flourish, called a friend for a good gossip session instead. She does relax at Balmoral, although that piper still gets going at 9 a.m. outside her window even on holidays. Some sovereigns are remembered forever, “and a few are best forgotten. The queen’s influence and presence wherever she goes is a ceremonial given, not yet a political or cultural problem she or the institution will countenance. The result was a documentary called "Royal Family." The 1969 documentary ‘Royal Family’ which was deemed to be so intrusive The Queen banned it from public consumption, has miraculously reappeared 52 … We see the family organizing a barbecue, Anne scrunching up paper to burn, mulling “it will be a total guaranteed failure.” (Anne, then 18, is obviously the coolest person in the documentary, commanding, wry, not taking any nonsense from her brothers.). 1h 50min | Documentary | 21 September 1969 (Australia) Intimate portrait of the daily life of the British Royal Family drawn from 18 months of filming within Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral. “At that time, universal access to television was looming and could you imagine the monarchy not appearing on television? Edward runs around asking what everything is for, and Philip, instead of snapping at him, tries to answer everything gently, but maybe this is for the cameras. Introduced to Anne, she says coolly: “I don’t think you’ve seen me on television.”, The queen tries to keep things to her diplomatic small talk of it being a “busy few days” for Nixon, which leads him into a muttering whinge about the size of briefing books and a changing world. For a film made 53 years ago (it follows the royal family for a year, from the spring of 1968 through the spring of 1969), it also by accident begins and ends by asking the question of today: What kind of king will Prince Charles be? The film is not alone as a small-screen cautionary lesson. We see this when the queen and Philip head to South America—a tour of crowds shouting “Viva La Reina” and waving handkerchiefs, and also meeting with diplomats. There are whole teams dedicated to maintaining an art collection begun by Charles I, a fairytale garage of state coaches and carriages, bedsheets that go back to Queen Victoria’s time (one hopes they have been washed and aired), blankets from William IV, cellars of champagne, a dedicated pantry of silverware and another one for goldware, and an intense discussion about menus that concludes with a firm declaration that “Pineapples are very good.”. It does the thing she recoils from most: It gets too close. We do not see him again, but the queen looks amused at his impishness. In 2019, it sounds unlikely. She sits with Charles, Anne, and Philip around a table, first telling the story of the time an ambassador lost their footing and skidded to the bottom of Queen Victoria’s throne. Royal Family was aired on British TV stations on June 21, 1969 on the government-owned BBC in black and white and then a week later on commercial station ITV in color. At the time, Edward is so young, he is learning with a group of other kids at home, Andrew is at boarding school, Anne is “learning French,” Charles we see with some Cambridge friends, describing in crushingly boring terms his misapprehension of how a parachute works. On June 21, 1969, a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the Royal Family was aired on British TV and watched by 37 million people. In 1969, Royal Family wasn’t a goldmine of scandal, but it broke a wall of protected silence and was then consigned to its own vault for doing so. Victoria, trying to quell laughter, “trembled the slightest little bit” as she did so, trying to maintain her composure. “He had a short body and long arms. Breakthrough revelations included the news that the royal household used Tupperware, a fact that hit many headlines at the time. Anne and Charles are winched between ships for some unclear reason. “God Save the Queen” was sung 18 times. There’s Anne and Charles chatting and laughing with their parents at the breakfast table in Buckingham Palace while the Queen makes a joke about a dignitary with extraordinarily long arms. Imagine a fly-on-the wall film following the Queen and her family for a whole year with cameras going behind palace doors, up close and personal. It originally aired on BBC One and ITV in June 1969. History and tradition are in a constant pas de deux, though we are never told why the queen still has red boxes containing documents of that day’s business (as since George III), or why she has one key and a private secretary another, or why the red boxes follow her remorselessly wherever she goes. The BBC is determined to stop its re-emergence. And again, perhaps it just showed too much. What the Stars of The Crown Look Like in Real Life, The Crown Season 4: Everything We Know So Far, Olivia Colman Thinks Queen Elizabeth Is "A Leftie", This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. It may not quite be in the league of definitive proof of the Loch Ness Monster, but finally seeing the long-buried and banned 1969 documentary Royal Family is revelatory—not just for what it shows us of the queen and Prince Philip with their then-young family and at work, but also because of the intimacy of the film itself. He clearly sees himself as their status equal, telling Charles he has seen him on television. What is their power, if only to ceremonially rubber-stamp the result of politics schemed elsewhere? It includes a scene that The Crown later dramatized of the royal family watching television for producer and director Richard Cawston’s cameras, to underline how supposedly ordinary they were. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”. In 2021, it should not be hard to watch this documentary. 62 votes, 14 comments. She seems more relaxed at an evening of Olympic athletes, and then we follow her to Christmas celebrations at Windsor and Sandringham. We are then shown her and Philip at their desks, asking for things via intercom, and the Buckingham Palace switchboard staffed by old men, plugging in leads here and there. “The criticism that some people made of it was that it made them [the royal family] too open," he says. But it actually happened 50 years ago, and the resulting TV documentary, Royal Family, unsurprisingly caused a sensation. They were volcanic and remain controversial today, as the revived controversy over the methods of BBC interviewer Martin Bashir has shown, but they were also broadcast in an age where reality TV and the media confessional were familiar to us. She should, she opines, get another dress designed for a necklace she observes that “belonged to so many kings of Persia and Mogul emperors.”. It is not convincing, but it is telling that this was the chosen argument for the monarchy’s retention in 1969, a time of social upheaval and revolution. “The Queen was a reluctant convert, but became much more aware of the possibilities and was prepared to participate when it came to actual filming. Royal Family is focused on arguing why this institution should carry on; its peekaboo bait is to see behind some of palace’s windows and curtains. The queen feeds her horses carrots from a fancy platter. Royal Family makes the royal mystique ordinary, revolutionary for a time when the family was lavished with privacy. It aimed to show the royal family as real people in their own homes rather than the lofty unreachable figureheads of an archaic institution which at the time some felt was out of touch with the real world. She pressed her bell, the door opened, and “there was a gorilla,” the queen says. You couldn’t really. This may be true in a class-bound, monarchy-led society, but is it really the advertisement you want to make for a group of well-dressed toffs, paid for by the British people in a modern Western democracy, where royal power is largely symbolic? Royal Family (also known as The Royal Family ) is a British television documentary about the family of Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps its sugared extremism is another reason Royal Family has been buried by the queen and BBC for so long. The tour barrels on, she in one brightly colored, beautifully tailored outfit after another, handbag on arm. On the royal yacht Britannia it seems quieter. Royal Family ends as it began, with Charles fishing on a river near Balmoral, the focus back on him. They decorate the Christmas tree, not exactly looking as if this is something they would typically do. The queen feeds her horses carrots from a fancy platter. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and their family allowed cameras to follow their daily lives over 18 months in 1968 and 1969— the result was a documentary film which aired on BBC One in June 1969. There are servants with titles to create another set of hierarchies (personal favorite: “the page of the back stairs”). The queen says it can be “extremely difficult,” recalling when a visiting home secretary said a gorilla was about to enter a room. Filmed between June 1968 and March 1969, the Documentary features a plethora of notable events from the Royal Family’s public and private life, including the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh’s State Visit to Brazil, a Gala Performance at Covent Garden, the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, Duchy of Cornwall Meetings, Summer Holiday at Balmoral, a stay on the Royal … Charles meekly offers up his breath-holding method of keeping a straight face. But then, this points to one of the central absurdities of being the modern monarch. When a country’s ambassador arrives in London, like the American ambassador we see, they present the queen with their letters of appointment. It was reportedly locked away in BBC archives, requiring the approval of the queen in order to be shown again. The BBC’s cringeworthy “Royal Family… It is spring again, daffodils are blooming in the palace garden, and more pageantry-filled trips to Austria, Wales, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand beckon. Its access is beyond what a documentary-maker would get now, or what the queen would allow—and probably so because this was made in a time pre-reality TV, pre-notions of “access.” Royal Family has the air of an original, a curio. There is no dissenting view. The documentary asks rhetorically what it is that Charles is being prepared for, and advances a set of ideas that place the queen as the practical, rather than symbolic, arbiter of British and Commonwealth democracy, with justice administered in her name. You could call it his high and solemn destiny, or you could say he will just be carrying on the family business, which doesn’t mean being solemn all the time.”, The queen will have also hated these last few minutes of the documentary, one guesses. I thought it was a rotten idea,” she said in a TV documentary about the Queen in 2002. Royal Family itself was intended to make the monarchy feel closer to the people, not so alien, part of the modern world, and—most important—to make an argument for its future purpose and continued public funding. Royal Family proposes it is she and the monarchy that are the necessarily guard rail against a slide into tyranny. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. It is radical in other ways, at its outset asking the question that still trails the family today: What is this institution for, and how does it endure? “News shots,” Nixon says, as if this is a stupid question, adding that both his daughters follow Charles and Anne’s doings closely. The film makes clear such time is cherished, as she is often away from them, and in these scenes her smiling at their play or jokes feels almost like an act of discovery for herself. The film is anticipating his accession to the throne and so will follow the queen through a typical year to see what lies in store for him, narrator Michael Flanders says. “It is all this that Prince Charles will one day inherit. The meetings that to the queen are prosaic are anything but. One of the episodes in the third season of the Netflix drama The Crown focuses on the making of the documentary and shows the royal family reluctantly taking part in the ground-breaking film. And that we absolutely achieved.”. Everything the royals do is function and show. The queen signed up for one reason and then hated the reality of the intrusion. It also zeroes in physically and personally more than any documentary—including those made in modern, and what we think of as more intrusive, times—on the queen and her family. It brings royal pomp respectfully crashing down to earth. Just the queen being the queen doesn’t stop such a thing. We next see the queen and Princess Margaret at the Royal Opera House in London, and the camera follows them neck-close into the royal box, so we see the reaction of the audience to them from their perspective. They exchange official pictures, with Nixon hurriedly saying he will send one of both him and his wife (to match the queen and Philip), rather than of just him, “which will be much more pleasant to look at.”. The reason that Charles was the questioning focus of the film was that it was released the year he was formally invested as Prince of Wales, aged 20. Which Members of the Royal Family Watch The Crown? In Royal Family, viewers saw Prince Philip barbecuing sausages on the Balmoral Estate in Scotland, while the Queen and Charles made salad dressing.