Object of the week: Production design for The L-Shaped Room

It was “one of those gone-to-seed houses…all dark brown wallpaper” and “pretty sordid” recalls Jane, the heroine of Lynne Reid Banks’s bestselling 1960 novel The L-Shaped Room. Unmarried and pregnant, Jane takes the cheap bedsit partly for economy and partly as a form of self-punishment. It becomes a mirror of her state of mind, and her perception of it changes as her own life evolves.

In this evocative production design for Bryan Forbes’s 1962 film adaptation, art director Ray Simm deftly captures the essence of the dark, dingy and threadbare room. Laurie Ede, author of British Film Design: A History, an essential read for anyone interested in production design, notes Simm was renowned “for his carefully drawn, always practical sketches”. Rendered in watercolour, pen and ink, and chalk, the sketch expertly conveys the texture, palette and unusual geography of the room, providing all the key information needed for draughtsmen and carpenters to bring the set to life. It is also richly expressive in atmosphere, capturing the tone of the production and something of the character’s psychological state through its depiction of the lonely figure of Jane (to be played in the film version by Leslie Caron) as she enters the room.

A lot of work was needed to make the set look so shabby. Simm told a reporter visiting the production how the perfect, brand-new doors built by the studio carpenters were dropped 15ft to make them suitably lopsided and ill-fitting in their frames. The wallpaper was bleached, the plaster mouldings were repeatedly painted in order to lose their detail and definition, and lino was laid on the floor before the set was built to give it ample opportunity to get heavily worn and trodden into the floorboards.

Over the course of the film, the room becomes Jane’s home and a place of companionship where Jane spends time with the friends she makes in the boarding house. Unlike in the book, where Jane gives the room a complete makeover (much to the delight of her landlady, who realises she can now increase the rent), the cinematic L-shaped room experiences only minor improvements, remaining much as originally conceived by Ray Simm in this design. It is Jane who changes. Finally at peace with herself, she is at last able to say, “I was very fond of this room.”

Produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.