Moviestar, oh Moviestar! (UPDATE: more movies)

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“You feel like Humprey Bogart, when you're driving in your car,” This little adaptation of the song by Swedish musician Harpo was the first thing that sprang to mind when we saw this 1934 Vauxhall BX. We thought of the song, because this Vauxhall starred in several Hollywood movies. The amazing database IMCDB lists almost all automobiles that ever featured in a movie. This Vauxhall was used in Cloak and Dagger with Gary Cooper (1946) and Passage to Marseille with Humphrey Bogart (1944). It is believed that Warner Bros., the movie company, ordered the car directly from Vauxhall in 1935 and kept it until the 1970s. It’s a Romney Drop head Coupe by Martin Walter Ltd. of which only a few were built. This could be the only surviving example. It now resides in Germany, almost untouched with little more than 17.000 miles on the odometer. Only the leather on the driver’s seat and the convertible top showed some patina and the paint was dull. Not much is known about the history of this moviestar between the 1970s and the 1990s. Can anyone fill in the gaps? Mail us (RB)

Update by George Seymour: “I have a keen interest in the BX model Vauxhall as I am restoring (for way too long) an Australian bodied BX roadster. For many years the ABC showed old B & W movies on late night TV and as a shift worker I often got the opportunity to catch some. Years ago I was jolted to full alertness when a BX with what I though may have been a Romney body appeared in several scenes of a movie titled "The Invisible Man Returns". There is a couple of shots of the car, one leaving a factory then along a country road where the driver is mystified to see the bonnet open and the car stop as the invisible man removed the plug leads. I did manage to record it on one of its screenings and I'm keeping a lookout for it again as the dvd would do a better job now.”

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