This week, we turn the clock back 53 years to filming at Elstree Studios and one film that brought together a rapidly rising star and the penultimate screen appearance of a former Hollywood great.

The film was entitled The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone and cast as the romantic handsome young male lead was Warren Beatty, who subsequently attracted quite a reputation for his off-screen romances.

Warren was relatively new to the screen and commanded a salary of just $30,000, whereas 40 years later he was reportedly being paid $10million a picture.

I guess I will always remember him for his performance in Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, which was a great hit. Apparently the studio had little faith in the movie, thus granted Warren a percentage deal that went on to earn him many millions.

Warren has enjoyed an up and down Hollywood career. It has been said he turned down starring in The Great Gatsby, The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

However, he was back at Elstree in 1981, starring in and directing Reds with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, and went on to win an Oscar for best director.

His on-screen career seems to have petered out, although apparently he still wants to make a film about the legendary Howard Hughes, and I assume his private life is a bit quieter now he is 77 years old.

However, Warren was nominated a number of times for an Oscar for his acting skills, so he went a long way from those early days at Elstree. Perhaps we should invite him back and unveil a plaque in his honour, which I would be happy to arrange.

Talking of plaques, back in the late 1990s I invited the screen legend and Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland to Elstree Studios to unveil a plaque honouring Warren’s co-star in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, that great cinema beauty Vivien Leigh.

Vivien had started her career in Borehamwood in the 1930s and we all know she got her big break and Oscar for best actress for starring opposite Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, which is often cited as the most watched film of all time at the cinema.

The producer of the film held a well-publicised search for his Scarlet O’Hara, and many famous actresses and unknowns tested for the part, but none satisfied David O Selznick.

Using stunt doubles, they were filming the sequence of burning Atlanta, utilising old sets from King Kong and other movies when David was introduced to Vivien on the set and, transfixed by her beauty against the burning background, he decided to cast this British actress in an iconic American role.

It is difficult to know the whole truth as Hollywood was spin city in its halcyon days, and it might have helped that David’s brother was acting as her agent.

However, Vivien went into cinema history earning an Oscar for best actress as she later did again for her role in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Vivien found filming Gone with the Wind exhausting and sometimes complained about Clark Gable’s bad breath due to his false teeth.

When the Gods give, they sometimes also take away. Vivien was married to theatre legend Laurence Olivier but her mental health was declining and she suffered with what today we would call bipolar disorder, but it was less well understood in the 1950s and 1960s. Vivien’s marriage broke up and her career declined.

Sadly, in 1967, at the age of just 53, Vivien died at home from tuberculosis and she was cremated at Golders Green.

Olivia de Havilland, her female co-star from Gone with the Wind, said: “Vivien lit up the screen but she was a fragile creature and deserved better from life.”