I never knew this! Jarrow was dropped as the setting for a movie

Confused? Let us explain more about the film called Jacqueline which was a movie version of the Catherine Cookson novel A Grand Man.

50s idol was chosen as the star

It starred 1950s British matinee idol John Gregson who first rose to fame in the wartime submarine drama Above Us the Waves.

But Jacqueline was not so popular and it failed to make a successful transition from the page to the big screen after film-makers decided to switch its location from Jarrow to Belfast.

Star who spent a night in the cells

Despite that, the Shields Gazette still found out more about its star actor when we tracked John Gregson down to Pinewood Studios.

He told us about one night that he spent in the Saville Street Police Station cells back in 1940.

At the time he was a telephone engineer in his native Liverpool, and was called up for war service to the Royal Navy and drafted to a trawler for mine-sweeping duties.

Cocoa and a wooden pillow

Ordinary seaman Gregson found his way to North Shields but could not locate his trawler.

He applied for bed and breakfast at the local police station, and an obliging sergeant set him up with a cell for the night.

“Two things stick in my memory, ” he recalled. “A cup of cocoa and the wooden pillow on which my head was parked overnight.”

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He went on to spend six months sailing in and out of The Gut at North Shields Fish Quay.

Back to Jacqueline which was a film about a steel worker who lost his job at a shipyard but his loving daughter Jacqueline vows to help him to get his life back on track once more.

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