A London scene has a passing (postwar) AEC RT:
Mike Harvey notes the appearance of East Kent Leyland Titan TD4 JG8207.
"The film is set in France, England and Germany. It was premiered in Paris on 18 September 1959. Babette (Bardot) escapes from Northern France in 1940 and arrives with some good time girls by boat on the Kent Coast. From there they take a bus trip to London, being 'buzzed' on the way by a German warplane piloted by two French POWs who have escaped and stolen the plane
from the German Flying School:
Babette is then recruited as a spy setting out to capture a Gestapo chief for the allies. This is a comedy, but I would describe it more as a lighthearted rather than a funny film. The bus appears for about four minutes, just 11 minutes into the film."
"JG8207 was new to East Kent in November 1936. It was a manual gearbox diesel Leyland TD4 with a six bay Park Royal L27/26R body of a style fitted to 135 East Kent TD4/TD5 chassis between 1936 and 1939, with some of the bodies supplied by Park Royal and some by Brush. In June 1949, JG8207 was rebodied by Park Royal with a five bay L27/26R body.
JG8207 was loaned to the film-makers between 19 March 1959 and 20 April 1959. It finally returned to its operating base at Canterbury on 25 April 1959. The filming took place in France and London. For the film, the bus was given a pseudo-wartime guise, with the red mudguards repainted to
black, and the top of the upper deck in grey. 'Blackout' masks were fitted to the headlamps (and interior lights?) and the white marker lines were added to the mudguards and the lower edge of the body.
By 1959, there were no six bay bodies left in the East Kent
fleet, although in 1940 all the double deckers were lowbridge and six bay, except for five highbridge Weymann/Daimler COG5s inherited from the Isle of Thanet Tramway in 1936. The rebodied TD4 was as near as they could get to what was running around in 1940, before 'utility' bodies were on the drawing board."
