Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (6 page)

We became firm friends, and my wife Kristina also knew Princess Lilian through her oldest friend Ewa Wretman, who was married to the great Swedish cook Tore Wretman.
Ewa, Tore and the Princess spent many happy times together at their holiday homes in the South of France.

And while I’m ‘princess name-dropping’, with Princess Anne at a Wildlife Fund Gala in 1970.

Tore Wretman, by the way, became a great friend – and was another person with a fascinating backstory. He began his career in the kitchen at the age of sixteen as an apprentice at the Hotel Continental in Stockholm; he swiftly moved to positions at the Opera Bar in Stockholm and then Maxim’s in Paris, where he learned all about French cuisine under legendary chef Louis Barth.

When war came Tore spent a few years in the United States where, in 1941, he signed on a Finnish cargo ship for the return trip home. However, the ship was boarded by the British fleet near Iceland and Tore was taken to the Orkney Islands then on to London until 1943, when he was finally able to return to Sweden and a job as head waiter at Operakällaren – without doubt the finest, and my favourite, restaurant in Stockholm. In 1945, aged only twenty-nine, Tore was able to buy his own restaurant and, later, went on to take over Operakällaren. He became the favoured chef of the Royal Family and, in particular, Princess Lilian.

Whenever Kristina and I were in Stockholm we would meet the Princess for tea and would also enjoy many dinners together. Sadly, the last few years of her ninety-seven-year life were complicated by illness and she was forced to withdraw from public life. We were unable to attend Princess Lilian’s funeral in 2013, despite the Swedish press reporting we were there, but we were able to attend her memorial service in the September, where we all shared our many immensely happy and fond memories of our times with the Princess.

With my two bodyguards on my spiritual – and literal – home turf: Pinewood Studios, where I’ve kept an office for over forty years.

CHAPTER 2

The Pinewood Years

L
ONG BEFORE
H
OLLYWOOD BECKONED ME
, I
FOUND MYSELF
auditioning for a film at London’s Pinewood Studios. Little did I realize that it would be my home three decades later for a major TV series and seven Bond films. But before I get to that, I thought it might be an idea to start where I started – and that was at the very epicentre of the British film industry: Wardour Street in London’s Soho district, though admittedly my first cartoon filler-in job was on D’Arblay Street just around the corner.

It was such an exciting experience for a cinema buff like me to walk along seeing all the familiar logos of the major film companies, including ABPC (at Film House, 142 Wardour Street), Rank (at 127), British Lion, Paramount, Hammer (at Hammer House 113-117), Columbia, Warner-Pathé and others that were all congregated on this one magical road. Wardour Street was named after Sir Archibald Wardour, the architect of many of its buildings, though along
with all the famous film interests it also had its share of, shall we say, more ‘dubious’ operators in the area and this caused the street to be known – even on the sunniest of days – as ‘shady on both sides’.

It was to here that hopeful producers ventured with scripts firmly tucked under their arms, would-be directors wooed film chiefs over lunch, and some aspiring actors even attended auditions.

Many of the aforementioned companies also, at one point or another, controlled the film studios where yours truly hankered to work – Rank owned Pinewood and Denham, ABPC owned Elstree, British Lion controlled Shepperton, and Hammer were out at Bray. While there were smaller concerns at Beaconsfield, Ealing and Southall, it was the larger studios that offered the most tantalizing prizes – Pinewood being the largest of all.

In 1947 the view across the fields on the approach road to Pinewood was broken only by a cluster of tall pine trees, and then, as if from nowhere, appeared the mock-Tudor double-lodge entrance, and a friendly commissionaire. It was just like arriving at a stately home.

At that time I was a rather green twenty-year-old lieutenant serving in the Combined Services Entertainment Unit and being tested for the male lead in
The Blue Lagoon
. It marked the beginning of my long association with the studio and now aged eighty-six I am Pinewood’s oldest (and longest-serving) resident, as I moved in to my office there during 1970, when I began work on the TV series
The Persuaders!
and I’ve been paying rent ever since.

An early publicity shot from MGM.

British film mogul J. Arthur Rank opened his Pinewood Studios in 1936 as his dream rival to Hollywood; the final syllable of which, plus the abundance of pine trees on the 100-acre site, gave him the name. When I first turned up, the studio hadn’t long reopened after being used during the war as a base for the army, RAF and Crown Film Units making documentaries. One stage was also requisitioned by the Royal Mint – some say that was the first time that Pinewood had made any money.

Just before my arrival, great film-makers were hard at work – names such as David Lean, Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger, Ronald Neame, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat – making some of the country’s greatest films, including
Great Expectations, The Red Shoes, Oliver Twist
and
Black Narcissus.
Even as a young studio, Pinewood had an outstanding reputation.

With Bob Baker and Monty Berman, producers on
The Saint
. Flat feet, boys? A likely story!

During the war years, my two future
Saint
producers, Monty Berman and Bob Baker, were both sergeants in the Army Film Unit stationed at the studio. Being the young tearaways they undoubtedly were, they’d found a way in under the wire, and used it for coming back after late-night shenanigans in the hotspots of Iver Heath. However, one night, just before breakfast, actually, they were caught midway under the wire, and were hauled up in front of the adjutant.

‘What’s your story?’ he asked Monty.

‘Well, I missed the last bus, sir,’ Monty replied, ‘and had to wait for the first one this morning.’

‘Why didn’t you walk?’

‘I have flat feet, sir, so I can’t,’ Monty added.

Bob was then brought in.

‘Why were you back so late?’

‘I missed the last bus, sir.’

‘Why didn’t you walk? Have you got flat feet too?’

‘No, sir, but my friend Monty has ... and I couldn’t leave him on his own.’

They were both stopped a week’s pay.

Bob, I should add, was the first allied cameraman in the ruined Reich Chancellery after Berlin fell and was a formidable cameraman as well as a hugely talented producer and director.

For my first screen test, I was led from the grandeur of Heatherden Hall, which formed the centre of the studio lot, through long clinical corridors across to one of the five stages – a huge, dark, soundproofed room with a smell of greasepaint, make-up and burning filters on the giant lamps. Soon it was my turn to step under the lights and in front of the cameras. Even though I didn’t get the part, I was thrilled just to be there.

Later, I learned that I had been recommended as a possible ‘contract artiste’ for the studio’s Company of Youth, more often referred to as ‘the Rank Charm School’. Now unheard of in the modern industry, the studio had then established a stable of aspiring talent, producing its own stars of the future: Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Anthony Steel, Diana Dors, Donald Sinden, Kenneth More and Petula Clark were all under contract.

Sadly, for me, it was at a time when John Davis, the much-feared company MD, was dealing with a £16 million overdraft. They consequently weren’t interested in a young Roger Moore being added to the roster and ever-increasing wage bills. So while I mixed socially with my Rank contemporaries, I had to slip off to earn a crust elsewhere, but I always dreamed of returning to the wonderful film factory in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Meanwhile, over at Shepperton Studios, where I occasionally auditioned for bit parts, Hungarian filmmaker Alexander Korda was busy building his empire, and while prudence was the watchword at Pinewood, extravagance was the order of the day at the rival studio, where the charming movie mogul began an impressive production programme:
The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, Anna Karenina, The Wooden Horse
being a few of the films I marvelled at over in the Odeon Streatham. Korda – unlike his Methodist rival J. Arthur Rank, who was a reserved and very unlikely film industry magnate – was a great showman who loved and courted publicity. He was also an astute and talented filmmaker in his own right and made his opinions known.