Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (8 page)

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The possibility of an actor drying, a scene shift not working or a camera breakdown was something of which we were all aware, but tried not to think about. Electrical equipment wasn’t anywhere near as reliable as it is today and in fact during the technical rehearsal on the morning of transmission we had to wait thirty minutes for a camera fault to be remedied. Mercifully it was all right on the night.

I unearthed a couple of interesting production memos from those BBC files. One was from Evelyn Moore’s agent saying that in the
Radio Times
listing for the show, ‘Miss Moore’s credit should also state she is now appearing in
The Dark of the Moon
at the Lyric Hammersmith’. There’s nothing like an unashamed plug for one’s current project!

Another memo was from the head of programming to our producer, stating, ‘Running time is 100 minutes including a one-minute opening and three-minute interval. The budget will be a maximum of £660 for one performance and should include all costs of wardrobe, design, film, sound, artists, script
copyright, orchestration, transport, hospitality and photos.’

Even in the hands of the most prudent BBC accountants, I don’t think £660 would go very far nowadays.

Of course, beaming into people’s living rooms made you ‘real characters’ in the viewers’ eyes, and many blurred that reality with drama. For example, one of my live TV contemporaries was Leonard Rossiter who was later – and most fondly – remembered for playing the miserly landlord Rigsby in
Rising Damp
. In one particular drama he was being examined by a doctor and, while fully trousered, had his shirt off.

‘You can get dressed again now,’ said the doctor and the dialogue continued while Len buttoned up his shirt and moved on to the next set-up.

Before the programme had ended word came through that somehow his mother, Mrs Rossiter in Liverpool, had been out to a phone box, got through to the BBC – which was no easy task in itself – and then miraculously to the production office to leave a message, ‘Len, you never put your vest on!’

Mind you, that blurring continues today, with soap opera characters often being mistaken for the actors who portray them. Mark Eden, who played villain Alan Bradley in
Coronation Street
, was innocently doing his grocery shopping at a local supermarket when he felt a sudden searing pain across the back of his head. He turned around to see an elderly lady swinging her handbag. ‘That’s for what you did to Rita!’ she exclaimed.

I was in great demand at the BBC and on 24 April 1950 appeared in
The House on the Square
as ‘John’. In fact, there were two performances, the second (or repeat) being four days later. Again, it was all staged at Ally Pally and this time for director Harold Clayton. An hour into the first performance
and an electrical breakdown on the stage meant it was time for the infamous
Potter’s Wheel
interlude film to appear on TV screens, along with the words ‘Please bear with us while we try to restore your programme’. There were quite a few technical breakdowns in those days and so the
Potter’s Wheel
was pretty well known in its day. Thankfully this time it was only on for a minute and we were able to resume; just as well we were the consummate professionals.

Drawing Room Detective
was, in fact, my third BBC drama opus, broadcast on 27 May 1950. In it, I played a part as well as performed the duties of Assistant Stage Manager (ASM) for the grand fee of fifteen guineas. It was a sort of whodunnit, hosted by Leslie Mitchell, in which viewers were invited to guess the person responsible for a crime.

With no further drama casting in the pipeline, I accepted an ASM role on a few episodes of
Lucky Dip
in June 1950, which was described as being a ‘Variety Hopscotch’. I was paid less at seven guineas this time, but it only involved a couple of days’ rehearsal at Lime Grove, followed by the live transmission from Ally Pally. It was actually rather fascinating to be part of a variety programme as the thirty minutes featured some regular comics – Duggie Wakefield and Archie Glen – along with a terrific line-up of guest artists including Julie Andrews, George Moon, Benny Lee, Lynette Rae, Jenny Lee, The Great Gingalee and a host of extras. There was also a new TV segment that excited BBC bosses, in which a member of the public chose a tune and Nat Allen’s band in the studio had to see if they could play it … If they could rise to the challenge the lucky punter received a prize of two BBC TV show tickets of their choice.

I also lent my ASM credentials to a Caribbean Miscellany called
Bal Creole
in which Boscoe Holder – brother of Geoffrey Holder, with whom I starred in
Live and Let Die
– was brought in from New York with his steel band, which, I believe, was the first time the metal dustbin-lid-type drums had ever been seen on British screens.

The Man Who Haunted Himself
was one of the first films made at Elstree Studios under the leadership of Bryan Forbes. It’s now attracted a bit of a cult following, I’m told.

Being a jobbing actor I was happy to accept anything, but when the mention of a film was made I thought I’d hit the big time. The Automobile Association (AA) made a number of training films and semi-documentaries, and I was drafted in to play a patrolman, along with my old friend Leslie Phillips. I wasn’t sure it would lead to my name in lights over the entrance to the Odeon, but it was a start. The exotic location for the twenty-minute epic was a road
somewhere on the outskirts of Guildford and while the crew set up the cameras behind a hedgerow on one side, I was to be found across the way, happily leaning on my motorcycle combination, dragging on a cigarette while awaiting my call to duty.

Just then, an old Austin 7 with two rather antiquated ladies in the front pulled up.

‘I say, patrolman! Patrolman!’ called the driver, with a rather strained upper-crust accent. It took a few moments for it to sink into my thick skull that she meant me and so in my full AA uniform, puffing on my fag, I ambled over.

‘Is this the road to Guildford?’ she asked.

‘Guildford?’ I pondered. ‘Well, back there I did see a sign that had Guildford on it, but I can’t remember in which direction it was pointing ...’

At that moment it obviously dawned on the old dear that there was something rather peculiar about this particular patrolman, as not only did I slouch and not salute (as a real AA man at that time would have), I was also smeared in make-up. Without taking her eyes off me, she feigned a smile, reached down with her left hand and, after a few attempts, ground the gear stick into first and kangarooed off down the road. Sixty-four years later they’re probably still circling the outskirts somewhere looking for Guildford.

Meanwhile, back at Pinewood, things were ticking over nicely with British crowd-pleaser films such as the Norman Wisdom comedies, the
Doctor
series, starring Rank’s biggest star, Dirk Bogarde, and (a little later) the
Carry Ons
.

Dirk Bogarde made most of his Pinewood films with Betty Box and Ralph Thomas. Betty, his producer, was married to
Carry On
producer Peter Rogers and was one of only a couple of women who had held such a role within
the film industry, while Ralph – the director – was the brother of
Carry On
director Gerald Thomas. They were often described as the ‘royal family’ of the studio. One of the duo’s films with Bogarde was
The Wind Cannot Read
, in which he played a flying officer in World War II who fell in love with a Japanese language instructor. Not a lot of people know that Bogarde had a false tooth in his upper set of gnashers and wore it throughout all of his films, only ever removing it at night when he turned in and placed it on his bedside table. Every morning the first thing he did was slip the tooth back in.

On location, Bogarde was having terrible trouble sleeping and consequently, day by day, looked increasingly more haggard on set. Ralph Thomas was becoming concerned that his leading man was going to look anything but his best, and suggested Bogarde might take a sleeping pill. Bogarde wasn’t keen on the idea, but Ralph nevertheless left a couple on his bedside table and suggested if he couldn’t get off to sleep after an hour or so, he should take one.

After an hour of tossing and turning, the star finally reached over and took a pill. At three o’clock in the morning, Ralph Thomas was woken by Bogarde banging furiously on his hotel room door. The star told his director that he’d taken his advice, but after getting up to use the bathroom he had noticed that both pills were still next to the bed and, yes you’ve guessed it, the false tooth wasn’t. The next day’s schedule called for a number of close-ups of Bogarde and, understandably, panic set in. Half a dozen bottles of castor oil and a jug of disinfectant were sent up to the room ... and yes, they got their close-ups.

Which is your favourite, Simon Templar’s Volvo P1800 coupe in
The Saint

However, it wasn’t until 1961, when Cubby Broccoli and his new producing partner Harry Saltzman wanted to set up a series of spy adventures based on Ian Fleming’s hero James Bond, that Pinewood really hit the big time. Typically, I missed out on all that fun as I didn’t return to Pinewood until 1970, after hanging up my halo on
The Saint
at Elstree, when Bob Baker, Johnny Goodman and I set up a new series called
The Persuaders!.

When Tony Curtis’s name was mentioned to me by Lew Grade as being one of the three possible co-stars for the 1971 series
The Persuaders!
(the other two being Glenn Ford and Rock Hudson) I was immediately grabbed by the idea. I thought Tony was a brilliant actor in films like
The Sweet Smell of Success
,
Trapeze, The Boston Strangler
and, of course, he showed his comedic skills in
Some Like It Hot
in which he based his English accent on Cary Grant. Incidentally, when director Billy Wilder later told Cary, he said, ‘But I don’t talk like that!’ in
exactly
the same way in which Tony had taken him off.

… or Brett Sinclair’s Aston Martin DBS in
The Persuaders!
?

Tony had worked with an impressive roster of directors,
and while he rarely spoke ill of anyone, he did tell me he had a tough time on
Spartacus
with director Stanley Kubrick. The whole cast had endured an agonizingly long shoot, and one day Tony turned to co-star Jean Simmons and asked, ‘Who do you have to fuck to get off this picture?’

BOOK: Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown
4.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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