The Light's on at Signpost (5 page)

N
EVER MIND PEERAGES
, can law-making be bought? If an animal rights organisation were to contribute to a governing party’s funds, would this assist the passage of a bill against parrot-kicking or butterfly-baiting or some similar blood sport? And if the Fruit of the Month Society made a similar donation, would this win government support for lowering the age of consent for homosexuals? I ask these questions in all innocence, and am ready to be told that it is disgraceful even to mention them—which usually means that the question has hit uncomfortably close to home.

On this head, I was an interested observer of the campaign to ban fox-hunting, deer-hunting, coursing, etc., and found myself wondering whether the proposed bill was the result of judicious investment or just mental derangement. I have never hunted, and never would, but I have a foolishly sentimental affection for it which comes of reading Surtees and Trollope and singing at school hearty songs like “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, and “A-Hunting We Will Go”, and of course “John Peel”, and I should be sorry to learn that they were no longer sung in this politically correct age.

This is very wrong of me, but there it is. I haven’t shot an animal since I was nine, when I nailed a rabbit and promptly burst into tears. And once I had my copy ruthlessly spiked when I was sent to write an article celebrating the Waterloo Cup, and turned in a passionate denunciation of coursing.

So I understand the position of the anti-blood-sports people (and would gladly shoot those of them who commit evil acts of terrorism, but that’s not germane to the argument). I’m neutral to the extent that I don’t give a dam about the morality of hunting, but as a country lover I have to defend rural traditions and the right of people to make a living from them. But my real interest, I confess, would be to watch the attempted enforcement of a hunting ban, something which I suspect the banners haven’t really thought about. I’m not sure how the police are going to proceed against law-breaking huntsmen—when they assemble, when they set off, when they first get on the trail of a fox, or when they kill it? Assuming they do. I would truly enjoy the sight of PC Plod in pursuit of the Blencathra, running up and down the fells crying: “Stop, in the name of Blair!”

I mustn’t be cynical, or wonder why the government debated fox-hunting while the countryside was dying from foot and mouth disease; whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. But I would like to know why the ban-the-hunt brigade don’t demand the outlawing of angling, which is horribly cruel, consisting as it does of the slow torturing to death of a fish with a barbed hook in its jaws. Could it be that while they inveigh against people who chase foxes and deer and blow the hell out of grouse and pheasants, on the erroneous assumption that they are all “toffs” and fair game, the antis are scared to tackle the anglers, vast numbers of whom are working-class? Of course it is. They know, too, that a bill against angling wouldn’t stand a chance—but being men and women of stainless principle, shouldn’t they
try
for one, or at least state boldly where they stand? Or don’t they care about fish?

S
ensible people
do their memoirs by taking daily notes, like
Alec Guinness and Alan Clark, which gives the published work an
immediacy and excitement lacking in those recollections which begin: “It
was in the summer of 1977…” Being idle, and having no great ambition,
until quite recently, to write my autobiography, I haven’t taken daily
notes, but on one occasion I did write up my doings on a weekly basis.
That was during the making of
The Prince and the Pauper,
and for the
sake of variety, and because it contains trivia which may be of interest,
I am including that account as I wrote it, with only a little editing. Since
I didn’t start my note-taking until some time into the production, I shall
have to set the scene with a brief introduction. So…it was in the summer
of 1977 that Alex Salkind invited me to do a screenplay of Mark Twain’s
novel, to be directed by Richard Fleischer. A screenplay had already been
done, and I was to adjust, or, if necessary, do a complete rewrite. I
read it, and decided to start from scratch
.

Accordingly I flew to Paris and met Fleischer, and so began a most
happy collaboration with one who was to become my closest friend in
the movie business—indeed, Kathy and I have no closer friends
anywhere outside our family than Dick and his delightful wife Mickey.
We see them only at long intervals, but they have been great fun in
London, Los Angeles, the Riviera, Spain, Budapest, Rome, Dublin,
and elsewhere, and as David Balfour said of Alan Breck, they can
burn down my barn any time
.

Dick, whose father, Max Fleischer, was one of the great animators
and the creator of Popeye, is a pro from way back, one of the masters
of Hollywood’s golden age and a meticulous artist of immense versatility.
You name it, Fleischer has directed it, from newsreels to such
celebrated films noirs as
The Narrow Margin;
massive spectaculars
including
The Vikings, Barabbas, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
and
Tora! Tora! Tora!;
musical comedy
(Dr Dolittle),
science fiction
(Fantastic Voyage),
fantasy
(Conan the Destroyer
and
Red Sonja)
and a host of outstanding films which defy classification, among them
Soylent Green, 10 Rillington Place
and
The Boston Strangler.
I’ve
been lucky enough to write for him on three productions, and can
only echo what Cary Grant said of Hitchcock: “I whistled all the way
to work
.”

We agreed that
Prince and Pauper
would need a complete rewrite,
talked it over with Alex Salkind and Pierre Spengler, and that was
that. I flew home, discarded the original screenplay, and did a new
version of Twain’s charming story (he saw it in fairly dark terms, but
I liked it for its excitement, humour, and ingenuity). It’s an historical
fantasy based on the premise that the boy prince, Edward, heir to
Henry VIII, and his double, a young thief named Tom, changed
places and found themselves having bewildering adventures in their
unaccustomed roles. It had been an Errol Flynn swashbuckler forty
years earlier, with the title roles being played by twins; Salkind and
Fleischer were to give it blockbuster treatment with a cast which would
eventually include Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, and Raquel Welch
(all Musketeer veterans), as well as George C. Scott, Rex Harrison,
Ernest Borgnine, and David Hemmings, with young Mark Lester, the
angelic hero of
Oliver!,
in the two lead parts—a huge challenge for
an actor of eighteen, since it is really four parts, the Prince, the Pauper,
the Prince-
as-Pauper, and the Pauper-
as-Prince
.

I did the first draft, following Twain as closely as possible, and
Fleischer liked it. Kathy and I flew to Hollywood, where Dick and I
went over the script, and agreed revisions. I flew home and did them,
Dick approved…and now I break into my notes, written at the time,
when I was waiting for the production to get under way…

Fleischer phones, with the splendid news that Rex Harrison is to play the Duke of Norfolk—can I beef up his part? You bet I can.

Down to Penshurst Place, Kent, for the first day’s shooting. Ancient house, beautiful grounds, Olde England to the life, with Fleischer setting up his stuff with Jack Cardiff, and yeoman warders lying on the grass looking harmless. Why don’t they get great big burly thugs for these parts nowadays? This lot of minions wouldn’t frighten anyone. Where are you Harry Cording, Ray Teal, Dennis Wyndham, et al.…?

Through a Tudor arch strides Henry VIII—Heston, in full fig, looking terrific in the true sense of the word, extending a regal hand for Fleischer to kiss (he doesn’t).

I’d met Heston in Paris in the production office at the Georges V before the M3 premiere—he had heard me give my name at the desk, and loomed up beside me saying: “I’m Charlton Heston.” Taken all unawares at the sudden appearance of a living legend, I had been startled into saying: “By God, so you are!”, at which he had taken no offence, handing me a whisky and starting to talk Scottish history (he is part Fraser and immensely proud of it—aren’t we all?) He had also confessed to a wish to play Flashman at Little Big Horn, an episode I had yet to write.
 

F. and H. go into a huddle over the script, and call me in. H. suggests rewording one of my lines to read: “You failed me in Scotland, Norfolk, and you know it well.” It sounds a wee bit corny to me, but I’m not fussy—maybe he knows better what will
sound
right. I stick my heels in on another point, the line where Henry says he’s been on the throne five and thirty years. H points out, correctly, that at the time Henry had been on the throne thirty-seven years; I plead poetic licence, claiming that five and thirty sounds better, and he yields. He looks horribly like Henry VIII, which is disturbing when you’re sitting on a garden bench with him arguing about what he should say, and expecting to be consigned to the Tower at any moment.

Meet Mark Lester, a tall, ethereal-looking, nervous lad who smokes Marlboro as if they were going to stop making them. He writhes convincingly in a muddy flower-bed while Heston stands on him, and Graham Stark, in jester’s motley, flings himself prone, crying “Break away, old Hal!” in a variety of accents. Rex Harrison stands by registering polite concern.

Time out, and Graham Stark is busy snapping away with his camera, something which he does, he tells me, on all his films—his collection should be worth a fortune one of these days. He is telling me what I suspect will be a scandalous story about Michael Curtiz, when Rex Harrison, who has been rehearsing with Heston and Harry Andrews, strolls over—and who can stroll like him?—and murmurs to me that now that Henry’s line to Norfolk has been changed, he feels that he’d like something stronger to say in reply. Could I possibly…? Sensing a slight needle here, I do a quick think, and give him a line off the top of my head which pleases him inordinately. I’d say it was passable, no more, but he writes it carefully into his script (left-handed), crinkling happily and repeating it with obvious enjoyment. When they come to rehearse the scene again, he drawls it out, Heston’s head jerks up in what may be well-acted royal displeasure or sudden suspicion that he is being upstaged (either way, it’s a perfect reaction), and Harrison opens his mouth and laughs silently.

The word is that he is notoriously a bastard to work with, and I have heard horror stories about his temperament, but I can only
say he seems extremely easy and reasonable to me—of course, I don’t have to photograph, produce, direct, record, attire, or act with him, and in my experience actors tend to be more friendly with writers than with anyone else, possibly because they have to depend on them. I’d given him a line, and he’d been happy with it; when I ask him if he has any thoughts about the rest of his part he leafs through the script and delights me by giving a sudden guffaw and exclaiming: “I like this!” It proves to be an exchange between him and Hertford (Harry Andrews) who has been sent to arrest him.

Hertford: In the king’s name!

Norfolk (pretending to be taken unawares): Henry, I believe.

It looks nothing on the page; as said by Harrison, with his perfect timing and expression of feigned surprise, it worked beautifully.

We talk about Arthur Barbosa,
*
and I ask Harrison if he saw
French Without Tears
on TV last night. He frowns and says he did, recalling his own appearance in the original play forty years ago. “I don’t know—these chaps nowadays, they seem so bloody
young
.” Sigh. “I suppose we were bloody young, too.” He reminisces affectionately about Roland Culver, Guy Middleton, and Trevor Howard; in the background Henry VIII is hauling an enormous mattress onto the grass and collapsing on it, robes, staff, and all.

Lemonade is served from a large urn; Harrison, whom one naturally associates with wines of rare vintage, looks doubtful, but exclaims after an appraising sip, “Not bad, really.” He tries for a refill, but the tap yields nothing, so between us we up-end the urn to get the dregs and manage to extract two paper cups-full. Harrison sighs contentedly, savouring the bouquet, and wonders when lunch is.

A buffet has been set up in a tent, and Fleischer, Heston, Harrison, Stark, Mark Lester, and I help ourselves, Heston unbelievable without his robe; he is clad in long johns with an artificial potbelly strapped on. Graham Stark is worried about his lines: is his accent right, is he doing them well? I assure him that not since Barrymore’s Hamlet…and he cheers up sufficiently to ask Fleischer if his Shropshire accent is acceptable (I gather he has been researching Will Somers, Henry VIII’s jester). Fleischer, who wouldn’t know a Shropshire accent from Cantonese, says so long as he’s comprehensible, that’s fine. Mark Lester’s nervousness is wearing off.

After lunch discuss children with Heston, and the question of which other monarchs he might possibly play. Since he is a dead ringer for Edward I—bone structure, height, and presence—I suggest that he’d make a fine Hammer of the Scots, but have a feeling he’d rather play Robert the Bruce.

Meet Harry Andrews, whose father, it transpires, was from Scotland, and who glows when I praise his performance as a Scots RSM in
The Red Beret
. Watch him and Julian Orchard shooting with Heston and Harrison. Fascinated by Fleischer’s directing technique: after one rehearsal he says quietly: “You’re trying too hard, Chuck.” Heston nods gravely and moderates his style. “Very good, Chuck; that’s it.” Fleischer is very neat and precise as he moves quietly round the set, relaxed, amiable, and taking every opportunity to praise, especially young Mark. “That’s good, Mark, that’s very good.”

As the afternoon wears on and the shadows cast by the sun change, Jack Cardiff makes mysterious adjustments to his equipment so that no passage of time will be visible in a scene lasting no more than a minute or so. This is a vastly more technical business than I had realised.

Heston has got shot of his make-up and is pacing in a track-suit, looking like a decathlon winner. He is one year older than I am,
God help us. We adjourn to a Tudor archway, through which young Mark has to be pursued by angry citizens. Endless rehearsals, as Mark practises barging into people, but the star of the show is a stout extra, whose job it is to be jostled and register astonishment. As the rehearsals progress, he expands his moment of mild surprise into something resembling Tod Slaughter going into overdrive in
Murder in the Red Barn
, with clutching of brows, staggering, rolling of eyes and cries of “What the hell?” Mark runs himself silly, Fleischer advises patiently, Nigel Wooll (assistant director), keeps crying, with eternal optimism: “All right, here we go, this time. Quiet, please, everyone, here we go…oh, quiet, for God’s sake!” Finally we do go, Mark hurtles past the stout extra who is going to win a supporting Oscar or die in the attempt, and B. H. Barry, the sword expert, tells me how he is working out the fight sequences, giving a different theme to each one.

Part of the production was to take place in Hungary, which necessitated two visits.

To Budapest to go location-hunting with Fleischer, Spengler, and crew members. Our principal quest is for a church interior which can pass for Westminster Abbey in the coronation scene—not easy, since Hungarian churches have a rather Byzantine look, being decorated with splendid colours over walls and ceiling. Eddie Fowlie stands in one vast cathedral nave surveying the rainbow riot which covers the echoing interior, and remarks: “We could spray this lot with plastic, easy. Peel it off after, no bother.” There is no end to the enterprise of the British film technician, but I doubt if the local Dean and Chapter would take kindly to having their church repainted, even temporarily.