Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (7 page)

What can I say? Another early publicity pose, this time from Warner Bros.

Guy Hamilton, who directed two of my 007 outings, told me one of his favourite memories of Korda, when he worked as an assistant director to the great man. Korda summoned Guy one Saturday morning, together with one editor, one
cameraman and one assistant art director, to view the rough cut of Emeric Pressburger’s first and only solo directorial effort,
Twice Upon a Time
. It was obvious that retakes were on the cards. The three Korda brothers (Vincent, Alex and Zoltan) walked in. The lights went out and they watched in silence until the end at which point Alex lit a cigar and addressed the assembled group.

‘Boys, I could eat a tin of film trims and shit a better picture.’

Although Korda was based in Piccadilly and rarely ever visited the studios, there was always the ‘threat’ that he might descend at any time and in the studio restaurant a large round table in the corner was constantly reserved for him.

Just before one of his rare planned visits, studio manager Lew Thorburn had stained the wood that ran the length of the long interconnecting corridors of the main house a lovely shade of red. It really was immaculate. Korda arrived and walked partway down the corridor before turning to Lew and in his thick Hungarian accent said, ‘Lew, this corridor smells of cats’ piss. Do something about it.’

One of the aforementioned great films backed by Korda, and one of my favourites, was
The Fallen Idol
directed by Carol Reed, on which Guy Hamilton was his First Assistant Director. The house used in the film, by the way, was the Spanish Embassy in Belgrave Square. One of the supporting cast members was Dora Bryan, who told me she received a call to audition at Shepperton to play the part of a prostitute. Very excited, she took the train out from Waterloo and on arriving at Shepperton Station, realized that the studio was actually a couple of miles away. So she walked across the fields, arriving rather the worse for wear.

Looking exhausted and a little flustered, but in her very
best red dress and poshest shoes, she read the lines and Mr Reed offered her the part and told her to report to the studio at eight o’clock on the Friday morning.

‘What should I wear, Mr Reed?’ asked Dora, wondering just how tarty he envisaged the character.

He looked her up and down and said, ‘What you’re wearing today is fine.’

Poor Dora! She didn’t know whether to feel insulted or not!

Another inimitable actress at that time was Dame Thora Hird who had, by the time Dora and I took our first steps inside a studio, been making a name for herself in films at Ealing Studios – a much smaller, but equally prolific facility as Pinewood. Dame Thora later told a wonderful tale about the mealtimes there.

Prior to the lunch break each day, one of the carpenters or electricians would usually go down to the canteen to get a copy of the typed menu for the day and bring it back to the set for the crew to place their orders. On one particular day, an electrician produced the menu which offered: fried Spam and chips, cold Spam and salad, Rissoles and a couple of other items ... only the capital ‘R’ on the old typewriter wasn’t working correctly and instead printed as a ‘P’.

‘OK, then,’ said the spark to the formidable canteen manageress. ‘We’ll have three Spam and chips, four Pissoles and chips ...’

‘What did you say?’ snapped the dinner lady.

‘Four Pissholes ...’

‘That is an R! An
R
– did you hear me?’ she screamed.

‘Oh, sorry,’ replied our trusty spark and, without missing a beat, continued, ‘We’ll have three Spam and chips and four R-soles and chips, please!’

All of the British studios remained busy through the 1940s, but when television became a real threat the government introduced a tax on box-office receipts, which was to be reinvested in British films. Called the Eady Levy, it helped to attract many overseas producers to the British studios, including Walt Disney and my friend Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli. Once here, they stayed because, quite frankly, they fell in love with our studios and technicians. That love led to millions of pounds being injected into the UK economy and employment for many, many actors and creative personnel.

As I write, Pinewood is buzzing with activity and the big news is that Disney have moved in again, but this time on a ten-year rental deal bringing with them
Star Wars
, and the first film in the new series is directed by my friend J.J. Abrams.

I say ‘again’ because it’s not the first time Disney has set up at the studio, as back in 1952 they became the first ‘renters’ to move in.

Whereas back then British studios had a regular tea trolley visit the stages twice a day, part of the American way of working was to have continual refreshments on set, and Mr Disney was adamant – he wanted hot and cold running drinks all day.

Keen to avoid what he thought would be a mass daily invasion from surrounding stages, Pinewood’s Managing Director Kip Herren suggested one of the old brigade of tea
ladies, Margaret, would man the station and thereby, after a few days, would recognize the Disney crew, despatching any interlopers with a flea in their ear. All was well and good until one day a tall moustached gentleman in a raincoat asked Margaret for a cup of coffee.

‘No you don’t,’ said Margaret. ‘You’re not on this production.’

‘Oh, but I am, I assure you.’

‘I don’t think so. I know everyone on this set and you’ve not been here before,’ Margaret continued, as she picked up a copy of the unit list. ‘So, come on then, what’s your name?’

‘I’m Walt Disney,’ the man replied with a big smile.

Margaret melted into a corner, but Disney was apparently delighted that his pennies were being looked after so diligently.

Disney’s newest employee, J.J. Abrams, came to my aid recently (and I’m so delighted he’s achieved great success since giving this old English actor a job as a British spymaster on the long-running ABC TV series
Alias
) when Lucasfilm (a division of Disney) moved into the corridor just down from my office. The next thing we knew, their part of the corridor was sealed by security doors through which access could be gained only via a swipe card. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow, as different productions have all had different security arrangements over the years, but the problem in this instance is that the kitchen and gents’ loo are all situated in the inaccessible part of the corridor – meaning no tea, and perhaps even no pee.

Pinewood staff shrugged their shoulders saying ‘that’s what
the client wanted’ and didn’t offer any real alternative save for using the workmen’s lavvy in the other direction, which, to be honest, wasn’t somewhere I’d have sent a workman – let alone an international megastar such as myself – to fill a kettle. (They’ve since refurbished it, I’m pleased to say.)

I dropped a line to J.J. – who was still in LA – asking if we could use the kitchen, and promising that we wouldn’t spill any of the secrets of
Star Wars
. The next thing we knew, not only was access granted but an apology came from Pinewood for inconveniencing us. Ah, what it is to have friends in high places.

My book on
The Secrets of Star Wars
, meanwhile, will be in shops later in the year …

Television became hugely important to me in my career, and in the late 1940s my first, and a very handy, means of earning an extra few quid through the medium came when my agent Gordon Harbud suggested me for some assistant stage management work (as well as acting gigs) at Alexandra Palace.

In doing a little bit of research for this book and
googling
myself, a certain well-known reference website states that my first TV appearance was in 1950 for
The Drawing Room Detective.

That’s not correct, dear readers!

My first tentative steps as a TV actor were taken a full year earlier in 1949 at Alexandra Palace, more fondly known as Ally Pally. The BBC produced most of its early TV programmes at Ally Pally in north London and as such it’s often referred to as being the ‘birthplace of television’.
While I wasn’t old enough to be there for the birth itself, back in 1935 when the Corporation leased the building, I do vaguely remember the following year as an excited nine-year-old when it started its broadcast trials; up until then our only mass entertainment was cinema or radio – one of my favourite radio shows being
Educating Archie
, which was actually a ventriloquist act. A vent act on radio – work that one out!

I saw my first TV pictures on a tiny box with a fuzzy little screen, introduced by Elizabeth Cowell with the words, ‘This is direct television from Alexandra Palace …’ The local baker was the only person we knew who owned a TV set and it was so exciting to gather around it waiting for the valves to warm up and seeing the picture emerge. Little did I realize that, a decade later, I would be starring in my own show on the box.

The momentous day I turned from viewing to being viewed was 27 March 1949, in a production of
The Governess
by Patrick Hamilton. It was transmitted live at 8.30 p.m., and I received the grand sum of twenty-three guineas to play the part of ‘Bob Drew’. According to the BBC files I was allowed to study recently, the story all took place in Drew’s house ‘outside London, in the middle of the Victorian epoch’. The plot centred on the kidnapping of my sister, and I had to come in to the drawing room where the police had gathered and say, ‘Hello, mother! What’s going forward here?’ I never understood the line, and am sure viewers were equally perplexed by the Victorian turn of phrase.

Other cast members included Clive Morton, Betty Ann Davies, Joan Harben, Jean Anderson, Dorothy Gordon and Willoughby Gray, whom I vividly remember describing his interest in restoring model soldiers to me, and that he had a
whole battalion of them. Almost forty years later, Willoughby starred as Dr Carl Mortner in my last Bond film
A View to a Kill
. You can’t keep a good pairing down!

Almost everything was transmitted live because TV budgets didn’t extend to the luxury of recording on expensive tape or film, but thankfully we had a couple of weeks’ rehearsal to get everything spot on and in this instance we all decamped to the cold and draughty Methodist Hall in Thayer Street, London. Our producer/director was Stephen Harrison, who guided us through the text and explained the various set-ups the camera would move through, stressing how careful we had to be so as not to get in its way, nor to be on the wrong set at the wrong time, as it would simply have spelled disaster for the whole production. No pressure then.