When Maureen Jympson turned nineteen, she contracted tuberculosis and had to be admitted to hospital. It was purely by chance that she was diagnosed in the first place. One of those mobile X-ray vans visited the studio and everyone was given free time to go and get checked out; Maureen was the only one to be called back. ‘When I had to leave Ealing I was so frightened. But this is an example of the sort of place it was. I was away for about eight months and they took me back, they said, your job is here. How many companies would do that.’
On her return Maureen moved to the casting department, which was situated right at the front of the studio, and very nearly burnt her office down within weeks of arriving. Maureen worked for Margaret Harper-Nelson, Ealing’s only casting director, and her assistant Thelma Graves. Margaret was one of the unsung heroines at Ealing, casting their films with a finesse and delicacy that greatly contributed to their success. She attended Cheltenham Ladies College and during the war worked for the forces entertainment group ENSA (wittily dubbed ‘Every Night Something Awful’ by the troops). Joining the studio in 1946 as an assistant, she was quickly promoted to casting director. It was a small office; there were never any vast typing pools at Ealing. ‘And Margaret was lovely,’ confirms Maureen. ‘She was a bit of a chain smoker, though, she always had a cigarette on the go. She lived in a flat in Chelsea but at the weekend would travel all the way up to Scotland where her mother lived.’
First thing in the morning Maureen always went into Margaret’s office to light the gas fire.
I lit the fire this particular day, thought the taper had gone out, put it in the waste paper basket, closed the door and returned to my little office just next door. All of a sudden I had a feeling something was wrong. I ran inside and the waste bin was absolutely aflame. God it was so quick. Anyway we got it out, thank God. But I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was so ashamed for a long time.
The office itself Maureen remembers as,
A bit shabby and well worn, shall we say. There wasn’t paint peeling off the wall, they hadn’t fallen into that kind of disrepair, it was just a bit dusty and musty, and in need of renovation. They probably were painted from time to time but I don’t remember anything looking pristine particularly, it was all a little bit run down and care worn, but cosy in a way I suppose, comfortable.
The job was fairly straightforward but fun. If a director wanted a certain actor they would contact his agent and arrange for him to come into Ealing for a meeting. Or the search might entail shifting through the stacks of Spotlight, the actors’ directory, that were kept on a shelf in the office. For the smaller parts, open-casting sessions would be held. ‘I would usually usher the actors into Margaret’s office,’ says Maureen. ‘After that, the contracts would be written out and typed out and then sent out, because we never had emails or any of that stuff in those days, it was all done on the old Olivetti.’ Carbon copies were made of everything and filed. ‘As for making phone calls. I am horrified when I see people in offices today on their mobile phones. If we made a private phone call in office hours we had to ask for permission or do it once, sneakily, in a million years. You just did not do that kind of thing. You worked.’
Working mainly with actors, Maureen never really had any contact with Ealing’s stable of directors. There was the one occasion she had to take some papers to Basil Dearden on the stage floor.
I was so nervous that I was shaking, and he called me over and said, ‘Sit down, dear, and tell me what’s been happening to you,’ and I was so in awe. That was the sort of place Ealing was; they were all gentlemen. I went on the set of The Ladykillers and The Cruel Sea, too, but we weren’t really allowed on the set, for obvious reasons I suppose. They couldn’t have everybody willy-nilly coming in and out. It was sort of an unwritten rule that you didn’t go in unless you were asked to go.
Maureen also did a brief stint for Leslie Norman. ‘He was a bit of a rough diamond, Les, frightened the life out of me. So that relationship didn’t last very long. He was a gruff man but very kindly. Although he did not tolerate fools gladly. Whereas someone might modify their telling-off, he wouldn’t. He told me off once and reduced me to a jelly, a quivering wreck.’ Maureen was typing a letter to Michael Balcon and had made a few mistakes and done her best to cover them up. It wasn’t perfect work and there was nothing more she could really do, so left the letter on Norman’s desk.
I was having my lunch with the girls when this figure came roaring into the canteen. ‘You, outside,’ he said. So I followed him out, I must have looked so pathetic. He got me outside. ‘What do you call this?’ I stood there with my mouth still full of undigested lunch and said, ‘Sorry, I made a few mistakes.’ He said, ‘I can’t send this to the boss of the studio.’ I apologised and did it again. So our relationship didn’t last. But he was well liked and was basically a lovely man.
Someone else who found Les Norman a little bit less than charitable at times was Ken Westbury.
I thought he was a bit of a bully if I’m honest. On this one film where I was still a clapper loader working on the second unit, it was quite normal for a trolley to come onto the stage for tea breaks, though everyone continued working. As clapper loader you had your own little tray and you got to know what the cameraman had for his morning break, what the assistants had and so on. Les was rehearsing quietly and I very gently came round the back with my tray and put a cup of tea down for him. He turned round and yelled, ‘Who told you to bring that on the floor!’ I mean; it was quite a normal thing to have a tea trolley. ‘I’ll see you never work in this studio again!’ He had a real go at me. And Gordon Dines, the cameraman, said to me, ‘Just keep your head down for a while.’ I heard later that Dines had a quiet word with the front office about Leslie’s behaviour to his crew. The funny thing was, Leslie could be quite charming, as well.
And there is no denying that he was a capable director. ‘He brought a refreshingly down-to-earth Cockney humour and wisdom to the predominately middle-class studio mix’, was how Michael Relph described him. Beginning in the cutting rooms, Norman became a producer, notably on Mandy and The Cruel Sea. His first film as a director was probably his best for the studio, The Night My Number Came Up (1955), an effective thriller about premonition written by R. C. Sherriff, best known for his play Journey’s End.
Ealing continued to forge ahead with its productions. The Rainbow Jacket (1954), directed by Basil Dearden, was the story of a middle-aged jockey, banned from racing, whose hopes rest on a young lad he’s training to become the next champion. The unit visited several racecourses around the country (Lingfield, Sandown and Newmarket) and gathered tips from grooms and jockeys at numerous stables. Christopher Barry couldn’t resist a little flutter. ‘My first bet won me almost a week’s wages and nearly hit the jackpot, missing by a nose. After that I lost and quickly retrenched.’ The following weekend Christopher’s wife came up to Newmarket and the stable boys let her mount a racehorse and gallop with them on the Heath, a thrilling experience she never forgot.
The Rainbow Jacket had everything for horse-racing enthusiasts: the colour, verve and excitement of the racetrack; horses at exercise emerging from early morning mists; and even Sir Gordon Richards, fresh from winning the Derby on Pinza, making a special appearance. Alas, it didn’t make much of an impact with general audiences, but it did inspire one twelve-year-old lad from a Scottish council estate, who for years had been teased about his small stature – Willie Carson. One afternoon, bunking off from school most likely as was his habit, he caught a matinee performance of The Rainbow Jacket and it literally changed his life. Coming out of the cinema he decided there and then to become a jockey and spent all his paper round money on learning to ride. Carson would go on to become one of the most successful and popular jockeys in the country.
Lease of Life (1954) starred Robert Donat as a middle-aged Yorkshire clergyman who, given only a few months to live, is determined to leave his mark. Donat hadn’t made a film for three years due to a chronic asthma condition that had physically weakened him to the point where producers were reluctant to gamble on his health. ‘That was Charlie Frend who brought Donat in,’ says Rex Hipple. ‘They managed to get the insurance for him, which was the great problem with Donat because of his asthma; he did suffer from asthma very badly. I think he lost several movies due to that because they couldn’t get insurance for him.’
Christopher Barry recalls just how much of a sick man Donat was on that film. ‘But he carried on professionally, though he sometimes emerged late onto the set because of the breathlessness he suffered. His dressing room was equipped with an air-conditioner that pumped ozone into it. I liked him a lot and he rewarded me at the end of the shoot with a handsome book token.’
Lease of Life marked the second occasion Christopher had worked with Charles Frend, but he blotted his copybook somewhat with the director by managing to lose half the cast. With location shooting up in Yorkshire, notably the beautiful Beverley Minster, it was Christopher’s responsibility to make sure the actors caught their train from King’s Cross to Kingston-upon-Hull. However, he was completely unaware that the train divided into two sections at Doncaster, the forward part going on farther north, the rear proceeding to Hull.
Unfortunately, some of the artists were up front in the dining car so it was a somewhat depleted cast that arrived in Hull. The stragglers eventually took a cab and arrived in the unit hotel before too long. ‘But this really put me in Charles’s bad books,’ reports Christopher. ‘And I became his whipping boy. On one occasion he told me off on location in front of cast, unit and gawpers for talking during a rehearsal. But as it wasn’t me I answered him back and he had the grace to apologise later in the hotel bar. He was much more forgiving after this.’
The Divided Heart (1954) was a film that was ripped quite literally from a newspaper headline. During the war it had been one of Hitler’s policies to seize babies in those countries his troops overran and send them back to Germany where they were brought up by childless women. This newspaper report concerned a Yugoslav mother who managed to trace her stolen son, and The Divided Heart is a fictionalised account of what must have been an agonising situation of the two mothers and the judge handling the case who had to decide what was best for the child.
Working on the film as assistant director was Gerry O’Hara, no more than twenty at the time. After working mainly on low-budget movies he had been recommended for the job by Norman Priggen, who had worked at Ealing since the early 1940s as a production manager and then assistant director. Priggen was well liked in spite of his rather menacing demeanour. ‘Norman pretended to be a tough guy and looked like a middle-weight boxer,’ says Gerry. ‘But he was a very decent guy and, after Ealing closed, he became Joseph Losey’s right-hand man in films.’
Once installed at Ealing, Gerry reacted against the ‘officers and other ranks’ atmosphere that he felt pervaded Ealing. On location, he was made to feel a total outsider, never once invited to join the rest of the crew for dinner in the evenings. He’d go out to eat instead with the cameraman, Otto Heller, a Czechoslovakian exile, who was likewise ostracised. ‘You could tell there was a touch of Otto being a Jew boy,’ believes Gerry. ‘People didn’t talk about it, but it was around in those days. Ealing’s directors had tremendous talent but they were a bit stuffy. Charlie Crichton, who directed The Divided Heart, was a decent fella, but he was rather abrupt and he wasn’t exactly a jolly chap, and I don’t think he really had much time for Otto.’
Heller had been hired a few times by Ealing due to the fact that he was supremely fast. His skills would later grace several top-notch 1960s classics such as Peeping Tom, The Ipcress File and Alfie. During shooting, Gerry and Heller struck up a friendship, mainly due to the Czech’s faltering grasp of the English language. ‘He was a very nice fellow, Otto, but he didn’t speak very good English. In fact his English was appalling. And he couldn’t read for tuppence, so he used to ask me what the scene was we were doing. Every day I would have to tell him what was going on.’
One particular morning Heller caught Gerry’s attention and asked, ‘What’s this Richard de Third?’ Being an ex-elementary school boy, leaving at the age of fourteen, Gerry wasn’t exactly an expert on such matters.
‘Well, it’s Shakespeare, Otto.’
‘I know, but vot is it?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I am going to see Sir Oliver tonight.’ He meant Laurence Olivier, who was looking for a cameraman to shoot his film adaptation of the classic play.
Thinking fast, Gerry went over to Balcon’s office to see Michael Birkett, who he knew to be an educated man. ‘Michael,’ he said. ‘Can you give me a “once upon a time” version of Richard III and could I have it by the end of shooting today.’ Birkett seemed delighted by the request and by late afternoon Gerry had a couple of pages of synopsis.
Usually, Gerry and Heller travelled home together, catching the Tube from Ealing and alighting at South Kensington, where Gerry lived, sharing a quick coffee before Heller caught the train to Baker Street. In the café Gerry gave Heller the low-down on Richard III for his interview with Olivier, which went so well Heller was given the job. Before leaving, he asked Olivier if he had an assistant director because there was this chap at Ealing who’d helped him out. ‘Send him over tomorrow night,’ said Olivier. Gerry duly turned up and was hired, trebling his wages into the bargain. It proved to be his movie breakthrough, leading to a career in international movies working on the likes of Anastasia (1956), Our Man in Havana (1959), Exodus (1960), Cleopatra (1963) and Tom Jones (1963), before becoming a director in his own right.
On his last week working on The Divided Heart, Gerry was sent to see Hal Mason in his office. ‘Look, Gerry, we’re very satisfied with your work and we’re prepared to offer you a permanent job here at Ealing. The only thing is, the studio is closing for a fortnight for its annual holiday, and as you haven’t got any holiday credit we can’t pay you.’
Not exactly impressed, Gerry took great pleasure in revealing that he’d already got a job. ‘Hal Mason was very cross as I remember,’ says Gerry. ‘Really cross. “Well, we won’t ask you again,” he said.’
Although he didn’t like the atmosphere much at Ealing, Gerry did appreciate the highly organised way in which the place was run.
There was a very interesting routine there, from what I observed. I realised that the directors and producers saw the rushes of each film and acted like a committee. Once or twice, walking through the stages I was surprised to find a set standing that we’d finished working on weeks ago. Obviously it had been packed away and then the committee had said, you can do with another mid-shot or a couple of close-ups, so they quite calmly rebuilt the set and we’d have another go at it. It was a remarkably good opportunity to put things right and improve things. It was very efficient.
One of the most impressive aspects of Out of the Clouds (1955), a routine drama comprised of several small stories dealing with the passengers and crew on an average day at a busy airport, was the production design, especially the airport terminal set.
At the time, the first permanent passenger terminal was in the process of being built at London Airport (later Heathrow) and Ealing’s art department secured a major coup. ‘We managed to get the original plans from the architects,’ says Norman Dorme. ‘And we built part of the concourse, with this big stairway that went up. I clearly remember the architects arriving at the studio one day to see the set which we’d built more or less according to their drawings and them later telling us that after seeing their plans in actuality it allowed them to make a few adjustments before the whole thing was built for real.’
The film featured an interesting cast, although the female lead, Margo Lorenz, made herself quite a pain according to Christopher Barry, ‘due, I think, to her insecurity’. As for James Robertson Justice, Christopher found him to be, ‘certainly a character to reckon with and not one to cross’.
The airport consisted of just the one major runway and the film required numerous shots of airplanes taking off and landing. David Peers was handed the job.
Thanks to the marvellous PR chief at the airfield I was allowed to go anywhere, anytime in my little Ford Popular. The cameras were set up on the edges of the runway and we got some stupendous shots of tyre rubber scorching the Tarmac. Much later in my film life I had occasion to organise a shoot at Heathrow and, quite apart from the exorbitant cost, we were not allowed even on the aprons.
Again, David was working as production manager on the unit, his job revolving around organisation; it came with great responsibility and certainly kept him on his toes.
Whilst one was concentrating on today’s shots, one was always thinking about the following day, what time to call the artists for make-up, what changes to the sets were needed, adding a couple of flats here, removing a door there, and so on. Maybe the electricians had to move the gantry and reposition the lights. Maybe Wardrobe had to alter a dress or buy another pair of boots. Maybe the rushes revealed a major or minor blip to one of yesterday’s shots and that meant having to do it again or revamping it in some way. So the task of a production manager was to not just concentrate on today’s work but tomorrow’s as well, and quite often next week and next month!
The Ship That Died of Shame (1955), from a short story by Nicholas Monsarrat, was a film that tackled the subject of servicemen after the war trying to readjust to the difficulties of civilian life. The plot had the crew of a much-decorated motor gunboat, now all unemployed, who buy her back from a scrapyard and use her to smuggle black-market goods across the English Channel. This was a worthwhile topic to be sure, but one that might have worked better in the years directly following the cessation of hostilities, not ten years later. As it was, the film came across as dated to the cinema-going public and created the impression that Ealing was behind the times and adrift amidst the current trends in cinema.
For Christopher Barry, though, the film proved a significant one as it saw him promoted to first assistant. ‘It was obviously exciting, as well as something of a learning curve. It was terrific working out of Portsmouth with the Royal Navy and their motor torpedo boats at up to fifty knots!’ Having not forgotten his cock-up on Lease of Life, when half the cast ended up in the wrong town, Christopher chalked up another bad ‘boob’ one day when they were shooting on the gunboat. Lunchtime arrived when he suddenly realised that everyone’s lunchboxes were on the supply ship anchored some twenty miles away and valuable shooting time was lost as they sped back to retrieve them.
Back in the studio, Christopher received his comeuppance when one morning he was on the deck of the mock-up boat, checking that everyone was ready to go for a take. ‘Unknown to me, Basil Dearden gave the cue for a tip-up tank to pour its load of water which showered down, soaking me, much to the delight of the crew! I rushed out to the wardrobe department for dry clothes, gaining a good pair of Richard Attenborough’s grey flannels in which to return to the set. I kept them for many years.’ Despite this prank, Christopher had a lot of time for Dearden, working with him three times in total at Ealing. ‘He was always extremely friendly to me and a good man to work with and to observe at work.’
The Ship That Died of Shame was not a great success but it has its moments. In the scene where the gunboat is under attack from another gang of smugglers, there is a shot of Dickie Attenborough on the bridge, grabbing a German Schmeisser Maschinenpistole and returning fire. ‘But back in those days they didn’t have 9mm blanks, which the Schmeisser took, as they’ve got today,’ remembers Tony Rimmington. ‘They had crimp blanks, which only fired one round and then they jammed. The director was determined that Dickie fire the Schmeisser, so the decision was made to use live ammo. This particular gun wouldn’t fire unless it had live ammo.’ With not a Health and Safety inspector in sight, Tony was asked to build what amounted to a shooting range that Attenborough could fire into; otherwise the bullets would whizz through the studio walls. ‘So I made this sort of ramp out of sandbags and Dickie must have emptied a couple of magazines into it, all live ammo. I put wings on the ramp in case there were any ricochets left and right and everybody got out of the way. The only people who were anywhere near it was the camera crew. You’d never get away with that today.’
In the end it wasn’t bullets that proved the most dangerous thing on the set for Attenborough, but the gigantic tanks of water that on a certain cue were tipped over onto the deck of the ship where the actor was standing. ‘Unfortunately we had underestimated the force of the water,’ recalls David Peers. ‘And poor Dickie emerged coughing and spluttering and screaming for help. He’d broken his arm. Rapid rescheduling then took place and a new wardrobe was made for Attenborough to allow space for the plaster cast underneath his jacket.’