Tom Priestley had always been interested in the movies: ‘I think partly because my mother disapproved of them, she thought there was something slightly naughty about them. Although my father had a 16mm projector and we used to look at old Chaplin films when I was a child.’ Tom’s father was the celebrated writer and broadcaster J. B. Priestley, who over the years had many connections with Ealing. Under Basil Dean’s regime he wrote the Gracie Fields’ film Sing As We Go (1934), and his play Laburnum Grove was turned into a film in 1936.
Under Balcon, Priestley contributed the story for The Foreman Went to France and his play They Came to a City was adapted for the screen in 1944, in which he personally made an appearance. You might have thought that when Tom decided to go into films this would have helped him get a place at Ealing, but it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that.
While studying at Cambridge, Tom found himself most days going to the cinema: ‘That, if you like, was my training.’ The art cinema in the city showed mostly French films and the film critic Leslie Halliwell ran a very good small independent cinema that put on three double bills through the week: ‘So one got a good balance.’ Leaving university, Tom took a year out to teach English in Greece. Back in London he got a job with a touring theatre company and when the tour came to an end everyone got together to see if they could find him another job. His love for film was well known, so he was sent to meet the Welsh actor Kenneth Griffith, who had just finished filming the comedy Lucky Jim (1957). Griffith made an appointment for Tom to meet the film’s editor, Max Benedict, who advised, ‘If you want to work in pictures you should go into the editing department,’ about which, quite frankly, Tom knew nothing. But Benedict was insistent: ‘And the best company is Ealing.’
Tom wrote a letter to Balcon (‘I have to admit, I name-dropped about my father when I wrote to Sir Michael, which can’t have been a bad thing’) and an interview was arranged with Hal Mason. ‘It was like a lot of old cab horses, someone had left so they all moved up one and the bottom job was available, and the bottom job was assistant film librarian, which was so low that nobody of any ambition would think of taking it.’ But he had to start somewhere, so Tom took the job.
He began his film life on about £5 a week. ‘And I was paying half of that to my sister whose flat I was staying in, which didn’t leave you with much money and by Wednesday I couldn’t drink coffee because it was four old pence a cup and tea was tuppence ha’penny, so I could only afford tea. It was that tight.’ Surprisingly, Tom doesn’t think his university degree cut much mustard in those days; in fact, it was more of a hindrance with one’s fellow workers, since it meant that you belonged to the other side. ‘Because I had a degree and because I had a well-known father there was a certain resentment, as if I wasn’t there for any other reason. So there was an undercurrent of, who do you think you are.’
Tom worked in the film library for about nine months and is a crucial witness to the way things were run over at Borehamwood and the morale of the Ealing staff there.
It was all rather sad because they didn’t have their studio any more, and they were used to having a studio with heads of department. So all the heads of department came with them to Borehamwood, but often there was nothing for them to do. For instance, the dubbing mixer, unless there was an Ealing film in production, he just sat in an office staring out of the window. What could he do? It was all a bit like that.
Despite the fact there really wasn’t a lot going on with Ealing it was still very exciting being at Borehamwood, which at 120 acres was one of the largest film-making facilities in Europe. Often Tom would wander around the huge backlot and see mock-ups of castles and other large sets. He was particularly impressed by the Chinese village that was built for the Ingrid Bergman film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958). There was also the time he bumped into John Ford in the cutting rooms.
And he was kept pretty busy in the library, where producers and film and TV companies could hire bits of film. ‘Say you had a sequence in Paris, you just buy a shot of the Eiffel Tower, put a bit of accordion music over it and there you are. But to actually send a camera unit to France with the equipment, it would take weeks of work and a lot of expense.’ Another part of Tom’s job was to go through old movies looking out for bits that didn’t have any actors in that might be useful for other films. There was only one cast-iron rule in that place Tom discovered, and that was if anyone came from abroad they had to pay in advance. This was because Orson Welles had used the library and never paid his bill.
During those months spent in the library, Tom kept applying to join the union without much success. ‘Ealing were a bit sneaky because they said, oh, he’s not actually working on film at all, which was not true because part of the function of being assistant librarian is you actually learnt how to handle film, which believe me has a life of its own; if you don’t wind it properly it all flies on the floor or breaks. So it takes a while to get used to it.’
Tom admits that while the unions caused no end of troubles, they did provide a valuable service, especially when one thinks about how conditions were prior to their formation.
One of the editors I ended up working with at Ealing told me what it was like when he started in the business and he could not go home until he was told to go home. And if it was late in the evening he couldn’t afford a taxi, and there was no public transport, he would literally have to sleep on the floor. It may have gone too far the other way but there was a reason for the unions.
Eventually Tom got his break. ‘Luckily one of the editing assistants, Mary Kessell, who was a good left-winger and knew the right people, said to me, “I’ll have a word with them.” So I finally got into the union.’ It was good timing: Ealing were about to embark on an epic recreation of Dunkirk, and due to the mammoth scale of the production extra hands were required and Tom was made a second assistant sound editor. It was the first film he ever worked on.
Dunkirk (1958) was a huge undertaking, retelling one of the most significant episodes of the Second World War when 338,226 Allied soldiers were rescued from the beaches of northern France. It’s really two stories, one of government bungling, especially in the slow gathering of rescue vessels in Britain, while the other follows John Mills’ corporal as he leads his men through enemy territory to Dunkirk.
Michael Birkett found himself first assistant working under director Leslie Norman, of whom he was immensely fond. ‘Leslie was very bright and very nice, but a rough diamond in a way, but actually very sympathetic. I got on frightfully well with him.’ Certainly they needed to work as a team because Dunkirk was by far the biggest production Ealing had ever mounted, with a large cast that included John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee. In order to capture the scale of the event and maximise authenticity, Ealing was granted help from the War Office, resulting in the allocation of 300 members of the Yorkshire and Lancashire regiments for location shooting at Camber Sands, which stood in for the French coast. One of the things Michael had to instruct them to do was avoid the blue-coloured sand, which was where the pyrotechnics were buried for explosions. Because they were shooting in black and white, the cameraman had informed Michael that blue sand looked exactly the same as ordinary sand on the screen. ‘So we put blue sand down for the stunt men and they were going to get blown up, not very seriously, but hoisted sort of three or four feet into the air. We said to everybody else, don’t go near the blue sand because you’ll get blown up.’
On one particular day the unit had access to some 4,000 troops. ‘That was quite scary,’ admits Michael, ‘because I knew that Les would want to make the most of these 4,000 troops and get as many shots as he could.’ It was a logistical nightmare, but a signals officer turned out to be Michael’s saviour when he turned up early that morning as the unit were preparing for the hard slog ahead. ‘I know what you’ve got to do today,’ he said. ‘And I’ve done a little something which I think will help.’ On his own initiative, this signals officer had placed concealed loudspeakers in the sand dunes; he then passed over a walkie-talkie to Michael and offered him the use of an amphibious truck. ‘I’ve also split the 4,000 troops into 26 groups under different letters and I’ve given them all a bamboo stick with the number of their group on it. So when you say, put up your numbers, you’ll see a forest of numbers from 1 to 26 and you can then tell them what to do.’
So all Michael had to do was shout into his walkie-talkie, ‘Number 22 could you form a queue out to sea and make for the incoming flotilla. Number 11, would you please run up the beach.” It turned out to be an absolute Godsend and the day’s shoot went off without a hitch. ‘This signals officer was absolutely marvellous. I owe it all to him getting through that day. Here was someone not familiar with film techniques, but he figured out what the problems would be and solved them.’
All the troops were under the command of Brigadier Bernard Fergusson, who served with great distinction with the Chindits in Burma. One lunch break, Michael and a couple of his assistants were having a quick bite to eat on the sand dunes when Fergusson’s sergeant major appeared. Coming to attention he said, ‘Brigadier Fergusson would like to see you in his caravan in ten minutes time if that’s alright with you.’
‘Oh, lovely, thank you very much,’ Michael replied, looking at his assistants and wondering what it was all about.
Anyway, we went to his command vehicle, which had all sorts of radar and things whirring on top of the roof, all the sorts of things you’d expect, so we thought, oh it’s got to be something highly technical. We went into this command vehicle and discovered that it was entirely full of gin and vodka and wine, nothing else, absolutely solid with it, and he asked us, ‘What will you have?’ So we had these super drinks with the famous Brigadier Fergusson.
It was a tough shoot, not helped by some of the antics of the cast, especially Bernard Lee. ‘You could never find Bernard, he was always in the pub,’ reveals Michael. ‘He was a terrible drinker really. But I had an assistant director of mine who knew about it and would always find out which pub he was going to.’ By the end of the final week Michael found himself in hospital. ‘I’d got glandular fever and jaundice all at the same moment, which I was told was not a clever thing to do.’
Dunkirk is far from a flag-waving war picture, dealing as it does with military incompetence and defeat, themes that were certainly in tune with the new cynicism in Britain following the recent Suez Crisis. It is an extremely well-made film, however. ‘We all put a lot of effort into that film and we were all quite proud of it at the end,’ says Michael.
Tom Priestley would occasionally leave the cutting room and take a wander onto the set of Dunkirk. ‘They employed a lot of extras to play soldiers and I think some of the extras never actually bothered to do anything because there were so many. Let’s say fifty would turn up at the studio and give their names, then they’d just stay in the dressing room playing cards.’
The person who ran the editing department Tom has never forgotten – this was the notorious Mrs Brown, ‘who, bless her heart, didn’t actually know anything about the creative side of editing. But as head of the department she qualified to go to the screenings. We lesser mortals weren’t even allowed to see the rushes. So dear old Mrs Brown would go and represent the editing department and would usually fall asleep and then they’d always ask, “What did you think, Mrs Brown?” “Oh yes, very nice.”’
Mrs Brown’s office was right next to the shooting stages, while the cutting rooms were way over the other side. ‘So if you needed something, like some more pencils, you went over to Mrs Brown to get the docket. She had to sign the docket. Then you went to the store room, got a packet of pencils, but then you had to take them back to Mrs Brown who would just give you one or two, and then you went back to the cutting rooms.’
Something else Mrs Brown was notorious for was getting her female underlings to wear her new shoes for something like two or three weeks until they were worn in.
Despite the omnipresence of Mrs Brown, Tom was enjoying his time in the cutting rooms. ‘You learnt on the job by doing it, by watching people, by learning how to manipulate the film.’ Like many who worked at Ealing it was a great apprenticeship and Tom went on to become a renowned editor working on such films as Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Deliverance (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974) and Tess (1979). His next Ealing film was Nowhere to Go (1958), a rare excursion for Ealing into film noir, depicting a criminal, played by George Nader, who escapes from jail in order to recover his stashed loot. When things go wrong a young socialite, Maggie Smith in her film debut, decides to protect him as he is shunned by the criminal community and hunted down by the police.
Having earned his stripes as an editor and then an associate producer, this was Seth Holt’s first film as a director. ‘Seth was without doubt the most intellectual man ever at Ealing,’ claims Michael Birkett. ‘He was in a cultural league of his own. So when he made his first movie, he asked if I would be the assistant director and I said, of course, like a shot.’
Alas, Holt’s promising career, like that of his brother-in-law Robert Hamer, was derailed by alcohol-related problems. After Ealing, Holt made two effective psychological thrillers for Hammer, Taste of Fear (1961) and The Nanny (1965), starring Bette Davis, who called him, ‘The most ruthless director I’ve ever worked with outside of William Wyler.’
By the time he was slated to direct the pioneering youth-alienation fable If… (1968), a film he had helped develop alongside his friend Lindsay Anderson, illness and heavy drinking had weakened his morale and he handed it over to Anderson. Back at Hammer he directed Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971), but suffered a massive heart attack a week from the end of shooting and died. He was just forty-eight.
By the time Nowhere to Go was released, Kenneth Tynan, who had written the script with Seth Holt, had resigned his position at Ealing. During roughly two years working for the studio as script editor, only one of his proposals had made it to the screen – Nowhere to Go. The rest had either been ignored, died at birth or were dropped in an advanced state of production. These included an original screenplay by Lindsay Anderson about life in the casualty ward of a London hospital, Cecil Woodham-Smith’s critique of the Crimean War, The Reason Why, which was later filmed by Tony Richardson as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth, a project that was later taken up by Alec Guinness.
Perhaps most interestingly of all was William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, about a group of school boys castaway on a desert island who turn to savagery. Leslie Norman was slated to direct it with a script by Nigel Kneale of Quatermass fame. Peter Brook ended up filming it in 1963.
Tynan had laboured under the misapprehension that he’d been hired to shake things up at Ealing, to broach explosive, awkward and controversial subjects. And yet each time such a project was taken on board, usually at the third or fourth rewrite, Balcon would bottle it, unable personally, Tynan reasoned, to make something that might cause offence. It was a stance, Tynan felt, that Balcon firmly believed was shared by the cinema-going public. ‘You may have been right,’ Tynan wrote to Balcon not long after his resignation. ‘On the other hand, at that stage in your career and at that nadir in the international repute of British films, it might have been worthwhile to gamble. More worthwhile, anyway, than making Davey.’
Tynan also refers in the same letter to Colin MacInnes’ 1957 novel City of Spades about African immigrants in London. ‘You bought that, but since it contained references to prostitution and drug-taking, not to mention a black man kissing a white girl, I never seriously expected to see it on the year’s schedule.’
Tynan’s departure seemed to sum up the prevailing mood at Ealing; there was a staleness hanging over the place and a sense of things winding down. ‘It was running down,’ says Tom Priestley.
And there were constant rumours that it was going to be closed, so staff were always frightened. If there was a longish gap between films people would get nervous and say things like, if we’re thrown out what do we do. I can remember one of our assistants, Robin Clarke, there was a gap between films so he actually left and took freelance work, came back and said, ‘It’s wonderful out there.’ And it was, in those days there was a lot going on. But at Ealing there was always this fear factor generated of you can’t leave us.
Tom’s next film is a strange one, since it began life as an Ealing production but was never released as such (MGM took it over), though Balcon remained credited as producer. The Scapegoat (1959) was based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier and starred Alec Guinness and Bette Davis. The story concerns an Englishman on holiday in France who encounters his doppelgänger, a French count, Jacques De Gué. After a night of drinking with his double, the Englishman wakes up to discover that Jacques has disappeared, leaving him to play the role of the count and become his double’s scapegoat in a complex web of family intrigue and deception.
Guinness had insisted that Robert Hamer direct the picture. It was an unselfish act of generosity but regrettably there were times when Guinness would have to take over the directing chores because Hamer was drunk. Tom Priestley was in the dubbing theatre once when Hamer was late and Guinness was growing ever more anxious and agitated. ‘I do remember Hamer making Guinness do ten takes of the word, no, just to get it right: “Little bit lighter, Alec. A bit more emphasis.”’
Just before The Scapegoat went on the floor Tom had asked for a raise. ‘The management got very snooty about that, how dare you, we picked you up in the gutter kind of thing.’ So he carried on as assistant sound editor on £7 a week, not much of an improvement over his initial wages. The sound editor Tom was working with, a chap by the name of Alastair McIntyre, had been promised the next up-grade to film editor but had been passed over by somebody else, and so he’d left. ‘One day he rang me up and said, “Tom, would you consider coming to work for me at £15 a week?” And I went straight round to the office and gave my notice in. Shock, horror, upset, how dare you, this is absolutely outrageous. And in the irony department, the editor of The Scapegoat, who was the famous Jack Harris (seen as the doyen of British film editors who worked on Brief Encounter, Great Expectations and many others), I remember him saying to me, “You’ll never work in films again.” And ten years later he came on as a second editor for something I was cutting.’