CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1962-63

Breakup

June 1st, 1962. “Can you believe it? This is our sixth wedding anniversary, Angela!” Paul picked up the menu.

Angela, dolled up for the special occasion, nodded as she studied the menu. “Amazing how time flies.”

After her winter tour, thirty-five cities with countless performances, Angela had gotten home in May. And tonight, Paul was taking off from his hectic schedule to celebrate. He had something on his mind. When he ordered champagne, Angela looked up: “We are putting on the dog tonight!”

They chatted about the new guild for directors being created. “They want to establish a schedule of rates of pay and working conditions to form a basis for an agreement with independent producers.”

“What a good idea.”

“Yeah, but it won’t apply to us at CBC unfortunately. We’re on staff. It would have if the RCMP series ever continued.” They went on to talk about inconsequential things, Angela knowing full well Paul was avoiding something. They talked about how well Stephanie was doing at the National Ballet School. She would soon be completing ninth grade and at fourteen seemed to be flourishing. Finally, as they sipped their drinks, Paul looked at Angela. “It’s been quite a six years...”

“Longer.”

“Seven? Eight?”

“Nine and a half.”

“I guess it hasn’t been all that smooth, has it?”

Angela shook her head. “We both tried!”

“Yes. So hard to for a marriage to succeed when one is often away and otherwise we work all the time.”

“I’m only too aware of that.” Angela dropped her eyes, as the waiter took their orders.

At last he said, “Angela...”

She kept looking down at her plate. “Yes?”

“I’ve been offered a job.” Angela looked up. “A good one. In England. Granada. A year’s contract.” Angela stared, absorbing... “Elspeth settled it. October 1st. Apparently, they’ve offered me more money than they’re paying anyone else. Supervising producer. Running things. So I was wondering…”

Almost without thinking, Angela blurted out, “You must take it, Paul. It’s a step forward. Don’t let anything hold you back.”

“I thought you might say that.” He smiled. “But… the thing is, could our relationship stand a year’s separation?” He paused. “So I’m wondering... Would you come, too?”

“You mean leave the National Ballet for the 63-64 season?”

“Only for one year.”

“A year? What happens if you do well? It could go on...”

“Yes, but,” Paul went on, a bit desperately, “there are lots of ballet companies over there.”

“I know, darling, but it is a bit of a shock. Will you let me think about it?”

“Of course, of course. I won’t sign anything until you say.”

“No, go ahead, sign. You must sign. It’s just...” Angela paused again for a while. “It means holding onto my marriage, or holding onto my ballet.”

“Don’t think about it that way.”

“I must. If we want to make the marriage work, I’d have to come.”

“Well... It might be a way to renew our relationship. I mean, a new environment, exciting ballet companies all around, me with a big new job, we can give our relationship one last try.”

“It might work,” she replied. “One last try....”

Shortly afterwards, the Royal Ballet, led by Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, came to town. What excitement! Angela and Paul, and indeed most of the National Ballet company, went to several performances. Nureyev’s agility, elevations, and technical ease nabbed everyone’s heart, and Margot was grace personified. One evening, Paul thought a young Canadian dancer, Lynn Seymour, almost stole the show.

At the closing night’s glittering reception, they met Sir Frederick Ashton, the renowned British choreographer who was due to take over the Royal Ballet the following year. He liked Angela at once and insisted that they call him Sir Freddie. Angela also chatted with Margot and made other valuable contacts in case she went to London.

But resuming classes, she kept her thoughts to herself. Then one evening at dinner, she announced, “All right, Paul, I’ll go with you.”

Stephanie had auditioned for the Royal Ballet School and got in, a real “feather in her cap”. But all three agreed it would be better for her to stay in Toronto at the National Ballet School. A lovely couple, Jane Smith and her husband, agreed to have Stephanie board with them while her parents left for the season.

The rest of the summer, Paul worked on The Forest Rangers, with Gordon Pinsent and Graden Gould, a series Maxine Samuels had put together. Known by some as the Dragon Lady, she had sold it to the CBC. A fine group of children, Ralph Endersby, Peter Tully, Susan Conway, Syme Jago and others, filmed out at Kleinberg in a recently built studio.

While working on Forest Rangers, Paul put together with Noel Dodds another documentary, Journey to the Centre, from unused shots from the Holy Land. A meditational film, it used out-takes of churches and monasteries that marked key moments in the ministry of Jesus. The narration, read so well by Budd Knapp, provided just the right reflective touch.

And another delight was the film Mother and Daughter Paul made to showcase his wife and stepdaughter. He had approached Ross Maclean, acknowledged genius producer of a short-lived miscellany called Telescope. In a bare studio with a cyclorama, Norman Allin shot Angela and Stephanie in practice tights and leotards. The brilliant young Canadian Harry Somers composed the score. In his editing room, Noel Dodds put a magic touch on the proceedings, running certain sequences backwards and then forwards, superimposing shot upon shot as though the alter egos were dancing. The NFB’s Norman McLaren later borrowed this same technique for his famous Pas de Deux.

***

In London, the couple rented a tiny flat in a sprawling complex known as Dolphin Square. But after their ample Briar Hill home and garden, they found the one bedroom apartment rather depressing.

Sidney Bernstein, the owner of Granada Television, had persuaded Tennessee Williams to allow his plays for the first time on television anywhere. Paul chose The Rose Tattoo and his friends, Hank Kaplan and Silvio Narizzano, selected two others. For the Italian mother, Paul cast Katherine Blake, now in London, and for her daughter, Lelia Goldoni, whom he had seen in John Cassavetes’ Shadows. The tiny role of Salesman he gave to a young actor from Nova Scotia, Donald Sutherland.

“So how are rehearsals?” Angela asked one day as she cooked dinner.

“Fine, fine.” Paul poured them both a gin and tonic. “Thanks for cooking again, Angela.”

“That’s all I seem to be doing here. Restaurants are so expensive.”

Paul agreed. “I thought, having this supposedly super salary, that we’d be out every couple of nights, but it’s not even once a week. Lucky Pat Macnee invited us. His new series The Avengers, with that sexy Honor Blackman, is a big success. My old boss Sydney Newman thought that up, you know.”

“And David and Eileen Green phoned us for dinner next week.”

Paul sipped his drink. “Anyway, to be perfectly frank, I’m not really enjoying England. I thought I would love it. My memories of it all were so good.

“And so were mine, old bean,” Angela agreed. “But I have to admit...”

“Go on, finish the sentence.”

“I’m a bit depressed, too. I like taking class, I like seeing ballets with our friends Pat and Clive Barnes, the ballet critic, but... shall we get away down to Sidmouth for Christmas? Mother’s lonely.”

So Christmas they celebrated with Betty and came back to London, somewhat cheered.

***

At Granada’s Golden Square office, Paul often went for a drink in the pub opposite with Australian Tim Hewitt, Head of World in Action, Britain’s top public affairs show. One evening over a pint of bitter, Tim asked, “Ever done a documentary, mate?”

“Two or three. I mainly do dramas. Did you see my Rose Tattoo?”

“No, but I heard it was the best of the lot.”

“Oh? Thanks!”

“I’ve been wondering, why don’t we do a show together?”

Paul grinned. “I’d sure be up for that. I don’t even have a play now.”

“I’ve been wondering. Ever think about England’s class system?”

Paul nodded. “I’d have lots to say about that...” Paul from Canada and Tim from Australia had both been surprised by how entrenched it was.

Tim ordered another half for them both. “You know that old Jesuit saying, give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man?”

Paul perked up. “Yes yes! So let’s look at seven-year-olds.”

Tim thought a bit longer. “We’ll go see Sidney.” Simple as that.

In 1954, Sidney Bernstein had founded Granada television as one of the original four ITA franchises when commercial channels were first permitted. Sidney, a lifelong Socialist, had inherited some money and increased it by owning cafeterias on through-ways. He ran the company like an old-time mogul, but always accessible. So they met Sidney in the boardroom.

Sidney liked the idea. But after a moment, asked, “Why not call it 7Up?”

Being the name of a soft drink, this title they both thought terrible. But any suggestion from Sidney was law. He gave them carte blanche, and told them to start right away.

Paul got two young researchers, Michael Apted and Gordon McDougall, Cambridge graduates and brand new to television. He described the project and sent them off to find photogenic children. Remembering his hikes over the Yorkshire Dales, he asked Gordon to go to Yorkshire and also to Liverpool, because of its colourful accents. They chose two bright lads from there, and Nicholas from a remote Yorkshire dale; little Paul, from an orphanage outside London came a bit later.

Michael Apted poked about the London boroughs. In the East End he found three girls and three boys, among whom was Tony Walker, a would-be jockey. To match these, Michael also turned up an upper-class trio.

Next Paul got an experienced cameraman, David Samuelson, and off they went to Lancashire, to start shooting — always using a tripod. Finally, on a bumpy country lane in Yorkshire, Paul got David to film off the back of their station wagon. David did grumble, but confessed he loved holding the camera in his powerful hands, protesting all the while that the labs would reject his footage when they saw his rushes.

Paul was not a little appalled to discover that how the Brits were still using techniques he deemed impossibly old-fashioned. Oh dear, he asked himself, am I going to cause as much trouble as I did with The Hill? It came to a head the day they shot Tony going into school. Paul wanted David to run with Tony at the height of a seven-year-old. “I’m sorry Paul, I can’t send that to the lab. I’ll be fired. It’s too shaky.”

“David, don’t worry, it’s got to be shaky, it’s a child, running.”

“It’s all very well for you , you’ll be back in Canada; but I’m stuck here. I’ll be out of a job.”

“David, Sidney Bernstein is fully behind all this. He’ll defend you, I promise. Can you imagine anyone tougher?”

David looked at him, then nodded. “All right, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy it. In fact, I love it. I was just afraid what they’d say. But if Sidney’s behind us...”

And so the matter was settled. Later hand-held cameras became the norm in British documentaries.

But shooting had its surprises. Paul brought all the children together in London: posh kids and orphans, farmers’ sons and East End girls, Lancashire and Kensington, the whole lot. First they went to a zoo where David shot their reactions, especially to a huge polar bear.

The climax of the outing was to be a party. Two extra cameras were ordered, and a table in the centre laid with all sorts of goodies.

The cameras were readied, as was sound.

Paul said, “Roll cameras.”

“Camera one, speed!” David said.

“Camera two, speed!”

“Camera three, speed!”

“Open the door.”

In came the children.

Paul watched.

Nothing!

The youngsters saw food — cookies, candies, soft drinks, milk — and rushed to the table without a word, never even looking at their neighbour; they all just tucked in silently like little angels. So much for that climax.

In British documentaries, the director always submitted a script before getting a go-ahead. But Paul had no script. As usual, he had intended to let the material speak for itself. So when Lewis Linzee, the editor, saw the rushes he growled, “What do you expect me to do with all this rubbish? They never sent me a script! How will I know what to do?”

“No script, Lewis. We’ll edit the film together. Then I’ll write the commentary.”

Lewis looked at Paul as if he’d gone mad — some stupid Colonial — and almost said, “I quit.” But he was a salaried employee...

So Paul sat patiently with his editor, assembling a rough cut. Once Lewis felt comfortable, he turned out some excellent editing.

They had chosen more children than needed, so they decided to concentrate on certain ones that Paul selected. The trainees he brought to the mixing studio to keep on learning. Indeed later, he asked Tim to add to his own end credit the names of Michael Apted and Gordon McDougall. After Apted took over the series, on 14Up, he single-handedly took Gordon’s credit off.

Once the film was pretty well put together, though not polished, Paul and Tim showed it to Sidney. But now it ran forty-five minutes.

World in Action ran only twenty-five. Good old Sidney Bernstein loved 7Up at the longer length. He persuaded the network to add fifteen minutes and run it exactly as Paul had made it. Now that, thought Paul, is how all television should work. But would North America ever change?

The film aired in May, but Paul had left England. It proved a major success, causing Granada to repeat it on New Year’s Day, and enter it at the Prague Festival where it won a Special Diploma.

***

One day, while Paul was planning 7Up, Angela proposed a rather novel idea: “Paul, let’s buy a house.”

“What?”

“Well, it might cheer us up. I’d love to decorate one.”

For the next month they searched, and finally found in Pimlico a derelict townhouse at 42 Cambridge Street, five minutes’ walk from Victoria Air Terminal. All sorts of complicated and prolonged negotiations followed with building societies and Canadian banks but in the end, Paul bought the house. His two youthful architects proved suitably adventurous, opening up two floors, putting in a balcony dining room and adding a two-storey window — although it looked out only onto a tiny back yard. Angela, while taking classes with different companies, began choosing colour schemes and buying furniture in cheap, hidden-away antique stores.

After the editing and mix was over, Paul sat with Angela at dinner, and announced, “Sidney Newman wants me to join BBC.”

Angela stopped eating and looked at him.

“Yeah. Become supervising producer of a new series he’s doing of ninety minute shows. Less salary than at Granada, but lots of prestige, he said.”

“Oh?” Angela appeared less than enthusiastic.

“And Philip Mackie at Granada, he wants me to do a new series made up of three half-hour plays on the same theme in each ninety-minute episode.”

“Lucky we’re getting this house,” Angela said. Not a lot of joy in her tone.

“I only told you to cheer you up. Frankly, I’m not keen on any of it. Philip’s plan would mean us living in Manchester for months...” He paused. “Did you hear that Lester B. Pearson got a minority government in Ottawa? Yes, on April 8th. He’s our new Prime Minster...” He trailed off.

Angela nodded. “It seems so far off.”

“Too far!”

Angela looked up. “So?” She paused. “You might think of going back?”

“Well... I keep seeing our little house on Briar Hill Avenue, our garden, and our life there. Forest Rangers is rolling all summer again, more film experience for me. I could write Bob and find out what’s up.”

The thought of going back to Canada gave them both a lift. And then, wouldn’t you know, Angela got offered a six-week contract with Britain’s Western Ballet Company.

“I’ll manage fine, Angela, don’t worry. Take the contract while it’s offered. I’ll go back, get the house ready, and find someone to help me with Stephanie.”

Angela looked at him with some tenderness. “Thanks, old bean. I might just do that.”

And so, with the Pimlico house almost finished, they both decided on Toronto, dreading what they knew was likely to happen.

***

The fateful day arrived when Paul, full of apprehension, drove out to the airport to meet Angela on her BOAC flight from London. Once out of the bustle of the airport and on the throughway, Paul told her about his rehearsals in Sumach Street on Harold Pinter’s first and most formidable play, The Birthday Party. Finally, he asked, “Glad to be home?” He kept his eyes on the road. They had done their best, were such good friends, but both knew the marriage could not survive.

After a pause, Angela said, “Is it still?

“What?”

“Home?”

“Of course, of course.”

“But I thought, we discussed…”

“Yes, yes. I know. But…”

Neither of them said anything.

“You know,” he said, “when the awful moment actually comes, I don’t know if I’m really up to it.”

“Neither am I, right now.”

Another silence followed.

“Shall we just tough it out for a bit longer?” Paul murmured.

“Good idea.” Angela leaned over, put her small hand on his on the steering wheel, and gave him a kiss. “Stephanie will be pleased.”

And that, for the moment, was that.

But the nights were still driving Paul to distraction. He decided that perhaps he should get away again, and so went to see Ross Maclean about doing another Telescope.

“Ross, how about a film this autumn on the Gaspe Coast? It’s never been covered by an English filmmaker. At least, I don’t know of any.”

Ross agreed. Paul went with a cameraman, Mogens Gander, to Shigawake to recreate film scenes from his boyhood — October Beach, a forerunner of what was to become Isabel.

How Paul had loved walking below the great red cliffs, or feeding the pigs back the Hollow, or lying on a load of hay behind a team of horses trotting along the brow above Uncle Joe’s abandoned sawmill and their pig pasture — all slowly returning to the dense woods of yesteryear.

Noel Dodds put together a terrific rough cut. But Ross and CBC brass were not enthralled. Undeterred, Paul finished the film and wrote the narration, and out it went, to excellent notices. Fletcher Markle, once lionized on American networks, had returned to introduce Telescope, and so opened the film.

Another step on Paul’s path to becoming a filmmaker.

***

With Charles Israel, they devised a Festival, Let Me Count the Ways, that would require a lot of film inserts. To play the wife of the troubled husband haunted by her death, Paul got Bob Allen to bring in Teresa Wright, an Oscar-winner for best supporting actress. He flew to New York and convinced the superb actor, James Daley, to come to Toronto. A kindly father with four children, he introduced Paul to a graceful teenager named Tyne, who kept offering them cups of tea.

That production became Canada’s entry for the Prix Italia.

After his next, Spring Song, with again the lovely Martha Henry, Paul flew down to direct one of Bill Shatner’s For The People, all shot on the streets of New York.

Arriving back at Toronto airport, he was met by a familiar figure, smartly dressed, trim, elegant, blonde hair gleaming under the lights. She had finished her National Ballet tour in April, forty-four cities. They embraced, threw the luggage in the trunk, and drove off.

“How was the show?” she asked her husband.

“Pretty darn hard, actually. Up at five, shooting all day on those crowded streets — first time a series has ever been shot outdoors on New York streets. I usually had dinner with Bill — always a new young lady with him — and then into bed. I’m still worn out.”

“So... not a good time to discuss…”

Paul sighed. “Shades of the last time we drove home from the Toronto airport?”

Angela nodded.

“No. It’s okay. Go ahead.

“Well, I’ve been looking for a house to buy...”

“Oh yes?”

“And I think I’ve found it.”

“Where?”

“Near Bathurst Street, below Bloor.”

“I see.” So, it was finally happening. His stomach churned.

“Not expensive. I’ll have to fix it up, of course.”

“But you’ll love that.” Amazing, this break up: something they’d both been facing and dreading for months, probably even years. Now so mundane.

“I’ve told Stephanie.”

“Hasn’t she been... rather expecting it, poor darling?”

Angela nodded. “I think so. An elderly couple owns the townhouse. They’ve seen me dance, so they’re giving me the mortgage themselves.” She smiled. “They love ballet and know that I’ve been with the company a dozen years.”

“Very nice of them, all the same.”

“Yes, it is,” Angela went on. “It’s a converted duplex on Brunswick, quite central. I’ll decorate the one-bedroom apartment downstairs and rent it out, to help with the mortgage. Upstairs there are two bedrooms on two floors, just right for myself and Stephanie.”

And so it came about, with little emotion, no screaming, no frantic arguments, in fact just two friends discussing the most important moment of their lives. As if they were choosing a restaurant for dinner.

Luckily, Paul got an offer from Granada to direct an Albee play in ten days; he wouldn’t have to moon around an empty house. And then he’d hurry back, because Bob wanted him to do another Festival in June.

Now, tell his mother and aunt and then, sadly, go his separate way.

***

Once again in London, Paul directed The American Dream, and Sandbox, the first Edward Albee plays ever allowed on television, telecast May 25th. This gave Paul a chance to cast Cathleen Nesbitt, nearly 80. While starring in the West End during WWI, she had been engaged to the poet, Rupert Brooke. [for his poem, The Soldier, see Appendix] Imagine directing an actress who had been loved by one of his favourite poets! He also enjoyed staying in his very own house in Pimlico — comfortable, though not fully furnished. He decided to ask, and pay, Angela to come over and finish it properly.

What made the whole experience more palatable was meeting, at a party at Canada House, a tall, slim, striking RADA student, Susan Clark. One look into her clear green almond-shaped eyes and Paul was smitten. She accepted his invitation to dinner, repeated several times. And as soon as they got back to Toronto, he cast her in his next Festival, Horror of Darkness with Neil McCallum. Soon, she too was off to Hollywood, another TV star.

But first, he and Robert Allen picked up a rented van, drove to Briar Hill, and took the day to load Angela’s furniture and bring it to her new home. As they drove down to Angela’s, it struck Paul forcefully: they had well and truly separated. His marriage was over. He would never again be coming home to share Angela’s dinners. Never again discuss her problems, or his own. They had so amicably agreed on a proper settlement, with money to help her and a down payment on her house. But still, the pain began to bite deeply. It infused his whole being. Everything ached. His heart plummeted. Gloom descended. Next to him, Bob sensed his agony.

That drive in the furniture van Paul was to remember the rest of his life.