Norman Spencer

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Norman Spencer Side 1 

Dave Robson  0:01  
the copyright of this recording is vested in the BECTU History Project. The subject is Norman Spencer, Motion Picture producer interviewed by Teddy Darvis. The date is the 22nd of June 1999. This is side one, and the file number is 453.

Teddy Darvis  0:29  
Right, Norman, tell us about your parents and your childhood. And when you first went saw a movie and where he was, went to school and how you got into the industry.

Norman Spencer  0:42  
Well, I was born in 1914. And I was born in Stockwell, which is near Brixton, but I don't remember any of it because I think when I was about six months, my parents I was the first child, my parents moved to a place called gooseberry green, which is on the outskirts of Billericay in Essex. And I can just about remember a little house we had the spray all very country at that time, I can just about remember that and then we move to Billericay itself. Now when I was and we were then in Billericay step missing, yes, that's right. When I was about six, I remember my which was there for 19 was 1920. I remember my parents talking now and again about moving pictures. And I could not understand as a six year old help pictures could move and I looked at the pictures on the walls. And they said, no, no, you'll see. But when you're a little older, we'll take care of, and I think I was nine, nine years old, by which time we were living, we'd moved from Bella Ricky, we moved to Lyon See, in Essex, I was taken to the cinema for the first time, and I look forward to this with enormous anticipation. It was a great excitement in my life, I was at least going to see pictures that moved. Because I used to say to them, is it somebody behind that moves things? Or is it a shadow of them? And they said, no, no, the picture actually moves and I could not understand. So the great excitement, I mean, it was real I can do this day, I could remember the excitement of going through the plush curtains into this dark and rather warm, sweaty sort of auditorium and the film was on the screen. And lo and behold, I saw it moved. I didn't know how or what. But I was hooked from that moment onwards. I, when I got a little older, when I was about 10, or 11, I was allowed to go to the cinema once a week, it cost three D that's three old pennies. And a little handle was turned in the box office and a little metal token dropped down. And you took the metal token you handed it to an attendant who took it and put it on a kind of string. And the curtains were parted and you went in, and I became so hooked on the cinema. In fact, I've always to jump forward. I've always thought that I've been enormously lucky that I've been able to be in the cinema industry for the whole of my life. I became so hooked on this, that every Saturday I would go on I would see the cartoons of the time black and white cartoons. There was Felix the Cat, a cartoon called out of the inkwell in which was a little amusing thing where a character jumped out to the income performed and so on. I remember actors like William S. Hart, Pauline Frederick, Charlie Chaplin, of course, a wonderful French comedian called Larry Seaman, Fatty Arbuckle. And even then I made my mind up that I would go into the cinema industry somehow rather, maybe I thought as an actor, because that's what children think of mostly. Anyway. I remember I went every Saturday and I became so hooked on it. That one Saturday, I set the whole performance. Around three times it was 10 o'clock at night I went in it too. And it was 10 o'clock or so at night, my father came down to meet me wondering what had happened and I was still apparently high. They told me sitting in the front row cheering on the cowboy hero who was coming to the rescue and so on and so on. Now, I became so hooked on films that when the Christmas came along on my birthday, I wanted to cinema To graph machine, and all we could think of my parents would think I was buying me one at damages, which was a big store in London. Now, these machines were very crude. And I've soon worked out I mean, they first of all, the first machine I had didn't even have a shutter on it. It had the Maltese cross movement, but there was no shutter. And so you've got these awful lines on the screen, which I didn't like and so the next Christmas came along, I said to my father, I want one with a shutter. So okay, we've got one with a shutter, but the shutter was a very primitive single blade. So it was fine, but it but it flickered. And I couldn't, I couldn't make out how you got rid of the flicker. Nobody taught me then that you need many blades to get rid of a flicker. But what I did come across then, and it was much too expensive, and I never had one was the marvellous path, the scope, nine millimetre hand cranked projector, which I remember to this day, Shall I stop, no matter what, which I remember to this day, cost five pounds, 15 and six months, and that was much too much my visor, can't afford that and so on. But I was terribly impressed with these passes coke projectors, which were beautifully made, machine made. The only thing was, to my mind, they had the wrong film, it was 9.5 film with one sprocket between each picture and that seemed to me to be wrong. Anyway, I was so excited by cinema things. I used to take boys magazines like the magnet and so on, and then the little advertisement in the back. You could buy 200 feet of cinema film for something or other and I had a Meccano set. So I used to buy these 200 foot rolls of film of anything. They were just odds and ends and so on. I made myself out and Macondo was sort of rewind to pieces of Macondo with a axle through the middle and the spool went on that deep, not the spool the actual film, so they kept it like a spool. I learned how to join film, I bought little bottles of acetone, and I had razor blades, I tried to make a joiner, but I never caught out on Macondo. So I had to scrape the little, you know, the fifth sprocket as it were, and join and I mean, this was my sole hobby, was films and I thought I got to be in films when I when I grew up, when I did get a little older. And I left school, I thought of Periscope, and I looked them up in the telephone directory and Periscope had an office on the great on the, on the North Circular Road. And I went there one day, absolute naively at about 14, and asked them if they had a job. And they said, What experience have you got, and of course, I've got an experience of they said, Well, we occasionally get jobs in our, in our cutting rooms here, but and so on. So that came to nothing. And I thought, Well, I haven't got that. I also at the same time, I tried to write little film scripts. But what I couldn't work out then was how reverse shots were done. For example, I, I'm going back a little from what I said, I'm talking about now when I was about 12, I tried to write a simple, naive little story of a mother coming to the back door, we're calling her little boy and have tea. And I thought, well, now we shoot the mother at the back door, then you've got to turn the camera around, I suppose and shoot the little boy. But then when she answers him, you've got to turn the camera around and do it again. And I could never work out the simple process that you did all the shots in one direction at one time. And the other the other it's just seemed to me to be an odd thing. Sorry, I'm just just let's stop for a second. Yes, just for a sec. I left school, I think I was 14. And because my other attribute that I had was that I could draw and paint. I also had the idea that maybe if I couldn't get into films, and incidentally the word movie is interesting because it's a very modern word, but it's really a contraction of the old moving picture. And it still carries echoes it have pictures that move move is mov i Yes.

My father thought well, there must be some way in which you can earn a living by drawing and painting. So he apprenticed me I was actually an apprentice to a commercial artist, who was a man called halls Hatton ha Double D O N, who had a small room come studio above the premises of Hector Powell, the tailors in Fenchurch Street, and to use to do while the boringly, all the show cards and price tickets for Hector Powell, all painted by hand, now I've got a facility to be able to do lettering. And so I've worked with him for some time. But after a while, I could see that I wasn't going to be a commercial artist, and but I got a job or unofficial job to paint some murals on the wall of a dance studio in a basement in Great Portland Street. I was now about 9019 or 20. Now, what year would that be 14? Can we stop just Just one second, because that was about 1933. Now, I rather fancied myself as a bit of a mural artist and I painted pictures on the wall of de garde type pictures DGA as the French painter. And there were some people there who said, Well, of course, we not only dance here, but we get jobs as film extras, and my ears pricked up and they said, that's the way to get into a film studio. I told them, perhaps rather naively of my ambitions, and they said, well, we'll try and get you on onto a film set one day, you'll come down with us and you can be a film extra. And glory be the day came when I got a job to go to Pinewood Studios in 1935. And I could not believe my luck to go to an actual film studio and I remember walking about the place. I was supposed to be a royal Aircross when in, in a film called splinters in the air, the star of which was an old comedian called Sidney Howard. But I broke away from the dressing rooms and I had to go and see, for the first time in my life, the interior of a film studio, and I opened those huge double doors and there was this vast and wonderfully Smithers, a wonderful smell comes out of Studio is a sort of size and paint and I don't know what and there was a set of the audit of the the auditorium of a theatre and they were filming a scene with Sidney Howard dressed in drag with a huge great Eska picture at singing. You made me love you to put to play back I didn't know what to play by was then. And that was my first exciting I mean I cannot explain how excited I was to be in a film studio for the first time it was absolutely incredible. Anyway I got various jobs as an extra I was on that film for a while I've even got a still a bit somewhere at home and then other I was an extra for about three years three or four years

Teddy Darvis  13:17  
How much did you get paid? 

Norman Spencer  13:21  
 One guinea a day one guinea a day for your ordinary clothes. If you wore evening dress I soon  cottoned on to had to have your own clothes. So I bought a secondhand dinner jacket and some tails. I've still got tails at home, which I never wear. I think I've grown out. I mean, I've got to do big now. You've got 30 shillings a day then. And if you were on sandy Powell picture which I was or a Mancunian film, which is made by men, I think debit card bank union films of the north of England, with terrible comics in, you've got the bear Guinea a day even if you want your evening dressed, they just wouldn't pay you anymore. But I worked on many films with people like Jack Holbert man in Detroit ish. Even though mother Riley I was I was called once to Bekins field Studios, where they were making an old mother Riley film. And I was all every time I went on a film set. I wasn't interested in being with the other extras who sat in dressing rooms and played cards and all that sort of thing. I used to steal down on the set and be very quiet in case somebody turned me off and I remember Oh, Mother Riley and his rather. They they they're both dead now. His is rather awful wife called kitty who played his daughter in these films. They were working out a musical sequence and they were planning it out with a director and I was my ears were flapping because this was wonderful technical stuff that I was absorbing also in those days, there were no union rules about times of work. And this particular Oh, Mother Riley film I remember distinctly at Bekins field studios, around about five o'clock in the evening, the word came around that they were going to work late, working late meant working till 10 or 11 o'clock. So the assistant director would come around and take names and addresses of everybody amongst the extras. And of course, the crew. And coaches were organised and you were taken. They they'd make a coach load for North London, another one for some way here. And you were taken aback by coach, but But no, I mean, just at the drop of a hat. I've even worked on films. I worked on a Jesse Matthew films when I think we started in the morning at eight or 830 and went right around two or three o'clock in the morning with no I mean, you've got you've got some sort of extra money so much for now, but it was very small, like five shillings an hour or something. But I mean, nobody had any redress. You were told at three o'clock in the afternoon that you're working late that night, and that was it. Your food was laid on and the food was laid? Yes, yes, they organised some food, but it was award terribly crude. And if it was a good production, the food was alright if it was a bad production, like, for example, Mother Riley, it was sandwiches or something like that. Anyway, I got the first time I went to Denham Studios was on a film called night without Dharma, which starred Marlene Dietrich ish, and Robert Donette. And was fascinating film about the revolution in Russia. Now I happen to fit a costume apparently they the scene that they were shooting was a Marlene Dietrich she was the debutante in some Petersburg being presented a court to the Tsar and the Zarina. And they had the there. There's an organisational there was the end of the Czar's called the Corps of pages. And apparently there are two pages from the Corps of pages stand on either side of the of the big doors. When the dead debutantes come in. Now, they've got two people who've been measured. The costumes were were were arranged, but one of them had dropped out. And so at the drop of a hat, somebody rang me up and said, Look, you all fit this. So I went to denim and I was put into I've got a still at home with this this wonderful frogged uniform, and I stood by the side of the doors, the grand doors of the sun, in which the debutantes Marni Dietrich's were being presented. Now leading up to this doorway, which was meant to be in the Kremlin was a huge staircase with soldiers on every landing. And to jump forward in 1979. I went to Moscow in connection with a film project and I was invited to go to the Kremlin with a lot of other people at the Moscow Film Festival and there was this exact staircase it was most incredible to walk up the staircase, which I walked up 50 years earlier Deham Studios built by

Dave Robson  18:28  
 it was Vincent Korda who was the art

Norman Spencer  18:31  
Vincent KordaI'm sure it was yes, I'm sure it was. Now the thing that impressed me on night without arm it was this. The third assistant director was a chap called Jack Clayton, who went on to become a film director and Jackie Clayton organised the extras they had lots of extras on this. Another aspect of the film was out on the lot of denim they built a complete three quarters of a mile of double track railroad with two full size steam engines on it, which were rigged up to look like Russian engines and with the Russian symbols painted on the side, and they were shooting these revolutionary scenes. They also built a Russian station their trains were coming in with refugees crowded on the roofs and so on. Their film was directed by Jack fader was a wonderful French director married to Francois Rosae. They say why those faders spelled fade Arias fe y d e r. Jack J AQ us he was off sick. For one whole week when we were working down there I was one of the extras one of the refugees or something I can't remember. And I was most impressed because Alexander Korda the producer of the film, came down and directed the film in his absence for one week, and that was my first sight of Alexander Korda. Great shock of dark Brown hairy had not not white as we know him, as we knew him later. And he became the director and I saw this man who, who directed and spoke with greater authority. And even then I thought What is pretty good for a producer to come out of the office and come down and direct and keep the picture going, not knowing of course quarters record, he'd been a film directory even directed films in France. He directed one of the, one of the Mario's films in the in the studios, I think, nice. But that was my my, my recollection. My other recollection there is, is on one frosty morning it was the winter but it was a frosty day was white on the trees and a lovely blue sky in the steam from these locomotives and these hordes of Russian refugee is the whole thing just looked like Mother Russia and it was on the back lot at denim. So that's my to record. The third thing I remember about that film and this must have been Vincent Calder was that the big stage at denim I can't remember what number it was, but it was the biggest stage had been turned into a complete forest. They brought in literally hundreds of trees, birch trees, pine trees, and there was the whole stage was it smelt like a forest. Some birds are flown in from outside and we're flying around. Found the trees with to their liking. In the middle of this forest. There was a there was a small lake pond like Lake, a stream running to it. The most incredible thing was to walk from a concrete corridor, open a door and go straight into a pine forest. And when they were shooting on it, it was absolutely marvellous I mean the lighting effects you can get with trees but it was absolutely sick with trees. That's another one of my recollections of night without armour. Now there's something other. So the film was photographed by a man called Harry straddling STR a D li Ng, who was Hollywood cameraman, who was a rather tough chap and a man called Jack Cardiff Cir, di WF was on one of the two or three small units they had. He was, I think a camera operator on one of the units to Cardiff who don't know came later on. Now, it was around this time because I kept on trying to get jobs in the films and not just be an extra the whole purpose of being an extra was to win was a stepping stone to thing. I got a job as I can't remember how I got the job as a clapper boy, on a very inferior little film called Midnight at Madame Tussauds. What year was the bus to be 1936 or seven. It was directed by an old British film director called George Pearson, whose daughter I think was Winifred Pearson, who became the secretary to George Elvin of the AC t as it was there in the association of Sydney technicians. And she was the continuity girl on this film. I thought this is absolutely marvellous. I mean, I'm on a film for the first time I was a clever boy. I didn't know anything about cameras, but I knew how to clap the cloud. And I picked all these things up. And what I didn't realise was the film was such a small one that it was shot in two weeks. I was even I don't know what I thought I probably thought I got six months work. It was it was two weeks only was shot at Highbury studios. Recently I got a copy of it from the BBC. It's on video. It is the most dreadful little film. I mean, it's really poor, but Bernard Miles was in it. And an actress called lusail Lyle spelled li SLE. I've never seen her since and seeing it again. It's really, really a poor film. But it was made at Highbury studios and hybrid Studios has a little projections yet to see the rushes. And, to my astonishment, the projectors, two projectors in that little projection theatre, were hand cranked, I'd never come across this before I hadn't. I didn't know much about projectors, except that as a boy I'd played around with them an awful lot and, and so on. And I knew that they were just like cameras they were run by electricity. But to see these these hand crank cameras with great mango light wheels with a handle on and the projection is just just You know, threaded them up I went up there to see as a, as a clapper boy I had authority as it were. I was one of the crew. Therefore I stood up there and had a look. And I believe much later on in 1944, when or 45 when great expectations, the black and white film, directed by David Lean was made the cameraman who was going to be taken on but wasn't in the end called Robert Cresco. A well known British camera man who I think have photographed third man, the third man and so on. David Lean, didn't like his photography. But the point was, we did some tests. And because it was then the Rank Organisation, we they said you can you can see the tests that are at high res, no need to come out to denim. And lo and behold, the hand crank cameras were still there. And they were cranked by hand. It was my suggestion is not the cameras, projectors, projectors. I'm sorry, projectors. Yes. Can we stop just one second? Well, during my time as an extra, I worked at all the studios and there were a number of studios around and then there were the rock studios as they were called at Elstree named after a man called Joe rock who'd, who financed them I don't quite know where there was British International pictures studios at Elstree, which is where Herbert Wilcox had worked and where Hitchcock and made I think his film his famous film blackmail was shot there. They were well in Garden City Studios that I worked at. They were Islington Studios, where I worked. There were Twickenham studios. There were studios at Merton park. There were Teddington studios and Ealing studios. Now I worked at Islington studios on a film as an extra step. Then, on a film with a crazy game in whose name I can't remember the the names of them all, but I remember it was an extraordinary film because the crazy gang were literally crazy. They'd half of them had to go up and to the dressing rooms and come down dressed in beautiful immaculate evening dress and the other crazy gang for a joke had got the fire who was in the moment they appeared in studio door they put the fire hoses on them, and it was an uproar has gotten a film to be on, directed by Marcel Vondel var inhale a French director with a real music British accent. I worked on a George Formby picture. And suddenly I got a job as a standard for George Formby. And I could hardly believe my luck because if you've got a standing job, you've got a weekly wage. You it was, you know, I needed the money then, of course, I'm talking about just after my Highbury studios thing. How much did you get something like six or seven pounds a week, which was the equivalent of all five pounds a week I think it was, instead of a Guinea a day you've got five, but you've got security of a job for three or four weeks. And I always remember George Formby who was not the most attractive of people and his wife certainly wasn't

playing his ukulele to play back. And when he played his ukulele on the screen, and you heard all sorts of little syncopated breaks as they were called. And I remember one of the technicians saying to him, George, when you do it to playback, you're not doing the breaks. He said, I'm purposely not doing them. I don't want everybody to learn how I play the ukulele. So somebody will pinch it from me. So he he moved his fingers to a different rhythm to the thing on the screen, in case somebody stole his syncopated way of singing. That was something which I noted being on the set as a standard. Now then, I got a much better standing job. I became the standard into Lesley Howard. Leslie Howard was a Hungarian. His original name was Laszlo Kovacs, H O V. AC. S, is his sister Ireenie. Howard was a casting director. And the film that I worked on with Leslie house called Pimpernel Smith. I can't remember the electoral dated 4240s Yes, or something like that. The editor was Douglas Meyers, who was the husband of Thelma Meyers. It was directed by,  just me look at my notes here. I

Teddy Darvis  29:38  
 By Leslie Howard  himself 

Norman Spencer  29:41  
Well, yes. He didn't actually there I mean yes he did it's quite right. He did. I'm sorry. You're still  running? Yes. Yes, that's right. It started done. Leslie had starred in it. For Mary Morris. I remember That was a fascinating experience because I really learned quite a lot not so much from Lesley Howe but from being on a really good film production made denim and so on. In Ealing studios, I worked on films with Gracie Fields directed by basil Dean DEA in famous old film director. And then I got my break, which was to become a third assistant director on a film shot at denim. Produced by Antony Havelock Allen and directed by Harold French called unpublished story, starred Valerie Hobson and Richard Green. The, the ACTT shop steward was a boom man the sound man called Percy Dayton. And he said, Well, you will have to join the union and I said, I've been longing to join the union. So I arranged and I got my first ACTT ticket and I'm membership number was 3565. I was number 3565 in the AC t and I suddenly I'd finally arrived, I was an assistant director. I was a member of the union and I was available for work

Dave Robson  31:23  
What show was  that Norman ? 

Norman Spencer  31:27  
that must have been about 1940 I must look it up in in in HollyWell. But is it 40 or 41? Or? Yes, yes, it was 40 it was later than 39. I then got various jobs as an assistant director I worked with her but Wilcox and Anna Neagle. On a filmmaker Denham cord they flew alone, which was the story of Amy Johnson, the great aviator and Jim Mollison, who she married. Robert Newton played the part there. There are a lot of Russians on it because Robert Newton, as everybody knew, was a great grand glorious drunk and we had awful scenes on the set sometimes, and then I progressed up the technicians ladder. I became a second assistant director on a film produced by Anatole de Grunewald called the demi paradise, directed by Anthony Asquith, which starred Laurence Olivia, and an assortment of well known English character actors John Thorp, Marjorie Fielding, Felix Aylmer, and so on. It also featured the then celebrated Beatrice Harrison, who was known for playing HER CELLO in the woods to make the nightingale scene. And we reproduce that scene on a wood scene and nightingales are put on the soundtrack and Beatrice Harrison played her cello. And

Teddy Darvis  32:53  
The leading lady was Penelope Dudley Ward

Teddy Darvis  32:55  
Correct. became married Carol Reed, correct

Norman Spencer  33:01  
. Correct. Absolutely correct. That's the the first assistant on that film was George Pollock. Now George Pollock rather talk to me. But, and so I got some jobs through him after that. But on this particular film, the demi paradise was shot in wartime. At the time when Russia was on the side of the allies because the Germans had invaded Russia. And people like Valerie Hobson, were going around with collecting boxes, which remarked tanks for Russia and the technicians that Denham studios took exception to this film, because the film was the story of a rather naive Russian technician who comes to England with models of a new ships propeller that He's invented, and his encounter with the curious English village life which he couldn't understand. And the Works Committee at dinner had a strike because they said this film is denigrating our great Russian allies. And Anatolia. Grunewald, a producer, who is Russian, had to make a speech to the Works Committee, which he did, he made an impassioned speech and said, I am a Russian, I would never do anything against Russia. This film is not denigrating Russia, it's showing a naive Russian. I mean, a charming young man coming and learning English weighs and the strike was finally averted. But But feelings are running so high about Russia, and particularly amongst the unions that that happened. 

Now I worked at Denham there. Now. This was the time when I first met David Lean, because I was second assistant director on this film running up and down fishing carrying people and at the lower end of the denim studios, there was a big restaurant and a cafeteria at the top end as it were of a huge corridor that ran the length and breadth of the land. It was like the spine of the studios. But at the bottom end where the cutting rooms and there was a little tea bar and coffee bar down there called Bolton's or something. And I used to pop in there occasionally. And I met this chap called David Lean, who was making a cutting of film there. I don't know what film he was cutting. And we became friends. We became sort of quite close friends. Now he was married to an actress called Kay Walsh. I was married by this time to a girl called Barbara Baker. We lived in Oxbridge and we lived in Oxbridge because Barbara, my fiancee and then wife was so scared of the bombing was took place in London, that we were talking about it one day with Lesley Howard's sister called Ireenie hard. And she said, Well, I've got a little place in Oxbridge that I've rented, which is way out of London and away from the nightly bonds. You can have it because I'm going away and I shouldn't need it. And so with great relief, we moved into this little bungalow called con Croft in Willowbank, which is a little suburb of Oxbridge. That was fine, except that one day there was a knock on the door and I opened the front door and a rather formidable lady said to me, can you tell me what you're doing in my house? And I realised we realised then that I really Howard, who was a charming, careless sort of girl had rented this house from this woman whose name was Robertson. It's immaterial really her name, but hadn't told her that she's sublet it to us. And so we're anyway, we made our piece. And so Barbara and I lived in Oxbridge for about three years, which is very handy to Denham Studios, which is where, where I did, I did most of the work. But anyway, David Lean and Kay Walsh, and Barbara and I, we came a kind of foursome. They lived in a little cottage in Denham village called Melton cottage. We were in Oxbridge. We'd go to each other's houses, we do this and David was an editor. He was a music champion knew a lot about films, he and I used to have long talks about films and so on. And came the day when he said he'd been approached by Noel Coward to be the editor on a big new propaganda film that was going to be made about the Navy called in which we serve. Now, I had sufficient reputation then as a good assistant director. I got a job on this film, not through David strange enough, but David said was marvellous, you're going to be on the film, too. I got a job as second assistant director on that film, for which I was paid. I wanted nine pounds a week and there was a production manager on it, a Swiss chap called Theo Lageard that spelt T HEO, and his surname was la G eARD, he would not pay me nine pounds a week, he would pay me eight pounds 10 shillings a week, but he would not go that extra thing became a battle of wills anyway, the film was " In Which We Serve". It was made in 1942. I remember drawing up the cross plot for the production of the film, which was to be something like eight weeks, which is quite a big shedule. I was drawing it up in March. And I thought, isn't that fantastic? When this film is finished, we should be in the summer. And here we are in the sort of chilly March. And it was one of the most marvellous films to work on terribly, terribly hard work. Noel Coward was the director. Kay Walsh said to David Lean had been asked to be the editor on the film, and Coward wanted a lot of advice from him about shooting the film Coward is going to direct it. And Kay Walsh said to David, you got to be co director and he said, but I can't ask him. She said don't ask them. Tell them that you're not working on this film, unless you're co director because after all you are you're supplying technical expertise, which Coward doesn't know. Well, after a while and I think it's in David  Lean's book. Coward agreed to this, but even then David was shy. I mean, Kay Walsh was on the set because she worked on it as John Mills fiancee. She said, Why are you sitting in a canvas chair at the back? You should sit next to Noel Coward. Bring your chair up and sit next to him and she pushed and pushed and pushed it. David Lean needed a lot of pushing, and she pushed him until he became, now Coward, of course being very shrewd. And also, he doesn't really like filming, he likes the theatre. He soon saw the skill of David Lean.  So towards the end of the film, Coward, just retired from directing. He talked to the actors about how to play scenes were to retire to his dressing room and  David Lean got on with the with the film, and David Lean had done enormous preparation on this. He'd helped to rewrite the script because Coward had written along and fulsome script. I believe all this material is in the David Lean book but and it was just fantastic. This I mean, David really came into his own then. And I had a great time on it because David was my friend and I was the assistant director. We had two great scenes. Do you want to stop? No, no, not running out. There was a great tank scene called a Carly float. Because there's the film is the story of a destroyer that's bombed off Crete during the war, and it's bombed. And what happened to the destroyer was it was going up 30 knots, and it was bombed. And it turned over, still going at 30 knots, and sort of dived into the sea. And that was the story of Mountbatten, who was then a Commodore but he was a captain, a destroyer Captain then. And that was his experiences on which the film was based. He managed to get off the bridge, when it was about 30 or 40 feet underwater and just came up to the top of the water the rest of them came up, they all clung to a thing called a Carly float, which is a floating device in this oil sea full of oil and filth and stuff. We had to reproduce this at Denham, we built a big tank in one of the stages there. And for about 10 days, we poured old sample oil and filthy oil into this water, coward got very cross about it all because it was very boring being in the water all this time, the water had to be a certain temperature or he wouldn't get in it. So it was Anthony have a lock Allen, who was the producer of the film. It was his job to go down there every morning at seven o'clock and take the temperature of the water to make sure that it was warm enough for car to work in it. Because although cowards are great professional, he just didn't want either himself or the other actors in this scene to be to be encoded by having to get into filth, not only filthy water, but stone cold water in the morning, so it was warmed.

There was a terrible accident on that film, we were shooting a scene of an explosion on a gun, a big naval gun. And the way we shot it was to shoot the men working on the big gun and then stop and the whole gun was then destroyed and twisted metal and read rebuilt like that, and the screen was filled with smoke. And as the smoke died away, you saw the twisted gun and the two cut together made the explosion. Now they were they were making the smoke out of an a big flesh out of something called lycopodium powder. I think that's a lie co p o de iulm. It's the stuff that's used used to be used in photography for flesh powder. And they had a series of film tins arranged around the object just below camera with electric wires in them. And at a certain each tin was filled with a little pile of this stuff. Somebody made the contact and the whole thing went up with a great thing. Now they all thought accident happened because the chief electrician or man called jock dime, or was refilling the tins after the first take. When because of the heat of the tin the entire thing went up. And it was on a rostrum this man was terribly burned. I went with him in an ambulance which was immediately called to Hillingdon Hospital, which is nearby. And he died about 10 minutes after reaching hospital. And I shall never remember. I shall never forget I mean, being in the ambulance with this poor man. And the smell of burnt flesh was horrible. But the point was he was such a jolly character that he was he was lightheaded with pain and he was saying, Norman there's a race at 230 at so and so and so and so you must back the so and so and so and so. And when we got to the hospital at Hillingdon they took the doctors took one look at him or the curtain said, man, he died or not Other electrician was terribly badly burned, and it put an awful thing on the film. We stopped shooting from the day of course and so could could we stop ?

End of Side 1

Side 2

Dave Robson  0:00  
All right, This side two

Norman Spencer  0:03  
I remember one of the incidents on in which we serve is worth perhaps talking about because it really was for its time, an enormously big picture in those days. And when the first day of shooting came, everybody was geared up. No, a car was on the set. He was then the director. And the first scene was a scene in the film, which is Christmas day in the shorty Blake, which was the name of the character that John Mills is playing who was a little sailor in his house with his mum and dad, the Turkey remains of the turkey on the table, paper hats on Christmas chains everywhere. And coward said and it was my job as assistant director to make sure the actors are on the set when he said I want everybody down on the set at nine o'clock to rehearse. Now there was one character called, whose name was William Hart and on an actor called William Hartnell, who was playing a sergeant and marines who was a friend who's also at dinner. He wasn't ready, so I got everybody else down. And coward said to be Norman Where's William Hartnell? And I said, Well, he's not ready, but I'm trying to get him down. So he kind of had got complete silence on the set, and stood there, with his foot tapping, until Hartnell made his appearance rather dishevelled. He wasn't properly dressed, he'd been late coming in, you see, hadn't got the proper shoes on, Colin said, Let me have complete silence on the set. And he tore a strip of William Hart on in front of the entire crew, and fired him on the spot. said you'll finish. Get out of this picture. I won't have you I won't have unprofessional behaviour like that. It was the most extraordinary thing. It was partly no card, I think showing it was boss on the very first day, but it was quite frightening because coward has a tongue like a whip. And he got Michael Anderson. Mickey Anderson, the assistant director said Mickey, you wouldn't go up to bake up have you had done in a proceeding put a little moustache on getting this costume you can play the part will be very, you know, easy on you, you're just have a line to say and poor Mickey Anson had to play the partners in the film to this day. But that was no card. Later on. Of course, when David Lean took over the direction card was so happy. No coward used to have a nap. It was his absolute environment rule that he'd have lunch, and then he'd have nap. So if he didn't work between one and three, after three o'clock, he'd had his afternoon nap. And he was ready to ready to work and so on. There were wonderful experiences on that picture. I've talked about the car, the float, and the accident. I was then asked to play a very small part in it can't it was cause delight to get people on the crew to do little bits and pieces. I didn't have anything to say. But when he in the film when no card as the as the captain of the destroyer is picked up, covered in oil and seen on on another destroyer. I was the officer that met him on deck you can see me to this day in that film in which we serve. They had to put a little bit on because they had a moustache. And in the Navy, I'm not allowed to have a moustache. You're either clean shaven, or we will have a beard and I and another officer greet him on deck. And that's when he's rescued. So that was a little thing. The other thing was it was the film in which Richard Attenborough played his very first part and was extremely good. He was I think about 18 or 19. Then I myself was about 21, I think Dickie Attenborough played the part of the, of the cow, the little, the little sailor that runs away. And he told me, him later years that he was so excited about his first big part or a really big film, that when the premiere came along, he got his parents there. And they waited to see his name on the film when the credits came up, and it wasn't there. And he got terribly upset. Totally have Ocalan apologised and said, I'm sorry, we somehow we we must have forgotten. I mean, you couldn't do that sort of thing. These days, there are contracts or obligations, but for Dicky Attenborough went all drove all the way out from the country with his parents to see himself on the screen, which they saw but his name wasn't there. And it's not on the film to this day. It's never been bought on. Now, the success of that film in which we serve and it was oh, there's there's some More or less tell you about the film, we had a wonderful big scene about the retreat from Dunkirk. And these soldiers been put a board at a store and bought back to England. Mountbatten, who was then a Commodore Commodore Mountbatten, and he was the technical adviser on the film said I cannot abide having film extras playing soldiers, they just look wrong and weird and so on. He arranged to give us a whole brigade of the Scots guards, I think it was who came down to denim. It was my job to organise the whole thing that we had to start at six o'clock in the morning, they had to have their proper uniforms taken off, and our uniforms torn and shell blown and full of gunpowder, we had to make them up with bandages, like the men coming back from Dunkirk. And it's one of the most exciting scenes in the film and all those extras, playing the part of all those soldiers are a brigade of guards, and that's why they look so marvellous. If you remember the scene on which when they form up on the key all is the David Lean pen from one tired face to another, blood running down and blankets around them and so on. And then the Scots, the sergeant major says, brigade, and all the chins stiffen up, and they march off, it's a wonderful scene, the film and David founder, very good March. I don't know it's a god's march to put on the soundtrack for that. And he's one of the most moving things I think in the film. And that was, that was Mountbatten. Now we see now, that film was a big success. And coward was so pleased with the work David Lena done, and Havelock Island or Rondon Ron in Eden photograph the picture that he suggested that the triumph for he would make some of his plays tonight at 830 plays. And they agreed, and they decided that the first play they would do was a play called this happy breed. So that was to be the next production, meanwhile, have a lot of Catalan Ronnie named David Lena myself had formed a company called cine Guild, and to make these pictures, and our first picture was this happy breed. Now I at this time was, I think I must have been 22. And the wall was on. And any minute, any months, I was liable to be called up. David Lean had been had had a medical, he wasn't all that healthy. And he was, he was marked as permanently unfit from military service. So he wasn't going to get caught up, have a look out on other people in the studios, we were, we were in what was called a reserved occupation, if we were doing important work, but you could only be reserved for a year, you could delay your call up for one year, but calling calling up the army took precedent. Now I was given the job, which I was marvellously pleased to have as the first assistant director, my first time on this happy breed. And I was so excited about this that on the previous films that I were working on, like the demo paradise, I used to be doing the breakdowns and so on in the early morning train, because I lived near Maryland, I lived at Baker Street, then I used to catch every morning and train at five minutes past six in the morning, which got you to Denver at about 10 to seven. And if you walk to the studios, you got in the studios at seven o'clock in the morning. I did this month after month after month, and I got already and I was already and shooting was about five weeks away when I got my call up papers. And there was nothing anybody could do about it. And I was called up into the army. So because I I mean right on my first beautiful marvellous job was snatched away from me by the war.

I mean, I went into the Army, six or six weeks later, I was in bleeded out because I had some problems with my stomach. But it was too late. So they taken on an assistant director and they taken on George Pollack, who was so delighted he was an older man, not liable to call up I put the George was about 35 or 40 then Pollock Pierre double loc K. He, he took the job with alacrity. And of course, when I came out of the army, the film was still shooting. I went down to see it and Ray sadly I had to watch the film that I had prepared and God already been a system directed by George Paul Like directed by David Lee, and I watched the last two or three weeks of the shooting. Then Antony Havelaar garland, who was the producer said, Norman, we'd love you to come back. But you see, we've got George Pollack now. And we made arrangements with him because we're going to make another film called Blind spirit. But he said, Would you like to be production manager? He said, I must tell you, it's not quite the same as being an assistant director because an assistant director works on the floor and has a can also have a creative input. Whereas the production manager is much more concerned with costs and shade drooling and all that sort of thing. And I said, Well, I just want to work with, you know, our dear Sydney guild, so I became a production manager. But the next film that Sydney guild made was called Bligh spirit from which was a coward play. No account had said that he'd always wanted to write a play about a medium and a serious play. And he said, I sat down one weekend and wrote it all over one weekend and it came out funny. I had no intention of ever being a comedy at all, but it became a marvellous comedy. So lies I'm became CO production manager with a chap called Syd Streeter STR weta er, who had been a construction manager and it was his first job. So we were joint production managers on blys spirit, which starred Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, que Hammond, Margaret Rutherford, the marvellous Margaret Rutherford is the old medium. And it was a very happy film to work on. It was difficult because the wall was still on, you couldn't get certain things. And there was a scene in the beginning of the film, which there's a dinner party and the the meal that's being served is a wonderful huge Chateau Briones steak. Now you couldn't get such a thing but the props people managed to get a bit of horse meat which they turned into look like steak nobody ate it. Nobody had to eat it because the dear old medium who's been invited by this couple to Mata Makati? That's right, Madam Icart to the taking the rise out of a relay. And she says when they when when they say dinner's ready, she says no red beet, I hope. And of course the new cut to this Chateau Breon being carved the hostess saying Could I get you a boiled egg or something? Your fantasies. Anyway, it was a wonderful scene, a very difficult film technically, because David had taken the decision that whenever the ghost wife that appears whenever you see the ghost wife from Rex Harrison's point of view, she's there. When you see her from any other person's point of view, she's not there. So it looks as though Harrison's talking to a space. And and what is more, she was dressed in a sort of grey Greenie trailing draperies. And David wanted her always to appear in this greenish light, which gave her enormous problems to run in eat him because you don't have to have a person walking for the door over here and sitting down and always to appear in that particular light was quite a problem. But it worked very well. And I think the picture is very funny, but no coward ated it. And he got terribly angry with lean and have a locker and so on and said that David Lean had no sense of humour. He shouldn't go anywhere near comedy, but he was wrong because the film is funny. And it became very popular and is still a very good record of that funny play. That was that was that was that now that the film after that, because we were now set? We're working at DataMan. Can I stop just one second. The next film that Sydney guild we're going to do was was was after blade spirit. They hadn't got any immediate plans and I was asked by a film director called Sidney gilliat Ti WLA TI and his partner Frank launder. If I would be a production manager on a film they plan to make called the rakes progress. The rakes progress was the film to be shot at

Shepherds Bush studios, the film was to star Rex Harrison. He had in it Lily Palmer. They were not married at that time. Margaret Johnston Godfrey Tearle and it was a film with a location in Cornwall for about five weeks before coming Back to Pinewood Studios. Damn sorry to denim studios. Now the wall was on there was we went down to Cornwall to try and find locations, which we found in a little place called Portreath. That spelled por ter EA th, on which was a little smuggler's Cove, and it was a scene in the film, several scenes in the film took place there, but where to put up the crew. I was at my wit's end as the production manager of the film to try and find where we could stay. We couldn't go every day from denim to call. And I saw in a place called Camborne, a big old hotel but closed for the war closed for the duration. And I went back to denim, and I was talking one day to the restaurant manager at denim whose name was I don't know his first night, Mr. Gershenson. I think that's spelled G R s c h e n s, O N, and consensus and said to me, I'll do it. And I said, What do you mean your do it? He said, he said, I'll he said, If you couldn't get permission to open that hotel, I'll come down, I'll run it for you out, find the staff. I'd find the fruit. I couldn't believe it. This is falling into my lap. So I took him down. We had to go down to Cornwall. We got arrangements from the owners, whoever they were, I can't remember now. We opened up this hotel beds were taken out of the loft and the various places were put into the rooms because Jensen was marvellous, he got a staff going. He got a lot of women down there. He brought cooking pans down from denim. The whole hotel opened up just for us just for our crew to stay in. We had Selma Meyers was one of them the editor, she was the editor, Sydney she stayed there, we opened up something like 60 or 70 rooms. And it was an incredible feat for a man to do. He In other words, he left his job at denim and took up a job as a as a one time hotel, hotel manager. And that worked that worked very well. Now, Jean Kent was an actress who worked I think this was her first film. On this rakes progress. And guy Middleton, another actor was on it. I was very happy working on this film. And while I was working on it, David said to me, we were going to make a Dickens picture called Great Expectations. So it looks as though it'll work very well, you'll come to an end of rakes progress, and can start on that.

Teddy Darvis  17:32  
Meanwhile, David presumably made Blythe Spirit er  Brief Encounter

Norman Spencer  17:38  
David made Brief Encounter, that's right. And why I couldn't work on brief encounter was because I was in the middle of this picture, which just intruded into it. So there are great expectations were set up David Lean, and a man called Stanley Haynes ha why NES who sadly, subsequently committed suicide for some personal reasons, but worked on on the script to great expectations. And David Lean said to me, we're having terrible trouble, because Great Expectations is a book about seven or 800 pages long. Now how to make that into a two hour picture. And he had a brilliant idea. He said, the very worst thing you can do on a script is to give little snippets of everything, you've got to keep a dramatic shape. So he said what I decided to do was to read the whole book, there are scenes in it, which Dickens wrote, which aren't very good scenes, and scenes, which are brilliant. So all the scenes which weren't any good, I took out and put on one side, keeping only the good scenes. And then we made a continuity following the book out of the good scenes. And it was so successful, that when the film was finished, there's a society in London called the dickens fellowship, who are people that a fan club of Charles Dickens in effect, they said to us, when they went came to the premiere, they said, You must have cut something out, but we can't think what it is you cut out. And David said, it's because bad scenes or poor scenes do not stick in the mind and the good scenes do. And nobody realised what we dropped. They did when they went through the book and compared it. And so that was a that was a lesson in how to make a screenplay out of a huge novel was a brilliant, brilliant film. It really was. We had a location in Rochester. in Kent. We had there were scenes with a paddle steamer, which I had to find. We found an old paddle steamer in Weymouth, built in about 1875 it had small paddles, but we got an art director to build it up. We put on huge great paddle wheel covers, which made it look as though We'd had big paddle wheels, a big tall chimney with a spike top mass because paddle steamers that period also had sales of mass. And we rigged the whole thing up. Now the thing in Rochester was we had a lot of scenes to shoot on the river midway. And it was very difficult on the river to, to work in the part of the Midway river we wanted to work in and go back every day to Rochester to the Rochester pier. But we found in the middle of, of the of the river midway, there's a small sort of Island have about a quarter of a mile across with an old ruin, naval fought on it. And we thought, what if we could use this as our base would be wonderful. But how do we get on and off, there's no peers. And I said, I've got an idea. We'll try and get because the wars finished by this time, we'll try and get a landing craft. And I managed and succeeded to persuade somebody in the not the War Office. The Admiralty, I suppose led to let her a smallish landing craft, which meant that we could put everything on this great big empty is like a big truck, everything there, the kitchen equipment for food, the lamps, the cameras and everything, go down, go up to the side and put the flap down and we could walk straight off, there's a picture of it in there, walk straight off. And so we use this little island as our base for the shooting all the scenes on the river. The paddle steamer scene was complicated because even in the script, even in the original book, it's difficult to to stage because Dickens it's a scene in which the paddle steamer has to run down a rowing boat with it with two of the main characters in John mills and Finley curry. And Dickens doesn't explain how it's done in the writing of great expectations. He he says, Because PIP the narrator Pip, the young man played by Johnny Mills is NARRATOR He says all in one moment, I saw the steam coming up already my moment I saw the man in the other boat reach out already. It's all like that. And David said, I don't know how I can shoot this B. Now this paddle steamer worked well. But it had if you wanted to put it into into reverse, you had to wind a great big hand or down about a three foot rod. And by the time it got to the end, the thing that the engine would stop and then start going the other way. So it took three quarts or a mile a river does to stop the boat and make it go reverse. And that was very difficult in shooting because you had to rehearse. But we managed it in the end and but we had to build a replica of the paddle steamer wheel and a side of the boat in a tank at den at Pinewood Studios, because the film was made at denim. But it was being arranged that our last big set, denim was being discontinued and Pinewood B was being opened up. So our last big set, the pedal wheel in the tank was built at Pinewood Studios. And so, in the film, John Mills leaps overboard to save the old convict called Magwitch. That's spelled ma G wa Tch, and that was shot in the tank at Pinewood I have some stills of that with with a with a wooden paddle wheel going so it was shot in safety. But the paddle steamer sequence took a lot of time, with weather and so on. And we also built a set out on the marshes at Rochester, of pips house pit being the chief character of pips house and so on. The exterior of that was shot there, we had a lot of very good shooting there. And then we made the film of course, in the, in the studio, the art directors, a man called John Bryan, br y and who, under the guidance, in a sense of David Lean to David said, you know, in all the dickens books, Dickens has this wonderful exaggerated characters larger than life. The illustrations, by fears are all larger than life. And so John said, Well, I'm going to make the sets larger than life. So the sets were all sort of theatrically in large, but were built in perspective, which gave an exaggerated picture and it gave the whole picture, a quality and a visual atmosphere, which helped in the thing they were none of the sets were actually real. We use things called foreground miniatures, in which our little model is placed in juxtaposition to the camera in such a way that it provides the top of a great big set foreground model was informal girl miniatures, and we use a lot of them in great expectations. And I'm just wondering, effective wonder very Oh, wonderful. I mean, it was that was just one because i Yes, that anyway the picture was a big success and it was David's first film away from Noel Coward because he'd always probably thought to himself well, okay, I'm Oh no it wasn't his his first film away from Noel Coward, he probably thought to himself well, of course Coward gets a lot of the credit for the films I'm making like Brief Encounter in this happy breed and widespread. This was a film in which Sidney gilded launched on its own decided and it was so successful they decided to make a second Dickens picture, which was Oliver Twist. So we we finished great expectations. And we prepared Oliver Twist. Now story, the character of Fagin was something in which we had some difficulty and who was to play it, thinking of big characters. And it was Alec Guinness, who had been so successful in in Great Expectations, who said to David Lee, I can play it. And David said, Oh, Alec, you can't, you know, you'll be covered in crepe hair, and it'll be awkward. And Guinness said, just let me give you a test. If you don't want to shoot it, let me and he made himself up. And when he came on the set, we could hardly believe this was Alec Guinness, and he got the job on the spot. Absolutely. And I think the David Lee book explains all the makeup of Fagan and so on. Robert Newton was was Bill Sikes, que Walsh David's ex wife, by this time was playing the part of Nancy when David shot the sequence, which is the murder, murder of Nancy Bill Sikes murders her. But instead of showing a lot of blood and gore, he, we had a dog, which we found somewhere, a bull terrier Bill Sykes dog, which is described in the, in the book, David shot, the thumping and the murder of Nancy on the dog scratching at her door to get out to get away from this horror that was going on. And the way we shot that was to have a little set of a door. And this dog went berserk at the sight of a little plush cat we had. So all wet the prop man had to do was go around the other side of the door, waggle the cat and shut the door. The dog was doing this to get away, and so on. But it's cut into the film in such a way, as we remember, it looks as though the dogs trying to get away from these awful screams this murders going on terribly, terribly effective and brilliant idea by David Lean total. So the murder of Nancy, which is a big sequence in order the twist is shot that way. Not can we mentioned

Dave Robson  28:07  
the closing down of Denham. Why was that?

Norman Spencer  28:11  
What happened? Well, I'm not. I'm not absolutely certain whether it closed down as such. But I know that all productions were moved to Pinewood because the company was called DNP studios denim and Pinewood was a private company. And I think commercially, they wanted to, to focus all production on one studio. Now why commercially, they decided to close down I don't know, it may have been purely economic that they couldn't afford to run two studios when they'd only got enough product for one studio. But it all went to Pinewood. And of course, the sad thing was that is you know, denim was demolished. And I've never forgotten to this day going past denim and seeing the bulldozers work. And now it's a series of like b&q ready made factory things. Very, very sad to see the end of denim. And there's so many studios are gone, of course, that the laboratories or the labs is too abstract. The labs are still the I did work, which I forgot to say but perhaps I should mention, I did work in the war on a film called The Way Ahead, directed by Carol Reed. You right, yes, yeah, I'll read and so on. I was a second. I was a second unit production manager on that film. Stanley Haynes was the production manager. And they would they did a lot of shooting on what was called City Square, which was the one of the lots of denim studios. And there is a story connected with that which perhaps I should tell because it might be of interest to people is that they had they had commenced shooting before I joined it as a second unit. Production Manager. They been shooting somewhere in the south of England with a lot of tanks and army vehicles, training sequences and so on. And when they got back to the studio, they found a lot of shots they missing. So my job as a second unit production manager was to go and get the shots. And Stanley Haynes, the production manager said to me, it's raising or when all you do is you go down to the Beachy Head or somewhere where they shot it. There's a colonel somebody and arrange everything for you, and so on. So I did all this. I went with a cameraman down and we had to film a great convoy of tanks with aeroplanes, swooping overhead was, which was one of the shots they'd missed out. So I went to this Colonel whoever he was, and he said, Yes, arrange it all for tomorrow morning. Fine. We got ready. Nine o'clock, I went back to the hotel. And just as I was about to sit down to dinner, a little army vehicle came up and asked for me, Mr. Norman Spencer, is he here? I said, Yes. He said, All the general southeast and come on wants to see you. And I said, Well, I'm just going to have Denise say, Well, you ought to come is important chat. So I was taken along to wherever this headquarters was. And I met general, whose name I can't remember, who was absolutely furious with me. What do you mean by going to one of my colonels, and ordering tanks and planes? It's an unmistakable professional behaviour. You have no right to go to a colonel, I am the general in charge, you'll come to a general Well, I managed to persuade him finally and let us have it. But it was Stanley Haynesworth fault. He told me to go to the colonel. And ever since then, I learned a big lesson that never, ever go to anybody other than the top man, in any situation where you want to get something done. And it was the general I should have gone to the general just to save his face. And then he would have instructed the colonel and the colonel would have done it. I went to one of his old buildings. And so you learn a lesson that way. But we did the shooting, and it was quite successful. It

Dave Robson  32:13  
opened, that film opened in Leicester Square, and I ran it and during that time, we had the invasion started. And sort of the end. The end because the beginning

Norman Spencer  32:28  
the beginning. I seem to remember that I do. Yes. Yes. Yes, it was. It was a I remember. Peter Ustinov helped to write it with with Eric Ambra. Peter Ustinov was only about 19 or 20. He was in battledress he was he do already been called up and but he was allowed permission from the War Office to come and work on the film. David Niven course starred in it and lots of English character actors are in it I think Bernard miles and so on, but Eric Ambler and Houston offered written the screenplay for it. I remember Houston off looking very, you know, he's hardly the smartest soldier soldier looking character in the world with a sort of pop baleen is battledress a bit arrived on the set every day. Sorry, touched your microphone. Now. Oliver Twist we got to Oliver Twist that was thing now. What happened with Oliver Twist was odd because cine gills had been run out name, David Lean antron, Havelock Allen, George Pollack and myself. Now, Ronnie name had come started to become rather tired of just being the cameraman. He wanted very much to be a director. He wanted to just not be just the cameraman. So on Great Expectations, it was arranged that he would be the producer. So Ronald name produced great expectations. We did the tests, as you know, with Bob Kraske. And then I think the film was photographed by Guy Green, who up till then had been a camera operator was given his first task, and he's a marvellous cameraman, he later on went on to become a director and became a he was a wonderful cameraman, and totally indifferent director. He should have stayed being a cameraman, because he redone the colour and the black and white. And now that meant that hablo coulomb, then wanted to find a story, separate from Sydney, partly separate, separated from Sydney guild for his wife, Valerie Hobson, and he found a novel called blanched fury, which became in effect to Sydney gilt production so that when Great Expectations was finished, Havelock Island could move in. And we the same crew myself was as Project Trump Andruw Jones Pollack, assistant director worked on Blanche fury. Now blondes Fury was directed by a Frenchman called Mark allegory that's Mar Cawl EGR et, who has a brother in the film industry called Eve Madikeri at a grey. Now Mark had a grey smoke quite good English. And he was the director on this film that the film was a rather novelette ish story of a governess in 1860. Big house somewhere. Stewart Granger played the part of the steward. And we we worked on that film for some time. The one incident, terrible incident happened on the very first day of shooting. The set was Valerie Hobbs mounting the steps in a big crinoline to an employment agency. And the camera was too, it was to be one big shot in the studio with a camera on a crane following her up the steps going through the doorway, straight through into the office of a woman who she who is interviewing her. And to do that John bruh, and again, the art director devise to set that mood so that as the camera went into the main portals, the portals were pulled back, and you went through into another doorway and that was pulled back until you ended in the desk and it was a marvellous shot allegory. Now. The very first shot take one which was the huge technical and blipped camera, about four feet square on a crane hit the top of the set that has been wasn't pulled back quite in time, snap the camera off, which fell to the floor, the counterweighted crane shot the operator up in the air hit the ceiling and fell. And it was a man called Ernest Stewart. And he broke his arm the bones was sticking out of his fingers. We had ambulances, I mean a terrible thing to happen on the very first shot of the very first day of a film and the camera was smashed. I mean this huge camera thank God nobody was under it. When it fell down. It would have killed anybody because you'd have to remember Teddy the size of them. They were huge. blipped cameras. That was that was that happened on block three. Everybody thought what an awful augury from the film but poor man's steward he survived and his hands better now on he's worked since then. But frightening experience I worked with that great way to camera snaps off counterweighted the weights at the back of the crane shoot it like a caterpillar would have been the camera was destroyed the cameras Oh, yes, smash was technical Academy. I mean, it was it fell off, you know, the, from the roof of a studio on to the grip, but it's so marvellous, it didn't hit anybody. We don't literally kill them. I mean, it's, it's like a it's the size of a grand piano but about five times the weight. You know, that happened on Brian's ferry. The other thing on it was we had the act of court, Stewart Granger. Now he had to ride a horse quite a lot in the film. And he had to he was playing the part of a steward of a biggest state of a man that knows a lot about horses because he didn't know anything about horses. And he was terribly worried about his horse riding. And he said to me, Norman, I think you know what I think you should do. Could you get me a horse from the Police College because police horses are trained to be docile and gentle. And we arranged to get to horses for him. We had an audition for horses we got about five down to please His Lordship but the brown one and a white one and a black one and for this and Stewart Granger was never very good at recourse riding when he rode his elbows and his knees flapped he rode like a cowboy and not like a not like a man of at this stage in Norfolk or whatever it was filled. That was but anyway, we got the we got the horse there. That was blind spirit and that was Antony habla Catlins contribution. It's a no, not a terribly good film looks absolutely beautiful photograph by Guy green. Valerie Hobson looks wonderful. But she's playing the part of of a governess and her costumes are so wonderful that they're even better than the mistress of the house. So it's the sort of thing that happens. Now the next film after that was a film. This is this is this takes some explaining because it's it's quite a story. Eric Ambler and Ronnie neem had got together and they wanted to make a film of an HG Wells book called The passionate friends and David Lean was going for a holiday somewhere and didn't want any part of this. Stanley Haynes was still helping. And so Ronald neem was to be the director. And Eric Ambler was to be the producer and Eric Ambler would write the screenplay of the passionate friends, which was the star, and Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains. And I was to be the production manager because that was my permanent job there. I was the production manager for all these productions. Now, the filming started at Pinewood Studios on a big set, which was representing a summer house and an English garden. But only the first 50 or 60 pages of the script were written because Eric Ambler wasn't.

I mean, he's a he's a, he's a writer of books and not a script. And they haven't got it already. But there was trouble of the third day of shooting. They were shooting scenes in this garden, a sort of love scene between and Todd and Trevor hard. But for some reason, it wasn't going well. The first day, they shot about half a minute screen time, the second day even less. There were big arguments on the set between them Todd and Trevor Howard and Ron in him. Were only named with his very first job as a director was finding it hard to take an on the third day, the Wednesday at the end of Wednesday, shooting. Ronnie name came up to me and he said, Norman, I can't go on. I cannot direct and Todd, I don't think I'm ever going to be a director. I don't know how to do it. I can't do it. We've got to stop shooting. I mean, that's disaster on a film that the directors, but we stopped shooting and he said what I'm going to do is this evening, I'm going up to see Arthur renku financial picture through through Pinewood and I've gotten explain it to him. On Saturday, I'd like you to get all the main members of the crew written over half a dozen people along to my house at Fullmer where he lived, because I'm gonna explain to everybody that I'm retiring from the picture and I can't carry on the picture has to stop. On Saturday. I got them all there. Ronnie was very brave. I thought he explained to everybody he said when I've spoken to he'd got David Lean back from holiday. He said My dear old friend David is coming to my rescue. He's going to direct the picture. We're going to stop shooting for three weeks while David Reed does the scripted the way he wants it. We should start again. I'm going to be the producer of the picture with Eric camera. Although Eric ambulate later dropped out, David Lean will direct it. And so on. So on. He said now, Norman, what I'd like you to do is on Monday morning, I'd like to get the entire crew, electricians, everybody into the big boardroom at Pinewood. And I want to explain to them what is happening, extremely brave thing to do, I thought and so it to the assembled company explained that he couldn't carry on. He didn't think he was fit to be a director, David Lee was coming on. And that was done. And of course, what happened was we did start again in three weeks time. We started with a huge set representing the Chelsea arts ball. And that was the beginning of the affair and the subsequent marriage of David Lean and and Todd David had never met and Todd before they just knew very little about another incident that happened on that film was Trevor Howard. We were shooting a scene with the entrance to the Chelsea arts Mall. And Trevor Howard turns up with Anton he's in dinner jacket and scarf and so on. And Trevor Howard in his dressing room was trying to open the window to let some more air in. And his he broke the glass and the glass cut the main artery in his wrist. And he came out into the corridor with blood spurting about 1015 feet it spits out like a like like a project we had to send for it for for for a doctor and she stitched it up and he was a bit pale and David said well we can shoot we can put circuits. So in the scene in the film, his scarf is over his arm. So you're in a rather pale Trevor Howard appears in that scene because it was a bit of a shock to him. Now this reminds me of something on Oliver Twist and it'll be alright if I go back to Oliver Twist. One of the record the beginning of Oliver Twist starts with in the book The birth of the little boy called Oliver in in workhouse. Now the sequence of leading up to that for the film was written for you invented by Kay Walsh because David Lean couldn't think of how to start the picture beyond a rather flat start in workouts and she got the idea of the pregnant girl coming over hill and seeing in the distance workouts like

scar from so on. And Trevor Howard in his dressing room, was trying to open the window to let some more air in. And he's he broke the glass and the glass cut the main artery in his wrist. And he came out into the corridor with blood spurting about 1015 feet it spits out like a like, like a protect, we had to send for him for for for a doctor. And she stitched it up and he was a bit pale and David so well we can shoot we can put circus. So in the scene in the film, his scarf is over his arm. So a rather pale Trevor Howard appears in that scene because it was a bit of a shock to him. Now this reminds me of something on Oliver Twist and it'll be alright if I go back to Oliver Twist. One of the record the beginning of Oliver Twist, starts with in the book The birth of the little boy called Oliver in in workhouse. Now, the sequence of leading up to that for the film was written or invented by Kay Walsh. Because David Lean couldn't think of how to start the picture beyond a rather flat start in workhouse and she got the idea of the pregnant girl coming over a hill and seeing in the distance work house life

End of Side 2

Side 3

Dave Robson  0:00  
Side 3

Norman Spencer  0:02  
The opening of Oliver Twist, required, the sequence showed a pregnant girl walking through a storm with bushes and thorns, until she sees a faint light in the distance the period is about 1840 1850. And this faint light in the distance when she gets to it is the workhouse. And in the film, what happens is we see her the gates opening and letting her in and you  cut to the cry of a newborn child. And she's in a horrible little truck or bed in filthy clothes. And she's just given birth. Now the film requires a newborn baby. And so David said to me, Norman, how on earth you're gonna get a newborn baby? And I said, Well, I think the best thing I can do atPinewood is to ring up the local doctors in the area, which Oxbridge and so on, and say if you've got any patients that are just about to give birth, and if so we'll see whether I can go and talk to them. And so I the first person I rang was a doctor Shipman, a lady doctor in Denham,  who I knew and I thought I'd ask her advice, and she said, Norman, I am about to give birth in three weeks time. And with pleasure you can have my baby this was Dr. Shipman husband was also adopted Dr. Useless Shipman was away. So when she gave birth, it was a it was a girl .That didn't matter. It's meant to be a boy in the film. What we arranged was that we would take a little piece of, of a flat of a filthy wall, I mean, a plaster wall down to her sitting room  like this, set it up, take a couple of lamps, the truckle bed, the actress and the the cameras of course, and the lights were didn't have to be terribly bright. And at the right, this was about the baby was three days old, I think. The right moment, you know, she'd lay the baby down in the arms of the actress, and we'd shoot which is what we did. And so the actual scenes of the baby are shot in Dr. Phyllis Shipman's sitting room were but cut into the thing. And that was the film now. That child grew up it was a girl and she named it Olivia. Because she was Oliver in the film. Olivia must be now in her getting on for a 30s I suppose now. And later on. Dr. Eustace Shipman, her husband, the marriage, I think, faded but because of the film connection, Dr. Eustace Shipman became the doctor on the unit of the Bridge on the River Kwai, purely through that connection of volumous was extraordinary to doctors who see me in practice together at Denham. Now, that's the story of of Oliver Twist. Now I'm, I go back to the passionate friends. Now, the passionate friends as I explained, Ronnie near David Lean started and we started with this sequence in the Albert Hall. Previous to that, while Ronnie NIEM was the director, I had gotten with Ronnie name and Eric Ambler, the writer and the producer at that time to France to choose locations for the film, which was still valid in the David Lean version. They were we we looked at some areas near that lake of Annecy. And we finally decided on a little beautiful little village on a lake side there called terawatt, which is spelled t a double l o. R. E. S. And John Bryan again the art director, built the set, built a set on a hillside overlooking the lake which was the terrace of a big hotel. We any scenes we shot the other way facing towards the hotel was shot on a hotel, but all the scenes on the terrorist was shot out with this wonderful lake in the background when the terrorist was dressed with flowers and so on. I was in charge of all this I speak French so it was it was alright dealing with the French people there. We had scenes on the lake with a with a Chris Craft and so on. Now, when David Lean took over the picture, he was still happy with those locations because they really were good and he had a lovely relationship with John Bryan and we went out there now David Lean had left. I'd left Kay Walsh by this time and in the shooting in the studio, which came before the shooting on vacation. he'd fallen in love Have we then Todd. So when we got to the location, and Todd wanted her rotten in the hotel is the wonderful French hotel there an old man who are beautiful hotel, she wanted me to arrange that the number on her dressing room on her hotel room was number seven, whatever the real number was, because she was superstitious, because she'd made a big success in the seventh fail. Therefore seven became her number. And David was arranged would have the room next to her become number eight, I suppose. I don't know what they numbered it. But they had a love affair on that film. Now, we had very bad weather out in Tel LA and Ronald NEMA, who was the producer, then as he said, after being the director kept ringing me up from London and saying Norman country hated him and I said, Ronnie, I can't do anything that it's it's raining steroids. You couldn't shoot that thing and Ray, but in the end, we did get good weather. We went up Mont Blanc, we shot on the tops of mountains we shot we had to go up by what's called teleferico the cable railway and there's one mountain top we shot on which is joined to another mountain top by huge looping cable railway. And I remember David was coming back after looking around with two of the camera boys and all the equipment when the power failed in the in the cable car system when he was in the middle of this huge loop. And it stopped with a jam and swung like a huge pendulum and poor David labels as white as a sheet he thought his last day had come but they managed to get the power on again after about half an hour. And it finished its journey to the to the Bayes net was the passionate friends. We shot in the studio Claude Rains this consummate professional that he is Trevor hard. And of course that was the beginning of the marriage of David Lean and then Todd after that film. Right now that's, I think gonna

Teddy Darvis  7:17  
be ready to go on topic.

Norman Spencer  7:21  
Now a whole new chapter opened really in the life of David Lean with a marriage to en Todd because David who'd been a little bit of a gypsy, and is not a form of man by any means found him if they found a house together. In Ilchester place in Kensington, David Leanne started wearing dinner jackets in the evening when they went out for dinner. And Todd had a Rolls Royce which David Lee in common did. And when she had to go anywhere, she took taxes and he went everywhere driving his own driving her dark green rose Royce. And she wanted very much to make a film. And she saw obviously herself as she the actress, he the director, he should make films with her starring or at least one film with her starring, if not more, rather, like Valerie Hobson and Antony have a look Alan. So she persuaded David to make a film of the story of Madeline Smith. She was a Scottish woman in 1860, who was accused of poisoning her lover. But in the Scottish courts, they have a they have a verdict, which is not proven. And that was the verdict because so nobody knew whether she did or not anyone. They decided to get this written. David worked I think was Stanley Haynes again. On the screenplay from the real story of Madeline's method film was called Madeline starring. And Todd. It was it was the true story of this woman who was the daughter of a rich Glaswegian merchant in 1850. Or I think it was 1850, who had this lover unbeknownst to her father, her strict father who was to visit her at night and when she got tired of him, the the accusation was that she had murdered him because he was found dead with a lot of us a lot of arsenic in his body. And she'd the previous week had been buying arsenic at the local chemist saying it was to kill rats. Anyway, it was never it was a highly melodramatic story. We got a Frenchman from France, a lovely man who spoke fluent English scored even Disney d s, N Y. And I remember that time Arthur rank had started a new system in his studios instead of everybody taking their two weeks A holiday ad hoc as it came up, he decided, or John Davis had decided perhaps the best thing to do was to shut the studios down for two weeks so that wherever any film was, at a certain two weeks in August, the whole studio shut, and everybody went holiday, our mass, I went down, drove down to the south of France. I remember with my wife, Yvonne Disney gave me a present of the mission. Our red book was he said, you like it then. So but I mean, that was now ranked continued that for I think only two years and then went back to the old system, which was much better, which is where people took holidays as and when they could. And production wasn't interfered with. But it was a it was a idea of John Davis that they might save money doing it this way. But they found they didn't. Typical, absolutely, absolutely. Sorry. So that was Mandy. Now Madalyn Smith was or Madeline, as it was called, also marked another thing it was their marriage started to go wrong when they were directing scenes because and Todd and David Lee had different creative viewpoints on things David has never been or never was a huge admirer of actors, only certain actors. And and Todd would say things like, Well, you see, you don't understand actors don't realise that nobody would sit down. And when you say I should sit down I, I should walk over there. And then I should sit down and no big, big arguments about staging went on such terrible arguments that so one day we even stopped shooting at about 11 o'clock in the morning and did nothing for the rest of the day. Let everybody cool off very unpleasant. But it was the beginning of the breakup, excuse me of their marriage. So Madalyn just was not really a successful picture. I think it's the one David Lean picture that really wasn't 100. But it's it's beautifully photographed by Guy green. It's very well acted by Claude Raines and Trevor Howard. And Todd is finding it really, it's not really compelling. And one doesn't really mind very much whether Madeline Smith got got her desserts or not. It wasn't I mean, it looked good. It looked a nice picture. But it but but it wasn't all there. Well. And now that was that was really Madeline Smith. Now, wow. Isn't

Teddy Darvis  12:31  
it here when rank dropped? David Lehman?

Norman Spencer  12:36  
Yes. Well, it wasn't kind of dropping. What what happened was, it coincided with David's always had this terrible problem to him, or what he calls constipation. He could never decide or not decide he could never find a subject to make into films. I used to go with him into her charge the bookshop in Piccadilly and he'd say is the impacting maybe within three feet of us is the most marvellous idea for film, but where is it? You know, people would send him things to read. I used to read book after book. It was his great problem was to decide what to make. And it was around about this time when Madeline finished and it wasn't a successful picture. And David's contract was coming to an end at the changeover was made to join Alexander Korda because David had always had an enormous respect for Korda, and he somehow the Rank Organisation with John Darby and AJ Arthur rank knew nothing about films. John Davis was an accountant who didn't know anything about films. And David just got disenchanted. His marriage was going wrong. Everything combined to make him see pastures new. And he went to we got Korda was delighted to have him and I remember going with him and meeting with Korda for the first time except that we'd all met before. And I thought to myself how funny years ago I was an extra seeing you directing the film. Talking to you, it was David Leeds associate producer and so on. And called I then had all sorts of ideas. He said, David, I've always thought there's a wonderful film to be made about the Taj Mahal, about Sharjah huntin who built it, who was in love with his wonderful wife and so on. And David, you know, takes fire and ideas and he said assets he said well David Why don't you go out to India go and we'll pay all the thing you'll go and spend six weeks in India go and have a look at the Taj Mahal or I think I think Vincent was going out with him to your well they did and David looked at this but nothing actually came of it to the could never really get a script idea going David at the same time, I think went to the cell The East Asian Film Festival on his way there on his way back. And he'd read a book, called the wind cannot read by an author called Richard Mason, which is a marvellous story. It was made later by Betty box and Ralph Thomas from a rejected script. And it was a very poor film, but it was a wonderful love story between a Japanese girl and a young English craftsman. And at the southeast Eastern Asian Film Festival, David came across a marvellous Japanese actress he was full of admiration for she was a huge name in Japan. Her name was Keiko Kishi? That's ke IKOKISHI. But they always caught it kisi ke ko because the Japanese put the surname first and they wish it but her I mean her her Christian name if you can call that about Japanese was Keiko. I thought

Teddy Darvis  16:03  
that that wind cannot read came after summer madness the idea that we proceed maybe made it sound barrier, Hobson's choice and can you stop it for me? All

Norman Spencer  16:18  
right, Teddy. All right. When David Lean started to work with Alexander Korda, the great thing, of course, was to find a subject to bake. And I've already explained that Korda tried the idea of the Taj Mahal, which didn't really work. Now, we then talked about Lawrence of Arabia, because when I worked with David Lean, at various times, we'd often talked about, we talked about all sorts of subjects. We talked about making a story, not a documentary, a story about the conquest of Everest, and we talked about strange it's been in the, in the press recently, Irving and Mallory who went up and nobody knew whether they reached submit or not, and all they found was Mallory's ice pick. Now recently, in well, I'm talking now in 1999. They've discovered the body of Mallory. That was a story which we couldn't get a good script out of in some way. And also at the same time, Richard Zanuck, in Hollywood had made a film called The White Tower, which was about mountaineering, and that rather, took the edge off that now Lawrence of Arabia we'd often talked about as a possible subject. We'd also talked about making a film of Gandy long before. Richard Attenborough came together. And these were discussed with Korda and he was interested in the Lawrence of Arabia idea. And he even years ago, I think, told us he'd had a script written by Arthur Woodbridge, is it or some name right there, based upon the Lawrence idea, but something had gone wrong, CLIFFORD

EVANS was going to play a lot louder. It was like Lawrence Wright, right.

And, but that came to nothing. And then David came up with the idea. You see, I used to go, when we were preteen between productions, I was then now associate producer today, Ridley and I used to go to David's house every day, while the Mary's was still on with and Todd. And we'd sit in his study and have a cup of coffee every morning and chew over all sorts of ideas, and so on. And David has always been a great admirer of sort of the technological revolution and so on. And we then saw in the evening papers one day that Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the son of can't remember his father's name, but the de Havilland aircraft company, had been killed by what the Evening Standard called the sound barrier. It was a sort of journalistic name for something up in the sky. When planes go faster than sound. It had hit it and killed him. And David said, as an idea. So we got interested in this sound barrier. And he talked to everybody around said, Well, how can you make a film? I mean, you can make a documentary about oh, and David was very also impressed by English inventions. And Frank Whittle who'd invented the jet engine was somebody who said, you know, the invention of the jet engine is a marvellous thing. It's like the invention of radar. We do these things wonderfully in England. I'd love to make a film about a jet engine. And everybody said, Well, you can make a documentary but how can I make a film about a jet engine? Anyway, we talked to Korda about this, and Korda, who's who, who really is a marvellous man in many ways. He said, You know what we ought to do? Let's talk To Terence Rattigan. Terence Rattigan is a great playwright. He's an inventive creative person. He was in the fry in the war. He's written plays about flying. Let's see if we can't. This was done. Terry Ratigan, David and I and Terry Ratigan, spent a lot of time at Terry radicans, flat in Eaton place. And out of it came a story which Ratigan wrote about a man who's a pilot, who's the son of a Sir Geoffrey de Havilland type of men, and so on. And it didn't quite work. But we showed it to Korda, and called us with great brilliance, I think he said, you know what's wrong? Instead of it being a son, it should be a daughter, but the son should be the son in law, which puts him at what I named Terry erratic and said, God, why didn't I think of that, it makes the whole thing work. And it didn't work properly before. And that was just quarters, off the cuff. And so the script was written. I thought it was a bit boxy and sort of theatrical, and on the ground when David was keen on showing these wonderful aircraft flying to the stars, and the sound barrier, and I remember, I think it's quote in the daily book, I remember writing a sort of letter to David trying to put my thoughts into words, which I did, and he showed it to Ratigan, who congratulated me and said, Norman, you're quite right. I'm so used to writing for the stage. It's confines like that, that I rather lifted out. And it was a new draft was written which encompass the the flying and gave it it's for you, we had the wonderful. In the first script, we had the wonderful drama of the people on the ground, but we didn't have anything much in the air that was just an ancillary thing. And this element was put in so it became a story of fly as well as and the sound barrier was made cold it was delighted with it. It we had an Todd Ralph Richardson, Nigel, Patrick, Patrick, John, Justin, Dinah Sheridan, the ex wife of John Davis. And

Teddy Darvis  22:26  
I remember because I started that we had all these conference rooms, you had great difficulty in those days to fit the big camera into the planes. So if you'd like to talk about yes

Norman Spencer  22:38  
at all, well, I'd Yes. First of all, I want to talk David became we. Before we got down to shooting, we went to the show at Farnborough, which is put on every year by an organised organisation called The Society of British aircraft constructors. That's the big flying circus and the that's when the new aircraft from France and Japan and Russia shown when the British aircraft is shown, and it's run the aircraft then we're all the all the new British aircraft and fighter planes were organised by the Ministry of Supply. So we had to make friends with the Ministry of Supply and the society of aircraft constructors. They are directors a man called Edward bowyer, who was terribly helpful. And he said, Well, the first thing David you want to do ought to do is to meet the test pilots. So these wonderful test pilots, the de Havilland test pilot was a marvellous chap called John Derry, who sadly was killed in a terrible accident at one of the Farnborough shows three or four years later, when he put the Hamilton aircraft to tighter turn or something. The engineers throughout the plane disintegrated, killed people and maim them on the ground. He was killed so but we worked with John dairy a great deal. And David was very struck with John dairy because he just bought he said, I must show you my new car. And his two car was an old 1922 Rolls Royce with a stuffing coming out of the seats. And he was so proud of this. And David said, Isn't the extraordinary is this chap flying at the speed of sound every day? And his delight is this terrible old raggedy Rolls Royce. It's with wooden steering wheel and straw coming out of the seats and water. And we met and now the test pilots were. Then we went to a company called Vickers Supermarine. And the test pilot was a man called Mike Lythgoe. Li t HGOW. Who was their test pilot they were sure Bolton airfield the there was another test pilot called grave Morgan Quill, Jeffrey quill we met who'd been the tester of the Spitfire. Jeffrey quill told us a story about the design In the Spitfire, before it was named the Spitfire was designed by a famous designer of I think the name was Edwards. And they've got this wonderful new plane called the AR 600 or something. And he said, Edwards came to me one day in disgust and said, I've got a letter here from the Ministry of Supply. We've got it. We've got to call the our 600. Spitfires. It can you think of a more horrible thing Spitfire, corny name to give to this play in the air. But the Spitfire, of course, became world famous. But their first thought was how powerful that was Jeffery Quill, there was another test pilot called Mike Wilson, I got to know them more and they're great friends. Subsequently, John Derry was killed. Mike Lythgoe was killed the plane he was in. I can't remember which one it was testing long after film was finished, pancaked down to the ground and killed him. Dave Morgan is still alive. Dave Morgan, they were wonderful, happy chaps. They they weren't anything like the old bang on whiz on fly by the seat of the pants pilots of the Air Force. They were much more technological chaps. But Dave Morgan always amused me by saying he said, I'm having a quarrel with my bank manager because they're always shorted money. He said he's run me up and said, I've got to do this. And I've said, Look, every month I put all my bills into a hat. And I take one out and pay it. I'm not going to put you in the hat if you've talked to. And we got a wonderful relationship with his test pilots going and they helped in the writing of the script by talking about various things. Now the great problem arose how were we to shoot these this? The aircraft we decided was to be the star of the film which Terence Rattigan had named Prometheus, because they all had a name. And we chose the vicar, super Marine 535 I think it was, and how will we to shoot it because the Minister of supply said, we can't interrupt our training and our testing programme. They were testing this aircraft, which looked lovely, it's the star of the film. And so the pilots, Mike lisco, in this case, said don't worry, he said, when every time we test, we tell you the days we're gonna test and you come down, and you come up in the air and on the way to testing and on the way back, we can do a lot of shooting and and it was all done under the counter that in that way. I mean, everybody's happy the Minister of supply said, Oh, well, we don't mind you photographing the aircraft as it takes off and lands and that's what they thought we were doing. Now. David Lean also, Teddy knows as much about this, perhaps as I do, David want. He said, I don't want to photograph these planes in the conventional way, which is sort of three quarter shots to do near I want to give somehow the immensity of space, the sky, and at great heights that they go up to. And he said, I think we ought to photograph them so they just a little image in the middle of a big screen. Now. Through my brother Ronnie, I got to know. Anthony. What was the name of his name? Who did the flying work and to me, Squire. Antony squire. And Anthony squire had been a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, I think during the war, and he was a second unit director, and he was the man who wanted to become a director. And David said, Look, we need a really good chap, and I introduced him to Tony squat. And they got along well, and didn't totally squat. I took fire on David's idea of how to shoot it, the so on. And so a second unit was put together. I think my brother was involved. Ronald Spencer was a system director. We got an aircraft called a Valetta va le WTA, which was the military version of the old vi counter twin twin screw plane, but it will could fly with its big door open. So we managed to put the crew in there. They were rigged up with oxygen, lots of tubes and also tubes to stop them falling out of the plane. And the camera was put in the doorway with the gym, bald head and so on, or gimbal head. And we found that by going as high as it could, he couldn't go higher than 18,000 feet. Because then it was as the pilots called it hanging on his air screws. But we could we could have Mike Lythgoe in the vicar Supermarine at that height too. And with the vicar super marine going as slow as he could, and with a Valetta going as fast as it could. They could just about keep together. It's extraordinary difference between a jet aircraft and the thing. And I remember one occasion When they were filming at Joe Bolden, they'd been up high and they came down and one of the camera boys it almost got frostbite. It's colder see where the door open. They had heated suits, but it was a terrible tangle in the aircraft because there were the oxygen pipes. There were the wires for the heated suits. There was a wire for the camera or the boxes that cap. It was a great sort of muddling. But But it worked very well. I remember I had to take the brown to the nearest pub and give them all brandy or something for them out before they went up again. And do you want to stop about now? How much more so that was the sound barrier. We did a lot of location filming we shot. We had meetings also with Sir Geoffrey de Havilland because that was still operating then we explained to him that we weren't making a story of about him, or about his son who was killed at this was an entirely fictitious story. He read the script and liked it very much. We made friends as I said, with all the test pilots, we did location shooting. We shot with all sorts of aircraft we shot with Tiger moths to an airfield at Cobham in sorry, we shot with the vicar super marine or was out of the chill bulk near field. Mike Lythgoe also flew another aircraft, which was used as a bit of transport between to and fro an old an old aeroplane with one propeller they called the Flying bedstead that was his name for it, and then he'd get into this great sleep thing and through we've we we managed to get to the the the explosion, you know the sound, bang, the bang in the air and so on. We shot it to HoloLens aircraft factory, we had to we have a scene in the film in which Nigel Patrick takes his wife played by en Todd on a trip to Cairo in a Vicar's vampire. And it's a very good sequence in the film. And they go he says, look down that's Paris from eight miles up. Now we needed a shot of Paris from eight miles up. So what happened was we managed to get a mosquito aircraft, one of those wonderful wartime fighter bombers made entirely of wood, I think. And we took a cameraman called Peter Newberg and Tony square, and they flew over Paris, I don't think they were eight miles up, but they were very, very high. And we have a shot in the film of Paris. Teddy knows well from that thing, and

we also got permission to use the comet. Now the comet, airliner was just in prototype then. It wasn't it wasn't in service, it had just been, as it were finished the wonderful new aircraft with the four engine set in the wings, so it was beautifully streamlined. We got we were allowed to shoot that. And at the end of the film, publicity thing was made which was very successful. The publicity department arranged through in Paris that the all the prison papers would carry a story that on the whatever the date was, say the 23rd of March look up, you will hear a different sound in the sky, because it's hard to think of it now. But in those days, the sound of a jet engine was totally new. We'd never nobody really heard it, and we got permission to fly. The first comment that went into service would be Oh AC British Overseas airways Corporation, and their production test pilot which is different to the to the prototype test pilots a man called Captain imagined D who was in brbc uniform he flew the aircraft to Paris, Alexander Korda came on the plane. The man who was called the fastest man on earth, Neville Duke, who was a test pilot came on with his wife, three other test pilots and their wives, David Lean, and Todd myself, we flew from the HoloLens from the aircraft factory to Paris. We sit we got permission to fly down the shores and easy at 500 feet which is very low and very rarely done in cities we got permission from the French authorities. We went round the Eiffel Tower within a steep bank at the same height as the Eiffel Tower so you could see the people on the tower and the the Eiffel Tower the shores and these a the traffic stopped, we could look down and there but everybody was stopped this strange noise this strange aircraft, totally new to everybody that time. And then when we done these little bit of simple aerobatics over Paris, showing off the plane, we landed at Orly Airport, and as we taxied in with this strange wind of the jet, which is now so familiar to everybody, but then was absolutely new. There were crowds of people watching people standing everywhere. And when corder and David Lean and and Todd went out on the steps to come down, they weren't masses of photographers. It was a hugely successful publicity thing for the sound barrier. And it was really, really exciting to be on. I remember we were taken to a great lunch at the big restaurant near the near notre DOM. And and then we were flight back and I remember Alexander Korda saying to me, before we set off in the morning, he said, Norman, why don't you and the all the boys sit at the back, because that's the safe spot. He said, You're already young. And I'm old. If something happens, you'll be safe. And I won't. I mean, it was it was just the tremulous feeling of a man like quarter getting into, after all a brand new plane that hadn't gotten into service yet. And thinking well, you know what may happen? So you boys go to the safe spot the back I'm an old man. Awesome. But we didn't of course, we all sat around in the plane. Comfortable positions with each other. Now, just let me think what else on the sound barrier? The it's it was yes, it was a it was a successful film was no, it was yes. It's extraordinary. Because when you look at it now and I saw it only the other day. I mean, it's far from what Sir Arthur Jarrett said is a documentary about flying. I mean, flying is and the and the the heroics of flying and the understated heroics of test flying are so melded into the story. Ralph Richard Richardson was extremely good in it. Terence Rattigan put put in, in one sequence at dinner. A very simple explanation of what the sound barrier is, or what the speed of sound means, which was beautifully done and is clear as a builder anybody. Denham Eliot was in it as the young son who gets killed in the Tiger Moth was the one model shot we had in the in the film was the actual crash of the Tiger monster, which was done by by a model especially faked the actual crash itself, the Tiger Moth sequence David even had a camera up in the plane set in the wings so that so that he could he could photograph dead Amelia when he was presumably flying the plane and so on. Anyway, that was the end of that now then came along the next hiatus in David's life, what's the next subject? Now he suddenly came up one day with an idea to me I didn't think it was a good idea at all. He said I've just seen or read. I don't know perhaps he'd seen a little Lancashire comedy called Hobson's choice.

Teddy Darvis  38:01  
And it was David Lin Korda had got the rights for Wilfred pickles, right right. And it was he never got made and and Korda said to David, here's the love story you want to

Norman Spencer  38:15  
make that said and David. David found it was on somewhere somewhere north and he'd gone to see it where they were then because then we're still around them. And ice I mean, I read Yeah, I knew it. I'd seen as such. It's an old chestnut really Hobson's choice and I thought, I don't know you know, here we're talking about faster than sound and the modern tech nation he has this old quarry Lancashire comedy funny, yes, but kind of, but anyway. Korda tried it out on Sir Arthur Jarrett who thought it was a good idea. He probably thought it's a good idea because it had lasted so long and had been enormously popular wherever it was shown. You don't know. Anyway. Now, Hobson's choice right? We decided we caught a said there's a writer called when yard brown that spelled wy n AR D and brown with an E on the end. And his wife they work together and I think they'd written a script record there was it was it home at seven or which which Robin Lowe always says quarter always called Seven at home because he couldn't be bothered together. He they'd written script. So when you're David Lean, and I had an office at 146, Piccadilly on the first floor, and when your brown came and worked with us, and after about 10 days, David said to me, I can't get on with these people at all. You know, they're, they're too small minded for this and then it didn't work. And he said, you know, you and I can do it. After all. There's the bits of wonderful play. We've only got to adapt to a good play. Go film script so it's the one film in which I get screenwriter credit is Hobson's choice because when you're Brown got credit because of the contract but actually he didn't write it David Lean and I wrote it and I remember David Lean suddenly becoming all over Yorkshire and saying, I like to buy Golden Knights God and all that sort of stuff he really got under the skin of Hobson's choice. We wrote the screenplay I wrote, there's a line of mine in it. I know because when in the story when Willie Mossop starts his own enterprise with a daughter, old Hobson is so upset by it. And we devised a scene with Willie Masak giving up leaflets and old Hobson knocks him down or something happens and the leaflets fly all over the place and there's a line we details his crony in the pub, he said i i Was it I gave the governor the great lover a great kick on the ass or something. I have some anyway. And the film was shot at Shepperton course which was called a studio then Teddy Teddy was on the picture. So the assembly Catherine web assembly Catherine Yes. And

Teddy Darvis  41:19  
the credit as a dubbing editor. Did you didn't get Oh, you didn't? They would say it wasn't an important enough film. For a sound that is it to get the credit. Oh,

Norman Spencer  41:28  
that's a pity because uh my one caught my contribution apart from my contribution the script which many lines into demand was when we Oh, yes. First of all to David's idea when we talked about the film we're writing the script was to have just forgotten the name of of the eye. He wanted to have them the actor Teddy, y'all know his name? No. Yes, Robert Donette for Willie masa. But he wanted to have the man who played Colonel blimp in the life and death of Colonel blue. Yes, actor can't think of his dancing, but anyway, he wanted him to be Hobson. And I just seen a very good Hollywood picture with three Oh Henry stories in which Charles Laughton played the part of a hobo, but hobo fat but rather elegant Ayers, who has nowhere to live, he's broke, he sleeps in park benches, and he wants to go to prison for the winter because the Winter's coming on it'll be warm in prison. So he goes into a big restaurant, swats himself up he's got all the as he orders a wonderful meal. A brand afterwards sips the brand equals for the bill, checks it all off, says Bring me a cigar, gets a cigar chicks are off and then says I can't pay I've got no money. So they sent him to prison that was there. And he was so good in this that I said to to David Charles Laughton would be miles better than this actor whose name we can't think of will in a minute. And he said, Oh, yes, but he was a bit scared at the idea of having Charles Laughton and I said, but obviously he's larger than life. He's, you know, he's he comes from Yorkshire, and this is about Lancashire. And there's not a lot between the me and over the screen. And so finally we talked a quarter about in quarter said always, she said Charlie's wonderful, remembering the private life with him with the eighth. He said, The thing you'll find about Charlie Lawton as he called him, is that the difficult things he does like that, but anything easy, he'll drive you're mad because he takes hours and hours and hours. He said, I had a scene in Henry Henry the Eighth, I think it was in which he had to come into into a room panting because he'd been running. And he said, Do you think he could do it? And he insisted on going outside and running right around the studio. So you could paint with thing and come in and he said, Can you believe it? I just wanted him to paint as though he just been running across the courtyard or something and he had to run well, but but he said any other difficult scenes. He's a gem. We'll do it like that. And so we cast Charles Laughton. Now Charles Laughton had one worry. In the film, there's a scene in which he has to fall down a cellar of his great rival in this town, and how, again, the same thing how to fall down the cellar. So he said, Do you know, Norman, if we could get hold of an old musical character called we did in fact, chap called Charles Russell. He said, I've got an idea of doing the funny double step that the that the video they did on musicals was Billy Russell, not child's Little Billy Russell, was it? Yes. Billy Russell, sorry, but it's not. It's Billy Russell. Now, Billy Russell worked with Charles Laughton for three or four days on this And when when when he did it. And when we came to the music and the idea of the music I said to David, you know what I think we should have over this musical thing is the sort of light tripping violins that they put on people on the high wire, you know, in music or not you did. And we all thought that was a good idea. So we can Malcolm Arnold compose that music for Naughton, heavy stop fat lot and falling down the thing

End of Side 3

Side 4

Norman Spencer  0:01  
For so far, one of the things on constants choice was the music. And we had a composer called Malcolm Arnold who's gone on to become a rather famous composer now. And he, David Lean had shot the sequence of Lorton coming out of the pub, and seeing the moon reflected in puddles. The Moon, which was a device invented by the cameraman, I think, was Jack Hilliard. He had a great disk illuminated disc put up high, so it could be reflected in a pool of water, which looked like the moon. And Malcolm Arnold said to me, I got an idea of something rather interesting for the music with this, I'm going to use a musical saw. And I think we got a man over from Paris or somewhere in Belgium, who was an expert on the musical saw playing this, this funny sort of music which fitted so beautifully into the moon, and of course, all the critics wherever. I've talked about this wonderful sequence of Lawton and the moon in the puddle and the drunken Lawton and so on. Now, Hobson's choice. I don't think there's anything more I can say about Hobson's choice. Teddy, you don't remember anything that I've left out in that no, nothing special, but I mean, the film was a great success. Oh, yes, I do. Remember one thing I remember that the picture openers with rain and storm lashing a bookshop in Manchester with a swinging sign of a boot. And then the camera goes inside as I remember and the door opens and the figure a big figure which is locked in appears and there's a stupendous Belch. Now, we lost and couldn't Belch and we got ahold of a chap called Peter Taylor. There's the editor who who's what you're saying? Yes, yeah. Who could belts to order and, and well,

Teddy Davis  2:07  
he we tried it and couldn't Belch and we got in warm Coca Cola and all of us drank went to get gassy. And the minute I said, cut it because no belches were coming, that when the camera wasn't running, all of us stick long belts.

Norman Spencer  2:27  
Anyway, that's wonderful belts, which is a marvellous way to open a comedy, comedy. And it was something else about Hobson's choice, but I can't remember. Just one minute, can you stop just Just one second? Of course, it's well known now and documented that Charles Laughton was a well known homosexual. And one of the reasons what happened was that, originally in the film, Robert Donette, was contracted to play the part of Willie Mossop. But he developed a terrible attack of asthma, which was his great bane of his life. And he became so ill he couldn't play the part. And David Lean said, at the last minute, why don't we try John Mills, we'd always thought that John Mills who, over the years we'd worked with him and sort of performed I mean, John Mills, for example, would do a wonderful impersonation of Chaplin better than anybody I've ever seen. He had that quick death little finger. And John Mills played the part we gave him a terrible haircut with his hair, standing up at the back and lower his forehead and made him look a real goon. And Lawton when he heard about this, said, I'm sorry, I'm not doing the film. I was contracted to appear with Robert Donette, who's a big actor, and corder, and this is documented in the David Lean book, intimated to Norton, that if he didn't, if he reneged on his contract, then corder was going to reveal certain homosexual practices. He knew about law, and he put the squeeze on him that way, and that is why Lauren came over. I met Lawton at Heathrow and I took him to lunch at the White Tower in thing. Now Norton stayed at the Great Railway hotel Paddington. And the reason he did that is because when Lawton was young, his parents kept a boarding house and then it turned into a hotel, and the hotel was finally sold to the Great Western Railway, and with some arrangements, so that Lawton could always stay at a reduced price at a great western hotels, so he stayed the Great Western hotel Paddington, which was a huge but rather dreary hotel with horsehair sofas, but that's where he stayed at a beneficial rate and got along with him famously, he was as happy as assemble him The whole film and that was it and I think that's about all I can remember about about

Teddy Davis  5:07  
render the render the band shows up.

Norman Spencer  5:09  
Thank you Teddy, Brenda dependency who played the part of Maggie, the chief sister, and the motivator of the whole thing, really. David, and Charlie Norton got together in a sort of actor ish way. And David began to get a sort of hate against Brenda dependency, and a love for Charlie Lawton. So it everything Lawton did was marvellous, and everything Brenda do banzi did was wrong. And Lawton in a rather wicked and gleeful way rather connived in this and he'd say to David, she's not doing that very well. You know, why don't you get an e cig or you're right. And David got completely bowled over by this. And poor Brenda dependency, I thought was pretty good in the film. She was stern, she had the right approach. I know there are other aspects of her that I don't know about, but I didn't think she was bad but

Teddy Davis  6:06  
she was good but she was a pain on the stage.

Norman Spencer  6:09  
She was a bit of a pain when she was some she was demanding. But she wasn't demanding to the extent to which I'm coming to with summertime like Katharine Hepburn and mitre she hadn't got the reputation or the star quality or, or ability of Katharine Hepburn but she was a pain but she wasn't she I mean, I've seen worse to be honest. I thought she was she was hard done by really because she got she she sets this atmosphere, which wasn't very pleasant, and that made her a little bit worse. But she was good. I mean, after all, Maggie is a masterful woman. And Brenda's a masterful woman in the to fitted rather well. You know. The little girl who played the youngest daughter, Prunella scales was almost her first picture. I

Teddy Davis  7:00  
think it was over.

Norman Spencer  7:01  
What's her first picture? Yes, she was good. Andy, I forget the name of the second Destiny daft and this definitely ends. Thank you, Ted. You know, Ted should be doing this or not me. Definitely add this in quite right. Definitely Anderson. We shot out we built a street Lancashire street out on the lot. I remember when we were looking for locations at the beginning of the film. We went up to Manchester. And we went to a suburb of Manchester called Salford which I didn't know never been before. Or since terrible slums. They've since been pulled out. And we were walking about and so on. And women were coming out of doorways and looking at us. And one woman asked us to come in and have a cup of tea. It was terribly poor place. And she started showing us damp patches in the ceiling. And this and she said something ought to be done. And the word had gone around that new flats were being built. And David Lena and I was surveyors who were walking around looking at which house which people should be rehoused and which shouldn't and they completely was sucking up to us because they thought we were deciding who was going into the flats out of their terrible slum houses. But all this all the all the scenes there was shocked in those in those locations, and they're wonderful. And also when we shot this sort of love scene, in inverted commas between Brenda banzi, the eldest sister, and John Mills, where they'd go out in the park on Sunday morning rather stiffly, and sit on a bench and look at the river and the rivers foaming with terrible effluent and suds. And it wasn't on that morning, so we sent out from lots and lots of packets of dares. And the prop man about a quarter of a mile up the river was throwing these days into the water. So by the time it got down to us there was foam and scum and everything that was we shot that I remember, I can't remember any other stories of Hobson's choice can have any patterns? No, I think that's about that's about that. Anyway, after Hobson's choice. Korda suggested to us that we should make a film out of a play by written by a man called author Lawrence spelled a L A u r. E n. T. S. Arthur Lawrence called The Time of the Cuckoo, which was a New York play which had a big success, starring Shirley Ann booth as a middle aged spinster schoolmistress, who goes to Venice and discovers love and sun and happiness and so on. And we read it and Korda said we I've got a script written by Arthur Lawrence, which isn't bad. And we read that and David didn't like this script at all. And he said to Alex, look, I'm interested in this story. But I'd like to redo the script. But before I redo the script, I'd like Norman and I to go to Venice and have a look at Venice because David has this, I think correct feeling that if you look at a place and get it under your skin, it persists suggests all kinds of things that that wouldn't come to you if you just sat in an office in Shepperton. So David and I went to Venice. We went on the not the Orient Express that didn't exist then. But we went by train, because there was no airfield at Venice then. I mean, there isn't now really, it's just outside venues. But we went you get offered a station called mystery. And there's a huge mile and a half long causeway into Venice. The train then goes into Venice and stops at the station in Venice. Now David had I had booked ourselves into a hotel with a re an Italian name of Bauer groom, valte Hotel, which was quite a big hotel now. Nice, not on the Grand Canal. And we got into a gondola, my punti down the Grand Canal to the little canal that led to the bar got involved. And I remember David saying, because when we looked up, there were two men with suitcases behind them and being punted along and he said, I expect everybody looking out the window thinks there's a couple of puffs down there. We stayed at the bar Grunewald, we spent about five days in Venice we had, we had a wonderful time we had some amorous adventures, which I won't recount, particularly David, rather than more than me. And we chose locations, we went back and then we sat down and we wrote the script. Now I wrote the script with David on that. Arthur Lawrence was apparently shocked beyond belief when he read our script, and said, I don't want anything more to do with this picture. They ruin my film and so on. But David had written or we'd written because we did it together, we'd written a sort of romantic story. And then we turned our attention to casting. Now the first person to cast was, who was to play the part of what was her name Teddy and in the thing, anyway, we decided caught through quarters influence, we got hold of Katharine Hepburn, who loved the idea. Then we had to cast the man in it, who's an Italian. Now in the original story, he's a roll a CD middle aged, fringed cuff down at heel chap who wanders around and prays and tourists, we didn't want that character. And our character was much more version premier as it were a sort of young, younger leading man type, and we went to Rome, and we sat in the hotel Excelsior in Rome, and various Roman a row, my agent sent us photographs of people. Now there was a producer on this picture, that Korda wanted to be the producer. And he wanted to be the producer because he was the he was the between man between Korda and a rich American millionaire called Robert Dowling, who was funding quarter at that time. And so this producer whose name was elior, lopud, that's il y a L. O. P. E. RT was, I don't know whether elior lopid had ever produced a picture before. But he was in the picture business. And he wanted to be the record and with this, because that was a chain aligned towards his finance. Ely lopud came to Rome with us, but he didn't have any creative input into the film at all. In fact, even later on when he thought were you getting behind schedule, loads, but went through the script and started tearing out all the pages that hadn't got dialogue in them thinking that was a good way to shorten the picture and make it short, he just he, he only recognised film workers, which had actual speaking lines, you couldn't see anything else. Anyway, we. We went to Rome and we cast a young actor who was comparatively alone called Rosarno brassy. It was quite pretty, a little plump. You

Teddy Davis  14:21  
also did to Vittorio De Sica, and he turned it down, because he thought it was bad publicity or Italians. Yes.

Norman Spencer  14:28  
Oh, I didn't know that. Will go there. Well, let's addition. Now result of Brad C had the most extraordinary wife called Lydia. She was just like the Michelin man. She was enormous, with great rolls of fat. And when we're in Venice, she'd wear little skimpy bikinis. But she was a masterful woman. Very amusing. Rosana brat car husband, she was his manager. She ran she wore the trousers and did everything. They seemed colossal. A woman but very amusing funny and almost pretty in a way which has been much bigger than the Baroness Woodborough got a real great the Michelin man you know anyway was on a Betsy was cast. Then we went to Venice we found some studios in a little island just off Venice called the Giudecca that spelled je IUDE cc a, it was the old Jewish Quarter, DECO, Italian for Jewish I think, or something. And there were little studios there with two stages and a primitive proper organ, which are in the hands of the receiver. And we managed through pulling strings and so on to pay off the receiver and get the use of the studios there. For whatever we wanted a few weeks. Vincent corder was the art director Wilfred Shingleton, Ising. Now these the script required a beautiful small pen Sione, you know a sort of boardinghouse, pen Sione Fiorini it was called and Korda Vincent had a very good idea we found a blank space rather like you find in London or bombsight, an empty space on the Grand Canal in Venice, and he built a wonderful, attractive terrace of a hotel on the Grand Canal so that shooting towards the Grand Canal with the terrorists, you had the background of the all the traffic on the Grand Canal going past it was a wonderful occasion. All the reverse shots were shot in these little in this little studio, where we built bit sort of Pincio new theory in the we also cast for the lady who ran the pen Sione, Isa Miranda, who was a famous film actress married to forgotten his name and Italian producer. And David had seen her in a French film with John gambang called or de la de Greil. That's au de la. de S. Gr. IW. Early Yes, in which he played a rather Slaton the waitress, but a beautiful run, and had a quality about Well, unbeknownst to Tavian. When she heard that she was in the running for this film, she'd had a facelift done. And she appeared for our first interview, looking terribly glamorous, she was about 45 I suppose maybe a little more trying to look 25 Not at all the person that David thought, but Ely Lopez thought she was good. And she is a good actress. So with misgivings, David cast her. She'd even had I had died. And she just looked quite different from the character in order law degree of this French film that she'd been in. Anyway, she played the proprietress of the Pincio. And if you're any Gavin, I can't remember the names of the actor, Gavin. Anyway, and Katharine Hepburn, of course, was cast as the spinster. And there's a small part in the beginning, which was played by Andre Morrell. Because when this we opened, I think the film opens with this, this woman, Katharine Hepburn, paying her first visit to Venice, and he's in the train going across the causeway at mastery and talking to the rather elegant English gentleman that carries about what's Venice. Like I've never been there before. This is my first visit. He said, you'll love it and so on. Just a small part for which David caused Andre Morial and then the scene when she gets to Venice and discovers that you know, there's waterways and when somebody says get the bus and she sees a boat and says that's the bus, which reminds me of a story of that famous American comedian Robert Bentley, Bentley. Yes, who went to Venice, I think for his honeymoon or something and sent a telegram to his agent saying streets full of water advise. Anyway, we shot there we we the whole crew will put up Raman Anza route a and Zed AR ut was the production manager. We stayed in various hotels I had my wife came out my two children who were I think four and six or five and seven, came out. I rented a house took over a house near the Accademia Bridge, we found an old servant, Gordana, who looked after us because that was better than and cheaper than staying in a hotel. So we lived in a house. I had an office in the little studios in the Giudecca. Every morning I just got up and walked down to the, to the edge of the water there and get a little river steamer which went across to the Giudecca. I had an office there with in the heat there with stone walls and little, I remember on the telephone watching little lizards running up the walls and down, it was all very excuse me Venetian and so on. Anyway, we shot happily there. The only trouble in Venice is that it's very slow because of the water. For example, if you we had, we had a big barge on which there was a generator to provide the generation for the lights. We had another big barge which had the lights on and the cables and so on. And another bars were the cameras, and it was really quite a clutter. And if you went all the way out to some part of Venice where the location was, and then found that dear Miss Hepburn had left a continuity scarf in the hotel, it was an hour for a boat to go back and pick the scarf up and bring it back again. Because in Venice, you're not allowed to travel more than about three miles an hour in a boat, because the wash is is is eroding the size and so everything only fire boats they have a wonderful fire boat system, which goes with a great beltway, but everything else isn't as to go very slowly. motor boats, they have funeral barges, the rubbish is carried out in big barges in the Grand Canal. And we lived in Venice for quite a while for this film now. It's a very boring place to live. It may be fun to see. But Venice is I mean, Venice produces nothing except tourism. It lives on tourism, it's got no integrity. There's a bit of glassblowing which is done in a bed is mainly for tourists. And so every fortnight Venice repeats itself. Every once a fortnight there's what is called the Grand gondola ride on the Grand Canal and there's a boat, a motorboat decorated with with greenery and so on with a tenner belting out Oh soli mio and lots of gondolas following along 30 pounds of throw with little grey haired and blue rings ladies following along and once a fortnight to see that happen. You can't get around Venice in a hurry because it's all on foot levers on the take you up to near then you have to walk and your legs get worn out. Everybody carries an umbrella because if it rains you you've got no shelter, etc umbrella there's the wheel is unknown there you just it's it's footpath. But Dennis shot, David shocked a great deal of stuff. I mean, the whole picture is a peon to Venice really isn't it?

We he wanted me to choose some music for the somebody had said we should use Rossini. So music piracy in a for the evening when Hepburn is taken out by Brad See, I chose the the overtired of the thieving Magpie like Gaza ladra and so on. That was done. Also, we, we took over a nightclub there which is called the antique Opinio low which means the old miser that was a nightclub which we shot in, in Venice, we shot the entire picture in Venice. Can I stop just one minute, it was in this nightclub was a wonderful nightclub because until midnight, it was out in the open in a square. And when when you look up through the, through the lights of the nightclub, and you'd see old ladies looking out windows, but at midnight, they had to pack up and just go indoors. And we became very friendly with the proprietors and so on. Now, the script we we talked beforehand about other films to a writer called Hae Bates. And at Bates we thought it might be a good idea to write some additional material and dialogue. So at Bates came out to Venice, and for the first week or two it was fine. And after a while all of us began to get a little tired of the continual continual Dieter shrimp some lobster and that sort of thing. And I remember at Bates one evening, saying can you imagine if we were sitting down tonight to a little shoulder spring lamb with green peas and new potatoes. We all said Oh shut up at your anyway. I can't see what happened was our producer elior Lopes, who I'm afraid is no longer with us was not a very good producer. He was he simply understood money. But I remember he asked me one evening to a party. It exactly shocked me But I was surprised because we had an Italian girl who was the stand in for Cara Katharine Hepburn. And when we went to this party to which I was invited and David Lean wasn't invited, I went, not my wife or his wife. The it was it was a kind of semi orgy. The stand in for Katharine Hepburn was start naked sitting on the chairs in this little saddle where the party was and Brad Z was rather interesting to her and I realised that this was perhaps the Italian way of making films that David leave and I up till then have that much experience of the I'm trying to think of what else happened on me on Sunday madness that's just what made the we Yes, when we are in the this nightclub, which David and I used to go to quite a lot, it was their sort of recreation. There was a very popular Italian song of the time gone. And Mr. Koray, that's a n EMA and then E on its own and then cure, which is means heart and soul and they had a kind of haunting frame. And David said, when we get to the music of this picture, I think we can't use that but I'd like to get something like it. And later on we were recommended to compose a chord Allesandro chicony which is spelled a l e s s a n de oro. See, I see oh, gee, NIJ go ne ne ne Alessandra trigone. And I remember David St. Him, can you hear no, no, no, you and I could, and he was a marvellous as an Italian composer British because it into this. He sort of picked out a tune in two minutes, which was the tune we used in the film, it just went like that. The that was all I can remember about the shooting in Venice. It was difficult. We built Yes. When Katharine Hepburn comes to this pensee only theory name for the first time, she's taken up to her room, which is on the top floor, and she opens French windows and there's a balcony and a wonderful view of Venice. Well of course, since this place didn't exist we'd built that little tiny piece of set on top of a tall building in Venice and walked up there and took the cameras up and just shot that way so that when she opened the windows we saw this wonderful wonderful View of Venice with the bells and so on. And David put in all the various things that there are in Venice so much so that when the film was finished, we got a new bubble letters from people saying we want to go and stay a dependency only fear any please give us the address. And so and of course it didn't exist. It was a set one way and the set the other one way in the open Grand Canal. Another in the studios. That was was summer madness. We shot on this on the station at Venice. The last scene of the film when Katharine Hepburn leaves and brat she runs off to her with a rose. We tried to think of any have any more. I don't think there was anything more

Teddy Davis  28:26  
didn't Katie Hepburn get to know you mentioned the labour scene

Norman Spencer  28:30  
of course, which I loved. Katie Hepburn is a scene in which she takes pictures of the shop that rizona Britse her the person she falls in love with. And she keeps going back to frame it till she falls in the canal. The great publicity at the time was Katharine Hepburn falls in a Venetian Canal, which she did very well. I mean, we threw a few old oranges and bits of straw and rubbish to make the canal look more horrible than it was. But she literally fell in and she got out and she didn't fall into the tie but she had to keep going back for retakes and closer shots and so on. That was that that got us agreement

Teddy Davis  29:12  
to get together there will Tammy infections.

Norman Spencer  29:18  
Remember that? No, she I must say poor Kate Hepburn I believe as I'm recording this is still alive. I think she's an old lady. But she was and I make no bones about it. She when she wasn't shooting and acting, which is brilliant. She was a real pain in the neck because when she she was a rather masterful and woman who never stops talking where that strident American voice and when she wasn't called on the set. She'd come down and sit on the camera and tell the camera boys how their focus or how did they focus and they'd all say For God's sake got to get rid of that woman. She kept quiet keep away. David Lean took a great liking to her because she is a great professional and she's very good. But she was. It was a pain in the neck. I was. That's all I can remember. I think some are mad. Oh yes, though the important thing. We also did some shooting on one of the one of the water buses, the directors as they're called, we had. We hired one whole Water Bus filled it with Italian extras, towed behind it a barge with a generator on so we could put lamps, even on Arclight on the direto. And we had some scenes to shoot on that. And it was while we were shooting that, or one day after shooting it David said to me, Norman, I've had a a book sent to me by an American producer called Seagull or Spiegel or something. And you know, I can't read a book now. But if you get a moment, read it and tell me what you think of it. And it was a book called it translated from the French called the Bridge on the River Kwai. And I read it over the course of the next few days whenever and I said today what is you know, quite a good story said, Well, this chap see got or speak or never heard of him before. Says he's got a wonderful cars, no cars go to play the part of the colonel. And he has he said in his letter, he's got the most marvellous script, the best script he's ever seen in his life, he said for this Bridge on the River Kwai. Anyway, that was that. And he said, I can't do anything about it now. Like he got Maggie Sibley, a shield Shipway. Or she was then to just write a letter back saying I'm too busy to read it. But when I finished the film I being touched. Well, we did finish the film. I remember leaving Venice on a November morning, with a thick white mist so thick that you could hardly see and in front of you and going in a motorboat slowly up the Grand Canal. just worried that we'd bash into something you couldn't see anything. Because I had to go out to get to the station and get a train to Milan and from Milan I had to get a train to Paris on the way back. And I remember seeing Venice as nobody sees it and a thick white British November mist so thick you could only see two yards in front of you. Now when we got back, and the editing of the picture went on and Teddy darvis knows more about that than I do. With Alexandre chicken eenie composed the music and the editing was done. It was it roamed Edie or

Teddy Davis  32:37  
no it was. It was done. at Shepperton pet Shepherd. But then we then David had to leave the country. And we finished it off. But chicken Nene, when we went to Rome to the music, we found that he hadn't done any work at all. So is the five days in Rome, I had 17 days on expenses. And every evening we had to go around to chicken in his place. And so I sent him he took stopwatch measurements, and this is in my tapes anyway. And I Pamela man who was the continuity said the production secretary had learned Italian. And she she translated all the music measurements into Italian, the first evening with elior, Lopez, everybody and one m one and he plays it on the piano and everything and I suddenly whispered to David, has he got the music measurement? So in your spare, good Italian, he says, Have you got the music measurements? And he says yes. So he went in another room, and they're still in the envelopes for all the measurements with alterations hadn't even taken them out. So it says I had to take the sword out to get the latest measurements on each one. And we had to go back to one one. Sorry.

Norman Spencer  34:06  
But I didn't know the I mean, I didn't know the detail. Yeah, that's good. Yes.

Teddy Davis  34:10  
And it had John. John Hancock's had to be the chief dubbing mixer because David couldn't be.

Norman Spencer  34:16  
I remember telling me telling me the trouble he had with him. But he be he produced a satisfactory schmaltzy sort of visuals. Yes. Which became it was played a lot on it radio played two and three. And if

Teddy Davis  34:31  
you stop me just for a second, can you Dave, can you stop it just for a second?

Norman Spencer  34:37  
By when we came back and the music was finished and the editing and summertime was quite a success. Quarter was pleased with it. I remember going back that Baroness Bitburg, who we talked about earlier, came out she was a great one for for going to a nice location she came out I'm not quite certain why she came out but she arrived one day in a gondola and stayed a few days in Venice was a friend of the quarters anyway. Anyway, the next thing was we had to deal with this some book we'd had by this man called Spiegel. And he Spiegel found out that we were back. And he sent a letter or telephone to say would David Lean? Enormous Spencer like to meet him at the apartment he was staying in in London in Grosvenor Square. Now he'd rented an apartment from a well known English singer called Zoe Gale, or was well known in the wall. And it was a big, long ground floor apartment in Grosvenor Square, just near to the American Embassy. Well, we went there at a prearranged time. Spiegel met us at the door full of Bonomi. And greetings, offered us both great cigars. I declined, David took one or more out of nerves and anything else I think and lit it and the sight of David Lean with a huge cigar that he didn't really want lit that was saying, and Spiegel told us about this marvellous script read God, which had been written by somebody called call for them that's fo r ri ma n ca RL call for that, which you said is the one of the greatest scripts I've ever dealt with. It's absolutely marvellous. And he said what I would like is for you and Norman to come to New York. He's just doing the final touches on it now. And we can see the script. And in principle, David agreed that he'd like to do the picture. If he liked the script. He'd read the book by that time. And he liked the idea thought it was a highly original idea. So in a few weeks time, I think I was held back in Shepperton at the time something to do with the finishing of the picture. David went off to New York. And he'd been there two days when at home at Red Hill cottage, I got a call from him. And he said, Norman, any chance of your being able to come over? And I said, Well, I could come over next week. Why but why? I said, What's this script? Like? I hope you don't mind me using his word. He said fucking awful. It is fucking terrible. And I said, God, told Sam, he said, Yes. I said, What did Sam say is that he went quite wide. And he said, I've told him that if he wants me to direct this picture, that script is thrown bodily out of the window. And we start again, from scratch. And I'd like you to come over and be prepared to be here for five or six weeks. And we'll start with a bloody book, page one, and we'll go right through that from the beginning. So that's what I did. I'd love for

Teddy Davis  38:00  
me, of course, was blacklisted. Yes. Because name couldn't be on it. That's right.

Norman Spencer  38:04  
That came later. Of course, at the moment in the creative bit that didn't want us people. Yes, because there's a story attached to that too, apart from the blackness. So I went to New York David hood, by that time met his Indian wife called Lila mapt. Car MLEILAM A tkr. They were living in hotel 14 on East 14th Street, New York, which is right next door to the copper cabana as a rather slightly scruffy little hotel David had a Royal Mint a sitting room a smallish, slightly scruffy sitting room. I had a room there. And we started one morning and literally took the book of Bridge on the River Kwai, out one and started writing a treatment, just the two of us there. And I remember to that when we got to the scene, which is now quite famous in the film. When the prisoners marched into the camp, David was talking about it, and he said, I wish we could have them. He said, I want to do something that shows them putting two fingers up to the Japanese. And I wish we could have them singing that old Army song, Colonel Bogey, bollocks and the same to you. A nightmare, but we can't in those days, the sensor wouldn't allow that. And he said, Well, I said, well, well, let's have them whistling it. And everybody in the know will know what it means and what they mean by whistling it. So that's how the whistling of the men marching the camp was born because that was right through the script. Anyway, we finished this and of course, during this time, Sam Spiegel was doing the heavy producer. He was a bit scary but on Morning or evening I got a call. How's it going? How's the script going? The usual press Pressure I think, and but in about six weeks or five weeks, we'd finished treatment, which was true to the book, because the script that David Lean had had from Karl foreman, and whether Foreman had written it by itself because Foreman used to keep used to work when he was in London in German street and he had an office. And there were three or four screenwriters in the basement. He used to do the work and chord form and would then digit around a bit and present it as his own work. But it was written by other people under under contract him anyway, and Spiegel liked it. Well, he could see the sensor and how much better it was keeping it to the to the truth, keeping it true to the book, and then speak or tried to get car form and back. He said, Now, you know, Carl's really interested in this, I've let him read it. And he thinks he's not sure it's right here in there. He was finagling, and he wanted to get calm and back in because there was some political arrangement between Spiegel and foreman, whereby formula done speed was some favours speaker was trying to get form and deal with Columbia Pictures to make a foreman picture. And so he didn't want to fall out with Carl form and, and he wanted him to come back on the picture. So on under the guise of a few little emendations, and alterations to the script, very small. Spiegel, ask David and I, and called Foreman to get to Paris, we'd all stayed at the shore, same hotel in Paris, and we had meetings and so on, but called Foreman and David never really hit it off, I mean, called form and didn't have anything creative from David's point of view to contribute. But he did do some work on it. And then as Teddy pointed out a bit earlier, because of the troubles going on there and about the I forget what they called them, the blacklist of blacklisted people call form and couldn't be named. And David wasn't happy with Carl Forman. But David said, look, there's American characters of this, and I can't write American, and neither can Norman as well as an American can. Another American writer was produced called Mike Wilson, who worked who was also blacklisted and was living in Paris, but was had a pseudonym. I can't remember what his pseudonym was. We'd also tried other writers too. But it was quite a business. But anyway, David Webb, then Spiegel had the idea. He said, Look, why don't well, I've got a good idea, David, you've got to go and find locations in Ceylon which is the best place to shoot this. Why don't you and call forward and get on a boat, like a slow boat to China, you'll get on and take a boat trip to salon, and you can both work on the script on your way out, which sounded practical and a good idea so that was done then they got to salon now I never went to salon on that picture. Because Spiegel unbeknownst to me at the time, was beginning to try and wean me away from David Lean. And he he said to me, I've got a marvellous idea Norman I'm there's a whole series of three anyway, smaller pictures I want to make and I'd love you to produce them for me, because I don't know. That sounded not a bad idea. To me. It was all a contract because he had no intention whatsoever of doing any other pictures. But I was contracted, in a sense as a producer of a whole series of smaller pictures, while the big David Lean picture was shot in Ceylon. Now, can we can we stop for one second?

End of Side 4

Side 5

Dave Robson  0:00  
Side five 

Norman Spencer  0:04  
On Bridge on the River Kwai, there was a lot of military work to be done. And we approached the War Office for permission to get a technical adviser non reading script, the War Office said they would have nothing whatever to do with the picture. Because no British Kern or whatever behave like that in the war with the Japanese, and they put not only the bar up, they tried actively to try and get the picture stopped. Speaking of the, they were, of course, the British War Office were no match for Sam Spiegel, who managed to carry on and make the picture. So David said, Well, what the hell are we gonna do? We need a military technical adviser. It's full of metal. So I said, Well, I know what we'll do. There's a thing called there's an organisation in London called returned officers of war association or some name like that. And I said, Let's put an advertisement up on their notice board in there that a technical adviser wanted for films. And my God, it worked beautifully. We got a general a retired Gen or just retired called general Perone p e r o wn E, who'd been a general in command in Southeast Asia. He was a lovely fellow like all these chaps, when they were decommissioned. They were a bit short of money. And the idea of earning I think it was 40 pounds a week we paid him, which was quite a lot of money in 1951. If I was farming it Bill 30. More bottom. That's right. Yes, he was grade started on this business which a lot of returned offices done or growing coniferous trees like Christmas trees and things. And he took the job and he was wonderful. He was the real thing. We couldn't have done better if we gone to the waters. But then we hit another tremendous snag, because bridge on the right Bridge on the River Kwai deals with Japanese prisoners of war building. On that famous railway of death, the man in charge of the returned the prisoners of war from the prisoners of war Association, from that theatre of war was a general Percival general Percival was a very grand general who had been the man who had signed the surrender at Singapore, when Singapore was taken by surprise, because the Japs overran it, because all the guns that Singapore pointed out to sea in the Japs just took it from the land with no opposition at all. And he was an extremely bitter man. And he asked Spiegel and myself, not David was out of this, to go and have lunch one day with other generals his and said, Sir, I will do everything in my power to stop this picture being made. I think it's disgraceful. It's It's disgraceful to the memory of the poor men that died on this, you're making a Hollywood picture. They all thought Hollywood and gimcrack Hollywood, and speak all argued with him politely but firmly and said, Well, I'm afraid you will not be successful in stopping the picture being made, because it's been made, it's going to be made, there's nothing you can do to stop it. But anyway, he tried to stop it. And it was it was a lot of publicity against it, and so on. So we got no help from any quarter except Dr. General Brown, who was doing it for 40 quid a week, and was very happy to do it, because it was, and he was back in his beloved salon. We shot the entire picture was shot in Ceylon. The bridge, we decided when David and I did the script in the book, the bridge is never destroyed. And we both said, you can't have that if you pose the whole thing about, is the bridge going to blown up? Is it not? You've got to blow it up. In the end. You can't do make all that fast and then deliberately don't do it. So we destroyed we decided the bridge must be blown up. The bridge was built by a firm of engineers. I think it costs something like 40,000 pounds then which was a lot of money. It was built very carefully a wood in a design, which Don ash and I think was the art director of design, but it looked good. The real bridge, of course, was an Iron Bridge, and was never blown up. And when the bridge was blown, it was blown up by a firm of a firm a set of engineers from ICI, the big multinational who professional detonators and so on had several

Teddy Darvis  4:55  
charges. The bill the bridge was built by a Danish company. Yes, it

Norman Spencer  4:59  
was built by them, but I mean the the detonate the you know, the blowing up was ici took it over, the Danish company came in and to Don ash and design and there were some film, film crew people on it too. Anyway, when when it came to the great day of blowing up the bridge, we had five cameras in various places, surrounded by sandbags, because nobody quite knew where great splinters of wood would fall and so on. And we had five lights, and each camera crew had to switch on and say they were ready. Before the assistant director gave the command to Oh, I must explain. The bridge is blown up with a train actually going across it. We had a smallish gauge railway line built of about a quarter of a mile leading up to the bridge and leading off it. And the plan was the coaches in it were were were filled with dummy Japanese soldiers. The idea was that don't give them the electrical signal light flashing light, the engine driver would set the train going to about 20 miles an hour and then jump off and let the train go along on its own. If something happened and it didn't blow up, there was an enormous mountain of sand into which the train would plough not doing itself too much harm. And we'd have to redo it again. Well, everybody came down to watch the blowing up of the bridge. Spiegel had friend from New York down there. It was a sort of party atmosphere like Wimbledon and the great thing was right, we're ready now got all five lights on all five cameras. And they said right going but one light didn't come on one camera crew didn't come on. So they said hold Stop, don't start the train, hold everything. And we went to see what had happened and some I don't really know what had happened but they'd either forgotten to switch their light on or there was an electrical connection hadn't worked. So terrible thing the sudden change so the the great blowing up was set for the next day. But the next day at work all five cameras went on start the train, turn over all the cameras and the train was so and it was detonated just as the train comes onto the bridge and it tumbles into the water and it was almost as a first

Teddy Darvis  7:21  
day the train did come across the the driver and the dude and read aloud. And they had awful business getting it back again. Yes. And the sound recorded he knows that sounds good. Well, I was not allowed to go to the British one of the times things are you stay in the cutting and the sound mix mix. Fell asleep a second time. And it didn't record the blowing up really. And it when I got the rushes in, I had all dies of the train etc. And where the explosions should have been there was a like that, because that was in the distance we did the Senate. And but he had John Michell had these this printed and didn't let on it took quite long. And then Sam had invited the Prime Minister and that the whole parliament to viewing of extracts of the film, including the blowing up of the bridge. And I didn't have any sound. I mean, Sam accused me of having cut off the noise of the wood. So I went to the government Film Unit, and they had 1938 HMV 78 effects discs and there was a train smash on that and I got that transferred five times. And and that was I put that on and that's still the basis of the finish zero really sorry.

Norman Spencer  8:51  
No, no, no, that's fine because he's taken his added Teddy's added something that I didn't really. I didn't know

Teddy Darvis  9:02  
that somebody Peter knew Brooke told Kevin Brownlow if you'd like to stop it just for a second.

Norman Spencer  9:10  
Yes, that was that way. The whole picture was shot in Ceylon. They built Teddy divers never went out to simile. I know I

Teddy Darvis  9:18  
was there. I was in Ceylon all the time. Or you were you didn't beat the Taylor couldn't come out. That's why I went Yes.

Norman Spencer  9:23  
Yeah. And you stayed at the max Spiegel Hotel. Did you know

Teddy Darvis  9:28  
I stayed with with David at the Mount Lavinia the mountain of it because I had the second best suite with my cutting room built into the city. So if you could come in in the evening, having had the shower and look at things Sorry, that was not the editor as the assembly assembly editor. Yes.

Norman Spencer  9:49  
i The there's only one girl in the picture, which was played by an actress scored and Sears nowadays abid rang me from Ceylon and said, this girl is bloody seen. We've got to put it in because everybody wants a girl in the picture. He said, would you shoot the test on her? Because I don't want to trust it to anybody else because Spiegel will bribe somebody to say she's fine and we'll have a so shoot a test and let me see it. So I hired some little studios in Maryland or somewhere and got NCOs in a bathing costume

Teddy Darvis  10:29  
I introduced and says to you with Sam Spiegel Secretary because I and was a great friend of mine and she was the sister of Heather says Helens, but n was always everything she touched turned to turn bad and so I said she was a good actress and that's how you

Norman Spencer  10:50  
interview well anyway, I took I mean, I thought she was jolly good. And I shot a test to sort of you know, outside of beating up Teddy probably remember see, and I purposely started it with a having a magazine or something in front of her face because the first thing that happens when people shoot tests is somebody puts the board up and they're looking at the girl and making their their mind up before they even the test to start so I thought I'll have a hidden until the clapper boards gone or whatever, then she puts the paper down this wasn't just being art it was just way so to see her for the first time at that site time when I thought you should see her and not trying to appear behind the clapperboard. Anyway, she was cast in the film and it was a it's not a very exciting scene but it was a requirement of Columbia than then of course we had the all the other people the other girls the girls that tie girls Yes. So on in the film, but apart from that there's not much I can say about Bridge on the River Kwai, Phil Hubzu did the catering had an awful business out in salon keeping and again he did the catering on Chuck come to in a minute Lawrence Arabia, keeping great refrigeration vans cool in the heat with the machines going at full tilt and, and sort of warning over them to keep them from the sun. But he had to have great stacks of meat and steaks and things there and was quite a business keeping the food just in reasonable cool conditions so that it didn't, didn't go bad.

Teddy Darvis  12:30  
He did a fantastic job. Absolutely. The second assistant director got killed in a car crash. Oh, he does a ghost he was injured. And he and Sam didn't want didn't replace the secondary system and build graph and Phil hubs did a fantastic job. Build

Norman Spencer  12:50  
graph GRF was the representative of Columbia Pictures and they wanted nobody ever knew what the budget was for Bridge on the River Kwai. Because that was the way Spiegel operated. Nobody ever knew. I mean, I've seen all sorts of information about what the picture costs but nobody really know except perhaps the accountants of Columbia. Because Spiegel and Mike Frankovich who was the chief executive of Columbia Pictures in Europe, there will always arguments going on but Spiegel has a wonderful way of getting his own way and never revealing too much what was going on. Now that's all I can really remember about Bridge on the River Kwai. It Oh yes, there is one other thing when we were scripting it, we agreed that the bridge should be blown up. What we couldn't really decide was how we had three alternatives either one of the mortar bombs by accident that being shown around at that time falls on the plunger, and like an act of God blows the bridge up. Or Alec Guinness gets shot on falls on it which seemed to us to be phoney or he couldn't blow it up himself we decided and that argument rage right to the shooting of the actual scene on the day. And in the end to my mind it's the worst scene in the picture because Alec Guinness gives a rather hammy funny sort of dying fall and falls on the plunger which sends the whole bridge up but people seem to accept it but it that was the final decision on how to blow the bridge up but up up it had to go was the

Teddy Darvis  14:41  
worst of the worst of the three options.

Norman Spencer  14:45  
Now that's about all I can remember I think about Bridge on the River Kwai. So I'll go on now. From there to Lawrence of Arabia now Oh, No, there is a little more on Bridge on the River cry, the cry March. This is what Mark Romano told me now Teddy was an editor on the picture and may know a little more. But when we talk, David and I talked to Malcolm Arnold about this, and he went away and he came in one morning to me in the office in Dover Street, and he said, Is there somewhere with a piano we can go to? Or no, somewhere we went? And he said, No, I've got an idea. He said, Norman, you whistle, Colonel Bogey, because I've written a countermarch. So you whistling the key or whatever it was, he gave me. And he played the counter March. And I was sort of knee said, that's the way I think it's gonna work. Well. Now there was a problem as I remember, because when they are whistling, and they come in, there's a cut of, of Colonel Nicholson with his leg up on a Sunday watching with pride, his men marching in, Teddy will remember this. And Malcolm Arnold and David at the time said, well, we don't want this to the Japanese over the shorter of the colonel. So Malcolm Arnold said, Well, we can, we can, we can, we can pull up the countermarch there. And my countermarch has got a kind of heroic theme, so I can do the two together. Then we found about getting the the copyright to Colonel bogey. It was written by I think, Colonel Marines in 1970.

Teddy Darvis  16:33  
Colonel Colonel colonel was a band band command band master regiment, he wrote lots of orphan and and he was there was a widow was still alive.

Norman Spencer  16:49  
That's right. And we were so pleased because she got the proceeds of the colonel Bogey, because it which becomes it is now called everywhere, the River Kwai Martens, but it's actually kind of a bogey with with with additions by Malcolm Arnold, this countermarch, which is a lovely, I mean, I can I can hum it to myself, and I won't, but it you know, it's a marvellous idea, and it works very well. Malcolm Arnold was a great was a great character. He was a great boozer and he'd come up to the office in London, and he'd say, come out and have lunch and I'd have lunch any say, I know a little drinking club around the corner, we get a glass of champagne there. And if I wasn't careful, I spent the whole afternoon with Malcolm on wood boozing champagne in some. I mean, it's quite harmless just drinking champagne. He was the jolly chap was the revelation. Yes, I saw him the other day on television and he's bald, absolutely bald now. But

Teddy Darvis  17:47  
did you know he had two or three nervous breakdowns? Yes. He tried to commit suicide two or three times. He lived up in that way. And now he's lived somewhere. I think in cornrows summer, and he's got a permanent minder all the time.

Norman Spencer  18:01  
Well, another film, which I haven't mentioned yet, which comes before this was a film that I think it comes before this, I'm not sure a film that speak or may David Lean has nothing to do with it at all. Called suddenly last summer, which was a play by Tennessee Williams, starring Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and all the sets were by Oliver Messel, and it's a curious Tennessee Williams play shot at Shepperton directed by Joe manky rich. That's ma N K. I e, wi C's Ed. famous American film director who shot that wonderful film called All About Eve with Betty Davis. Now I was productive. I don't know I was associate producer on that picture because Spiegel kept going in and out of London. And the film was shot at Shepperton. And the point is that when the film was finished, Malcolm Arnold was approached to do the music and because of the theme of the picture, which is an extraordinary odd Tennessee Williams idea about a homosexual in Spain who's chased by a horde of little boys that he seduced, and they literally cannibalise and eat him. And the fact that the girl who saw this, who was his friend, Elizabeth Taylor, gives her a nervous breakdown. I mean, terribly turgid stuff. Malcolm Arnold said, No, I don't want to do it. He couldn't. He didn't want like this whole idea of it. And you can understand why because he was had that sort of nervous breakdown himself. But that's a film which there's only one story connected with that film. And that was that speaker was away. I don't know were doing something Mankiewicz shooting. I was down at Shepperton and Mankiewicz came up to my office one day and said, Norman, what can I do? Montgomery Clift is blind drunk. I don't know whether it's the drugs he's taking, which he was, or drink or both. But he said, we got a shoot, I got the scene. It was shooting, he played a part of an intern in a hospital. And, I mean, when I can't demonstrate it on tape, but Montgomery Clift was slurring his lines. He was sort of like that he couldn't. And he said, What can I do? I mean, you know, the producer ought to see this because I can't shoot the film today. You know, I've got a drunk an actor. And I said, Well, the only thing I can suggest Joe, is, after thinking about it, we talked, I said, Look, why don't you get everybody off the set except everybody. It has to be there. Shoot it with him. It terrible is 40 all and show it to him tomorrow on the rushes privately, just you and he that's the only thing I can think of. He thought that was a good idea. So we got everybody off the set and he shot this scene with Montgomery Clift falling about and I mean, he was gone. I don't know. Drugs are what? And he did. He showed it to him the next day. And Montgomery Clift had had trouble in that direction. And his greatest friend and helper was Elizabeth Taylor, who was like a mother to him. And I think in the end, they showed the that rush special Rush was shot no more that day, just that scene, just one take. I think they showed it to Elizabeth Taylor, and she said, Oh, I must help Monty poor chap. And she tried to keep him off the drugs and so on. That's the only story I can tell about suddenly lost some, as it was called. It was a very weird film with a location in Spain. And the here it was called Sebastien after St. Sebastian, where the error was all in immigrant. Now, now we come to, I think, Lawrence of Arabia. Now, there's a lot of stories about Lawrence Arabia, when it was decided, by Spiegel and David and everybody that would they would make Lawrence Arabia? The Great question came up who was to play Lawrence? And the first thing they did, David did really, or instigate, it was a test of an English actor called Albert Finney. And David, did you work on Lawrence? David did a two day test with various scenes that were cutting so it was like a little film and it's open the way David loved to do things. And Albert Finney was absolutely stupendous in it. We all said, ma I mean, Albert Finney, who was a tough look was marvellous, he wasn't like he is now an older man. He was bit younger. He hadn't done he don't need just I don't know whether he then done Saturday night, Sunday morning. But anyway, he was marvellous. We said That's him. But Feeny turned it down. He he didn't want to do a film. B Spiegel in vehicle him wanted him to sign a seven year contract and he said Not on your life. I'm not gonna sign a seven year contract. He didn't want to do films is is he was quite open. He said the theatres my thing and I don't do you're dangling wonderful salaries on Hollywood in front of me. I'm not interested. I don't want to do it. He was intrigued to do the test. But he really was when he looked out. Instead of in a test somebody saying look camera left over there. He was looking at something he wasn't just looking camera. Lefty is a marvellous actor. So he turned it down. So David said we've got to have a marvellous actor for this part. And he said, You know who's the best actor I think Marlon Brando. So Marlon Brando was approached. Marlon Brando said he do it. He wasn't then as fat and bloated as he is now. But he was always a beefy. He said, I'll lose some weight for it. I can do that. And he was cast. And we had a huge press conference in Claridges to announce the making of Lawrence of Arabia, produced by Sam Spiegel directed by David Lean, starring Marlon Brando done. And then I don't know what happened. But everybody went off Marlon Brando, having decided he was good. I think it was David, do you see David said, you know, he can play an English. I mean, look at him in the young lions, when he played a German look at him in when he played Fletcher Christian and he plays an Englishman. He's just a wonderful actor. And what we need is a wonderful actor. It doesn't matter that he's American or Marlon Brando. What he's a wonderful actor, and he can act it but it turns sour. I think there was some financial jiggery pokery going on with Spiegel and Columbia. So on it turns out and back we were with Noah Lawrence Arabia, then I think it was And Todd, who made the first suggestion, or que Walsh, the first suggestion that David should look at the work of a new young actor who was in a play in the West End of London called the long and the short and the tall called Peter O'Toole. And David did, he went to see the play and thought he was wonderful. And then we called him down for an interview. And between David seeing the play, and the interview date, Peter O'Toole has had a nose job done on his nose. And he did it made his nose instead of a lovely Irish conky didn't got a little tiny nose and it pretty fired his face. And that took them aback. It was like he said, Miranda all over again, changing her face before, you know she was cast. Anyway, Peter O'Toole got the part in the end with with what we know, the picture started shooting in June. The Jordanian authorities said that they wanted they wanted no Jew on the picture of any kind. Spiegel had to get special permission from or made some deal with the White House in the USA. And so they finally said they'll accept Spiegel they wanted every member of the cars to carry a certificate for the Minister of religion to say they weren't Jewish. So David said to me how the bloody hell do I get a certificate? And I said, Well, I tell you what I think why don't we I'll ring up the actors church, so Martin's in the fields, and speak to the authorities there and just say the problem, and perhaps they'll give him a certificate. The curate of some Martin's in the field, turned out to be John Brian's brother, John Bryan, the art director. I forget his name. And we went to see him and he said I can he said, What am I right? I said, I know. He pulled a tight, right. He said, I know I just put to whom it may concern to the best of my knowledge and belief. David Lean is not a Jew. They were that's it. So everybody had to produce this. We couldn't have any Jewish member on the couch because it was Jordan or even worse than a but Spiegel himself went up there. Now he was we shot in Jordan for some time. Speaker was very anxious all the time. We were shooting there because he felt uneasy and he was felt he was in the in the land of the enemy here now and so on. And while we were there, the foreign minister was blown up with a bomb in his desk. And that made Spiegel and Columbia terribly agitated. So we agitated for David to come out on the panel, the picture was to shooting Jordan, then to move to Spain to shoot taking of Africa, in the in,

in the south of Spain anyway, and then move on to Morocco, and shoot the huge scenes what's called about the bloodbath scenes where there's a huge battle with lots of blood and 1000s of people and so on. Now, Spiegel had asked me because I spoke French he said, Norman, you know, somebody's got a look after this picture in Morocco, would you do the Moroccan bit? And, you know, it's very difficult to refuse Spiegel like it's difficult to refuse quarter they both have the same kind of ability to just persuade you again. So I said okay, so I was in charge of shooting in Morocco. So what happened was they shot in, in Jordan for something like two or three months. Then they moved by ship to Spain. And they shopped in Spain for about 10 weeks on the great Moorish house, which was the headquarters of General Allenby, it's part of the thing. And then they came to Abraca. I know the shooting of the picture went well over 12 months, because they had a party to celebrate the 12 month anniversary of shooting, it was still shooting. And then they came to to Morocco. Now I went out with Robert boat to Casablanca. And I set up an office there there's a big hotel in Casablanca called the Elmont sewer, that's e l and another word ma n s o u r, which is almost exactly like the Dorchester here a big hotel Dorchester standard. And I got two huge rooms with sitting rooms on the fourth or fifth floor and we took those over for the duration and made them an office and I had an accountant out there he had one room and secretaries and another room and so on. Now the main shooting of the film in Morocco took place at a at a small town on the edge of the desert called was that which is spelt oh you a Zed A is T EA says, say days that at EA or was as that now to reach was his that this was in Casablanca headquarters which is on the coast to reach was his that was a nine hour car journey. So, to go to houses that you drove from Casablanca for four and a half hours, you stopped at Marrakech. And you would either have lunch there or eat or something or if not overnight, and then you get in the car and drive another four and a half hours to wass which is right on the desert because it's right the other side of the Atlas Mountains. So it's an extraordinary drive and a terrifying drive because you went around mountains like that. But you'd get to Marrakech which is a huge town. And then when you started to climb the Atlas Mountains, and going through passes, all of a sudden, all greenery would vanish. There was nothing but desert for four hours till you got to us that desert I don't mean just sand but just nothing, nothing green at all little mud huts and here and there and thing, and was that was a one horse town with a very small hotel in it. Now this shooting, having it having been decided that the shooting would take place in Morocco. Spiegel, who works on scales, arranged to have a meeting with the king of Morocco King Hassan and he asked me to come with him. So we had a meeting with the King we had an audience of King Hassan who spoke beautiful English although workers a French speaking country, and he introduced us to his brother called Molly Abdullah. His brother it was rather like the British Royal Family. A few years ago, the king was a serious Monique like the queen and Molly Abdullah. Abdullah was a playboy Prince rather like Princess Margaret used to be isn't anymore but was then Malia So the king said that Molly Abdullah would would be appointed look after us do anything we wanted, and he was after money. But he took over and then speak or typically speak or found somebody else. A Moroccan aristocratic called Paul sunroof, Sen. Ouf, who was high up in the Moroccan hierarchy, and all kinds of fiddles were going on. And Spiegel paid him a lot of money. And Paulson who was supposed to be the liaison between us and the royal family, because we could not ask the king every day for everything. But the king did say that we would get all our facilities we would have a meeting the king arranged with himself, the chief of the Royal cabinet, the chief of the army, and all the grand people in the Cabinet Room in Rabat, which Spiegel and I went they all spoke French Arabic most of the time. And we have to keep asking them please speak French because we don't speak Arabic and and I found a wonderful secretary. I lost touch with her whose name was Barbara and back, who came surprisingly from Oxbridge. And she was bilingual in French and English. And she did shorthand in both English and French. So she took down all minutes of the meeting in in French, transpose them into English and distributed them to everybody up to no so we all knew what we were talking about, because not everybody spoke French. However, that was the initial meeting and I had worked out by them what we needed. We wanted 800 camels with riders. We needed 600 foot soldiers. I mean, there were huge battle scenes, and this and that to the other and a place to shoot and so it was arranged that we shoot it was as that now, we then were put on to the another meeting with the chief of the Moroccan army who said that he couldn't supply 800 camels and riders because camels and riders are used for the word then patrolling of the broken borders and they couldn't spare them. But he said I will arrange with the governor of the province of was that to find you 800 civilian camels and their riders, their owners and you could dress them as the army and find that would be fine and so on. All this is minuted, and I've got the minutes of it in English, which I gave to who was it? Who wrote the book David Lean's making Lawrence of Arabia? A chap who edited Kevin's book. Just a minute. Just tell you the name. He wrote a book about all this that was on bridge on the required and of course he worked on launch Arabia. Yes. Robert Bork was the first was the first time that Robert bolt and David met I think once Rabia, I flew out to Casablanca with Robert bolt, just rob bolt and I to join Spiegel in Madrid, where we and David because they finished shooting in one of the sections to have a long meeting about the shooting in Morocco. We had a production manager called Eva mondly mo n le y was a woman production manager who was quite tough and good, and a big crew and so on. And so I had to, I had to get together 800 camels with riders. Now we we, I then was passed on by the chief of the army or the chief of the Royal cabinet, to a meeting with the governor of the Morocco, bro of the was that province. I can't remember his name. It's it's a rocker name. And he being a provincial governor laid on a big red carpet for me and people I came with I had a little crew then of about five, including the Secretary Barbara back, we were given a great dinner with about 20 people round in his palace, because he lived in a palace. Everybody goes with their soup pillow like they do sleeping soup. And he asked me what I wanted because he'd been told he'd been in effect instructed by the king that he was to give every facility so I had meetings with him speaking French the whole time because they speak English, Arabic or French.

And I said no, your hotel here, there's only one hotel he was that. He said, Well, we're actually starting to build another one because we want to attract tourists to this region. And we're building a Moroccan style hotel, whereas the one that was existing them was a pretty straightforward sort of, sort of American style hotel, and that will be ready in time for you and you can use that. Now these camels arrived as he said, I will send out an edict that I want 800 camels complete with riders, we'd worked out we would pay them I think it was 1500 dirhams a day, which is about one pound 50 a day, they would bring their own food. If a camel got injured we'd pay them on a sliding scale of repairs to the camels as it were. And for the great day when shooting came along. All these were assembled the crew came in a boat the crew came by plane rather from the from the south of Spain to Costa Blanca and then was sent in various batches right down on this huge nine hour drive to was that the equipment was colossal. The equipment came by coastal steamer. And I don't know if you know if people listening to this know there's a there's a RAF vehicle called a Queen Mary, which is a huge vehicle it takes fuselages of aeroplanes with a tractor in front to carry big aircraft. It took nine Queen Mary is full of caravans and props and I don't know costumes all had to go this huge nine journey round the mountains down to was that was a huge operation, a really big operation. And David David came with in his roles from Spain, across from Algeciras, to Gibraltar to Gibraltar and then over to to the rock Gibraltar with the continuity girl Freddie young, and David were the three in the thing. I got them. I went to meet them and got them over he brought his rolls over to Morocco. And they drove down. I said, David, it's a horrible journey. And he takes nine hours in a car. Oh my God. I said but what you want to do is with Booker did you stay the night in Marrakech is a huge, wonderful hotel in Marrakech called the mamounia ma N ma m o un IA which is where Churchill stayed. It's a huge old fashioned hotel with rows of old fashioned balconies in most marvellous gardens with birds and flowers and I say do love it down there. If I were you I'd stay a couple of nights down there before you do the other four and a half hours into into into was that and that's what they did. Now. A huge great snag hit us. We found that in Jordan, in all the scenes that had been shot. The Jordanians ride camels in a totally different way to the way the Moroccans ride camels owes the Jordanians ride camels and they sit in a sort of like a big leather pole like this sitting there and they have a long wand and they guide the camera like that. The Moroccans have camels have saddles with two poles on them and they put one leg round one on one round the other and they didn't match. So we had to and I've got it the other way round. Sorry. That was the Jordanians right out that the Moroccans right in this. So we had to have 1000 Camel saddles made in order and we had to teach the camel riders in Morocco to ride the camels in the way they ride in Jordan, which was a huge undertaking, but you'd have to be done because the scenes that don't match you couldn't have them. I mean, they just look different and, and the trappings of the camel were different and so on. We also ran out of camels. We had a man go, I think his name was Geoffrey Robertson, who won an order the picture would have been called Master of the horse, he would claim our master of the camel. He went right down past Edgar deer in a landing craft, and managed to buy 200 more camels from the blue men of Morocco in the real desert, put them in, they filled this landing craft with about three or four feet of straw and put about 200 camels into it and store being so they wouldn't break their legs with a rock. And they were brought up and they were added to the thing and we it was his job to train the camels now. There came the day when David had a rehearsal of a charge of 800 camels and riders and at the first charge up 10 of the camels just fell down dead with heart attacks because they were agricultural camels are used for pulling ploughs. They'd never galloped in their lives in anything but so he said, Well, this is not going to be any good. Then the second thing that happened was that we found the camel owners were were mutilating their animals in order to get extra money because you've got extra money if your camel was damaged, they'd slit it's alongside instead of being cut on a rock. They couldn't they couldn't write any of them. So what happened was we had to get like supermarket rolls of white paper type all their names, these extraordinary rocker names that on and they when they got paid, they put their thumb down and give us some printers there. You know these roles of thing with the receipts that the cashiers had to send to Columbia Pictures implanted as to camels had been paid. And that was the time we had we had barrels of blood. There's a wonderful blood I think it's made by ici which is a kind of thin oral and brown powder that's mixed with it that makes lovely sticky, gooey blood. That place was covered in blood in the scene. So we had barrels of this blood. And but in the end it was done. But actually people out on the setting was as that went slowly mad including David, we had a technical adviser from the Moroccan army, who used to sit in his tent after nightfall and just shoot at anything moving out of the real bullets. I mean, John Palmer had a nervous breakdown and he was the production manager. David went on speak or kept out of it as he always does. He he wouldn't go by car down there was his that he prevailed upon the king. So let him use an old Dakota they had army Dakota and although speed was scared of flying, and he had to sit in an awful little tin bucket seat. Nevertheless, he'd rather have a flight of a couple of hours than a nine hour car journey. So he'd turned up every two weeks. And well, David's remarks about it, I think are in the book, but he'd say gone back to bloody Monte Carlo and so on while we're here in the desert, sweating away and so on. But the scenes were shot finally, and they're in the film. And that was the Morocco shooting on Lawrence Arabia. But the camel saga was was tremendous. And we we got a lot of facilities from the Moroccan army, including this med tech them this met technical advisor went mad, because it was very hot in Missouri that it really was the edge of the desert. And the atmosphere was very, very dry heat. But what happened was that every morning about 10 o'clock a wind would come up which would bang doors and windows and that wind would would would carry on till about four in the afternoon. And it was the wind that drove people mad. You had to have big fans and the other. The other hotel that they promised me would be built. We had trouble with that being got ready in time. I had to go and I threatened Well, I had to go see the governor. And I said well the king has said that it would be ready you know and it's it isn't and he had to put extra labour on it was a huge Problem sort of whole lots of physical problems, but it was done in the end. And no wonder they were battle scenes. And I remember while we were in Morocco, Pietro tools work came to an end. And towards the end of the picture he'd been with, with Omar Sharif shooting in Spain with the second unit with the end of it. And I remember him coming into this Grand Hotel in Morocco. Flinging open the big main doors and yelling out to the assembled people in the hotel who were not film people. The fucking pictures finish fucking pictures. They will want to Watch

End of Side 5

Side 6
 

Dave Robson  0:00  
Side 6 

Norman Spencer  0:02  
There's one more thing I want to say about Lawrence Of Arabia David was very keen having before we started shooting the whole picture of he wanted to know whether he could photograph a mirage. And I said, Well surely academies, so well I don't know funny things happen to light rays. So he did a big recce in the Jordanian deserts, shooting transparencies, two by two, something like that. And he photographed mirages. And that's how he because he had in his mind, the mirage of the first approach of Omar Sharif in the film, do remember when he appears like a little.in, the sky and slowly gets close. I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful scene there. It's described in the in, in, in in the David Lean's book. And that's the only other thing I want to say about Lawrence of Arabia. They, when they were shooting in Jordan, they came across wrecks of engines of trains that the real Lawrence had blown up, because of the dryness of the sand or the dryness of the atmosphere, they hadn't rusted, they were still there. They didn't shoot any of them. But then they actually came across the trains and the twisted rails that have been blown up with explosions and so on. Now, Spiegel then said to me, now Norman, have you found any idea that you want to make the film to your own? And I said, Well, I'd read a book called Dangerous silence, which was about I can't remember all of it now because it was never made and speaker like now realise had no intention of would ever be made. But he went through all the motions. It was about a man who works for a security company, who actually burgles the house of a friend of his for some reason I forgotten which, and he said, You speak or said, you know, Jack Lemmon would be very good in this because there's humour in it. And he said, What About Bob parish to direct? Well, you know, Bob parish is not the greatest director in the world. But Bob parish came along and we worked on the script. I went down and spent two weeks or three weeks on speaker's yacht, and came to the conclusion that everybody should have a yacht. It's a wonderful way of living. You know, the speaker's yacht called the SS Milani. Ma la HN. II had nine staterooms, each with bathroom, a crew of 16 including two French chefs one for the crew one for him. The whence speak was hardly ever on it. He when we went down, I went down there with a screenwriter, American writer, forgotten his name, Sydney something and speaker was chasing Romy Schneider, the actress called Romy Schneider, and Romy Schneider wise to all said brought her mother along. And Ramesh sliders mother was a famous old German string actress called Magda Schneider, who you may have seen and I remember seeing her in not silent days, not she wasn't as old as that, but in the days and I said, Oh my god, I was great fan of yours and she was so pleased to hear she was in her 60s of something Rami was a daughter and she had no intention of leaving Rami alone with Speaker speaker was doing everything in fact, when we when the writer and I went down to Monte Carlo where they got was Speaker said, I'm having a little work done on the outside booked your chaps into the hotel to parry and stay there just for a couple of nights. I found out later he was trying to regal Romy on board and he didn't want any witnesses. But he couldn't mum was with her and so she did go on board but with mother so Magda and Rami work together on your and this story I told you about about the casino and they try and take her on and so on. And Speaker wasn't wasn't there very much because he'd said one day I've got to go off to Paris, and then knowing then I'm going back to Rapallo and I'm gonna fly down there. So I've told the captain that to take the boat over to Rapallo you you'll be on board. This writer Sydney, I can't remember his other name. And I had a state roommate. So we we went across the Mediterranean in beautiful weather for about a day and a half after Apollo. And it was wonderful. You get up in the morning and anytime you like and went in there sat in the stern on the deck and the steward would come up and say would you like breakfast so what was your like you know, bacon eggs, the works anything because that's what I thought everybody should have a yacht. It's a lovely way of living. And we get to Rapallo and then we went to Portofino and when we got just outside Portofino speed was said to the captain, so I mean the this yacht has a great big sitting room rather like to pretend Nia, a royal yacht with white telephones everywhere and big cities and chairs. Now I mean, spit like a sitting room at Claridge is not a bit like being on a boat. And the routine on board is like the routine of an old country house. Spiegel, when we weren't doing anything will get up about 11. Pick up the phone and say, send the cat send the chef in? Well, you and the chef would come up, take his big hat off. And they discuss in French the menus for the day. Now that took a long time. But Spiegel refunded his tummy. So they talk about this, what they'd have for dinner and so on and so on. And once Yeah, anyway, to go back when we got to Portofino, speak on how to talk to the captain who's got a cabin and his wife's on board as well just and he said I want Birth Number One. And the captain talked on the intercom to the Harbormaster who said sorry, Mr. Speaker, burst number one's not available. And Sam said, Oh, no, come on. Look, get the boat down. They've got a great big electric boat called the VA debt, which is like a motor launch. Got that down from its debits. Spiegel and the Harbormaster went, the captain went off to see the Harbormaster. Half an hour later they come back and we go into berth number one somebody's been taken out. So that to me goes. Vanity wouldn't allow him to go anywhere but in Birth Number one the best birth in in Portofino. And well and also the well the stories I think I told you the lunches on board, and so on. It's absolutely marvellous. We didn't get a lot of work done. There was one occasion when Speaker When he went he he hadn't got anything to do he wore shorts and then his beard grow a bit rather like Alex did when he was on his yacht. And we went around we went through a big Mediterranean storm it was a lovely sunny day, not a cloud in the sky with mountainous waves. And a huge wind and speaker was very good. He was up on the deck up on the bridge with a captain loving it holding on tight to the boat was doing. He enjoyed his yacht. But he was never on it because the moment you've got to land I remember once he we were on there on our way back to Monte Carlo from somewhere noted Sam said Do you know what I feel like? I would love to eat a bottle for tonight. So he said Get me the hotel to Perry on the phone. And he got the phone he says Mr. Spiegel here can you make me a bottle for and they said obviously Speaker We can't it's to taste preparation at least there's no oh god he said well, and in way but he got his Potter for the next day. But I mean that's the sort of life we lead by dispensing money right? They've consent from living. And Alex Of course, Alex lived much quieter on boats than speak or did speaker was a? I mean, he loved it. But he was a bit of a show off Alex was a little quieter I think on board is Bowden wouldn't behave like that. I mean anyway, that's now this film called Dangerous silence speaker said it's a wonderful story for Jack Lemmon. Let's get Jacques Jacques LeMans in Europe doing something other we're getting along. So we had meetings with Jack Lemmon, who wasn't all that keen on the script. And we hadn't decided who was direct and so on. And as I now realise, people had no intention of making the picture, quite happy to go through all the motions to keep everybody pretending another film is going to be made. But so the script was never satisfactory. And this wasn't done and that wasn't done. And we never did. It was around about that time that as I've told you about suddenly last summer, while I was sort of marking time that I worked on suddenly last summer, because that was a speaker picture and, and so on. Now, we've nearly finished out. I left Spiegel at in 1963 and I was asked to become the Special Assistant to Elmo Williams, who was the head of 20th Century Fox in London. So I worked with him in big offices in Soho square for three years, when we made pictures like those magnificent men in their flying machines. The Blue Max modesty blaze

the third secret director by Charles Crighton. I learned a lot from doing that because I was yes I was executive assistant to the Head of Production in Europe, which is a man called Elmo Williams. Very nice to me. I can. And for three years I did that, working on various pictures like this and using what knowledge I had on those pictures and so on. And then that poured after a little while, and I took some time off. And Fox had a change around OMA Williams went as they always do after so many years, somebody else came in, there was a new hierarchy. And I joined Cupid productions, which was a little production company who'd made one film only a film, starring the Rolling Stones called one plus one. Or they gave it another title for America Sympathy for the Devil, which was the famous song apparently so famous song that the Rolling Stone sing. And the film was directed by John Lucado. Now John, Luke Goddard came over and made to feel me speaks quite good English. And he made the film in a series of nine minute takes, you know, a whole reel in one take. And it was a terrible film. It was nothing to do with me because it was all in and when I when I joined them. And I remember asking once I said, why do you why don't you cut my Why don't you like cutting? He said, Because cutting is the rhetoric of cinema. And I'm not interested in rhetoric. I mean, I thought he was a phoney really John of God. I mean, this sacrilege to say this bad, but he's regard is one of the great otters do cinema. But nevertheless, and at the end of the film, the very end the last two minutes, there's a curious sort of scene on a beach, lasting less than two minutes in complete silence. Now, the company, Cupra productions was composed of the honourable Michael Pearson, and a chap called Ian Correa, who was knew nothing about films but knew everything about calling everybody into things. And the word Cupid came from Korea. Qu Korea PE so it was was going to be QP productions, they thought oh QP Cupid QP recorded cubed, Korea and said, This is before my time I came there after it was done to the editors. Look, I think we ought to put a bit of music over that because we can't have the picture ending in total silence. When John Luke goddaughter heard of this he was furious. He came over to England. I then joined the company. I met him when he came up. And his first words to me were, I'm not speaking to you. So I said, Well, why not? Is he said, he said, you see that picture? I paint the picture and somebody paints a little piece in the corner. How dare they do my work? You know, I mean, this is putting a bit of music. I said, Well, don't blame me. I mean, I was laughing really? I said nothing do with me. Well, anyway, I'm not I want to speak to Korea is easy coming in. I said, Well, I expected Well, well, I'm going to wait and see and they had a rail. The film was then shown two days, two nights later on the south bank, in the south banks in a wealthy and John Luke Gada, decided that he would have a counter showing of his version, which is the same film, but without music on the last minute now, on a truck with backprojection from a truck just outside the cinema. The courier announced the film on the stage, God odd appeared strode UK off the stage, smacked him in the face in front of the whole audience sent him flying. So he ended up underneath a grand piano, which is in the corner, and said to the audience, this man has ruined my picture. That is why it didn't and walked off. It was pouring with rain. His counter version so called was a very poor print deed got quickly on this backprojection van about three people watching it with umbrellas. The real film was showing inside. It's a dreadful film. I mean, I wish you could see it, it's just and watch it not just unshakeable, it's almost unwatchable. I mean, I don't know what it's about it's, and this was I was suddenly pitchfork after all these fabulous films, I'd been into the SAM well, because it's got the Rolling Stones in it. And it kept cutting back to the Rolling Stones rehearsing this song, which apparently became famous called Sympathy for the Devil. Various people wanted to buy it because of the soundtrack. And there were complications about the copyright because they didn't know how to make films. They didn't know how to make deals about copyright. They did. It was an absolute mess. And I thought, well, I don't know what I'm doing in this outfit. I do not know by amateurs, Michael Peterson's a nice chap. And then suddenly, a young man, a hippie with a wide awake hat and dripping with beads and captains came in. And he said, Listen, man, I've got a great idea for a film. And he's gonna make a lot of money. And I want to make a lot of money out of it. And he gave me a bit of paper, which was one and a half pages. That's that page and a half a page with an idea on it called pick a card, any card. Now, I read this idea. And it was the story crudely put down in two paragraphs of a racing driver who takes a car across America. And I thought, well, in spite of this weirdos doing this, and I didn't know what I think there's some merit in this. So I said to Michael, I think that, you know, if you want to make a real film, instead of this crap you'd be making. I think there might be something in this. So he said, Well, let's get him in. We talked to him. And he said, Well, he said, I want about half a million for I said, You mean for a page and a half a thing, and nobody pays half a million for a page and a half, even if it's in pure gold. And anyway, we got him down to I think, like 200 pounds for the idea, and a promise of 4% of the profits of the film, if it was ever made. He was happy went away with that, because he is. So I got ahold of a chap a very extraordinary man. He's a Cuban exile, living in London lived in London many, many, many years and still living in London called Guillermo Kane cin. And his real name is Guillermo Cabrera, Infante. See ca b, Ra Ra. And another word I NFA en te, and he shortened it to cane. Now he'd been the Cuban and Ambassador to Belgium. But at one time, and then he left and ran away from Cuba, frightened of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, so on came to London, and he's a writer. And he's a wonderful writer in both Spanish and English, in the same way that Conrad wrote in Polish and English. Guillermo, as we called him, wrote in Spanish or Chinese or Spanish man of letters, I discovered he's got he wrote a wonderful book called Three trap Tigers or something. They're rather esoteric books, but they're, he's he goes to anyway, he was interested in films. And I said, have a look at this Guillermo. And he looked at he said, I could write a film script on that. And I said, you could? Well, let's talk a bit more. I mean, you don't just say, he said, No, no, honestly, I think it's a marvellous idea. And that's where our vanishing point was born. So, to cut a long story short, Guillermo wrote the screenplay, we paid him 5000 pounds, and share the profits. In our heart of hearts, we never kind of thought the film would ever be made. But at least I thought it was a good idea. And when he wrote this very unusual script, which was even more unusual than the finished picture, due to an inferior director we had, it was quite interesting. So the person in Korea who was still around at this time, but was beginning to go because I was the professional on the scene. And he was the amateur and everybody, I mean, he's a nice enough chap, and he just didn't know anything about film. Said, I said, this is an American story, because it was all set in America, even in that little sheet and a half a paper will only get this going if we get it set up in America. And I said, with my knowledge of 20th Century Fox, no American company in London has any real authority. I mean, even Elmo Williams had no authority beyond 5000 pounds. Everything had to be referred to the home office in California. So I said we ought to go to Hollywood. So Korea said, all good, let's all go to Hollywood, or we're gonna have a wonderful time in Hollywood purposes. But anyway, we went to Hollywood, and they all pistol route and enjoyed themselves. And I, having worked at 20th Century Fox, I got to know Dick Zanuck, who's the son of Darrell Zanuck. And Dick Zanuck was then the head of the studio.

So I rang. I was only in Hollywood for about 10 days, and I was going back at the weekend. And on the Thursday, I rang Dick's Alex office, and they said, Oh, Mr. Xanax in New York, but we'll put you on but I said I've got a script and because I knew Dick's and I said, I'd like him to read it. And I really like his opinion on it as an American head of the studio, whether you'd like to to make a film and they said no, but what we'll do is we'll pass it on to the store department. Now they Head of the story department is a man called George or not George Brown, something Brown. And he's in New York too. But I'll get the assistant head to read it. Well, three hours later, after dropping it off at the Fox studio, this man rang me and he said, Spencer, I think you've got a marvellous script here. Now for a script reader to say that usually they're turning things down, right? He said, really? He said, Would I have your permission to send this over for? Not George Brown, Michael Brown to read? Because he's in New York, and he's coming back on Monday, but he reads a lot on the plane because it's, I said, Well, sure. Yeah. He said, No. Could you see him on Monday? I said, No, I'm going back on Sunday. All he said, I think you ought to stay this might be I said, Well, I really have to get back. I can't remember what it was. And I went back to England. The next thing I think, was I got a call from Brown. And he said, Norman, because I knew him too. This is a marvellous idea. He said, can I give it to Dick Saavik to read, and I was getting very excited now knows this thing, which had come out of nowhere, and they were getting excited. I mean, usually people frog around for years trying to get a script written. So I say trouble. And the next thing was two days later, I got a call from Stuart lions. You know, Stuart Lyons, who was then the head of Fox in here, a very small office. And he said, Norman, he said, I think you ought to open a bottle of champagne. I said, why? He said, Diggs, Alex, read your script. And he wants to make the picture like that, absolutely. In my lap. So he said, they'd like you to go over there and talk about it, and so on. So I took Michael Pearson with me, it was just before Christmas in 1969, I think. We went across the aisle, and had a couple of meetings with dicks. And it was a nice young man, he was sort of youngest then. And Brown. Mark was in a knot, George Brown, Michael Brown, Mr. Brown anyway, who was the what's called executive in charge of story development. That was his title, everybody's president or an executive. And they said, it's a great idea. It's a great idea. And, you know, I mean, let's make it I mean, can you get a budget made and tell us how much it will cost? And we'll have to talk about who's to play in it. And the picture was off. And I said, Well, now, there's one thing, I don't want it to be a Fox studio picture. First of all, it we've got a company called Cupid. I want it to be a cupid picture. And I want Cupid to retain artistic control. Now, that's a big rub with Americans, they don't like anybody having artistic control and, and control over the final cut and so on. But I but I had a bargaining factor, because it was our film. It was our idea. We owned it. So if you want it, it was not, you know, on our terms. It wasn't put as bluntly as that it was all very nice. And he said, Well, okay, I don't I don't have any problem with that. He said, I think, you know, we ought to have an arranger in the contract that we see the rushes every day. And I said, we're sure you're hoping. So in. In the end, it was made with Fox as distribution partners, and Cupid made the film and I said, we will finance the film ourselves. We don't want Fox finance, because I discovered that if you had a good script, and if Fox or any other major distributor would give you a contract for distribution, you could take that contract to the Bank of America. In Mayfair, they had an office then, and they will finance the picture against that contract because they have a guarantee from the distribution company that the picture will be shown. And once there's a guarantee the picture will be shown and that Fox have expressed so much interest in it. They like it so much. They've given you a contract, they're willing to finance the picture of uncertain terms. So we got finance of $1,350,000 was the cost of the picture, which is a fleabite. Now as you know, and we were off, we we signed all the contracts we had been drawn up by the lawyers. I went over to Hollywood again and I was there for a year. We we had to find a director. Now this champion Korea, who this raving amateur was all mad about drugs and Mick Jagger's and rock and roll and so on. He came up with some director in Hollywood called Richard serif, Ian, who I saw a couple of pictures he did they weren't bad, but they weren't marvellous. And he was a great big fat, sort of fatter than Hitchcock character and full of braggadocio, sort of rubbish. But in the end, we talked with Zanuck and we said, well, we'd give him a chance on this picture. We'll so we employed Richard serif, you knew was a terrible thing because he was a bad director and everything possible and nasty man to deal with in every way. But however he was under our control because he was hired to direct as it were, he had no control over the film. We had it I was. And so Michael Pearson, knows nothing about films. And it's not interesting because in a way it was one of his toys is his father was Lord Cowdray is worth but he was given 7 million when he reached 21, and had all the money with us. And he was money. He left me to make the film, which is just what I wanted. So I made I went across to Hollywood, in 1970. In I think, February, and stayed there till December of that year, we started shooting the picture on location and what you've seen the picture, Ted. Oh, well, have you ever you taped it? No, I'd like you to see it sometimes see what you're doing. It's a road picture. Every room. Everybody accused us of copying. Easy, right. But it was we didn't know about the existence of easyrider until the script was finished. When somebody said, Oh, you put a script about going across America in a cold, they've just made a film. We didn't know anything about it. So it was it was certainly wasn't a copy. It's quite, it's quite a good film in a small way. It became a cult picture, anyway, was shot, all on location. It was a story of a man delivering a car from Denver, Colorado to San Francisco. And what happens to him on the way he falls foul of the place, he picks her up all sorts of things happen. And that was it sort of basic theme. And it was it was a good idea because we started shooting in Denver, Colorado, and moved over the Rockies and shot in all places awful little places like Green River, Utah, and so on. And in the end, he he causes so much trouble by speeding and getting out of the state before they catch him. They get to California and they say we'll catch him. And in California, they put two great bulldozers across a road like that. And they they have a helicopter following him. And it because of the curious difficult to explain really slightly psychedelic element and the thing very small, he somehow has a death wish. So he stopped to consider the end of this whole saga and then he goes he goes, drives Full Tilt into the Bordeaux's whole bloody thing goes up in flames. And that's the end of the picture was certain kind of music. It sounds a bit weird, but I'll lend you a copy Teddy and just see what you think. Having see. And so I was producer on that original I mean, indeed I have done the producers job. And Richard serif el Amin in extraction was the director. We had nobody of any note in it these chief actor was Barry Newman. Do you remember he was in a television series called The lawyer or something? Petrocelli? I think it was he played in television. And that film was made. And I tell you it cost 1,300,300 $50,000. And it's made, as I told you, around $11 million every year checks come in. Now it's your own profit share. I hope I had a small profits here. Yes, I know. But I've been when it was finished. They were terribly pleased with it at Fox. They wanted me to go to Paris when it was shown in Paris with them. So I went, they went to Hamburg in Germany where it was shown the subtitles both in Paris and Joe knocked up subtitled. First your original original version, they wanted to see the picture. The arrangement was that the film, we would receive

revenue receipts every three months for the first year after the release of the picture, then every six months after that, and then annually thereafter. Our first check came in, and we photographed in put on the wall $285,000 Our first profit share marvellous, absolutely wonderful. And that pictures made profit every year. Not as big as that now, because it's 23 years ago, we get about $75,000 a year coming in every June or July roundabout now. It's due again for 20 years and the American lawyer we had a great chat called how Burke recently said Norman, you don't realise he said very few people make profitable films. They are there you can count them. He said there's a lot of PoFo lore about films. But when it comes down to the money they make, and when they print it in variety, the List of films of the all time winners. It's not near the top, it's about in the middle. But the enormous important films after it that haven't made as much money as Vanishing Point is incredible. When I mean really important big films. So that was that was that now I come coming out of the last film. Anyway, we tried to get some other films going after that with with Sammy from Fox, we never hit upon a really good idea. And a few couple of years or so after all that, in roundabout 1980, I met a chap called Donald Woods, who was a man who had escaped from South Africa, disguised as a priests at the time of apartheid because he was under, under not any observation, he was under house arrest. And his family and five children, or came over to England, arrived here in 1977. And there was huge publicity at the time, because they disliked the apartheid regime. They were met, and he'd been shot if he'd been caught. And he said he wanted to, he'd be interested if somebody could get a film going on this. And I thought it's a wonderful idea for film. He'd written a book called asking for trouble, which were included that story as well as all the others. And he said, What about Richard Attenborough? You know, he's, I said, Well, yes. I mean, we can send him a copy of the book, if you like and see what he thinks. No, Dickie Attenborough wrote back very enthusiastic and said, I wish you a normal would come in, I'd like to talk to you about this. It sounds interesting. So we went to see Dickie Attenborough. And I'm not a great fan of Richard Attenborough's. I must tell you, because I worked with him and I know more about him. But anyway, he said, Well, I'd like to make make this picture. But he said, Who are we going to get to write the script? And I said, Well, Donald woods and I, as we had, I'd written a script, which I got Donald woods to help with. He couldn't write scripts, but he, he knew what he was writing about. And Attenborough bought that. And the whole thing was made on condition that Richard and it was a Richard Attenborough film, produced by Richard Attenborough, directed by Richard Attenborough, Norman Spencer, co producer Richard at were enormous. Spencer CO produced the film, and the film was made, and we couldn't find a title for it. And the book was called asking for trouble because it was, he was in all his dealings with the South African government. And it was a story of the black activist Steve Biko and his thing, so we thought and even when we were shooting, we couldn't find it till one day, I had a idea. We'd written hundreds of titles down and reject them. And I suddenly remembered that wonderful South African story cry the beloved country, and I thought Cry Freedom. I when I said, I wrote down a bit of paper, I said, Dickie, what do you think of that? He said, No bad. Now. He didn't say another bloody word. The next thing I heard was Attenborough's making a wonderful new film called Cry Freedom. That's my title, with no credit, sorry. Anyway, that film was made. Attenborough got his production company together. I was co producer. He then pulled a fast one on me because Ghandi had been written. Gandhi, which was a big success have been written by a screenwriter called John Briley. Jack Briley, who is an American, but he lived in Amazon. Funnily enough, I lived in Amazon for 10 years. Suddenly, I read somewhere that read Richard could produce by Richard Attenborough co producers Norman Spencer and John Briley. Now, he'd never said a word to me about this. But I mean, it doesn't matter for the sake of this thing. But this is the kind of man that Adam Reyes is you know that that famous expression of tricky Dicky, I think applies to that Tiki as well. I'm surprised. Yeah. Well, many stories I can tell you. But anyway, the film was made we shot it in Zimbabwe. Attenborough is to be honest, and it's fair enough to say this on a on a recording. Adam is not a good director. He's already limited director. He's but he's got enormous desire to be the in control of everything. Enormous desire to so he won't he can't make a film unless he's the producer. He's written the script. He's directed it. It's something to do with being this high. And his his direction as you'll see tech do. Did you ever see that? Yeah. Well, it's not a well directed film. And it wasn't a successful film. It didn't make any money. It cost astronomical. It cost and I had no control over this because Edinburgh was making these deals with Universal Pictures. It cost I think, 24 and a half million dollars, an enormous sum of money for something that didn't weren't there. it and it was all there is Attenborough's reduction or Richard reduction books came out Richard Attenborough's film of Christ, I mean, it was sick making now that's more or less where I come to an end. Because the film all it did for me was to tell me a lot about South Africa and, and apartheid, Donald would said to me, everybody says apartheid. He said, apartheid rhymes with hate. It's apartheid in the South African rain labour and a very nice man don't have words. And that's the best thing I got out of the picture apart from being paid happily for it and properly is a friendship with Donald woods and your knowledge about the thing. Since then, I've had various projects and people are writing books. And this lawyer of mine in America I told you about called Howard Berkowitz. He's got a strange film idea. He's trying to get going called Willow wick, which I can't really explain to you on this what it's about, but I've been helping him with that. But I mean, I'm getting on now. So that's really I'm more or less, I suppose come to an end. But before we finish while your tapes running, can I go back and give you one or two inserts in the things I left out? If I say this is this is like a postscript. And I'll now on the sound barrier film. I wanted to put on tape this story that we talked about when when Nigel Patrick as the young husband carries his wife and Todd into this vast house. We found a fantastic house and we built the interior and Shepperton. He carries her over the threshold. And he says My God, what a threshold he has to carry out through a hole the size of a football field. He couldn't carry her on also Ann Todd was their marriage was on the rocks. She said she got her periods that day as she was

Dave Robson  37:01  
all only in terms of appendicitis and he was not allowed to lift. FYI.

Norman Spencer  37:06  
Yes. Well, I think that was his part of his story because he didn't get on with Ann all that much and he wasn't key and she was throwing a tantrum and so that persist, I can't lift. So we got a Kirby flying ballet ballet harness and put round Ann Todd with a wire up to this wire which is strung right across this enormous Hall, the length of this old apartment. And she's sort of, although he carries her she's supported by the wire. And that's in the film. And as Teddy says, if you look closely, you'll see a little flash of the support wire. Fantastic. That's on now. That's on the "Sound Barrier". Now on "Great Expectations". I'd like to add about this wonderful character of Miss Havisham played by Martina Hunt, because we had this if you remember the film, this incredible room that she lives in, which is the wedding breakfast. That's right when I'm coming to that this but this this wedding breakfast. She was jilted. But so Dickens says in the story by a man and she's never taken off her wedding dress since the wedding feast is laid on the table. The cake is crumbling away. There's my son, there's cobwebs everywhere. It's a wonderful set we had it was stumbling mice running over the table of fire. And she sits there in her wedding veil, and she's now a woman of 50 or 60, having been jilted and she said I will never look upon the light of day ever again. And she never has and it's good old Dickens. Now, the end of it. Dickens never knew how to finish Great Expectations. I've read several biographies of his and he talks about it and we didn't know how to finish the film. It doesn't have a satisfactory ending. And it was Kay Walsh, who had an idea. And her idea was that Estella, Who's the girl in the film paid by Valerie Hudson, when Miss Havisham has died? Because she is a stellar who's been her protege starts to become like her and pick the hero John Mills, comes back one day and finds a stellar sitting in the chair next. Oh my god, she's gonna go just like the one. So he comes in and tears down the curtain says I've come back, Miss Havisham. And he opens the shutters and all the dust and the daylight comes in, and he blows the whole room out of existence with daylight and with a very good, dramatic end. No, that's to add to great expectations. I worked on a film as an extra called a Yanka at Oxford, which was directed by Jack Conway an American director and photographed by Harold Ross and who is an American cameraman starring Robert Taylor. Now, when I say extra, I was always in my youth. I was a good sprinter. I could run very fast for a short time. So I was very good at 100 yards and they wanted to shoot a scene where Robert Taylor runs around a racetrack in a scene, you'll see it in the film I forgotten. And the racetrack was built at Denon. I didn't live it dead on then I lived in Baker Street. And between the station at denim and denim village, there was some fields and they built a racetrack, Cinder track and they built standards and their scenes there with Robert Taylor in running gear. And he and myself and Richard Todd, who was an extra, and another chap, no two other chaps. We ran with him we were special. I think we've got something enormous, like five Guinness a day or something for that. And we ran with him. And I've got to this day a cutting from the daily sketch with a picture of us all Robert Taylor myself running next to me I had hair then you wouldn't recognise me. And so on. That's that was the thing. And that was when I first became acquainted with Denham village because we used to get on that was 1938 I think 38

Speaker 1  41:04  
No, it was earlier because Goodbye Mr. Chips was 38 Was it

Norman Spencer  41:10  
but it was night without armour was 36. Seven isn't. So it was between there and I suppose. And we used to get on the set to we used to get off the train and about eight o'clock in the morning, quarter to eight in the morning, walk into dental village, there's a restaurant which is there to this day. It was run by a dear old lady, we'd all sit down and have mammoth breakfast of bacon and eggs and coffee in front of a roaring flower, this lovely little village denim and then walk back onto the set and do our running. And so now that's what I wanted to add

I think I've done that set.

Dave Robson  41:53  
Thank you very, thank you very much.

Norman Spencer  41:57  
Which of all the productions you worked on, did you enjoy doing vegetable, which is the one I think the film I did for myself Vanishing Point in America because I was the producer. There was nobody above me I was in total charge of the whole thing. I had the satisfaction of being the only Englishman on it because it was made in Hollywood with a totally an American director, American cameraman American Crew. And it was a success. And as an epic, I mean, it's a good film to see and its success in in commercial terms because it's made so much money. I mean, it's I mean, I wish I had all the proceeds of the film. I mean it's that was the most satisfactory one because

End of Side 6