Ted Candy

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Roy Fowler  0:04  
The following recording is copyright by the ACTT history project. It was made on the 26th of October 1987 at 111 Water Street in London. The subject is Ted candy. The interviewer is Roy Fowler, Ted. Can you tell me when and where you were born?

Unknown Speaker  0:28  
I was born in Bedford in 19/22 of January, 1920

Roy Fowler  0:36  
right. What did your father do?

Ted Candy  0:42  
He died when I was very young, and my mother brought me out with my younger we had a big family. When she looked after us, she did it all. Yeah, I went to an ordinary Elementary School. I left school at 14. I liked school. I enjoyed it. I was good at some things and bad at others, the same as 1000s of people. And at 14, where you go, get a job. So I did. I left school on the Friday and I started work on the Monday at half past seven.

Roy Fowler  1:29  
You were quite lucky. That was the time of the Depression, yeah. Well, that

Speaker 1  1:32  
was sad. That was in 1934 I got a job where I was paid. It was 10 years a week, that's 50 pence today. That's so much, but it was quite a lot in those days. You got to remember, you could buy a lot of things very cheaply. In those days, you could buy, you know, I think a bottle of whiskey was about three and six pence. And so in comparison, it was quite worthwhile. I stayed, I went to work. I was going to be an electrical engineer. I was very interested in that at the time. And then I was ill. I had rheumatic fever and one or two other things. And I got, I went to I got a job on the newspaper, and I was going to say I was photographer, though I was going to eventually be a photographer, I worked in the dark rooms, and I learned a lot about photography. It intrigued me, and I liked it. And working for a newspaper, you were independent, you could have a ball, and they were good crowd of people

Roy Fowler  2:48  
that was a local newspaper, bed for chair times.

Speaker 1  2:56  
Then I was unfortunately, I had three heart attacks when I was 18, which kind of stopped me a bit. Then I went to work for the loot news. They ran a series of evening papers as well, and they worked. You worked all the hours of God saying, believe me, you did. It was hard work, but you learned a lot. And one way of learning is to be in on everything. And then the war started. Well, I knew I remember the ticker tape 1939 about the Germans had crossed the Polish border, and you suddenly the world seemed to stop. You thought it was all going to be like 19 1418, over again, because that's the only war you knew about. And of course, it wasn't going to be like that, but you thought so, and there was a certain amount of tension about it all. People took it very calmly, but that's how it happened to me. Well, then you see, there were restrictions on zinc, which they made the blocks to print the pictures in the newspapers, so there was going to be a restriction on it. So I thought, well, the one thing that was top of the pole in those days was the newsreels. They were in everything, did everything. So I wrote to there were five New Zealand companies in those days that was paramount, universal pathing, movie tone and go more British. And I wrote to Goon British, and I wrote to Paramount, and I didn't write pathing, but I. I wrote, I think it was the universal, I'm not sure. Can't remember now, but anyway, I got an answer from Goon British, and they said, Well, would you like to come up and see us? So I did, and I saw a gentleman by the name of Bishop Bert bishop. He was a nice man. He was the production manager for gomats, and then I had to see Mr. Castle tonight. He was the boss in those days. And I went back home, carried on working. And then I got a letter from them saying, if you'd like to come up, we'd be pleased to see you would give you a job. And I got four pounds, 10 shillings a week. And I worked for go months. And after, I went with Eddie Edmonds, who was a great character, lovely little fella. He'd been with go months for since war 1914 he he took pictures during the 19 1418, war. But he was a wonderful character, lovely man, frightened to death of his wife. But lovely man, and he married a widow with five children. He had good reason to be fried Noel. Then there was Peter cannon. There was a little chap connected with the collino brothers. He was but he was a brilliantly good cameraman, solid as a rock. I'm telling you, these were the first people I met. Then there was Ted Hawkins, who used to was with Paramount. Then he came to go months, and then he went back to Paramount bill. He was a sound man. They were the principal characters. Anyway,

Roy Fowler  7:00  
this is what, 1940

Speaker 1  7:03  
just Yes, yeah. Round about that time, 1940 41 then the next thing i i took pictures in those days, the first job I had to do, I'll always remember I worked. We worked out in one four King Water Street, film house Water Street, just up the road. And I had to go to Marble Arch, where the Duchess of Kent no the Duchess of Gloucester. I was going to open a new building, which meant it really all it consisted of was a picture of the car driving up the crowd cheering. She getting out of the car, waving to the crowd coming up the steps, coming up to you, passing smiles out nicely, goes in bonk, then she comes out, stands on the steps, waves to people, comes down, gets in the car, drives away in the crowd, or wave, simple as that. But it would have made us both about 40 feet, if you were lucky, in the newsroom. The Duchess Kent did this, or did that. Lots of things happening and but I mentioned this because at that time, that was the first job I ever did. When I came back, they said, God, put your expenses in. You

Roy Fowler  8:30  
actually were the camera man on it or assisting someone now you went straight. Newman

Speaker 1  8:37  
Sinclair, no folks in all guesswork on a tripod. And no, don't use a tripod. And it was there was no parallax. That was a innovation they brought in later on, where you could move the eyepiece to allow for the parallax with the lens, because it was offset. The eyepiece was in the right hand corner, and the lens was lower down on the left hand side. So if you were trying to take a picture at, say, two yards away, well then you kept the head you slightly up and over to the right, to the left the as you looked at it, and you prayed that it was in the middle, and it was nine times out of 10.

Roy Fowler  9:25  
How was it driven? How was it driven?

Speaker 1  9:32  
And when I came back, the point of this I was trying to make was when I came back see having worked on a newspaper. I put my they said you've got to put your expenses in. So I did bus to Marble Arch. And these are exact figures, throughputs, return bus, Marble Arch to water, streets, sixpence, total. I. And I took that up to paid up to Bishop. See, I took it up to about bishop to sign it, and he said, You can't put expenses like this in it's not allowed. I said, Well, what do you mean that that's what I paid? And he said, Yeah, yes, but you're not allowed to travel on public transport, because film you've got is nitrate film. I said, Well, don't make any difference. Oh, it does. You're not allowed to travel on public transport. What you got to put down this taxi to Marvel arch taxi back and charge for the tea, for your tea, you see one in six months, which made a hell of a difference, because now you were getting one and six for tea, three shillings to Marble Arch, three shillings back again, that was seven and sixpence, whereas you only spent six months to me, I thought it was marvelous idea, but that was the first thing I ever did. First thing I ever did for grandmas, I'll always remember that. And the people that I met. There's the lions from movie town. They were great people, Powell and Pat wild, Jimmy Kimmel, Gemmell and jock Gemel. They were Jimmy Gemma worked for Paramount. Jock Gemma worked for Pathy, and there's Alf tamwell movie tone, Ken Gordon for Pathy. Arthur farmer,

Speaker 1  11:48  
Ronnie Reed at Paramount, and lots of others. But they were all great characters. They were wonderful people. They stopped at nothing. They couldn't care less about anybody else. They only wanted to do the job they were supposed to do. That was the most important thing in the world. Didn't matter, damn what else was whatever they were going to do, whatever they were there to do. It wouldn't matter if it had been 10,000 people in front of them. They were going to do it, and they did it, and they were marvelous people, and they could put on the most wonderful act, every one of them, really. I say this in all sincerity. You couldn't find a group of people like them anywhere in the world. They were fabulous. They really were. Then the next you did jobs, all kinds of jobs. I mean, you went because the system was then, every three months, the news show changed. You see the head like, say, for instance, the first quarter of the year, go months, would have the home office, the Ministry of Defense, if you like, or the army, and the then path, he would have, say, the Navy. So one of the other ministries.

Roy Fowler  13:22  
This was the wartime pooling arrangement, yes,

Speaker 1  13:24  
but that you did the job. So if there was a naval job, then path you got it. If they couldn't send anybody, then got anybody, then they'd ask one the other companies to do it for so you didn't, you didn't know where you were going, what you were going to do. The first job I got, really of that type was, I was sent down to the Admiralty Commander kimmings. He was then it was great bloke, about six foot six, got a great big, white, flashing teeth, lovely looking bloke. He was an author. He wrote plays, he wrote lock up your daughters. He was great sense of humor. And I got the war correspondents license, and that was the first job I did, which was a convoy to Malta 1942

Roy Fowler  14:26  
Excuse me, what did you have to be or do to get that license? Was it a matter of security clearance or what do they expect?

Speaker 1  14:36  
All they wanted to know was what your name was, where you lived, which company you work for, and if they'd put you up, then that was it, honestly. And I got a license. And I went into see goonda kimmings Before I left, and he said, Have you got your license? I said, Yes. He said. Right? Let me look at it. And his first words after that was, that's no good. No self respecting captain, would you allow you on board his ship with that? Take it back, because it was number 13. So it changed number 14, so I had Admiralty license number 13 and 14. Then I went on this convoy. And I went up to, I won't go into a lot of detail, but up to go rock in Scotland. And we sailed from there on August, bank holiday, Monday,

Roy Fowler  15:44  
excuse me, how much gear did you have to carry with you for this sort of job?

Speaker 1  15:50  
Well, I did a lot of traveling, but I always had the Newman Sinclair and a tripod, and you had a spares case with all the lenses, and you had another spares case with the spare magazines, because each magazine took 200 feet of film. And then you had a container, which was in those days, was a metal box film can, film transport can, literally, in effect, which is what you took for film with, because all the nitrate,

Roy Fowler  16:27  
how much would how much stock would you take?

Unknown Speaker  16:31  
Well, on that Convo, I took 10,000 feet. So

Roy Fowler  16:35  
that's really rather difficult, that plus your personal effects, because

Speaker 1  16:40  
that's why you always found that most funny, most neutral cameramen had very long arms. They all did. You think an amplifier, a sound amplifier, weighed 300 weight. You had to update in and if you would work in a sound, you got a sound man and yourself, and if you got, say an eight story building, then they say, Well, no, there's no lift. You've got to get up there. You've got to carry it up the stairs, for which we used to charge tension in John load, which was a fiddle, but it was very good. I mean, you earned it, believe me, you earned it. There was nothing given. You did earn it too. And I went on this convoy to Malta. I was transferred from one ship to another. I did all the admirals, the briefings and all that kind of business. And then we set sail. We got into the Mediterranean. It was the biggest convoy ever to leave this country. Up to that time, we had 12 merchant ships. We had two battleships, the Nelson and the Rodney. We had seven cruisers for five aircraft carriers and 41 destroyers to guard 12 merchant ships to go between the Straits of Gibraltar and to Malta, and they left us just off Cape bomb. But in the meantime, the they chunked the eagle, they hammered the indomitable, which was brand new aircraft carrier. They stopped the Nelson, and then they started to not be ships of the merchant ships. What were you on? Which one I'd been transferred from the cruise of the Sheffield to the merchant ship the clan Ferguson, which they all carried the same cargo, 7000 tons of aviation, spirit and 5000 tons of ammunition. Jesus and we got it. We got ours on the August the 12th, the beginning of the grouse season, at four minutes to eight. And it was, it was unbelievable, really. But, I mean, we were very fortunate. We got off it all right. I swam in sea for nine hours. I got picked up by a broken down lifeboat as a lot more that happened. And then we left. We got we landed at an Island, zenbra Island, where we were picked up by the Vichy French from Tunis, who took us into Tunis, where we were put into a prisoner of war camp, and then I went to tunis Military Hospital. Then when I came out of. That they put me in jail for 10 days, and then I love me, and then I am

Roy Fowler  20:08  
in jail. You say, yeah, why did they put you in jail? Well,

Speaker 1  20:12  
they transferred me from this hospitals to I didn't know where they were going to do, what they were going to do. They took me to the jail. The only thing it was that when they wanted to cut my pair off, I wish they had a dump, I stopped them, so now I'm going to have that. So they put me up on the roof, and I stayed on this fort city Casin on the roof. They kept me up there for 14 days, then took me down back to the railway station One dark night and put me on a train, and they were all the survivors from this convoy, and they took us down as facts and put us into prisoner of war camp there, and that's where we were supposed to spend the rest of the war. But there were five of us, and the only reason I was included because I got a pair of shoes, leather shoes, and we got out and we walked from sex over the Atlas Mountains to Constantine in Algeria, and we were arrested by the RAF we didn't even know they'd invaded. And it was fabulous, it really was. And that took us three weeks, but then they sent us home. Took a little while to get home, and we eventually got back to Guru rock. And then from go rock, back to Water Street, you always came back to Water Street. Then, I mean, that was exciting, and it was fabulous, and the fact that you survived, and there were so many who didn't. And the I remember the next job I did after that was out in the country, thatching a roof, showing the putting the thatch on the roof, and this, and the other still, during the war, yeah. And that was for Ireland. You see, because during the war, the entire war, we supplied new seals to Ireland, but we couldn't show a uniform or anything to do with the war. The weekly reel had to go out. And I mean, most of the reels consisted of plow thatching farm work, because people didn't farm in uniform. And if you, if you went to a farm and there was land girls, you had to move the land girls away if they wore the Lagos uniform, because the Irish wouldn't show it if it showed any uniform, so we had to steer clear. And it was always all right the Dutch, just like the Duchess of Kent or the Duchess of Gloucester, opened something or there was no military there, as long as there were no uniforms, it was all right to use. We did that throughout the entire war. As far as Ireland was concerned, as far as we in the new show business, was there was no such thing as a war. When you consider the number of Irish people who were fighting the war that joined the British Army, it was quite remarkable, really. I don't know where they thought, though they'd all gone to, you know, but that's the way of the world. It was as it was then that brought us up to the war. Then I went through the war, then I went, Oh, no, end of things, you know, all we had the Blitz in between, and at night, each and every person connected with the news field. You took it in turns. So it was your night tonight. Well, then if there was a raid or a blitz on London, and you did it, you didn't, nobody rang you, or told you or anything, you got up and you went and did it whatever you could, whether it was a big raid or a small raid, as long as it was something, you could spend all night wandering around looking for it. But if there wasn't anything, if there were no warnings you didn't take, then the next guy took it. The next night, they give you a break. If you were in London, if you, of course, if you were out and away in Manchester or Birmingham, then you did whatever happened. If there was a raid up there, you did it. You were always looking for stories everywhere. And you see the news, you will mean they, they didn't have a lot of money. And if. Even going to send you anywhere. They try and work out a route for you so that you could call there, do that, and then go on to that. And then I'll give you an idea when they brought in this startling thing, which was for working on Sunday, you got 10 shillings and six months. That was after the war. Well, you never did an Indian single job. Then, when it first started, they resented that so much that you got to pay for a Sunday because my first contract that I had with go months was for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That was you're working out. You were always supposed to be there if you went anywhere. I was remember you said, as far as we're concerned, if you go the toilet, you tell this office first. And that's how it was during the war, really was. But it was all exciting, and people will cry into you, and everywhere you went, they helped. You know, end, and there was never any it did with the new shows, you'll get lots of people would tell you that there was fights and arguments, and they always used to argue with each other, and it was like a battlefield when the new shows used to get together at a loud hurry. They always helped each other. If you went, if you went on a job, and there was paramount Pathy movie tone, they were there. And you just come from somewhere else, and you come from somewhere else, and you'd run out of film. They'd lend you the film to do the job with, so they weren't trying to stop you. But they wouldn't tell you anything. They wouldn't say, Oh, I found out that they're going around the back door and they're not coming out the front door at all. They're coming out the back door. He'd slope off quietly on his own and wander around there. And that's the only way you could do it. You had to please yourself. You had to do his use of it. And the wonderful thing about the newsrooms was nobody told you what to do. You were entirely free love. They said the only instructions you got was a piece of paper which said, so and so, that's the job. It's in Manchester, nine o'clock Monday, maximum 400 feet, which meant that don't shoot more than 400 feet. Now, when you got there, you look at the story, and if you look as to how it what would make the best story, in your opinion? So you had to have a beginning, an ending, and a bit in the middle. And it didn't matter what it was, you calm a building, you get your general picture and establish where it was. Then you get the arrivals, or do whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever the story was, and then you'd finish up within a shot showing an identification, so that you know it was in Manchester. Anybody who saw it in cinemas in Malta would know it was Manchester. You know the liver building in Liverpool? No, it was Liverpool. You always got that's the way your mind went. You did a lot of sport, lot of football, cricket, all kinds of things. If it was on during the war, a lot of things were canceled, but they'd still had a lot of football and a lot of sport all the time. And you see, they had the races. We used to do the racing.

Unknown Speaker  29:00  
Then I had to do a it's only afterwards you realize it. I had to do a picture of a colonel. I think it was Colonel,

Speaker 1  29:12  
just a portrait, just an identification picture, so that they could cut it in if ever they wanted it during the War of I think it was Colonel one star, General Eisenhower. And he wasn't important. And the way I why I remember it was so well, was because I couldn't spell his name, Eisner. How do you spell Eisenhower? I had to ask his a How do you spell that? Eisenhower? And he said, E I, well, it's amazing, isn't it? Because you always wrote your own doubt sheets, and when you went abroad, yours had puzzled it up you took it to the airport or however you were going to say. During the war, the services took care of that for you. You know, they shipped it back for you. Then I was attached to the United States Navy. When that was I was told. I went home, I had a phone call at home, and the guy said, Can you come to Grosvenor Square? And I said, Yes. And I said, Don't bother about telling your office just come. So I said, right. So I went to Governor square, and we had a cup of coffee, and I saw various people. I said, it's just a dummy run. We just want to see what's going to happen. So just sit about the Office for the morning rest of the day. Now go home. That was the first time, and the next time the office knew I was but they didn't know what I was doing. Then they rang me up and said, Can you come to the want you to report to the Admiralty tomorrow morning, nine o'clock. Be there, and we want all the gear, everything. So you thought, This is it. This is D Day. Oh, so you got all this stuff together, all of the films cloud down there and and they said, don't want you to get all excited. It's not on, so it's okay. We're just going to take you for a nice little trip. So we went down to Fauci in Cornwall with Daphne to Daphne de Marios place, and we spent three days early. Was there while they told you all about the fortifications on the Atlantic Wall and everything else, and all the correspondence they took out of London to see what the effect would be. And then we all came back again. Then eventually, one day, I lived at Chingford. At that time, I got a telephone call, and he said, By this time, I knew him quite well. I said, Daddy, you got all your stuff. Said, Yeah, say, come straight here. Don't go to the office, don't tell anybody anything, just come straight here. So I went to Goon the square, and I got little car, black Ford. I bought it for 42 pounds. In 1941 and I think that was about six months old, but it had been stored, you know, since because of the petrol situation. But that was the price of cars, and it was marvelous. Little car ran it for years when all over this country 42 pounds. But anyway, coming back to Grosvenor Square, I went there and the chapter said, well, there are those your instructions. And there was a letter which said, you will report with all speed to the United States, Northern Ireland naval base at London area where you report to the Naval Commander, signed Admiral, Stark admiral in charge of United States operations in Europe. I never told the office where I was going or anything. And I said to the boat there, how the hell do I get to Northern Ireland? And I said, Don't worry, we'll take and we went from there to Heston. And on the tarmac there, there was this plane, United States Navy plane. We went in, and I was wearing an army uniform, British Army uniform, you see. And all this gear came with me and went on this plane. And then I went to walk through. And of course, the British forces people there said, Just a minute, where do you think you're going? You can't leave this country. And the American said, look, as far as you're concerned, far as everybody else is concerned, he's an American. You've never seen him in your life, so forget it. And I just walked out. I mean, nobody knew where I was, or all of us. I got on the plane, went to Northern Ireland, stayed there. Then I was a ship I was on was it was a destroyer, the USS shubrik, and we were going to drop anchor 2000 yards from the beach. Is, and we did that. But first of all, before we went there, we went down the Irish Sea, which was the first time I'd ever been seasick in my life, and I felt terrible. And then we got down to Plymouth, and then we turned around and went all the way back again, up the Irish channel and then turned around and went back because it was delayed 24 hours. And I think by that time, I didn't mind. It didn't bother me a bit. I didn't care whether somebody shot me, buried me or drowned. We went to we were the just off Cherbourg, and we dropped anchor just just before midnight, and there were five destroyers in a row, 2000 yards from the beaches, and I think it was about five past Three, four o'clock that morning, we opened fire. But before then they bomb the beaches, we had a grandstand few you never seen anything like in your life. I've never seen so many planes coming down. I've never seen so many planes on fire. There was always the tail end run. Was always the place. And you could literally see the bombs hit the ground bounce, because they never did a scrap good, because it was all reinforced concrete, and they bounced off it. It was the thing that really destroyed the fortifications on there were the the next day, we did battleships way behind you, the 16 inch armor piercing shells. They're the ones who did it. You could hear them too, but God, you could. And the the invasion started, and that was it. And I was there for three weeks with the USS shubic Now I came back to Plymouth. I caught the train for London, and I walked into the office in Water Street, and the first words I heard when they said, Where the hell have you been? I said, I've been to Normandy. I've been to Cherbourg. I said, I'll be shipping film back every day. And I had, they shipped it back and it went into the pool system. You got onto the beachhead? Did you? No, they wouldn't let me know. No, I stayed on board the USS Shubin all the time. They were marvelous to me, honestly, I had Lola luck. Everybody was very kind to me.

Roy Fowler  37:44  
Were the US combat cameramen along too. No, just you, just me,

Speaker 1  37:52  
but it was you saw the rocket ships. I'd never seen those before. They frightened me to death, and they were so efficient. They really were the Americans. But I saw the both sides, the British Navy and the American Navy, different worlds, but marvelous really, you see because normally, I mean, people didn't see that. The only time I was was in the war. I was grade four at the beginning of the war. I'm fit for military service because I had three heart attacks. And I suppose if it happened today, I'd have been into airfield and they'd have killed me by giving me a transplant instead of letting me grow out of it, which you did, because I swam, I tell you, I swam in the sea for nearly nine hours. And when I was examined, when I came back, they said they couldn't believe it. The doctors, they said we'd pass a one now. So it didn't do me any harm. And all the walking across Africa and across Tunis and the Atlas Mountains obviously didn't do me any harm, and I've never been to slightest trouble since I'm 60 just on 68 so and I had a marvelous time with initials. I met everybody. I met every politician from Churchill

Unknown Speaker  39:21  
and Newham, Bevan and Ernest Bevin. I knew Ernest Bevin quite well, and I knew thorny craft. To throw just a few names, I met a lot of American politicians and I never met one that wasn't a bloody liar.

Speaker 1  39:47  
The biggest liars I ever met were politicians. That's the gospel truth. I never met an honest one ever i. But, I mean, for me, I was only a country boy, but, you know, I went with the queen all over the world. I went with Princess Margaret to the West Indies. I went with Princess Margaret to Africa, to East Africa, to West Africa. For months, I went to Egypt. I got deported from Egypt, and I went back again for Suez.

Speaker 1  40:36  
I went to Ethiopia with the Hillier Selassie. Stayed with him, you know, for a little country boy from Bedford, have one bag going

Roy Fowler  40:46  
wonderful people. Let's talk about some of those trips and some of those stories. You finished the war, where

Speaker 1  40:53  
I finished war, up here in London, in border

Roy Fowler  40:57  
Street, right? So you didn't go through with the armies, or

Speaker 1  41:02  
any of them. No, I came back. No, well, we did this. And I think the final thing, the final thing was the victory parade, you know, the big, big victory parade. And everybody was work walking through, and we were told that we got we got to do it. There was the job we all detailed out and the positions marked out for you, and you had to be early, and all that kind of business. But the thing that annoyed me was we were told that we got to wear a uniform. And I said, Well, I thought it was outrageous, because victory parade was a victory for them, not for us. And we told that if we didn't wear a uniform, we'd be fired. And I always remember that very definitely. But anyway, we all did in the end, and it all worked out well. But the victory parade went on all day. That was marvelous. That was the end of the war as such, for us. Then we were getting back to normal. Then, you know, as it used to be, we started to ship new shows abroad. We were shipping them to Canada. We supplied new shows to Canada, Africa, every part of Africa, South Africa, we had exchange deals with pretty well every country in the world. And at that time, we were putting out a million feet of film a week every, every twice a week, there was 1000 newsreels, which it was 1000 feet in length, Monday to Wednesday, then Thursday, it was changed, and there was and the transport arrangements for that were fantastic. You think you can't do it today, you couldn't do it today, but they did it. Then we used to print 1000 copies. And got the high speed machines they've got today, but we used to print 1000 copies from Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon lunchtime, and they would be transported to every cinema in the country, including Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland, north of Scotland, and everywhere by the next morning, mostly, however, by train, by road, by train and by lorries, trucks, film transport, which, when you think about that, want some time. And the labs were marvelous. You know, to turn out the quantity they did.

Roy Fowler  44:00  
Did Goma British have its own lab devoted to the newsreel? Or did you use one of the commercial labs? No, we

Speaker 1  44:05  
had the labs were at Lime Grove, you see, because they were owned by the Ostra brothers, and so was Gomer British as Ostra brothers, before the rank organization general film distributors took over. I But Lime Grove, you had little Percy there. He was the developer. And when you take film in there, he had a wooden frame, a drawing pin, and he'd pin the film on, wrap it round this wooden frame, 200 feet of it, and then he'd pin it up, and he'd take on the frame. He had a I can see him now. He had a rubber apron, and he dunked this frame into the developer and tooth. And he'd do that a few times. And. There was a little red bulb up on the top. He'd pick it up, and as he lifted it up like that, to look at it, to look at the film, BFI, you got a frame with 200 feet of film on it, he'd look down and it would drip all over it, absolutely soaking. Think we will give it a bit more. Boom when he dunk it a few more times and in water, in fix and he'd left it. And then he take the next one and repeat the process. Do you remember his last name? I can't remember his name. Percy. Percy. I found I can't. So that will come back, come back.

Roy Fowler  45:42  
That was a separate part of the lab. Was it labs for, just for the newsreel.

Speaker 1  45:48  
Oh, that was the labs at Lam grove. They did everything there,

Roy Fowler  45:53  
including the studio. Oh, yes, yeah. Do you remember Bill Goldston? Yes.

Speaker 1  45:58  
And then he went to ranks. He decided at Denham, I knew Bill gorge them very well. But I mean, he I'm trying to give you some idea the cost then as what it was. Then, if you had the labs, labs on overtime, it used to cost eight pence per person. If you held the labs, we used to sometimes old to lab, Because don't forget, the news shows in those days kept the studios going. Most of them, studios were the ones that the movie. The new shields were the kept the studios going during the war in more ways than one. When they had the polls during the war, you'll find that all of them carried under percent. News drills were the most popular thing in the summer, that was at Lime Grove. Percy was there little Percy

Roy Fowler  46:55  
we have we have to do.

Speaker 1  0:00  
Yeah. Sorry, I beg your pardon.

Roy Fowler  0:07  
Ted candy side too. Yes, Ted, you were saying about the lime growth. The reason

Speaker 1  0:12  
I mentioned about Percy was to show you how primitive it was to what it is today. You know, today you've got, they put in great big, huge rolls of films, start to finish. It goes through its color. They were black and white, and that's how the new shows were done. And you would, as I told, you, hold them. And that cost eight pence for over time. So it had to be thought about very seriously before you held them up. Then there was, let's see. We used to work from Water Street. You had to you get your instructions there. And you never saw the office. You didn't go into the office. You just came in now you come back, say you've been to Brighton, Mama job. You come back in towards the street, you go down to your locker, and on a clip on your locker was paper. Then you knew you got another job, but you didn't know what it was till you read it and it said, Oh, it's tomorrow morning. It might be back at Brighton, where you've just come from, or it might be Manchester or Birmingham, anywhere, anywhere at all. Tell you what time you got to be there, who you reported to, but that was all you were supposed to know. What the story was, and they'd be the key. The most important thing was how much they expect it? 400 feet, 200 feet, 1000 feet, or whatever they wanted. And that's how you modeled your film when you got there, if it was a good story, if it was a big story, much bigger than you imagined, you did the best you could, and you shot as much film as you could, and you'd phone up before you left where you always did, and told them what it was like, because then you take the film direct to the labs, which, in latter years, they changed from Lime Grove. When they packed up out of Lime Grove, they moved to Denham. Well, that's 25 miles from Water Street. So you've got to, if you were coming in, you'd come into London, into Water Street and then go to Denham. Or if you were coming from the west country, or anywhere at the West Side London, obviously you'd make your way round that way, go into Denham, put your film in, then come into London and pick up your story for tomorrow. It

Roy Fowler  2:44  
was your responsibility to get the film to the lab. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1  2:50  
No, I got a scar on my face. I was a lion grove. I did that. I went into the labs, and there it was all in pitch darkness. This was about 11 o'clock at night, and we've been told that you've got to take the take the film up and put it in the safe, which was up on the second floor. You must do that. But there were no lights on. Nobody was there. I went up, put in, found the safe. Couldn't find the lights, because you know where the lights were. Put it in there. Then I could see the lights through the windows, and there was the doorway, which you used to walk down the fire escape, down to the where the little red phone box used to be in the center at Lang Grove. And then you walked out and walked over the main gate, and there'd be the watchman, and you just tell him you were leaving, and you'd walk out. And I walked across the floor, tripped over, went straight through a film dryer, and cut my face, and I'd went to Hammersmith, and they stitched it up there. But I had a job the next day. And then I was go go to I got a black eye, great big black eye, and my face was all swollen up, and I'd go go to Ascot on the Saturday for the King George six, Queen Elizabeth stakes, when airborne was running, saying, Tell what the date was. And they stopped me. They said, No, you can't do it. We can't let you do that. Because I used to like racing, because in case anybody sees you, they'll think we're the wickedest subjects alive to make you work under those so I said, All right, then suit me. One Go. I should go and watch it instead. But they said, Oh no, no, no, we're taking you out of the paddock. You can build. Be cut out in the country where nobody could see you. So I still COVID, but that was it.

Roy Fowler  5:09  
Ted. How many hours did you put in each week? Would you say on average? If there were such a thing as an average?

Speaker 1  5:17  
Well, I mean, I don't want to make it sound too bad, but the hours, let me tell you, when you had a week's holiday, you were all at sea until you got back because you didn't know what was happening. You lost touch. And nobody wanted to be away. Everybody wanted to be there because you knew what was happening, what was going on in the world, you really did, and to go away and not to know what was happening was purgatory. Really was you'd lost touch. You couldn't do that the hours you worked, according to one of my diaries, I worked for over 12 months, and I never had a Saturday or Sunday off once, and I never got paid one penny piece for working Saturday or Sunday, because that was part of your

Roy Fowler  6:18  
job. Did you get time off during the week? No, so it was seven days a week.

Speaker 1  6:22  
Seven days a week. Horse was nobody can the complaints used to be, was okay this weekend, this jobs now this job upper we're going to cover the Manchester United football match, if you like, they said, the other, nothing wonderful, you know, nothing that anybody's going to be get excited about. The issue the pass is for him and him, he's going up to Manchester, you're going up to Doncaster, you're going to Brighton this set and the other and there'd be one bloke left out, and he would complain, what have I done? Why? And I got the jobs. Why are you isolating me? What have I done? That's wrong. Every job I've done has been okay. I asked Roy drew he was the editor. He's quite happy with it. Why am I being pushed out? Why? And I got a job. That was the attitude, really was. And when you think about it, it sounds crazy, but it while you were they were pushing you, making giving you the jobs, then you were good. You were doing a great job.

Roy Fowler  7:35  
What were they paying you?

Speaker 1  7:39  
I got four pounds, 10 of shillings a week during the war. Then the Act came into being. Well, as far as I was concerned, and as far as we were concerned, and I got really a big jump to seven guineas a week. But I'm not saying I didn't have a rise in between then, because I did, but it wasn't. It was different to what it is today or what it has been. You got called up at the end of the year. Castle night used to say, you've done a great job. You've been very good. We appreciate your efforts. And as from the first week in January, you'll get two and six months increase in your pay packet. And you said, thank you very much. That's most kind of it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Or you might get five bulbs. I mean, it had been known that you might even get tensions a week rise, which was quite fantastic, but, I mean, you didn't know what anybody else got. I mean, it was purely yourself, and you never, you wouldn't dream of asking anybody else what, what did you get? Did you get a rise? You never ask anybody else. It was purely yourself. And if you, if you had about, he said, mind your own business. I'm

Roy Fowler  9:06  
still curious the hours you were putting in to to get this, four pounds, 10 a week,

Speaker 1  9:12  
approximately. Well, I mean, you'd go like, for instance, if you went away on a job, wherever it was, whatever it was. You went away and you didn't till you come back, you wouldn't have any time off when you came back. You just work again.

Roy Fowler  9:32  
How much of the time would you spend away from London, away from home?

Speaker 1  9:37  
Oh gosh, you spend time. Should say 1996 95% of the time away from London. It was only when you were in London that you got bored stiff, because then it would be you'd be sitting there waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to happen.

Roy Fowler  9:54  
Did you have a family? Yeah, but the job came before the family, in effect. Well,

Speaker 1  10:00  
I think the reason why we're still married and we've got a very happy family, very successful family, thank god Touchwood, was because I was wasted a lot, because it was an all. She were always coming home, and it was always pleased to see you my son, who is now 40 odd. I mean, he was five years old before I ever saw him at Christmas. I never saw him at Christmas stall until he was five years old. First time I ever spent Christmas with him. I bought him a motor car, and that was only because I was in the business. I was and I knew, and I got one. I found out where there was one. I bought it in Wales, and I brought it all the way back in the building car, one of these little pedal cars, because you couldn't get one anywhere else. You couldn't buy one.

Roy Fowler  10:52  
Well, I seen from today's industrial relations point of view, you were being exploited, but you you didn't mind it, obviously.

Speaker 1  10:59  
Well, you weren't exploited. It was a different world. Things were different. I mean, if they'd have suddenly brought in somebody who said, or I had a company which said we're only going to work a shift system of four days a week, and it's going to be we're going to work 40 hours a week, but we're going to work four days of 10 hours, then everybody would have said, well, of course, not a bad idea. And they would have done but, I mean, the system was such, if you'd have turned around to anybody and said, in just a minute, I want to go home on Saturday and Sunday. I haven't been home for a week. I haven't been home for 10 weeks. I haven't been home for three months, four months. So I want to go home and I want to have a week off. They just said, well, in that case, you don't want to be a New Zealand man. You don't want to work for the new show. You want a nine till five job. Go and get yourself an office job somewhere, or go and get a job in a factory. You don't want this job. That would have been the attitude. Tell

Roy Fowler  12:03  
me then about acts, arrival on the scene, how they organized the newsreels, and the effect that it had.

Speaker 1  12:11  
Well, the thing that I knew was I was a member of the National Union of Journalists,

Roy Fowler  12:21  
and I came into, we're talking now, of when, what issues,

Speaker 1  12:24  
the beginning of the war, 1940 I was a member of the National Union, journalist. And I met Alf tumwell of movie town we were going up to linkage here RAF tappy, who died. He got killed about a month later. He just won the Victoria Cross, and we were going up there to do pictures of him and playing and all this kind of business. It was morale booster for the public show, this young man who's won the Victoria Cross. And he went up for movie town. I went up for go months. And also Ken Gordon went up for Pathy. Ken was an ardent act man. Well, he was the president one time or something,

Speaker 1  13:29  
pardon me. And Alf tummore was very, very much interested in the ACTT. And he said to me, or the act, as it was, then they said to me, you want to join this and the other. And that's how I came. Became a member my number, I can tell you what it was now, 1117, 1117 I've still got the cards. One month empty. George Elvin was the secretary.

Speaker 1  14:13  
I knew him. He was quite a nice man. We got on very well together. Spoke to him, George. He was always very easy to talk to. But I mean, you didn't have a lot. There was nobody coming around telling you what to do, or how to do it, or rules and regulations. There was the Act didn't come into it, and when they did, it was the things. But as I told you, the most startling thing was the 10 and six for working Sunday. Never get that.

Roy Fowler  14:45  
That was directly because of the Union.

Speaker 1  14:49  
Then the other thing was seven and six months allowance if you worked after seven o'clock at night. The. Now, seven and six. Now, they were the income tax wasn't consistent, you see, because there was Pathy judge seven and six and got it complete. Now, movie and I know, go once you had to buy you and if you were drawing the 76 which you had to pay for it, pay for your dinner out of that, but paramount, they had to pay income tax on it. But they said, But how's the point? You know? But by the time we bring it out and paid income tax on it, and they've added it up. It's pushing us up all the time. They're taking it away from us, not giving it to us. But that was the first two things. Was the seven and six after seven o'clock and the 10 and six for working Sunday, but

Roy Fowler  15:55  
no limitation on ours. Oh no,

Speaker 1  15:59  
no. I mean, when I first had it was, really, was funny. I mean, we all laughed about it, but there was no viciousness about it, or, everybody was delighted at 10 and six, but they decided that, instead of having just one job, they were going to pay you 10 and six to work Sunday, they'd find you a job at nine o'clock, and then there's the armistice at 11 o'clock, and then you can go on to Hampstead, because there's a job there at four o'clock. So the one person, one of them, would do all three. Might have two, two others to help on the armistice thing, but they would only do the one job, but the other one would do the two, because they you've got to make it worthwhile. Did

Roy Fowler  16:43  
the companies resist a news agreement? No,

Speaker 1  16:47  
I don't think so. I have a bit touchy at start with but I mean, you want me to tell you the truth? Oh, absolutely, you do, right? I'll tell you, in my opinion, it was the wrong approach. The news shows and the film bosses at that time were very, very hard businessmen, and they didn't want this attitude of restriction, and it was the wrong approach, the wrong you see, Ken Goon. He was a charming bloke. He was a lovely fella. Don't make I'm not pulling any punches, but he

Unknown Speaker  17:37  
with hustle

Speaker 1  17:39  
bustle, you know. And a big man, great big man. He was, you know, he weighed about 18 stone, 20 stone, his great big tummy on him, and all that coming. And if he came into a room and us or bustle, he looked as though he was throwing the place about. And these both people who ran the newsreel, sir Gordon Craig cars tonight, Jim Wright, Paramount, and one or two of the others. They didn't. They weren't used to that kind of approach. If you'd have had suddenly somebody who said, Right, okay, Mr. Knight, when I finished that. Oh, well, by the way, I'd like to talk to you if you've got a few minutes. Can you Yes, well, now, you know, it's a little bit unfair if they'd have started that attitude, Santa, Santa, don't you think it would be a good idea if we could come to an agreement where we could cut the hours down a bit, maybe have an extra day here or go and give them a day off their day. Wouldn't it be a good idea to do that? I think they said, Yeah, we'll go along with that, because it's not going to take cost anymore. It's not going to we haven't got to employ another 50 people to take care of it, or another well, 50. There's more than we employed altogether. But I mean, that would have been the approach in my book that was in the beginning. But, I mean, it's easy for me to criticize because I wasn't involved in so you mustn't take that too seriously. If I'd have been involved in it, then I would have said, but I wasn't. I was just a member. I The unusual. They the and the actc, in my opinion, did a very stupid thing, in some respects, when they tried to use the news fields to bring the studios into life. I know it's a war, and they use whatever weapons they can. But they did. They tried to stop the newsreels, because they were the constant ones, because the through the laboratories, because the studios could stop or go as they pleased. It didn't make any difference if you had an overtime. And in the studios, most of the people who were making the films thoroughly enjoyed it and said, That's a good idea. We get better. We don't have to work so long. They weren't all that enamored of overtime. But when you said to us, the new shows overtop, you could hardly leave London. Go to Manchester and do the job and be back here by half past five. You know you'd be back here by half past nine. Well, if you if you got to go, what they tried to say was, you drive up as far as, if you like, Birmingham, and then turn around and come back. Don't go to Manchester. Well, they were the wrong type of people. They knew they weren't used to that. They you can't do that. That's what we're supposed to do. This is our job. If we don't take the film, nobody will know it ever happened.

Roy Fowler  20:55  
So what was the outcome of that?

Speaker 1  20:58  
Well, we still did the job. We still did it, but he wasn't processed. I remember doing the derby when I knew when Dan, he won the Derby, and the film was we took a film and everything else, took it back to the labs, but they never processed it. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that was never processed. It was processed afterwards and used in the libraries and things like that. But because it came in the overtime,

Roy Fowler  21:24  
when was

Speaker 1  21:26  
this? Oh, Emerick, is this? This was, well, the derby. Dante's Derby was at the end of the war.

Roy Fowler  21:40  
Yeah, you mind if I smoke? No, go ahead. Would you No, I don't. No, thank you. I don't know if there is an ashtray. We'd better look for one. Shall I stop

Speaker 1  21:54  
the news? Yes, was terribly independent people. I stress this to you. You that's why you could send a guy from movie town and a guy from Paramount, if you like, and they'd go and do the same story, but they come back with different stories. Fundamentally, it would be the same. The guts of it would be the same, but their approach would be entirely different.

Roy Fowler  22:19  
Were you unique in that you were previously a member of the NUJ? I mean, other words, did you see yourself as a journalist and other people see themselves as technicians? Or did people all think themselves journalists and filmmakers? No, I

Speaker 1  22:38  
think they were all film. I mean, well, Peter cannon, he worked for go once, originally, right at the beginning, when go once was a silent newsreel. He went up to he was sent up to Glasgow. He ran, then an office up there. Well, he used to take the picture, the news, feel take the picture, develop it, print it, cut it, edit it, put it all together and also serve in the shop, selling tickets. It was a one man band. He did the lot, everything. That's how it began. That's how the business began. The I mean, I never had an assistant in my life. I went to every country in this world, and I went around the world, I think six times at least. I went around the world, once with one ticket from London to London. In 21 days with the motor car.

Speaker 1  23:51  
But it was an entirely different world. Later on. You got people, they would, and you could understand it, and you could see the point. And they turned in and said, Well, you know, we ought to do 36 hours instead of 40 or we ought to do 40 instead of 45 it was an improvement on their standard of living, if you like, or their time off. But at the beginning, it was never, ever suggested. It was never, ever dreamed of.

Roy Fowler  24:26  
You say it was a different world? Is it a world who's passing? You regret.

Speaker 1  24:31  
I'm so sorry that the people who were in it had to go. But I don't believe in this good old days, the good old days, you can keep them. I mean, my mother and the woman when I was young. I mean, life was pretty hard compared to what it is today. The good old days are such. I don't want to know. I never want to see him again, either. I.

Roy Fowler  25:02  
Ted in terms of your own career, we've come up to the end of the war and the victory parade. Could you take us through maybe some of the major stories you covered after that and the major trips, especially if there are interesting anecdotes that Well, I'll tell you BFI, excuse me, I'm gonna Okay,

Speaker 1  25:24  
yes, well, I'll tell you this little point about the war. At the end of the war, they had all the material that came from Belsen, Bucha and Vald and all the other terrible places, and they showed this film, and we had to go to the Ministry of Defense, I think it was to see it, and I looked at it, and the powers that be decided that we couldn't use any of Those pictures, because the public would never believe it was real. They would think it was pure propaganda, and that those kind of things just couldn't happen. And so it was decided by the powers that be that those pictures should not be shown. But what's his name? Me. His name steps for the moment. He was the boss of universal just up the road here. He came back, he cut a story. He made a reel up of all the material, and in spite of everybody, he he put it out, and the newspapers, once he'd done that, the newspapers broke the banks and they published the stories and everything else. And the following, three days later, of course, the other news fields followed suit, and then you got the terrible scandal of the cold concentration camps, but those pictures wouldn't have been shown if it hadn't been for him. He was but of universal. He did it independently, on his own. I mean, you can't believe that a thing like that could possibly happen, but it did. That's the reason,

Roy Fowler  27:29  
what was your own did you go to Belsen? No, I didn't. You weren't in any of the camps. No, no,

Speaker 1  27:35  
I thank God I didn't. Ronnie Reed went. Ronnie Reed was over there and a few others. They went to the Belsen and to the other camps. But you see, we Movietone had an office in Germany throughout the war, and they had pictures of Germans. They ran the neutral under Go Bulls. Of course, when the war ended, they had all the material still, mind you, it's a bit of a shambles, but they did, and later on in life, when I took over movie tone, I was selling pictures of the German of Hitler, back to the Germans, totally enjoyed that. There was always a sweet touch that wasn't

Roy Fowler  28:23  
so what were some of the major stories that you covered after the war?

Speaker 1  28:29  
Well, I was one sent to Egypt for the British army to ismalia, in the British army base at ismalia, and I arrived in Cairo at midnight one night. It was quite warm, lovely, and I got off the plane, and I was immediately met by four gentlemen, Egyptian gentleman, very nice people who said, Ah, you're Mr. Candy in New Zealand, yes. And why have you come to Egypt? And I said, Well, I'm going to is Malia, the British army base at Ismail. And they said, but there is no such place. And I said, Well, if you get me a map, I'll show you where it is, because that's where I'm going. This

Roy Fowler  29:24  
was when, in 4647

Speaker 1  29:29  
just before Suez. And he said, so. I said, No, need to get nasty about it. Okay, I'm not going well, what am I going to do? Then he said, Well, we would like you to leave the country as soon as possible. So of course, you will stay tonight, tomorrow morning, we'll take you to the airport and you can go back. And I said, Do I have to go back to London? They said, No. I said, right. Well, I'll go to somewhere else. So. The next morning, when we got up, I got up and we went to the airport. They took me to the airport, and that was the time when you had to have your gear weighed as well as you. And I was remember most used to have 13 packets, 13 pieces. I always used to count 13. But also got 13 pieces of luggage, I was safe. If I'd only got 12, then I was in torment because something had gone wrong. I'd lost something. And I caught a flight to Ethiopia to Addis Ababa, and I went there, and I had stayed in the grounds of the palace with Ali Selassie, and I thought I'd go to the British Embassy and tell them what I was doing now. And also wanted him to get in touch with the office and tell him where I was. And I saw the ambassador. His name was la salle. And I said, I can't see you, sir, because I thought I'd like to tell you that who I am and what I am and what I'm doing here, and so you would know I was here. And he said to me, and I presume you'll also want my advice. I said, Yes, sir, if you're kind enough to give it to me, I'd be delighted. Yes, I'd like your advice, you said, and get the next bloody plane out of here. Whoever sent you here must be mad. So I said, Well, why was Don't you realize what this is like here? He said there's a curfew seven o'clock at night if you step outside. Said, I don't care if you're standing in the palace grounds. Said you step outside your door at seven o'clock at night, they'll shoot you without any compunction. And he said, if you got a car, if you run over a woman on the streets, he said, See her next to Kin, or whoever is there. Don't know whether you killed her or you haven't. Don't worry about it. Give them $7 Ethiopian dollars, and drive away. They'll be quite happy. Said, but if you run over one of the little donkeys and you're really in trouble, he said, you'll have to get in touch with me, and I'll do the best I can to help him. That was the type of place Ethiopia was, I mean, there on King George of Fifth Avenue with two bodies hanging on the tree as a warning.

Roy Fowler  32:42  
Hey, what had they done? Do you know?

Speaker 1  32:44  
No, well, there was your uprising, the people who now run in Ethiopia, they were the terrorists at the time.

Roy Fowler  32:55  
And, well, it's only what 150 years that we used to do that in this country too.

Speaker 1  33:02  
And that was, and I was out in Ethiopia, and I did the pictures, you know, of El Selassie. Said he was very good to me, because I took some pictures of him once, and he was on a film. I made him look whiter than he was, and he was purely by chance. And from that moment onwards, wherever only Selassie came into this side of the world, I had to go and take pictures of him in Malta, in with Mount batten and all over the place, but he was quite nice to me, so I made a film called Spotlight on Ethiopia. While I was over there, I did the Opening of Parliament, showing Hillier Selassie dictating his terms, because it was most unusual, because we'd already recovered the Opening of Parliament here with his pomp and circumstance, whereas the Opening of Parliament in Ethiopia, all the tribes were outside with their lion manes round the head, but only Selassie drove up, walked in, and parliament, as such, stood up, and then he just stood there, and he laid the law down. What will happen? Who will do this? He will be the Minister of Finance. He will be the Minister of so the first week I was there, he said he arranged a picture for me. I didn't know what it was. And he's he said, You take pictures. He's done, you know, this will make a good picture for you. And there was in the palace grounds, the square was set up, and all the ambassadors came, and they all sat there, the British ambassador, the American ambassador, I. Everybody, the Russian ambassador, all on there. Then in the square, they put the triangle, they brought the guy in, tied him up, pulled his shirt off, and lashed him. That was Haley Selassie, Finance Minister, Minister of Finance. They were tied on that.

Roy Fowler  35:15  
Doo. Doo. It's a pity we don't do that. No, but

Speaker 1  35:19  
that's, that's what they did. I mean, that's the so called picture, you know, the social life of Addis Ababa brought up to date. And anyway, that was one thing. Then short time later, I went back to Suez. For Suez, I had to go. I flew from London to Malta. Malta to Cyprus. This is

Roy Fowler  35:49  
the Anglo French invasion, yes.

Speaker 1  35:51  
And I got to Cyprus because we had, there'd been a lot of terrorism in Cyprus. And I arrived there that was midnight. I was always arriving at places at midnight, it seems, when you think back and I rang up this post hotel where I was supposed to be staying, and they said, No, we haven't got any rooms, and we don't know anything about you coming, because I was supposed to report to the Navy. So I got a taxi and I went and stayed at little hotel, like a pub in Cyprus. It was quite nice. I had a single bed. I got up in the morning. I had a boiled egg holes. Remember bread and butter? And I rang up the Navy people, and I said, I'm here, in case you're looking for me. I arrived last night at midnight. There's nobody there to meet me or anything. And they said, where are you? I said, Oh, what's it? What's the name of this place, the Golden Crescent, or something. And I told them where it was. Don't move. Stay there, Christ. Next thing I knew, they got armored jeeps and the tank outside come to fetch me. And I said, Well, these people have been very nice to me. Never said a word. You don't realize they shoot you. Just to leave. Look at you. So nobody's taking a show. Yeah, I'm all right. It was quite nice to me. Said, right, get in that cheap don't move. I said, well, first of all, I got tired for the night, but, I mean, that's the type of place I prefers once you got in with the Navy. Then it was a piece of cake and went over to Suez, stayed there on board a ship, right alongside the lesser statue.

Unknown Speaker  37:44  
I mean, and then when we left Suez, we left in a hurry. I mean, it was a rear guard action to get out Suez, because they were sniping at you the whole time.

Speaker 1  38:01  
And I got a cable telling me to stop on and represent the new field Association in series? Yeah, absolutely. And General Stockwell said, I've never seen anything so bloody stupid in all my life. Who do the what do these people think you're doing here? He said, If I was to allow you to stay here. You'd last. I should think approximately three minutes.

Roy Fowler  38:24  
Who sent the cable? Do you remember? Oh,

Speaker 1  38:27  
yeah, you should New Zealand Association stay on and represent us. In other words, stay there and do some new show pictures. But

Roy Fowler  38:35  
being the pool cameraman, that would have been

Speaker 1  38:38  
general Stockwell said, No. So I came back. That was that I went round the world in 21 days with an Austin motor camp car, and we ran a competition in the cinema. How'd

Roy Fowler  38:55  
you do that?

Speaker 1  38:57  
We flew a car around the world and they drove it across the land Austin motor company we gave, was that

Roy Fowler  39:04  
a promotion for Austin or the newsroom? Yeah,

Speaker 1  39:07  
and then we always but it the people entered for the competition, and if they could, they had to name the number of hours it would take to get to the gates of Universal Studios in Hollywood. And it worked out, somebody got a new car out of it, and few prizes. But I mean, you, you were on your own, you had to ship the stuff back as often as you could, and from wherever you could, you had to write the story. He wrote all the details down, because it was only on that that they knew who it was.

Roy Fowler  39:46  
Were you the only camera man on that? Oh yeah, I was the

Speaker 1  39:50  
only cameraman for the news rivers. For us, the BBC sent his cameraman, but he packed up. I repaired. Camera for him at Milan, because his camera packed up, and he was the only camera he got, and he wanted to go back home, but I did it for him. I repaired it, putting his spring in for him. So he carried on. Otherwise he BBC wouldn't COVID it. But they did. They only did a little coverage. We ran a big story every every three days. And that was one I gave, had a ball on that thoroughly enjoyed it. I went to the West Indies with Margaret when she was the young princess. Every island in the West Indies and I coward that for as is for population. I covered this for the BBC, the new shields, the five new Shield companies here, all the new short companies in America, and from them, all their supporting countries, which they supplied. It all came from me, one camera. That's what made it interesting. And you made it you did your stories as you went along. I mean, you should go to one island and there'd be a garden party, but one island is very similar to another. You can't always take a picture of a palm tree and the princess underneath it and say, this is Jamaica, or this is Trinidad. You've got a mother with a baby, a big was a Muslim woman with a little baby talking to her or something, because they were all the same. So you had to do something different. So you do the Garden Party and the pomp and circumstance, if you like, and waving and all that kind of business. But then you do fashion, if you like, on the hats, and the next island, you do fashion on the shoes. But, I mean, I had a long talk to him out there, and I said, well, for christ sake, this is a fairy tale princess. She's a lovely girl. She really was a marvelous kid. I said, These people want to see her. What are you putting her in a great big black saloon for? Because, don't forget, the windows were quite small, and those big cars in those days said that they're coming forward because they want to see her, and the police are trying to push the crowd back to stop them seeing her. So that's crazy. Put her in an open car. Never mind. It's sunshine. Okay. She can hold a sun shape, but that's what you want to do. Not only, they make better pictures, as far as I was concerned. So they did it, and from that moment onwards, everything was fine. There was no crowd rush forward. They all cheered and ran along with her. And I mean, they were, she was safer there than she ever was anywhere in the world, because they thought the world of it. They worshiped her. And she was charming, she was marvelous. She was always very good. Do anything. You shipped it back, all you could do. Don't forget, in those days, you didn't phone up from Jamaica, because I doubt if you'd have got through. You had to go down to the cable office and send the cable at night rate, because it was cheaper. So you had to wait till then. And you wrote the story. You shipped it out. You send a copy for London Airport, for the customs to take, and a copy for the office. You also wrapped it up, film copy for London customs, London Airport, copy first, and that got through the customs, made somebody to pick it up. That was it, and that's the way it was done. I went to America few times.

Roy Fowler  44:07  
What stores were you on?

Speaker 1  44:12  
Can't even remember, but I won't say, I mean, like, I'll give you an instance. I went to five countries in Europe. Never stayed the night in one in one week, I came back to this country every day, but I never stayed overnight in one went to Holland, back to this country, then went to Belgium, back to this country, went to France, back to this country, back to Holland again, then to Ireland, back again in one week. That's how it was done.

Roy Fowler  44:51  
You said earlier that there wasn't ever one honest politician. What prompted that statement? Well, your dealings with the politicians. You. Oh,

Speaker 1  45:01  
God, be careful. But no, you see, they weren't truthful. You knew you traveled around with them, and how many it's like you you you might say to me, I loathe smokers. Please don't smoke, because I can't stand smoking. I can understand that. People say, Okay, I won't smoke. But they'd say that to you, if you like. But then, once they got in front of the audience, they turn in and say, Oh, I mean, smoke if you want to, you know, do whatever you like. Go. I mean, doesn't bother me a bit. And yet, you know very well, is just kicked the dog. Yet you turn in say, how I love the dog. You love dogs, but he kicked the bloody thing 10 minutes before, in more ways

Roy Fowler  45:49  
than one. Was any one politician worse in your estimation than another.

Speaker 1  45:55  
I thought I knew him. Bevan was a past master. He used to, if you take his speeches as he recorded them, he all said to say, he always did the same thing. He would like a good comic. He would start off, he'd tell him something, get him interested. Then he'd tell them a story, and they'd laugh, and he'd wait until they stopped laughing, until they were absolutely quiet, and then he'd tell them what he wanted to tell them. They'd stop.

Roy Fowler  0:04  
Three just heard you

Speaker 1  0:08  
well. And the other point I wanted, apart from politicians, she is, people buy the rights of things today they're sold. Well, we did that. I mean, before I joined in New Jersey, one of the things that they told me about, which was, was when they bought the rights to the test match. Now everybody remembers this, but I'll tell you, as it was told to me, because I wasn't there, but that was at the oval, and they decided they'd have a balloon, a big balloon, to stop anybody else filming from off the flats opposite. So they rose. The balloon rose up and down with them. When they moved the camera onto the roof, the balloon moved up when they brought it down to the second floor, then balloon moved down. This was done consistently. You see, this was the time of Bradman, great Australia. And lunch time came. You see, off they go and they leave the bloke who's beaten by the balloon. And I think it was paramount nobody knew. Because, you see, you knew everybody. They came up to, apparently, to the little fella who was on the balloon, quite amazing, the way you keep up and down this balloon core. Said, why is it? And he told him, You seen his Oh, simple. What are you doing now? He said, Oh, well, they've all gone to lunch, but you know, I'm standing by so well, that's all right. You've got lunch. I'll stand by for you. I'll watch it. Bucha right off. Don't have a drink, see? So he did well. As soon as he gone, he studied it, let it go well. So that was that. And then, so they got to do something. But they brought in search light so that as paramount moved, moved there they saw, shone the searchlight into parames lens see wherever they moved. That was it. Well, that was the time when Bradman complained, said he couldn't see because somebody kept shining his search light at him. But that's the kind of thing that happened. And you see, you've got the boys. Jimmy gamble was a pass master. So was they all were. I've seen them at the variety, all in broken head, often for a bit of fun. She if you were going to cover the Grand National, everybody was involved. Was the one time where everybody worked together beyond any shadow of doubt. You got your side to do. You got your bit to do. And it was all Hello, Jimmy, hi. And this certainly other. And we always used to go to the theater in Birkenhead, you have to take over the first two front rows of the seats the varieties yet the day before the Grand National, then we'd all go to various places, and then all meet up at Lane tree, well before the BBC ever did the Grand National. This happened before it was ever televised at all. And years, year after year we did it. And I mean, they have to stand the queue outside. I've seen Jimmy Kimmel do a busking act outside, and he'd have his cap of hat on the floor. This that the other do a little dance. Harry Abbot would do, one of the best performers ever. Used to do a little tap dance and a little song move his arms bounce about Tom, and the people would throw the money in the hat as the queue started to move, they pick it all up, getting the queue and moving with them. Who's sitting on the front seat, and the I think the best thing they brought the place to a halt was when the the comedian was on stage, and they didn't think much to him, and they rather gave him a little bit of a going over. And he did the thing he shouldn't have done. He leaned over and he said, If you can do better, you come and do it. And they did make no mistake, they really put on a show that was second to none. And this was, this was how they were. They were completely outrageous. Some of the things they used to do, I mean, Jimmy Kimmel used to dress up as Gandhi. He had an act. And we were staying at Liverpool, I think it was in the Adelphi, and they were kidding him on, and they said, Goon Jimmy, do your act on. Do your Gandy act. So he said, right. So he goes upstairs, takes his clothes off, she puts his sheet on, does all that got his sheet tied rent. And He came down. Of course, everybody's gone then, and he walks into the lounge, and there's everybody looking at him, saying, class, what is a white Indian? What's happening? What's this guy doing? But they did some outrageous things. I mean, they barricaded a room because there was one chapter, he could walk on water. He had no fear of heights of any kind, and he was liver pudding. And he stacked everything in this room, and then he stacked everything in, got out the window, walk around the ledge, and of course, when they even moved the refrigerator up from downstairs that caused the trouble all the way up the stairs, and put it in this room, locked it in, and then he walked around, got through the window, and that was fun. In the end, they had to get the fire brigade with the long ladder to get up on the outside to get into the room, because they couldn't move. The key didn't move. The door wouldn't move. They tried to break it down, but when they moved the refrigerator, they ruined all the carpets. So the usuals had to pay for the carpets, which wasn't very polite. So they stopped there. Then you had the Cotters at movie tone. See, Terry Cotter was an outrageous leg puller, and I mean, the classic story of all time, they had a long runner carpet down the corridors Gordon Craig's office, and he couldn't resist him, his chaps standing there, knocking Goon Craig's dog door. Said, come in. As he opened the door, he got the carpet and pulled it and he shot straight into the office. Oh, he did some outrageous things. I mean, there was never any viciousness as such. He when path he had the rights to the FA Cup Final. I mean, Terry waited outside and they saw the bloke with the film, and he said to him, you got the film. Then pat the bloke said, Yes, she's right. Thanks very much. Give it to us, right. Give it to him. He put him back up, took it away. I mean, movie town put their reel out and everything else. Patty ain't got any film. They were going raving mad. Where is it? What's happened? And of course, in the end, it was it all came out. What Tony said? Well, I didn't think it was upsetting that much they fancy that they got all annoyed about it. You see, when they used to pinch things, you see, if you anybody got the rights, I mean, the obvious thing was, when anybody had the rights to anything, the other four companies immediately said, right, we'll pinch it. We'll show them they can't do this kind of thing. We're going to destroy that idea for a start. So you get, and don't forget, the cameras weren't small or tiny or, you know, they were all bulky and big. So you'd have rasher picnics, you know, people with big baskets, with the taking the family on a picnic to the FA Cup Final. And you get a lot of people in wicker chairs, you know, invalids being pushed in with crutches, which were tripods and all this kind of business. They'd all arrive. Well, the only thing you could do is put as many of your own people on the dates as possible, because you recognize them. You know, it was, Come on, off outside. That was the only way you could do it, some of the things they did, but they had to be that way, because that was the circumstances at the time. Now, if you said today, oh, well, the BBC has got the rights to so and so, well, everybody would walk away. You wouldn't. They wouldn't say, Well, that's the biggest incentive we've ever known to pinch it. We'll do it and we'll publish it. Oh, sorry, we'll publish it, which is what they should have done. But they wouldn't do it today. They'd walk away and say, well, it belongs to the BBC. We bought the 1948 Olympic Games cast, and I bought that. We did that. We had all the cameras colored, and the the no color. What we did there was we had to buy pack. Two strip color system from America. There was half a crown of foot to be processed. It was an overall red picture, but it was color

Roy Fowler  9:57  
and color was it technical? The technical. Bike Park, but we had

Speaker 1  10:03  
to ship it back to the United States, and it took six weeks for us to see it before it came back. Because, of course, in those days at the beginning, you know, in 1948 it wasn't bad, but in the beginning, you know, people didn't fly to America overnight. If you, if you, if you could have flown to America, you'd have had a statue put up to London Airport. What girls were doing during the war, flying these planes back had never been done before. The quickest way across the Atlantic was on the Queen Mary. You know, Queen Elizabeth was there to the half the half to New York. That was it. But it's not like today, where you can get on a plane and back and I mean, when you think that today, you see it as it happens from the other side of the world. I mean, that's the difference. It's a different world.

Roy Fowler  11:14  
What was some of the other incidents in news? Real wars as they're called? I think when you were out to wreck someone else deal there. You didn't do

Speaker 1  11:24  
any damage. I mean, the they used to run a sweepstake for the people who got the usual stuff back from epsilon. Say, first that was for the dispatch riders they work. There was I but as I say, nobody ever did any damage. I mean, it was always on a practical joke basis. But if you could noble him, you would, well, you wouldn't hurt him. I mean, if you could prevent him getting the story, well, you didn't try to prevent him getting the story, because it was his job. If you got the rights, then you were entitled to tell him to get out. You've got get him removed. Because if just the same as if you were pinching it and he got the rights, although you could be the best of friends, no, he'd say, I knew you bastard. I knew you'd be in Now get out. Can't get rid of him, take him out and then march you out and throw you outside. Well, what you do is you go along into the next gateway and pay again and go in. Can

Roy Fowler  12:33  
you remember any specific stories of those circumstances when people got stories despite all the all the odds. Well,

Speaker 1  12:42  
I went up to the Lincoln to cover the the Lincoln is particular race because it's, you've got a road that runs right alongside, and they're the BBC. You see that once they came into being, they took the BBC, had a car, you had a police car leading the way, then you had the BBC car, then you had a newsreel car behind it, the Lincoln because it was a straight mile. And they used to start off, pick it up and run it along, you know, and they'd do the follow. Well, we decided one day that as Pathy had got the rights, we pinch it. So we put a car in a farmer site. Leslie Murray was involved in this, and young John Cotter, well, they as this police car moved off. They drove out. They got in front of the police car, and they held them all back because they were getting the picture, so the police car, he couldn't get in front of them, because it was an arrow road, and you've got people watching the race. So you go, and they're belting along there, you know, about 55 miles an hour. Remember bank? So the police car couldn't take a chance, so they stayed behind. And then they go, when she once you get up to the top, I go around the stands. You see, you break off and go around the stands. Well, of course, he carried on, because the BBC were in an uproar and the police weren't. But of course, they got out the district, they got over the area before the police could catch them. But that was one thing. Then the same time Patty were doing it. And I was trying to get some stuff in the paddock and the finish. And there was a guy named Kibby who worked for Pathy at that time, big bloke. He went to Australia. He was only a youngster after the war. In the end, he went to emigrated to Australia. And he said he was there, and I was trying to go in, and I'm doing the best I can to keep out of the way. And Kim, he said, Hello, Dad, how are you? What are you doing here? I said, just come up to watch Lincoln. Said, Oh, I thought you might be covering it. I said, Well, you got the rights. Well, you should? I thought you might be. I said, well, and he said, and that York here, over there? I said, Yes, but he said, you are covering it. And I said, Yeah. He said, Well, where are you going to do it? Then I said, I'm going to do it from over there. I thought, That's it. It's the end of the world, he's going to throw me up. He said, we don't do that. Come up on my rostrum. You'll get much better picture there. So we did. I mean, there's no wars as just one incident. As far as he was concerned, he said, I couldn't care less whether you get the pictures or not. I'm getting the picture. You're getting a picture. We both can put the news shows out. That's it. And the new shows were a commercial proposition. That's what you got to remember. You had to sell them. It was the classic story of all time. Was the the Leeds. I think he came from Leeds, the Leeds exhibitor who was Jewish, and we were putting out a full reel on this upstart Hitler, and he turned around and said, I don't want this buddy Hitler on my screens. I want this local agricultural show from Lee. So we had to go and cover that to make a special for leads, and they never saw the story on Hitler and his rise to power and what was going on in Germany, because he didn't want it. He was the Jewish man too, but he didn't. He paid for the newsreel, so he wanted this agricultural show is a local show. That's the type of thing ahead. Did

Roy Fowler  16:45  
you do a lot of that local coverage specifically for

Speaker 1  16:48  
a major exhibitor? No, not, not an awful lot. Because it must have been an exciting think about it. It was much less than you you would imagine. Well, an expensive

Roy Fowler  16:58  
proposition. I would have thought to make up a special reel Ted along with you say the news rule wars didn't really exist. How about faking? Were stories ever faked in your experience, to your knowledge?

Speaker 1  17:13  
Oh yes, I can tell you, tell you a story that was faked because it was impossible to do. We, you can do it. They RAF bombed Budapest. Now, we got an area. They bombed it, and it's, I mean, they did, they bombed it was 1000 bomber rate, and there was the now we hadn't got any pictures of the bomb. We got the pictures of the bombers taking off. The bomb was taking off, silhouetted against the sky and taking off. 1000 bombers take off the bomb Budapest, and we got pictures of them arriving, coming back. But we hadn't got any pictures of the bombing, so we had to make a story of the bombing. Then we got a map, and there's Bucha pest, there's the river Bucha and pest Baba, bang. And so we did this at denim, and we did the plane flying, and we did a tube of John. We went bought a sixpon in puncture outfit, John ball puncture outfit. And we did put little blobs of glue on there, and then little because we were doing it with a Mitchell. And turn Mitchell, you could turn it back as you know, superimposed one picture on the other, and we lit these bumps as they hit the deck. In the end, we set fire to the river. We set fire to everything. We set fire to the bloody map. Bang, but we got the bitter stuff we needed. And at that time, Britain was having a rough time. They were being hammered in more ways than one. And I remember standing at the back of the Odeon Barnet, and you saw this 1000 bummer raid, this, that and the other. And you saw these silhouettes take off against the sky, all this droning, planes taking off. And then you saw the night, the flashes, the bombs dropping. You saw it burn, and you saw the flames and all this that and the other bomb. It was quite an impression, bang. And then you saw the planes come back. Now the people stood up and clapped hooray. They were cheering it. They really were. And I thought if you knew that half the picture you saw was phony, was fake, but in detail, in actual fact, it was a true story, but the pictures of the actual bombing wouldn't. Not true. They were phony, but they the impression they gave. It was only an impression, but it it gave the people something to to cling on to. You know, never mind about what they're doing to us. Let's give them some of it back. Well,

Roy Fowler  20:16  
yes, that was propaganda, which there was a great deal. But in peacetime, were there fake stories? No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1  20:27  
It was all on the level, all the stuff I can't remember, but I mean, when you say family stories, you'd be if you were going to do a story on, say, Germany, politicians, you use picture of because you were going to say President Roosevelt, you brought in the President Roosevelt. You show a picture of President Roosevelt. It might only be 10 feet, 15 feet, 10 feet, but you showed the picture of him, but it wasn't the picture of Roosevelt as he was there. It's a picture the library picture, just same as you might say, and one of the politicians who's like Foster Dulles, for instance. But you haven't got a picture of him there, but you got him there, but it was a big news item. That was it. You were just making a fact, and you were showing the people concerned with that, but it wasn't taken at the point at the place. Nobody took the pictures there because then nobody was allowed. But that's, that's the only kind of fake you could say that there was sure.

Roy Fowler  21:42  
Yes, in the heyday, there were five British reels, so 10 issues altogether each week. That's a great deal of coverage, is it not? Did each newsreel have its own sort of identity, its own character? Would you say? Oh, yes.

Speaker 1  22:01  
And everybody was, I mean, each and they were very proud of that. And each time they would have a showing, and they would show all the newsreels together, have a show copy, see, they'd put on like it might be a film house or a patties, or movie tone in so square, one of those three, they show all the news channels.

Roy Fowler  22:27  
Was this a regular occurrence every week? Yeah.

Speaker 1  22:31  
And then they'd, if you weren't doing anything, you went, sat in and watched them, because they give you a chance to see all the others. But, I mean, I didn't see him very often, but nor did anybody else. But all the powers that be, did you see? And then they'd wanted you were wide open, because then they'd say, why didn't you get that picture of so and so on that story? And you'd say, but I did. Then it was the turn of the bloke in charge of the editing. They say it's eight. Why the hell didn't you use that picture and the it was in the end, you used to say, Well, would you like me to follow the parames camera man round. I follow him round all the time. I'll do exactly the same as he does because, or do you want him to follow me? What? Which do you want? Because you couldn't do it. But what they were seeing were five completed stories, and each one had treated it in a different way, but it was fundamentally the same story. But then when you got the five to pick from, you say, Oh, well, that one was much better. They liked the way that was done, that was polished. Although they had the same material that did and that did, it wasn't quite so good as that one, the way it was completed, the way it was done.

Roy Fowler  23:53  
Of the reels which Try, try to be objective about those, which do you think, or which was perceived as the slickest, the most polished, perhaps the most admired.

Speaker 1  24:08  
I would say that goons were very good. I mean, I'm prejudiced to a certain difficult being honest, not to be right. But I mean, you always thought, I mean, I dare say, if you had Jimmy Kimmel sitting here. Now, if you ask him that same question, he'd say, without a doubt,

Roy Fowler  24:25  
Paramount. Well, let me ask you, then, which was your second favorite real

Speaker 1  24:29  
I like paramount. I thought they were very good. I like movie town. I mean, don't make any mistake. I didn't think the I mean, universal never had the same facilities as the other reel. So it would be not fair to compare them. It

Roy Fowler  24:46  
was the backing. Wasn't they didn't have the backup. They

Unknown Speaker  24:49  
didn't have the power of the others. For instance, I mean, they didn't have a sound outfit.

Speaker 1  24:59  
They landed all sides. All with dub sound everywhere. They couldn't put on a speech or record a speech.

Roy Fowler  25:07  
Was there a political bias to the reals? Would you say altogether or separately, individually? I

Speaker 1  25:14  
would have thought the world very definitely. I would have said they were all conservative mistake. I mean, I remember the thumb, and it was prime minister. He was elected prime minister, well, we were looking through the stuff that we'd already got. And Mr. Howard, who was actually the mayor of Chiswick, he was the he was the four guy editor, because you always had an editor who was the one who was going to take the brunt of any trouble, but he had no power as such on the real it was always The general manager who decided what was what. And he

Speaker 1  26:03  
there was this election, general election in this country. We saw the stuff we got. This was how they were going to put it out. And somebody said, I suppose, what happens if labor wins? If Attlee gets in because Churchill was going to walk it. I think that's right. Oh, my class, we haven't got a picture of that, Lee. We haven't got anything see. This was type of thing. So we had to get in touch with that Lee. We took him down to the East End. I stood in a block of flats in the center. He made a speech. We got all his housewives to lean forward over the balcony so we could take their pictures, and they laughed and played about they would break fun. And he gave them the speech, and he he did it purely for us, and he had him in stitches half the time. I told you, he was a brilliant, brilliant man, and then did this and the other and he put his point over. We were there for, I should think, he gave us about half an hour, and we'd done all the stuff we wanted. We got Mr. Adley. He couldn't be nicer. And it happened, but he won it. And so apart from the fact that the things you couldn't get ready, you got all the labor, we'd now got us real on Mr. Acting. Bang, bang, so we could put it out. We could then do all the stuff as it was, as it turned up. You know, the last minute there's the excitement, the crowds, because we all should do it in Trafalgar Square, when they used to have the election, all that kind of business that all came up. But if we only done, if we hadn't done, we wouldn't have had a picture to show.

Roy Fowler  28:06  
Was there any attempt to make him look foolish? Oh no, no. It was played straight. Oh no. Was there any attempt to promote Churchill, to make him bigger or more important than no,

Speaker 1  28:17  
that, you see, you've got it was I mean, how can I put this to you see, church had only had to stand there with the cigar. Now somebody's going to read detail out what he's done. You know, first thing you have to say, whether it's right, wrong or might be in your way of thinking or not. He turned in and says, So Winston Churchill, a bulldog breed, the man with the cigar, the man who won the war, they certainly are, reeled off all these things. Well, he became powerful, overall, powerful the picture. If you'd got him, a picture of him playing hopscotch, he wouldn't look so good. But, I mean, there he was.

Roy Fowler  29:05  
He looked like a black so the bias lay in the selection of material. Well, that still goes on today with television news.

Speaker 1  29:14  
But, I mean, don't misunderstand me, but every every camera member, I mean, he had his likes and dislikes. And if the bloke was good, you know, always, always got time for you. What do you want me to do? Right? I jump off that roof, okay, as long as I land on your feet. Is that all right? Yes, right, paying. He'd do it for you. Well, you, it was always good because you, he'd always give you the time. He'd always do it for you. He'd be therefore you've got better pictures of him. Now, if you've got somebody who who turned in and said, What are you doing here? I don't want the picture. I don't any of that you knew damn well he did, but he put on a show. And you say, right, well, Shan, take any pictures on the only picture. On the take of him is the back of his head, and so you did, I mean, that was people who were nice to make your job easier. For instance, like the queen mum. I mean, she was the best in the world because she always did the job for you. All you had to do was stand there, wherever you stood, whether you put a rostrum up and a tripod and a camera and a sound, a microphone or whatever it was, you just put it there left, because if she was reviewing 10,000 guards, she'd walk along until she got to the point, and then she'd stop, and then she'd turn and she'd say, and what I mean, you've already picked the guards when you want he looks good, and he's got rows and rows of medals, you know which one it is. And she turned horse has her, and she's turning half to you and half to him, and she's talking away. Oh, how marvelous this at the other and she'd more or less look up at you, and if you'd like, you turn and said, Thank you, ma'am. Then she'd carry on. If you didn't, if you were still blowing your mind, she'd stay there, so they're all bloody day. But she'd go, then she'd go on, turn down, but she knew where he was. Why was she doing that? When she did her coronation, when we did the coronation, no, that was she wanted to know where the cameras were. When we did the Jubilee. She wanted to know where the cameras were, which side of the road and where were all the cameras going to be, because that was where she wanted to. She didn't want to be facing this way if the cameras were there, she wanted to. She knew her stuff. She was

Roy Fowler  31:50  
her interest. You think helping you? Marvelous, marvelous,

Speaker 1  31:54  
marvelous, marvelous. She was selling the royal family. She did a marvelous job, and she was always the most gracious and latest. Really, I'm, I'm an ardent royalist, believe me, I couldn't, I couldn't, I wouldn't have their job, not for all the money in the world. I find them. I find them. They spend so good they're the highest paid, if you like, but you get them for nothing. That's what inner master, as far as we were concerned, you could if you turn in, no matter who else it was, you could say the Queen was going through denim at seven o'clock in the morning and he's pouring down with rain, there'd be somebody there waiting to wave to her. There is nobody else in the world. They'll do that for they're marvelous people. And I think of all the times I've spent, the hours I've spent where you've had cameras watching. All they want you to do is to just, I mean, if you were standing there and your nose itch and you just wanted to do that, nobody take a slightly notice to you or me. But on the front cover of Life next week, you got Margaret holding her hand like that, holding her nose, which they using bang, they've got to be so careful at that time. Gee, don't forget, at that time with the royal family, you couldn't have a microphone. Nobody could record what was said. That was the agreement. You could record the music, you could record everything else, but you couldn't record what they said. If you did, you didn't use it. And I mean, a few years ago, the royal family, it was very much. I mean, not not so easy as it is today. Therefore, when you got the facility, you took full advantage of it, and you did the best job you could. And if they let you get away with something, well, then that was great. But I mean, the law was, no microphones, no sound. What the conversation was was entirely private. Always was. But then the when the television came in and they started putting microphones from the side of the crowd, long range, what do you call it? Disc microphone, picking up the sound and using it. That's when I said, Well, we'll do the same. And there was quite a bit of trouble about it, but in the end, it was all sorted out. I.

Roy Fowler  35:01  
Ted who were the best news or cameramen, in your opinion,

Speaker 1  35:05  
the best? Well, there was well, they were all good. They were all I didn't know any bad

Roy Fowler  35:16  
ones. They didn't last. If they weren't good, they were

Speaker 1  35:19  
all good. Ones. They could all work. They all had their own idiosyncrasies. They all had their own way of doing things. You got one local was absolutely brilliant with a 36 inch lens. 24 inch lens, he had the patience and he would. He did a marvelous job on it. You got another bloke who would cover boxing extremely well. You get another camera man who would be an artist at the horse racing. You get another bloke who would do the run of the mill stories, but was always up to date with what was happening, and therefore he was one step ahead of everybody else.

Roy Fowler  36:08  
How many were there at Goon, at British at any one time?

Speaker 1  36:12  
Well, altogether, on all five, five newsrooms, I don't think they ever had more than mates, including sound men as well. I don't think they've read more than 40 people in the five.

Roy Fowler  36:26  
Was there a considerable turnover, or was it a job for life? Do you they stayed with

Speaker 1  36:32  
Well, you see, there was nowhere else to go. Put it that way, once you were involved in it, you were involved in it. I mean, you, I can't imagine anybody jumping with joy if you walked in and said, I'm looking for a job. What was you before? Or I was a neutral cameraman, they might say, oh, did you cover that story that we saw the other week, which I like you say, yes. I said, Well, that's very good. You did very well, but unfortunately, we're building motorways, or we're building houses, or we're selling this, therefore, you know, good to us.

Roy Fowler  37:10  
Well, you could have gotten into documentary filming, perhaps nothing. It wouldn't have been so exciting. It wouldn't have pleased

Speaker 1  37:17  
you. Not only that, you see, it was exciting. You went. I mean, you just think,

Speaker 1  37:25  
as I told you, I went around the world. So least six times I went to every country that you care to mention. I went to Russia after the war, when Joe Stalin died, I went to Russia. I was the first one into Russia from this country, and I got my stuff. Was the first back. I learned two words in Russia, which were a passport to anywhere, passiba, pursue.

Roy Fowler  37:59  
I know what the first means, but what's the second? Thank you,

Speaker 1  38:02  
please, and thank you. And the with those 2x you can get anywhere. Work with me in Egypt, in North Africa, in Libya in South Africa, in Mauritius, in Australia, in Canada, you name it. Everywhere I went, Caracas in America, in South America, Brazil, the Far East, the Middle East, Sweden and different types of people. There's nothing more different than the Swedes are to the rest of Scandinavia. In my opinion, they're entirely different, but it always works the same. As long as you're polite, you say please and thank you, you'll always get away with it.

Roy Fowler  38:58  
Yes, Ted, how about Sangster? Your feelings about him? George Sangster,

Speaker 1  39:05  
well, now I've, I'd like to make a statement here. In all my years, and I've been working for 51 years, but in these All right, in my years in the film business, I met two real judgment. One of them was Jerry Sangster, and the other one was Lord drink. I They're the two I would rate as the two real in the meaning of the word gentlemen. They were first class gentlemen,

Roy Fowler  39:58  
so remarkable i. Endorsement, did you meet J Arthur?

Speaker 1  40:03  
Yes. He was charming and always considered. And he was a different cattle of Fisher entirely. He always appreciated what you had to do, and he was always in the mouth. It's wonderful. How did you do it? How did you do that? And he was always, you know, sometimes you look at me and you think, well, just a minute, what the hell is he doing, talking to me? You know, I'm down here on the ground. I'm one of the the ants who are working here, and he's an eagle up there. What's he talking to me for? What's he trying to do? But he wasn't. He was always the same. He was charming man, a gentleman. And Jerry Sanger, I never heard him ever say, and I knew Jerry quite well over a great many years, but I never ever heard him say one word against anybody, and that's the gospel truth. The most honest man I ever met was a Mr. Bateman

Unknown Speaker  41:10  
who worked for ranks. He was the most honest man I ever met in my life.

Speaker 1  41:19  
He would, he would screw you for one foot of film? I had memos to say you should have in your possession 2862

Unknown Speaker  41:34  
feet of film. I have your return deal which says you have 2681

Speaker 1  41:41  
feet. Would you please explain where the one foot has gone for one feet of film? He'd want to know where it was, but he wouldn't cheat you other hate the he'd stand up and fight everybody to see that you got what was yours? You us. I trust him with my life and yours as well. Bateman was who he was, an accountant, a chartered accountant, who worked for the rank organization at the beginning. He ran Radio Pictures. He was the secretary, charter Secretary Radio Pictures. And he was, he had three big film companies to run. He was the secretary, touch secretary. But a certain gentleman went along to him one night and said, From now on, I want you to make two sets of books. One you do in pencil. And he said, not me. You don't. I don't do that. Either do it my way or I don't do it at all. And three weeks later, he was demoted, and he was demoted, and he finished up on this with us. Now why was the bottom man like Bateman, with his accomplishments and qualifications, doing a job that any Well, let's face it, fourth rate accounting could do, and yet he stayed with us all the time. He died working for us. But he was a lovely man, lovely man, and he'd stand up to the powers that be. If he, if he thought you were entitled to three shillings more than you got, he would stand up for it. He would fight for you. Never mind about if it was three pounds. For three pounds, he'd take them all on. But I mean, for even for this, he'd be just as hard on you if you were trying to swing one penny piece, but he'd be just as hard on anybody else he was trying to cheat you.

Roy Fowler  43:51  
Was he aware of all the fiddling that went on on expenses? There

Speaker 1  43:56  
was never any fiddling on the expenses as true as I'm riding this bike now, you when you say fiddling on expenses. Now look, I'll give you an instance. I went to Russia. Now, when I got to there, a Russians stipulated that you couldn't take any money out of the country. You could cash it. You could get the money through the bank, but once you cashed it, you couldn't take out rubles, and you can pay it back into the account. Now I'm there at the International Hotel. There's a gentleman from Sweden. There's a salesman. He's just going back to Sweden. He said to me, you have come away. You only staying here? I said, Yeah, I should be here for about three months, I think six weeks, three months. And he said, Oh, well, you could use this then, because it's no good to me. And he gave me a lot of money now, I took it and said, thank you very much. And he explained the system to me. Now, if that's a fiddle, that I took that money and I used it and then I charged the company for it, then that's a fiddle. Well, I

Roy Fowler  45:10  
was thinking of relatively innocent things much earlier. You said, troops on the bus became three Barb in a taxi.

Speaker 1  45:18  
Yeah. Well, I was, I was illustrating that to show you an either naive was because, I mean, nobody else ever used to it's still a fiddle. Oh yes, absolutely. And, I mean, just the same as I can tell you that. I mean, the old Eddie was a absolutely genius Marvel. I mean, he always just, he'd do the job, but he'd do an elevated shot from somewhere. And if he got an elevated shot in his reel, in his story, you could rest assured, he got charged for a ladder. He always charged for it five shillings.

Roy Fowler  45:56  
That's a good space to point to break i think i.

Roy Fowler  0:04  
Ted candy side four. No, I was thinking when we were talking about fiddling, it was a relatively innocent and universal practice I would have,

Speaker 1  0:16  
well, if you worked it out, I mean, the most money, even when I was got the best after television came in and I was offered a job by television, and then the company offered me a job to counter act that so that I stayed with them. I mean, the most I think I ever got, was about 32 pounds a week, and that was at the end, was in 1960

Roy Fowler  0:55  
right? No, I wasn't for one moment pointing any fingers. No. It's often said about me. My, my most creative work was done on an expense account. So I

Speaker 1  1:09  
quite agree that one of the comments, pardon me, you know, Hungerford bridge across the Thames, London, yes, well, one guy put in him for a taxi over hunger for good bridge. And the classical comment that was always made about expenses was one bloke, he said, you've put in everything you possibly can on this expense account. The only thing is you haven't put in tip to cable for carrying current. But everything else you've got, no, I mean, we used to go, all right, you're going up to Glasgow. You got, say, six big cases, the tripod, and everything else. Well, you haven't picked yourself. You put it in the guards van yourself. You've got a trolley, and you've loaded it up, and you take it and you put it in the guards van. And then when you get out the other end, you get a trolley, and you go up to the guards van, and you load it all in, and check it in, you push it out, and you put it in a taxi, and you get to the hotel, or you've done it all yourself. So you put in tip to Porter two and sixpence, tip to port to the other end, two and sixpence. That is technically fiddling, but I mean, you could have done just the same as we had a super accountant on the over here. He's still alive, wicked, his man that ever lived, but that's another story. But he didn't like this unload that they used to charge when we had the in the original in the early days, when they had the sound man and the camera man, they used to have to unload this piles of equipment. And you think that you've got a connection that used to weigh four pounds in weight, a brass connection of a cable that weighed four pounds just to clamp it together. Not these little tiny like they are on there, but great big clamps. You've got to hump it up, you've got 10 shillings. 10 shillings unload now that Miss genius suddenly said, we'll stop this. So he did. Said, No, from now on, I want a receipt. Then I said, certainly. So the first job they go to there is, right? Then we want a couple of labors. Where can we get a couple of Labors from? Right? Don't know where you'll get them from, right? We'll go and get them from the council. So they are a couple of blokes from the council. Got a bill for them, yes, paid for them. So much an hour. That's it. They put it in. From that moment onwards, they turned in and said, Well, John, don't worry about that anymore. That's all right. The unload stays, yes, yes, yes. I think it did do, because the only thing that they were charging was for what they were entitled to. They were entitled to spend it. I mean, if, if you were going from here to Luton, and I'd got to go, and I'm supposed to go by train. Well, if you're going up there with me and you're taking me in your car, I'll pay you for the petrol, but I'm not going to, it's not going to stop me from charging the company the train fare there and back, because they were prepared to pay that in the first place.

Roy Fowler  4:42  
Well, in the light, anyway, of the poor salaries they paid and the quite extraordinary conditions, it seems little enough recompense, I would think.

Speaker 1  4:52  
And you see, they'd never, I mean, they never gave you a big expense account for entertaining or something like. Which is which you could make money on. I mean, the most I ever had. I did a trip that car around the world, and they said, I'll cast a note. He said to me, before I went, he said, Now look, you know you're gonna you're carrying the name of Goon British. You're an ambassador. Said, Yes, sir, I know all about that. So he said, right for any small town maturing or small area, we'll give you two pound a day, social expenses. For any big town like New York or Los Angeles, we'll give you five pounds a day social expenses. I said, thank you very much. Tell me, well when you work out, I did the job and I did it well. Everybody said so, and I gave I put my expenses in. Mr. Bateman said to me, I think you did extremely well, then you've done marvelous job. You didn't well. They had to go tonight for signing. And he turned around and said, What's this about this social expenses? And I said, Well, that's what you said. I wouldn't say a thing like that. Don't be ridiculous. I said, just a minute. Stay where you are. Beyond that. Don't move. I went out and I got older, Mr. Bateman, I said, Can you come in and Mr. Bateman, please. He came in. I said, Mr. Bateman, Mr. Knight. Can't remember when he told me that I could have two pound social expenses and five pound social expenses. Do you recall that most definitely, he said I was here, sitting here at the time, and of course, Mr. Knight, that's exactly what you said. And on I said, Oh, well, in that case, okay, I'll sign it. That's all right.

Roy Fowler  6:53  
Then, had he forgotten, or was he trying to

Speaker 1  6:57  
playing hard to get cheap? He would have given it to me, undoubtedly, but he would have made me pay for it in more ways than tell

Roy Fowler  7:04  
us more about him, because I meant to ask you before

Speaker 1  7:07  
he was the best showman I ever met. He could sell anything to anybody. He gets you to do anything with enthusiasm. With his he was going to do it, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. And you'd find yourself doing it, although you said at the beginning, I'll never do it again. But, I mean, I'll give you an instance. We were in 127, Water Street up the road here, and the king died in Sandringham. George Fleischman, who's over in Ireland, he was sitting at his desk, at the desk with Castle tonight, and I knocked the door, and I went into him, and I torn the ticket state of I said, Mr. Knight, I got some bad news for you. The king is dead. And he said, I'm very sorry, because he was a good man, they said, the other bleishman, he was the king is dead. And I swear to you that exactly as I tell you this happened, he picked up the phone and he rang Technicolor, and I forget George, somebody or other. He rang when you ring the technical, and he said, I want an option on every technique color camera. He told him first of all that the king was dead and all this that the other then he said, I want an option on the entire every tail Technicolor camera in Europe. And I want an option on the plant, and I want it in writing, and I want it today. And they said, Oh, for the funeral. It'll be for the funeral. He said, No, it'll be for the coronation. And I thought, yes, class, I'm thinking about the funeral, you know, the dump, and the sons and all the kings and princes of Europe walking behind that they done before and all they've done. Thought, my God, this guy is thinking way ahead of that the coronation. And of course, he was absolutely right and eager. He chopped from John Davis for that too. Although, if he hadn't had done the coronation, I tell you straight, there would have been no rank organization today.

Speaker 1  9:46  
The reason the rank organization is allowed and kicking today is because castle and Knight did that coronation. He made more money than they'd ever seen up to that time, and they were in such a bad way they needed it.

Roy Fowler  10:03  
And you see, he got fired.

Speaker 1  10:04  
Well, he got hauled over the coal, coal for it, two years later,

Roy Fowler  10:09  
for committing

Unknown Speaker  10:11  
trouble. Who gave you the authority to do that? That was John David. I mean, he gave him rough time. But Castle night had not only his own ability and tremendous strength, and he back here 100% that's where his strength, time. If you were going to do anything, he'd move heaven and earth for you. He'd fight for you, tooth and nail,

Speaker 1  10:51  
even if you had to give way. In the end, he'd still give way. But he fight. He really would. He was a good boss. Then, oh, he was a good boss. He had his idiosyncrasies, the same as everybody else. He'd fire you just as they'd look at you and then start yawn again, and then, if you turn in and give him a rough time, he turn around probably give you a raise, just to show you there was no ill feeling.

Roy Fowler  11:16  
Was there a barrier between management and the staff. How did you call him?

Speaker 1  11:23  
Bills? Called him ck, Mr. Knight, you know. And he used to be. He was very human, very ordinary, but a brilliant, brilliant mind. When he set his mind to anything, when he wanted to do something, he'd do it. And he had a great showmanship. I mean, when we did this film on Arnhem, he did it on next to nothing on a shoestring, and when he put it on at the gunmont Haymarket, he had search lights on the top of the theater going across the sky, and the crowd stopped to watch because the war hadn't been over very long. Christ, they're all coming back. What's going on? There were these search lights. He had all the police outside on horses, white horses. He staged it. He stage managed everything, but always with a reason. I've never seen a man work so hard as he did on the Olympic Games. After all the ballyhoo and all the pomp and circumstance, a lot of work has to be done. And he did that, by God, he did in two days. He put that picture together and finished it. And, I mean, they wanted him doing. He was brilliant, brilliant, mind you, he had some brilliant people working for him. I don't mean, I'm not referring to myself. I mean, Roy Drew and John O'Kelly. They were hard workers, brilliant workers. They really were.

Roy Fowler  13:02  
They were editors down at Denham,

Speaker 1  13:05  
or that's where it was done, you see, and everything was so different in those days, you didn't have tapes, you know, it was all done on and when, if you during the war, you wanted to sound of the bombs and sound of the gunfire. Well, we used to put a camera up on the roof Poland Street garage, 1000 foot camera, and just point it up to the sky. I mean, there's nothing to look at. You couldn't see it any but you'd hear with

Roy Fowler  13:39  
the bombs, this was, what a single system, camera,

Speaker 1  13:42  
sound camera, then you'd switch it on. You've got two microphone out there. You'd wait when you thought it was going to happen. Then you get closer, when you think there was a lull in it, you'd switch it off and switch it on again, if you've got the anti aircraft, bang, bang, bang, switch it on. You get it going up. Well, then they'd take it that would be processed the same as the film, the picture, but you got the track, that's all. And I did use it the usual way. I mean, in the latter stages of my life, we were laying magnetic tape. You know, if you wanted a racing car, you got a picture of a racing car starting. You look at it and say, right, that's a Ferrari, right? Once track of a Ferrari, lay it on. I mean, that's what you did. If it was an airplane you put it on.

Roy Fowler  14:45  
Let's talk about the last days, the final days when it all began to fall apart. When was there an inkling that the fate of the news rules was sealed? Well, you

Speaker 1  14:57  
knew it was because the you knew it couldn't go. On because a it was costing us more to print bloody things

Roy Fowler  15:07  
than the money we could get. When was that apparent?

Unknown Speaker  15:11  
Well, I was running Movietone at the end, and we were paying rank something like 25 pound a real for printing, and we were charging rank 20 pound a week, 20 pound an issue to show it.

Roy Fowler  15:33  
Did you say you were running movie tone? Yeah, tell us about that. I thought you were still with GB, but

Speaker 1  15:39  
no, well, GB, then we then GB, knew, packed up. See, Paramount, packed up. First of

Roy Fowler  15:44  
all, that was when, roughly, if you can't remember, it was about 1956 Yeah,

Speaker 1  15:51  
then Goon was packed up about 1960 just after, then we took on, we started to make look at life till 69 and that was very profitable and very we kept all the people the

Roy Fowler  16:09  
same. People. You were a camera man for look at life. No, I ran the camera side right, assigning cameraman, assigning and

Speaker 1  16:19  
deciding what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. And

Roy Fowler  16:25  
you would choose the subjects, or you would set up the servicing. No, I go to all the

Speaker 1  16:30  
meetings, and I'd say, Well, you come up with suggestions of your own, but you then give reasons why you couldn't do that. They come up with some right by these steamers, which would have cost us 1000s and 1000s of pounds to do well, you've got to keep within the bounds of what you've got to spend.

Roy Fowler  16:49  
What was your budget?

Speaker 1  16:51  
Not very much. You'd be surprised. Well, can you remember? I couldn't tell you. I can't remember exactly, but it was very, very little.

Roy Fowler  17:00  
You were getting one real art per month, per week, per week. We

Speaker 1  17:08  
did 52 a year, and then the occasional special thing here or there.

Unknown Speaker  17:17  
But it was you were dealing with people who had no idea what you could do with the camera, what you couldn't, who had no idea the limitations and the way you could do it.

Speaker 1  17:39  
You had to explain everything to all right? You can't. You can show a picture, if you like, somebody says something about stress. Now, if you want to illustrate that with a in a picture, in the old days, they would show somebody old in their head, you know, crushed, I'm going bar me. And then they cut to a shot of a rope, slowly but surely breaking, you know, entwining. And that was the illustration of stress. When you suddenly say you want to show the stress in the general public outside, then all you can do is you're going to take pictures from a window or something and show them crossing the road with the cars and the flashing lights and the stop grow, stop grow, and the cars going across. The stress of it all, this is modern day life. You can't suddenly take pictures of people's eyeballs in the street as they're walking along, and suddenly see a reflection in a window of a person walking along. And do the reflection in the window, and then cut to their phone, then their face walking in. You don't know they are. You've never seen them before in your life. You don't know what they are. And then you're going to quote to him that this lady is under dark stress. She could turn around afterwards. You were joking. I'll sue you for me a dear Christmas. You had to explain all this to people. That's what the meeting used to take place. And then you used to say, Well, leave it with me, and we'll do it, but I'll have to do it our way, my way, because otherwise, can't do it at all. And then you go away and do it. That's what I got mounted to. But then when that ended, I went to Percy. I wrote to movie town. I went to see movie town. I wanted to see Percy Livingstone. He was the boss of movie town, and he wasn't there. He was in America. And I said to Percy Livingstone, as his ADC was there, I said, Well, he doesn't know me from Adam, but I understand that movie town. You'll still run movie town for. In this office. So what I'd like to do is I would like to give this list to you of all these people who have been so brilliant in their lifetime and are being thrown on the waste heap by being made redundant. I said, now there's all their names, what they do, what they can, and then telephone numbers, their address and everything else. So like Mr. Livingstone to consider them,

Roy Fowler  20:31  
to interrupt you for a moment, the rank organization just slung you out after 30 years service

Speaker 1  20:40  
for which I get a very small pension. I paid him for it, and that's what I did to try and keep him in the business, because they were too good to throw out and become take any job they can. Because, you know, in the film business, you know it's well as I do, if the circumstances are such, then they they got to survive, or they had to. I mean, some of the big shots eventually were driving vans at one time because they couldn't get a job anywhere else. Eventually they come back. But that's what I did. And I was amazed here that I got a telephone call from 20th century folks saying, Could you come back to Could you come call in the office? We'd like to see you. So I said, Yes. So I went back to see him. I thought they were going to say, well, we can take two of your people, but we can't take any more. Which two would you recommend for this jump? Instead of that, they said, we've got all these names and this certainly. And then we understand, but now we see that your name is not on this list. I said, No, it's not. Said, Well, we wanted to know, where are you going to work? What are you going to do? I said, What am I going to do? I'm going to take my wife on a holiday. I said, we're gonna have a ball. I'm fed up of worrying about redone and seeing people losing their jobs. That's for me. I'm going out. I'm going to play golf and forget about and they said, Well, have you got a job? I said, No, I'll think about that when I come back. And I said, Well, would you like to add your name to this list and tell us what you can do, what you do? I said, No. I said, I'm not really interested in it. I'll decide when I come back, I'm going away. And that was that. And then I then I got a telephone call. Mr. Percy Livingstone, would like to see you. Would you come and see him? I said, Yes, so I went and saw him again. Said, what's all about? He said, I like to offer you a job. I said, Well, that's very kind of you. Thank you very much. May I ask what the job is? He said, Well, I want somebody to take over Movietone. I want somebody to run movie town. And he said, we're losing they're losing money and over fist, and it means the end. I've got to stop it. He said, No, they want to do that. I'd love to keep it going. So that's the first job, and the other one, I'd like to make some shorts. And unlike a producer, he said, So now, if you'd like to become, if you'd like to take on the job producing shorts for me, Yuri, if you'd like to take on the job of running movie tone. You can he says up to you. I said, All right, well, I tell you what person if I take over movie tone, I run them both. I do them both, or not at all, because I know what you're going to do. You're all the same. You're going to use movie tone to make your shorts anyway. So I'm going to be that's all you're going to do. So that's what you're trying to do. I said, if I'm going to do it, I do it both ways. I want to have the final say on this that now. And I said, From now on, I make my own name. I'm not making other people's. I want you to understand that before we even start. And he said, That's it. He said, you'll have to give me time. I just want to check up on this that the other I said, Yes. When I saw him, he said, I haven't had time to check up on your you know, on you. I said, you don't want to worry. I've had time to check up on you and found out a little bit about you, so I know exactly where we stand. I said, so don't worry about it. Everything will be all right. And it was. And then we kept movie town going for about another 15 years, which was a struggle for. On a shoestring. We made a few bob, but they wouldn't spend it the way I wanted them to. I had no interest. They never I had no part of movie town. I realized afterwards what I should have done, I should have bought it. I should have said, Look, I'll tell you what. I'll give you 25 then what they'd take me could have made a fortune then. But instead of that, I took it on, I ran it. I made him a lot of money. And we kept everybody employed right up to the end. We were the last one. And even then, we kept it going afterwards. We developed the library whilst we were running it, and we made it into a worldwide setup on a very small scale, because a we had no money for advertising. We had no money to do anything about it was just catch his catch can and using friendship people you knew, and that's what we did, and it developed. He really did. If Lady bother me helped us with a little money now and again, we would have probably done a lot better, but they were wanting to take it out and didn't want to put it in.

Roy Fowler  26:24  
Why her shoes? No shareholders, Yes, Lord,

Speaker 1  26:27  
he was 45% 20th century. Fox was 55 but Fox was very good. And I'll tell you this much, if I had to work those last 50 years for Fox, I wouldn't be sitting here. Obviously I had been working somewhere other swinging a pick or digging hole in the root ground, because I couldn't have lived the way I lived now without Fox. Fox were marvelous.

Roy Fowler  26:58  
What happened to the others who also were let go and weren't so lucky, they just went out of the business. Well,

Speaker 1  27:04  
they were all older, old enough to retire. They all got a pension from Fox, which nobody paid him for. It was also all supplementary. Nobody had to pay a penny for them. And I got them to agree to bring their pension scheme up to date, which they did, which made all the difference in the world. Now, I gave John. I got John O'Kelly back, who was used to be with go months, and he was there in Pinewood, running their library, there, working in their library. I got him back to work for movie town. He retired from with with rank, and then he retired from Fox. And this is just between you and me. No interest anybody else but his pension. So he got, for the few years he worked for Fox was 10 times for the 45 years he worked for Rick. I couldn't believe it. That's a fact.

Roy Fowler  28:14  
When finally did movie turn close down,

Speaker 1  28:21  
many we go down. I've got the final poster up on my wall at home with the signature of everybody who was working on it on the last day. When was it? About 1970 and 80, I think. We closed down 1979

Roy Fowler  28:48  
it had really ceased to be a news reel, of course, at that stage, hadn't it, because

Speaker 1  28:52  
we were still putting out a real one a week in color, but

Roy Fowler  28:56  
it was less news and more topics, I suppose. Well, it was

Speaker 1  29:01  
no good competing with the the news as such as we use my point. It was a spectacular news. What we did was, all right, the Derby, but we had to make it different. In other words, everybody knew this, the winner before we even put the reel out. So you've got to make it spectacular. So we stuck instead of we couldn't afford to build 75 foot towers like they used to. We used to do the derby from the start to the finishing one sweep. That's how they did it. Originally, the old news always did the same great big tower up on do that. We used to put you go down the seven Furlong start. You'd spend a day down there trying to find a different angle, and so that you saw the horses coming up, and then you run of slow motion. So you saw the nostrils going and all this, and then the faces and the jocks and the whips coming up, and you made it you. Live. You made a different type of picture of it. You wouldn't have done that in the news real, because they just said, crush, we can't afford to run this bloody thing. It runs for 50, you know, 120 feet. Well, we only want five feet of that. But it made a marvelous picture of it. You tried to make the picture, make it different, and they did very well at that. That was the only way you could do it.

Roy Fowler  30:26  
How many cinemas was it going into at the end?

Speaker 1  30:32  
Well, you see, you had first run cinemas. They were the money spinners. If you had the first run cinemas, it was the first showing.

Roy Fowler  30:42  
So how many prints per issue, per edition?

Speaker 1  30:45  
Oh, we got it was down. There's about 35 prints. You see, it was costing us more to buy the prints than it was to sell them on the first run. Then there was a second run. They used to run them a week, and then nine days, and then, and then, eventually you get them up in the north of Scotland, they get, they pay one pound, you know, which hardly paid for the transportation.

Roy Fowler  31:10  
Did you have a budget? A weekly budget? No, we

Speaker 1  31:14  
just had to make a profit at the end of the period. The boat we had, I mean, we started off with meetings once a month, and in the end, we didn't have a meeting once every 12 months. I left you on your own all. The only thing you had to account to folks was what your bank balance was and what was happening and how much money you got.

Roy Fowler  31:39  
What was your exact position linked to it at this stage, were you managing director, General

Speaker 1  31:44  
Manager, General Manager. We didn't have a managing director. I was general manager, and I was also a director of the company. They made me a director. I didn't get anything for it. It just meant I kept in the know as to what was going on, and I could argue with

Roy Fowler  32:02  
them. And you carried the can, yeah.

Speaker 1  32:06  
Well, it all looked good. You know, you were a director of the company.

Roy Fowler  32:10  
How many short subjects did you make?

Unknown Speaker  32:13  
Oh, I should think about

Roy Fowler  32:16  
3040, yes. What was that? One a month? Or I used

Speaker 1  32:20  
to make one for Fox. You see, if they got a because it's no good. It was no good making a short to try and sell it, because you never celebrate, because nobody buy it. Rank one. Buy it because they all want to. They'd reissue the old ones rather than buy me one. So what I did, I levered Fox into the position that if they got a film coming over, and if it ran for just so long, and the program was then I used to say, it's a short, we can put a short in there. Now I used to sell the film, the short to Fox, and they would pay me for it, which would make a profit. They would make a very nice profit out of it, too, on the distribution and all that kind of thing, because we always had to pay the distributors anyways, no matter whether we were winning, losing or

Roy Fowler  33:16  
well, they couldn't. They couldn't lose with the any money. Couldn't they? No,

Speaker 1  33:20  
well, exactly. And that was the thing. I mean, it's just same as look at life that was done on an ED money basis, and it was a very profitable setup, really was. But there again, they all get, all these people get very How can I say I want to be topical. They get the touch of the Leicester pigots. They get greedy. They get greedy. They're not content. Now, some people, if they had an income of a 10,000 a year at one time, they would have said, I'm in the seventh heaven of delight. I'm grateful. But you see, there are some people that are not satisfied with that. They're not satisfied. They want 50,000 they want 100,000 they want 200,000 they're never satisfied. And so eventually the engine blows up.

Roy Fowler  34:23  
Well, we're living through it once again, are we not? And they bring it all tumbling down. I remember 50 years or so ago, my father used to say there are two motivations in the City of London. One is greed and one is fear. Exactly we're seeing it operate now? Yeah, I feel that maybe we should backtrack a little on look at life. Is there anything more to be said at that? Since it was an indigenous real for the rank organization,

Speaker 1  34:51  
I mean, we were, I was running the camera side, and they said, We're going to go. Closed down and more British news. And that wasn't because of the television, as everybody seems to think it was, but it was a particular policy, because caster night was leave. He left because John Davis forced him to. That's besides the point. But that's,

Roy Fowler  35:22  
well, no, it's, it's a matter of history, so it's good to know he was forced out again after years of loyal service. Well, that's

Speaker 1  35:30  
what I'm saying. But, I mean, I couldn't prove it to well, the stories could be denied, both emphatically, but one of the kind of thing was, I mean, we had a signature to you, the march of the movies. Movie to come up was

Unknown Speaker  35:58  
not Leslie Mitchell. There was movie time,

Roy Fowler  36:01  
forgive me, Emerick Ted Emmett,

Speaker 1  36:05  
brilliant genius. He was absolute genius. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he could, he could. He got a bloke who Roy Jo who was a brilliant editor, who could work, and he'd work. Never give up. He'd make something out of nothing. But he couldn't see the funny side of anything. Mrs. Emerick, that was Roy Drew, but Ted Emerick could. He was the he could see the humor in any picture. He'd say, anything, anything. What we'll do is we'll twist that round and use it that way, boomerang, and it was funny, and it would make the audience laugh. Now, you know, as well as I do, you get a cinema, it's spontaneous. As soon as one laughs, they all laugh, one laugh, it'll lead to another, lead to another. And if like the old Charlie Chaplin pictures, he made him laugh. He had him crying the next minute. As long as you do that, you'll always win. But I mean, we were told we got to change the titles, change the signature here, and after all these years,

Roy Fowler  37:19  
and where did that come from? South Street, yes.

Speaker 1  37:22  
And then he said, Did you has it been done? Why hasn't it been done, this, that, and the other? And then they come out with the $64 question. You know, either you do it or I'll get somebody who will. And I couldn't believe it. I never believed it, but my Noel died, was retiring. I thought, Well, that's it. He's been a friend of mine for years. He never told me. Then he said, I am retired. I'm going and I said, Why do you do that? What the hell are you up to? And he said, Well, circumstances are such that there's, that's the only thing left open to me.

Unknown Speaker  38:12  
And he said, I can manage, alright, so retire. So he did. And he said, the chap I'm going to tell I said, Well, he's taking over from you.

Unknown Speaker  38:25  
And he said, There's a man named Grafton green. He was the editor of the sketch, daily sketch. And I said, Oh, he introduced me to him. He was quite a nice man.

Speaker 1  38:46  
I said to all night, do you want this bloke to take this job or not? I said, because if you don't want him to have the job, he won't have it three weeks. I'll guarantee to and he said, Oh no. I said, because it was stopping, stop him dead in his tracks, because he knows nothing at all about it, nothing at all. And he said, Oh no, he's quite a nice man. He said, help him all you can. I said, right, so we did, and we made him. No two ways about it. I mean, he was, this is the biggest snob I ever met in my life. I never met a man, Michael ever

Roy Fowler  39:34  
this is the one coming in glass and green. Jesus

Speaker 1  39:37  
Christ. You couldn't believe it. You couldn't believe that the world, the people existed,

Unknown Speaker  39:45  
still the same. I mean, she's a bloody liar too. He really was. One of his favorite words was kinsman. He's a kinsman of mine.

Unknown Speaker  40:03  
They set me up, but he never, ever mentioned his brother, who happened to know but he worked as a sweeper up at Wimbledon dog track. And I assure you, he didn't go down well with me. Anyway. That's between you me and the gate post.

Speaker 1  40:34  
But Well, I would say he was Grafton green knew as much about the film business, a little bit less than that frame of that picture.

Roy Fowler  40:52  
How much longer did the real survive after he came in? Well,

Speaker 1  40:55  
it survived. We survived 10 years. We kept it going as long as that.

Roy Fowler  41:01  
What was your function? Then? Were you still a camera man? Or heard you? Well,

Speaker 1  41:04  
I ran the cameras, I set it up, and I did the stories, and as I say, we went to the meetings, and I told them what they could do and what they couldn't do. And I even had the powers that be that used to come down from just up the road here, bank, film distributors. They said, when we have the meeting, would you please keep your head still? I said, What do you mean? I don't know what you're talking about. Said, From now on, will you keep your head still? I said, I want to keep my head still. What are you talking about? So when, when somebody says something, they look a graph of green, you're always, you always look at him and go, and he says, well, perhaps we have to think about that. Well, it has possibilities, but, and then he said, You go like this. And he said, Oh yes, that's a very good idea. So why we have him there? Why don't we ask you, save a lot of time and trouble. I

Roy Fowler  42:08  
should point out for the tape that you were nodding your head either up and down the

Speaker 1  42:13  
way it was done. But you got to help him. You got to protect him, which is what we did. And so we made it work. And it was the only way we made it work. It wasn't because I nodded me head, believe me. It was a fact. The reason was we got three or four cameramen. T Peter cannon was still there. Bill was he changed from sound to a camera and Albert, where he was a lovely kid. He died when he was 45 but he was a worker second to none. Do anything I wanted to do when we did pictures when they built that post office tower. I thought I saw that commercial the other day, which was up there, and I thought, how long it take them today to do it? We hadn't got anything like that. We couldn't get a helicopter. We couldn't afford one. But not only that, they wouldn't let you fly a helicopter over there. So we put him up on the end of a crane. You know, when those buckets, yes, he went up the top, sat there as good as gold did it all, lowered him down, pulled him up. He did zoom shots and all that. And they look fantastic, marvelous. And he did a marvel. Still, he really was what they made it possible.

Roy Fowler  43:43  
Yes, that's that's so often the case, isn't it? The foot soldiers actually making, what would you say at that stage was the level of competence of rank executives? I mean, was that typical? Do you think, or was he a one off? No, no,

Speaker 1  44:01  
no, no, no. I think a vast majority of rank at that time. I mean, don't forget, you had a strong arm man at the top, John Davis. Now, John Davis was a good man for the period of time when it was essential that you had somebody like that to hold it together. But he was also the wrong kind of man, because I always feel this is only my opinion, that the power structure went to his head a little bit. I you could nobody worth his soul, who's going to be a man is going to be told what to do and how to do it all the time. Sooner or later, he's going to turn around and say, just a minute, I know my job. I'll do it the way. I know he's right. Not. I mean, I've had people say to me, Well, we've got to do so and so. And I've said, Well, I don't know how you can do it so well, doesn't matter. We've got to do it. Then I've said, Well, I'm sorry, but I just don't know how to do it, so you will have to tell us how to do it, because I can't do it. I wouldn't know the first way of doing it. Now, how do we do it? You tell me. And the only answer was, oh, but the chairman wants it. I said, I'll tell the chairman. I ring him up. I knew him. I've been away with him. Time to I said, I'll ring him up, tell him. There's only one way. I know we could do this, and we'd have to employ one person. That's Jesus Christ, because he's the only bloke I know could do it. Nobody else, nobody else in this world could do what you're asking us to do. And therefore I can't do it. And I mean, he ruled with the rod of iron. I've got a docket now at home, which says when he first started, which says nobody shall spend 10 pounds without my authority. Jay Davis, I mean, we run in a new show, but I'm down at Folkston. There's a training ship that's missing, you know, one of these with all these kids on these great, big old and there's the local President press boys from Fleet Street, and everybody else says, right? Well, are a tug and we'll go out and look for it. That's the only thing we can do, because it's supposed to be somewhere in the North Sea, right? Because you can't go out in a rowing boat, right? How much are we going to pay? It's got, if we all chip in 25 quid, we can charter the thing for the 12 hours, or whatever you like. So we can go out six hours and six hours back, see if we can find it. You.

Roy Fowler  0:00  
Right? This is side five. Sorry, I wasn't prepared for that break. You were saying, Folks, and you called the office to get the money for

Speaker 1  0:08  
the tug. Yeah, and I rang, Mr. Howard, did he What's the matter? I said, now about this 10 pound, Mr. Howard, I want to hire this tug. Can I have your okay to do it? And if I went dead? I rang back again because I thought I'd been kind of nobody in the phone. Girls were there, and they said, Yeah, I'll put you through. No reply, no reply. Couldn't get any reply. What was he doing? Hiding under the desk. Oh, just nobody would take the responsibility. I couldn't get older all night, all night. Would have said, do it. So I did. I knew what he'd say, so I did it. So I spent the 25 pound I thought, glasses, we don't find this boat. They'll be able to pay now. But, I mean, that was the kind of thing that

Roy Fowler  0:51  
happened, an atmosphere of fear. Oh, absolutely. But you see, was your job on the line if you took a decision like, well, I thought I could talk

Speaker 1  1:01  
my way out of it. Got a strong reason, and I couldn't see him being that stupid. But anyway, I think he see if you, if you go to, in my book, if you're going to employ people. You employ them because a they can do something that you want them to do. Now, whether it's if you employ a gardener and he's got a spade and he's going to dig a garden, you don't tell him how to do it. You just say, I would like to see a bed of flowers there, and you let him do it because he knows more about it than you do. If you're going to stand by the side of him and say, Oh, stick it. Push the shovel down. Push the spade down a bit further. No, don't take it as deep as that. There's no point in having him. He knows more about it than you do. Let him do it, and that was always my policy. Anyway, I had people work for me, and I used to say, right, well, that's what you're going to do now, tell me what you do. Tell me what you do. Well, I thought we'd do this, and then I thought we'd go and have a look at that, and do this and do that. Great. Sounds fine. I like the idea do it, bang. And I tell you this much, I don't think I had one failure. It always worked because you gave them the responsibility, and in most people, if you give them the responsibility, they'll see it through. They won't run away. And I dare it under a pillar, because they're frightened, they'll do it. Most people will. And I was lucky. I had them all who did it. They helped me, no end all of them. But I mean great people. I met a lot of famous people, a lot of poor people, a lot of rich people, but in this business that we were in, I think the greatest showman of them all was Castle tonight for exploitation. I think one of the bravest men I ever met was Jim Wright of paramount. I mean, he was the boss of Paramount, Paramount news. He didn't he didn't have to go to the war. He didn't have to be involved. He didn't have to hear a shot far. Instead of that, he went with the American forces on their bombing raids, daylight bombing raids, and I've taken a picture of Jim Wright when he stepped out of a plane, when he was hosed down with a hose pipe, because he was coward, because they got hit with a cannon shell, and all kinds of things happened. But I mean to me, he was a brave man. When he died, I went to his funeral because I had to go. Do you know there was not a soul from Paramount? There wasn't even a wreath.

Roy Fowler  4:12  
Where was that?

Speaker 1  4:15  
I think, Paramount changed hands two or three times. Nobody even knew he existed. His obituary was in the times. You know his son, Jimmy Wright, Jim is that his son? That's his son. Didn't realize, yeah, oh yes. And I saw Jim now, and he thanked me for coming and all this, that and the other well, out of all the people in you in the business, there was only two people there. There was power from Kodak's, what's his name, power and myself, the two of us went after all the years he put in. It seemed to me a bit

Roy Fowler  4:57  
much. It's a pretty shitty business. It's on occasions I would have thought

Unknown Speaker  5:01  
that. I would have thought they would have done something. I would have thought they would have done

Roy Fowler  5:07  
what happened if one stood up to Davis because some bull is retreat. Well, could you call his his bluff? If such, it was

Speaker 1  5:20  
now Maya before that, I can tell you, I went away with John Davis to various Cannes Film Festivals, to Venice Film Festival, to various others Berlin festival. I mean, he, to my way of thinking, he was brilliant in what he was doing at times when circumstances were such, but he never had the people he had were small fry in my book because they hadn't got the guts to stand up to it. If you say to somebody, they were bought pure and simple that I'm convinced, you know, they turned in. I mean, they suddenly go, got a big car, big expense account, this, that and the other, and a big salary. They didn't want to lose it. I can understand that too. I wouldn't want to lost it. But there are some things that you've got to stand up for. There's some things you've got to be counted on. And one of Monsieur what you yourself are, what you yourself do. But they hadn't got anybody like that. If he had a done it had probably done much better. He had one bloke I knew very well, Harry Norris. He was great man. He was the assistant managing director of the rank organization. But he left, unfortunately. But he was brilliant, brilliant man. The others, I don't think there was one of them in the same category as Davis. John Davis said, John Davis was, in some lots of respects, brilliant, and in to me personally, he can be nicer. And every time I've told him, when I've had to tell him something, and he's always, he's always explained things to me like we were doing I was doing some pictures there, and I said, Oh, Mr. Davis, would you do this? Would you come in? He said, No, I don't want to be in this picture. I said, right, Google, do we arrange another one? I wonder, why not? Then he's come over later, and he said, I must explain to you why I didn't want to be in that picture. And he's explained it. And he said, Oh, I quite understand. I didn't realize that. Thank you very much for telling me. Now you didn't have to tell me I was employed by him. He could have done anything. You're fired for even asking. He was always generous to me. He's always nice. He never ever expected to do anything. He expected to work, but he also wanted to take you out and give you good time. He said to me, with one day, if I see you with that bloody camera anymore, I'll fire you. Leave it where it is. I'm going to take you out. We're gonna have a good time. Need it. Leave that camera at home. Leave it. I don't want to see you with it. Just leave it. It could be nicer. He was

Roy Fowler  8:42  
a good companion on an occasion like that. Oh yes. And

Speaker 1  8:44  
I think I've told you, seriously, I think if you were in trouble of any kind, and you, I think John Davis would be the first class man to appeal to because he I think he'd help you. I think he would. I don't think he'd run away. That's my opinion module. I don't have to ask him. I would assume that anyway, I would think so, from what I know. But he was always nice to me. He's always good to me. And I could all see his point in lots of things, but I must say, I don't think much to the people he had working for him. I thought they were a load of rubbish, most of them and should never have been in the positions they had. He's one weakness in my book. He couldn't pick the right people, because the right people wouldn't work. That was the point, because he wouldn't give him the freedom. But what else is that?

Roy Fowler  9:49  
Well in you say Fox Movie turned closed down in 79 so you were still a comparatively young man. I. What then

Speaker 1  10:02  
I retired in 85 or 65 or 60, 5960 then, well, then we went to work on we made some shorts. I did a lot of work for countries abroad, because we still had the contacts with them and what they wanted doing, and we covered stories for them and shorts and documentaries. And we built the library up. Spent a lot of money on that

Roy Fowler  10:35  
you were running the library. We were going to

Speaker 1  10:37  
build that up. And we did. We built it up so that it was a very big money spinner. Too good business.

Roy Fowler  10:46  
A lot of that must have been a nitrate stock. Did you have hell of a lot of it? Did you have a plan to transfer it? Yes,

Speaker 1  10:53  
I wanted to transfer it. I got them to do a deal. I got ranks to agree. Jim down, I said, Look, you you've got all these people here. They don't. They're not all working all the time. Now, if I gave you, say, 200 wheels. Now, I want them transferred on to safety stock. You're going to make me a new negative. There's no rush. Nobody's saying all those 200 cans have got to be done by four o'clock this afternoon. Doesn't matter whether they're done this week, this fortnight's time, three weeks time, six weeks time, two months time. Okay, whenever you've got any done, you just fill in. Okay, now a special deal on that, and he quoted me prices, and then we beat the I beat him down, and then he helped me on that. And then I said to him, Well, it's going to work out at about six, 10 million feet to do. Oh, Christ. So I said, Well, it'll keep us going for a few years money keep him running. But then you see, they haven't come up with the money. Oh, well, we're considerate. We'll consider it. Consider it. We see, without they do something about it. I mean, every month we were throwing a can of film away. Kind of film away? You see these pictures, not the famous pictures. I'm not talking about those. That's the little police car with the two policemen with the tall hats was the first motorized policeman in England. There they were in a little two seater car. If they'd arrested anybody, they can't put him in anywhere. The only way they could have done it was put him in the boot. But there they were down little country lane. That was the first police car. That was the first motorized police in this country that's been lost. No, but that's there. But, I mean, that's a picture. It's not famous. Nobody's ever going to turn around and say, right, we're going to put it on the nine o'clock news. But for my grandchildren. That would be interesting when they see today. Well, we were streaking along the motorways. That's how it all started. It

Roy Fowler  13:30  
says far more about life as it then was than a shot of any politician. It

Speaker 1  13:34  
does, does, I quite agree, and it hears so much that he's being lost, thrown away, really is, I mean, the I held stories like The Prince Charles his wedding, I did that on 35 millimeter color, so I had the entire Negative duped, then the original negative had sealed up. Then the Duke negative, they used it, but the original negative never been touched, and that's kept there, not for this year, not for next year, not for 10 years time. But my idea was that would come in handy, if you like, in 500 years time, or in 200 years time, or in 100 years time, probably they'll be able to put it onto paper, I don't know, but it will be there.

Roy Fowler  14:33  
It'll go into a computer, digital

Speaker 1  14:37  
Quite possibly. But to see, oh no, I got, I tell you, seriously, all the enthusiasm for that got beat now and me, because nobody would listen. I got to the minister who was the Minister for the arts and Christ knows what. I. I wrote him a long letter explaining to him, now the work I'd done over the years on various things that had helped his party, and now on the time we come when I wanted some help, how about this, that and the other and I detailed it all out, and our friend of his and people he knew would be forgotten in history unless his film was protected, etc, etc, etc, because thorny Croft when he was and he wrote me a very nice letter about His hand, Dear Mr. Candy, I do appreciate your difficulties. This certainly other. But the only thing is we allow so much to the art, so much money per year to the arts, and so much to this, this, that and the other, and so much to the Film Council, or something of this, certainly other, the only thing I can suggest is you appeal to them. So that was that I wrote to him again a couple of times I wrote to lots of other people. If I'd known what I know now, I'd have gone with a begging bowl, and I'd have tried to get a sponsor for it. Say that, for instance, every time you've shown this film, you've got to show a clip of Kellogg's Corn Flakes, but then I could have got the money to do

Roy Fowler  16:34  
Ted. I guess we're getting towards the end. Now, is there anything that you would like to add to what we've done now, in terms of your career, what's happened to you, places you've been, people you've met? Well,

Speaker 1  16:47  
I'd like to, if I can, to put it when I say it's a different world. Now, like, for instance, I explained to you how I cut my face. I've got a permanent scar on the side of my face. Now I didn't get any compensation for that, but I didn't expect any. I also, when I was in Ethiopia, I broke my back, but I didn't get any compensation for that. I fell off a truck I was used instead of using a truck with a proper clamps and all that kind of thing. I was doing surrounded by these tribes, and you seen they got flat bed lorry. He was driving down. And I said to him, this is nice little boy he was driving. I said, stay steady. Don't for Christ's egg. Slam those brakes on. Well, of course, you're in the middle of a mob. And of course, one of them immediately stops in front, so he slams the brakes on, and I went straight over the side, and I cracked his phone across the back. Anyway, we survived. That was the main thing.

Roy Fowler  17:55  
What was the hospital like in Addis Ababa? Well,

Speaker 1  17:59  
I got up all right, and I thought I'd hurt myself when I was out of breath, things like that. And I'm this Jewish. He was looking for the lost tribe. I mean, you always meet people, but he was looking for the lost tribe from Israel, Jewish who were in Ethiopia. And I thought, well, he's a nut. He was a German. He happened to be a medical student. He had been apparently. And he called me, and there was nobody. There was no medical, no doctors or anything else. And he said, Come. And he got up, and he took me back, and he got this bandage, and he soaked it in this water, and he bound me up from my hips to my chest, and he just bound it around, tight and tight as could be, all the way around. And then he put pinned it up and taped it up, and I kept that on, and that dried and tight as a wax. That was and I was alright. I mean, I could, I couldn't move, but I could, I could get about. I could move my legs. And I didn't think I'd heard anything. I didn't think I'd done anything, but I knocked, you know, on a chemiflex camera, you have an inching knob, which you push in to turn the shutter out. But when I fell, I knocked that off. But I could do it without it. I could tape it over, and I could carry on without that. But just you couldn't you had to just switch it on and off to move the shuttle. But when I came back, I've been back about six weeks, and then I got to go to Egypt again, and I were going back to Egypt again. It after having been thrown out once. And they said the insurance wanted to know how the camera was damaged. Not the camera. Man, no, the camera. And I explained to him what happened, and I made this report. So they then turned in and said, Well, you will have to be examined by the blank doctors. So before we'll insure you to go abroad again. So I saw Teddy. What's his name? He was the first rank doctor, nice man, and he examined me. And he said, Well, I was working on my car at the time when I got called across. He said, I think it would be better if you went to Middlesex Hospital. I'll make an appointment for you to go there. So I went up to Middlesex Hospital, and they took x rays, and then they slapped all this plaster all over me, and I got a case of plastering. They said, You mustn do anything for three weeks. So it was great. But, I mean, that was the garden thing. Now, no compensation, none at all, no question of it. But then you didn't expect it. You see, that's the whole point.

Roy Fowler  21:11  
I'm surprised they didn't carry some kind of insurance policy. What had happened if you'd lost your life? Ah, yes, we've got an insurance policy, right? But no nothing to cover injury. You got

Speaker 1  21:21  
the insurance policy if you lost an eye, a leg, an arm, both legs, both arms, both eyes, or you were dead.

Roy Fowler  21:32  
Do you know what it would have paid if you'd lost your life?

Speaker 1  21:35  
Well, when I was missing in the in on that convoy to multi I was missing for about six weeks, presumed killed. You see? Well, the insurance policy was for 2500 pounds. I wasn't married or anything. It would have gone to my mother. My mother, God bless her. Anyway, they were very good old. Night was very good to me about that, because he arranged for him, instead of paying her 2500 pound to pay a 1000 pound in cash of 1500 pounds in shares, which would bring her an income in which I thought was very well thought out and done, and they'd made sure it was all right for it, and which was good. But then, unfortunately, I turned up. You see, was alive, but I'll tell you. Eddie Edmonds, I mentioned that he went to during the war. This was at the end of the war. We had four Ford V eights, big Ford v8 American Ford V eights, and they all had spare wheels with a little clip on which you used to put flange on the cover. We used to carry it on the top of the truck, which was a big wooden shooting break. Well, if you had to put a rostrum on, a portable rostrum, you had to take that wheel off, put the rostrum on, and then drive, you know, then put the spare wheel on the top, and he stood on the top of this truck in Poland Street garage, and he threw the wheel off the top, and the flange got caught in the ring on his finger, and it pulled him off, and he cracked down onto the concrete floor, which must have been a hell of a shot. Anyway, he went to the ministry of information. The job he was doing the ministry of information was all the generals were being given Russian awards, you know, Tedder and cross those they were given Award, which he entitled them to free rides on the trams in Moscow, as well as the decoration, you know, and that kind of thing, which was rife at that time. And he rang up and said, I've done it, I've done this, but I fell off and hurt my back. Could you possibly get somebody to come and pick this, pick the things up, and, you know, take him back. And yes, so he went and picked it up. He went to the hospital. He come back. He broke his back, but he carried on and did the job first. No question about class. I can't go on. He must have been in absolute agony, but he did the job. That's what I mean, see the these guys over that was the whole point. You couldn't say or can't do it. I mean, I've seen Eddie come back from the East Coast when the floods came in, where we had to scrape the mud off his ears and give him a wash before he could go to the Dorchester to do a job, because everybody else was out. We were all going other places, really. I mean that there was no question about you can't believe you were I'd never heard anybody ever in all my life. I say, I can't do that. I can't I don't want to go now. I know I can't do that. I only ever heard one person say that. That was me. And the old man said to me about when Mountbatten was viceroy of India. He said, Would you I want you to go to India and you'll be with Joe Melba, you'll be on his staff. You'll take pictures of Mountbatten and all this. And I said, please, I don't mind. I've never turned down wars, Fars, floods or famines. Please don't send me to India. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the poverty, and so I didn't go. John Turner went,

Roy Fowler  25:51  
all right, what else were we going to cover? Or is this now toward the end of your working life that we're talking about.

Speaker 1  26:01  
Oh, and there's one other thing I got when I retired, and I told everybody I was retiring,

Roy Fowler  26:08  
he retired at 65 yep, yep.

Speaker 1  26:11  
Fox didn't want me to, I must say that in all fairness, but there'd been changes there, and I knew it was no good. You can't teach old dogs. BECTU, I got a very interesting letter saying the Queens decided to make you a member of the royal Victorian order, which I was thrilled and delighted with. And so I'm a member of the royal Victorian order. And I went to the palace. I covered the investitures many times. I'd even covered the one inside, the first one that was filmed inside, and that was when Matt Busby got his knighthood, and she was marvelous to us. And when I went there, all I wanted to do was to say, thank you very much. Thank you, ma'am, and I could never got the chance, because she said, Oh, Mr. Candy. She said, this is a small thank you for all you've done for me and my family and I thank you very much indeed. And I said, well, thank you, man. I nearly fell over backwards, but that was the last thing I got. I've been very fortunate. I've had a ball. I mean you, you can believe me when you think, what chance is anybody today? I mean, I never went to a good school, I never went to university. What chance have they got today going around the world, and it wasn't paid a lot of money, but at least I was paid for it, and I kept my family and give them a good education and all that kind of business. And I had a ball, and I went everywhere I went, as I told you, I went and sold Khrushchev. It was quite nice to me, smart. Got out of his car, stood while I took his picture, and was quite happy. This was where in Russia, yes, I went all over the Kremlin and look round. It's like the, like the Tower of London, woman here, and they were very good to me, very kind. I like the people. I like the people everywhere.

Roy Fowler  28:39  
So would there be any chance of you choosing another career, given your given an opportunity to do it over again? No, you would have chosen precisely what you did. Oh,

Speaker 1  28:52  
I couldn't have been done better. As far as I'm concerned, I've had a ball. I've met the nicest people. I've worked with some of the characters that maybe the rest of the world didn't know him so well, but I do, and I can think back and they were marvelous, fabulous people,

Roy Fowler  29:17  
someone that I recorded a week or so ago. I wonder if possibly you knew him at Adolf Seymour, who was that?

Speaker 1  29:23  
Yes, because he was, he was a Frenchman who came over with Pathy to work for Pathy, then he was at he worked with Pathy, then he retired. Simon must be 90 or 93 Yeah, Marvel. All should swear black Tammy, did

Roy Fowler  29:41  
he? Did he tell you that no French berate. French

Speaker 1  29:45  
berry always simul, yeah. Well, he's, oh yes,

Roy Fowler  29:54  
he was. He's still very lucid. Tommy

Speaker 1  29:58  
boat indeed. Door is what he was. Do you know, honestly, I thought he died. I did really, no,

Roy Fowler  30:06  
he's in a home, a nursing home, but his daughter and his son in law brought him over to their house, which is near Oxford, to be interviewed. So, so we interviewed him.

Speaker 1  30:20  
Well, I am pleased, because he was a marvelous boat, 93 honey. You see, he was the sound man. Now there was a

Roy Fowler  30:35  
he began as a cameraman. Actually, he switched to sound with the coming of sound. But before that,

Speaker 1  30:40  
yeah. You see when, when I came into it was sound, yes. And you see the when the first sound, I looked at no end of the first sound reels. And what they did was they put the microphone up, and that was the important thing. This was real sound you're hearing. I mean, if somebody was going to make a speech in the in the park or something, there's a platform, and in the background is a bloke ringing a bell. Well, you just let it run, because that was the point. You could hear him ringing the bell if the clock tower decided to chime 12 or two or three in the afternoon, the bloke who's speaking, he stopped because he went doing, doing, but they recorded that. Oh, that was marvelous. You see the sound, and you could see it didn't change the lens, didn't change the picture, just the sound. Was there to run, run it, no matter what happened, let it run, to pick up the sound Sam. Was he all the god and when I knew sim, because I had been there a long time when I came on the scene, when I met him, he was sound man for path A now, of all the people around, I think I knew him. He was always quiet, gentle, and he's always, how are you? How's the end zones? How he so and so? Oh, he's, well, good, good, good. And how did you get old? Does that mean that type of thing? But there was never, I was never close to sit, put it that way. It was all friends. But you see, he was sound man, I was coming back. Big difference. I didn't understand what he was doing. And as far as I was concerned, he didn't understand what I was doing. Obviously. Nemo, yes, well, I'm known. Do you know I thought he was dead as Bill could died the other week. There's only one person I know of who's still around, who's still alive, that's John O'Kelly. Out of all the people I knew at go months at the beginning, he's the only one who's left John O'Kelly. And I mean, he started to work go months when he was 14. And I mean, he's 10 years older than I am. So he must. He's got his family. His daughter married a Spaniard, a very good way of going on, and he goes over there quite a lot. He spent a lot of time.

Roy Fowler  33:33  
We'll have to try and get to him then, because he obviously must have seen a great deal of history. Well,

Speaker 1  33:39  
he saw Warner. Did, but in our we've always been good friends. See John.

Roy Fowler  33:49  
Where does he live in this country? I've

Speaker 1  33:51  
got his. I'll give his telephone number. Got it here. He lives in Barnes. Oh, well, that's useful. And John O'Kelly is 878,

Roy Fowler  34:03  
well, I'll take that from you when we finished, if I may, three, eight, double, six.

Unknown Speaker  34:09  
Pat holder.

Roy Fowler  34:12  
Oh, I'll take these as suggestions from you. Shall we then bring the interview to an end? Ted, what do you think we covered everything else? You wouldn't say no. From my point of view, I think we've gone into, oh, you go into each of the areas if, as I say, if anything occurs to you that you feel we've left out or not covered enough. And

Speaker 1  34:35  
let's do so well. As far as I can see, all you really want is you want just as far as possible to give an idea, just a flavor of what it was like. I mean, I hope I haven't given the impression that it was nobody ever led a laugh or enjoyed laugh because they did. Oh,

Roy Fowler  34:56  
no, I think you made it clear that they worked very hard. Yeah. They a lot of practical joking. Oh, hell of a lot you never

Speaker 1  35:04  
knew. I mean, I'll tell him one instance, give you an idea. I mean, there was Marines, you know, as they used to be, with the White Helmets, bth helmets, and all the pipe clay. And this that the other and the officer in charge in the front with his sword, well, Leslie Murray, he was late turning up, and all he had the others were over there, all ready for the camera. They're all on trucks, all in lined up. Is he ready to start this parade? Just he did that. Across the parade ground came this truck. It was gladly Murray. And he was late, and he got to get to where those trucks were and line up with them. And as he as he came across the playground, you see everybody, Oh, was it? He threw an anchor out with the on the end of a rope, dragged it along as he shot across the spark flight. So he's trying to slow down? Well, of course, the entire parade fell apart. I mean, don't mistake about it. I mean, you see the picture, they weren't no longer to attention. They were just about laughing themselves sick. But that's the kind of thing you do. Nobody else would have dared done it. And one of the others just we had to move from one side to the other, see when they'd done this. And they put a chain around the back axle of the truck and around the lamp post. Everybody moved off. He went to drive off. June wheels bit in. You see him. This bloody lamp post was slowly but surely coming down towards him before he realized what would happen. As you said about a cameraman, when you think about it, I think the best cameraman I ever met was a boat named Harding. Jack Harding. He was the wickedest, but I think he was the best of a type. I mean, Jack Owen would take a camera and one magazine. He carried the camera as it was, without the case, without any spares or anything else, he'd have a toothbrush in his pocket, top pocket. Then you see him walking across the station where you're going, Jack, I'm just going up to Manchester. Now, he can't to do a story, and he'd do it, and he cut it in the camera, absolutely come back. Now, I know no more dare do that than the man in the moon, but he could, and he got enough assurance. And he was always he knew exactly what he was doing. Audrey, come on, stuck now and again, but he'd always got a very good reason.

Roy Fowler  37:50  
That breed of man. What do you think he'd be doing nowadays? Well,

Unknown Speaker  37:55  
I think he'd be,

Speaker 1  38:02  
I should think he'd be either mixed up with racing or in this other stock exchange or something

Roy Fowler  38:12  
a periodical element to that nature. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1  38:16  
Little bit All right, you'd be doing. Bonnie. Yes, God's called everybody. Bonnie, hello. Bonnie, hi, your body. See troubles. You forget many things, and it suddenly, when you're talking, it suddenly comes back to you, and you begin to see it all again. And it's been a long time, but there were marvelous days that I tell you straight, I can't think of anything I could have done that would have ever been half the life I had great Jackie, you know, little Jackie mccudden, well, when I when cast a knight retired. You see, in the last days of Goon, were British.

Speaker 1  39:18  
Would you come in? Would you do it? Because the others were all doing retiring, Bishop retired, and everybody else retired. And it left this new man, garfton green, with no staff and nobody to do it. So I said, Would you stay on? Will you come in? You know, don't pack up camera work and come in. And I said, Yes, all right, if you're going to mean any more money to me, yes, it's certainly other, right? And I got two children, that's all I'm really worried about. But anyway, I thought, right, I'll do it my way. And Mr. McCartney. I said, she was there. I said to her, how would you like to be my secretary? She said, I'd love to. I said, right, you are so that's where I first met her, and she stayed. We were good friends for a long, long time. We still are good friends. But, I mean, we work together. Well, she was brilliant. She was marvelous, Jackie, because we she was with me, with look at life as well. And we did. I mean, we improvised so much. I mean, we made, we got nothing to work with. I mean, we made a cotton reel do the work of a tank, believe me. I mean, that girl could do anything. She was marvelous. And if there was a subject which there are very, a great many that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about, and I just mentioned it to her, and I say, Jack, do you know anything about this? She'd say, No, but I'll find out. Right? You do that, if you can find out, get a book on it or something, we'll we're all right. We've got three days which to do that. So if you would, that night, she'd go to the library and she'd read every word on it, and she got a specialized library up in Hempstead. And not only would she the next morning, I used to pick her up and bring her into work, not only would she have the entire thing, but the specific things that I wanted to know, she'd have all typed out every bit of absolutely bloody marvels. Now you see no payment for that, no overtime for that. I mean, everybody did bother just to keep the bloody thing going.

Roy Fowler  41:49  
I didn't know she was there. Oh,

Speaker 1  41:51  
yeah, Jake was brilliant, good. She was marvelous.

Roy Fowler  41:57  
We have two or three minutes left on this tape. It might be nice to give your recollections of Joe Telford.

Speaker 1  42:06  
Well, as I told you, it's quite honestly, I didn't know very much about Joe. I knew he was always jolly, always outspoken when he was with the rank advertising films, but I didn't come into us too much with them when they moved away from film house. Then they moved back to when we moved to park royal, the old Ilford place, from Water Street, well from denim, actually, we moved out to Denham, then we moved to it was really a change over you see what happened was we were in border Street, then they moved us down to Denham, because we had denim as our cutting rooms and everything else. So they moved all of us down there, cameras as well. And when we ran look at life, we ran it from Denham, then suddenly, this should be interesting. They moved us from Denham. We had to move out so that movie town could move in. So they because they were moving from so square. But now nobody knew anything about this. And I met Paul wild one day, and he said, You heard about this deal between Fox and ranks. And I said, deal, Paul, what the hell I wish he don't give me that you know all about it. We're moving into Denham. I said, pretty when's that? He said, You know the dates. You know everything about it. I said, I don't. And he thought I was kidding him, but I wasn't. I didn't know the first thing about it, and the best of it was, nor did anybody else. That was set up by John Davis for the shares situation, when he was trying to garnish all the shares in because Fox had so many shares in Goon, British and OD, see, but we didn't know anything about it. Ralph and green didn't know anything about it, but not told him. He had a fit. Nearly fell off his chair. I said, You do realize we were moving? What are you talking about? I said, Well, we moving. We're moving to Park Road, the old Ilford place.

Unknown Speaker  44:25  
That's where business is now. Don't believe it. I said, Well, yeah, you can ask all your friends in order street.

Speaker 1  44:37  
So of course, he was in an absolute panic, but he didn't know either. But we've all moved, and you just think, what a kind of a move that was, with all the film stock, all the library material, everything that had to be moved out. Christ, tremendous,

Roy Fowler  44:57  
Ted, we're just about there on this. Eight Well,

Speaker 1  45:00  
thank you very much. Well, thank you, sir. Yes. Very interesting. More explicit. Sorry, I can't remember all the details of things. There's a couple of names I can't remember. We've

Roy Fowler  45:14  
covered some stirring times, one way another. Well, I hope you'll continue to enjoy your retirement.

Unknown Speaker  45:23  
I'm sure it will good.Roy Fowler  45:28  

Thank you most kindly. Thank.