behp0076t-cyril-crowhurst-transcript
7 hours 45 minutes
Side A - Interview with Cyril Crowhurst at his home on Monday 6 February 1989.
A In point of fact I was born in 1906 and the birth place was down in Deptford right over that part of London. Later on we moved up to an area where I was for a long time - that was in Crofton(?) Park, that is near Catford and Crofton Park, Onrow, Lewisham, all that sort of area. I was there, it was before 1914, because, while I was there, war broke out. One of the extraordinary things I still remember to this day was, I was only eight years old in 1914 and soon after that I remember running home and telling my mother that I had just heard that Lord Kitchener was dead. He had been killed in the Baltic etc. and my mother nearly threw a fit, you know, Kitchener meant a great deal to them and so on. And still to this very day I remember saying ‘Lord Kitchener’s dead’. It didn’t mean a thing to me but, you know, it is one of those little things.
I went to the local LCC school at that time there. And right through the school until we took the LCC scholarship exam, which I passed. In a class of 33 only 7 of us that got through. There was a chance that I was going to Christ Hospital School but it didn’t quite come off. I hadn’t got quite enough marks for that. So I went to - on Hillyfields - the school there. I suppose today it would be called a secondary school - it was a secondary grammar school. And I went right through to matric. Then I thought I was going to go teaching, but they offered me a bursary. My parents went on holiday and while they were away on holiday I turned down the bursary and didn’t go any further at all. They were furious when they got back. But my father took me on one side and said ‘All right, if you want to go out and get a job, get a job, but what do you want to do?’ By this time, I had been very interested in radio, made a little crystal set and that sort of thing which one could expect in those days. And said ‘All right, well I think I know somebody who works at Blackheath - Berndets. Berndets was one of the well known radio films at that date. They used to make the Berndet coil which was similar to the iranic(?) coil, whereas the iranic coil was a honeycomb the Berndet coil was one turn that way, then turns this way at right angles to it, right round, next turn the other way. An awful lot of tosh was talked about coils and how they should be wound in those days - but never mind, that’s all water under the bridge. I did get this job at Berndet but my father was still cross and he said ‘Look, if you want to get on in anything, in radio or anything like that, you must get some technical training. So I was put down for the polytechnic. And I went to the Burgh polytechnic and started a course there which, five years later, landed me with a Higher National Certificate in Electrical Engineering with Distinction in Electro-Technology. So, you know, things were shaping. And at that moment a very curious thing happened. I had a choice of doing two things. One was to go to Cyprus to help run the power station there through a contact which I had made at the Burgh polytechnic. Another through a friend at the polytechnic who came up and said that he thought there was an opening at Columbia Graphaphone(?) Company in Petit France, which I went along to and got the job, because they were expanding. Now what they were looking for was a Technician, we would call the Maintenance Engineer this day, who would go away with them to the Milan station, keep the Milan station alive as the recording engineer would call in from there and a German one from the Odeon Company would call in there and I would keep the station in good shape technically. So - 1927 - I go off to Milan.
Q Can I just interrupt? The station, you say,
A It was a recording studio. Columbia Graphaphone had a recording studio there. And, of course, there was where we recorded all the Scala opera singers, all the big, big, big Scala people. And, apart from all the ‘hoi palloy’ there were other things a well. Local singers and such like. And there, at Colombia, before I went, I had some training with the new equipment, that was all Weston Electrical recording equipment - Weston electric amplifiers, but not the turntable. The turntable was a weight-driven one with governors and that gave absolutely constant speed. And it used to be set up on governors, and the recording engineer, each time he arrived at Milan, one of the first things he would do would be to wind it up and check it with a stop watch and so on, and count the number of revolutions it was making and adjust the governors until they were dead right.
Q Can you just, for my information, the weight-driven one - this was a system of the weights being wound up and then being allowed to drop.
A Yes, that’s right. There is one big weight, it is about somewhere about six inches cube, or not quite, but almost. A big solid dead weight.
Q Which was gravity with.... to send them down...
A That’s right. And the governor controlled so the speed was absolutely constant. But all the rest of the equipment was Weston Electric, which is interesting.
Q The cutting head was Weston?
A Yes, and one had to learn how to replace the sapphire points in it - in the head, because sapphire points set in with rosin. And you had little mouth blow pipe which you blew on them, warmed it up, took it out and examined it under a microscope to see if the edge was still sharp or not.
Q When you say ‘warmed up’, the stylus, was this for during cutting or....
A No, to replace the stylus. If, after cutting, the Recording Engineer looked at his cut through his magnifying glass and thought they looked very odd, he would decide that perhaps the stylus had got chipped, which did occasionally happen. You may have got a hard lump in the waste(?). So if that was so you would look at it under a microscope and decide it was, it wanted replacing, so you warmed up the setting to - you can imagine an old fashioned type pick-up with a long arm and a point, well this stylus was sealed with rosin into.
Q ....rather than the usual needle or stylus held in with a screw, this was actually really cemented in.
A Yes, cemented in with the rosin so you heated it with a blow lamp and a little methylated flame and you blew it and replaced it. All little tiny things etc. It was all one mike technique in those days and that was a big condenser mike, I should think about three inches across with a standard Weston Electric condenser microphone. Well, every year I used to come back to London to Petit France etc for my holiday and so on. And after about the second year, either the second or the third year, something very interesting they had up at Petit France. They got a film recording machine which they had there under inspection. All sorts of queer things. Myself and another fellow looked at it, some mysterious thing about pH involved in it to do with the processing - you know, it was all Greek!
Q This was an optical film recording.....
A Yes. It was very interesting. I would like to know more about that. But anyway, off I went. And this after about a year later I should think there was a big do going on where HMV and Columbia merged. And I had already sort of said, I was getting tired out in Milan, I’d been there four years and I wanted to pack it in and come back. So I said ‘Please can you replace me out here?’ They did. And then this merger came along and I said ‘Thank you very much, goodbye’.
Q Really!
A And that was that. Well now, in the meantime, I had met there, right from the very first time I went there in 1927, a fellow called D P Field. Now, in the interim period, he had left Columbia and had got mixed up with Weston Electric and out in Japan. And, after I had got my notice, after the amalgamation of HMV and Columbia, somebody said ‘D P Field’s at a studio called British and Dominion Forms out at Boreham Wood, Elstree, go and see him. I think he might find you a job’. I went out there to see him. Now, most interesting, because D P Field was the Chief Maintenance Engineer and a Mr Arry Overtown who was the Chief Sound and D P Field had a fair number of staff which were all ETU, all except the man who was looking after what is called - which I will describe in a moment - the amplifier room, who was keen to get moved on to another thing and D P Field wanted to have the amplifier room under him. So, he was going to give me that job provided I joined the ETU. I went back to Lewisham - I was living over at Lewisham at that time, or Bromley actually - found the local ETU people joined me and I joined the ETU over there at Tollfield. They said ‘Fine, you start’ - this was in August 1931 at British & Dominions. Now I don’t know how long they had been running. But it hadn’t been running perhaps twelve months, two years, I don’t know. You could probably find out through the records or somewhere. But it was a lovely studio. It was the best equipped studio in England. It was all Weston Electric equipment.
Q Can I just jump in for a verification? This was British & Dominions?
A Yes.
Q At Elstree. Now that was not what became ABC?
A No. ABC was BIP (British International Pictures), they were on one side. And three of their small stages joined over to three stages or to two stages which were British & Dominions.
Q Is that what is now the BBC have at Elstree?
A No. It’s not there.
Q It’s just completely gone? I didn’t know that.
A It is very easy to explain why because a few years later it burned down.
Q Did it? I am interrupting the thought here.
A So I joined - I am not honestly sure how long it had been running, this I just don’t know, I suppose it didn’t concern me at that time. But it was really, very, very well equipped. There were two main stages and, whilst I was there, a third one was added. And each of these stages, I don’t know - perhaps seventy feet by a hundred, something like that, perhaps smaller - tremendous like the large stage, or the normal stage at Pinewood, smaller than that. But they each had a monitor room but not a little monitor room - but the monitor room was probably of the order of about thirty to forty feet cube. That was attached to the stage but it was up on like a first floor and there was a big window which the mixer sat with a big control mixer on top of another booth which was a projection room, no, not a projection room - it housed the projector, let’s put it that way. Because, when you came to dubbing, he just sat up there on that same platform with his controls, and the projector shot into the monitor and the big speaker, which was one of those big speakers, you know, ? ? curled one, you know the sort of thing I mean? And he had about four feet square in front round and round. I can’t remember what you call the darned thing.
Q Expeninsulas?
A That’s right, yes, that’s right. That was set over in one corner of this huge monitor room and a screen was dropped down, the projector there, and the dubbing was done from that, together with two, when I first went there there were three sound heads, downstairs, and down in the sound department. So, normally speaking, this mixer was sat up there with a fair array of pots. Now, also on that same floor, was a recording room and that recording room had two film recording machines and two wax recording machines. And there were two of these. Later on there came a third one. Down on the ground floor at one part was the test room workshop and also the amplifier room which was where I first went to. And this amplifier room was quite long and all along one side, about where the gaps are between the wall and the back of the racks, was probably about three feet. And these were not like the posh cabinet racks you have now. They were iron racks built with metal panels across and amplifiers somewhere about six or seven feet high - three per channel, all with amplifiers on. And then three racks together called Bay-ex - a term which has gone on, very often referred to a room but it meant this is where trunks ran to and from all over the place. And then these three racks housed all the equipment for this one stage and the other three racks for the other. But all with patch panels and it was two pin patch panels there which were polarised so you had to put it in one way. It had a serrated edge so that you would know which way to put this double plug in. There would be one main amplifier. Now at the amplifier room at British Dominions the main amp was an 8C. Out in Milan I had had a 8A which was the main amplifier from Weston Electrics. All this equipment again at British Colonial was Weston Electric. Lovely stuff. Of course, Weston Electric was a fantastic company in America and was backed by ERPY - Electric Research P? ? you know, with all the brains in the world there. So there was the main amplifier which fed, what they called a bridging bus, and off this bridging bus there were four bridging amplifiers, four of them - two of them for the two film machines and two for the two wax recording machines on there. Oh, incidentally, when I first saw this film machine at Columbia the light valve, it had one ? light valve, which was tuned in at 7,000 cycles and with a 2 ml gap between the strings(?). By the time I got to British & Dominion that was reduced to 1 ml between strings and tuned to around 8,700-8,900 cycles etc. Then on this thing in this amplifier room there was also the main amplifier, also monitoring amplifier which would feed the loud speaker up in the monitor room and various other things and, you know, every amplifier had its jacks that measured the current, the voltage and the ? etc. On the opposite side, all this row of racks and amplifiers, was a huge switchboard which distributed the battery supply, because there was also a battery room with huge - oh about eighteen inch high by about twelve by six or something, two volt accumulators making up banks of twelve volts for all the old C supplies ? in the amplifiers. And 360 volts of accumulators for the HT supplies. And there was two voltage and one 135, as I remember it was either the 135 or 180 and then the 360 which was fed over. And these were fed to the switchboard and they in turn fed the amplifiers over. Now every amplifier came down to a little fuse distribution board at the bottom and there were all the group of, what I call, grasshopper fuses which meant that - it was on a spring and if a fuse blew that spring would shoot it back and one contact would touch another contact and it would light a red light on the rack. So that if you saw a red light there you knew a fuse had gone and you looked down there, found it and replaced it. Also in the room, of course, was an intercom phone because you would have the mixer phone and say ‘I think I have got noise on my line, check it and see if it is on a monitor or on a main ?’. So you had your power phone to check in there and, of course, if it was. Oh incidentally these amplifiers, they had grid bars batteries - this is going back to the real original sort of stuff, transistors hadn’t even been dreamt, of let alone seen.
Q Except, for your crystal set.
A My old crystal set, yes.
Q Another story!
A Yes, that’s quite true. Anyhow, this amplifier room had to have somebody there all the time and that’s what was my original job there, was (a) first thing in the morning, you would go up, you would patch a line into a trunk up to the monitor room and patch that into his mixer and send up a tome from the test room on the oscillator up there and kept the level all right, listen to it turn the pots, see if it was noisy or not, if the pot was noisy you would clean it with Carbon-tet or such like things and so on. No Electrolude those days! And so on.
Q A couple of question before we go on, I want to ask. One was, it’s fascinating that when you talk about the batteries and everything, all the power supply then to drive the amplifiers was completely battery.
A All battery.
Q Was the speaker the retrification of mains was not at a standard then that would be satisfactory.
A Not at a standard because the hung content was too high. Now it was only a very few years later than that when rectifiers did come in, they were OK, but at that time this was, mind you, by that time at British & Dominion the equipment was all probably two years old, but nevertheless, it had to be battery so as it was absolutely free of any harm at all.
Q And the batteries would be on a floating charge all the time?
A No. There was a charging man came in at nights. And that man, an electrician came in at nights all on the sound department, of course - I have missed out several things - but anyway, yes, there was a battery room and they were charged at night. They could be charged during the day but they were mostly in use during the day.
Q They didn’t float?
A No.
Q The other question, before we go on, so you can keep going with your good progression - you mentioned that they were shooting the floor material was being shot on optical and it was edited on optical at this ridiculous stage. Now then you mentioned that there were two wax recorders - when you dubbed was the dub put on to the wax discs as well as on to the film?
A No. Once you were recording you could record on to the wax. Now by the time I got there - yes, wax was fairly used, it was used while they were shooting, for playback, the director in those days would say ‘let me hear that’ and you’d play it back. Now at that time a lot more notice was taken of sound because this was the early days of sound and the director was very sound conscious and they wanted to be sure. Later on I am afraid a lot of them got very sloppy about sound. I think they got pulled up eventually - I’ll tell you a little anecdote about that presently. But in point of fact, by the time I got there, only one of the wax machines was ever used at once.
Q So the wax machines were not there, the conversion from originally sound on disc systems was pretty well obsolete by this time, it was all sound on film for reproduction in cinemas?
A The wax machines were the hangover from ..... and in fact we had some - they were running at thirty three and a third - and we had some reproducing machines down in the place for sending out for dubbing from, for all thirty three and a third discs and there was still some discs around which they used for effects. But the actual wax machines there, there’s more, having recorded it was to play back if the director wanted to.
Q As the facility is now with magnetic, instant replay, if you want. Then, can I question further, that to your knowledge, whether any films produced in Britain that used the sound on disc principle or, by the time that Britain got into producing sound films like with “Black Man” and so on, they were well into .....
A I honestly can’t answer that. I think not. But certainly all the machinery was there for it but I don’t honestly know, I can’t answer that question. But it is a very pertinent question.
Q ......because the pictures that, for instance, the American pictures that were coming over at the start,......must have been disc installations in the West End cinema.
A Oh, yes, there were. I have seen them. We had them at British Colonial for playing discs back.
Q So anyhow, that’s something that I must look into.....
A Yes, it would be worthwhile.
Q And so now, we are at the stage when you.....
A Yes, now, amongst other things there was staffing. Because as I said, I think it happened, that when they installed the place there they had a lot of wiring to be done, they had electricians in etc and they took a lot of them over to be on the staff for the sound, because the sound crew then would be the Mixer, the Boom Operator and there would be another man on the stage and he was an ETU man, a Sound Man, and he would take charge of the microphone, put it on the boom and run all the cables out. And boy, oh boy, those cables, not nice little canon (cannon?) plugs these day, in fact, the motor cables were as big as my fist, they really were. I will come to that in a moment again. The microphone cable was about half the size of my fist. So he was an ETU man. The maintenance men were ETU. The amplifier room men were made to become ETU, that was me. And it was also the sound power room. Now the sound power room there, because with Weston Electric, they had this interlocked system which drove the system there was, oh, let me describe it, it is well documented, of course. But basically, you would starting up the motor system from the system of getting interlock and then running up. There was a distributor which was a three phase wound stator and a three phase wound rotor. All the rotors and stators when, in the running condition, were all connected together. At interlock just one phase would be collected all the way round. The motor driving this distributor was a DC motor. And after you got interlock and that locked all the motors all together in one position, camera motor sound, motor, projector motor, etc. And then when you started that provided a DC to the DC driving motor and that drove that distributor and, because now you can see, an electrical man would see that all the motors would run up, not only run up, but run up exactly synchronously together, and so on. And the DC motor was controlled on the DC control cabinet which had three valves in it and filter systems and extra windings in the motor providing a certain frequency which was controlled by control systems - fantastic thing it was, absolutely fantastic! There was a man in charge of that. Now, the frequency was 60 cycles, so in the sound panel room there was a converter to convert from 50 cycles to 60 cycles, you know, motor generator set. So that was quite a job. There was, I think, four of these distributors, four or five - I think it was four we had at British Colonial. A man once again ETU, of course, was in charge of that etc. Adjoining the sound power room was a general room where we had the wax shaver. Now, these big waxes which were recorded on, they had to be cleaned, and there was a machine there like a milling machine but with a - I forget with some gem, was it quartz or something or ruby - cutter which would go right across the first coarsely and then finely to give it a mirror-like finish you had on it. And they were always stored in a cupboard which was kept at a certain temperature by heating the lamps generally. So Bull Potter in charge of the woof wax shaving, that was it, very amusing etc. he was a lovely character, once again an ETU man. Because there was no ACT!
Q So again then, the person who was mixer and the person that was boom operator didn’t belong to any union.
A Didn’t belong to any union at all. They had mostly come in from either the Post Office or from Weston Electric or such like things etc. But, oh incidentally, the man who was the stage hand man who used to run up all the cables etc and take the microphone, those microphones they were consisting of a tube about twelve inches long, three inches diameter, with a condenser mike at the end - they weighted seven pounds! Heavy terrific things when you think of these days. After three or four years there came the moving core microphone, six eighteen was the first moving coil microphone. Followed by the six thirty, a little round ball one, which they modified by putting a plate and so on, so it wasn’t quite so omni-directional. And that. We had staff - there was Sound Power Room Man, the little old fellow - he wasn’t a full ETU man - but he was an auxiliary - an Electrician’s Mate would be his grade - he was the Wax Shaver, there was the Amplifier Room Man - myself, there was a Night Man on charging batteries and there were two Maintenance Engineers - there was T P Field as Chief Maintenance Engineer. There was one other thing important there, because one of these maintenance men, he was the man who always went out on location, and boy, location we had a sound truck! That sound truck weighted seven tons, seven tons! And it consisted completely like one of the installations there in the studio. The mixer was a thing, I think it may have been probably about two foot six high, about eighteen inches wide and about nine inches deep, carried out of the truck when they got to location and put on a chair or something for a Mixer to operate.
Q How many microphone channels would that have, do you remember?
A It would have three. Only ever used one at a time in those days. And once again, it would be the same heavy microphone, the same big amplifiers, like this on a rack inside the truck, driven by batteries. There was 110 volt of accumulator batteries driving the distributor motor system, a converter making three phase 60 cycle, not quite such a big thing as in the sound power room, but that size of thing.....so it was a real, real, heavy job and the film machine fixed down and when it was released it was on springs, heavy springs so that there was no danger or anything. Oh, and of course, I had forgotten, at this time of course, all the film was in 2,000 foot magazines. One big one at the top, one big one at the bottom.
Q And the rolls were 2,000?
A And the rolls were 2,000 feet. Later on you got rolls of 1,000 and later on still the same basic film machine converted to take a camera type Mitchell magazine on top.
Q I have often wondered because I have seen pictures of the old Weston Electric recorders with the hug........
A That’s right, that’s the ones we had.
Q I wondered why.....didn’t know that the rolls were 2,000 feet. Pretty well a day’s shooting on one load!
A Yes, quite true. In those days, of course, the camera used to run out before the sound. Later on it was always a fight trying to keep the synchronised on that, but never mind! Yes, the sound truck was a real thing. Now, the man behind things at British Colonial, because in the city or in town, was Mr Marsh but it was Herbert Wilcox, of course, of Herbert Wilcox Studios almost. Although it was the British Colonial Company Limited or whatever it was called - British & Dominion Film Corporation and Herbert Wilcox was the big Director. And I remember Anna Neagle, when she first started there, and she was quite young etc. but she was a trooper, she was in one part where she had to do some gym and in one of the monitor rooms which was not in use she would work there on the rings and things like a real trojan, she was a marvellous person. And, of course, Herbert Wilcox was fantastic. Of course, our money, I think mine was about two shillings an hour, that was our pay, and it was a forty seven hour week and two shillings wasn’t much use to us but there was a lot of overtime. And, of course, with Herbert Wilcox, when he was directing one of his pictures, he didn’t get really warmed up until late afternoon and time and time again he would go shooting late in the evening. Well, it was very nice, because if they had finished by ten, all right you got the local train from Elstree Station down at the end of Boreham Wood and that, but all you hoped was that if it was approaching ten you would make it in cars home because they would go on until twelve o’clock or one o’clock in the morning and you were taken home by car. About six of you in one car and dropped off. I was about the furthest away at Bromley and, you know, it was a long, long journey, but it saved dashing about, and it was a nice comfortable ride home. But that was the great thing. Now, Raymond, the Director named Raymond, who did all the Tom Walls and Lynn(?) series, he finished at 6 ‘clock come high wind or whatever, dead on line, no overtime for him at all. But everybody was looking for overtime there to more money. At two bob an hour and 47 hours a week, even in those days it was good money, but wasn’t all that. I think, Overton was getting about £15.00 a week as Chief of Sound and Field was getting about nine, at least, a little later on. Anyhow, Corder was there, he started making pictures there and so on and his Mixer was Watkins, not S S A Watkins who was also a Weston Electric man, he was one of the fine people at Weston Electric. My whole history there - Weston Electric had lovely people, their staff - they were helpful, intelligent, good engineers and you all go a lot of backing and a lot of information, they would flow information to you if you wanted it. And then any troubles they would be on the spot to help out, marvellous company. A little later on they changed their name to Westrex, became Western Export - Westrex. Whilst they were still Westrex they were fine. Later on when they became Litton Industries this was the things going all wrong - but never mind, this was the history of lots of companies. Now, while Corder was there, “Henry VIII” was made there. We had a lovely time.
Q Was it?
A Yes. We had a lovely time. Now, a little later than that I was at home, about that time I got married in 1933 and came over and lived here and I’ve lived in this house ever since, this is where I was in 1933 and married. And, because there was still lots of overtime and lots of working late at night and I couldn’t be there all the time.... Corder decided he wanted his own place and he moved to Walton Hall, Isleworth. That’s where off he went etc. And low and behold he took Field, D P Field, and I got promoted. I got the sum of £9 per week. Boy oh boy. It was very nice. Anyway, I had a very fine staff there, I wish I was able to keep in touch with them. There was Harold Wickham in the sound power room, Jack Maynard of maintenance and so on, George Lewis which I did come across later. Now, because there was late working and all sorts of things could crop up and I always - I don’t know, all my life I have been terribly conscientious, I mean to me, I didn’t worry, I never have worried about productions or the staff or the stars or, you know, all the airs and graces that went on there. I am a down to earth technician basically, I am keen on seeing and giving service. So I had a phone installed by my bed so that any of them could phone me up and I would go out straight away if necessary and so on. And come the night, the phone rang. It was George Fair(?), he was my Battery Charging Man that night. He said ‘Cyril, Cyril, listen, listen, the place is on fire’ and he held up the phone so that I could hear all the crackling etc. Yes, that was a night! So I dashed out there by car. The place was absolutely in flames. It had started from over the BIP side and spread through. Whilst I was there Herbert Wilcox turned up and he said ‘Crowhurst, Crowhurst, get the sound truck, drive it out on the field’ - because it was in a garage near, it would have been quite safe as afterwards that garage never did catch fire. But he was petrified that we must maintain something which would help carry on the pictures and that was the sound truck. So the sound truck was dashed out to the field, in the middle of a nearby field there. Next morning it was a sorry, sorry picture, it really was. But the theatre, alongside the sound building, in a separate block, was the theatre where they did all the rushes. Well, between this we converted that to the still theatre and that to be a dubbing theatre because pictures were being made and they still had to be finished. The sound truck would finish the location work and they would get this done and that done, here, there and everywhere and pictures being edited, but had to be dubbed. Because ever since then every place has had its problems with dubbing theatre. Previous to that, you see, it was just done the hole in corner way almost, just three machines - three sound machines - and so on. So that was really an epoch. Oh, by now, ACT had appeared.
Tape turned over
Side B
A Yes, just a bit earlier than that I had been round. Now I don’t how Elvin was the ? in the main at ACT. I remember a couple of chaps coming down to the studio and they went round talking to the Sound Camera Operators and the Boom Operators and the Mixers etc, because they didn’t come to the rest because they were already ETU members and they were approaching them and suggesting they join this new idea of ACT as a union. In fact, one of our people went up there and said ‘well, why don’t you come and join the ETU instead’. They were probably not know but I know that they thought ETU and, you know, the sound Camera Operators, I mean, they thought the ETU was a bit hoi palloy and wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Well, there was four in but gradually they did join. Now who was behind it all etc. I don’t know, it didn’t interest me much because I was, you know, in the ETU. And I carried on the ETU for many, many, many years. Until there was eventually a meeting of three meetings - ACT, NATKE(?) which had some of the projectionists and, of course, a whole lot of the floor staff and ACT. ACT and NATKE had a meeting and there they agreed that all ETU member in sound should become a member of ACT and so I got then. But in my opinion, Bob, I think the Projectionists were sold down the river. The ACT sold them down the river to that NATKE ? and that was a bad day, I don’t know....
Q Studio Projectionists - the strange anomaly is that, of course, the Laboratory Projectionists were ACT.
A Yes, it was an awful thing that was done then. Because, you see, in the dubbing theatre there was a Projectionist working alongside the Mixers, the Sound Camera Operators - all worked on the same job - NATKE and ACT and there could have been the sort of, you know, gradual chance that they would get higher positions and such like, advancement. No, that was - I thought that was very bad, very bad, but anyway that’s what happened. Today, are our Projectionists all NATKE?
Q No, I think it is still Studio Projectionists are NATKE, Cinema Projectionists, of course, are NATKE, and the Laboratory Projectionists are ACT.
A I don’t think, I think the Laboratory Projectionists had to go over to NATKE.
Q You could well be right. I am not sure.
A I’m not sure. But it was a bad day. But anyway, I became then a member of ACT automatically and, of course, because of that. After the fire, and of course we had got the dubbing theatre working and things were happening over at Warton Hall and it was all hoo-ha and long faces, well we’ll get sorted out and we heard that Pinewood was being built by Lady Yule of Sloan etc and there was a lot of inter-thing etc. And finally, the powers that be took over the responsibility for Pinewood and they had got their Chief Sound and Mixer - a fellow called Murray - Leslie Murray who had come from some small place or other. I won’t say any more on that. Overton left, he found a job with Technicolor, he joined up with Technicolor. Ivor got the job of Chief Maintenance at Pinewood. Very early on he had a flaming row with a peculiar man that Westrex had installing the place who did things all very cock-eyed in my opinion. But there you are. Anyway I got the job over there. But the rest of the boys, all the ETU boys, they just - that was the end of them for the film studios, they went off their various ways.
Q These people that had made you a crew at Elstree, they...
A They weren’t wanted by the....
Q They didn’t continue on with any of the other studios?
A They weren’t required. They weren’t given the job.
Q Was that because they were ETU?
A I suspect it could well have been. Murray and the Studio Manager at Pinewood - this new place - they wanted to have the people they wanted. And they didn’t want ETU.
Q So who were the other people then - question further there - you said that, after the fire, that you were at Warton Hall for a...
A No I never went to Warton Hall.
Q Oh, you didn’t.
A Dick Field had gone there earlier with Watkins, that was a separate company now.
Q They were still rolling on there then?
A But meanwhile, they started building Denholm.
Q I see, yes.
A Corder moved over to Denholm when it was being building and then Pinewood was being built after that. These all sort of....
Q Two completely separate....
A Completely separate....
Q organisations....
A Yes very completely separate.
Q And then there was still Elstree operating as far as the British International.....
A That’s right - BIP then they later became ABC. They kept on. Because they only lost three of their smaller studios. Their main studios were all right. They didn’t get burned.
Q Do you think that the fire started at...
A Oh yes it did start on their side, oh yes, it did. Down at Pinewood was the Studio Manager and Murray, he didn’t want to know anything about the rest of them, except for John Hood. Now you can pick up the story of that from John Hood if you would.
Q Yes, we have to try and get to John Hood. Where did John come from then, prior to that?
A You’ll have to ask him because he in my memories are a......
Q He - that was your first association with John, was that. He was maintenance also, was he?
A Yes.
Q So you were in charge of maintenance and John was one of the maintenance staff.
A Yes. Well, I’ll cut things a little bit short now because I went over to Pinewood and then that went on so far, what was that 1937? 38? -
Q I’m not sure.
A Something round about that. Because it wasn’t all that long before war was threatening. Came 39 and war etc. And I then went over to Denholm to work as a Maintenance Engineer under D P Field who was now the Maintenance Engineer there with Watkins as the Chief of Sound.
Q Sorry, that was during the war?
A At the outbreak of war.
Q Why was that then? Cause I know eventually Pinewood had the Army Kinema Corporation and....
A Pinewood.......stopped producing, stopped work etc. everything close down there. There were four people left there - Tommy Knight looking after the electrical side, myself looking after any sound equipment etc. - you know, just caretaker, the Chief Carpenter and the Chief Plasterer roughly and one or two odds and ends etc. But it came obvious that they couldn’t carry on. In the meantime Denholm was still working and flourishing - they had got pictures on over there. Watkins was in charge and D P Field his Chief Maintenance etc and they offered me to go over there and join them. I went over on Maintenance there. And, of course, within a very few months D P got called up because he was in the Territorials. He got called up. I went for an interview but I got stopped, the company there stopped me under essential war. ..... I thought I was going on the three day alarm but they wouldn’t let me, you know, said that I wasn’t in the Territorials we shall put you in reserve occupation. So I was there for that. Well, from there onwards I ran Denholm. Then, of course, Denholm and Pinewood and all the financial things they all became one studio - D & P Limited. They had Denholm under myself and Pinewood under myself. We also had a little place called Highbury which we took over for training etc. I ran that with an engineer. This was quite a thing.
Oh, one person I have forgotten through all this, going right back to British & Dominions - there was one man there who was responsible for looking after the laboratory side of things - Brian Sewell.
Q Ah yes.
A Now, he was a very clever lad. A very difficult chap, very difficult people found him but I liked him. He looked after all the interests with the laboratory. And later on he came over to Pinewood, was a Dubbing Mixer for a while and then went off. I last saw him, he was in one of the Rank Research places.
Q Was he not at one stage in charge of sound at The Bush?
A He was. That’s quite right. He went off to Shepherds Bush with British Acoustic Equipment.
Q It was BA Equipment that was in the bush?
A Yes.
Q And so now, there is another query I have got. With the building of Pinewood and then Denholm...
A Oh Denholm then Pinewood.
Q Denholm then Pinewood, what about British MGM studios at Boreham Wood?
A Oh, now that came on ...
Q Because that’s where Watkins and D P Field went?
A That was later, much later.
Q Would that be after the war then?
A I am trying to think that of it as towards the end of the war or after. MGM built their place and Watkins went there.
Q Yes.
A No, it must have been just after the war. No.
Q I think it might have been because, if I remember rightly, there was one of the pictures that I remember, not that I have seen ..... back in New Zealand was “A Yank at Oxford” which was an MGM picture.
A Yes.
Q And I think that would have been based in..... There was also, what else was there?,
A I did warn you that I was a bit hazy about dates and times.
Q Oh that’s quite all right.
A Watkins went off there. And I was offered job to take over from Wattie, as Chief of Sound - Sound Supervisor. That was around 1944, so round about that time, give or take a year.
Q And that was at both .....
A Both Pinewood and Denholm. Now Field was demobbed and I took him on at Pinewood as Chief Maintenance - it’s ironic in its way! He wasn’t very happy, he didn’t get on very well with some of the management side at Pinewood. So he found his home with Wattie again at MGM. Oh he was a lovely man was D P Field - he was very clever, very bright, very alert and a real find engineer in every way. It was very sad that he got Parkinson’s at the end and so on. I had a lot of time of D P Field, a lot of time.
Q Yes, he was a great engineer.
A Oh yes. I hope I would like to put myself in the same ? but more interested in seeing things working right, that organised well, and things were done and they were done properly and well. All this production - of course, I know that’s everything that matters, but if you lay the foundations, the things which are being used are tip top that’s your job. Nothing to do with production and stars etc - they are part of it - but you provide the service of your part of it, an insignificant part, but it’s as tophole as it can be. That’s been my philosophy all they way through. I don’t know. I don’t think I can really tell you much more. I can only answer questions.
Q What about, for instance, during your period of working in your career in sound engineering? There have been a vast number of changes - transistors for example, but I was thinking of even before that, the progress in optical recording for one thing and the eventual transition into magnetic and.....
A Well, one of the big things that happened was, just at the end of the war, just after the end of the war, there was quite obviously a whole lot of equipment around was getting a bit derelict and out of date etc. And the powers that be at D & P Studios, they really paid out the money - Spencer Reace was very good on this, he got the allocation of money. And I got installed, both at Denholm and at Pinewood, the 1251 sound reproducer, optical, push ball, everything on it, lovely, it was a marvellous piece of engineering - the 1251 machine was, it really was. So we had, by that time, a dubbing desk, six machines in each studio of these 1251s plus the others, so now dubbing was beginning to be instead of one two tracks and then three and later on we had four and we were now getting up, so you had at least twelve mixers on your desk with each being fed by a machine. So things were gradually spreading and getting bigger etc., mostly through quality stuff being on the market, from America. Now, in the meantime, British Acoustic were building themselves up and one time at Pinewood we had to install a whole lot of their stuff - it was pretty good and do you know, I don’t know if it’s still in use there or not - I expect it is - in Theatre 5 for example.
Q When you say ‘had to install’ was that for some political trade reasons?
A Yes, commercial in Rank Organization - it’s part of Rank Organization.
Q Of course, yes.
A The boss man saying ‘you are .......equipment(?). Least said the better!
Q Actually, I suppose it is sad that really the problem with British Acoustic equipment was that, from my own knowledge of it, is that it was hindered by the patents problems in America and also with not the same financial backing going in.....
A Yes, quite true, quite true, they hadn’t got the outlets for it, they hadn’t quite got the expertise either.
Q No but..
A Although......and this was where they were, off the record, this is where they were a bit naughty because they hadn’t got the expertise that they thought they had. But, you know, it was stacked against them financially and commercially in every sort of way. Well then after that, of course, gradually Leverswitch(?) came along with this little magnetic recorder - lovely job, lovely man - Norman Lee - great friend. And then, of course, all the developments in America and so on and all the rest of it. I remember going over, after the war, being sent over to the Hamburg studios to see how the Germans were coping with magnetic. I went over there for the company to see. It was very interesting, especially when you saw them - you know what a numbering machine is like, don’t you? -
Q Yes, yes.
A It was all being written by hand.
Q Hand numbered.
A Hand numbered at that time, that shook me.
Q That happened in Australia too because they didn’t have numbering machines.
A Fantastic! Labour! Oh dear!
Q Now with the magnetic then, you mentioned the Levers rich, the quarter inch, the synchropulse system and so on, but the recording on 35 mm magnetic, can you remember its introduction at Pinewood?
A Yes, well. Oh, of course, by now we were getting to the stage where Denholm packed up. Terrific activity but we closed down and I was left with just Pinewood. Yes. We used the - Westrex brought out a magnetic recorder. The 1251s there were sound reproducers all around, they were capable of being modified to magnetic and we modified them.
Q That was the re-record cabinets?
A Yes. We modified those but the recorder had to be a redo - a complete machine.
Q You were, for a time, using those racks with magnetic heads put on them weren’t you at - to the floor shooting, I mean.
A Yes.
Q As in charge of the sound department with introduction of magnetic were there any, apart from the engineering side of it, the other problems of people wanting to use it or people not wanting to use it? Have you any recollections of that?
A There was a lot of cufuffle. I would think it all came in fairly smoothly. It meant an upheaval in the cutting rooms. And you could no longer pick up track like that and see what you had got. That took a bit of.....
Q Because at that particular time, while the floor shooting was on magnetic, if I remember rightly, it was all transferred to optical for the cutting rooms because the cutting rooms weren’t prepared to accept the magnetic tracks and so that we had......
A They gradually came round. No, I am sorry, this is where my mind gets a little bit..........It’s an extraordinary thing, you know, the middle years - most people find this when they get to an age - of course, I’m 83 now - the middle years seemed to have sort of gone all hazy!
Q Yes, but I think it is, you know, what the .....
A I can see and picture my British Film Corporation. I haven’t been able to describe it terribly well, but I can picture it right like daylight - it is clear as clear. And, of course, as I left Pinewood, but since then that’s all altered.
Q Before we started recording we mentioned about BKSTS and other learned societies - would you like to have a.....
A Well, BKSTS - I joined that up while I was at British .... who was the man who was very active. He was employed by General Electric. Oh dear, his name has gone. It was a nice little society, nothing very tremendous. They expanded after the war tremendously, it got very big to what it is today. It was a very quiet little team, ongoing, very small little magazine but the thing where we got so much was the SNPTE, their journal, in the early days that was a mine of information.
Q You found that very helpful?
A Oh yes. That was really helpful. You got the real stuff. That was a marvellous thing. And, you know, it was a real technical journal. The BKS one was pitiful in comparison, at that time.
Q Don’t know whether it has improved a great deal yet.
A Well the BK........lost its way I think, it’s got too involved in too many different things. And, in any case, everything has changed, it is all digital, this, that and the other and I wouldn’t know what it meant! I don’t want to, Bob!!
Q I think the difficulty with BKSTS is that it had to try to cover too wide a field and be popular with people from the laboratories, people from various things.
A Yes, yes.
Q And never able to specialise quite........never had sufficient members to specialise on any one particular topic.
Pause
Q You were talking about magnetic.
A I am just trying to think how - it was one of the committee meetings etc. that Dr Knock was there, and there was to be an international ? meeting at Comridge(?) Park in Kearsham, down there, and a couple of us - Tony Lumpkin and myself - would join the working group out there to represent Great Britain’s interest, together with a BBC man - what was his name, their Chief Engineer, oh dear, how awful, I’m sorry, the name’s gone - and Dr Knock was the leader of the British delegation which included, not only sound, but all the various other aspects. I think there were six different working parties. He was the leader of the thing. He suggested that we went, so we went and when we got over there, there was some crisis arose about the Sound Committee and he turned round and told me that I was to be the Chairman of the Working Group. And from then on I got really involved. I had a lot of back-up from Tony Lumpkin etc. and so on. After that we met again at Milan, at somewhere else and then at Williamsburgh..... and London, every four years we would have the big meeting. That was at the beginning of magnetic, things getting really all magnetic, everything else was being forgotten, getting all the standards and dimensions and sizes and speeds and characteristics and what have you. It was all very, very interesting. I really enjoyed all my Standards work. Then, of course, I became also the Chairman of the British Standards, the Senate(?) Committee of films for British Standards. Peter Griffiths was their British Standards Officer and later others because he retired and so on. Right up to the end it was a part I really found very interesting.
Q When did you give that up?
A When I retired.
Q Oh, when you retired.
A Well, soon after, soon after.
Q So we want to put on record here that you retired in 1973?
A 1971. 18 years coming up and that’s a long time, you see.
Q But there’s a wealth of information, a wealth of experience in your past career, of course. But you would have liked to have continued though?
A Oh Yes, I would have loved to have continued but, you know, amongst other things, things like that they cost and if you haven’t got any backing from a company, out of your own pocket so you can’t really carry on.
Q Most of us, I suppose it seems anyhow, most of us in the sound recording side of the business, don’t seem to have much in the way of other hobbies other than work. Did you have any other hobbies?
A No, work was my hobby.
Q How did you come when retirement came then and what did you replace the work with? Did you........
A Really, there was an awful blank. Mind you, at least I did carry on with the ISO work for a while, you see, and then I used to join with Tony Lumpkin and help him with all the documents etc. Although it was all unofficial, I was still very interested in that but that eased me out all right. And then there was a meeting - a lumber meeting - of the ISO and I was invited to go along, so I went along and met them all. I wasn’t able to contribute but I was at least there. And then health and things you begin to go down. My leg gave me trouble.
Q When Tony Lumpkin developed a system of mag-striping released prints. Did you have any connection with that?
A Oh yes, oh yes. There was an awful war went on on that. That was a terrific.
Q What?
A Well, you see. He was dead keen on it, I was dead keen on it because quality-wise and everything else-wise but commercially, you see, a photograph track cost nothing, magnetic track meant it cost.
Q Yes, an extra process.
A None of the other people - lab people, production, producers, all sorts of people, were all anti and, of course, there was a lot of hard feeling went on.
Q I wasn’t aware of that. I think that one of the pictures that I was Production Mixer on “Nothing but the Best” was one of the ones that was done and I think they picked up some sort of an award at an Italian festival because of the development of using the stripe. But as you say it died out because of this financial aspect.
A Yes, this was the thing. I was very sad really. We had the four track, or six track magnetic for big pictures. That was a different kettle of fish. That was lovely. We did some of that and I installed the stuff at Pinewood for that. Oh no, at Pinewood, from when I was first there after the war the things that happened gradually and under me we built Theatre 7 which was lovely theatre then. We built the post-sinking(?) theatre there, Theatre 5, Theatre 6 right over there at the side and another little small one etc. Oh, you know, there was a lot of work all the while, things were growing and building and you had to sit and design and research and, you know, plan for and cost and so on. It was all very lovely, interesting, exciting work.
Q Did you become involved on the independent frame?
A Oh! Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Yes that was mostly centred at Denholm with Rawndsly and Co. I was on the fringes of it, yes......... Least said the better. There were some good things came out of it.
Q Yes, it was a brave idea?
A Very brave. I don’t think I had better say more. Some good things came out of it.
Q But again, going back to your co-operation with Tony Lumpkin, were you in his early work at ABC or EMI as it was by then with the development of stereo optical, now known as the Dolby stereo.
A No, that was coming in, all that.
Q That was about 1974 or thereabouts.
A I had retired then. Yes, but that was coming in.
Q Which has actually added something to optical release prints, I mean, it is Dolbyised optical whether it is played stereophonically or played just mono. It has got a.....
A Yes.
Q Yes, they go on about the old academy roll-off and things like that....
A Oh yes, lovely! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Q What amuses me is that they used that in the....this system these little recorders have got Dolby B in them which is really academy roll-off!
A Marvellous.
Q You roll it off and amplify it up and so on.
A Oh no. You see in the standards world we had quite a fight, no not a fight, quite a complete misunderstanding or lack of understanding with the Russians. Because the Russians didn’t have characteristic like that, they couldn’t understand how......
Q Discard that you were doing a big academy roll........
A .....compensated for it orally didn’t you when you were making a recording.
Q There is great confusion I find over this. I mean, I was no great dubbing expert at all but I served a little bit of time in a dubbing theatre on commercials on the West End along with - I was going to ask you if you remembered, and you undoubtedly do, - John Cape.
A Oh yes, John Cape. I remember John Cape.
Q I mean, there the speaker system was compensated and had roll-off and you listened to it and if something sounded as if it was something like this and you leaned over and you squeezed in a bit left in the top lifting to it, so it came out in the end, it was being rolled off, but at least it sounded as though there was more energy then. That, of course, was where I think the Dolby system has overcome this by doing away with this, at least you aren’t shooting all this high frequency stuff in which is getting into processing problems in a variable area.
A Quite. It was processing problems that was the trouble.
Q Yes, it was more...... But anyhow I am interrupting this too much. The Russians you were saying had no roll-off....
A No, they didn’t have this roll-off, you see, they thought it should be that. And so trying to work out a sound with them they couldn’t understand this roll-off at all. There were a lot of problems. I tell you one thing. Something you just said reminded me. In the early days, with that condenser microphone, you know which was about that diameter and set back, do you know there was a resonance set there round about 3,000 cycles?
Q Yes, giving a midlift.
A So when we went over to dynamic moving core microphones something was missing. And what we had, therefore, had a presence equaliser which was a ? ? which compensated and the presence equaliser owes itself as much to listening and what the condenser mike used to do automatically.
Q Do you think that was built in to the condenser microphone purposely or was it just a function of the....
A Accidentally. A geometrical..... The diaphragm like that meant they built round here and it left a cavity in front of it and somehow or other that caused a peak, a slight peak at 3,000.
Q Because, nowadays, of course, looking at modern condenser microphones ...
A ....flat as a pancake. Oh dear, do let me tell you a lovely story on this about Tony Lumpkin. Tony Lumpkin was a marvellous man. In committee I always had to sort of hold him down a little bit because he would rush off. And what I have found and what I was fairly successful with as the Chairman of this International Committee, because there were Russians, Germans, Italians, French and so on. So you had to speak deliberately, carefully, enunciate and so on and this I soon learnt and did. But Tony he jabbered away, you know, and I often had to say ‘Slow down Tony’. And then Tony was one day describing about a characteristic curve and he said ‘...............’ what he was going to say was what you and I would say came out in a nice straight line. Well, now you know, when you are working out you say plus six, minus two, etc and you write your figures down - that’s minus so you learn an upward curve which is minus one, nought plus one, nought, nought, plus two and so on. That’s the curve you get. Well Tony came out at describing one of these curves at this International Meeting and he comes out just like a string of doughnuts, absolutely like a string of doughnuts. ‘What’s he meaning, what is this string of doughnuts, where are these doughnuts?’ Oh dear, oh dear. I remember Tony and the string of doughnuts. Nobody was understanding him at all! Just a funny little thing.
Q In your youth and in school days and so on, that was pre-sound cinema, a silent cinema. Did you used to go to movies in those days?
A Yes. Oh yes, oh yes. The piano. There was the Queen’s Hall down at Catford, Crofton Park - that’s where I remember - I don’t know how old I was - quite a youngster - and they had “Tarzan and the Apes”, the very first one of that. There was no sound. Pearl White’s “Serials”.
Q You mentioned the piano accompaniment. Do you remember seeing any other shows with any fabricated sound effects?
A No. I think there were such things but I didn’t go.
Q You didn’t have any great inkling to get into the movies at all?
A No. It come up through radio, you see, radio and technology etc and so on and then, as I say, came that group .......either power station or recording.
Q Yes, you are the complete engineer. Did you ever do any actual music recording when you were with Columbia at all?
A No. I was the Maintenance Engineer, looking after equipment and they had a recordist etc. Oh I did once or twice, yes, but not very much.
Q You preferred the engineering aspect rather than...
A That was my job.....
Q But you didn’t really want to get into the....
A Oh I think I would have liked it yes, oh yes, I would have liked it all right, but you know, they were very senior openings and so on.
Q What do you remember as being the first sound film you saw then?
A Oh, the very first one was “The Jazz Singer”.
Q And that was in London, was it?
A In London, yes.
Q Because if you were in Milan there would be a.....
A No, it was in London I saw that. Was it the Tiffaly, somewhere, I’m not too sure now.
Q With your stay at running and maintaining the studios in Milan the....
A Four years.
Q Did you acquire Italian language?
A Yes, oh yes, I can still speak a fair amount of Italian, it is getting a bit rusty but I can speak Italian all right.
Q Did you find that any advantage in later years after you came back from....
A Not really, not really, I mean, fun-like, only in fun.
Q At the Standards Meetings?
A Yes, yes, I would speak to Italians yes. If there was any query you see?
Q Did you have any other languages then?
A No, well, I had French of course but only because we had it at school. Never got much beyond school French - a little beyond it but not much. No just Italian.
Q You mentioned your father being very encouraging as to your education. What was his profession?
A Well, he was with a paint manufacturing, a small paint manufacturing company. He became their Chemist, I think.
Q So, he was quite well educated himself?
A No, not terribly well, self-educated more or less and by experience more than anything else, I think.
Q His Chemist position didn’t require a degree?
A No, no, nothing like that. Very modest. But he was very keen. I mean, more or less bullied me into going to this poly, and I did, and you know, you don’t get the Higher National Certificate with Distinction for nothing you know.
Q No.
A It’s quite a struggle.
Q Especially and you were working at the same time. That is something today that not a lot of people don’t really appreciate the advantages that they get to be educated, not having to work and just concentrate on....
A Mind you, it meant - you see when I was working there were quite a few radio companies, you see, which made good background eventually and so on. No. I used to get cross in my early days in the studios. The chap would come along wanting to be a Maintenance Engineer. You would ask him a fairly simple question ‘look you have got a DC motor and you increase the field card (could this be current?)and what happens?’ He wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was speeded up or slowed down! ....no solid background and to my mind that was, you know, if a man was going to be an engineer he should be an engineer and he should know something. A lot of them got in just, oh dear!
Q Yourself being an engineer, and a good one, the two sort of aspects that happen as far as sound and motion pictures, sound recording going of the recording crew, shall we say, and the engineer maintenance crew, the amount of engineering knowledge that the people doing the actual recording should have.....
A Well, now, in the early days, a Mixer would have a fair engineering knowledge. And a Sound Camera Operator wasn’t just a money, he had to string his light valves and tune his light valve and know a little bit about things etc. Later on I had an awful feeling that.............it got very diluted. I think it was a shame. You know, there were two ways of looking at that.
Q Yes. These days there’s an awful lot of emphasis being put upon about training and people trying to working out training schemes and we will have to train people for the future. But I still don’t think a lot of them are going about it the right way.
A Probably not. You have got to have basic knowledge to start from. I mean, when I left and matriculated I had done Physics, Electro-synmagnetiscm etc. We got the basics there and in the Higher National Course you started from there and you built up through it all. You had to design coils and you know motors and all sorts of things etc. Well, of course, eventually becoming Chief Sound Engineer of a big studio like that I had the knowledge of all these things and this meant something and you had the background which gave you the means of understanding and doing and knowing the right ways of things, which some of them would be completely lost. I remember, you know, there was one time there was a big fight in the early days between BFPA and ACT over salary rates. And the people that were causing the biggest stir were the Boom Operators or a Boom Operator who, for ACT, wanted the earth. And you know it was really awful. The people, Engineers - Maintenance Engineers - who really had put years, were sort of ‘oh they don’t mean anything, we could do this, you know, it was all....
End of Side B
