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John Luton 0:00
This is British Entertainment History Project. Interview with Ernest Marsh on the 31st of July, 2023 and Ernie, nice to see you. Nice to see you, John. And if you could just give us the permission via your statement about the copyright in what we're about to do, yes indeed
Ernest Marsh 0:22
here with in pituitary, give you permission to use exclusively what you record today. Thanks,
John Luton 0:34
Ernie. And if we can begin by you giving us some background about where you came from your early years? Yeah,
Ernest Marsh 0:44
I was born in Folkestone, Kent a couple of months before the end of World War Two, and lived there until 1953 in the day after the Coronation in 1953 we moved from noisy Folkestone to a little hamlet in in Suffolk called Somerton, and That's basically where I've had my early years, I went to the local schools and where I first had a piece of film in my hand, piece of 9.5 film of Alan bes army, and with a hand cranked 9.5 projector. I was there for the rest, rest of my younger life, and eventually moved from Somerton to Bury St Edmunds in 1957 and in 1958 I was being 13, was allowed to get an outside weekday job with an employment card from Suffolk County Council, which I was duly got, and I did a paper round for WH Smith. But then I always had this love of the cinema, and I used to wander around Bury St Edmunds. There were three cinemas at the time, on a Saturday afternoon and one one Saturday, I decided to be brave, and I walked into the Playhouse cinema in the butter market and said, did they have any jobs going and expecting nothing? And he said, Well, what can what would you like to do? And I said, Well, I love films. I come in here a lot, and they said, Well, would you like to run the news reel between the Playhouse and the central cinema on a Saturday afternoon? And of course, I jumped at it and the sum total of it was that I got seven shillings and sixpence
John Luton 3:28
Erwin. Can I just chip in here, if you're going to explain for anyone watching running the newsreel was actually carrying, what 1000 foot tin It was
Ernest Marsh 3:38
between two cinema, yes, it was. It was a two, I think it was a 2000 foot can, because it had the adverts, the local adverts, the National adverts, and the pathway news. And the two cinemas being both owned by kinemas East, Anglia shared it, and so the programs were timed, so it got there on time, and no one was let down.
John Luton 4:09
And you did the running to make sure they got there on time. I
Ernest Marsh 4:13
literally ran from buttermarket to Hatter street to the central cinema,
John Luton 4:21
when you arrived there with it, did you get into the projection room?
Ernest Marsh 4:25
Oh, yes, yes, you the the Playhouse was quite a nice cinema and a nice projection room. The Central was a long, narrow tube. And when I remember before then that they had to close it for a week when they installed CinemaScope because the proscenium wasn't wide enough to have a wide CinemaScope lens screen. And so what they did, they actually. Lowered the masking at the top, brought it up at the bottom, and the picture, a CinemaScope picture, was about half the size of the standard one, and so that was to be remedied in 1959 when the central was closed and was developed, and they made A beautiful job, everything, it was an amazing cinema with tabs curtains flowing from one side to the other, all Bay. I remember it like today, bathed in blue light, or just the week before it opened, the play house had been sold and was closed, and that duly became berries and Edmonds Co Op store. And the film that opened the cinema was starred Ted Roy, and it was the world premiere, and Ted Roy was there, and I was in the projection room of the now named Abbey gate cinema. The Night of the world premiere, please turn over starring Ted, Roy and Ted and other members of the cast were there, and I was in the projection room watching the proceedings and the Katie Katie 12 projectors were showing the film many years later, when, when I was working in the West End of London, I went into Frank brockless One Afternoon to pick up a piece of equipment. And we, I was talking to the guy in there, and he came up with this thing, Oh, you came from various Netherlands. I said, Yes. So he says, brockless tried to bribe them into having a pair of brand new Phillips FP 20 projectors with pulse discharge lamps offered them an amazing discount, but they wouldn't take it. They had to use what they got. The Kaley 12 projectors, of course, used carbon arcs, where you had to to to a positive and a negative feed, which ran together. They were they burnt a flame, and they were mechanically locked to to slowly burn together. And I think they were four to probably 14 inch positives and 10 inch negatives. There were different carbon arcs. Some had revolving positive where they it actually produced a finer burn of the light. But those those lamps have been really going ever since pulse discharge lamps were the lamp housing was that big, and there were a number of them in the lamp housing, and if one went the next one automatically dropped into its place. But they tended on a big screen to look a wee bit yellow. But many cinemas had it. In fact, I think you worked with them, didn't you? Joanna Frank Hendricks, did you have a pulse discharge? Now, I think
John Luton 9:04
we did. I think we did have a pulse discharge. There certainly wasn't a carbon arc,
Ernest Marsh 9:08
yes, yeah, yeah. You had an FB 20. Phillips, that's right, yeah. They were, they were, that's what they were for. So my life from then on Saturday afternoons, right the way through until, oh, I left school, I was in there, and at the age of 13, did my very first changeover, which was changing from one projector to the other, the film, on average, would have five or six reels, and you had to synchronize the movement between of the sound and the picture, between one projector and the other. And that was no. Certified at the end of the film, about 12 feet from the end of the film, there were four engraved or printed in dots into the top right hand corner of the picture. This is at the end of each reel, at the end of each reel, and the the you then had a second lot 12 feet later, the first set of cues, you started running the next reel of the picture, which had been laced up on with 12 in the gate. And the second lot of cues, you changed the picture on the two switches, picture and sound, and it went over from one project, from one projector to the other. And I, I remember way before I even started doing wondering why pictures flickered. And I, one afternoon, I sat in the Playhouse and turned around and watched and waited until the picture changed over. But at that time, of course, I didn't realize what it was. But it doesn't happen today,
John Luton 11:16
normal digital. So going back to that, how did you come to be let loose onto doing a changeover in a public show? Well,
Ernest Marsh 11:29
the abbey gate was a small a small cinema. Put it this way, it wasn't the Odeon. The Odeon had a much bigger crew, and someone suggested, would I like to do it? And I don't remember the film now, but I remember doing it. That was the highlight of my life. At that time, I'd actually changed between two projectors and amazing, amazing.
John Luton 12:06
So at this point you were still at school.
Ernest Marsh 12:07
I was still at school, and I still went there until, until I left school. In fact, even after I left school, my parents put me into agricultural college, which didn't work, and I still went into the abbey gate, and Hugh Berry, the manager, who I knew well unfortunately, was A good friend of my father's, and Hugh was because he didn't have a Wurlitzer organ. He had a Hammond organ, and he used to sit at the front on a Saturday night, at the front of the stalls, and it was a single seat stadium anyway, and play the Hammond organ, and he said he was recreating his younger life. And I said to Hugh, you've only got one projectionist here, and he's working all hours. Can I have a job? And anyway, my father put put his foot down and said, There's no way his son was going to work in a cinema. And so I had to take a big decision, and I basically decided I read the King weekly at the Abbey gate and all these adverts for projectionists all around the country and everything. And I decided, right, this is it. I'm leaving home, and I literally packed a few things into a case, bagged a lift from the local milk float to take me into Bury St Edmunds, from where we lived. He took me there. I hitchhiked from Bury St Edmunds down to the East End of London and went into the ABC Leighton stone, where the District Engineer was turned up at his office and said, I want a job. And he said, Well, you know what? What experience you got what this, what that, what the other? And he decided that the best thing for me to do. He said, Yes, okay, you can have I'll give you a trial job. And he sent me to the ABC Enfield, where the chief projectionist, Jeff was. Was a lovely guy. Was with two assistants, and I was made the fourth projectionist. Had to get lodgings that night and everything. Oh, it was, it was chaos, but within two weeks, they were letting me do changeovers there and there they had Ross GC, three mechanics with mono with carbon arcs. And they were one of the cinemas that had, although they didn't use 6000 foot spools, they had 6000 foot spool boxes because they were one of the cinemas that used to run 3d in tandem, where you had a control bar running between the two projectors to keep them in sync. And that was my real start in cinema and Patrick church, who is currently the manager at the ABC at the Abbey gate film theatre in Bury St Edmunds. He he replied to the ad which kinemas put in when I left, and left the projectionist on his own. He applied for the job, and he got that job, and he's still there now in a sort of part time role. So that was from 1964 through till currently 2023
John Luton 16:51
that's an incredible long record of service. My god,
Unknown Speaker 16:56
yes. So
John Luton 16:58
So picking up your story, right, you've landed in the East End of London. You've got yourself a job, you've proved yourself, but you've got, you've got to find lodgings, you've got to make ends meet. Oh
Ernest Marsh 17:12
yes, that's not said. That's not said. But I, I persevered, and was then, after only a few weeks, was given a pay rise, and Jeff said to me, if you want more money, you're going to have to go elsewhere. So I sort of looked around and there were two other cinemas in Enfield, the Granada and the Florida. And there was nothing going there, but they told me there was a job going at the Queen's Palmers green. Now that was only about three miles down the road. So I went in there, and the owner, who was quite elderly, he sort of interviewed me after a fashion, and said, what can you do? And this, that and the other. And he introduced me to his chief projectionist, who also worked on his own. And it was agreed that, yes, if I'd like a job, I could have one. And there at the queens, that was really the smallest Show on Earth. It had gas secondary lighting. So every, every afternoon you lit the mantles after the show, you put them out. There was a circle there. And every morning, you had to spray the circle seats. Nowhere else, just the circle seats with DDT and the projectors, there were a pair of my least favorite projectors of all time, super simplexes, also with carbon arcs. I put up with it for about three months, and ABC gave me a relief chief's job on North London. So I when the chief had a day off at various cinemas, I would go in there. So I did relief, daily relief. Muswell Hill, bows Road, Haringey, Mile End Road all over North London, until I got bored with it, and I wanted to go that little bit more, and I. I had to make a big decision by because at that time, I'd met my Carol, my future first wife, and she, she worked at the ABC Enfield as a part time Usher at and so I I didn't want to do it, but I knew if I wanted to get on I'd have to do something better. And so that ended the first part of my life in the cinema, and I was ready to tread new ground. Once I'd made the decision that I wanted to better myself, I started looking in the Evening Standard or evening news for projectionist jobs in the West End of London, and came across this one, and particular one, and So I rang the number, and it was an Emporium owned by Frank green in ward or street. Now, Waddell Street was the headquarters of the British film industry at that time, it was a two way street with traffic and from sort of eight in the morning to eight at night. Every day except Sunday, there were cans of film being rolled up the street, both ways, going to probably 1215 preview theaters that were there, and it was manic, and you went through an alley, and you had Berwick street market, and that was also a totally vibrant place, which I understand now hardly exists. But on getting to ward or street, I met Frank green and was taken to his office for interviews, which was the film cafe, just so it was next to the marquee Music Club. And I was asked, What could I do? So I said I yeah, I can do whatever you want. And so the silly man took me at my word. And Frank was a lovely person, but he wanted to save money all the time. But anyway, he he was solely responsible for giving me my first job in the West End of London. And so on the 26th of September, 1966 I started work there. He met me in the morning, took me downstairs into the basement, and I was introduced to three people. The first person was Ron Brown, who was actually he was known as Tango top, and he always dressed immaculately in a suit and bow tie and everything gray sweat back hair, and he was the mixer in the studio that I realized I was going to have to work in, rather than a previous theatre that I was expecting to I was also introduced that day to two people who been friends for the rest of My life, Graham Bloomfield and Max Bell and Max became the very first Dolby sound consultant in the world, and has a credit on things like Star Wars and This being 1966 we were it was a mixing studio with quite a small area. But when I went into the machine room, rather than finding the projector to run, there were all this banks of different looking machines. I'd never seen one of them before in my life. And so I decided, well, you know, if I'm going to keep this job, I better learn to use them. And we had this. There were West Rex machines. I didn't know that at the time. There were RCA machines. There was a Cayley machine. They were 16 millimeter. They were 35 millimeter. And other than at college, I'd run the 16 mil projector. I'd never had anything to do with 16 mil, but that first month was a real learning curve, but came through it in the end. Right? And those were the days when you had quarter of an hour bookings to mix a commercial. And at my end, I was responsible for plugging a particular machine into a socket a bit like a telephone exchange, which went to the mixing room where Ron Brown mixed the commercials,
John Luton 25:27
this bank of machines, Ernie, I guess you're talking about referring to magnetic replay machines,
Ernest Marsh 25:32
magnetic and optical relay replay machines, which was
John Luton 25:38
onto which was laced, probably 1000 foot rolls or loops.
Ernest Marsh 25:45
Virgin virgin loop was the system was called Yeah, and it was basically, if it was a 32nd commercial, you had a 45 feet of picture and all the different sound tracks, like the dialog, the music, the effects were on magnetic sound also 45 feet long. There was then a 10 or 12 foot leader in between the front of the sound and the end of the sound, and it went around in a loop, you then had the Virgin loop, which was a blank, equal length piece of 35 millimeter, fully coated with magnetics emulsion, which was on the recorder. And so everything went out one way, all the individual tracks, and then came back as a single mix track to go on to the magnetic master. That master was then sent up the road to path A where was the first time I ever saw a 35 mill optical recorder, and the the magnetic sound was transferred to the optical and that then went to the lab for processing. That was a negative. Then the next morning, there would be a positive print made using the the optical sound, the positive, the optical sound negative, the picture negative. There was a three on both, a sink PIP at three on the sound on the picture, there was the figure three. The two were lined up together, went into a printer and a print was made. And that print is what would eventually, or bulk prints would eventually have ended up in the cinema. So I then met a friend, Sammy McLeod, and he worked at Kay's West End Sound Studio.
John Luton 28:18
Is that the one in Soho square? Yeah, 22
Ernest Marsh 28:21
Soho square had the lab in the basement, and the studio was on the first floor, and the COI, where people like Neil Cronin worked, was on the upper floors of the building. And Sammy said, I've got a job going. Would you like to come and work with me? So I went there, and it was another step. Frank green wouldn't pay me enough money, but Kay's would. And so I went there. I was there about three months. Came up against maestro, Ron the mixer there, and he was quite something. He blew his top at the slightest thing and but a really nice guy who I was to meet later in my life and actually take over a job from him. So after a while, I had a phone call from Frank green. Would I come back? And so I I said, Well, we've got, we've got a problem. My wife, or my wife to be Carol, and I had decided that we were going to get married, and we put in for a mortgage on a house in Lou. Person we we eventually got a mortgage offer, but that offer meant that I had to earn in the next three years a certain amount more money. And I was earning at Ks. I was earning 19 pounds a week, but someone had to say that they would pay me 29 pounds a week within three years. So when Frank green rang me, I said, right, well, this is what we've got to do. Will you pay me 29 pounds a week. Oh, dear. We'll have to think about that. But eventually he actually coughed up the 29 pounds a week. We got our mortgage and we were married on the 30th of september 1967 and at that time, I was still working with Frank green, and I then got poached again because Graham Bloomfield had been poached by stage sound London for their studio in Covent Garden. And then the real character of life, Fred Ryan, Teddy Ryan, who was the mixer. He came along, and he said, I need staff, and offered me a job at more money. And he'd already got Graham Bloomfield. He also got David Roberts, who was also worked in mercury facilities, but he ran the projector, and so the trio of us went to work for stage sound London. It was on the fifth floor of the building, and there was no lift, and it was a really strange studio. It was large. It had a Corrugated Roof. Now bearing in mind, this was before jumbo jets, but not before comets and Boeing 707, but it had an amazing reputation for doing re recording of post sync of dialog on films. So in as as well as doing commercials, we also did TV programs and things like that. But we also got involved in other projects. And the first major project, or I got involved there with, was with Michael Reeves on a film called Mike witch finder general. And we were doing the footsteps and effects Ernie,
John Luton 33:21
just it, just putting which finder general into context for people who don't know about it, it was a home grown British movie, yes, which achieved a great reputation. It was. It was a very important independent movie, wasn't it?
Ernest Marsh 33:36
Oh, it was. It was produced by Tony tenser of Ty Goon films, yeah, and it's one of the few films that Tony made where he didn't come up the first morning and turn around and say, got a right little finger full of dog shit here, folks, we better make the best of it.
John Luton 33:56
Yeah. It was also one of the few films he made where the cast kept their clothes on.
Ernest Marsh 34:01
Well, yeah, but Michael Reeves, of course, was a nasty kettle of work. And Beryl Mortimer, who I it was the first time I knew, met Beryl. She was a footstep artist. She was the queen of the footsteppers. She was there, and Michael Reeves in the witch ducking sequences, was actually putting Beryl and another girl's head in buckets of water to make them scream more. He he did die. I don't think there was an awful lot of loss when he he died, because he wasn't a nice person, but we did. So that was my introduction to footsteps. Now the sound editor on that film in. Was Howard Lanning. And the next film that came in for footstepping was my introduction to Michael winner, and that was the game starring Michael Crawford and so by that time, Howard had been doing some footsteps. He knew I did footsteps, and so I was sort of put onto the footsteps by Freddie Ryan. He was probably taking something out like that, because that was the way he was. But he was providing a footstep artist. So the first day, and these footsteps were all done on loops, similar to the commercial dubbing. And so the first day we it been a hard day, and I'd been delivering milk bottles most of the day from from a milk float and
John Luton 36:04
sorry, but how do you mean you were delivering milk bottles? You mean on the screen? Michael
Ernest Marsh 36:10
Croft was a milkman. Oh, I see. And so he went up, picking up the milk bottles out the crate, putting them down on the steps, all the sound effects, the sounds of his clothes as he moved, and the footsteps as he walked. And we used to do it on 35 mill film with three separate tracks, so you could put footsteps, bottles, clothes, and sometimes on complex scenes, you use many of those loops to build it all up. But just before the end of the day, the doors crashed open, and Howard turned over, looked at me and mouthed winner, and he strode into the room. This is my film you're working on. Get your feet in the air or words to that effect. So I stopped. I turned around, looked at him, walked up to him, put my hand out to him, to shake his hand, and said, Mr. Winner, I presume, and believe me or not, he shook my hand, and we were friends for the rest of his life. It was quite amazing, every film that he did after that, if he wanted footsteps done, his rough pre mixes, culminating with Wicked Lady, when the whole of the wedding scene in the big dubbing theater at Shepperton, they couldn't get right, he inserted our mix that we did on the wedding scene in Wicked Lady in its entirety. And at that time, he said to me, any pre mixing we do before and from now on, you do triple drag, sirs, or got dialog music and effects separate, and we can do that. And so that's how, that's how I was introduced to Michael winner. And as I say, I've got Christmas cards from him here from years gone by. Great guy, great director should have won an Oscar for death wish. I
John Luton 38:45
couldn't agree more. Ernie, and I think really, it's a tragedy that his I don't know why, but his kind of off screen personality damaged his reputation in terms of what he delivered as a director. He was a great director. Yeah, yeah. He had a great vision in his
Ernest Marsh 39:00
movies. Look at any of his films, and the cutting is so smooth because he The problem was that there was another member of the cast on all his films, and his name was Arnold crust, and the film editor was always Arnold crust. Now, or the supervising film editor was Arnold crust, he would have people like Chris and others as editors, but the supervising editor was always Arnold crust, and Arnold crust was, in fact, Michael winner.
John Luton 39:52
I didn't know that it
Ernest Marsh 39:53
was his pseudonym, and he. He he he knew what he wanted. And so a bit like David Lean, David Lean knew exactly what he wanted, he shot, he edited his film in the camera and Lawrence of Arabia, sorry, Ann Coates, rest in peace. She cut the picture together, but Michael, but David Lean shot it in the camera and edited it in the camera. Michael Michael, when I was just like that, and so many times and I, on one occasion, we were doing one of his death wish films, which had a train in it, or was it Superman, I don't know. When one of them had a train in it, and it's it, it was an underground train coming into a station, and we were doing footsteps for it. And it was supposed to be the New York Metro, but it was actually shot in the old, closed, old witch station on the Piccadilly line in London. And I saw this come up on the loop, and I this is strange, and I started laughing. And if you laugh with winner there, you had to have good reason. And you come scream out, what you do it. You laugh. What's What's so funny about that? So I said, Well, go back and look again. Michael and Chris Barnes, who was the editor, there were two of them there, sitting there looking at it, and no nothing. So he said, Well, what's wrong with it? So I said, Well, as the train comes in, just look very carefully at the nine board on the front. Because what they'd done, they'd put a New York fiberglass front on this tube, but they'd forgotten to take cock fosters off at the front of the train. So with that, winner sort of went into his shell, and at the end of the day, he came up to me and he said, every film from now on, you watch with the editor to check there are no more cock ups. And that happened from that film onwards, every time we did it. And I say he was a lovely person, but Mr. Winner, I presume, as well as footsteps at stage sound we did post synchronization. And it was the first time, the first film that we did post synchronization on when I was there was, in fact, which find a general and it starred the wonderful Vincent Price. It was shot in the Suffolk countryside around Lavenham and places like that, in the original locations of the witch finder. And Vincent was going straight back after the movie to go to shoot another film in the States, and so he wouldn't have time to do any post synchronization if it was needed, because at that time, I don't know whether it still applies today, but at that time, an actor had to give a certain number of hours Free of charge for post syncing, for the number of days that they worked on the film. And so what Vincent decided to do was once a week, or sometimes twice a week, he would come into London in the evening, because it was only an hour and a half by train, and he would post, sync his rushes. And what I saw there was an absolute perfectionist. The he would hold an earphone to his ear which had the sound which was recorded on location, on it, he would then say the line. Now, because he'd done it recently, he knew the pace he'd done it at his and everything, and I never saw him take two takes. It was le. Wilson, do the line play back next loop? He was a perfectionist, and we did an awful lot of post sync in that room, and I was very lucky to also record the best woman I've ever known for post thinking, and that was Bridget Bardo with chalico The Western but going back to stage sound, there we had this, LA, the fact that we had a Corrugated Roof with pinball underneath, it used to provide amazing acoustics, and we were basically the number one studio in The West End of London for doing post sync. And because we were also close to the Savoy Hotel, we were very, very lucky to be the honored to have with us on one for four hours one evening, Charles Chaplin, who walked up with his wife five floors to the Studio, and Erwin, his wife, introduced herself, and then Mr. Chaplin, you call him Charles. You do not call him Charlie. No one calls him Charlie. And we were involved with doing some clapping effects on his 1924 I think it was film the circus, or 1928 one of the two, which, of course, Chaplin shot everything at 24 frames he always did. And so I was in the theater with Chaplin, and he said he was pointing out people on the screen. And he says, you see that little girl there? She's clapping. I want to hear her clap. So this went on. He got three hour four hours, booked one evening to do this. Well, it wasn't going to happen. And so we went home that night, and he then booked from two o'clock till eight. I think it was the next night, but we got no further with it, because we were then mixing this together, the mixing the sound effects, and he'd written a score for it, he'd written the song, and He sang the song. And
John Luton 48:21
do you mean he sang the song in the studio? No,
Ernest Marsh 48:24
no, it was, it was he pre recorded in a studio with the with the orchestra, but it was all laid by John Victor Smith was the editor, and it was all laid up and we were going to eventually mix it. But the second night, he turned around to me and he said, Where do you live? And I said, I live in Luton. He says, Oh, it's a long way. I said, No, there's no problem. He said, Oh no, no, you'll come to my suite. I thought, well, what's this? And una said, we have a part. We have rooms in our suite. Charles doesn't want you going back to Luton at that time of night to be back here again at eight in the morning. No, and I spent two nights. I think it was two nights in his suite at the Savoy Hotel. And he was a wonderful person. But to go forward many years, there was a film made by Richard Attenborough called Chaplin. And I went to the world premiere of it, which was at the Leicester Square Theater in London, and I was horrified at the end of the film, there's a sequence where Chaplin is given his Honorary Oscar, because he never won an Oscar in his life, but he was awarded an Honorary Oscar. And. And the dialog on the screen goes that he is waiting to be called on. And una, who I think was played by his daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, had to shout to him, and she said, Charlie, you're on. It would have never happened, because owner of all people, would not have anyone to call him Charlie, let alone her. And yet, Attenborough reckoned that he knew Chaplin off the back of his hand. Negative,
John Luton 50:41
very interesting insight. Ernie, yeah, yeah, fascinating. What kind of conversations did you have with the chaplain outside the studio? Did you have any chance to have a chat about
Ernest Marsh 50:54
other things? Oh, well, I mean, we had breakfast brought. I mean, it was amazing, but he wasn't the sort of person. I was a bit scared of him, actually. I mean, you know this, this is an icon that, you know, I felt a privilege to have met. There are lots of other people icons that I feel privileged to have met, but Chaplin he he was it. And I don't particularly like Chaplin's films, but I love the circus, because the version that you can buy on disc now is the version that was mixed at stage sound,
John Luton 51:46
I'm gonna buy it.
Ernest Marsh 51:49
Yeah, yeah, and no. But we then had one other interesting thing. And I know you, John, know what this is coming at stage sound, Mr. Hitchcock, he turned up shooting his movie, and stage sound was right next to the pub in Covent Garden.
John Luton 52:23
We're talking about frenzy here. Sorry, we're talking about the movie frenzy.
Ernest Marsh 52:28
Yes, yeah, yes. Frenzy with Barry Davis, Barry Barry
John Luton 52:33
Foster, and John Finch, wasn't it? John Finch, Barry Foster,
Ernest Marsh 52:40
well, we sat looking out of the window at lunch times, watching Hitchcock direct, because there was a scene right by the pub door, and he would be sitting there, and he'd put his hand up, and someone would come running and take instruction, he would then go to the act to give instruction, and that was that. But they had some generator problems one day with Barry Foster, and so it needed to be post sunk. And I been talking to the production manager down there, because we just went down there watching the great man work. And I said, Oh, you you realize that we're a sound studio upstairs, you can do that. And he told Hitchcock, and lo and behold, we had Hitchcock in the theater as well. And that was he also walked up five floors of stairs, which is something that a certain major actor decreed, after having done it a few times, I'm not going there. And that was awesome. Wells was awesome. Used to do a hell of a lot of voice overs for commercials, and he'd come in and then not that place again. And when there's an infamous tape, I think it's birds IPs, which exists, of Lawson telling some advertising executives what to do with their commercial voice over. And that's because he got away with it because he was in a studio in Paris, and they were in a studio in London on a landline.
John Luton 54:47
I know that, you know, I had a copy of that paper only for years, and I can't find it. It's somewhere, but I know the one you mean, it's one, there's one tiny bit of a much longer tape. Of where you remember this bit the director says, or the person directing the voice over from London says, Lawson, would you emphasize the word in at the beginning of the sentence? And well, says emphasize in at the beginning of a sentence. If you can tell me, how do they do to do that properly? It's impossible, he said, but if you told me how to I'll go down on you,
Ernest Marsh 55:27
which was also impossible, because he was in London. But no, but it was strange, because we used to get everyone in there. Just
John Luton 55:42
go back to we, we segued out of Hitchcock, any little stories about Hitchcock and that session? Well, not
Ernest Marsh 55:51
really. He because Hitchcock, Hitchcock was getting on at that time, and he, he was there because he had to be there, and it was convenient for him, because they were shooting in Covent Garden, and that was that. But it was no it was there again. I shook his hand. I shoot a chaplain's hand. And you know, those people don't exist today.
John Luton 56:30
No, I mean, thanks to you. You tipped me off, actually, that they were going to be shooting in COP and garden. I was between editing jobs, and I went to watch and I watched him for a week working, and he was very decisive. I don't mean he was dictatorial. He was very gentle with the actors, but he was very decisive when he had a take. That was it? 123, takes, no more. Was he the same in the studio? Yeah, yeah.
Ernest Marsh 56:54
But you see, when you're doing that, like with Vincent, you've got it in your head you've recently done it so you've got the pacing done. It's not like when you're dubbing into a different language. There's only one actor who I came across who couldn't dub, and God rest his soul. That was Rupert Davis may gray. He just couldn't do it. There were plenty of others who could do it. And in fact, one in sage sound we were doing posting on a movie called Zero population growth with Oliver Reed. And we had olive reed in there, and this loop had been going round and round and round, and he couldn't get it. He just couldn't get it. Just befuddled him, and he was wandering off the mike. So I put a concrete paving stone slab there in front of the mike for him to stand on, because if he then wandered off, that he'd fall over. So he was there doing it, and he just couldn't get this. This went on for about half an hour. I mean, it was a horrendous Ted, Ryan the mixer, who was very well, he could be a problem, was screaming away, why the Earth doesn't he do it? And why don't you, why don't you re voice him, and all that sort of thing. And anyway, so anyway, Ollie got to the point where he knew he was in a state. He stood off of this paving stone. He got down on his knees, and he cracked his head, his forehead, three times, against that paving stone. He stood up and did it next take he uh, amazing, but he was another great one, yeah, but I think, you know, we probably come to the end of stage sound in Covent Garden because we had to move, and we moved into the old films of today, sound stage in Maiden Lane, which was in the basement, which had one great advantage to it, the fact that it had a tank in the floor, because it had been used for shoot, for underwater shooting. So if we did footsteps and things there, we only had to put water in it. It had got a pump to pump it out, and you had really good because water was always a problem when it came to doing post sink effects and. But when we left, when we left stage sound in Covent Garden, Fred Ryan decided to retire now. He lost his temper very much. He made a lot of enemies. He was a damn good mixer, but he made a lot of enemies. And so he decided he was retiring, and he moved to Leicestershire with his wife, and they bought a local post office. And the joke that went around the industry was, Can you see him on a Tuesday morning with the pensioners coming in for their pension, paying out Fuddy Fuddy money and all that sort of thing. It won't last. We knew it wouldn't last. But anyway, he went and at that point, I applied for the job I'd been doing a lot of mixing for students at the Royal College of Art and stage sound wouldn't, wouldn't employ me As the mixer. So they took on Cyril Brown, who was the mixer I knew from Kay's West End. And Cyril came in there, and he promised, oh, we'll do this. We'll do that, and we'll get our BBC work in which didn't actually happen or not much of it happened. And after six months, I had a telephone call on a Thursday night from Jim Brown, who was the managing director of stage sound, and he said to me, if the job was available, would I be interested in it? And so I said, of course, of course. And he said, Well, don't say anything, but perhaps we can help you. Well, Friday came and Cyril Brown was called over to the office in common garden and was told that they were sorry, but it hasn't worked out. And he was given six months. It didn't happen. And so he was under notice. Apparently, Cyril turned around and said, Well, who the hell is going to do it then? And they told him that they'd offered me the job. He came back. He walked into the studio just before lunch, he looked at me and he said, I understand you're the new dubbing mixer. And I said, Well, it has been said, Would I like to apply for it? Well, you got the job. And what's more, you're starting it earlier. You're starting it at two o'clock on a BBC program. Wow, that gave me the shivers. And the BBC unit, it was, it was BBC Open University, and it was a film about oil rigs and gas exploration in the North Sea. It was 40 minutes long, and they came in at two o'clock, and Cyril, actually, he introduced me to them because he knew the editor, and he stood at the back, and it was terrible. We got helicopters going here, helicopters going there, waves crashing here, waves crashing there. And anyway, eventually, if I remember Riley, there were 616 millimeter magnetic tracks, and we ran on for 20 minutes, maybe half an hour past the end of the booking, which, of course, you then had to give a reason to the BBC why you were doing it. So we finished it. It the BBC went, and Cyril came up to me and he he said, well done. You'll be okay with that. He packed his bag a week before he was due to go and walked out of stage sound forever. And from that day on, I had my first mixing job as a dubbing mixer, earning 40 pounds a week. They were paying Cyril brown 50. But I then I still had there with me, Graham Bloomfield and Dave Roberts and Fred Haywood. They'd all come over from Covent Garden, and we so when we were mixing, Graham had a week's holiday, and we needed an engineer for the week, and we for the week, we there was a chapel name of Bill Howells, who was an old, quite old, sound record is stroke engineer, and we he was taken on for the week to look after things. And on the front on the Friday of that week, we had a job from films of today. It was a two real, 35 millimeter documentary. And so it was about 1819, minutes long, and we started mixing in the morning,
and by just before lunch, the 35 mil magnetic recorder started clicking when you went in to record. So whenever you push that record button, it went slap. So as we had to stop, and I said to Bill, we've got to get this sorted. Bill. So he looked at it. He says, Well, he says, I don't know what it is. It could be a relay, but we've got no spare relays and all that. And at that time, we'd got a 35 millimeter optical recorder. Now before magnetic sound, of course, all mixes had to be recorded directly to optical sound tracks. But the problem was that if you made a mistake, you had to throw that role of optical sound track away, go back to the front and start again.
John Luton 1:07:57
Are we talking about on 35 mil? Would that be 1000 foot roll? Yes. So about 10 minutes
Ernest Marsh 1:08:04
a potential. 11 minutes, 11 minutes, yes,
John Luton 1:08:10
you're absolutely right. So even if it cocks up 30 seconds from the end, the whole rolls got to go, yeah, and it's back to the top.
Ernest Marsh 1:08:18
So what we what we did, we'd got probably half of the real done on magnetic without problems. So we had to line that up complete with the tracks, and I'd got to somehow. In fact, I said to Simon the editor, if you chop that piece of magnetic at that point so that we know it's finished, I can then pick up the other tracks from there. So we had two, three rehearsals going through this role, checking that we could get it right, getting the levels right. In those days, you had cue charts, which were papers telling me exactly where on what track, everything was laid out. And so we got did about three or four rehearsals. And then I said, right, well, we're going to have to try and do this, because by this time, it was sort of getting into the afternoon. And so we put a roll of magnetic on a roll of optical sound in the optical recorder, went for a take and managed to get through it without a stop. So then we had to go to real two. So you've got to make sure that your levels at the unless there's a problem or a big change on a real end and start, you've got to be so precise with your levels at the end to the start. And so. So anyway, we rehearsed it, and just after six o'clock that night, I managed to get through real two without mix missing up a roll of optical stock. It was horrifying, but I could that's when I look back at people like Gordon McCullum at Pinewood, who for donkeys years, mixed direct to optical and all those old mixers, old films that were mixed with no magnetic tracks, no backups, no nothing. And I learned a lesson that afternoon, a lesson I've never forgotten, never put all your eggs in one basket,
John Luton 1:10:49
Ernie, just just to paint a picture of what you were saying a moment ago about your respect for those old mixers who worked an optical. Can you describe what a feature dubbing desk would have looked like, not just one mixer, I suppose, but the systems also, because they're all looking at the chart, the footage counter, the footage on the chart. So the main mixer is relying, am I right? What I'm saying? He'd be relying on some help. Well, you've got to be good assistants. Yeah, in
Ernest Marsh 1:11:25
the studio system, like Pinewood, places like that, there were two or three mixers. If it was a mono film, and there weren't many stereo films, then if it was a mono film, you would find that the senior mixer, like Gordon McCullum would have, would be in charge, and would take dialogs. He might not have pre mixed the dialogs, but he would have would take them, because they're the most important thing. You then have someone on the music tracks, someone on the effects tracks, and someone on the footstep tracks, but these had all been pre mixed down, so you ended up with maybe five lots of stock with three mixers controlling it. Now, I was never honoured enough to to have two other mixers, and I never worked. In fact, I did on one occasion, and it was chaos, and the client asked for that person to be removed from the theatre. But I always right to my end of my days mixing, when we were mixing six track master mixes in stereo. I did all the mixing and pre mixes and everything myself. You get a kick out of it, and you you learn to trust editors. You need to trust yourself. You've got to, you know, it's like a joke was made by a sound mixer once who was a bit nervous, and Mr. Winner didn't like at all. That particular person was in the Australian Navy in a submarine, and it got out that he was in a submarine, and someone said to me once, would you trust all those people with him? Because he was very prone to problems, but it was the way it was. You got on with the job, and that was it. And but dubbing charts told us everything that was on all the particular tracks, and they used to be lined up across the mixing desk. You had a footage counter which corresponded to the footages on the dubbing charts and that ran in front of you so you could see that. So you had to have good eyesight, because you had to look at the screen to see what was going on and be able to follow what was on the dubbing charts. And also, you had wipes, which went across the screen to tell you where a dissolve was required, where you'd have one going like that or like that and like that. And those were marked on the film with chinagraph pencil. And I. Hmm, so there was a lot to it. I mean, today, forget it. Everything is a little track. It's all done by a computer, and that's what a lot of them sound like. Towards the end of 1976 stage sound was taken over by a company called theater projects, run by a guy by the name of David Collison. And he they were theater people. They did West End theater sound and everything, and they decided to cut their losses and close the film part down. So I was out of work for six months in total, actually, but fortunately, I'd been in the position of because of people I knew and because of my footsteps that I did. I'd been called by Warwick, who were in 153, ward or street, to do daily work. And so I was quite happy to go in there, doing footsteps, doing post sync and things like that. And they turned around to me and said that if I was prepared to wait until their financial year, which was the April 77 I could have a job also at 45 pounds a week, so I'd actually come up little bit. And they were, they were a nice crew. John watts, who was a lovely person, Ivor Kitching, who was, until he became a manager, was one of the most unionistic people on the earth. But once he once he became a partner in the business that went out of the wall. There was then a third sleeping partner, the accountant, Arthur Morrison. And so I went there in April 77 and took over mixing. Now they had a very old, 16 channel West Rex valve desk, mixing console with only three equalizers. So if you wanted to change something, you had to unpatch it from one patch it into the other and do all that. Now the advantage of that was that they were passive, so there was no problems with levels or anything. But I suggested to them that they put an offer in for the old mixing console from stage sound. And there was a couple of pieces of equipment they'd like stage sound, we're never going to use them. And so they did that, and they bought the lander four channel stereo mixing console. Also I demanded that they change the speakers, or the speaker, as it was then, which was mono, and because it had what was known as an academy roll off, which was ghastly. It's what allegedly was ensued in cinemas. But you mixed with the academy roll off, which cut off the high frequencies. Oh, I think it started about 6000 cycles, and they stayed in cinemas, really, until Dolby Stereo came along in the in the early 80s, and then so the speaker was changed. That made me happy. And one of the things we did every week there was a Thursday afternoon was national screen service trailers. We'd have two or three, sometimes four hours of trailers. And so I ended up mixing James Bond trailers and things like that, which was great fun, and working with the great Maurice binder, who, of course, was the Mr. Bond. He was the he did all the title sequences on the early bonds until his. Death, and Morris was also his favorite hobby was taking 3d still pictures. And we he used to have freedom of walk over the bond Stage at Pinewood. And he showed us many, many 3d slides. And I'd love to know when he died, where they went. But anyway, we Warwick, I was there, and so Warwick used to do a few, a few small time features before they opened in what Ward street they opened in. They were had been in Soho square for a long time, and they mixed all of Michael winners pictures,
John Luton 1:20:51
of course. It was founded only by what Irving Alan and Alfred art broccoli, yes, that was part of Yes, yes, who had Warwick films, and they made some big pictures back in the, what, late 50s, yeah,
Ernest Marsh 1:21:03
and it was, it was basically them that financed Warwick for the first lease of The independent Warwick at Warner street. So the first movie of Michael winners, after they opened at Ward Street, was Chateau land, which is a Western. And they did mix it, but we, I was never given a reason by winner, but we never mixed another Michael winner picture there so but where we came in Very handy was the fact that we had a good reputation for post synchronization. And so there I got involved with Jesse Vogel, Robert riety, and to a lesser extent, another who will be nameless, in doing foreign language English versions of foreign language films and working with big directors, Paul van Hoven and people like that, I look down here at My list because it's we have some forbidden all directors that we worked with our foreign version, English versions of foreign films covered a Massive genre of pictures, from ran the Japanese masterpiece to Louis Boone wells, that obscure object of desire, Werner, Herzog, fitzgeraldo, and one Franco zarelli film, which proved to be the downfall of itself because of its star. The picture was called Young Toscanini. It was in 1988 and the star was Elizabeth Taylor Robert rietti had been taken on as dialog director to produce the English version of it. And zeffrelli, he was a very gentle sort of person, and he got easily upset. And we there was one scene in it with Elizabeth Taylor where she is on a stage, she plays an opera diva, and she's on a stage and she's proclaiming that this opera house has been built in the Amazon jungle for the people, and she's doing this like that. And on the third occasion she does it, she hit her breasts. The only problem was the microphone was between her breasts, and so you heard this big smashing sound. And so Zeff Roy was worried about this, but he said, Oh no, Elizabeth will do it for me. And we did the rest of the movie. We tried seeing what we could do, from wild tracks and everything, but it didn't work. So. So rietti. At that time, Liz Taylor was in Rome, and she was in a wheelchair, and Rieti said, I must go to Rome. And so frank, as a Roy, said to him, Well, why don't you take Ernie with her with you? Because he's done the rest of the film. He can do it in Rome. So we turned up into it was international recording in Rome. She was wheeled in, she was played this bit, and she just turned around, she said, I am not doing that. I my men in Hollywood would sort that out. We don't want upstarts playing with it. We kept her in there for a couple of hours trying to persuade her to do it? No, she wouldn't do it. So we had to come back empty handed. Zephyrelle is in a terrible state, and that film was due to open the Venice Film Festival that year. Well, the reason that you can't see the English version of young Toscanini today is that it was never finished. A fortune was spent on it. And I think you can get, you can actually get it on DVD in Italian, but the English version is just not available. But, I mean, it was mixed. We mixed it, but it, I'm told that a preview screening of it closed the house with laughter and but it was quite a good film. Young Toscanini. Another oddity we did was a Buster Keaton movie. It was called boom on the moon. Was shot here, I think 1948 in Mexico. And Alexander Sulkin, he had bought it in a package, or he got it in a package of films that he bought for T cable TV and airlines and things like that. And so he wanted an English version of it. And so we actually dubbed the Buster Keaton film into English from the Spanish original sound that we had. And Jesse Vogel made a brilliant job of that, and it is on IMDb, I think, as it's there. But then we did things like marriage and Maria Braun and all that sort of thing. Then it was then time to go stereo. And it was a big investment. We bought a new, brand new, custom built, 24 channel, six track stereo mixing console. The new console was used for the first time for mono mixing the hammer house of mystery and suspense. 14 episode TV series vel guest, Johnny huff and lots of other good directors, directed one or two episodes, and they were, they were 7374 minutes, and were also had big name stars in them, because of sales for in America, it was known as the fox mystery theater, very successful, and I got to know vel guest, very, very well. We would be sitting the the editors would be out doing something in the cutting room, and Vel, he'd sit in the theater, and you could talk to him just like that. And oh, he was a wonderful person to talk to. The stories he told about these movies in the past The Day the Earth caught fire, for instance, who he was really upset because there was a foreign version, international version made of it, which actually Ed, Judd confirmed to me he couldn't understand why it couldn't be regurgitated, as he called it, because he said it was lovely cuddling up to her. And according to Val, it a the. Negs had been in Kay's Soho square in there, or Gillespie road or somewhere in their vaults, and never came out. And so it was a 10 minute longer version of the film, and for its time, was quite explicit, apparently, but no, it was. And I also spoke to Johnny Huff about his films. And you get so much from these people, and like later on in the time there, I had the great privilege of working with Michael Powell on his last film, and would spend hours talking to Michael Powell about this, that and everything, but that's sort of getting a little ahead of ourselves.
The Hammer series was a success, and then came our first stereo movie, which was called Yellow Pages, or its American title was called going undercover. And that was a super duper stereo mix with, I think we had 63 tracks on one reel in a car chase where we had cars going left to right, right to left, front to back and back to front. And that movie was the very first Dolby Stereo movie which had dialog exclusively on the surround track. Now you have to understand Dolby Stereo in those days, was done by putting to get the surround track, you had to put the surround signal out of phase to the front signal in that when it was encoded, so it was encoded left, center, right, surround into what was known as LT and RT. So when it was decoded, anything that had got surround, because it was out of phase the front, it was separated and sent to the back. And there was a Dolby consultant, Ron, who said, You can't do that. And I said, Well, I'm sorry, Ron, but it takes place in a jumbo jet. The scene you've got the main characters, Chris Len lemon, on the front field. You're looking at them. It then reverses to them, and you can see the stewardess coming down with the drinks trolley down the back and so I said, right, well, how about we put the stewardess talking? What would you like to drink, sir, on the back channel? Oh. RO, no way, no way. You can't do it. So, so we just we what I did, because I was mixing it on a six track head, I put the stewardess voice onto track five. I use track not onto track six. I'm sorry, I use Track five for the main dialog. Put her dialog on track six, and then you had the left channel, the center channel, the right channel, the surround channel, on one to four of everything else. So that night, after we packed up, I said to the boys, I said, I want to put that up again. I want to redo it. Ron had cleared off for the night. Dolby had cleared off for the night. So we put it up again, and we put the stewardesses dialog on the surround channel. And when, when we had a screening in Pinewood, in theater seven in Pinewood, and Mac was there, the mixer there, and he came in, and we ran the film, and he came up to me afterwards, introduced himself. I'd never met him. And he said that was a very good stereo sound trial. Back he said, How did you get the girl on the back channel? He says, That's not allowed. I said, Well, he says it's not allowed in Dolby time, but it's in Warwick over time, time it is. He laughed and went away. But another incident we had at with Pinewood was a film called me Oh, in the land of far away, which I think is a Scandinavian picture, isn't it? John,
John Luton 1:35:36
I'm not sure, yeah. Well, we
Ernest Marsh 1:35:39
voiced the whole movie. The lead character was the boy from the young boy in the Spielberg film.
John Luton 1:35:54
Which one?
Ernest Marsh 1:35:56
The one with the airplanes? Anyway, we had to post sync before Empire of the Sun. Empire the sun, yeah, and the we had to post sync the whole film, every single word. We did it all. And I had a gadget in the studio which working in the West End, you tended to get noise problems occasionally, but I worked with an effects manufacturer to give me a dip filter, which worked at more or less whatever frequency I wanted without affecting other parts of it. And I always on all the postsync I did at Warwick. I used it, and the film was being mixed at Pinewood, and I had a telephone call on a Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, one of the two, from John Hayward, who was second in command on the mixing at Pinewood. And he said to me, I'd like you to come down to Pinewood whilst we're mixing it. So I decided to take a day down there. Went down there, he turned around to me, and he said, How do you get your dialog so clean? And I said, it's clean. He says, I know, but how do you do it? And I said, Well, that's my little secret. And he said, Well, do you know I mixed 10 reels of dialog, pre mixes in seven hours. He said, I've never heard such clean dialog in all my life, and that that was a good credit to take being called to Pinewood to be told that
John Luton 1:38:12
very nice only, yeah, yeah,
Ernest Marsh 1:38:15
but, but, no, we did all right, but around this time, of course, you heard the first inklings of digital cinema. And I think in fact, it was Denmark, who were the very first country to go completely digital in their cinemas without not worrying about the picture quality. But we went on, we carried on. Did lots of work. And come about 1995 95 the last film, main film that I did was Michael Powell's pavlova. Anna Pavlova, a woman for all time. That was stereo we we went to town on it. It was a nice movie. It had had its world premiere at the Leicester at the Leicester, I think it was the Leicester Square theater with Princess Margaret as because she was patron of the Royal Ballet and the charity premier was in aid of the role or some ballet calls. And we did that. But in that meeting Michael Powell like that, he, at that time, was at the beginning of his relationship. Work with Thelma Shoemaker, Martin Scorsese's editor, and it was lovely to see them on a Monday morning when they just come back from the weekend. And Michael was on the telephone, dialing up, where could he go next week? But he was a lovely guy, Fred Ryan, who went to open a post office. He had told me that Michael Powell was a real bastard because he worked with him on one of the Oscar Wilde movies, and when he heard that I was getting in, because at this time, Fred Ryan had given up pensioners in Leicestershire and had gone back to come back into the studios in mercury, working for Frank Green, where I started, and he wanted that Powell film, but he didn't get it because I was in with the producer, frixos Constantine, and it came into us, but he was Fred gave me some horror stories about what Powell was like, but he actually was a lovely old man, and I've got nice pictures of me with him and the Russians and Stan pfeifferman, the sound editor, sitting at the console in Warwick. But it's also got in the shot the infamous filters that were made for me for getting rid of the background noise on dialog,
John Luton 1:41:49
the secret filter, the secret filters, yeah,
Ernest Marsh 1:41:54
but no so Warwick, I could see it Coming. And so it was decided we had a massive rent increase for a new lease. And so nine, I think, 9493 9495 we decided to pack it in and we'd find somewhere else to go, because at that time we were, we were the number one studio for Dolby Stereo optical tracks.
John Luton 1:42:30
Ernie, can I just butt in for a moment just before we leave the big sound studio in Water Street, I do remember you telling me an interesting story about a famous director who was sensitive about his name. Mr. Z
Ernest Marsh 1:42:51
Oh yes, yes, yes, yeah, a very famous director, and someone I thought was a great guy, but he didn't. He's the only person that I never got on with in the whole of my time in the film business. Fred Zimmerman, I had him in the studio one Monday morning to do some post sync with Sean Connery on his movie five days one summer. And sure, well, right? Sean had worked with him on the movie, and everything got on better with him, this, that and the other. And it was Z, this, Z, that, Fred, this. And towards the end of the session, I I turned around and he said, said something to me about what did I did? I think that the sink could be put in on a take that had been done. And I said, Fred, so, my God, something like that. It's Mr. Zimmerman to you, boy. And that was it. And he gave me grief the rest of the session, but when I went out So Sean Connery said, Well, he's a bit like that. He's a bit like that. It's like one other notorious afternoon I had in there. We were doing a movie with Billy post sync with Richard Burton and Billy Connolly for a comparison. The movie called absolution, and it bit booked in. There were three or four loops to do because they both had they were both on the loops. Billy played a tramp. And it was around a campfire, and Richard Burton was a priest, if I seem to remember. And so the first loop goes up. It's, we've got an hour and a half, I think, to do these three or four loops, which, in a normal manner of things, is you're out after half an hour, but we dealt without Billy Connolly, because Billy I'd worked with him previously at stage sound on his documentary film about Ireland big banana feet, and he was a great guy, and so we go into this loop, and they start doing it. And Bill is not very he couldn't get it, but then all of a sudden he'd go off at a tangent with a long, drawn out story about Glaswegian drunks and things like that. And because Richard Burton was in riots of laughter, and the session went on to eight o'clock in the evening, we got it eventually, but that's where someone gets carried away. And same happened with Roy Kinnear on the Michael Powell picture, he played a gardener, and the leading lady playing Anna Pavlova, her dialog to him was, tell me so and so, whatever his name was, which way is Moscow and Roy Kinnear is sort of going on like this, and all of a sudden he burst says, I don't know my dear but I should think it's put through them that third hedge on the left, because the whole theatricist bursts into laughter. And we also had Bruce Forsyth in there as well, who was another classic, not that good on sync, but, I mean, he did the job okay, but Roy used to make a joke of things. Yes, threw that hedge on the third edge on the left, but just one or two tales we slot in, like Judge Judy does,
John Luton 1:47:28
and I derailed you slightly there in your story, because you were going on to the huge rent increase that Warwick suffered, or was going to have To suffer if it stayed in the big studio. Yeah, yeah,
Ernest Marsh 1:47:43
yeah, right. Well, when we closed down 153, ward or street, most of the equipment had to be sold, but we retained the optical equipment and the console, and we managed to get hold of Brian Blamey, who the sound editor on really famous films, like clockwork orange, and that we were good friends, and he wanted to Get rid of his cutting rooms in Tyler's court, which was a rather smelly alley between ward or street and Berwick street market. So we did a deal with him, and it was basically three rooms, and the main thing was that we had to get the equipment there because we couldn't afford to not do work. But at the same time, we needed to get it tidied up. I mean, that first winter we had snow coming through the edges of the windows. I mean, it was really powerful. Then Ivor kitchen decided, and turned around to me, and he said, Well, he says, I think I'll make you redundant. And I said, why either? Then there's nothing so John Watts had already retired, I told John, and John said, Oh. He says, ignore him. So I said, Well, what should I do? So he says, Well, if you, if you want to do something to it, do it. So on the following weekend, on the Saturday, I came up from Colchester, where we were living with all my tools, and I bashed three huge holes through a breeze block wall. And. Separating these two rooms, two of the three rooms, and on the Monday morning, Iver kitchen never came in until the Wednesday because he was semi retired. On the Monday morning, I got on to the landlords, and I said, I'm doing this. Do you mind? And then say, well no, he says, you've got a lease. So I said, but it would be so nice if we could have new windows, because the snow comes through these windows, and that could potentially damage our equipment, and within six weeks, we'd got new windows in the hole at the floor. And so I didn't tell either that they were going in. I told him that they'd been and looked but when they were installed, the next time he came in after that, of course, he couldn't believe it, and he and he, by that time, I'd got holes in the walls. I'd got a false floor down where I'd got all the new cables laid in. And he said to me, he says, Well, what are you planning? Then? I says, I'm planning a modern digital studio, either. And he said, I spoke to Arthur, who was the accountant, about it, and I said, Well, we're still we haven't lost one job through what I'm doing. We're still earning money, and eventually this room is going to be really comfortable clients to be able to come in here listen to their work being done. And so he had a word with Arthur, and then I was sort of temporarily reprieved of being made redundant. But I spent just over a year Saturdays and Sundays in there building the studio I built every bit myself without any help from anyone, all the wiring, everything and when it was finished, well, you saw it, John, you saw what it was Like. People came in. They couldn't believe what we'd done. I remember
John Luton 1:52:43
it very well, only because I thought one of the most brilliant things you did, you you built a recording booth which was completely insulated from the rest of the building so there was no there was no vibration. Vibrated transmitted sound coming in. Do you
Ernest Marsh 1:52:59
know what actually sound. I probably never told you what isolated that sound from a skip in ward or street we bought out. I must have been 50 or 60 pieces of quarter inch plate glass, and they were in the walls and under the floor of that booth, just the doors and the window were were free of it. We couldn't put them in the ceiling for obvious danger reasons, but the it was well insulated, and because we came before I'd finished it, I found we got a problem with the floor above. It was a ladies toilet above. And whilst I was building it, all of a sudden, you'd hear this noise, and I then realized it was someone flushing the toilet. And it got embarrassing on occasions, so we had to sort of get it inside. We had to buy one of these false insulated ceilings. It's the only money that was spent on that whole job that cost anything. But no with that. And we did a lot of effect footsteps and things in there that was very good, doing it to the video projector in the and of course you could from the booth. The way I designed it was that people doing the post sync and everything, could see the big projected video image on the screen.
John Luton 1:54:56
I remember that it was, it was incredible how you use every square foot. Every square foot of the premises, and
Ernest Marsh 1:55:02
they will come a couple of years down the line. Iver was in failing health, and he died when he was 76 actually, and Arthur Morrison, the accountant. He inherited Ivers shares. He wouldn't give the Ivor wouldn't give them to me. Loads of people spoke to Ivor when he was ill, saying you should give Ernie the shares. But he never did. So when come 2012
the digital cinema worldwide was, I mean, we weren't getting the work for optical sound tracks, and we had the best optical digital recorder going, but we still weren't getting the so in 2011 Christmas, I said to Arthur, I think we should call it A day. And after saying, Well, I know we're still making good money, he says, he says, We've never made so much money since Warwick has been in existence. And of course, they were giving me good wages. They were also putting, I think they were putting away 500 pounds a week into a pension for me, but they so he didn't, and he should have closed it down at the end of 11, because at the end of 10, because at the end of 11, I just said to him, I says, I'm retiring, Arthur, I don't like coming in here, taking your wages, not earning enough to pay The rent. And so on the 22nd of December, 2011 Warwick closed down, and I went in. That day, Arthur came in. He gave me a paycheck, and of course, I said to them, we're closing down. You've got to make me redundant, because by that time, the redundancy laws so he was on to the solicitors, and the solicitor said, no, sorry, you've got to make him redundant. You're closing the studio down. He's not closing it down. You're closing it down. So he gave me this, he gave me a check, which he said was part of my settlement, and I think it was about 3000 pounds of it and and I said, Well, Happy Christmas. Arthur, it was three days before Christmas. He didn't say Happy Christmas. He didn't say anything. And I walked out of that place, and that was the end of my thing there. But eventually I got my redundancy money, but I then, of course, spent a lot of time installing a lot of the gear from there in Bucks film laboratories that was, which is now Sunny film London, and so I kept my fingers going halfway through 2012 but before I finish, just a few things, I want to say so tributes to people, more than anything, people that I worked with. I mean, like you, John. I first met you when you worked for Keith. So, Oh,
John Luton 1:59:29
Frank, Frank, Frank Hendricks. Frank
Ernest Marsh 1:59:33
Hendricks and his wife and we were doing DS on the end of commercials because Sandy Morgan was it? No, Peter Wingard, Oh, Peter Wingard couldn't say the word on the world's finest blade. He couldn't get the d to go through. That's right, so I went into the booth and did, and that's how. It sounded it came through the sword slashing. The sound effect of the sword slashing,
John Luton 2:00:05
you're absolutely right. And on subsequent Dubs, I had that D on a loop,
Ernest Marsh 2:00:11
yeah? Laden, sync, Ernie.
John Luton 2:00:13
Ernie Steve was like,
Ernest Marsh 2:00:15
yeah, yeah. But I mean, I talked about Fred Zimmerman and colony. I'd also like to Roy make a mention of a wonderful guy who left us a long far too early, and that was Roy self, who, along with Mervyn collard, if it Ray self, was a 3d nut, and actually shot Peter Walker's 3d sequences for his feature films that had 3d in them.
John Luton 2:00:58
I didn't know that. I remember Ray. He was a lovely guy and a tremendous film collector. Wasn't he, in his own right? They had a huge, huge collection of 16 and three and 3535
Ernest Marsh 2:01:13
and 16. Yeah. But that, of course, also takes me to one of his partners in crime, which was Bob Monkhouse. And I had a number of 14 inch Vitaphone sound on disc, film discs and the pictures. And Bob Monkhouse, he had those off of me as loans and never returned them. Also among those discs were 14 inch transcription discs for the American forces in the war and Alan gel, the jazz DJ who used to come in doing commentaries. And I showed these to them, and he took them off. He'd get them transcribed, but I never saw those again. But these are all things that you you, you sort of come up against. But then my friend and yours, Lindsay shonteff, you Jeff, a lovely, a person you couldn't want. He'd, he'd come in and he'd say, another, another jet loop there, you know? And that was, that was no What was that one that was now, sleep the brave
John Luton 2:02:45
house. Sleep the brave Yeah, Vietnam, the only Vietnam War movie shot in, beckons field. Yeah,
Ernest Marsh 2:02:51
right at the end of London Airport, in the forest, in the trees. But he went to the last movie he made, he went and he rented a ghost town in Arizona, and the movie was called gun slinger. And being Lindsay, he he couldn't, couldn't take English technicians with him, so he had to pick up what was local in Arizona. And he must have chosen the worst sound recordist of all time. I mean, I mean, also it wasn't his masterpiece, the movie itself, and to get it to run 96 minutes, he had to run the title song, which was six minutes long, three times. But he was a lovely Emerick John you cut two or three of his number one of the Secret Service. Well,
John Luton 2:03:59
I cut that, and also I edited combat. It was called Combat Zone at one time, which is the same movie, half asleep the brave and I'm pleased you mentioned Lindsay Ernie, because everything you said about him is true. He was a delightful guy. I'm probably the only, I might be the only film extra who went on my very first extra job went up to the director of the second feature. It was Lindsay, a black and white movie called run with the wind. I think it was being shot on location in Kensington, introduced myself to him and said, I don't know how I had a tremendous nerve. I just had to crack the business somehow. He was a director, and I had to talk to him, and I said to him, I want to be a director. I said, Is there any advice you can give me? And he said, Well, I can't imitate his voice the way you can. But he said something like, Well, I tell him. To do, he said, and he scribbled, took out a pen a piece of paper, scribbled his phone number down, give me a call on this number, yeah. And a few years later, say, 10 years later, I was editing one of his movies, yeah. And,
Ernest Marsh 2:05:14
of course, Elizabeth, his wife, she was lovely as well.
John Luton 2:05:18
Absolutely, was very quiet, shy person. But, and
Ernest Marsh 2:05:22
I cannot understand why any of those movies gunslinger or accepted that any of those movies you cannot buy because the spy ones were good, and now now sleep the brave that that sold very well on video cassette.
John Luton 2:05:42
I mean, what I said earlier about the only Vietnam War movie to have been shot in, beckons field. He mustn't take that comment in the wrong way. It's a very, very good movie with a great flavor of a it really, I think, inspire platoon. To be honest with you, Oliver Stone's platoon is really a big budget version of how sleep the brave
Ernest Marsh 2:06:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. And, of course, there's two names that I don't I can't leave this without mentioning Arnold Miller and Leslie Berens, the kings of the Korda documentary, they Arnold, who lived to be a very, very Good age. He go out with his ARRI ST Camera, silent 35 mil, non sync camera. And he'd shoot masses of footage, and he'd come back and then make God knows how many documentaries. And if he ran out of footage, like I on one occasion, he was in the States, he shot all these things, and he got back and he the thought of having to dupe something in the labs that was not part of Arnold's psych at all. So I remember him going down near Heathrow Airport and shooting along the motorway, then bringing it back, reversing it in the camera, and expecting people to realize that that is not the m4 because in one of his documentaries, it cuts between one shot and the other, and in between is a bit of Heathrow Airport and the m4 in reverse and out of Focus. But Warwick made a lot of money from them. I used to mix Oh, eight, eight, maybe 10 shorts a year. So, you know, we and they always paid their bills and, and that's the great thing about Michael winner, Michael always took the charges, if it was universal, or whoever the company, Michael took the charges, and it was a Michael winner check that paid the bill, a great guy, and
John Luton 2:08:40
The bills got paid, which is the bottom line, yeah,
Ernest Marsh 2:08:43
and you get other people who used to hold you up for money. One One of the dialog directors who is not who is nameless, we Warwick had to put the bailiffs onto and only when the bailiffs went near his rolls, Royce, did he pay up instantly. There are two. There were too many people like that in the business, but there were some great people. I had a great time. You've had a great time. And I think that is a catch. Yes,
John Luton 2:09:23
it's a cut. This a wrap, Ernie and but one final comment from me. You said it was a great time, and we met each other. You referred to it just now in 1967 I think something like that. I was 6768 66 or was it 66 Wow. It was a year before I
Ernest Marsh 2:09:44
thought it was at stage sound, stage sound.
John Luton 2:09:49
And it was, I was working at Frank Hendricks productions. Yeah, Frank, and here we are, 2023 and I'm. My footnote to your interview is, it's been wonderful knowing you for all those years.
Ernest Marsh 2:10:04
Absolutely, absolutely. John, yeah, and here's so the next change over.
John Luton 2:10:12
That is a wrap that's a wrap cap change over. Look for those cue dots. Do
