Gordon Hales

Roy Fowler  0:01  
The date is the 30th of may 1989. And we're at 111. Water Street. And the interview is a with a very distinguished editor, Gordon Hales. Gordon, welcome. The first question as always, is when and where you were born.

Gordon Hales  0:18  
Yes, I was born in the village of watton, in Norfolk of which I have no memory at all, because as a very young baby, we moved to Ipswich. In Suffolk. My father was a retail chemist. My mother, as was General in those days was a housewife mother. And I have a very early memory of the First World War, because quite clearly, I can remember my father opening the window in the bedroom, in which they slept and I as a baby with the role of a Zeppelin going overhead, that must mean I was no more than two years old at the time, your birth you was 1916, right? Which may or may not be surprising that a child should remember so much. And about that time, also, a rat crawls out my cott, and tried to get me I can remember the clickety click, and I must have bawled my head off because my father came up to pretend to sleep. I went to the local preparatory school which was part of the girls school, a very good school, run by the days school trust , something like that very enlightened School, where I was a junior. And my first shock was when I was summoned and told to concentrate and put my back into work. I was asked to be in a very dreamy child. And then I went to the Ipswich Preparatory School, which was the junior part of the Ipswich public school. But we were taken to the cinema but rarely our parents who both was religious I had an elder sister and a younger brother for films  that they considered a suitable to see with cheddar kitten? in the jungle, things like that. Anything dramatic, romantic and so on was forbidden to us. And during Lent, we did not go to the cinema at all. But

one would, one would go what during the day or on weekends or even in the evening.

evenings. Yes. Yeah, we were taken of course. But quite young, I started to become a cinema goer myself. We went to see films featuring the dog, Rin Tin Tin, and I went on my own. And one of my most vivid memories is being frightened by the shaping up of the air squadrons in the film Wings, which age I must have been about 10. As my whole life was an unhappy one and a disturbed one, I took refuge in the cinema. And later on, I used to spend an inordinate amount of time there seeing everything. This I think was the escape for the tensions of home life. My father was tended to be violent, though he was not an alcoholic,

Interviewer  3:58  
toward the children or towards your mother.

Gordon Hales  4:00  
Towards my mother less so towards the children, not cruelty in the sense that you read about it now. We were unwanted children, I think. And they would prefer it when I was seriously ill about six or seven. They would have preferred it if I had died. It would be in God's will. And that would mean that we were an expense of the nuisance in about 1936 when I was 20 apparently I heard a talk on the radio by Anthony Asquith about film societies presenting films that were not considered commercial for the public. I don't remember actually that but I was told this a comparatively few years ago at the 50th anniversary. History of the Film Society an event that was set of about at the National Film theatre and Ipswich itself. But I got the local principal singer? put a slide on the screen, appealing for people to support the formation of an Electric Film Society, and a few are joined. And we started in a small hole in the museum running on a 16 millimetre Kodascope projector that I owned was probably a present from my father. The first film was Warning Shadows and an early GPO documentary The Coming of the Dial. The society develops slowly and eventually the watch committee permitted performances in cinemas on a Sunday of course, there was no Sunday cinemas in those days. And these are films that were not seen in in the cinema at all. Among them was a silent films of Eisenstein in Pudobkin?. We lost the number of members because they considered we were subversive, even communist organisation our breakthrough in success was quite surprising we'd invited Mary Field. They were paid Of course, who brought her own projectionist and talked about her workers making the sequence of nature films. And the hall overflowed we had to transfer to the bigger Art Gallery in the museum to accommodate us. This really got us off the ground. And we continue to show these films and foreign films and also to invite lecturers we invited Stuart Legge. Edgar Anstey was the first Basil Wright was the second Stuart Legge and Cavalcanti. And Cavalcanti promised me that the next opportunity for a junior in the GPO Film Unit, which was part of the public relations, a very imaginative part of the public relations of the GPO, which is very good on progressive publicity. He would give me the job and as a time when the compliment allowed two juniors to be taken on he was as good as his word. And in 1938, I left London I lived in digs at  Blackheath, I was paid two pounds 10 a week and was a bit mortified that Jack Lee the other boy Jack had almost paid three pounds.

Interviewer  7:47  
Can I just backtrack in two areas. First of all, you jumped to the age of 20, you left school at

Gordon Hales  7:54  
I left school, without taking the School Certificate, I began to develop friends in my chest?, which I later discovered are psychosomatic anxiety returning to the row ridden home, I used to get them for working out the walking up the hill from church and our excellent family doctor decided I had outgrown my strength and that I must only go upstairs twice a day, once a day to go to bed and use the downstairs toilet. To which end my parents who would determine I should not contemplate going into the unstable, very possibly licentious world of the cinema

Interviewer  8:43  
was a very religious

Gordon Hales  8:47  
they were Yes, but not obsessive.

Interviewer  8:51  
Concern for your moral welfare,

Gordon Hales  8:53  
welfare. And as I now had to stay at home, I had to leave school. This is probably anxiety about the exam itself the School Certificate. Anyway, the diagnosis was physical. And so I've studied optics, going to the London School of Optics for practical work in London twice a year. And eventually, because I already passed the written part the first time around, eventually I qualified. But I was still drifting about at home. And by that time, I just develops obsessional rituals, and so used to sleep in my mother's bed. And my father came in in the middle of the night and assaulted her not violently but had sexual intercourse in the dark. I didn't know what was happening until I put the light on. I still didn't know. But that started a history of obsessional ritual protective ritual. However I qualified as an optician and then my father got me a job in the local opticians, a local opticians in Ipswich and eventually Cavalcanti was as good as his word and I went to London to which my parents did not obstruct. 

Interviewer  10:21  
How old had you been when you cease to be a movie goer and became obsessed with with film as a as a form, or even as an art?

Gordon Hales  10:29  
turning point in that was was still at school, there was a magazine called Close Up the erudite magazine which recounted the disaster of Quevieva Mexico. Eisenstein's adventure and I couldn't concentrate on anything other than that. That was probably one of the insights I had into the cultural the cinema. And the other was a screening of Streets Scene? Melville Rice's play directed by King Vidor. went to the cinema, one of them was one of these Tom was Ralph Lin, comedy, and then Streets Scene then Streets Scene was a revelation to me. I could see how bad the Tom Walls thing was, and how vital Streets Scene was, is possibly a post puberty opening up. From then on, I think I looked upon the cinema differently. And more seriously, but I still saw virtually everything which was a refuge, refuge from home.

Interviewer  11:39  
It sounds as if early on editing became a preoccupation. Is that right?

Gordon Hales  11:45  
No. As the gap of filming, and it was you were Junior, you were everybody's dog's body, you were treated like dirt  I'm a dumb, cruelly but ignored by young man who was snobbish and you're made to do anything. With the exception of the late Jack Chambers. You were assigned, he needed an assistant. And I used to do things like pushing an arrow to train?. But the unusual thing about me was that he took me as a human being. And he went off in the evening, visitors, friends, he took me with him. He was quite exceptional in that way. And he'd recently died. But he was exceptional, the other man that was humorous, gregarious and invited me to his cottage in the country for the weekend. Because I had nothing to do nothing to do and too immature a virgin and had no girlfriend. He invited me to his cottage at the in the country, those were the human beings among the people.

Interviewer  13:00  
Is there anything more? Obviously the GPO Film Unit we should look at in depth. Is there any more to say about the film societies? The London one and also the one you started in Ipswich? I'm curious. For example, what was the the subscription in Ipswich? Or any idea? No.

Gordon Hales  13:18  
No, if I said 10 shillings a season or something? It would be that sort of thing

Interviewer  13:24  
for that they'd get how many showings?

Gordon Hales  13:27  
Oh, they get shown about it when seasonally winter. I think its not all the year around, they will get about eight of you. Yeah, so essentially, is a considerable assignment, of course. And we could hire cinemas for six pounds. And remember that the picture house Burns the films were got from distributors to the London, the Film Society, which Barbara Frey was the secretary at the time. And we showed films that were not shown in Ipswich at all right now had no chance we're seeing them unlicensed, too, I presume? No, they're usually being shown often by the academies cinema I like the Jenny Emily idea of runaway classrooms I've learned. This is by the N word outgrow showing films on 16 millimetre in a small museum Hall.

Interviewer  14:32  
The authorities in quotes were very suspicious of Russian films, particularly then you mentioned before that you were all politically suspect because you ran the Eisenstein films.

Gordon Hales  14:41  
Well, why not tell the members because I went to see interest and if they were joining again said no for that reason, but all films had to be scrutinised, approved, by the watch committee,

Interviewer  14:54  
or even to a society

Gordon Hales  14:56  
just to say, yes, film like Cavanet Shaft? was looked upon as suspicion with extreme suspicion. That is implication of the comradeship of communism. And we had to get their their permission to show the programme had to be submitted to them first.

Interviewer  15:15  
Was it given reluctantly, do you remember?

Gordon Hales  15:19  
It was either given or I was questioned about I remember being questioned about Cavanet Shaft?, which they finally agreed.

Interviewer  15:29  
Do you recollect any any film being banned? They would not permit it showing?

Gordon Hales  15:36  
No, I can't explain that other than possibly took place in a hall in a museum and it was opened only to members who allowed one guest. That's the only reason I could think of I can think of but it had to be submitted to the watch committee and approved.

Interviewer  16:03  
So you went to the GPO unit in Blackheath in 1938. Right. And well, let's let's delve into those memories. You mentioned Jack Chambers, Cavalcanti was still there than obviously he was the man. He was largely Yes, 

Gordon Hales  16:20  
He was a very striking personality. Because he was, as I see, now, in hindsight, he was creative. And he could put his finger on weaknesses in the film, and put things right just like that, for that reason. Apart from his experience in Brazil, in Paris, he came from Paris. Harry, Watt was rumbustious scot, who had a flair for shooting. He couldn't edit a film. And so he relied on other people, but he had a definite flair. The other principle was Humphrey Jennings, an ex Cambridge intellectual, who was obsessed with and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Industrial Revolution is John's Seroot Kay?. But the man if you come under the spell of people, as everybody does, and when I fell under the spell was, I was assigned to a man called John Goldman, who on the outbreak of war changed his name, possibly superior anti semetic proposals. If Germany invaded to John Monk, which is M O N C K, there's John Goldman, he edited Man of Arran and came under Flowertist? spell. And he was hired by the unit to make a documentary for the Ministry of Health. commissioned by the Ministry of Health and energy, and I fell under his spell, I worship the man as well. And he taught me a tremendous amount. I was his willing slave and I felt lost when he went. He was the big influence in my life. And the other big influence. Editing wise was Reginald Deck who edited  Henry the V 

Interviewer  18:16  
as one of our greats.

Gordon Hales  18:20  
During those early days, the GPO film unit  was an official government Film Unit. and started to make films about how to wear gas masks and so on and so forth.

Interviewer  18:34  
This is still pre war, This Is War. Right? Have we exhausted those pre war years? Do you think in terms of both activity and individuals, you your own career, you were the dog's body or one of the dog's bodies? What did that entail? Was your studio based all the time or did you go out with units?

Gordon Hales  18:53  
Very seldom went out with units, but when I say a dog's body, you will assign to productions and you have the Junior Assistant and the primary influencer that say when I was lucky enough to meet the assistant assistant of John Monck, John Goldwyn, as he then was, the film was called Health for the Nation. Unfortunately, the only copy exists is on in inflammable stock, because I wanted to show that the film school

Interviewer  19:25  
videos in the archive is in the film,

Gordon Hales  19:28  
but inflammable uninsurable

Interviewer  19:33  
then what stable, do you know is it stable?

Gordon Hales  19:37  
I would think they would know how to keep it stable. Yes.

Interviewer  19:41  
Because so much is now being lost from even the searches isn't sure degeneration

Gordon Hales  19:46  
through degeneration. I cannot answer this is 1938 39. Every summer to before the London season the started the GPO film unit would present a programme of their work at the Cambridge theatre this was this was one of them

Interviewer  20:11  
at what stage now had you focused on on editing if indeed you had done that

Gordon Hales  20:17  
i hadn't one of the jobs i was given was to direct a film about an english family how they live and the working class family was engaged they weren't actual family but it was to meet Mr English at Home it was like that i was assigned to direct it

Interviewer  20:36  
right now an MRI film is it

Gordon Hales  20:39  
no still GPO

Interviewer  20:40  
but it's it was commissioned by the MRI is it war time

Gordon Hales  20:45  
i'm not clear it possibly could be we were still at Blackheath at that time i was a conscientious objector and survived the scrutiny of the tribunal i was allowed to be registered as such and was kept at the GPO unit which by then was made the Crown film `unit and possibly because of the air raids and we witnessed the first major bombing fire raid on london we had a grandstand view of it and Jack Holmes and Jack Jackson and myself as assistant were there and filmed it and i remember being scared i was of having to cross Blackheath to get back to the safety of the studio i then war was on us and we had things like dogfights overhead and the shock of seeing a pilots parachute shots of you felt earth like a stone and things like that and they may have decided it was impractical for the unit to continue there so it was moved to Denham and we were assigned a cutting room there and had screening facilities within Denham labs cutting rooms in the stables it was a very disorganised studio because they are using outbuildings it was very in fact you had to walk a long distance when we were there and good suited nominally it was practical because we were less liable to be damaged and this

Interviewer  22:39  
was early in the war

Gordon Hales  22:40  
was 40 40 41 after the blitz

Interviewer  22:47  
went over the blitz that was what september i think close forty very positive in the fall of 40 is

Gordon Hales  22:55  
where after that and then we made propaganda films instructional films one of the units went to America on the lease lend idea but the one of the biggest was Target for Tonight which is directed by Harry Watt was edited by Stuart Mcallister and i was all the others we mucked in helping working sometimes he used to work all night his book Portrait of an Invisible man mentions my personal remenicences is working all night he once worked twice all night spending the second night mostly asleep and that had to be finished by a certain date and i was one of the people that mucked in on it making joins and so on that was a considerable it made a considerable impact yes it was shown as a second feature as it were but made a note of it in fact

Interviewer  24:06  
one sidelight before we come back to the unit into films is how difficult how pleasant or unpleasant was it attempting to register as a conscientious objector was it made very difficult

Gordon Hales  24:20  
no

Interviewer  24:24  
i mean did one get sympathetic hearing

Gordon Hales  24:27  
it was it was impersonal i had no advice i didn't know that there should be any witnesses to the sincerity of my conviction if it was sincere or if i was just scared probably the latter but it was a normal sort of court in which i've made a statement how i'd refuse to join the ATC at school and so on and so forth but it was probably i wanted to escape Having to fight I've been through the medical examination and I had worked all night. So that my heart might be a suspect and they decided it was a bit but that was all trying to get out of military service. I think the conscientious objection was also and then I was kept you will kept you were directed to an extent level was directed row was kept at the Crown Film Unit and worked as an assistant and an editor a very amateur editor. So I was a quite a bit of trouble or service slow on us to get the thing out of sync on a film like Ordinary People, which Jack Holmes directed about people in the in the blitz using actual people like taxi drivers and people who have bombed out. These again were shown in cinemas the support to features I think, to maintain morale. Humphrey Jennings was also there, who was an explosive in tolerant totally inhuman person to who I was assigned at one time, or almost hysterical as a personality. 

Interviewer  26:30  
How did he work was it instinctively and intuitively or? analyst No,

Gordon Hales  26:39  
he would go out if he had to make a film about one was concerned with agriculture. Then he will go out with his favourite camera man, they had some very gifted young caravan, Jonah Jones and Henry Fal under a lesser extent Fred Gammage, he would go out, shoot his stuff and come back he was also a painter. And then he would edit it himself or if I did any editing, I was roundly abused pulling shots out of the bin. He was curiously incapable of, of forming personal relationships. Eventually, he fell off a cliff. And it may have been suicide.

Interviewer  27:25  
Really. I remember him dying. I didn't realise that it possibly killed

Gordon Hales  27:31  
him. So I say that because a psychiatrist who treated my brother I told him this once he said he was so he committed suicide. I said he couldn't communicate with people he said just like that. But nobody was here. Such I think

Interviewer  27:46  
my new note sounds a little snap judgement all

Gordon Hales  27:49  
Yes, indeed. Do you probably trying to get a setup walk backwards? backwards, backwards, and fell off?

Interviewer  28:00  
Yes, that's the way I remember it that he was trying to get a shot and you're gone. Let's talk about other people in the unit who else went to Denham? When did the unit move to Pinewood because it ended up at Pinewood did it not?

Gordon Hales  28:15  
Yes. It was after Target for Tonight because we finished that. And it may have been practical to get the services together. We were the civilian arm because the army had a film unit and the RAF had a film unit and they were there and then we will move to correspondingly with the my memory or just take it strictly as my memory. There was no feature film production there then feature film production. 

Interviewer  28:52  
We'er talking of Denham or Pinewood right Yes, yes, I think it was exclusively either storage or factory or the crown and the film units and the film units

Gordon Hales  29:03  
and army

Interviewer  29:05  
right well let's stay there briefly at Denham. Who do you remember being there was there any Feature Production that Denham when you move into indeed

Gordon Hales  29:15  
there was the 49th Parallel which David Lean took over as editor he had previously edited One of our Aircraft is Missing

Interviewer  29:30  
that came later

Gordon Hales  29:34  
there parts vs files right after and Major Barbara which was produced by the lunatic Gabriel Pascal.

Interviewer  29:46  
What do you remember of Pascal

Gordon Hales  29:48  
Well, you already saw him about or he turned up in a union meeting protests that of which. There were stories of his grotesque this flying about grotesque i would have said mentally unbalanced

Interviewer  30:03  
well charlatan i knew him quite well

Gordon Hales  30:07  
Better than i had on appaling  exhibitionist worked for a producer went for an interview with him there were two secretaries in the room at the Connaught hotel and he was pacing about dictating stark naked mad bears but after the success of Pygmalion which was a great deal due to Anthony  Asquith and David Lean who edited it and Leslie Howard

and the finding of Wendy Hiller that was a great success and then as he had the entree to show he undertook Major Barbara which was in production with David lean and Harold French as his the people who read it directly for him yes you may know maybe superflous

Interviewer  31:01  
no no no this is very valuable for me to

Gordon Hales  31:04  
photographed by Ronald Neame and this was going on i thought i was looking as dogalize this was real cinema happening we carried on with our work and then after Major Barbara was finished we will move to Pinewood the RAF and Army film units there

Interviewer  31:27  
maybe i should ask you if you have any memories of Powell and Pressburger on the 49th Parallel while that was on a lot

Gordon Hales  31:34  
no it was shot extensively in Canada and then on the stage with Laurence Olivier Leslie Howard and i don't know with  and as the submarine commander Eric Portman right no earlier i was over awed because in the canteen and so andy's with me in mind the real filmmakers we never saw stars particularly dry and going on the set was not encouraged though occasionally i went on

Interviewer  32:11  
you mentioned in your letter about Adrian Brunel that he was  at Denham around this time was it earlier because it was on the Lion has Wings which surely was just immediately at the outbreak of wars

Gordon Hales  32:24  
yes I put the Lion has wings in my letter because i had an idea that there were three directors who each did a separate sequence and i may or may not be wrong he did one right not but this was all very new to me then and i used to meet this charming man who will join us at the table a cultured man modest with amusing anecdotes he was my first experience i think of a feature filmmaker but i can't say that i got to know him but many years later comparatively recently within the last 10 or 12 years i must have seen his book and his second hand bookshop and bought it and i'd got to know lady locally and her husband was mentioned in it she visited me for some reason she spotted the book and said it's my house to house and so i gave her the book christmas she bought it it was the only proof of his existence so i knew from his autobiography about him and the very sad fact that he was taken off the Weaker Sex which he was assigned to direct i believe Leslie Howard dircted it  himself

Interviewer  33:43  
yes i'm not clear about that term the Weaker Sex there's also another one i think the Lamp Still Burns was involved in that i we better not go into that because we can't trust our memory

Gordon Hales  33:56  
no i can only say that the Lamp Still Burns which is about nurses i don't know whether it was evolved with that or not now

Interviewer  34:04  
i have a feeling he was but it's very hazy we haven't really gone into some of the other people you've so far mentioned Cavalcanti by this time had gone where to Ealing i suppose had he left the unit he went to Ealing who remains at Crown Edgar Anstey?

Gordon Hales  34:26  
No Edgar Anstey he was never at Crown he was part of something like realist film right another years altogether

Interviewer  34:34  
so whom do you remember being at Denham &  Pinewood with with the Crown Film unit

Gordon Hales  34:39  
it was at Denham and certainly Harry Watt Jack  Holmes jack holmes those were the seniors you see at the GPO the seniors were Cavalcanti Harry Watt and J B  Holmes with a lesser life hierarchy wide Humphrey Jennings, Humphrey Jennings went to Denham made a film of Lily Marlena and then to Pinewood where he embarked on his major work, and he was going to prove that he can make a synch? films, well as anybody else Fires were Started. He lusted for Ealings titled The Bells go Down, but he couldn't have it. And that was to prove to himself that he could make a synch? film properly and he could do it. And he did Harry Watt.

Interviewer  35:41  
Let me just ask you one question about Jennings. To to clear my image of him. Was he a disciplined filmmaker, with all the personality problems was he was he very purposeful and single minded about his work? And he knew in effect what he was doing, or was it chaotic? in the making,

Gordon Hales  35:58  
it was not chaotic, but I think his judgement over the film he made about Ladeechi?  was hailed was ludicrous. He would describe how he had this idea that you would never see the Germans. He was very articulate. But when I comparatively recently, about five years ago, they had a retrospective of two versions. I think, the Stewart McAllister, and this was sure I thought, Christ. what a clanger. What a mistake What a waste, waste of government's money. And an intellectual idea that would not get across to the public at all, was a waste of money.

Interviewer  36:42  
But it was very famous at the time. And perhaps if there was I don't remember all Yes, I remember it being shown with great, great reclame.

Gordon Hales  36:53  
Well, then he made his point.

Interviewer  36:55  
Yes, I think so. I was at school and the Film Society of school got a print of it, and I think we enjoyed it. But again, recollections are hazy.

Gordon Hales  37:07  
Another film I'm leaving out, that is called Men of the Light Ships. And there was an unprecedented attack, By German dive bombers on a light ship which  was strictly against the rules of war. And the film was made and they reconstructed it and they brought in a man or Rumour has it he walked in and asked for work, called David MacDonald. And he was a feature film editor of no particular note, fairly experienced. And he directed that at Blackheath.

Interviewer  37:45  
How was it made with models or with actual aircraft and

Gordon Hales  37:52  
with library material of aircraft. And the actual attack I forget how it was done. But they did a lot of shooting on an actual light ship. And Stuart McAllister, and accented with a Scotsman, because their senior film editor was ill, or something, I was given the job. And he pottered about took ages doing it but from then on, he was dedicated to working with Humphrey Jennings, and he worked with Humphrey Jennings from then on a very odd combination of totally different personalities will say, I

Interviewer  38:37  
was gonna say it seemed to work.

Gordon Hales  38:38  
Yes. Well, they were dependent on each other. And he edited later on they did a film interesting film called The Voice of Britain something like that, which was an evocation in pictures and sound have listened to Britain. Listen to Britain, that's right. They did that together. They were dependent on each other

Interviewer  39:02  
wearing Louis McAllister his eccentricities

Gordon Hales  39:06  
are named personality. He was a dear, little Scot. Very prickly but deeply kind. I worked I worked for him for a short period, as one does gets assigned to things. But he was he was buggered up by a bitch called Francis Cockburn who twisted him sexually around her little finger. She was a married lady, but she was an absolute bitch and he fell in love with her a situation she exploited. She practically he drove him to a nervous breakdown. In fact, he had to leave the unit for a while to recover

Interviewer  39:44  
was the emotional life of the unit fraught in ways like that? Well, but that was he living intensely at the time,

Gordon Hales  39:52  
or I don't know. I don't know there was I don't know if there was much sleeping together i suppose there was a certain amount Francis Cockburn would never get accounting associate with him as soon as he was fallen in love with her she treated him with great cruelty and indifference she was assigned to him as his assistant and she was a professional assistant and introduced him to things like edge numbering which he didn't know about she organised him the interesting thing about him is that he took ages to get off the ground with the rushes of Fires were Started piling up he would sit around in the cutting room and say I can't get down to it

Interviewer  40:43  
it sounds in some ways that the GPO film unit and then subsequently Crown were essentially amateur is that a fair comment in other words there was a great deal of self teaching going on

Gordon Hales  40:55  
yes

Interviewer  40:56  
right how did that affect your learning mean do you think that was a good or a bad thing devising your own ways presumably

Gordon Hales  41:07  
No that when Cavalcanti left Ian Dalrymple was brought in who was a highly professional former supervising editor of Gaumont  British and then a writer for Korda and who actually directed a film with John Mills I can't remember its title  as a feature film but he was highly professional so imposed he had professional standards and expected professional work i was fortunate and having worked with John Goldman and later on with Reginald Beck but Ian Dalrymple was was a vital focal point for professionalism

Interviewer  41:55  
was the cross fertilisation between the feature branches the feature activity and the documentary movement has been

Gordon Hales  42:03  
in the studios you mean

Interviewer  42:04  
well in the studios or with personnel was there drinking together in the bar what did they do there separately

Gordon Hales  42:14  
not that i'm aware of they may have looked upon us as a bunch of propaganda documentary stuff no i don't think so

Interviewer  42:25  
so once really way from Denham you didn't have that much contract with features at this period

Gordon Hales  42:32  
At Pinewood i don't think there weren't any feature production

Interviewer  42:35  
No we didn't there were the people there in uniforms such as the buildings and

Gordon Hales  42:41  
all the voting is very much so yes John Bolton was i think made a captain i don't know whether i have an idea that Roy Bolton was a captain in the army and he directed a film called Desert Victory

Interviewer  42:55  
right nothing to do with you

Gordon Hales  43:00  
no the army film unit

Interviewer  43:03  
question about these films which they will propaganda films and they depicted events there was an enormous amount of recreation and they seem to be real but the fact is a lot of it had been staged such as fires were started i think was was that actual footage or was that recreation

Gordon Hales  43:25  
no there was actual footage there's some sensational footage of of a gasometer being direct hit and going up to the extent that it was overexposed when a lot of it is a lot of it was stuff that was taken by members of the unit one unit or another who went down there when it was going on there's a great deal and i was reminded of this when i worked on the London Experience which was a three screen film that was presented 15 years ago because i had to find all this footage but there was another reconstruction and the first station was reconstructed in in Pinewood studios of course they were the actual firemen themselves not actors but they were doing their own jobs so they weren't called on for histrionic acting abilities

Interviewer  44:29  
you would say was legitimate that it wasn't

an histrionic

or exaggerated recreation that there was truth in it

Gordon Hales  44:37  
oh absolutely yes and i don't think Jennings or Dalrymple would have stood for anything else that was the

Interviewer  44:44  
idea it had to be real how about Target for Tonight because when  one sees that one can recognise the........................................................

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Roy Fowler  0:01  
 Here's another thing, the extent to which on Target for Tonight there was recreation.

Gordon Hales  0:09  
Yes of the interiors for example, the briefing all that sort of thing as was on the discussion between the captain of the station, the group captain and the Wing Commander, as the tactics, there was all but done with sets the GPO Film Unit had before it moved to Pinewood to Denham contracted Edward Carrick who was professional set designer. And he devised a sensational shot of a bomb actually exploded on Germany, which was taken by an audience's documentary

Interviewer  0:50  
that these people were inclined to call real people. Were they the Group Captain and

Gordon Hales  0:55  
Oh, they were real. Yes, they were. Absolutely. Picard, the squadron leader who focused on one plane. He subsequently was killed. He was the actress had an a Pickard's brother

another big undertaking was a film for which Edward G Robinson acted in about RAF training I can't. Directed by John Boulting.

Interviewer  1:31  
I think it was Roy, Roy, I think Roy did. And it was called Journey Together. Was it with the young Richard Attenborough? Firstly, Bessie Love Bessie Love. Yeah,

Gordon Hales  1:42  
I can run. Remember, I went to cinema to see it. And John Boulting was in the cinema at the same time and afterwards, he said, he just shows how ephemeral cinema is, which I thought was nonsense. It wasn't ephemeral to me at all. That was another major production at Pinewood. And that would have been done by the by the RAF Film Unit. The RAF film Unit,s  head is that chief Derek Twist, who was a senior film editor and he would have the rank of Wing Commander.

Interviewer  2:22  
Would you care to offer up your memories of these various people the Boulting twins and Derek Twist?

Gordon Hales  2:29  
Where I wasn't in that class. I wasn't a senior very well, I didn't mix with them not because they were necessarily snobbish but I didn't speak to them or get to know them

Interviewer  2:44  
didn't rank count in the in the unit

Gordon Hales  2:46  
chaos or Oh,

Interviewer  2:48  
military rank where they sticklers for military discipline

Gordon Hales  2:53  
without without the spit and polish serious? and so on and so forth. No, they knew their place because they had been trained to know their place but they were I am assuming that the noncommissioned doesn't the the ranks, obey their officers. There was no question about it. But I was not especially aware this

Interviewer  3:21  
but it wasn't particularly spit and polish, for example, in the canteen would would other ranks sit down with offices or 

Gordon Hales  3:28  
No other ranks will sit down in the canteen, the general canteen that we sat down in, so they would tend to sit together. The officers I suppose ate elsewhere, I don't quite know Ian Dalrymple used to eat` in the canteen.

Roy Fowler  3:46  
Had he been commissioned overseas? And so really Crown film, the unit was a civilian outfit, whereas the army Film Unit or the RAF Film Unit, they all had been taken into service.

Gordon Hales  4:00  
That's it. But our function was the same. The promotion of the war effort, morale and direct instruction. Yes.

Interviewer  4:14  
Looking back, what are your favourite films that you worked on that survive in your memory from that time?

Gordon Hales  4:22  
Oh, because of the influence of John Goldwyn, undoubtedly Health for the Nation. John Mancusi by that time  was scored.

Interviewer  4:31  
Was this largely a location film?

Gordon Hales  4:36  
Yes.

Interviewer  4:37  
And shooting what sync sound with people was interviews.

Gordon Hales  4:41  
Very little of that though. It was very imaginative and very imagined to re edited. He covered areas of working class was concerned with raising the standards of health working health, cleanliness and so on. But it was very imaginatively done.

Interviewer  4:59  
This was when Gordon 41

Gordon Hales  5:02  
although this was, as it was most of health commissioned by the Ministry of Health. It was finished in 1939. Earlier I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I've answered your question as to the work.

Interviewer  5:14  
Yes, yes. Yes.

Gordon Hales  5:16  
I was impressed with Target for Tonight. There's another important film I've left out that came after that called Coastal Command.

Interviewer  5:27  
Yes.

Gordon Hales  5:27  
In which again, officers and men of Coastal Command were detail drafted to report to Pinewood to act in a film. And this was an extensive presumably This was directed by JB Holmes and again took a long time because you you had to wait on other factors as your film filming commitments. Although the crews that were assigned to it were full time on it. It took a long time to make By that time, they brought in a professional film editor called Michael Gordon who cut the picture and it was finished and it's premiere it was presented at the Plaza Lower Regent street  which was a cinema on its own at the time. They even in short, in wartime circumstances succeeded having a drop curtain with the wings in the centre quite a triumph because everything was rationed

Interviewer  6:35  
very difficult to get all the materials Western Approaches was was

Gordon Hales  6:39  
oh yes Western Approaches directed by Frank Jackson. That was going on I was a bit hazy about that. That came under under Ian Dalrymple benign but very firmly guiding influence. I can't remember when it came out. I remember very little of it, it was in colour

Interviewer  7:02  
you know, three strip technicolour,

Unknown Speaker  7:06  
which was

Interviewer  7:07  
a great problem, I think for them shooting it in those conditions, but the old three strip camera

Gordon Hales  7:12  
where it was a cumbersome of course, both be expensive.

Interviewer  7:17  
What exactly are you doing now? Have you

Gordon Hales  7:21  
looking for work? Ah,

Interviewer  7:23  
so that in terms of work itself, you can't yourself an editor now or assistant editor.

Gordon Hales  7:31  
My last long term work was in 1979. Now I'm sorry,

Interviewer  7:37  
I'm still talking about that period. What was I doing will come forward Thanks

Gordon Hales  7:43  
looking for work to ride because he was what you were allowed to do. And so I couldn't leave and say I want to work in features. But I did succeed in getting the job of first assistant to Reginald Beck on Oliviers film of Heny the V which he was shooting in 1943 to 44. Now you couldn't leave your job or get in rather just like that you were directed by. So I had to go to see the senior man on the civil service. Who was originally ran the GPO film minute, who was a career civil service was necessary for the war to remain as the civil service and whatever procedure I did, I was allowed to leave and join this film which was being shot at Denhamand I became Reginald Beck's first assistant I did

Interviewer  8:47  
started when when you moved over the years we've been shooting for about a month. Now this should be very interesting your memories of Henry V,

Gordon Hales  8:56  
Well again it was another world because it was a feature film it was in colour three strip technicolour. Of course. It was an imagined imaginative adaption of Shakespeare and getting to know Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh though she wasn't acting in it. It was another world again.

Interviewer  9:21  
Reggie Back gets a credit as more than editor on that film. What, how closely was he working with Olivier?

Gordon Hales  9:29  
He was on a set. He was as a technical advisor to make sure that the Olivier shot material that cut together which is what he was there for, and he was consulted for Vivien was very good because we Shakespeare and the interpretation of Shakespeare seeing having seen a production of Henry the fifth on the stage. Subsequently many years later realise how good His interpretation was and the

Interviewer  10:03  
text adaptation to

Gordon Hales  10:05  
Yes, the text adaptation was done by an experienced film writer called Terence Young I think, was it? I think before he became a director, and I didn't realise that Alan Dent was also was a friend of theirs, and just is here from time to time and Ernie Guthrie once came and saw some of it.

Interviewer  10:28  
Were you on the set much? Or were you down down in the stables?

Gordon Hales  10:33  
No, we were actually in one of the the cutting rooms that were by the laboratories the excellent Denham laboratories. Because it was a long way to the set. But no, I was in the cutting rooms. And Reggie once let me cut a sequence. But he cut the picture. And I was his first assistant and principal business was the service even make sure the rushes are broken down and ready and was the first assistant to he also had a second assistant and a junior. Finally,

Interviewer  11:11  
how did one cut a three strip picture? What exactly were you cutting? One of the registers presumably,

Gordon Hales  11:18  
you will had for rushes of black and white print, which is what you cut

Interviewer  11:25  
off which of the negatives

Gordon Hales  11:27  
I got magentas cyan and yellow. I can't answer you technicolour would do that. It was a perfectly good print perfectly good. But on a big new set. As a check reference, a colour print was struck. But the film was edited in black and white. Later on, they ordered some colour prints, because Reggie was worried about the synchronisation and Frank Bush of technicolour was critical of he said it's very expensive is this necessary? But Reggie deemed it necessary in the production budget allowed it

Interviewer  12:07  
it was a very expensive picture for its time was it.

Gordon Hales  12:12  
probably yes, probably. It had very good it was very carefully cast. People like George Roby playing Sir John Falstaff dying, for example. Mistress Quickly ` as marvellous as a marvellous people in it.

Interviewer  12:35  
Getting great film. Marvellous. Do you remember anything about tulip itself?

Gordon Hales  12:44  
ask you the time?

Interviewer  12:46  
It's 1053. Seven minutes,

Gordon Hales  12:48  
that's fine.

Interviewer  12:49  
At what time? Do you have to be on?

Gordon Hales  12:50  
No, I have to be at the housing benefit people in Berwick Street at 12 noon. No plenty of time,

Interviewer  12:56  
okay, I don't think now. I was going to ask you about other people on Henry five. You remember. Now Reggie Beck. You mentioned briefly before GPO give us a

Gordon Hales  13:07  
lot of GPO. And I had no

Interviewer  13:09  
sorry, I beg your

Gordon Hales  13:10  
pardon. He was of the other world. We in the the other world being the world of feature. He had of course cut many films before then

Interviewer  13:23  
a thumbnail sketch of Reggie Back as you remember him

Gordon Hales  13:27  
educated, somewhat diffident. A man of absolute integrity. Very hard working. From subsequent experience of my own working and so on, I would have said not a natural gift for Film Editing. He would take a long time to arrive with a particular cut. In hindsight, I could think I could have gotten there quicker if I'd had his experience. But a man of very good judgement would never spoil a scene with by letting editing intrude.

And particularly for that reason putting he could keep editing in its place. He is one of my valued mentors. There was no vanity about I cut the picture that sort of thing. He spent when Olivier was shooting, he was always there. And I have no doubt they discussed before they shot. Right.

Interviewer  14:42  
So it probably cut very easily in that case since the editor was so involved in the shooting.

Gordon Hales  14:51  
Yes, there were no technical problems that made it impossible to cut. No, but the battle was formidable. And the battle which was thought out and quite well shot. Reggie had many goes of that, to make sure that the battle wasn't just a mess. It was in three phases the charge of the French knights and the chaos because of the most of this assault of arrows, the arrows, the the flank attack, and then the hand to hand fighting. But he laboured over that. I don't mean he got lost, but he laboured over it until they were satisfied,

Interviewer  15:42  
right. Was Olivier very noticeable in the cutting room or was Reggie Beck's province?

Gordon Hales  15:50  
No, it was Reggie Beck's  kingdom he didn't come and say I'll go through it with you on the moviola. Oh, now that sort of potential balls? No. He saw the result in the theatre. He never breathed down his name did he make changes?

Your impression? No. It's a very good question that there were changes made that there were very substantial. It was it was well shot. Well thought out. And no, comparatively few the battle. Reggie had several goes until they agreed that was the best. The only occasion which shocked me a bit. Because I was coming under Reggie's.  spell was that the actual execution define our fight and execution. The showdown between the constable of France in Henry the fifth was over deliberate. And Olivier sent for Reggie and said, Look, Reggie, this is too` deliberate too deliberate of Reggie to hit back and put it right. But the fact that he should have to do so I remember shocked me. The other thing they worked very closely on very fruitfully was was a composer William Walton, who may have been a personal friend of Olivier's anyway, stayed at his house when he was here. He lived in Rugby. And it was my business to give him music links, which I wrote out by hand or typed ig I could getget a typewriter and send them to him. And the music was recorded by conducted by Muir Matheson to a picture of course over several sections. Olivier was very impressed with this very much for his picture. You know, it's really coming Sunday, you know, now we're cooking with gas, and understandable. And he was only critical of the music that Walton wrote for the entrance of Pixel?, which he said was not brutal coarse, which Pixel? was and he rewrote that there's no animosity, he just rewrote it. It was re recorded the second time. The unusual thing happened was that the battle which had to do about work out the absolute crying next, when the sword came down for the flight of arrows, they got a good take to picture because fitting it to picture introduced for certain inhibition or musical performance. So Muir Mathieson said now then lets, go for a concert performance. And did so. And Reggie adjusted the picture to fit the concert performance. So we've got the actual maximum of fame.

Interviewer  19:25  
Was that the only instance when when the picture was adjusted?

Gordon Hales  19:29  
Yes. Oh, yes. Otherwise it was shot to the picture any case. Any case was the rhythm of the dialogue you couldn't fool about

Interviewer  19:39  
some other people on the picture Dallas Bower. Did you encounter him Dallas has created as associate producer,

Gordon Hales  19:46  
I think which he was? Yes, he was. Therefore, presumably he handled things like money matters. For the stars he was I felt a rather sad man. and who was on the sidelines and was aware he didn't amount to much

Interviewer  20:07  
i suspect it had been his project originally he'd done Henry ive on television pre war and i think he'd put up the idea and obviously it just was taken away

Gordon Hales  20:18  
i think

Interviewer  20:19  
yes i believe that but i get the same impression that he didn't really have much to do on the picture

Gordon Hales  20:26  
or he did he did whatever work he had to do but he didn't influence it wasn't consulted i thought i found him and i subsequently met him once or twice the felt rather sad man who's had a hard time of it

Interviewer  20:41  
yes

how about the front office people fully tell judy chu or god ci ??????????????????? or however you pronounce his name

Gordon Hales  20:51  
jay we need to do what he had no he didn't comment on it he didn't interfere his appearance was when the film is finished and J Arthur Rank was invited down and girl gg? made apparently have some sort of form of speech otherwise no i think he had a word with Olivier at about three quarters of the stage of production probably about okay you're spending too much money

Interviewer  21:27  
any of those pressures exert themselves in the cutting rooms

Gordon Hales  21:31  
no

we work very hard but not necessarily seven days a week we work very hard and to my memory we weren't working to an absolute to a desperate deadline for screening as we work to a desperate deadline for Target for Tonight no we worked on course technicolour the things that are now seeing an awful bind are that as the soundtrack was photographic it was subject to damage there was this business of blooping and painting neurons which is now a thing of the past is almost just the right mind a revolution the was about edexcel? sound Harry Miller was brought in what do you remember of Harry what do i know of him

Interviewer  22:37  
yeah so remember of him on the picture

Gordon Hales  22:40  
the very down to earth so go blimey probably never seen a Shakespeare film his life very professional and worked solidly hard sometimes late he had a willing fat jewish boy called Joe was his assistant who was a real assistant no Harry was a professional I got to know him on other word pictures though we never work on the same one later a professional sound editor with the curious blind spot that sound editors  have something that he doesn't see on the screen isn't necessary to synchronise for example hand to hand clang clang clang out of screen he didn't put one there that's i've observed this fault in sound editors subsequently and i used to make a fuss about the film school i not sure i was understood but professional

Interviewer  23:41  
what did he bring to Henry V

Gordon Hales  23:47  
getting the soundtracks properly laid in time to maintain the schedule

Interviewer  23:52  
did he create many of the sound do you remember I was gonna say he says the arrows are his

Gordon Hales  24:04  
the arrows was that effect was done with a series of things like that and then if you lay a series of them ( noises like swish made by mouth) it was done like that as soon as multiple tracks as a pre mix but Harry  did all that Harry  you did all that whether you had the idea for doing it like that i can't say

Interviewer  24:37  
i don't know what else to ask you about Henry V it's such an extraordinary picture i should be asking more but is there anything you can volunteer

Gordon Hales  24:45  
oh it had an extraordinary publicity the man who was brought in who proudly said he pinched the paper for the programme from the war office and the illustrations were very crude because quality printing wasn't possible and it had a slap up premiere at the Carlto  yes I went there and i believe a party afterwards which i was not  invited and of course the title beforehand which yhey devoted to the parachute regiment if

Interviewer  25:22  
i don't remember the occasion that well i do remember one of those overhead lines perfectly true when Helpman came on in that character and that make up a pre sloane voice behind me is that oh god what are they done the body anyway are you on the payroll of Two Cities or is it just for the film

Gordon Hales  25:47  
or i was hired for the film

Interviewer  25:49  
right okay then then what what happened to you after that

Gordon Hales  25:55  
then oh then i got the job of editing the Seventh Veil

Interviewer  26:04  
well that's some distance ahead isn't it

Gordon Hales  26:06  
no not that much if at all well because henry the fifth went on for quite a while no i think it was almost overlap Bob Bennett  came to Denham to see Sydney Box was the Producer and he asked Reginald Beck about me and it was fortunate he was a film editor because i was very much at sea cutting a film for the first time a feature film for the first time and he steered me through 

Interviewer  26:42  
really that was quite a sizable jump in your career it seems to me

Gordon Hales  26:50  
well from first assistant to editor it often happens i think that's the next thing

Interviewer  26:57  
which should be worked on only first assistant on H enry the fifth

Gordon Hales  27:01  
yes originally allow me to do some tiny bits of cutting while which is criticised the other he was substantially left but no that is the case

Interviewer  27:11  
which is the bit that you cut

Gordon Hales  27:13  
in any tiny exchange tiny exchange before the battle of Agincourt or not so valley is really good at solving

Interviewer  27:23  
the night before that sequence the night before

Gordon Hales  27:25  
the day battle or the day before they actually marched  tiny no  consequence he also allowed me to have a go at the battle and i made the mistake of into cutting the charge of the french knights with the preparations for which was vetoed out of hand the lighting camera was outraged intervene with his lovely tracking shot and in fact whereas you may remember the premiere that shot drew applause.

Interviewer  27:58  
that it's a very famous not that it's interesting to think it might not exist if you'd had your way

Gordon Hales  28:07  
well if i'd had my way Olivier said oh no way but

Interviewer  28:19  
let's talk about the Seventh Veil and the people involved in that

Gordon Hales  28:25  
unless again ask you what we have time

Interviewer  28:27  
now is 1110 what shall we start with Sydney well we've come to minute

Gordon Hales  28:35  
what Sydney Box was a big friendly as far as i could see man and Muriel his wife they wrote the script together they devised it i agree with arose from the researchers and success that they discovered i think it was in the RAF that a psychiatrist can break through to a pilot who seems to be in shock and has completely lost his nerve there's and  had made , made to relive the terror it was based on that revelation i think R D Lang  was one who instigated this you know they've returned from their flight they ran to buy a  drinks all round and then suddenly they collapse and they can't do it and it was making this psychiatric discovery making them relive that they've got to do it relive it and then they're all right and i think that was the original idea the germ of the idea when I arrived at Riverside the film was set to roll he operated on giving new people a chance and paying them little I was paid 10 pounds a week he gave Reginald Wye? his opportunity as a lighting camera man. And he knew that Compton Bennett, an experienced film editor would know how to shoot the picture. Compton Bennett was an inhibited Englishman. Got on alright with the artists who couldn't express himself particularly well. But the film proceeded smoothly enough.

Interviewer  30:33  
How was it regarded when when you were working on it? Did anyone have any inkling that it was going to turn out to be a sleeper?

Gordon Hales  30:40  
No. No, it was a commercial film the war was still on. There would be a market for it. I believe he suffered a near disaster with money having been withdrawn. Promises, but it's up to me at a critical stage in the production but he was able to keep going

Interviewer  31:05  
through without happened  to Sydney quite often didn't it. He would become a little precarious. Do you remember who didn't find it instead? It was at Riverside. So maybe the Shipmans had something to do with it.

Gordon Hales  31:16  
It's possible. There was also an Englishman who was clearly not a film man. They occasionally had a lunch locally, which is president who has to put money in it, put bank money which they've been promised they gather the bank wouldn't  stake them up for, which was very critical for them to keep going. But they did keep going. I finished the picture. Bob Bennett had to stand over me to get the editing, right. The thing was right, the sound recorders was a very difficult, reactionary man, George Burgess, who was a pain did not have the record. Good recordist but he was also very bureaucratic and obstructive.

Interviewer  32:06  
Let me ask you about your statement about Bennett standing over you, which sounds very diffident. I mean, what what difficulties were you encountering cutting the picture? 

Gordon Hales  32:15  
Well I was inexperienced. So it was not that it was a mess. It wasn't particularly well cut. Do you sorted this out with me bit by bit used to work at weekends with me.

Interviewer  32:34  
So that must have been considerably useful to you in those days? Yes. Just on that picture, but in terms of learning the craft. That's right. You were saying about music man?

Gordon Hales  32:48  
No, George Burgess was the was the sound recordist. He was a difficult man to deal with. And he caused a good deal of aggro through the sort of bureaucracy. The music was written by

Interviewer  33:01  
what kind of bureaucracy a union bureaucracy

Unknown Speaker  33:03  
or

Gordon Hales  33:06  
sound department of bureaucracy difficult but it needed stroking.

Interviewer  33:13  
Yes. Which is very boring.

Gordon Hales  33:15  
Yes, essentially a hugely boring man but he was the resident sound recordist head of sound at the studios said he was stuck with him. He didn't record on the floor. 

Interviewer  33:27  
An obstructionist is by the sound of him.

Gordon Hales  33:30  
Yes, yes. Could be at times 

Interviewer  33:34  
sound people are frequently have been especially in the days of optical. What else about the film? 

Gordon Hales  33:45  
Well Benjamin Frankel wrote the score, who was a very gifted it was a very professional, very effective film score.

And we mixed it and if it was neg cut a one bit through a mistake of mine was out of sync

in the married print, and they tried it out that print at two cinemas in the provinces is one at Weyouth? one at somewhere else. And it was an extraordinary experience to be to be present at a screening in which people react and laugh. Rule go sequence Houma indico sopping ????  they laughed working in a technical atmosphere. This is quite a shock. They decided to take out a marionette sequence in the film which seem to go for the audience, rightly so. And they tried it out again at another cinema and the sync was corrected it was compartively minor. And then it opened and then it opened to tremendous success but tremendous. So they're my money worries were over. The script received an Oscar received an Oscar. Compton Bennett went to Hollywood. But not before they're directed another film For Years between based on a play I think by Daphne du Maurier. And Clive Brooke acted on it in the London stage, he didn't say Michael Redgrave played the lead and Valerie Hobson. This was not a particular success. It was well made, again, Bob Bennett closely supervised my editing. And then he went to Hollywood. And then Sydney Box organised and received the Rank had regularisation that I should go to Hollywood for the good of education, really. Rank centre has an interest in Universal Studios. And we were given I was given the sum of 500 pounds who consider a song to take to the United States.

Interviewer  36:20  
This would have been when and what you know,

Gordon Hales  36:22  
after the war, of course, we went on Queen Mary with God knows how many war brides and this was, of course, shattering to the world, the scale of New York, and the friendliness and openness of Hollywood and getting to visit sets and get to know editors as they were editing the best deals of our lives. But the extraordinary thing to me, which is not necessarily the original experiences, seeing that editors worked as I did, we're not gods and had small films and so on. The effect when I came back and then was put under contract for Rank. I didn't need to have a vision anymore. I can't explain that. But the experience of Hollywood put it into perspective.

Interviewer  37:20  
I understand that because it is a revelation, I think the same thing happened to me to go to the states and see how, again, in quotes professionally things can be done is quite astonishing. You were based at Universal.

Gordon Hales  37:38  
No, I visited Universal I visited most of the studio's I had a certain amount of introductions. The Metro Goldwyn Mayer Paramount, was that them I saw some of the Chiefs but particularly I got to know the editors and was the guest stayed in the house of the assistant editor to the man directing editing the Best Years of our Lives

Interviewer  38:03  
that was at Golden Golden. Studios. How long were you there? 

Gordon Hales  38:08  
About six weeks? Two months?

Interviewer  38:12  
Because it was it was a sea change in attitude for you.

Gordon Hales  38:16  
Or which I was not aware until In other words, I didn't know what I was doing before I went but I did when I came back.

Interviewer  38:24  
Did you have any desire to stay there and be part of that mammoth operation as it then was,

Gordon Hales  38:30  
it didn't occur to me didn't occur to me  it would be possible and it wouldn't be possible because I had nothing special. I was just another film editor.

Interviewer  38:40  
So you came back and we're signed by the Rank Organisation which was what then it ?????????????

Gordon Hales  38:48  
was beginning it was now 1946 a grand could be talked into financing production in a big way. Not only got Rank Denham and as the Pinewood but as far as Sydney Box is concerned, and his sister Betty he was at Shepherds Bush in charge. And she was at Islington  I was her editor just internal work from picture to picture.

Interviewer  39:19  
I would like to ask you about Muriel your memories of Muriel whom you worked with on Seventh Veil. What What comes to mind of

Gordon Hales  39:29  
a nice woman slightly crotchety, crotchety with her husband, they later separated or divorced. Nice woman.

Not bossy or  interfering. And I have recently seen her and her husband they invited me to a party on his seventyth? birthday i was quite surprised to receive it and i had a christmas card from them last year a genuine person i say nice because i've met so much shit since the lowest of low in some people

Interviewer  40:24  
what was the symbiosis would you say between Sydney and Muriel

Gordon Hales  40:29  
i don't know it wasn't

Interviewer  40:31  
the way in which they work together what they both brought to that relationship professional relationship

Gordon Hales  40:37  
well rather than they work together i wouldn't know because it was done the script was finished i have no doubt it was a close collaboration

Interviewer  40:48  
was either one that evident on the set or in the cutting room

Gordon Hales  40:52  
never in the cutting room they left that to Bob Bennett they were on the set of great deal i think they wanted to see it working and happening

Interviewer  41:04  
and do you remember they were putting making input into the scenes

Gordon Hales  41:10  
no say observe they didn't interfere with that no they

Interviewer  41:16  
they do whatever they did they did discreetly

Gordon Hales  41:20  
they watch yeah i think they wanted to watch their treasure take place

Interviewer  41:24  
but if they had anything to say they wouldn't publicly presumably

Gordon Hales  41:28  
there was a happy it was no or no there was no friction there was no flouncing on the set Ann Todd was very much the actress demanding attention you know mollycoddling and all that

Interviewer  41:40  
and how about Mr Mason

Gordon Hales  41:43  
no what little I saw him utterly utterly professional he as is often the case he was plunged into the big scene was the first scene that was shot which he did utterley professional you know highly professional

Interviewer  42:06  
as the production the way I recorded it fitted into the Riverside very well it looks bigger than the studio it isn't it is that the the way it strikes you

Gordon Hales  42:15  
I can't no both stages one of them particularly was quite sizable no you could build me to shoot quite a respective big link to the the two stages they had a professional art director course Maurice Carter who knew what was what no i wouldn't have said

Interviewer  42:37  
i'm wrong

Gordon Hales  42:38  
i think a studio that could have operated as a film studio making sizeable productions for some time they shot Years Between there too.

Interviewer  42:52  
do you have anything special to say about Years Between it i don't think it was an important picture at the time wasn't

Gordon Hales  43:01  
it was a mistake of judgement i think on Sydney Muriel's part I don't think it was necessarily the Seventh Veil went to their heads of course it was a tremendous relief that they had made it and succeeded but it was not a subject of you hadn't got the fascination of the dropping of the Seventh Veil this was the first thing or in which the psyche was dealt with the first which is fascinating to people because we all have psyche` is i think it was a mistake of judgement the Years Between

Interviewer  43:38  
i think maybe it was the fault of the british film industry particularly that time that they went for photographed plays still with west end  west end material with west end actors with terrible RADA accents

Gordon Hales  43:50  
yet particularly presumably on the score that the plays are successful but Michael Redgrave hadn't got the sexual attraction that mike that James Mason had no nor Valerie Hobson

Interviewer  44:04  
i think we'd better knock it off change the tape no

no.............................................

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Roy Fowler  0:06  
we're on slide four we just better backtrack on that because i don't want to lose it i asked you if you thought he was a good director of actors and or actresses

Gordon Hales  0:17  
i would have said so but i can't say how much was their innate talent he had for example Irene Worth playing a key role was an immensely gifted actress i can't say how much is in innate talent and how much his skill he handled a child well in the film had a comparatively small part on Paul Massey's speaking of his homosexuality through who he may have had deep attraction though I doubt of a physical relationship he virtually discovered Paul Massey he may well have been responsible for getting Paul Massey going as an actor it's not an easy part tp play calling for violence and guilt and bafflement immaturity in the actor? i mean i've no doubt that he was very influential in that respect

Interviewer  1:19  
fairly or unfairly i'd like to suggest to you that a great many directors british directors at that stage didn't really understand how to pace the film films were very easily shot and became somewhat diffused whereas that i don't think was true of Asquith there there was a tautness about his his work of compactness i'm curious the extent to which that came from the material that he handed you in other words how would you set about cutting material that he shot

Gordon Hales  1:51  
 Well I used my judgement if he gave cover i would use my judgement as to whether to use a close up or not otherwise the organisation was the move of cameras and so on and the corresponding angles one use one's judgement as to which you favoured for which at the crucial scene in which the young man has to execute this old man Asquith considered because he did cover a good deal of the violence was too violent and he said his schedule?` that's not quite what i intended Gordon was the way he put it and so that was toned down the scene was not destroyed in sense or what was happening with the actual violence of it was taken out

Interviewer  2:54  
would did the shots that he give you more or less dictate the way they were cut had he shaped the film in the camera or did you have an lee way

Gordon Hales  3:05  
yes he should he it's a good way of putting it he shaped the film in the camera but where cover was necessary and he wanted latitude it was there and the fact that i could tone down the big scene showed that there was the extra material there

Interviewer  3:21  
so he was really expert at putting a film together

Gordon Hales  3:25  
oh yeah shooting a very experienced he knew what he was doing he was by no means one of these stage directors who cover in long shot medium and close up to make sure it's all there

Interviewer  3:37  
had rapid? on that because that was very much the the old Hollywood style wasn't it to shoot a master and medium shots over the shoulder singles

Gordon Hales  3:47  
yes i think he was very i think he was influenced by i suspect that he was such an unpleasant man i didn't keep his company more than necessary i think you're possibly influenced also by Robert Preska his camera man my conclusion as i said was that he's one of those directors who are very dependent on their key technicians

Interviewer  4:14  
i should have asked you about Preska of course just hopping back to Another Man's Poison

Gordon Hales  4:21  
yes he was the first time the only time i worked with him he kept himself to himself was not ostentatious was surprisingly because at that time he had won the Oscar for the Third Man surprisingly anxious at times to have a very early screening of rushes so at times he wasn't quite sure of himself he failed to make a very good particularly good back projection sequence for that just possibly because you've done very little of it before it wasn't ruined but it wasn't particularly good but some of his other effects are very striking he described himself quite frankly although they were shooting on location as an interior camera man hears but i think he worked very closely with Rapper Rapper could  have been homosexual himself

Interviewer  5:26  
he was doing classical was to it's interesting that so many people we've talked about where

Gordon Hales  5:33  
yes they were sort of buddys on the film but there were rows there was one disaster on the set when the water for the rain was obviously a failure and to my mind they should have not have turned the cameras they should have seen how bad it was because it was a retake several rows but it got through

Interviewer  5:55  
well coming forward again back to Anthony Asquith with anything more to say about that particular film

Gordon Hales  6:02  
no except it was a very interesting picture i've used it at the London International film school to screen it to a class of kids to talk about it though is interesting because i don't see tremendous success it had no obviously popular ingredients no but it well that was that interesting and after that Asquith asked me under the producership of Anatole de Grunwald to edit the Doctors Dilemma which was in colour with Leslie Caron and Dirk Bogarde

As the reprobate for which De Grunwald's good script the temperamental i gather somewhat prima donna Leslie Caron did not throw her weight about under director Asquith and the production went smoothly the editing went smoothly but the rift came when it came to the subject of music because Asquith of course wanted Benjamin Frankel and i think De Grunwald decided he was not commercial enough and eventually a french composer name I ought to know

Interviewer  7:35  
good measure week not only more noisia ??

Gordon Hales  7:43  
nice a frenchman who'd written a music lesson for some of Renoir's films dammit

Interviewer  7:50  
where the game would

Gordon Hales  7:52  
record he was he was he was brought in and typically i suspect of Asquith was defeated he withdrew

Interviewer  8:03  
gave up

Gordon Hales  8:04  
he did he withdrew from the production he was not present at the music recordings and he was not present at the mix he congratulated us after he had been shown the mix but very unlike Orders to Kill when he was present at everything i think he dealt with that situation by withdrawing

Interviewer  8:30  
Yes De Grunwald was one of those people who really considered the producer more important than the director in many ways did he

Gordon Hales  8:39  
yes i think so yes he was explosive basically a nice man but tended to be something of a show off without extreme exhibitionism blow up on this side of the other but you didn't interfere with Asquith so the shooting was as Asquith organised it and very well to a difficult subject adapted from a stage play very wordy but extremely well shot

Interviewer  9:15  
you mean Asquith shot it well or Preska shot it well

Gordon Hales  9:20  
he had to do you have Preska yes Preska yes

Interviewer  9:31  
So really i would suspect that your work on that was was rather limited since it was really essentially a photographed play there wasn't there wasn't much to do just cut between

Gordon Hales  9:44  
yes never did it was not a strain and it was finished smoothly on schedule

Unknown Speaker  9:53  
right

Gordon Hales  9:56  
now in between getting the odd jobs directing, which included directing one or two of the Edgar Wallace films, and then the RAF training film. I then went back to editing for force? and got a job at Pinewood editing City under the Sea a horror film directed by Jacques Turnell? with Vincent Price. Yes. Which was so so is a very nice man Jacques Turnell?

Interviewer  10:32  
How old was he at that point was an old man I

Gordon Hales  10:36  
certainly in his late 50s it is no,

Unknown Speaker  10:39  
no,

Gordon Hales  10:40  
no by no means an experienced directors you know, nice man said the editing was neat, and virtually didn't ask any alterations at all. Looking back on it comparatively recently, I think some of it is too long the underwater stuff. But they also brought in an American supervising editor which must have subconsciously put my backup. But although he was there in the library, he was brought in by the producers American money, people. I forget the names. They were partners one was Nicholson? I think there was another who has made their day by making cheap pictures. Oh,

Interviewer  11:34  
yes. A IP not not a IP. What were the Sam Markoff and then Jim Nicholson 

Gordon Hales  11:41  
That's right those two the only interesting sidelight on it is that the leading lady was Nicholson's mistress and she was no good, no particularly good as an actress but weren't having complete. Turnell's efficiently, went off on holiday saw the cut said it was neat. And then it was left for the American supervising editor who'd arrived ready to look after the interests of Markoff and Nicholson not leave it in the hands of a limey who might not know what he was doing. But he was very nice, man. And do you recall his name? No unfortunately no a` nice man. Only thing I worried about. And the only thing I wouldn't allow him to do was to or didn't want him to do it the any cutting himself with that, too childish possessiveness, childishness. And he didn't ultimately,

Interviewer  12:42  
these are the days I suppose of what would begin to be called Hollywood, England. And when so many American producers were over here for either avoiding US taxes? Because if you stayed out of the country for 18 months, you didn't pay US tax. There was also the EDI fund available and also was it? Oh, then yes, yes. Very much so until quite recently. And also, of course, costs were cheaper, were they not? So was it the usual practice to cut an American version, as well as an English version? Or

Gordon Hales  13:19  
No in my experience, it didn't rise, the film's finished. And I had as the stood, though this may be incorrect. There was also a great deal of American frozen money dollars in this country, which they could not take out, and therefore they invested in film production in this country as a means of using it.

Interviewer  13:43  
I don't know when that changed. I think it was in the 50s sometime, but you're absolutely right. Yes. He has frozen funds,

which is very useful for British production. Right. Was that the only time you work for Markoff? and Nicholson?

Gordon Hales  14:01  
Yes. They were very little seen. They came and saw it. They took themselves they were not present at the finishing of the picture. Or the mixing of the musical score. That all went professionally.

Interviewer  14:17  
Anything special to say about Jacques Turnell? He said he was a nice guy, very competent, but he had been somewhat more than that in his day. How

Gordon Hales  14:24  
do you know it is as he had had quite a reputation? I agree, particularly for Cat People the original version of this black and white horror film. And no I wouldn't said there was anything very special about him. He knew his stuff. He knew what to do. He didn't cover that much to the annoyance of the producer. But no, he knew what he was doing. He was a professional. didn't make any special impact on me. The film was a success. I think it for that type of film is professionally made. Steven Davis?  Lighting cameraman was finished at Pimewood very good special effects by a company they hired outside Pinewood of the danger of being the underwater volcano that might erupt very good, that sort of stuff. And a good professional cast John Le Mesurier in a key leading role. They knew where to spend money, but they were not extravagant and it was well organised. It was one of the few pictures in which I was hired a week early. So that the whole unit sat down for at least one day round a table and went through the script in detail to anticipate any difficulties. 

That's unusual.

It's only happened twice. Now

Interviewer  15:48  
what was the other film it happened on

Gordon Hales  15:49  
It was Frankenstein Must be Destroyed right by Terence Fisher Hammer at Elstree yes a Hammer film by them?

Interviewer  16:00  
Gordon after the undersea picture, then

Gordon Hales  16:05  
then I put in for John Mills, his film that he directed Sky Western Crooked, this script was written by his wife. It starred his daughter and a young man called I think Ian McKennon the other experienced people. The shooting on location in the north, he had me up there not to hold his hand but to make sure that things would work. That went smoothly enough, he was very, he was preoccupied a bit too much about the physical appearance of Hayley Mills  if she looked at all fat child, you would reject that take for that reason he is a bit self important. A bit dictatorial. Like some small men tend to be otherwise. Okay, it was okay as a film.

Interviewer  17:24  
Was it independent or was it was under the

Gordon Hales  17:27  
Rank and the interiors were shot at Denham. He had Carmen Dillon the advantage of Carmen Dillon as art director, right.

Interviewer  17:38  
So Denham was still operating 

Gordon Hales  17:41  
Pinewood Yes. Pinewood it was shot at Pinewood interiors of Pinewood and the editing was finished there and mixed there

Roy Fowler  17:49  
you mentioned Carmen Dillon. Strangely enough, we've been desperately trying to get in touch with her because we'd love to interview her. She lives in Hove under a married name. She seems able to find out what it is. But your Do you have memories of her at all? You just admired her work? 

Gordon Hales  18:05  
 Oh, I admired her work and life as a person and she was utterly so unpretentious and genuine. I was sorry for her for her loneliness because she was unmarried. I don't know whether she was lesbian but she seems to be married now as I understand  great A very interesting person. Then after see the Sky Western Crooked. Oh, then I got the job that was the worst was torturous in my experience was Charles Chaplin's Countess from Hong Kong.

Interviewer  18:58  
Now this should be worth a considerable amount of discussion, or am I wrong? Is it a lot to tell?

Gordon Hales  19:07  
Yes.

Interviewer  19:11  
At the beginning, then how did you get the job?

Gordon Hales  19:16  
I put in for it. I had an agent at the time for some time. And I was one of the names that was put up. I don't know why I particularly got it though for no` special quality that I might have. They needed an editor and I was interviewed by a sort of scarecrow called Epstein Gerry. Gerry Epstein, I say Scarecrow, an American style young untidy shirt. And he interviewed me and said that Chaplin would cut the picture. Well, it started I was only allowed one assistant When there was an ACTT row behind the scenes about that was very irregular. It was a lot of work. He shot not exactly extravagantly, but he shot and shot

Interviewer  20:14  
where you had you been interviewed by Chaplin? No, no. Your first encounter with him is something we must record but yes, in your in your own way. Well, no.

Gordon Hales  20:24  
I was hired by shooting started and it's my business with my assistant to get the rushes ready. And I was presenting the rushes and I've considered my duty to be at his side to take notes on set takes. He said, Oh, you're the editor. That's all. And then shooting proceeded

Interviewer  20:46  
a thumbnail sketch of Chaplin as you first encountered him.

Gordon Hales  20:51  
I first encountered him after the war in Hollywood. When I went under the Rank scheme when he was shooting Monsieur Verdoux  I didn't know that. Today's did they ever tell you that?

Interviewer  21:02  
No, no, no, no, you? Oh,

Gordon Hales  21:04  
I was sent to my VA.

Interviewer  21:06  
You talked about going to Hollywood? Yeah. Not that you'd seen Monsieur Verdoux being shot.

Gordon Hales  21:10  
No, that was one of the films I saw being shot. You get formal introductions, you know, you just can't barge in. I was introduced to them. And he was acting to see at the amount I was bitterley disappointed. Because having grown up as an earnest, student of the cinema and read Paul Rotha, and all that, you seem to be a very ordinary person, and praised indiscriminately films, British films. And I was quite disappointed in him as a person, that first impression. And later I visited and I saw him doing a scene, which was all right. And that was that at least in London, of course, I saw the film, which is all right. Do you

Interviewer  21:53  
remember the scene after all these years?

Gordon Hales  21:56  
Well, one scene he was doing, he had he gave his rose to a little girl then took off his hat in the street. That was never in the final picture. The other scene he was preparing some poisonous concoction and said And now for the experiment. He had a very experienced Hollywood director also keeping a watchful brief on the scenes he was in I forget his name be a director for many years I think directed the original Douglas Fairbanks  Robin Hood. Anyway like to be locked up,

Interviewer  22:32  
Alan Dawn? No. Well, as you say, it's probably on a on a universe somewhere

Gordon Hales  22:40  
right where he was. He was kept a watchful brief. And he said, Yes, that's okay. That's it.

Interviewer  22:47  
Now when you saw Monsieur Verdoux being shot he was on his home patch was, you know, how did he work there?

Gordon Hales  22:56  
Or it was just a small scale studio in Hollywood, his own his own profit,

Interviewer  23:01  
but he works slowly, meticulously.

Gordon Hales  23:04  
I don't know, I got to know a bit the editor who would complain ocassionally that things wouldn't match and Chaplin would say, oh, they'll never notice. But I didn't get to know the editor very well. And I couldn't. And I saw so much in Hollywood and was hungry for some of this other world is this. glistening lights, movies 1000s on do I bet very few. It was another world after austere Britain. Totally so.

Interviewer  23:36  
So really, your memories were not that favourable, or rather boring, opinionated,

Gordon Hales  23:44  
boring, yes. man socially, not denying his genius as a clown. But on a Countess of Hong Kong when he was the director and made one of his token appearance is he did two the first I was much funnier than the second and I wish he'd left the funny one at that. But he had Sophia Loren, Marlon Brando to contend with. Sophia Loren was extremely professional was in bed by 10am every night. Never socialised during the week here my

Interviewer  24:23  
10 pm hope.

Gordon Hales  24:26  
Never socialised during the week was very professional, never late, always knew her lines and was always ready and cooperative and accepted his direction without question. Even if he did take after  take for some reason it could only be in private to Chaplin Marlon Brando mumbled through the part. He was lazy. To my mind didn't put his heart into it would sometimes play a scene with the dialogue on a  napkin on the table, that sort of thing. not arrogant. I got to know him slightly not arrogant or distanct a natural person if you've got him on his own, but he took it very easily. He was Marlon Brando. And he was not particularly good. Chaplin was I found extremely naive. He did an early scene with pretty girls in a nightclub with Sophia Loren where Brando first meets her. And very ordinary I thought it was and also he was very much concerned with things both right to left and did not like shooting in depth. His camera man persuaded him to do one very good shot in normal depth, nothing extreme. He said I hate that shot and he wouldn't use it. He also this was a real bind insisted on editing the picture. And he used to shoot Monday to Friday and Saturday see all the rushes in the morning and then go home my business was to keep the rushes in order take out ng tapes of which I was not always clear because he wasn't get the rushes numbered and then ready for editing. Of course he did no editing during shooting I say of course because it has been known for Edward De Metre? when he was in England who direct during the day and ended at night. For the age apart he was obviously tired and he had his Sunday night seventyeth seventyeth birthday. On the set during shoot towards the end of shooting they made a great hoo ha the prop man even produce the little cane and bowler hat, which he refused to wear and mime he didn't do particularly well. The presentation he made no formal sincere speech, I understand from the Secretary is in fact the shy man. But he was indeed autocratic on the set very unpleasant at times was he disliked Oh yes, very much. Also rather the shooting was crummy. But he was err

Interviewer  27:32  
define crummy

Gordon Hales  27:33  
having elementary not particularly well covered. Giving no particular latitude for editing conventional, not only but conventional it is a very dull picture.

Roy Fowler  27:49  
It is.

Interviewer  27:53  
It is a total failure, sadly.

Gordon Hales  27:59  
But he cooked the rate and he knew what he was very good with Sophia around. He could direct her to do things and act it behind the camera to get her to do it. He could bring it out of her. So you can't write him off like that.

Interviewer  28:15  
But he would direct by example, was that good?

Gordon Hales  28:19  
Well, thank you, particularly when I was on a Saturday It was a silent shot when she saw her lover on the beach or things like that. And he told us to do that and encouraged her like encouraging the child to get it out of her and get it out of her head. He did.

Interviewer  28:35  
Did he perform for her so that she could copy or was it just encouragement

Gordon Hales  28:41  
in that particular case perform he acted behind the camera?

Interviewer  28:45  
Yes. Now did you do that with Brando?

Gordon Hales  28:47  
No. What little I saw shoooting with Brando no, I think he was relieved to get the shot through without Brando fluffing more than usual. Brando I think was possibly the basis of vanity,he took it very easily. He was not a late comer or anything like that or didn't throw his weight about and he socialised in the bar with the lightning cameraman. At the end of the day, he was not remote in that respect. And for his post syncing on a Saturday or a Sunday he turned out more or less on time. But he took it very easily on some other film scenes, particularly the penultimate parting of Chaplin and Sophia Loren was perfunctory. I was shocked that is that all sort of thing because you couldn't say that to Chaplin?

Interviewer  29:42  
You say that Chaplin insisted on cutting the film for himself. How did he do that?

Gordon Hales  29:47  
Literally, he cut he ran the shots on the moviola. mark them and then I physically put them together on the synchronizer because he couldn't cut in sync he couldn't cope with that but he marked the literally and very early on after one of our first Countess he did something that wouldn't cut standing over one minute marble sitting around the neck??? so i altered it to make it work he was furious said I don't want to see any more of that crap and you can take that back and put it back how it is I said but but it I will deal with that he said he was very jealous and possessive he was also old and his timing was not good and this is where confidentiality comes in I trimmed the whole film behind his back which he did not realise which he didn't realise now that's something Gerry Epstein could make a lot of money off of if he got to know that

Interviewer  30:51  
whereas it is it's a very long film and it isn't noted for the for the speed at which it plays either as it is a very laboured film and i mean with all respect to you

Gordon Hales  31:05  
yeah yes yes i didn't present it i couldn't do anything obvious i could just tighten it i did titan one sequence that in his presence and his request he said that's very good and William Hornbeck the superb key figure American for  Universal came over because it was Universal production when he saw the complete cut along with me he put the idea into my head which i wouldn't have dared  he said suppose you did trim it would he notice?

Interviewer  31:37  
what were you taking out Gordon frames

Gordon Hales  31:39  
Yes frames just having the dialogue exchanges were stopping Gerry Epstein noticed one trim to his triumph but he kept his mouth shut Gerry Epstein was a terrible sycophant he held his job he flattered Chaplin he kept Chaplin to himself and there was a danger that if a cut the picture for Chaplin which would have been the obvious thing to do Chaplin might have become more dependent on me than Epstein. Epstein Chaplin was Epstein's private property and his meal ticket

Interviewer  32:14  
yeah Epstein at this point was running the Universal production programme in England wasn't he i think

Gordon Hales  32:21  
i wasn't aware of that they had switched offices at the end of Piccadily and which he used i wasn't aware that the big shot was J Cantor Eddie Cantor's son.

Interviewer  32:35  
or maybe i'm mistaking them

Gordon Hales  32:36  
i think so

Interviewer  32:38  
because he

Gordon Hales  32:39  
was a big shot

Interviewer  32:40  
they did try some interesting pictures i think they will failed films like Charlie Bubbles for example which i adored was yes i didn't see

Gordon Hales  32:49  
 Certainly after a Countess was all over Gerry Epstein either wrote and certainly directed a film which was an utter flop for Universal but Jay Cantor was the big shot around the  and there was another bigger shot from Hollywood who came over with his wife before the premiere was present at the premiere that was a very big the biggest gun at Universal whoever that was well

Interviewer  33:16  
it might have been Julie Stein or Harry Blastfogle?

Gordon Hales  33:22  
i don't know well anyway i must go to the toilet yes okay

Interviewer  33:27  
let's stop rolling

Gordon Hales  33:28  
well we finished the one thing the element of genius in Chaplin apart from the mind there's no question about it to my mind no question whatever as a mind that he was deeply knew he was genuinely musical he understood other musical cultures and the music he wrote he wrote the tunes for like editing in sync he couldn't orchestrate so it's orchestrated for him but the tunes are his and the famous melody in Limelight is his jazz music by Charlie Chaplin

Interviewer  34:13  
and when do you know how he composed was it at a piano playing by ear

Gordon Hales  34:18  
i would think at a piano he would occasionally take a recreational break by playing on the piano in the lunch hour that may be part of the showing off

Interviewer  34:28  
did you have a piano on the set

Gordon Hales  34:29  
no no no no no there was happened to be in the theatre when rushes was playing I don't think it was especially showing off but i suspect that he the tunes the music i just can't do he will probably play on the piano and he might have been capable of scoring that but the score was written by a professional scorer and they hired not Muir Mathison which they should have done But another man who's a bit passe a poor man, a bit of a drunkard, but he did it well enough. But it was quite a shock, a pleasant shock to hear the musical score. It was tuneful. It was right for the picture romantic when needed, and so on and so forth. It was very good. And then the film was mixed and mixed to my mind too quickly

Interviewer  35:34  
were there budgetary considerations on the picture that you're aware of.

Gordon Hales  35:38  
Not that I was aware of. I was not particularly well paid. That may have been. He himself was mean,

Interviewer  35:47  
I think he was legendary, wasn't he?

Gordon Hales  35:49  
Yes. And trying to establish a rapport with him early on the first cut, I said, I bet you half a bottle of champagne. That it's not longer than so something like that. Unfortunately, I lost the bet, lost the bet and he was quite embarrassed. I didn't want to accept the champagne but there was nothing reciprocal. At the finishing of the picture altogether at the Hilton Hotel in their Trader Vic's restaurant. A formal party was given by Chaplin and his wife for all their senior technicians. And Sophia Loren, who was still in the country was there. But there was no natural give and take he wouldn't know how to.

Interviewer  36:32  
He was a remote figure as well as being an unfriendly one was he. Now was it China? so it was very arrogant.

Gordon Hales  36:40  
very arrogant references. apropos Brando about On the Waterfront and all that crap. The guy that was Oh, he lives in an ivory tower

Interviewer  36:53  
was that he was conscious of his legend. The Legend of the great genius.

Gordon Hales  37:01  
It's possible he would say a wave goodbye from his car times like royalty. It's possible.

Interviewer  37:08  
Well, he had been royalty 4050 years before Hadn't you mean in the film in the film world? Yes.

Gordon Hales  37:15  
So there was

Interviewer  37:16  
no one more important than he in silent. pictures of the late teens in the

Gordon Hales  37:21  
trial is that there was no more important I would said he was supreme in his field. Was the deadly rival I don't mean malicious of Buster Keaton.

Interviewer  37:31  
Well, I there's a handful but Chaplin is

Gordon Hales  37:35  
Douglas Fairbanks, famous author.

Interviewer  37:38  
Just to go back to the way he shot now he is old man now approaching 80 but he always worked slowly, I believe and shot a great deal of footage was a lot of that just waste.

Gordon Hales  37:53  
No, it was question of doing another take. He didn't shoot extravagantly in the sense of during the whole scene in long shot their mid shot then close up. But he was not an economical director in the sense that it could have been cut several ways a lot of the scenes. He did print quite a number of takes not less than three on a lot of shots. But there was an atmosphere of this is Chaplin almost of awe I think,

Roy Fowler  38:29  
a cathedral like atmosphere on the set.

Gordon Hales  38:32  
If not a cathedral or you know Mr. Chaplin and people refer to him as Mr. Chaplin,

Roy Fowler  38:36  
very formal. He was never Charlie to anyone.

Gordon Hales  38:38  
Well, I called him Charles and the art director called him Charlie  but Epstein was just forever psycophant who was an unpleasant man, a very unpleasant man,

Roy Fowler  38:51  
what would have happened if one of the sparks or the clapper boy, well, not the clapper boy, because they're always very well behaved. But if a lowly member of the unit called him, Charlie,

Gordon Hales  39:02  
oh, he would have taken it probably just not responded. He wouldn't have sort of tip the wings. Okay. But yeah, put your way. No, he had no, he had no social rapport, natural social report at all. If we said something and smiled. And he would smile and mechanically it was that sort of thing.

Interviewer  39:25  
The when you run the rushes with him, how would he react? What What were the points that he would make?

Gordon Hales  39:33  
He wouldn't that was the trouble. He wouldn't select takes or say anything particularly. And he was his art director had a very good art director Don Ashton, who did some lovely work for him. I've been present on the set when Don Ashton has done part of a ship. You know how Having done a colour sketch first was approval and Chaplin said oh I don't want this at all isn't what I meant that sort of cutting around completely smashed on his feet that sort of thing he used it of course it was an excellent set there was an I remember once at rushes there was a scene shot was in a hotel Brando and I said lovely shot and Chalin said I don't like green sort of nonsense went on. But he finished shooting the picture. Then put it all together.

Roy Fowler  40:38  
How did the takes get selected? What would be an average number of takes on a scene?

Gordon Hales  40:43  
 Three I would say right. Three prints. Yes. At these Saturday morning scoring screenings. He was occasion his thing one takeout which was n g and that was that selection was done up to a point in screenings. Or then he would start to cut a picture occasionally using more than one take. And he worked laboriously marking it with his grease pencil and then I took it and put it on the synchronizer it used to make fun of me to Epstein who was always there in the cutting room. For the time I took it once in a tantrum he ripped the film  off the synchronizer

Interviewer  41:24  
what who precipitated the tension?

Gordon Hales  41:29  
I can't remember, possibly spending too much time doing something.

Interviewer  41:32  
Whatever it was, it was trivial.

Gordon Hales  41:35  
Yes, it was sign of tantrum Epstein's outside of course keeps his mouth shot. He was in the cutting room it was just this laborious business 

Roy Fowler  41:45  
You make Chaplin at this stage of his career anyway sound both pathetic and monstrous.

Gordon Hales  41:52  
When you say monstrous if you get him alone, very occasionally I did in the cutting room. Because the lymphatic Epstein was always around. I have on occasion, I had a serious discussion about certain things in the thind was entirely entirely serious and natural, the real Chaplin. He was a US it's a bastard, isn't it a bastard to do which it was that sort of thing? entirely natural. But he was protected. And glorified, very protected by his wife who loved him and kept him alive. Yes. I mean, then that loving sense.

Roy Fowler  42:33  
 she was there all the time was she?

Gordon Hales  42:35  
No, but she was a great deal of time on the set. Yes. Not in the cutting room but she was around a loving wife. Yes. And they had his vivacious daughters Victoria and one other Oona who turned up the eldest. Who was very much

Roy Fowler  42:54  
Oona was the wife? Oh, no. So

Gordon Hales  42:57  
I'm sorry. Geraldine. Geraldine. Yes, she turned up she I think she was Oona's daughter. If not, somewhat like

Roy Fowler  43:05  
what she was Oona's daughter yes

Gordon Hales  43:08  
daughter from her body. I mean,

Roy Fowler  43:09  
yes. Oh, yes.

Gordon Hales  43:10  
Yes. Yes, of course. She looked like she was very attractive. She was nice and unpretentious. I got to know her slightly the the others were a couple of young monkeys is one of the fell in love with David Lee de Marlon Brando. But when we finally got to the mixing stage, they had a professional track player as an insight. I'm not going on too l ong about this.

Interviewer  43:36  
No, no, no, no, we're coming to the end of this tape. So I don't want to but we've got a minute.

Gordon Hales  43:42  
Yes, it was an insight into what he thought that everything must be perfect and that he was God. The sound editor was engaged and there was question things like ship hooters and so on. And the the sound editor said very reasonably, yes, I should get them from the library and Chaplin was said outrage. No, not at all. He was go to Southampton. And so believe it or not, we hiked off to Southampton to get sounds that we did we got perfectly well out of the library because the library isn't good enough.

Interviewer  44:15  
I think we'll stop on that..................................................................................

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Roy Fowler  0:02  
To the sixth side, probably the last. It's difficult to since you've had a low key relationship with the union, I think it's difficult to think of any more questions in that area. Do you have any knowledge of the Union currently? Do you read the journal? For example? Are you one of those who thinks that the union is far too active in a political sense rather than a trade unions sense?

Gordon Hales  0:34  
No, I read the journal but I don't read all of it. I read the more personal items. I don't think it's either less or more political than it was. I can't imagine the unit not being political. It was meant to be a contradiction. And I think that is it is sincere and not hysterical. But I think it's in a weak position. I think all unions are now with this Thatcher's contempt, generally for the union ethic.

Interviewer  1:16  
I think that's, that certainly is true. There is something which you approve

Gordon Hales  1:24  
of her content of her contempt, I very much approve of her having broken the stranglehold that the unions exerted at times, which is considered outrageous. And I would find it difficult to knuckle under to such a situation if I had to, but I would have had to.

Interviewer  1:45  
Do you think if anything, the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction in the other direction? of I would say people are not unions necessarily, but organised people now are really being emasculated having almost no power to to organise their affairs collectively. 

Gordon Hales  2:10  
No I don't think emasculated No, I think it's best to strongly and you use the word power. That was the danger in the past forever, the danger to my mind their power, they could stop work and throw big commercial enterprises into chaos and risk depression in the country. Industrial position for depression. No, not emasculated. I think

Interviewer  2:38  
Tamed

Gordon Hales  2:40  
No not veven tamed although there's a statue on there think so. I think she's very, very out of touch with with working people is quite, quite remote and her husband I suspect, they're out of touch. But I was against, for example, in support of the miners strike. And I I think I withdrew a contribution from a pretty girl who said that if she sang swam 60 lengths that they would I contribute? She was a student very nice to you and I know quite well get distantly in touch with her. And she swept for 60 days. I then discovered that they had vast sums stacked away and secret bank accounts. And I said, Look, you that's not good enough. You won't get your money.

Roy Fowler  3:40  
All right. Well, let's leave ACTT and one area that we didn't really get into in the course of the tape and that is your directorial career. You made the Glorious films and directed a few other things. How did you regard yourself as a director First of all, let me ask you what made you want to be a director.

Gordon Hales  4:10  
I suppose being a star eyed  cinemagoer as a boy. I was a compulsive cinemagoer  and to an extent it became a refuge from an  unhappy home life. I could hide in the cinema. Away from the attention of the actual my parents were very badly adjusted. But apart from that, I did see many too many films. But I was terribly attracted to it. And I was made to qualify as an optician by by parents who said I must have a qualification behind me because the cinema is too uncertain. I did that soon as an opportunity. came I one of the people who organised the Film Society I may have gone over

Interviewer  4:56  
we covered this in quite a bit

Gordon Hales  4:59  
I joined the GPO film unit but ambition is the star I'd like wanting to be a star on Broadway of a girl. Oh boy.

Roy Fowler  5:08  
 Was it other thing? Was it then the title of director? Or did you feel you had something to say to impart as as a director as a creative artist,

Gordon Hales  5:17  
Well I'd known enough, enough about the culture of the cinema, then to, to consider that the director was really the ultimate responsible. For that reason, I think not to see my  name in lights on Broadway.

Interviewer  5:39  
It wasn't that long a career as a director, and it seems not to have taken so so what what went wrong? Do you think?

Gordon Hales  5:49  
My own limitations at that time, lack of confidence, of course, no, no experience in directing actors and actresses. And an inability to develop ideas and push myself I think, at that stage, you have to have, say, a property into which you resy your hook certain properties, that sort of thing. And that was not in me as a person.

Interviewer  6:16  
Did you enjoy it being a director? who assumes that to me?

Gordon Hales  6:19  
Yes. Particularly the first one, which was the best. The Best Shot? Yes, it was exciting. Seeing what you had seen through the viewfinder and organised happening. I was also touched to an extent by the cooperativeness of the acting casts, they were not big names but my god they were good.

Interviewer  6:43  
These were the Merton Park Films.

Gordon Hales  6:44  
The Merton Park films. Yes. The documentary was interesting, because I had a good deal to do with it. In preparing it. It was done for the COI, I was hired by Pathe a man go Lionel Hoare. And doing research and visiting the stations was very interesting. And I was allowed to cut the picture myself and finish it off. It was pretty good. But again, there's no follow up. I wasn't. If you draw a picture of a Jack Greenwood. You're not put under contract, even if it's good. If you do a fixed rate, the fact that you're not put under contract,

Interviewer  6:44  
You had an agent, you said did you ever find your agent really got to work or?

Gordon Hales  7:35  
No, they very rarely. He was they were a big agent who also handled actors and actresses, they negotiated the contract, which they took 10% they may have got me one or possibly two jobs. It was usually the case of after the contract period. One job if you cut a fiction Betty Box, it was okay, you did the next one, that sort of thing.

Roy Fowler  8:07  
What, looking back now over what is it well over 50 years, almost 60 years isn't in the business, of the regrets, and also the fond memories, what was the happiest time or the happiest period of your life?

Gordon Hales  8:32  
There were just such because each film was its own life. for that period, I worked too hard at times all hours, and became totally involved with it. So each film had its own sort of little work  orbit. My regret is that I never got anywhere. To an extent I feel it's a wasted life. I felt that acutely, even talking to you.

Roy Fowler  9:05  
I'd say this, that that's a feeling shared about themselves by many, many people in this business. It's less reflection on the individual and it's far more on the way the business is organised and conducted and to some extent the people who control it. There's no loyalty or very little it's a rough business,

Gordon Hales  9:30  
But I should have foreseen this and made provision for it.

Roy Fowler  9:33  
We've referred several times to what you yourself called naivete. Is that your I think maybe naivete is one word but maybe you trusted people more than

Gordon Hales  9:47  
No, I think clearly enough because you get some absolute shits in the cinema. One film I edited we've not mentioned at all fairness, the picture called the War lover.

Interviewer  9:59  
Oh yes.

Gordon Hales  9:59  
With produced by Arthur Hornblower Jr, an American producer, very professional, as a very nice man, Philip Laycock, there was, this is why this is be confidential there was a production supervisor called Raymond Anthony who was just an intriguer. Fortunately, you very rarely meet such people, but it's a distinct shock when you discover what they liked. The film could have been much better if they'd stuck to the complete original script. But however, that was one of the very unpleasant experiences because of this intrigue

Interviewer  10:42  
iWhich manifested itself Oh, just unpleasantness or, and

Gordon Hales  10:47  
No the situation was that Hornblower was there for pre production and production. And then saw parts of the cuts and then he went away on holiday. And I edited for Philip Laycock  then Anthony car  saw his chance to move in. Then Hornblower came back some time during that period, Anthony proved  to dig himself at Colombia and advance his position. And Laycock, dishonesty was pushed out. And I was naive enough not to question this with Laycock saying what's going on here.

Interviewer  11:36  
Well, I'm sure that isn't an isolated instance, in the history of motion pictures.

Gordon Hales  11:41  
No, no, I

Interviewer  11:42  
don't. That's my point about some of the individuals were very much part of it. They lack integrity and electron? both. Well, as I say, it's not a summing up. I'll leave it. I'll leave it to you anything that you think we've omitted or that you want to enlarge upon,

Gordon Hales  12:04  
No just, I think partly a wasted life.

Roy Fowler  12:15  
That's sad to say that it's true. I'm not sure mine was any less wasted. In that sense, you know,

Gordon Hales  12:27  
You're much younger than I

Interviewer  12:29  
Well, my working days, I suspect..............................................................................................

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