To eat, drink and, as Al Burnett would say, ‘Make Merry.’
MONDAY, 18 JUNE
A great weekend. On Friday night I told all the girls about my job. They were very impressed and I succeeded in getting Yvonne into bed at last. She is tough as an alley cat on the surface but quite scared underneath – like an alley cat is, I suppose. She is really too moody for me, but she was just the company I needed to stop me getting big-headed. After all, I’m not exactly going to direct MM in a movie yet.
I had quite a hangover on Saturday, but I spent Sunday sleeping in the garden and today I felt really good.
This morning Mr P gave me quite a cheerful, for him, ‘Hello Colin,’ when he came in. Mind you, if you didn’t know him, you’d have thought he was going to a funeral. He must have a wardrobe full of the same clothes as he never varies what he wears, day by day. Brown tweed suit, dark brown shoes, pale brown shirt, brown tie etc. Gilman said he’d never ever seen him in anything else. (There is a Mrs P. I wonder what she thinks?) After a bit, Mr P called me into the office.
‘You might as well know everything we are doing if you are to be any use.’
He showed me a huge squared-off sheet of paper, covered in columns and names and shaded squares.
This is really Mr P’s pride and joy, his chef d’oeuvre, his bible. It is called a cross-plot. It has been cunningly worked out so that Pinewood’s studios A and B can be alternated, with different ‘sets’ being built on one stage while the other was being used for filming.
To get the most out of each set the film is not shot in chronological order. If there is a scene in a particular room at the beginning of the story and another scene at the end in the same room, then they will both be filmed together. This is especially hard for film actors who have to develop a character in fits and starts.
The major actors also have to be fitted into the cross-plot so that we get the most out of them in the shortest time. Dame Sybil Thorndike,11 for instance, is going to play Sir Laurence’s mother-in-law (no more ‘Larry’ now that I’m officially working for him). But she is also booked for a West End stage play, so all her scenes have to be shot first if possible and most should be finished before the play begins. (Some of her scenes need special effects and these can be put in later.) SLO12 and MM and Richard Wattis13 are in virtually all the scenes so they don’t influence the cross-plot much.
MM has a terrible reputation for being late on the set, and not turning up at all on some days. Mr P has scheduled her to do all her scenes first with a long list of alternate shots, cutaways and reactions which can be put in at short notice if MM is not available.
‘What happens if shooting gets a week behind? The whole plan will collapse.’
Mr P grinned a Machiavellian grin and pulled out a second sheet and a third.
‘We just switch sheets. Warner Bros will never know.’
I gather that Warner Bros is lending LOP and MMP the money to make the film. Already I hear Mr P say: ‘Charge it to MMP’ pretty frequently. I wonder if MMP is MM herself, or a group of people backing her.
I don’t dare ask anything about MM. It seems in bad taste, like asking about childbirth. Anyway my job is to be preparing for MM’s arrival. Police, press, chauffeur, bodyguard, servants, redecorations, everything to delight her eye and soothe her nerves. She must be a very difficult lady. I can’t believe anyone is so unreasonable and silly, that they have to be spoiled so much. What would Nanny have said?
TUESDAY, 19 JUNE
Six weeks until filming starts and a lot to prepare. Mr P depends on me a lot now but of course he won’t need me at all when it does. Today a David Orton came in, and Mr P warned me that on him my future in the production would depend. He is going to be 1st Assistant Director. This does not mean SLO’s assistant (SLO being the director), but the man in charge of seeing that everyone in the studio does what they are told.
‘He’s a sort of sergeant major,’ explained Mr P.
This didn’t sound very attractive and I can’t say I liked him at all. Blondish-mousy hair, a thin face and glasses which he is forever pushing up onto the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. He did not take to me either:
‘Have you worked on a film before?’
‘No.’
‘Then forget it. If you haven’t made a film already then you aren’t in the union, and there is no way in which you can work on a film, in any capacity.’
Very funny! It seems the union is the ACT, the Association of Cinematograph Technicians, and they are a famous ‘closed shop’. (No card, no film; no film, no card.)
So Mr Orton advised me to stay in Mr P’s office. This is very disappointing. Mr P has already told me I can’t stay in his office after production begins. And anyway I want to be a film director, not producer.
Mr P cheered me up by telling me to go down to see Diana Dors’14 house tomorrow. It is somewhere near Ascot or maybe Henley. I’ve only got the phone number so far. Her agent has learned that MM is looking for something for the summer and thinks it might be good publicity if they could swap houses. Of course we already have two houses, for MM and her manager, but I suppose some other creeps like APJ might arrive from America so I’ll go and look.
Diana Dors always seems very sexy, even if extremely common. A bit of a tart.
WEDNESDAY, 20 JUNE
Diana Dors is divine. She’s as vulgar and cheeky as I imagined from her films, but with a hilarious sense of humour. She never stops cracking jokes and telling stories. Her conversations peppered with F—s and C—s.
Her house is near the river, although I couldn’t see it, as she has a huge indoor pool. She and a starlet friend were sitting by the pool in bikinis when I arrived. DD is smaller than you would think in real life. I suppose the camera exaggerates her on purpose. She is quite a pretty girl, and her friend was even prettier but not so vivacious. DD could not care less about the house swap but she did want to hear about MM. It was quite a let-down when I was forced to admit that I hadn’t met MM yet. DD got bored very quickly, so to liven things up she and her friend both took off their bikini tops and jumped into the pool. That got my attention all right. There were two workmen hammering at something at the far end and their eyes stood out like organ stops. They just downed tools and stared.
Both girls have beautiful, quite small breasts but I must admit that they were so brazen that I was more embarrassed than rapacious. They must have been on the game together in the old days, is my guess.
The house is much too small for MM or her retinue, and has no class at all. With this film, MM is trying to go up in the world, not down. So I left silently and reported back to Mr P. He just chuckled. He hates film stars really.
THURSDAY, 21 JUNE
Thank goodness, I was completely wrong about David Orton. Underneath that severe exterior he is a very nice man. He is just awkward with people until he knows them.
He is married to a pretty, jolly make-up girl called Penny, who picked him up this evening. His world is the film studio, where he is in charge of course, and he is very experienced. He gave me a long explanation about how film studios work. Like in every job, there is a hierarchy which is very important. This is true in each department – the lighting cameraman is head of one group, and pretty much above everyone except the director, the designer has his crew – set-dressers, down to chippies (carpenters); there is wardrobe, make-up, film editing etc., each with their own structure. The Director has an Associate Director, but his right-hand man is the 1st Assistant Director – David in our case.
The lowest of the low is the 3rd Assistant Director who is known as a ‘gofer’.