‘I had to take some scripts and captions down to an OB unit’ says Paula Westbury. ‘I was sitting on the bus minding my own business when a mother and her daughter of about 18 behind me started talking about an article in that morning’s Daily Telegraph. It was about being a PA. “I think I’d rather like to be a PA – it sounds a nice job,” commented the girl. ‘No,” replied the mother immediately, “you don’t know what they did to get there”.’

Well, whatever they might do to get there, Fusion thought it might be interesting to find out some of the things which happen to them once they are there. This article by Julia Helps is based on a random series of interviews with the production assistants of Rediffusion Television.

Drawings by Maureen Roffey.

Scene: a continental nightclub after a hard day’s filming …

One member of the team quietly asks Marjorie Graham up to his room for champagne later that night – champagne which he has on ice in the bath. ‘He was showing off a little, so I decided to teach him a lesson by accepting.’ Later, as planned, she knocks at his bedroom door, clutching her toothmug. ‘He welcomed me. Then he saw the rest of the unit behind me, carrying their toothmugs. I must say, the champagne was excellent.’

Scene: Television House …

Marjorie is told she is going to Vatican City and that the team will probably meet the Pope. Cyril Bennett, then head of features, warns her to get a ‘Vatican Dress’. ‘I searched London for a dark, demure dress, and finally came up with the very thing,’ she recalls. ‘‘It was navy-blue cotton with a high neck and buttons down the front and it had a belt and long sleeves’ She returns to the features office wearing it and terribly pleased with herself. There is now no time to change it before leaving England. Faces fall. ‘Your Vatican dress,’ gasps Cyril, ‘it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.’

Scene: The American deep South …

Marjorie discovers that the State is dry. No liquor can be bought. The American unit insists that they have to have a drink,. The nearest place to get one is in the next State. A wealthy student who has attached himself to the unit helpfully offers to drive 200 miles in his Thunderbird to get some. Marjorie insists on going with him. They return some hours later with cases of whisky and beer. ‘The only reason I had gone was because I was sure he would forget the beer. I needed it to wash my hair.’

Scene: St Benedicts Abbey, Ealing …

Ruth Tester is told there are strict laws about exactly how far into the Abbey a woman can go. ‘They said punishment for the monks would be excommunication. I didn’t want to get all those kind monks excommunicated and I was so worried that I might overstep the mark. The crunch came, though, when I had to spend 6d to spend a penny. I had to take a 6d bus ride to Ealing Broadway.’

Scene: The South of France for ‘Riviera Police’ …

At the weekend part of the unit decides to go to a nearby island for a day’s water-skiing. ‘I went along for the ride,’ says non-swimmer Erika Klausner. ‘Seven of us piled into a little fibre-glass boat.’ Then the Mistral blows up. The boat starts shipping water badly. ‘Someone later said I looked a bit scared,’ says Erika. ‘A bit scared – I was nearly hysterical.’ Luckily they are near where H.M.S. Carisford is anchored on a goodwill visit. ‘They rescued four of us and fed us food and drinks in the wardroom – very much needed.’

Scene: Agadir for ‘Crane’ …

‘Another thing that happened to emphasise the point that salt water never brings me good luck,’ she continues, ‘took place in Agadir just after the earthquake.’ All are transferring from a small fibreglass boat (again) to a yacht. There is a moment when each is poised between both boats – rather like a minor Colossus of Rhodes. There is a swell and one larger wave than usual rolls along. ‘I lifted one foot from the little boat and put it down again – straight onto a rowlock. It went right through my foot.’ Erika is rushed to a clinic where nobody speaks English, though the doctor knows some French. Everyone smiles sweetly and carries her into the operating theatre. The doctor smiles again, picks up a needle and just sews up the gaping wound without an anaesthetic. ‘None of that stiff British reserve for me – I yelled the place down.’ Ruefully she adds: ‘The pay-off came when somebody said – not at all nastily – “and we’ve lost an afternoon’s filming”.’

Scene: Eastbourne …

‘The Story of John Logie Baird’ is being filmed. Somebody decides that a shot of seagulls swooping down is needed. Naturally no seagulls are to be seen. Vicki Miller is sent to buy some raw fish. ‘I sliced them up, then ran along the front, throwing bits of fish behind me. Hundreds of seagulls appeared. I had to run faster and faster until I was flat out, as the seagulls were really dive-bombing me. I don’t know when I’ve been so scared or when I have run so fast.’

Scene: The men’s Turkish baths in Jermyn Street for a live ‘ Here and Now’ …

‘Being a coward, I asked for a female vision mixer,’ says Nona Richards, ‘but I didn’t get one, so I was the only woman there. In a quiet moment, Geoffrey Hughes, director, leaps out of the scanner for a quick bath. ‘He left me in charge of his shirt.’ Tim Brinton, the commentator, is supposed to strip off and dive into the water at the end of his piece. All goes according to plan.

‘The shot that went out was fine – but you should have seen the pictures on the other cameras. It was incredibly funny.’

Scene: A ‘Here and Now’ from a dog sanctuary in Surrey …

Myra Hersh recalls: ‘Neither Daphne Shadwell, my director, or I had done an OB before. Our first problem was how to get into the scanner. Both of us were in tight skirts and high-heeled shoes. The one and only step was about two-foot high. The crew thought it was a great joke. Finally someone brought a box.’ Just before the recording, a terrific thunderstorm breaks. Both Myra and Daphne are terrified of thunder. ‘There we were, trying to do the programme and hide under something at the same time. It wasn’t our day.’

Scene: Canada for an Intertel …

Mary Horwood and researcher Stacey Waddy want to get back to the hotel to see the rushes of that day’s filming. It is the day of the East Coast power cut. They try buses, tubes, trams and even hitching. ‘We were so worried about being late for the rushes.’ They walk in pitch darkness through the lampless streets of Toronto. Finally they get to the hotel. ‘It hadn’t dawned on either of us during our frantic dashes that the power cut would stop the rushes being shown as well.’

The post It happened like this… appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

‘The yellow submarine is like an information-cum-lost-persons-cum-marriage-cum-personnel office.’ So says Mrs Peggy Davidson, manager of production in Ray Dicks’ section about her yellow-painted office on a corner of the fourth floor – like a submarine, it has no view.

Peggy Davidson’s job is to assign teams of directors, PAs and stage managers to programmes and allocate the rehearsal rooms. It sounds simple but working with creative people sometimes presents problems and in particular the problem of personalities.

‘Some people don’t like working with others, some people work better on a certain kind of programme and some haven’t the ability to do what they want,’ says Peggy Davidson. ‘All this has to be taken into account when considering a team for a programme. When I started this job, I was very worried about matching people up, and found that all my best ideas seemed to come in the middle of the night. The answer was to keep a pencil and notepad by my bed, and when I woke up shouting “Of course – put her with him” I would jot it down immediately. I’ve still got a notebook by my bed, but it’s only used in moments of great stress.’

The manager of production’s job has changed a lot over the past four years. In 1965, Peggy Davidson had 40 staff directors and brought in perhaps a dozen freelancers for specific assignments over a year. Now there are 22 staff directors and the rest, over half, are contracted. This involves much work as there are agents to be contacted, contracts to be negotiated and fees to be arranged and the whole to be passed by the controller of production, Ray Dicks. The position of PAs has also changed during this time. All PAs are on the staff and must be kept working all the time. ‘The days of a durable partnership between a director and a PA are going to become rare,’ says Peggy Davidson.

To keep them busy PAs must now be moved from one director to another. This means matching them with a book showing what a director is doing at any time and when he will be free or available for a programme. There are also minor problems like making sure that the contract directors have offices, that PAs have stop watches and that programmes have rehearsal rooms. The number of rehearsal rooms at Television House are dwindling as they are converted into offices. Part of Peggy Davidson’s job is to find new rooms outside, which means more negotiations. This can sometimes produce unexpected complications like: ‘You can have the room all week except Thursday afternoon when we have our jumble sale’.

Theoretically, once the members of the unit are selected Peggy Davidson’s responsibility towards that programme ceases. In fact it doesn’t, because her office (known to the inmates as the Yellow Submarine and to outsiders as Ray’s Aviary) is a clearing house of information concerning the whereabouts of people, the availability of freelancers and general problems.

‘The job has developed a great deal over the past four years,’ continues Peggy Davidson. ‘I think one of the biggest changes has been the advent of producers. When I started, there were really only two – one for “No Hiding Place” and one for “This Week”. Now there seems to be one for almost every programme. It makes the job more complicated, because there is one extra channel to go through. Setting up a show used to involve the head of a section and his manager, but now there is a third person to cater for – the producer. All three have their own ideas, their own preferences and their own dislikes. Matched up with the creative ability of directors, plus the opinions of the PAs and SMs, one has an awful lot of combinations to play with.’

The job of being a director, a PA or an SM are among the most sought-after in television. Peggy Davidson sees on average three would-be SMs and a PA each week. ‘They go onto a waiting list or my files,’ she says. ‘I also see directors and arrange for Ray Dicks to interview them too. SMs are usually trained when they come, as are directors, but PAs are more often trained with Rediffusion. ‘We have a board of PAs to help select the girls – but vacancies are few and far between. They are in all three jobs.’ Peggy Davidson is an ex-PA herself. She joined Rediffusion in 1955 and after two years went to Canada. She returned in 1959, worked on ‘Hippodrome’ and the following year went into advertising. At Stella Ashley’s request she returned, for the second time, in 1962 and worked on ‘The Somerset Maugham Hour’ series. Then she took over from James Butler who had been manager of production for three months on a temporary basis. ‘It’s the longest I have ever been in one job,’ she says. ‘I love dealing with people and this job involves a great deal of it.

‘Our humorous and tragic moments come and go,’ concludes Peggy Davidson. ‘Usually they are of the moment, and are neither funny nor important by the following week. The one that does stand out in my memory though was a director announcing he would interview all the SMs before deciding which one he wanted to work with. He so floored me that I let him see four and choose his own. It’s never been done before or since.’

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‘When I first saw this letter with “from the Prime Minister” on the front and “10 Downing Street” on the back, my first reaction was that it would be excellent for props. So I put it in my pocket and never opened it for a couple of hours. Then I read that I had been awarded a BEM and thought someone had been to a lot of trouble to play a practical joke.’

But it was no joke. Len Fraser, production buyer, was awarded the BEM in the New Year Honours List.

Len Fraser has always been connected with show business in some way – his father sold instruments and records in Canada, where Len was born. The family moved to Glasgow when he was seven and his first steps on the stage came some five years later with Sunday school shows. ‘Something went wrong backstage. I was sent out front to pad, so I did a shuffle-dance for some seven minutes.’ Len Fraser grins: ‘It was a hit – I did it for the rest of the week.’

After leaving school, he worked at a petrol station then became a chorus boy at the Pavilion, Glasgow. ‘We were on twice nightly, singing and dancing with rehearsals every morning. I received the princely sum of 25s. a week [£1.25 in decimal – Ed] – well up on what I’d been getting before,’ he says. In the meantime, Len Fraser had joined a concert party which put on shows for charity. They would rehearse and perform in the afternoon and occasionally there would be another performance at a dinner-dance after the show.

Then came stooging in a pantomime and working up a solo act involving patter and dancing. He toured Scotland and England and made trips to Ireland. The war took him into the RAF as a LAC [leading aircraftman] and within three weeks of joining, he had organised entertainment for the camp, including the recruitment of a five-piece line-up which played dance music and jazz – one of Len’s great loves.

In 1942 he was medically discharged from the RAF and started work in a large factory. ‘After six weeks I went to the management and nagged. Finally they told me to go ahead and organise some entertainment. Yes, I could have the canteen, which was enormous, about four times the size of the Wembley one. Massive auditions. I got a five-piece group, comedians, singers, instrumentalists and dancers, and every Friday lunch-time we put on a show.’

There was also a ‘Comforts’ Fund’ with which Len Fraser was concerned. Shows were mounted for a minimum charge or a collection and the money spent on comforts for the troops.

‘After the war, I caught the first train south I could and battled to get back into the business. I was an extra in about eight films. Then came Ralph Reader’s Gang Show for 14 months. I did everything with them. At one point I had 21 costume changes in a night. I used to start off with four layers of clothing on and just strip down.’ He was band manager with Leslie Jiver Hutchinson and His All-Coloured Orchestra, which took him to Belgium and France. ‘In England I was appalled at the amount of colour-bar I met up with,’ says Len Fraser. ‘One night I had managed to get rooms for eight of the 14 members and had to appeal on stage for beds for the other six.’

Next there was a year as entertainment manager in Exmouth. This involved, among other things, running the restaurant and organising baby and beauty shows.

‘After this I was with Linnett and Dunfee, the impressarios, for five years,’ says Len Fraser. ‘It gave me my worst moment ever. Opening night with the first eight rows of the stalls packed with all the “big-wigs” of show business. On the set as the first scene faded to black, I had to whip out and put in seven period props for seven modern ones. The idea was that the light faded up again and lo! a period set – enter the star. But the stage manager switched on the lights instead of fading them up. I dropped like the proverbial duck behind a settee amidst a roar of laughter from the audience. I was clearly visible underneath and couldn’t escape. But worse was to come. The star, who couldn’t see properly without his glasses, walked straight into me and fell into the footlights. The audience was nearly hysterical.’

After Linnett and Dunfee, Len Fraser spent a short time with H. M. Tennent and then five years with Jack Hylton’s ‘Crazy Show’ as stage manager and on props. On August 20, 1955, he finished ‘Kismet’ at the old Stoll Theatre (now demolished) in Kings way. He walked across the road and on August 22 started with Associated-Rediffusion as a setting assistant. ‘I became property master the following January,’ says Len, ‘and moved into production buying in November, 1961.

‘Yes, I still do a lot of charity work, mostly for old age pensioners, prisons and the Star and Garter Homes for the disabled.

‘I always have a ball on these occasions. Sometimes, though rarely luckily, things do go wrong, like the show we did in front of some WVS girls. Two top-line Americans were coming down and bringing a girl dancer with them. All went well, I introduced her dance of the seven veils, and to my horror she started removing them one by one until she ended up in her G-string – to the joy of the ex-servicemen and the horror of the mayor, his wife and the WVS. Still, I have been back.’

He’s been back to quite a few other places, too, time and time again.

Julia Helps

Bryn Siddall, senior production buyer, adds:

‘Possibly I have worked closer to him than anyone else in the company and, during the last 12 years, he has been more than just a colleague. Anyone who was in contact with him while he was property master will remember his almost legendary devotion, not only to his own department, but to the studio in general. Len seemed to have a finger in every pie and his apparently limitless theatrical knowledge was available to anyone who needed it. Animals, musical instruments, trick effects all benefited from his interest.

‘When, four years ago, he joined the buying department, he was able to give full rein to his imagination. There is yet to be a “prop” which he has failed to track down, and he pursues the elusive with the tenacity of a Highland terrier. It seems that at last Len has found his ideal niche and with his almost insatiable curiosity, old world courtesy and dry sense of humour, he has become a favourite of our suppliers. His friends, especially those with children, find his generosity unlimited.

‘Len never mentions his work for charity, but by picking up the odd scrap here and there one can see that he gets a terrific kick out of bringing enjoyment to others. Over the years he has provided entertainment at hospitals and prisons, and all with his boundless energy. Normally one would have to read one’s own obituary to see what people really think. To judge from the amount of mail he has received after the award, Len has proved the exception.

‘He received the news of the award in his usual calm, unflappable manner, and his only comment was that so many people deserved the honour more. Possibly us, his friends and colleagues, can assure him that we disagree.’

The post Len Fraser BEM appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

If a doodle-bug had cut out two seconds earlier, perhaps Robert Taylor’s trousers would never have become covered in distemper when he was filming ‘A Yank at Oxford’.

The man who put the distemper on the trousers was in a train the doodle-bug would have hit. He is Bill Bolton, a scenic painter at Wembley, and those two events are just two episodes from a pretty varied life in show business.

Bill is a Londoner, born in Marylebone at the turn of the century. He did a four year apprenticeship before taking up the tools of a house decorator. ‘I was a member of a working man’s club at St James’,’ says Bill Bolton, ‘and we used to meet a lot of people there who made a bit more money by working at a theatre in the evening. I liked the idea of show business, so I did it too – and I have been connected with it ever since’.

‘Doing shows’ meant working behind the scenes as prop man, stage hand or flier man, depending on which was needed. The rates were 3s 9d a show, going up to 4s. ‘I worked in all the West End theatres except His Majesty’s, the Haymarket and the Opera House,’ recalls Bill with a grin. ‘I never could make them’.

One of the shows he remembers best is ‘Jill Darling’ with Francis Day and Arthur Riscoe starring and John Mills as the second lead dancer.

‘Francis Day liked jokes. Many’s the time we sat around telling her stories and sometimes she’d give us five bob for the best one of the evening. But things have changed a lot since then’. “Then’, he said waving an admonishing finger, ‘we weren’t so used to young ladies being scantily dressed. In “Jill Darling”, Miss Day had to make a couple of very swift changes, and used to brush past us on the way back to the stage very scantily clad – I was most embarrassed,’ then musingly, ‘wonder if I would be now?’

Early in the 30’s, Bill Bolton moved to films when he heard that they needed painters. ‘It was very different then from today. We’d do our day’s work, which was sometimes only a few hours, and leave. Next morning we’d queue for more work. There were days when I was so broke that I’d walk back from Elstree to Tottenham Court Road, where I lived. But I liked the atmosphere – it was varied. I preferred it to the theatre’.

Bill Bolton then worked on about 50 pictures, including several with Anna Neagle and Herbert Wilcox. ‘He was superstitious. He’d start his pictures on the Friday nearest the 13th of the month. He said it’d bring good luck! Bill smiled. ‘Before each film, he’d come round, find out who everyone was behind the scenes and shake them by the hand. And at the end of the film there was an extra little envelope waiting for us. He and Miss Neagle are two of the finest show business people’.

Errol Flynn was another of Bill’s favourites. He worked with Herbert Wilcox and Anna Neagle on ‘Waltz Time’, a lot of which was filmed in Barcelona. ‘Errol Flynn loved publicity of any kind, but I think half the stories printed about him weren’t true. He was a considerate man, full of jokes and fun – a great loss to the film industry’.

The unit spent the first 10 days of their 12 weeks in Barcelona without work permits, and on limited cash. ‘We had £5 a week – that’s all we were allowed to take out of England. We were very broke, and the director and stars were in the same boat.

“The Spanish people who were working with us had a different life – they had lunch of bread and fish and wine while sitting on the pavement. Meanwhile the unit went off and ate in good restaurants. I found it most embarrassing,’ frowned Bill. ‘So we requested the same facilities for them as we had – and got them too. It was tragic – some of them had never seen butter before, and wrapped it up carefully to take home to their children’.

During the war, Bill Bolton worked at Denham Studios. He was not called up because the work at the studios was considered to be of national importance. He was, however, accepted as a rear-gunner with the RAF until the studios got him exempted. Among the films he worked on was ‘In Which We Serve’. This meant building a full-scale model of the destroyer HMS Kelly. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came down to see the set, together with Lord Mountbatten. ‘It was a wonderful set and they were most impressed. The bows had to be built in another studio, she was so big,’ recalls Bill Bolton. “The difference between film and television sets is that the film ones were built to last. They might have had to stand for several months on end, whereas the television ones have shorter lives. Also the pace wasn’t so fast in films – we had more time to devote to each set’.

It was around this time that the incident of the doodle-bug took place. Every morning, the men used to go down by train to Denham for the day’s work. One day, near Sudbury, a flying bomb dropped right in front of the train. ‘We heard it come over and cut out, and we thought we’d had it,’ says Bill. ‘We jumped down on the floor and there was a proper commotion when it went off just in front of us. The line was completely blocked and houses all around were flattened.’

After the war, Bill Bolton continued working at Denham. Robert Taylor stands out among his memories of the late 40’s. ‘He was a great gambler who liked backing horses and playing dice,’ is how Bill describes him. While working on ‘A Yank at Oxford’, on Mondays, Bill used to be sent out with £60-£70 to back the ponies that used to race at Northolt Park. ‘And occasionally I used to collect winnings too!’ Taylor also liked to dice with the boys in slack moments. ‘I used to play occasion- ally sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. He used to take all our money off us from time to time then return it later.’

One of the scenes in ‘A Yank at Oxford’ required Robert Taylor to be ‘debagged’. ‘We had built a complete replica of an Oxford “quad” at Denham, recalls Bill Bolton. Then the complications set in. There was a mix-up with wardrobe and the second matching pair of trousers needed did not arrive. ‘As the stand-by painter, I was asked if I could quickly make another pair look like the original ones, so I set to work dirtying an old pair down with an air gun and distemper, then I put them under an arc lamp to dry quickly. I couldn’t guarantee exact similarity, but I’d done my best,’ says Bill. The 1,000 student extras set about the debagging and triumphantly the mocked-up trousers were thrown into the air. ‘But’ says Bill, ‘down came a shower of loose distemper – it went all over the place. It ruined Robert Taylor’s suit and the clothes of several of the students. I had visions of my cards being handed to me. But the director humorously accepted that accidents could happen and my job was safe’.

After Denham, Bill Bolton spent 18 months at Rank’s Charm School, where short films were made to give budding stars – including Diana Dors, Jimmy Edwards and Michael Pertwee – an insight into the world of cinema. When it closed in 1950, Bill went on to the Associated British Picture Corporation at Boreham Wood for five years.

“When commercial television started, I thought I’d like to try it, as I’d been in both the theatre and films. I found I did like it. It’s not the same as films, mark you. There aren’t the same personalities, though it is a similar set-up. Television’s a growing industry and when colour television does come, the sets are going to have to be produced very differently – those cameras will pick up the slightest defects and flaws’.

Bill Bolton is married and has a son called William. In what spare time he has, he is a sports fan – but I’m too old now to play’. Since 1911, he has been a firm Chelsea supporter.

‘I’ve enjoyed every minute of my work in show business. It’s a great industry,’ he sums up.

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