Rude Little Boy: ‘Wotchcr doing? Propping up the building?’
Debonair Gentleman with Elegantly Crossed Legs, One Hand in Trouser-Pocket, Leaning Against Wall: ‘Yes.’
R.L. Boy laughs sceptically.
D. Gentleman with E.C.L., One H. in T-P., steps away from wall.
The building collapses.

While no-one would go so far as to claim that if Guy Bloomer stepped away from Wembley Studios there would be a positive structural disaster – least of all, Guy himself – you feel that without his support the edifice might totter slightly. Beneath that deceptive appearance of nonchalance, Guy is in fact busily ensuring that the non-stop activity of the studios continues to flow smoothly, all round the clock.

But it isn’t as easy to prop up a building as it looks. Before tackling his present job (official designation: ‘Deputy Manager, Wembley Studios’) Guy accumulated a great deal of varied experience, all of which has proved useful in one way or another.

For example, as deputy manager, he has to know when to say ‘No’. He first said ‘No’ when he left Malvern College; a firm ‘No’ to the prospect of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a solicitor. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but he knew that whatever profession he took up, it wouldn’t be legal.

Instead, he joined the Royal Navy, as an Ordinary Seaman, in 1942. After a posting to the west coast of Scotland, he was transferred to the King Alfred Training Establishment for Officers at Hove, and thence to the R.N. College at Greenwich. He spent most of the war in beach-landing parties, on combined ops and beachhead assaults – ‘Mostly along the South Coast and the Isle of Wight’, he adds. Pressed for details, he admits that he was in the D-Day landings in France and at Walcheren as well.

He was en route for the Far East when the war in Japan ended, and so turned smartly about and set to work, convoying a flotilla of captured U-boats up to the Baltic, where they were to be handed over to our Russian allies. He found our allies slightly unco-operative on an official level, but on the unofficial level he has a hazy recollection of splendid hospitality in the Russian Officers Club; there was a picture of Lenin on the wall, and vodka everywhere else.

The deputy manager of Wembley Studios has to know a lot about hospitality.

Then there was a long job in mid-Atlantic, when Guy assisted some oceanographic scientists to measure the height of waves.

(You: ‘That’s interesting. How do they measure the height of waves in mid-Atlantic?

Guy: ‘That’s what they were trying to find out’.)

At last he became a civilian again, and immediately took a long trip by trawler to Murmansk and the White Sea, as a passenger – more or less from force of habit, presumably. But he decided it was time he picked himself a career, and after twelve wasted months as a trainee in a local brewery, went to take a rehabilitation course at Bournemouth, in Business Management. This was designed as a general introduction for men who had gone straight from school into war service, to open their eyes to the devilish cunning of business procedure.

That, too, must have stood him in good stead since. Unfortunately, he took the course just too late to qualify for a Government Grant, and discovered after the first forty-eight hours of riotous reunion that he was broke. To earn some spare-time cash, he took a job in the evenings, as a very inexperienced stagehand at the Hippodrome Theatre, Boscombe.

This was a case of love at first sight. ‘I hadn’t been backstage more than ten minutes when something clicked,’ Guy admits, slightly embarrassed. ‘I mean – I knew that this was the business for me.’

Reluctantly he decided to finish his course anyway, mainly through pressure from home. ‘As soon as I announced that I had decided to go into the theatre – well, never have I received so many letters from my father in such a short space of time.’

Then followed a long spell of backstage work, during which all readers will be glad to learn that he applied for, and was granted, a NATKE union card. After spells in Bournemouth and Plymouth, he finally armed himself with some useful introductions and assaulted the West End.

His resultant success nearly killed him; he worked on the fit-up of the first Latin Quarter revue at the London Casino, and spent a hundred hours in the theatre during five days. But the show went on, and Guy survived. (Another valuable qualification for Wembley Studios.)

Soon afterwards, he decided to take a holiday in France, and wrote to every theatre in Paris (in enthusiastic, if inaccurate, French) describing himself as an assistant ‘metteur-en-scene’, and asking if it might be possible to go backstage as a visitor. Several theatres welcomed him warmly, including the Opera – a memorable experience – and the Chatelet, where they were producing a colossal extravaganza called L’Auberge du Cheval Blanc… (White Horse Inn a la Française, and equally memorable in a different way.) Everywhere he was received with flattering courtesy, and it wasn’t until later he realized that instead of describing himself as an assistant stage-manager, he had in fact announced himself as an assistant producer. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

His next important step was when he joined the International Ballet for four-and-a-half years, first as stage manager, and soon afterwards as stage director. This gave him further opportunities to travel, since the ballet toured in Italy and Spain. But when this job came to an end his travels continued.

A drink in a Chelsea pub – a casual invitation – and suddenly Guy found himself helping to refit a yacht in Majorca, then working in the crew on a series of Mediterranean cruises. The last cruise got a little out-of-hand and finished in Barbados.

This was all splendid, but Guy’s bank manager was beginning to send him curt little notes, and he realized the time had come to earn a living once more.

He travelled back to England, in an Italian ship with a passenger-list made up almost entirely of West Indian immigrants. When they reached Teneriffe, in mid-winter, a furious argument broke out, and Guy had to arbitrate ‘Yes’, he told the incredulous passengers, ‘that stuff on the mountain is snow…’

Perhaps it was the association of ideas that carried him on to his next job; shoving scenery about in the Earls Court Ice Show. However, he soon got an offer to go to Bath to stage direct the Trafalgar Pageant on the local rugger field and thence to Glyndebourne as stage manager. During his season there, he had an interview in London for a rather different kind of post, and was accepted; but he couldn’t start work immediately, as he had to go to the Edinburgh Festival with the Opera Company. He returned to London in mid-September, 1955, and managed to walk into his new role at Wembley Studios, just ten days before the first programme went on the air.

‘Look here, I’ve been talking too much…’ he breaks off apologetically. ‘Anyhow, you know the rest – I’ve been doing the same job ever since.’

After this saga, it’s rather a shock to realize that Guy has actually stayed in one place for four years. Does he ever feel restless? Does he ever get the urge to hoist scenery in Boscombe, or sails in Palma?

‘Well, I go back to Majorca every year, for a bit of sailing… But as for the theatre – well, strange as it may seem, I like television!’

So it looks as if Guy Bloomer has dropped anchor at last.

The post Track in on… Guy Bloomer …White Sea to Wembley appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

The memory of this wicked juvenile triumph sends Miss Moynihan off into a paroxysm of giggles until she shakes with laughter.

It is a very recognizable laugh, and the Fifth Floor inhabitants could tell their way to Room 518 blindfold, just by following the vibrations. Vyvienne Moynihan enjoys life, and she enjoys laughing. And yet, like many people with a swift sense of humour, she is basically serious.

‘Born on 19 January, under Capricorn – the goat, dear – I won’t say which year. I lived for a while with my grandmother, in Westbourne Grove. She came from Ireland, and she disapproved of the way the local children spoke, so she wouldn’t send me to school. When I was nine years old, I met a very nice gentleman who saw me playing in the garden – I asked him to tea, and told him daddy was a chemist, and mummy often helped him, so I lived with my granny. He asked which school I went to, and I said I didn’t… but the next day I did. The nice gentleman turned out to be an LCC inspector.’

‘Of course, I hated school; I wasn’t a very nice child anyway. I had long golden ringlets in those days – so long you couldn’t tell where the ringlets ended and my bloomers began. There I was, aged nine, and I could quote any Shakespeare play by the yard – or Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth – I knew them all. Only I didn’t know my five times table.’

‘At that school, as a punishment, naughty children had to learn Latin verse; Virgil’s Aeneid, Book XII, and Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Books I to V … soon afterwards I won a scholarship for my remarkable knowledge of the classics…’

At first Vyvienne wanted to be a chemist like her father, and got her Inter.B.Sc. for chemistry, physics and maths; but she was following another passion in her spare time – the theatre. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and took herself off to see the best possible productions and performances whenever she could afford it. Plays like Norman Marshall’s production of ‘Victoria Regina’; performances like Clive Brook in ‘Cavalcade’. One day, she resolved, she would work with men like these .. as in the case of the bicycle, she finally got her own way.

Having won certificates and gold medals galore at the Guildhall, she was invited to go on to the staff, and at the outbreak of war became one of the youngest professors ever to join that august body.

But the war was on, and Vyvienne wanted to do something about it. She went to the Labour Exchange, and was asked her qualifications. Briefly she outlined them – her professorship, her experience of teaching, her spare-time work as a speech therapist at the Maida Vale hospital. The girl behind the desk listened coldly, then said – in a voice that cried out for a course of speech training – ‘Nao thenks. We want somebody that can do somethink useful.’

So Vyvienne took three years’ leave of absence from the Guildhall, and became a student A.S.M. with the West Riding Theatre.

‘I did practically every job there was – lighting, scene painting, the lot. Then I moved on to become the stage manager at the Q Theatre, with Jack de Leon, and through him I met Clive Brook. That’s how it started, really – soon I was stage director or production manager on plays like “Second Threshold”, “The Dish Ran Away”, “And So to Bed”, and “Clérembard”.’

Vyvienne’s proudest memory is of when she was producing a tour of ‘Angels in Love’, with Barbara Kelly and Henry Kendall. A serious operation sent her to hospital for six weeks, and during those weeks not a single day passed without one or another member of the cast keeping in touch with her, by letter or by telephone.

‘A different sort of memory around that time was when a very famous leading lady had a fit of temperament and locked herself in the smallest room in the theatre. I tried to climb through the window to let her out, but the window was too narrow – I got stuck, and we both missed the matinee.’

One of the few people Vyvienne had never worked with, after twelve years in the theatre, was Norman Marshall. She heard he was moving into television, and so – although at that point she knew nothing about TV and didn’t much want to – she decided this was an opportunity not to be missed. She was appointed manager of the drama department at Associated-Rediffusion, and now, after four years in the job, she prefers television to the theatre.

‘Some people say that in television there’s no chance to follow a thing through – once a play is done, it’s done. But that just isn’t so. In the theatre your contacts with people are limited – at most it’s a year, if you’re lucky – but in a year you can’t really see people develop. That’s the thing I love about television. In the long run, the teamwork is more permanent, not less.’

‘And sometimes it can surprise you. The biggest shock of my life was when we did “The Judge’s Story” – yes, Clive Brook again. I knew it was good, but I liked it so much that I was afraid other people wouldn’t. It shook me to the core when the viewers enjoyed it as much as I did.’

At week-ends Vyvienne usually goes to Brighton, to stay with her family and two old friends – a cat called Sukey, and a dog (his breed is politely referred to as ‘Chinese Wolfhound’) called Michael-Angelo.

‘Sukey’s a wonderful critic. If there’s a good programme on, he sits on top of the set with his head craned forward over the edge, watching it upside-down. His favourites are “Wagon Train”, “People in Trouble”, “This Week” and “Crime Sheet”… In that order. If there’s a show on he doesn’t care for, he turns his back, and sits with his tail hanging straight down the screen. Whenever I see Sukey’s tail across the picture I know the viewers are switching off all over the British Isles.’ But Vyvienne likes to get away from that little screen sometimes. She likes swimming, listening to music, going to the theatre or the cinema; she likes eating and drinking, she likes people. And most of all, she likes reading.

‘I settle down with a new novel, and I determine to forget all about television. Only, while I’m reading, I suddenly find I’ve been thinking subconsciously: “I wonder – would it adapt?”…’

Once again, Vyvienne starts to laugh at herself. Let’s hope she never stops.

The post Track in on… Vyvienne Moynihan …Who Manages to Laugh appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

When he says this, you suddenly see him clearly; wrapped in a toga, hawk-like and angular, with a laurel wreath over his smoothly silver hair. He tilts back his head, and regards the world across high cheekbones; slightly affronted, you might think, at what he sees.

It makes a good picture – but when he starts to talk, you realize at once that Len Fraser is not in the least like that.

‘When a situation arises, we have to be here to meet it,’ he says, with enough of a Scottish burr to banish any visions of Ancient Rome. ‘And I’m proud to boast, we’ve never let anybody down yet… Oh, we’ve skated over thin ice now and again – I’m not saying we haven’t – but so far Lady Luck has smiled on us.’

You have to take every fantastic crisis in your stride, and meet life with a relentless, down-to-earth logic, when you spend your time in Wonderland. Even Alice had to do the same.

For ‘Wonderland’ is hardly an exaggerated description of Len Fraser’s world. His office is a sort of giant telephone box, from which he gazes out like a goldfish in a bowl, at a vast and surrealist collection of objects.

Sides of papier mâché beef, bouquets of artificial flowers, sideboards and fire-irons, abstract paintings and steel engravings, oriental devil-masks – and even the rear half of a horse… This is the Property Store at Wembley.

Stretching across the desk, Len pushes aside a box marked ‘Gold Sequins’, burrows under a sheaf of prop lists (‘For our production next Monday, in addition to the articles already ordered, we shall require a set of dentist’s tools, a box of exploding cigars and an old-fashioned water-pistol’), finds an ash-tray, and stubs out his cigarette.

Then he lights another, and starts to reminisce.

‘I went into the business when I was sixteen, as a chorus boy. In some of the big Scottish shows; revues, mostly. We usually did four or five months resident in Glasgow, then maybe a tour – Dundee, Aberdeen, Belfast, Dublin – all over. I’d started as an amateur, of course, singing a bit and dancing; in local concert parties and Scout Jamborees — you know the sort of thing.’

‘Oh, no, I wasn’t born in Scotland. I’m a Canadian really; born in Chatham, Ontario. My father was a Scot, and he managed a chain of music stores out there, selling instruments and records. But I resisted the opportunity to learn the piano; I was keener on the mouth-organ! We came back to Scotland in 1922. My father had been told by the doctor that he had three months to live, and he wanted to see his old home again. …I’m happy to say he carried on for another thirty years.’

So Len went into show business, and almost at once he began to discover talents outside his song-and-dance routines. He took up drumming, and in the summer months joined a band, playing for dances and concerts at some of the big seaside hotels.

During the war, he served with the RAF for two-and-a-half years, and then, when he was invalided out, he was sent to a Midlands factory on ‘work of national importance’. But this wasn’t enough for Len and soon the factory had its own band, and the staff were entertained with lunchtime concerts. There were gigs in the neighbourhood (i.e. engagements for dances, to those readers unfamiliar with the Musicians’ Union patois) and every week-end there were variety shows in the big Midland theatres and at the army camps. So Len went on, organizing shows, drumming and dancing, until September 1945, when he tried his luck in London as a film extra.

Lady Luck smiled again and he walked on – and occasionally off – in such films as ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, ‘I See a Dark Stranger’, ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘London Town’, and of course, ‘Caesar’.

Then back to variety and another series of tours; one notable one was with Ralph Reader’s ‘Gang Show’.

‘You ask Dickie Emery when you see him – he’ll remember those days. And Cardew Robinson, and Reg Dixon – they were all in the “Gang Show”… . After that I toured with Hylda Baker, running the band, doing three dance routines, and working in the sketches too.’ (Len knows, y’know…) ‘And I followed that up with a couple of years as entertainments’ manager at Exmouth, organizing everything from the concert parties to the bathing beauty contests.’

So far Len’s theatrical experience had been on the lighter side, but soon after this he transferred to ‘the legit’, as property-master and stage-manager – first for Linnit and Dunfee, then H. M. Tennant, and also Jack Hylton.

His last job outside television was at the Stoll Theatre, with ‘Kismet’, so when A-R got into its stride, all he had to do was walk next door and get himself a job – 22 August, 1955, as a setting assistant. And on 1 January 1956, he moved into the property department, and has hardly moved out of it since.

‘We don’t make props here, like they do in the theatre,’ he explains, lighting another cigarette. ‘That would be impossible. We’re more of a supply depot, you might say. When we get the prop lists through from the directors, we go through them with the buyers – then, anything we can supply out of stock is marked off; everything else is hired. But of course, if something we hire fails to materialize on the day – it’s up to us.’ He brushes off what appears to be part of an old bicycle, and rests his elbows on the desk. ‘Here, necessity is the mother of invention. I’ve often had to go and knock up the people in the shops over the road, on nights when things haven’t turned up. I remember once, we were short of a lawn-mower, and I borrowed one from a pal of mine. He was actually cutting the grass when I rang up – but we got it all right.’

‘Of course, we can’t just use any old thing. We’ve got to be accurate. You get a Victorian sofa in a Louis drawing-room, and first thing you know, there’ll be a buzz on the ’phone. Somebody will spot it… Like when we do scenes in shops – we have to go round blocking out all the trade-names, on every tin and package and showcard in the set. Can’t go giving them all free plugs, can we?’

Sofas, showcards, soda-syphons… Len’s department is responsible for everything from a to z; from artichokes to – well, a zebra is one of the few objects they haven’t been asked for… Yet!’

‘Oh, we deal with a lot of livestock.’ He thinks back rapidly. ‘Dogs and cats, parrots, lion-cubs, monkeys, goldfish, a fourteen-foot python – and even mice. We’ve got one mouse upstairs who lives here permanently, ever since he escaped from a conjurer in one of the children’s programmes.

‘We had a goat here, too, a little while back; tethered to a bench, on a nice piece of tarpaulin, to keep the place clean and tidy. But he got loose, and ate every blessed thing he could get at – goodness knows how many paper flowers he polished off. He even ate the tarpaulin.’

And there is the studio cat, Boxer; an impressive black-and-white tom who has made sixteen appearances (intentionally) on the screen to date, in every show from ‘Murder Bag’ to ‘The Red Grass’. Len claims that Boxer is the least temperamental of TV stars – even if he does think that ‘Cool for’ was named after him.

‘What do I do in my spare time?… Well, I’m still keen on music. Maybe you saw me let my hair down at the Christmas party, singing a couple of numbers with the band! Jazz is one of my hobbies; I’ve got a collection of jazz records – two hundred and twenty-one of them. And I watch television at week-ends. The Palladium Show’s one of my favourites; I still like variety.’

The ’phone rings; he finds it under the bric-a-brac, and has a brief conversation with Television House.

‘Yes, Frank… A settee you’ve got there, to come to us tonight?… Right – you can put it on with the next lot. The stuff we’ve got coming back now is nothing much – only about eight articles. That mahogany writing-table, a chest of drawers, and the grandfather clock – only odds and ends. No big stuff at all.’

He rings off, and tries to remember what he was saying. ‘Eh? Oh – the Palladium Show… I’m only sorry I’ve never seen a single one of our shows, either on the screen or from the floor. The next one I see will be the first.’

Let us hope that when the great moment finally arrives – if it ever does – Len will enjoy what he sees. As long as he docs not spot an Edwardian whatnot in a Regency boudoir, he probably will.

The post Track in on… Len Fraser Prop and Mainstay appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

After what he refers to as ‘a lifetime in show business’, Des McCormack has learned that you should never be surprised by the unexpected.

He learned that lesson the hard way, when (at the age of eighteen) he applied for his first job in the theatre, and was employed in a touring pantomime.

‘It was “Cinderella”,’ he reminisces, in that distinctive voice – midway between hoarse and fruity. ‘My father and mother wrote off to the manager to get me fixed up. He fixed me up all right; he wrote a letter back saying I could start my theatrical career by playing one of the flunkeys, and “looking after P…” He was crafty, you see; we thought the “P” stood for “properties” – and it did – but it stood for “ponies” as well… I still remember one train-call, doing the trip from Salford to Bridlington in a horse-box. Just me and four ponies…’

Nowadays ‘looking after P…’ can stand for ‘personnel’ or ‘props’, or practically anything from panics to panel-game-players. But Des sits back behind his desk on the first floor of Television House, and takes life as it comes, regarding every new trick of fate with a faintly astonished curl of the lip and one raised eyebrow.

If only he had followed up the flunkey role instead of the property-master, Des might have developed into a deadpan comedian in the Aldwych farce tradition; Ralph Lynn without his monocle, amalgamated with Tom Walls minus his moustache.

‘Oh, I have appeared from time to time – perforce,’ he admits dryly. ‘I once played one of the Broker’s Men in panto; and I was so ruddy awful at the first house that I wasn’t asked to go on at the second. So I stuck to being on the stage staff. It’s more regular employment – and there are enough bad actors in the world, without me.’

Just how many actors there are – good, bad or indifferent – no-one knows better than Des.

He was on tour when he was eighteen months old, accompanying his parents as they travelled the country with a musical act. It was all in the family tradition; his mother was already with the circus by the time she was eight, and grandpapa played the flute and piccolo in the pit orchestra at Bury St Edmunds, where he first looked over the footlights and saw grandmama on stage.

Des’s father was a Dublin man, who started by managing a cinema in Galway.

‘Did you ever hear of Cladaugh, in Galway? That’s where I came from really; they call it the city of the tribes – the people are supposed to be descended from survivors of the Spanish Armada. And you can still see traces of it in some of the Cladaugh girls… They have their own wedding ring; like this one I’m wearing…’ He shows it to you; two hands holding a heart between the finger-tips, surmounted by a crown. ‘I picked it up when I was over there last. They make them for the tourists now, really. Still, it’s interesting… Might make a programme out of it.’

Des has always been interested in almost everything. He has been involved and interested in every branch of show business, he claims – except sound radio and ice show.

After schooling, divided between Gloucestershire, where he lived with his aunt, and a later spell in Warrington, where his family made their home, he started work in the theatre, and has never stopped.

(Somewhere along the line, he seems to have picked up a brother called Stephen, who also went into television.)

But in Des’s early days, television was still a gleam in the eye of John Logic Baird. He toured for Prince Littler, in such shows as ‘White Horse Inn’, ‘Glamorous Night’, and ‘Careless Rapture’, as property master or carpenter.

When the war cut across his life, Des joined the Royal Armoured Corps, as a tank driver-operator. He was working in mine-sweeping tanks; Shermans fitted with chain flails that beat up the ground ahead and detonated any mines in the vicinity – and managed to pick up a leg wound in the process.

Scarred but civilian, he returned at last to the theatre as if he had never been away, and after a spell in pantomime (his first love, but this time without the ponies) at Golders Green, he joined Mrs John Christie (the late Audrey Mildmay) at Glyndebourne. He worked on their first post-war season of opera, taking Britten’s ‘Rape of Lucrece’ with Kathleen Ferrier first to Sadlers Wells and then abroad to Amsterdam and The Hague.

In 1946, the Glyndebourne Children’s Theatre sent out a touring company, playing to schools all over the country – ‘in everything from barns to cow-sheds!’ They started at Toynbee Hall, and soon had a repertoire including ‘Tobias and the Angel’, ‘She Stoops to Conquer’, ‘Abraham Lincoln’, and ‘Great Expectations’. Original producer – Mr Anthony Quayle, and a young but very experienced stage-carpenter – Mr Desmond McCormack.

This was followed by a season of melodramas at the old Bedford Theatre, Camden Town (‘Everything from “East Lynne” to “Trilby”, but not for long’) and then Des found himself stage-managing eleven shows a day, in a strange, unfamiliar medium called television, at the Birmingham Radio Exhibition. Pye were demonstrating colour television (the previous year, another unknown called Michael Westmore had been in charge, at Olympia) – and somehow the electronic theatre got into Des’s blood at last.

There were a couple of final flings in the ‘legit’ – a tour of ‘Meet Mr Callaghan’ with Derek de Marney, and a season at Canterbury Rep. – but Des and television could not be parted, and he began to work on a free-lance basis as a stage manager at Lime Grove. (One of his first programmes was a children’s serial written by an unknown author called – but come to think of it, he still is unknown, so who cares?)

‘I once appeared in a serial called “The Railway Children”, with Ronnie Marriott. We were a couple of farm yokels; I know I had on a check suit, and I just had time to throw down my stage-managing clipboard, and pick up a bowler hat, and then rush on to say my lines… Which mostly consisted of “Arrrr”, as far as I can remember. Friends who saw it said I gave a very convincing portrait of an Irish bookmaker.’

Then came 1955, and – as so often happens in this series – came the dawn. He joined A-R as a trainee floor-manager, and while still on the training course at Viking Studios was offered the job of assistant production manager at Wembley; where he stayed from 22 August 1955 to 30 December 1957 – during which time he did everything, from ensuring that the dressing-rooms were in that state in which an artist would wish to find them, to editing our distinguished forerunner, ‘The Wembley Wail’.

And now he sits, as we said earlier, behind a paper-strewn desk, as assistant studio manager (TV House), taking life as it comes.

‘We might have five crises at once… Or it might be a completely peaceful day,’ he says optimistically. ‘I might be out chasing people who haven’t turned up – or acting as general information centre for the studios – or – well, I try to be the oil that keeps the machine running.’

Setting, lighting, rehearsal rooms, tube-hours, liaison with schedules, liaison with artists – even seeing that the crews get their tea-breaks – all of these are just a part of Des’s job.

‘I’ve had three and a half years of it now, and I can’t say they’ve been uneventful; but on the other hand they’ve been so crowded with little incidents – there’s no single thing you could pick out.’

Little things… Like the time Studio 1 was flooded, when the drains went wrong just before transmission, and the actors in a Robert Tronson production had to splash around as silently as possible in inches of water, while the camera cables were dragged up out of harm’s way, and Des helped to build a barricade of sandbags to dam the rising tide.

Or that time when the Mole-Richardson camera ran amok during a rehearsal of ‘Double Your Money’, and Don Gale crashed through several rows of audience chairs, finishing up on the rostrum, and claiming that he had held focus every inch of the way.

‘You see what I mean,’ Des sighs. ‘There really aren’t any particular highlights. 1 just sit back and contemplate the shows we’ve done, and – excuse me.’

He breaks off to answer a persistent telephone, as the day’s sixth crisis breaks loose. Either the performing seals are trapped in the lift, or there’s been a camera breakdown in Studios 7 and 8, and for once Jim is Out…

But whatever Des may do, one thing is certain. He will never have time to sit back – and contemplate.

The post Track in on… Des McCormack looking after P——! appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

You almost expect her to add: ‘And open a little wider’ – but Pam Elliott’s overall is a rosy pink instead of a dental white. Reassured, you relax, and put yourself in her hands for the next ten minutes. ‘We start with a base of pan-stick all over the face,’ Pam explains briskly, setting to work at once. ‘There – now look up. We have to light the eyes underneath, to wipe out any dark shadows.’

For just over five years, Pam has been working as a television make-up artist. Ever since she was a little girl in Ealing (where she still lives) she has been interested in make-up; like most little girls, she used to practise with her mother’s powder and lipstick when she got the chance – though this was not encouraged. There was no family tradition of greasepaint; in fact, Mr. Elliott is a department head at Negretti and Zambra, the scientific instrument makers. But Pam wanted to deal with people instead of barometers, so she took a firm grasp of her mother’s lipstick – and made up her mind.

When she left school, she enrolled in the Barrett Street Technical College, taking a course in Beauty Culture and Hairdressing which lasted three years. She wasn’t so keen on the hairdressing side of it, but she couldn’t take one without the other – and now she is often grateful for that early training. ‘You see, I never had the slightest intention of going into this sort of work,’ she says. ‘Sit forward and look in the mirror.’ She stands back and surveys her handiwork critically, then picks up a powder-puff and returns to the attack.

‘I really wanted to go into a Beauty Salon,’ she continues. ‘But when I was due to leave, I found it was impossible to get that sort of job without further training – and anyway, I was too young. So they asked me if I’d like to go along to the BBC for an interview. I didn’t want the BBC job at all, but I was desperate – and I certainly didn’t want to be a hairdresser – so off I went.’

‘I had to do a couple of test make-ups; one straight, and one character. It was just a question of ageing somebody, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do – we’d never done any TV make-up at the college. I just had to guess and invent as I went along. I was so determined to avoid the trap of overdoing it that I don’t suppose I did nearly enough… Still, they must have been able to tell the difference between the character and the straight make-up, I suppose, because I heard a few days later that there was a job for me if I wanted it.’

She began as a trainee for about a year, then as a make-up assistant for another fifteen months. And right from the start, Pam worked with Mrs Barrie Hansard – now head of Associated-Rediffusion’s make-up department. ‘If it hadn’t been for Barrie, I don’t suppose I would have come to A-R; but when Barrie moved over, I moved with her. We started in July, 1955, doing dummy-run shows. On the opening night, I was working at the Mayfair Hotel; I remember my first real job for an A-R programme was to make up the American singer, Marti Stevens, who was appearing in the cabaret… ‘Shut your eyes, please.’

You blink and obey, as Pam brushes your eyebrows and darkens them slightly. ‘That’s better… I suppose the shows I’ve enjoyed working on most were the Peter Sellers series. They were certainly the heaviest from a make-up point of view, and the biggest challenge… All those plastic noses…’

Another of her favourites was Cyril Coke’s production of ‘Yellow Jack’. ‘We had to do a lot of research beforehand into the symptoms of yellow fever; a medical consultant helped and advised us, because patients look different at different stages of the disease… It was great fun’ she concludes brightly, with the real enthusiast’s gleam in her eye. ‘Oh, it’s a wonderful job. I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else. Of course, it does get a little hectic sometimes. Once, on the “Butlin” series at Clacton, when we had a real rush job to do, we actually made-up several people who weren’t appearing on the programme at all!’

‘But that wasn’t so embarrassing as an awful moment after a costume drama, when I hurried on to the floor to collect all the beards and moustaches from the actors… Well, I suppose it was a tribute to our work in a way; after all, TV make-up has to be convincing, even from a few inches away… Yes, that’s right; in the confusion, I tried to remove a moustache from one man – and he’d grown it specially for the part.’

She dabs a damp sponge over your face to take off any excessively ‘matt’ appearance.

‘You don’t want to look as if you’re made-up,’ she explains, then whisks away the overall that covers you. ‘There – that’s finished… Good luck!’ You stand up and admire the result in the mirror; pink and glowing with health, your eyes sparkling, your eyebrows beautifully brushed. And you think – ‘Is that really me?’ Well – no. Not really. It’s mostly Pam Elliott…

The post Track in on… Pam Elliott who made up her mind appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

In fact his present job, in charge of the General Office and Post Room on the second floor of Television House, probably ranks high on his list of long-term occupations, for he has been at Kingsway for over three years. Before that, he was – in his own phrase – ‘a bit of a rolling stone’.

He was born 45 years ago, in Portsmouth Military Hospital, but his boyhood was spent around Dovercourt and Harwich, learning to sail and fish, and living by, with, on and frequently in the North Sea.

When he was fifteen, he joined the Merchant Service and began to travel. For some time he worked on the Red Star line, living in Antwerp when he was ashore, and getting to know and like the Belgian way of life. ‘I picked up a certain amount of the language,’ he says, admitting disarmingly: ‘Well, the bad language, anyhow.’

His next job was on board the S.S. Belgianland, under the command of the United States Mercantile Marine – a luxury passenger-liner of 42,000 tons, with a cargo that seemed to consist largely of retired millionaires and beautiful blondes. But high life can pall after a time, and during one world tour he left the ship in North China, to spend six months working in a North Chinese coal-mine… ‘Well, I got kind of interested in the place and the people – still am, as a matter of fact – and I wanted to get to know it better.’

Between times, he returned to Harwich, and when he couldn’t get a ship, he began to take temporary jobs in various hospitals as a medical orderly.

He even had one brush with show business, when he acted as Publicity Manager for a lady fortune-teller called ‘The Hooded Woman’ who was touring East Anglia at the time. The war broke out, and Mr Short found himself attached to the Admiralty for marine salvage and degaussing; when that job was over, he returned to hospitals again, and worked for some years at the British Legion Sanatorium near Maidstone in charge of the surgical wards.

At last the rolling stone paused for a moment… Emergency operations in the small hours of the night, and shift-work all round the clock – somehow, it had lost some of its original glamour, and Mr Short decided to try the experiment of regular working-hours.

He heard of an interesting post in the General Office of the British Electric Traction Company at Stratton House, and worked there for two years; then – almost by accident – he found himself being transferred to Television House.

If moss ever does grow on this rolling stone, it will be Hertfordshire moss. Mr Short has been living in Herts for the last two and a half years, and finds that staying in one place has its compensations.

‘I watch television a good deal,’ he admits. ‘I like the serious programmes chiefly; drama, features, anything of a philosophical nature… Mind you, I won’t say I’m not partial to a ‘whodunnit’ now and again – I am. And I’m passionately fond of music; any kind of music, so long as it’s good of its kind. I’m what you might call catholic in my tastes.’

Light Entertainment doesn’t have quite such a strong appeal; for instance, it would probably be true to say that Mr Short has seen Michael Miles more frequently in the General Office than on the screen.

‘I’ll never forget that time we were sorting letters for Mr Miles’ Diamond Rush…’ His walnut face pales slightly at the recollection. ‘You know, we had one and a half million entries for that contest.’

In a single day, the total number of letters coming through Mr Short’s office may top 70,000. If you ask him how he begins to cope with this amount of mail, he shrugs calmly: ‘It’s just a question of organization; everybody knows what his job is, and gets on with it. So many start sorting, so many delivering and collecting round the floors. Apart from my assistant, Mr Pullen, I’ve got seven boys working in the office at present, aged between sixteen and nineteen. Of course, they come and go; a good many of our boys have moved on to really good jobs on the technical start. We’re rather proud of that – if there is an opportunity for a promising lad, I like to help him along if I can.’

Mr Short’s past training comes in handy; his attitude to his teen-age staff owes something to the Bos’un in charge of a bunch of ‘first-trippers’ – and an occasional reversion to hospital experience, as he watches for revealing symptoms. (‘Some of them smoke too much, and don’t get enough sleep… I have to keep an eye on them.’)

But he enjoys his work, and finds life continually interesting. ‘Being in the Post Room makes you a bit of a philosopher,’ he says. ‘Well, you’re always meeting people – and you never know what you’re going to be faced with. We get some very peculiar parcels sometimes – the other day there was a box of kippers – and once we had a bundle of dirty laundry from a viewer in Wales. She said she couldn’t get her husband’s shirts really white, so would we please pass the enclosed on to Mrs Bradshaw, and let her get on with it.’

Does this all mean that the rolling stone has settled down at last?

Mr Short nods briskly. ‘Oh, I think so.’ Then he smiles, and adds: ‘But then I always think so, every time… After all, you never know what might be round the corner!’

But at this moment, there is only one thing coming round the corner – the afternoon collection of office mail. The door opens, and a stream of boys bustle in, with their arms full of letters, packages, memos and Ooms … Mr Short takes one brief look, squares his shoulders, and sets to work again.

The post Track in on… Albert Short for general post appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

If you didn’t know him, you might imagine Tony Hulley was a tennis champion; quick, lithe, with the seamed brown face of a man who spends most of his life under a blazing sun. But Tony’s appearance would be misleading, for his sun is usually a battery of lights, and his feet are set firmly on the floor. First he danced on floors; now he manages them.

‘Well, my family were all theatre people’, he explains. ‘Grandfather composed comic operas, my father was a ’cellist – as a matter of fact he played for Pavlova – and my mother was one of George Edwarde’s Gaiety Girls’.

He even married inside the charmed circle of show business, for Mrs Tony Hulley used to be Marjorie Cormack, and they met backstage at Drury Lane during the run of ‘Careless Rapture’.

Now they live at South Harrow, and Tony has a family of three to ‘manage’, when they hold the floor – Bunty and Marian, who go to dancing lessons and are obviously destined to follow in their father’s footsteps; and David, the renegade, who is looking towards the Navy instead of the Theatre, and sees himself as a budding Lieutenant-Commander. Even so, he might still finish up at Television House…

‘Of course, I started in the theatre very young – I’d only just left school when I got my first job. In the chorus, on a tour of – let me think – “That’s A Good Girl” … It seems a long time ago. Thirty years next December’. Tony frowns faintly at the relentless speed of passing time; even tap-dancers have to give it best. Then he throws back his head and laughs – and time is forgotten. ‘Mind you, I got the sack from that job!’

‘I was understudying a small part, and the chap who played it was taken sick. It was only one line – I had to go on and serve a writ on somebody, just before the first act curtain, saying: “Mr Barrow, sir… ?” That was all…

I was dead keen; I put on a full character make-up – I even wore a hump-back – I was determined to build up the part! The trouble was, all the rest of the company collapsed, and I was fired… Still, I really stopped the show.’ This setback didn’t last long, and Tony’s career began to sound like a page from ‘Who’s Who in the Theatre’. ‘Follow Through’ – ‘Little Tommy Tucker’ – ‘White Horse Inn’ (with an up-and-coming youngster called Jimmy Hanley) – ‘Stop Press’ – ‘Why Not Tonight?’ – ‘Latin Quarter’ – ‘Paris to Piccadilly’ – and a spell as one of Mr Cochran’s Young Gentlemen in ‘Words and Music’ (together with another Young Gentleman called Cyril Butcher).

His first brush with television was as a dancer, nearly ten years ago, in a Henry Caldwell production; but the medium never really beckoned until, after working as a dance teacher for the Buddy Bradley and Joan Davis schools, Tony was rung up in July ’55 by Ted Beaumont.

Would Tony like to be an assistant floor-manager for Associated-Rediffusion? Tony decided he would. He joined the staff and after a few weeks at the Granville Theatre found himself floor-managing A-R’s first live drama production, the opening episode of ‘Sixpenny Corner’, from Viking Studios.

‘And I’ve never regretted it for a minute’, he says cheerfully. ‘Oh, yes; I suppose you do miss the live theatre – you miss the contact with the audience, you miss the warmth – and that excitement just before the overture on a big opening night… But then, in TV, you get that every night. You know the programme I enjoyed working on most? Peter Croft’s “Jubilee Show”. That had everything – the music, the audience – a real theatre atmosphere…’

His worst television memory is that famous production of ‘White Carnation’, when the play was off the air for the first eight minutes, and Cyril Coke in the gallery had to cut as he went along to make up the missing time.

‘He gave me the cuts during transmission’, Tony remembers, slightly glazed. ‘There I was, trying to tell the cast: “Now we’re cutting from shot 83 to shot 91 – that cuts your scene at the front door.” They all looked very sceptical – I suppose they thought I’d gone crazy – but they did it somehow, thank heavens… And we came out on time.’

‘In a way, I sometimes feel I’d like to be back in front of the cameras. (Actually, my ear was in front of the camera once on “Take Your Pick”, but luckily that was a tele-recording, so it was taken out.)… You know, when I retire I think I might make a come-back. I can’t imagine myself retiring, anyway – pottering round gardens – I’m not cut out for that. No, I’ve often thought I might start again as a character actor, when I’ve got a nice crop of white hair. A sort of Grand Old Man of Television.’ Tony grins, and the Grand Old Man seems a long way away.

‘But first I’d like – well, I suppose all floor-managers would like to be directors some day. I’ve got a lot to learn yet – so much technical stuff – you’re always learning in this job; but eventually I’d like to have a go. Light Entertainment; that’s what I’d like… Musicals’.

He breaks off and looks at his watch, as one or two of the girls pass him on their way into the studio. He stubs out his cigarette, and calls: ‘Five minutes, dear’.

He taps one foot absently, then slides into a soft-shoe routine with one of the girls as he disappears into the studio.

The post Track in, as… Tony Hulley steps on to the floor appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.

She leaves her North London flat each morning soon after eleven, travels to Television House, works till two-thirty returns home, gets back to Kingsway just before six, puts up the metal grille at ten-thirty, and finally gets back home around eleven-fifteen. Which — when you’ve also got a husband (Alec) and a ten-year-old son (Eric) to look after — makes a pretty long day.

Holidays excepted, she’s been following this routine ever since the Rediffusion Club first opened in October, 1955; and those two-and-a-bit years have made her a genuine TV personality. How many girls in the shooting-star world of television are known exclusively by their Christian names? Sabrina may spring prominently to mind, but Betty, with a less bizarre name, can claim an even more devoted band of followers. Perhaps not one of her customers in a hundred knows her as “Mrs. Bowes” — but everyone who has ever visited the Rediffusion Club knows “Betty”.

Alec Bowes is a wine-waiter in a West End hotel; but though they are both in the catering business, they have never worked together, and they did not meet over a corkscrew. Apart from a war-time spell in the Women’s Services, Betty admits that she has spent most of her working life behind bars… Mostly theatre bars, she adds hastily. (Like “Oklahoma!” Betty spent three years at Drury Lane.) But she wouldn’t want to go back to the theatre now, or the jangle of the interval bell.

“It’s a passing trade,” she explains. “You never get to know anybody. Television’s quite different; you couldn’t call it boring, could you? The time never hangs, if you know what I mean.”

In Television House, Betty has to know people. Not always their surnames, perhaps, and probably not their jobs — but she knows a thousand faces, and can fit a Christian name to most of them. Best of all, she knows what they like to drink. Mostly it’s straightforward; the Studios come in thirsty and hot, needing beer; the Fourth Floor splice the mainbrace with something stronger; a Third Floor customer might occasionally ask for a Pimm’s Number One.

But the Fifth Floor demands — and usually gets — anything and everything.

“I think I know most drinks by now.” Betty Hashes a smile as bright as a new penny. “A ‘Cameraman’s Kick’, for instance —That started with the camera-boys from Wembley; it’s a lager-and-lime, but lots of other people besides cameramen have taken it up now.”

Then there’s the “Morley Special”, which comes from the Features Department, and is a judicious blend of martini-and-soda. This too is getting increasingly popular. Betty doesn’t get a chance to see Mr. Morley’s programmes — she says it’s an awful shame, but when would she have the time? — but she does know that the “Morley Special” gets a very high rating. “Mind you, the Design Department gave me a tough one, when they started asking for a ‘Negroni’. It’s campari, vermouth and gin —the only trouble is, it takes time, and when the bar’s crowded… Well, Michael just has to wait.” Betty wipes the bar-top in short, lightning movements until it is spotless once more, then continues:

“Of course, there are some who ask for things with funny names, just to show off if you know what I mean. A ‘Horse’s Neck’, for instance — it’s only brandy-and-ginger. Well, you might just as well say brandy-and-ginger, mightn’t you?” She sees the fashions in drink rise and fall; vodka used to be very popular, taken with tomato juice in the form of a “Bloody Mary” — but whether or not it’s because Television House feels by now it has had just about all it can take of Soviet Russia, the “Bloody Mary” is on the way out.

Betty’s own personal choice? A Scotch and dry ginger. It’s warming — and that’s another way our drinking habits reflect the passage of time. More whisky is drunk in winter; more gin in summer. For a short time after New Year’s Eve, there was a run on soft drinks, and the sale of cigarettes noticeably dropped — but most noble resolutions, Betty remembers, slipped after a couple of nights.

Thursdays are Betty’s busiest nights now, though at one time it used to be Fridays. She says it’s because of “This Week”, though she can’t explain quite why. Surely that rush of custom can’t all be due to Mr. Hunt?

For a while, light music was served in the bar, as well as refreshments. Betty was responsible for running and changing the tapes, which were amplified — perhaps too well amplified — through a small speaker hanging from the partition…. But the experiment didn’t work. As the customers pointed out: “If you can recognise the tune — it’s too loud.” The tape-machine disappeared; but Betty doesn’t mourn its passing, nor does she nurse any secret ambition to take a job in S.T.U.

“I’m very happy here,” she says. “Really I am! The only thing I hate is washing up glasses, but apart from that… Well, I wouldn’t change. It’s such a varied sort of life.” Someone raps on the bar with a half-crown, and Betty flicks a reassuring smile at him.

“You’re next, dear… She adds in an undertone: “Of course, you have to be diplomatic sometimes — well, you know how it is. You do get the odd one or two who may be a bit naughty, now and again, but most of them — they’re very nice…

She hands over the change, and moves along the bar.

“Now, then — what’ll it be?”

Same again, Betty. And please have a scotch-and-dry—on us.

The post Track in on… Betty Bowes, the dark lady of the tonics appeared first on THIS IS REDIFFUSION from Transdiffusion.