Thanks for the memory….

SALLY SUTHERLAND, who has been a part of Rediffusion ever since shortly after the company’s formation, retires next month. After a distinguished career in the film publicity world she was for some time responsible for the output of the picture publicity section and more lately has been a member of the press office. In this article she recalls some of her memories of her work in television.

 

The mere suggestion that I should look back in memory over the nine and a half years I have spent with A-R was enough to make my mind blank. When the days, weeks, months and years fly by as they seem to do in television, how does one recall the vital moments? I can’t. Through the mist of time, some things emerge slowly, most of them quite insignificant and ephemeral – probably of no interest to anyone. But it is of such inconsequences that life is made up. So I shall rattle on and hope that moments will generate in a way of their own.

It is always well to begin at the beginning, so I will recall my first day at Stratton House where the first 60 members of A-R were then housed. I entered with trepidation for as far as I knew I was entering a world of strangers. The office I was given contained a desk, a fire escape and nothing else. ‘A chair? So sorry all the chairs were used for a meeting in the Board Room along there. Help yourself.’ I wandered into a sea of chairs where two men were on the same errand as myself. They turned and in a flash we were all hugging one another with joy and relief. Weston Drury, head of casting, with whom I had been associated in the thirties at Elstree Studios and Ernest Gartside, one of the kindest production managers in films, were newcomers like myself.

The early days at Television House can never be forgotten by any of us veterans. The noise of the pneumatic drills thundering on the office walls, the barrow loads of cement trundling up and down the passages and the showers of dust are now all part of the history of ITV. I was reminded lately, on finding a second toilet roll, a box of tissues and a waste bin in the Ladies (but still no light over the mirror!), of those desperate days before the plumbing was completed when, penny clutched in hand, we rushed along Kingsway to the Holborn Tube, or blushingly offered a pink pass in a nearby building where hospitality was available.

Those, indeed, were the days of pioneering. The electricity failed? Magically, we were all issued with hurricane lamps until normal service was resumed. The heating system died on us? Every office had its convector heater. At last the time came when the girls no longer got their 10s. [50p in decimal, about £22 in today’s money allowing for inflation] a month hairdressing allowance and the men could no longer send one suit a month to the cleaners. We were on the air.

Of September 22, 1955 I remember only the first night nerves and wild excitement that possessed us all. This was it! Everyone was at concert pitch and the Mayfair Hotel, from whence came part of the programme, was littered with cables and cameras.

Below ground level at the foot of a short staircase, the ‘control room’ had ingeniously been installed. Never before or since, I wager, has there been such a glamorous control room. In the seat of office sat the director (Kenneth Carter) with his PA, Norma, and his vision mixer and crew. All were in full evening dress – white ties and plunging necklines!

A grand party was held later in the ballroom which was crowded with showbiz celebrities and distinguished guests. My lot was to dash round with photographer Dick Dawson to see how many we could capture for stills. My feet ache at the mere thought of it.

From this time on, my memories are like a mosaic, vari-coloured and of all sizes and shapes. Some are mere fragments such as the turkey that wouldn’t go in the oven. Dionne Lucas, Cordon-Bleu chef, was to demonstrate how to cook a Christmas dinner and a kindly gas cooker company loaned a newer-than-modern stove. Alas, it took all our united efforts, much butter and almost a shoehorn to get the bird in. Our chagrin on knowing that this noble turkey, which we had seen basted with brandy, was to be given away was only tempered by the fact that the WVS took it for an Old People’s Home.

The visitor that wasn’t there – that was on the day that George Cansdale put his head round my door and asked if he could leave a friend with me while he parked his car. ‘Sure’, said I and he opened the door wide and nothing came in. Then I saw standing and looking minute in the doorway – a lion cub a few months old. Actually it was a lioness, so little she was still spotted. She wrinkled her nose in a mighty snarl and out came a tiny ‘Mee-oo’.

A particularly vivid and pale yellow piece of mosaic I recall was in the Club, then rather new to us and catered for by Fullers. The only food they could cook on the spot was an omelette and my guest, taking his on a very hot plate, jerked his hand back so suddenly that the omelette became airborne. It sailed in a graceful parabola across the room and landed on someone’s empty plate. He couldn’t have done it if he’d tried.

Do you remember ‘Gala’ – the first one for which Maria Callas did not arrive for the rehearsal? My feelings on being told to go to Hackney Empire for her eventual recording on the very Saturday that I was due to collect my new bubble car were far from charitable. But oh! when that voice soared up to the roof of the old music hall, all was forgiven. Moreover, bless her, she whisked off to catch a plane and I got to Raymond Way’s in time.

The bubble car, of course, has since then provided Television House with many a giggle. The most famous story is of the day a policeman summoned me to the reception desk to inform me that, according to witnesses (and thank heaven they were there) a Rolls Royce, turning in Drury Lane, had got its bumper caught under mine and all unbeknowingly had towed the bubble away. The driver discovered the appendage in the Aldwych, and no doubt madly embarrassed, had hopped out, freed the bumpers and abandoned the bubble to its fate on a pedestrian crossing. How I miss our good friend Albert who took care of 596WML in Drury Lane until it was made one-way and metered. Now the poor little thing languishes in odd gaps in Bloomsbury and since Christmas has had its right winker light side-swiped six times.

Who could forget that wonderful third year anniversary when we sailed down the river with so many television personalities on board that ITV would have gone out of business if the boat had sunk? The spluttering fireworks before the floodlit lower spelling out A-R (in full of course), the wonderful entertainment and dancing on the deck, the glamour of the Thames on a perfect autumn night as we drifted down to the illuminated Cutty Sark? These are pleasant memories.

And how about those revues so splendidly worked for by the ARTS? I am still blushing over my photographic disasters at the dress rehearsals. So elated was I at being asked to take pictures for Fusion, that I made the mistake of not trusting my gear but on two occasions borrowed electronic flash equipment with dire results. The first one had not been properly charged and I ran out of light before the first interval and for the second I was loaned the very latest thing which developed a short, and packed up in like manner. Doing my best by low key stage lighting, I managed to produce a collection of murky prints as seen through a glass darkly.

During the last nine and a half years there have been many merry meetings and many sad partings. My deepest grief was, of course, the death of Hugh Findlay, an old friend before he joined A-R and a colleague that many have missed as much as I.

And now, all my dear kind friends that I shall miss so much, I must bid you adieu. Before I go, let me counsel the young not to apprehend the passing of the years. The longer you live, the more you live and the more you live, the more memories you can store up. I wouldn’t swap mine to be 30 years younger. So once again adieu, as away I go – ‘I’ve got a lot of living to do!’