‘Hi Colin. Want a beer?’
I explained that I was just checking if he was comfortable and well looked after.
‘Sure am. Stick around and meet Amy. She’ll be down soon.’
Amy looks even younger than Milton. She is also extremely attractive – small, pale, dark hair, intense – very much a contrast to my little Wdg with her empty eyes.
The little boy is about 2½ and known as Josh. He toddles all over the place, pretty much unhindered and with very little sense as yet. Milton seems very involved with both of them. Perhaps he is not as much of a rascal as Mr P implies. I absolutely can’t help liking him.
In the afternoon I drove over to Parkside. Plod opened the front door cautiously (I don’t know the staff here so I can’t go round the back). It seems that MM and AM spend all their time upstairs, having meals and newspapers sent up. I met Hedda Rosten, MM’s ‘personal secretary’. She is very New York, middle-aged, but sympathetic and clever. She had a drink in her hand and seemed to me a little tipsy. I suppose she is still exhausted from the overnight flight.
Plod seems happy enough. It is a great relief to have him there.
As I was leaving AM appeared in a white towelling bathrobe and gazed round slowly over his hornrimmed specs. Plod explained who I was – the house etc. – but AM just grunted and went back upstairs.
And to think that this is the man the whole world envies – on honeymoon with Marilyn Monroe.
THURSDAY, 26 JULY
Mr P and I and Vanessa went to Pinewood again to check everything once more. (Vanessa is going to be Mr P’s production secretary.) We already have Studio A and the major set – or scenery – is being put up there. It is going to be the purple drawing room in the Carpathian Embassy in Belgrave Square, and it is built so that each of the four walls, with their windows, fireplace, doors etc. can be swung away, and the camera can film the other three. There will be various bedrooms and dressing rooms leading off it which will be built later. It is meant to be on the first floor of the Embassy, and a huge columned hall and grand double staircase will eventually be put up in Studio B when we have finished in A.
There is a lighting grid or gantry all over the ceiling of each studio, with literally hundreds of lights hanging from it. They are on telescopic, rotating metal rods so that they can be altered by the electrician working up above. The lighting cameraman, Jack Cardiff, will work out which of these lights he wants lit, how high they should hang and where they should point. He will make a plan beforehand and give it to the lighting foreman, or ‘gaffer’, to set up. Then Jack will fine-tune all the lights using the stand-ins – one for MM, one for SLO, one for Dame Sybil Thorndike etc. until all is ready for the stars to walk in and perform.
The stars will be made up in their dressing rooms and walk in costume to the set. MM will do most of it in her main dressing room and then walk to her ‘portable’ dressing room for her costume. The idea is to have her ready to go in front of the camera at the same time as the set has been lit and prepared, and all the technicians are ready.
I get the strong impression that the technicians are the bosses here. If MM has to be kept waiting, so be it. Woe betide the actor or actress who keeps the technicians waiting!
That seems to be the attitude to British stars, anyway, but I doubt if MM will see it that way. Nor do I. There is no doubt that the technicians are admirable men – calm, professional, efficient. But basically they are replaceable and MM is not. Skills are common. Talent is rare. One day someone will have the courage to sack every technician in the industry and only rehire them if they promise to do what they are told.
However if I said that, even to David, I’d get lynched, so I better keep my mouth shut.
To go back to the filming – you never shoot a scene in one go. You shoot all the bits with the camera pointing in one direction and then swirl round and shoot the others later. And each shot is done many times to get it just right. The boy with the clapperboard marks each one so that the editor can put the whole thing together in the right order later. The film goes off to a laboratory to be processed overnight. The sound is transferred from thin magnetic tape to wider tape in the Sound Department, and the editor uses the ‘Clap’ of the board to ‘sync’ the two up on his machine. The board also tells the production name, the shot number and the take number. The lab only prints the takes that look successful to the director – sometimes only one – in order to save money, but even so the editor ends up with hundreds of strips of film in his office, each one with a parallel piece of sound tape. I had asked David to explain all this and he took me round the studios showing me the various bits of equipment we would use. Cranes, dollies, B-P screens, arc lights, booms, concealed microphones etc!
I’ve got a lot to learn but David and Mr P have been very patient teachers. I really need to know as much as I possibly can before filming starts, so I don’t get caught out.
The editor of the film will be Jack Harris. He is an old pro. Thin, grey hair, stoop and perpetual cigarette. At the moment he is finishing up another (British) film here, and normally he wouldn’t join our production team until the actual filming was nearly over. An assistant would log all our footage, and sync it up for us to see in ‘rushes’ each evening.
But SLO (and Milton, I suspect) wants all the insurance he can get, so Jack H will start to work a week after filming starts in 10 days’ time. Then he can double-check that every single thing has been covered by the camera.
David explained that with an ‘inexperienced’ (his word!) actress like MM,46 there might be a little ‘um’ or ‘er’ or breath that the director didn’t notice at the time. The editor will catch it on his machine – which he stops and starts while he examines every frame. Then they can either look for another ‘take’ or the director can shoot something to cover it.
This seems a good idea, especially as SLO will be acting in most shots as well as directing them. Tony B, bless him, could easily miss something. He’s really not a professional director.
Jack Harris is as dour and thorough as Mr P – what politicians used to call ‘a safe pair of hands’.
FRIDAY, 27 JULY
Pinewood again. Mr P was occupied with the accounts and legal departments of Rank Films who run Pinewood. They will rent us the necessary facilities. Very dull!
I spent the entire morning flirting with the little Wdg. Very exciting!
I finally bucked up courage to ask her for a date.
‘Not tonight,’ she said sternly.
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve got to wash my hair, of course.’
I didn’t quite understand the ‘of course’, but pretty girls must be allowed their little ways.
‘What about Saturday night then?’
‘Oh, all right,’ smile, giggle and wiggle.
She really has the smallest waist and the most enchanting laughing eyes I’ve ever seen. And all those beautiful natural (I suppose) brown ringlets hanging down to her shoulders. I’m hooked. I wish I could decide where to take her.
David and I checked the MM dressing room which had needed some alterations – not, I hasten to say, at MM’s behest. I don’t think she has even noticed where she is yet, but Milton feels he can interpret her wishes best. MM will use the suite to rest in from Monday, when rehearsals start.
We also checked the security arrangements. The idea is that no one can get in to our area unless they are on a casting call-sheet. For some of our scenes – the Coronation route, the Abbey, the ballroom – we will have as many as 500 ‘extras’ and it would be very easy to smuggle a journalist in, so everyone will have to be especially careful. The ‘extras’ belong