Earl Cameron

Earl Cameron was interviewed at the National Film Theatre on 16 September 2002 by Dylan Cave. In this interview Earl Cameron discusses how he began his fim career; the challenges he faced in moving from theatre to film and memories of his time spent at Ealing.

• Lose the moustache and it's yours
• The Aldridge Connection
• Memories of Ealing

Interview © BFI 2002

Lose the moustache and it's yours

Dylan Cave: Earl, you never acted on screen in a speaking role before Pool of London, but your performance was wonderful. Can you tell me how you managed to land such a successful role?

Earl Cameron: Thank you. It's a long story.

[Laughter]

Let me see if I can remember. I had done quite a lot in the theatre. I had been in a number of things. I was in a thing called 13 Death Street, Harlem. It was a terrible thing. I hated it. Not to boast, but they had booked all the Moss and Stoll Empire dates because of me. The show has been losing money from the beginning. A man called Alan Russell was the agent, and got me a part in it. They paid me very little money.

Actually, that's a long story and I shouldn't get into it. During that period I phoned a lady I knew who worked for a film company and I said, "I hate this show I am in." She said, "By the way, Ealing Studios are doing a film called Where No Vultures Fly, why don't you phone them and see if there's a part for you?"

I was very reluctant to do it. In those days, I didn't have an agent so I phoned them myself. I spoke to Margaret Harper Nelson, the casting agent. I said, "Hello, my name is Earl Cameron. I understand you are doing a film in Kenya called Where No Vultures Fly." She said, "It's a shame that you should call us because we've seen your picture in Spotlight and we think there's something else that we had rather thought about you for. It doesn't start until November." This was about May or June. She said, "Would you like to see Basil Dearden this afternoon?" I said, "Yes, I'd love to."

She arranged an appointment and he said he had some cuttings from a theatre I used to work in a lot. He said he would call Guy Verney, who worked at the theatre, and see what he thought of my acting. He said, "You look a little old for the part. How old are you"?" I said that I was 26. He said, "You look older." He shouldn't have told me that I looked old for the part, I mean, what was I going to say? Actually, I was 32.

[Laughter]

So, he said, "Maybe it's your moustache." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Would you shave it off?" I said, "Right now, if you like." He arranged for me to have a film test. He said that he would send a script over to my place. I lived in Mornington Crescent at the time. He said, "Hopefully it will arrive at yours before you go to the theatre" and it did. I got on the bus on the way to Walthamstow, where I was playing at the time, and started reading the script. I was like "Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny." I was like, "On my God." The most I had ever done in a film before was extra work. Anyhow, I thought, "I've got to get this part."

I had several screen tests for the part. I was very bad in the first one. I gave a very staged performance with all the gestures. Basil Dearden said, "Look, it's late at night. You're on London Bridge. You can hear the ships in the distance. Keep it down." I said, "Yeah, that's true." But I'd still go back and do all this corny, ham stuff.

[Laughter]

That was my first test. I knew it wasn't good and I went home and thought, "I could have done so much better." But, as it happened, they called up a few days later and said, "Earl, we've got to test for another girl. Could you come to the studio and test for it. They said, "We'll pay you for it." I said, "Sure." So, in the end, I tested with about five girls altogether. Geraldine McEwan, Susan Shaw and Carol Marsh were among them. I can't remember the other girls. After about the second or third girl, I had started to learn the difference between theatre and film. I was keeping my voice down and cutting out the gestures. I was making it really natural. On Saturday morning I got called and told that they had decided on me for the part.

DC: You came over to England in 1939 but you didn't do any acting until 1942. What were you doing in the meantime?

EC: I came and worked on ships for the Merchant Navy. I also did a lot of menial jobs like dishwashing and kitchen porter jobs. To be very honest, I came to London just after the war started and got very ill. I had to go to hospital and nearly died. My only thought was to go back to Bermuda. I wasn't the brave, heroic type. The war was alright, but I wanted to go back to my little island, especially after I came out of hospital after the pneumonia. I couldn't get there. I went to Liverpool to try to get back to Bermuda and the fact is that I was a typical Bermudian who was dumb enough to leave Bermuda without a passport.

[Laughter]

The only way I could get back was on a ship. I didn't have any money. Eventually I got a job on an Egyptian ship and went to India for five months. It didn't have a convoy. It didn't even have a gun on it until they fitted one on in Calcutta. I left on my birthday, August 8 1940. Coming back to Liverpool, the bombing was on so I stayed for a couple of weeks. I thought, "Well, I can't go back to Bermuda. I might as well go back to London."

The Aldridge Connection

DC: What made you turn to acting?

EC: That's what I was about to say. When I got back to London, I suddenly felt this urge. I suddenly realised I had fallen in love with London. When the train pulled in to Euston, my heart was beating fast. I thought, "I love this place. I love London." The thought of Bermuda disappeared. But I couldn't get a job. I wasn't involved with theatres or films. I got back into my menial jobs, such as dishwashing. Then one day, a guy gave me some tickets to see Chu Chin Chow; I saw my friends there, six black guys. They played the part of slaves in this great musical show, with a cast of seventy. I went backstage and said, "I could do what you guys are doing. Can't you get me a part in the show?" A guy called Harry Crossman said, "Come on, Earl. The show is cast. They don't let people in now. No way." I had been joking, more or less. Three weeks later, he came to me in a club where I used to go to called The Jigs Club and said, Earl, your big chance has come. Robert Atkins had said, "Get someone else." A guy called Russell hadn't turned up. I went to the theatre and met Robert Atkins, who looked me up and down. He said, "I guess you'll do" and that was it. That night, I was up on stage.

[Laughter]

Oh boy. I tell you, my knees were shaking. I had to go on in a group and sing,

[Singing] "Here the oyster's stewed in honey and this is from Zanzibar"

My thing was to come on and sing about Ali Baba. That night, nothing came out. I was sweating. But I said, "This is better than dish-washing. I am going to stay right here. This is what I want. The theatre." So that's it, the beginning.

[Applause]

DC: Throughout the '40s, you trained with Amanda Ira Aldridge, the granddaughter of a great Shakespearean actor. What did she teach you?

EC: I was then in something called The Petrified Forest. It was a small part, but my first acting part. I did a few other acting parts. After the war, I went back to Bermuda. I spent five months there but had a yearning for the theatre. So I came back to London. When I got back, I got a part in Deep are the Roots. This was my first worthwhile part. I was the understudy to a guy called Gordon Heath. On the first day of the understudy rehearsal, I thought I was acting well. But the stage manager, who was taking the rehearsal said, "Earl, I am sitting in the fifth row and I can't understand a word you're saying." I said, "What do you mean?" Someone else said, "He's right. You are slurring all the words. You need to learn how to act. You need proper diction."

I thought that I was doing alright. A girl in the show said, "You really have to work on your diction" so she introduced me to Amanda Aldridge. She was the granddaughter of Ira Aldridge, a very famous Shakespearean actor. The actor Charles Kean in New York in 1824 saw this young man and brought him to London. He became one of the finest actors there has ever been in London. He was black. Unfortunately, you won't really find his name in the archives of the English theatre. He played almost every Shakespearean role you can think of, Shylock, Macbeth, even Hamlet. His main part naturally was Othello. He became a very good friend of Alexander Dumas at the time. He played in Germany to a German audience and he was so powerful as an actor that he could get away with doing it English. His granddaughter showed me some pictures of him in Russia. There was this photo of a stage, with rats running along it, and it said 'Before Aldridge.' Then there was another photo of a huge crowd of people and it said 'During Aldridge.' That was how great he was. But that's beside the point, because I am supposed to be talking about myself.

[Laughter]

But I must pay tribute to Ira Aldridge. He is extremely well known in the States but they don't talk about him in this country.

DC: In this season of your films, it seems that you tend to play very humane, wise characters. Is that your personality coming through there is it wonderful acting?

[Laughter]

EC: It's just luck.

[Laughter]

I was extremely lucky. Most of the parts were dignified parts. I must say that when I got a script that showed black people in a derogatory way I would say, "No, I am not going to do it" or I would tell the director to change things about it. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. Fortunately, most of the parts I did I am proud of. I don't mean my acting; others can judge that. But there's no-one I have felt ashamed to play in theatre, film or television. I can't think of anything like that.

DC: You did a number of films with Albert Broccoli, one called Safari, where you worked with Victor Mature on location ...

EC: It was shot on location in Kenya, around 230 miles north of Nairobi. Victor Mature was a nice man, a beautiful man but he was a very heavy drinker. An Austrian woman ran the catering. We were up in the bush under canvas one day when one of the waiters, Hassan, was fired. Victor Mature said to me, "Have you heard about Hassan? They've fired him. It's not right. I don't like that. That Austrian so-and-so ..."

[Laughter]

So he wanted us all to sign a petition to get the job back. He was that sort of man. I remember one day also we were talking in his caravan. He was telling a few stories. The dresser, an Irish guy called John, said, "Victor, can you put your shirt on? They are going to use you in a few minutes." He said, "Just a minute, John. Take it easy. Can't you see I'm talking?" John waited seven or eight minutes and then said, "Victor, I'm sorry but I have to put your shirt on or you won't be ready and they'll blame me." And Victor said, "Hey, John, don't get hurt. Don't get hurt, man." He was that kind of person.

[Laughter]

Memories of Ealing

DC: We are going to show a small clip from a film called The Message, an epic from the '70s. Why did you choose this clip to show?

EC: The film has a unifying message. The film is about the life of Mohammed. I play the part of the King of Ethiopia. Mohammed told his followers to go to Ethiopia because there was a just king there. They were being badly persecuted in Arabia. Mohammed said this king would protect them.

They then sent an envoy from Arabia to take them back. He told the king that they were honorary slaves and that they wanted them back. The king said, "If they are honorary slaves we will send them back. But firstly, let's hear something from them."

DC: I would like to take some questions from the audience now.

Q: The film tonight brought back many, many memories for me of the area that it was shot in because I used to live there, in Bermondsey. At the end of the film, when Susan Shaw had been arrested, a little tear came to my eye the way you looked at each other. How did you get on with her while you were filming?

EC: We got on very well. It was my very first picture. I was very green. When I watched some of the scenes I squirmed. I would pLay them very differently now. But I did a fairly good job on the whole. We got on very well together.

Q: I am interested in the sociology of the cinema, particularly in the evolving role of the black actor. How did you get on with established actors at the time, like Bob Adams, who didn't do such a good job in Sapphire?

EC: I knew Robert Adams well. I knew him during the war. I played with him as a young man in a play called All God's Chillun at Colchester Rep. I knew him fairly well, not that well. No disrespect to Mr Adams but I feel that the way he played the part in Sapphire was not very nice. It was very Uncle Tom-ish and not true to the way that black people are in this country. I don't think he gave a good rendering. It annoyed me too. Thanks for mentioning it.

Q: What are your greatest memories of Ealing?

EC: I have wonderful memories of Ealing. I did my first film there, after all. I remember arriving from the theatre and being amazed at the way they treated actors. They met me at the gate and took me to my dressing room and made me coffee. You don't get that sort of thing in the theatre. It was all rather nice. I have a lot of respect for Michael Balcon. I noticed the other day that he produced a film with Paul Robeson called The Proud Valley. I have a great respect for the whole Ealing set-up and have some great memories there.

Q: Were there any indoor sets on Pool of London?

EC: There was an awful lot of location work. But in those days they used much more studio than they do nowadays. But practically all the exterior shots were location work. I remember there was a shot where I entered this pub in Bermondsey but all the indoor scenes were in the studio. I couldn't believe that they went to such detail to make the studio pub look like the pub in Bermondsey.

[Laughter]

Q: What was your fan mail like after Pool of London?

[Laughter]

EC: Tremendous.

[Laughter]

One word, I tell you.

[Laughter]

All the nice young girls were writing to me, and old girls too.

[Laughter]

I was getting about 25 letters a day. I didn't have a secretary then so I had to deal with them. I probably answered about 10% of them. I hate to admit that but it's true. And I made one mistake, which I won't go into now.

[Laughter]

Q: When Ealing finally decided on Susan Shaw for Pool of London, did they ask your opinion?

EC: No, they didn't. I remember testing with Carol Marsh one day. I went for lunch with her one day and she was very negative. She said, "I know I won't get it." She had done some epics. She had shot something in Rome. She was a good little actress but she was so pessimistic about it. I said "Why are you so negative?" I couldn't afford the luxury of being negative at the time. I had to get this role. Anyway, she didn't get it. But they never asked my opinion on it. Geraldine McEwan gave a very good performance and I thought she'd get it. She was the best known at the time. But Susan Shaw was well known too.

Q: Where do you see yourself going in the future?

EC: I am well past a nice part like Pool of London. Black actors have always been knocking at the door for years. I have been to many protest meetings to get better parts for black actors and better stories for them. I have to say that more recently I have seen some extremely good black actors out there. There is some real talent out there and I think they should take advantage of that and give them much better parts than we see in some of the soaps and films. They are out there but they need to give them better parts. I think Adrian Lester is a very good actor. He was in a good film with John Travolta. That was an American production, though. Here in England, they are way behind.

Q: I was surprised that you weren't associated with any Korda Brothers films. Why weren't you?

EC: Most of the Alexander Korda films were before the war and I came to London during the war. I missed out on a role to Sidney Poitier in one of their films. That was immediately before I got the part in Pool of London. We are very good friends, even now. We have done two films together. He deserved it more than I did. I went to the studio and I didn't know the lines very well. It was my first test, so to speak. They called me up and said, "You came to the studio and didn't know your lines. This is unforgivable for an actor."

[Laughter]

[Applause]

DC: Thank you for coming today Earl, it's been a pleasure.