Ronald Neame

Image: Ronald Neame

Ronald Neame was interviewed by Matthew Sweet at the National Film Theatre on the 19 October 2003.

Beginning as an assistant cameraman on Hitchcock's Blackmail (1928) Ronald Neame went on to earn two Academy Award nominations as a writer, for Brief Encounter in 1946 and Great Expectations in 1947, (both of which he also produced), and one nomination for special effects for One of Our Aircraft is Missing. Over more than 60 years he acheived in excess of 80 screen credits, variously as assistant cameraman, camera operator, director of photography, writer, producer and director, and a reputation as the best 'all-rounder' in the business The bfi was delighted to welcome him to the NFT to discuss his extensive career after a special screening of The Horse's Mouth, which featured Alec Guinness in an Oscar winning performance as the talented eccentric artist Gulley Jimson.

Interview © BFI 2003

Introduction

Matthew Sweet: Ronald Neame was born into cinema. Today he's a kind of living embodiment of the form, a sort of one-man world heritage site. His parents were pioneers in the medium. His mother, Ivy Close, was a film star whose picture postcard photograph soldiers took with them to the Western Front. His father, Elwin Neame, was one of the first directors to craft a self-conscious form of British art cinema. Their son entered the film business as a teenage gofer at Elstree just as the silent era was drawing to a close. His second job was as an assistant camera operator on the first British talkie, Hitchcock's Blackmail [Alfred Hitchcock, GB, 1929]. He spent the early 30s learning the cinematographer's craft on quota quickies and George Formby pictures. From the 40s, the list of credits, whether as cinematographer, producer or director, is simply a list of everybody's favourite pictures. He shot No.l Coward floating in a sea of sludge in In Which We Serve [No.l Coward, David Lean, GB, 1942], co-wrote the affair between Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter [David Lean, GB, 1945], then de-materialized Kay Hammond in Blithe Spirit [David Lean, GB, 1945]. But his directing career was almost over before it began, the casualty of a painful dispute with David Lean that effectively brought the work of their company, Cineguild, to an end. He recovered, however, from this setback, partly through a series of brilliant collaborations with Alec Guinness. He encouraged Guinness to drive a mechanical wrecker through a church in The Horse's Mouth, and to drive John Mills to suicide in Tunes of Glory [GB, 1960]. In the 1960s and 70s, his work became increasingly international in its scope. He fought a battle of wills with Judy Garland on the set of I Could Go on Singing [GB, 1963], helped Maggie Smith to an Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [GB, 1968], and coaxed a tune out of Albert Finney on Scrooge [GB, 1970]. He sent Shelley Winters for a final swim in The Poseidon Adventure [US, 1972], sent a huge lump of rock hurtling into the Earth in Meteor [US, 1979], and sent Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau to bed in Hopscotch [US, 1980].

You need a thick and compendious book to tell the whole story, and, fortunately, Ronnie has written it: Straight from the Horse's Mouth [Scarecrow Press 2003]. Before we talk to Ronnie, we're going to show a reel of clips to remind ourselves of some of the great moments of Ronald Neame's career.

[clip reel and applause]

Ronald Neame: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

Born in a film studio

MS: Ronnie, I think perhaps maybe we ought to start by putting you in context. As I said in my introduction, you yourself span almost untold lengths of time as a British practitioner, but it's in your background. You were born into the cinema. Did you have any option?

RN: Well, they say Judy Garland was born in a trunk. So I was really born in a film studio, because my mother was, as you said, a very famous silent film star. She was making a film up to six weeks before I was born, and everything had to be shot in close-up of her, which was very nice for her, because I was due to arrive. She took me on the set when I was just two or three months old, rather proudly.

Of course, The Daily Mirror ran this competition to find the most beautiful woman in the world. That's how she became an actress. She entered this competition, and my father photographed the 25 finalists. My mother won the first [Miss] World competition, my father married her, and here I am, 92 years later!

MS: How aware were you of the world that your parents moved in?

RN: Well, I was conscious of the fact that they were quite famous, of course. Even this evening I was handed and shown ten photographs of my mother from the period. You know, it was during the First World War. I was born in 1911 so I do remember the First World War. But I've been, as I say, 75 years 'at it'.

MS: Your mother, I believe, was the person who got you your first job, who catapulted you into Elstree.

RN: Well, my very first job [was different.] I had to leave school when I was fifteen because the money ran out. My father was killed in a motor accident and the business went wrong. The first job I got was, funnily enough, with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. I was an office boy, and it didn't seem to be my future. My mother, bless her, used her influence and got me a job at Elstree Studios as a messenger boy. Just yesterday I went down to Elstree Studios again and what nostalgia there was!

Early Elstree

MS: What do you remember about your arrival at Elstree? What else was going on there when you arrived?

RN: Oh boy! The first day that I went into a studio, there were three films. It was a great big shed cut in half. On one side there were three films being made. One starred Madeleine Carroll (I wonder how many of you remember that name!) But that wasn't the one I was on. The second starred Betty Balfour (I'm sure you haven't heard of Betty Balfour!) and was being directed by Syd Chaplin, who was Charlie Chaplin's brother, who, I have to tell you, was, sadly, deported for having relations with an underage girl. We have to give a little spice to it, don't we? And the third film starred Jack Buchanan, who was a matinee idol of the time. And that was the one I was on. Now, on the other side of this enormous double shed was a film that nobody was allowed to go in to see. It was being directed by the boy genius, 28-year-old Alfred Hitchcock. Very fortunately, a few months later, I found myself as assistant cameraman with Hitchcock on the very first talking film made in Europe. I never worked with him again, but I knew him all my life, and all his life. I was asked just six months before he died whether I would introduce him as Man of the Year at the British-American Chamber of Commerce. I hadn't seen him for a long while, and he was brought in in a wheelchair, and I went over to him and I said, "Hitch, do you remember me?" And he looked up and he said,"Ronnie, of course I remember you. You're one of my boys". And then he said, "You've grown sideburns!" It was so lovely to see him again. And just a few months later, he was gone.

Now I have to tell you one thing before we go any further. George Burns once said that the secret of a good speech is a good beginning and a good ending and having the two as close together as possible!

So we'll try to do that this evening.

I've ruined my lighting!

MS: When you were working on Blackmail, did the enterprise feel like a cranky kind of experiment, or like the shape of things to come?

RN: Well, there were those who thought that sound might be important. There were those that said, This is just a flash in the pan, I mean, dialogue has got nothing to do with film. Film is action. Film is you watch. If you want dialogue, you go to the theatre. And, you know, for years, we didn't really recognise television, us film-makers. We thought they were little upstarts, you know. Well now, of course, the tail is wagging the dog, and television has become more important, almost, than film.

But the problem was that we made the film silent and then in came sound and we had to reshoot the dialogue sequences. Now, our leading lady, a little Czechoslovakian girl called Anny Ondra, had a strong Czech accent, but it didn't matter, because you didn't hear her speaking. And then sound comes in. Now, we didn't want to shoot the whole picture, so what did we do about Anny Ondra, because she was supposed to be the daughter of a London newsagent? Hitchcock was brilliant then, way ahead of his time, because sound had only just happened, and we engaged another actress, Joan Barry, who rehearsed with Anny Ondra, and she spoke the lines on the side of the set into a microphone, and Anny Ondra mimed them on the set itself. There was nothing like dubbing or looping or any of those things in those days.

And the problems! I mean, we used arc lights. The sound [people] said, You can't use arc lights; they make a hum. We cannot have that hum. And so we had to cut out all arc lights, and [yet] the incandescent [replacement] lights just weren't strong enough. And the camera department and the sound department practically had physical fights over this. The microphone had to be that much from the actor's head, otherwise they couldn't get good sound, so the microphone - and they were the kings of the castle - the microphone was brought down, and that caused shadows all over the walls! The cameraman went up to the sound man and he said, Look, you've got to compromise too. I've ruined my lighting for your 'effing' sound! And all those kind of things happened. But in the end it was a wonderful experience. And, of course, sound came in to stay. What was correct and right, just as the gramophone company, when radio came in, thought that was the end, they in the end decided that they'd better join them, because they couldn't beat them, so you had the radiogram, and the two industries combined, and that's really what happened with film. The British Film Academy, of which I was a first member, changed its name from British Film Academy, BFA, to BAFTA, British Film and Television... And I've never made a television film, because I'd be fired after the second day for being a day behind schedule. I should say 'shedule' - I'm here in England!

Uncle Arthur

MS: The late 20s and the early 30s must have been a tremendously exhilirating time to be involved in British film, because there was such a boom in production going on that had been stimulated by the new Quota Act, and new studios being built and all kinds of, you know, the level of production going up. The quota quickies were a place where you learnt your craft, really, weren't they?

RN: Yes, the quota quickies which were made by... 25 per cent of all screen time had to be, by law, devoted to British film. The government brought in what they thought would save our lives. And so this law came in. But our American friends were very, very clever. They all formed British companies. There was British Warner, there was British Fox, you name it. British MGM, who had a studio up the road from Elstree. And they financed these films. They gave a British producer five thousand pounds for a five-thousand-foot film. The producer would make the film for four thousand pounds in six days, and put the other thousand in his pocket. Now, obviously these films weren't good, but they did help us with our training. As a young cameraman, I learnt so much from them. But when the finished article was there, it wasn't exactly exciting. But our American cousins had a very clever idea. They opened the theatre at eight o'clock in the morning (by the theatre I mean everywhere in the country.) The theatres opened at eight o'clock, and the British film was run from eight to nine thirty, to the cleaners. And then at around about nine thirty, they ran it again. And at eleven thirty, they put it in the back of the projection box and they didn't bring it out till the next morning; they showed their own film all day long. So [the Quota Act] backfired. But the real, real wonderful years, what we call the Golden Years, were the years of Arthur Rank. Uncle Arthur, we called him. Who just simply said to us, What film would you like to make? And we'd choose a story, Great Expectations being one, and [he would say] Tell us when we can look at it, don't spend more than you have to, and go away and enjoy yourselves. It was wonderful. We did anything we wanted. A film like Brief Encounter with Celia and Trevor - they were completely unknown. You couldn't make it today. Nobody would let you make it today. But in those days, we were given complete freedom. And, of course, we thought the Golden Years would go on forever, but I'm afraid they didn't.

MS: Yes, it's very interesting that you say that because the image that comes down to us of Rank is of somebody who's not doing his best, perhaps, to propagate the idea of art, but in those early years, that's exactly what he was doing, wasn't it? He was a kind of benefactor.

RN: Well, he was a benefactor. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. But he spent too much money, really, because we didn't have an American market. No matter how he tried to get into the American market, the Americans just did not like our films. They were too colloquial for them. So he never got into that market. Finally, the accountant, whose name I will not mention, of the Rank Organisation, took over the whole thing and made the Rank Organisation solvent by stopping making films. He sold a lot of theatres for a lot of money and opened bingo halls in others and in no time at all he reduced the overdraft to a reasonable figure, and the Golden Years had gone forever.

MS: Do you think the Golden Years, in a way, though, generated those lean years? Do you think that you pushed it too far? Do you think some of your colleagues took Mr Rank's money too easily and spent it in too profligate a way?

RN: Well, I suppose so, yes. I have to admit we weren't interested in figures on pieces of paper, and, yes, it couldn't last. But it was wonderful while it did last.

MS: One of the jobs that brings you into contact with this other group of film-makers is Major Barbara [Gabriel Pascal, GB, 1941], Gabi Pascal's film, when he was notorious for going way over budget.

RN: Well, he was one of the last ones that got away with it. Very shortly after that, we made In Which We Serve, the No.l Coward picture. This was produced by a gentleman called Filippo Del Giudice. He managed right in the middle of the war to get Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was in charge of combined operations or whatever, to help us. And we built three quarters of a full-size destroyer on the set, which rocked and rolled and was magnificent. We'd been shooting for ten days, with No.l Coward starring, and at the end of the tenth day, Filippo called David Lean and me and our executive, Tony Havelock-Allan, into his office. He said he had something very important to tell us. So we went to his office, and he said, I'm afraid I have tragic news for you. We have run out of money, and the film can't go on. We said, What on earth are you talking about, Del? I mean, you've built these enormous sets, you've engaged a big unit, No.l Coward is starring and goodness knows who else in the picture, you're living in a suite at the Savoy Hotel on the riverside - how can you now say you haven't any money? He said, All on credit, I'm afraid. But, he said, the Savoy, they won't let me leave until I pay the bill. But, he said, I still get room service. However, it was very serious. And he said to David Lean, David, we've shot twenty minutes of film. Could you cut this together over the weekend and give me something I can show on Monday to a gentleman called Sam Smith, who was head of British Lion at the time. And David spent the weekend [editing], and I spent it with him because I was fascinated with the cutting room, and on Monday morning we showed Sam the twenty minutes, and he said, I guarantee the rest of the money. And No.l was never told about it. He never knew how dodgy the situation was. And Del was a pirate, just as Gabi was. They were wonderful pirates in those days. Alexander Korda... They made films they wanted to make somehow or other, against all odds. I wish there were more pirates around today.

MS: Do you think today's film producers are rather callow figures in comparison?

RN: Well, it's not in [the hands] of the film-makers any longer; it is the front office that make the decisions. Of course, in America, a film costs a minimum of around fifty or sixty million. (I'm proud of The Poseidon Adventure because it only cost five million!) And if it doesn't do well after the first three days, the first weekend, they'll run it for the rest of the week, and if it hasn't done well, off it goes. Now, earlier on, one of David's films, Doctor Zhivago [David Lean, GB/US, 1965], was disastrous. It had the most terrible reviews, and it ran in a lot of theatres [without success]. But MGM knew it was a good picture, and they kept it running, and they put more money into publicizing it. And word of mouth went around and the film became a big success. But you can't do that today. And indeed, anyone that wants to make the kind of film you've just seen [The Horse's Mouth] has a terrible struggle. It's very, very difficult to get that kind of film financed. So that's the way we are.

MS: Was it difficult even then to get a film like The Horse's Mouth financed?

RN: Yes. It's too long a story (I mean, I promised George Burns) to tell you today. Yes, it was very tough to get that one going. And, of course, the following one, Tunes of Glory, which is the film I am proudest of, and that, of course, is with Guinness.

The thing that happens to directors

I do have to tell you a story here because it's the kind of thing that happens to directors. This picture [The Horse's Mouth] was entered for the Venice Film Festival and I went over for the Festival. Around about Wednesday or Thursday of the week of the Festival, or the ten days of the Festival or whatever it was, the United Artists representative came to me and said, Ronnie, Alec Guinness is going to win the Best Actor's award and you've got to get him here. I said, Well, I'll try. Well, I don't know how much you all know about Alec Guinness, but he hates any of these events. He really does. He likes to be hidden. He was the introvert of all time. He said, No, Ronnie, I'm not coming over. I don't like these things. Oh, Alec, please come, I mean, you're going to win for Best Actor. I am not coming, Ronnie, and that's final. And, of course, he won the award. Two years later, I went to Venice again, with Tunes of Glory, and again on the Wednesday or the Thursday, the United Artists man came and said, Alec is going to win again. And this time, you've got to get him. So once again I phone Alec. Alec, you've got to come over. Oh, Ronnie, I've told you before, I hate these things. Please, Alec, I beg of you! You're going to win the Volpe Cup. All right, he said. And he came over. And he was as miserable as sin, and he gave me a wretched time all evening. And I mean, they did it proud. We had bagpipes leading us down the street from the hotel to the theatre, and it was a wonderful evening. The next morning, very early, Alec went off back to London, and the Festival went on for another four days or whatever. On the final day, when the announcements were made, it said, For Tunes of Glory, we give the Best Acting award to... John Mills! Well, you can imagine my embarrassment, having to phone Alec and say, I'm sorry, Alec, but Johnny won it. But I had to do it. And Alec said rather tight-lipped, Well, he really deserved it. He deserved it far more than I did, and I'm delighted.

MS: In fact, the last time that you were here at the NFT, to introduce a screening of The Card [GB, 1952], your first film with Alec Guinness, you had some trouble persuading him to attend the event as well, didn't you?

RN: He wouldn't attend. He said, No, I'm not coming, Ronnie. The Card is a film we made a long time ago and I've forgotten all about it and I'm not coming. Then just the day before we were due in here, he phoned me and he said, Ronnie, I think perhaps I would like to take another look at The Card, and I'd like to come along. I said, Great, Alec. That'll be wonderful. [Then he said] But I don't want anybody to know I'm there. I want to be hidden in that audience and I don't want anybody knowing. And I said, Well, Alec, difficult, but I'll try. And I had to make a little speech right here on this stage, and I did say, which was perhaps breaking faith with Alec, Somewhere in this audience tonight is Sir Alec, but he just doesn't want it to be known. And after the film, as the theatre was emptying, Alec came up to me and he said, You know, Ronnie, I thought this was just another ordinary film, but, seeing it again now, I think it's rather good. And at that moment, somebody took the photograph that I've used on the front of the book.

And that was the biggest compliment that Alec ever paid me in all the six films that we made together.

Directing Guinness

MS: What was Guinness like to direct, then?

RN: Oh, wonderful. I have to tell you, this film [The Horse's Mouth] is his film, really. He sent me the book, which I had read, by Joyce Cary, a very underestimated writer, by the way, who should be much better known than he is. Alec sent me this book and he said, I think we could make a film out of this, Ronnie. And I'd read the book, and I said, Alec, I think it's a wonderful book, but I just cannot see a film. He said, You're wrong. Would you mind if I had a go at writing a screenplay? I said, My goodness, be my guest. I got a very cheap option on the book, because I was convinced that it wouldn't be a film. And we used to go down to his house, John Bryan and I, to Petersfield, once a week, and we would do the mechanical part of the scripting. But that screenplay is Alec Guinness. When you think that he not only starred in the film but that he also wrote it, I have to say that this evening is, in a way, a sort of tribute to Alec, whom I loved very much.

[applause]

MS: You describe in the book how he almost became, in a way, almost possessed by the characters he played. He started to take on their physical attributes in private life.

RN: Oh, yes. For example, in The Card, he was playing a sort of north country character. He would go up to where the film was supposed to take place, in five towns, it was 'The Smoke', I think they used to call it, where all the pottery is made. He went up there by himself, and he spent three or four days mixing in with people to get the real feeling of it. He became the person he was playing. Most actors - Rex Harrison, for example, comes to my mind because I worked with him - no matter what Rex played, he was always Rex Harrison. But Guinness wasn't anything at all, until he had this façade which went very deep, which he learnt from his characters. He did become those characters. Just about a week before the end of The Horse's Mouth, Merula, Alec's wife, came up to town and she said to me, Ronnie, I will be so glad when you've finished this, because Alec has become so dirty he won't even clean his nails! He does become the part. He did become the part.

MS: I understand that Merula was even more glad when the shoot was over on the film where he played Hitler(!)

RN: Oh, probably. I didn't have anything to do with that, but, yes, I'm sure!

MS: We should mention also, I think (because I didn't know this until I read your book) the name of Mike Morgan, who was so good in The Horse's Mouth.

RN: Mike Morgan was a lovely young actor. We were so lucky to find him. I think he was completely convincing. It wasn't an easy part. Stuttering can be funny, but he seemed to be so genuine. For me, he gave a good performance. About ten days before the end of the film, he became ill; I don't know how, but he got meningitis, and he was dead before the end of the film. It was a terrible problem for us - apart from the loss - because a lot of the locations had to be dubbed. You couldn't get sound in busy London with the buses going by. We were lucky enough to find someone (I don't remember his name) who absolutely brilliantly impersonated Mike Morgan. But it was a sad loss, because he was a very, very nice young man and a delightful actor.

MS: It's one of the very few films I've seen where the work of an artist is convincingly portrayed. Now, you had John Bratby to supply you with the paintings.

RN: Well, we went to see the then Chairman of the Royal Academy. We said we were going to make the Joyce Cary book, and who should we get to do the paintings. And he'd read the book, and without hesitation he said, There is only one man alive today who is right for this, and that's John Bratby. So we chose John Bratby. And again, Alec, the perfectionist, went down to John Bratby's house, and watched him painting and learnt all about it. John Bratby enjoyed himself, up to a point. But he began to get a bit pissed off when they started to call him Gulley Jimson. The thing I remember most about Bratby, whom I liked very much (I liked all the people I worked with!)... The wall at the end took him eight weeks to paint. It was on the lot at Shepperton, and he took eight solid weeks of painting, and he knew it had got to be knocked down. He just couldn't take it. He went home to bed. He couldn't stay there. Of course, it was a very dodgy situation. John Bryan, who designed the sets as well as being the producer, built this wall without any mortar in the centre of the bricks, so that a tractor coming in from behind would knock the centre out, and then, hopefully (and I say hopefully!) the rest would follow. I remember I had four cameras on it in different spots, because I didn't know what was going to happen. And I had this terrible moment when I had to press the button for the wall to be knocked down. We had four cameras. I said, Camera One? Camera Two? Ready! Ready! Ready! I knew I'd got to press it, and I knew that if it went wrong, there would be eight more weeks painting, and John Bratby probably wouldn't have anything to do with it. But it was one of those lucky things; it worked perfectly, as you saw. The wall broke in the centre, and it all fell down. And then a little miracle. One great piece of wall was still standing, and it stood for two seconds, and then it fell. It's a wonderful end to that, which was sheer luck.

Judy Garland

MS: We ought to talk as well about some of the forceful personalities with which you've worked over the years. Judy Garland, for instance.

RN: Judy Garland... talk about a love-hate relationship! I was so excited when I was asked to direct her. I thought, you know, what a wonderful opportunity, to direct Judy Garland. I heard all kinds of things about how she ate directors for breakfast, and if she didn't eat them, she fired them. I was told how difficult it would be, and I thought, oh well, I'll turn on my British charm, and I'll be all right. I'll win through. And she was absolutely charming through all the preparation of the production, and during the first number. Then the problems started. Again, George Burns would not let me go into the details, but what I will say is that when she liked me, which was half the time, she used to call me Pussycat. She would come up to me and give me a hug, and I would hug her, and she'd say, We're all right, Pussycat, aren't we? And I'd say, Judy, darling, we're all right. And we'd have three days of greatness. Then she'd come on the set in a filthy mood, having been missing for three days, and then I became 'Get that goddamn British Henry Hathaway off the set!' Now, all of you here don't know about Henry Hathaway. Henry Hathaway was a very important American director but had the reputation for being a bully. So when she called me Henry Hathaway, she meant that I was a bully. The film went through - I mean, it would take far too long to tell you. But in the end, we finished it. And although it wasn't a success at the time, it has become a sort of cult film now, because it was her last film. And it was very much her life.

MS: Yes, in fact, there are moments in it when there seems at times to be a strange kind of switch going on between...

RN: Well, there's one scene between Dirk Bogarde and her when he's trying to persuade her to go back to the theatre from the hospital. She's been taken to the hospital, and she's determined not to go back. And he's determined to make her go back. This scene was about a four-minute, five-minute scene, which I intended to break up into a medium shot and a close two-shot, and then individuals. We rehearsed it, and I said fine, let's now shoot it. Now, some extraordinary piece of magic happened. It was a very dramatic scene, where the Judy character says I'm never going back to the theatre again. I'm not going to go there and put myself up there, and why should I sing when I don't want to sing. So, a big argument. And suddenly, on the first shot, which was supposed to finish a quarter of the way through, suddenly, I realised that this was real life. That suddenly, Judy had become the real Judy. It was no longer acting, and it was absolutely wonderful. She bared her heart to Dirk. Whilst we were shooting, I thought, My God, what am I going to do? Because this was a one-time thing. So I did this [waved him forward] to the character pushing the camera, to get him to go in closer, which he did, he crept in closer. And Dirk Bogarde, being a brilliant actor and a very good film person, he realised what was happening, and he moved in closer to her. So they were right close, and so I was able to come in closer. And we went on with the scene. Then we realised that there was a little light on the front of the camera. As we went in closer, it started to burn up the faces, because it was too bright. And the cameraman signalled to the chief electrician, who crept over to the camera and slid a gauze in front of the light so that it wouldn't make it too strong. And we went right through the whole six minutes, I suppose, of the scene, and everybody on the set was in tears when we said cut. I said that's it. We'll never ever get that again. So it is all in one shot.

One of the things I do feel about today's films is that they are too frenetic. There's too much cut cut cut cut cut. When something is playing beautifully, and you have beautiful actors, you don't have to cut all the time, because it doesn't help the scene. It just destroys it. There's another one with Judy, of course, when she's on the telephone to her son, a little boy who doesn't want to go with her back to the States. Of course, I shot the boy as well as Judy. I mean, there's Judy in bed, on the phone, and the boy on the Embankment, I think, in a telephone kiosk. My plan was to intercut them, as one does. But Judy was so great, I couldn't cut away from her. I mean, I just couldn't. I couldn't go to the boy. I had to stay with her. And I think that runs for about three minutes. Getting in a little closer all the time. It's God-given, good acting. It really is. It's something so special, and I admire it so much. I hate actors, by the way! But I also love them. And we can't do without them. I think they should get a little less money. But, of course, they get so much money because they were so diddled by the studios, who had them under contract for peanuts and starred them in God knows how many films. Suddenly there was a revolt. The actors said, I want paying up-front. I don't believe in your profits. You will never let the film go into profit. So they started to get bigger and bigger salaries. Liz Taylor was the first to get a million dollars for a film. Now, of course, it's ten, fifteen, I think even twenty-eight million dollars.

The terrible thing we did

MS: What about Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? Did you love or hate them?

RN: Oh, I loved them. Grotty Maggie I used to call her. No, she was never difficult. She was a consummate actress again. Played everything beautifully. But she thought the theatre was the real place. And filming was slumming it for her in those days. I remember saying to her, before we started shooting, You know, Maggie, you go to the theatre and you have a miserable little dressing room somewhere round the back with no running water and certainly no loo, and you love it. And we give you every possible comfort, we try to make you feel a star, but we're still second best. And she didn't really like this, coming from me. On the first day of production, she came on the set, and I said, Good morning, Maggie, darling. 'Hrmph!' was the reply. And she walked past and went somewhere. On the second morning, I said, Good morning, Maggie. 'Hrmph.' And on she went. And the third morning, I thought well, to hell with this. Why do I keep on saying good morning, Maggie, darling, when that's all the response I get? So for a couple of days, I didn't say good morning. On the third day of my not saying good morning, she came over, and she sat on the bench I was sitting on, sat next to me, and said, 'ello! From then on, it was easy and lovely.

MS: Albert Finney in Scrooge sounds, from what I read, more of a genuinely enthusiastic participant, although you nearly didn't get him, did you, at first?

RN: We were going to have Richard Harris. He was going to play the lead. And he had to go and make a film in Israel, I think. Something went wrong with it and he had to take it over, and he had to direct it. So we couldn't get him. The company who were financing the film said, well, if you can't get him, there are only two or three other names that are acceptable to us. One of those names was Finney - who turned it down. He said, I don't want to make a film just now. So we thought, Rex, Rex Harrison. Rex could sort of play Scrooge. So we gave the script to Rex and he liked it very much and we cast him. But there was a problem. Because he was at the end of a play which he was working on in London. He had three weeks more to play. We had to start in two weeks, because of weather conditions, summer and winter scenes. So this three weeks was really a nuisance, but we had to face it. And then we decided we would pay the theatre off. We'd pay for the three weeks, and we'd get Rex earlier. And then one day, we had a phone call from Alby Finney, who said, on the phone, I have just read your screenplay, in my office, because my partner is playing a small part, and (he said) you know, I would love to play it. And we said, Oh, Alby, oh goodness me! We've cast Rex Harrison. And he said, Oh well, it's my fault, but I would have loved it. And we did a terrible thing. Slightly ashamed to tell you. We told Rex that we hadn't got the money to pay off the theatre, but we had to start shooting the following Monday. Rex didn't mind very much. And Alby played the part. I've always been slightly ashamed of that. I don't know why I should tell you tonight, but you're all very fair!

MS: It's time for you to expiate your guilt, isn't it?

Unspeakable Money

MS: Your films of this period are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, almost, aren't they? The Poseidon Adventure and Meteor are enormous, aren't they? Very different from the kind of pictures you were directing a decade before.

RN: Yes. I was never considered to be an action director up until The Poseidon Adventure. But because of Scrooge, the man who was head of the company that financed Scrooge phoned me up one day and he said, I have a film. I've just taken over presidency of Twentieth-Century Fox, and I have a film that's in terrible trouble before it even starts. The director's walked out because he couldn't get on with the producer. The sets are all built, everything's ready to go, Shelley Winters has been cast, and several other people, and Ronnie, I'm in terrible trouble. Can you come tomorrow to California and see what we can do? I went over, and we got a reasonable script out of it, and I must say, I enjoyed it. Of course, it's far, far and away from being the film that I'm really proud of; I'm certainly not proud of The Poseidon Adventure. However, it is my favourite film... Now, would you like to know why it's my favourite film?

MS: Yes please.

RN: Well, thank you. Whether you'd like to know or not, I'm going to tell you. It gave me 'F.U.' money! I very nearly used the full word instead of just 'F.U.' and then I thought you look such a nice, polite audience, that I won't. But, you know, that leads me to something quite different. I hear that word, f-u-c-k, at least 25 times every time I go to a movie. And in a sort of a way, it's taken the place of good dialogue. There's a dearth of good dialogue these days [audience applauds] - thank you - and they resort to this kind of thing to try and pretend that it's good dialogue. I regret that we can no longer make films that don't have car crashes in them, and there we are.

MS: I think this might be a good moment for me to throw the questioning open to you [the audience], if you can keep the language clean, of course!

Q1: I'd like to know your recollections of working with Robert Donat on The Magic Box.

RN: Well, Robert Donat was a consummate actor, of course, and a sweet, sweet man. But suffered from terrible asthma. And when I say terrible, I really mean terrible asthma. Which wasn't too bad when he wasn't working, but the moment he started to work, started to film, he would get this asthma, which practically destroyed him. We had ozone things all around the set to put in good oxygen, air and all of that. He had to struggle. There's a scene (we saw a bit of it) where he actually makes the first moving picture. As you know, here we claim that William Friese-Greene invented the movie camera. Americans, of course, claim Edison, and the French claim Lumiére. I think they were all onto it at about the same time, and then Edison got the copyrights. That scene that you saw just a little bit of is a lovely scene, because you can see the sincerity in Bob Donat's excitement at having achieved this. And, of course, Laurence Olivier wasn't too bad! That film was made for the Festival of Britain in 1951 when all this was just begun. We made it very cheaply, on a shoestring, for the Festival. So we couldn't afford to pay for actors. We did pay for Bob Donat, and we did pay for Maria Schell, who played his wife. They were paid their full rates. But John Boulting, who directed, and I, who produced, we sought out Laurence Olivier, whom I knew reasonably well, and I said, Larry, would you do a small cameo for us in this film for The Festival of Britiain? And would you do it for twenty-five guineas? Not pounds, but guineas, because you pay guineas, I believe, still, for racehorses. Larry said, Of course I'll play a cameo part. We gave him the script and we said, Anything you want, it's yours. And he chose to play the policeman that Bob Donat drags off the street to watch his wonderful invention. Well, of course, we were fairly quick on the uptake of saying Laurence Olivier is playing a cameo in The Magic Box. Within two weeks - less - I had every agent in London saying, Why isn't my star actor so-and-so in your film? And we got everybody. Practically everybody who was anything. Eric Ambler, who wrote the script, had to keep on writing in more people in order to dole it out. Only one person wouldn't do it. You want to guess who?

MS: Might be able to... Alec Guinness?

RN: Yes!

Q2: Mr Neame, I'm about to embark upon my first feature film. Would you help?

RN: Heh heh heh! Well, of course, you know I'm terribly, terribly out of date. Therefore I have to regretfully refuse, simply because I would be... what?

MS: It has no swear words in, apparently!

RN: It doesn't? And good dialogue, I hope. No, I'm retired, I'm a very, very nice, old, retired gentleman. (But I still can walk - just!)

MS: Invite [Ronnie] to the premiere!

Q3: When considering the lead role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was Maggie Smith your first choice?

RN: Well, no. Our first choice was Vanessa Redgrave, of course, who played it on the stage. But she just didn't want any part of it. It went against her politics, I think, apart from anything else. She didn't want any part of the film. When I joined it, Maggie Smith was already cast, but I would have chosen her anyway, because she was absolutely ideal for it.

Q4: How much say does a director have over the locations in a film?

RN: Well, in my day, everything. We would take advice, of course, from people who knew the area. Hopscotch, for example, with Walter Matthau, was shot partly in London, partly in Atlanta, Georgia, and Germany. All the locations were chosen very carefully. And they should be. Just as casting [should]. When I was casting a film, and this should apply to everybody, I realised that a small part played badly can absolutely ruin the film. It's not just the big parts that matter. It's the small parts that sometimes matter even more, collectively. So I always have at least a week of casting in any film I'm doing. I call them 'wheel-in' days, because the agents wheel in actors. And the producer, if I'm the director, or the director, if I'm the producer, (David and I used to do this a lot), we have maybe seven or eight people for one part. We would chat and talk, never asking them to read, because sometimes people read beautifully, so that's a bit dangerous. But talking to them, sounding them out. David and I would take it in turns. I would do the talking and he would do the listening, then he would do the talking and I would do the listening. Then when the actor had gone, we marked him out of ten points, from one to ten, and then we'd compare notes. Almost invariably we both chose the same one. But it's tremendously important that you cast correctly. I've had one or two that I didn't - no names, no pack drill!

Q5: What memory do you have of Kay Walsh, who appeared in quite a lot of your films?

RN: Well, my memories of Kay are wonderful, because she goes with me right back to the George Formby comedies at Ealing. Kay was a gorgeous, very young woman and I think it was I See Ice! [Anthony Kimmins, GB, 1938] it was called. Kay was in that. One day, the character who was editing the film, but was also co-producer, came to me (I was the cameraman, of course) and said, Kay hasn't been looking good in rushes the last two or three days, Ronnie. What's happened? I said, Well, I'm using exactly the same lighting on her. I don't know. Well, she honestly hasn't looked good. And somebody - I can't remember who - said, Well, the reason she hasn't looked good is because she's out every night till two or three in the morning with David Lean! I hadn't met David at that time. But that's how I knew Kay to start with. And then, of course, she was ideal for so many parts, because she was almost as good as Alec at becoming different people. Also, if I can use the same actors, and I do a lot, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. I love using characters that are good. I love using them over and over again. We had, for a while, a sort of repertory company, really.

Q6: Can you tell us a bit about the demise of Cineguild?

RN: Oh, boy! That's a long story. How do I tell that in two minutes? I tell you what: it's in the book!

[laughter and applause]

MS: I think that is probably the perfect sentiment on which to draw this evening to a close. So, apart from writing to our MPs to ask why Ronnie hasn't yet been given a knighthood, it just remains for us to thank him very much for talking to us this evening. Thank you ever so much.

[applause]

RN: Thank you very much. I have to say just one more thing. I did my best to persuade my son not to go into the film industry. I said please go into something more practical and more sensible and not so dodgy. But he's here tonight. He left school when he was sixteen and he went into films, and he's been in films ever since. So then I said, OK, Christopher has gone into films, but God save Christopher's son, my grandson, Gareth. Well, the same thing happened. Gareth is now with the BBC and is earning more, I think, than I ever earned! So we're delighted about that. The other thing I must do tonight, and it's odd, because he didn't photograph this film [The Horse's Mouth], but Ossie Morris is here, with his entire family. Ossie is probably the greatest cameraman in the world. And I really mean that.

[applause]

Stand up, Os! Stand up! We used to tease him a lot, when Arthur Ibbetson was our operator, and he was the director of photography, as they came to be known, and I was directing. I whispered to Arthur Ibbetson, who was by the camera, Don't you think Ossie's got rather too much soft, front light on this shot? I did it deliberately, knowing he would hear. And Ossie went round putting scrims on all the front lights (which I'm sure he took off again!)

Oswald Morris: You're absolutely right!

RN: And, of course, with Os tonight are his whole family, including my goddaughter, Gillian. You're my only goddaughter, by the way, and I hope I've done my job in teaching you your religious [duties]! And there we are, so thank you very much, everybody.

MS: Thank you.

[final applause]