Dream Repairman. Jim BSL Clark
distant with the technicians. I had now cut three pictures for Donen, but barely knew him. Perhaps that was good, since getting too close to Clayton had upset the balance. The relationship between directors and editors is a close one and often a long one. It is complex like a marriage.
I’ve often wondered whether film and book editors work in the same way. I am often curious if anyone has bothered to edit books at all or even read them. Like books, most movies can be helped or hindered by the editing. It is not just a matter of taking two pieces of film and splicing them together at an appropriate moment, though that is an important basic element. The technical aspect is only of so much importance. It is the approach to the material and the way the editor deals with the director that can be crucial to the outcome. Although the editor is not responsible for the final cut, he can help the director by guiding him. An editor can best make his point by skillfull demonstration. I have never believed in arguing with a director, which usually ends in bad feelings and hurts the film. But I do believe in cutting many versions of a scene to prove a point. Of course in the early sixties, the days of Donen and Clayton, this was rarely required. The paranoia that now surrounds post-production has made the whole procedure more nerve wracking and unsettling. There is much to be said for what now seems like a gentleman’s club atmosphere in which we worked. Time has altered all of that. Pictures are often rushed through post-production in weeks when we had months. Sometimes these rapidly completed pictures succeed and make money, thereby causing the studios to decree that expensive, long post-production periods are no longer necessary. They also point to television series cut on video in next to no time. This is the direction the money providers would like film editing to go and they will doubtless get their way.
The films I cut for Clayton, Donen, and later for John Schlesinger and Roland Joffé, were done with a different spirit. It was the film that mattered, not the budget. We all tried to work within the budget, but we would not compromise. The pictures were made with love and that is now hard to find in the editing rooms of the film world. I am told that the same is true for books—a sorry state indeed.
The excellent score for Charade was composed and conducted by Henry Mancini, and Hank, as he was known, was one of the most charming men you could meet. On the first day of recording, we met at CTS in Kensington Garden Square. He was introduced to me, walked into the studio, greeted the orchestra, picked up his baton, and they sight-read the title music without a mistake. It was sheer magic. The Charade theme, later with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, was heard for the first time. “It’s a standard,” I said to Stanley, who nodded sagely. I was quite right. I know a good tune when I hear one. The session was interrupted by lunch at a pub and then we continued. Everything was wrapped up in a couple of days, and Hank was back on the plane.
Charade was put together rapidly. Stanley took it to Los Angeles to show to Universal. They previewed it and he returned. Some tweaking was required to the final scene involving trapdoors in a Paris theatre and that was that. It was probably one of the most successful pictures Stanley directed in that period.
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Having moved from Ealing to Bourne End during The Innocents, I now settled back into life on the Abbotsbrook estate. Although created by a spec builder who had fallen in love with Venice, the estate did not resemble Venice in any way, a stream with swans ran through it and the homes were rather mock Tudor in style.
I’d moved into Cornerways with a housekeeper, Mrs. Dring, a widow from Boston who my mother Florence had located for me. Mrs. Dring was charming and helpful. Kate went to school locally and my adopted son David was at a prep school near Newbury.
Laurence visited me in Bourne End after I returned from Paris. She soon christened it “Dead End,” because Laurence perceived it as a commuter belt area where people were interested only in domestic matters. There was no culture.
In deference to Mrs. Dring, Laurence stayed in the guest room. This situation quickly became tiresome, and she moved into my bed. Neither of us considered what Mrs. Dring might think.
Shortly after Laurence had returned to Paris and before we decided to marry, I was driving my mother to David’s sports day at prep school. Kate was in the backseat of the car. “Are you still sleeping with a board under your mattress?” my mother enquired. She was referring to a cure I had for backache. “No, he’s not,” Kate piped up, “Laurence didn’t like it.” Mother fell silent. She remained silent for the rest of the day, and we drove back to Boston without further reference to Kate’s remark. The following morning Mother came into my bedroom, looking haggard and drawn. “I didn’t sleep last night after what Kate said in the car.” I grunted a little. I was, after all, well over thirty. “Did I understand that you and Laurence slept in the same bed with Mrs. Dring in the house?”
In fact, we must have been really active since Sybil was conceived around this time. My mother said, “I will come to the wedding, but I will not enjoy it.”
Laurence and my mother tolerated one another, but I could not say they were close. Mother always said bad things about my wives. When I married Jessie, she described her as “attending the tin tabernacle,” a reference to the fact that she was Catholic and had a Russian mother. Laurence was Jewish and French. My mother would have preferred a nice English girl, who was not pregnant.
One Saturday the marquee from Harrods went up at Cornerways, and Laurence and I were married at Little Marlow Church. Sybil was born shortly after while I was editing Clayton’s next film, The Pumpkin Eater. Jack was a near neighbour and offended my mother by wearing casual clothes to our wedding and then compounding the felony by taking small children with him when he went to smoke in the back garden.
David and Kate were there and it was a family occasion. Laurence looked beautiful in her wedding finery, her family had come over from Paris and the sun shone all day. It was the start of a lifetime of happiness, though like all relationships it had its ups and downs.
FLASHBACK: Photogravure
My father had decided I should be apprenticed in the photogravure section of the factory that manufactured engraved cylinders from which the labels were printed. The department was under the strict rule of Mr. Booy, a small man with a big temper. Although I was the boss’s son, he treated me exactly like anyone else.
I lived at home and tried to adjust to small-town life. I joined an amateur theatrical group, the Boston Playgoers, and rapidly became their juvenile lead. This occupied most of my leisure time and introduced me to a circle of local folk who had a nucleus of like interests. We would repair to a inn after rehearsals where we drank too much beer. On Saturday nights, a few of the male members of the cast could be found getting drunk in the “men only” bar of the White Hart hotel. Women were consigned to the adjoining room with its wicker furniture. I would consume too much beer and then retire to my bedroom. The room would revolve as soon as I lay down and just in time I would get up to throw up in the hand basin. When this became a regular Saturday routine, I knew it was time for a change.
I had made a few trips back to Oundle, often to discuss my future with Arthur Marshall. He never once encouraged me to drop out of the family business and engage in something to do with cinema. When he was my age, he had wanted nothing more than to become a professional comedian. His parents had talked him out of that and, as a result, he had abandoned his desires and become a teacher, which he never regretted. He felt it was sensible of my parents to steer me toward a secure future in the printing business. That I eventually spurned his advice always amused me. It was only a couple of years afterward that Arthur abandoned teaching, left Oundle, and became secretary to Lord Rothschild; then he became part of Binkie Beaumont’s theatrical empire, and finally a television personality. He also never stopped writing humorous pieces for the New Statesman and the Telegraph. So much for his advice—which I never took.
The Boston Film Society had sprouted a production department. I had a16 mm Bolex camera and with the help of Charles Whittaker and others, we made a short silent film that we called Absconded. I volunteered to play the lead. It was shot on the marshes around Boston and concerned a Borstal boy who had escaped from the camp and was chased to his death by drowning. My friends played the police, who determined that there would be no way out.
The film ran for ten minutes and was awarded a prize