The Cine Technician (1943 - 1945)

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-May — June, 1944 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 45 was all spent and he bad to take odd jobs. Besides, be and bis girl were now thinking seriously of getting married. So the odd jobs were followed by going with his old cameraman friend Phil East and a still man called Jonas into the photography and shorts business. This did all right for a time, but was finally wrecked by a sharper who called himself Bud Pollard, claimed to be Snub Pollard's brother arrived from Vienna, set up in the Savoy with trunks full of bricks, and contracted with them to do film tests. Needless to say they didn't get a penny and only just escaped being jailed, so Charlie was on his ear again. Firmly forswearing the film game for ever, he got a job with McNamara's driving G.P.O. vans and on this steady basis chanced his arm and got married. All went smoothly, and he quite enjoyed the work, until in 1926 came the General Strike and that was that. Charlie, as a member of the Transport md General Workers, naturally took an active part in the strike and after it was ' ' settled ' ' was Mie of the many who was victimised and never got his job back. With a wife and kiddy to think tA now, this was a bit upsetting, but he managed somehow or other and finally landed a regular job driving a delivery van for a boot firm. This time he swore that nothing should lure him from a safe job, and so it seemed for a while. But in 1927 the activity of various people, particularly, Charlie says, George Bidgewell and Captain Bex Davies, of the Film Artistes' Guild, caused the passing of the first Quota Act, and the British Film Industry began to perk up a bit. One day an old film-electrician friend of Charlie's told him that any experienced electrician could get £10 a week at the newly-built B.I. P. Studios at Elstree, md because of the long shut-down they were cr\ ng out for men. Charlie resisted the temptation or a long time, but £10 a week was very tempting, uid finally on the understanding that the job vould be permanent, be succumbed. Two weeks ater the production he was working on finished, md Charlie was given the sack. That should have been enough for anyone, but Charlie soon after managed to land an electrician's ob at Gainsborough, and there he stuck. He vorked through the silent days of such films as The Rat, and when sound came accepted George j-unn's offer of going into that department, where le's stayed ever since, mostly on the boom. He is near as not met a sticky end at Gainsborough's slington fire. He did have one long spell in sound 'ffects, including doing the effects for Flaherty's Man of Aran, which he enjoyed very much. Bui 's t's mainly on the boom that he worked, from the lays of Sunshine Susie, Friday the 13th, Michael md Mary, and The Camels in Egypt. Then, after lis two year spell on sound effects, the location ob in Canada on The Great Barrier, till 1937, when G.B. closed down, and he had a happy year with Emie Gartside's Fox-British Wembley outfit. After the big shut-down in 1938 he free-lanced for a time on Selznick's tests at Wembley, Jamaica Inn at B.I. P., and Botha's Times documentary, but when war broke out he was out of work solid for months at a time. He used to sit at home, at Welling, Kent, and entertain the creditors and bailiffs alone, as his wife and three kiddies had been evacuated. He did think of volunteering once and actually went to the recruiting office, but when he found the family allotment was even less than he was getting on the dole he decided to stick to the good old dole. And then once again the film business began to pick up and Charlie found himself back on the boom with GB /Gainsborough, where he still is today. I've told of Charlie's Canadian travels adventures at much greater length than of his film career — because that seems to me to be much the more important side of his build-up. Charlie is a first-rate technician — but we have dozens of first-rate technicians. Charlie is a good debater and an active political worker — but slick speakers and good committee-men are ten-a-penny at a time when a show of left-wing views and political activity is the fashion with every up-to-date careerist. What Charlie has that the others haven't got is a solid basis of experience and conviction, a view and way of life that have become instinctive, so that you know at once that after all the shouting, the political wire-pulling and coat-turning is over, old Charlie will still be there the same as ever, talking about the " tutt " or whatever it is that that is fundamental then. Lurching about in a wallowing tramp's coal bunkers and sweating his heart out on the Canadian prairie have taught Charlie something you can't get out of any book, how it is that the world's essential work gets done, what it is that keeps going the miners and the dockers, the farmworkers and the trawlermen, the labourers and the steelworkers, on whose sweat and strength and neverending goodwill the whole artificial edifice of our i.iiK-v and deodorized civilisation is based, and without which it could not last a week. And because he understands just that, Charlie is modest in his demands and unextravagant in his hopes. He'll be satisfied if he can see people working together a bit more happily than they did before, with a greater control over their job and more decent conditions of living. It may seem a modest, or even sentimental, programme, but it's based firmly on the fundamentals of society, which the political tyros so recklessly ignore. It's typical of Charlie that he sin mid be proud of the fact that all through the blitz he was never once late for (Tarn to Page 40)