The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

162 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN December, 1953 The Strange Life of a Production Secretary Peggy Anderson answers that oft-asked question : "What is a Production Secretary ? " WHEN I was ensconced in the Scenario Depart" ment at London Films, it certainly never occurred to me to consider the lot of production secretaries and continuity girls in anything but the most favourable light : hard work, but well paid, trips to warm and interesting places, surrounded by quite exceptional people, working amidst the smell of paint and make-up among a medley of wigs, props and costumes, and within the hot glow of arc lamps ... all this in addition to the more direct contribution one had in helping to produce those strips of celluloid that flicker across the screens of the world. Oh for an A.C.T. passport ! But I found that the possession of this passport leads one to do an infinite variety of other things in places one had never thought about before. When it first dawned on me that being a Production Secretary was not necessarily a full-time occupation, and that the salary one received while working did not necessarily permit one to indulge in even one idle week between productions (and one never knows when or what one's next production will be!) I suddenly had the idea of becoming a temporary secretary for a small bureau in London. Afraid that I might be tied down, however, I offered to do all the jobs that nobody else wanted. Most temporary secretaries are really searching for an interesting permanent job, so I found myself making expeditions to Shoreditch on cold foggy mornings to discover all about brake linings and conveyor belts. This good deed came to an end, however, and the next week I was introduced to the secrets of gear boxes and dog clutches. The whimsical gentleman who invented patents for gears and other things took great pleasure in dictating pages of technical data to inexperienced newcomers, but with the help of some drawings which I found when everybody was out at lunch, I outwitted him and transcribed the whole thing with reasonable accuracy. By the time I had typed an account of a new kind of self-change gear, I knew exactly why his secretary had gone on a cruise. I left a few weeks later with an extensive knowledge of the mechanical sciences and a new understanding and sympathy for protesting gears. always breaches to be leapt into . . ." Then there was the Spanish mining concern with a dark black office on the top floor of a narrow building east of the City, near Tower Hill. They mined minerals in Spain and South America and were quite excited when I told them about the two blue kopjes in Rhodesia — a very wild, uninhabited, waterless part where I was the second white woman ever to have trod — but when the samples of earth dug from the kopjes arrived to be analysed, nothing resembling chrome was found, alas. Already 1 had visualised the kopjes torn apart and myself quite rich — perhaps even rich enough to produce a film. As I had already made several abrupt departures to answer clarion calls from the Studio, I began to feel a little diffident in my approach to the bureau for more work, and attempting to sound nonchalant and not too apologetic, would 'phone and offer to " leap into breaches." There were nearly always breaches to be leapt into, providing one did not mind what or where the breach was. And as one had only leapt into it to fill an immediate need, it was always easy to escape or extend the job, as required . . . I went to all the outlandish places in the dreary parts of London, with bleak bare offices and dusty typewriters. Mostly, in the Spring, I was deputising for young secretaries who had gone to get married, and in the summer for people on holiday. One wonders what these people are like who spend only two weeks of the year in a different place? One Christmas I sorted out and delivered Christmas mail in Chelsea for three weeks. I worked in a warehouse in Hounsditch; a city wholesale firm that dealt in toys, novelties and Christmas decorations and exported them to every unimaginable country and far away tropical island, their specialities being spiral and sausage balloons and painted balloons with feet, squeaker blowers (those long feathery paper things that curl up when not being blown), noisy rattles, funny hats, masks, tinsel and confetti, and these trifles were treated very seriously indeed and as carefully as if they were valuable china — I was very impressed. The Orient line . . . When having lunch at Pimm's, it was . . knowing many workmen who danglt in cradles . . ."