The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

128 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN June 1954 rejected scripts, put them together as a book and approached a publisher. The charge for printing was more than Zannuck could pay, so he went to his boss and said he would put in a hundred pages about the hair restorer if his boss would pay for printing the book. The boss agreed and the book was printed. Later it was filmed, hair restorer and ail. Del Guidice was another instance of an out of the ordinary character who had yet done remarkable work. Mr. Minney thought that the Press made a mistake when they dwelt too much on this side of people. Del Guidice had a flair for picking subjects. The association of the ideas England, Shakespeare, Olivier had resulted in the film Henry V. Mr. Minney thought that there were two categories of producers. The first, became producers because they were relations of the boss. The other type of producer was a technician who was employed to make the picture. The first problem facing a producer was to rind a story. If one took a classic — Dickens for example — there was first the difficulty of condensing 10 or 12 hours reading time into one and a hours film time. And then, if it was a familiar work, one ran into trouble with the people who expected to see ail their favourite passages on the screen. This was why Gone With The Wind was made at such length. With biography you were on safer ground. Whatever you put in it was assumed that you had done some research, and there were always new facts being discovered about people ! Having found a story, the producer then has to engager a writer, think about finance, stars and director, and work out a rough budget. After three or four months preliminary work, if he is lucky, he may have a deal with a renter. All this work is done in advance of the shooting, so technicians who come in at the shooting stage may sometimes indeed wonder, "Is your producer really necessary?" Once production had started the producer had to be prepared to cope with all sorts of contingencies : trouble from the top, inteference from the sponsoring company, as well as getting on with the job of getting the film made. That remarkable book " Picture," by Lillian Ross, the story of the making of Red Badge of Courage gave an example of interference from the top. Mayer was opposed to making the picture and accused Huston of risking other people's money for his art. Nevertheless, it was understandable if the front office played safe, artistic and commercial pictures cost the same amount of money. There were no blueprints for successful picture-making, so everyone tried to keep their latest film nearest to the one that had gone before. Hence the cycles of films. Mr. Minney said his career as a producer began at Lime Grove, where he made a number of interesting pictures which also made money. One of a producer's main problems he found was dealing with stars suffering from inflated egos, who believed themselves to be geniuses. There was the case of two well known stars, male and female, acting in the same film, and both with the right side of the face best for camera. When it came to a " twoshot " neither would give way, and eventually overthe-shoulder shots were the only solution. Another trouble he encountered was censor trouble — in those days the censorship was very strict. In Madonna of the Seven Moons they anticipated trouble with the censor over a scene shot in silhouette which showed Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Grainger apparently in bed. An alternative scene was photographed in full light with Grainger sitting in a chair. The scene was passed in silhouette, but the censor objected to another incident, the saying of a prayer during Phyllis Calvert's death-bed scene. The Wicked Lady also ran into censor trouble — not here — but in America. The dresses were copied from paintings at Hampton Court, and were passed by the English censor. Queen Mary saw and enjoyed the picture at its premiere and paid a second visit during its general release. The trouble with the U.S. censor was on two counts. First, the dresses were not right — " I wish you could set the girls more into them." The film was brought back and some close-ups were rephotographed eighteen months later. The other trouble was that the word " hell " occurred twice and " damn " once in the course of the film. It was felt that a film about highwaymen justified two " hells " and a " damn," but that was two " hells " and a " damn " too many for the American censor. One " hell " spoken by Rennie was easy to cut, but the other " hell " and the " damn " had been spoken by Mason, who was not available for retakes. The scene in which the offending words occurred showed Mason and Margaret Lockwood galloping through a wood; after a good deal of thought, extra hoof beats were dubbed in to cover the cuts of the words. Mr. Minney thought that his most pleasant experience as a producer was when he worked on The Final Test, A.C.T.'s own film made by technicians on A.C.T.'s unemployment list. They made a fine job of the film, which was well received not only here but in America. Once shooting started the director took over; during this stage the produced served a useful purpose as he had the detachment lacking in the director. The producer also guarded the director from attack from the rear, and he had to work out solutions to a number of problems which arose during production a d were outside the director's scope. For exam p. there was a scene in The Wicked Lady which showed the frozen Thames. The director wanted to do it with a model; the model would have cost £25,000, which was more than the budget could afford. It was a question of sacrificing the shot or finding an alternative solution. The Art department solved the problem with a glass shot and model figures worked by magnets attached to long rods. The producer had also to look after the selling of the picture and watch the schedule and the budget, for films were not only an art but an industry. Today there were the added costs of CinemaScope and Stereo Sound. Goldwy.i had said that it was easy to make a successful picture : all you did was to get people into the cinema and collect their money. Mr. Minney concluded by saying that he would leave it to the audience, after all they had heard, to decide whether your producer was really necessary. The evening concluded with a showing of excerpts from films with which Mr. Minney had been associated : The Battle of Plassey sequence from Clio of India, and reels from The Wicked Lady and Madonna of the Seven Moons. After an interesting discussion the vote of thanks was moved by George Hill. Published by the Proprietors, The Association of Cinematograph and Allied Technicians, 2 Soho Square, London, and Printed by Watford Printers Limited, Watford, Herts.