The Light’s On At Signpost. George MacDonald Fraser
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his part? You bet I can.
Down to Penshurst Place, Kent, for the first day’s shooting. Ancient house, beautiful grounds, Olde England to the life, with Fleischer setting up his stuff with Jack Cardiff, and yeoman warders lying on the grass looking harmless. Why don’t they get great big burly thugs for these parts nowadays? This lot of minions wouldn’t frighten anyone. Where are you Harry Cording, Ray Teal, Dennis Wyndham, et al. … ?
Through a Tudor arch strides Henry VIII – Heston, in full fig, looking terrific in the true sense of the word, extending a regal hand for Fleischer to kiss (he doesn’t).
I’d met Heston in Paris in the production office at the Georges V before the M3 premiere – he had heard me give my name at the desk, and loomed up beside me saying: “I’m Charlton Heston.” Taken all unawares at the sudden appearance of a living legend, I had been startled into saying: “By God, so you are!”, at which he had taken no offence, handing me a whisky and starting to talk Scottish history (he is part Fraser and immensely proud of it – aren’t we all?) He had also confessed to a wish to play Flashman at Little Big Horn, an episode I had yet to write.
F. and H. go into a huddle over the script, and call me in. H. suggests rewording one of my lines to read: “You failed me in Scotland, Norfolk, and you know it well.” It sounds a wee bit corny to me, but I’m not fussy – maybe he knows better what will sound right. I stick my heels in on another point, the line where Henry says he’s been on the throne five and thirty years. H points out, correctly, that at the time Henry had been on the throne thirty-seven years; I plead poetic licence, claiming that five and thirty sounds better, and he yields. He looks horribly like Henry VIII, which is disturbing when you’re sitting on a garden bench with him arguing about what he should say, and expecting to be consigned to the Tower at any moment.
Meet Mark Lester, a tall, ethereal-looking, nervous lad who smokes Marlboro as if they were going to stop making them. He writhes convincingly in a muddy flower-bed while Heston stands on him, and Graham Stark, in jester’s motley, flings himself prone, crying “Break away, old Hal!” in a variety of accents. Rex Harrison stands by registering polite concern.
Time out, and Graham Stark is busy snapping away with his camera, something which he does, he tells me, on all his films – his collection should be worth a fortune one of these days. He is telling me what I suspect will be a scandalous story about Michael Curtiz, when Rex Harrison, who has been rehearsing with Heston and Harry Andrews, strolls over – and who can stroll like him? – and murmurs to me that now that Henry’s line to Norfolk has been changed, he feels that he’d like something stronger to say in reply. Could I possibly … ? Sensing a slight needle here, I do a quick think, and give him a line off the top of my head which pleases him inordinately. I’d say it was passable, no more, but he writes it carefully into his script (left-handed), crinkling happily and repeating it with obvious enjoyment. When they come to rehearse the scene again, he drawls it out, Heston’s head jerks up in what may be well-acted royal displeasure or sudden suspicion that he is being upstaged (either way, it’s a perfect reaction), and Harrison opens his mouth and laughs silently.
The word is that he is notoriously a bastard to work with, and I have heard horror stories about his temperament, but I can only say he seems extremely easy and reasonable to me – of course, I don’t have to photograph, produce, direct, record, attire, or act with him, and in my experience actors tend to be more friendly with writers than with anyone else, possibly because they have to depend on them. I’d given him a line, and he’d been happy with it; when I ask him if he has any thoughts about the rest of his part he leafs through the script and delights me by giving a sudden guffaw and exclaiming: “I like this!” It proves to be an exchange between him and Hertford (Harry Andrews) who has been sent to arrest him.
Hertford: In the king’s name!
Norfolk (pretending to be taken unawares): Henry, I believe.
It looks nothing on the page; as said by Harrison, with his perfect timing and expression of feigned surprise, it worked beautifully.
We talk about Arthur Barbosa,* and I ask Harrison if he saw French Without Tears on TV last night. He frowns and says he did, recalling his own appearance in the original play forty years ago. “I don’t know – these chaps nowadays, they seem so bloody young.” Sigh. “I suppose we were bloody young, too.” He reminisces affectionately about Roland Culver, Guy Middleton, and Trevor Howard; in the background Henry VIII is hauling an enormous mattress onto the grass and collapsing on it, robes, staff, and all.
Lemonade is served from a large urn; Harrison, whom one naturally associates with wines of rare vintage, looks doubtful, but exclaims after an appraising sip, “Not bad, really.” He tries for a refill, but the tap yields nothing, so between us we up-end the urn to get the dregs and manage to extract two paper cups-full. Harrison sighs contentedly, savouring the bouquet, and wonders when lunch is.
A buffet has been set up in a tent, and Fleischer, Heston, Harrison, Stark, Mark Lester, and I help ourselves, Heston unbelievable without his robe; he is clad in long johns with an artificial potbelly strapped on. Graham Stark is worried about his lines: is his accent right, is he doing them well? I assure him that not since Barrymore’s Hamlet … and he cheers up sufficiently to ask Fleischer if his Shropshire accent is acceptable (I gather he has been researching Will Somers, Henry VIII’s jester). Fleischer, who wouldn’t know a Shropshire accent from Cantonese, says so long as he’s comprehensible, that’s fine. Mark Lester’s nervousness is wearing off.
After lunch discuss children with Heston, and the question of which other monarchs he might possibly play. Since he is a dead ringer for Edward I – bone structure, height, and presence – I suggest that he’d make a fine Hammer of the Scots, but have a feeling he’d rather play Robert the Bruce.
Meet Harry Andrews, whose father, it transpires, was from Scotland, and who glows when I praise his performance as a Scots RSM in The Red Beret. Watch him and Julian Orchard shooting with Heston and Harrison. Fascinated by Fleischer’s directing technique: after one rehearsal he says quietly: “You’re trying too hard, Chuck.” Heston nods gravely and moderates his style. “Very good, Chuck; that’s it.” Fleischer is very neat and precise as he moves quietly round the set, relaxed, amiable, and taking every opportunity to praise, especially young Mark. “That’s good, Mark, that’s very good.”
As the afternoon wears on and the shadows cast by the sun change, Jack Cardiff makes mysterious adjustments to his equipment so that no passage of time will be visible in a scene lasting no more than a minute or so. This is a vastly more technical business than I had realised.
Heston has got shot of his make-up and is pacing in a track-suit, looking like a decathlon winner. He is one year older than I am, God help us. We adjourn to a Tudor archway, through which young Mark has to be pursued by angry citizens. Endless rehearsals, as Mark practises barging into people, but the star of the show is a stout extra, whose job it is to be jostled and register astonishment. As the rehearsals progress, he expands his moment of mild surprise into something resembling Tod Slaughter going into overdrive in Murder in the Red Barn, with clutching of brows, staggering, rolling of eyes and cries of “What the hell?” Mark runs himself silly, Fleischer advises patiently, Nigel Wooll (assistant director), keeps crying, with eternal optimism: “All right, here we go, this time. Quiet, please, everyone, here we go … oh, quiet, for God’s sake!” Finally we do go, Mark hurtles past the stout extra who is going to win a supporting Oscar or die in the attempt, and B. H. Barry, the sword expert, tells me how he is working out the fight sequences, giving a different theme to each one.
Part of the production was to take place in Hungary, which necessitated two visits.
To Budapest to go location-hunting with Fleischer, Spengler, and crew members. Our principal quest is for a church interior which can pass for Westminster Abbey in the coronation scene – not easy, since Hungarian churches have a rather Byzantine look, being decorated with splendid colours over walls and ceiling. Eddie Fowlie stands in one vast cathedral nave