My Week With Marilyn. Colin Clark

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СКАЧАТЬ for instance, is going to play Sir Laurence’s mother-in-law (no more ‘Larry’ now that I’m officially working for him). But she is also booked for a West End stage play, so all her scenes have to be shot first if possible and most should be finished before the play begins. (Some of her scenes need special effects and these can be put in later.) SLO¹² and MM and Richard Wattis¹³ are in virtually all the scenes so they don’t influence the cross-plot much.

      MM has a terrible reputation for being late on the set, and not turning up at all on some days. Mr P has scheduled her to do all her scenes first with a long list of alternate shots, cutaways and reactions which can be put in at short notice if MM is not available.

      ‘What happens if shooting gets a week behind? The whole plan will collapse.’

      Mr P grinned a Machiavellian grin and pulled out a second sheet and a third.

      ‘We just switch sheets. Warner Bros will never know.’

      I gather that Warner Bros is lending LOP and MMP the money to make the film. Already I hear Mr P say: ‘Charge it to MMP’ pretty frequently. I wonder if MMP is MM herself, or a group of people backing her.

      I don’t dare ask anything about MM. It seems in bad taste, like asking about childbirth. Anyway my job is to be preparing for MM’s arrival. Police, press, chauffeur, bodyguard, servants, redecorations, everything to delight her eye and soothe her nerves. She must be a very difficult lady. I can’t believe anyone is so unreasonable and silly, that they have to be spoiled so much. What would Nanny have said?

      TUESDAY, 19 JUNE

      Six weeks until filming starts and a lot to prepare. Mr P depends on me a lot now but of course he won’t need me at all when it does. Today a David Orton came in, and Mr P warned me that on him my future in the production would depend. He is going to be 1st Assistant Director. This does not mean SLO’s assistant (SLO being the director), but the man in charge of seeing that everyone in the studio does what they are told.

      ‘He’s a sort of sergeant major,’ explained Mr P.

      This didn’t sound very attractive and I can’t say I liked him at all. Blondish-mousy hair, a thin face and glasses which he is forever pushing up onto the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. He did not take to me either:

      ‘Have you worked on a film before?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then forget it. If you haven’t made a film already then you aren’t in the union, and there is no way in which you can work on a film, in any capacity.’

      Very funny! It seems the union is the ACT, the Association of Cinematograph Technicians, and they are a famous ‘closed shop’. (No card, no film; no film, no card.)

      So Mr Orton advised me to stay in Mr P’s office. This is very disappointing. Mr P has already told me I can’t stay in his office after production begins. And anyway I want to be a film director, not producer.

      Mr P cheered me up by telling me to go down to see Diana Dors’¹⁴ house tomorrow. It is somewhere near Ascot or maybe Henley. I’ve only got the phone number so far. Her agent has learned that MM is looking for something for the summer and thinks it might be good publicity if they could swap houses. Of course we already have two houses, for MM and her manager, but I suppose some other creeps like APJ might arrive from America so I’ll go and look.

      Diana Dors always seems very sexy, even if extremely common. A bit of a tart.

      WEDNESDAY, 20 JUNE

      Diana Dors is divine. She’s as vulgar and cheeky as I imagined from her films, but with a hilarious sense of humour. She never stops cracking jokes and telling stories. Her conversations peppered with F—s and C—s.

      Her house is near the river, although I couldn’t see it, as she has a huge indoor pool. She and a starlet friend were sitting by the pool in bikinis when I arrived. DD is smaller than you would think in real life. I suppose the camera exaggerates her on purpose. She is quite a pretty girl, and her friend was even prettier but not so vivacious. DD could not care less about the house swap but she did want to hear about MM. It was quite a let-down when I was forced to admit that I hadn’t met MM yet. DD got bored very quickly, so to liven things up she and her friend both took off their bikini tops and jumped into the pool. That got my attention all right. There were two workmen hammering at something at the far end and their eyes stood out like organ stops. They just downed tools and stared.

      Both girls have beautiful, quite small breasts but I must admit that they were so brazen that I was more embarrassed than rapacious. They must have been on the game together in the old days, is my guess.

      The house is much too small for MM or her retinue, and has no class at all. With this film, MM is trying to go up in the world, not down. So I left silently and reported back to Mr P. He just chuckled. He hates film stars really.

      THURSDAY, 21 JUNE

      Thank goodness, I was completely wrong about David Orton. Underneath that severe exterior he is a very nice man. He is just awkward with people until he knows them.

      He is married to a pretty, jolly make-up girl called Penny, who picked him up this evening. His world is the film studio, where he is in charge of course, and he is very experienced. He gave me a long explanation about how film studios work. Like in every job, there is a hierarchy which is very important. This is true in each department – the lighting cameraman is head of one group, and pretty much above everyone except the director, the designer has his crew – set-dressers, down to chippies (carpenters); there is wardrobe, make-up, film editing etc., each with their own structure. The Director has an Associate Director, but his right-hand man is the 1st Assistant Director – David in our case.

      The lowest of the low is the 3rd Assistant Director who is known as a ‘gofer’. Anyone can tell him to ‘go for this, go for that’.

      This is the job he’ll try to get for me, but even a 3rd Ast Dir needs a union card and that is the hardest thing in the world to get: actually it is the same card as a director needs to work on a film, but it is a different grade. David has promised to try and come up with a scheme to get round the union ‘closed shop’ rule. I trust him.

      Mr P has other worries and so has SLO. I’m not surprised. I saw the play on which the film is going to be based: The Sleeping Prince. Larry and Vivien did it together – at the Phoenix Theatre in 1953–4¹⁵ – and it was a very slight piece indeed. Typical Rattigan¹⁶ – theatrical, charming and that’s all. Vivien was enchanting as ever, despite a funny accent. But I thought Larry was at his worst. He has an old-fashioned notion that it is funny to play European royalty, and he gets wooden and mannered. The whole play ended up like a sort of 1930s in-joke – hardly Hollywood. I can’t see it being a good role for MM. I suppose she thinks it will enhance her new ‘intellectual’ image. She will certainly have been told what a fantastic opportunity it is to play opposite the greatest classical actor of the generation etc. But Rattigan is no Shakespeare. Unless MM is cleverer than she looks, she will find it jolly hard to mix her style with Olivier’s. She is said to be reading Dostoevsky or War and Peace or something so maybe she will surprise us all. Diana Dors surprised me, but she’s more a crafty cockney than an intellectual.

      FRIDAY, СКАЧАТЬ