Jonathan Balcon Side 1
end
Roy Fowler 0:00
The day is the 1st August 2001. Um I should add the copyright of the following recording is vested with the BECTU History Project, if that's agreeable to you Jonathan, and the subject we're about to embark I suspect on a marathon discussion is with Jonathan Balcon, who is the son of Michael Balcon. Jonathan now, we're going to range over vast areas of territory so where do we start in this? I think maybe the Balcon family itself, the origins and ...
Jonathan Balcon 0:35
Yes Roy I think probably you are right. But can I just say that to start as it were in the middle, as I think you know, he was knighted in 1947 for services to the British film industry during the war. He was also a Knight First Class of the Order of St. Olaf, Norway, which he and Charlie Frend acquired I think because of the "Return of the Vikings", I'm not sure about that. He was also a Chevallier Des Arts et Des Lettres, France and curiously enough, my sister was in Paris the day he died, buying the Insignia because in fact the French are too mean to give it to you. But there we are. He was a Fellow of the British Film Institute; he was a Fellow of the Royal College of Art; he was an Honorary D Lit Sussex University and he was chairman of the various companies later in life that we'll come to. But let us go back to the beginning. He was born in Birmingham in 1896. Now 1896 is always taken to be the year that the British film industry was discovered as it were and came into being. So it is rather nice to think that in 1996, was the centenary of the British film industry and in fact in 1996, if my mathematics are correct, Mick would have been 105. He had he was the, with his sister Nettie, he was the youngest of five he had two other brothers and an older sister. His two older brothers, Chan, of course, who was a regular soldier to all intents and purposes and had been to university and fought with some distinction in the First World War worked for Mick at Ealing and indeed before then at Gaumont. And it's quite amusing that there was I understand at the old Gaumont Studios, a long corridor, which was known as the Polish Corridor because the Balcons were at the end of it! Anyway, he, the family was a middle-class Birmingham family, my grandfather, who I knew quite well, Louis, was an extraordinary man who never really did a stroke of work all through his life. My grandmother I never knew, Mick's mother, I'm always given to understand that she couldn't speak very good English. And when in late 1890s, early 1900s, Louis said he was just going out to take the dog for a walk in fact he was going to South Africa to try and earn his fortune. It took us some weeks to realise that a) he never went for a walk anywhere and b) they hadn't got a dog. But that is an apocryphal family story, but quite an amusing one.
Roy Fowler 3:53
Where had the family originally come from in Europe?
Jonathan Balcon 3:56
Well now this is an interesting point. The Ukraine covered a large amount of territory. On the other hand, at times parts of the Ukraine belonged to Poland. So they came from somewhere around a town, which is now in Poland, called Konin, K O N I N and a book has been written called Konin by Theodore Richmond, I think his name is, which describes this town in detail - it was totally destroyed by the Germans in the last war. But my cousin Dorothy, who was the daughter of one of Mick's brothers, has done a lot of research on the family and has come up with the fact that some of our antecedents did come from this particular part of the world - whether Louis did or not I don't know. The other distinguished member of the family who also came from that part of the world and his grandfather was Louis' brother, was my distant cousin Sir John Balcombe, B A L C O M B E, who was a Lord of Appeal and a very distinguished judge, who died last year and had the most marvellous ecumenical service in the Great Hall at Lincoln's Inn. I did query with him why the name was spelt differently, he said when they first came over to this country it was in fact spelt B A L C O N and his father changed it when his father started working here, but I don't know how true that is. The other story that goes around of course is that depending on what port of entry an immigrant came in, the immigration officer wrote down the name of the person as he thought it was spelt phonetically. This is as maybe but to side track for a moment in 1944, when I was with Mick down in Mevagissey when they were making "Johnny Frenchmen", the Breton fishing fleet was in Mevagissey, waiting to go back to Brittany, which was about to be liberated and it was in charge of a captain whose name was Michel Balcon. So whether or not the name originated in France I just don't know but as you as you realise the French word balcon call means balcony. Numerous friends over my last 69 years have sent me postcards of the Hotel du Balcon from various parts of France. Anyway, he had a conventional grammar School education Mick, quite a good rugby player. He had a congenital defect in his left eye, in which he wasn't quite blind, but it did prevent him, his eyesight, from being called up in the First World War when all his brothers went off to fight and Chan indeed ended up the war a Half Colonel. But Mick went off to Dunlops, where he met Sir Charles Tennyson, as he subsequently was, and of course out of that bloomed the relationship and the subsequent employment of Pen, which we'll come to in a minute. I have at home here his quote 'Certificate of Protection' unquote. Evidently the ladies of Birmingham in the days when the war was on in 1915 if they saw a young man on the streets who they thought was worthy of military service they would go up and present him with a white feather but if you waived your 'Certificate of Protection' at them they used to take their white feathers back. Mick always used to say, tell quite an amusing story because one of our neighbours later in Sussex in fact, was Bill Slim, the famous Field Marshal and he and Bill in fact did go along to join up in a "Pals Battalion" a Birmingham Pals Battalion on the same day, and Mick always says the only difference between the two of them really was that Bill Slim ended up as C.I.G.S., and Mick ended up as a Lieutenant in The Home Guard. But that was the sum total of his military service and I have in fact also got his home guard identity card. He served in Dunlops, as I said, from about 1915 onwards, he literally started on the shop floor fitting solid rubber tyres onto lorry wheels. He then in fact, was taken out of that and given a job in the accounts department, I think bookkeeping, and he always had a very good financial and mathematical brain. Although later in life he spent his time thinking he was going bankrupt. Anyway when the war was over, and thanks to the good offices of various people, not least of all um CJ Wolf ...
Roy Fowler 3:56
CM, CM
Jonathan Balcon 9:43
CM Wolf sorry, CM Wolf yes, I do get names wrong. He formed with Victor Saville a production company making advertising films. This was in 1919 and it was not unnaturally called The Victory Motion Picture Company. And Victor Saville himself was also a Birmingham boy and they'd obviously known each other and in what I imagined in Birmingham in those days was a comparatively close Jewish community.
Jonathan Balcon 10:13
They weren't related ...
Jonathan Balcon 10:15
They weren't related,
Roy Fowler 10:16
I'd heard they were cousins.
Jonathan Balcon 10:17
No, no, no. They did have a big fallout later on in life. But as a result of their success making advertising films they teamed up again in 1923, and raised sufficient money through what was then the National Provinicial Bank and CM Wolf, to make a film called "Woman to Woman"
Roy Fowler 10:47
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 10:49
And apart from being a good film, and a film that made a lot of money, it was famous because they actually employed an American actress called Constance Smith?
Roy Fowler 11:03
I wouldn't be sure.
Jonathan Balcon 11:05
I would have to look that up.
Roy Fowler 11:06
Yes, yes. But it would be a matter of records.
Jonathan Balcon 11:08
Yup, at a 1000 pounds a week. So even if you needed a fortnight's work in those days for 2000 pounds that was a great deal of money.
Roy Fowler 11:17
Well that was a Hollywood rate I would have thought ...
Jonathan Balcon 11:20
I would have thought
Roy Fowler 11:20
It would have been $5,000 a week.
Jonathan Balcon 11:21
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 11:23
Tell me, tell me Jon did he ever given an indication what attracted him to the film industry in the first place?
Jonathan Balcon 11:30
I think as a boy he used to go to the what, weren't they Penny Arcades or whatever?
Roy Fowler 11:38
Yes I suppose they were yes. Where they had the crank machines. Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 11:43
Yes that's right. And I think this fascinated him. And I think goodness knows where he got it from there was a vague sort of creative urge inside him and I think he felt it was a medium that he would like to be involved in, it was new, it was exciting.
Roy Fowler 11:59
Right. Was he adventurous do you think as a young man, in that sense that he would latch on to a new idea and pursue it?
Jonathan Balcon 12:08
I think yes he was. I think yes he was, I think he wanted to get out really of the rather sort of closed Birmingham, middle-class rut that he felt he was in. And I think he felt that this was, I think it was greatly helped by CM. I don't quite know how CM came on the scene originally, except, of course, in later life we were always friendly with John and Victor Saville, of course, was John's son-in law.
Roy Fowler 12:37
I did ask John once, that's to say John Wolf, how his father got into the business and he said he wanted to start a family business. Just after the war with his father, with his brother-in-law, I believe.
Jonathan Balcon 12:52
Yeah, yes, and this sounds absolutely fine.
Roy Fowler 12:57
And by the time your father came along he was quite a figure in the distribution business was he not?
Jonathan Balcon 13:03
CM?
Roy Fowler 13:04
CM.
Jonathan Balcon 13:05
Yes.
Roy Fowler 13:05
Because it was W & F Films I think.
Jonathan Balcon 13:08
Yeah, that's right.
Roy Fowler 13:10
So that explains your father presumably went to him to say, look we want to make this film will you back us?
Jonathan Balcon 13:17
Yup. I think that in those early days I'm sure that's what happened. But then of course we jump ahead very slightly. and we get I think it's to 1923, '24 and he and Victor Saville and various other people including ... Oh, goodness, it'll come to me in a minute. He was the father of quite a well known actress of the day, founded Gainsborough pictures.
Roy Fowler 13:54
I'm not at all sure, can't help.
Jonathan Balcon 13:57
Yeah. I'll have to look him up. Cutts, Patricia Cutts, Jack Cutts.
Roy Fowler 14:05
Oh alright.
Jonathan Balcon 14:06
Sorry I'm getting like you, I don't always remember names. Anyway they acquired Islington Studios. Now Islington Studios had been owned by Famous Players-Lasky I believe, and Famous Players-Lasky had not made any money in their British production ventures and we're only too pleased to sell the studios to Mick for £14,000. And in fact, if you go there, even today although the site is being developed, on the big wrought-iron gates into the yard it quite clearly says Gainsborough Pictures, or Gainsborough Productions. And I believe the gates have got a preservation order slapped on them.
Roy Fowler 14:58
Yes I would think so. Right. So they are the original, the first Gainsborough company gates are they?
Jonathan Balcon 15:04
Yup. By acquiring Islington, of course he acquired Hitchcock. Because Hitchcock, at that time had been writing, I don't know what you call them captions for silent films, he'd also been in the art department and he was desperate to direct pictures. And I believe that they had given him the opportunity to direct in a minor way one or two smaller pictures. But he in fact was given his first major opportunity by Mick which was "The Lodger" with Ivor Novello in them in the main part. I think people forget that Ivor Novello, the great romantic figure of the '30s and '40s was in fact alive in the First World War, very much so, and wrote that famous song "Keep the Home Fires Burning".
Roy Fowler 16:03
Indeed.
Jonathan Balcon 16:07
My mother always had a thing about Ivor I mean, we all know what his leanings were, but she she thought he was the most lovely person. And I remember when he did eventually die, she was totally devastated. But there we are, she was inclined to be over emotional at times, like others in my family.
Roy Fowler 16:25
I guess Ivor was the archetypal luvvie was he not?
Jonathan Balcon 16:28
I suppose this was it, and one used to see him. I mean, I remember seeing him during the war sitting at lunch in the Ivy, you know with with with various women swooning all round him [LAUGHTER] But the Hitchcock era really started. And then of course, Islington went on to make films with various people, including in Germany, he went to Ufa for a time and of course Adrian Brunel worked for him. Christopher, as you all know, and will remember, was a leading light in the ACTT when it was when it was going, and his mother in fact, and I didn't know this until she died, had been quite a well-known silent film actress. I can't remember what her name was but Babs, in fact married Adrian, and I don't know how many people know this but Adrian was also the spitting image of Claude Rains. And in that ghastly Gabby Pascal film "Caesar and Cleopatra" many of the scenes it was in fact Adrian they shot and not Claude Rains. He he did a stand in for them, I think at that time he was fairly short of funds and they lived in a modest way in Gerrards Cross and I think he was only too glad to be called back to Denham studios to do this small ...
Jonathan Balcon 16:28
Well that's fascinating because there were great problems between Rains and Pascal and also for tax purposes ...
Jonathan Balcon 18:09
Oh I'm not surprised.
Roy Fowler 18:09
... great problems yeah.
Jonathan Balcon 18:13
About this time, of course, the Ostrers were developing Gaumont British at Shepherds Bush. And in that great year 1931, which was the year I was born, he was invited Mick to become production head at the new Gaumont Studios in Shepherds Bush. And a great era of British filmmaking started really and then, as you know it. I may be wrong in my assessment of this but I always think in that period the British film industry constant, concentrated rather too much on British middle-class habits almost exclusively and embarrassingly and all the men changed into white tie and tails for cocktail parties and dinner parties and ...
Roy Fowler 19:10
And the rest of the British population was represented by Kathleen Harrison as ...
Jonathan Balcon 19:16
The eastenders were rather a joke and the police force of course was even more of a joke. But there we are, it's it's curious even in the comedies with Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge they were always on very much middle-class subjects. My recollection, I didn't really start my film going until much later in life but I've I've caught up a great deal on the older films, and until the great Hitchcock era, but even there when you look at films like "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes" of Hitchcock they were all again on middle-class subjects really. Now, there's an interesting story about "The Man Who Knew Too Much" Roy which you may know and that is Hitch, who was establishing himself by this time, with Mick running both Islington and Gaumont British Studios at Shepherds Bush, Hitch came to him in 1935 I think it was, and had with him the synopsis for "The Man Who Knew Too Much". And Mick liked the synopsis and said to Hitch, "What do they want for it?', '£500' said Hitch. 'Right' said Mick, 'Give it to them.' What Hitch didn't tell Mick was he'd bought it for £100. As a result of which, of course, his Catholic conscience pricked him and he commissioned a sculptor called Epstein to do a very nice bronze bust of Mick, which is now reposing in the National Portrait Gallery. And if anybody could be bothered to go up to the first floor into the whatever it is the contemporary or not contemporary but well-known figures of the last century, he's behind a pillar in the sun and very happy.
Roy Fowler 21:17
Was that a donation to the nation or did that stay in the family?
Jonathan Balcon 21:21
It was, I in fact, when I heard that Puttnam was anxious to acquire it for BAFTA, I offered it to the National Portrait Gallery, which I thought was a better venue. And the family did receive money for it. Not a lot, but I mean, market, market value I would have thought. We had it at the Grey House in Seal for some time and it used to wear a fur hat in winter and a straw hat in the summer. And it really ought to be exhibited because it's a very, very good likeness. 1931 of course, he had, the year I was born he had a nervous breakdown whether or not it was enhanced by my arrival or not I don't know.
Roy Fowler 22:11
Your sister preceded you by how long?
Jonathan Balcon 22:13
Seven years, seven years and has never forgotten it [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 22:19
Maybe it was she who occasioned the break down who knows.
Jonathan Balcon 22:22
Could have been, could have been.
Roy Fowler 22:24
But do you have any idea why possibly he was getting a little unstrung? It was, do you think it was the Ostrers ...
Jonathan Balcon 22:28
I think he was doing too much.
Roy Fowler 22:30
Right.
Jonathan Balcon 22:30
And of course even in those days although he had a permanent contract, or seemed to have a permanent contract with Gaumont British ... their lifestyle even in 1931 was pretty good and I think you know, expenses always rained fairly, fairly heavily in the family and he spent most of his life always thinking as I said that he was going to go broke. Luckily he never did. But the period with the Ostrer's of course, was again a curious one. But he met some marvellously interesting, or he had some marvellously interesting people who passed through his hands, most of whom became the great filmmakers of ...
Roy Fowler 23:19
Indeed.
Jonathan Balcon 23:20
... the last century. One of the more interesting ones who I was very fond of was Ivor Montagu, son of a peer, member of the Communist Party, a man of the dirtiest fingernails I've ever seen in my life [LAUGHTER]
Jonathan Balcon 23:20
A member of a great banking family.
Roy Fowler 23:38
A member of a great banking family but an absolutely super chap. And I remember there was an occasion, I can't remember what the occasion actually was, but Ivor was going to, I think it was probably a first night, possibly even of 'The 39 Steps" on which Ivor worked but, Mick made Ivor go out and hire a dinner jacket which he'd never had. Because he'd paid the higher fee Mick said he arrived at the studio in the morning wearing this bloody thing and remained in it for the rest of the day [LAUGHTER].
Roy Fowler 24:12
Right.
Roy Fowler 24:13
It was during, Roy, his period at Gaumont that they made "Jew Süss"
Roy Fowler 24:19
Right before we get onto that just a short step backwards: how well did he get on with the Ostrers at the beginning? Any idea?
Jonathan Balcon 24:30
My recollection is that at the beginning fine but there was a sort of armed neutrality between them. I don't think they interfered too deeply.
Roy Fowler 24:42
They were a mixed bunch anyway.
Jonathan Balcon 24:44
Oh very odd lot. The one I knew best was, was it Isadore?
Roy Fowler 24:49
Isador was the money man.
Jonathan Balcon 24:51
Who wrote about Geld.
Roy Fowler 24:52
He was the brilliant one, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 24:54
I met him at Upper Parrick and I thought he was er sort of intellectually way above have us all and talked in terms that seemed absolutely marvellous. The boys, the boys were, one of the boys was my was my contemporary at school. The older boy I can't remember, one of them married, it was older boy I think, married a cinema usherette which didn't go down frightfully well with the Ostrer family. But I think, I don't quite know latterly what went wrong and why he left Gaumont or why his contract was terminated. But it was certainly I think they had a disagreement about the type of films that Gaumont we're making which were costing too much money and not making enough.
Roy Fowler 25:47
So Mick really wanted to conquer the, the international market, which has always been the Holy Grail, hasn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 25:53
I think so, yes I think so but of course was a total reversal afterwards. Well we'll come to that.
Roy Fowler 26:00
Right.
Jonathan Balcon 26:01
We'll come to that.
Roy Fowler 26:02
You mentioned "Jew Süss", which was indeed one of the more expensive pictures and failed in the States.
Jonathan Balcon 26:07
Yup, during the making of "Jew Süss", of course, which I think was '36?
Jonathan Balcon 26:14
Around, there yes.
Jonathan Balcon 26:16
Hitler had been in power in Germany for some time, three or four years and the German Embassy sent a delegation down to the studios to ask for the film to be dropped. They of course got their marching orders. The film was not dropped, it wasn't as you said, an enormous success. And the interesting thing, of course is that the Nazi Party remade it in 1939 in Germany but with a totally different ending. So it was obviously even in those days a very controversial subject. This Jewish thing in the family is very odd because it was something Mick never told us, any of us about. He never had any religious teaching himself and it's something that certainly Jill and myself were never conscious of as children. Although K???'s there's a marvellous photograph, of which I have a copy of going back to Mick's father when he was in Johannesburg, he was made an elder of the first synagogue that had been built in Johannesburg. And this was roundabout the time of the Jameson Raid and all that, but they thought it would be only polite to invite Oom Paul down from Pretoria to open it. And the Presidential train duly arrived, and Oom Paul descended in his stovepipe hat and he was taken to the doors of this synagogue. And he stood in the doorway and he removed his stovepipe hat and he said, 'In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I declare this synagogue open'. [LAUGHTER] And I have this photograph of the elders, one of whom was my grandfather, looking absolutely shattered as though a thunder bolt had struck them [LAUGHTER].
Roy Fowler 28:24
Because of that phrase?
Jonathan Balcon 28:26
Because of that phrase. With Oom Paul sitting in the middle looking quite unconcerned.
Roy Fowler 28:30
Right.
Jonathan Balcon 28:31
But that's another nice little piece of family history you know, that ...
Roy Fowler 28:37
Does that mean there's any sense of Jewish identity or total thorough assimilation?
Jonathan Balcon 28:42
No.
Roy Fowler 28:43
And Mick was what first generation in effect was he?
Jonathan Balcon 28:48
First generation English.
Roy Fowler 28:50
Yes, born in this country.
Jonathan Balcon 28:51
Yes. Although Philip Kemp has discovered a birth certificate of Louis' saying he was born in Aberdeen, and I said, it must be a forgery [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 29:01
Curious.
Jonathan Balcon 29:01
It was much more likely he came over on an onion boat and landed in Aberdeen. Oh, no, no, there was no doubt about it, there was no sense of that at all. Except, of course, he was obviously extremely worried by the news coming out of Germany. He was instrumental, he in fact he employed Renata Muller in a film. He was responsible indirectly for getting a number of Jewish German actors and actresses out of Germany by offering them contracts.
Jonathan Balcon 29:35
Technicians too I believe.
Jonathan Balcon 29:37
Technicians, I believe. Now we were always, we always rather thought that he was on the Nazi death list for as and when they landed over here. In fact, I've got a copy of the death list and he's not on it, but the Ostrers are. [LAUGHTER]
Jonathan Balcon 30:32
Probably not because they were Jewish though [LAUGHTER]
Jonathan Balcon 29:58
But there's no doubt about it I mean that we would have been gonners as well. We'll come to that in a minute. The Gaumont British episode I think, I know that he was paid I think his salary in 1931 was certainly £2,000 a year which was again a lot of money. And it was at that time while still owning Tufton Street where the Westminster City Council in their wisdom put up the green plaque and where you and I first met.
Jonathan Balcon 30:36
I started there that wasn't Westminster.
Jonathan Balcon 30:38
Well you started, yes, of course you did. And as a result of which now English Heritage have got on to the ballgame, but as well as owning tufton Street, which incidentally after the war he sold for £5,000 [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 30:56
Oh well the heart bleeds.
Jonathan Balcon 30:57
He hired or rented a house not very far from here at Ide Hill called Henden Manor, most beautiful house, I've got photographs of it. Where I was brought up as a child and curiously enough there was a kindergarten in the, in the village - sorry he's barking at the dustman - there was a kindergarten in the village run by a dear lady called Mrs McDonald where Sally and I first met, because she lived on the other side of Ide Hill and I lived this side of Ide hill, we did lose touch after that. But Henden Manor was the most lovely house and he very much wanted to buy it, but he also very much wanted to have, as Jill I think once said in a television programme about Ealing, he wanted a little bit of England. And the house was owned by Hudson who was then the Minister of Agriculture, and an MP obviously, and it had a farm attached to it but Hudson would have sold him the house but not the farm and um as a result of which we moved literally just across the border into Sussex. But this was all happening at about the time that he left Gaumont British in 1937 and went and joined Metro Goldwyn as production head of MGM UK.
Roy Fowler 32:26
Had he put himself on the market or did they come to him do you think?
Jonathan Balcon 32:31
I rather had a feeling they came to him, I'd have to check in his book about that. I've got a copy, I've got the original somewhere of the most ecstatic, nauseating Western Union cablegram from Louis B Mayer welcoming them both to Hollywood. My mother hated every moment of it and in fact started writing a diary which I have the first 15, 20 pages of, which is almost unpublishable.
Roy Fowler 33:12
Written when she was when she was in Los Angeles at Metro?
Jonathan Balcon 33:17
At Metro. Father tells some quite amusing stories about Metro, not least of all the one, Louis B Mayer, being again of Jewish extraction, and having been a poor boy on the streets of New York, the one thing that he'd always wanted when he was poor, was chicken noodle soup - Jewish penicillin. And every meal served in the restaurant in Hollywood there was always chicken noodle soup on the menu. And whenever there was a celebration for Louis' birthday, whatever anniversary it was, always the first course was chicken noodle soup. And on this particular occasion, I think it was his birthday party, and it was obviously quite an important birthday party because there was an enormous tent erected on the lot, and there was flunkies in white wigs and white gloves who leaned over you with their golden cords dangling in your chicken noodle soup and said, 'Can I get you guys anything?' Anyway, whether it was an excess of chicken noodle soup, or whether it was a foretaste of things to come, suddenly in the middle of this Louis B Mayer collapsed and it was wind round the heart or something but one of the flunkies dashed out to get an ambulance and as he dashed out the MGM Symphony Orchestra which was waiting outside thought this was the scene [LAUGHTER] for them to strike up for 'He's a Jolly Good Fellow' [LAUGHTER] And this macarbre scene took place with Louis B Mayer being taken out almost as it were on a door, or on a stretcher, and the MGM Symphony Orchestra playing away 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow' followed by I think 'Happy Birthday to You' [LAUGHTER]. And it was one of the scenes that always remained in Mick's mind. He made, as you know, one major film for them which was successful, which was "A Yank at Oxford", um Vivien Lee, Robert Taylor. And even in those days he said the teenyboppers used to stand outside the windows of Robert, Robert Taylor's. [DOG BARKING IN BACKGROUND] Is that going to worry you?
Roy Fowler 36:00
Well, no, it's okay it's way off in the background. Like I'm not even sure I can hear it on the cans.
Jonathan Balcon 36:07
Oh that's alright. They used to stand under the window of Robert Taylor's room at the Ritz and catch his dogends as he threw them out of the window [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 36:17
Tell me, have you ever read Graham Greene's piece called 'Film Lunch'?
Roy Fowler 36:22
No.
Roy Fowler 36:23
Ah, there was a glorious luncheon given by LB at the Savoy to launch the production of "A Yank at Oxford", your father must have been there, and apparently he made a speech, everyone was going to be restricted to 15 minutes, but he droned on for a couple of hours [LAUGHTER]. I have it now I'll make you a copy it's fascinating. It beautifully written needless to say.
Roy Fowler 36:46
I'd love to.
Roy Fowler 36:48
Right. I'll give it, we are meeting next week so I'll bring a copy.
Roy Fowler 36:53
Lovely.
Roy Fowler 36:53
It was in Night and Day, if you remember Night and Day, the the English answer to, the British answer to the New Yorker, which failed. Anyway.
Jonathan Balcon 37:03
Well, then, of course, "A Yank", I don't know whether it was successful at the box office, I think it must of ...
Roy Fowler 37:12
Immensley so, a great hit.
Jonathan Balcon 37:14
He then also set about setting up or arranging the preliminaries on "Goodbye, Mr Chips." when something went seriously wrong, I don't quite know what it was whether he had a row with Irving Thalberg or whether he had a row with somebody. But he went out to Hollywood and I understand that in front of an open window and a crowd of several thousand extras Louis shouted at the top of his voice, 'If it takes a million dollars Balcon I'll break you' to which Mick quite rightly replied, 'Oh I can assure you it won't take as much as that' and walked out.
Roy Fowler 37:52
It's documented is it?
Jonathan Balcon 37:54
That's documented, yup.
Roy Fowler 37:55
That's lovely, that's great.
Jonathan Balcon 37:57
And he had of course, we must go back a bit now let's go back to "39 Steps" at Gaumont. One of the assistant directors at "39 Steps", on "39 Steps" was Pen Tennyson, now Pen I suppose was the nearest thing I had to a brother in as much as my father, in the healthiest possible way, absolutely adored him. I think Pen represented everything Mick would like to have been, and in fact everything he hoped that I might become. Pen was good looking; he came from an established English family; he was artistically bent and I mean the word in the leaning sense; he was mad about films and he had two delightful parents in Charles and Ivy who were his mother and father. Ayway, and this is a perfectly true story and I'm sure the film industry know it ... what was the name of the female lead in "39 Steps" wasn't Merle Oberon it was ...
Roy Fowler 38:36
No Madeline Carroll.
Roy Fowler 39:26
Madeline Carroll in one of the scenes where she had to totter across a Scottish bog in high-heeled shoes, refused to do it. So without any more ado Hitch made her take-off the suit she was wearing, acquired a blonde wig, put Pen into the suit, put the wig on Pen and made Pen do the shot in long-shot. And in fact when you see this figure running across the bog in Scotland, it's Penrose Tennyson and not Madeline Carroll.
Roy Fowler 40:03
A nice little sidelight.
Jonathan Balcon 40:05
It is a nice little sidelight. But Pen became as it were part of my father's team and when he finally left MGM as you probably know, Basil Dean had been making a series of pretty awful films at Ealing and had put various stars under contract, I think probably the best of the bunch that he made was the one with Gracie Fields, which again rather mocked the working class, but it it "Sing As We Go". Is that the one?
Roy Fowler 40:49
Well that was a Gracie Fields film. I think there were several Fields that were made at Ealing at that time.
Jonathan Balcon 40:54
And Stephen Courthauld who was was the majority shareholder at Associated Talking Pictures, which was the holding company at Ealing, had said to Reg Baker, who was the managing director, 'Reg, you know, I've got to get rid of Dean and this crowd making, losing money hand over fist at Ealing. Can you find me somebody who can make films?' And it is alleged Reg Baker, said, 'Well, Steven, the only person I know who's available at the moment, if he's available, is Mick Balcon' and this is alluded to in fact in Steven Courthauld's, or the Eltham Palace booklet that you get when you go around the palace there's a little bit about this and about Mick in that. Anyway, Mick said to Reg Baker, 'Look, I have no intention of tying myself down under contract to any production organisation. But what I am quite prepared to do is to come in with my team' and I think his team consisted of people like Walter Ford, Pen Tennyson, Mick, I'd have to get the list of films that, those early Ealing films that he was responsible for to give you the full list, I've got it upstairs. But it was, he said, 'I will come in with my team and we will be an independent company within your organisation but we won't be tied down.' Anyway Mick always alleged when he got there on the first day there in the parking bay was a large measure saying Michael Balcon Esquire, and he said he knew he was lost then. And we know the subsequent story from there, but they did initially, they made a number of films: "There Ain't No Justice", "The Ware Case", Jimmy Handley was in one or two of them.
Jonathan Balcon 41:47
As a child presumably?
Jonathan Balcon 43:04
No in "There Ain't No Justice", Jimmy was a teenager, he was a boxer. And I think he became a drunk later in life you know, whether it was when he was first married to Diana or not I didn't know. But I always thought Jimmy was a lovely actor and I thought, again I'm rushing ahead a bit, but his performance in "The Blue Lamp" was absolutely superb. But um I've also there is a nice little, upstairs, which you'll see ...
Roy Fowler 43:37
Before you go on though let me change the tape.
End of Side 1
Side 2
Roy Fowler 0:01
School's out since.
Jonathan Balcon 0:02
Yes.
Roy Fowler 0:04
Right sir, you were about to say?
Jonathan Balcon 0:06
Yes, what was I about to say?
Roy Fowler 0:07
Er, ah ...
Jonathan Balcon 0:13
Upstairs which you will see in the computer room as I call it, I've got framed a pound note and a ten shilling note in a glass frame with 'Walter always pays' written as a sort of caption on it. And evidently, Walter Ford at some stage must have borrowed thirty bob off Mick for something and it must have worried Mick [LAUGHTER]. So Walter instead of paying him back actually had the thing framed and given to Mick, but I don't know quite what the origin of that. His association with Edgar Wallace was obviously quite a happy one. I've got a marvellous cigarette holder upstairs about that long, which says a 'Happy New Year from Edgar Wallace'.
Roy Fowler 1:01
Right, this is an audio tape so that long is what about a foot something like that?
Jonathan Balcon 1:05
No a bit bit shorter than that about eight inches. And those early films I think we're reasonably successful. I know that one of the contracts he had to take on when he eventually became production head at Ealing. And I think he acquired with Reg Baker, quite a number of Associated Talking Picture shares from Steven Courthauld. One of the contracts he had taken on was George Formby, of course, well now, whereas we all know that George Formby was a talented player of the ukulele, his wife I understand was the most formidable and unpleasant person who had to be dealt with and kept a very, very close eye on what George got up to particularly where the ladies were concerned. We now come actually to the point where I saw my first film, and I saw it in the Granada as it was then in Sevenoaks, and it was George Formby in "It's in the Air" which I think was directed by Anthony Kimmins. Anthony Kimmins famous as you probably know for the commentary during the war on the Malta convoy even more famous for a pl, very bad play right call "While Parents Sleep" and I think ...
Jonathan Balcon 1:21
And a very bad film he made for Korda called "Bonnie Prince Charlie".
Roy Fowler 2:21
I was going to say and various other reasonably [LAUGHTER], bad films but an interesting character and I never really knew Tony I met him. But then you see Jill and I were, to a certain extent we led a very protected life particularly at Henden Manor going back for a fraction. And it was a, of Mick's thought a conventional English way of bringing up children, we had nanny, a housekeeper, a man servant who drank, a parlour maid and two people in the garden and Jill and nanny and I stayed in the house all the time. And were brought down on a Sunday to Sunday lunch, particularly if there were guests obviously, where Mick and Aileen having arrived home on a Friday night, I and my Daniel Neil shirts and shorts with little Cromwellian shoes. And the moment lunch was over we were dispatched back to the nursery where we stayed for the rest of the week. But I mean, in a way it was a very happy childhood, I don't remember being terribly unhappy as a child. My own ...
Roy Fowler 3:51
How did you regard your father with awe or as a remote figure?
Jonathan Balcon 3:57
A rather remake figure. You see he used to, around that period he used to disappear off to Hollywood and Hollywood was something one had heard about but didn't really know what it was. One's life really revolved around nanny, the garden, ones toys and of course the occasions when we were taken up to London to a pantomime. Because in addition, this was the other extraordinary thing, in addition to Henden Manor and subsequently Upper Parrick, he not only had Tufton Street, which he let, he had a flat in Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square. And it was really I think as a result of owning all this bricks and mortar that he finally decided that he ought to sell Tufton Street. It was during the war completely destroyed by enemy action. It was um I'm just gonna have a cough clear rebuilt as my mother would have liked it by the war damage commission and I have very little recollection of being there, I do remember being a pageboy at my cousin's wedding and that was about all. My, all my recollections, childhood recollections are Henden Manor and at Upper Parrick. But enough of that, he he yes he was a I suppose a remote figure. I remember some very curious things he he never drove a motor car. It's always alleged he was involved in an accident in the Edgware Road very early on and swore he'd never drive. So he always had a chauffeur. He always had, we only had in in my lifetime, we had two chauffeurs both from the same family, father and son. They were both called Shackleton. And I remember well, it must have been about Munich time, we came down on a Monday morning for my, to say goodbye to them to go back to London and they're in the drive was a black Vauxhall motor car, in addition to Mick's car and he said to Shackleton, 'Whats that?' and he said, 'Oh, that's Mrs Balcon's new car.' 'What?' said Mick and Aileen turned round and he said 'What is that?'. She said, 'I bought that for myself.' 'You won't be driving it' he said, 'you haven't got a driving licence'. She said , ' Yes I have, I learned to drive in South Africa.' And indeed, she drove. Likewise, in 1939, not long afterwards, when she joined the Red Cross, as part of the war effort, he tried to put his foot down on that. But of course, she had a very successful war war career and ended up as a very senior officer of the Red Cross and acquired an MBE for so doing.
Jonathan Balcon 4:40
Jon we haven't said anything at all really about your mother until this point, is this now the stage at which to do it or another time?
Jonathan Balcon 7:21
Oh yes my Mama. My Mama was the most lovely person. She she was, she used to get furious if anybody said she was South African. She wasn't South African. She was brought up in South Africa. She was born over here, she went out to South Africa and then she was brought back by my grandmother, who along with her sister my great-aunt were two very naughty women. And she was hawked round Europe as a possible, what do you call somebody who plays the piano very well? Not a diva, but I mean ...
Roy Fowler 8:02
A child prodigy.
Jonathan Balcon 8:03
A child prodigy. And poor Aileen was hawked round Europe while this was going on, and didn't really enjoy it very much, although she played the piano quite beautifully. One of the curious things about her she always led, alledged she married Mick when she was 18, in fact we discovered she was 20 [LAUGHTER] because I've got her marriage lines upstairs and her birth certificate. And I don't know why she kept this myth up but she did. She was um, I've also got which is quite extraordinary, I've got about a half a dozen letters that Mick wrote to her when they were 'courting', quote, unquote. And I can't honestly say there is a sign of affection in any of the letters at all but he was obviously absolutely entranced by her. I think I can safely say he never looked at another woman all through his life, nor would she have let him. Her mother, we were always brought up, both Jill and me, to think of our grandfather, Harry, as our proper grandfather and that Aileen's name was Leatherman and his name was Harry Leatherman. In fact it turned out that Leatherman wasn't her name at all, Bea, my grandmother, had divorced her first husband who was called Jacobs. And Aileen was in fact Aileen Jacobs and her brother Gerald was also Gerald Jacobs. But they both adored Harry so much that they changed their names to his. Um Bea and Harry were over here in 1939 when war was declared and were due to sail back to South Africa on the Athlone Castle ten days into the war. And they did in fact sail back I think it was the Athlone Castle it may have been one of the other castles, Union Castle boats. And they successfully got back to South Africa and safely although I believe they were chased by U-boats at one time. But that, she was er, my great-aunt Florence, Beatrice's sister, my grandmother's sister, was an extraordinary woman she was still entertaining American Colonels in a negligee in a flat in Grosvenor Square at the end of the war.
Roy Fowler 10:43
Good for her.
Jonathan Balcon 10:43
She married a chap called Aubrey Heimann who was a pathetic little man really who was obviously very rich and kept her in the the style to which she may or may not have been accustomed. But their brothers were called Spencer Freeman and they were bookmakers and they were highly successful bookmakers. And they founded the Irish sweepstake, which was a fix anyway I understand in later life. And they used to wander around with suitcases full of money. And they also found er I don't know if you remember if you're not a racing man you may not, there was a very well known bookmakers called Douglas Stewart.
Jonathan Balcon 10:43
I've heard the name.
Jonathan Balcon 11:31
Well they founded Douglas Stewart and for years my Mama had an account with Douglas Steward and I always remember her picking up the telephone and saying 'Ah,' she said, 'Mrs Balcon here nom de plume Blessing.' [LAUGHING] 'Shut up, Basil go away.' They ended up in fact, funnily enough, living in the South of France and it is alledged, although we looked for it we couldn't find it, but in Cannes there is an avenue Spencer Freeman but the French change the names of roads from time to time, and I didn't think and I don't think it probably exists anymore. But they, they're rather interesting because they had a daughter, my cousin Jacquie, who got through a series of husbands that at one stage she was living with the head of Cosa Nostra in France and my other cousin, Toni, Antoinette, used to say when she went to see her in the bushes on one side of the gate would be the gendarmerie watching the mafia on the other side of the gate [LAUGHING] But I've lost touch with that side of the family really, my cousin Toni who lives in Switzerland now is the only close member that I keep in touch with and she in fact, is a very close friend of Virginia McKenna's because they were both at the Central School together. But Aileen's family, Mick was very funny not only about Aileen's family but about his own in a way because he always said because Louis had no idea about birth control there were 101 cousins in South Africa when he was out there that Mick had never met. And also one of his great cries, although it's slightly different now was 'I keep them all why should I have to see them?' And I suppose it's perfectly true, he did certainly on his side of the family to a large extent, look after them.
Roy Fowler 12:54
Really.
Jonathan Balcon 13:37
I keep very closely in touch with his one remaining niece who's still alive my cousin Barbara, who's an absolutely delightful person, she lives just down the road at Lewes, Jill keeps in touch with her too. I keep in touch with my cousin Dorothy, Dorothy, she's Dorothy Moncrief. She gave a lunch party for relations recently, when I say recently in about the last three years, and there were 33 relations there, including a large block of people from Manchester. Now they are rather an odd lot, I'd met them before and I don't know if you knew but there is in fact a big firm of loss adjusters up in that part of world called Sydney Balcombe, B A L C O M B E and they recently made an enormous fortune adjusting the losses after the Manchester bomb and the Birmingham bomb. Anyway, when I first started working in the city father sent me a copy of a letter from Sydney Balcombe saying, 'Dear Mr. Balcon, I think we're cousins. I run a loss adjusting firm in Manchester. I would love to meet you one day etc etc.' Mick sent this letter on to me and said, 'Look if he's a Loss Adjuster, he may be able to do you some good in your business' being an insurance broker. It subsequently transpired that Sydney Balcombe and Co had been involved with Leopold Harris. Does that mean anything to you?
Roy Fowler 15:36
No
Jonathan Balcon 15:37
Leopold Harris um there was a famous case, Leopold Harris' firm were known as the fire raisers and they burned down any business for you to get the insurance money. And they had everybody in their pocket: fire chiefs, police chiefs, and the whole thing was bust open by William Charles Crocker?
Roy Fowler 16:01
No ...
Jonathan Balcon 16:01
William Charles, Sir William Charles Crocker was a very famous solicitor, Crocker's, and his daughter Phyllis was Mick's casting director subsequently at Ealing. And anyway, I duly met the B A L C O M B E's in a restaurant in the city, um didn't like them at all and about a fortnight later, in those days I was a Manchester Guardian reader as it was in those days, there was a tiny little paragraph on page three in the Manchester Guardian, which said the firm of Sydney Balcombe & Co were today fined 1000 pounds in Manchester Sheriff's Court or whatever they call it for ambulance chasing. So I cut this out and I sent it to Mick my dear I had him on the phone 'have nothing more to do with it, absolutely nothing, I'm sorry, I'm terribly sorry I should never have got you involved'. I said to Mick, 'For God's sake Mick forget it. I said, you know, it ain't the biggest crime in the world and I said, but people do take a fairly poor view of people who listen in to ambulance/police via radio. Funnily enough old Sydney who was still alive was at this lunch that Dorothy gave two or three years ago. I didn't bring the subject up again but I recognised him instantly. And there's no doubt about it they are cousins. Likewise, there is a cousin in in Los Angeles at the moment who spells his name B A L K A N who's in the documentary film business, Ed and he certainly is a cousin he looks like a Balcon there's no doubt about that. Aileen's family I've told you about um ...
Roy Fowler 17:55
Are there any other any other film or showbiz connections at all or ...
Jonathan Balcon 18:00
Not, apart from Jill not really. And once you get onto Jill of course you get on to Daniel and Tamazin, Jill's children Daniel, of course, as you know, a highly successful actor.
Roy Fowler 18:13
Do you think we could do something about the barking I'm sorry but it will be um ...
Jonathan Balcon 18:25
Right where we?
Roy Fowler 18:27
Other possible connections ...
Jonathan Balcon 18:30
Daniel, as you know, I've said to Silver Apples that of course I would raise no objection if Channel 4 want Daniel to do the commentary on this programme they are going to make, from a commercial point of view it seems obvious an obvious thing to have him do and wont involved me in any way. Tamasin writes for The Daily Telegraph, a cookery programme which I find rather recherche as all her suggested recipes are far too expensive. She was married and is in fact still married to number three he was at one time in the BBC called John Shearer. He was known as 'Vulcan the Exterminator' because he was responsible for cleaning everybody out making them redundant. And Jill wrote to me, in the days we were speaking, a slightly emotional letter saying poor John has been made redundant and I wrote back and I said. 'Jill, it's a sad fact of life these days of those who make others redundant are themselves made redundant in due course.'
Roy Fowler 18:34
Sooner or later, right.
Jonathan Balcon 19:00
Which again, didn't get done very well. But no, there's no other connection really at all. The extraordinary thing is that I think you'll know that Sally's sister married Basil Dean's son, Joe, who's a retired judge, a lot older than Jenefer. And I've said to Silver Apples that I think it's incumbent upon them to interview him about his father because I said, if you're doing a programme on Ealing, you've got to mention Basil. And if he doesn't do it, then one or other of his brothers must do it and I think Joe has agreed to do it because I had a word with him on the telephone the other day. He has of course two very talented children: his daughter Tacita was runner up in the Turner Prize three years ago. She recently had three, five rooms at the old Tate Gallery, Tate Great Britain.
Roy Fowler 21:13
Good Lord.
Jonathan Balcon 20:48
She works almost entirely in film. I'm afraid Sally and I and her mother and father think it's School of Rubbish but she is very highly thought of, she exhibits all over the world. Even the night the exhibition at the Tate opened, they gave a dinner party for her at the Tate which Serota made a most tremendous speech. Um I understand she's just been out in Washington and ...
Roy Fowler 21:31
We better hold it for a moment [LAUGHING] We do have a lot of sound effects on this tape, do we not? There we go. That's fine.
Jonathan Balcon 21:38
It's Gatwick, you see.
Roy Fowler 21:40
Ah, is that it right.
Jonathan Balcon 21:45
She was in Washington recently and Mrs Bush in fact, was entranced by her. I haven't heard any more than that. Joe's son Ptolemy, it is unfortunate enough to have three children and call him Antigone, Ptolemy and Tacita.
Roy Fowler 22:05
The judge clearly had a classical bent.
Jonathan Balcon 22:09
Oh yes. I also said to him, Joe were they all conceived on Greek beaches? Anyway, um, Ptolemy is a very successful young architect; he's an authority on Sir John Soane; he is honorary advisor for the Soane Museum; the partner in the firm for which he worked at the time fell off the roof of something he was doing and Ptolemy had to take over his work on Southwark Cathedral. I don't know if you've been in Southwark Cathedral recently, but they've got a new refectory and all that, which Ptolemy has done; he has got, various other, he's got two banks in America he's doing at the moment and he's just been appointed to totally restore Westminster School. And quite apart from being a very charming young man, I'll show you some of him drawings, which are dotted around this house because he's a very talented artist as well. So that really is that side of the family. There's a very apocryphal story again that when Basil and Michael Powell were both alive they met one day, and they didn't like each other very much let's be honest about it, they met one day on the steps of the Garrick Club, on the stairs of the Garrick Club halfway up the stairs Basil put his hand under Mick's elbow and said, 'Mick my dear I think our boys have done quite well for themselves' at which Mick gave a stifled hiccup, fell all the way down the stairs, broke his ankle and swore that Basil had pushed him. [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 23:57
Lovely.
Jonathan Balcon 23:58
I can't confirm that story. He, Mick and Victor Saville as you know, had a big fallout, I think partly because Victor, didn't Victor disappear to America during the war?
Roy Fowler 24:07
No, I I think principally because he took over from your father at Metro.
Jonathan Balcon 24:15
Ah, is that it.
Roy Fowler 24:16
I think so.
Jonathan Balcon 24:17
I thought Sam Eckman took over.
Roy Fowler 24:19
Well no Sam Eckman was managing director of MGM British generally, largely on the distribution side.
Jonathan Balcon 24:26
Ah.
Roy Fowler 24:27
Production I think, was inherited by Saville, Victor Saville.
Jonathan Balcon 24:31
Well anyway. Yah.
Roy Fowler 24:32
Which took him to America subsequently, but ...
Jonathan Balcon 24:34
They had a great, they had a great reconciliation because for Mick's 80th birthday, Victor gave a party a lunch party up at the Garrick and he'd done his research well because he had everything on the menu that Mick adored asparagus, smoked salmon, gulls eggs. I'll never forget because I was there and it was a super party and some very nice claret. The other thing of course was I mean, I can't remember the exact details of this Roy but you may know more about it than I do: Mick wrote a very scathing article in Picture Girl or or one of those magazines just before the war, verbally crucifying those members of the British film industry in particular those of Jewish background who had fled to Americans.
Roy Fowler 25:14
Yes I've heard of it.
Jonathan Balcon 25:14
I've got a copy of it somewhere because as I, as you know part of the archive is in the garage and part at the moment is still down in Dover and the BFI gonna take it off me very shortly the rest of it.
Jonathan Balcon 24:41
'Gone With the Wind Up' it was called.
Roy Fowler 25:44
Something like that.
Roy Fowler 25:45
Ah not necessarily your father's article. That was the general thing at the time, wasn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 25:50
But as a result, you see Hitch took offence of this article, but of course it wasn't directed at Hitch because after all Hitch had already had an American contract. All through the war years Hitch wouldn't speak to Mick at all. But they had a great rapprochement again after the war was over, which was when Sally met him again. And subsequently, every Christmas would arrive from California a case of the most delicious claret, which Mick was very fond of, and a case of pink grapefruit because Hitch had a grapefruit farm somewhere. So there was a great rapprochement there. But you see, he did feel, Mick, very strongly you know, I suppose a total xenophobic, chauvinist way about this country.
Roy Fowler 26:53
And why is that? Do you think? Did you ever ask him all about it?
Jonathan Balcon 26:57
No, but let's let's just look at some of the films. Practically every film for which he was responsible, not all, seem to centre around a small section of a tightly knit community, be it a family, or a village, or a military selection, section or a ship or a group of people they came to a city but it was, they were all united in one thing, and a lot of them were united in fighting bureaucracy. Tilting at windmills was a great thing in Mick's life and I mean, he's left me with this legacy, I tilt at windmills practically daily in a quixotic way. But it's always a number of things I will never forget: two really important occasions on about June 10 1940 he called us all into the dining room at Upper Parrick, now Upper Parrick wasn't a very big house, but he called in Jill, me, Nanny, Rhoda our dear housekeeper - a remarkable women she came as a temporary to Aileen six months before I was born, and was still with us when I got married [LAUGHING]
Roy Fowler 27:33
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 27:40
... I mean probably one of the best plain cooks in this country, she was fabulous, she was a, an unforgettable character. Thomas Atkins, the butler, who taught me how to tie my shoelaces and tie my tie because war having been declared I was being sent off to prep school. I had been sent off at the age of 7 to board and I could look up the hill and see the house and couldn't get there and cried for a year before I went to my proper school in Oxford. He called us in and I can't quote him verbatim but it went something like this: as you know, we are a Jewish family - I hadn't got the vaguest idea what he was really talking - he said things aren't looking very good at the moment. Johnny and Jill I have had many requests from various people to send you to America, I don't intend doing so. If things get bad we will all go down together and there will be no hope. But I believe in this country and I don't believe things will get that bad and we're going to stay and see it through together. And that was it. And he felt very strongly about this, very strongly. Apart from the fact that he hated Nazism, fascism, whatever it was, totalitarianism, he hated anybody, that's why he hated Louis B Mayer, because Louis B Mayer was a dictator let's face it. It was an extraordinary feeling of patriotism he instilled in one ...
Roy Fowler 30:36
Yes
Jonathan Balcon 30:36
... all right it was jingoistic, but then don't forget, in many ways, he was a late Victorian.
Roy Fowler 30:43
It raises some interesting questions because somehow it relates to Charles Barrs fascinating book about Ealing Studios, which he presents as a microcosm of of Britain.
Jonathan Balcon 30:55
Yes.
Roy Fowler 30:56
And you can say well that's a little far fetched, but now maybe less farfetched than one might imagine. It raises the question of the extent to which every film made at Ealing was, um your your father was directly responsible for presumably ...
Jonathan Balcon 31:12
Initially, latterly he wasn't.
Roy Fowler 31:15
No.
Jonathan Balcon 31:16
I mean latterly it was a Michael Balcon production produced by Monya Danishevsky or Leslie Norman ...
Roy Fowler 31:22
It was never produced by associate producer
Jonathan Balcon 31:24
No.
Roy Fowler 31:25
Are you sure. Ahah ok right.
Jonathan Balcon 31:26
'Cruelty' produced by Leslie Norman
Roy Fowler 31:28
Ahaha. Okay.
Jonathan Balcon 31:29
I've got it here so we can check on that.
Roy Fowler 31:31
No.
Jonathan Balcon 31:32
I think I'm right there.
Roy Fowler 31:33
So maybe Charles has a point that your father's personal predilections somehow shaped this image of the studio.
Jonathan Balcon 31:46
Roy, just cast your mind back most of the wartime films behind the logo is the Union Jack.
Roy Fowler 31:55
Mmmm.
Jonathan Balcon 31:56
And at the end it says a British film produced at.
Roy Fowler 32:00
And a degree of paranoia too because they all have to do with fifth columns or spies.
Jonathan Balcon 32:04
My dear a total degree of paranoia. I couldn't agree with you more. Oh, absolutely. Look at 'Went the day Well' you see.
Roy Fowler 32:12
Yes, indeed right. So you think this stems from your father?
Jonathan Balcon 32:15
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean he instilled in me then, he instilled two things in me, which Sally says is extraordinary because she thinks that I'm in many ways very German in my outlook, it instilled in me a hatred of things German. A reasonable hatred of things Japanese but that was only because of the dreadful things they did in China. And I remember an edition of Picture Post showing the Japanese atrocities which really as a child had a great effect on me.
Roy Fowler 32:49
Really.
Jonathan Balcon 32:50
I thought this was unbelievable. But there was another instance too, I was staying with them, this was a very curious month in fact, I think it was it must have been the Easter holidays, yes it was the Easter holidays in 1941 and Pen I think was killed in 1941.
Roy Fowler 33:15
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 33:17
About sometime before he was killed, it may have been months, few weeks, I was sleeping in the flat in Lansdowne House in a camp bed at the end of my parents bed in their bedroom and every time the siren went we went down in Lansdowne House to the cellars to the basement where allegedly there was an air raid shelter, what people didn't realise ... I don't know if you know that part of the world, do you know Lansdowne Row?
Roy Fowler 33:44
Well, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 33:45
Which runs between Berkeley Street and Square. Well, in those days, Lansdowne Row was a row of shops and there was a well behind it, literally and of course, the basement of Lansdowne House was at the bottom of this well, so there was no protection at all. Anyway, it must have been in April 1941 I woke up, no let's go back to Pen for a moment. Pen came into my room and he took off his watch and he said, 'Jonny, I want you to have this.' And I've got it upstairs, it's falling to pieces and it just says to Jonathan from Pen 1941. Something like that it was a very cheap watch, but it was a nice gesture. He said, 'I've also got a 12 bore shotgun which when you're old enough I would like you to have. It's at the moment reposing in a gunsmith's near Charing Cross, but when you are old enough to have, to learn to shoot' he said, 'it's yours.' And within what three months he was dead, most extraordinary. That moved me considerably as a child. In April 1941, I woke up in the middle of a blitz in the most terrible agony in the stomach and it was appendicitis, but acute appendicitis, and none of the teaching hospitals would take me because the air raid casualties they were full of. And I remember being carted in a hearse converted into an ambulance, privately, from Lansdowne House to the London Clinic and all Mick would say to me was 'Do you realise this is costing me 20 guineas a week' [LAUGHING]. It's now 20 guineas a minute, I think.
Roy Fowler 33:45
Yes. at the very least. Yes, indeed. Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 35:53
And he said 'The surgeon fee you know was 100 pounds, 100 guineas 100 guineas' he said, 'very expensive.' I said, 'Oh I'm frightfully sorry.' 'That's alright dear boy, that's alright'.
Roy Fowler 36:05
It does, sorry ...
Jonathan Balcon 36:05
I was in the London Clinic for three weeks. It was an interesting time because every night we were wheeled in our beds into the lift, down again into the shelter and there we sat. The shelter was in fact right alongside the Baker Street tube line, Bakerloo line, and it was very difficult to tell the difference between the trains going past and the bombs falling. And I do remember that it was a pretty nasty period. Anyway, I came out of the London clinic on the morning of May the 10th 1941. I was taken by Mama to Hamleys and bought some soldiers and an anti-aircraft gun and some sandbags and I was going to convalesce for three weeks from the following day down at Upper Parrick. May 10th 1941 you may not remember but it was the night of the largest blitz on the west end. We went down to the shelter early. Now my camp bed in the shelter was alongside this well wall and the first thing I knew was I been thrown out of bed by a stick of something bursting outside. And we were turned out of the shelter and we had to go and sit in the corridor and there was a steel door which led through to the Air Ministry's air raid shelter, the Air Ministry was in that big building on the opposite side of Berkeley Square at that time and we always knew when there was going to be a raid because the flags on the roof used to change colour. Anyway, we asked if we could use the facilities of their shelter and they refused to open the door. So we sat in this corridor and literally every time a bomb fell another bit of plaster would come down and the dust would go up. And Mick said, 'I'm not usually a pessimist' he said, 'but somehow I don't feel we're gonna survive tonight.' This was about three o'clock in the morning, well, by that time it tailed off.
Roy Fowler 38:17
It's been so cheerful as keeps me going
Jonathan Balcon 38:19
Absolutely. And with much relief we went back upstairs, every single window in the flat was out, the beds were all full of broken glass, my soldiers my anti-aircraft gun, which I'd laid out on what was his dressing-room windowsill, were all smashed. Within 24 hours they'd received notice to quit because the building had stood up to whatever it had stood up to and the Ministry of Economic Warfare took it over. I was dispatched back to Summerfields which was my prep school when I should have been convalescing. And they went off to live with Aileen's brother at Stanmore because, my uncle Jerry, I haven't talked about him uncle Jerry was a fascinating character. He died only recently. Apart from marrying his first cousin, his first wife, he was a very eminent dentist, but a very eminent dentist and in the latter part of his life he should have been knighted, but nobody, he had nobody to recommend him. He was Chairman of the International Dental Federation and he was the man entirely responsible for what you and I these days know as dental hygiene. He got, he joined the Air Force at the beginning of the war and he was so appalled at the state of the airmen's teeth. that he personally trained 2000 WAFs to be a dental hygienists and out of that grew all the scraping and things that we go through today. But he was a lovely man Jerry. He was a great racing man, again bookmaker in the blood you see. And I know very well that famous day when Frankie Dettori won every race of Ascot. He was leaning over from wherever he is up there because in the morning I said to Sally, 'Do you now I've got a sneaking feeling Frankie's going to go through the card today' and I didn't have a bet, I've regretted it ever since. [LAUGHTER] But anyway, there we are, they went off to live with Jerry until they got established. And they then ...
Roy Fowler 40:46
People were slung out at that shorter notice they ...
Jonathan Balcon 40:49
I think it was actually 36 hours.
Jonathan Balcon 40:51
Even so.
Jonathan Balcon 40:53
It not only became the Ministry of Economic Warfare, it then subsequently became the Ministry of Defence. And this is the funniest thing now, Roy I must, is this awfully boring?
Jonathan Balcon 41:03
No, no, no. It's fascinating.
Jonathan Balcon 41:04
I must tell you this, because two things happened in the flat, which I shall never forget. But anyway, subsequently, it must have been let me think, ooh, about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, the telephone rang in the office and a voice said, 'Jonathan' and I said, 'Yes' he said 'It's Mike Matthews here.' Now Mike Matthews when I was a sergeant in the Roughriders Mike Matthews was a regular soldier who was our adjutant and he tried desperately to get a commission for me, but there's a long story attached to that, which we, if you're interested I'll tell you later. Anyway, Mike said, 'Jonny, your father used to have a flat in Lansdowne House.' So I said, 'Yes, Mike.' He said, 'Number 61 on the fourth floor.' I said 'Yes, that's right, Mike.' He said, 'Well come and have lunch with me tomorrow' He said 'it's my office.'
Roy Fowler 42:01
How extraordinary. It's a small world as they say, we're at the end of this tape.
Roy Fowler 42:07
Right.
End of Side 2
Side 3
Roy Fowler 0:01
This is Jonathan Balcon tape two
Jonathan Balcon 0:06
Right, the other extraordinary thing that happened in 61 Lansdowne House going back a bit, I'm sure you will recall just before Dunkirk there was the abortive Norwegian Campaign. Well now in those halcyon days - oh incidentally also another thing I'll never forget is in 1938 I was up in the flat and Aileen had two Austrian maids in those days and they both at the time of the Anschluss put on swastika armbands and disappeared to Victoria station [LAUGHTER] ...
Roy Fowler 0:49
Oh dear, oh dear.
Jonathan Balcon 0:49
... which always caused Mick much amusement in view of certain things we've talked about. No but anyway just before Dunkirk in the Norwegian campaign Aileen had a charming parlour maid, I think they were called that in those days, called Helen. Now Helen had been put the previous winter, or the previous year in the family way by a Scots Guardsman and my Mama being my Mama in that dreadful winter in 1939 marched them up to Colemans Hatch Church and got the vicar to marry them. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, Peter being in the Scots Guards arrived at 61 Lansdowne House not on embarkation leave but in full kit, what they call field service marching order, to say goodbye to Helen because he was being dispatched to Norway. So anyway, Aileen very discreetly left them together in the kitchen, and I remember this vividly, there was suddenly the most shattering explosion came from the kitchen and Peter had decided to shoot himself through the foot.
Roy Fowler 2:04
Oh God.
Jonathan Balcon 2:04
What a call I believe a blighty one. Believe it or not, he got away with it. But while this kerfuffle was going on, while the ambulance was being sent for, while Aileen was trying to calm Helen who was having hysterics, I quietly said to somebody, I can't remember who, 'I wonder what happened to the bullet?' It had gone through a compound floor and had lodged itself in the kitchen table of a couple beneath who were having breakfast and they hadn't even noticed, because that's where the police found it [LAUGHTER] Anyway, that was the other amazing incident in Lansdowne House. But from staying with Jerry, the point I'm getting around to is this from staying with Jerry, Uncle Jerry, they eventually moved into um I suppose you would call it a Red Cross Hostel but it was in fact a hotel in Gerrards Cross called the Charlton Park Hotel. Which again was quite interesting because there was quite a lot of film people around, it was near Denham Studios and it was near Ealing Studios, living in the hotel, but not only was my uncle Cham, Mick's brother staying at The Bull at Gerard's Cross, in Bulstrode Park, because he was commanding at that time an anti-aircraft battery, which was somewhere around in that area. But he was invalided out shortly afterwards, because he was a fairly great age by then for being an active soldier. Anyway, staying in the Charlton Park Hotel there were a number of very interesting people: there was a chap called Todd, who was head of, is it John Brown's Shipyard in Glasgow; there was Willie Cormack, the most lovely, delightful Scotsman who was head of Heinz; there was Sir Philip Chetwood, who was head of the Red Cross and Lady Chetwood, the old Field Marshal and he was a lovely man and there were various other people like that, it was quite a substantial hotel. And I remember Tony Havelock, Alan and Valerie coming to see us there and I remember Bill O'Brien and Liz Allen coming to see us there and in fact we had quite a pleasant time there until the doodlebugs came. But in 1944 I'm not really jumping the gun here I don't think, Mick said to Aileen he said, 'What are we going to do with Jonathan in the summer holidays? What are you going to do with him?' and Aileen said, 'I'm afraid Mick I'm not going to do anything.' He said, 'What do you mean?' She said, 'Well I can't tell you at the moment but I have a rather important assignment.' 'What do you mean you've got an important assignment? Tell me about it.' She said, 'I can't tell you just at the moment.' This was about April or May. Anyway, just before the end of May, beginning of June it transpired that she was in charge of a railhead at Tibenham with her girls, and what was happening was the wounded from D-Day were being flown back to this American airbase and she and her girls were unloading them off the aeroplanes, putting them on to hospital trains and sending them all over England. And it was really rather remarkable because she got people like Willie Cormack and Todd Brown and various other notables to make up or subscribe to little packets so that when these lads, who literally had nothing, when they were just lying on stretchers they were given a sort of box in which there was a bar of chocolate, cigarettes, writing paper, a pen or pencil, a towel, soap, just something to make them feel you know that they weren't completely destitute. I've got some marvellous pictures, there's a picture in the sitting room you can see of her actually doing this job. And this was her other work she got the MBE for as I said. But anyway, she did eventually tell Mick and Mick said 'What am I supposed to do?' 'Oh,' she said, 'It's quite simple. You take him with you if you're going to Mevagissey because the "Johnny Frenchmen" location is going down there', she said, 'Charlie and Sonya Frend are going, Cham's wife Aunt Adele is going.' She said, 'he'll be perfectly well looked after.' And he said, 'Where's he going to sleep?' 'He can share a room with you.' 'Oh, I'm not sure I'd like that.' Anyway that's exactly what happened and subsequently I was put in the charge of Tibby Clark. Dear Tibby, with whom until almost the day he died I used to go racing. Tibby said he always used to lie on the beach looking after me, watching me paddling and swimming in the sea and wonder if Johnny drowns what do I go back and tell Mick. [LAUGHTER] But that was an extraordinary location Roy because I don't know, there was Patricia Rock, there was Ralph Michael, there was Ralph Michael's wife, that lovely actress it'll come to me in a minute ...
Roy Fowler 2:04
No I don't know.
Jonathan Balcon 2:58
There was Tom Walls, there was Tom Walls' valet; there were a whole lot of Ealing people; there was Cham; there was Adele; there was Dougie Sutherland, who was the art director, and he had a wife called Queenie who was a musical star. I mean it was a hilarious time. And if you ever want to know what the White Hart at St Austell, where we were all staying, looks like you watch "Next of Kin" because a great deal of it is shot ...
Roy Fowler 8:09
Really.
Jonathan Balcon 8:09
... in the beginning of of "Next of Kin." Oh, lovely actress who played Desdemona to Jack Hawkins' Othello. Oh, famous actress, it'll come to me.
Roy Fowler 8:26
It'll come, right. Francoise Rosay.
Jonathan Balcon 8:29
Francoise Rosay of course was there.
Roy Fowler 8:32
What are your memories of her because she's rather forgotten now I suppose, at least in this country.
Jonathan Balcon 8:35
She was a lovely person, I loved Francoise, she was always delightful to be with. And she'd been in a number of Ealing films as you know. But the interesting thing was, there was an enormous love affair going on at the time between Roy Kellino and Pamela Mason. I think I'm right there.
Roy Fowler 9:00
Well, I'm not sure um he had been married to her I think ...
Jonathan Balcon 9:03
Then he was having an affair with Patricia Rock.
Roy Fowler 9:06
Ah, that's more like it because I think Mason was on the scene and married.
Jonathan Balcon 9:11
I probably got it wrong.
Roy Fowler 9:12
Yeah.
Jonathan Balcon 9:13
Wasn't she Pamela Ostrer?
Roy Fowler 9:15
She was. Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 9:16
That's right.
Roy Fowler 9:16
She's in ...
Jonathan Balcon 9:17
Don't forget I was only 12 and a half or 13.
Roy Fowler 9:21
She's the young Jewess in "Jew Süss".
Jonathan Balcon 9:25
Oh is she?
Roy Fowler 9:25
She plays that yes.
Jonathan Balcon 9:27
You see I've never seen "Jew Süss" so I would'nt have known but ...
Roy Fowler 9:30
Rebecca, I think or some such name.
Jonathan Balcon 9:32
But it was a fun summer holiday and it was my, I had broken up from Summerfields, finished with Summerfields, and it was before I went to Eton. So I had a sort of tremendous summer holiday.
Roy Fowler 9:46
A couple of questions then. The kind of relationship you had with with your father ...
Roy Fowler 9:52
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 9:53
... what, how would you describe that?
Jonathan Balcon 9:55
It began to get much closer, he very much left the children to Aileen, particularly after the war. He was always very good about coming to take me out or he always came down, certainly to eat and for things like the fourth of June. There was a tremendous time when he was asked by the headmaster if he'd bring a copy of "Scott of the Antarctic" down to Eton and show it to the school. And there was a most lovely character who a lot of people remember at Ealing, the chief projectionist called Bert Minnell.
Roy Fowler 10:34
No I didn't know him.
Jonathan Balcon 10:35
Well Bert was the most lovely cockney. I can tell you a few Minellisms later. And Bert took one look at the two projectors in the school hall and he said, 'Governor I don't believe this' he said, 'I didn't think these sort of things were still around. [LAUGHING] Anyway he got through a showing of the film without any disaster. But I gather the arcs were ancient, you know, everything about them was ancient.
Roy Fowler 10:35
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 10:58
He was so funny about it. No Mick was um ...
Roy Fowler 11:12
He was happy to have children was he?
Jonathan Balcon 11:13
He was happy to have children. He was determined that his children should have the best of everything educationally. Jill he sent to Roedean, myself he sent to Eton. He was going to send me to Stowe, was it Stowe, who's the famous headmaster?
Roy Fowler 11:35
Oh I don't know at that time.
Jonathan Balcon 11:37
I can't remember now.
Roy Fowler 11:40
There seems an element of snobbism in that. Can one say that Eton was the best education or was it just the most famous school?
Jonathan Balcon 11:47
I think it's certainly the best education now because I've been back there several times recently. In my day, I think it was, it gave me an exceptional grounding.
Roy Fowler 11:59
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 12:00
An exceptional grounding. Sadly I never took to science very much so when I got up to Cambridge they wouldn't let me read er Agriculture, which I wanted to do because I said I had no scientific subjects. What they didn't tell me was I could have taken an Estate Management course. Instead I tried to read Modern Languages my first year and hated it and I read English my second year and hated it and came down after two years, but I had two of the best years of my life. I don't think it was, I was down for a number of public schools including Westminster because he thought he was going to go back and live at Tufton Street. And my house tutor actually rang up when I was 12 and a half and said, 'Look, if Jonathan can come next half, I've got a place for him.' So I actually went there before I was 13. And it's a very str, it was a very strange because in many ways one was terribly free, but in other ways one was terribly restricted. But I was very happy there, the awful thing was, once I became a specialist, which you became after you've taken school certificate, I really didn't work terribly hard. And I remember, I took school certificate, I've missed out a bit Roy, we'll come to in a minute, I had a quite a serious accident which changed the whole of my life the year I was taking school certificate. And I'll never forget I took eight subjects. And that summer holiday I got a card from my house tutor, a postcard addressed to my father, and it said, 'Surprise, surprise. Jonathan has seven credits in his school certificate and one failure. I never thought he'd make it.' And the one failure was the New Testament in Greek, which I thought I knew backwards and of course I didn't. But as a result of that I got into Cambridge, you see, that was in the days when you matriculated.
Roy Fowler 14:12
That's right.
Jonathan Balcon 14:13
And Eton had its own 'A' levels as they weren't in those day, it was known as the July examination, and I passed that and I was into, into Caius without any problem. Um, thanks in many ways to Oliver John Hunkin, whose father was a fellow at Caius and Oliver John, I think you know, worked at Ealing for a time. He'd been a beak at Eton and he then took Holy Orders and became Head of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC and is now retired. But I did speak to him on the telephone the other day. He's still alive, well into his 80s.
Roy Fowler 14:53
There was another question which rather surprised me that your father went down on the location on "Johnny Frenchman." I mean, he's now a very considerable figure in the in the British film industry and right, he's the executive producer I would have thought rather than a hands-on producer.
Jonathan Balcon 15:09
Yes, I, I, I've never sort of thought about that.
Roy Fowler 15:16
What did he do?
Jonathan Balcon 15:17
Well, you might say, as far as I know, he didn't do anything during the day he disappeared to the production office you know.
Roy Fowler 15:23
He didn't roll his trousers up and sit on the beach.
Jonathan Balcon 15:26
Oh, yes ...
Roy Fowler 15:26
He did.
Jonathan Balcon 15:27
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. All of that. I'll tell you something else too. Because don't forget he did the same thing when they were shooting Dunkirk at Camber he went down to the location, there's a marvellous picture of his trousers rolled up in the sea with Johnnie Mills. But it's one of the few pictures in existence of Mick and Chan together, there are very few but they're in, I've got it somewhere here I don't know where it is. They're in a fishing boat in Mevagissey talking to each other.
Roy Fowler 15:59
Were they close or ...
Jonathan Balcon 16:00
I think they were closer than the other two brothers. Yes.
Roy Fowler 16:05
Because I somehow get the impression rightly or wrongly that the Balcons do have perhaps problems with personal relationships?
Jonathan Balcon 16:14
Yes, yes, yes. Not my generation, but he certainly had problems with his family. I mean, after he died in fact Sally and I took on looking after Aunt Nettie, his youngest sister. And we used to pay her electricity bill and her gas bill and things like that, because she really was living on a very, very small pension you know. But we felt duty bound. As I think I said to you earlier what his great cry was, 'I keep them all why do I have to see them?' Which was a little unkind.
Roy Fowler 16:50
Yes, yes, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 16:51
But the other thing that impressed me I came across a letter some years ago now from David Niven and he had obviously written to David because whilst we were down in Mevagissey and St Austell "The Way Ahead" came, came out and Mick sent for a copy and we all trooped into the Odeon in St Austell, after it had closed at 10.15 one evening, and watched "The Way Ahead". Which again as a film impressed me enormously and Mick must have written to David and said, 'You know how, what a marvellous film and how much he enjoyed it' because David just said Mick your your kind words you know mean more than anything I could say. I've kept this letter. I always thought David was the most marvellous actor anyway. And curious enough at the Charlton Park Hotel where we were living at the time, his sister was living there as well. David's sister married to a delightful man called Mellor, who was in operations room at Uxbridge in the RAF. So that was you know I got closer to the film industry I suppose then it was only time, I was always rather miffed that they were looking to cast a cabin boy in "Johnny Frenchman" and I was rather hoping that they would cast me but they never did but it was an interesting summer holiday, was a very interesting holiday.
Jonathan Balcon 18:01
When did you begin to go to the studio?
Jonathan Balcon 18:36
From, rarely from the time I suppose halfway through my prep school. It was always a treat but the last day of the holidays I would spend at the studio and um it was always the same routine I'd see Mick, I'd see Miss Slater and Miss Taylor - don't forget Miss Slater ruled our lives. I used to ring up Miss Slater and say what's my report like and she'd say bloody awful. So I used to see a film, have lunch with Mick in the round or not or not the round table but in the sort of little director's annexe in the in the commissariat area of Ealing and then go back with him with Shackleton in the evening.
Roy Fowler 19:30
So you were treated as the young master by the sound of it?
Jonathan Balcon 19:34
Not really. No, not really. I mean, I always go and see Hal because Hal, there was a truly remarkable man, Hal Mason. I don't know what Mick would have done without Hal I really don't. I suppose the people who governed his life more than anybody, apart from Aileen, were Miss Slater and Hal. Um, he had a curious fixation about Miss Slater it was a sort of love/hate relationship because she was an extremely good secretary, extremely efficient, very rarely made any mistakes but the moment she retired, it says there's a sort of psychotic thing here, he took her cushions out into the garden [LAUGHTER] behind his office and set fire to them [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 20:29
Well not many people know that! Where had she come from, had she been at the studio, or did he take her there with him?
Jonathan Balcon 20:38
You know I don't know where. I think she'd been with him at Gaumont.
Roy Fowler 20:42
Yes. So she was probably indispensable and knew where all the bodies were buried.
Jonathan Balcon 20:48
She was totally indispensible. Oh, I mean, she really did rule our lives.
Roy Fowler 20:58
Was she a formidable character?
Jonathan Balcon 21:00
No she was very mild. Also she used to drive my mother mad, she had one of those handshakes, which as you put your hand out she slid hers away from it ...
Roy Fowler 21:09
[LAUGHTER] Off-putting.
Jonathan Balcon 21:09
... it was always like a wet fish. And I think she bullied Miss Taylor around, because latterly he had the two of them. She bullied Miss Taylor unmercifiully. But she was another great character. Until she died I kept in fairly close touch with her. And she and Steve Dolby who was a sound man at Ealing used to come and see us you know at the Grey House and have lunch and things like that. Then Miss Taylor latter in life had a great friend whom she brought to lunch you know.
Roy Fowler 21:44
Were you fascinated by the filmmaking process at this stage?
Jonathan Balcon 21:47
Oh yes, I, this was the sad thing I very much wanted to act and didn't really quite know how to go about it. I staged, I did act at school quite a lot and I stage managed a number of productions at Cambridge. But you see, I wanted desperately to farm and we had this farm in Sussex. Mick sat me down literally when I came down from Cambridge and it was like the old Latin question which required the answer 'Nonne or nay'. He said to me, you don't want to come into the film industry do you? And the way he put the question I knew I had to say no.
Jonathan Balcon 21:49
Was nepotism a word not in his book?
Jonathan Balcon 22:35
Nepotism was a word that played a very important part in his life. He said, in fact, he said to me, he said, 'I'm glad you said that' because he said, 'I never want to be accused of nepotism.' He said, 'I'm absolutely certain in my own mind that if I went to the ACTT and asked for a union ticket for you,' he said, 'they'd give me one.' But he said, 'I cannot possibly be put into the position where they turn around to me and say on any industrial dispute and say they could say we did this for you what you're going to do for us?'
Roy Fowler 23:12
That's an interesting sideline.
Jonathan Balcon 23:14
Yeah. And those were his very words. And that was how we left it. And he's, he's sort of put his hands together, he said, 'All right, he said, you're not over enthusiastic about work.' But he said, 'I do suggest you go off and see a friend of mine in the city, who runs an insurance brokers at Lloyds. He's called Victor Gentry and the insurance brokers are called Hobbs Saville and they look after our business.' So I went off to see Victor, very pompous man, who said, 'Where were you at school?' and I told him, he said, 'Were you at university?' and I said,' Yes.' And I told him and he said, 'Well, you can forget all that if you come here.' And he offered me a job at £250 a year, which to me sounded like riches untold. And I took it.
Roy Fowler 24:10
What year would this have been?
Jonathan Balcon 24:12
That was in 1950.
Roy Fowler 24:14
Right.
Jonathan Balcon 24:15
1951.
Roy Fowler 24:17
I'm surprised in the city they forgot about Eton or Cambridge. That wasn't usual.
Jonathan Balcon 24:24
Well I didn't go to the right broking firm. It took me in fact some time to discover that they did a lot of film business and I ended up running their film account for them.
Roy Fowler 24:38
Is that really how your future course was determined? Your dad said go see ...
Jonathan Balcon 25:17
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 25:41
Quixotic?
Jonathan Balcon 24:47
Well you see, in those days, Lloyd's, I'd never heard of Lloyds and I didn't know what it was all about, I didn't know what insurance broker was all about, I soon learnt. I soon learnt to hate the city. I just hated this whole feeling of making money rather than learning you know, which was always Mick's great cry too you don't make money you earn money. Yes, I suppose you see what happened in those days firms like Hobbs Saville would take on the sons of clients, they would pay them nothing, virtually. They would say we are prepared to pay you commission on business introduced and they would expect you to become working names at Lloyds on the syndicates which they control. And Mick always said, 'If you stick it out,' he said, 'I will make you a name at Lloyds.' Which in those days for a working name meant you had to show assets of 10,000 quid this was in the '50s.
Roy Fowler 26:01
So that's a factor of what 100, probably.
Jonathan Balcon 26:05
Now?
Roy Fowler 26:05
Yeah. Oh, now God, no, no.
Roy Fowler 26:07
I mean, in other words what would 10 grand be worth now? Oh,
Jonathan Balcon 26:10
Oh I don't know. I suppose 100, yes.
Roy Fowler 26:12
More.
Jonathan Balcon 26:13
More, yes. But I mean, he said, 'Whatever I do for you, I have got to do for Jill as well' and I said, 'Fair enough.' I mean, on the basis of the fact that if you produce business you got commission at one stage, I was told that because of my commission account, I was earning more than most of the directors of the firm which didn't go down very well. And then, by the time I started getting underwriting profits from the syndicates I was on, one was getting paid, say 1000 a year. Well, another two and a half thousand a year on top of that and one was extremely comfortably off. And I was I mean, none of my children went, well one of them went to private schools, they were all state educated, but I mean one was able to live very comfortably and do the things from wanted to do and have foreign holiday and things like that. The only thing I think Mick resented was the fact that he thought we got married far too young. Now a very extraordinary thing about, both Aileen and Mick, because as I, to hark back to what I said before we had no religious instruction whatsoever. Jill and I were left entirely to our own devices. We were brought up as good conventional Church of England children through our schools. I was married in the church in Seal to Sally, as were two of my daughters; Deborah was christened at Hartfield, by the rector of Hartfield; Claire and Henrietta, we're christened at Seal. And all totally accepted, after Deborah's christening Aileen gave a small party for a few people at Upper Parrock After I'd announced Henrietta's christening in the paper, I rang Aileen up, I used to ring them up at least twice, three times a week. And I got what we all knew as a still small voice and I said, 'Come on what's wrong?' 'Mick and I have many Jewish friends you know' and I said, 'For Christ's sake Aileen what are you talking about?' 'There was no need to put Henrietta's christening in the Times and the Telegraph.' I said, 'Well you never raised this subject before?' 'Oh well your father and I are beginning to feel very seriously about it.' 'So I said now come off it.' And in fact that subject was soon dropped. But then when Deborah was confirmed, Deborah is now what 44, 44 she was given by her godmother a crucifix. And I suppose rather tactlessly she wore it round her neck at lunch one day at Upper Parrock. And this again seemed to upset Mick latterly.
Jonathan Balcon 29:27
Roots are strange things are they not.
Jonathan Balcon 29:29
And he actually got hold of Sally and he said, 'I do think if Deborah is coming to lunch with us, she perhaps oughtn't to wear it' and yet nothing had been said again.
Roy Fowler 29:40
You were never Bar Mitzvah'd or not that he's thought of it presumably.
Jonathan Balcon 29:46
Roy, I remember my first half at Eton Aunt Florence came across, I don't know where the hell she got her petrol from and took Aileen and me out to lunch at the Old House at Windsor, the Old House Hotel and we were sitting on the banks of the Thames afterwards in our large motor car and she said, 'When is Jonathan's Bar Mitzvah?' 'What the hell are you talking about?' said Aileen. And the other marvellous instance and this is jumping the gun slightly, the day Mick died I was in my office and the telephone rang and it was Aileen to say, 'Johnny, I can't wake your father up.' And I knew exactly what had happened. She said, 'He got up in the middle of night and sat in his chair in his dressing room.' And erm I've just seen what the time is we must have some lunch.
Roy Fowler 30:45
Okay.
Jonathan Balcon 32:41
In a minute. 'And he was still there this morning and I couldn't wake him up.' So I said, 'Don't do anything.' And I rang Sally and I said, told her what happened. I said, 'I'm coming down on the train. We'll drive straight over to Upper Parrock.' We drove straight over to Upper Parrock and Steven Watts was staying with them that weekend, who ghosted the book.
Roy Fowler 32:07
The book.
Jonathan Balcon 32:53
And Steven greeted me on the doorstep and went like this, you see, and I knew exactly what happened. So anyway, I hadn't got the vaguest idea what to do. And Aileen was in a frightful state obviously. So Sally quite rightly said, ring Aunt Gert, Mick's sister. So I ran Aunt Gert. 'Oh, Johnny' she said, 'I'm so sorry.' But she said, 'I'll tell you exactly what to do.' They both subscribed for years to the Liberal Jewish Synagogue at St. John's Wood, you ring 4059611 ask to speak to Mr Levy or whatever it is. Tell them what's happened and they will do everything. Did this after about my fifth brandy. And sure enough about half-past mid-day a long low Peugeot arrived out of which was produced something that looked like a portable wardrobe and these two chaps in skull caps and briefcases went upstairs and removed Mick, put him in the back of the car and came back with their briefcases still with their skull caps on and said, 'Right Lady Balcon now we must discuss arrangements.' So I said, 'Well, I think the arrangements are going to be quite simple.' I said, 'if Rabbi Rainer is available, it will be Tunbridge Wells crematorium in about a week's time. If I, I will let you know how to book it.' 'That's fine' they said, 'that couldn't be better. Now Lady Balcon what about a memorial service?' 'Oh' said Aileen, 'that's dead simple St. Martin's in the Field.' 'Oh,' they said removing their skull caps' 'I don't think we will be involved in that.' [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 33:03
How lovely.
Jonathan Balcon 33:03
And indeed, we had a very nice memorial service at St Martin's in the Field organised by Jill, myself and Austin Williams, who was a great friend of both our families. It was almost totally ecumenical not quite because I read the lesson from Revelations the usual one you know, 'I saw a new heaven and a new earth.' The Jewish cousins were a little dubious about it, but perfectly happy. Kenny Moore and that lovely lady who was a, Dilys Powell, gave short addresses. And I gave a small luncheon party afterwards. Kenny wouldn't come because he said, 'We have a great tradition at the Garrick we go away and we toast the deceased in champagne in the bar.' And he said, 'that's where I'm going to go.' I had invited him to lunch. And it went off perfectly. But again, Aileen you see didn't mind a bit. The extraordinary thing ... Roy, I hope this isn't boring.
Roy Fowler 34:04
No, no.
Jonathan Balcon 33:04
When we got to Tunbridge Wells crematorium, I can never stop laughing about it, in the dust shadow on the wall [LAUGHTER] by this awful machine, you know, the lift that goes up you can see the outline of the cross that they had taken down. And Rabbi Rainer did it extremely well. And as we he was leaving, I said, 'Rabbi Rainer we're having a totally ecumenical memorial service at St Martin's in the Field I do hope you feel you could attend.' 'In no way' he said and walked away. And I was rather put out by that because of course things have subsequently changed. I mean, had it been Jonathan Sacks or any of the present ones they would probably have jumped at it you know.
Roy Fowler 34:24
As one who regards all organised religion as total rubbish it baffles me how people ... but it's a great need, isn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 35:05
Well, this is it Roy? I mean, I wouldn't go as far as to say it was rubbish I feel you, people have got to have something to latch onto, something. And I'd rather ...
Roy Fowler 35:15
Most people do indeed yes.
Jonathan Balcon 35:17
I would rather they latched onto something that was how would you say non-physical than something that was physical like a political party in a way.
Roy Fowler 35:27
Yes indeedn, reasonably civilised and urbane. Yes, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 35:32
But I mean that's my personal opinion. I'm not beyond saying the odd prayer or two, I must say, at time. Whether or not the power of prayer, I sometimes wonder how strong the power of prayer is, you know. I've been to so many funerals, and so many memorial services and written so many obituaries recently that I really am rather fed up with it. I've got to sit down and write my own fairly shortly [LAUGHTER].
Roy Fowler 36:02
It's the best way.
Jonathan Balcon 36:03
Oh, yes. And I've also got to, I've also got to make a, I would like a nice send off, I know exactly what I want in the way of a service.
Roy Fowler 36:16
Send offs, there's nothing wrong with that it's fine. I'm rather baffled by this need.
Jonathan Balcon 36:24
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 36:24
It's just erm the ...
Jonathan Balcon 36:26
I mean, I much enjoy, enjoy is the wrong word. I get very emotional at things like Remembrance Day Services, I get very emotional watching the Cenotaph Service.
Roy Fowler 36:37
But that's a different matter ...
Jonathan Balcon 36:38
Which is a different matter entirely.
Roy Fowler 36:39
... it's remembering something that happened and people who've gone.
Jonathan Balcon 36:43
And I keep saying to myself, if it hadn't been for what they did I wouldn't be here today. You know, I do feel strongly about that.
Roy Fowler 36:51
Oh, yes. Well, that's gratitude and ...
Jonathan Balcon 36:55
The ex-servicemen in me. I mean, Sally will tell you I only have to hear a military band and the tears stream down my face.
Roy Fowler 37:02
No, my point is that the great questions of where do I come from? Who am I? Where do I go? Are unanswerable in effect and especially where am I going?
Jonathan Balcon 37:14
Absolutely.
Roy Fowler 37:17
I would like to know I would enjoy knowing but I don't believe I can ever know.
Jonathan Balcon 37:21
Wasn't there a play, a film, a book called "I know where I'm going".
Roy Fowler 37:27
Well yes. Mickey Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Jonathan Balcon 37:31
They made a film, was it?
Roy Fowler 37:33
Yes, but it isn't really about that. It's about it's about it's about a class thing. Do you remember it was erm I just got the DVD from the States. It was Wendy Hiller and ...
Jonathan Balcon 37:46
No I don't remember it.
Roy Fowler 37:48
They made it about 1945 or so.
Jonathan Balcon 37:50
Yeah let's have a break.
Roy Fowler 37:54
Because you've done an awful lot of talking.
Jonathan Balcon 37:56
I know, I hope to goodness, you don't half encourage me.
Roy Fowler 38:01
These are all the things that don't end up in the books anyway. I'll tell you what we will do we will unplug this because those things.
Roy Fowler 38:08
So John post lunch, which was very gratifying. We'll resume not necessarily chronologically but going back to Ealing what in the late '30s, early '40s, when when you were visiting there as a schoolboy. People you knew, what was going on there? What your father was doing?
Jonathan Balcon 38:32
Well now the extraordinary thing is in his protective capacity Mick very rarely invited people home for the weekend. But on the other hand he did have people of whom he was immensely fond and they were invited down I suppose rather like going into the headmaster study in a way. And they used to come and stay for a weekend and then there was Danischewsky and Brenda, and there was Charlie and Sonya Frend, who always kept one in stitches. Sonya was Norwegian, but with the most delightful English sense of humour, the most attractive personality. And of course, the actress I was trying to think of earlier who was married to Ralph Michael was Faye Compton.
Roy Fowler 39:15
Ah so.
Jonathan Balcon 39:18
Which has just come to me.
Roy Fowler 39:19
Good Lord. I never knew that, she was so much older than he.
Jonathan Balcon 39:21
Oh indeed, indeed. And of course he was wildly attractive to women. And, of course, Bob Hamer used to come and stay and one of the great homosexual friends of Mick's, not in a homosexual capacity but because he was such an amusing chap, was Robin Maugham, who subsequently became Lord Maugham and wrote various things including that marvellous subject for Dirk Bogarde, 'The Servant', which of course the film put a slightly different connotation on the Servant than the book did, but it was an extremely good film. And I remember these people terribly well. I mean, Maggie Vonner, who worked at Ealing who was married to Leo Genn. There was a famous incident when Maggie, in the dining room at Upper Parrock there was a large multi-wave band wireless set lying on the floor and the telephone lay on the top of it and all the rest of it. And Maggie bent down to switch on a programme and then I couldn't resist it I stuck a corkscrew into her backside [LAUGHTER] And she never let me forget it for the rest of her life. She was another very attractive person who came to stay, Grizelda Harvey, the great BBC actress used to come with her husband, Diana Morgan and Bobby used to come and stay and of course, Penn Tennyson and Nova honeymooned at Upper Parrock when they were first married.
Roy Fowler 40:58
Did they?
Jonathan Balcon 40:58
And as I've said to you earlier Penn was the nearest thing I had to a brother because Mick really thought he was a marvellous. And I don't know whether you knew this, but later on in the war Charles Tennyson also lost Penn's brother Julian, who was killed in Burma.
Roy Fowler 41:16
No, I didn't know that.
Jonathan Balcon 41:16
So Charles lost two boys in the war. And the third boy Hallam, who ended up at the BBC, in fact, during the war was a Quaker and became a member of Friends Ambulance, and served with some distinction as a as a stretcher bearer. But that's the Tennyson family, but we were actually, Julian's widow was staying with us at Upper Parrock when the news came through that he'd been killed. And it was absolutely devastating. But these people used to come for the weekend to Upper Parrock. Bob Hamer I remember well as being the most tortured person, Bob could never really make up his mind what he was, he had a very tough girlfriend, although I think he had strong homosexual undertones to himself, but he was a brilliant director. To this day, I mean, "Kind Hearts" to me is a complete masterpiece.
Roy Fowler 42:17
Unbelievable, I think he was the best of the lot, was he not?
Jonathan Balcon 42:21
Although Cavalcanti, again another homosexual, lived with mum, his mum I hasten to add, Cav was a highly emotional person and would get terribly worked up if Mick did something that Cav disapproved on and would sit there and in a Latin American way, throwing his arms in the air and weeping, but a lovely person.
Roy Fowler 42:48
What was your father's reaction to that kind of temperament, to that kind of overt behaviour?
Jonathan Balcon 42:52
He took it all in his stride. He took it all in his stride. There was the famous story I'm sure you must have heard this and other people at Ealing will confirm this.
Roy Fowler 43:01
We're coming to the end of the side, so why don't I flip over ...
Jonathan Balcon 43:05
Right.
End of Side 3
Jonathan Balcon Side 4
Jonathan Balcon 0:00
The other famous occasion, I think it was the nephew of Warren Chetham-Strode was doing his national service and wanted to come into the film industry when he had finished and asked if father would see him, and father said, 'Yes, of course,' I think it was Warren Chetham-Strode's nephew. And in the course of the interview in that office at Ealing Mick said to him 'What are you going to do in your national service?' 'Oh' he said, 'I'm just off to Palestine to beat up those bloody Jews.' Of course Mick thought this was the funniest thing [LAUGHTER] that anybody had ever said to him, how quickly the word got around the studio I don't know. But there was practically a lynching party out for this young man when he, when he left, I think, probably Miss Slater must have had the intercom on and passed the word around [LAUGHTER] but it did create much amusement and mirth. As far as Mick was concerned he thought it was terribly funny. The rest of them: Angus McPhail was a very sad case, Angus was a real drunk, a serious drunk. And in fact there came a day when he had to be carried out of his office because green snakes were writhing up and down the wall. But he was a very talented man and it was a shame that so many of them who were so talented, did take to drink in rather a big way.
Roy Fowler 1:27
Was that Ealing do you think or the film busines or ...
Jonathan Balcon 1:29
I think it was the film business in general because you know we talk about stress and pressure these days but there wasn't anything like the stress or the pressure in those days. I mean okay, they all had to make a living, but none of them got paid very much. I doubt it if there were many people in Ealing earning a tenner a week you know in those days.
Roy Fowler 1:52
Well your father was I think notoriously under paying was he not compared to say Korda at Shepperton ...
Jonathan Balcon 1:58
I would have thought without a doubt
Roy Fowler 2:00
Or the Rank Organisation?
Jonathan Balcon 2:02
And yet his great cry was a labourer is worthy of his hire. It was one of those cliches he persistently ...
Roy Fowler 2:08
To his own advantage.
Jonathan Balcon 2:09
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 2:11
How about Mr Balcon's Academy for Young English?
Jonathan Balcon 2:14
Young Gentleman.
Roy Fowler 2:15
Young Gentleman yes.
Jonathan Balcon 2:16
Well, there's no doubt about it if you take Charlie Crighton, Charles Frend, to a certain extent Bob Hamer, they were products of reasonable English schools and universities. And they all dressed, I mean, I don't want this to be misinterpreted, you see a soi-disant film director or film producer on the box these days and he's usually either in black leather trousers and a polo neck sweater, or else something equally as outre. These chaps were in nice tweed coats, corduroy trousers, a decent tie and smoked pipes [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 2:58
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 2:59
And I suppose in that way yes they were, they were Mr Balcon's Academy for Young Gentlemen. Mick had this curious idea. You see Roy we haven't really touched on this and this is Mick's politics. Mick was a socialist, quote unquote. He and Alan Sainsbury, the late Lord Sainsbury, formed a thing, and I've got a lot of the papers somewhere. I always thought it was called the 1944 Committee but I understand it was called the 1943 Committee I seem to remember having discovered the letters. Which was dedicated to bringing a Labour government into power the moment the war ended. And this was slightly hypocritical of Mick because he always, one of his other great cliches, always to me and to a certain extent Jill when she was at home, which she wasn't very often was 'The one thing I must never be identified with is any political idea, or any religious feeling. I am responsible for a media of mass communication and I must therefore be free of anybody ever accusing me of bias.' Now I'm quoting him, and this is exactly what he said. And I always used to sort of think yeah, you know, because I knew what went on in his mind. It's alright. Okay.
Roy Fowler 4:30
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 4:31
He um, he tended not to, he talked politics to me and let's face it his great friends apart from Alan Sainsbury were Michael Foot, Hugh Gaitskell, in fact he treated the Gaitskell daughters really as though almost there they were his grandchildren, Robin Maugham was also very left-wing, Robin Maugham's nephew who, Robin was born into the Maugham family very late, very late in life and his nephew David Bruce was at Eton with him, so that's, you know, that's how late in life he was born, but they all sat talking socialism at Upper Parrock.
Roy Fowler 5:24
What was socialism then in those days? We're talking now during the '40s?
Jonathan Balcon 5:28
We're talking about the late '40s before the '45 election.
Roy Fowler 5:32
The early '40s?
Jonathan Balcon 5:33
Yeah.
Roy Fowler 5:33
Before the war?
Jonathan Balcon 5:35
The middle of the war '43.
Roy Fowler 5:36
The middle of the war that's still the early '40s.
Jonathan Balcon 5:39
Yeah I don't know ...
Roy Fowler 5:43
But it wasn't Marxist was it?
Jonathan Balcon 5:45
It wasn't Marxist no.
Roy Fowler 5:47
Social democrat or ...
Jonathan Balcon 5:48
Yes I would have thought more social democrat. It was, it was a more equal opportunity for all. And yet, you know there was a great deal of have another glass of claret or pass the port please. And there was a certain amount of hypocrisy about the whole thing I found.
Roy Fowler 6:07
Well, how did your father relate to the, to the unions?
Jonathan Balcon 6:15
They were a necessary evil, I think.
Roy Fowler 6:18
There you are, perhaps mmm...
Jonathan Balcon 6:21
I think I'll never forget he, the telephone rang one Saturday morning and I think it was Hal and there was an entire unit at Ealing waiting to start shooting. The carpenters were there, the lighting men were there, the actors were there but there was no electrician there and nobody would dare touch the main switch. And I remember Mick saying, 'I cannot believe that this is a restrictive practice that could be allowed to go on.' But he said if anybody had stepped forward and switched it on they would have, the whole lot would have come out. He used to get very irritated with Christopher Brunel. I think he took Sid Cole with a tongue in cheek slight, because we all knew Sid was, according to Sid, a 'raging red', but I don't think he was really. I mean Sid had mellowed a great deal by the time I knew him. He was a card holding member of the party.
Roy Fowler 7:32
Oh, yes. Yes, he was a party member without a doubt. As indeed I think Christopher Brunel.
Jonathan Balcon 7:36
I can't see Sid really wanting to overthrow anybody but that's one of the nice things I suppose.
Roy Fowler 7:45
They are very similar to the people we have today. They were, they were self-righteous, they knew exactly the way things should be and and beyond their horn-rimmed spectacles, or their rimless spectacles, they really could be commissar or they could be gauleiter for that matter you know.
Jonathan Balcon 8:03
But how many of them lived up to their own beliefs and went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War?
Roy Fowler 8:09
Oh quite a lot of the ACT people did.
Jonathan Balcon 8:11
Did they?
Roy Fowler 8:12
Well Sid did certainly ...
Jonathan Balcon 8:14
I knew Sid did.
Roy Fowler 8:14
... and Ivor Montagu.
Jonathan Balcon 8:16
Yes I knew Ivor.
Roy Fowler 8:17
There were several of those who did yes. Oh I think they were thoroughly genuinely in their beliefs.
Jonathan Balcon 8:23
But then, of course, we had this extraordinary thing didn't we where having been the arch enemy Russia became suddenly the great ally.
Roy Fowler 8:31
Overnight.
Jonathan Balcon 8:32
And as Sally said, because we had a village communist in Seal, who's now a councillor, just up the road here and he's mellowed a lot he's now a socialist councillor, a Labour councillor. But as Sally said, Walter was livid when he'd heard Sally had been to Russia and Sally said to him, 'Walter, if you want to understand what it's like go there' 'Oooh I don't want to go there' he said.
Roy Fowler 8:57
Why was he livid?
Jonathan Balcon 8:59
Because she'd been and he hadn't. But I mean that was what it was like.
Roy Fowler 9:04
Class envy?
Jonathan Balcon 9:04
Yes. And I remember her, because Sally went in 1975 to Russia. Just to sidetrack you for a minute, her great, great grandfather was a Welsh iron master, who's picture is in there called John Hughes. And he perfected a way of hardening steel for railway lines, amongst other things, and he was sent for by the Archduke Constantine and he produced all the hardened steel rails for the Trans-Siberian Railway. And he was given a plot of land in the Ukraine, where he sank a mine, built an ironworks and founded a town, it was called Hughesovka.
Roy Fowler 9:48
Oh I've heard of this yes.
Jonathan Balcon 9:52
We went, we took in 1991 just before the Perestroika, we took 30 either direct relations of John Hughes or direct relations of the Welsh workers he took with him out to Hughesovak, which is now called Donetsk and they have renamed part of the town Hughesovka. And we were treated like royalty except nothing worked, but nothing, it was pathetic. And what really upset me, and it was my first taste of seeing a communist country, they all went off to have tea with another ancient relation whose picture is just up there and our guide who came from the School of Mining took me to the, to the beryozka, to the duty free shop. And there shelf after shelf of things like Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky at the same price as you pay over here; television sets; beautiful shirts. Outside they were queuing for bread and that upset me terribly. If you have the mighty dollar you were in. And Sally and I sailed through that week pretty well on a pack, a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. But there we are and that was my introduction to communism but she she she'd been out there already, she knew what it was like. And she'd been to Outer Mongolia, she went Ulaanbaatar because a friend of ours was our man in Ulaanbaatar. I did say to him at the time, 'Miles what have you done to deserve this?' I wouldn't go because I'm rather sort of xenophobic about things like that. And I was involved in too many things to want to get involved in going to Russia. But there we are that's a that's a sidetrack. But we always rather, I suppose slightly scathing say Mick was a champagne socialist. It's terribly easy to talk about socialism with a glass of champagne in your hand it ain't so easy to actually practice it.
Roy Fowler 12:08
Charles Chaplin I suppose is the prime example.
Jonathan Balcon 12:12
The prime example absolutely. On the other hand I mean the antithesis you like of that I think the McCarthy era and the Hollywood business was outrageous.
Roy Fowler 12:29
I lived through all that.
Jonathan Balcon 12:30
Well you were there at the time?
Roy Fowler 12:32
Yeah, mmmm
Jonathan Balcon 12:33
Gosh I mean the man was a total disaster. Nixon was involved in that.
Roy Fowler 12:39
But it could happen anywhere and it does. The same things have happened certainly in this country, I suppose in slightly different fashion we're going through some such now currently with this Brass Eye programme where it's immediately condemned by people who who haven't seen it.
Jonathan Balcon 12:59
Who haven't even seen it! The most dangerous thing about that, of course, is the government ministers who pronounced upon it without even having seen it and I think that is terrifying. But you know, I suppose Roy the thing is you and I are too old, we are old fashioned liberals.
Roy Fowler 13:16
We are too sensible.
Jonathan Balcon 13:17
Well, maybe but it seems to be people just sit by and let it happen now.
Roy Fowler 13:23
Yes. We did during the McCarthy period because we were too terrified not to. It's all very well to condemn it in retrospect but as I say I was there at the time, and I barely lifted a half, certainly not a finger and a little boy. I tell you a terrifying story I was doing a programme with a director, with a producer rather I was directing, the producer was a man called Franklin Heller, when last I heard of him he was still alive at very bad state. And Frank and I were on our way to rehearsal one day, in a cab going up or down Broadway I can't remember which, and I said something about McCarthy and I got a violent dig in the ribs and I didn't quite know why but I continued with my query and this man pointed at the driver as if to say he could be listening, he could be taking notes, he could be reporting. Now we were both fairly of good standing in CBS television, responsible, I think, intelligent, adult and yet that was the kind of fear that prevailed. So one was dumb really to to carry it too far. Happily, those with, Edward R Murrow eventually did, but they were terrifying times.
Jonathan Balcon 14:55
Larry Adler of course is a prime example.
Roy Fowler 13:31
Well indeed all of the people ... I came back to live and work in this country in the '60s and I used to go play softball in the park with them, alongside the the barracks, and some of the best talent in America motion pictures was there playing softball because they couldn't work in the United States. You know they were here, Marty Ritt, oh I know, so, so, so many of them. Anyway, we're, we're, we're digressing. But I suppose my general point is where you have Russians or Jews or Germans or whatever we're all capable of it. But we did, we as a people did in the course of building the British Empire.
Jonathan Balcon 15:01
Oh absolutely yeah. I don't know if you, while you were coming down here by train this morning, Pinter was letting, sounding off on Radio 4 about how Slobodan Milosevic ought to be released.
Roy Fowler 15:44
Oh really.
Jonathan Balcon 15:59
And I thought you've gone raving mad, you know, and then he was on about the atrocities committed by NATO and the Americans.
Roy Fowler 16:06
Well you know.
Jonathan Balcon 16:07
... and how Slobodan will never get a fair trial. I in the end, I gave up.
Roy Fowler 16:11
Well I don't blame you. But I mean, how do the two things equate? Certainly in America is on occasions a ghastly country so is this. What's going to happen now under George Bush, it's the end of the world so far as I'm concerned. I'm sure that's an exaggeration.
Jonathan Balcon 16:30
Except he has not got a majority in the Senate.
Roy Fowler 16:35
Yeah, that's happenstance as you know.
Jonathan Balcon 16:37
Well I do know yeah.
Roy Fowler 16:40
Anyway, let's get back to to Ealing, Michael Balcon, the Balcon family all that there. So where do we find ourselves? We haven't really covered the film's particularly have we?
Jonathan Balcon 16:52
We haven't covered the films particularly. Um it's very interesting he always purported not to worry about what the critics said about any of the films. And yet the first thing that happened when any film came out was every newspaper was sent for.
Roy Fowler 17:13
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 17:14
And every criticism was scanned, some of them were a little unfair. I don't know if you remember "Ships with Wings"?
Roy Fowler 17:23
Yes I do yeah.
Jonathan Balcon 17:23
Well now he became, it's the only time I know I've known him to be really angry with me because I saw "Ships with Wings" at Ealing and he said to me afterwards, what did I think of it. And I said well Mick it is a good adventure story but I said it was spoilt by all those dinky toys going across the top of the dam. And he hit the roof. And I said, it's no good being angry. I said, I got those dinky toys myself and I said it was the most appalling balls up, well I didn't say balls up because I was too young in those days, by your model department. But he was very angry about that.
Roy Fowler 17:24
Why is that he objected to criticism or?
Jonathan Balcon 17:27
No he objected to the fact that I'd seen through these dreadful models.
Roy Fowler 18:03
Mmmm, well that's illogical.
Jonathan Balcon 18:08
And it was. Well, in some respects, it was a very amateurish shot.
Roy Fowler 18:17
Oh the model shots were terrible usually in Ealing films.
Jonathan Balcon 18:21
Well you say that now.
Roy Fowler 18:22
Well they were.
Jonathan Balcon 18:24
You say that if you'd seen the model shop at Ealing, I mean they spent immense trouble making these bloody things.
Roy Fowler 18:32
It's the way they were photographed I think.
Jonathan Balcon 18:33
it's the way they were, but on the other hand in convoy now I was taken as a very young man to the studios at Wembley where they have this enormous tank and in the tank were I can't remember which pocket battleship it was, was it whichever one it was, there was a model of that and there was a model of the Ark Royal and they were beautiful models. They was beautifully made and you really couldn't fault them. I'm thinking of do you remember "The Big Blockade"?
Roy Fowler 19:12
Well, I remember ...
Jonathan Balcon 19:13
I've got a copy of it here.
Roy Fowler 19:14
Yes, I remember it but I couldn't be very precise about it.
Jonathan Balcon 19:18
There were some pretty grotty model shots in that.
Roy Fowler 19:21
Well look at the the Hitchcock films, the the model shots, or the miniatures are always laughable ...
Jonathan Balcon 19:27
Yup
Roy Fowler 19:27
... but it is largely is the way they're shot with too much light.
Jonathan Balcon 19:30
That's the truth it's the light that does it. This was particularly you know, they were deep into supporting Mihailovich. Ealing were in a film called "Undercover" with John Clemens when of course, Tito came on the scene and Mihailovich was found to be a fascist. Yes it was called ...
Roy Fowler 19:51
That was government policy was it not?
Jonathan Balcon 19:53
It was called Chipniks to start with and they quickly had to change the name to "Undercover" and John Clemens a Tito hero I remember that. But there was some model shots in that which which weren't weren't awfully good but ... latterly of course, when they got permission to go to sea with the Admiralty, and when they got permission to use War Office material, captured German film material, and when they got permission to actually use authentic stuff it wasn't too bad. I mean the shots in "Next of Kin", although it's pretty obvious what are cut in as newsreel shots on what aren't are extremely authentic.
Roy Fowler 20:39
What kind of influence did officialdom, the bureaucracy in the MOI have on the studio on your father?
Jonathan Balcon 20:46
I think a fair amount. Of course, they were responsible directly to the MOI, were they not also responsible for Ministry of Economic Warfare?
Roy Fowler 20:55
I don't know.
Jonathan Balcon 20:56
Certainly "The Big Blockade" was made under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Hugh Dalton was at the MOI wasn't he?
Roy Fowler 21:06
I don't, I don't know I wouldn't say no and I wouldn't say yes. Not Hugh Dalton ...
Jonathan Balcon 21:12
Father was forever fighting bureaucracy. When "Next of Kin" first came out it was so close to what happened in the Dieppe raid that Churchill wanted it banned and not shown to the public, shown only to the military. And Father said no, this film was being made to show to the public well he won the day in the end and it was shown publicly. But it was very close to the mark because of course it ended on a downbeat note with the raid having been not terribly successful, and a lot of casualties.
Roy Fowler 21:50
All our fault.
Jonathan Balcon 21:51
Yeah. beautifully made film. Thorrold Dickinson of course.
Roy Fowler 21:55
Yes. brilliant director.
Jonathan Balcon 21:58
Marvellous director, I gather he was a very difficult man to work with. But on a film in which Nova Pilbeam of course, played quite a large part. But I think he found, he found red tape boring ...
Roy Fowler 22:19
Frustrating too?
Jonathan Balcon 22:20
... and frustrating and certainly when latterly, you know after they were members of the Rank Organisation, or he was or the studio was taken under the Rank wing, and he found himself up against various government departments over something, various things. He just found it frustrating, I think that's the word, I think very frustrating.
Roy Fowler 22:48
Well, during the war Ealing was very successful, very useful in producing what essentially was propaganda. It was easily assimilated propaganda and so therefore it must have been in favour. What is, do we have more to say about that era do you think? Is it the films or policy or did he bring problems home that you were aware of? Did he ever discuss them with you?
Jonathan Balcon 23:15
Latterly but not at that stage.
Roy Fowler 23:17
No.
Jonathan Balcon 23:17
I mean latterly he used to chuck scripts at me like "The Cruel Sea", he chucked "Kind Hearts" at me and I thought it was marvellous. "The Cruel Sea" I thought was fantastic. Eric Ambler did the um did he not ...
Roy Fowler 23:36
The adaptation.
Jonathan Balcon 23:36
The adaptation.
Roy Fowler 23:39
It is said your father didn't like "Kind Hearts" that he kind of disapproved of it.
Jonathan Balcon 23:44
No.
Roy Fowler 23:44
Would you say that was true?
Jonathan Balcon 23:45
No, no.
Roy Fowler 23:46
That's, that's usually said it was kind of sneaked through and you don't sneak things through a studio do you?.
Jonathan Balcon 23:52
The thing he didn't like was a synopsis of "Lavender Hill Mob" that Tibi took to him. And he said I don't think Tibi this is going to be commercial and he loved it afterwards of course. I mean, he always said the greatest mistake he made in "Lavender Hill Mob" was not to see the potential in Audrey Hepburn, although he'd given her some sort of contract to be what 30 seconds in the film, he always regretted.
Roy Fowler 24:22
That's true again of so many producers we can't just put it down to him Mick Balcon can we? Jean Simmons somehow was recognised and Deborah Carr was somehow recognised but indeed to let Audrey Hepburn gowho was was insanity,
Jonathan Balcon 24:37
Yes but of course, at that time, am I not right he was with the Rank Organisation and he had to a certain extent casting wise do what they suggested.
Roy Fowler 24:48
Yeah.
Jonathan Balcon 24:48
Which is how he got his hands on Dirk Bogard for instance in "The Blue Lamp". Jack Warner, of course, was always a great standby. And I think in many ways um Jack was eternally grateful to Mick for "The Blue Lamp" and it's one of those most extraordinary things in British acting history is it not that there is someone who in the first 40 minutes of the film is killed, but out of whom grows a great legend.
Roy Fowler 24:48
Indeed.
Jonathan Balcon 24:58
And indeed, almost a dynasty. And I mean Jack was the most lovely person as indeed were his two sisters. And one of the things which I'm sad about that was stolen, along with the other silver, was a nice silver cigarette box, which Jack gave to me Mick just saying "Mickey with many, many thanks for all you've done" you know. Old Mick very graciously accepted these gifts [LAUGHING]
Roy Fowler 25:50
Solid silver. Did he have a favourite Ealing film do you think?
Jonathan Balcon 25:58
I like to, I would always like to think that "Kind Hearts" was his favourite film.
Roy Fowler 26:05
But that's regarded as being atypical Ealing being of its rather mordant acidulous side.
Jonathan Balcon 26:13
I know everybody raves about "The Ladykillers". I enjoyed "The Ladykillers" but I didn't think it was anything more than than an enjoyable film.
Roy Fowler 26:24
It's quite delightful indeed. The Mckendrick films, how did he feel about those?
Jonathan Balcon 26:32
Mckendrick films?
Roy Fowler 26:33
Yeah, the Sandy Mckendrick films: "Whisky Galore", "Man in a White Suit".
Jonathan Balcon 26:43
"Man in the White Suit" he got very disgruntled when he heard that Cecil Parker has based his part on Mick [LAUGHING] as the benevolent managing director.
Roy Fowler 26:52
He heard about that?
Jonathan Balcon 26:53
He heard about that. I ... you see one of all our favourites and one that was a great disappointment to Mick was "Saraband for Dead Lovers", which I always thought was one of the loveliest films to watch with the most marvellous cast, but it hit the market at the wrong time. And the other extraordinary thing it was as far as I remember Ealing's first venture into technicolour.
Roy Fowler 27:26
"Saraband" was?
Jonathan Balcon 27:28
"Saraband" was and I think it was, as far as I remember, it was technicolour on the three negative system rather than monopack and I believe Dougie photographed it.
Roy Fowler 27:41
He did.
Jonathan Balcon 27:42
It was beautifully photographed.
Roy Fowler 27:44
Indeed a very handsome film.
Jonathan Balcon 27:45
Yeah. And it was not a success and it was the most expensive film Ealing had ever made, and it cost 325,000 pounds I think which was, when you look at it these days ...
Roy Fowler 27:56
Well indeed.
Jonathan Balcon 27:57
... pea nuts.
Roy Fowler 27:58
But it never made it's cost back the first time around presumably.
Jonathan Balcon 28:01
No. It's been shown since on television.
Roy Fowler 28:05
Indeed. And I think it's recognised now as a very interesting film. It's a very stodgy script I have to say, it was Dearden and Relph wasn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 28:15
Yes. Incidentally I hear Michael Relph's not too well.
Roy Fowler 28:21
Well that could be so I suppose because of his age.
Jonathan Balcon 28:23
But I didn't hear from Simon. I heard on Monday.
Roy Fowler 28:26
But Simon was there last night but he didn't say anything. But I didn't ask him or no, no one to my knowledge asked him.
Jonathan Balcon 28:38
Course you see, the boys of both Deardon and Ralph have done well. I mean ...
Roy Fowler 28:44
Although James seems to have disappeared, hasn't he?
Jonathan Balcon 28:46
Yes, he'd rather sort of fallen off the ...
Roy Fowler 28:50
A couple of hits ...
Jonathan Balcon 28:51
Then this happens in Hollywood you know.
Roy Fowler 28:54
Merciless, absolutely. Right, back to our onions then, where are we? All the little sidelights on the studio I think are the most interesting ones because so much otherwise is known and is recorded. Were there any villains at the studio that you're aware of, [LAUGHTER] people who were not liked for one reason or another, or distrusted?
Jonathan Balcon 29:23
Well not, Jack Dooley, the stills man, was always a bit gritty but I don't think he meant to be I just think he felt you know, being a stills camera man in a movie films [LAUGHTER] ...
Roy Fowler 29:40
Yeah, it's true the stills man always has been somewhat a disgruntled character because nobody will let him get in to take his stills I suppose.
Jonathan Balcon 29:48
The real grumps, if you like bad tempered old bugger was Ernest Irving.
Roy Fowler 29:55
Aha.
Jonathan Balcon 29:56
And I didn't know whether you knew this, but Ernest developed a pathological dislike of Pentis [LAUGHTER] and they couldn't practically be in the same room together.
Roy Fowler 30:07
I didn't know that.
Jonathan Balcon 30:11
But Ernest did some very weird things, I mean he could be very bad temper. But you see this was the extraordinary thing about Mick, Roy, he employed good composers, Ernest Irving was an excellent conductor. He employed super artists to do his posters, in fact, Ealing posters are almost classic now.
Roy Fowler 30:39
Yes, indeed, yes. There is a book devoted to them is there not?
Jonathan Balcon 30:43
Yes upstairs I've got the three volumes of all the press releases, which of course have got Edward Ardizzone and they've got John Piper. I did in fact, I don't know whether this is widely known, after mother died I found in the roof of the garage at Upper Parrock what I thought was a print of a poster for "The Bells Go Down" and I didn't think very much about it, but I was getting rid of a certain amount of stuff to Christies and they came down and they looked at it and they said, "This is no print. This is the original John Piper watercolour". And I sold it for 4000 pounds. And um it's now at the Imperial War Museum they bought it and I went to have a look at it the other day it's a beautiful poster, it's a beautiful poster and of course, I love Piper anyway. They had a Piper exhibition there, St John Woods of course, was responsible largely for coordinating. Oh, yes, I know that something's just occurred to me. I don't think Anthony Mendelson was an evil genius he, Anthony, had a sort of sinister look about him. The person who was incredible and made the most beautiful things was Andrew Lowe.
Jonathan Balcon 30:52
I don't know the name.
Roy Fowler 32:06
No well, he was in the art department at Ealing. And I got one or two things of his upstairs, well one one thing in particular because when you're knighted you have to do this ridiculous thing at the College of Heralds as they write to suggest that you ought to have a coat of arms. So Mick got Andrew to design a coat of arms for him and Andrew then did a model of it as it were in relief, which I've got upstairs, which is beautifully done in paper but it stands out in its frame you know. No there were some exceptionally talented people around the studio.
Roy Fowler 32:48
Why is it do you think they worked there if they were getting less than their commercial rate? Was it security, opportunity?
Jonathan Balcon 32:55
I think security, I think opportunity, I don't know what the contracts were like. Were they on an annual basis?
Roy Fowler 33:00
I've no idea.
Jonathan Balcon 33:01
I've no idea I mean ... there was an armed neutrality to a certain extent between Mick and Reg Baker, you know. Because Reg was very much the frontman and always, he was very tall ... Did you ever meet him?
Roy Fowler 33:20
No, I never did.
Jonathan Balcon 33:21
... very tall, handsome ex-major.
Roy Fowler 33:24
What were his areas of responsibility?
Jonathan Balcon 33:26
He was managing director.
Roy Fowler 33:28
The financial but principally it was ...
Jonathan Balcon 33:30
Yes and his brother Leslie did the accounts. But Reg was the frontman with the Royal Film Performance and all that you know. I don't know whether you knew this, you know Reg had a son, Peter. Peter Baker, who had a very distinguished war and was a sort of a war hero, became an MP after the war, went into the publishing business and in fact eventually went to prison for embezzlement.
Roy Fowler 34:12
Didn't know.
Jonathan Balcon 34:13
Mick, in spite of all his feelings about that sort of thing, stood bail for Peter. Now Peter was a drunk, yet another one, but a serious drunk and he went on a bender between trials, collapsed completely and was taken off to Virginia Water, what's it called the Priory.
Roy Fowler 34:39
Oh yes.
Jonathan Balcon 34:42
On a Saturday night at Upper Parrock at three o'clock in the morning the telephone rang and the telephone was on Aileen's side of the bed and a voice said, 'Sunday Express here. Could we speak to Sir Michael?' So Aileen said, 'I'm afraid he's asleep.' 'Who are we speaking to?' and without thinking Mother said, 'Diana Dors.' [LAUGHING]
Jonathan Balcon 35:10
Oh bless her.
Jonathan Balcon 35:12
And there was a sort of gasp at the other end. And they obviously cottoned on it was Mother 'Was Sir Michael aware that Peter Baker had jumped bail?' Well Peter hadn't jumped bail at all, as I say he'd been taken into Virginia Water. But he did subsequently end up in prison and he ruined his career and practically crippled Reg. But then of course, Reg had a great attribute with the ladies because he is quite handsome. And when he, when he became a widower he went off to Australia , married an Australian millionairess who promptly died, so he married another Australian millionaire. Well, Reg is dead now but I mean, he didn't do too badly at the end.
Roy Fowler 35:51
It never happens to me.
Jonathan Balcon 35:53
No exactly. But he was a curious man Reg. I don't know what, I suppose you see Baker Todman, Baker Rook as it became and whatever it's called now Baker Tilly, were very distinguished film industry accountants at one time. And I mean, they looked after all our family affairs until they became too big and our affairs became too small you know.
Roy Fowler 36:26
Did your father inherit Reg Baker at Ealing?
Jonathan Balcon 36:29
Yes. It was, it was entirely, Reg was there with with Basil Dean. Courthauld went to Reg and said, 'Look, for God's sake, find me somebody, find me somebody to make films and Reg said that the only person I know, as I've said earlier is Balcon and he approached Mick. They hadn't known each other I'm not sure they hadn't known each other at Gaumont or somewhere like that, they had met previously. Something in the back of my mind something tells me Reg had been an advisor on "Journey's End" because he'd had a very distinguished First World War. But I may be wrong about that. Now somebody asked me the other day, we haven't really talked about what I call the adventure films and the foreign location films, somebody asked me why Harry Watt, there was not a lot was written about Harry and I said I didn't really know. I always found Harry a most interesting person to talk to. "The Overlanders" was a fine production. I gather, he was a very difficult director to work for but he'd had a distinguished career with the GPO Film Unit and subsequently the Crown Film Unit, I think.
Roy Fowler 37:59
Yes. Yeah, I'm not sure, I see your point. I'm not sure why he seems not to be taken overly serious.
Jonathan Balcon 38:07
That's right yup. But he was the one who was terribly excited at being sent to Australia. And he was very excited to be sent to Africa for "Where no Vultures Fly" and for "West of Zanzibar". But in a way, they were out of the out of ordinary Ealing films, I mean Father realised that he had to break out as it were of a rather restrictive stories going round in this country and he had to do something abroad. But again, all be it with with a small community you know.
Roy Fowler 38:44
What about the Australian connection? Because that was quite surprising for its time, was it not ...
Jonathan Balcon 38:50
It was very surprising
Roy Fowler 38:51
... to send a unit off that far.
Jonathan Balcon 38:54
Well I think it was partly the Rank Organisation found themselves had some difficulty with their operations in Australia. And I can't even remember who came to him with the script for for "Overland". Maybe Harry did himself, but he thought it was a very exciting story, and he got very excited about the whole thing. And of course, with "Siege of Pinchgut", "Eureka Stockade", "The Shiralee", and "The Overlanders" really began to form the embryonic, if you like, Australian film industry, which matured into what it is today through Bruce Beresford and other people. And sure enough when Bruce was over here, we're talking now about the '50s, '60s, '70s they saw a great deal of Mick and Mick gave him a lot of advice. And Bruce now must be of an age, you know, but I remember having a hilarious lunch at Wheelers in Old Compton Street with Mick, Bruce Beresford and Dame Edna Everage - Barry Humphries.
Roy Fowler 40:11
In drag?
Jonathan Balcon 40:12
No, no. Barry was himself but he was hilariously funny. As a result of that they made that dreadful film about the Australian character, you know who was always shooting?
Roy Fowler 40:24
Oh Yes. Ah, I know who you mean.
Jonathan Balcon 40:28
Yeah, but they've matured since then. It was a, you see again, after the Ealing era and well during the Ealing era Group Three, of course became something for which Mick was responsible. I again, I didn't think he was ever terribly sure about Group Three. Then of course we had Bryanston.
Roy Fowler 40:55
Wasn't that after Ealing had finished.
Jonathan Balcon 41:00
Oh, yes. Yes. I mean ...
Roy Fowler 41:02
Well, then let's sort of run our minds over Ealing to make sure we have covered that in as much detail as we can. At some stage the Rank Organisation came into the picture, what were your dad's relationships with Arthur and with Davis?
Jonathan Balcon 41:21
He was never terribly happy about religious fanatics and he disliked John Davis more than I can say and my mother absolutely despised him. The only thing I can say is that both John and his lordship gave Sally and me two very nice pieces of silver when we were married, which I've subsequently sold. Um he was very unhappy he had, if you remember, he had fought monopolies all his life, on and off, and he felt you know, to own an organisation which not only made films, not only distributed them but also exhibited them was a monopoly situation
End Of Side 4
Side 5
Roy Fowler 0:00
Tape three. Yes, you were saying a monopoly situation. Now on to the Rank Organisation, and yes.And JD, you know ...
Jonathan Balcon 0:07
He had a seat on the board. There were certain people in the organisation he liked enormously. He didn't trust either Kenneth Winkles or the other one, there were two of them weren't there? Were PAs to John Davis. One of them had been Monty's adjutant , or staff officer under Monty, I think that was Kenneth Winkles. There were two of them, I can't remember the second one's name, but my mother absolutely hated John Davis. And of course, if you really, well I don't think it'll ever be published but some of the stories Dinah Sheridan tells about her married life to John Davis really makes your, your blood run cold. And the man was a brute. And a fascist, and a dictator.
Roy Fowler 1:00
Yes, a hideous man. Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 1:03
Of course, you know it was the beginning wasn't it, forget artistic merit what's the bottom line look like?
Roy Fowler 1:14
Yeah, I don't know the extent to which it was ever different. But the film industry has always been that dichotomy of people trying to make good movies and on the other hand people trying to make a quick buck out of it. I suppose Davis is really the beginning of the serious green eyeshade people sitting there looking at the books. You spoke about the Prudential much earlier and of course they suffered so hugely the Kordas ...
Jonathan Balcon 1:43
Well they actually paid Korda a million didn't they to relieve them of all commitments.
Roy Fowler 1:47
Did they?
Jonathan Balcon 1:51
Oh yes.
Roy Fowler 1:50
But they built the studio and they lost vast sums of money on the production. And eventually I, he walked away having bought the rights to his films for an absolute pittance.
Jonathan Balcon 2:02
Absolutely. The other curious thing, little experience I had, the BBC rang me and said, did I know what had happened to the unfinished 'I Claudius' with Charles Laughton?
Jonathan Balcon 2:05
Yes. When was this? Ages ago?
Jonathan Balcon 2:25
Ages ago, when I was at Hobbs Saville, '50s, '60s
Roy Fowler 2:32
Had the company insured Korda?
Jonathan Balcon 2:34
We hadn't no but I knew how the whole thing had gone. And I rang up Phyllis Crocker's father, William Charles Crocker, explained who I was and I said, I'm awfully sorry sir to worry you but I've just had a call from the BBC and could you possibly tell me because I knew you dealt with the claim on Merle Oberon. This was when she was injured in a car accident and the film was abandoned. Could you tell me what happened to the finished cans of 'I Claudius'? Of course I can he said, I'm sitting looking at them, they're on a filing cabinet in my office. He said I think there are four cans or five cans. I said would you be willing to get rid of them because I believe the BBC may be interested and he said, yes, of course I would, put them on to me. So I rang the BBC back and I said William Charles Crockers got them he'd be very interested. As a result of that they did a BBC programme on the making of 'I Claudius', not the series they eventually did.
Roy Fowler 3:42
A stunning programme. I have it on tape.
Jonathan Balcon 3:44
Yeah and that was entirely my investigation and ringing William Charles Crocker.
Roy Fowler 3:51
Well that really is fascinating.
Jonathan Balcon 3:53
I happen to know because I was in that side of the business in insurance, that William Charles had dealt with the claim. I can't remember the circumstances but it was one of the ... as you probably know, in a film producers' indemnity policy, you can do one of two things: you can, if somebody falls ill, one of the sheduled actors who's insured, you can pay the net increase in costs to complete the picture or you can abandon. The only thing about abandonment in brackets afterwards, with the consent of insurance. Now, years later, Edward G. Robinson had a heart attack on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro whilst making 'Sammy Going South'. Mick rings me up and says, Hal tells me we've got to abandon. Mick I said you cannot abandon without the consent of insurance. Don't you start quoting small print to me. I said, I'm sorry Mick you cannot abandon that. Well, he said, We'll see about that. Anyway, subsequently what happened was, I said, it's far better let Edward G rest for 2, 3, 4 weeks and we'll pay the net increase in cost of the finished product. Which is what we did and it cost us a lot less money of course. But the point I'm trying to make is the Merle Oberon episode in 'I Claudius' was the only time I think a film was in fact abandoned and the words with consent of insurance, insurers wasn't, weren't in the policy.
Roy Fowler 5:33
It's said that Korda arraigned because the, it was a very, very troubled production.
Jonathan Balcon 5:41
I'm sure.
Roy Fowler 5:42
Sternberg was the wrong director and Lawton was having a tizz all the time and so it went went, soit said, and I'm sure it can't be true that the accident was, was arranged.
Jonathan Balcon 5:54
Nothing surprises me.
Roy Fowler 5:57
I wondered if you had any ...
Jonathan Balcon 5:57
Roy I'll give you two little incidents: Lloyds paid out a million quid on Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cleopatra',which was the largest FPI claim that had ever been paid. Now, I happen to know that that was a fraudulent claim. She did not declare on her medical form that when she went to Dr Wilkinson that she was taking a certain drug. And this drug had the side effect, which actually caused her to be ill and have the tracheotomy. But rather than have the publicity Lloyds paid up. The other time was I insured 'The World of Suzie Wong'. Ray Stark, the producer, wanted to screw whichever girl it was who was playing Suzie Wong and she wouldn't have it. I rang the production company, and I said, look, there must be, apart from the Sterling element to this policy, there must be a dollar element. They said, Well, we haven't heard from Paramount about this. And I said, well you get on to Paramount and find out. They came back about 48 hours later and asked me to do the dollar policy as well and, at the same time put a claim in for the girl being ill. And I smelled a rat and there was a marvellous chap who worked for Toplis and Hardy. You probably never heard of Toplis and Hardy but they were probably the leading loss adjusters in the city at one time. There was a marvellous chap called Freddie Geddes who we flew out to Hong Kong and he came back he was able to prove that the claim had been made, that they knowingly had a claim when they asked me to place the insurance. So we got off the hook on that one. But when Freddie produced his report, he said, the original claim, he said, was quite extraordinary because it included four gold cigarette cases for Mr William Holden for various members of the crew; six bales of silk for Mrs. William Holden. And I mean, these weren't items that were included on the policy at all. And Freddie blew the whole thing wide open. In fact, we ended up paying practically nothing. I'm not even sure we did pay, because he, Ray Stark sacked the one girl and appointed somebody else. He sacked the one girl because she wouldn't sleep with him. Insurers are always considered fair game. You're not in the sun are you?
Roy Fowler 8:49
No, no, no, I'm fine. Any more stories about insurance scams?
Jonathan Balcon 8:56
Insurance scams, my dear. You only have to read the papers in the past five weeks don't you.
Roy Fowler 9:02
What's been going on in the last five weeks.
Jonathan Balcon 9:04
Well, you had The Independent going bust, The Equitable ...
Roy Fowler 9:10
Oh, I see what you mean. I mean, with reference to the motion picture industry.
Jonathan Balcon 9:14
Oh no, no, no it wasn't too bad. It wasn't too bad ...
Roy Fowler 9:20
What are some of the great insurance disasters with with films?
Jonathan Balcon 9:25
Well, I suppose they mostly occurred under Korda. 'Cleopatra' was another ...
Roy Fowler 9:31
Was there more to it than Taylor and her illness.
Jonathan Balcon 9:35
No, no. Apart from the fact Burton spent most of his time in a pissed state. And Robin Mormor, I don't know if you knew this, had a house on Ischia and he said Burton came up to see him there and sat in the sun drinking this very strong white Ischian wine and then went to go and shoot a scene and they put his armour on him and he fell over. [LAUGHTER] But I mean that's Robin being slightly bitchy, I think. I don't think there's been any, I've always been highly suspicious of any claim. It is the easiest thing in the world to make a claim on a film policy. But if you've got a good Loss Adjuster you usually get away with ...
Roy Fowler 10:23
Korda was probably the most notorious and there were all kinds of abandoned productions in the '30s at Denham.
Jonathan Balcon 10:29
Yeah, but they probably weren't insured.
Roy Fowler 10:32
But the Prudential was his principal backer.
Jonathan Balcon 10:34
The Prudential may have backed the film but, they may not have insured it. Because the film producers indemnity insurance didn't come out really. It was originally a Norwich Union worded, believe it or not. I mean, all big insurance companies were involved. My cover, I had, I ran three covers, I ran an open cover; I ran a cover for ABPC and I ran an Ealing cover. And on each cover there was something like 40 underwriters at Lloyd's, and something like 23 insurance companies. So the risk was pretty well spread. And the covers I mean, Ealing got away with murder. They had the lowest rates of anybody which used to drive the other people up the wall, because everybody knewwhat Ealing rates were. But Ealing on the whole had until, until Edward G they had a pretty good record. Did I tell you ...
Jonathan Balcon 10:35
Yes. Well your father was a very respectable character was he not? So presumably, was regarded as an honest operation, as opposed to the ...
Jonathan Balcon 11:41
Did I tell you about 'Man in the Sky'?
Roy Fowler 11:44
No.
Jonathan Balcon 11:45
Well, my three great successes as an insurance man. I got Donat fully insured for 'Lease of Life' because he was uninsurable, because of his asthma. I got Katie Johnson fully insured for 'The Lady Killers' aged 83 when the age limit was 65. And Hal came to me when they were making 'Man in the Sky", and they got hold of Bristol freighter the things we used to fly ...
Roy Fowler 12:26
We did go through this yes, yes, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 12:28
And I insured that as an actor and the bloody thing taxied into a ditch. But that wasn't put out of action for very long. But then I suppose, really, the worry was if anything went wrong what Mick's reaction would be because I mean, he wasn't the easiest customer to deal with. And he normally, he had a marvellous company secretary called Cyril Orr who I looked after, when I say looked after,I mean I did everything that Cyril asked me to do in the insurance. And in fact, it paid off handsomely, because when he, we also broked at Hobbs Savill for every single independent television company, with the exception of Yorkshire. And Cyril, when London Weekend started rang me up and said, I'd like you to handle business, which the firm were only too pleased to do.
Roy Fowler 13:21
So what it was almost entirely profit?
Jonathan Balcon 13:24
Almost. But the loss of profits insurance for television companies is very interesting because we pioneered, with the Commercial Union, a clause which was known as Memorandum Four. And whatit quite simply said was this insurance covers the insured for failure to transmit from any cause beyond the control of the insured. All right? I went to Yorkshire and I said, loss of profits insurance we don't believe in it. But I said, you cannot not believe in it because I mean, what about your mast? What happens if your mast collapses? Oh, quite impossible. We have just erected the latest Swedish mast of such and such a nature which is totally and utterly reliable. Three months later in the middle of a storm Yorkshire's mast collapses,
Roy Fowler 14:34
Couldn't happen governor!
Jonathan Balcon 14:37
Cost them over a million I think too, for they were off the air for quite a long time. Now Border continuously had American aircraft running into their mast, or the stays on the top of whichever fell it was but they never had a claim the mast never collapsed. And they were never off the air. But I said to you, I said to Paddy Cruickshank afterwards, I said, Paddy had you had insurance for that mast it would have cost you nothing because Memorandum Four would have would have covered it. But they still wouldn't insure, quite extraordinary what some people are like. Sorry, I've digressed. But I mean, it just shows you the sort of thing we came up against.
Roy Fowler 15:18
They're all sidelights again, matters not covered elsewhere. So all very useful.
Jonathan Balcon 15:23
But you see, Roy, we had extraordinary things because Granada, quite rightly, came to us. And theysaid, we are building up a massive library of VTRs. We must have some basis on which to insure them. And we sat down with insurers round a table and we worked out that once the programme had been initially shown then to all intents and purposes the production costs had been recovered. But there had to be a formula if it was put into the library and subsequently destroyed, not wiped by mistake, just destroyed. And we came up with a formula that was very satisfactory, to all concerned. The trouble was the sum insured grew and grew and grew and grew and in the end I don't think Granada could afford it because it was all based on a rate percent. I don't know what's happened since. But that was one of the things we pioneered. And we pioneered cover for when the negatives were being processed at the laboratories.
Roy Fowler 16:28
Well given now the value of the catalogues the the insured value must be absolutely phenomenal, sky high. Yeah,
Jonathan Balcon 16:36
It was phenomenal. I mean, it was in the millions when I left and that was, I left Hobbs Saville in 1969 and set up on my own.
Roy Fowler 16:43
Well, hardware and licences that really has nothing to do with it anymore. It really is the value of the software, isn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 16:49
Yeah. But there we are, it's it's quite interesting. Go back to Ealing
Roy Fowler 16:56
Go back to Ealing in the '30s '40s, when did it all begin to taper off for Dad do you think?
Jonathan Balcon 17:04
I think really it began to taper off, didn't it not after "The Lady Killers"?
Roy Fowler 17:09
Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 17:13
And I think a lot of, Michael Winner, who I can't bear ...
Roy Fowler 17:24
[LAUGHTER]
Jonathan Balcon 17:20
... says that of course Balcon was going broke or the studios were going broke. I don't think they were ...
Roy Fowler 17:27
Did Michael Winner say that? He's a very stupid man.
Jonathan Balcon 17:30
Oh yeah, horrible man. Have I not told you that story? In the Sunday Times some years ago he said:my close friendship with Michael Balcon. And I wasn't gonna take this lying down. So I wrote a letter to the Sunday Times saying my father was extremely careful about who he had as close friends. I said my father and I were latterly fairly close. I can recall at no time Michael Winner ever being invited to our house in the country. And I would have thought close friendship quote/unquote,was something that was not entirely correct. My dear, they published my letter. I had Winner on the telephone. I didn't really mean that you know. I said you may not have meant it but you said it. Oh we had business dealings together. I said I don't think you did because I said yours were the sort of films he would have absolutely hated.
Roy Fowler 18:32
And also a great disparity not just in outlook, but in age too. Michael then would have been very, Winner would have been very young. Yes, yes.
Jonathan Balcon 18:41
So anyway, that scotched that one. But now after the 'Ladykillers' it was always put about, this maybe a bit of what the Labour government are famous for, their various advisors, but we were always told that they had outgrown the studios. The studios were no longer a viable unit for making the type of films they were going to make without actually saying what type of films they were going to make. But what have they made subsequently? They made 'Sammy Going South', 'The Long, the Short and the Tall' and 'Dunkirk'. That's all I think. And the studios were sold to the BBC. Sadly the films were sold to Warner Pathe and subsequently of course are now owned by Canal Plus.
Roy Fowler 19:45
Whoever knows who owns the library these days.
Jonathan Balcon 19:48
Well Canal Plus, you've never heard my story. I took them to, very nearly to the courts here.
Roy Fowler 22:06
Yes.
Roy Fowler 19:56
I get a small royalty every year from 'The Long, the Short and the Tall,' and they do this bloody silly thing, they send you what you're due on paper and say will you please send us an invoice. And it was the year before last and it was 350 quid or something. So I duly sent them an invoice and weeks later I still hadn't heard anything or had a cheque. So I rang up the litigation clerk at my solicitors who did the same law course as me quite recently at Canterbury and I said, Carol, what should I do? She said, Well, don't involve us, she said it'll cost you too much money. But she said go along to the small claims court in Tunbridge Wells County Court here, get the appropriate forms. Fill the forms in but she said don't get them stamped by the court because you'll have to claim, you'll have to pay 32 quid, which you can claim back from the people you're suing. So anyway, I went and got the forms and filled them all in and didn't get them stamped and added on the 32 quid so the whole thing came to 370 quid or something. I faxed a copy to Canal Plus at Boulogne, at Pinewood Studios, in Paris. I think that was about all because Carol had said fax it to them. My dear, I had some chap from Paris on the telephone the following day. I cannot understand what has happened and what has gone wrong, we have had problems in our accounts department. I said yeah I've heard all that before. He said, I said I'll give you five days to get you get me a cheque. Anyway, it was the bank holiday Monday, the following Monday, and on the following Tuesday by special delivery I have a cheque. And it obviously put the fear of God up them, just to see if they thought I'd issued a writ you see but it hadn't cost me a bloody thing.
Roy Fowler 22:06
That's a neat dodge actually if I ever need that to not get it stamped.
Jonathan Balcon 22:14
Don't get it stamped. But whoever you're going to serve, this is in the small claims court, fax them acopy. And they were so they said to me Oh, you know, we have all your father's films here at Pinewood. I said yeah, I said if you haven't got them I'd be multi-millionaire by now
Roy Fowler 22:30
Indeed everyone else is making a fortune out of them.
Jonathan Balcon 22:33
This is what saddens me in a way is that Jill and I and our families have not benefited. I'll tell you what is integrity with life, don't forget I wasn't terribly involved in the setup at Ealing, financially. But Associated Talking Pictures had a number of outside shareholders in the Ealing area from way back. Some had 10, some had 100, some had one you know. And I remember that there was a chap called Hillier, who lived in Ealing who always created a fuss at the AGM and somebody I can't remember who wrote a poem which started off, you know, nothing could be sillier than little Mr Hiller. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, that's beside the point. Because when the studios were sold, when the films were sold and the rights, and the only rights that weren't sold, dammit, if only he had realised realised about the rights, every single shareholder was paid the dividends that had been due to them from 1938 when he took over and none of them in fact lost out. And of course, the shares,eventually ATP was wound up and the shares were valueless but they all got their dividends. But he and Reg I think had a pretty heavy stake in it at that time. I don't think, they came out of it reasonably well out of the sale. I don't know what the films were sold for but whoever bought, Warner Pathe must have have done extremely well, because Warner Pathe became EMI, EMI became whatever EMI became and then now Canal Plus has got them.
Roy Fowler 24:24
Well there was Weinchild in there at one stage.
Jonathan Balcon 24:28
Weinchild was in there you are absolutely right. Now and then I believe I think I asked you this, I believe Spikings and Deely were involved in it somewhere along the line.
Roy Fowler 24:38
They certainly were at EMI and knowing them they probably had a hand in the catalogue too.
Jonathan Balcon 24:43
You see Mick fell for those two and I, we met Deely ,Sally and I and we said that man's a crook.
Roy Fowler 24:50
Wheeler Deely.
Jonathan Balcon 24:50
Yup. Sally and I took an instant dislike. Mick and Eileen latterly weren't awfully good judges of character actually. And I thought Deely was taking advantage of you over something you know. But I, who was I to say so I mean, I couldn't say so he'd would have said oh, you know, you're a bad judge of character.
Roy Fowler 25:11
When did maybe his judgement begin to fail in that respect?
Jonathan Balcon 25:17
Of people?
Roy Fowler 25:18
Well, yes, I, the business perhaps was leaving him or he was leaving the business. Um, tastes change.
Jonathan Balcon 25:26
I don't think to put it crudely Roy, I don't think his marbles ever failed rarely right up to the end.
Roy Fowler 25:32
Well, it's taste isn't it? Taste whether people are going to pay to see the films or not?
Jonathan Balcon 25:39
Yeah. You see, latterly, after Bryanston when he really wasn't, he wasn't doing much but advising other people and talking to people and giving lectures and doing the National Film School and the BFI was always a great, great thing of his. People used to flock down to talk to him, you know and he, he'd sit rather like the elder statesman and pontificate about various things.
Roy Fowler 26:16
Well you said 'Ladykillers' was the point at which maybe the studio began to subside in whatever fashion either because they couldn't service the productions properly maybe because the films weren't being properly distributed, which I suspect is ...a more likely ...
Jonathan Balcon 26:33
I suspect more than likely.
Roy Fowler 26:34
Yeah, indeed. And the dreaded JD hovering around, did they get along? You said that they didn't like each other, well your father didn't like him.
Jonathan Balcon 26:43
Well he had to get along with him at board meetings, but he couldn't bear him otherwise.
Roy Fowler 26:46
Was that reciprocated in other ways?
Jonathan Balcon 26:48
Oh don't I don't know what JD thought. But JD had a strong anti-semitic streak in him anyway.
Roy Fowler 26:53
Really.
Jonathan Balcon 26:53
Yeah. I mean, he ended up marrying a fascist, did you not know that?
Roy Fowler 26:58
Well he married so many times. The final, the final one the last one ...
Jonathan Balcon 27:02
The final one Diana was a member of whatever it is party.
Roy Fowler 27:06
I didn't know that. I spoke to her on the phone a couple of times. And she always sounded as if she were about to declare the bazaar open but no maybe it was to declare the ...
Jonathan Balcon 27:18
Yeah, did what he liked best and dressed in black and wore boots.
Roy Fowler 27:22
God bless her. Ah, thank you lady!
Roy Fowler 27:28
I'd call because I was trying for ages to get him to do an interview and everyone was saying to him,those who spoke to him still, because he was a rather pathetic creature I think at this stage. And they'd say, John you really ought to do it for posterity. Bill MacQuitty did oh, several ... Percy Percy, 20th Century Fox, Percy Livingston did.
Jonathan Balcon 27:54
Oh, yes, yeah.
Roy Fowler 27:57
So we'd talk on the phone but he was always convinced that we were out to get him and I said, seal the bloody tapes, you know, deposit them with your lawyers.
Jonathan Balcon 28:06
That is sad.
Roy Fowler 28:07
But she'd come on the phone and I'd say may I speak to him. And she said, in the garden,
Jonathan Balcon 28:15
I suppose he had paranoia about being stabbed in the back.
Roy Fowler 28:19
Yes. And I think he realised by that time how loathed and disliked he was and what damage, what damage, at least I hope he went to his grave knowing this.
Jonathan Balcon 28:29
The old man I liked a lot. I got him up to Cambridge when I was secretary of the Film Society.
Roy Fowler 28:35
Did you? We're talking about Arthur?
Jonathan Balcon 28:37
Arthur yeah. And he couldn't have been nicer. And he gave an extremely good lecture.
Roy Fowler 28:42
Yeah
Jonathan Balcon 28:44
But of course, again ...
Roy Fowler 28:45
man out of his time.
Jonathan Balcon 28:47
Absolutely. Mick was never quite sure of him. Was never quite sure he understood about film in spite of the Children's Film Foundation and his own production company.
Roy Fowler 28:58
Well, I think that's absolutely right. I don't think he knew a thing about film. So he knew about flour milling but nothing beyond that.
Jonathan Balcon 29:06
Our great friend in Hartfield was his nephew Joe, who ran the milling business. Joe sadly died quite recently having gone gaga.
Jonathan Balcon 29:13
Would have been what Arthur's brother or nephew?
Speaker 1 29:14
He was Arthur's nephew. But it was, yes they were curious days weren't they because ...
Roy Fowler 29:27
They were indeed. If only the personalities had been different, with that kind of money and that kind of determination we could finally have built an international organisation.
Jonathan Balcon 29:38
Yup. I don't know how or what effect the EDI levy had on the industry.
Roy Fowler 29:44
Very benevolent one I think.
Jonathan Balcon 29:46
It did have a benevolent one I think effect. Mick was involved in the setting up of that I'm not sure about that. He was certainly involved in the setting ups of groups one, two and three as I said to you. He was certainly deeply involved in Bryanston. Bryanston as a co-operative had a lot of merit and it had a lot of interesting films. But it was subsequently ...
Roy Fowler 30:08
Indeed it was a whole new era.
Jonathan Balcon 30:10
But I was never quite certain of people like Maxwell Setton. I was never quite sure what...
Roy Fowler 30:16
Their talent or whatever ...
Jonathan Balcon 30:18
Whether they were sincere filmmakers.
Roy Fowler 30:19
Sure before we come on to that, because that is again a whole change of life I would have thought for your father. There was that period when the studio's Ealing was sold to the BBC and ceased to function. But yet the title remained and he made one film, two films for Metro?
Jonathan Balcon 30:37
No he made two films for Metro I think. It became Ealing Films Limited. Now, I dispute but I wouldn't do anything about it, the fact that Shawn whatever his name is who's running the studio is using the Ealing logo. Now, I don't know whether he's entitled to that logo, the lozenge with the two leaves and Ealing, a very simple but very nice logo
Roy Fowler 31:08
Very sweet. Yes. And again, redolent of its time and standing.
Jonathan Balcon 31:13
And if anything David Bill did, and what a lot of what David Bill did was nonsense, but he he did produce, I've got a number of badges with Ealing on it. I've got one of those disgusting jockey caps or whatever you call them with Ealing written on it.
Roy Fowler 31:26
Have you?
Jonathan Balcon 31:28
He produced all these and he produced T-shirts with the Ealing logo on it. When I tuned into the website the other day, they are still using the logo and my opening remarks to Shawn were, I'm not sure you're absolutely entitled to use this. But I suppose that I don't know you see, I never saw the original contract, so I wouldn't know. But it's um they moved into offices in MGM in Elstree. They became, they also had offices in the West End, Ealing Films Limited, I can't remember where, I'll have to look it up. I can't remember where
Roy Fowler 32:08
Your father was what, managing director or chairman?
Jonathan Balcon 32:11
I think he was chairman of Ealing Films. He then in but, we'd had a family company called Hartfield Film Productions Limited of which Eileen, Jill, Mick and me were directors. And we always understood that it was primarily that any royalties he got for lectures and books and anything else were going into this company. Out of Hartfield Film Productions grew Michael Balcon Productions Limited of which I ended up being chairman. But the revenue of Michael Balcon Productions Limited, of which I still have a great deal of writing paper, didn't cover the accountancy fees to present to the DTI each year. So in the end Lesley Baker suggested we wound the company up and we did. But Michael Balcon Productions Limited had a subsidiary called Great Shows Limited and Great Shows ... Yes, we'd love a cup. Cold I think.
Jonathan Balcon 32:21
Cold I think cold. Yes, ideal. Thank you.
Jonathan Balcon 33:25
Great Shows produced 'Sammy Going South'. Now whereas I've received royalties for 'The Long, the Short and the Tall' I have never for the life of me received royalties on 'Sammy Going South'. And it gets shown on television infrequently, but ...
Roy Fowler 33:44
It must be in profit by this time?
Jonathan Balcon 33:45
I would have thought. I wrote to Weintraub and I said, you have sent me a cheque for 'The Long the Short and the Tall' what about 'Sammy Going South'? This will amuse you. There was a sort of hiccup and a pause for about four days. I then got back a 53 page fax showing the contract Mick had signed when at Bryanston for 'The Small, Sad World of Sammy Lee' which was an X-rated film and nothing to do with Mick at all. And Weintrob said to me that is the only film we have. But of course 'Sammy Going South' was called 'A Boy's 10 Foot Tall' for the American market. I have a pirated copy funnily enough on video. And when I got in touch with the production company, I was told it didn't exist, the people who produced the video. So I just don't know either I'm owed by somebody a fortune because it's several years now.
Roy Fowler 34:56
Well indeed and as you say it's in circulation so ...
Jonathan Balcon 34:59
And it's in circulation and we will go one stage further there was a delightful South African called David Schict. S C H I C T one has to be awfully careful how you pronounce it.
Roy Fowler 35:15
Who was full of Schict
Jonathan Balcon 35:17
He was a Boer. But he was a very long sighted Boer because he was, he was an African nationalist, you know, and he believed in the, in black supremacy and all that. And we had long talks. And he was a very scruffy individual but he's he's he's made a number of films. Now, for three years running, I suppose I can't complain he paid me £2000 a year to give him an option on making 'Sammy' into a television series. The last I heard of him was that with Common Market money, there is some film fund evidently. I didn't know about it.
Jonathan Balcon 36:24
Well, there is and there isn't. Theoretically yes, it's difficult to get your hands on it.
Jonathan Balcon 36:06
He produced a draft script, which I've got upstairs and that's the last I heard of him and that was about three years ago. And he kept ringing me up at that time and saying, well, but we were definitely going ahead with this. Well, I don't know what's happened to him. I tried the other day various ways of getting in touch with him. All I got was on the IMDb website his name came up as a film producer. But it didn't give any address or contact number, which is a pity because I'd very much like to get in contact with him. And I had the legal documentation to prove that Great Shows was a subsidiary company of Michael Balcon Productions Limited. And so anybody and I think this was Delian Spikings again, anybody who took 'Sammy Going South' away from me, where in fact taking away the asset of one of the subsidiary companies, which I once owned. But I mean, I may be wrong about this, I don't know.
Jonathan Balcon 36:33
Well, somehow it should be made clear. In some document or the other the title did pass.
Jonathan Balcon 37:18
Yeah. He he showed all the documents to his solicitors who said yes, this is absolutely ... Jonathan has absolute rights to sell you the television rights, or the film rights for television purposes. And that's the last I heard he may have killed himself in a motor accident or something, I don't know he had a small family and children. I remember I told him to come and have lunch at the City of London Club and of course, the City Club has a great rule about people wearing suits. And I was waiting in the hallway and this gloriously scruffy individual appeared in jeans and an open necked shirt. And I whipped him, luckily there was a very good restaurant just about 100 yards down the road, I whipped him into there and gave him lunch there. I've sinced resigned from the City Club because every gin and tonic I had was costing me 20 quid. Roy, where do we go from here?
Roy Fowler 38:19
Well I suppose really, if that's the end of the second Metro phase, bearing in mind, it wasn't a happy experience I gather working with Metro Finance on that second time around, was it? They made wasn't it 'The Scapegoat'?
Jonathan Balcon 38:37
They made 'The Scapegoat', they made 'Dunkirk'
Roy Fowler 38:48
Was 'Dunkirk' part of that?
Jonathan Balcon 38:50
I think Dunkirk was part of that. We can look it up because I've got it here. I've got all the books of reference here. Oh, darling, thank you. How lovely. Oh, goodness me. Isn't that very elegant? Oui elegante? I'll tell you something, Roy, I insured his contract.
Roy Fowler 39:17
Is that yours? That's mine I'll put it over here.
Jonathan Balcon 39:19
Mick never drew a salary from Ealing. He signed his salary straight back to the company, the studios and merely got them to pay for certain expenses. Is that alright for you? And this, this was an eternal thorn in the flesh of his income tax inspector. And he used to have frightful rows every year because they would query something. Why had I been included on a dinner at the Ivy or something like that you know? And Mick who was terribly honest, was sure they were out to get him, which I'm sure they weren't. Oh well, the film industry was always vulnerable anyway. But when he went to MGM, his contract with Ealing Films and MGM, what do you think his pay was?
Roy Fowler 40:14
I have no idea
Jonathan Balcon 40:14
He never drew it. And this was in 1950, 1956.
Roy Fowler 40:18
Early '50s yes?
Jonathan Balcon 40:21
'56, '57, '58 - £60,000 a year on paper, he never drew it. But I had to insure him for that in case anything happened to him.
Roy Fowler 40:35
Why would he not draw it?
Jonathan Balcon 40:37
Don't ask me I never discussed money with him in that respect. He may have drawn something after that I don't know.
Roy Fowler 40:46
Well, I guess he was by this time what you might call independently wealthy or rich or adequately provided for one assumes.
Jonathan Balcon 40:55
He permanently thought Roy, his accountant said this to me. He every year thought he was broke. He had the most lovely collection of paintings. He had a Piper, he had a Passmore, he had a Henry Moore and he had a Graham Sutherland. And he sold, he sold the Henry Moore and the Graham Sutherland because he thought he had no money in the bank.
Roy Fowler 41:30
Oh dear that's sad. I would have thought to, to have a Sutherland the last thing in the world one would ever want to do would be to dispose.
Jonathan Balcon 41:39
Well absolutely. The Passmore and the Piper I eventually sold only to stop the children, the grandchildren and Jill quarrelling over it. Because I said if we turn everything into cash and split it in the correct way then nobody can complain.
Mrs Jonathan Balcon 42:00
They were both incredibly gloomy both these paintings. and he went and looked at the Piper at the the national, in the Imperial War Museum. And it was very gloomy. The Passmore was extraordinary. It was a sort of in between period of Passmore and it was the most extraordinary picture for a Jewish person to buy. because it had the Christ figure in it, it was the resurrection. It was really the whole difference between Christianity and Judaism. So that was different.
Roy Fowler 42:00
And there are all sorts of dichotomies I think in in the story anyway, personalities and concerns. We're almost at the end of this tape. So right right, we'll turn over.
End of Side 5
Side 6
Roy Fowler 0:00
Side six. Yeah. So another point of transition, the end of the Metro era, Dunkirk was a very successful picture was it not?
Jonathan Balcon 0:12
I'm not sure how successful it was financially I'm really not. It was very interesting. He was determined to make Dunkirk and there are various Dunkirk stories as you know or you may not know. One of the earliest ones was by quite a well-known war author called Gun Buster, who wrote a book called Return via Dunkirk. And it was curiously, and I didn't discover this until much later, he was a member of Sally's father's regiment, the Kent Yeomanry, which was a gunner regiment. And it's a very good story. And I remember father sending for all these various Dunkirk stories, which I'd read and I had in fact, he ended up with one that I didn't think was the best story. But in fact, curiously enough, to go back to what I said to you about the films it was about a small collection of people pitting themselves against the odds. It was Johnny Mills, and five, a private, pitting themselves against the bulk of the German army and getting back to Dunkirk and of course the the actual evacuation, apart from the fact they use the Third Infantry Division of Camber, the bulk of the evacuation scenes were what were gleaned off official records you know, official films and again the the studio shots in that, certainly of the evacuation, were were very bad. But Dunkirk, the Scapegoat again you see, a curious subject. Hamer again a curious subject for Hamer really.
Roy Fowler 2:15
Well there was no consistency it seems on the part of any of them in that sense they kind of made whatever came along that was especially through Hamer who was a very good director clearly but he only hit it once with with Kind Hearts did he not?
Jonathan Balcon 2:31
Yeah. What did he do before Kind Hearts?
Roy Fowler 2:34
Um, well, I'm not sure the chronology but ...
Jonathan Balcon 2:36
It'll be in Barr's book won't it?
Roy Fowler 2:38
Yes. The other one that's an extremely interesting film, atypical of what your father I think is thought to have overseen and that was It Always Rains on Sunday.
Jonathan Balcon 2:52
Ah! Realism. This was of course, Ealing's first, I suppose descent into neo-realism was it not? In as much as you had a married woman having an affair with a convict in the East End of London with some very superb shots of Docklands and some superb acting both from Googie and from Ted Chapman and of course from John McCallum. A film that got very good reviews because it was neo-realism you know. Very widely accepted in France, Il Pleut Toujours le Dimanche, but then, of course, the French would have liked the the adultery scenes you see.
Roy Fowler 3:49
Oh, I think the French have a better sense of cinema culture than just the adultery scenes.
Jonathan Balcon 3:56
Well you know how staid the English are. Well they loved Kind Hearts didn't they, Noblesse Oblige.
Roy Fowler 4:06
I suppose the French are the most appreciative audience for motion pictures in the world. Right. Any of the personalities we touched very briefly on any of them?
Jonathan Balcon 4:22
We touched on Angus, we touched on Robert Hamer, Charlie and Sonya Friend we've touched on. Sham my uncle was always very upright. He had a wife, my Aunt Adele, who could never stop talking, she suffered from total verbal diarrhoea and a nice woman but not of what I might call an artistic bent. [LAUGHTER] Who else now, Peter Tanner was a very nice man, he was the editor who I gathered died recently.
Roy Fowler 4:22
Well, I hadn't heard he died.
Jonathan Balcon 4:57
Well somebody told me at Silver Apples that he was dead because they tried to get hold of him.
Roy Fowler 5:04
It could be he was getting quite elderly was he not because he went back to pre-war days at Ealing I think.
Jonathan Balcon 5:10
Yeah but not at Ealing?
Roy Fowler 5:12
At Ealing
Jonathan Balcon 5:12
Did he Peter?
Roy Fowler 5:13
I think so I interviewed him for for our project. He was very cagey about his age, he wouldn't give his age but it was it was easy to ... kind person.
Jonathan Balcon 5:24
Now the other person I knew who was at Ealing who died, of course, was David James. David James, Archie James was a director of the Rank Organisation and a director of Ealing. And he was a very woof-woof little Ex-Wing Commander from the First World War of the Royal Flying Corps who'd emigrated to Kenya, raised a herd of red polls in Kenya, had the most smelling awful motor accident, came back under Archie MacIndu's hand came out of hospital looking better looking than when he first went in [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 6:01
What are red polls?
Jonathan Balcon 6:02
Red polls are a form of cattle with no horns. They're called polls because they have no horns. And he was a lovely man. He was an archetypal Colonel Blimp, Wing commander Archibald James, Sir Archibald James MP.
Roy Fowler 6:22
Well, all this sounds terribly British, doesn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 6:27
It was terribly British, that was what was so extraordinary. I mean Cavalcanti must have stood out like a sore thumb. Who else well of course they have Simone Signoret, Francoise Rosay. I never ...
Roy Fowler 6:41
But its management that I'm curious about in that sense.
Jonathan Balcon 6:46
Well you see the person ...
Roy Fowler 6:47
It's not exactly people who either know about or would seem to love and adore motion pictures, which I think is a prerequisite for making good films.
Jonathan Balcon 6:57
I suppose you're right, I don't know. I mean what what made somebody like Charlie Friend want to direct pictures. What prompted Charlie Crichton?
Roy Fowler 7:10
I'm talking about management rather than ..
Jonathan Balcon 7:12
Management. Well, Hal of course had been in, you know Hal's story do you?
Roy Fowler 8:09
No I don't.
Jonathan Balcon 7:18
Hal's real name was not Mason at all it was Tinkler. And his family were a family, were a troupe of acrobats in the circus. And he came from a circus family, how he got into the film industry I do not know but my God he was an efficient studio manager he ran a very tight ship. And everything father did from Border Television upwards and downwards Hal was included in. I had to buy back all Hal's Border Television shares after he died because his widow didn't want them. And her solicitor rang me up and said would have would we would I as a family be prepared to buy them back and I said I'll buy them back at market price. Unlisted securities market that's what I was trying to think of.
Roy Fowler 8:10
Forgive me I'm crunching on a biscuit
Jonathan Balcon 8:17
That's alright my dear, it's homemade.
Roy Fowler 8:20
Excellent too, delicious. I'm doing all the wrong things. So we're now I suppose into the last professional period of Mick's life, which is Bryanston and Woodfall and that era of the '60s and the extraordinary change both in the country and in the industry.
Jonathan Balcon 8:46
Industry really became very mature in the Bryanston period, when you think of films like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Tell me some more. Was Saturday Night Sunday Morning a Bryanston film it was either that or Fox wasn't it?
Roy Fowler 9:10
You'll have to forgive my memory is not that good. I wasn't I wasn't in the country then you see
Jonathan Balcon 9:18
But anyway, there were a series of very mature films
Roy Fowler 9:22
And filmmakers
Jonathan Balcon 9:23
And filmmakers, and they seem to get on extremely well. I got into, this was on a personal note, I got into a slight panic because I thought I was going to lose a lot of my production indemnity insurance business. And I got together with the boys who did the completion guarantees, Tufnell status rate. And I said now look here, a lot of these people in Bryanston are both our clients and I said I think the formula I am proposing to you is that if a Bryanston film comes up who is say your client you place the insurance, you take 50% of commission and you split the other 50% of commission between us other two brokers who are interested. And likewise we will do the same for you with our clients. And they agreed to that it was it worked extremely well I mean we had no quarrels at all. I was always very sceptical about the completion guarantors and Tuffnells and all the rest of it. And I was certainly very sceptical about David Metcalf and Sedgwick, no it wasn't Sedgwick Collins what the hell was it called? Florence Desmond's husband was was Managing Director and they offered me a job and I went to be interviewed by him in this ghastly office with rows of telephones and these little lamps on the table were hunting boots with lamps stuck in them. And he said, well, we very much, he had met Aileen at a dinner party, and she'd said I wasn't terribly happy at Hobbs Saville and he'd suggested I went to see him. And he said, well, of course, if you come and join us, you'll be working under David Metcalf and I said well that's very kind of you sir, if I did come to you I think I'd be working with David Metcalf but left it at that never took the job. Charlie Houston, famous man in the aviation insurance world, Stuart Smith the firm had a terrible reputation. Terrible.
Roy Fowler 11:38
What did your father hope to do seek to do in [DOG BARKING] going into those because the 60s, it now seems quaint to us, does it not but it was a highly transitional reformative period, I suppose in British history. What, how did your father relate to it any idea? Did you ever talk about it with him?
Jonathan Balcon 12:12
He was beginning I think, Roy to get tired. I mean ...
Roy Fowler 12:17
He was now approaching his 70s if not into his 70s, yes?
Jonathan Balcon 12:20
He was born in 1896. So yes, he was into his 70s. Physically, he wasn't terribly, he was fairly strong. His health wasn't always that good. But he was such a fastidious man, he was forever washing his hands he gave himself quite serious eczema. And he at one stage in his life about that time wore white gloves all the time because he was so embarrassed by it.
Roy Fowler 12:49
Really. He seems in that sense, compulsive or obsessional is probably too strong a word.
Jonathan Balcon 12:56
Well, no he was obsessed about certain things yes. Cleanliness, certainly. He was obsessed by well, yes extraordinarly they were married for 50 years. He was obsessed by Aileen, and he was very loyal to Aileen because although it was quite clear to him she was suffering from Alzheimer's or beginning to, he never let on to Jill on me or Sally. Although, a week before he died Sally and he went for a walk down to the River Medway, which cuts through the middle of our farm and he said to her, then he said, if anything happens to me, he said, I would be grateful if you and Johnny looked after Aileen. And that was the first inclination that we had that she wasn't well. And of course, she became quite seriously ill shortly after he died. I mean that's another of the bones of contention between Jill and me just to sidetrack you for a moment. We had Aileen for seven years, we had her living with us for a start, then we had her in a nursing home, Jill would perhaps come down once a month to see her in the nursing home. When she did come down matron used to hide. There was one famous occasion, matron had had Aileen in a ground floor room and Aileen had tried to escape twice and so matron had moved her to a much nicer room on the first floor. And Jill arrived in the afternoon went to the old room, bed made up, room empty, roared through to matron's office: my mother's died and you haven't bothered to tell me. That was the attitude you know. Anyway, after Aileen did die seven years later, we exchanged letters of condolence. Every one of Jill's friends had written to say, we know how much you'd done for your mother, which drove her up the wall of course. And made me pretty angry because she really did not do a bloody thing. We bore the whole brunt of it. And we not only had my mamma to contend with, we had her dog and we had Sally's father living in the back end of our house as well. And he died shortly, shortly afterwards, shortly before.
Roy Fowler 15:35
Does Jill take after anyone in the family or she is she her own woman.
Jonathan Balcon 15:45
She's very much her own person. If you talk to people who are at school with Jill, and there are still a number around. They will tell you that at the age of 17, Cecil came down to lecture at Roedean and as he left Jill turned to the assembled company and said that is the man I'm going to marry. Mind you there are innumerable affairs in between. Mick took us all to Switzerland just after the war, it must have been in 1945. We actually flew out of Croydon I don't know if you have ever flown out of there.
Roy Fowler 16:25
I did. Yes indeed. Went to ...
Jonathan Balcon 16:27
You would be of an age which would remember it. But he chartered this ghastly aircraft. And we flew out from Croydon and there was a Norwegian pianist in the hotel we were staying called Erik Stokstad who fell madly in love with Jill and I'm sure it was reciprocated. Coming back quite interesting we had a different sort of aircraft we had a de havilland Rapide, which I leant against at Zurich airport and the pilot said for God's sake sake don't do that it's only made of fabric. Anyway, we had to land at Le Bourget to refuel and I don't know whether you remember this but it was just after a Dakota had taken off from Le Bourget, done a tight turn and ripped its bottom out on a factory chimney and the only two survivors were John Slater and his wife.
No. No recollection of that at all.
Well that was still sort of in our minds when we landed Le Bourget. Jill was always the rebel. Jill would defy Mick at every turn, knowingly, you know the famous story about her and von Werra. Do you know who von Werra was?
Roy Fowler 17:47
No, I'm not sure I do.
Jonathan Balcon 17:49
von Werra was a German fighter ace. He was the one who got away. He escaped from prison camp at Shap Well Hotel ...
Roy Fowler 17:58
I know the story, I didn't know the name.
Jonathan Balcon 17:59
He got across to Canada, got across to America and got shipped back to Germany. Jill and a whole lot of Rodean girls came down from Rodean, which was evacuated to Keswick to take their Oxford entrance. Standing on Oxford station before going back to Keswick up the far end of the station were two enormous British red caps. And between them, Jill said was the best looking man she'd ever seen in her life, quite obviously in German Air Force uniform. And they made a few inquiries and found out it was von Werra being shipped back to the Shap Wells Hotel, which was the English equivalent of Colditz Castle for officers. They somehow inveigeled their way into his compartment. He spoke absolutely perfect English, was enchanted to be spoken to by three English maidens quote unquote. They showed him their German papers they'd just taken and he translated them all for them. Now this story got into the hands of Christianson and Christianson rang my father up and said, Look, we'd like to publish this in the Express. And Father literally said, Chris, if you love me at all, don't, please it will look so bad. And the story was in fact suppressed, But it gives a fair illustration. There was an, I'd never told you this, I've told very few people about this. She never used any of the family advisors, financial, legal, or anything. She always went her own way. There was an outrageous row when prior to Nicholas Nickleby. All right?
Roy Fowler 19:53
The film.
Jonathan Balcon 19:54
The film in which she played Madeline Bray. She announced she was going to change her name and Mick hit the roof. She said the fact that she was a Balcon would stop people employing her. And he really got on his high horse and he said look if you are not proud of being my daughter, he said there's no hope for you - or words to that effect. That really started the rot between them. You're not in the sun are you?
Roy Fowler 20:26
It's moving around over here.
Jonathan Balcon 20:27
Well come over here.
Roy Fowler 20:29
Wow, okay, fine. I was alright for the moment. I keep an hour on it.
Jonathan Balcon 20:35
The day she appeared on the front page of the Evening Standard being cited as co-respondent in Cecil's divorce he burst into tears. And my mother said, Mick, I was there, my mother said Mick you have lived and worked all your life in an industry where adultery is second nature to some people. And yet, you cannot accept this. He said it doesn't happen in my family. He said she said it just has. The day Jill got married to Cecil she had a reception in the upstairs room at the Ivy. I don't know whether you would now it?
I remember the old Ivy yes.
Well, I went to the new Ivy recently, horrid, horrid people. Hal must have said something I don't know because he refused to come. And we were all up, I was 14 I seem to remember and Sean Day-Lewis mentions this in his book. Aileen and I not only went to the wedding, we went to the reception afterwards. And about three o'clock in the afternoon was several people standing around congratulating Jill and Cecil and there was a sudden hush and there standing in the door was Mick with Hal, and he walked across and he shook Cecil by the hand and he gave Jill a kiss and he walked away again. But that was how strongly he felt about it.
Roy Fowler 22:05
What then brought him there was he felt it was his duty?
Jonathan Balcon 22:09
Now Hal had said to him, this is a family occasion you've got to go shake, wish Jill well.
Roy Fowler 22:17
So much and no more
Jonathan Balcon 22:19
But she does ridiculous things. After she'd sold her house in Crooms Hill in Greenwich, you know, she bought a house without looking at it. And rang me up in a terrible state. She said, I bought this house, I never went to look at it, I've just been to see it, it's terrible. I said, I didn't know what to say. I thought nobody in their right mind buys a house without looking at it. She was bloody lucky because a week later she sold it for what she paid for it. And she was bloody lucky.
Roy Fowler 22:51
Well, indeed yes. Very strange way of going about things. Um mmm we're having all sorts of insights into the family. I suppose what I would like to put down what as far as we can is that period of the '60s now and Shepperton too, remember we were going to talk about Shepperton.
Jonathan Balcon 23:16
I know very little about the row with what I have always been known in our family as the 'revolting brothers' but I believe that they're known like that in the industry anyway arent they?
Roy Fowler 23:26
I think opinions vary depending on the time of day. They did some interesting things, they I don't think they're regarded or were regarded as particularly trustworthy in any respect.
Jonathan Balcon 23:39
Well I, I think they've made some marvelous films, particularly the Peter Sellers film the famous one
Roy Fowler 23:46
Indeed Yes.
Jonathan Balcon 23:48
I'm Alright Jack. I once got threatened by I think it was Roy, not John, with forming a cartel. I think Itold you this, did I not, no perhaps I didn't.
Roy Fowler 23:55
No we haven't done this one.
Jonathan Balcon 24:03
They came to me for a quote on an FPI insurance and I gave them a quotation. They went to three other brokers and got the same quote. And I said, Well, I'm sorry, I said it's a very restricted market and once we have a quote, we register it with our other broker. You're forming a cartel, it's a monopoly situation, I shall report you to the, well it wasn't the DTI in those days, or it was whatever it was, I don't whatever it was. I can't remember it now ...
Roy Fowler 24:33
It sounds a bit cartelish to register it and everyone says right that's the figure or ...
Jonathan Balcon 24:39
Roy wasn't so, it wasn't necessary, we weren't trying to stop competition. What we were trying to do was to say, look, it's a very restricted market this is the rate for this film. Take it or leave it.
Roy Fowler 24:52
It depends how you define cartel I guess then in that case
Jonathan Balcon 24:59
We didn't intend to form a cartel.
Roy Fowler 25:01
No of course not.
Jonathan Balcon 25:07
The one thing he was quite determined to do was to stop Sydney Box getting hold of Shepperton right. Sydney, this is stretching my mind a bit, as far as I know wanted to acquire Shepperton and sell it for development. Right?
Roy Fowler 25:29
Was it Sydney? I am very, very vague about the history of this time.. It could well, I thought Sydney was somewhat out of the picture. But I mean, who knows, the names I remember, first of all John Bentley, who was a property developer
Jonathan Balcon 25:45
I'll tell you about him in a minute.
Roy Fowler 25:46
Okay. But I can't remember quite the sequence of events.
Jonathan Balcon 25:50
He was an asset stripper.
Roy Fowler 25:51
Yeah. One of the early ones.
Jonathan Balcon 25:53
I don't think Bentley was involved because around a little later on, a little later on Tamasin suddenly appeared at Upper Parrock with John Bentley in tow. And it's the, I wasn't there but I heard this afterwards from Aileen, it's the only time Aileen said I've ever known him get up, say to Tamasin, can you come into the next room and say to her, Tamasin, if you cannot produce reasonable people to come to this house, will you please take him away now? And don't come again and threw him out. Wouldn't have him in the house. I don't think it was Bentley. I think Bentley came later. I think it was Sydney Box now I don't know the ins and outs. Did you know Neville Breeze at all?
Roy Fowler 26:42
No.
Jonathan Balcon 26:43
Neville was the sort of general manager of the studios for a time, sadly dead, lived in Ziele lovely man, ex-sailor, played cricket. Neville never really talked to me about it but the fact remains the Boultings, Goodman, father et al got together and they bought British Lion. Now I don't believe he was long enough there as chairman for them to make any films was he?
Roy Fowler 27:19
I don't know.
Jonathan Balcon 27:20
No, I honestly don't think so. All I know is there came a point when the Boultings saw some loophole in what had been done and saw that they could make monetary advantage out of it and did and used Lionel Goodman to to get their own way. And Lionel was in fact, I think a very unpleasant man and very suspect.
Arnold, that is.
Roy Fowler 27:44
Yes Arnold.
So this is why Sydney Gilliat was so reluctant to talk about it, they were all in it really ...
Jonathan Balcon 27:51
They were all in it together. And I think they used Mick in spite of his age unmercifully as a stepping stone to get their own way
Roy Fowler 28:00
As their front man
Jonathan Balcon 28:00
Yeah. That's my, I may be totally wrong about it.
Roy Fowler 28:04
Well as I said before, it was very significant it seemed to me that Sydney would not discuss the matter and could only read a prepared statement as it were.
Jonathan Balcon 28:12
Yeah and another curious thing Jill said to me, after Mick died, the year after he died I put a little thing in the Times saying Michael Balcon, how did I word it, it worded something like producer of many classics and loved by all and she rang me up and she said a lot of people hated him you know. I said I don't know no, how very odd, a lot of people disliked him intensely she said. There we are.
Roy Fowler 29:01
There may or may not be I tell you a very a curious thing in my experience going back to the Tufton Street plaque. I did a design, a very conventional design that just had Michael Balcon filmmaker, lived here from whatever the dates were. And Kevin Brownlow saw it, the draft, and said oh, he wasn't a filmmaker, film producer, I think he insisted it should be but filmmaker bothered, in other in other words, according to him about his ability ...
Jonathan Balcon 29:45
No technical ability.
Roy Fowler 29:46
Well that he didn't actually make films somehow he arranged for films to be made.
Jonathan Balcon 29:50
I suppose you know. I suppose I can't remember what the wording on the English Heritage one is I've got it upstairs.
Roy Fowler 29:57
Where is that going?
Jonathan Balcon 29:58
It's going on the front office at Ealing, right, which I understand Ealing Council have listed Grade 1. I also understand you probably knew this it is the oldest working film studio in the world.
Roy Fowler 30:13
It goes back to
Jonathan Balcon 30:15
1902
Roy Fowler 30:16
Which was what Barkers wasn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 30:17
Yeah. As as, as George Perry said to me, he said they want to list all the sounds stages. Grade 1 or grade 2 and I, but he said, I've said to them, how the hell can you list a lighting gantry? And I said, well, George, that's up to Ealing Council, not up to us. But I said, as long as the facade is there the front office bit, I mean, that is the bit that everybody will remember.
Roy Fowler 30:44
Yes, I don't see how you can take the technical facilities unless you're going to make it a museum.
Jonathan Balcon 30:48
Yeah which they are not because they're going to make film there.
Roy Fowler 30:51
It's a working studio. One hopes.
Jonathan Balcon 30:54
They going to make one or two alterations I gather. Well, fair enough. God knows.
Roy Fowler 30:59
The external fabric really is all that you need isn't?
Jonathan Balcon 31:01
As long as it doesn't become a housing estate. You see David Bill told me and I don't know how true, that White Lodge at the back was going to be renamed Michael Balcon House and was going to become the National Film School. Well, now of course, we all know that that was kyboshed I think by Putnam and the National Film School's gone back to Beaconsfield hasn't it?
Roy Fowler 31:24
Yes and I don't know why they didn't take Ealing because I would have thought it would be ideal for them to have had Ealing.
Jonathan Balcon 31:30
Well you know I don't know either.
Roy Fowler 31:34
There are very strange murky shenanigans that always go on politically ...
Jonathan Balcon 31:38
I mean, I might put it to you Roy I never understand why Putnam got a peerage nor do I understand why Dickie Attenborough got a peerage..
Roy Fowler 31:45
Well Dickie I can understand to the extent that he is so bloody famous, and he's got his fingers in every single pie. I suppose that's true of Attenborough too, I mean Putnam too. But whether or not they're worthy of it is entirely another matter.
Jonathan Balcon 32:02
Dickie is such an enchanting person. You can't not, you can't be angry with him. I mean, I wrote to Dickie a few Christmases ago, after one of my more vitriolic BAFTA efforts, and said, I feel the time has come you and I must have a rapproachement. And he wrote back and said, Johnny, darling, what do we need a rapprochement for we've never fallen out.
Roy Fowler 32:22
Right. Well I'm still curious to pin down the '60s, if there is anything to say about that ... you keep wandering off from ...
Jonathan Balcon 32:34
You see, I keep wandering off the '60s because I really wasn't that closely involved. I was involved ...
Roy Fowler 32:40
OK
Jonathan Balcon 32:40
... let me just explain to you I left Hobbs Saville in 1969 and set up on my own with the help of £2000 quid from Mick. The only problem was I didn't realise I'd set up with a crook and I eventually lost my 2000 quid. And after that, I became employed again by other people. But Mick never lingered on this he just said to me that I could have told you that man was a bad character, you know, so it's a pity you didn't tell me at the time [LAUGHTER] Mick was a bit, you know, what I call post natal [LAUGHTER].
1960, between 1965 and '67 I was a captain in my regiment. I spent those two years fighting a losing battle to keep the Territorial Army in existence and it was finally defeated by Harold Wilson by one vote in the House of Commons. In 1967 I fell under the chop by which time I got my majority, I got my TD. And so what did I do, I went off and became a Special Constable [LAUGHTER] because I wanted to wear my metal ribbon on something. Sally, of course, said I had a uniform fetish [LAUGHTER]
Roy Fowler 33:48
It sounds it.
Jonathan Balcon 34:01
But don't forget, I had three female daughters, a female wife, three female dogs, two female donkeys, and two female cats.
Roy Fowler 34:10
So you yearned for a masculine society.
Jonathan Balcon 34:12
And the one thing I used to do when I came into the house every evening was put all the loo seats up. [LAUGHTER] Now when I mean that that's exaggerating so really the '60s and my family was growing up I was trying to earn enough money to keep us all. I obviously kept in close touch with Mick.
Roy Fowler 34:32
You did go to see them?
Jonathan Balcon 34:33
Oh my dear, do you know, for, we did have one monumental row. Shortly after I was married, we were married and for 18 years, less than that probably he refused to come to our house but every Sunday, every Sunday solemnly we drove the family across me and we had lunch with them. In the end, I don't know who said what to him, a number of people said he was behaving extremely stupidly towards me over this particular incident, I'll describe what the incident was in a minute. And we were all sweet and charming and lovely and he came before he died he came lots of times to us. What happened was when we were first married, we hadn't got anywhere to live and he gave us a cottage on the farm, which we had done up. And I can't remember where we or what we were doing, or we we were over, I think, at the Grey House which wasn't ours, we were staying with Sally's great aunt, because our middle daughter was about to be born in Pembury hospital here. Aileen rang me up and said, er, we've just sacked one lot of servants and we've got some Spaniards moving can they move into your house? And I quite rightly said no, if you don't mind. And they took tremendous umbrage at this. But they felt it was their right as their cottage, although it was our cottage quote, unquote. Sally's father,in spite of what I asked him not to wrote quite a rather silly letter to Mick saying not to upset us. And Mick took umbrage against him, which was why he never came to us for that lengthy period. But I mean, it never really meant anything because, as I say, we solemnly took the children over there at every opportunity,
Roy Fowler 36:43
Was he as touchy, and as possibly self-centred as you make him sound or ...
Jonathan Balcon 36:48
He was inclined to be in private yes.
Roy Fowler 36:51
And did he relish power? I mean, did he enjoy being the head of a studio?
Jonathan Balcon 36:55
I think, so. Oh I think so.
Roy Fowler 37:00
Was it control of the people or their destinies or the project or whatever?
Jonathan Balcon 37:04
It was the projects I think. I don't think he relished control over people necessarily. Frankly, domestically, I thought he was a bad employer. I thought he treated his people not awfully well. Though they were very loyal to him.
Roy Fowler 37:19
They stayed?
Jonathan Balcon 37:20
They stayed. He was very good with the widow of our old gardener. And when he died, he willed that she should live in her cottage to her death, free of rent.
Roy Fowler 37:34
It's all a bit feudal isn't it?
Jonathan Balcon 37:36
Oh my dear he was inclined to be terribly feudal. I mean, he really he was, he was the English gent monque in many sense.
Roy Fowler 37:46
Right. So in a sense, he had adopted a way of life.
Jonathan Balcon 37:49
Yeah, I mean, he loved walking around the farm with a twelve bore under his arm but he never bloody well could hit anything.
When you talk about butlers for example.
He rang me up one day and he said, Jimmy Waters, Jimmy was a great character who lived across the valley to us, Jimmy Waters wants to use our farm for part of his shoot. He doesn't know what rent I want he suggested a case of champagne. And I said, Mick, don't be bloody silly, don't have a case of champagne. Give him ME. Oooh he said I never thought of that. And I used to get eight or ten days shooting a year for nothing. I mean, you know, two or three thousands pounds worth of shooting for absolutely nothing. And Jimmy was only too pleased to have, the fact that I don't shoot now is I can't see very well anymore. But I mean, he enjoyed that, he enjoyed that he enjoyed also the pheasants I brought him [LAUGHTER] But yes, he was very feudal in some ways. He left the running of the farm to my mother except the financial side he took control of
Roy Fowler 38:59
The farm was was what dairy or ...
Jonathan Balcon 39:02
Oh yes, we had a herd of of 120 Friesians and their runners. And we went off to Maidstone market one day and we bought a pen of 30 Kent sheep. And they were more profitable than anything we did. The sheep were terribly profitable.
Roy Fowler 39:02
So it was a paying concern.
Jonathan Balcon 39:22
It wasn't paying terribly well. In the end, he got fed up with running it. And we had a dispersal sale he let the farm to a chap called Colin Clark who lived in Forest Row. And when he died, the executor said to me you it's a choice between keeping the Border Television shares and selling the farm or keeping the farm and selling the Border Television share. And I said well, I happen to have faith in Border Television we're getting 4000 a year in rent from Colin Clark. I said every time we try and put the rent up, he goes to arbitration. I said let for God's sake sell him the farm. So I sold him the farm got 500 quid maker for it which was in those days not bad for tenanted land you know. And I made the right decision there.
Roy Fowler 40:12
We've got another minute or two on this side.
Jonathan Balcon 40:15
But to go back to the '60s Yes, I suppose ...
Roy Fowler 40:19
Did he talk about any of the characters Tony Richardson, for example, or Karel Reisz ?
Jonathan Balcon 40:25
No, he was involved with two friends of mine. Who were the Shipman brothers do you remember Alfie Shipman of Shipman and King?
Roy Fowler 40:32
Indeed, right.
Jonathan Balcon 40:33
Well, Alfie was another tycoon who kept his two boys on literally on 30 bob a week, suddenly upped and died and the boys found themselves worth 2 million each overnight you know. Kenneth went completely off the rails, in the nicest possible way, went in for witchcraft and all that sort of thing and sexy films with Guido Cohen at Twickenham. Gerald, who was my friend, was very much more conventional and very woof woof. And Mick was very fond of those two boys. They got involved in Bryanston, I don't think they did very much. Maxwell Setton I knew
Roy Fowler 41:20
You said before you distrusted him.
Jonathan Balcon 41:21
I never trusted Max. I don't know why there was just something about he seemed slick to me. Then I wasn't terribly fond of slick people, you know. Who else did I, what was the name of a chap who married not ...
Roy Fowler 41:41
While you cogitate I'm going to ...
End of Side 6
