Harold Myers

Alan Lawson  00:03
The copyright of this recording is vested in the ACTT History Project

Sid Cole  00:10
Harold Myers, film journalist, correspondent for variety, interviewed by Sid Cle on the 23rd of July, 1989 at his home in Rottingdean side one.

Sid Cole  00:35
Tell me, when have you got a introductory you've done that well. How would you like to say when you were born and where general family background? Well,

Harold Myers  00:47
briefly, I was born in Notting Hill, 19 12 my parents were refugees from Russia, victims of the pogroms. My father came over first and followed 18 months, two years later by my mother. My father was a journeyman tailor. We lived in something approaching a slum in the back waters of Notting Hill, and it was apparently I was a kid with my parents. It was a hard struggle, and when the first world war came, my father, who had not been naturalized, was given the option of either becoming a naturalized British subject and serving in the army, or going back to Russia, as he had a wife and family here, it wasn't much of an option, and he went into the Army, and that's briefly how I came to be in this world.

Sid Cole  01:51
Didn't realize that. Did you have any other brothers or sisters? I had two

Harold Myers  01:56
sisters, both of whom and they are dead.

Sid Cole  02:00
What about what? How long was your father involved in the war?

Speaker 1  02:04
Well he was called up in 1916 and came out on April Fool's Day. 1919

Sid Cole  02:13
did he actually go in to go to France? No, no, he was in the Middle East. In the Middle East, yeah, yeah. So you were still quite young

Speaker 1  02:20
when he came back. Where did we go to school? In Notting Hill to start with, and sort of later on in Hammersmith. What school in Hammersmith is that the Latimer a

Sid Cole  02:35
Latimer Upper used to play them. When I was at Westminster City. We used to play each other at football. So how did what was yours? The start of your working life after you left?

Speaker 1  02:49
The start of my working life was I wanted to be a journalist, and things were pretty bad at the time, but I eventually got a job on a trade paper has nothing to do with the film industry it was  about the building industry. I didn't like it very much. It was rather dull, but it was a foot and I was earning a few bob, but I subsequently got a job on a freelance basis with the Kentish Times series, I went to Sidcup every day, catching the the workmans train before 730 from Charing Cross. I couldn't afford to go in digs and b I couldn't afford to pay the full fare. But then I was 1616. I got some basic training there. And during that period when I was learning something about the craft, going to night, school, learning shorthand, I came to a decision that there was not much future in journalism at that time, unless one specialized or unless one was exceptionally brilliant, I knew I wasn't exceptionally brilliant, far from it, so I looked around for areas in which to specialize. And there were three industries that were developing very rapidly. One was the motor industry, the other was the aircraft industry, and the third was the film industry. Well, I tried the motor industry, and there you had to have a technical knowledge, and the same applies to the aircraft industry. So it came to the it boiled down to it had to be the film industry. And this is what it was. It took me a long time, patient, slogging away for the best part of two years, and I got a first break of a temporary holiday job at the cinema, the Daily Cinema, it was run by Sam Harris. That was only a holiday job, but it was a foot and subsequently, through friends. Is I got a break with a Daily Film Enter. I joined there in 1935 who was the editor of the Yeah, that was 1935 and I stayed there until the outbreak of war, and I went back after the war for a short period.

Sid Cole  05:20
Yeah, so, but did you have any particular interest in films before you had made that cut?

Speaker 1  05:26
I loved going to the cinema. So every few spare copers I had, I went the cinema, and as I matured in age, and so a little bit more money in my pocket, I could be seen very frequently on a Sunday afternoon, queuing up outside the Empire or the ADAMA, as it was then, to see what was going on. Sometime paying as much as two or four pence to get in.

Sid Cole  05:52
What was your impression in those early trade papers that you worked for? What I asked that was, there was times I've heard stories, perhaps even before your time. I don't know that was where there were certain connections between some of the reviews and some of the advertising.

Speaker 1  06:09
That is putting it very politely, very polite, they bought a good review. Quite simply, you'd buy a good review by taking a fair amount of advertising. And this was brought home to me fairly early on in my career at the Daily film Endow  when I was assigned to review a certain film, and Mr. Fedman called me in to say, it's a very good picture. You're going to see Myers. So I said, really, have you seen it? Don't be bloody stupid. They got four pages of advertising tomorrow. They were blackmail  sheets. They were a wonderful training. ground credit for that, and we did cover the news for the tiniest of staffs. There were four editorial staff of four to bring out a daily paper. In those days pre war, there were always two night trade shows that had to be covered. One person had to go to the printers to put the paper to bed. And there was the editor, I'm not pregnant, the real working editor who didn't do any of these things. So the three of us, are the reporters and subs, were out every night. We were working more or less from 10 o'clock in the morning at 10 o'clock at night. It got so bad, I mean, after a prolonged period that I, as clerk of the NUJ chapel, went in to see the Fedman and said, we really must have somebody else on the staff. And he was surprisingly most sympathetic, he said. But what you don't understand is that we lost about 8000 pounds last year, and afraid we can't do it. Well, I came back and reported to a chapel meeting, and we were all extremely dubious about this, so we organized a company search. And yeah, I mean, there was a loss of 8000 pounds. The year before, there'd been a profit of 52,000 pounds. That year there was a profit of 44,000 pounds. Hence the loss of 8000 pounds. So we went back with this information, and terrible rows broke out, and I got fired on a flimsy excuse, very flimsy. The NUJ intervened, everybody on the staff, the reporter said, Unless I was reinstated. They would all stop work. And after two days, Fedman caved in and called me, and he said, No, the net result of this shocking business is I've lost your services for two days, and I've got to pay you.

Harold Myers  06:55
Did I suppose your job entailed going to studios, though, did it as well as

Speaker 1  08:52
Not a great deal I was made in charge of political issues and labour issues the way I became involved with ACT in its early days.

Sid Cole  09:17
When did you first? Can you remember your first contact with ACT?

Speaker 1  09:21
Oh, yeah, somebody introduced me to Thorold  Dickinson. And Thorold  said to me, though we've got a new secretary at ACT, there had been a man there called Captain Cope, and believe his name was, but he's gone, or he's going, and we got George Elvin, and I'd like you to meet him and do an interview with him. And it was arranged after a little while, and I went, was taken by Thorold  up the back stairs of Piccadily Mansions  because I they said that he thought the bailiffs  were out in the front. I. Yeah, and I was introduced to George, and George said, Well, I'm sorry, but I don't give interviews to the capitalist trade press. I know they will distort everything I say, so I put my hand in my hip pocket, pulled out my N U, J card said, Yeah, look, I'm fully paid up to the end of the year. I'm as good a trade unions Unionist as you are now talk. He did, and we became bosom friends.

Sid Cole  10:29
Now, then you went on for a long time being very good friend of the Union. When was it that you you did have a period when you edited their magazine? Well, that was after the war. That was That wasn't until after the movie. So what anything else outstanding in those years prior to the Second World War? Can you remember?

Speaker 1  10:50
Well, I was heavily involved in reporting on the films bill, the Quota Act, as we call it, the 1938 one. I went to every session of the Committee stage and through the house, and even produced a booklet on it for Daily Film Renter at the end of it, and got to know quite a few MPs who were heavily involved in the film industry and served me in good stead later on, when I was in the army, one of them Tom, I think this surname  now, he was Minister of Agriculture in the coalition labour coalition government in wartime, came down to the area where I was staying. I have a station, and there was a local exhibitor whom I knew very well, Abe Freeman, who owned the cinema in Minehead, and I used to go there. And one Sunday evening, they were having a charity show, and I went with Abe Freeman and his family sitting in the front row. And this minister came over to me and said, Oh, hello. However, nice to see you. I hope you're well, etc, my commanding officer was sitting three or four rows back, very impressed. I'm not only in the front row, but the guest of honour came over and called me ways by my Christian name.

Sid Cole  12:18
How long are you with the Daily Film Renter.

Speaker 1  12:21
Well I joined then in 1930 1933 and I served with them until I went the army in 1940 then I came back in 1946 re joined them in 1946 and at the end of the first year back, I went to Fredman and said that I need desperately, I need to have a rise, because having been working for a year, I find I got this money in the bank now, rather than I had when I came out of the Army, so obviously I just can't make ends meet. And he asked me how much I wanted. I said, I'm getting 12 pounds a week now, and I can't manage I want 15. So instead, he gave me 15 pound a week. He gave me three months notice, a cheque on the spot.

Sid Cole  13:17
I suppose originally you because you got your job back, because there was legislation.

Speaker 1  13:21
He hated my guts, you see, the ones while you were in the army. And did he pay you any money at all? He paid me after about two years or 18 months, two years, he paid me a pound a week.

Sid Cole  13:38
So when did your contact with Variety start ?

Harold Myers  13:41
Well it was 1948

Sid Cole  13:44
and how did that come about?

Speaker 1  13:49
They were looking for somebody to take. They originally had an American who got killed in an accident just towards the end of the war, and he had an assistant who was due to take over, but the thought of the job was apparently was too much for him. He cracked up, and he was in and out of mental homes. So the editor wrote to various friends of his, asking them to make suggestions who might take over, who might be suitable candidates. And two people nominated me. One was Sam Eckman at MGM, and the other was Ben Henry, who was closely connected with the Hyams  brothers and a great personal friend of the editors that happened. And then the editor came over, and I was the first person to be interviewed, and that was on a Monday morning, and at the end of the week he I had to call him up, and he said, You better come over and have a drink, see when you can start. And that was it. Right, what were you doing in the meantime? Because I had a temporary job. Well, not temporary, but I didn't know. I worked for my brother in law, and it was impossible, not in the business at all, but at that time, I was already editing the ACT journal, so I kept, yeah, the editorship, the of the Journal  came about very simply after the war was over, but whilst before I'd been de mobbed, George Elvin wrote to me to say that the executive had decided that they got to have a paid editor part time, and if I'd be interested, they wouldn't advertise the job until I came back. So I went back and said, Yes, I would be interested. And yes,

Sid Cole  15:46
but before then, and George Ken Gordon and I used to do the thing. And as the union was growing, beginning to grow in those days, the we needed someone

Speaker 1  15:58
I had to catch up on two issues that hadn't come out.

Sid Cole  16:04
Yes, how did you get to know Sam Eckman? to the point where he recommended you to Variety, because that was because, because of you come particularly well?

Harold Myers  16:12
Yes, I used to reporting meetings and so on interviews.

Sid Cole  16:19
So then what did? What was your original assignment, the first, when you first started with Variety. I mean, did you just cover the UK?

Harold Myers  16:26
Yeah, I was the bureau chief. Did

Sid Cole  16:30
you have any staff with you

Harold Myers  16:33
at all? I inherited one woman. What was she secretary? Well, she was laughingly. Called the secretary.

Sid Cole  16:46
She wanted, she expected to do she'd do

Speaker 1  16:48
Well she looked after the money, sort of she was hoping she can come to but she'd held the fort for a long time, and she was loyal and honest, and they kept her on until so you covered all the trade shows and openings of everything I did, films, theatre. You did theatre as well. Yeah, night clubs and television.

Sid Cole  17:10
Did you have to, this is a point that Alan raised when we were talking on the way down. Did you have to have a glossary of the strange language that Variety sometimes use?

Speaker 1  17:21
Yes, but one that you picked up, it wasn't a printed one, and I found it so easy after a matter of weeks that I subsequently said to a friend of mine who asked me about Varieties, I said, the trouble now is, if anybody was to offer me a job on a paper like the Times I couldn't write straight,

Sid Cole  17:45
can you give an example of the most, sort of, most extreme Varietyese that you ever composed yourself?

Speaker 1  17:55
Oh, that's a tall one. Well, one that comes to mind reviewing a belly dancer at the Pigalle night club. And I said she makes, she makes with the hips, and something else  I really don't remember, but it all comes fairly naturally. It's amazing. Nobody was more surprised than I was how easily it came about.

Sid Cole  18:23
Well it's very at its best. It was very vivid and very succinct.

Speaker 1  18:27
Yeah actually a lot of the Varieties has come into the language. I mean, things like so and so, giving somebody the brush off started in Variety. I think disc jockey started in Variety, and a lot of the language started in there. Yeah, I mean things like boffer and wham and all these things

Sid Cole  18:53
I always still does amaze me how you can fill a paper like that of that size. Every every week

Speaker 1  19:01
there's more left on the cutting room floor. As you film, people would say, next it goes into the paper. It's incredible the amount of stuff that comes in. I remember that there are offices more or less worldwide, plus stringers, hundreds or a couple  100 stringers, 100 in the United States alone and others scattered around the rest of the world, offices far apart as London and Australia.

Sid Cole  19:31
Did you get sorry? Were the stringers in England at all?

Harold Myers  19:35
Only One In Scotland, Gordon Erwin in Glasgow, was going

Sid Cole  19:40
to ask you, was, did you have a byline? I believe it's called. I mean, did you were you were your contribution signed from the word go,

Speaker 1  19:48
if the story, no, if the story merited  it, you got a byline?

Sid Cole  19:51
What was it on? What did you have a special name?

Speaker 1  19:56
Well yeah, my special name was Harold. Myers for film reviews, it had to be a four letter number. That was because the founder of the paper was a man called Simon Silverman, and he signed reviews called Sime, and his number two was the man who appointed me the editor who was Abel  Green, and he signed himself Able. So that established a president you had a four letter non de plume  So my wife concocted Myro, m, y, r, O was a combination of Myers and Harold. And it was strange. I used to get correspondence from all parts of the world addressed to Myro Variety London

Sid Cole  20:42
when did you extend operations outside the United Kingdom?

Speaker 1  20:47
Well the owner of Variety, the grandson of this Simon Silverman, inherited the paper, but he was still at school, and when he finished at university, he got conscripted into the army and served in Germany, but came over several times to England for leave, and we became very friendly, and he invited me over. Eventually, when he got back to visit the states, my first trip, that was in 57 and when I was there, we had several meetings and so on and wondering how to expand the influence of the paper in Europe. We had a part time office in Paris and a part time office in Rome, but that was about all. And as a result of these discussions, they appointed me European manager with a brief to go around to all the major European festivals, get to know the people involved in the European film industry, and also to devise a formula for special editions that would attract European support. The the one that made my name and made Variety's name in Europe was the special issue we bring out at the time of the Cannes Film Festival, which officially is known as the International Film annual. But everybody calls it the Cannes issue, the first issue in 1958 in it contained about 32 pages of advertising. Now it contains about 400 500 pages of advertising is actually turned over on one or two occasions, exceeded 600 pages in one edition.

Sid Cole  23:00
So how big a staff throughout Europe was there?

Harold Myers  23:03
At that time. There was me. I had a by this time, I had an assistant, a junior, and we had this part time man in Paris and a part time man in Rome, and that was it.

Sid Cole  23:17
And that involved an enormous amount of traveling around, presumably,

Harold Myers  23:20
Well not so much to start with, but gradually it built up and built up, and I was spending more than half, well, about half the year away from the office. I went to the Canes  Film Festival for 30 consecutive years. I finally gave it up last year I wrote to the owner of a paper and said, I've done it for 30 years. The novelty has worn off. Unless you desperately need me. Can I bow out and I bowed out.

Sid Cole  23:55
Had you got bored with the festival by then?

Harold Myers  23:59
Yeah, it was. It had rather changed. It has changed so much, a variety of change, so much. In the early days, I used to go there with my colleagues from Paris in my own just the three of us. Now, they send about 20 people down there and everything, every tin pot, little thing, is covered, and the owners sons come round and trying to rule the roost, or the hell with it. Who needs this?

Sid Cole  24:28
Did you get to see all the well, you couldn't, I suppose, see all the films, both in the festival and sort of, what do they call it? All Concours?

Harold Myers  24:36
yeah. Well, first of all, there was, there was the festival. There were four or five subdivisions, sidebar events at the festival, and there was a film market, which varies from about 500 to 700 films. So I reckon about three a day. Was as many as I was prepared to take. I. So I didn't always do that, because in between time, we have a daily paper in Hollywood that had to be serviced, and the weekly in New York had to be serviced. And in between seeing films and writing reviews, one had to write news stories as well, do interviews or other things, never more than three

Sid Cole  25:19
You must have had quite a good constitution, physically, as was mentally. To cover all that you had to cover. Well, I could take my dick off very well.

Harold Myers  25:33
When you say you had a daily to service in Hollywood, it's called Daily Variety. It's been running since the 1930s

Sid Cole  25:42
amazing. Yeah, well, Silverstone must have been a very remarkable is it Silverstone? Silverman, Silverman, and very remarkable chap to launch that.

Harold Myers  25:53
Well what happened was he was working as a variety critic for the one of the New York papers, I think it was the Telegraph, and I wouldn't swear to it, and he gave a hostile review to somebody, and because he wasn't prepared to alter it, they fired him. And he struggled. He raised the money. He raised two and a half $1,000 and told to start variety and made it a condition that nobody's that no reviewers, review should be tampered with by management or the evidence. And I must say, one good thing that still provide us today,

Sid Cole  26:37
that's very good. Yeah, yes, typically since compared with your background when you started?

Harold Myers  26:42
Yeah completely different world.

Sid Cole  26:45
What would you say is the, what are your outstanding sort of memories of your time when you were with Variety or with the industry, your contact with the industry generally? In fact,

Harold Myers  27:00
I it outstanding is rather good There were so many varied experiences I had, traveling and opening up new spheres of influence for Variety. There was a time a few years ago when I was better known in Tokyo than  I am in London today because I've been out of the picture. I was covering Japan and the whole of the Far East for Variety for quite some time.

Sid Cole  27:32
Did you meet some of those outstanding Japanese directors that are very have come to our attention.

Harold Myers  27:38
The only one that I met was the outstanding one was Kurosawa.

Sid Cole  27:41
He's the one that did throne and blood. Yeah, yeah, terrific. What were your impressions of him?

Harold Myers  27:48
Well it was extremely difficult. One of these things through an interpreter, and he wasn't terribly forthcoming. My impression of him is based on his films, which I more than the actual interview. Did you ever did you see him actually at work in the studio? No, he had a press conference at the first Tokyo Film Festival, one of his films. I'm trying to remember the title, based on the Shakespearean play. And were shown at the festival, and he had a press conference held out in the country at a hotel where he was staying.

Sid Cole  28:28
He was the only one of those directors to any of the Japanese studios. Yeah, the same as everywhere else presumably

Harold Myers  28:41
Yeah same in the Soviet Union. The studios were the same as everywhere else.

Sid Cole  28:46
Who did you meet there in the Soviet Union in terms of well known directors?

Harold Myers  28:51
Well on my last trip, I was there twice a couple of years ago, I met Kumov, who is the head of the Union, and I met Abuladze the man who did Repentance, and a woman in Georgia. what was  her name? Hopefully it'll come to me later. I can't think at the moment.

Sid Cole  29:17
And did you then see some of the pictures that had been in these last visits, or some of the pictures that had been kept in cold storage down the years? Did they impress you? Well,

Harold Myers  29:34
Well the one that merely impressed me was the Commissar. Some of the others were interesting. We're not all that great.

Sid Cole  29:43
No one has the impression from reading some of the comments that perhaps they were, well, not justified in being put on the shelf. No, they weren't. They weren't very outstanding. No,

Harold Myers  29:56
I think there aren't any films now left  on the shelf. As far as I know. I shouldn't. Think so.

Sid Cole  30:02
What about your contacts with ACT and ACTT as it became? Do you recall any outstanding contact there during those later years? I mean, when we had strikes and things

Harold Myers  30:17
Well when you had the the repair and dispatch strike. I was still editor of the journal, and I went out with George Elvin  Ralph Bond  on not sure whether you were there or not all night. picket  at on the North Circular Road. Yeah, and no. Also the people the film transport union organization that the people who dispatching the films, yeah, yeah, and it was film dispatch,

Sid Cole  30:53
wasn't it was cool, yeah, yeah. Well, you had happy, very happy relations with the union even after that, when you were no longer on these, oh yes, because you got

Harold Myers  31:06
friendship with George Elvin and other people that I had met and ACT continued with yourself. Thorold  Dickinson, Ralph Bond, Bessie Bond and many others i Hmm.

Sid Cole  31:23
And did you tell me about your general feeling about the as it were, the kind of pictures that have been made during the time that you've worked for Variety, because you've covered an enormous period of development in film making, haven't you in your professionals?

Harold Myers  31:40
Yeah some interesting things, particularly in the in regard to censorship. I remember the Hays officer was commonly called, the United States did not allow a married couple to be photographed in bed. They had to have  twin beds. And suddenly one that, one day I went to see a film. There was a married couple in bed together, and this became the front page news story. In fact, I sold it to David. I think it was David Dil? the Express. I forgot my pay me a pittance for it. And then I remember Arthur Watkins, when he was Secretary the British Board of Film Censors , saying, well, we can go so far. I don't mind showing you some of this woman's tits and so on, but when it comes to pubic hair, we've got to draw the line. Well, I wasn't, must have been a very short one,

Sid Cole  32:44
because it was censorship. I think people found began to feel that censorship was pretty idiotic. Yeah, you know the, I think it was quoted in the the journal, I don't it was during your time, an example of a French surrealist film which the censor totally rejected, because, on the grounds that the film appears to have no meaning, but if it has a meaning, it is doubtless obscene. And there was that kind of idiocy. Wasn't there about so and it hasn't. The absence of the weakening , the loosening of censorship hasn't inundated the screen with total pornography.

Harold Myers  33:25
Is the language that the biggest area of change. I think I mean, almost every any four letter word in the book is acceptable now. And I know the I went to see a film quite recently that was using quite a few of the more popular four letter words. And it was 15, so another one was PG, so they're not taken very seriously, no, by the censors anymore.

Sid Cole  33:55
No, I don't think they are. And I think anyhow, there's, there'll be a period, I think with this period of indulgence in those words will probably come to an end, and people will stop using them, because they lose their force anyway after a time. What about the sort of general presentation of films, technically and that sort of thing? What do you think of the most important things that have happened during your time?

Harold Myers  34:18
Number one, colour and the wide screen, the bigger screens, the much improved standard of photography, where you get wonderful in depth photography nowadays, which was absent, particularly many pre war films and the big action films that, I mean, I personally don't like them, but from Indiana Jones and Batman, not my cup of tea at all. But they do take a tremendous amount of money as they. Unbelievable.

Sid Cole  35:00
Yes, it's interesting. The cinemas coming back in quite a big way, isn't it?

Harold Myers  35:07
Oh yeah in the United States, I mean, it's overwhelming when you get a film like Indian Jones taking, I think, about 100 million in its first week. Quite ridiculous. And it's reflecting here new cinemas are opening in this country,

Sid Cole  35:23
and you see people queuing, which

Harold Myers  35:28
in this area. So Cannon have got a four clicks, and Odeon had five. They just within  the last month, added a new one, made it six. So they must be doing well. We have one art house, so called the Duke of Yorks, which shows many of the films you wouldn't otherwise see when we first moved here, the Film Institute had a cinema in Brighton, but within about a month of our arrival here, before they tell us even to go , there it folded.

Alan Lawson  36:03
Why do you think there is this resurgence?

Harold Myers  36:07
Well, the

Alan Lawson  36:09
is it this is becoming less satisfied?

Harold Myers  36:11
I would think so. Yeah, the television is, I think people like to see the big films on the big screen,

Harold Myers  36:24
and also, if the age of the people who go in the main the 18 to 30 fives, I remember on one assignment I have for the Daily Film Renter , sort of going around in various parts of the country, seeing how people reacted To sort of given films and what the business was like. And I went to one cinema somewhere that I really don't remember, where they had double seats in the circle, and these were the dearest seats in the house. And by 530 you couldn't get one. Whatever was showing. It was two pennorth  of the dark. In other words, yes, I

Sid Cole  37:03
remember the Yeah. I can remember those seats, not from personal participation in them. But I remember on a preview when I was at Ealing studios, held  up in the in Lancashire, Bradford, or somewhere cinema which had those kind of seats  in it. Yeah. But I think, as you were just saying, obviously, people have got, I think a generation now has got so used to television that they want to get out of the place, out of the house anyhow, because watching television is no longer any kind of an event as it was when it started, whereas going to the cinema people realize, again, is an event? Absolutely, yeah. What about television itself? Did you review television in your years? Oh, yes, yeah, I thought you did. Yeah, that's more difficult. It's a different kind of reviewing, isn't it, because if you review a theatre piece or a film, people can go and see it, whereas most of the time you're reviewing television already gone.

Harold Myers  38:04
The purpose of the review was, was quite different. I mean, its  wasn't a question of affecting the box office? it's suitability or saleability for foreign markets. Aha. In fact, it was the BBC, a man called Eric Fauci. It was a BBC producer called me up one day, said he'd like to meet me for a drink. So I got a great idea. So we met for a drink, and he said, Look, you do films abroad. You do in the theatre, you do plays abroad. What about television plays abroad? So I said, That's a great idea, Eric. But the trouble is, I mean, I don't know whether our people will accept it. I might be able to persuade him, but I don't have a television set. This was, oh yes. Very much. He said, Well, we can resolve the question of television set, if you can resolve the other one. And I got my television set and he got his reviews

Harold Myers  39:13
yeah, and your paper, Variety who the editor, was quite happy.

Harold Myers  39:15
Oh yeah. And, I mean, to this day, they do sort of television reviews from all parts of the world.

Alan Lawson  39:29
That was a BBC set you

Harold Myers  39:32
had it was, it came from the Morris agent, the William Morris Agency, provided by the BBC. This would be when? When did television come back after the war came back?

Sid Cole  39:47
Came back 46 Yeah, television was 55

Harold Myers  39:50
No, this should be for independent television. It would have been about 49 or 50 Yeah, you know, did you well? The. He was doing a play. The reason why he was so anxious, he was doing an Elmo rRce play called Counselor at Law, which was done live. I reviewed it, but I reviewed it by standing in the wings at Ally Pally while it was being performed.

Alan Lawson  40:19
They did it twice Thursday and repeat on Sundays,

Harold Myers  40:23
on Sunday night. Yeah,

Sid Cole  40:24
live in both cases, because strange accidents used to happen sometimes on live things, but you went on doing that, you must have had the most amazingly crowded schedules in your working life. How? Yes, and when you were covering everything throughout Europe,

Harold Myers  40:43
Well I didn't cover editorially throughout Europe. I was administering administrator. I covered something, but

Sid Cole  40:51
we still covered some things. I mean,

Harold Myers  40:54
Of course, was another thing. But as we became more involved, I appointed more and more stringers, yeah, sure, some of whom became full time correspondents afterwards.

Sid Cole  41:06
But did you get to see, you know, famous visit, famous theaters like the Berliner Ensemble or anything like that. You know, the Brecht No, no, I thought you might have so then you lived in Italy for a while, didn't you? Yeah, I was sick.

Harold Myers  41:25
I was sick, and I stopped working full time, and I was so busy going to and from hospital that opportunity,

Sid Cole  41:37
what did your How did your employers react on Variety to yourself?

Harold Myers  41:43
Well I gave up my job on the understanding that I would be available for assignments as a way there was up to it. And I mean, they appointed somebody else to take my job as European manager and head of the London office. When did that happen? 19 January, 1967

Alan Lawson  42:06
you're out of commission. How long then really

Harold Myers  42:09
Oh, I was probably about mainly out of commission for about 10 years. But oh yeah, I surfaced in between, yeah, the major part of the year I would be out of  commission.

Sid Cole  42:28
Did you get a retainer? Meanwhile, yeah, yeah, that was good. . So you

Harold Myers  42:33
I still do form a pension, but a on the basis of sort of favour nation arrangement. There's no statutory obligation on their part. The paper has changed hands. Yes, sure. Interestingly, amusing the way I found out about the paper changing hand, I'd been to the the Moscow Film Festival in 1967 1987 and on the way back on a British Airways flight, I asked the steward for a paper  and he gave me the choice of the Sun or the Financial Times. Wasn't much of a choice. I took the Financial Times opened up in the middle, middle page, and there was a photograph of the owner Variety, a character of the owner Variety, and I discovered he sold the paper to Reed internationals, American subsidiary for a report is $60 million $60 million yeah, that was the two papers Daily Variety. Yeah,

Sid Cole  43:43
terrific. So you, and that was, is that the last assignment you had the Moscow festival? Yeah, yeah. So it's unlikely that they'll ask you. Since there's a new proprietor, it's unlikely that the paper,

Harold Myers  43:57
the owner of the paper, is there on the five year contract, whether he will stay there or not. I don't know. The end of the five years, whether my pension will continue after he goes. I don't know that's one of those things. Yeah.

Sid Cole  44:12
Anything else Alan you want to ask? Anything else you want to say, what you never felt as a result of that? Did you wanted to be involved yourself in the making of movies or anything?

Harold Myers  44:25
Not really. No. I had one or two opportunities of becoming involved in studio publicity, but it didn't really appeal to me. I'd had my share of having to write good things when I worked for Fredman, if you're a film publicist, you can't say anything nasty about the people involved , and I like to preserve my freedom.

Sid Cole  44:50
So who as you would say, was the most outstanding person to have an impact, serious impact on your career? Yeah. If there is such a person?

Harold Myers  45:02
Well, I was, you'll find it hard to believe this, but I would say Ernest Fredman, well, because we had such a small staff that I had to do a bit of everything, and we all did, and I got to know more people, and I got to know the way the film industry worked, technically, the financing of the film industry, box office, film distribution, production, the economics of film production. Film distribution was my specialty, so it served me in good stead and the encouragement I got from the editor of  Variety who saw once he got over the rude shock of being told by Tom O'Brien that I was not entirely desirable character to be employed on the American newspaper that really gave me as every encouragement encouraged me to go. I............................................................

Alan Lawson  00:04
Yeah, you said you he encouraged you to go to Australia. Yeah, he encouraged me to go to Australia. In spite of advice from other people that Variety would carry no weight there. And we found, on the contrary, that got a wonderful reception. We, we now have a full time bureau. They've had it now for seven or eight years, staff of about three or four and they said the office is very successful. You set it up? Did you I set it up? Yeah, we, we tried to set up a Tokyo office, but the economics, the cost of running a Tokyo office would be so astronomical, because the higher wages, the high rent and everything else that we've got a stringer  I used to go there twice a year. Now somebody else goes there twice a year to

Sid Cole  01:02
tell me about the reference you made to Tom O'Brien. He presumed was referring to your political opinions. Yeah, that was very unfriendly of him for you as much in the context would be the appropriate phrase.

Speaker 1  01:14
Well the editor sent me Tom's letter. Tom actually wrote to him. Yeah, sent me Tom's  letter. He dinner, saying something like, I expect you to have good relations with everybody in the industry. Please deal with it or not. Please deal with this yourself.

Sid Cole  01:36
So did you go? Did you confront Tom with it?

Speaker 1  01:38
I got  document  saying the editor has passed your letter of saying so and so  date to me to acknowledge which I hereby do Yours sincerely. Or words to that effect?

Sid Cole  01:51
Did you get any reaction out of O'Brian? ,

Speaker 1  01:54
Eventually I had to see him. From time to time, he had to see me from time to time. It was an uneasy trip for quite some time. And a few, a few NAATKE members came to see me on one occasion and wanted me to write a vicious article about corruption in NAATKE and I told him we'd take a running jump. It wasn't my job.

Sid Cole  02:23
He's a very peculiar character, really. O'Brien, wasn't he

Harold Myers  02:28
not one of my favorites. But on

Sid Cole  02:30
the other hand, he used to get along quite he had to get along in trade union terms with some of the people in the other unions, like in ACTT. You know, I can remember occasions when Tom was being quite polite and issuing drinks with people like Ivor Montagu and Ralph bond and myself, and that was because he couldn't avoid having to discuss things with us, because in inter union relationships, that was necessary. Well, he said, Without us behind our backs, I don't

Harold Myers  02:57
know, well, he couldn't avoid having to take me to lunch on a couple of occasions.

Sid Cole  03:04
Anybody else that? I mean, not that, I mean that's someone who tried to have a very adverse effect in your career, but any, anybody else, some of you said, the main person, any, any, anybody else you I'm just trying to think

Alan Lawson  03:16
who else there might be. I don't think really there was

Sid Cole  03:22
fine. Well, that then probably is it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, that's a pleasure. Great thanks. Bye.....................................................................

Transcribed by https://otter.ai