Sublime

Our ranks are beginning to swell as various crew members’ wives turn up. I am a great believer in having the family around because it makes for earlier nights. On locations where all the crew are wifeless, they congregate in the local bar, get smashed out of their minds, stay up far too late, and work the next day suffers because they feel bloody a

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For a leading lady to bring me a letter from her father-in-law is a new experience. She is married to Michael Attenborough, son of Richard, and when Dickie was in New York recently for the opening of Young Winston I dropped him a note. His reply said it was very sweet of me to offer to look after Jane, adding that he knew I would do this anyway. Th

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Monday morning and Day Three. Harry called me at eight to tell me we were going to a funeral. ‘That’s nice. Mine?’ I queried. It turned out he meant a jazz funeral for a famous musician, Sylvester George Handy, who was being buried at twelve o’clock. I was on ‘stand-by’, which means I could be called out to the location where the rest of the unit w

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I have been asked to sign all sorts of strange things, including hands, arms and actual breasts. I remember Danny Kaye, coming over on the plane, was asked to sign a stewardess’s blouse in a protuberant place. My nastiest moment with autograph hunters was years ago when I was making Ivanhoe. I stepped from a car at the stage door, where a mob of te

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