“Ah.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I see. Very young. But not for long, Miss Clara Hope.”
His condescension irritated me. “What do you mean?”
But he chose not to reply, and soon Dennis called us to order, and the test shooting of my very first scene began.
The lights were hot; perspiration was evident beneath Aidan Tobias’ make-up, and my armpits and waist felt damp beneath my heavy costume. Perhaps, among all the innovations of the twentieth century, women’s light clothing was the truly revolutionary one. The thought made me smile.
“Lovely smile, Miss Hope, but unnecessary,” called Dennis. “This is only a lighting test.”
Admonished, I straightened my face.
“Oh, come on, Dennis, it’s her first day, don’t y’know.” Aidan seemed to be exaggerating his upper-class drawl. “Grant the poor girl a nervous grin if she wants one, can’t you?”
“I am not nervous,” I told him coldly. “Not in the least.”
“Why were you smiling, then?”
“That has nothing to do with you,” I said, gathering courage. “And since it was unnecessary anyway, as Dennis says, it is not worth discussing.”
He stood back and looked at me approvingly. “You’re quite plucky, aren’t you?”
“And you are very rude.”
“Er … Aidan, would you get back into shot?” asked Dennis plaintively. “I don’t want this to take longer than absolutely necessary.”
The test filming did seem to take a long time. David scrutinized us closely, sometimes looking through the camera, sometimes not, requesting that Maria change the make-up under my eyes and make Aidan’s eyebrows “more sardonic”. Although he complied without complaint with requests to turn, look up, look down, move to a marked spot, Aidan appeared bored.
“Can we have a clinch? See what you two look like together?” asked David. He turned to Dennis. “What do you think? On the sofa, or by the window?”
Dennis pursed his lips. “Let’s test a shot in front of the window, for the lighting.”
Aidan and I were positioned in front of the window, which wasn’t a real window, of course. Lit from behind, we also had to be lit from the front or our faces would be in shadow. We waited while lights were adjusted, me patiently, my leading man less so.
“God, this is tedious!” He wiped his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. “When will they invent a light that isn’t hot as well as bright? It must be ninety degrees in here.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” I said calmly. “And anyway, you must be used to it.”
He nodded moodily. “Too damned used to it, that’s the trouble.”
“Righty-ho!” came the call from the man whose name was Harry. I remained mystified by what his actual job was, though it seemed important. David and Dennis discussed each test with him before they filmed it, and it was Harry’s confirmation that everything was ready that started the filming.
“Now get together, you two,” instructed David. “You don’t have to look as if you mean it, but for Christ’s sake, Aidan, do try not to yawn.”
We stood close together, and Aidan put his arms around me. I had been expecting this, since we were playing lovers, and David had asked for a “clinch”, which every filmgoer knew meant a passionate embrace. But I did not expect Aidan’s hand to go to the back of my head and draw my face so close our cheeks were touching. His skin felt sweaty and sticky; I could smell smoke on his breath. My body felt tense, and weighted by my costume. It was not a passionate embrace.
David sighed. “Fine. Look into the camera, both of you.”
We did so, cheek to cheek.
“Look at each other.”
We drew apart, still with our arms around each other. I gazed into dark eyes, outlined with make-up but expressionless. Aidan’s nose and cheekbones, I noticed, were prominent. His face was that bony English type so sought-after by film directors. Not winningly open and handsome like David’s, but striking, especially in profile.
“All right.” Another sigh from David. “I suppose that will do. Maria, powder please!”
Maria dusted the powder puff over both our faces. When she saw the make-up smear Aidan had left on his cuff, she did not say anything but gave him a weary look. When we were powdered to his satisfaction, David took my hand and led me to the little sofa.
“Gorgeous, Clara,” he said. “Now, let’s try a rehearsal.”
By the time we had finished the rehearsal my head ached and my feet were balls of fire.
“Maria, I think these shoes are too tight,” I ventured awkwardly.
“New shoes for Miss Hope!” called Dennis, though I had not addressed him.
“Dennis orders Maria about, not you,” whispered Aidan in my ear. “It gives him something to do.”
I thought Dennis, and everyone else who worked in the studio, had plenty to do. If I squinted, the scene before me turned into a swimming mass of colours: the dark shapes of the cameras, the huge lights above, the cables on the floor as thick as elephants’ trunks, the illuminated eighteenth-century stage where I sat and the muted twentieth-century shadows where those who were watching me lurked. Their faces looked ghostly as they worked in the gloom – talking, arguing, occasionally laughing, jotting things down, operating machines of which I had no knowledge, examining those same machines when they did not work properly, and cursing casually, not always under their breath.
However, my own job seemed clear. I had to turn up on time every morning, do as David or Dennis requested and learn, by process of trial and error, how to act in a film. Everything was so new and complicated. I was determined to be careful about what I said and to whom, and to hold my tongue unless spoken to.
Aidan Tobias, however, had no such scruples. He said whatever he liked. I wondered if he knew how lucky he was to be in films and not have to work on a farm or in a factory or an office like most young men. He did not seem to like being an actor, and I found that baffling.
The rehearsals that day were exhausting. I was glad I was not acting in the theatre, where I would have had to project my voice as well. But because the films were silent, we could say the lines as loudly or as softly, as well or badly, as we wanted. Eager to please, I stuck valiantly to the script I knew the audience would never hear. The words helped me to understand what my face and body were supposed to be showing the viewers of the film: love, fear, happiness – whatever David demanded. But Aidan was so easily bored, and so experienced, that he no longer needed such an anchor. He would sail carelessly into improvisation, jokiness and sometimes downright rudeness, in his own words instead of the scripted ones. Everyone would laugh, the scene would be ruined and we would have to do it again.
Rehearsals went on, hour after hour. I had no clear sense of how much time passed: day might as well be night. The studios were a collection of shed-like buildings on the edge of a small town near the Thames, but once inside them I felt as if I might as well be underground. There were no windows; interior and exterior light had to be created by electric arc lamps strung from the invisible ceiling, and windy or misty conditions created by large fans operated by the technical staff. Everyone seemed to drink coffee, but I preferred tea. “Cup of tea for Miss Hope!” became Dennis’s refrain that first day. David never drank coffee or tea, only water. And Aidan accompanied his coffee with a swig of something from a hip flask he kept in his jacket pocket.
David chided him. “Inseparable from that thing, aren’t you? Like a baby and its bottle.”
“You’d drink, too, if you had to put up with a director whose childishness is more evident than any baby’s,” Aidan retorted. “Light me a fag, will you, Jeannie?”
Jeanette did not obey; smoking on the film set was strictly forbidden. But Aidan never gave up his quest to irritate everyone, though it was obvious that all he did was bore them. When I asked Maria why he did it, she shrugged and said, “That’s not for me to say, Miss Hope. Mr Tobias is a lovely actor, even when … you know, he’s had a
tipple, and that’s what matters, I suppose.”
Jeanette did not seem to consider it necessary to introduce me to the technicians. They ignored me as they went about their work. But to their surprise, and possibly their embarrassment, I could not ignore them.
“And you are…?” I said to the man in the cap while he was adjusting a lamp.
“Cinematographer, Miss Hope.”
“And what is your name?”
“Harry, Miss Hope.”
“And what does a cinematographer do?”
Blank look. “Er … the moving pictures. I’m in charge of the photographing.”
Blank look from me.
“Er … the cameras, like. I keep them working and sort out the lighting, and the effects, and how it all looks through the camera. You know, get it all how Mr Penn wants.”
I held out my hand for him to shake. “Well, I’m very pleased to meet you, Harry.”
While I was drinking tea during a break, I tried the same tactic on the boy who was winding cables in the corner. “And you are…?”
“Me?” His face was scarlet. “Grip, Miss Hope.”
“Grip? Your name is Grip, you mean?”
“No, miss. My job. I’m a grip. Me and all them others, we’re the grips,” he said, nodding towards a group of five or six men, also on their tea break, playing cards on a box.
“And your name is…?”
“Alfie, miss.”
“And what do you, er, grip, Alfie?”
Met by his silent bewilderment, I tried again. “Look, I am very new and want to find things out. I mean, why are you called a grip?”
His embarrassment increased. “Don’t know, miss.”
“Well, what do you do?” I asked patiently.
“We’re like stage hands. We do what the gaffer tells us.”
The gaffer? I felt defeated. “Very well, Alfie, thank you. Now, I had better let you get back to work.”
One person never seemed to have a break. The film set was haunted by a young woman with fashionably bobbed hair, who scribbled constantly on a notepad. Her eyes darted everywhere; she missed nothing, and when Aidan and I left the set she photographed it solemnly, from several directions, with a still camera. I could not fathom what she was doing.
She was friendly towards Maria, Harry, Dennis and Jeanette, so when a suitable moment arrived near the end of the day, I approached her. “And you are…?”
Her eyebrows shot into her fringe. “I’m Kitty!”
“And what is your job, Kitty?”
“Continuity, Miss Hope.”
“Continuity?”
She lowered her notepad and showed it to me. “Well, you see, I make sure everything’s exactly the same on the set for the next time.”
This meant little to me. “Um … the next time?”
“For going back over the scene. If you’ve got your hand under your chin when the camera films you from the front, Miss Hope, you’ve got to have it there when it films you from the back, and that could be on a different day altogether. If I didn’t note it down and take a photograph, we’d be forever going over bits of film and taking ages, and Mr Penn wouldn’t be pleased!”
“Oh, I see.” I did not, really. A different day altogether?
“And Dennis!” she added in a rush. “He’s a stickler for continuity!”
I seized this opportunity. “Tell me, Kitty, what is Dennis’s job, exactly?”
“Why, Miss Hope” – she was trying to hide her astonishment – “Dennis is the AD. The Assistant Director.”
“And Mr Penn is the Director?”
“Yes, and the Producer, too. He’s the big boss, and Dennis is our … immediate boss.”
“Oh.” I pondered for a moment. “I thought Jeanette was Mr Penn’s assistant.”
Kitty was beginning to look uncomfortable. “She is. She looks after him, like a secretary, and you know, manages everyone.”
“And Maria?”
“She’s the Wardrobe Mistress. The girls in costume and make-up are under her.”
“And you are under Dennis?”
She nodded. “And Harry too. They work together, under Mr Penn.”
“And the grips work under them, too?”
“That’s right.” She waited politely in case I had any more questions, then, tucking her notepad under her arm, she gave a nervous nod and made her escape.
I sighed. The business of film-making appeared to have class divisions as complicated as those of Britain itself. From the King to the vagabond tramping the lanes of Wales, everyone had their place, and so it seemed at Shepperton. With so many social tripwires all around me, how could I possibly stay on my feet?
“You look miserable,” said a voice at my elbow. “Justifiably, I’m sure.”
It was Aidan. In his drawn face I saw my own exhaustion. “Not miserable,” I told him, “but tired.”
“Hah! We’ve hardly done anything today, with only you and me here!”
He could tell from my expression that I did not know what he meant, and smiled without humour. “I suggest you go and look at the call list Jeanette’s put up. Tomorrow the rest of the cast of this ghastly enterprise will turn up for work, and believe me they’re a pretty rum crew. I’ve worked with a couple of them before. You’d better watch your step.”
I took little notice of his words. Whatever happened tomorrow, I was ready for it. Shepperton might be a place as far removed from Haverth as fairyland but, bewildered as I still was, I had realized two things. First, my contract would not allow me to get away from these people until we had completed the film, even if I wanted to. And second, I did not want to. Everything I had dared to imagine as I sat on the farm gate was here. Modern surroundings and modern people. Beautiful things and beautiful people. Knowledge, worldliness, power, achievement, creativity – all showered with the glamorous light of the cinema screen. I knew I stood on the threshold of a shadowy place that would present unimagined challenges. But I was ready for them. Now I was here, I wanted to stay in fairyland.
The call list was a typewritten piece of paper pinned to a noticeboard outside the dressing rooms. It was, as Aidan had explained, a list of the actors who had been called for filming the next day. I had assumed there would be more leading actors than there actually were. Besides Aidan’s and my own, there were only four main parts: the Comte de Montford’s uncle, a revolutionary leader, his mistress and her maid.
“How can a film about the French Revolution have so few people in it?” I asked Jeanette, who was standing at the call list, frowning. I knew all the action did not take place in one room, like a stage play; I had read the script. So where was everyone else?
“They’ll use extras,” she told me. “You know, people from a theatrical agency who do things like being peasants, Parisians, soldiers and sailors and so on, to make it look realistic. Tomorrow we’re just doing scenes with you six – or five, as it turns out.” She took a pen from behind her ear and crossed out someone called Simona Vincenza. “Miss Vincenza’s agent telephoned last night to say she can’t get here until Thursday. Something about an aeroplane. So that puts the whole schedule out. David’ll be livid.”
“Is she the maid or the mistress?” I asked.
Jeanette laughed so loudly and suddenly that it made me jump. She put her hand up apologetically. “Sorry, but the thought of Miss Vincenza playing a maid is such a hoot! I must tell Harry.”
“Um…” I tried not to look as embarrassed as I felt. “Please don’t, if that’s all right, Jeanette.”
She stopped smiling and regarded me with interest. Understanding came into her eyes. “Oh … very well, of course I won’t. You can’t know what Miss Vincenza’s like, after all.”
“Thank you.”
She was embarrassed that she had considered gossiping about my ignorance. She put her head down so that her hair fell over her face, and busied herself with putting the pen away in the pocket of her dress. “See you tomorrow, then!” she said brightly, and disappeared
down the corridor.
My cheeks were still pink when I returned to the dressing room. Maria gave me a curious look but said nothing. I refused Jeanette’s offer to accompany me to dinner and ordered it in my room instead. Unable to fight down my nervousness, I ate very little, made a sketchy, shivery toilette in the hotel bathroom, and went to bed.
I lay awake for a long time, planning not only my own conduct in front of the rest of the cast but also how to deal with Aidan Tobias. I dreaded having to do scenes again and again because he had wrecked them. I went over and over things to say and ways to behave that might discourage him. I toyed with the idea of throwing a tantrum, leading-lady style, threatening to walk off the set unless he behaved himself. But I soon dismissed this. Aidan losing his job did not worry me; losing my own certainly did. And it was with this worrying thought squeezing my brain that I eventually fell asleep.
Today was the first day of filming. Not a lighting or camera test, but the real thing. Tonight, there would exist a length of exposed film showing me – or at least someone who looked a bit like me – acting in her very first moving picture. The nerves I had endured last night were gradually replaced by relief that we were getting on with it at last. And as the day went on, the pieces of the kaleidoscope that had so baffled me began to settle.
We did the scene we had rehearsed yesterday. The set and lights were checked, Aidan and I “blocked” the scene, making our moves without acting or speaking, and the lights were adjusted until Harry, behind the camera, was satisfied. Then he shouted, “Set!” which meant, “Everyone on the set who shouldn’t be, clear off!”
David, who was such an exacting director that it had taken ages to get the scene set up to his liking, eventually called “Roll camera!” and Harry started the camera and called back, “Rolling!” Then Dennis called for the clapperboard.
The contraption known as the clapperboard seemed to me old-fashioned. The primitive wooden board with a hinged top seemed to have no place in this modern, electrified studio. It did not take me long, however, to realize it was the most important piece of equipment of all. Without it, it would be impossible to make a film.
101 Pieces of Me Page 3