t is my sad duty to report another death amongst our Elstree Film Evening guests of yesteryear.
This time it is veteran character actor David Lodge who appeared in over 100 films during the period from the late 1950s until the end of the 1980s.
In particular he will be remembered for his roles in a number of Peter Sellers movies from Two Way Stretch to the Pink Panther films.
I remember David telling me about a film he did which starred Peter Sellers and Richard Todd. "The problem with Peter was he suffered from insecurity and on this particular film he found out that Richard was wearing 'lifts' in his shoes to give him extra height as he is fairly short. “This was nothing new for Richard but Peter assumed he was trying to upstage him in their scenes together so he started wearing lifts as well.
“I thought it was all a bit silly especially as I was taller than both of them so when we had a scene with all three of us I also wore lifts.
“The end result was we all ended up two inches taller but with still the same height difference!"
David worked in Borehamwood studios many times on films and television and was of that generation of character actors whose face you instantly recognised but may well not have known the name.
I had the pleasure to meet up with two real Elstree veterans at the studio a couple of weeks ago. The first was 92-year-old cinematographer, producer and director Ronald Neame who still seemed fighting fit and with an excellent memory.
As producer he was responsible for such classics as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and Brief Encounter and went on to direct such movies as The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, The Odessa File and The Poseidon Adventure.
He started as an assistant cameraman with Alfred Hitchcock back in 1929 at Elstree and went on to photograph many famous movies including In Which We Serve and Blithe Spirit. Ronald recalled the fire that destroyed the old British & Dominions Studios in Borehamwood in 1936.
"I was woken up with a phone call and rushed down to Borehamwood where I met fellow cameraman Jack Cardiff. We managed to salvage a camera and some film stock but it was a different type to the one we were both used to and were not sure how to load it!
"Luckily we found a clapperboy who knew how it worked and managed to get some excellent footage of the fire. I did produce a film at Elstree Studios in 1951 called The Magic Box as a joint film industry contribution to the Festival Of Britain. It was about the pioneer film inventor Friese Greene whose son oddly enough worked at Elstree in the 1930s.
"I cast Robert Donat in the main role but we decided to have all the minor roles filled with British film stars of the day. I started the ball rolling by inviting Laurence Olivier to take part and he selected the role of a policeman and it was filmed over one weekend.
"We agreed a flat fee of 25 guineas for everyone. As Oliver had taken part everyone else wanted to jump on the bandwagon and I even had agents phoning me asking why their clients had not been approached. The poor scriptwriter had to keep adding cameo roles!"
The other veteran cameraman I bumped into was Bryan Langley who is also in his nineties and worked at Elstree over 70 years ago. Bryan mentioned that he is often approached by people writing books on the film business and that day was expecting a visit from an author wanting details of the Elstree made 1950s war film Angels One Five on which Bryan photographed the special effects.
He remembered working with a number of stars but in particular the legendary 1930s horror king Bela Lugosi who shot to fame playing Dracula. "I was the cinematographer on a movie he made in England at the old Welwyn Studios in the late 1930s. Bela was a very charming, educated man and had been a great romantic classical leading man on the stage in his home country.
"Sadly he got type cast in horror roles and eventually died in poverty after becoming addicted to drugs."
Sometime soon I am supposed to be appearing on television in a new ITV series on British film studios which was filmed back in the summer.
Really they should have tracked down people like Ronald and Bryan who could have recounted some marvellous first hand anecdotes.
Still they know that for a few glasses of whiskey and a penny arrowroot biscuit I will tell a few good tales.
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