Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 25
Part 2 continued
1956–1966
There was a write-up about a newly formed wildlife department headed by conservationist David Attenborough. I thought I would test the age barrier assertion that I was too young and apply to join the team. I was granted an interview with the senior producer but quickly realized that they were looking for someone with a degree in conservation or perhaps some experience in that field. I did not get the job. Having lived in Africa did not qualify me.
However, I discovered that Associated TeleVision (ATV, the biggest of the new independent TV channels that had only been operating for about two years) was looking for a studio manager (equivalent of the Beeb’s floor manager) for their Midlands Studios which had opened on 17th February 1956. The idea of making the big jump from call boy to studio manager was irresistible, so I applied. I was interviewed by the general manager of the studios. After asking questions about my work with the BBC, he wanted to know what jobs I had held before that. I figured that it was the kiss of death, as my jobs varied from running a fish and chip shop, crewing on a cargo ship, farm laborer, restaurant storekeeper, washing dishes in Stockholm and a bouncer in Soho. The manager started grinning and eventually roared with laughter. He asked me how I thought I could cope with the exacting task of studio manager with a career path like mine. In desperation I told him about the night I took over the floor manager’s post for one night for the BBC’s Brain’s Trust and showed him my letter of commendation from the producer, where he praised me and added that my imagination was vast. I returned to London convinced that I didn’t stand a chance.
In a bizarre twist, the Beeb suddenly offered me the post of assistant floor manager attached to the program “Sportsline.” The reaction of my fellow call boys ranged from amazement to unbridled jealousy plus a couple of heartfelt congratulations. Some of them had been there for ten years without any sign of promotion so it was regarded as a major feather in my cap.
And then a day later I received a letter from ATV Birmingham offering me the studio manager position. After serious soul searching, I decided to accept the job in Birmingham. I discovered later that it made me the youngest studio manager in Britain at the time. When I told my boss at the Beeb that I would not be taking the Sportsline job and would be leaving to work for ATV, he was genuinely horrified. He assured me that commercial TV would never last in Britain and I would soon be out of a job – instead of remaining with the world’s number one TV broadcasting channel, which BBC was until the early 1960s.
The senior studio manager, with the improbable name of Bob Hope, was a seasoned old pro with an early career in music hall comedy. He helped me through the early days of my new post. I have to thank him for giving me the confidence to do the job that turned out to be far more complex than I had expected. It was a combination of ensuring that all the technical aspects of the show in the studio, like camera, sound, lighting, props, make-up, etc., were under control as well as the more subtle but vital task of ensuring that the morale of the entire team was kept at a high level. All four of us studio managers had hugely different management styles, but I have to say that all of us managed well enough in our own ways. As the youngest by some years, I decided on a firm but friendly approach with a willingness to listen to any sensible suggestions. If the suggestion made no sense to me, I went with my gut feeling; but if it did make sense, I had no hesitation in accepting it. This was appreciated. I seldom raised my voice and approached each day with a sense of humor wherever possible.
One day, however, we were rehearsing for a show called “After Hours” hosted by quirky comedian Michael Bentine and another comic Dick Emery and singer Shirley Bassey. The show normally ran very smoothly; I enjoyed working with the cast as well as the director Richard Lester. On this particular day everything seemed to go wrong. Lighting accused Sound of having their boom microphone throw shadows over the set. The camera team complained that the set and props made it impossible for them to get the camera angles they were after. Everyone became increasingly cranky and started to bitch at each other. In the year since I had been there, I had never once raised my voice, but I decided it was time to do so. I ripped my headphones off, stood in the middle of the studio and bellowed at everyone, telling them to get their act together and to help, rather than hinder the different departments. We had a show to put on. There were a few seconds of completely stunned silence. This was a Chris Dresser they had never seen or heard before. One by one, I received a chorus of embarrassed acknowledgements from the heads of departments, with words like “Sorry Boss” or “Right-on Mate, let’s do it again,” etc.
I put the headphones back on and heard Dick Lester’s smooth American accent in my ears. “Never thought I’d hear that from you … well done, let’s go from the top again!” Both Dick Lester and Michael Bentine became a big influence in that stage of my life. Dick left television shortly afterwards to make a crazy short film with the Goons, Peter Sellars, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe, called “The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film.” He told me before he left that he was going to start making TV commercials. I was amazed.
Dick was highly thought of in TV and I felt he was taking a backward step, but he explained that he felt that telling a story in thirty seconds or even a minute with a commercial was a wonderful discipline in the art of crisp and succinct movie making. And so it proved. Dick went on to direct the two Beatles movies “Hard Day’s Night” and “Help.” After that he made a number of successful pictures including “The Knack and How to Get It,” “A funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Superman II,” and “Superman III” as well as “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers.” His tightly scripted, fast-moving pictures strongly influenced the movie industry of the 1960s and thereafter.
Michael Bentine was born into a wealthy family in Peru. He went to school at Eton in the UK and thereafter joined the RAF at the beginning of WWII. He crashed his Spitfire and was invalided out of the Air Force. He then joined the cast of the Windmill Theatre in London as a comic where he met and became an early member of the radio Goons. He then left to go on his own, hosting various comedy shows on TV and writing a book on mad fictional English pub games.
Shirley Bassey was an up-coming singer in 1958/9 going on to record a couple of James Bond movie theme songs. Every week when she saw me on set of the “After Hours” show, she would call out “Hello, you white racist South African bastard” and then fling her arms around me and give me a big hug. She was quite a character.
Working on “After Hours” was great fun. Although it was carefully scripted, Director Dick Lester allowed for plenty of improvisation. Perhaps the funniest moment I remember was totally unscripted. We set up and rehearsed one of Michael’s pub games from his book, called “Dratting.” This involved a ritual of dipping a mop into a bucket of water, holding it somewhat like a bayonet, then dashing to the front door of the pub, which opened. The Dratter disappeared and moments later there was the inevitable crashing sound of the Dratter hitting things. Remember, this was still live TV. On transmission the Dratter assumed the position and charged at the door, which opened. Unfortunately, one of the make-up girls, not having been present during rehearsals, had hidden behind the door ready to dab the sweaty brows of the cast as the studio lights were very powerful. An audience of millions saw the man with the Dratting pole rushing at the door which opened to reveal a terrified young girl screaming and leaping away. In the studio we were hysterical with laughter. A continual stream of phone calls from irate old ladies, claiming that the show was obscene, eventually calmed us down!
A few years later, when I was back in South Africa, Michael Bentine came to visit his sister who was living in nearby Pretoria. Hero and I had him over to dinner and he regaled us with wonderful stories, including his claim that he could make clouds disappear. We put him to the test before the sun went down. To our amazement he nominated a small cloud which did indeed disappear after he concentrated on it for a minute or two. I suspect he just got lucky but it was a party trick that my children and even my dad loved.
In mid-1959 I applied for the post of TV director with ATV London. I had just turned 23 years old but I figured that if I had been successful in getting the studio manager job at 22, I might just get to be the youngest TV director in Britain as well. During every show I worked on, from the BBC to my ATV job, I carefully watched and listened to the actions of the director of the program and where possible looked at the transmission screen to see how it looked on air.
In the event, I was one of 230 applicants for three vacancies as TV director. I attended the first board and in addition to my work as a studio manager I went through my list of weird (to them) previous jobs, which once again provoked both mirth and intrigue. I don’t think the average Englishman of my age had experienced anything like the kind of variety as well as my canoe travels I had achieved. For me it was just how life was. Going from job to job, playing my sport and grabbing any opportunity that seemed to be interesting. Some, like washing cars in London’s fashionable Bond Street or spot-welding lampshades, were not my idea of fun but it always took me to my next step.
On the strength of my first interview, I was forwarded to the second board and once again they seemed to see something in me that they regarded as potential. I ended up on the last board of thirteen people. On this occasion I was not asked to go through the list of my adventures but the senior man on the board spoke to me instead. His verdict was roughly as follows:
“We’ve listened with interest and fascination about your variety of occupations as well as the numerous countries you have stayed in during your young life. You have been the youngest applicant out of 230 by ten years, and you must be congratulated on reaching the third interview. However, we have decided not to appoint you to one of these posts … yet. There will be more directorial jobs in the next year or so. Our company is expanding fast (despite the gloomy predictions of the Beeb) and should you apply for the next posting, we would expect you to succeed. The additional year or so in your current position will add to your experience and suitability for the job.”
I was hardly even disappointed. In fact, I was delighted. It meant that I was virtually certain of a director’s job in the near future and realized that my experience at the University of Life would eventually pay dividends.
Meanwhile, I continued to learn more and more about the fascinating world of television. Looking back, the fact that all our shows went out live, as video had not yet been invented, added an element of excitement to everything.
As my experience grew, I was regularly given the daily program “Lunch Box” which was the signature show of ATV Midlands. One of the duties of a studio manager when we had an audience watch the show was to do a brief warm-up with the audience before transmission. This entailed getting them to applaud when I waved my arms above my head – just in case they didn’t get a gag or know when a song had ended. It was also expected that I should tell a couple of gags during the warm-up. I had absolutely no experience with joke telling but fortunately the old timer, Bob Hope, gave me a couple of gags. After a few awkward attempts I began to get the hang of it and even made up a few gags of my own.
“Lunch Box” consisted of two or three singers and some interviews conducted by the hostess of the show, Noelle Gordon, a former actress whose main claim to fame was a lead role in the movie musical “Brigadoon.” It was also one of the shows that pioneered outside broadcasts in the Midlands. This took us to many of the major towns in the region. This included a show in Nottingham, where we performed in the Nottingham Forest Football Stadium. It had a capacity of 70,000 people but for our show we were delighted to get about 25,000. Doing the warm-up with that many people was pretty terrifying but I somehow got through the ordeal. We also performed in a circus tent hosted by a major circus touring Britain at the time.
Doing the outside broadcasts reminded me that I was essentially an outdoor person and I realized that to spend my working life mostly in studios would be too claustrophobic for me in the long run. This led me to a decision that radically altered my life.
In much the same way, Peter Warren’s discovery of the inherent flaw in all of computing, as it is currently practiced, will completely alter and simplify the technology of computing. ExoBrain will be a world leader in the application of what we call ExoTech.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.