Douglas (Dougie) Slocombe (1913-2016)

 

Douglas, or Dougie, as he was known to his friends and co-workers, Slocombe passed away yesterday in West London, where he lived with his daughter, following complications from a fall. He had just celebrated his one hundred and third birthday earlier in the month.

Probably best known for shooting the first three Indiana Jones films with Steven Spielberg as director, I know him better for all the amazing work he did at Ealing Studios. What he shot there at that famous West London studio reads for me like a personal Greatest Films of All Time list: Hue and Cry, Dead of Night, It Always Rains on Sunday, Saraband for Dead Lovers (Ealing's first crack at luscious English Technicolor), The Man in the White Suit, The Titfield Thunderbolt, The Lavender Hill Mob, and, of course, Kind Hearts and Coronets, which he personally believed to be the finest screenplay he had ever read. (He will not get any argument from me on that score.)

He also shot Julia, Guns at Batasi, The Italian Job, The Lion in Winter, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Jesus Christ Superstar, Rollerball, Never Say Never Again, and The Servant.

Speaking to the BBC last year, Slocombe recalled working under the Ealing Studio mogul, Sir Michael Balcon, as well as filming on location in a city still scarred by bomb damage.

"I think I'm the last man standing," he said. "All the major technicians and the producers and directors are gone - and that famous repertory company of actors and actresses."

One of my favorite stories about Slocombe is how he shot in camera a half dozen members of the D'Ascoyne family, all played by Alec Guinness, using multiple exposures over a period of a few days. Since the lighting had to be the exact same for every exposure, and the camera could not be moved even a millimeter, he slept in the studio to make sure everything went correctly.

Slocombe, himself, was also a perfect gentleman, who was extremely generous with his time, talking to interviewers about his work and process numerous times, even in his later years.

I only wish I could be at Stage Six in Ealing right now to raise a pint in his honor.

Mr Slocombe is survived by his daughter, Georgina.

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Ardent Henry

 

I forgive the film, Pirate Radio, for all its sins

Because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  And Bill Nighy.  And Talulah Riley.  And Nick Frost.  And Chris O'Dowd.  And The Kinks.  And The Who.  And The Rolling Stones.  And Jimi Hendrix.  And Rhys Ifans.  And Emma Thompson.  And Kenneth Branagh.  (Do you think Ms Thompson and Branagh were on set together? Are they friends, still?) And Danny the Drug Dealer from Withnail and I.  And the great tea and biscuits "cheer up" scene as Leonard Cohen sings So Long Marianne.  And one of the greatest End Title sequences in the history of film.  And the fact that director Richard Curtis shows people on the loo, listening to the radio.  And the fact that Pirate Radio is really just a modern Ealing Comedy when it comes down to it.  (I apparently am going through an Ealing thing right now, having watched Whiskey Galore, A Fish Called Wanda -- another modern Ealing Comedy, directed by a real Ealing Studios director, Charles Crichton -- and Pirate Radio over the past three days.)

Actually, I am just going to have to admit it.  I love a Richard Curtis film.  Who woulda thunk it?



Mwah, ...

And the English are right.  A nice cuppa can cure anything.  

-- AH

There is one big problem

With Robert Hamer's, It Always Rains On Sunday.  Well, it is only a big problem to most folks, I imagine.  To me, it is no big deal, at all.  I am not going to reveal the issue, I will let folks find it themselves.  If you can find the film.  It is not available on dvd Stateside, and TCM hardly ever shows it, if they ever have, period.  I bought it on Amazon and can watch it (as part of my Digital Collection) on any decent computer.  I also own another Ealing film this way, Went the Day Well?

Morrissey mourns the passing of Googie Withers.

(Quick sidebar, and open note to Criterion:  Please, please, please make BluRay versions of It Always Rains On Sunday, Dead of Night, The Blue Lamp, Hue and Cry, Pink String and Sealing Wax, Whiskey Galore, Went the Day Well?, The Man in the White Suit, Passport to Pimlico, etc, ... )

Ealing Studios made a lot of very bad films, quite a few good ones, a few very good films, and one definite masterpiece:  Kind Hearts and Coronets, also dir by Robert Hamer.

Hamer was the alcoholic bad boy at the puritan Ealing.  Michael Balcon, who ran the studio, was not fond of Hamer or his work, especially the amount of sex Hamer liked to inject in to his pictures. Kind Hearts has a fair amount of sexiness, centered around the lispy, lovely Joan Greenwood.  But Kind Hearts also had Alec Guiness, playing eight different roles, and a great deal of literary comedy in it, too.  This was not a concession to Balcon, at all.  The script and film are perfect in every way, absolutely true to its' purpose.  It was not an act of subversion, either.  Still, despite it being one of Ealing's biggest international hits, Balcon hated it.

I believe Balcon had already written Hamer off a few years before Kind Hearts, due to Hamer's Googie Withers films.   Hamer made two features with Ms Withers, and a shorter film, as part of an omnibus horror film, Dead of Night.  (Hamer's section in Dead of Night is miles better than any other section of that very good film.) The two full-length films he made with Ms Withers were Pink String and Sealing Wax, which I have not seen, and am desperate to watch, in which Withers plays a Victorian-era poisoner (Balcon must have hated that, for sure); and It Always Rains On Sunday.

You just have to believe that It Always Rains On Sunday has got to be one of Morrissey's favourite films of all-time.  Even the title of the film sounds like a Smiths song.  Though set in London, and not The North, the subject matter and plot are right up Morrisey's alley, as well.   Googie Withers' Rose is not a happy housewife.  She resents her husband, loathes the stepchildren, and hates her shabby London, East End hovel.  She wishes she had married Tommy, the East End bad boy, instead. But he is in prison now for a bit of Smash and Grab.  When Tommy escapes from prison, though, and hides out in Rose's bomb shelter, Rose somehow manages to keep the entire family shuttling in and out of the house, and away from the upstairs bedroom, where she has Tommy hid.  This juggling act is v difficult, indeed, and Rose is an absolute monster to the entire family all the while, incl one scene where she shreds the "hot, loose" stepdaughter's  favorite frock right in front of the closed bedroom door.  When the entire family is finally dispatched for the evening, Hubby has been convinced to play in the the local pub Darts Tourney, Rose spends a last few hours with Tommy upstairs, doing you know what.  By the way, Tommy is played by John McCallum, who Ms Withers married soon after.  They eventually moved to Australia and were married until their deaths.  McCallum died in 2010.

I am not going to spoil it any further, but you can imagine how the extremely puritan, Carry On, stiff upper lip, pro-England Balcon felt about It Always Rains On Sunday. It is a wonder that two years later Hamer would be able to make Kind Hearts at Ealing, period.

After, Kind Hearts, Hamer's career went swiftly down hill.  A closeted gay, Hamer eventually lost his battle with the bottle and died far too young for someone of such immense talent.  A real loss.

No wonder

She liked the name her Nanny gave her.  She was christened Georgette Lizette Withers.  Ugh.  So Googie would do just great.

Googie wonders if a turtleneck is really necessary.

Googie Withers has been one of my favorite movie stars for a long time now.  She passed away yesterday at ninety-four in Australia, a year after her second husband and co-star in the magnificent, Hamer directed, It Always Rains On Sunday, passed.

Googie was so beautiful, tall and slender as a lily, with high cheekbones and a full, ripe mouth that was even more sexy when it said something snide or sarcastic.  She had two of her directors fall in love with her, incl one who was quite gay, thank you v much, Robert Hamer; and when Googie was done with being a movie star, she and her husband moved to Australia.  She did a lot of theatre down under, and the occasional movie or teevee appearance, incl the movie, Shine.  Unfortunately, one of my fave performances of hers is still not available stateside on dvd.  That would be Dead of Night, an Ealing omnibus horror flick, that is absolutely smashing.  A real popcorn munching film entertainment that is essential viewing.  So, it'll be It Always Rains On Sunday here at the house today.

Goodbye, Ms Withers.

"You and your darts, ... "