be married.
So the three articles I did for the paper: ‘Cinema tomorrow, overture or finale?’ perhaps over-emphasized the importance of Marshall Stone’s contribution to the post-war history of the cinema.
Several times I’d mentioned to my publisher the idea of doing a book about the superstar phenomenon. He insisted that only Stone’s life had all the ingredients such a book needed: the overnight fame, the ostentatious wealth, the immense talent evident and so sadly squandered. The fact of having done that first Stone script and of being married to his one-time wife gave me all the cards. And yet it also made the task impossible. To write about the other man is difficult enough but when that man is Marshall Stone…
There had been times when I wondered if our two daughters – six- and eight-year-olds – would grow up disappointed at a father who had so nearly been Marshall Stone, but one meeting with the grown-up son of Stone and Mary dispensed with that one.
I still would not have gone ahead if Mary hadn’t encouraged me. Primarily I was keen on the project because I believed Stone to be a rare talent. It was only after I began work on the book that I discovered other motives within myself. I wanted to revisit the world I’d walked out of, that sunny day on the Koolman lot. And to some extent I wanted to know more about the life that my wife had exchanged for mine.
There was no mistaking the address the film company had given me. Pantechnicons, generators, a couple of limousines with dozing chauffeurs left no doubt that this was where Stool Pigeon was being shot. Edgar Nicolson – the producer – had leased this condemned house in Notting Hill Gate for five months at fifty pounds per week. It was a high rent for a derelict London slum but by using the lower half of it as production offices and building his sets floor by floor as they were needed he could save the cost of going into a studio. Offices, projection theatre, workshops, recording facilities and space to do the same film in one of the big studios would have cost him ten times the money. However, the big cars and luxury dressing-rooms were still mandatory. The industry had learned how to tighten its belt, but it still had quite a gut.
These all-location films were more relaxed than studio productions. There was an atmosphere of goodwill and informality among the crews. The big studios had too many elderly technicians watching the clock so that they could rush back to their semi-detached around the corner. These location crews were the industry’s Foreign Legion. Most of them had spent their lives travelling from unit to unit. They drank, screwed and gambled like legionnaires too. In the hallway one of them asked me for a light. He was a fuzzy-haired man in denims. I remembered him from a decade ago when I had been on my very first assignment for the newspaper. He’d been a twentieth assistant director then: now perhaps he was eighteenth. I remembered him telling me what was wrong with Godard and Fellini in exact and lucid detail. He was right but it hadn’t done him much good. Did he still dream of becoming a director, and did he still believe that this was the way to do it?
He said, ‘And next week Richard is going to do the explosions right there in the garden.’
‘That should give the neighbours something to talk about.’ Two prop men and some grips pushed past us with a plaster section of a battle-scarred Buddha.
We watched them huffing and puffing up the stairs. He said, ‘The bangs: yeah, but we’ve got permission. Dick Preston is quite a character.’
Richard Preston was a director from TV. Someone at Koolman International had decided that, since youngsters made up the bulk of the audience, kids should make the movies. As a business philosophy it would hand Disney to the adolescents and the computer industry to the computers.
‘They’re shooting on the roof today, Mr Anson. Wait on the top landing if the red light’s on.’ He took a call-sheet from his pocket. ‘You’ve got Suzy Delft doing shot number 174,’ he grinned, ‘for the fifteenth time.’
‘It’s her first day on the set?’
‘I think it’s her first day anywhere.’
‘Is she going to be all right?’
He grinned. ‘The greatest little piece in the business, and for half a page and a photo in your rag – she’d do it!’
‘Where’s the big man?’
‘Marshall Stone – he’s gone to the Test Match.’
‘He’s on the call-sheet.’
‘Yeah! Fixed it with the director. After the girl’s done, there are a couple of pick-up shots with Jap soldiers. We’ll finish early. It’s a slack day.’
‘Where’s publicity?’
‘Next landing, he’s in there, no one with him.’
‘Ta.’
The unit publicist had found a nice little office. On a cork board behind him there were a dozen stills pinned up in sequence. On another wall there were the Press clippings that had so far appeared. Mostly they were in the fan mags and trade journals: about one hundred column inches in all. The biggest of the clippings included a photo of Marshall Stone relaxing in a canvas chair. One cowboy boot was flung carelessly over the arm of it and the stills man had angled the shot to include the star’s name stencilled on its canvas back. Stone was smiling a wry compulsive grin that made you sure that success had come upon him with the unexpectedness of a traffic accident. I read the final para of the piece.
‘The cinema is my life’ said Marshall just before I took my leave. He gave the shy smile that tells his friends that he’s talking of things that are sacred to him. He said, ‘Once I’m involved with a part I just can’t leave it, I just can’t. If I have a fault it’s being too concerned with the craft of acting. Perhaps Larry or Johnny [Olivier and Gielgud – Ed] don’t need to put in the hours I put in. But we ordinary mortals have to run fast to keep up with such strolling players.’ I don’t think Marshall Stone need worry as far as a few million movie-goers are concerned.
‘Did you write this crap?’ I asked the unit publicist.
He grinned.
‘Can I have a copy?’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘For research.’
‘As a bad flack’s handiwork?’
‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Henry,’ I said. ‘We’ve both got to live with the industry.’
‘In the immortal words of Sam Goldwyn, “Include me out”. This is the last picture I’ll do as publicity man.’
‘Do you know, Henry, you said that to me when you were doing that film at Ealing.’
‘I might surprise you.’
‘Yes, you might go to Spain and write one of the great novels of the decade: send me a crate of Tio Pepe.’
He passed me a fresh copy of the fan mag containing his phoney interview. I put it into the red folder that I had marked ‘Marshall Stone’. It was the only thing in it.
‘Where is it all going on?’
‘The roof.’ He reached for some mimeographed biographies that were stacked near the duplicating machine. Suzy Delft, Edgar Nicolson the producer, Richard Preston the director. ‘I’ve
