You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone (13 page)

“Can I borrow your briefcase, Mr…er?
”

“Do, do.”

“Thank you, Mr Do-Do!”

While it was clearly a lot of fun on set, Francis was quick to point out that, for Eric and Ernie, making those three films for Rank was a huge change from doing TV and so there was a serious side to entering upon this new venture. I know myself how keen they both were at this time to become film stars—Ernie perhaps more than Eric, in that Ernie, just as he longed to make it big in the States, would chase the dream till his last breath—so to underachieve in this medium would have been a severe body-blow to them.

The middle picture,
That Riviera Touch
, was filmed in the late summer of 1965 on the Grande Corniche, a spectacular road which runs from Nice to Menton on the border with Italy. In his diaries Kenneth Williams wrote: ‘There were

some very original things in this film, which was very well done.These two came out of it very well indeed—very much “innocents abroad” and at times a real note of pathos was established.’

Actress Suzanne Lloyd guest-starred in the film. ‘I didn’t have to audition for
That Riviera Touch,
amazing as that is,’ she said. ‘There was a body of my work for anyone to see.The producer, Hugh Stewart, met with me at Pinewood, and that was that.’

Suzanne recalled the first time she met up with Eric and Ernie. ‘We met as we were getting on the plane, and we were all a bit nervous with one another, which is usual before a film. I’m sure they didn’t know my work and were wondering who I was and who they were stuck with.We worked in different genres. I was aware of Eric and Ernie, but hadn’t seen them on TV. I was told they were as funny as [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis and indeed they were.’

She was able to confirm that film-making was ‘not the boys’ level of com
fort’,

as she put it. ‘They were improv specialists.They did it once on TV and that was that. In film they had to do it over and over, and matching was a nightmare for both of them.’ Apparently this led to their becoming concerned that the spontaneity would not be there and that they wouldn’t be able to keep the takes fresh, which of course is not a problem in television, where their shows were virtually shot live. I remember many studio visits in the seventies, and if there was a technical problem requiring a retake of a part of a scene, both Eric and Ernie would deliberately wrong-foot the audience on the retake by adding a gag or changing their dialogue, just so as to keep it fresh. Sometimes Eric would say to the studio audience, only half-jokingly, ‘Clear your mind and pretend you didn’t see that last bit.’ On a film set, without an audience, you can change it as much as you like, but there is no one to judge what went before: you just hammer on, retake after retake, until it all matches.

‘They did not give me any advice as to how to make a scene funny,’ said Suzanne. ‘I wish they had. But they were concerned about stepping on the director’s toes, I think.They did ask me about “matching” from scene to scene and from time to time we spoke about it. I would have loved it if they had taken me aside and given me some pointers.’

A particular point Suzanne Lloyd made, and one which informed how different my father was when working in this new medium, was his seriousness in making the film deliver its very best. ‘Eric was not always “on”,’ she explained. ‘This was hard for them. I cannot stress this enough. They had a lot riding on this film and they knew they were not in their element. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t laughs. There were a lot.The crew had a devil of a time not ruining a take by laughing out loud.And the Khartoum crew and cast would come over to be entertained. They had to stop that because the set was getting too noisy, and besides, they were drinking all our tea and eating our biscuits!’

My personal favourite scene from the film is the balcony scene when Eric is trying to seduce Suzanne’s character, Claudette, with a song, and he’s miming to Ernie’s vocal. I was pleased that Suzanne too thought it the best scene.

‘The boys had a good time with that one.Also in the dining room with Ernie trying to eat frog legs and snails without throwing up. That scene didn’t require acting.’

‘The crew had a devil of a time not ruining a take by laughing out loud.’

My mother tells me that the late summer of 1966 in the South of France is one of the happiest memories she has of her years with Eric. Suzanne Lloyd recalled of the times away from the cameras, ‘Their wives were in the South of France and I remember liking them both, but then my husband knewTony Curtis and we hung out with Tony and his wife and daughter. I can’t remember socializing much with the boys.’ But there was much socializing going on. Warren Mitchell and Lionel Jeffries were out there filming, and with or without Suzanne, the boys met up with Tony Curtis.There is a photo commemorating the occasion.

Suzanne’s final comment is so consistent with the views of everyone I’ve talked with while working on this book. ‘I liked the boys very much. Eric was
thoughtful and considerate. Ernie was always smiling. They did not have a mean bone in their bodies. I was saddened to hear when they passed on.Too soon for both.’

Eric and Ernie’s final big-screen outing,
The Magnificent Two
, was a strange film. Considering it was supposed to be a comedy, it was rather violent in places and drew critical fire for this reason. But for me this is one of the film’s few strengths: it pulls away the safety net and makes what is a lightweight and irritatingly preposterous story suddenly a bit more engaging, a bit edgy. It led to talk of further films, but Eric said he didn’t want to make any more if it involved Robert Asher or Cliff Owen as he felt they were too concerned with their own decisions and therefore less receptive to external suggestions. He also felt they had personal distractions on set, which he found disconcerting as it detracted from the 100 per cent commitment required to make a bunch of half-decent films.

The basic storyline is that two salesmen, played by Eric and Ernie, travel to South America to sell their products and become entangled in a revolution. It’s the story of Eric having a doppelgänger and having to replace him after this lookalike (well, he wears the same hat and glasses) is bumped off. Eric has to take on his identity and later becomes ruler of the South American country when the revolution is at an end. Far-fetched in the extreme—Hans Christian Andersen would have blanched at the script—the film still contains Morecambe and Wise’s irrepressible enthusiasm and joie de vivre.Also, no one plays it for laughs—except for Eric and Ernie, and even they keep it within the characters they are portraying—which makes it more acceptable as a film than it might otherwise have been.

On making the first of their three movies Eric had commented, ‘We want to bring to the films the same originality we’ve brought to television. We don’t want them to be just typical British comedies with all the usual ingredients.’ Sadly, Eric’s must have been a lone voice. The originality they brought to television comedy went adrift on the big screen, although to give all three films credit where it’s due, they were not typical British comedies with all the usual ingredients. They were just too odd for that accusation to ever stick.

I’m not convinced that employing their TV scriptwriters, Dick Hills and Sid Green, to be their film scriptwriters was the best of moves. I can understand the security they felt in doing this—the continuity of working with the team that had helped to make them big stars on TV. But they needed big-screen writers—writers used to a medium that was new to the four of them.

Eric and Ernie’s film era came and went, but countless are the times I’ve been watching some obscure cable channel and up comes one of them, transporting me back to blurry yet happy days.

‘Yes, I’ll always remember the first big laugh I got professionally. I can also remember the last big laugh I got. It was the same one.’

I
t comes as a big surprise to many people—including me when I set out on the journey that ended up as this book—that in the last three or four years of his life Eric Morecambe did three theatrical-release film projects that in no way involved Ernie Wise. I probably knew at the time, but with the passing years had forgotten. It was certainly a thrill to be reintroduced to them.

The first two of these films were based on Sir John Betjeman’s poetry and called
Betjeman’s Britain
(1980) and
Late Flowering Love
(1981). They were narrated by Betjeman himself, which was a particularly satisfying element of the project. The third film,
The Passionate Pilgrim
(1984), like the other two, was directed by Charles Wallace.

In London I caught up with Charles, the brains behind the films,

to find out more about this trio of screen releases starring my father as a solo actor of which hitherto little was known. ‘I had this idea of dramatizing some of Betjeman’s poems,’ explained Charles. ‘They’d already been set to music, and I thought I’d just take it a stage further. There was one poem called “Indoor Games Near Newbury”
,
which is basically a tale of a children’s Christmas party. In the verses there was talk of a “funny uncle”. Initially I’d thought of actors like Peter Ustinov and Robert Morley.

‘As it happened, Eric was being filmed at the time by Anglia Television having his portrait done. Someone atAnglia then suggested Eric Morecambe. This
kind of wrong-footed me as it was so completely different from what I’d had in mind. In fact I would confess to you now that I wasn’t terribly positive about the idea.

‘The head of production took me to one side and said that if I could get Eric Morecambe then I must do so, because there was no one bigger.

‘I tracked Eric down, telephoned him and explained that the film, a short, would be called
Betjeman’s Britain,
and would he remotely be interested. Straight off he said, “Yes, fine!” In fact, I got the immediate impression he was very up for something different from the Morecambe and Wise format.’

This is something I know to be accurate from conversations I’d had with my father at this time. In fact as early as 1973 he had been saying that he felt Morecambe and Wise were getting themselves in a bit of a rut.

‘As I recall,’ continued Charles, ‘he came over for filming the afternoon before.We had dinner and a bit of a chat together, and filmed the next day and he went home. Just as he was leaving he came back to me and said, “Sunshine! If there’s anything you ever want me to do, just give me a call.” I smiled on the outside, but was thinking, “Shit! I’ve got the biggest star on television and he wants to work on anything I can offer him.” But what came out my mouth was, “What do you feel you’d
like
to do?” And he replied, “Do you know, I’ve always wanted to do something about ghosts!”’

‘The only thing that the film and TV people wanted was Morecambe and Wise, and they didn’t want anything that detracted from that.’

Hearing this from Charles triggered a memory of Eric standing in front of his mirror in the hallway of his house saying he would love to write a ghost story about a spectral life inside a mirror.

‘He was serious,’ said Charles.’ I mean he wanted to do it for real as a straight bit of acting—no comedy stuff.And I was pretty interested in the subject, and understood the line he wanted to take. It would be completely different from Morecambe and Wise, and that would have given me as much pleasure as it would have done Eric. I was understandably buoyed up about this. But could I get anyone interested? Not a chance! The only thing that the film and TV people wanted was Morecambe and Wise, and they didn’t want anything that detracted from that.’

‘That mentality of playing it safe was creeping in around this time as the more adventurous programme makers of the fifties and sixties retired or died.’

This was something Eric and Ernie experienced when they moved from the BBC to Thames Television in the late seventies. In essence Thames wanted the same shows the BBC had given viewers during the previous decade, and that despite the stars wanting to develop in other areas of their comedy work. For instance, both Eric and Ernie were keen to pursue the idea of a Morecambe and Wise series which had none of the variety guest stars, duologue in front of the curtains, and other familiar elements, but took place entirely in their make-believe flat and bedroom. At the time the flat and the bedroom represented about twelve minutes of their shows, so the idea was to make them into a sitcom that was quietly announcing itself along the lines of ‘You’ve seen short moments from our life in the flat and the bedroom, now here’s a series just of those elements.’ I, for one, encouraged him to push on this as I thought it was a great idea. But as Charles found out himself, no one was interested—even when it was Eric Morecambe making the suggestion.

‘Making the odd little cameo in a twenty-two-minute TV or cinema short,

or having his portrait painted on Anglia TV, was acceptable at a push, but that was it,’ said Charles. ‘Any thought of a new direction seemed to imply there was an element of risk as far as the powers that be at that time were concerned—the risk of killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

‘That mentality of playing it safe was creeping in around this time as the more adventurous programme makers of the fifties and sixties retired or died, and this new breed of programme makers came in. Even today there is a playing-it-safe feel to much of the programming we see.

‘But with Eric at least we were able to go on to film another Betjeman short,’ explained Charles. ‘Paramount Pictures had seen the original one, loved it, and asked if I would do something for them. Being a prat I went and offered them
another Betjeman instead of taking advantage of doing something totally new. As it happened, the second Betjeman with Eric worked incredibly well. Eric played an army major in the film.The poem was called “Invasion Exercise on the Poultry Farm”
.
We got Susannah York and Beryl Reid involved as it was a kind of take on the movie
The Killing of Sister George
, in which Beryl had starred some years earlier.

‘In the Betjeman poem a paratrooper lands off course in the countryside. Susannah’s character takes a fancy to him and goes off with him. Beryl rings up the local military base and demands someone comes along [Eric] to deal with the wayward paratrooper. Instead, Eric’s character goes off with Susannah, leaving the paratrooper tied up.

‘It was fine—in fact it was good—but for me personally it felt too like the original film we’d shot a year earlier.What I should have done was something a bit more adventurous. However, it proved the most successful cinema short ever. The head of UIP thought it was just wonderful, and he put it out with everything, including the latest Bond movie of the day and
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

‘What was pleasing for me, and no doubt Eric, was that short films are something everyone tends to avoid, but with this one they actually advertised it. It went out as “
Late Flowering Love
starring Eric Morecambe!” They knew that would get the punters in on Eric’s name.’

After filming was over, Eric joked with Charles as he left, ‘Same time next year, sunshine?’ Charles was up for that, especially as the second Betjeman had gone down so well, including a double-page spread in a national tabloid.

‘But a year later I still hadn’t managed to get anything together,’ said Charles, ‘probably because this time I really was keen to do something entirely different from the two Betjeman films. Soon, though, the idea of what would be
The Passionate Pilgrim
started to formulate in my head.The structure of the piece was to tell a story in three or four parts. It was all to be set around this eccentric lord in a castle—that being Eric, of course—trying to woo this very attractive damsel—who would be played by Madeline Smith—and this strapping knight trying to beat him to the damsel—finally played by actor Tom Baker.’

Interestingly,Tom Baker hadn’t been first choice for Charles. ‘Originally the role played byTom Baker was to be played by Sean Connery,’ he told me, which came as a big surprise as I had no previous knowledge of this. ‘Eric and Sean couldn’t match availability, and time was pressing and we needed to move on with the project, so I approached Tom Baker.’

Tom Baker, of course, is famous around the world as the fourth incarnation of the Gallifreyan with the keys to the
Tardis
, the Doctor, in the BBC’s
Doctor Who
.

Although I knew Eric and Tom had met some five years before the film and that they went on to make this film together, my knowledge till now had gone no further. Mind you, I knew that Tom Baker has a certain reputation for not being the easiest on-set actor to ever appear in front of a camera, yet, accord
ing

to Charles, ‘he was on his best behaviour.Tom was in awe of Eric Morecambe, and felt genuinely honoured to be working with him in this three-hander—Eric,Tom, and Madeline Smith.

‘There was only one time, when Eric wasn’t there, that Tom got a bit grumpy. But even then, with Eric’s energy on the set,Tom was not going to be difficult.Also Tom had seen how compliant Eric was, always willing to do whatever the director, me, wanted to do. It should also be pointed out that when I approached Tom to do the part, he said, “To be honest I’d never heard of you, but if Eric Morecambe has agreed to do it, then that’s good enough for me!”’

‘Eric wasn’t that accustomed to being without Ernie Wise, in whom he perhaps had the greatest straight man who had ever breathed.’

With some irony I sense that Tom Baker’s expression almost cues the moment from
The Morecambe and Wise Show
when Eric, on hearing Ernie say similar words, turns to the camera, and effectively to the viewer at home, and says, ‘This boy’s a fool!’

‘Eric, who liked Tom enormously,’ continued Charles, ‘wasn’t that accustomed to being without Ernie Wise, in whom he perhaps had the greatest straight man who had ever breathed. Sure, he could have little digs at Ernie, as partners always do, but you knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had a great love for him and a great loyalty to him. I think he also sensed that without his own contribution what would Ernie be able to do? And that probably is the sad truth of being regarded as the straight man in a double act.

‘Working with Tom Baker reaffirmed Eric’s understanding of how wonderful Ernie was as a straight man,’ Charles asserted. ‘Eric did say to me in the middle of filming
The Passionate Pilgrim
that working with
Tom was like working with a piece of wood. “I love Tom, but I don’t get anything back from him.” Tom, as Eric knew full well, was a brilliant actor, but he’s not a stand-up comedy type. And that was Eric’s problem within the confines of the piece we were making.

‘Of course, Eric was so used to working with Ernie for over forty years by now, and almost to the exclusion of anyone else, that they had this rapport which had never failed them.You put Eric with someone who is a brilliant actor but not that type of natural comedy expert and it’s going to be tough.’

Charles explained his inspiration for this surreal short film with its double entendres
.
‘As a kid I was, and still am in adulthood, a great fan of Tom and Jerry cartoons. I saw the basis of their relationship as the basis of Eric’s and Tom’s in
The Passionate Pilgrim,
and with Madeline Smith as a sort of Tweety Pie [the little canary-like bird that appeared in many cartoon films with Sylvester the cat] character.’

A rather bizarre, quirky little number, and with a
Carry On
-style narration by the late John Le Mesurier,
The Passionate Pilgrim
has something very naive and lovable about it. Whether this effect is enhanced by the knowledge that it was Eric’s very last piece of work is hard to know. But it has a genuine fairytale quality and it is a great pity that fate made it impossible to be completed in the manner wanted by Charles Wallace.

Charles began talking me through the process of what he originally wanted to achieve with the film. ‘The plan was to do three or four connected stories. Each segment, or episode, would star Eric as the lord, Tom as the arch-rival and a different girl—Madeline Smith being the first—as the one both men are trying to woo. These wouldn’t go out as individual films, but as one short film combining the three episodes.

‘I decided that the best way forward would be to shoot the first segment of
The Passionate Pilgrim,
show it to the right people, and then the money would come in for us to complete the other two segments and the film would be complete. The first segment, which was to end up being the whole film in the end, was shot as an historic piece at Hever Castle in Kent. I put it together roughly and showed it to various people, but unlike the Betjeman[-narrated] films I just
couldn’t get the financial backing, which struck me as ridiculous. Eric rang me up: “How’s it going, sunshine?” Well, I didn’t have the guts to tell him I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Also, I knew it would work—it was a great project with Eric starring. It was a guaranteed success. Feeling pretty certain therefore that all would come right in the end, we went ahead and started shooting the third segment of the story, planning to return to do the second segment later to finish the film off.

‘Again it was Eric and Tom, but by this time Tom was no longer a knight but a postman on a bicycle, and Eric was still the local lord, but now dressed in keeping with the much later times of our setting.

‘I was still under a lot of pressure, and I was only continuing filming to keep Eric on board. If I’d had to go to him and say I wasn’t able to get it together, he’d understandably have felt uncomfortable and reckon he’d backed a loser!’

Some of the filming was done back at Hever Castle.After that there came a long break as Charles tried to raise funds. He did so, but not in the manner he had planned.Tough times call for tough measures, it seems. ‘I sold my flat in the meantime, bought a house, got a whacking great mortgage, so I had the funding in place to get at least another day’s filming in the can.