Bryan Forbes at 100 - A Life In Film

[00:00:05]Brian was a writer who became an actor, who became a director, who became a producer, who ran a studio, [music] who was a very good novelist. He didn't come from any show business background at all.

[00:00:28]When I was 16, I won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And then when I left, I started to go around to different agents with photographs and trying to get a job. And I went to one particular agent. I I thought, my goodness, it's incredible. Because he said, I think you'd be very good in this. And it was a sort of I was 18, flatchested and you know and very um inexperienced and this was a part that Diana Doors would have been wonderful for. And so he said the only thing is we're shooting at Marlean Shunting Yard and uh night shooting and in order to meet the director to get the final approval. if you could go there tomorrow night at midnight, he would meet you and if he thinks you're right, the part is yours. So, I'm so excited. I go to Maliban [laughter] Shunting on endless tubes, endless buses, and I get there and I'm on the platform and there's this young actor who's doing a scene where he has to throw himself in front of an oncoming train. Now it was a very small cheap production so they hadn't got a stand in or anybody. So and the actor was Brian.

[00:01:55]So I stand there watching him and eventually Brian finishes the scene comes and stands beside me and says oh hello my name's Brian Forbes. What's your name? I said Newman. And he said what are you doing here at this time of night? So I said, "Well, uh, Mr. Forbes, uh, there's a chance I might be in your film." So he said, "Really?" So I said, "Yes, I it it's a part for a woman in a pub, uh, and it's just a small part, but I'm waiting to talk to the director." So he said, "Well, I'm terribly sorry.

[00:02:35]you've been brought here under false pretenses because this is the last night of shooting and we're wrapping tonight.

[00:02:44]So he could see I was a bit devastated cuz I'm in Malaban Shanting Yard and it's late and I I've got to get a tube or whatever home. So he said, "I'll tell you what, I'll drive you home. Where do you live?" And I said, "Straton." And he said, "I'll drive you home because you'll be safe with me." I wasn't safe with him happily [laughter] but uh that was how we met [music] and we were together forever after that.

[00:03:15]He was one of a group of young exciting people in the industry who wanted to change the face of British films and I think Brian wanted to make that change.

[00:03:28]If you wanted to do films where [music] you actually shot the whole thing on location and you didn't build the jungle in the studio or on the Pinewood lot, he wanted to bring a kind of reality and subjects that were perhaps deeper, more complex subjects.

[00:03:50]That was what he wanted to do. And uh I think to to quite a degree he managed to achieve that.

[00:04:00]There were a lot of things they felt were wrong with British films that they hadn't uh they hadn't progressed enough.

[00:04:07]They weren't realistic enough and they both agreed on many things. So they formed a partnership called Beaver Films. They had no money, but they decided they would try and do subjects that were unusual subjects that they both cared passionately about. And of course, the angry silence was the first one that it it shot on a shoestring.

[00:04:33]Brian wrote the script. Dicky was in it.

[00:04:37]Dicky at the beginning wanted to continue acting and then he began to want to direct, which he did brilliantly. Brian always wanted to write scripts. Dicki never wanted to write, but Brian also wanted to direct.

[00:04:54]And he managed to get his first directing job really in a very bizarre way because uh Mary Haley Bell who was uh Haley Mull's mother had written a book which was a great success called Whistle Down the Wind. And it was all shot on location. All of the children in it they were just local school children.

[00:05:23]Haley was the only actress, proper actress. And it was very funny, you know, how Brian got to direct it because they'd signed a director who got an offer from Hollywood just a couple of weeks before they were going to start shooting. And Brian and Dicki said, "Well, you can't turn it down. It's a lot of money, which we don't have, and it's a great opportunity for you." So he'd gone. So Brian said to Dicki, "I wish I could direct it." So Dicki said, "Let's go and see Johnny Mills, Haley's father, and see if he would let you." So they go and see Johnny. And at first, Johnny said, "No, because he thought, well, you've never directed before, so why would I risk my daughter being in a film?" Eventually, they they beat him down and he said, "All right, yes, you can direct it." So Brian and Dicki were coming back in the car and they were coming back to to our house and they were silent apparently. And then Dicki said, "Brian, do you do you really think you can direct it?" And Brian said, "Well, they'll soon find out because [laughter] they had no option by then.

[00:06:40]They were stuck with it." And he did direct it. Obviously, I think he he did a tremendous uh job of directing that film. When that launched him really, it was the most exciting thing that suddenly they had got a film off the ground albeit with no money but it was a success. Producers were saying oh you know they [music] these two men should be considered as filmmakers. So it was a very exciting moment in both their lives really.

[00:07:20]Seance on a wet afternoon was uh the next subject that they wanted to make and that was a really difficult film to set up. It was very strange, very quirky and [music] and uh Brian wanted to direct that himself and do the script himself and they managed to get that wonderful actress Kim Stanley to play the part in that. It was a kind of new move in British films. Every film Brian did was just slightly different and moving away from the type of films that we'd [music] all become used to.

[00:08:06]Very often films you're connected with or whatever, you look at them and you think, "Oh, they're so dated, you know, why would anybody enjoy it?" But League of Gentlemen curiously stands up. And I think Bronn wrote a really terrific sharp uh funny script and of course Jack Hawk and it was a group of really really interesting actors.

[00:08:32]League of Gentlemen was a success.

[00:08:36]I thought it was a a film that would was a very interesting, very sharp, lovely actors. Everything went right with it which was which was great and I think both Bran and Dicki were very thrilled with that bizarre man. I mean I adored him. Brian adored him but he was he was just wonderful at what he did and it was a great joy to work with him, great privilege to work with him. He was generous, incredible company, funny, then incredibly sad and worried [music] and insecure.

[00:09:21]When he married Britt, she was such a lovely person and one hoped that that was going to be the happy time for him, but that didn't work. And then I don't think Peter ever found what is the corny expression the bluebird of happiness. It wasn't within him. He was wonderful, [music] clever, talented, and could make other people's lives so happy, but he couldn't make his own life happy.

[00:09:55]Elton is the greatest friend any person could ever have and I think I've known him now for 30 years and he and David are extraordinary [music] and they they they are extraordinary people. got to know them originally [music] because Elton had a house near where I used to live [music] in Virginia Water and Brian at that time had taken a desperate step and owned the local bookshop. But one day Bran said, "There's this weird young man who came in dressed in the most bizarre clothes who's just spent a fortune on books. I think somebody said he's one of the beees."

[00:10:40]So that was Alton and then Alton used to come in and spend for because he's an avid avid reader. He reads ferociously.

[00:10:51]Anyway, he then invited us over to his house uh to come and we all had Brad said we better be, you know, care because maybe there's lots of sort of mad pop stars there. Will they be on drugs? Will they be on that? And we go and we all have tea. Actually, I seem to remember. But we became great friends with him.

[00:11:13]The kind of film Brian did brilliantly [music] just in my opinion was King Rat which was almost a love story between [music] the two men and it it was an extraordinary film that I I actually did see that a couple of months ago and I thought my god that broke all the rules and we got to know James Clell who was an inmate in that Changi prison.

[00:11:42]and he wrote the book that Brian wrote the script from.

[00:11:46]And Brian was very anxious to please him because he had been there and lived through it amazingly live lived through it. It was a film that had so many different levels. It was touching. It was funny. You got the grimness and the awfulness of the existence. the thing about loyalty when people are in a situation like that and it was almost the love of these two men and then at the end the last shot which Brian did where where um George Seagull is is in the van when they're being relieved I think he says uh [music] you know what you kept us alive because hate is what keeps you alive and that's what James Clell said that hate can keep you alive as much as love.

[00:12:38]Brian wrote The Whisperers for Edith Evans because he admired her so much and she was she adored Brian. She hadn't done a film I think she only in her life I think maybe did she did two films for Brian. She was in Slipper and the Rose just briefly like for two seconds when she was really very old. And Brah wanted to write this.

[00:13:04]He wanted to write something about old age and and shoot it on a shoestring and Edith wanted to do it and Brian loved working with her. He loved it and that again is an extraordinary film.

[00:13:20]It was an amazing cast and it wasn't a successful picture. It never worked out.

[00:13:26]It was never quite right. It had the most wonderful actors, the most wonderful location. We shot in the studios de of Victorine in the south of France and everything was going but it was never right. He took over from John Houston who walked who didn't want to do the film and Brian always felt he didn't really think the script was right. He would have liked to change where it was set but he couldn't because it was last minute. He was offered it and started the next week and he thought I should be so lucky. Kate Heburn, Charles Boyier, Julieta Msina, Maggie Leighton, all these wonderful people in a great location. It looked beautiful. Brian always said it wasn't a successful film, but he met Kate who became a lifelong friend. So, some good happy things came out of it. Extraordinary to have worked with Kate who was unique. She was She really was. They don't, you know, they say they don't make them like that anymore. They don't. I mean, Kate was extraordinary.

[00:14:37]Brian was so thrilled to have be given that opportunity. [music] It was always a struggle. It was a struggle because Brian was trying to do the kind of films that he and Dicki liked, which are not the kind of films that a committee want to do.

[00:14:56]One thing that came out of it that was wonderful, Lionel Jeff, the actor who Brian had worked with, he he came went to see Brian at the studio to have a have lunch one day and he said to Brian, "I've written a script, The Railway Children, because I love the subject so much and I would just love to do it." So Brian read it and Brian said, "Let it is a terrific script. I love it.

[00:15:26]I love it. We're going to make it. I've got to make it. And I will try and talk the committee into doing it because it's a little English film, but we've got to do it. And he said to Lal, "Who would you like to direct it?" And Lal said, "Well, I know this is Pie in the Sky. I would love to direct it, but who's ever going to I've never directed. Nobody's going to let me do it." And Brian said, "You're doing it, but you're an actor.

[00:15:55]You're like me. You absorb things.

[00:15:57]You've written one of the most enchanting scripts. I'm going to insist you do it." And Ronald said, "You You're joking. Surely they won't let." And Brian said, "I shall insist." And he did. L did it. And I don't know. I hope people [music] still love it as much as I do.

[00:16:18]He loved the raging moon which was with Malcolm McDall and Bran wrote it for me.

[00:16:23]And at that time nobody had made any films about people who were disabled or had had touched upon that subject.

[00:16:34][music] He decided to make it and everybody in it took a cut but they would profit if the film made money. It was a kind of communal thing. Malcolm McDow couldn't have a lovely actor to work with and I thought he was stunning in it. I thought it was an interesting script. It got a lot of awards, but it was such a happy film to make and it was lovely that it I think it it did come off. It people [music] seemed to like it. I don't know what I'd think if I saw it now, but at the time, nobody had touched [music] a subject like that.

[00:17:17]The originally, you see, [music] it was meant to be something that Elizabeth Taylor did. And Brian went out to meet her. and he said to her, "Please do it cuz National Velvet, International Velvet, but uh he spent the day with her and she said she'd consider it, but decided she never wanted to make another [music] film and so they were stuck with finding somebody and although I don't I don't suppose anybody believes it, they went through a lot of people and time was going on and eventually Brad said, "I think you should do it." And of course it got a lot of criticism because everybody wanted Elizabeth Taylor naturally to do it. Brian wanted her to do it. So I got that part and the film Brian felt it never came off. He wrote he rewrote and and did things with the script. But you know how sometimes, however much you want something to work or you try so hard, nothing nothing quite is right. And I think Bronn always felt that. I mean, there were certain things about it he loved.

[00:18:26]I I did I like doing it, but I'm not a horse person. So, I was terrified a lot of the being because horses know if you're terrified. And um Tatum was amazing. She did all her own riding.

[00:18:43]So, no, I don't think that I don't think that was really one of Brian's successful films.

[00:18:50]Dicki was very keen to make a film about Charlie [music] Chaplain and he said to Brown, "Would Brian um write a script?"

[00:19:01]And so Bran said yes, he would. And Bran researched it uh researched obviously Chaplain's life. And Bran wrote a script which ultimately Dicki wasn't 100% keen on. It was very It wasn't just the, you know, the Charlie Chaplain funny character. It It was much more gritty.

[00:19:28]And I don't think Dicki wanted that aspect. And it wasn't an unfriendly situation. It's just that it wasn't really finally what Dicki wanted for the film. It's really rather good that they had such an incredible friendship and respect for each other, respect for each other's talent, and they would argue and try and win their own point of view. But I think when the chips were down, it was very good that they could agree to disagree and remain friends and still [music] um admire or or respect each other's talent.

[00:20:08]It it is difficult. I mean I keep using the word difficult but it is a difficult profession because one minute you're hot one minute you're everybody's flavor of the month and then other people come up and take those positions and you are left kind of wandering around thinking what next. I think that's where Brian was lucky because he could always turn to writing.

[00:20:35]If there was ever a lean period or something fell through or some film he'd hoped would get off the ground, he would turn to writing. And I have this vision always of Brian in his study sitting there at the typewriter and sitting there with a big cup of coffee and literally a cigarette going all the time. Writing writing probably was the thing he turned to most and he loved most maybe. Um, so he was lucky that he had other things he could do so that if the film came up and he lost it and somebody else got the job he hoped to do, he would write.

[00:21:25]And you know who thought he was very good, which was a great compliment was John Larry, who Brian admired enormously. [music] and he loved Brown's work and that Bronn always felt that was pretty special to get his approval.

[00:21:44]whenever he's filming, if he has to be away for a long period of time, either in Hollywood or Spain or wherever, I never want our family to be separated.

[00:21:56]And I never want to be in a situation where I want to be with the children and I want to be with Brian and I'm always on a plane trying to divide my time between the two. That's really very unsatisfactory.

[00:22:11]Both my daughters always say they loved it cuz we were all together. We were never separated as a family. You know, everybody has their own method. But for me and for Brian, it it just worked cuz we thought we've got two wonderful children. How lucky we are. We want to be together. We don't want to [music] be away from them. I think I've just been very lucky. I think I've been lucky to have found somebody to be in my life at such an early age and I think I I've just been very very lucky really. I've had the good luck to meet fascinating people and I think Kate [music] was a a special person to have in our lives and so many people that I've been really really lucky and it's um combined with having a lovely man in my life. How lucky is that?

[00:23:20]>> [music]