You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone Page 13

  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.

  Makin’ Movies (Part Two)

  ‘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.’

  It 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, according

  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.

  ‘By now another year had gone—1983 had become ‘84—and I knew I just had to keep Eric there with me, and I was sure that eventually we’d get the thing completed.

  ‘The following Sunday, Eric was dead.’

  ‘Then a slightly eerie thing happened. We were set to do another day’s filming, which would have basically finished the segment with Tom as the postman. We had Beryl Reid lined up to play Eric’s mother.

  ‘We had lined it up that we were going to shoot on a particular Wednesday—just with Eric and Beryl Reid and the new damsel, as Tom’s stuff was now all in the can. However, during the previous week I felt I didn’t have things totally together enough to shoot that day. I rang Eric up just to let him know, and to make sure he wouldn’t mind that we were putting back shooting until the following week. Eric was the easiest person to work with, and I thought therefore he would just say it was fine—no problem.And in this plaintive voice he said, “Oh! Do we really have to?” “Crumbs,” thought I. “I must’ve upset him somehow.” Eventually he said, “Well, if you really have to change it I suppose I can go and mow the lawn instead.” I hung up with thi
s conversation nagging at me, because it was so unlike Eric to be that fussed by a week’s delay.

  ‘The following Sunday, Eric was dead.’

  ‘I cannot help but think Eric had an inclination that things weren’t right: a premonition that time was short, and that was why he wanted to finish the film.’

  My father was very perceptive about his health, and all his close family felt with hindsight that at this time he was having quite a few premonitions. He was giving belongings away, like pipes and books, sorting out his photo albums and his office, and generally distancing himself from everyday mortal existence. And, looking back, Charles Wallace concluded the same.

  ‘I cannot help but think Eric had an inclination that things weren’t right: a premonition that time was short, and that was why he wanted to finish the film.

  ‘On the other hand, and from my own perspective, I’m rather glad we didn’t do that last day’s filming. It would have been very strenuous for him, and in light of what soon happened to him, I would have felt terribly guilty that it was the effort required to film that had brought on the fatal heart attack. I was happy to live without the thought that I was the man who killed Eric Morecambe!’

  I suggested to Charles that it must have been a big shock for all the others involved in the project when it was announced that Eric had died. He replied, ‘To be honest, it was such a big shock to me that I didn’t really have the time or inclination to think about how the others might be affected, beyond his family, of course.’

  With Charles left with an incomplete third episode, a second episode that hadn’t even been fully written, and only a first episode complete, what would be the new plan for The Passionate Pilgrim? Too much time and money had been invested to just shrug shoulders and walk away.