The MacGuffin: News and Comment (02/Feb/2004)
(c) Ken Mogg (2004)
February 2
In 1927 a Scottish solicitor, John Maxwell, opened the huge new Elstree studio in Hertfordshire, England, and formed British International Pictures (later Associated British Pictures). On a shoestring he set about rivalling Hollywood's product. Almost immediately he achieved a coup by importing the German director E.A. Dupont (Variete [1925]) to make such films as Moulin Rouge (1928) and Picadilly (1929), the latter scripted by novelist Arnold Bennett. In 1929, a young Welsh actor named Reginald Truscott-Jones (later Ray Milland) got his start at BIP in a couple of 'quota quickies'. Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock had also signed with Maxwell. Between 1927 and 1932, Hitch directed eleven films at Elstree, including parts of the review Elstree Calling (1930). The atmosphere around the studio was generally high spirited. Practical joking was not unknown, and Hitch was one of the ringleaders. On occasion, just to alleviate boredom, he might light a fire under a chair in which an actor was dozing between takes, or have someone's new car gaily striped in washable paint. Someone else who had just started at BIP was Ronald Neame, still a teenager. Hitch (himself nicknamed 'the boy genius') always referred to Neame as 'one of my boys' - see 'News' item below. Neame was employed as a 'gofer' to run errands and make himself generally useful to whoever needed him. Perhaps, though, he was sometimes too energetic and still a bit wet behind the ears. One day someone asked him to go over to another production that was shooting and get the 'sky hook'. Young Ronald jumped at the chance to be of use and went around asking for this strange device. But everyone he approached said that they had given it to the next production down. The last set Ronald visited was that of Hitchcock's The Farmer's Wife (1928). Neame remembers seeing Hitch but being too intimidated to approach him. Instead, he went up to the cameraman, Jack Cox, and repeated his question about the whereabouts of the 'sky hook'. Cox responded by inquiring very nicely if Ronald was 'new' and then told him that there was, in fact, no such object. He recommended that Ronald return to his set and tell everyone that 'the studio has sold the sky hook because no one was using it!' (My hearty thanks to Mark Norberg for this story, told by Neame when he spoke last week at the Hollywood Heritage Museum.)
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