The Telegraph (12/Dec/2007) - Obituary: Peter Handford
(c) The Daily Telegraph (12/Dec/2007)
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Frenzy (1972), Jack Cardiff, Laurence Olivier, Peter Handford, The Lady Vanishes (1979), Under Capricorn (1949)
Obituary of Peter Handford Sound recordist whose films included Out of Africa, Room at the Top and The Go-Between
Peter Handford, who has died aged 88, won an Oscar as the sound recordist on "Out of Africa" and worked on many of the classic British films of the 1960s; he also created a vast catalogue of railway recordings documenting the last days of steam.
In a career stretching from 1936, when he joined Denham Studios as a 17-year-old sound apprentice, until 1988 Handford worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Pollack, Tony Richardson and David Lean. Although he worked closely with Hollywood during his later years, he was primarily associated with the English New Wave Free Cinema movement of the 1960s, led by Richardson and including such figures as Karel Reisz, John Schlesinger and Jack Clayton.
Handford worked on the sound of such classics as "Room at the Top", "The Entertainer", "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Sons and Lovers", "Billy Liar", "Tom Jones", "Charge of the Light Brigade" and "Oh! What A Lovely War".
Later on he formed a close working relationship with the American director Joseph Losey, who settled in London after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. For him Handford created the sound for "The Go-Between", which starred Julie Christie and Alan Bates; "A Doll's House", with Jane Fonda; "The Romantic Englishwoman", with Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine; and "Steaming", the final film for Diana Dors.
At that time 95 per cent of exterior shots were faked inside a studio, but Handford used his war-time experience to develop a system of location sound recording - which he first pioneered on David Lean's location shoot in Venice for "Summer Madness", starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, and perfected in "Room at the Top" for Jack Clayton.
His skill at capturing complex location sound also made him much in demand for Hollywood productions; in addition to Out of Africa, he worked on "Murder on the Orient Express", "Dangerous Liaisons", "Gorillas in the Mist" and "White Hunter, Black Heart", Clint Eastwood's homage to "The African Queen".
In a parallel career to his film work, he used the technology and techniques developed for film recording to capture the fast disappearing world of steam railways. He established a record label, Transacord, dedicated to steam railway recordings. The vast catalogue he produced is now lodged with the National Railway Museum in York.
"I love the sound of trains because that's what gives them their aura and mystique," he said. "You can get a sense of the weight and power of these mighty machines from the sound they make when they are puffing up an incline."
Peter Handford was born on March 21 1919 and joined Denham Film Studios in March 1936 as an unofficial apprentice, picking up the necessary skills from watching and talking to the senior technicians.
He worked on "A Yank at Oxford", with Robert Taylor and Maureen O'Sullivan, but on the outbreak of war joined the British Expeditionary Force and was evacuated from France.
He returned as a cameraman on the D-Day landings. He was shot during the hedgerow fighting two days later, when his life was saved by a pocket diary and a silver cigarette case, which stopped the bullet.
His first major film came in 1949 when he was offered a job working for Alfred Hitchcock on his experimental film "Under Capricorn" alongside the director of photography, Jack Cardiff.
"Working for Hitch was fairly boring," Handford said. "He came in every day totally prepared. He knew exactly what he wanted and how he was going to achieve it. Everything was mapped out and you did as you were told; and if you didn't you were off the film, and it was as simple as that."
Handford was delighted when, in 1972, Hitchcock tracked him down in Suffolk, specifically to ask him to do the sound on "Frenzy", the first film he had shot in London for 25 years.
But it was his work during the 1960s that assured Handford's place in the English art-house movies of the period. "I became very friendly with Tony Richardson when I worked with him on "The Entertainer" with Sir Laurence Olivier. "Room at the Top", which I did the sound on for Jack Clayton, marked the beginning of a new age for British cinema. It was no longer a series of drawing room comedies or stiff-upper-lip war films. Cinema was starting to reflect what was happening at the Royal Court Theatre in London."
It was while he was working on "Billy Liar" for John Schlesinger that he met his future wife, the actress Helen Fraser, who was playing Billy's long-suffering girlfriend, Barbara. The kind loan of a coat during a cold morning's location shoot in a cemetery sparked a love affair which lasted all his life.
Despite working on such high profile films as "Murder on the Orient Express" and "The Lady Vanishes", Handford found films in the 1970s very frustrating. His experience with the director Michael Cimino on the "Heaven's Gate" disaster - over-budget, over-long and under-watched - was enough to prompt a short sabbatical away from the big screen.
For some years Handford worked as a freelance sound man for Anglia Television in Norwich.
While working for "Farming Diary" he received a message that the Hollywood director Sidney Pollack wanted to meet him in London.
The "Out of Africa" shoot took Handford to Kenya, where he spent many months not only recording the dialogue on set but also penetrating deep into the bush, recording the authentic sounds of the African landscape. His work won him the Best Sound Oscar for 1985.
Handford retired after finishing work on Havana with Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford in 1988. He kept himself busy archiving his sound recordings and working in his garden, and enjoyed the continued success of his wife's appearances in Bad Girls on television.
Peter Handford, who died on November 6, is survived by his wife and by two daughters from a previous marriage.
