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after which the apprentice cameraman joined Denham’s camera department full-time. Promotion to first assistant focus puller soon followed and by the time he eventually linked up again with DP Robert Krasker on Laurence Olivier’s morale-boosting Henry V, Allwork was credited as the Assistant
Technicolor Technician.
The war was now just over when,
following a brief deferment so he could work on The Way To The Stars, the 18-year-old began his National Service in the Royal Artillery. By some great good fortune his commanding officer turned out to be Misbourne’s former accountant who knowing Allwork’s movie background facilitated his transfer to an awesome-sounding unit called Scientific Advisors to The War Council. First he was posted to Germany where he photographed captured V2 rockets then it was on to Palestine for a harrowing spell in which he witnessed at first hand all sorts of terrorist outrages including the King David Hotel massacre. The result of all that was, perhaps not unsurprisingly, a nervous breakdown. After a 12-week spell of recuperation in hospital near Cairo, Allwork was posted back to the UK where he worked briefly for the Army Kinematograph Service before eventually being demobbed.
Resuming at Denham he renewed his foothold on the industry ladder as a focus puller on a string of films in the early Fifties, thence to Technicolor where he finally graduated to fully-fledged technician on their three- strip camera. By the mid-Fifties, he was working full time for the Boultings
this wilderness by Lossiemouth-based Air Sea Rescue pilot Squadron Leader John Leeming, who’d earn a gallantry medal for his singleminded efforts. Before the crash, Allwork was 6ft 3ins. After it, he was an inch shorter due to the accident. Years later, he returned to Loch A’an while shooting footage for Braveheart - this time, he agreed,
80s there was, of course, Out Of Africa which won its DP David Watkin a Best Cinematography Oscar.
Watkin, though, was quick to acknowledge Allwork’s astonishing
aerial work which perhaps remains longer in the mind. More recently ACS can boast films like Braveheart, The Jackal, The Devil’s Own, Seven Years In Tibet, The Barber Of Siberia - which opened this year’s 1999 Cannes Film Festival - and Ridley Scott’s new sword-and-sandal epic Gladiators.
These days ACS looks very much like a family concern. Quietly-spoken Allwork is chairman, his son Matthew is managing director and daughter Sam is operations manager while Frances also seems to keep rather more than just a watching eye on busi- ness - as well as whisking her husband away for regular golf dates, both at home and abroad.
Now 72, Allwork claims to have given up aerial cinematography but has certainly not quit “stooging around” for hours at an end (with instructor on board too) in his beloved 1929 Gipsy Moth. Asked once by broadcaster John Dunn what kind of pilots he preferred to work with, he replied, memorably, “old ones.” He probably fits that category these days.
Apart from his bi-plane, another passion is a long-held ambition to make the definitive full-length feature film about controversial British female flier Amy Johnson, who like Allwork’s one-time boss Leslie Howard disap- peared without trace, and seemingly without explanation, during the Second World War. He has a script, a dazzling promo and, Hollywood pro- ducers please note, simply will not take no for an answer. ■ QUENTIN FALK
PETER ALLWORK BSC
on what would turn out to be a series of classic satirical comedies, starting with Private’s Progress. This led on to his first encounters with the Brothers’ brightest new star (and future sup- porter), Peter Sellers, as well as his own elevation to camera operator on I’m Alright, Jack.
Now we must cut to some 10 years on from the start of Allwork’s new high-flying status and almost to the end of a decade in which he’d firmly established his aerial photogra- phy credentials on films like The Red Baron, Aces High (for which he received a British Academy nomina- tion), A Bridge Too Far and Superman. It was winter in the Cairngorms and Allwork was shooting some POV material for a time-warp adventure The Land That Time Forgot.
Allwork, strapped in sitting on the mount with the door open, and heli- copter pilot John Poland were on their fourth foray of the day flying at about 300 feet between great pinnacles of Highland rock when they suddenly heard a bang. The tail rotor had gone and all too quickly the chopper went down hitting frozen Loch A’an with the camera still turning. Poland, who’d managed to transmit a feeble May Day before the crash, was okay while Allwork though injured managed painfully to crawl out of the wreckage. It was about 3.30 in the afternoon and the weather was very quickly closing in. Eventually some 12 hours, four flares, increasingly frozen limbs and a lot of barley sugar later, the pair were rescued following a heroic sortie into
from a much safer height Encouraged by Frances, Allwork
was quickly back up in the air again and less than a year later, ACS was born, based first at Fairoaks near Chobham before moving to its present base at Shepperton. As the company developed its spread of activities so it also continued to build up an impres- sive range of movie credits. In the mid-
Photos top left to right: Only Two Can Play on location with Peter Sellers and Kenneth Griffith;
Peter Allwork with his son Matthew; Robert Redford in Out Of Africa; Malcolm MacDowell in Aces High (Courtesy BFI Stills); above: Peter Allwork with his 1929 Gipsy Moth.
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