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Smart Operator
Smart Operator
An interview with David Harcourt
A lavish budget - £250,000 – and an even more epic
schedule – three months – had been allocated by 20th Century Fox for the pro- duction at Shepherd’s Bush Studios of the 1942
wartime flagwaver, The Young Mr Pit t , helmed by Carol Reed.
In the title role was Robert Donat as the fledgling politician who eventually rises to power in time to curb the Gallic excesses of the belligerent French dicta- tor Napoleon. The rest of the cast was a veritable roll call of the best of (avail- able) British including Robert Morley, John Mills, Herbert Lom, Phyllis Calvert and Felix Aylmer.
Filling out the distinguished “bill” was a whole raft of other character actors, many theatre stalwarts like James Harcourt who had secured the tiny but telling, be-smocked, role of local pieman to Pitt and his parliamentary cronies.
The casting of Harcourt had an extra poignancy because observing his perfor- mance from extremely close quarters were two of his three children. Daughter Jo was Reed’s continuity girl while son David, at 26, was focus puller to director of photography, Freddie Young.
“He was extra nervous,” recalls Harcourt fils, “because both Jo and I were on the other side of the camera. He wasn’t concentrating on the cue for the next line and I really thought he might seize up altogether.
“His crucial line was ‘Pies are to Mr Pitt what frogs are to Monsieur Bonaparte’. But could he get it out? No. It just went on and on. Poor Jo had to leave the set and I only stayed because I had to, being on the camera crew. In fact everyone was very sweet about it, espe- cially Carol Reed.”
According to Freddie Young’s mem- oir, this halting progress wouldn’t have remotely fazed the director who always “worked at his own pace.” Apparently the film was already two days behind after just a week’s shooting and produc- er Ted Black was complaining bitterly.
“Don’t worry, Freddie,” said Reed. “What you’re doing is beautiful. Just carry on as usual. I have an infallible method for these producers who want to hurry things up.”
“What’s that, Carol? What do you do?” replied Young. Reed, who was an actor before he turned to directing, told him: “I let tears come into my eyes, and I look terribly upset and before long the producer’s got his arm around me, say- ing, ‘It’s all right, Carol. You leave the worry to me, let me take care of it.’ And I always get away with it. It’s the only way to deal with producers.”
The Young Mr Pitt proved to be, probably for the best, the one and only time that Harcourt – who’d go on to
On the set there was a tree with a door which suddenly opened and moth- er, in full witch garb, stepped out on to the stage. This proved too much for the youngster watching from the wings who then began to scream and scream. The director eventually yelled for the curtain to be rung down and David had to be removed from the theatre.
When he left school, he still hadn’t much of a clue what he wanted to do except that he knew an actor’s life was too precarious for his own liking. He
right, my boy. You make tea better than anybody else and you’ll get on fine.’”
Before that too-close fami- ly encounter in the early Forties, there was to be anoth- er occasion when his father’s theatrical connections would cause some embarrassment. Having quit BIP in 1936, Harcourt was, by now, work- ing for DP Jack Cox at Islington’s Gainsborough Studios on Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes.
Up for one of the main roles (Miss Froy, which even- tually went to the peerless Dame May Whitty) was an old family friend Marjorie Fielding. “She was very ner- vous and I did what I could to steady her. Then, before her test, Hitch came up to me and whispered, ‘Don’t put any film in the camera.’ That was like a stab wound to me, I felt ter- rible. But what could I do, I was just the assistant. After Hitch called ‘Cut’, he told her, ‘Thank you very much, we’ll let you know.’ Naturally she came up to me and asked how I thought it had all gone. ‘Fine,’ I said, stuttering. Now, of course, I was acting.”
The war proved to be
Harcourt’s big ‘break’. In the
Army Kinematograph Service
(AKS), he operated on various instruc- tional films and even did some lighting. So when he finally returned to civvie street, he was able to resume his career higher up the traditional camera ‘ladder’.
His first feature film back was Holiday Camp, now operating for his sometime boss, Jack Cox. “I always dreaded the first day on a new film and as this one marked my transition I was especially nervous. I didn’t sleep think- ing about seeing the first set of rushes.”
From 1947 to 1980 - when he retired at 65 after completing Saturn 3 for DP Billy Williams, with whom he’d worked for seven years on such great films as The Wind And The Lion and Women In Love - Harcourt had spanned nearly five
become one of the industry’s most prolif- ic and respected camera operators - and his father ever coincided on a film. Yet, 35 years on, history sort of repeated itself when he and his son, Jamie - then making his own way in the industry as a camera technician - briefly collided too on just one assignment – Peter Brook’s Meetings With Remarkable Men.
James Harcourt had been a compara- tive veteran when he briefly stopped the show that day in West London. David was just five when, quite unwittingly, he brought the curtain down at the Liverpool Playhouse, where his father was a con- tracted star and his mother, professional- ly known as Isadora Keith, was appearing in pantomime playing a witch.
enjoyed photography, though, and even had his own rudimentary dark room at home.
Thanks to his father, who was working at Borehamwood’s BIP Studios – known as the Porridge Factory because of its Scots owner John Maxwell – on an early sound production of Hobson’s Choice, Harcourt was given an entrée to the camera depart- ment where he was eventually employed at 30 shillings a week on the usual week- to-week arrangement.
“It was a wonderful atmosphere,” Harcourt now recalls at 85, still sprightly but long settled into retirement, “all go, lots of noise and lights. But when I came home I told my father that all I seemed to do all day was make tea for the crew. ‘That’s all
Photo above: David Harcourt takes a quick nap behind the camera during the filming of The Devil’s Advocate in 1977 with John Mills
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