behp0249-sheelagh-rees-summary

[Transcribed from typed and handwritten notes. This appears to be Shelagh’s memories, with prompts, for the topics she would cover in her interview. DS]

[Memory prompts?]

Salaries; Bonuses; Premises; People; Programmes; Worst Moment; Best moment.

1945 joined; 1946 went to AP Malcom Baker-Smith; 1946-7 cold; 1947-49 John Glyn-Jones; 1947 Heatwave. 1950 move to Lime Grove. People and programmes, offices, studios, transport.

[SALARIES & BONUSES]

8^th January 1945, joined as short hand typist on £2.18.10 a week, with a cost of living bonus of 14/- making a total of £3.12.10, with one week’s notice on either side and a note that “this does not qualify for entry to the permanent staff.” At this salary it seemed unnecessary for them to add that I was advised not to enter into a long-term house commitment at any base, as I could be transferred at any time. By 1948 I had got up to £5.10.0 a week and was on Grade BW. I then went up by a yearly increase of 5 shillings a week.

On 16^th November I was put on the permanent staff. An interesting note in the light of today’s rules: “The Corporation was at liberty without any further consent or concurrence of the employee (a) to record by any means any performance of any kind which the employee may at any time during his engagement give in any of the corporation’s programmes in any capacity.” Also, if I invented or discovered anything it would be the Corporation’s.

March 1952: A bonus of £1.10/- [£1.50] less tax of 7/- [35 pence] for some hard work I had done

July 1954: a bonus of £25.

February 1955:  Made a PA [Production Assistant] on about £12 a week, the first woman to do the Floor Managing job.

June 1955: My first big drama, producer Ian Atkins, Director John Jacobs and my AFM [Assistant Floor Manager] was David Wilmott whose voice is often heard today [1992] as a continuity announcer. This play was called A Dream of Treason, starring John Robinson and Jill Bennett.

November 1955: ran a Production Secretaries course

December 1958: Bonus for documentary programmes (letter from Kenneth Adam, then Controller, Programmes).

1959: Director’s Course, followed by a short series from Birmingham, Gosta Green.

1962: A new special [pay] award to take me to the special roof of grade. Letter signed by Stuart Hood, then Controller, Programmes. This bonus for £60, less tax.

1968: a personal grade of MP3. Letter from Huw Wheldon.

1969: 25-year bonus of £281 less tax. Letter from Charles Curran, DG.

1970: Bonus for working on drama experts conference. £40 less tax.

1972: Made a PUM [?]

1975: Grace leave.

1975-83: we were later called Production Associates.

1983: salary in year of retirement £13,000 net, so from £187 a year to £13,000 in 38 years.

PREMISES.

The convent at Maida Vale; the hostel in Grosvenor Square.

Alexandra Palace.

Marylebone Road (half the script department).

Lime Grove.

Television Centre.

Threshold House.

And Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and Belfast.

PEOPLE

Directors, memorable: John Fernald, Al Rakoff, Michael Elliott

Programmes: Gil Calder’s, most Z-cars.

WORST MOMENT: when I was a trainee floor manager at Alexandra Palace doing the Nine-o’clock News on my own and they changed the running order half way through and I lost my place.

BEST MOMENT: At the end of an Al Rakoff recording, when I was sitting on the studio floor, exhausted, and a Canadian visitor, whom I did not know was in the gallery, came down and said that he would trade me for any one of his floor managers at CBC.

CREDITS: 1958: short series in Birmingham, Gosta Green

1959-1964: School drama documentary on a secondary modern school.

Life and work of Ross, discoverer of source of malaria;

The Case Before You. A series of court-room dramas;

Moonstrike;

Kipling.

[Handwritten note says:] BBC Hostel, Grosvenor Square. Y. Littlewood. [Yvonne]

[There follows a more fleshed out description of Shelagh’s career]

1945. January 8^th. Joined the London Transcription Service at St Hilda’s convent, Maida Vale, backing on to the Maida Vale Studios, the convent later demolished. Making programmes recorded there and sometimes at BH, cut on discs at M. Vale. Met Michael Hordern for the first time, he narrating a programme.

Salary £3 10/- a week [=£3.50p], paid in cash in an envelope – did not have a bank account until managerial staff in 1955. Coffee was two and a half pence a cup and sometimes I arrived on Friday morning, payday, with only that amount in my purse. We were paid about 11 o’clock in the morning; I expect it was that time because the cashier’s office was over at Maida Vale Studios near the canteen and we had to walk across from our cell offices for breaks and lunch.

My producer, who would now be called a Director, was Malcolm Baker-Smith, who had been a pre-war set designer before he joined the Navy, and who was to return to Alexandra Palace (AP) as a Producer (Director). There was no great rush for town-based staff to apply for jobs at AP, as it was considered too far to travel and also television would not develop into anything much, so there was no [interview] board for the job, and as I remember I just went up to AP with Malcolm Baker-Smith. It was of course all extremely strange and exciting, with an immense amount to learn: no TV training school in those days although there was a very nice woman, married to a Studio Manager, who had been there before the war and advised us. We just had to feel our way and try not to make the same mistake twice. I remember when I was in the Gallery and the film of the Tower came up, and the signature tune, my stomach did turn over and this feeling lasted for a long time afterwards.

I expect everybody was nervous, so many things could, and did, go wrong.

I think the first programme I worked on was in June 1946, shortly after the reopening, and I think it was a ‘two-hander’. Certainly, the small number of characters didn’t lessen the nervousness in the Gallery, though the number of sets, if several, would certainly increase it.

I remember the actual movement of cameras from set to set, caused problems: noise was one, with heavy cables dragging along the floor; actors moving as well, sometimes rapidly to get to their position before the camera. Unfortunately, the audience got to recognise [that] the look of the ‘stuck pig’ was as common as the look of the breathless arrival as sometimes it happened that the cut came before the cue.

The movement of cameras and cables brought their own particular problems: sometimes a piece of furniture was in the way and had to be moved to clear the path; sometimes the leg or foot of an actor would have to be gently lifted, while he – in vision- gallantly carried on with his dialogue.

After Malcom Baker-Smith left I moved on to work with John Glyn-Jones and worked with him on plays, and one production I particularly remember was a musical version of Alice in Wonderland. This was done using both (which meant ‘all’) studios, the actors in one, and the orchestra, Eric Robinson, of course, in the other. It was a jolly show and I remember Ian Wallace being either Tweedledum or Tweedledee.

When we used two studios for sets, the Producer and Production Secretary would physically go to the other gallery. The next scene would be cued in by the S. Tel. E. [Senior Television Engineer?] of the first studio while the Director and Secretary dashed along the balcony outside in the open air, stopwatch ticking all the while to get into the gallery of the second studio. Too bad if it were raining! I well remember trying to hang onto two scripts (mine and the boss’s), the stopwatch and a handbag, notebook and pencils.

In 1947 there was a serious shortage of electricity in the country and television was taken off-air for six weeks. It was a sadly boring time as we all went to AP every day, but had hardly anything to do. I was in the middle of a comedy series, with John Glyn-Jones, called Pinwright’s Progress, with James Hayter in the name part. The shutdown happened half-way through the series, which returned as normal once we got electricity back again.

That was the very cold winter of 1946-7 with office heating down to minimum, and the canteen was the only warm place. About this time our office was a converted dressing-room at the back of the stage of the old theatre. Its outlook was a wall and we worked in electric light most of the time. It was quite eerie going back to the office after a transmission, up through the old deserted theatre which was used for set storage. I don’t think I’d like to do it now but in those days one was young and unafraid.

Being young and unafraid and full of energy, one got to BH [Broadcasting House] by 8.55 am to catch the BBC Greenline coach which took us up to AP via Camden Town which was a stop to pick up staff. I remember particularly Mrs Robb, who was in charge of wardrobe who always got on there.

Miss Bradnock was Head of Costume and Make-up, with Mrs Robb in charge of Wardrobe, and Tommy Manderson of Make-up.

The Reference Library and the Gramophone Library, were, in the early stages, sharing a room on the ground floor near the canteen.

[END]