[…]Russian Ballet came over here. And all sorts of ballet companies used to arrive in London. I used to go a lot to that and I used to go to the Mercury Theatre where Marie Rambert started the ballet club. On Sundays, I used to go there, and you'd meet a lot of designers and dancers and so forth. And I[…]
[…]hat made you decide to go into film?Charles Bennett : I didn't decide to go into film. It sort of happened. Actually, I started professionally in the theatre, I suppose when I was eleven. That was in Max Reinhardt's production of The Miracle at Olympia in 1911. And then I went back to the theatre wh[…]
[…]ust go back. My father had a patient called Louis Leavy he was conductor of the orchestra. Oh, yes. Yes. And Louis Leavy talked to the manager of the theatre. One, Reggie Forsyth and Reggie Forsyth he was a terrible man, really, terribly Jewish man by God Himself. And through that I got this job tha[…]
[…]nd, um...Grierson said, "Well, we want a sneak preview, but where can we sneak preview it?" And through, I think it was Basil's connections, the Arts Theatre had just opened at Cambridge and 'Night Mail' was to be the first film ever shown at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge. And we all went down... Harr[…]
[…]d he didn’t shoot superfluous stuff, his stuff always went together and when we came back to England I used to take notes every night from him in the theatre which was a wonderful education and don’t always get it and in those days some of the cuts would be 8 frames long and you’d get a nudge in the[…]
[…]me when newsreels were in enormous competition with each other and they would buy the rights and other companies would pinch it and they had newsreel theatres in London which showed nothing else and they would sometimes bring out two or three issues a day – tt was 1ike a newspaper – if something big[…]
[…]ck to what happened, so developing from your school years, what...Well, in about 1945, ’46 I was at the Brighton and Hove High School and I loved the theatre, I think this was a family interest, always a great interest in the Collins family, and I used to spend all my spare pocket money going down a[…]
[…] of pleasure boats going down the river. They were made into a 15 minute short and you had the soundtrack of the organ and the music score and if the theatre had an organist they cut off the sound and the organist played the score. And if they didn't have an organ then they played the soundtrack, it[…]
[…] And the theatres in them days was marvellous! The Coventry theatre, the old Coventry theatre, not the new Coventry theatre […]
