William Boyd - The New Confessions

“I’d like you to meet Sonia,” I said thickly. “Must try and get up to Coventry. Once I’ve made this film.”

“I say, Todd,” Druce frowned. “You couldn’t see your way to lending me a tenner, could you?”

“Of course.” I took out my wallet. For some reason I had more than thirty pounds in it. I handed two fivers over.

“Pleasure,” I said.

“Couldn’t make it twenty, could you?”

I counted out another two. “Pay me back when I come to Coventry,” I said cheerfully.

Druce smoothed his hair with both hands. He looked as if he had a dull but nagging ache somewhere inside him, deep.

“In fact …” he began. “Everything I said tonight — to you and Kite and Teague — was a load of nonsense.” He did not smile. “I’m broke. Stony. Bailiffs have got my cars, my garage. I’ve got a couple of tenseater charabancs in a friend’s yard, but I can’t afford the license fee. I came here, tonight, to see if I could tap an ‘old comrade’ or two.”

He told me more about his difficulties. I half-listened. I was moved by his candor. In the state I was in I would have emptied my wallet, no questions asked. I saw the essential decency of Leo Druce then, and I felt truly sorry for him. His appearance, his manner, his personality, seemed to promise so much. But nothing in his life had lived up to his potential. I resolved to do what I could to help him.

That did not turn out to be much of a problem. At my instigation, Superb-Imperial hired Druce’s two charabancs as cast and crew transportation for the filming of Wee MacGregor Wins the Sweepstakes . He had to wait a couple of months and had to get the vehicles up to Edinburgh, but Maude paid him half his fee in advance, which saw him over his initial difficulties and kept his creditors at bay.

We started filming in mid-November in and around Edinburgh (Harry Bliss was playing Wee MacGregor and we had to wait for him to finish his role in The Blue Cockade —hence the delay). I warned Maude about the problems of filming in limited daylight, but he needed the film as soon as possible and insisted we press ahead. I had insisted for my part on filming in Edinburgh. Location filming was then the latest fashion, but I was prompted more by my own inclinations to authenticity. In the event, it took approximately twice as long as planned owing to appalling weather, Harry Bliss coming down with pleurisy and the holidays at Christmas and New Year’s. For Leo (we were on first-name terms now) this was a bonus, as his fee virtually doubled. As the frustrating weeks went on, so his old confidence returned. As a cost-cutting exercise I was producer, director and cameraman, but I soon relinquished that first role to Leo. His experience of military logistics in the Service Corps proved highly useful. He managed to procure a small mobile generator that enabled us to deploy arc lamps while on location. He also bought three large sheets of mirrored glass, which we used to bounce light back onto the actors on murky days. Wee MacGregor , I am the first to admit, is by no means an example of good lighting, but the fact that it was lit at all was something of a miracle — whose working was almost entirely due to Leo.

One other aspect of the film is worth recording here. At a key juncture in the story, Wee MacGregor, down on his luck, his last pennies spent in a consoling pub, shambles drunkenly out into the rain and weaves his way home to his dreadful lodging house. He spots on the ground a cardboard ticket — the eponymous sweepstakes ticket — and unthinkingly pockets it. I wanted to shoot this moment from Wee MacGregor’s point of view. Recalling my experiments with a hand-held camera in the field outside Elverdinghe, I decided to try again. I broke apart a large alarm clock and, removing the cranking handle on the camera, rigged up the clockwork spring to the turning ratchet. Wound up and set going, this device gave me about thirty seconds of filming at the regular speed of sixteen frames a second.

In the completed film, we cut from Wee MacGregor bouncing off the alleyway walls to what appears to be his uncertain gaze (nice work with the focus) wandering about the cobbled lane. The camera halts at the ticket, wavers, closes up and a hand comes into frame to lift it off the ground. I claim this as the first commercial use in Great Britain, possibly the world, of an independently powered camera. Later, when small portable dynamos and compressed air bottles were commonplace power sources, I still used my clockwork device for short bursts. I never liked cranking cameras and was an early advocate of the power drive. My only regret is that it was not available to me during the first war. I could have filmed the most sensational footage.

The delay in the film upset Sonia, who was most annoyed when I told her I had to return to Scotland after New Year’s, and our marriage experienced its first truly bitter row. She was heavily pregnant and our child was due in January. I said I would try and get away. In fact I was filming in the Pentland Hills when our son Vincent, named after his maternal grandfather, was born. I remember the cable:

SON BORN JAN 5 10:30 AM STOP MOTHER AND VINCENT DOING WELL STOP VINCENT

At first I thought Vincent Shorrold was making some kind of feeble joke. It was only when I returned home two weeks later that I learned the shocking truth and discovered my son was called Vincent Todd. He had been registered and I was told it was too late now for second thoughts. I was violently opposed to the name and fell out badly with old man Shorrold when he demanded to know what my objections were. I had to give way and have always regretted my weakness. I now had a son whose name I disliked. Every time I said “Vincent,” Vincent Shorrold’s face came unpleasantly to mind. As I have said before, names are important to me. This surrender on my part proved to be a serious error.

Wee MacGregor Wins the Sweepstakes turned out to be a sizable commercial success. Even the critics were kind. The Daily Telegraph described it as “a delightful example of Caledonian folk-comedy.” The Herald said, “Harry Bliss has never been so hilarious.” Bioscope commented, “A limp comedy of shameful banality redeemed only by its technical excellence.” Close-up remarked, “If this is the best that the British cinema industry can produce, we should shut up shop and go home.” But Superb-Imperial’s audience loved it. The film made twenty-one thousand pounds at the box office in its first two months of release (the trade show was in April 1923). Maude and Rosita were ecstatic. At Sonia’s prompting I asked Rosita to be Vincent’s godmother and she happily consented.

In fact the success came at an opportune time because Maude was having terrible problems with The Blue Cockade . Thanks to Faithfull’s ineptitude it took over sixteen weeks to film and the costs escalated to twenty-nine thousand pounds, not including Mary Mount’s fee. Faithfull now cut me dead at the studios. Apparently he and Mary Mount hated each other. Originally, she had agreed to stay on and make another film for Superb-Imperial, but she left the instant Blue Cockade was over. The film itself was a box office disaster. Even with Mary Mount as its star, no American renter would touch it.

Maude sold the rights to Wee MacGregor to a film distributor, Ideal Film Renters, for ten thousand pounds to make a quick profit. Ideal, so I learned later, paid him another fifteen thousand to make two more Wee MacGregor five-reelers, and these I was duly contracted to film. For the first time I was regarded as a director proper. Maude and I drew up an interim agreement. I would complete the two films before the end of 1923 for a fee of four thousand pounds. Leo Druce was to be producer on them both.