Swallows and Amazons movie – Page 10

Filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in the rain at Bank Ground Farm in Cumbria ~ 20th May 1973

It was quite amusing when Mrs Batty’s sheep walked into Swallow’s boatshed, lifting our spirits on that rather gloomy wet day on Coniston, but I have no idea if it was caught on film. Can anyone remember seeing a television programme made up of amusing out-takes from movies prior to the 1980s? I don’t suppose ours were ever kept. It doesn’t matter – seeing them spoils the magic of the story in a way.

Taking Swallow out of the boatshed — Simon West as John Walker taking Swallow out of the boatshed at Holly Howe aided by Suzanna Hamilton, Sten Grendon and Sophie Neville

In 1971, Claude Whatham had enjoyed glorious May weather when he made ‘Cider With Rosie’ in Gloucestershire, but it rained so hard in Cumbria that filming anything was proving difficult. He managed to capture one limpid shot of me looking at Swallow’s tatty flag.

Claude Whatham at the Boathouse with Simon West and Sophie Neville

I wrote more enthusiastically about playing Consequences in Bank Ground farmhouse. This is the game that Virginia McKenna had introduced us to and we loved it. This time we must have roped in heads of the Costume, Hair and Make-up Departments. It seems that Emma Porteous, the Costume Designer, was on set with us that wet day in May. I would think that this was when they recorded the scenes inside Holly Howe with Susan and Roger and the wonderful lady who played Mrs Jackson. Someone recently asked why Susan never thanked her for lending her the frying pan, as it seemed out of character, but she still wasn’t feeling very well. Does Susan thank Mrs Jackson in Arthur Ransome’s book?

Suzanna Hamilton's costumes for scenes set at Holly Howe — Suzanna Hamilton’s drawings of her costumes for scenes set at Holly Howe

Ronnie Cogan was the quiet, gentle man usually clad in a grey tweed jacket, responsible for our hair on Swallows and Amazons. Foregoing the use of wigs, so very much in use on costume dramas at the time, he simply did up Virginia McKenna’s lovely thick hair, and cut ours, giving the whole movie a classic feel.

Mrs Ransome was fussy about Sten’s hair. She had specified didn’t want Richard to cast children with black hair and objected to his photo but acquiesced when she saw him running around at Bank Ground Farm with a short-back-and-sides.

Years later my mother worked with Ronnie on Diana: Her True Story, the bio-epic of epics based on Andrew Morton’s outrageous book. Serena Scott Thomas played Diana Princess of Wales, David Threlfall was Prince Charles, Anthony Calf had the glorious opportunity to play James Hewitt and my mother was given the role of Diana’s nanny, who hit her on the head with a wooden spoon. Mum said that she later bumped into Ronnie in Oxford Street but heard soon afterwards that he had sadly died. He had a wonderful career and must be hugely missed.

Simon West having his hair cut - trimmed — Simon West having his hair trimmed by Ronnie Cogan. Can anyone tell me the name of the driver holding him still.

He’d worked on classics such as The Boys from Brazil with Sir Laurence Olivier and A Bridge too Far directed by Richard Attenborough – the Lord Attenborough. That must have been quite something. It starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Ryan O’Neal who I am sure would have been pretty concerned about having the standard WWII military haircut. Ronnie also worked for Roland Joffe on The Killing Fields and Kenneth Branagh when he had a pudding basin haircut, for his monumental film of Shakespeare’s Henry V. It is funny how things inter-connect. Kenneth Branagh played my great uncle AO Neville in the Rabbit-Proof Fence.

Dixons Farm - Mike Pratt — Ronnie Cogan attending to Mike Pratt in the role of Mr Dixon photo: Daphne Neville

Peter Robb-King had been the Chief Make-up Artist on Diana: her True Story. Having worked on movies such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Stars Wars – Return of the Jedi, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, he is still involved with the most amazing feature films. He has just completed The Cabin in the Woods where he was Sigourney Weaver’s personal make-up artist – and to think! He was once mine.

Sophie Neville as Titty getting her makeup done — Sophie Neville being made up for the part of Titty by Peter Robb-King in 1973

“But, Sophie – you disappoint me! You didn’t wear any make-up to play Titty.” No, but as we filmed out on the water, sun cream became extremely important. If even a tiny bit of us had turned red or peeled the filming would have put in jeopardy. Predicting that we would turn vaguely brown, Peter decided to give us a bit of a tan when scenes where shot out of sequence, as a couple had been that first week.

Sophie Neville receiving a Titty haircut

Peter and Ronnie were also responsible for the continuity of how we looked so that the shots would cut together. My fly-away hair was well monitored. Mum had to wash it every other day.

Stephen Grendon and Ronnie Cogan — Ronnie Cogan with Sten Grendon. I was in the Make-up caravan beyond.

Sten seemed to be forever having his hair trimmed. There are quite a few photographs of this particular activity in progress.

Cutting Sten's hair — Sophie Neville with Sten Grendon’s being given a haircut by Ronnie Cogan ~ photo: Daphne Neville

You can read more in ‘The Secrets of Filming Swallows and Amazons’ available as a multi-media ebook illustrated with behind-the-scenes photographs.

The end of our first week’s filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in 1973 when all was not well ~

Suzanna was ill. ‘I told Claude that it was because she wouldn’t eat anything,’ my mother said. ‘Oo she was difficult.’ But it can’t have just been that. We’d all got cold filming out on the lake in our flimsy costumes and she went down hill from there.

The Producer, Richard Pilbrow, called a ‘unit day off’. It happened to be a precious, sunny Saturday. Sadly for him, it rained the next day, which the crew were originally scheduled to take off.

Richard Pilbrow and Claude Whatham at The Secret Harbour on Peel Island, Coniston Water — Producer Richard Pilbrow with Director Claude Whatham

I made the most of it. Mum hardly ever took my sisters and I either shopping or walking when I we were children, but Sten’s mother, Jane Grendon was happy to take us around the craft shops of Ambleside and up into the fells. I am sure it was just what we needed while Mum stayed with Suzanna, and had a snooze herself. She was the better chaperone on location, where she felt happy and relaxed, Jane enjoyed taking us hill walking and encouraged us to sing on mini-bus journeys through the Lake District.

My diary kept during the filming of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in 1973

My diary 19th May page two

The norm when filming on location is to work six days a week, resting on Sundays. This quite often has to be changed to a Saturday as some locations, such as the police will only give you clearance for tricky sequences when it’s very quiet. Busy town centres, can only be used on Sundays. We didn’t have any gun fights in Swallows and Amazons (1974) but when I was a location manager myself on Rockcliffe’s Babies I once had to get everyone out on a Sunday morning at 6.00am. We were recording a car chase going the wrong way around the Harrow Road roundabout above Paddington Station in West London with four policemen employed to stop the traffic. We had an actor clinging to the bonnet of the baddies’ car by the windscreen wipers, which were moving.

Dame Virginia McKenna on Windermere in 1973 - photo: Philip Hatfield — Dame Virginia McKenna on Windermere in 1973 – photo: Philip Hatfield

I look back through my diary and am so touched. Virginia McKenna was incredibly kind to take such an interest in us, bringing Suzanna strawberries and talking us all to the cinema in Ambleside. We must have watched ‘The Cowboys’, a 1972 movie starring John Wayne. I wonder if she’d met him in Hollywood. Her husband, Bill Travers had appeared in Rawhide with Clint Eastward and starred in Duel at Diablo with James Garner and Sydney Poitier when he’d been given the line, “Apaches seek revenge that way.” Titty would have loved it.

I wrote that Garth brought a pocket chess set. I’m afraid I couldn’t spell properly. This was meant to read Gareth. I have known two Gareths in my life. A Gloucester Old Spot pig, living in North Wales and Gareth Tandy, our third assistant director. His aunt Jessica Tandy was the famous Hollywood actress who had appeared in Alfred Hitchcock dramas such as The Birds. In later life she went on to star in Driving Miss Daisy with Morgan Freeman, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Nobody’s Fool with Paul Newman, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith.

Gareth had acted in all sorts of things as a boy from Oliver Twist to Dr. Findlay’s Casebook. If I’m not mistaken, Swallows and Amazons was his first film as an Assistant Director but he made a career of it, going on to work on amazing movies including the original Superman, For Your Eyes Only ~ the Bond film with Roger Moore, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp, Nanny McPhee, with Emma Thompson and Colin Firth, Johnny English Reborn with Rowan Atkinson and was the First Assistant Director on A Fantastic Fear of Everything.

Gareth signed himself ‘The whipcracker’ in my going-away book. It think this was because it had been his job to get us through costume and make-up and onto the set at the right time but I was left puzzled because he had done this with such charm we had never noticed any whips cracking at all. There must have been. Poor Gareth had been the runner with a walky-talky stopping unwanted traffic, cue-ing various boats and lugging tea urns about, but he did this with good grace and we all loved him. And no wonder, seeing as he’d given us a chess set just because Suzanna was ill in bed.

Jane Grendon with Sophie — Sophie Neville with Jane Grendon in 1973 ~ photo: Daphne Neville

You can read more in ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ available online, from Waterstones or direct from the publishers.

the-making-of-swallows-and-amazons-audiobook-cover

Holly Howe on the 5th day of filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ near Coniston in 1973 ~

Holly Howe or Bank Ground Farm ~

Lesely Bennett's photo of the double decker buses at Bank Ground Farm in 1973

Fifty years ago in the Lake District

My diary

When you next go to Bank Ground Farm you must stand outside the front door and imagine the sight of two red London Route Master buses making their way down the drive back in 1973. They swayed from side to side.

We thought it comic. I still can’t work out how they managed to avoid how bringing down the dry stone walls. While sheep grazed outside in the rain, we made ourselves comfortable at the Formica tables in one of these converted buses and got down to our lessons.

Bank Ground FArm above Coniston Water in Cumbria

Meanwhile Ian Whittaker, the set dresser, and Simon Holland, the art director on ‘Swallows and Amazons’, transformed Mrs Batty’s upstairs rooms into the Walker children’s bedrooms of 1929. I changed on the top deck of our bus and was rushed through the rain with a coat over my nightie to the magical atmosphere of the film set. This was warmed by arc lights. Everyone became focused what was just in front of the camera: me reading an early edition of Daniel Defoe’s classic book, Robinson Crusoe. The director, Claude Whatham needed to establish that he was Titty’s hero. I can remember having to hold the book in special way so the cover could be seen clearly.

You can see that in my diary, I described this as ‘a bed scene’, which might amuse some actors, especially those who are not at all keen on doing bed-scenes (every actor I know). The beds themselves are probably still at the farm.

The LP — Sophie Neville, Virginia McKenna and Simon West on the cover of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ LP, which is still available on Amazon.co.uk

They may have shot the scene where Captain John is learning Morse Code in the same room. Simon West then had to be made very brown indeed, the Make-up Designer dabbing away with a tiny sponge. This was for the uneasy sequence, much later in the story, when he returned to Holly Howe to explain himself to his mother. This was shot with Virginia McKenna writing letters at a desk in the square bay window, with the view of Coniston Water beyond. I had used it when stitching Swallow’s flag in the scene recorded the day before.

lucy batty — Virginia McKenna and Lucy Batty at Bank Ground Farm on 15th May 1973

Mrs Batty later told me that the bay window leaked terribly and that she was glad to get rid of it. She built a lounge area in its place, which became a dedicated Swallows and Amazons room. I’d been chatting to her back in 2002 when we were waiting for Ben Fogle and the BBC crew of Countryfile. They had been looking for other locations used in the 1974 film before a planned interview with me and Suzanna Hamilton, who had played my sister Susan. I remember Suzanna’s train had been terribly delayed.

We’d waited and waited and waited. It got later and later. When Suzanna’s taxi finally arrived, I was so excited to see her that I encouraged her to run down to the lake as we once had as children.

Homes and Gardens April 1974 — Sten Grendon, Simon West, Virginia McKenna, Suzanna Hamilton and Sophie Neville on location at Bank Ground Farm in 1973

The Countryfile director must have been at her wit’s end. Ben Fogle came down to fetch us. My excuse was that Suzanna needed a stretch after her a long journey from London.

Countryfile The Westmorland Gazette captured the three of us plodding back up the field.I did the whole interview holding a bottle of grog, given to me by Arthur Ransome fans who were staying at the farm. You can see it in the photographs if you look closely. I don’t think Ben knew what it was.

Ben Fogel interview — Ben Fogle, Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton and the BBC crew recording Countryfile at Bank Ground Farm in October 2002

My father’s 16mm home movie footage of the making of Swallows and Amazons was cut into this interview with such success that the documentary was re-shown on Big Screen Britain along with other landscape movies such as Whistle Down the Wind and The Dambusters.