Horror Days, Happy Times for Hugh
From his cheerful face with its ready smile you would never guess that Hugh Harlow lived with horror in his younger days.
Horror with a capital H.
Dracula and Frankenstein, creatures from outer space and the slimy depths. All of them charming characters, he says, ready to obey his every word.
‘H’ also stands for happy times in a long and distinguished career in the movie world during which he enjoyed the friendship of some of the great names of the industry.
His home at Chillington, near Kingsbridge, is a treasure chest of signed photographs and memories from a career which has taken him all round the world.
Errol Flynn, Christopher Lee, Sir Laurence Olivier, Pierce Brosnan, Julie Christie and, on the other side of the camera, classic film makers like Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron and Richard Attenborough.
Watching a late night movie on television it is a fair bet he will see his name flash up in the credits, quite small if it was made in the ’50s or ’60s but much more prominent from the era where he had a leading role in production.
Hugh is proud of the part he played in the making of many award- winning films that filled cinemas all over the world.
Yet it is his 15 years with Hammer Productions that most people want to talk about when they hear he was a film-maker.
“Everybody remembers Dracula and Frankenstein,” he says with weary resignation.
“Christopher Lee got so fed up with being asked about them, he refused to be interviewed when they were mentioned.”
Horror is still big business, however, and those 50-year-old films have found a new audience among people who were not even born when they were made.
An international fan club has built up and Hugh is often called upon to write articles for their specialist magazines.
Last summer he went back to the Hammer studios at Bray to attend a convention to mark the 50th anniversary of possibly the most famous horror film of all – The Curse of Frankenstein.
“There was a tremendous turn-out and they were nearly all young people, many from Germany and America,” he recalls. “Horror has a new cult following now.”
Hugh, now 68, seemed destined to become an engineer when he left school.
His father had lined up an apprenticeship and was upset when the boy announced that he had got a job with the newly formed Hammer Film Productions in Wardour Street.
He began as an office boy but within two months had moved into the production office and the world of glamorous people like Errol Flynn who Hugh said ‘used to call me Junior’, Eva Bartok and a procession of famous names.
Those were the pre-horror days but everything changed when the studios made The Quatermass Experiment which also became a big TV success.
Young Hugh moved out to the studios at Bray and worked as a ‘gofer’ – the lowest form of life on a film set – helping to make the Quatermass sequel.
Then he moved up to become third assistant director on The Curse of Frankenstein, the first Hammer colour film.
The stars were Peter Cushing who Hugh said was ‘a splendid man’ and Christopher Lee.
Rapid promotion followed and by 20 he was a first assistant director, running the set and coordinating production, only to be called up in the last ever National Service draft to spend two years in the RAF, much of it in Cyprus.
Back in civvie street the studios at Bray were going through a hard time and he was loaned out to Errol Flynn who had formed his own production company to make films in England.
“A nice man but with faults. I soon learned that he was only able to work in the mornings,” he said.
Back with Hammer, a succession of horror films followed and then others with a wider interest.
She – the Rider Haggard story, starring Ursula Andress, The Wrong Box with a young Michael Caine, John Mills and Tony Hancock ‘a very strange man’, then unit manager for Alfred the Great, an MGM film shot in Ireland where the company leased 50 acres of the Galway countryside to construct a set.
Another film featuring Michael Caine has some uncomfortable memories for Hugh.
In 1966 he worked as second assistant director on Funeral in Berlin, one of the three spy novels by Len Deighton, following the success of The Ipcress File.
Most of the film was shot in what was then West Berlin, apart from a week in London. The opening scene was shot from a high angle position from an office overlooking Trafalgar Square and showed Michael Caine, playing Harry Palmer, weaving his way through the four lions, people and pigeons en route to see his MI5 boss.
Hugh was down in the square with a link to the director Guy Hamilton and after giving Caine the cue to start walking had to whisper ‘turn over’ into a walkie talkie hidden inside his coat lapel.
Several takes were necessary before the director was satisfied and as Hugh said ‘turn over, action Michael’ for the fourth time he felt a heavy hand clamp on his shoulder and turned round to confront two burly policemen.
“I almost collapsed with shock,” he confesses.
“They had apparently been watching me for the past half hour and it turned out that ‘turn over’ is an underworld phrase for turning over stolen goods.
“A small crowd had gathered and as Michael Caine came walking by, on cue, without stopping, out of his cockney mouth comes the comment ‘See you in jail, mate’. Fortunately I was able to get out of that scrape but much to the amusement of the crew.”
Hugh enjoyed working with Richard Attenborough, particularly on Grey Owl starring Pierce Brosnan, the true story of an Englishman who went out to Northern Ontario and Quebec and lived with the native Indians.
At Pinewood Studios he worked with Ridley Scott on Legend, starring Tom Cruise, and was due to follow this by re-joining the Bond people for their next picture A View to a Kill, which followed Octopussy.
“Then our forest set, occupying all of the huge 007 stage, the largest in Europe, burned down over a lunch hour,” he said.
“That incident set us back on our schedule enormously and it jeopardised my chances of finishing the film in time to do the next Bond.”
Among Hugh’s happiest memories are making Far from the Madding crowd, with Julie Christie and Peter Finch, filmed in Dorset for director John Schlessinger and as production manager for Schlessinger on Sunday, Bloody Sunday, again with Peter Finch.
Shortly afterwards he crossed the Atlantic to work in Hollywood and then 10 years in Canada before returning to Bray to team up with some of the most famous directors in the business – Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, Ridley Scott and Richard Attenborough.
The James Bond film, The World is Not Enough, put him in touch with an old friend, Pierce Brosnan, with whom he had worked earlier. Filmed in Azerbaijan and Pinewood Studios, it involved constructing a matching set on oilfield platforms out on the Caspian Sea ‘a logistical nightmare’.
From a long list of famous names, he says Sir Laurence Olivier (Please call me Larry”) is one of his favourites. The great man was in failing health when he agreed to star in a Dracula film to be shot in Cornwall and Hugh was delegated to look after him.
He met the great man, and a nurse, at Exeter airport and stayed with him throughout the filming at Tintagel and Mevagissey.
Hugh is proud that his son and daughter have followed him into the film business. Matthew is a special effects technician working on the Harry Potter films and the recent Bond movies, while Katie is a freelance script supervisor.
Retirement in Devon reminds him of professional visits to the county including a five-month spell in Dartmouth making The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson.
Another Devon assignment nearly brought disaster. In 1965 the Dave Clarke Five were the stars in Catch us if You Can filming on Burgh Island. The production mini-moke became stuck in the sand at Bantham with the tide coming in fast.
“A four-wheel-drive Land Rover pulled us out in the nick of time but it was a scary moment. I had visions of making headline news – for all the wrong reasons.”
(c) 2008 Herald Express (Torquay UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.