from Clifford White
I was a cameraman in London, working mainly on crews 7, 10 and 13, from 1959 until 1969, when I moved to Bristol to work as a cameraman on O.B.’s, before gaining promotion to Floor Manager – a post from which I recently retired. I have been raiding my loft and my memory banks, and have come up with some stories and illustrations which I hope everyone will find interesting.
First, a copy of an article in the London Evening News, published on June 1st 1966, which describes my unique contribution to the “Wednesday Play.” It was the very first time that an Ikegami hand-held camera, normally used on Outside Broadcasts, had been used inside a television studio.
In those days, because of the difficulty of editing the new-fangled video tapes, the play was recorded ‘as live’ and, since I featured in a large part of it, I was carrying the camera for a full 75 minutes. I subsequently discovered that on O.B.’s it was normally supported by a full body harness and a thick shoulder pad. In the heat of those old-fashioned studios I was just wearing a shirt, and can still remember the pain as the heavy camera gradually dug into my shoulder!
The next item from my archives is a picture which was given to me by a press photographer covering the official visit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to the recently opened Television Centre on February 15th 1961. This was during my spell with crew 10, and the senior cameraman on the front of the “Mole” crane is Peter Hills. Swinging the crane-arm is Peter Ward, and that’s yours truly behind the steering wheel, in my natty sleeveless pullover, talking to a press reporter. Second-in-command on the crew, operating the camera on the left, is Tony Abbey, being driven on the Vinten “Heron” by Barry Webb, who is talking to a camera trainee named Brian Kingston.
For the studio part of her tour, the Queen Mother was brought to TC3, where we were rehearsing for that afternoon’s transmission of “Wednesday Magazine”; hence the presence of David Jacobs, Ron Moody (dressed as Fagin), and John Gielgud. But other personalities were obviously brought in, because I can see Richard Dimbleby in the background, talking to Hugh Carleton-Greene. And that’s about as far as my memory goes on this one. Perhaps your readers can come up with the names of some of the BBC dignitaries surrounding the Queen Mum.
When she had finished meeting the people in the line-up, she looked straight at me, and started to walk towards me. I felt sure she was going to say something about the huge camera-crane that I was driving, but she was deftly steered back on to her planned itinerary by a Palace official, so I shall never know!
The next picture was published in Weekend Telegraph magazine on 21st May 1965, where it was used to illustrate a feature-length article about the long-awaited advent of colour TV in this country.
Yes, yours truly again, operating a camera that thoroughly dwarfs its modern-day counterparts! In fact, it was so big and heavy that it actually took four men – using a handle at each bottom corner – to lift it on and off the camera pedestal!
The photograph was taken during two days of colour TV demonstrations that were carried out in Studio H, Lime Grove on Monday, 22nd March, and Tuesday, 23rd March, 1965. Throughout that time we repeatedly ran a magazine programme which was presented by Judith Chalmers; and which, as the picture-caption rightly says, was much stronger on colour than intellectual content!
The audiences for these demonstrations consisted of gentlemen of the press, BBC executives, and Members of Parliament, all in the hope of persuading the Government that we were more than ready for them to give the go-ahead for regular colour transmissions to begin. Even so, this didn’t happen for at least a couple of years; when, from late in 1967, several programmes per night were broadcast in colour on BBC2. These were mainly documentaries on film or were US imports – who can forget Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in!
Until now, I thought that was as far back as my memory went, but then I happened to trawl through my work-schedule diaries for the previous five years, and came up with the following entries:
Friday, 13th July, and Monday, 16th July, 1962. Studio H, Lime Grove. Colour TV Experiments.
Monday, 20th August, to Saturday, 1st September, 1962. Earls Court Radio Show.
(I believe I am right in thinking that, as a result of those experiments a month before, this is when colour television was first demonstrated to the Trade and the visitors to the show.)
Wednesday, 13th January, 1965. Studio H. Colour TV transmissions to Moscow.
(This was to help Soviet Television decide whether they wanted to use the German PAL system, or the French SECAM method.)
Another item in my collection of memorabilia is an edition of the Observer Magazine dated 27th September 1964. It contains an article about series 3 of Z-Cars, and features the arrival of a character, P.C. Baker (played by actor Geoffrey Whitehead), who joins the cast as the new partner of P.C. Bert Lynch (James Ellis). It also includes interviews with the writer (John Hopkins), the producer (David Rose), and detectives Barlow and Watt (Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor); and one of the illustrations used in the article is the attached “behind-the-scenes” picture.
I have to admit that I did not normally wear outdoor clothing whilst toiling away in a hot studio, but on this particular occasion I happened to be wearing a “Persil-white” shirt, which the photographer said would seriously upset the contrast-ratio of the film in his camera, making the rest of the picture appear much darker. While the photograph was being taken, therefore, which happened for a very short period during rehearsals, I simply donned my car-coat, thus ensuring that the picture would pass through the printing process properly!
At Bristol I soon became the “personality” cameraman for their sports coverage, and the next picture, printed in Ariel on 13th October 1972, was taken while we were setting up to record a Match of the Day from Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane ground. The unit had recently taken delivery of its new colour scanner, CMCR 13, and I was getting to grips with Angenieux’s latest 100inch telephoto zoom lens, which enabled me to see the whites of the goal-scorer’s eyes from my position on the half-way line. Happy Days!!
