33 results
Schizophrenia: An Overview
- I. Harry Minas, Henry Jackson, Peter Doherty, Pat McGorry
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- Journal:
- Behaviour Change / Volume 2 / Issue 2 / June 1985
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 October 2014, pp. 80-93
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An overview of schizophrenia is presented. The epidemiology and clinical features of this common but serious psychiatric disorder are outlined. Four case vignettes illustrate different presentations and, to some extent, the varying course of the disorder. Diagnostic issues are discussed and the heterogeneity of the disorder highlighted. The major aetiological hypotheses are outlined, including evidence for genetic and biochemical involvement, the role of family, social and personality factors, psychological mechanisms and life events. A diathesis-stress view is presented, in which biological vulnerability and psychological and environmental factors are necessary for the development of the clinical disorder. Somatic and psychosocial treatments are briefly discussed as are the course, possible outcomes and factors affecting prognosis. Finally some future research directions in both the biological and psychosocial areas are considered.
Contributors
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- By Isabella Aboderin, W. Andrew Achenbaum, Katherine R. Allen, Toni C. Antonucci, Sara Arber, Claudine Attias‐Donfut, Paul B. Baltes, Sandhi Maria Barreto, Vern L. Bengtson, Simon Biggs, Joanna Bornat, Julie B. Boron, Mike Boulton, Clive E. Bowman, Marjolein Broese van Groenou, Edna Brown, Robert N. Butler, Bill Bytheway, Neena L. Chappell, Neil Charness, Kaare Christensen, Peter G. Coleman, Ingrid Arnet Connidis, Neal E. Cutler, Sara J. Czaja, Svein Olav Daatland, Lia Susana Daichman, Adam Davey, Bleddyn Davies, Freya Dittmann‐Kohli, Glen H. Elder, Carroll L. Estes, Mike Featherstone, Amy Fiske, Alexandra Freund, Daphna Gans, Linda K. George, Roseann Giarrusso, Chris Gilleard, Jay Ginn, Edlira Gjonça, Elena L. Grigorenko, Jaber F. Gubrium, Sarah Harper, Jutta Heckhausen, Akiko Hashimoto, Jon Hendricks, Mike Hepworth, Charlotte Ikels, James S. Jackson, Yuri Jang, Bernard Jeune, Malcolm L. Johnson, Randi S. Jones, Alexandre Kalache, Robert L. Kane, Rosalie A. Kane, Ingrid Keller, Rose Anne Kenny, Thomas B. L. Kirkwood, Kees Knipscheer, Martin Kohli, Gisela Labouvie‐Vief, Kristina Larsson, Shu‐Chen Li, Charles F. Longino, Ariela Lowenstein, Erick McCarthy, Gerald E. McClearn, Brendan McCormack, Elizabeth MacKinlay, Alfons Marcoen, Michael Marmot, Tom Margrain, Victor W. Marshall, Elizabeth A. Maylor, Ruud ter Meulen, Harry R. Moody, Robert A. Neimeyer, Demi Patsios, Margaret J. Penning, Stephen A. Petrill, Chris Phillipson, Leonard W. Poon, Norella M. Putney, Jill Quadagno, Pat Rabbitt, Jennifer Reid Keene, Sandra G. Reynolds, Steven R. Sabat, Clive Seale, Merril Silverstein, Hannes B. Staehelin, Ursula M. Staudinger, Robert J. Sternberg, Debra Street, Philip Taylor, Fleur Thomése, Mats Thorslund, Jinzhou Tian, Theo van Tilburg, Fernando M. Torres‐Gil, Josy Ubachs‐Moust, Christina Victor, K. Warner Shaie, Anthony M. Warnes, James L. Werth, Sherry L. Willis, François‐Charles Wolff, Bob Woods
- Edited by Malcolm L. Johnson, University of Bristol
- Edited in association with Vern L. Bengtson, University of Southern California, Peter G. Coleman, University of Southampton, Thomas B. L. Kirkwood, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing
- Published online:
- 05 June 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 December 2005, pp xii-xvi
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Evaluation of Rapid Readout Biological Indicators for 132°C Gravity and 132°C Vacuum-Assisted Steam Sterilization Cycles Using a New Automated Fluorescent Reader
- Michelle J. Alfa, Nancy Olson, Pat DeGagne, Michele Jackson
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- Journal:
- Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology / Volume 23 / Issue 7 / July 2002
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 January 2015, pp. 388-392
- Print publication:
- July 2002
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Objective:
The primary objective of this study was to evaluate fluorescent readout results of Attest 1291 Biological Indicators (Bis) (3M Health Care, St. Paul, MN) and Attest 1296 BI test packs (containing Attest 1292 Bis) using full and fractional cycles compared with the growth data when prolonged incubation (7 days) was included. Gravity displacement and vacuum-assisted steam sterilization cycles were evaluated. A secondary objective of this study was to evaluate the new automated rapid fluorescent reader (Attest 290 Auto Reader).
Design:The rapid readout Bis for gravity displacement and vacuum-assisted steam autoclave cycles at 132° C were processed using full (4 minutes) and four fractional cycles that provided 30% to 80% positive results for growth after 24 hours of incubation (48 hours of incubation for Attest 1292 Bis from the Attest 1296 test packs). Sixty of each type of BI were tested for each cycle (300 of each BI type in total).
Results:For all full steam sterilization cycles, results of the rapid fluorescent readout and the 24-hour, 48-hour, and 7-day growth tests were negative for all Attest 1291 and 1292 Bis tested. For all fractional cycles, the 24- and 48-hour growth results for the Attest 1291 and 1292 Bis, respectively, were the same as the 7-day growth results. The fractional cycle data indicated that fluorescent rapid readout was a more sensitive indicator than growth. There were rare (0.9%) false-negative results for Bis under fractional cycle conditions and these all correlated with short fractional cycle exposure times.
Conclusions:The fluorescent rapid readout results of the 1291 Bis and 1296 BI test packs reliably predict both 24- and 48-hour and 7-day growth. These data support the value of rapid readout Bis for sterilizer monitoring for both the vacuum-assisted and the gravity displacement steam sterilization cycles. The new automated reader requires less manipulation of the BI and makes monitoring user friendly and less prone to user errors.
A Survey of Reprocessing Methods, Residual Viable Bioburden, and Soil Levels in Patient-Ready Endoscopic Retrograde Choliangiopancreatography Duodenoscopes Used in Canadian Centers
- Michelle J. Alfa, Nancy Olson, Pat DeGagne, Michele Jackson
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- Journal:
- Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology / Volume 23 / Issue 4 / April 2002
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 January 2015, pp. 198-206
- Print publication:
- April 2002
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Objectives:
To obtain information about current reprocessing practices and to obtain samples from the biopsy channel to quantitate soil levels and bioburden in patient-ready flexible duodenoscopes used for endoscopic retrograde choliangiopancreatography (ERCP).
Design:Participating centers were sent a questionnaire and a kit for on-site collection of samples from the biopsy channel of the duodenoscope.
Setting:Thirty-seven hospitals from across Canada participated. The only criterion was that they currently used and reprocessed flexible duodenoscopes for ERCP procedures.
Methods:The questionnaire obtained information on reprocessing practices. The kit included a detailed instruction booklet outlining sample collection and all of the tubes, sterile water, and brushes needed for it. Samples were collected on-site from all ERCP scopes in each center on Monday morning and shipped by overnight courier on ice to the research center. Each sample was assayed by routine microbiologic methods for total viable count and protein, blood, carbohydrate, and endotoxin levels.
Results:Microbial overgrowth was present in 7% of 119 scope samples. Cleaning appeared to be reasonably well done in most of the centers, and 43% of the centers were in total compliance with basic national guidelines. The data from the scope samples indicated that there was significantly greater buildup of protein, carbohydrate, and endotoxin associated with ERCP scopes from centers using glutaraldehyde, compared with those using peracetic acid. Carbohydrate was the soil component detected most frequently and in the highest concentration in scope channels.
Conclusions:Although cleaning was generally well done, areas for improvement included ensuring the availability of written reprocessing protocols, immersion of scopes during manual cleaning, use of adequate fluid volume for rinsing, adequate drying of scopes prior to storage, and the separation of ERCP valves from scopes during storage.
20 - The Temeraire to the rescue
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
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- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp 215-236
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Summary
It was to be 9 November when our Temeraire steamed into Holyhead. I couldn't wait to get aboard and introduce myself to her Captain. He was a massive Yorkshire man and had been trawling out of Hull all his life, and his ship was called Acrasia. The unit had gathered round and were looking her over with delight. She was the realisation of all our hopes that the frustrations of the last weeks were now over. I asked the Captain to come down and meet the unit. This he most willingly did. And when it came to Phil Ross, her auburn hair down to her shoulders and her perky impish smile beaming up at him, he was struck with awe as he swallowed her hand in his massive fist. ‘What's thy job, lass? Not putting paint ont’ this mob, surely?’
‘Not quite, Captain. I sort of keep the log, keep track of things, the day's events. Quite complicated, really. You'll see as the days go by.’
‘But you don't get int’ boat with all this lot, do you?’
‘Certainly I do.’
‘How many hours are you out there, lass?’
‘Depends on the weather. On a good day, five or six.’
‘I've never heard the like. How long you been doing this?’
‘September 18th we started; about seven weeks I suppose.’
‘My word, but I reckon you've earned the V.C. twice over.’
‘And so say all of us, Captain’, I added, and meant it.
‘Now what's to be done today, like?’
‘We have to get our equipment aboard, if that's all right with you.’ And then we explained our bits and pieces of equipment and what each one did, how and why. We put him in the picture so far as it was possible, and from his occasional blank stare, he would have identified better with us if we had walked out of a circus tent in our various garbs: clown, juggler, trapeze, equestrian, but this lot? A bit rum, no question.
At the end of the day Charlie found himself and his sound camera somewhere down in one of the holds—none too salubrious—whilst Kay lorded it, perched imperiously astern, his recorder nestling in a cradle that Harry knocked up for him.
Contents
- Pat Jackson
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- A Retake Please
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp v-vi
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2 - Dog's body
- Pat Jackson
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- A Retake Please
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp 12-22
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Summary
I was face-to-face with Harry Watt, later to make his name with Target for Tonight and Overlanders.
‘Hullo Jackson, I'm Harry.’
‘How do you do, Sir.’
‘We drop all that, here. Just call me Harry. What's yours?’
‘Pat, Sir—I mean, Harry.’
‘Very democratic, the film bizz, very informal, though we do refer to Mr Grierson as the Chief. Tomorrow, get out of your suit, because you'll be expected to do all sorts of odd jobs apart from running messages: flannel bags and an old hacking jacket's the ticket.’
Then, out of the centre door on the right, appeared a composed looking youth, about my age. He was blinking. ‘Chick, this is Pat, our new messenger boy.’
‘Hullo Pat, I'll see you properly in a tick; when you've been in the dark room … it takes a second or two to focus, properly.’ Chick Fowle was to become a great cameraman, who was to shoot many of Humphrey Jennings's films: Spare Time, Listen to Britain, and many others. He showed me the enlargements he had been doing. Beautiful prints of Ceylon, as it was in those days. Wonderful studies of Buddhist temples and close-ups of Sinhalese dancers in their fantastic head-dress and ceremonial garb. Basil Wright, he told me, had just returned with thousands of feet of film which was to become the famous Song of Ceylon.
Chick kindly asked me to join him for lunch. It cost us sixpence, a ham roll and cup of tea in a small cafe in Rathbone Street which was almost directly opposite 39 Oxford Street—most convenient. Chick had been with the unit about six months and was a true Londoner. He too had started as ‘the messenger boy’ and was thoughtful enough to be encouraging about that lowly station. ‘You'll soon be doing a bit of everything, apart from running messages’, he said.
8 - The G.P.O. becomes the Crown Film Unit
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 66-76
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‘I have to tell you now that we have received no such communication from Herr Hitler and consequently, from 11.00 am this morning, this nation is at war with Germany. You can imagine how I must be feeling after all my strivings for peace …’ To hell with his feelings. How dared he lumber us with them! What arrogance and insensitivity. Who gave a damn how he felt when every family in the land knew that it was threatened, that it must face pain and tragedy for years to come, until peace returned to a world that could never be the same again.
Martin Boyd, the Australian novelist, was staying with us at Newlands. Neither of us had a gas mask so we walked down Eltham High Street to the Civil Defence Unit. We were each given a ridiculous cardboard box which might have contained anything. A looped length of string enabled them to be carried from the shoulder and we made for home. Entering the ‘in and out’ driveway, my sister Joss opened the front door and from the top step greeted us with her finest example of British sang froid. ‘I'm afraid we're at war.’ And then the air raid warning sounded, a banshee wail if ever there was. Would London be flattened in the next hour or so? I climbed the front steps and wondered how many times I'd done so since Joss and I returned from a visit to an uncle to find the blind and curtains drawn and to be told of Kit's death. None of us had ever got over it and never would. Maybe in the near future, an hour or so, I would be reunited with him.
We went inside to the drawing room and listened to the B.B.C., which was giving half-hourly bulletins. The R.A.F. had sent out a raid on the Kiel Canal, almost immediately after war was declared—a bellicose gesture if nothing else. Hibberd, the chief announcer and news reader, was his cool Edwardian England self, oozing King's English with every vowel and relishing them, and then the ‘All clear’ went, half an hour after that first siren sounded. How many thousand times were we to hear it?
Introduction
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp vii-viii
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Fay Compton, so her son told me, said to him in his early teens: ‘Tony, darling, I'm too poor to educate you properly, you'll just have to go on the stage’. Anthony Pelissier did, and amongst many other endeavours made a success of everything that he undertook. But he was an enviably talented man. Sadly this is not a biography about Anthony, though one is long overdue. No, no. Here we are dealing with much smaller fry. But, the smallest salmon parr on reaching the sea is liable to have strange experiences and meet many large fish in the oceans of his travels, some of them so large that they have influenced the recent history of our times. How then did I have the chance not only of meeting some of them but filming them? How could it be that I, the ex-messenger boy of John Grierson's G.P.O. Film Unit, could nine years later be face-to-face with the Commander in Chief (C. in C.) of the Western Approaches, Admiral Sir Percy Noble, outlining to him how I proposed to make the film he had requested on the Battle of the Atlantic? And, some years later, confronting L. B. Mayer, the founder of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, with the simple challenge: ‘Use me or release me. Otherwise you are wasting your money and my time’?
In retracing my steps they will not lead me to the confessional. I shall not, as the great Jean Jacques Rousseau in his vast volume of confessions, gloat over every temptation and his failures. He spares us nothing except the movement of his bowels. The confessional is for The Brompton Oratory, and greatly though I may be in need of it, I shall spare you the list of my failures and wrongdoings. I am only concerned here with the struggle to find my little niche in the world, the struggle that is the common denominator of us all. As I walk back over my pebbly path, if you will come with me, even part of the way, I shall be delighted and very flattered.
3 - Night Mail
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
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- Liverpool University Press
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- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp 23-34
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Summary
Its working title was The Travelling Post Office and Basil Wright was assigned to write a script on the subject. I read some of his early notes. I recall vividly his suggestions for the now famous Beattock sequence, immortalised by Auden's verse:
This is the Night Mail
crossing the border
bringing the cheque and postal order.
Pulling up Beattock a steady climb
the gradient's against her but she's on time.
Basil's equivalent, scribbled in one of those large Post Office notebooks, read roughly as follows:
Over close shots of the locomotive's funnel belching smoke as it struggles up the Beattock gradient, the puffs get slower and greyer and maybe we could lay over a voice saying; ‘I think I can, I think I can’.
Whether he ever finished that script I don't know. Certainly I never saw it. Neither, I suspect, did Harry Watt and I was with him on every shot in the making of Night Mail. However, during the birth pangs of this recognised classic, when the search was on for an idea, a conception of how to tackle the subject, John Grierson came down to the pub at the end of Bennett Park Road where seniors and juniors would gather to discuss the day's work and generally put the world to right. We juniors would make our half pints last as long as possible, listening to the great minds at work, and there were some great minds at work: Humphrey Jennings not the least of them. Grierson had been talking about documentary and possible lines of approach to tackle this ‘Travelling Post Office’ subject, our most ambitious and complex one to date.
He summed up and I can almost quote him verbatim, even though I heard his words over 60 years ago.
Can we imagine a society without letters? Of course we can't. But does anyone appreciate the postman? Of course not. We take him for granted like the milkman, the engine driver, coal miner, the lot of them. We take them all for granted, yet we are all dependent on them, just as we are all interdependent one to another. It has nothing to do with class or education.
Frontmatter
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp i-iv
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10 - No escape from a dreary chore
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 87-89
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Early January 1942. I had spent two dreary days on a building site near Bedford. An ordnance factory was being built and a film had to be made about it. A less cinematic subject would be hard to find. I had been asked to make it, and was about to report to Dal on my findings. I entered his office wondering how I could get out of this most unrewarding subject.
‘How did you get on?’
‘There's nothing to film, Dal. I'm sorry but what could be less cinematic than drain pipes, muddy puddles and bulldozers buzzing about? A building site is a building site. Dead as mutton.’
‘Maybe … But it's got to be done so you'd better go away and think how. It's no good thinking it's impossible; that won't get you anywhere. Find a way of making that building site interesting. O.K.?’
‘O.K. Dal.’ I went down to Jo's cafe, almost below 21 Soho Square, often frequented by Joe Loss and his band. What Ian Dalrymple had asked me to do was think of a way of making a fiveminute film on the building of an ordnance factory. The request had come from the Minister of Works. He was worried that the morale of the building workforce was non-existent. On certain sites, almost every day, an excuse was found to strike. He felt that a film showing how important their work was might help to encourage a more willing contribution to the war effort. That was the brief and there was no escape from it. Harry had had his Savings Bank and now I had my building site. Find the shape.
How to get the message across in five minutes? Visually, there was to be no help from the subject matter. I had spent a miserably depressing couple of days on the site in question, my future location. It was just outside Bedford and the only interesting visual was the forest of chimney stacks of the London Brick Company standing stark and gaunt on the horizon. They weren't going to be of much help. However, I had found a wonderful cockney character, a ‘brickie’ all his life, Charlie Fielding, a master of his craft.
7 - Rungs of the ladder
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp 49-65
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Summary
I returned to the unit in the spring of 1937. Harry Watt was on location in northern Scotland with Chick Fowle, who was photographing Harry's finest film, North Sea, dramatising the reliance of the trawler fleet on the Post Office radio weather station at Wick in the most northerly point of Caithness. Bill Blewett, from Mousehole, was with him, a member of the trawler's crew, and being a non-professional actor would encourage the rest to be confident in being just themselves: no acting would be required, and in this regard Bill was to be a tower of strength to Harry and North Sea was to be a great step forward in story documentary. The rough conditions in which the trawler put to sea were extremely severe, vividly portraying the dangers trawlermen face. ‘We take them all for granted. Yet we are all in each other's debt.’
Meanwhile, our small studio was a bedlam of hammering and sawing. The Jacob brothers, our master carpenters, were building what looked like a huge mushroom sock darner. This inverted mushroom was to be a rocker for the trawler's cabin which would be built on the flat top of the sock darner, mushroom at the base, of course. Wooden levers would protrude from it so that we could rock the set in front of the camera set up independently beside the rocking cabin. Had the camera not been independently set up there would have been no illusion of the trawler being tossed about in heavy seas.
Whilst Harry was hard at it with North Sea, I was allowed, on my return from Grenoble, to make my first faltering steps as a director. I was to complete a film that Harry had started but had had to lay aside for the more important subject of North Sea. However, as money had been spent on a film attempting to show how the Accountant General's Department worked, it had to be finished. It proceeded under the inspiring working title of A.G.D. It was completed and went out under the title of Big Money. Harry is credited with having made it. Not important, for I had the satisfaction of having written my first dialogue scenes and directed them for this rather dreary subject.
22 - How to round up the remnants
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 246-256
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Summary
Aweek or so later we docked at Liverpool and Peter Lupino was there to meet us. What a help he had been to us and was still to be. He took me to lunch and then back to Derby House for a council of war. What a blessing it was that he knew show business. His first question: ‘What have we got left, Pat?’
‘Only the climax of the picture, Peter, that's all.’
‘Involving what exactly?’ Pencil in hand, at his desk, surrounded by pneumatic tubes, occasionally spewing messages into their wire baskets. He ignored them, a sixth sense suggesting that they were unimportant. He had more important business on hand. I started to enumerate what remained to be done. ‘We have to sink the U-Boat. To do that convincingly we have to have the Leander's gun barrel firing at it in foreground.’
‘Any gun barrel will do?’
‘Yes. The first shot goes over so we must see the splash beyond the U-Boat, the second short and the third a direct hit.’
‘You've done all the action leading up to the gun firing?’
‘Yes. Then there's the cat-and-mouse game. Griff and Rogers watching the periscope circling as they make for the gun aft.’
‘That means a submarine and the Patricia again, if she'll play. Her gun'll do, one barrel's like another.’
‘Sadly we couldn't get the shots of Leander with her lifeboats in foreground as seen by the U-Boat.’
‘Oh Gawd.’
‘I know; wasn't through want of trying. Both Vinten motors burnt out through constant camera jamming due to faulty stock: strain on the motors was too much.’
‘Those may be more difficult to lay on than the mock battle. Means sending out a special escort to meet her. Pray God she'll still be with us. She'll have to be detached from the convoy … My sainted aunt, rather organise the Spithead review. Anyway, let's go for mock battle first.’
We had had hardly time to unpack, get our bearings and see the rushes when news came through that Peter had arranged for a submarine and the Patricia, which had helped us in the rescue scenes of the lifeboat survivors, would be at our disposal at Holyhead for a day on 7 September.
5 - Harry Watt challenged by the Savings Bank
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 39-45
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Harry Watt, meanwhile, after his success with Night Mail (though Grierson, for reasons that I have touched on, did not give him the credit for having directed the film), had to be content with a shared credit with Basil Wright. He was bitter about that, and rightly so. However, he soon got over it and was now assigned to make a film about the Post Office Savings Bank. One had been made already by Arthur Elton, a year or so before. I had worked on it as Davidson's loading boy. The film was a crashing bore, a disaster. I don't know whether it was ever shown. If so, it was soon put into the vaults alongside Grierson's P.L.A.
So, Harry had not only to redeem the unit's reputation so far as this section of the civil service was concerned, but advance his own theories of how to go about this rather precious documentary film thing. He was getting sick and tired of too much intellectualising: too much of this dialectic materialism that everyone was on about, to coin a contemporary phrase. Left wing O.K. Everyone who thinks at all is bound, at some stage of their lives, usually early on, to be radical, very radical. But, you don't want to meet Das Kapital in the loo. It's not that sort of book, is it? There was a good deal of impress, impress: intellectual fireworks flying about. If that was the way to get on, O.K. for some, but not for Harry. Now, he was burdened with a film on the Savings Bank. If only to camouflage a boring subject he was determined to get the message across in story form. But to be anchored to the premise that it is wise if not virtuous to invest at three per cent so that when you are ready for the grave your capital will have grown sufficiently to give you a decent funeral requires inspired winching to get that off the sea bed. Find the right shape, though, and you can make anything work. Metal can be shaped to float. The sea! The sea had brought him to Flaherty and then to Grierson. He would launch his Savings Bank film on the ocean, somehow, somewhere.
24 - An assignment, at last
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
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- 31 December 1999, pp 278-299
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Summary
Early on Monday morning, Doré was on the phone. ‘Pat, you won't believe me, but the day I received your letter I found an assignment for you.’ He was right, I didn't believe him, though I showed great interest, of course.
‘How splendid, Mr Schary. What is it?’
‘I want you to come over, meet the producer, and we'll take it from there.’
‘Wonderful. Shall I come right away?’
‘You do that.’
‘Say half an hour, that's about what it takes.’
‘That'll do fine. Till then.’
‘Till then, Mr Schary, and thanks.’ Blimey oh Riley, we were on our way. We'd an assignment at last. Kitty did her chauffeuring act and I was up those steps, bursting through those Billy the Kid saloon doors and into the secretary's ante-room. She was on to the intercom and I was into Mr Schary's Office. He said to her: ‘Tell Mr Sisk to call in right away’. He gestured for me to sit down and with a broad smile—they were all genuinely warm-hearted people—held up my letter and said, ‘We shan't need that any more’ … and tore it up.
‘I'm thrilled, Mr Schary, I really am. Do tell me about it.’
‘I'm going to let you read it cold. Don't want to risk prejudicing you in any way. All I will say is that you'll have two of our finest actors—from your country, too. Edmund Gwenn and Donald Crisp.’
‘Donald Crisp. Played National Velvet's father.’
‘That's right.’
‘And I knew the real one and the real Velvet from Rottingdean. Hilder was his name and he was the local butcher, wonderful old boy, and his daughter was Whin, and she had won a horse in a raffle.’
‘I didn't know that.’
‘God, she was pretty, too, like your Elizabeth. I passed her the other day on my crutches and took a sideways look: just as well I had them. Knock out, isn't she?’ He laughed. We were totally at ease and I liked him enormously. He had heart, there was no doubt, and so had L.B. No doubt. And in came my producer-to-be … a bit like, in manner, the March Hare entering court. Undercurrent of fear was all too clear.
25 - John Sullivan and Pinewood to the rescue
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 300-312
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Summary
Amost welcome letter, from someone unknown to me, a John Sullivan. He wondered whether I would be interested in directing a film based on a novel by Helen Ashton, Yeoman's Hospital. The first draft script arrived a day later. It had more substance than a straw to a drowning man. It was good and with work could be very good. I accepted at once and a week or two later was back in my old stamping ground, Pinewood Studios, meeting Jan Read, the script writer, and a sturdy Texan, Earl St John, who was, I gathered, the right-hand man of someone called John Davis who, judging by everyone's reaction when his name was mentioned, was even more fearsome than anything that Hollywood could produce from its executive ranks. Earl St John had a mane of leonine grey hair which he forked back off his brow with both hands, a mannerism he was fond of in his eloquent moments. He had been a cinema manager which automatically made him highly qualified, but with no means of proving it, to wield considerable authority in the Rank Organisation which had really slipped into films by mistake; however, that's another story.
Having sold my studio in Bradbrook House, Kinnerton Street, to Arthur Pann, the artist who had painted the famous portrait of Winston Churchill sitting with his hands resting on the arms of a leather-backed chair, I had no base in London so Jan Read very kindly put me up. He had a flat in Dilke Street, Chelsea, and here we worked and had a most happy collaboration as we added new ingredients in reshaping the script of what was to become White Corridors. Amongst other strands we introduced a running gag in which poor Basil Radford, a returning colonial, finds it hard to adapt to post-war socialist Britain, and even harder to find the right procedures to take advantage of the N.H.S. He is always baulked by the hospital porter, a nice enough old boy, who with patience and sympathy tries to explain what must be done. Who better to play the part of the porter than my dear old friend, the gunner in Western Approaches. What a wonderful contribution he had made to that film, and he was to make just as good a one in White Corridors.
A Retake Please
- Filming Western Approaches
- Pat Jackson
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- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999
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This fascinating memoir is a unique contribution to the history of film and cinema. At its centre is the story of the making of the British film classic Western Approaches, the first story documentary in Technicolor, totally enacted by amateurs. It was nominated for an Oscar in the category ‘Best Film from any Source’ and has influenced and inspired film-making to this day. It was acclaimed a masterpiece when it was released in December 1944 and fifty years later Philip French wrote in The Observer: ‘It remains a milestone in our cinema and an exciting, vibrant cinematic experience.’
23 - So, this is Hollywood!!
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 257-277
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Summary
I had arrived in Mecca, the Mecca of cinema and the cage of the Roaring Lion, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios in Culver City, Hollywood. I was staring up at the Irving Thalberg Building, built in memory of the young executive producer and late husband of Norma Shearer.
I was on crutches, in plaster from ankle to hip, having had a skiing accident on the second day of my honeymoon. I had broken my leg in what was poetically described as a ‘butterfly fracture’ in 30 or more splinters a few inches above the ankle. Not the most glamorous way to arrive and launch a career as a feature film director. However, those massive steps as in front of a Greek temple had to be climbed so that I could announce my arrival.
It was now six weeks since my unfortunate fall in Stowe, Vermont. I was skiing on a hill aptly called ‘Suicide Six’. No, I was not showing off, trying to ‘vedell’ at 70 miles an hour. I might have been doing, perhaps seven or eight, gliding just off the flat, to the hotel. Everything was in shadow and contours hard to see. I hit a rut, regained my balance, immediately hit another and spreadeagled between the skis. The upturned metal running edge of one treated my leg as though it were a piece of kindling.
Now, I must climb those steps, deeply regretting that Korda was no longer at Metro. He had, to put it crudely, been sacked after his first film for them. They considered it a disaster. Korda, free of Metro, was now independent and successfully running Shepperton, taking Ian Dalrymple with him, but I was not released from the contract that Korda had drawn up for me on behalf of Metro. Much had happened since we showed him Western Approaches, but the net result was that I was out here to try and do battle against the ‘mighty moguls’. My poor wife of only a few weeks, Kitty Talbot of Boston, Massachusetts, slowly climbed the steps with me.
Whether by accident or design, we were met by Ben Goetz who was supposed to be running the Metro Studios at Boreham Wood, Elstree. They hadn't turned a foot since Korda's disaster but were, at least, preventing competitors from using the studio space.
12 - Blank despair
- Pat Jackson
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- Book:
- A Retake Please
- Published by:
- Liverpool University Press
- Published online:
- 04 July 2017
- Print publication:
- 31 December 1999, pp 108-130
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Summary
Next day, at home in Mandeville Cottage, near Pinewood Studios, I confronted the blank page. Not a pretty sight when you know that your mind is equally as blank. To describe my problem was easy enough. How was I to film this battle of the Atlantic without any hope of getting the facilities to stage it? There must be a way, but for the life of me I hadn't found it. Would I ever was the question which daily became more agonising. Days went by and still the page remained blank. Despondency soon leads to panic.
This simply wouldn't do—wouldn't do at all … Perhaps a breath of fresh air? Ah yes. A quick potter round the garden. Not at all pleasant, far too nippy … Make up the fire; getting very low on fags, bound to need another packet. A brisk walk down to dear old Dealey at the Pinewood service station; great fun old Dealey, always good for a laugh. On with the duffle coat and a quick march there and back. Might get a flash, never know your luck … Back again. No luck: no flash. Sit down; have another go. Get the pen to work; magic connection, pen–paper–brain; one thought leading to another. Write. Write anything; any old codswallop, just get started. ‘Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to fetch the poor dog a bone. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.’ ‘There is an oily calm. The horizon is glowing as the sun sinks. In immediate foreground a periscope breaks through the surface. We are close enough to see that it begins, slowly, to swivel. The U-Boat commander is scanning the horizon, and though his eyes are glued to the lenses, we sense him react. He sees a smudge of smoke on the fading horizon line. He gives orders to lower the periscope and sets a new course for that smoke.’ Not too bad an opening image, perhaps, but then what? An inevitable attack on the convoy; torpedoes, explosions, and we're into a naval battle that even Cecil B. de Mille would think twice about staging. No good; quite beyond our resources. Have another go.