Popular Photography magazine had an article on "The Searching Eye", a short
Saul Bass had made for Eastman Kodak, to be shown on the New York world
expo. I wanted to include this short in a road-show with Akira Kurosawa's
"Akahige/Red Beard", adding still more prestige (as if any was needed) to
the program. Somehow I succeeded in contacting Saul, and as he was coming
over to London we arranged to meet there.
At that time the cheapest connection between Holland and London was by
Channel Airways. This was my first flight in a Dakota, from Rotterdam
Zestienhoven to Southend-on-Sea. There you had to take a bus to a train to
London; but don't get the idea this was anything like the JFK-Express that
just zips you to Manhattan. In London at night I found a bus to an address
Annette had found for me, the friend of a charwoman at her office. I don't
like buses in a town I've never been in before, especially at night -
somehow, I get the feeling that they might go anywhere, except where I want
to go. It always works out OK, though, so in the middle of the night I
knocked on this lady's door. She had not been warned of my coming; in
those days, a telephone was a rare luxury in Europe, let alone international
calls. Her problem was what the neighbors would say if a man stayed there
for the night, but very hospitably she put me up in her own bed. The next
morning I managed to find a cheap-but-not-sleazy hotel and called Saul from
there.
Saul had this heavy, precise voice with lots of presence. Not one of your
snappy fast-talkers. We made an appointment, where we discussed the
possibility of my buying the rights for Holland. The usual deal going was a
percentage deal, where the owner of the rights got 5% of the net receipts of
the combined show. Both of us, as Saul remarked, were no mathematical
geniuses and we had lots of fun trying to figure out what this would amount
to.
There was another problem. Saul had made the movie with music and effects
only, and as he explained it "the people at Eastman are what we in the
United States call, rather square", and insisted on having a voice-over
narration added. This meant that the M&E track would have to be remixed -
which might well be more expensive than what Saul could expect to get for
releasing the movie through us. And than the guarantee on REDBEARD...
As I had never seen the movie, I arranged renting a showroom. Contrary to
what I had gotten used to, I paid for that. Saul had this 16mm roll of film
containing lots of his work. How I wish I could lay my hands on it now!
There was this little problem, though - the operator did not have an
anamorphic lens to unsqueeze the image. Somehow, I had foreseen this
(sometimes I'm amazed at myself) and had taken along this Delrama mirror
optic. (This was made by Oude Delft in Holland for 8mm and 16mm film - they
used to advertise for it showing a beach shot 'before' with only a 90 pound
weakling in the frame, and one 'after' with two bikini-clad girls now in
plain view to the left and right. Later, Technicolor had them develop
Technirama from it). The operator managed to attach the Delrama with masking
tape and we were in business, even though the Delrama only unsqueezed by a
factor of 1.5 versus the 35mm standard factor of 2.
You won't be surprised that this was one of the greatest screenings of my
life. There was, alas, no time to project all of that roll. It also
contained the titles of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", which was
released in Cinerama. I remarked on the clever trick of having all titles on
screen at crooked angles, a good way of getting rid of the downright
horrible distortions the Ultra Panavision system then in use had. Saul told
me that George Stevens was so disgusted by it, that he had the release of
"The Greatest Story Ever Told" postponed for a year until they had fixed it.
Another goodie was the movie he made for United Airlines at the same world
expo, "From Here to There". It was marvelous. It opens in brownish
monochrome and Academy screen on an airport where people are saying goodbye.
When the plane takes off, in a shot of the (almost monochrome) runway he
dissolves to color and opens the screen up wide. What a rush! The rest of
the movie consists of aerial puzzles you can't make head or tail of,
intercut with solutions from ground view. Upon touchdown, the color fades
out again and the screen closes back to standard - people joyfully meet
their friends.
Never before had I seen a movie where the color fades out and the screen
closes where you did not wish it had remained as it was. The lesson derived
from that I could put to good use much later in my own "Edgar Palm en
Otrabanda", where I mixed color slides and super-8 film.
Saul was very surprised I didn't like "West Side Story" too much; didn't I
agree that it was much better than the average musical? Yes, one has to
concede that, but it's not at all in the class of "Singing in the Rain". I
hastened to tell him that I liked his stuff in the movie enormously, and I
still do. That film's opening is just great - until it moves into the
studio. So we parted as good friends.
I later saw "The Searching Eye" again at the Photokina Köln 1966, but
finally, Cinerama bought the world-wide distribution rights. So that was
that.
Still later, I tried to get a production going on the Curaçao 1795 slave
revolution, in which Toho Film Co. of Japan was interested. They thought it
a good opportunity to get Kurosawa, without losing face, back from Hollywood
where he'd gone to direct the Japanese parts of Darryl F. Zanuck's "Tora!
Tora! Tora!", but had been fired because of 'historical disagreements'. Saul
thought it highly interesting, and so did Duke Ellington, but as most often,
nothing came of it.
I made it back to Southend-on-Sea with hardly any money left, and there
missed the station, got off at the next one, took a train back and made it
in time for the bus to the airport. Otherwise, I might still be stuck in
London right now, for all I know. Wouldn't have minded too much, to tell you
the truth - a great city.
Before I forget, next year Channel Airways replaced their DC-3s with Vickers
Viscount turboprops and went bankrupt soon after.

07:56 02/11/18