WITHOUT a short-cut into the BBC or an entrée into a production company, it was almost impossible to get a job in film or television production in London, but pushing a foot through the door of a post production (editing) facility with a resume in your hand was a viable way to enter the industry.
And so, within 24 hours of pounding the narrow thoroughfares of Soho, between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, I was offered two jobs.
Having just signed a lease with a group of friends on a cottage on the Isle of Dogs in east London, I had rent to pay, so I said yes to both.
As it happened, that weekend I went back to ARTTS International in Yorkshire to complete the final edit on a drama-documentary, and I was greeted like a conquering hero on the Saturday morning by a mob of students, hungry for a taste of the world beyond the pig farm, and then confronted by a Feedback Session.
Only ARTTS alumni around the world will know exactly what I mean by the latter. How do I describe it and not make it sound like ARTTS was, on occasion, a little like a correctional centre?
In any case all the accolades looked kindly beyond the fact that the best position of the two on offer was that of a lowly Post Production Runner.
A Soho Runner in those days was not an enviable position. If you were serious about your career, you’d want to stay in the job for no longer than six months.
So I took the offer than a Dean Street post production facility made to me, and started that very week. By the end of summer, I hoped, I’d be up the next rung of the ladder.
The other runners showed me to my first task – to clean-up the soft drink supply room below street level in a dank passageway that looked (and smelt) like I’d imagine the very same street did in Dickens’ time. Five years of tertiary education had prepared me to recognise dramatic tension, at least.
The rats gave ground by retreating around a bend in the subterranean storeroom, while I re-arranged the pallets of lolly water, trying to ensure they were not sitting in the inch of water that flowed across my shoes.
This post-production company liked to keep its clients happy, so there was no set lunch menu. Instead, the gourmet delights of central London were ordered and fetched on foot.
FABULOUS FOOD For fabulous people, Berwick Street Markets, Soho.
But we runners were also required to make a selection of sandwiches for clients who just couldn’t wait, created from the fresh produce of the fruit and veg markets on Berwick Street, with slabs of fresh bread and the finest cold meats from local delis. Luckily I’d had some sandwich-hand training while studying at NIDA, so I knew my way around a slice of focaccia.
There were some pretty speccy people making their way through these doors, but also plenty of clients who just believed they were on the A-List, and the only way they could gauge their level on the ladder was by shouting at the runners.
I never got shouted-at, but when a music-video maven came through to the kitchen in a tube dress right to her tennis-shoed ankles, calling for a “toasted ciabatta with marmite”, I made the mistake of answering that we were fresh out of ciabatta, but we had plenty of focaccia.
Her perplexed look quite naturally led me to believe that she simply didn’t know what focaccia was, so I began to explain. Before I got through the basics, she said: “I know exactly what it is!”, before insisting her first choice was fetched.
LONDON’S MAZE Soho is a small district jammed in between four major thoroughfares.
Now, most people couldn’t pick ciabatta from focaccia in a blind test, and since I was a Soho Runner of some weeks’ experience, I knew at that hour there wouldn’t be a fresh piece of either available anywhere. So I just sliced some bread quite thickly and smothered it with the maven’s favourite spread.
And so the cry of “I know exactly what it is” went on to be summer’s catchphrase at that end of Dean Street.
Each week I religiously wrote my first screenplay (an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Other Kingdom), and duly typed it up for consideration. The potential to make movies flowed through my veins, even if I was really working in catering under a fancy name.
Running video tapes and reels between editing houses meant I soon got a great knowledge of Soho’s street network. Rarely did we have to travel beyond the zone bordered by Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue and Regent Street.
I also discovered the locations of all the production offices listed in the films I aspired to join-in-on – Merchant Ivory, Goldcrest, The Oil Factory – behind glossy doorways with polished buzzers at street level, with people rarely coming and going.
In this maze I realised that if you spend enough time in Soho, you’ll encounter famous people. I saw Sean Connery looking both ways as he turned into Dean Street in his rather boring looking car; Greta Scacchi looking like she’d locked herself out of her flat; and Germaine Greer leaning into the wind of a stormy night as she ambled next to me along Oxford Street.
Soho also brought me face-to-face with entertainment by a different name. One racy shopfront near the markets displayed hilarious posters of new porn films with names that referenced the mainstream movies of the day. There was A League of their Moans (a slightly different take on the all-girl baseball team flick), and Howard’s End (in which Howard’s end was about to be spanked by a rather domineering lady).
The really sad element to Soho was the homelessness. At the end of almost every day I packed-up the leftover sandwiches and took them to St Anne’s Court, where legions of homeless men spent their days in the sunlight. They accepted the fresh, nutritious food with a quiet gratitude … they knew exactly what it was, and they didn’t care if it was ciabatta or focaccia.
After a couple of months the boss found out and told me to stop, since the bags I carried the food in were the very same we used to run tapes and reels around Soho – a handy way of advertising, I guess – and he didn’t want our company associated with any feeding-of-the-poor.
But I didn’t stop. I didn’t even use different bags. I wasn’t going to leave perfectly edible food for the rats.
BRIGHT LIGHTS Don’t get burnt at drama school, get noticed.
I RECEIVED plenty of interesting feedback on my post The truth about drama school, so I thought I’d dig a little deeper…
Drama school is a once-off networking opportunity
Make the most of the industry connections offered to you while you’re there, since they’ll be far more important to your career than any skills you pick up. Skills can be learnt on the job, but contacts are what gets you work.
The industry will rarely give you more than one moment to shine
Forget about cashing in on being a drama school graduate long after you went to it. Make a splash in your last year and you’ll be noticed. After that – this will sound harsh – people with think there must be something wrong with you if nobody employed you on graduation.
If you feel you’re not getting to make a big splash at drama school
Dive in, don’t wait for permission. Think of a way to get something happening.
Don’t give all your great ideas away
Keep some things back for yourself. It’s rare, but some drama schools like to claim intellectual property rights over student work.
Get used to having no social life
Theatre almost always happens at night – you’ll be working when your non-theatre friends are partying. Make friends in the hospitality scene.
Drama school is a great educational add-on
But if it’s your only qualification or skill-base, you’ll be unemployed (and cash poor) for most of your life. Get some other employable skills under your belt before, during or after drama school.
Drama school friendships need to be strong enough to endure competition
But they very often aren’t.
Drama school takes a while to get over
The last time I was at one was 20 years ago, and I’m still processing the experience on this blog!
DAFFODIL DAZE One of the world’s favourite cut flowers, the daffodil.
A Writer unravels a local myth.
MY first glimpse of the Blue Mountains high school I attended was a hillside covered by a layer of golden daffodil blooms. I was in sixth class and a group of us was to play one of the high school teams in basketball, but we were late and had to run to the top of the hill to start the match.
The daffodils were so plentiful (over knee-deep in my memory) that running through them took some effort and created a kind of insane delight as we ascended, laughing and stumbling in their ridiculous golden abundance.
Many years later I took on the task of researching the history of the old house on the hillside, and learned about the man who was behind the daffodil plantation – Robert Matcham Pitt (1849-1935).
Throughout that process the most intriguing element of the home’s story was, for me, his daffodils. Primary sources and archives are all very well, but surviving blooms carefully raised by the long dead … now that was history brought to life.
Soon after moving to London I consulted the International Daffodil Registrar, at that time the wonderfully generous Sally Kington, at London’s Royal Horticultural Society. What Sally found shed a whole new light on the man who was amongst the first to bring the humble Narcissus to Australia.
I had the opportunity to publish a feature article on this horticultural history in the August-September 2010 edition Blue Mountains Life Magazine (Vintage Press). Typically, there’s always parts of a story which must be left out for publication, so I’ve included those at the end for posterity.
HOME GROWN OPERA Helen Porter Mitchell (aka Dame Nellie Melba 1861-1931).
A Diva’s Daffodils
Nellie Melba’s inspirational encounter with a Mountain Daffodil Farmer
For almost a century there was a tale told that Nellie Melba sang an impromptu recital in a private home in Wentworth Falls and received a rather unorthodox daffodil tribute in return. Now Ann Blainey’s award-winning biography I am Melba reveals the only time the soprano can be placed in the Blue Mountains during daffodil season, and why.
Melba’s journey to the Mountains began in 1909 when she purchased a property near the town of Lilydale outside Melbourne, with two plans in the pipeline – to renovate and landscape herself a sanctuary, and to bring grand opera to her home country.
Before sailing for performances across the northern hemisphere in 1910, Melba met with Australian theatre impresario J.C. Williamson. The soprano guaranteed fifty per cent of the opera project’s budget, leaving the producer to work his connections in the business sector.
The ‘Melba-Williamson Opera Company’ announced Sydney and Melbourne seasons for spring 1911.
On her return trip to Sydney from Europe that year, Melba went to inspect work on her as yet un-named new home, but rehearsals in Sydney beckoned when a boatload of international singers arrived in late August. The venture was launched before an eager public on September 2.
Overseeing fully staged versions of twelve operas, fifty-year-old Melba was also performing three times a week. “Although in some ways she was in her element, the pressure began to tell,” writes Ann Blainey. “By the end of September she was ill, with an aching ear and a sore throat … bronchitis set in, and she was ordered to rest in the mountain resort of Medlow Bath”.
Without Melba, audience numbers dropped, and rumours of her drinking resurfaced. Her letters from these critical weeks reveal a desire to conceal the extent of her vocal problems from the public. Between Williamson and he publicity agent Claude McKay, Melba’s escape to the Mountains was heavily stage-managed.
OPERA FANS Robert and Marie (‘Eugenie’) Pitt at Coorah.
Enter Robert and Eugenie Pitt, resident at their Mountain estate ‘Coorah’ in Wentworth Falls. A successful stock and station agent and one of J.C. Williamson’s guarantors, Robert and the immensely musical Eugenie may have been recruited to aid in the singer’s recovery. As a result of Melba’s secret convalescence in the Blue Mountains during daffodil season, a legend emerged.
It told that Melba arrived at Coorah by car and delighted in Pitt’s fields of daffodils. After dinner, she entertained her hosts by singing, after which Pitt offered Melba a gift. She expressed a desire for some of his daffodil bulbs for her fledgling garden. They were lifted and packed that very night, since the soprano was due to return to Sydney the next morning.
The facts about Coorah are well-known – the property was established in 1889 complete with water pumped from a local creek, a dairy, stables, and a nine-hole golf course. English style gardens and the bulb farm surrounded the late Victorian country house atop a hill overlooking distant blue ranges.
But horticulturists will tell you no serious daffodil hybridiser would lift flowering bulbs unless they were to be transplanted immediately. Legends, of course, are not infallible, and this one needed some unravelling.
Coorah’s centenary in 1989 unearthed how the property became a hostel for children and then the Blue Mountains Grammar School. Pitt’s daffodils were still returning every spring to the north-facing fields of the property, and stories about Melba’s visit persisted.
School parents related meeting Doris Pitt (youngest daughter of Robert and Eugenie) who revisited Coorah in the 1960s and recalled the night Melba sang in Coorah’s large central room.
A ‘below stairs’ oral history of the same event came from Arnold Gorringe. His mother Mary was Coorah’s housekeeper until 1919, and she had to move husband Arnold (head gardener) and two small boys into a cottage on the estate to make room for Melba’s stay.
Barbara Lamble recalled her grandfather Robert Pitt’s long association with opera funding – “Within the family at least he was known to have expressed a dislike for Melba and her money-raising methods,” she said.
BULBS FOREVER Blue Mountains Grammar School student Philip Parkinson in the surviving field of Pitt’s daffodil farm at Coorah in 1961.
Pitt’s daffodils held their own secrets. In 1993 Sally Kington (International Daffodil Registrar at the time for London’s Royal Horticultural Society) analysed photographs of the daffodils still flowering at Coorah. Since they could be seen to be derived from already existing varieties, Sally suggested they were Pitt’s hybrids. His daffodil creations included ‘Clive Pitt’, ‘Doris Pitt’ (two of his children) and those he registered with the RHS – ‘H.H.B. Bradley’ (noted horticulturist) and ‘G.S. Titheradge’ (actor and flower enthusiast).
DAFFODIL FARMER and pastoralist Robert Matcham Pitt (1849-1935). Photo courtesy of Libby White.
In the RHS library, the Daffodil Yearbook of 1914 yielded an essay by Titheradge in which the following appears – “Mr. Pitt is devoted to music, and when the great singer, Mme Melba was here, he, or some members of his family, went to the opera nearly every night. It was during the spring months, and Mr. Pitt used to send the ‘diva’ great quantities of daffodil blooms. One day he wrote and asked if he might be permitted to immortalise one of his seedlings by naming it after her”.
“She said she would be delighted, so he sent her some of his finest productions to choose from. Mme Melba happened to select the one called after me, so Mr. Pitt had to tell her it had already been appropriated by an artist in another branch of her profession, but when the time came for lifting the bulbs he made her happy by sending her about 20,000 for her place in Lilydale, Victoria.”
MAN OF FLOWERS Actor George Sutton Titheradge (1848-1916).
Blainey writes that when Melba returned to Sydney from the Mountains, “she was cheered as she entered the stage”. The Melba-Williamson opera company moved on to Melbourne, where Melba had her sanctuary to nurture any lingering health problems. Audiences were not as keen on the event as Sydney had been. Despite a spectacular opening night, by November attendance dwindled.
Meanwhile, Pitt waited for his daffodils to die back, drawing nutrients into the bulbs. In December they were lifted and rested in sheds. Twenty-thousand bulbs dispatched to Melba sounds like a large amount, but in 1897 Pitt had advertised a stock of half a million bulbs.
In Autumn 1912, Melba busied herself with completing the transformation of the home she’d now called ‘Coombe Cottage’. The name remembered a property she’d rented while performing at Covent Garden, but it’s possible it also had echoes of her time at the similar ‘Coorah’.
There can be little doubt that Melba would have been inspired by Pitt’s achievements – they embodied the end result of the major changes she’d commission for her own estate.
She once said: “If you wish to understand me at all, you must understand first and foremost that I am an Australian. I shall always come back to the blue mountains in the heart of the vast deserted continent that gave me birth.”
Estates with distant blue horizons, not too far from the city life, were obviously close to this woman’s heart.
We are left to assume Pitt’s bulbs were planted at Coombe Cottage sometime during her first proper season there.
But well before they would have flowered the next spring, Melba was in Europe again. Blainey suggests the disappointing Melbourne reception of her grand opera season was the reason – “The company disbanded on a dismal note. Melba’s inclination was to leave almost at once …”
However, the diva’s association with daffodils was far from over. During the same northern autumn Melba arrived in Britain, Irish Plantsman William Hartland released a catalogue of bulbs advertising a new variety, listed as “new for 1912” and named ‘Madame Melba’.
Pitt had sourced much of his bulb stock from Hartland since the 1880s – was it he who suggested to Hartland that since she’d missed too many seasons at Covent Garden it was time for a ‘Melba’ daffodil?
Robert Pitt gardened until the 1930s at Coorah, but his daffodils outlasted almost everything else he planted. Bulbs which he gifted to his staff and others still appear every spring. Titheradge called him “one of the pioneers of the cult,” and the daffodil heritage of the greater Blue Mountains owes much to his mass plantings and hybridising at Coorah.
FEELING FOR FLOWERS “If I had only the money that has been spent in flowers for me and nothing else, I should still be a rich woman” Melba once said.
An anecdote from the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1970 links Pitt and Melba late in both lives – “For one of her farewell concerts he sent her thousands of daffodils from his daffodil farm. A flood of golden blooms flowed onto the stage … Melba announced she would personally sell the flowers in Martin Place the next day, in aid of Sydney hospital.”
Whether the daffodil farmer’s twenty thousand ‘G.S. Titheradge’ bulbs ever graced the diva’s garden remains a mystery.
The Story goes on …
In 2014 Melba’s garden at Coombe Cottage was opened to the public for the first time. I visited in February, 2015.
Since the publication of this article more has come to light about divas, daffodils and Coorah. My sister Jen happened-upon some fascinating photographs of another opera singer from the Melba-Williamson company (Austrian contralto Marie Voluntas-Ranzenberg) who visited Coorah on Sunday, October 15, 1911, was given lunch and garlands of flowers and had her photograph taken with the Pitt family. This at least proves the Pitt Family was in residence at the time of the legend about Melba’s visit.
The day I arrived at the RHS library in 1993, Sally Kington showed me a card catalogue entry which simply said “R.M. Pitt?”. Sally said she found it fascinating to find a story associating Narcissus with opera, an industry abundantly supplied with flowers, but rarely daffodils, apparently.
In 1993 I corresponded with the resident of Coombe Cottage in Lilydale – the late Lady Pamela Vestey (grand-daughter of Melba) – she had no knowledge of twenty thousand daffodil bulbs on the property.
The design of Melba’s garden at Coombe Cottage was one of the last estates created by William Guilfoyle (1840-1912), the man responsible for several iconic gardens in the state of Victoria, including Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Garden.
Coombe, the Melba Estate, as it is now known, experienced many design changes over the years, including plans that were never realised by garden designer Edna Walling in the 1920s. The property remains a private home (under the ownership of the next generation) amidst a winemaking operation, with Melba’s garden open for tours.
Michael Burge Media 