Jordan 1974 part 2 – tales of Lawrence

This is the second in series of articles about my trip to Jordan in 1974 to advise Jordan Television. Click here to read Part 1.

George, who was the Head of News at Jordan TV, took me off to lunch to meet Hassan Dal Lal, our local freelance cameraman.  We lunched in the open air in western Amman.

Foreign language versions

At the end of the Second World War, much of the world was in turmoil.  Before the War, Movietone had been distributed, like the other newsreels, around the world.  It was advertised that Movietone was produced in 57 languages.  These would have been produced out of five centres around the world. Some of the recipient countries had, previously, been able to re-record their own language version of the sound track.

Cameraman tales: Richard Graff

In December 1964, I was asked to go to Frankfurt and Bremen to supervise a commercial we were shooting for Interflora in the United States.  The gist of the film was that Interflora were taking orders from relatives, in the U.S., of American servicemen stationed in Germany.  The orders were for a single plant, the Poinsettia, a plant that was completely unknown to me at that time.

Jordan 1974 part 1 – A journey into the unknown

In February 1974, UPITN took on a Middle East representative.  He was a Jordanian in his early thirties.  He was dapper with a high forehead, wavy dark hair and he always wore a reefer jacket and grey flannels.  He always wore a collar and tie.  He was Yasar Durra.

He was to transform the activities of my department, bringing in a continuous list of productions on behalf of our Arab clients.  Life would never be the same again.

“Why do you drive on the left?”

One of my drinking companions during the Safari Rallies was Paul Broncard, Head of P.R, for Peugeot. Peugeot always had a big team for the rally and usually relied on local drivers for their works entries.  In the early 70s, we would make a short film for Peugeot featuring their cars in the Rally.

A Case of Cities UPITN

In the early eighties, I came up with an idea concerning stock footage to be offered to our clients.  Even in 1983, broadcasters were short of up-to-date stock material of locations around the world.

The scheme was, additionally, to show what we were capable of.  To show that with, by now, our line up of top class cinematographers, based around the world, we could bring in quality film pictures from around the world.  I thought that it might boost the client list of UPITN Productions, I settled upon providing clients with a collection of stock material, recently shot, on the main cities of the world.  These would be provided in a specially built case or container which would enable the material to be handy for an editing room to use quickly.

East African Safari Rally 1968

It was Easter time and, once again, I was on my way to Nairobi for the East African Safari Rally to cover the Datsun Team for Nissan Motors.  This time, I flew B.O.A.C. in a VC10.  Cameraman Paul Badin flew in from Paris to join me on the flight down. We stopped off in Frankfurt before going direct to Nairobi.  It was a long and boring flight.  I was never able to sleep on an aircraft and, even if I had been able to, I would have been woken by a passenger who seemed to spend most of the time walking up and down the aisle brushing all the passengers in the inside seats.

Colleagues: Norman Dickson

Norman Dickson was a close colleague of mine from 1967 until 1976.  He was born in 1911 and was some seventeen years older than me, but we got on well.

Norman was a Scotsman from Edinburgh.  He had a curious accent which was basically an Edinburgh accent which had been influenced by him spending some time in the Caribbean.  He was sometimes mistaken for an American.  However, he was able to use a variety of phrases which one might expect to come only from a Scot.

Meeting a future Prime Minister 1965

In July 1965, Edward Heath was elected as leader of the Conservative Party. In a party election, he had defeated Enoch Powell and Reginald Maudling. Soon afterwards, Dick Clark, my boss at United Press International Newsfilm, arranged a meeting with him to discuss a filmed interview at some convenient time in the future.  Dick asked me to go along with him to meet Ted Heath.

I was asked to decide if the apartment was suitable for filming the interview.

Belgian Grand Prix 1968

We had been engaged to film a series of Grand Prix on behalf of Honda Racing.  Their car was driven by John Surtees. Now, we were off to Spa Francorchamps in Belgium.  I brought in Vittorio Della Valle in to join with Piet Van Strien from Holland and  Jan Borg from Oslo.