On Location with 'Smiley’s People' Production Manager Richard Cox
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Richard Cox (foreground) with Malcolm Webberley (red top) and Ken MacMillan on the Metro in Paris during filming for Smiley's People in 1981
This month Richard Cox, Production Manager on Smiley’s People, joins us to explain how he found some of the key locations in the series. We also discuss Richard’s extensive work in film and television and some of his career highlights…
Jonathan Moran (JM): Hi Richard, thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview.
Richard Cox (RC): It’s a pleasure. I’m so happy that there is still such an interest in Smiley’s People, it's very gratifying.
JM: You started in the film industry as an assistant director on films such as Hannibal Brooks and then you made the leap to television and production management. I was curious about what led you into that area of work?
RC: The first film I worked on was as a runner on He Who Rides A Tiger, which was a film with Judi Dench and Tom Bell. The production had its troubles, but it was my opening into film. From that point, I had to work to get my ACTT (Association of Cinematograph and Television Technicians) union ticket because, as you probably know, in those days, unless you had a job, you couldn't get a ticket and you couldn't get a ticket unless you had a job!
That was where I started but towards the end of the sixties the film industry was going through a period of change, so I went to the BBC for nineteen years and had a very interesting time there.
JM: You worked on a number of important BBC productions including Juliet Bravo and Doctor Who. You also worked on Day of the Triffids as well - I would imagine that would have been quite a complicated shoot, particularly in the early 80s.
RC: Absolutely. I mean imagine having to close Hampstead Heath so that you can have a lot of people wandering around who had lost their sight due to a meteor storm. The Chief Inspector at Haverstock Hill Police Station was extremely helpful with that, even though it was going to be difficult.
On the day of filming I got up to Hampstead Heath near the pond and there were no police around at all. So I rang the Chief Inspector who said he had forgotten but he would get someone up there immediately. One police officer drove up in a Rover and put the car straight across the road, which blocked it completely. He came up onto the top of the hill and just stopped the traffic from three other roads and we had five minutes to get the shot. For those five minutes there was traffic backed up in all directions. As soon as he moved his car, it all went back to normal!
We also filmed on the streets of Islington. We leafleted the houses in the vicinity and all the residents co-operated with us by staying in, so we were able to shoot a completely deserted London.
(John Duttine and Emma Relph in Day of the Triffids - BBC 1981)
JM: And you were back on Hampstead Heath for Smiley's People, where there was quite a lot of filming.
RC: Oh yes, ‘Moscow rules’ and all of that in the hut there. The most wonderful thing of all was Smiley retracing Vladimir’s footsteps. When you're watching it you realise what a brilliant actor Guinness was because you're absolutely riveted on him walking away from camera, trailing that umbrella along the grass until he gets to that point where he turns and looks up into the tree. It is an amazing piece of work. I think he really was something very special.
You can't take your eyes off him when he's on screen and he completely dominates the scenes he is in. I think the only time there was any difference to that was when we filmed at Connie's dacha and it's Reid and Guinness together. There is a certain tension in what you see. They are both coming up with their best performances but I think Beryl Reid kind of stole it in that particular moment.
JM: Were you present for the filming of those scenes?
RC: Yes, on Smiley’s People I was the first assistant director and I also found some of the key locations, including Harry's Cornish Heap.
JM: Trevince is an amazing location. How did you discover it?
RC: It was a very special location. When you look at the book, the brief is very simple - it is everything le Carré wrote. One of the things I learned from that particular recce was how difficult property is to find in Cornwall. If you set off for a specific building, you go down long roads into the middle of nowhere and that might be five miles. Then you have to turn around and come back to where you started from to go down another road for five miles.
So the recce process is a bit prolonged there. I actually went to the Truro library and met the archivist. He came up with seven houses around Truro that might be of interest - they were listed and maybe not as well maintained as they should be. So I went off armed with the addresses of these seven properties.
And some of them were absolutely not right. I'd ruled out four of the seven before I set off for Trevince.
As I went onto ‘the driveway’ the car was going all over the place because of the potholes. Then I saw this house in the distance with the roofs against the sky, looking like torn tents, just the way le Carré describes it. I saw them more as gray sails because there were so many of them. On the left hand side, as I was driving down, there were these broken down greenhouses and I just couldn't believe my luck that I had discovered this. Anyway, I kept on going and pulled the car up in front of the house.
The one thing you hope to goodness that you're going to be able to do on a recce is speak to the owner and for them not get too annoyed because you've trespassed onto their property, even though you do it with the best intentions. I did almost get arrested at one house down there because it was owned by a Cabinet Minister! There were two guys that grilled me about why I was there and who I was and asked to see my ID and so on.
I got to the front of this house, rang the bell and there was no answer. Looking in the windows you could see there was one room where some plaster had fallen from the ceiling on to a desk. As I walked back towards the front door this man appeared and barked at me, "Who are you. What do you want"? I said I was from the BBC and I showed my card, which he wasn't interested in at all. He said, "I don't want you here".
I tried to explain that we were making a series called Smiley's People and this was a house that we would possibly want to use. I knew at that point we absolutely wanted to use it because it was a perfect location. Anyway, he was still getting very angry and saying all sorts of things and then his wife and daughter came out.
His wife asked if I would like to come in. I did and they made me a cup of tea, during which time the situation calmed down. We sat in the very room that we filmed in (below), which is just off the hallway. I think it was their one main living room in the house. We sat by the fire and drank our tea - it was quite cold outside.
(Sir Alec Guinness and Siân Phillips filming at Trevince)
His wife asked if Sir Alec Guinness would be here during the filming. I explained that it was a major part of the story that he was here. The idea of Sir Alec being in the house and them having the opportunity to meet him, which of course they did, lifted the atmosphere.
But it was amazing driving down that driveway and thinking this is just perfect. It so rarely happens that you find that the perfect location. I know everyone involved, Ken MacMillan, the cameraman, Malcolm Webberley, the sound recordist, both said to me this is just unbelievable that you found this. So, I was rather pleased with that. Jeremy Silberston came up with the Cliffside Walk because he used it before on Rebecca.
JM: The cliffside walk is quite a long way from Trevince, isn't it?
RC: Everywhere is a long way from everywhere down there! I did actually learn a lesson from this because when I came to make By the Sword Divided, we needed to find two locations. Actually, one was for By the Sword Divided, and the other was for a series called Inside Out. On this occasion I didn't send location managers out, I actually hired a plane. We flew the coast of England, which is achievable in a day. The costs just come right down because if you start paying a location manager to go off for three or four days that's more than the cost of a plane. We cracked it in the day! We found one location in Suffolk and the other one was in Devon. It was a very worthwhile way to do it but it's one of those things that you learn with experience.
(By the Sword Divided - BBC 1983)
Incidentally, while I was doing By the Sword Divided, I was told "you must go to Lavenham". People look past so much when they see a beautiful village. They don't notice the things that you would have to remove or block out. In Lavenham there were television aerials everywhere. And if it's not aerials, there were strings of telephone cables across the streets which made it impossible to film there.
JM: Funnily enough I was in Lavenham when the BBC were filming Children of the New Forest back in 1976 or 1977. They were only filming interior scenes in the Guildhall but I remember standing in the market square and having to keep quiet when the cameras were rolling. So how did you become involved in Smiley’s People?
RC: I joined the production after there had been a postponement and there were one or two things going on. The previous director, John MacKenzie, had stepped down and Simon Langton had just been appointed. I think Simon was a really good choice. He stuck to the script and that, to me, was the great thing about his direction. It was to bring the script to life - and that's what he did. There maybe other directors that could have made different interpretations. The one thing about Simon and Sir Alec Guinness was that they were of one mind in making it. There was a very strong bond between the two of them in terms of bringing this to the screen.
Simon was very tenacious and determined to do the best with the script on screen. And so was Ken MacMillan. I remember in that sanatorium, we used to have to wait for the floor to be made wet and that's why it's shining. Little things like that take a bit of time.
And of course Rosalie Crutchley was in these scenes as Mother Felicity. She was such a lovely lady and a great actress. I’d worked with her before. She always knew her lines and she knew exactly what she was going to do with them.
JM: Those scenes in Switzerland do look beautiful and there were a number of filming blocks abroad in Smiley’s People. What do you remember about the location filming?
RC: We started in Paris and then up to the farm at a place called Cergy-Pontoise, which is kind of a distant suburb. There was a big block of filming in Switzerland in Bern and Thun. My wife and I went back there a couple of years ago as we have friends who live in Bern and they took us out.
The bank in Thun is now just an office block but the town doesn't change. If I remember rightly, the place that we used for the little cafe where Smiley and Esterhase meet has been turned into hairdressers now. That was a shame because I thought that location worked so well.
I loved those scenes there and of course, Bernard Hepton was such a wonderful actor - and I would say to you a lovely man. He was so easy to work with because he was so professional. He'd done everything, he'd been everywhere, and he was just so relaxed. One of my favourite exchanges is in the art gallery where Smiley says, "Shouldn't this be numbered if it is a Degas"? and Toby says "Degas...it's a very grey area, George" - so wonderful.
JM: Are there any other locations that particularly stand out for you?
RC: I like the scene where Smiley goes to Vladimir's flat. The whole thing works so well because the staircase is very austere and you've got the woman saying to him that it's nice to be fancied. There is also the sinister implications of poor Bobchik thrown down to the bottom of the fire escape. It's the way Guinness picks through all of Vladimir's possessions to establish the story that's coming through, especially the discovery of the cigarettes.
The other location I liked was the London Airport Safe House. I found the house but it would have been impossible to film in it because from 6 o'clock in the morning the planes started coming over and they sounded like they were touching the roof! I asked the people living there how they put up with the noise but they said they were used to it.
We couldn't have shot anything there, especially with Malcolm Webberley as our sound recordist. If you listen to the sound on Smiley People you can hear how precise he was. If he could hear a plane anywhere in the distance we would stop filming and that's why everything is so clean on the soundtrack of the programme.
I had to find a a matching house that would work for the interiors and I found one in Greenford that was ideal - no planes!
JM: Your fellow Production Managers were Marion McDougall and Jeremy Silberston and Marcia Wheeler was the Production Associate on Smiley’s People. What are your memories of working with them?
RC: The fondest memories - we were a great team. Marion was absolutely brilliant. She was a fantastic planner and I worked with her for ten years off and on. We did Fortunes of War together and I don't think we had an argument over those years. And sadly, Jeremy died when he was still very young. I think he was only 55 and that was a great shame. Smiley’s People was the only thing I did with Jeremy. As Production Associate, Marcia was above us. We all worked very well together and that was particularly true in this case. We all knew each other and had respect for each other's professionalism - it was a very strong team.
JM: I don't know if you've seen the series recently but what are your feelings about it now?
RC: It is close to my heart because it was a wonderful production to be involved in. I look back on it with pride and very fond memories, not least because I was able to work with some amazing people. I think it stands the test of time very well. When you look at the overall production and the quality of the camera work it's all very good. I don't think you could better it. We also had a great international cast.
JM: There are so many terrific supporting performances in Smiley’s People and Curd Jurgens is one actor who stands out. I believe he wasn’t terribly well during filming though?
RC: He wasn't. We had one day where I said to Simon I felt we needed to send him back to his hotel because he was so shaky and wasn't able to deliver his lines. He needed to rest and the next day he was fine. He was frail though, I think that is the way to describe it, but still a wonderful and powerful presence.
Michael Lonsdale was excellent. It's another beautiful performance and so well measured. He had a great sense of fun, twinkling eyes, you know, a really great guy to be with. He is so funny when the penny drops that Smiley and Esterhase are spies. Poor Grigoriev really was a bit thick and he was beaten down by Gregorieva.
JM: Did you have much contact with Sir Alec Guinness?
RC: He was a very private man and you didn't really get to know him, even over that period of time. He had certain people on the production that he was closer to. The only time that I ever remember him opening up to me was when we were in France and it was someone's birthday party on the production. He turned up and he had a few drinks and that was when he started to talk easily, otherwise he didn't engage in conversation that much. On that occasion he just needed a few drinks to relax and he was a different person. In that moment, he was very much at ease and it was comfortable conversing with him.
He had a really nice sense of humour. I remember when we did the scenes in Bernard Hepton's gallery we dressed it with a love seat which was covered with shiny plastic. I remember Alec sat on this love seat and, because it had a plastic covering, he slid down. George Smiley’s dignity was slightly destroyed in that moment. Guinness said to Simon that he would like to use it. When you look at the scene you'll see he slides slightly on the seat. It was his idea and a nice moment.
Incidentally I found that location - it was an empty shop. One of the interesting things about it was the glass pavement, so that you could see the people walking above.
JM: It is an estate agent now. I actually went there and they were kind enough to let me go down the steps and have a look in the basement. You can match up the architecture down there perfectly. You mentioned Fortunes of War was one of the most high profile productions you have been involved in. What are your memories of the production?
RC: It was probably the biggest series I ever did as associate producer. It was nine-months of filming spread over two years of my life but a wonderful production to make and I'm very proud of it to this day. There's a story behind it. I had set up a new structure for filming because one of the things about the BBC was it had grown out of theatre. Everything that was produced in Television Centre was just like a theatre productions.
When you started to move out onto location, especially abroad, the structure they had wasn't really geared up for it, in my view. I had an agreement with the chief accountant that we would change things for Fortunes of War. With my background being film I was more used to having an umbilical cord of money to the production team in the country where we were filming. Betty Willingale and I agreed that we were going to do it our way, and that's exactly what we did.
JM: So you really pioneered a new approach?
RC: It was a very different approach. We did break new ground with it and then I did the same thing with Summer's Lease, the John Mortimer piece, a few years later. But Fortunes of War was an independent unit working abroad and the mothership was rarely spoken to.
(Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in Fortunes of War - BBC 1987)
Again, you’ve got this wonderful assembly of actors and some glorious locations to look at. Tim Harvey, Marion McDougall, and I did a six week recce because the director had his appendix removed just at the moment we were about to set off. So the three of us went off and did the recce and set everything up in terms of all the locations. We did it all in Egypt, Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania - we didn't actually film in Romania but we did see locations there. Incidentally when we arrived in Bucharest, as guests of the British Council, we were settling in to the car when it was bumped from behind. The Secretary for the British Council said "Don't worry about that, it's just the secret police letting us know that they know you are here"!
After we had finished the complete recce there was only one location that the director didn’t agree with, all the rest were agreed.
Betty Willingale and I had a great time on it. I mean purely as a working relationship, it went so well. When a production makes the cover of the Radio Times, the first run of the cover was framed and presented to the producer. And Betty got hers, and then she left it to me when she died, saying that was it was just as much yours as it was mine.
JM: That's lovely. You obviously had a very close working relationship with Betty.
RC: She was a legend, the most brilliant woman I've ever worked with. I was deeply fond of her. We had a wonderful working relationship and I could go on for hours about that. We were like two strong parents. We conferred on everything and we were as one - nobody could break us up or try and find things that one of us would disagree with.
JM: Thank you so much for your time Richard. It has been lovely to talk to you about your career and your work on Smiley’s People.
RC: I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much. It's so rewarding that people still love the series and go to such lengths to find out about it.
JM: You will be pleased to know that a lot of people have fond memories of the series. Thanks again for sharing your recollections with us.
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