Marcia Wheeler: A Life in BBC Television - Part One
From Stage Management to Production Management
I am back at Rowley’s Restaurant in Jermyn Street and this time my lunch guest is former BBC Production Manager, Marcia Wheeler. Marcia worked at the BBC from the mid-sixties until 1994 and, crucially, she worked as Production Unit Manager/Production Associate on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People.
As Marcia worked on both series, my thinking was that our conversation would naturally break down into a two-part interview. I hadn’t anticipated the fascinating discussion we would have about Marcia’s journey from stage management to production management at the BBC in the 1960s and 70s, prior to her work on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. It is too important a story not to share.
Part one of our interview is about a young, professional woman rising through the ranks in a male-dominated industry. It is also a funny and affectionate look back at the history of BBC television during a decade of change. You will meet a host of familiar faces from the past, including Roy Hudd, Dave Allen, Val Doonican, Arthur Askey, Adam Faith, Dennis Potter, Paddy Russell, Frank Finlay, Simon Ward and Meg Wynn Owen.
During this period, Marcia worked on shows such as Doctor Who, Z-Cars, Les Misérables, Thirty Minute Theatre, The First Churchills, and Sense and Sensibility. Marcia also worked on the very first episode of Late Night Horror, titled No Such Thing As A Vampire. It is one of the earliest colour dramas and when we spoke it was still missing from the BBC Archives - the episode has since been recovered by the amazing Film is Fabulous team. Read on to find out about the tests the production team did on the colour of blood!
As you are about to discover, Marcia’s powers of recall rival those of Connie Sachs - for clarity, any similarity between Marcia and Connie begins and ends there! Join us as we take some illuminating 'back bearings' over a leisurely meal…
Marcia Wheeler at the Salisbury Playhouse around 1963/64
Jonathan Moran (JM): Marcia, it is wonderful to meet you - thank you for joining me for lunch. We’ve got a lot to talk about, as you worked on both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People, but I would like to start at the beginning of your career. How did you come to work as a Production Manager for the BBC?
Marcia Wheeler (MW): My mother helped to found a repertory theatre, and I was involved with that from the age of about 13. I did my first Cinderella, looking after the props. Susannah York was Cinderella, straight out of RADA, and her then husband, Michael Wells, played Prince Charming. I remember her talking on the phone to her agent about an audition for a film. Her agent shouted down the line, “You've got to have a frock”. She said, “I've got some material for a frock”. I found myself saying, “My mother will make you a frock”. And she did, and Susannah got the part - that was Tunes of Glory with Alec Guinness.
The other thing my mother was involved in was a big amateur Shakespeare society. I used to go to afternoon tea rehearsals every Sunday through the winter, and help to hand round the sandwiches. As I was already involved in the theatre, a stage manager told me about Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was one of only two reputable schools that had a technical production course. The other was RADA, but he said the RADA people were mostly foot soldiers for the productions. He gave me a brochure, and I liked the philosophy, which was that if one was going to be in charge of skilled personnel, one should understand their roles. All Production Course students built and painted scenery, made costumes and masks, did lighting and sound as well as planning, running rehearsals and the shows. I applied, and they wrote back saying I was a bit young. My father contacted them and said I'd got all this experience, and the theatre gave me references. I had an interview and got in. That was wonderful for me because I was a freak at school. “She likes Shakespeare, my God”.
Anyway, I did Bristol, which I loved. I did Cinderella again at the Bristol Old Vic, this time operating a follow-spot, but it was a really awful production. Then, I got no work at all. I went to a local technical college and learned to type - I didn't learn shorthand in case I got turned in to a secretary.
Eventually, I got a call from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School to say the Salisbury Playhouse had contacted them and they would like an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager), and was I still looking for work. I had an interview with the wonderful Reggie Salberg. He said, “I was expecting somebody a bit older”. What can you say, except, “I’m getting older by the minute”. But he hired me, and I did six months as a technical ASM.
Reggie Salberg and the Old Salisbury Playhouse
JM: How old were you at this time?
MW: I was 17. I remember having my first legal drink when I was in Salisbury. Equity had recently brought in a rule that there must always be one member of Stage Management offstage. So, the role of the technical ASM came in. Sound was getting more complicated with the use of tape and tape editing, lighting was also getting more complicated and there was much more of a role for technically trained people. I did six months as the Assistant Stage Director, that was the job title then, but it was essentially Stage Management. The Stage Director then went to join the BBC, so they offered the job to someone else who got a better offer and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Reggie Salberg then offered the job to me. He obviously had concerns because he offered me the job on an acting basis for a couple of months. I remember him saying, “We'll see how it goes”. After a couple of months, my salary went up by a pound, so I assumed I was probably all right.
I did that for two years. I remember being told if you do a job for two years, people will know you're good, because if you weren't good, they wouldn't have kept you. After two years, I decided it was time to move on. Before I started working at Salisbury, I wrote to the BBC and got rejected. I wrote to them again before I left Salisbury, and got another letter saying, “Dear Miss Wheeler, you are far too young for the BBC”. I wrote back, and said, “Dear BBC, it is a pity you regard age as being more important than experience”. I thought, that's the end of that.
Six weeks later, I got another letter. “Dear Miss Wheeler, if you are passing through London, perhaps you would care to meet the Serials Organiser”. So I quickly arranged to pass through London and had a very nice interview. Nothing came of it but a bit later on there was a Board for Floor Assistants at the BBC, so I applied for that and was invited to see them. It was a very strange Board, typical BBC - five men in suits, all sitting at a table. I’m opposite like an accused person.
After the interview, they asked if I would step out for five minutes as they wanted to talk. When I came back in, they said, “There are two jobs, one at £15 a week, and one at £17 a week. We feel we could offer you a job at £17 a week, which is not for Floor Assistant, but Assistant Floor Manager (AFM). Could you start tomorrow?”
I reeled back slightly and said, “How about the day after tomorrow?”, thinking I’d got nowhere to sleep in London. I found out ages later that someone had contacted the Board and said, “We're desperate for AFMs. If you see anyone who could come in at that level, grab them.” So they had grabbed me.
I went off and contacted some actor friends of mine and arranged to sleep on their sofa. I packed a small suitcase and turned up on Wednesday morning to find myself meeting Establishment, the BBC's version of Personnel, who told me, “By the way, keep quiet about your age. We have an age limit of 21, and we raise it for women.” What he didn't say was that in Studio Management, it was raised pretty much out of sight, because the Head of the Department, who had fortunately been away on holiday when I had my Board, didn't like employing women.
JM: What was the balance of men and women working in Studio Management back then?
MW: All the Floor Assistants were men. All the AFMs, except two, were men. All the Floor Managers were men. There were male and female Vision Mixers, but apparently, the Head of Department had tried to get Vision Mixing recategorised as an engineering job because the engineering department didn't employ women. The directors rose up as one and refused to accept this, as a lot of the best Vision Mixers had been PAs and were really good. When I turned up in Studio Management, everyone gazed at me in total astonishment, then a furious Production Manager came in, thumped the table, and said, “I’ve got to have an AFM”.
“Ahh”, they said, their little brows clearing, “Have her”. He looked astonished because, firstly, I don't think he’d expected anyone to pay him any attention, and secondly, there was this strange girl standing there. He took me up to the seventh floor, where there was an office, and he said, “Can you write a prop list?” I confirmed that I could, and he said, “Here's a script, write a prop list”, and left, leaving me alone in this empty office. I don't know what had happened to the PA or the Director; there was nobody there. The phone kept ringing, so I looked at the door to see whose office it was. The name on the door said ‘John Duncan'. So, I answered the phone, “Hello, this is John Duncan's office - no, there's nobody here. Can I take a message?”
I took messages in between going through the script looking for props. It was a change of scale for me from the theatre to discover that a double-decker bus with a driver was considered a prop. Eventually, the phone rang again and by this point I'd got quite good at saying “Hello, this is John Duncan’s office, can I help you?” “It's me”, said a voice. “Who is me?”, I said. “Me, me”, said the voice, with increasing desperation. It was John Duncan. How was I to know?
John Duncan
I had joined television but this was an all-film production, called The Maladjusted Busker. It starred a very young Roy Hudd and it was for the Montreux Film Festival. Years later, I found out from Roy Hudd, it had actually won some sort of prize. It was shot almost like a silent film and it was all about buskers. It was essentially shot all over London as a piece of guerrilla filmmaking, which was quite an introduction for me. Meanwhile, I had to find somewhere to live. This was probably about 1965, because when I'd done the film, I was sent back to Studio Management. The next job I had was a sort of rotation between Duty Standby and Floor Managing in Presentation B, a tiny studio from which Late Night Line-Up transmitted live and was floor managed by an AFM.
JM: Was this your first taste of being in charge of a studio?
MW: It was! Mind you, the studio was tiny - smaller than this restaurant. If you wanted a long shot, you opened the doors and hauled the camera out into the corridor. It was a point of honour at that time for BBC Two to stay on air longer than BBC One. So if a late-night discussion was flagging a bit, you would want them to stretch it out. If BBC One had already closed down, you would encourage them to wind the conversation up. You were on duty from 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and all sorts of things happened. I walked in one day, and there was a grand piano in the studio. Somebody was tuning it, and then Arthur Askey appeared, did one take of Busy Bee and disappeared! What that was for, I never found out. David Attenborough turned up one day and did a bit of commentary; that was fun. Another day they were doing auditions for newsreaders. All sorts of things happened.
One day, there was a jazz group and in the middle of the recording I could hear screaming in the gallery. When it was finished, I went and asked what was going on to discover that the Assistant Producer had a migraine and the jazz had caused him such agony he'd actually had to be removed and taken to BBC surgery to be looked after. It was quite mad.
As Duty Standby, you turned up at nine in the morning and you had to stay until all the studios were staffed and there was a Floor Assistant, an AFM, a Vision Mixer, and a Floor Manager. You sat there and had coffee and talked— that was very informative. You also toured the studios to see if people were in, and once they were all in you could go home, unless you were called to do something. Once, I remember being called up to the Weather Studio (Presentation A), to find they were recording a trailer for some show and it was full of these girls in Arab costumes, and there were so many nobody could move. I couldn't even start the clock, because it was across the other side of the studio. I had to wave to someone who started the clock for me. It was quite good fun.
Eventually, I was sent to trail rehearsals on The Kathy Kirby Show. Variety was a completely strange world to me. There was nothing for me to do, so I sat in a corner with Adam Faith and did a crossword puzzle. Then I trailed rehearsals for a week on Harry Worth, which was quite useful, because I met the other female AFM, Maggie, and she showed me how to organise rehearsal props. The paperwork was the thing I was completely adrift on. Maggie showed me where to find Rehearsal Room Ground Plans, to enable me to plan the sets in their rehearsal room, remembering that the rehearsal room was always much smaller than the studio. She was very helpful. Then I found myself doing The Val Doonican Show - that was really the first time I was officially on my own doing an LE (Light Entertainment) show. The joke used to be that there was a Heavy Entertainment Department!
The Val Doonican Show was live, and that was weird because it took place in the television theatre. I was never quite sure whether I was stage left or camera right on that. It was really quite odd. Halfway through, my three-month contract was due to end, so the producer went to the Head of Variety, who presumably went to Head of Studio Management, and said, “You can't get rid of her - Val’s got used to her.”
JM: I think that counts as a compliment!
MW: For good or ill, as we now know, the light entertainment stars were God. If Val had got used to me, that was it, I was safe to the end of the series.
JM: Val Doonican was a household name back then - what was he like?
MW: He was one of the most focussed people I'd ever met. He ran his own career - he had no manager. He might have had an agent, but he answered all his own fan mail. If the fans liked something, he did it. If they didn't like it, he didn't do it. He hated Paddy McGinty’s Goat. He wouldn't rehearse it - he would strum and mutter, but the public liked it, so he would do it. In the middle of all that was Dave Allen, who might have come from another planet, and who I later realised was being groomed to have his own show. He would turn up with all his own material and sit on this chair. My life was geared to a stopwatch on that show because it was live; the timing had to be perfect, and everything was timed precisely.
JM: It must have been something to see Dave Allen at the start of his television career?
MW: It was. Some of his stuff was outrageous, but he delivered it with such a relaxed charm that unless you were really paying attention, you didn't realise quite how outrageous it was.
Val Doonican and Dave Allen on The Val Doonican Show
Anyway, I was just about to leave the BBC, and I was doing my last studio with Val, and reception asked if I would telephone Establishment. So I did, and they said, “We might have some work for you. Could you start in Plays on Monday? Be in reception, and we'd like you to go out to this rehearsal room and turn the pages for a pianist.” I decided this wasn't the moment to tell them I couldn’t read music, so I said, “Yes, certainly, I'll do that”. I signed another contract, turned up at the rehearsal room, and explained to the pianist that I couldn't read music. “It is all right”, he said, “I’ll nod”.
This was for Theatre 625. It was a big ninety-minute number titled Carried by the Storm, starring Simon Ward. At that time he was probably in his 20s, but could play down to 16 or 17. I was fascinated by the fact that he could do a huge emotional scene with a camera so close to him. His technique and control were extraordinary.
When we were in the studio on Theatre 625, an elderly actor came up to me very upset. This scene required her to eat a sweet with her tea. The other AFM had ordered sugared almonds and Turkish Delight. This poor actor knew Turkish Delight was going to gum up the next line and sugared almonds were going to crack. I went out and brought some Maltesers and dotted them around. I told the actor to go for the brown ones as they just dissolved in the mouth. There were various tricks that I knew. For example, if you have a teapot, it's much better to have one with a hinged lid, so it doesn't fall off when they're pouring the tea. When actors are nervous, teacups tend to rattle. If you glued a little circle of blotting paper to the saucer, it solves that problem. I hardly knew I knew all this stuff, but having worked in the theatre, you just accumulate knowledge.
At that time, quite a lot of theatre actors had never done television. In the theatre, what you have to do is remember the deaf, half-blind man in the back of the stalls. The main difference on television for actors is if they are close to the camera, they don't need to do much - they just have to have the emotional thought and the camera will pick it up. On the other hand, experienced actors know that if they're in a long shot, they really need to do something big. The basic skills of acting are exactly the same. It's just a question of dialling it down a bit. Some actors found it easier to do that because they always found projecting difficult - others were real theatre actors and it took them years to stop being so theatrical.
JM: You did quite a lot of plays at this point in your career. Which ones stand out for you?
MW: I did a Dennis Potter play called Where the Buffalo Roam, which was recorded in the studio in Cardiff. We had the Welsh OB Unit for the location recording. Most people think it is a film; Videotape editing and dubbing simply couldn't cope with Potter at that time, because of the way he overlapped things. We recorded this in Cardiff down the line to London onto film, and the OB stuff was also transferred to film. The whole thing was edited and dubbed as a film.
Nearly all of Potter’s original stuff is related to his life. Where the Buffalo Roam is him speculating what would have happened to him, if instead of being a clever boy and going to university, he'd let the fantasies take over. Hywel Bennett played the lead, and he had a fantasy about being a cowboy, which eventually takes over, resulting in him killing someone.
Hywel Bennett in Where The Buffalo Roam (1966)
As an AFM, I had to go to the rehearsal in a taxi because I had to bring the gun for Hywel to practise with. The gun went into the lock box, and I had the key on a string around my neck. We were rehearsing in the depths of Wandsworth, so I quite liked going to and from there in a taxi.
Another Theatre 625 I did was a disastrous Kafka, called Amerika. I was sent in to help the AFM, as they said it was getting too much for them. It was the 3rd week of rehearsal and they were still blocking and I had no idea how we were going to catch up. We must have had one of the longest studio overruns in history, until nearly midnight, at which point God knows who they were asking for permission to continue. They finally pulled the plug, but not only were there twenty minutes of this ninety-minute piece not recorded, those twenty minutes hadn't even been camera rehearsed!
They had to give the Director another week's rehearsal and another day in the studio. He never directed in television again. The Production Manager on that was John MacKenzie, who, of course, later almost came to direct Smiley’s People. I also worked on one of the first things he did as a Director, which was a live Thirty-Minute Theatre called The Queen Street Girls. That doesn't exist now, which is probably just as well, as there was a huge row the day after transmission. There was a scene in a gentleman's toilet, and a viewer was convinced they'd seen a penis! Fortunately, there was no evidence, so it was ultimately deniable.
After nearly two years on short-term contracts, the BBC told me they were not renewing my contract. The reason I ended up staying with the BBC was largely due to Dennis Channon. Dennis was a TM1, a Technical Manager who did Studio Lighting. I was working for Paddy Russell on Late Night Horror, one of the earliest dramas in colour. The first episode was No Such Thing as a Vampire and I remember we were actually given half a day in the studio to experiment with colour, because there was blood involved. The leading actor was Meg Wynn Owen, so most of the blood got poured over me because I'd got a matching skin tone!
Anyway, I bumped into Dennis Channon, and he said, “You're looking glum”, and I said, “They’re not renewing my contract”. I later discovered that he'd gone and tackled Paddy, who had kindly mentioned me to Drama Serials. I was rung up by Betty Saunders, who was the Organiser of Drama Serials, the manager was called an Organiser in those days. This was just before I took my parents on holiday to Wales for two weeks. Betty said, “Well, there's probably a Doctor Who when you come back” and a contract followed me. When I arrived back, it wasn't Doctor Who at all, it was Les Misérables (1967) with Alan Bridges directing, rehearsing back in darkest and coldest Wandsworth TA Drill Hall.
I’d missed the filming, but the other AFM, Margot Hayhoe, and I did alternate episodes in the studio. We were in the studio every week, going up to 45 minutes of material. The early scripts had been written by Giles Cooper, who was a really good writer but, tragically, he'd been killed in an accident at about episode seven or eight, and the later episodes were not so good.
Michele Dotrice (Fantine), Anthony Bate (Inspector Javert) and Frank Finlay (Jean Valjean) in Les Misérables (1967)
What Alan took to doing was reading from the book and getting the actors to improvise. People like Frank Finlay loved this and were really good at it. Some of the actors were completely fazed by it. There was a wonderful moment where two plotting actors crept up to each other in a garden to exchange some crucial information, looked at each other, looked at the director, and said, “We've never met”. This is the problem with taking things out of the book and improvising - the structure goes a bit awry.
I remember getting on very well with the Designer, Peter Seddon, and each week he would let me have a set and do the set dressing. I remember doing an office for an official and deciding he was really absent-minded and a bit vague at his job. So he had a full glass of wine, a half drunk glass of wine, and another one that was nearly empty. A fly obligingly came and died in the bottom of one of the glasses. I thought this was perfect, but the audience wasn’t going to see it. There was even a bread roll with a pen jabbed into it. I gave him an entire character on his desk. I really enjoyed doing that.
After Les Misérables, I did a whole mixed bag of stuff. I did a lot of Z-Cars. At some point in the middle of all this, I did my first Doctor Who, The Wheel in Space, in 1968.
Just after that, I did The First Churchills. I think every AFM in the department had asked to work on The First Churchills because everybody loved David Giles, who had directed most of The Forsyte Saga. He directed all of The First Churchills.
We actually started recording with hardly any scripts.
JM: This all sounds quite stressful - was it?
MW: Completely nerve-wracking. I remember David saying if we end up in a presentation studio, reading extracts from Churchill's Life of Marlborough, we are going to finish this. We never had a planning meeting after episode four, because there was never anything to plan. Those of us who worked on it were welded together for life. We all cast from memory, because the Producer was writing the scripts, so he was locked in an office and was not expected to do any producing at all. When we went away for a second filming session (a block between two episodes to cover the later story), the actors had to play everything very neutrally as they only had their script for filming and didn’t know the context of their performance. There was a terrible moment when we came back from filming and we couldn’t go into rehearsals as we didn’t have anything to rehearse! The script was coming down a page at a time! Frances Alcock, the Director's Assistant, would type it, David Giles would put it on the Roneo machine and produce copies, and I would order taxis to take the script out to the actors, a couple of pages at a time. Margaret Tyzach's husband was hand-copying her script and taking it round to Susan Hampshire, because she wanted to know what was happening.
I remember having to write a prop list with no script and thinking all these characters better have a horse and they’re all going to need a sword. Incidentally, swords were props and scabbards were costume. We’re going to need some other transport, perhaps a couple of coaches and they’re signing something so we’d better have a tent, a table and some stools. I was quite proud when we eventually got the script - my supplementary prop list was just twelve items and I thought that was a bit of good guesswork. It was so stressful - we were literally operating on a wing and a prayer.
When we were rehearsing I was always afraid, because we had characters who would start off being Joe Bloggs and the next week, they might be the Earl of something. The week after that, they might be the Duke or something. I lived in fear that one day two actors were going to turn up for the same part! I can remember new actors turning up at rehearsal and David would sidle over to me and say, “Who’s that?” I’d say, “I don't know, but we need someone for 'Ferguson the Plotter', let’s hope he's come to play that.” I also worried that some passing electrician or poor gas engineer was going to find themselves playing a part, but thankfully it never happened.
There's a good story about David Neal who came along and played a discussion scene with John Neville. I actually cast David Neal, as I remembered him from productions I had seen in Nottingham. When the episode was cut together it was too short. Donald Wilson, who really liked David Neal, wrote an extension to the scene, which we could then record in the next episode. A rather startled David Neal was called back and we recorded that scene. When the two scenes were edited together, the poor costume department had got John Neville in a different coat - he went around a corner and appeared in another colour. So, David Neal was called back yet again to do the scenes with John Neville, this time in the right costume and it was edited into the episode. David Neal stopped saying goodbye to us and told me all the re-shoots paid for his move from Nottingham to London!
John Neville (left) and David Neal in The First Churchills
I can also remember turning up in the rehearsal room to mark out the sets, and I had not got a ground plan. I telephoned Spencer Chapman, the Designer, who was in a meeting with David Giles and they had decided we needed this conference room. He dictated the dimensions of the set over the phone, and we ended up doing the rest of the sets over the phone like that! I think the only thing that really went wrong is that on one occasion they were short of a door in one set.
JM: It sounds like complete chaos. I haven't seen it - was it well regarded at the time?
MW: I think it was reasonably well regarded. Susan Hampshire won an Emmy. I don’t think viewers would have been aware of the difficulties, unless anyone was paying attention at the start and noticed that thirteen episodes had become twelve.
After The First Churchills, I finally got a permanency at the BBC in Serials and almost immediately passed a training board to be a Production Manager, which is actually the job I came into the BBC wanting. That was the equivalent to the Stage Manager job I'd been doing in the theatre. Eight of us got this and we were all taken, more or less, in order of sex and age - they took the oldest man first, and the youngest woman last, which was me.
So I carried on as an AFM, and that's when I did Sense and Sensibility (1971), with David Giles again.
JM: In preparation for our interview, I watched and enjoyed that quite recently. (For those who would like to see it, it is in the 'Archive' section on the BBC iPlayer.) What do you remember about it?
MW: Did you notice the end graphic, which is a still life of a fruit bowl? I did that; it was a prop on a sideboard. Somebody took a shot of it, and it was decided to use it for the end titles.
I also chose the title music. Every adaptation I’ve seen of Sense & Sensibility, including the more recent film version, misses a layer of Jane Austen’s irony. The Dashwoods are convinced that they're the poorest of the poor, but they are actually living in a nice six-bedroom house in a village. They're a good deal more sorry for themselves than they have any right to be. I remember arguing with David because in this adaptation they were in a thatched cottage and had a dear old housekeeper written into the script, and I said it wasn't like that - they actually had at least two servants. Emma Thompson had got them at some cliff-top cottage, miles from anywhere, which was also completely wrong.
Cuddly housekeepers aside, though, it was quite a nice adaptation. I'd cast Milton Johns as 'Ferguson the Plotter' when we did The First Churchills, and David then cast him as John Dashwood. His agent was almost overcome with joy because he was always playing sinister bookmakers and crooked solicitors. He was still a nasty character, but this time he was a nasty member of the upper classes.
Marcia holding someone's cloak during filming on Sense and Sensibility
After Sense and Sensibility, I got onto my training to be a Production Manager. You did six weeks back in Studio Management, getting up to speed as a Floor Manager because you were responsible for safety on the studio floor. You then did six weeks in another department (I was sent to Series), and you did a 13-week production course, which was meant for directors. You went on it as a Production Manager, and you did a lot of the same training. This was so you understood what the directors did. After that, you had a six-month acting attachment as a Production Manager. If everything was ok you then carried on.
I had a very good time in Series because they were going to send me to trail a production team. There were aspects of the job that I didn't think I knew enough about. One area I needed to know more about was setting up filming, another was film dubbing. The other area, which was becoming more important, was costing. The Organising Assistant was excellent, and for three weeks, she put me with an Associate Producer who was writing budgets and costing productions. She was essentially doing the job, which later became Production Unit Manager/Production Associate.
In part two of this interview, we cover Marcia’s work on The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Sense & Sensibility - previously unpublished behind the scenes photos taken by Marcia Wheeler - Marcia's comments are in italics.
Director David Giles pre-visualising a shot
Makeup artist Ann Ferriggi (left) and Frances Alcock
The very latest thing in camera equipment - putting it together was a three-act performance in itself!
Lighting Cameraman Brian Tufano (right)
Ciaran Madden as Marriane Dashwood and Clive Francis as Willoughby
Brian Tufano (left), David Giles (centre) and Fiona Cumming (right) all laughing at something. The glum man on the right is of course, Sparks (Bob Julian, I think), so is the hairy one on the left.
Setting up the camera at 'Norland' on the first morning - David Giles is on the left.
Filming 'the walk' - a typical filming photo, in which no-one appears to be doing anything!
Ciaran Madden, Clive Francis and horse
Frances Alcock (left) and Ann Ferriggi looking at a continuity polaroid
Patricia Routledge as Mrs. Jennings with a beautiful wheelbarrow full of flowers in the background.
Screen captures from various BBC productions (c) BBC
Other images courtesy of Marcia Wheeler
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