mason movie magic

My mum and dad both worked at Warner Brother's film studios, in Teddington (UK), when they were teenagers. It's where they met, in fact. It was something of a family tradition, working there, as both had either aunts, an uncle, a mother or a sister all employed in one capacity or another at the studio.

While my mum worked in the offices, as a gofer, my dad was an errand boy, cycling around the studio lot delivering messages. But family legend has it that he did have one brush with the glamorous side of film production when he was promoted to the role of clapperboard boy on a James Mason film, Candlelight in Algeria (1944). Apparently, my dad harboured ambitions to work his way up to cameraman eventually, but the Luftwaffe put paid to those dreams when the studio was badly damaged in a V2 rocket attack in July of '44. Damn Hitler to hell for millions of reasons, but I feel really bad for my dad that he had to watch that dream of his go up in smoke.

Curious to see the movie that he played a crucial...ok, peripheral part in making, I bought Candlelight on DVD and recently watched it one afternoon in lockdown. It was a good, old, British, wartime, spy drama. With Mason bringing a relaxed bit of charm and dash to the lead role, as the hero who (ironically perhaps) hands a drubbing to some nazis in North Africa. No mention of dad in the credits of course. Film credits in those days only mentioned a couple of dozen people, unlike the movies of today. And seeing the film jogged my memory about dad having Mason's signature his autograph book, and here it is - To Charlie, with all my best wishes James Mason. For dad, I'm certain this would have been a small but welcome reminder of a happy and exciting time in his youth.

Photos are the author's own.