My own children seldom needed more than a withering look from their mother or me, but they knew that the possibility of sterner measures existed—and that is the key to controlling all human behaviour. If I seem to repeat myself it is because one tends to when an obvious, patent truth is being denied or ignored by fools. For example, bullying in schools seems to have reached epidemic proportions, yet nothing is easier to stop. Simply empower teachers to inflict corporal punishment; if the bully knows he is going to have his backside painfully thrashed, he will desist from bullying.
And how, scoffs the liberal, is a frail female teacher to chastise a hulking thug? She isn’t; she is going to report him to the headmaster or mistress who will instruct a burly assistant janitor, paid out of the small fortune that will be saved from the abolition of special classes for disruptive pupils, to inflict the punishment. And any parent who comes round to the school seeking revenge will be liable, after due process, to a fine or worse. If a parent wishes to have a child’s punishment investigated, that too must be properly carried out.
It’s easy…and the bully doesn’t have to be expelled or denied schooling, his victims will not suffer from his cruelty or, provided school discipline is properly organised and supervised, have to demean themselves by complaining to higher authority—the only remedy that “educationalists” seem able to think of. We have come to this, that what used to be looked on as the most contemptible thing a child could do, namely, telling tales, sneaking, clyping, grassing, ratting, peaching, narking, turning stool-pigeon (you can tell the odium in which it was held by the rich variety of synonyms) is now recommended behaviour. That is the depth to which children are being advised to sink, simply because our rulers are too spineless and stupid to tackle the evil head-on.*
How cruel they are to children; how they fail them by their neglect, not only the well-behaved pupil but the disruptive lout or young virago. They are being denied the good, untroubled education that is their birthright—one might say their human right, to use a phrase which should strike a chord in liberal minds. And all because the enlightened sneer at such folk wisdom as “Spare the rod and spoil the child”, and never have the wit, apparently, to wonder how the saying came to be proverbial.
There still exists, of course, among such thinkers, the belief that a child is naturally good, and only some aberration of circumstance or upbringing causes bad behaviour. Believe that and you’ll believe anything. It was my wife who pointed out to me, after careful observation of our own children and their playmates at the toddler stage, that you will see in the nursery every crime in the book except sexual assault: GBH, attempted murder, theft, blackmail, extortion, lying, fraud, false pretence, menacing, putting in fear, robbery with violence, conspiracy, mayhem—the whole Newgate Calendar is on show, and if sex and high treason are exceptions it is only because the little blighters haven’t got round to them yet.
I have rambled somewhat, yet I hope I have at least illustrated the old truth that as the twig is bent so grows the tree. I hope, too, to have demonstrated that I and the majority who share most of my views—they tend to live in Crewe and Arbroath and Truro and Larne and Llandudno and similar places, rather than in Islington, Hampstead, the Palace of Westminster or Broadcasting House—are not really cruel or unfeeling or vindictive folk. We want crime prevented and properly punished, and our children and grandchildren safely and humanely schooled. That is all, and we are tired of those selfish and hard-hearted bigots who refuse to let us have these things, and will not face the obvious truth, that capital and corporal punishment should never have been abolished.
They won’t be restored in my time. For one thing, we have the paradox that while a national majority favour the death penalty, p.c. has already had such an effect that juries would be reluctant to send even a proved serial murderer to the gallows. And the fury that would erupt if a non-white were hanged is not to be contemplated. If, or more probably when, so-called democracy fails, and totalitarianism triumphs, they will be re-imposed with a vengeance, either by communist or fascist dictators.
Meanwhile we must all suffer from the weakness of bad governments and the folly of permissive policies. And every time I hear of some defenceless old woman beaten to death by thugs, or a little child raped and strangled by a paedophile, I shall have to bite back the words: “Well done, congratulations, all you abolitionists and enlightened liberals and champions of the permissive society! That’s another family who have a lot to thank you for.”
A shameful thing to say? No, a shameful thing to have to say. At least I’m still capable of shame, even if the liberal establishment is not.
* The most effective cure for bullying, as my generation know from experience, was that advocated in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, where Tom and East ganged up on the bully Flashman and beat the stuffing out of him.
INTERLUDE
No One Did It Better
AT THE MUCH-ADMIRED opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (which I thought rather vulgar), great emphasis was laid on the Aborigines, but there was virtually no acknowledgement that it was Britain that made modern Australia; a Captain Cook figure made a brief appearance, and that was it. A stranger, noting the amount of attention paid to Stone Age barbarians and to the arrival of the non-British immigrants in modern times, would never have guessed that Australia and its people are more British than anything else. Many of them may wish to cut the tie, but that’s beside the point.
This deliberate down-playing of the British contribution is, of course, just another manifestation of the politically correct tendency to denigrate Britain (and especially England) and the Empire at every opportunity. Regrettably, there is no shortage of detractors in Britain itself. Many are sincere, half-educated liberals, or New Labour zealots who seem to detest British history (a prejudice which led them to neglect a heaven-sent opportunity for a patriotic celebration of the Millennium, and make themselves a laughing-stock with their ridiculous Dome), while others are simply dishonest, deliberately distorting history by selecting every item they can find to Britain’s discredit, and carefully avoiding its virtues.
This happens on even the most trivial level, as witness such cinematic drivel as Pocahontas, Braveheart and The Patriot, all of which shamelessly presented a false picture of their subjects, with the apparent intention of vilifying the English as the ultimate archvillains. Which wouldn’t matter a hoot if it didn’t damage the education of our children, as I’m afraid does much of the all-too-slanted history they are taught at school. The trouble with the big lie is that it works unless it is refuted, and I don’t kid myself that my voice is big enough to stem the tide of revisionist propaganda. But I can state the truth as I know it, from study and observation, just for the record, and that at least will be something.
I write as a convinced Imperialist—which means that I believe that the case for the British Empire as one of the best things that ever happened to an undeserving world is proved, open and shut. Of course it had its faults, grievous ones; there are bad blots on our record—and what country since time began is blameless? We know that history is one long catalogue of theft, slaughter, and conquest, and no one can deny that Britain was better at these things than anyone else. We were, and still are at heart, a nation of pirates, and as a fine historian once said, let the world not reproach us with it, but be thankful.
Why? Because with all the greed and lust of dominion and buccaneering zeal that drove our ancestors, the wondrous paradox is that they left the world better than they found it. If no other country was so rapacious and acquisitive and successful at doing down its competitors, no other country did half as much to spread freedom, law, good government and democratic principle around the globe; as a civilising force Britain and its Empire were unique, and if proof is required one need only compare the state of imperial lands when they were under the Union flag, with their present condition. At best, as in India and many smaller, usually insular, territories where British influence lingers most strongly,
the peoples are no better governed than they were, to say the least; at worst, independence (laughably called freedom) has been a ghastly tragedy, as in those African countries which have been transformed from prosperous, law-abiding colonies into bankrupt bloody dictatorships under the tyranny of evil thugs like Mugabe and Amin and the butchers of Biafra.
It is liberal dogma that responsibility for the African horrors rests with the Imperialists who allegedly did not prepare the colonies for independence—conveniently overlooking the fact that it was the indecent haste of Attlee’s Labour government in getting out of India that led to a carnage in which two million died.
The Empire had to end, but those who hurried its demise (including the United States, which short-sightedly lost no opportunity of twisting the lion’s tail, and now wonders why places like the Middle East are in endless turmoil; it would make you weep) bear a heavy share of guilt for the ills which so often accompanied independence. I shan’t forget a symbolic little notice pinned to the wall of a bungalow, far up a river in Borneo, which had once been a British resident’s headquarters, recording the programme of inoculation against malaria: it stopped abruptly on the date of British withdrawal.
Ah, well, if you want to incur everlasting hostility, do someone a favour: they’ll never forgive you. Perhaps that explains the anti-British feeling. Or perhaps we’re just not very likeable. Who cares? We did what we did, and it was worth doing, and no one could have done it better—or half as well.
SHOOTING SCRIPT 6
“Thirty Years in Hollywood and You Can still Learn Something New”
I KNEW THAT Burt Lancaster and I were never going to be soul-mates the moment he suddenly exclaimed: “What the hell d’you think we’re paying you for?” Annoyed, I hesitated between “You’re not paying enough to take that tone,” and “Up yours, Lancaster!”, but discarded both: I knew his knees were hurting him, we’d had a long hard session in which my ideas had risen farther and farther over the top, I didn’t want to walk out on an excellent project on the spur of the moment, and even at the age of sixty-four he looked as though he might still be able (in his own words) to “throw Ernie Borgnine out the window.”*
So I took my time and replied: “For ideas which you don’t seem to like. So d’you want me to quit? I might as well if you’re going to start talking that way.” He growled: “Ah, for Christ’s sake!” and we resumed our search for a plot for a sequel to The Crimson Pirate. Perfectly amiably, but with no intention on my side of prolonging our association beyond the next few days, which he had paid handsomely for in advance. I was still prepared to write him a screenplay if our discussion went well and the price was right, but I wasn’t going to commit myself to working with him on set and location for three months, which was what he wanted; that, I realised after the momentary exposure of his hairy heel, would inevitably end in strong language, explosion, and me on my way to the nearest airport.
It wasn’t that we didn’t get on; quite the reverse. In the time we had already spent discussing the project, I’d found myself closer to him where ideas were concerned than to his partners, Harold Hecht and Jim Hill. He was the one who really wanted to make that sequel, he was intelligent and well-read (surprising me by his admiration for Mervyn Peake) and was not only an anglophile but a romantic one: in childhood he had devoured Jeffery Farnol, “Lady Charmian and Black Bartlemy’s Treasure, the whole lot. Used to buy ’em for ten cents from a stall in Little Italy, sell ’em back for seven, then buy another for ten.”
It was easy to understand why, although he had built a reputation as a serious actor with an Oscar to his credit, he had made good old-fashioned over-the-top swashbucklers like The Flame and the Arrow and The Crimson Pirate, and having read Flashman he had decided that I was the man to write his sequel for him.
I was enthusiastic, but I guessed before we met that he would not be the easiest man in the world to work with. His screen persona suggested a formidable, probably overbearing character, and I recalled seeing a quote in which he had said: “If I’m working with frightened people, I tend to dominate them. I’m no doll, that’s for sure.” Never mind frightened people, he’d have tried to dominate the Duke of Wellington. Indeed, he’d given me a hint of this at our first meeting. “You fight your corner,” were the words he used, stabbing a forefinger. “Don’t mind me. It’s your ideas we want, so you be a stubborn Scotsman, Georgie—a stubborn Scotsman, right?”
I assured him I would be—and prepared myself for script-conference brawls. They didn’t happen, and he never “exuded the physical menace” which one writer discovered in him. His irritable demand to know what he was paying me for was the nearest we came to a quarrel, but that, my doubts about his partners’ enthusiasm for the project, their apparent lack of agreement on how it should be developed, and Burt’s own tendency to talk about a script’s “kinetic values”, gradually persuaded me that by and large I might be happier doing something else.
Which was a pity, for Crimson Pirate II could have been great fun on screen (if no doubt hell to make), and he was a most interesting man. For that matter, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was a most interesting outfit, with a remarkable track record which included Marty, Separate Tables, The Devil’s Disciple, Vera Cruz, Sweet Smell of Success, and several Academy Awards. Yet they operated out of a small office on Pico Boulevard, a most modest set-up by Hollywood standards, with only a single secretary so far as I could see, a quiet and efficient young lady who ruled the place and ferried me to and from my hotel in Lancaster’s BMW. “Ah, you’re a hard-working Jewish girl, Sandy,” he would say. “We’ve got to find you a nice Jewish boy, with blue eyes.”
The founding father of the group, credited with discovering Lancaster, bringing him to Hollywood, and helping him to become one of the first movie stars to break away from the studio system to form his own production company, in which James Hill later joined them, was Harold Hecht. He was a tiny dynamo, an elderly and ebullient Jew who met me at LA Airport, making contact in the crowded baggage area by climbing on a pile of someone else’s luggage and bawling through cupped hands, “Mr Frayzhur! Mr Frayzhur!” (Frasers in America get used to hearing their name pronounced in the old Highland way imported long ago by Gaelic-speaking settlers, and now familiar world-wide through the Frasier TV show.) It was like being paged by a demented Nibelung who seized my suitcase and used it to flail his way to the exit while he kept up a running fire of comment to me and passers-by.
He bounced about alarmingly in his seat as he drove me at frightening speed to my hotel in Pacific Palisades, of all places, cross-examining me on my movie c.v., and damning the director and producers of my last picture (“Journeyman work! Journeyman work!”) It emerged that he was a showbiz jack-of-all-trades who had been with the Metropolitan Opera (as a dancer), worked with Boleslawski and stage-managed the first American production of Bernard Shaw’s “western”, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, been a film dance director, and produced many of Lancaster’s pictures.
Once at the hotel he harried the manager and desk clerks with manic energy, insisted on accompanying me to my room, which he inspected critically while I inhaled the familiar musty smell of American hotels and noted that the water still came out of the taps as foam, and then he shot away, haranguing the bellhop all the way to the elevator, leaving me wondering what I’d got myself into this time.
Jim Hill, whom I met next morning, was a more sober and reassuring figure, a producer and writer who had been the fifth husband of Rita Hayworth (of whom he wrote a memoir). He was to play a leading role in our talks and was plagued by acute fibrositis in his neck and shoulders.
We drove to the office on Pico, and there I met Lancaster himself, large, grave, courteous, and the most precisely controlled man, I think, that I’ve ever seen. It was not only in his movements and body language which, as his fans well know, were careful and deft and rather mannered, but in his thoughts and speech, that this curious deliberate precision showed; he would not respond immediately in conversation,
but wait for a second, studying the speaker (I almost said opponent) before replying quickly and directly to the point; it was all exact, without “ahs” and “ers” or incomplete and careless phrases, more like the written word than speech.
I’ve no doubt that this precision was a result of early professional training. He was an acrobat before he was an actor, and it showed in his disciplined physical skill. Hecht told me that, early in their acquaintance, while they were taking an evening stroll, they passed a tall building shrouded in iron scaffolding onto which Lancaster had suddenly leaped, swarming to the top at high speed and descending again in a series of swings, trapeze-fashion, from bar to bar, before resuming his walk. I didn’t doubt it. During one of our talks my cigarette lighter ceased to function, and as I clicked unsuccessfully Burt, seated at his desk across the room, with his chair tilted back, flipped a book of matches casually in my direction. He was at least ten to twelve feet away; the match-book fell neatly into the empty ashtray beside me.
On that first meeting, after checking me into a new hotel, the Century Plaza, which was handier for his office, he took me to lunch at his club. I think it was called the Hillcrest, but I’m not certain; it had a splendid-looking golf course, was luxurious in the extreme, and was Jewish—whether it was the club which Hollywood Jews are alleged to have formed when they were barred from other clubs, I don’t know, but Lancaster, the Anglo-Saxon gentile, was extremely proud to be one of the few non-Jewish members.
We had an excellent lunch (scrambled eggs and sausages for Burt, cold salmon for me) beside a picture window overlooking the golf course, and having ascertained that I played, he said we might fit in a game, adding rather hastily: “Not for money, of course.” I was under no illusion that he thought I might bankrupt him; he looked and talked like a low-handicap man, and I’m sure his concern was that he would beat the blazes out of me, bad knees notwithstanding, and win back the expense money he was paying me, which would have been embarrassing for us both.