YouSaid · the spoken record

Lewis Gilbert

lines on the record: 49
first: 2010-06-20
most recent: 2010-06-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's right. If I can work with actors, I can work with chimpanzees, that's for sure. Now, should I be rescued? Then I will be a mounty millionaire because I will take my team to England, I think it would be terrific if I”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is my luxury and my physical. My luxury is a football. And the reason why I'd like a football is that all these monkeys and chimps on the island, the would follow me. They would start to learn how to play the game, and I every day I would take my chimps out and I'd have a team.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've got two things really I've got to work my mind And work my physical fitness. So first of all my mind, I would like a book of poems of which I could probably learn one every couple of days it would help me a lot.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell me about the music we do. As I do too, and I think a lot of people would, it's very much of its time, which I suppose was the thirties or twenties and thirties, I expect.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say yes it was. My sons, grandsons, they were all wonderful, and I see them all the time. I'm never lonely because they always keep in touch with me.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of my films are about women, darning Virginia McKenna who did Carver Named Pied, another wonderful girl. I think I was better at directing women than men, strangely enough.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it was Shirley Valentine, yes, a film which I loved making, loved working with Pauline Collins, I find that when a film you have a wonderful time and it's delightful to work on, it's always successful. So I do strive for that.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was terrible. Anyway, eventually she rang me. and said she also made a terrible mess of her life we must meet and that's what we did and we both burst into tears. And that was it, and we knew we were never going to be separated again.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I struck a very bad patch. And I could see that I couldn't afford marriage at all. And I said to her I'd have to go. which was a dreadful thing to do, and she then married somebody else.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm absolutely furious, fuming and then I don't know I'm not going to let her get away with that so I rang the number, she answered it, and I said to her and what happened to you today There was a pause and she said You mean what happened to you? I said What do you mean? She said Well I waited an hour for you but it turned out there were two booking offices at Waterloo Station. Now strangely enough, it couldn't have been better because we both started to laugh, and from then on that was it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, funny enough, I was now a documentary director making my first documentary, and I was waiting for the lift. The lift door opened, and there were these two girls there very, very pretty, and before I could step in to the gates closed, and that evening I came out of the Shephersburg studios, and there ahead of me were these two girls. So I put on a bit of speed, I got there, and with the end of the story is that I said how about Danton Sunday? She said, Well, no, I can't do that. She said, I'm going to my cousin, but why don't you come with me? I'll meet you on Waterloo Station. I said, fine meet at a book in office eleven o'clock. So I go, turn up, Nothing she doesn't show.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was very, very beautiful. Very beautiful, I mean any room she walked into she would stop him stone dead, but she was wonderful for me because she was so well up in show business, going to plays, going to films, and Recommending this, recommending that I was lucky”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I may not have made it as good as this I just felt that for a fleeting moment, and then I thought you would have done. Yes, you'd have made a very great film out of it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want to say the name of it. It's too hurtful for me to say that I gave up Oliver to do that film. That was the other thing, so they said we can't get anybody at this late stage. I said, Well, there's plenty of directors around, surely it's a wonderful subject. I said by the way, Cow Reed is available and in the end they gave the film to Cow Reed, and on the Academy Awards for Oliver. Cavalry got best director, and I happen to have been in Hollywood at the time, and I walked into the hotel, and there was Cavalidi rushed over and he threw his arms round me, and he thanked me for recommending him to do the film Barmini was a great director anyway, and that's show business.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Getting it registered when I was making the bond film. In fact, Kabba used to say to me Which film are we working on today, Louis? He was great, Cubby, he was good natured, and he didn't mind me in his time working on Oliver with Lionel Bart, you know. And that was a film that I longed, longed to make, and I messed it up because I signed contract where the chap said to me Oh don't worry, you can do, Oliver. reneged on it”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oliver If I was born to make a film it was to make Oliver. I longed to make Oliver, and Lionel Bart said to me Nobody else will do it, you will do it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the States as well as then I made the biggest mistake in my life which comes really to the next piece of music which is Georgia Brown singing it's a fine life.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I just felt I'd got all the things I already wanted, I got the golden globe and I got many other rewards, and life is not about awards as it's really about choice”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the time? Yes, I think so. It was anti British in a way. The biggest thing we did was to make Alfi talk confidentially to the camera. That was new, and Micah was able to do it and he did it wonderfully well.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that was very odd because my wife went to the hairdresser and in the next chair there was an actress Margaret Courtney, and she was in this plane I'm in a wonderful play at the moment, I think. You ought to come and see it, she said. So my wife went, she came back and said you've got to do this play. It won't make a wonderful film. And it did. And Michael Kane never looked back? I never looked back. Alfie was a big success for everybody.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, he was. It was very difficult because I didn't think he was right, and again my son John Gilbert said to me Why are you getting so worried about somebody to play Alfie? You've got one on your doorstep. Michael Kane would be absolutely perfect for it. That's how Michael Kane got the part I don't think he realised it was the director's sud that recommended him.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was after Alfie. From Alfie I was a big time director because that was a really big hit round the world and Sonny Rollins did it live he didn't write out a score he projected the film onto a screen and he did his stuff and I thought that was wonderful. Sanny Rollins Alfie theme from the film soundtrack.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you ever come out of the Air Force, come and see me'cause I could use you as a director. And that's how I became a director.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“dramatic, and I said, Jim, you are going to do that scene, aren't you? No, no, you can do it, he said, you can do it. Well, of course I could do it, I mean you'd have to be a real idiot not to do it they were actually doing it for you. So naturally I knew I couldn't make a mess of that and then I said Jim, would you like to see the rushes? No, no, I'm sure they will let you go up and see them. I went up to town and there was a man sitting there. And he said would you mind if I stay? I said no, not at all. And I ran this stuff well of course it was marvellous. They weren't acting, they were practically in tears. It was a wonderful scene. And at the end of it this man said to me Oh that was very impressive he said Who shot this stuff? And I said I did. He said Oh really very good he said My name's Arthur Elton I'm head of the films division for the MOI.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the main one which changed my life was a scene where these boys when they took off in a plane should fly over Germany, they had to empty their pockets of everything and leave it all behind pictures of their baby, of their wife, of their house, and it was a great moment that Phadamic”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a whole book in itself. The war years for me, because eventually I was seconded to the US Air Corps, and I was with the US Air Corps Film Unit, and that was a big, big step up for me. But there in the US Air Corps I was very lucky, because my CO was a very famous director, Keeley, William Keeley, directed many big Hollywood films, but he hated the cold. He couldn't stand the cold, and he'd say to me, You do it, you do it, you can do it. I was his assistant. And it went on like that, and that's when I got my first directorial job.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I'd been in show business all my life, so it didn't overwhelm me. I knew, I mean, for instance, Vivian Lee, who was a most beautiful, beautiful girl, was the first woman I ever heard swear. I couldn't believe that this beautiful girl could say these things. I can't say it because it's that bad, is it? That bad, yes. It's terrible.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, I thought to myself we're in luck, and I did, and obviously I stayed the night, and we stood on the terrace and watched London burning, which was quite an experience”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was at Oxford's camp during the war, and we used to get free tickets to a concert hall, and I sat down in the auditorium. But it was the first night of the Blitz, and the bomb started to rain down, and I turned round and there was a girl, young girl, Aren sitting next to me, then the sirens went, and I can't remember who the conductor was, but he said we'll play some dance music, and you can all dance in the aisles, and I said to this girl, shall we dance? And we danced round in the hall. It was wonderful, actually. The bombs are dropping all round me, but it was wonderful to be with this wren, and then the old clear went, and I left the hall with her. So I walked home and through the streets of London burning. All around us was fires, and then she said to me I left her at Dolphin Square, and I said well you're all right now, and she said, Well, why don't you come in and have a cup of coffee?”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes Yeah, I tried, but you know, it's very difficult'cause he's clever, and he knows that if he goes sick you'll get the blame'cause he knew that one day there was no insurance and one day”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lawrence Olivier, Lucy Buffs. Well, that was one of the great moments in my life because the thought of working with Lawrence Olivia, you know, when you're seventeen is a thing you think oh my god I'll be terrible and be awful but it taught me a very great lesson of being kind to your fellow actors means a lot I mean I knew it again when in later life I did the film with awesome worlds which was a nightmare beyond all you never cared about this fellow actors just went his own way didn't want to listen to the director didn't care and it was a nightmare.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This stuff. She never went on the stage again and she never remarried again. Theirs had been a real love story really, and it was very, very tough on her. But she had a stroke of luck. She became a film extra. And that was in a way my entry into it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No,'cause it was my life. I think with one's life is one's life, and you accept it, and you make the best of it, and I thought I was very lucky in many ways.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's absolutely true, and I remember being in one silent film, and the boy who sat next to me in class, I told him that the film I was in was playing at a local cinema, so we both bunked off from school and went to see the film, so it was quite good fun actually.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Job I had a terrible film called The Adventurers, which was a big, splawling, very expensive film, which was a disaster. I should never have made it, and then I'm not proud of.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I remember very distinctly how when I was playing in the street and suddenly a very distant cousin came up to me and she said I've got sad news for you. Your father died today. And it didn't really mean anything to me because I was only seven. But she said to me here you are, and she delved into her pocket, and she bought out four pence and gave me this she said come and buy yourself a bag of sweets and I can tell you I ran all the way to the sweet shop to buy the sweets and that's what I thought of not my father because it doesn't come home to me that I would never see him again but it was then times were bad then they were very difficult.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, my father had TB when he was he died at thirty four, and I was seven, and that was very, very difficult for me, very difficult for my mother, because up to that time we were repassably well off, and then suddenly the TB got worse. It was very vivulent in those days, and you couldn't treat it, so gradually he went downhill and”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was wonderful Butcher to tour with my parents I would get in the train with my parents and then they would put me up on the rack and cover me with coats so that when the man with the tickets came round they wouldn't have to pay for me and I love that I used to think that was very great fun.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was looking for something for Roger, and suddenly I thought Ahis, that's nice and light, and it reminds me of Roger in a funny sort of way. It's charming, and it's got Delius had that way with him.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I must say, working with Roger was a wonderful experience because he is I'm not friendly with many actors, but with Roger, I'm still friendly with him. In fact, we had lunch the other day together. But if I did anything with the bonds, I think I made the humour work very well with Roger. It's no good trying to make him the great physical thing that Sean was. It's far better that he won everybody over with his sense of humour, and I think that's what made those two bonds. They were very different from Sean's bond.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he wasn't a film man at all, he was wing commander in the Air Force. I have met him since, and we always have a joke together and how he nearly lost his life with me, you know.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was the okay now. That's what gave us the idea for the set. But it was a real volcano. Well, he did. He started to fly around the rim and then he went down about six feet below it, and he was going round and round and round, and I said, Well, that's it. They tell him to come out now. He said he can't get out. What do you mean he can't get out? He said, When he's stuck because there's no lift, and he can't come out, and he was going round and round and round and round, and oh my goodness, I suddenly thought this is terrible. I'm going to be responsible for this man's death. Anyway, just as I was practically weeping, finally he just suddenly bobbed up and he got himself out, but it was a wonderful piece of luck because otherwise he would have gone down into the water and that would have been it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The spy you loved me. The spy loved me that was the biggest set that had ever been built in England, but maybe in the world it was a huge huge set, and we had a small gyrocopter called Little Nelly in the film. It was Wing Commander Wallace drove this thing, which was quite difficult, and he'd say, Well, it's very difficult. I must have the wind for the lift, but he'd always do it. Once we came to the volcano, then we asked Wing Commander Wallace if he Could he fly around the perimeter of this volcano which had water in it down below and”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but it was very good, and in fact when I go round the world now when I'm working, it's amazing they're not interested in any of my films until I say James Bond, and the minute I say James Bond, they practically geneflect and go my God did you really do three James Bond? I mean there was”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Elton John's friends, yes. That was kind of interesting because my son, John, was in music at the time. Can he recommend Elton John to me? I'd never heard of Elton John. In fact, when he introduced me to Elton John, it was at my son's house, and he kept talking to this man and talking to Regg, and I said, You know, when is Elton John coming? And he said, You've been talking to him. His real name is Reg”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And underneath it said, directed by Lewis Gilbert, and there it was my name in lights, and suddenly I thought of my grandmother, and I thought what a shame she was never around to see it.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My grandmother always used to when I used to go and stay with her, she'd say to me forget the others You're the one forget them you're the one you will have your name in lights I didn't quite know what she meant by that, but it stuck in my memory and you know about thirty or forty years later I was walking across Leicester Square and there was my bond picture still.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I can remember very, very well because it in a way changed my life. I used to stand at the side of the stage and watch other acts, and one day the trick cyclist said to me You see that little car over there would you like to drive it round the stage? And I said Oh I would love that I was only about five but I thought that would be wonderful and he said OK well when I come off you go on and I did that while the audience went mad they thought that was the most wonderful trick they'd ever seen. They took it as a trick in some way. So of course they went mad and everybody upstairs heard this and my mother and father suddenly saw the value of a small boy at the end of an act. So at the end of their act they would come off I would come on with a little tap dance and that always brought the house.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I never knew anything else from birth, for the first four years of my life I toured around England with my father's vaudeville act, and I stood at the side of the stage. My grandmother had ten children, and she put every one of them into Vaudeville, they all different acts. It made me very conscious of being in show business.”
2010-06-20 · Desert Island Discs · Lewis Gilbert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source