Roger Moore Official Site

Roger Moore - The Early Days

Roger Moore from 1972 - page 2

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He'd taken time off from a lorry convoy going through London. Food was scarce, of course, and good old Uncle Jack brought us some enormous sausage sandwiches.
We never left London again. I stayed at school, which under wartime conditions with still a lot of children away, had become a weird amalgam of grammar, central, art and technical. With my ridiculously easy-and I sometimes think unfair-ability to cope with anything educational, I went on to become a prefect and do well. I managed to get Royal Society of Arts examinations without having to strain myself at all. Then again, standards weren't very high. All schooling was of necessity in confusion and I was less confused than most. I was what you might call something of a leader at school-but maybe because I was taller than anyone else.
Whether it's a disadvantage or not to one's character development I always found that I never had to push myself a great deal, at school or later. My luck was good then too and it was easy to send myself up then because it was good.

Roger with Doorn Van Steyn. They are on a modelling assignment for a fiction story with a very young model makingup the three some.

Adolescence brought a certain amount of confusion. Doesn't it always? I had a few girl friends, particularly a gorgeous little dolly cafled Jean with blonde hair and cornflower eyes. Then there was Dorothy, who lived near me - she was the prettiest girl in the neighborhood and there was always a fight between the boys over who was going to carry her bag home from school. Nowadays the fight would be over who was going to buy her contraceptives, but it was a vastly different scene in my young days.
I had one physical problem that didn't make me as big a hit as I would have liked to have been. I was always slightly overweight and people used to call me tall, fat and ugly. It never occurred to me that when I finally settled into adulthood that I would have. . . well. . . good features.
There was something curious around about that time-14 to 16-with recollections of my mother saying to me: "Don't ever be conceited." I could never understand what she meant. Be conceited about what? I couldn't grasp her point. Later, when I started mixing with actors I began to appreciate it. Even so 1 can look at myself and see a vast number of defects. People you see on film screens aren't all as beautiful as they look-even me.
But to stay on the point: my first wife (I married at 19) came back from Spain after a tour and advised me to get out of the acting profession. She said I had no chance of getting anywhere. My face was far too weak, my chin was too big and my mouth was too small. I saw no reason not to believe her. I simply didn't act on her advice. One thing in my mid-teenage years that did seem to stand me in good stead with the girls was my swimming prowess. Much of my father's strength had been passed on to me and I developed into a good sprint swimmer. I rarely lost swimming races, but they were never much above the level of school championships or Police Federation boys' matches. Then again, I found most of my swimming activities were with people much older than me. Even when I went to work I'd be rushing off to the swimming baths and it was a routine morning for me to get up at six just to go to the baths. Rapidly, it seemed, I was approaching the time when I would have to earn my living. A colleague of my father's had seen some of my Walt Disney-type drawings and introduced me to Publicity Picture Productions in D'Arblay Street, which made animated cartoon films. So. for £3 LOs. a week, I started work.

It was nice going to work. Even more fun than school. Added to which Publicity Picture Productions in Soho, was just around the corner from Marshall Street Baths. So I could go swimming morning, lunchtime and evening if I wanted. The job was that of tracer and filler-in, part of the process of animated cartoons. It included things like introducing words over film, so that an advertisement may read: "Buy Your Rabbits at Bloom's the Kosher Delicatessen."

We had War Office contracts, too, making instructional films for the services. It was during the making of one-on the R.A. 17-ponder gun-that I first saw in the flesh a man who is now one of my closest friends-Lt. Col. David Niven. He was our technical adviser. I remember we were all terribly impressed when he came to the office, resplendent in uniform, to explain whatever he had to. He never remembered me from that first meeting. Not surprising, as I was probably the lowliest in the entire building. As the new junior they tended to send me across to a fellow in one of the offices who did titles for films. I would have to ask him for things like tins of sprocket holes. And he would tell me to go back and say he didn't have any and would rainbow paint do instead? I was in this chap's office when the announcement of D-Day was made on his radio. Also at that time, of course, buzz-bombs-the VI and V2's were dropping on London. They seemedto drop with great regularity around Oxford Street, An adventurous aspect of it all was having to go on fire spotting once a week All the people in the offices were on a Rota system and they would stay up a!! Night ready to deal with any fire outbreak that might occur. As a diagram artist I became a member of A.C.T.T.. The studio workers' union, and I have remained a member ever since. Holding this membership enabled me to direct a few episodes of The Persuaders! In fact, the studio bosses thought they had me over a barrel when I said I wanted to direct a few episodes~ "Of course. We don't mind" they said. "But they'll never let you without a union card.'
~quite right, too," 1 said, producing my union card. "Now can I direct (I hope you like my episodes. -
Meanwhile, back at the drawing board--what do 1 mean, drawing board! A lot of the time I was making tea and running errands at one point they stuck me in a little office all on my own, 1 lived like a tramp in there.

Was always untidy and in between doing my tracing and filing I would make the tea with an electric kettle.
I used to stop the water around and one afternoon I son of sloshed through the spilled water and turned on the kettle. The shock I got sent me 'straight across the room and split my head open on the wall.
Came the morning when everything went wrong I forgot to do some of my errands, the tea was cold, I made a mistake on sonic celluloid, and I was fired. I went home in great gloom, and found my Uncle Jack had been killed at Monte Casino. As it turned out-as it turns ant for a lot of young people- .being fired was my luckiest break. But even before I started doing well in other directions never held any real grudge. I still pop into the offices sometimes and see some of the people I knew as a callow low kid. There's a man called Laurie Price, who helped me a great deal. Bob Palmer and AIf Langley who was our shop steward.

Some evenings, especially the magical Saturday nights, I would go with the rest of my gangs of lads to the Locarno Ballroom at Streatha.m. Best memory of those days was buying my first suit on my own. I got it for £5 at a cut-price shop at The Borough, near the underground station. It had a particular air of raciness about it because it was ever-so-slightly black market. It had turn-ups as well as pockets and during the war you weren't easily able to get turn-ups on trousers because it took so much extra cloth. But it was undoubtedly a ghastly suit. A terrible light grey with a great white chalk stripe. When I think now of the hundreds of suits I've had in my wardrobe, and think back to that first one, I don't know whether to laugh or cry or pray.

You may have heard that I am involved commercially with a clothing firm, which presents clothes the like of which the Saint would be delighted to wear. My first reaction towards giving the firm my advice on design was to take as a yardstick that first grey, chalk-stripe suit with illegal turn-ups. My principle is that everything that felt good on me at 15 must have been appalling. Anything as far away from that as possible must be good.
Money, even when I was working, was never in profusion. Girls, highly to be desired, were around but expensive. I was always delighted, for instance, when I was able to arrange to meet a girl inside the Locarno instead of outside- which meant I would not have to pay for her entrance fee.
American servicemen were a bit of a handicap to us lads. They were more romantic and wealthier. And they had packets of Pall Mall it and lots of trendy chewing gum. I didn't do badly with the girls, but I never went in for quantity so much as quality. It was probably a matter of economics but even so I didn't feel the need to play all the field all the time. It was a long, hot summer after D Day and I was jobless. Most days were spent in the swimming pool where one afternoon I was chatting with one of our crowd, Harry Caulfield, who had been discharged from the iel wounds. was easy money to be made ~iafflm called Caesar and Denham Studios. They were he said, for presentable young men Who could walk around looking like Roman soldiers. Anything even remotely connected with acting hadn't occurred to me before. I had read the lesson a few times at school assembly, and recited poems like The Revenge in the school hail. My father had been involved a lot with amateur dramatics but it was nothing to do with me.

But I didn't mind being a Roman soldier for money. So I went along to an office in Wardour Street, offered myself as an extra, collected a piece of paper and made the long journey on a bus out to Denham.
I did this highly pleasurable job for a few days and on the third day as I walked through the studio gates a car stopped alongside me. The co-director on Caesar and Cleopatra was Brian Desmond Hurst and it was his head that stuck out of the window. He said: "Are you interested in being an actor?"
It didn't occur to me not to be interested in being an actor. Then, that moment, it seemed I always wanted to be an actor. It was like walking in the dark towards an object you know to be there and 'when you switch on a torch and see it suddenly in the beam it comes as no surprise to you. He told me to tell my father to get in touch with him. He said: "If your family can support you for a while I will arrange for you to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And I'll pay your fees there too." Opportunities like that are straight out of publicity handouts. But that's exactly the way it happened to me. My father met with him; Hurst said I had a potential-and it was agreed I should go to the Academy.

For the family it meant a considerable financial sacrifice. For a start they lost any money I might bring home if I were in a regular job and they had to provide my food and give me pocket money. But when Brian Desmond Hurst made this offer on the forecourt at Denham I could hardly wait to get home with the news. I rushed in and shouted jobless. Most days were spent in the swimming pool where one afternoon I was chatting with one of our crowd, Harry Caulfield, who had been discharged from the iel wounds.Ie was easy money to be made in the film alled Caesar and ~Denham Studios. They were he said, for presentable young men who could walk around looking like Roman soldiers. Anything even remotely connected with acting hadn't occurred to me before. I had read the lesson a few times at school assembly, and recited poems like The Revenge in the school hail. My father had been involved a lot with amateur dramatics but it was nothing to do with me. But I didn't mind being a Roman soldier for money. So I went along to an office in Wardour Street, offered myself as an extra, collected a piece of paper and made the long journey on a bus out to Denham.

I did this highly pleasurable job for a few days and on the third day as I walked through the studio gates a car stopped alongside me. The co-director on Caesar and Cleopatra was Brian Desmond Hurst and it was his head that stuck out of the window. He said: "Are you interested in being an actor?". It didn't occur to me not to be interested in being an actor. Then, that moment, it seemed I always wanted to be an actor. It was like walking in the dark towards an object you know to be there and 'when you switch on a torch and see it suddenly in the beam it comes as no surprise to you. He told me to tell my father to get in touch with him. He said: "If your family can support you for a while I will arrange for you to go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And I'll pay your fees there too." Opportunities like that are straight out of publicity handouts. But that's exactly the way it happened to me. My father met with him; Hurst said I had a potential-and it was agreed I should go to the Academy

Or the family it meant a considerable financial sacrifice. For a start they lost any money I might bring home if I were in a regular job and they had to provide my food and give me pocket money. But when Brian Desmond Hurst made this offer on the forecourt at Denham I could hardly wait to get home with the news. I rushed in and shouted: "I'm going to be Stewart Granger!" It never occurred to me that I might simply be an actor and not a star. What was the point? If I was to act I would have to be a star. Oh, the confidence of youth. There was a bit of a waiting period before going to the Royal Academy and I think I got about seven crowd part jobs before I started. I remember one of them was Hazel Court's first big film, Gaiety George, where I was a member of the audience. Another was my biggest thrill to date. For a long while I'd had a secret crush on Deborah Kerr. She was making Perfecr Strangers with Robert Donat and I played a sailor sitting opposite her in a railway carriage.

Or two glorious days I had to sit across the carriage from her just drinking her in. This, I thought, was the life for me. I was not quite seventeen, fully grown-but not quite reached the stage where I needed to shave.
For my R.A.D.A. audition I fell back on my schoolboy recital of The Revenge, and a piece from The Silver Box by Galsworthy. When I started, R.A.D.A. had been bombed out of its main theatre and was using a tiny place in Gower Street. The first morning I was standing around waiting for someone to tell me what to do when a nice little girl with a blue beret came up and said: "Where do I have to go?". Automatically, I tried not to show I was new. "Oh, if you wait here someone will come along and look after you," I said, like an old experienced hand. (An insight into my reaction: I recall being in the Brixton Astoria cinema when I was 13 and one of two girls behind me leaning forward and asking me for a light. Well, I hadn't begun smoking but I said: "I'm terribly sorry but I've left my lighter in the shop." Not only was I trying to convey that I smoked, but that I bad a lighter and that I also owned a shop! Funny the things you do when you are young and without confidence.) Thus it was I was desperately trying to convey to this girl in the R.A.D.A. foyer that at the very least I was in my last term there. The girl, incidentally, was Daphne Slater, who later became a most successful Juliet at Stratford.

I was prepared to accept that I was going to gain a lot of experience at R.A.D.A. What I hadn't considered was that it was also going to provide me with a wife. I stayed at R.A.D.A. for three terms and they were the happiest days of my life to date. I did all that they told me but I was developing the principle of taking none of it too seriously. As far as I was concerned I was leading the life of Reilly and it was great. Later on, of course, I'd get around to being a star. In my class were Yootha Needham (now Yootha Joyce) who was to do a great deal of work with Joan Littlewood and Lois Maxwell -who had the unlikely name of Lois Hooker when she was there. I've worked a lot with her since. Among her roles-Miss Moneypenny of Bond film fame. The most interesting aspect about the class was that there were 16 girls and four boys; and I was the tallest.
Most of the students were pretty broke most of the time. The few who did have money were generous with it, buying the teas and meals and so on. Students, particularly drama students, have this essential cameraderie and it was a wonderful atmosphere in which to live and learn. To me it was like going back to school. I could sail through the work with no problems, and enjoy myself that little bit more. I had the advantage of having already gone out to work and although many of the students were older than me I had the feeling of being more adult than most of them. Already I have said that I would never be a great actor and at R.A.D.A. I proved it. Whatever young Roger Moore was be was not brilliant. Fortunately, that is no criterion. Winners of the Bancroft medals for instance, although they were given talent contracts and film tests, did not necessarily find success.

At the end of my first term I managed to get into a production of The Italian Straw Hat at the Arts Theatre. I played a French policeman, two or three other parts-and even sang a couple of songs. The £7 a week it brought in was wealth, believe me.
There was a group of four of us at R.A.D.A. who worked out some marvelous systems of survival. One thing we used to do was go to a Chinese restaurant, each buy a full portion of something and then share.
My second onslaught on the West End stage was a tiny part in The Circle of Chalk where I shared a dressing-room with Peter Noble, who was then an actor. He used to make me laugh. He would jump around very excited and say: "You're going to be a star! You're going to be a star !" I had no reason to disbelieve him. No one said I wasn't going to be a star. Marvelous outlook wasn't it?
Came the start of the second term and with some eagerness we anticipated "casing" the new intake. Sixteen girls between four boys is all very well, but variety and all that...
A swift assessment of the incoming class sent me homing in on a very pretty girl with long blonde hair and a baby face. Her name was Doom Van Steyn and she was primarily an ice skater. She was five years older than me but she looked as young as the rest of us. She was quite a work with Joan Littlewood and Lois Maxwell -who had the unlikely name of Lois Hooker when she was there. I've worked a lot with her since. Among her roles-Miss Moneypenny of Bond film fame. The most interesting aspect about the class was that there were 16 girls and four boys; and I was the tallest.
Most of the students were pretty broke most of the time. The few who did have money were generous with it, buying the teas and meals and so on. Students, particularly drama students, have this essential cameraderie and it was a wonderful atmosphere in which to live and learn.
To me it was like going back to school. I could sail through the work with no problems, and enjoy myself that little bit more. I had the advantage of having already gone out to work and although many of the students were older than me I had the feeling of being more adult than most of them.
Already I have said that I would never be a great actor and at R.A.D.A. I proved it. Whatever young Roger Moore was be was not brilliant. Fortunately, that is no criterion. Winners of the Bancroft medals for instance, although they were given talent contracts and film tests, did not necessarily find success.