My Account
When it comes to “name dropping”, there are few locals who could out-do Eric Price, who lives at Summerset Falls, in Warkworth. Dame Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave attended his first wedding, he’s friends with Richard Attenborough, he had his first taste of Dom Perignon at Ingrid Bergman’s birthday party, Alec Guinness once picked him up when his car broke down and he’s played golf with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. But the retired physical education teacher/director/producer/financial planner who has a doctorate in Kinesiology, doesn’t have much time for playing the fame game and as editor Jannette Thompson discovered, these famous names were just “workmates” …
It might sound like a glamorous life but it wasn’t. I’d arrived in London in the early 1950s on a NZ Government bursary to study production abroad. I’d previously been working as physical education teacher, but had also been involved with the Auckland Amateur Operatic Society, based in the old Her Majesty’s Theatre. I’d toured NZ, singing and dancing, with the Australian company J.C. Williamson and dabbled in filmmaking, producing coaching films such as Learn to Swim. In London I attended the Central School of Speech and Drama as a graduate student. That’s where I met Judi and Vanessa, who were both in their first year at the school. Later I started with Ealing Films, in London, as an assistant director; just a fancy name for the dog’s body. These days I would have had a credit card to charge my bills to but back then, if you didn’t have the cash in your pocket, you didn’t go anywhere. I was so poverty-stricken, I couldn’t even afford to smoke. Brian Brake, now acknowledged, as NZ’s most renowned international photographer, and a friend from grammar school Tom Kneebone, who was in the Royal Shakespeare Company, were two Kiwi contemporaries, but by and large, unlike the Australians, NZers went their own way in England at that time.
While at Ealing I worked on Dunkirk, directed by Leslie Norman (starring John Mills and Richard Attenborough), Scapegoat (Alec Guinness and Bette Davis), Inn of Sixth Happiness (Ingrid Bergman and Robert Donat) and Tom Thumb (Russ Tamblyn and Peter Sellars). Alec was a brilliant and accomplished actor; a real gentleman who considered other people. But I do recall him being less than impressed with a Savile Row suit I spent a fortune on. Looking back I suppose it did resemble the colours of a bumble bee, but I thought it was very smart at the time. Alec saw me and asked … “Eric, what are your wearing? I have a suit made out of that cloth in the film because it makes me look eccentric.” Sometime later, when he chanced to see me on the side of the road with my head under the bonnet of a car which had broken down, he said he stopped because he recognised my suit pants!
After working in film, I moved to television where commercial TV was in its infancy. There was no such thing as a ‘national’ network and regional services produced their own programmes for regional audiences. When we started work on Coronation Street at Granada for Yorkshire/Lancashire, it was a live show and we recruited local actors to play the roles because they knew the regional vernacular. They were a great bunch to work with, and we never envisaged it would go beyond the local audience, let alone international and still be on the screens 50 years later. Among the cast members was Patricia Phoenix, the street’s resident sex symbol Elsie Tanner. Pat was auditioned after her ruse of cutting out the middle of her bra (to show-off her assets to best effect) brought her to the attention of one of the casting directors. My mother kept a photo of the original cast (signed on the back by all the street originals such as Jack Walker, Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell, Len Fairclough and Valerie Barlow), which was taken at the request of a pop group called Johnny and the Moondogs, who were fans of the show. Of course people may remember them better as The Beatles.
After being involved in directing or producing other shows such as Softly Softly, The Borderers (which starred a young Michael Gambon), Dr Finlay’s Casebook and the Onedin Line, I joined the Thomson media group, the second largest media conglomerate in the world at that time. My job was to help set-up television and radio stations in developing countries such as Jamaica, Addis Ababa, Barbados and Mexico. This involved appointing and training personnel. My return to NZ came after I received a cable from NZBC asking if I’d help set-up colour TV. They knew I’d already been involved in doing a similar job the BBC, CBS in New York and ATV in England, but they didn’t realise I was a New Zealander. I was about to say ‘no’, but a few days later I received a cable telling me that my father Les, a retired NZ Navy commander/engineer, was dying of cancer. I came out as a colour consultant and was then put in charge of all local production. Shows during this time included Frost Over NZ, Top Town, Mastermind, Town Cryer and Moynihan.
I found the NZ industry quite different. In the US, England and Europe, people who work in films and television are interested in films and television. In NZ, film and television people are just interested in themselves. Here it’s all about ego. There’s an incredible amount of money wasted; money which could go in to production. They say they can’t make ends meet – what they mean is they don’t know how to make ends meet. They didn’t want me to do Moynihan but we made that hour-long series for the same budget that TV1 was doing the half-hour Close to Home. It was planned properly and as a result it sold overseas. So it can be done.
I’m not a good viewer these days, as I tend to flick between channels only stopping when something catches my eye. The best movie I’ve seen recently was the King’s Speech and I thought Downton Abbey was very well made. I prefer to read books because I find what’s on TV repetitive; there’s no originality. All these “reality shows”, which are anything but reality, aren’t really what people want to watch. My Japanese akita Ichiban and I moved to Summerset two years ago. We meet lots of people on our walks and what I like about Warkworth is that people still have time to stop and talk. I like to paint and I’ve got a US PGA golf coaching qualification so I still do a bit of coaching at the Warkworth club. It’s odd that I should retire here because although I grew-up in Auckland, this is where I started school. I was about five when I came to live with the Buckley family; Ted Buckley managed the garage, about where Halls is now. I lived here for about six months and remember walking through Lucy Moore Park with a billy can to collect milk from the nearby farmer and jumping off the scows into the river.
After leaving broadcasting, I joined NZ News as the managing director of Vid Com which set-up NZ’s first private film and television studio, and pioneered international conferencing. I later formed my own production company which specialised in TV commercials, industrial documentaries and media training. Some politicians were more difficult to teach than others – Dave Lange was marvellous, Muldoon less so. Before retiring, I joined the Bank of NZ as an investment advisor. So, you see, I’ve never strayed far from my original calling as a teacher.
I enjoy being able to pass on knowledge and I’ve learned to expect the unexpected, and accept it when it happens. I came from an era that was influenced by the Depression and we learnt to economise, to try and help others, not to waste, and to be of service. Most New Zealanders of my generation have lived by those tenets and I found that was often what made us different when we were overseas. I wish New Zealanders could reclaim their pride in themselves and go back to being more giving, and less materialistic.
