In 1953 I worked at MGM Borehamwood Studio on Knights Of The Round Table. The stars were Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Mel Ferrer. The sound crew were Sash Fisher, mixer; Brian Coats, boom; Oscar Stevenson, maintenance; and I was sound camera operator. The America director Richard Thorpe was somewhat anti-British and quite difficult to work with. Sash had fallen out with him on a couple of occasions.
To get authentic backgrounds the picture went on location to Tintagel in Cornwall. The scene where Robert Taylor (King Arthur) flings the sword Excalibur into the sea was to be shot on a cliff at the top of a steep hill.
The sound truck (in the days before Nagras), containing the photographic Western Electric F Channel together with the heavy duty lead acid batteries that powered it and the Mitchell cameras, could not get up the grassy slope to the actual location. We had to unload all the gear and carry it up the slope by hand. Once there and set up, I had to do a hand test to ensure the optical track position had not shifted in the upheaval.
All this activity was performed under the watchful eye of director Thorpe who when he saw we were ready, walked over and said 'I don't need you. There's no sound on this shot!' We were furious. He could have told Sash it was mute when he first saw the truck being unloaded.
As the next scene to be shot was about three miles away, we humped all the equipment back down the slope and set it up in the truck again leaving the camera department to turn wild using their own batteries.
Two Mitchell cameras were set up for the shot, one with a Cinemascope lens and the other with a standard lens, the picture being shot in both formats,
All was ready and everyone poised waiting for the moment when D.O.P Freddy Young, happy that the sun and cloud formation were just right, would call the 'Turn over'. The moment arrived, 'Roll'em' echoed out, the operator switched on - nothing happened! The cameras did not run!
All hell was let loose. The clapper boy was sent off down the slope to get Oscar who toiled slowly back up with his Avometer. He put the meter across the first camera battery and then across the second. No volts from either. He then unscrewed the caps on both batteries - they were dry. The batteries were both new and had never been filled with acid let alone charged.
Richard Thorpe didn't get the shot that day. He would have had he not been smart trying to put one over on sound by saying after we'd unloaded that he didn't need us. Had he said nothing we would have turned synch on the shot and the cameras would have been our responsibility.
It was a gleeful sound crew who returned to base that evening.