Claude Rains was in England from America. He was a very kind man, fully appreciative of all that the Unit was doing. Stan Lambourne had an appendicitis consigning him to London’s St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. Claude Rains was one of his well-wishing visitors.

Tom White was icy-calm throughout the many months of pre-production and the eight months of shooting, followed by the very long post production.

The post production was a saga in itself. Alan Whatley, a long-time member of the Sound Department, devised and developed a splendid system of virtually instant replay of post sync tracks. All production and post-production recording was, at that time, on photographic 35 mm sprocketed film. Alan devised and developed the use of the Western Electric disc-lathe driven by the same three-phase motor/distributor supplying the re-recorders and projectors of the post sync theatre as well as the photographic recorder.

The technique for the dialogue replacement was to rehearse the artiste watching and listening to the synchronised picture and sound loops. The loop of the original production recording now becoming a guide-track.

When the new reading of the dialogue seemed satisfactory, the technique would be to run-down the distributor while retaining interlock of the re-recorder and projector. When stationary, but still maintaining interlock, bring the disc-lathe and photographic recorder online. Then, run-up the distributor with all machines synchronised. With a take being acceptable to the director, the sound-editor and the mixer, the system would be run-down (in interlock) bringing all the machines to stand-still. 

Then, taking the photographic recorder off-line, setting the pick-up of the disclathe to the start-mark, replay the disc-recording of the new track in sync with the picture-loop on the projector and the original guide track on the re-recorder.

With just the minimum of refinements, this became a new post sync technique until the arrival of magnetic recording some years later.

Pascal never missed a moment of dialogue post sync, just as later, he almost lived in the dubbing theatre for more than three months. On his farm near Denham, he had an exceptionally ferocious bull. Aptly named ‘Caesar’ It was known to be quite villainous though Pascal could do anything with him. Calling ‘Caesar” in the fortified paddock, the bull gently walked up to him to be hugged, kissed, fondled and was totally placid. On Pascal’s departure the bull reverted to being a rogue.

 Through the seemingly very long months of post production, Gabby so loved to regale us with outrageous stories, hoping though failing, to embarrass Yvonne Axworthy, daughter of the Denham & Pinewood Studios’ Secretary. Margaret Sibley and Yvonne had been joint Script Supervisors throughout the production. For some of the time that the main unit was shooting in Denham, another camera crew was in the desert in Egypt. For these sequences a dubbing editor wanted tracks of sea water. Soon, the request was for “warm sea water”. In 1945 such a request was very soon quashed when Tom White heard of ideas to go to Torquay to record ‘warm sea water’.

Music for Caesar And Cleopatra was recorded in Denham by Desmond Dew. Dew and Alan Whatley steered the three months dubbing in Denham’s Main Theatre, recently totally renovated after destruction in an air raid. Re-recording Sound-Camera Operators were Tony Kay and Peter Davies.

The re-recording requirements of the day specified two negatives for the several versions of the production; in time, numerous other versions were required.

All of this giving me a total of more than two and a half years of ‘Caesar’ time. A lot of time sheets, and of course, a lot of petty cash forms as well!

 Caesar And Cleopatra [GPM-12] was a very big production.

 PETER T DAVIES