Biography

February 12, 1929 · Maida Vale, London, England, UK

Angela Jean Allen

Honorary Member of the Guild of British Camera Technicians (GBCT).

Awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) in the Queen's New Years Honour's List 1996.

[1940-45] Attended Paddington & Maida Vale High School in London, England.

On The African Queen I did some second-unit directing; I was only 22. On Freud, I held up cheat boards for Monty Clift because he was in such a state he couldn't remember his lines. On Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, I had to get in a swimsuit to body-double for Ava Gardner one night because Frank [Sinatra] was in town and she didn't want to get in the water. I was the youngest woman around who could swim, so I was pushed to do it. Ava was sort of engaged to Frank at the time, but we all knew she was having a romance with this mad bullfighter in the film, so when Frank was coming over, I had to get him out of the way.

Unless you were in hair or make-up, it was very much, "You're the secretary." A lot of producers thought of continuity as glorified typists. It wasn't until the 1980s that women started training as things like cameramen - or camerawomen. We were known as "script girls". I did 14 films with John Huston and I was always told, "Of course, you were John's mistress." Of course I wasn't. None of John's mistresses lasted more than a year! It took me 10 years of working for him before I asked for a promotion. He said, "What do you want that for? You're unique." I said, "Yes, but I'm not paid that way." I certainly didn't get anything extra for all the jobs I did.

[on her role as script supervisor] In those days, your notes had to be really copious; they described everything, every movement. There were no computers, video or Polaroids then. You had to be so conscientious and careful.

I was the second unit continuity girl [on The Third Man (1949)]. Today the title continuity has become script supervisor. We did some day shots and then we were the sewer unit shooting plates down there. And if an actor was involved, Carol Reed always came over to direct it. Whether he'd been on night work or day work, he was 24 hours a day on it. You're watching all the details, and if the actor doesn't do the same thing in the close-up as he did on the long shot, you have to tell the director. That is the job of the script girl, or boy, as it is now. You have to be very observant.

[on The Third Man (1949)] Carol Reed was an incredibly hard worker. He knew exactly what he wanted. He would choose every setup and rehearse it, and his shots could be shorter than, say, John Huston's style, which was rather different, involving long takes etc... Orson Welles didn't improvise the whole [cuckoo clock] speech. He came out with the line [about the] "cuckoo clock". But nobody knew what was going to come out of his mouth. That was done by the first unit on the set. And he was trying to rewrite that bit, or mess about with it, and that came out in the end. But he certainly did not write the script in any way. It was Graham Greene's script, and he only has that one big scene in the film where he talks on the wheel. The cuckoo clock line, he can have that one. But most of the scene was Graham Greene's... [Assistant director] Guy Hamilton told me that [Welles] did go around, especially in America, saying he'd half directed the film, which couldn't be further from the truth. And if you see the film, he was only there for a very short period. The next day he disappeared again and off to another country. People used to chase him around Europe to get him back.