Cuttings

Hayter family photo album

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Peter modelled for this in his swimwear. So good-looking!

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Me, Nora and June trying out the roller coaster in Skeggy - 1930?

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Me in my happy place!


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First Hayter stall in London!

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Petey test riding the flying boat!


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Petey (holding his ball)) watching his aunties mucking about!

 


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Petey testing a new stall with his pals


Two Letters, One War.

29 September 1937

Mother

I am settled here now at the training camp and kept very busy learning all aspects of aeroplane engineering and maintenance. I’m told that I can also be trained as a pilot eventually if I keep my nose clean, so that’s what I’ll be trying to do. When the war comes there’ll be a need for more pilots.

I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much of each other for a while now, and perhaps that is for the best. You and I have had our battles and I'm not sure we're very good for each other. You have Uncle Norman to look after you now, and as you well know he doesn’t think the best of me. You asked me to try and be get along with him and I promise you I tried. But there was no pleasing him. 

I just want you to know that not everyone who joins the RAF is a queer. And not everyone who likes to reads book is a snob. Not everyone is such a fan of Mister Mussolini either. And when the dodgems break down, as they always do, it’ll be Norman who’ll have to try and fix them, instead of relying on me.

I write all this to warn you about kind of man you are hitching yourself to. When this war comes  - and it is definitely coming - we're all going to have to decide who's side we're on. God knows what the world will look like when it's all done.

Take care of yourself.

Peter

==

13 May 1946

Mother

You must know I went to see Mr Butlin last month, and he said I could be useful to him. He’s expanding the fairground and has plans to open an airfield, so he can fly more holidaymakers in. He said he’s going to need people who know about planes, and he considered me to be one of the family. I had high hopes of gaining a position.

Instead, I received a visit from Uncle Norman this weekend. He suggested I would be better off pursuing a career in London and implied strongly that I wasn’t welcome to come to Skegness. He said I wasn’t cut out to be a yellowbelly, and then added ‘well, not of that kind anyway’ which is a slight he must have been practising for several years!

There is only one way Norman could have known that I’d been to see Mr Butlin, and that would be through you. Am I to presume that you thought it necessary to put me off?

Don’t worry – I wasn’t intending to try and rekindle any kind of relationship with you and Norman. Far from it. I have always known that Norman is a bully – he never could stand that I knew more about how to run the rides than he did. And you know very well that he was on the side of Mussolini and Moseley back in the day. If he could have found a black shirt to buy in Skegness he would have done. And don’t get me started on the number of times he turned away Jews and gypsies looking for work. And now he’s turning away people like me.

He wants to say I’m a coward for never trying to escape Stalag One. He wants to believe that men who joined the RAF before conscription came along were almost certainly queer. He thinks I’m too high and mighty with my book-reading and my posh accent. He probably thinks, like you, that any kind of intelligence and learning ends up making a boy unhappy – although it was you – wasn’t it? – who wanted me to go away and be educated and make my way up the social ladder. You sent me a way and then got surprised when I became distant and remote  - became, as Norman would have it, ‘snooty’.

Well, Mr Butlin seemed to think I was OK, and it seemed to me there was an opportunity there for me – your son! – to set myself up with a decent job and possibly some kind of long time career in the business. My thought was always to get myself some lodgings in the area and not trouble you at all with the idea of resting with you in any way, or being a drain on your time. But it seems Norman – and you – couldn’t even live with that. How petty.

As it happens, I have got an opportunity to work at a sports car garage just outside London with an army pal of mine – who you can let Norman know is very probably a homosexual. There are also a lot of film studios out that way that need people who know about electrics and cars and trucks and planes. My friend Donald – another kriegie and not a queer by the way – says there’s going to be lots of motion pictures made about the war now.

So really I had no need to go to Mr Butlin except to think it might be better for me in the long run to get into a business that I knew, and which definitely gave me prospects.

But that has gone now. Thanks to you and Norman. I shall take his advice and stay in London. And you can rest easy that I won’t be troubling you in the future. You and I have never been able to rub along in a nice way, a loving way, have we? And given what I’ve been through these last few years I’ve promised myself that I won’t stay long in any environment that is hurtful  - for me or for others.

So, mother, you can tell Norman he has got his wish. This is the end for me. I’m not saying I won’t help you out if you need it as you get older, when Norman has passed on into hell, as he inevitably will, sooner rather than later. That’s what a good son does – looks after his mother.

What does a good mother do?

Peter

 


The Lincolnshire Star 01 July 1927 - Let The Sun Shine In

Local schoolboy wins scholarship to top preparatory school

 

Our congratulations go to Peter Hayter (8) from Skegness for winning the annual Norman Angell Scholarship prize for entry into Little St Hugh’s Preparatory School, one of the county’s most highly regarded schools.

Peter won the scholarship for high scores in the school’s forward-looking entry exams, that include not just Maths, English and Science, but also a Money Management paper and a Story Challenge. The exams have been developed in association with esteemed alumnus former Labour MP, Norman Angell, who is perhaps best well-known for his internationalist anti-war views and is also a past contributor to this very organ.

So impressive was Peter Hayter’s contribution to the Story Challenge, written at such a tender age with great maturity and fine feeling, that we felt compelled to seek permission from the Hayter family for Peter’s story to be republished to a wider audience. We’re delighted to report that permission was given and below is the aforementioned story.

The challenge for all the boys who undertook the Story Challenge was to choose one of three suggested titles and produce an essay of at least two sides of exam paper in length, taking only one hour. to write it.  The suggested titles were: The Way Forward; Let The Sun Shine In; Man’s Best Friend.

We think our readers will agree that Peter Hayter is a young writer of great promise and we all look forward to seeing how he progresses at Little  St Hugh’s – and beyond!

Let The Sun Shine In

The stars were very bright on the night that the tramp walked into the town.  It was very late and everyone in the town was asleep.

The tramp tried to walk as quietly as possible so that he did not wake anyone up. He was worried that his old shoes were very noisy, but he could not do anything about that.

All his clothes were very old and dirty. He had a long coat on with lots of holes in it and baggy trousers with a piece of orange string as a belt. He didn’t have any gloves but he did have a large felt hat. His beard was long and dirty. His face was dirty. He looked like he had not eaten a proper meal for a long time, which was true.

What he knew was that a clear sky meant it would be very cold all night and that there might even be a frost. He had no bed for the night and no means of keeping warm. He stopped walking for a moment and shivered. It was going to be a long, cold night.

What he wanted was to find some food, any food, and then try and find some place where he might be able to sleep safely until morning. But the town was an unfriendly place. The tramp knew that people did not want him there which is why he came in the night. During the day he would go out into the countryside or by the sea and ask people for work or for food. Most of the time they would tell him to go away.

The town was the best place to find food, but it was dangerous too. The tramp knew to look in people’s bins for leftovers and also to look out the back of shops.

He went down a dark and narrow alleyway. His footsteps echoed off the corrugated metal fence. He stopped for a moment and tried to see if he could see any bins or bags in the dark. The silence all around him scared him.

Then he got even more scared because he could hear scratching noises. He could hear scuffling. He could hear the wind blow, and a window rattle, and something drop onto the stone path from a window shelf. Suddenly there was the clatter of a bin lid falling off and it rang around the town like a giant cymbal.

Now that his eyes were getting used to the dark the tramp could see two animals on top of the bins digging into something. He wasn’t sure what the animals were. They were probably cats but they seemed scarier than that and when one turned to look at him he could see two scary round eyes that shone like tiny pocket torches.

The tramp turned and hurried away. He would get no food tonight, but maybe he would find somewhere warm to sleep.

Then the wind got up, the sky clouded over and cold rain started to fall. The weather changed so quickly on the coast, he thought. And I don’t have a raincoat.

The water seeped into his rotten coat and his felt hat became soggy. The water dripped off his fingers and flooded into his leaky shoes. He felt like a drowned rat. Rats! He thought. The animals in the bins were probably rats. Rats might eat him if he fell asleep.

The tramp became very afraid and very cold and decided to walk around some more so that he didn’t freeze to death and the rats would not get him.

He was so cold and frightened and so hungry that he thought the night would never end and he would die. But just at the moment when he thought everything was lost, the first rays of the sunrise appeared. The sky went from black to purple to blue. The sun went from a tiny line of pink to a big strip of orange and then went full in the sky as a burning yellow flame. The frost melted off the trees. A mist rose off the pavements. Birds started singing.

The tramp turned his face toward the sun and felt the warmth on his skin. He felt his clothes drying off and he stopped shivering.

Let the sun shine in, he thought.

By Peter Hayter (8)


MOUNTAIN BOY, 1958

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‘Mountain Boy’ is this year’s big Saturday matinee production for kids from the Childrens Film Foundation (CFF). It combines two of CFF’s favourite elements: a lovable and loyal animal – in this case a large slobbery St Bernard - and a young boy pitted against a cruel uncaring world.

This should be a predictable and unthreatening story of a boy and a dog running away together, enduring hardship on a long trek over mountains in search of a better life, and eventually finding a safe haven in the bosom of a loving family. But there are surprisingly dark elements along the way.

Filmed in Austria – only recently a fully-free and autonomous country once again – the film is not afraid to confront many serious issues that have bedevilled that part of the world in the years since the war.

The opening scene paints a picture of a post-war rural community on the brink of starvation. Emil (Dennis Waterman) is a young evacuee, sent to the village for his safety, but now the war is over his parents have failed to appear to reclaim him. He is doomed to work as a near-slave for his brutal, possibly Nazi sympathising, foster-parent (Bartlett Mullins), living on scraps and sleeping in a barn that he shares with a large St Bernard dog called Bear.

So far, so Oliver Twist. The circumstances, though, do quickly become unsettlingly grim for a film that one supposes is meant to keep our innocent young British minds feeling cheerful and positive as they seek refuge from the modern world of American TV-based consumerism on a wet Saturday morning.

So hungry are the villagers that they contemplate killing all the dogs in the village for meat. And Bear is definitely on the menu. Emil rebels against this and takes a beating from the foster parent for speaking his mind. Both boy and dog are locked in the barn, but Emil manages to start a fire, get free from the barn, and boy and dog then run off into to the night.

Now starts a more traditional peripatetic tale of trekking across an Alpine landscape with a series of incidents along the way, some amusing (an encounter with a family of rowdy marmots), some less so (a grotesque shepherd who wants the dog for himself).

The tone of this so-called childrens film, though, remains oddly off-kilter. The appearance of a mountain rescuer, played by Peter Shure, makes matters worse not better. With a sudden blizzard leaving our intrepid duo trapped and freezing to death, Shure arrives in the nick of time to guide them to safety, but not before he himself is swept away in an avalanche and is last seen lying dead in the snow, a frozen corpse that the camera lingers on for far too long.

It is a brutal scene designed to shock, and epitomises all the mistakes made in this film, in terms of tone and atmosphere. ‘Mountain Boy’ could have been a thoroughly British and wholesome response to the likes of Lassie, the all-action American collie, that is currently keeping our children glued to their TV sets. The mid-European setting might even have lent itself to a more fun fairytale element, akin to the hugely popular ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin’, say, with merry tunes, light comedy from the likes of Claude Rains and upliftingly colourful costumes and sets.

But there is none of that here. Yes, there is a happy ending. (I won’t spoil it for the reader.) But most people will come away from ‘Mountain Boy’ failing to really care about the fate of Emil and Bear for very long.

It will be Peter Shure’s spectral and ghoulish screen presence as doomed deceased rescuer that will haunt many a child’s dreams, I suspect – a Rip Van Winkle figure in reverse, forever asleep on the mountain side, a macabre warning about the passing of time and the inevitable triumph of death. I think I can safely say ‘Mountain Boy’, in the end,  is CFF’s least child-friendly film to date, and I would have expected it to receive an 'A' certification rather than a 'U'.


ONE MISSION MORE 1953, 96 mins


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It might seem odd to include this fairly unremarkable film about the travails of a bomber squadron in 1943 as part of our Peter Shure retrospective, given it's quite hard to spot him in it. But Peter’s presence is very much felt throughout ‘One Mission More’, and in some ways it’s a seminal film that could be said to contain many clues to Shure’s complex personality and his development as a performer.

Filmed at Shepperton Studios and at RAF Upwood in Cambridgeshire (a place Peter knew well), ‘One Mission More’ is a traditional wartime story of a dedicated squadron leader (Dirk Bogarde) nearing his 90th bombing mission without sufficient rest or leave. The strain is beginning to show and, to add to the emotional pressure, he finds himself falling in love – in a typically British uptight and upright way – with a hard-working and much-admired WREN (Dinah Sheridan).  

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The film is an awkward mix of light romance and dark, almost documentary-like, coverage of intense bombing raids. The fleet of Avro Lancasters and Lincolns receive more screen time than either Bogarde or Sheridan, and the audience is placed right in the thick of the action when it comes to the mission of the title, whilst being left out in the cold in the love scenes, conducted hurriedly and formally in the pub, at the office or in a corridor.

We follow a ‘lucky’ bomber crew all the way to Germany in the end -  the radios crackle with commands, red and green tracking flares  pop off into the night sky, Nazi soldiers scurry around in panic, anti-aircraft guns bristle, loud flashes of flack explode dangerously close to the British bombers, everyone inside remains resolutely chipper and determined.

“Steady’, the bomb aimer repeats. ‘Steady….’

The plane rattles and shakes its way towards the target. A rear gunner lets loose volleys of bullets to see off a Messerschmitt. Several Lancasters fall away flame. It’s left to Bogarde to save the day by stepping in (unauthorised) to barks orders over the scrambled comms link and skilfully guide the remaining bombers to target.  

“Left a bit… steady… hold it… steady….”

‘A more accurate reconstruction of a bombing raid you will not see,” recorded one reviewer at the time. “It’s hard not to be moved by the glory and the terror of it all,” observed The Spectator critic. He was not writing about the love scenes, more’s the pity.

But what has any of this to do with Peter Shure? I hear you ask.

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Shure does appear in the film several times, if you look carefully: he sits quietly amongst a group of airmen in a briefing room taking in mission details; he larks about in a RAF mess room with mates helping to ‘paint the ceiling’; he runs in a  crowd across the airfield to greet his pals in a returning Lancaster bomber.

It’s very likely too that in the very first scene -  that of a vast whirring bomber, facing head on, taxi-ing towards the camera - it is Shure who is piloting the aircraft. But he has no lines in the film and no official credit. (A very young Laurence Harvey has two lines by the way).

What Shure does contribute is a huge amount of knowledge and experience of being a bomber pilot and looking after large military aeroplanes. He even had bitter experience of bailing out of a burning plane at altitude in 1944. He was, therefore, the perfect man to advise a director on how to accurately portray a typical RAF bombing mission.

His main job in movies up to this point was as a transport supplier and advisor, sourcing and maintaining  all the cars, trucks and other motor vehicles needed for people like Dirk Bogarde and Dinah Sheridan to sit in and look good.

Whether it was a pre-war London street scene with cars buzzing back and forth, or a phalanx of 1950s racing cars, or a war-time caravan of military trucks set to trundle across the desert, Shure was the go-to man for sourcing and managing everything that was required.

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So successful was he at his job that quickly he became trusted by many of the leading British directors and cinematographers of the day -  notably Guy Green (‘River Beat’, ‘Sea of Sand’), Terence Young (‘Wings of Danger’, ‘Mask of Dust’) and Ken Annakin (‘Landfall’, ‘Double Confession’, ‘The Planter’s Wife’).

But with ‘One Mission More’ something different occurred. The director, Philip Leacock, leaned on Shure in a different way, not just to ensure all the bomber footage was accurate and dynamic and that all the jeeps, staff cars and trucks were of the right period, but also to offer some psychological insight into the mind of a wing commander.

“I knew Peter had direct experience of the world we were trying to create. It seemed stupid not to allow him to have some input into the development of the characters as well as the detail of the action scenes.”

Shure was encouraged to spend time with Bogarde, coaching him on how to deport himself convincingly. Up to that point Bogarde had been mainly playing young spiv types. Now he was expected to be a matinee idol, whilst also an anguished pilot and reluctant leader of men.

In this regard. ‘One Mission More’ can be said to be a turning point for both men. Within a year of the film’s release, Dirk Bogarde was playing lead roles in films for Ralph Thomas and Joseph Losey and he quickly became famous for his ability to combine seemingly innocent romanticism and decency with a dark formality that often betrayed inner turmoil within.

For Peter Shure, small speaking parts started to come on bigger budget films. He also became socially comfortable with leading actors on set, and developed good relations from that point not just with Bogarde but with many other stars. 

One might suggest that in his most famous sleeping performances, Peter Shure even inherited something of the same screen effect as Bogarde – sweet serenity mixed with something more insidious, masked and hidden.

Did Shure help Bogarde to broaden his skills? Or should we perhaps think  that it was Bogarde who managed to capture something of Shure? In ‘One Mission More’ we see decency and manners, but we also see a man on the edge, masking difficult experiences and dark memories.

Shure never spoke frankly or openly, as far we know, about his wartime experiences, and like many men of his generation, he preferred to lock his memories up inside himself rather than unburden himself to others. Perhaps in Bogarde he found someone he could talk to. Certainly Bogarde was lucky enough to tap into whatever Shure was offering, and thus develop his range as an actor.

This is why we count ‘One Mission More’ as a Peter Shure movie. It is, in part, a depiction of the possibly scarring life experiences that allowed Shure eventually to become a legendary performer in his own right. And it is perhaps the one example we have of another actor attempting to paint a living portrait of the man we have mainly come to know through watching him play dead.


Lilliput Magazine, November 1949 - AT THE CINEMA: ‘LANDFALL’

1949 november voll25 no5 lilliput magazine

 By Nigel Bennett


Meet The Real Men Behind The

New Wave Of ‘War’ Movies

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Whilst women (and even some men) will swoon over Michael Denison in this neat little adaption of Nevil Shute’s ‘Landfall’, this correspondent has decided to focus on men who make a movie really fly.

No, not the director, nor the producer. There are far less visible members of a production team that increasingly play a critical role in delivering that more and more frequent visitor to our screens – the ‘war movie’.

‘Landfall’ is a basic tale of romance between a coastal RAF pilot and a down-to-earth but ingeniously nosy barmaid. He is accused of bombing the wrong boat. She stumbles into her own investigation about what really happened. So far so hum-drum.

Now meet John Woolride and Peter Shure: one who has provided the raw material for the film, the other who organised the machines that add a more substantial and realistic atmosphere than the film probably deserves.

We find the two men at a bar just off Piccadilly, where I’m standing them a few rounds of drinks, so they might spill the beans about what each of them has brought to the film.

“We just told them what we know,” says Shure.

Both men are modest about their achievements, not just in film but also in life. When it comes to wartime experiences, Woolride and Shure are the real deal. Both men are RAF veterans: Woolride completed over 80 bombing missions as a pilot. Shure flew 45 raids as a flight engineer before he was shot down and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.

Woolride is the taller, with public school manners and tidy appearance complete with military-issue moustache. Shure is stocky, clean-shaven with the hint of the barrow-boy about him. Both men are manly, forthright and cheerful. In short, good company. In the Piccadilly bar they exude the steady presence that comes with years of mess room bonhomie and the mastering of one’s nerves in a tight spot.

“I suppose I fancied myself as a bit of a writer, having rattled off a memoir at the end of the war. It felt important to have a record of some sort,” says Woolride.

Fully decorated for his troubles – DCO, DFC & Bar, DFM – Woolride signed up for ‘Landfall’ originally as a paid advisor, keeping an eye on the technical detail of the plane- and airfield- related scenes (of which there are many). Very quickly he was giving input on how the characters might behave more credibly,  and how an actual RAF investigation would have played out at the time. This involved significant changes to the script, and before he knew it Woolride had become a writer, albeit with no screen credit as yet.

“I’ll admit I’ve been bitten by the bug. I’m helping on two more screenplays for Associated British already, and I’ve got my own ideas for an original story based on my own wartime experiences,” says Woolride.

Undecorated Peter Shure (“they don’t give medals for falling out of planes and sitting it out in a camp”) is part-owner of a garage not that far from Brooklands and is a whizz when it comes to all aspects of souping up motor cars for racing. As a something of a sideline he started sourcing older vintage cars needed for period films. In the case of ‘Landfall’ he found himself one day dropping off an ageing MG to Elstree and making sure it behaved whilst Michael Dennison either sat in in it or drove around looking suave.

Shure too became more involved in the film due to his knowledge and experience of not just cars, but also planes and wartime flying.

“I was cheeky enough to point out to Ken, the director, that he’d got some details wrong. He was very decent about me putting my oar in, invited me down the pub at the end of the day and we became good pals,” says Shure.

Obviously a clubbable character, Shure also happened to be able to teach one of the actors the basics of playing a piano accordian. In the end, Shure was responsible for supplying all the cars, trucks and lorries for the film, ensuring they look just right for the period. Alongside Woolride he also advised on how to recreate accurately the inside of an Avro Anson aeroplane and teach the actors how to behave like proper airmen.

“I didn’t realise films sets were such friendly easy-going places,” says Shure.

“Although it can get tense sometimes if they’re just not getting the scene right and the light’s going,” adds Woolride, sounding more and more like a director himself.

What’s clear is that both men have realised they have valuable knowledge and experience to bring to films such as ‘Landfall’. It depicts a world that already seems so distant, even though it was only a very few years ago, and thus it requires people with good memories and lived experience to be working on the production

 ‘Landfall’ reminds us about the kind of society we thought we were fighting for – decent, prosperous, peaceful, fairer. We are, perhaps, still far away from that idea.

But at least men like John Woolride and Peter Shure are starting to get a fair crack of the whip when it comes to being recognised for their hard work and bravery.

And also they have happily managed to gain a passport into a glamorous industry that in the past might well have been completely closed to them. One supposes that could be called progress!


“Save The Life Of My Child” - August 1974

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The Scottish Journal, Wednesday 14  August 1974

Movie star’s son still missing for

second night in Scottish wilderness

Movie actress Helen Grosvenor (37) cut a small sorry figure yesterday, nothing like her usual exotic ebullient self, as she read out a statement to the press appealing for help in finding her son Christopher, aged 7.

Interrupting the filming schedule for her latest historical bonkbuster ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’, Grosvenor spoke of her deep distress at the failure to find any trace of her son for a second day running. But she remained optimistic that Christopher would be found alive, and dismissed press speculation that he may have been abducted.

On the morning of the 12th August  Christopher was reported to have taken off for a day trip with his older sister Isabella (14) to Tentsmuir Point, Fife, to spot seals and watch RAF jets practice their manoeuvres just off the coast. At some point in the day, it appears Christopher rebelled about which way his sister wanted him to go and ran off  into the woods. After searching and calling for him for an hour, Isabella ran back across the Tay Bridge to the Chestnuts Hotel in Dundee (where the Grosvenor family are staying during filming) and raised the alarm.

“Chris made the simple mistake of not staying close to his sister and I believe he became disoriented and lost in what is a remote and wild place,” said Grosvenor. “I have been reassured by experts and the authorities that the fine summer weather makes it very likely that Christopher will be found alive and well quite soon.”

“No, this is not a John Paul Getty situation. Christopher has most definitely not been kidnapped and I have not received a ransom note, as reported in some of the newspapers. It’s hurtful and ridiculous to suggest such a thing.”

“As some of you will know, I have a gift of second-sight and can assure you that if Christopher was in any kind of mortal danger, as his mother, I would know. Instead, I am filled with the warm glow optimism that he is doing OK out there and will be found very soon.”

“I appeal to everyone from the local area to please come forward  with any information that might be relevant.”

Ms Grosvenor declined to confirm or deny that she personally was taking part in the search in the coastal woods just south of Tentsmuir Point where Christopher was last seen. Flanked by the chief constable of Tayside Police, as well as senior officers from nearby RAF Leuchars, Grosvenor pointed out that dozens of airmen and police officers were combing the area and that RAF Search and Rescue helicopters had been  scrambled for the second day running.

“Everything that can be done is being done. My powers do not extend to being able locate Christopher’s aura in a specific place, alas. The best thing I can do right now is comfort my daughter who made the silly but understandable mistake of not keeping a close enough eye on her little brother. She is a teenager and teenagers make mistakes. She is not to be blamed for that. She certainly does not deserve to be hounded by photographers, as has been happening. I would ask you member of the press here today to please give her - and please give all of us – the privacy we need in order to cope with this very difficult situation.”

Ms Grosvenor confirmed that filming on ‘Mary Queen of Scots’ has only been suspended and not yet completely cancelled.

Christopher’s father, actor and performance artist Peter Shure is currently in the United States and unavailable for comment.


SURFACING/DOWN THE HATCH (1984)

 

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SURFACING/DOWN THE HATCH

The Lyric Studio, Hammersmith

dir: Harold Pinter

Helen Grosvenor’s first step into the world of theatre after a successful 30-year career in film and television is anything but tentative.

In the one-act play ‘Surfacing’, she takes on the challenging role of Diana, a woman stuck down by a mysterious sleeping sickness in her teens, only to be awoken 30 years later still believing herself to be sixteen.

It would be difficult enough for any actress to capture this engrossing and emotional dilemma – how to present convincingly an untrammelled adolescent mind trapped inside the body of a late-middle aged woman, forced to confront the terror of so much lost time.

But to then concede the stage to the mighty Alan Bates for the second half of the show, another punchy one-act short, ‘Down The Hatch’, in which Bates plays a booze-fuelled torturer interrogating a subdued and terrified family group – that is to risk being overshadowed to the point of oblivion.

Grosvenor, though, is unforgettable. Certainly it is her girlish ghoulishness that haunted the minds of the audience as they left the theatre, much more than Bates’s taciturn cruelty and violence, shocking as that was. Both plays pack a punch, but it is the fate of Diana in ‘Surfacing’ that lingers in the memory.    

Watching a woman of Grosvenor’s age present all the silliness, exuberance and thwarted desire of youth is both astounding and deeply moving. And then there’s the sorrow of all that’s been lost, thirty years of life. Incomprehension, panic, yearning all play across Grosvenor’s piteous, time-worn face. It is an acting masterclass, and  a play and a performance that will sear into your psyche, reminding anyone who sees it how quickly time passes and how little of life’s experience one manages to store up against the darkness.

If this is a sign of what Grosvenor is capable of as a live performer, we should all be very excited about what is to come. Alan Bates’s agent, meanwhile, might wish to rethink who he’s matched up against next time around.

There was no plan about it. I was at a dinner party at Antonia’s, wine had been taken, and I happened to mention an interest in taking to the stage. Things just snowballed from there.

It’s true Peter has always thought of it as a direct invasion of his territory, as if I had put my tanks on his lawn. Absolument non.

It’s not as if Peter was at all interested in theatre. By 1984 he wasn’t doing any live work of any note, certainly no more gallery performances that anyone can remember. As I recall, he was mucking about with that dreadful McClory man on a Bond vehicle again - can you believe it, after all these years? Then he made a complete fool of himself at Truffaut’s funeral. Thank the Lord I turned that one down. No more funerals! Please!

Meanwhile I was hearing his agent was keeping him afloat on a diet of music videos and advertising.  So it wasn’t really a competition, was it?

I suppose the subject matter was bound to force a comparison. I had sans idea that the play was about a woman in a coma when I said yes to it. Frankly I would have taken anything Harold was prepared to throw my way. I just wanted to get back to work in a decently designed performance space interacting with proper actors of proven calibre. I’d had enough of the phoneyness of film. And I supposed the film business had had enough of me, you might say.

People were bound to make comparisons, given that I start and end the play flat out on a hospital bed. But if you read the reviews, I don’t recall there being any mention of Peter anywhere. Critics were far more worried about me having to play the warm up act for Alan Bates every night, as it were. On that score I’m happy to relate I came out of it perfectly well.

Besides, I was unconscious in that play for a total of a more two minutes at most. And I hardly think that was the most testing or important aspect of my performance. I had pages and pages to memorise, and some very complicated blocking to master at times. Name me a part in the last 20 years of his life where Peter had had more than a half-dozen lines to say or had to do little more than lie on the ground.

If I had truly wanted to cash in on Peter’s reputation in some way, I certainly wouldn’t have done it with a very short new play presented in a relatively obscure arthouse theatre well away from the West End, now would I? I would have made a big song and dance about it. A pantomime, perhaps. ‘Sleeping Beauty’! Or ‘Snow White’ with Judie Dench and I swapping the roles of Snow White and the Wicked Queen each performance. I’m being silly now. But now you see how silly it all is, this false comparison with Peter. He has his career and I have mine. I had a dream not so long ago of me being on stage in a production of ‘Mother Courage’. So if nothing else, I have that to look forward to. It will happen, let me promise you. Everything I dream about comes true in the end!


The Rapture, 1992 (89 mins)

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The filmmaker and artist known simply as ‘Devon’ claims that ‘The Rapture’ is to be his last ever film. This is a shame, given it feels very much as if he’s ending on a low rather than a high.

‘The Rapture’ is a deliberately messy affair, full of the director’s trademark effects - amateurish improvisations by actors who should know better, campy costumes, abstract Super8 footage, a fruity voice-over full of classical allusion and doomy sounds of industrial squalor and the coming apocalypse.

Do not expect anything like an engaging plot, sparkling dialogue or charismatic characters. This film is very much a spectacle of sound and light, a deliberately painterly work that offers a range of representations of people preparing to take leave of this world and seek out what may lie beyond the pale.

If this all sounds rather gloomy, arty and obscure, then you’d be right. By now, most people paying to see a Devon film will be prepared for this and will almost certainly feel like they’ve got their money’s worth. True Devon devotees (Devontees?) who endured/enjoyed his all-nighter art movies of the 1970s may wonder why, at 89 minutes, the film is so short. The rest of us will be happy to walk away from an 8pm showing knowing the pubs might still be open.

The major complication that dogs this movie, and which prevented it from being released until a good two years after it was completed, is the presence of Peter Shure. For those with short memories, Peter Shure is the cult British actor who passed away whilst on the set of ‘The Rapture’. I say ‘passed away’, because it was a matter of some tabloid interest as to the nature of Peter Shure’s demise – was it an accident? (the Mirror) was it murder? (the Sun) did he ever really die or just disappear? (the National Enquirer).

The film has been mired in any number of legal disputes. Devon and his production company were subject to a detailed health and safety investigation that led to a hefty fine, but no prosecution for negligence, manslaughter or worse. Shure’s family pursued a claim against Devon for control over the right to use Peter Shure’s image in the film. Everyone, it seems, sued or at least threatened to sue Peter Shure’s agent and personal assistant, Martin Chambers, who denies all allegations of mismanaging his client, doping him, administering unlicensed medications to him, falsifying contracts and financial records about him, and even tampering with the dead body. It has been quite a media circus.

With the film finally securing a release date – with Shure scenes in tact – Chambers has managed to pour more flames on the fire by publishing his own ‘exclusive’ memoir. The distributors have also played their part by releasing the film on the anniversary of Shure's death.

The result is that a large group of people may well be going to see this movie hoping to see a dead body - or at least to come away with their own smart  theory about why it is not a corpse they’ve seen.

My own view of the Shure saga is that his are indeed the best scenes in what is an otherwise forgettable arthouse movie. He is the only actor who makes you believe that he is genuinely preparing for the rapture of the title. Everyone else appears to be attending a rather ropy warehouse party from the 1980s. Shure’s last scene on a remote pebble beach, waiting for a gleam to appear on the horizon, and then laying down to sleep, gently singing his way into a welcomed oblivion, is genuinely moving. It is also the one scene that is beautifully filmed, bathed in natural light with the gentle gushing sound of the sea.

Whether Shure is actually dead when the camera closes in on his sun-rosed face is a question than no-one can answer, and to my mind it’s a question that takes away from the power of Shure’s performance rather than lending any kind of ghoulish thrill to it all.

If you want to be kind to the memory of Peter Shure, you might do better to pass on 'The Rapture’ and seek out some of his earlier iconic performances in such films as ‘The Privateer’, ‘Una Brutta Morte’ or 'Mary Magdalene'.

If you really feel compelled to see this film, be prepared to do what Peter Shure did so well throughout his career – fall asleep.


"I don't think any word can explain a man's life"

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It turns out Dorothy Hayter had not died in a WW2 air raid, had not been electrocuted on a fairground ride, had not emigrated to Canada, had not run off with a notorious bank robber, had not been murdered by her fascist partner, had not driven over a cliff – all stories Peter had made up for his family and friends at various stages of his life.

Instead, she had been living a quiet life in Skegness. Her chief obsession during all that time was to hoard information about her son – storing up every last scrap of news she could find, from the moment Peter Shure first appeared in the public eye until well after his death in 1990.

The earliest cutting from her vast collection is an article from ‘Motor Sport’ magazine, dated October 1948, in which Peter Shure is named in Harry Lester’s winning MG team at Goodwood in the race for 1100cc open-cockpit sportscars.

The 29-year-old Shure would have witnessed Stirling Moss announcing himself to the world that day and seen Reg Parnell in a Maserati winning the Goodwood Trophy, the first time Formula 1 race to take place on British soil.

Dorothy proved to be obsessive and eagle-eyed when it came to spotting references to Peter. She spots him in the background a photograph of motor engineers working at the Jersey Road Race in April 1949, for example.

Once Peter moved into the movie business he was much easier to find, and Dorothy’s collection reflects the growing interest in his work from 1954 onwards. In the 1960s and 1970s she appears to have found friends abroad who could supply her with Italian and Spanish language movie magazines containing relevant reviews and interviews. There’s also an extremely rare edition of ‘Interview’ magazine, not available in the UK at the time – certainly not in Skegness - in which Peter talks about his relationship with Warhol and other artists of the period.

The sheer range of artefacts in her possession is at times boggling. In 1957 alone, over 60 items have been catalogued gleaned from publications as varied as The Sunday Times, Cahiers du Cinéma, Playboy and Ariel Magazine, as well as publicity materials from The Rank Organisation, Amalgamated Productions and British Lion.

Childhood memorabilia were stored by Dorothy in a separate box. Included in that cache are: short pieces of creative writing from Peter’s schooldays; home-made birthday and Christmas cards; drawings (of motor cars inevitably); photos of various fun-rides and fairgrounds; brochures and posters promoting Butlins holiday camp; cuttings from local newspapers; a number of home-made finger puppets made from felt and wool.

Pointedly there are very few letters from Peter to his mother – just one dated 1944, and a further two dated post-1945. There is also one letter from Helen Grosvenor to Dorothy dating from early 1967. (She kept a cutting from the Times announcing Peter’s divorce from Helen.) 

For researchers, biographers and general cinephiles looking for complete coverage of the events surrounding Peter Shure’s death, Dorothy Hayter’s hoard is hard to beat. Every newspaper article, every interview, every conspiracy theory that was ever published appears to be here. A first edition of Martin Chambers’s memoir is included in the collection, as is a number of articles by the film maker, Devon. Surprisingly, Dorothy even started to collect punk and rock music magazines that included material about Christopher Shure. Quite how and where she sourced these magazines is unclear. 

Could we think of this obsessive tracking as an act of love, of adoration? Or was it simply the collector’s addiction to completeness and control? Perhaps, the lack of direct contact  - at Peter’s insistence - drove his mother to find a different way to be close to him.

The size and scope of Dorothy’s collection is, some might say, a monument to Peter’s cruelty in excommunicating his mother so completely and attempting to erase her from his history.

He did send her money regularly – a monthly stipend that paid the mortgage on her house and covered most of her living expenses. This paid for her silence, no doubt, and allowed Peter to tell whatever lies he liked. It may also have helped to muffle any guilt he may have felt about being a less than dutiful and loving son.

Over the years, Peter was always adamant that Dorothy had never loved him, hadn’t supported him the way that he wanted. He’d sometimes would go as far to say how good it was to be an orphan. Only a small coterie knew the truth that she was alive and well in Skegness – the two Martins, Helen, Bob Cowell, Donald Pleasance possibly, others who had died in car crashes or assassinations. But not the children, Isabella and Chris. They were never told anything their grandmother except that ‘you wouldn’t have liked her’ and that she was ‘a mad old lady’.

Peter Shure would not be the first actor to have had a troubling relationship with his mother (she was a single parent let’s remind ourselves). His great hero Chaplin would be a prize example, although he was always solicitious about providing his mother with medical care and seeing her when he felt he could. He certainly never denied her existence.

Coming from nowhere, coming from out of the war with a new sense of self and a forgetting of what he had been before was of ultimate importance to Peter. More important that anyone suspected until Dorothy’s horde came to light.

Her collection could now be seen as something of a metaphor for how all childrens’ lives are, to some extent, curated - and even defined by - parents. Peter was forever rebelling against this idea. Nobody was allowed to define Peter Shure or decide what he was to be like apart from Peter himself  and, one might suggest, the audiences that watched him asleep on the screen.

When we watch Peter asleep we can project our own ideas on to him about where he comes from, what he is like, what he is dreaming of. It was an important part of his mystique, his power, that Peter was not easy to know. what better way to maintain that power of people than to erase any hint of a specific and prosaic truth?

For, in the end, where would be the mystery of a sleeping man if we knew everything about him? What if we could only imagine him dreaming of a plain pebble-dashed semi-detached Skegness home and a dear old mum seated at a table with blue-rinse hair and a floral housecoat, earnestly and carefully employing her embroidery scissors to cut out yet another precious article from the latest magazine?