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).
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.
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.
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.