REMEMBERING FILMING SECRET ARMY

My name is Rachel Beasley and I appeared as a child actor in an episode of Secret Army entitled
‘Guests at God’s Table’ back in 1978. I played Marie-Claire, a 12 year old orphan, scrabbling out a
living on the streets along with three other children in wartime Brussels. This motley family of whom
Marie-Claire becomes ‘mother’, discover an injured RAF officer and use their streetwise skills to
barter him to the Resistance in exchange for food, clothes and a proper Christmas for the little ones.

This was my first professional acting role and I think I was chosen because I was a very skinny young
girl and therefore presumably easier to pass off as an underfed wartime refugee! I’d recently started
attending the Barbara Speake Stage School in London but hadn’t had many auditions yet. When I
was called to the BBC TV centre in Wood Lane for the first audition I was really scared. Nobody had
told me much about what I was to do, or what the series was – however, Terence Dudley, the
director, was very kind and encouraging and asked me to read a couple of scenes from the script. By
the time I got back to school that afternoon, a very excited June Collins, our school’s agent and mum
to Phil Collins of Genesis fame), called me into her office and said that Mr Dudley had called and
offered me the part. I was so happy and so terrified at the same time!

The rehearsal and filming schedule were quite tight. I had a couple of weeks to learn my part, which
was quite meaty, and combining this with my day-to-day schooling was a bit pressured but I used to
spend my evenings going over the part at home, with my dad reading the other roles. Then came the
actual rehearsals. In those days, the BBC had a dedicated rehearsal room in North Acton. It was in a
1960s office block overlooking the industrial estate, the A40 and the Central Line – not very
glamorous at all but its anonymity belied the stellar goings-on behind its closed doors. I recall getting
into the lift and realising that sharing the space with me were Windsor Davies and Don Estelle, who
were rehearsing ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’. I was so shy, I couldn’t speak up to ask Windsor Davies to
press the button to the 7th floor but he was very kind and physically lowered himself to my level to
ask me which floor I needed. Or maybe he was used to bending down to speak to the diminutive
Don – I don’t know!

Once in the rehearsal room, the first day was spent doing a ‘read-through’. This is when all the
actors sit round an enormous table and just read through each scene in order, quite flatly, not really
acting, just saying the lines. The purpose of the read through is to give the director a chance to time
the scenes and to see if there were any lines that could be cut, if the overall timings were too far off
the allotted 60 minutes of screen time. As a rule-of-thumb, one page of typed A4 script equated to 2
minutes screen time.

There weren’t any introductions made of us four child actors. The regular cast all knew each other of
course, so I suppose it must have been a bit like another day in the office for them, sloping off for tea
and cigarettes in the breaks and not really paying much attention to us kids. However, I’d like to
make special mention of Angela Richards, who played Monique and Stephen Yardley, who played
Max. Although they didn’t share any scenes with us, they both made a kind effort to come up and
talk to me and the others in a warm and friendly way, just to put us at ease. They didn’t have to but I
will always remember how pleasant they were in a non-patronising way. Michael Culver (Major
Brandt) was also very kind, taking the time to come over and say hello and ask how we were getting
on. When I saw him in costume though, wearing that Nazi uniform and in character, I did feel quite
scared, though!
As we were children, there were child labour regulations that had to be obeyed at all times, the
principal ones being that we were only allowed to work up to 4 hours a day and that a school-
appointed chaperone had to be on set with us at all times. My chaperone was very elderly and very
deaf – she’d been doing this work for years – and once she saw us safely into the rehearsal room,
she sat in a corner doing her knitting, only looking up if we needed to go to the loo or have lunch.
Because of her deafness, it was really hard to get her attention or to communicate anything but the
basics. She later told me that she’d lost most of her hearing in the war when a bomb exploded near
her in the street. Being a callous 12 year old, I didn’t really take in the full import of this, all I was
bothered by was the fact that she stopped me exploring the BBC building on my own – just as well,
now I reflect on it, as Jimmy Savile was also there rehearsing Jim’ll Fix It, at the same time!

Rehearsals lasted a week, then on Saturday we transferred to the studios at White City for the real
filming, which was to take up the whole weekend. The first day was actually a camera rehearsal, so
although we acted each scene in the mocked-up rooms and pretend streets, in full costume, our
efforts were not recorded. The idea was to have the shots lined up correctly, check sound levels and
iron out any technical difficulties. It was a LONG day, from 7.30 in the morning until about 9pm. I
don’t know what happened to the child labour laws that weekend but the chaperone disappeared
too. Fortunately, nothing amiss occurred, except for the make-up that was applied to me. In order to
look like a grimy street urchin, I was sprayed with grease from an aerosol, all over my face and
hands, which was then rubbed in with extra cream to make it ‘set’, as well as oil being put into my
long hair to make it really greasy. When I got home that night, my mum went mad, as the awful stuff
wouldn’t come off properly in the bath. ‘Oh never mind,’ I reassured her, ‘It’s all got to go back on
again tomorrow!’

We filmed on the Sunday. My abiding memory is of the smell of the studio – sawdust and paint and
something undefinably extra, too, maybe the adrenaline of all these professionals wanting to get this
right. The heat from the studio lights were also really intense and almost unbearable, especially as
my costume consisted of lots of woolly layers and a headscarf. But the good thing was that the light
obscured my sightline of the crowd of people watching and working in the darkness – the camera
crew, the sound engineers, the floor managers, as well as the other actors. So I felt more confident
in just getting on with my job and doing my best to make my lines come alive. Each scene needed a
few takes, sometimes because one of us actors stumbled over a line, or when we’d got it right, then
there was a lighting issue or a camera problem. So we’d all have to start again. One thing to be said
for repetition is that it certainly quells the nerves.

The final scene of the episode is a little unusual in that the end theme is partly replaced by us
children singing a Christmas carol in German. It took us ages to learn the words, mostly because we
were all Cockneys – you might as well have given us a Mozart libretto, for all the sense it made. At
the time, it seemed a bit silly to me – ‘why have they got us off-key kids singing this over and over?’
But when I recently saw the episode again, now I’m 56 and with a more mellow heart, I felt that the
pathos worked. Do let me know if you agree.