This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme by John Fife.
My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP).
: You obviously would have seen a lot of these personalities coming through Melbourne. I think you actually worked overseas didn’t you as well? Desi Arnez?
*MP: Yes, we went to America to do program for channel 10 Sydney with Hazel Phillips? and Judy *Pietrich? And on the way we were supposed to work for about three weeks in Los Angeles, and then go off to the Mexico Olympics. And by the time we’d finished in LA we were absolutely stuffed so we came back home. And the other reason we came back home was that Phil Gibbs, the sporting editor who was supposed to come with us to Mexico, decided that he wasn’t going to come. But that’s alright.
*What we did in LA, we were driving around interviewing people like Desi Arnaz, Charlton Heston, a stripper… ‘let me entertain you’ (he sings)… what’s her name? A well known stripper. We had an appointment to meet her in Beverly Hills. So we arrive there and are let in by a butler, and come into a small ballroom that had a tree growing right along one side up to the balcony. There was a balcony that was supposed to be- you know how you have an orchestra balcony for playing for dances – leading up to there that tree’s growing right through that building, and we are square bang in the middle of this ballroom there.
And her entrance on the balcony was like (with a flourish) ’Hello darlings!!’ Very theatrical. (Laughs). What’s her name? No.
JF: Her name will come while we’re chatting. You were saying – Arnaz, he was into film in a big way wasn’t he.
MP: Yes. Actually what Desi Arnaz was doing… the ‘I Love Lucy’ show was produced live in front of an audience, and filmed on film at the same time. He had 6 cameras in there and I was very interested. I thought crumbs, he’s going through a lot of bloody film! This was during black and white time. And I was talking to him later and I said ‘why 6 film cameras?’ and he said ‘Well, film’s been here for a hundred years and it’s gonna stay for another hundred years.’ And that was it.
But Desi was very good to us. He invited us up to his private place at Malibu. He actually cooked eggs for us and fed us breakfast. He actually had split with Lucy, and really he was trying hard for us to talk her into talking to us. But Lucy wasn’t going to be in it. So we missed out on Lucy but we had Charlton Heston, and we had Sharon Tate before she got carved up with one of the interviews.
JF: You’re shooting this for more of a doco…
MP: No no, we’re shooting just interviews. Picking up people, banging them in front of the camera wherever we can and just interviewing for a girlie show that they had in Sydney, which was fronted by Hazel Phillips.
JF: What I was trying to work out – so you’ve moved a little out of shooting something for news, to shooting something for a channel 10 program.
MP: Oh yes, well this particular one was going to be handy. We’re on our way to Olympics so you can have a couple of weeks, couple of shots. So we finished up interviewing about 40 people.
JF: Personalities always easy to work with?
MP: Some of them are, some of them no. But …. I didn’t have any problems. What we did have problems with was the union. I had to hire a guy to come with me and stand by me while I’m filming at Disneyland. And laughing was a big thing in America at that stage. So to interview people laughing, we had to sneak in through a hole in the bloody fence behind the studio, and getting round behind the bushes (laughs) to interview them. Otherwise union was going to black ban us and what have you. But oh no, we work very hard. Absolutely hard.
By the time we finish, I don’t think we could have gone to Mexico anyway. Because John – chief cameraman from Sydney – he already had the tail end of a cold when we were leaving and he wasn’t very well. He wasn’t fit to do anything else, we just do what we were doing.
JF: Just thinking about that news coverage as well. Its’ a young man’s business, it’s a fit man’s business.
MP: Oh yeah. Fit man’s business, yeah. Before I go any further – we shot some 40 interviews with *various personalities, I’m sitting in the car. We had an interview with Eve Ardern?, you know, one of the girls who usually play school marm, mama, you know. She said to Judy … ‘Oh yeah, a couple of wigs I’ve had done up at the Hollywood studios, could you bring them to us?’ So I’m sitting there with two *heads in my hands… The looks from people driving next to us!! John’s driving, John Gibbs, – it looked as if I had two women that I’m cuddling! So I took them to her – she lived just in Orange County. Yeah, but basically they’re alright you know, they were just normal people. And they didn’t have to put on a big bloody act because we’re in the same business anyway. Eighty percent act.