Write What You Know

High Hell on the Jungfrau

Before my family immigrated to Canada in 1958, we lived in Walton-on-Thames, Surry, near London. That was where my father had moved us when he decided to pursue work in the entertainment industry. By 1954 his career was taking off. His days were busy and interesting, but he was seldom home.

I recall that period in my family’s life in my unpublished book, Just Call Me Irene: A Memoir. 

An advertisement in The Stage magazine attracted Basil’s attention. He quickly applied. Well-known trumpeter and bandleader, Eddie Calvert, hired him to answer the hundreds of pieces of fan-mail he received weekly. The magazine, Calvert Cavalcade, was born. Basil wrote and edited the magazine, injecting contests, trivia, and local celebrity information – okay gossip – into the glossy pages.

Ist Edition of the Calvert Cavalcade. June-July 1955.

While working for Calvert, Basil was also pursuing his own ambitions. He wrote several songs. “It’s The Same Old London Town” and “Goodnight Till Tomorrow” were among the tunes that became popular. Unfortunately, Basil’s savvier business associates often took advantage of his limited business financial acumen. Even though his songs were recorded, sung, and played by well-known artists of the day, he rarely profited from them.

By 1956, he had built a somewhat successful international publicity company in London. His business was multi-faceted. He arranged publicity for the Harlem Globetrotters, on tour from the USA, and managed Marilyn Monroe while she was in England making a movie. Errol Flynn and Richard Burton not only became clients, but also friends.

When the movie, High Hell, was being filmed, Paramount Pictures hired my father to publicize the film. John Derek and Elaine Stewart were the stars of the “B” movie with a budget of $350,000. American Director, Burt Balaban, son of the Paramount chief Barney Balaban, had overlooked Derek’s wife, Ursula Andress, for the female lead. He hoped the combination of Stewart and Derek might just be the ticket to push the movie into an “A” rating at the box office.

High Hell was a steamy story of lust and betrayal in a Canadian mining town. Interior scenes were filmed on a sound stage in England. Exterior (Canadian Rockies) scenes were shot on the Jungfrau in Switzerland. The film would be released in the United States as an American movie.

My father had an uphill task to promote the movie, create “buzz” and provide material that would make the newspapers pay attention to the film prior to release.

As he was working on High Hell, the 13^th Duke of Bedford, Ian Russell, contacted him. As my father wrote in From Old Hollywood to New Brunswick, Nimbus Publications, 2013:

A few years earlier, the Duke had inherited the family’s magnificent ancestral castle, Woburn Abbey, near Bedford in England. With that inheritance came death duties totaling more than two million pounds, which he and his family did not have. To raise the money, he opened the castle to the public, charging 10 shillings for a guided tour of the wonderful buildings. More often than not, the guide was the Duke himself. But somehow Woburn Abbey never really caught the imagination of the public.

“I want to be able to keep all of the Abbey treasures and one day hand them down to my son. I want you to devise some publicity ideas that will bring in ten times the visitors I had this year. Will you do it?” he asked.

The High Hell film crew was heading for Switzerland for a week to shoot the Canadian Rockies scenes. The Duke agreed to travel with them and my father promised he would “find some way to put the trip on the front pages” thus earning publicity for the movie and for Woburn Abbey.

Again, from my father’s book:

Two days into the location shooting, the film unit was hit by bad weather. Everyone was sitting around playing poker in the lounge of a beautiful hotel on top of the thirteen thousand-foot Jungfrau Mountain, when Elaine Stewart, looking out of the window, winced a little. “Thank heaven I’m not going out in that blizzard,” she said.

Suddenly I had my story!

“But you are going out, Elaine – you and the Duke of Bedford. We’ll add in Harry Claff (the makeup man) for good measure. Let’s have a talk.”

The story became an overnight sensation: Elaine, the Duke, and Harry had become separated from the film crew. A freak snowstorm had stranded them. A local guide, Hans Egger, and the film’s producer, Billy Boyle were out looking for them. A local donkey, with a minor role in the film, also figured prominently in the rescue.

My father sat down with everyone to write a brief scenario outlining the story from each person’s point of view. They all quoted the same details religiously when interviewed.

When the Duke returned home to England, he was met at the airport by several reporters and crews from TV stations. Tourists at Woburn Abbey that summer were so numerous that extra staff was hired to handle the crowds. Later, the Duke told my father that he had even bought a donkey and stabled it at Woburn. Visitors didn’t know the difference and the donkey was regaled as the hero of the Jungfrau.

As for the real donkey, he became the darling of tourists down the mountain in Grindelwald. His exploits, saving the film crew from crashing over the edge of a crevasse, earned him a comfortable retirement.

Elaine Stewart blushed and demurred under her new publicity – never denying that she and the Duke might be a twosome.

The movie never made it into “A” status but my father’s daring publicity didn’t go unnoticed. Besides being well paid for his efforts, Paramount offered him a job in Hollywood should he care to relocate to the USA.

That takes us back to my book, Just Call Me Irene: A Memoir:

Irene and the children were finally beginning to settle into life in Walton-on- Thames when, in 1958, Basil set his sights across the Atlantic Ocean. America would have been his first choice of destinations given the response from studio officials following the High Hell story.

However, British citizens had no problem immigrating to Canada so that was where he chose to move his family. He left London in the spring of 1958 for Toronto, Ontario and quickly found a job with CKEY Radio. Irene and the children followed him in August that year, anxious to see what Canada held for them.

Most of the High Hell story is not included in Just Call Me Irene: A Memoir. That story, after all, is about my mother and her journey through life. Of course, my father’s career and choices affected her and are vital to her life story. However, at the time, Irene’s life revolved around her home and children. What she knew about any of Basil’s exploits is a mystery. Now, at 97, her memory is past the point of recall. I often wonder how much she knew at the time. As I’ve mentioned previously, she rarely read anything her husband wrote.

My father brought home a Swiss chalet music box and a handkerchief embroidered with a map of Switzerland. They still remain in my care all these years later.

The movie, High Hell, for anyone interested, is available on IMDb and can be accessed through Wikipedia, External Links. 

From Old Hollywood to New Brunswick, by Charles (Basil) Foster is available on Amazon.com.

See you next month. Thanks for reading. Your comments are appreciated.