Berman, Baker and Spooner
For a while in the Sixties, it was like the entire action drama output of British TV was coming out of Whitechapel. Lew Grade was heading up ITC - the programme-making side of ITV franchisee ATV, with a string of hits including The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Saint, Danger Man, The Baron, The Champions, The Prisoner, The Persuaders, Department S and many more.
Meanwhile, the tireless team of Robert Baker and Monty Berman, both Whitechapel boys themselves, were writing, directing and producing a string of hits, including The Saint, The Baron and Gideon’s Way. Alongside, the pair managed to churn out dozens of films, with thrillers and chillers a speciality. At one point, they were rivalling Hammer as the kings of British cinema horror.
Sidney Baker was born on 27 October 1916 in Whitechapel. His dad pushed him to join the family furrier business but an unwilling Sid decided to go travelling in Europe with pals instead. Back in Britain in 1937 he won a photography competition and landed a job as an assistant director at a London film studio. Joining the Royal Artillery in 1939 he found himself billeted with five other blokes - four of them called Sidney! Each adopted a nom de guerre, with our man becoming ‘Robert’. The name would stick for life.
Baker saw active service at El Alamein, but his greatest experience came with his transfer to the Army Film and Photographic Unit, filming in Italy and Germany, and riding into Berlin on a motorbike and being photographed amid the ruins of Hitler’s Chancellery. It was in the unit that ‘Bob’ met Monty Berman. Nestor Montague Berman was four years older but had shared a similar career trajectory to his new pal. He had worked at Twickenham studios before the war, working his way up to cameraman and getiing a credit on Michael Powell’s semi-documentary The Edge of the World (1937).
The pair emerged into Civvy Street with hundreds of wartime hours of filming behind them - a superb grounding and one that gave them the confidence to make their own movies. Their partnership, Tempean Films, was superbly disciplined, bringing in movies on time and to budget - crucial as they had borrowed the money to set up. It was a lean operation too, with Berman generally working the camera and Baker directing, and the two collaborating on the scripts.
They co-produced two budget vehicles for budding comedy star Terry-Thomas, with A Date With a Dream in 1948 and Melody Club in 1949. The experienced pair were also picking up freelance work, with Berman working with the second unit on Carol Reed’s The Third Man in 1949. The two switched seamlessly between writing, producing and directing.
The pace was relentless, with Baker and Berman reliable producers of the ‘B’ movies that supported the main feature. There were thrillers such as Three Steps to the Gallows, a series of movies in Ireland for Emmett Dalton, some light comedy and, from the late Fifties, schlock-horror to rival Hammer. Consciously or otherwise, the pair paid a number of visits to their native East End, though the historical accuracy of Jack the Ripper (1958) and The Siege of Sidney Street (1960, and actually shot in Dublin on the basis that the Irish capital looked more like the East End than the real East End) is open to question.
As cinema faded and TV came to the fore in the Sixties, the pair were perfectly placed. Baker went to Associated Rediffusion with his treatment for a new series based on the classic Saint crime novels, having persuaded author Leslie Charteris to grant the pair TV rights. Rediffusion were appalled by Baker’s budget of £16,000 an episode - a huge sum for the day - so Baker approached the more farsighted Lew Grade at ATV. Grade saw the potential for selling the high-quality shows, shot on film unusually, to the US. And he had charismatic TV star Patrick McGoohan, already a hit in ATV’s Danger Man, in mind for the lead role.
McGoohan turned it down (too much sex), matinee star Roger Moore stepped in and a hit was born, as well as a lifelong friendship. When Baker died in September this year, Moore described him as one of the kindest men he had ever worked with - praise indeed in the tough world of TV. The ‘overpriced’ ‘The Saint’ went on to gross more than £350m worldwide. Grade commissioned the pair to produce Gideon’s Way, all shot on location around London. Starring John Gregson it was another hit, and The Baron completed the set.
Baker and Berman parted company in the late Sixties, though remained friends. Bob Baker went into partnership with Roger Moore, producing hour-long episodes of The Saint through to 1969, lavishly funded by US TV. The pair hit paydirt again with The Persuaders, teaming Moore with Tony Curtis. Baker came back with Return of the Saint in the late Seventies and squeezed the last drops from the franchise with the Val Kilmer Saint movie in 1997.
Monty hooked up with Dennis Spooner, a native of Tottenham and former Leyton Orient pro, and the new pairing dominated ITV schedules in the late Sixties and early Seventies. The Champions (1968), Randall and Hopkirk (1969), Department S (1969 and starring Peter Wyngarde from the Siege of Sidney Street), and Jason King (1971) rattled off the production line. Berman made his exit with The Adventurer in 1972. Starring that American stalwart of Sixties British telly Gene Barry, it was an unexpected flop. Monty took the hint and withdrew to 30 something years of well-funded retirement. He died on 20 June 2006.