In a career spanning more than 40 years Tony Teiger has established an enviable reputation as the doyen of Property Masters. His association with 007 dates back to his work as a Stand By Propman on 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

Tony Teiger

This, the fifth Bond film, took the successful franchise to even greater heights. Starring Sean Connery, Tony’s favourite Bond, the Lewis Gilbert movie was set in Japan and required 007 and a team of ‘Japanese secret service ninjas’ to find and stop the culprit of a series of spacejackings before nuclear war is provoked…

Since then, amongst a dizzyingly list of titles including films such as Operation Daybreak, Force Ten From Navarone, Ghandi, The Far Pavilions, Dry White Season, The English Patient, Highlander 4 and Blade where Tony was in charge as Property Master, Tony renewed his association with James Bond on Pierce Brosnan’s Tomorrow Never Dies. For this and most of his 60+ movies Tony was in charge of an entire department, working as Property Master.

Tony Teiger as Blofeld

Today, Tony’s son, Ty, is following a similar career path, having worked as a Property Master on two Bond films: Die Another Day and the latest James Bond adventure, Casino Royal which stars ‘newboy’ Daniel Craig. Ty also wo rked on the most recent three Star Wars films and most recently, Batman Begins and V For Vendetta.

Arthur Ward (AW) interviewed Tony Teiger (TT) at his Riverside home in West Sussex in August 2006.

AW: Tony, could you tell me a bit about your background?

TT: I was born in Birmingham, England, in 1936. My father was a tailor whose family came from Poland in the late 19th century and arrived at Cardiff. My father was born in Wales. My mother’ s family was originally from Russia and fled that country as a result of the various pogroms that engulfed it. I was one of four children. I had two brothers and a sister. My sister died in a road accident when she was only nine years old a n d my elder brother sadly passed away some time ago. However, my younger brother Joe is a successful producer of TV commercials in New York.

 

AW: So how did you get into movies, given your background and your father’s vocation?

Tony Teiger with guitar

TT: My father always wanted me to go into his business, tailoring, which I really didn’t want to do. So, funnily enough I went to study agriculture in Sussex. Then I travelled the world basically. I went off to the Middle East, Scandinavia and ended up, ironically in Birmingham! Whilst there I joined the theatre, the Birmingham Rep , as a Showman, come whatever. As a Showman you were on hand to assist the productions by doing the props, flies, whatever was required. The period would have been about 1955 or ’56.

Shortly afterwards I moved to London. Incidentally whilst with the theatre in Birmingham I had joined the theatre union NATKE (National Association of Theatrical and Kine Employees), which you had to join then to be able to work in the industry. So, when in London I started working in theatres there – The Royal Court, Princes, D’Oyly Carte Opera, The Savoy Theatre. Eventually, in between jobs, I went to the union offices to see if anything new was available and I was told ‘well, you could go to Pinewood Studios if you want to, they are looking for people’. So, I did, staying with Pinewood Studios until I went freelance and that’s how I got into films!

AW: Has the industry changed since you started or has it always required you to use all you resources to find work?

TT: Well, now that the unions are basically non-effective – that is you can ’t go down to the union office and ask them if they have any work – today I don’t think they’d find you work and it’s more a matter of going on training courses or attending film school. Nowadays people establish early goals: ‘I want to be a camera man’, ‘I want to be a director’, ‘I want to be a producer’ etc. When I started, I had a young family to feed and I was flexible – then as now the film industry paid double the wages of the theatre so it was a very attractive option. Anyway, I was always interested in movies and keen to get into the industry.

However, funnily enough, the first job I did involved pulling nails out of pieces of us ed wood in the Stage Hand Carpentry Shop! Shortly afterwards, somebody said to me ‘Listen you want to transfer over to the Props Department. That’s the department to go to.’

So I applied and I got into the Props Department. That’s where I’ve been ever since.

AW: What’s the definition of ‘Props’?

 

Tony Teiger playing tennis

TT: People get mixed up with Props and Wardrobe and Special Effects (SFX). In the film industry they’re distinct departments – although at some points they do overlap. For instance when it comes to certain ‘gadgets’ that are needed then the Props Master will have them made and he might use an SFX guy or outfit through the SFX department but the result will be a ‘Prop’ or a ‘Hand Prop’. Basically Props are everything you see in this room (Tony sweeps his arms around pointing to all of the objects in his sitting room), literally everything in this room from furniture, to the television, objects and implements on the table, wall decorations, the actual construction and painting of the set. We have a ‘Drapes Department’ who deal just with drapes (curtains). Everything is co -ordinated through the Production Designer and the Art Department – you are basically working in co-ordination with them.

AW: Many members of Collecting Friends are particularly interested in 007. There’s a huge constituency of James Bond fans out there, supported by a thriving merc handise and licensed toy industry. You were at Pinewood, tell me about your first Bond movie?

TT: It was You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery in 1967. It was made at Pinewood and on location in Japan. I wasn’t the Prop Master on that I was just the Stand By Prop on the floor, as they say it. It was very interesting. Whilst I was doing something on one of the sets during the rather lengthy period of pre-production I noticed that producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and one or two of the other guys – everyone knew each otheron set – kept on looking at me. I thought “what am I doing wrong?”

 

Tony Teiger as Blofeld 

Anyway, eventually they came over and they said “Tony, would you mind doing something, a favour, for us?” I said “Sure”.

“Would you mind doing some make-up tests for us?” they continued. I ask why and they told me “Donald Pleasence, who’s going to play Ernst Blofeld, is not available and because you look a little like him we wondered if you would do some make-up tests for us.”

I agreed and they took me over to Make-up and shaved my head, put scars all over my face and other make-up and we went back to the studio floor and they filmed me. In fact we went back and forwards several times, applying and removing different make-up and filming the results to judge the best procedure to use when Donald became available. Of course it was a proper screen test and I guess the rushes were sent to Donald Pleasence, but fortunately I still have those photos.

AW: So, it’s a Collecting Friends exclusive to reveal those photos and to point out that Tony Teiger was the first person to play Blofeld on screen!

TT: Incidentally, there are a couple of funny stories relating to those photos. At the end of the day I didn’t take the make-up off. I was living in London’s Notting Hill Gate at the time and because I di dn’t hav e a car at the time I went home on the tube, from Uxbridge. When I got home from the underground station I knocked on the door of my flat just to see the reaction of my wife who gasped ‘What’s happened to you?’

Fortunately, I was paid something for the make-up tests and when I returned to my normal job, some of the boys I worked with at Pinewood said ‘Are you going to share the money you’ve made whilst you’ve been messing about and we’ve been doing your job?’

AW: So, how many Bond films have you worked on?

TT: I’ve only done two. You Only Live Twice and Tomorrow Never Dies. In the early days only permanent staff at Pinewood worked on Bond films. Before I went to Japan (for Yo u Only Live Twice) I was at Pinewood and they were trying to get people to go to Egypt to work on Gordon of Khartoum with Charlton Heston. I said, “I’ll go’, because some people didn’t want to leave home. When I came back I could see indications that more was happening overseas but in a freelance capacity – one or two people had gone out to work on Lawrence of Arabia, in the region and this was a freelance, not a studio production. In fact my first freelance film was The Charge of the Light Brigade, which was filmed in Turkey. I came back to work on my first Bond film when I couldn’t find enough freelance work. When I worked on Tomorrow Never Dies , I was able to as a freelance because by then, the whole system had changed.

AW: Of all the 50+ films you have worked on, do any stand out as particular favourites?

TT: Well, obviously Ghandi was a big, big success and wonderful to work on, but films like Force Ten From Navarone, Khartoum, The English Patient and The Charge of The Light Brigade were special. The Bond films were wonderful. Evil Under The Sun, the Agatha Christie movie directed by Guy Hamilton and starring James Mason, Pet er Ustinov, Dian Rigg, Denis Quilley, Maggie Smith and many others was also particularly memorable.

AW: In general, it seems to me that today we are living in a much more politically correct liability ridden culture with far more regulations. Is this true of the film industry?

TT: There are more rules. Health and Safety has become a much bigger factor in studios, not so much on location. For instance, now when you go onto a set, a lot of the time you’ve got to wear a hard hat! It’s so funny seeing directors and producers walking around these days wearing hard hats – especially if set construction is taking place when you are simply not allowed to go on the floor without a hard hat for safety reasons. It has gone a bit too far I think .

AW: Your son Ty has followed in his father’s footsteps.

TT: Yes. He worked on the last three Star Wars productions and the last two Bonds, so he’s more into making stuff than I was. In the early days I used to take him to various sets and locations and then got him a job as an assistant to me on two or three films. He made friends with a lot of people and actually went into to television. He made a lot of TV commercials and soon became one of the top TV prop men. He got to know art-directors and got to make his first films. Occasionally, he has come back and worked for me – he was in charge of Tunisia for me on The English Patient and in Hong Kong where we did a TV production with Pierce Brosnan called Noble House. He was also on the floor with me on a Clint Eastwood movie, White Hunter Black Heart.

Film Show Annual, 1964

AW: You know Sean Connery quite well?

TT: Yes. I like him very much. Occasionally we play golf together. With my wife Cindy being quite unwell, he and his wife Micheline, regularly ask after her. They are very caring. There’s no doubt he’s my favourite Bond.

AW: What do you think about the success of 007 as a franchise from a fans point of view. Do you ever get involved with the numerous conventions?

TT: No. Normal Bond films are a crew of 600 people. It is less glamorous to us because it’s a job of work. On Tomorrow Never Dies, for example, at one stage our department comprised 50 or 60 people. When we had to build the market for the motorbike scenes, which were filmed at Pinewood and at Frogmore Studios in Hertfordshire, where we took over a warehouse and built a whole street and all the shops. We had masses of stuff there. We were collecting studios. We had about 200 old Vespa scooters and rickshaws gathered from all over the place.

James Bond 007 Annual, published in 1966

AW: Has there always been a lot of money washing around in the movie industry, especially for props?

TT: No I remember working on one movie and my entire props budget was £1,500. I came under budget by £1!

AW: Is there anything that’s really difficult to facilitate?

TT: Well, as I said before, I don’t think anything really fazes property masters. If I was told to find 10 elephants or 3 vintage cars or help to design and manufacture particular items you would either employ the skills necessary or go out and find what’s required, whe ther you are here or in the middle of Africa or India. It’s amazing how much ‘stuff’ is out there. Only the other day I was talking to a friend and thinking what people have in their homes – props being essentially furniture and even though tons period items have long been shipped to Japan or the ‘States – there’s still an enormous amount left. If everybody in Lon don emptied his or her houses into the street, can you imagine how much stuff there would be? You wouldn’t be able to move about the streets given all the material that’s inside a row of houses!

I mentioned something Collecting Friends expert Mat Irvine told me about his days of model making for BBC TV’s Dr Who and Blake’s Seven. I had told Mat that I admired his models and would love to see more of those used on TV. He told me that often, because his models would only ever be recorded from one side or angle, he didn’t need to complete all the items ‘in the round’ as it were. And that they were often incomplete! I asked Tony if, similarly, film props were only part complete.

TT: Basically no, because you never know what the director or the artist will do. I mean he could have something in his hand and he could turn something around or the director might decide to do something else and if it’s not a complete article, then you’re in trouble.

AW: There is a huge market in Bond collectables as you know. There are dealers who purport to be selling authentic props used in films like The Terminator, one of the Star Wars films or Alien for example. However, there doesn’t seem to be many ‘authentic’ 007 props on the market.

TT: Well, at the end of every Bond movie, all the props and pieces of equipment seen on screen are the property of the company and at the end of the film everything stays with them. Officially everything goes back to them and you aren’t allowed to take anything without the company’s permission. Now they might decide to have an auction to sell of unwanted items, props and various things. If there are things that might be of use to other producers then there might be an auction, or you sell them to a hire company. Indeed lots of hire companies have bought what you might call ‘incidentals’. All the weapons would have been hired of course and they would go back to specialist armourers like Bapty & Co. Of course a great deal of material goes back into the production company’s own stores, probably at Pinewood.

AW: Returning to the Bond films you worked on Tony, can you think of anything in special from either that particularly springs to mind?

TT: Well, on You Only Live Twice for example, we had the wonderful little autogyro Little Nellie that was shipped out to Japan. I remembered we waited quite a while for it to arrive and when it did everyone was fascinated to see this tiny machine that someone was supposed to get into and fly!

AW: Must have been terrific fun. In fact that machine has appeared in toy and model format for years. It was first produced as a licensed plastic kit by British firm Airfix in 1967, the company re-releasing the model again in the 1990s for a fraction of the £350 or thereabouts being asked by dealers for original replicas. Famous die-cast manufacturer Corgi has two versions available in their range as we speak, one in 1/43rd scale and a smaller version in 1/72nd scale.

TT: I think it was Ken Wallis himself who actually flew it for the movie. Actually the other thing I remember from this picture was that the producers wanted a girl to drive the open-topped Toyota car. There was a young clapper loader (Michael Messenger) who was a ‘bit of a lad’ and a very good driver. I suppose then he must have looked a little shall we say ‘feminine ’ then, because they gave him a wig and he was the one driving the car!

AW: As you know, there is a huge merchandise industry surrounding the Bond franchise. Members of Collecting Friends will be especially interested in the toys, models and collectables associated with 007. How early to brands and manufacturers get shown what’s in the film so that they have time to release their products simultaneously with the film’s release?

TT: Of course anyone producing a toy or a collectable has obtained a license to do so from Eon Productions (the rights owners). Consequently, these people will be shown the fruits of the Art Department’s labours and will see what is being featured in the actual movie. First of all, it must be remembered that everyone works to the script and all the gadgets and vehicles are mentioned there. Once a script has been finalised, you have meetings to discuss specific weapons, etc with the director and producers. Any new developments are illustrated, discussed and agreed at these meetings.

AW: Did you ever have a part in suggesting changes to any of James Bond’s personal equipment?

TT: In fact, I once suggested changing Bond’s gun. We thought Bond’s original gun (Sean Connery’s famous Walther PPK) was too small. So, I asked Bapty & Co to produce a prop of a larger version of the weapon. I thought, as did many other’s “isn’t it about time that we changed Bond’s gun?” The result was the P99 adopted by Pierce Brosnan.

I suggested the change to the producer, Barbara Broccoli, the director, Roger Spottiswoode and the art department.

AW: So we end this interview with another Collecting Friends world exclusive, Tony Teiger was the original Blofeld and also had a hand in updating 007’s sidearm!