4 min read
Nobody knows anything.” This is a quote from the great screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man, The Princess Bride in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. It highlights the unpredictable nature of the film business. Nobody – including top executives – can predict whether a film will be a hit or not, or understand why if it isn’t. Or even, why if it IS.
The film Yentl, written by my late husband Jack Rosenthal – in conjunction with a certain Ms Barbra Streisand – was funded because the powers-that-be knew the soundtrack would make up the shortfall they expected for a film about a woman in 16th-century Poland who dresses up as a man in order to become a Yeshiva bocher (an Orthodox religious student). Can you imagine pitching that one to a roomful of gum-chewing Hollywood executives all posing as Protestants?
In her score-settling autobiography, Barbra dismissed Jack’s two year’s of hard labour on the script, in two countries, in three lines. He was, according to her, an English scriptwriter who’d had some success with a play about a bar mitzvah and had supplied some gags to her script. Now, I remain a fan of both’s work, but, though I cannot discount her genius, her lack of generosity I certainly can.
The screenplay credit went to arbitration. Jack, always a gentleman, acknowledged her share of the discussions and decisions on the script, but insisted that he wrote the words…the words! In the beginning was the word.
That is, for God’s sake, what the whole Bashevis Singer short story Yentl was adapted from is about. Generous to a fault, Jack agreed to share the screenwriting credit with the actress, singer, director and producer of the film, Ms B. Streisand.
Nobody knows anything. Actors have more or less relinquished all rights to the repeat fees that paid their water bills and school fees and must rely on a flat fee, and have been forced into what is called a “buy-out” – end of story. Equity, their union (no longer mine), is so fixated with marching for Palestine 24/7 that such matters as rights for actors is beneath their plumb-line. Meanwhile, important TV appearances by their membership are going virtually uncredited. By which, I mean the credits roll by so swiftly, in a little box in the right-hand corner, that only a cheetah could catch them. Viewers could have every excuse to believe the supporting stars are played by Chat Bot AI.
I have been riveted by Slow Horses, series one. Gary Oldman brings Jackson Lamb to life so that you watch him with a grimace. You can practically smell his breath. Jack Lowden and Kristin Scott Thomas glitter with intent and the script and direction make you hum with excitement. There is also a quietly brilliant performance from Saskia Reeves as Standish, the spook with a bathful of dead boss, taken out probably by the man with whom she shares an office. Saskia is the kind of actress who should receive every plaudit and slips under the wire because her subtlety makes you believe she’s not actually acting. Her credit on the other hand speeds past with six others at the speed of an asteroid. Her agent needs to make a massive shout-out for series five.
Memo to self: must get out more. We were having a coffee and raisin toast in the vintage cafe The Coffee Cup, which was there, possibly with the same décor, 50 years ago when I last lived in Hampstead. It could be that the same man served us in 1973, only in bell-bottom trousers, turquoise beads and an Afro. Glancing at the wall I noticed a small brass plaque saying “Rex’s Corner” and asked, in my role as ethnic roving reporter, whether Rex was a dog or a person. The answer was intriguing, Rex was a famous marine archaeologist who had his morning coffee in the window booth every day until his death in 2025 at the age of 97.
Reader, we googled him post haste and found a film waiting to be written.
Rex Braham Cowan (JC obituaries, March) was a fascinating Jewish figure in the world of shipwreck exploration. That’s not a sentence you will hear very often. He was brought up in north London, the child of Sammy, a toy importer, and Fay, who were both of eastern European descent. He was evacuated to New York during the war and lived for a while in Hollywood, working part-time at Paramount, meeting Ginger Rogers and Mickey Rooney and Chaplin. He returned to England to enlist in the RAF but was grounded because of his colour blindness, so he served as a guard for POWs.
After the war, Rex, who by now had a wife, Zelide, and family studied law and set up as a criminal lawyer. His success at 39 years old, however, felt hollow.
One day he awoke and thought: “Rex, do you want to go into an office in a suit and help rich men get richer or defend murderers?”
It was a road-to-Damascus moment. He gave up the law. He had a holiday home on the Scilly Isles and was asked to write about the Royal Navy’s search for the wreck of The Association, a man-of-war that sank off the island. He watched the divers retrieving artefacts from the wreck and knew, in a flash, that he had found his calling.
Over the next 40 years he joined the race to find – and usually he was the first to find – the wreck of the Dutch India ship The Hollandia, which sank in 1794; the wreck of the Vliegenthart, sunk in the 18th century; the Swedish ship Svecia; and the Dutch ship Rooswijk. He recovered thousands of treasures and coins, which he gave to museums. He incurred the wrath of many established archaeologists for, in their words, “commodifying”. Cowan was adamant that he dived not for financial gain but to “uncover lost voices coming from the sea”.
Rex left three daughters, two actresses – Juliet played Amy Winehouse’s mother in the film Back to Black, one an actress/singer, and one disability activist. “My dad’s a marine archaeologist” is one giant leap for a Jewish child, from, in my case, “My dad’s a gentleman’s outfitter” or in my late husband Jack’s case, “My dad’s a waterproof garment shmearer”. His girls must have said it with pride. Mind you, so did we. No one knows anything. True but if you sit in a corner and ask, you might find out what history truly wants you to know.
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