Bald Auditions

One day in early September 1979 when I was living in West Hampstead, I caught a bus down to Swiss Cottage, found an old fashioned barber’s shop and sat in the chair with instructions to “take it all off. I want to look like Yul Brynner.” Not particularly odd you may think but remember this was pre-EastEnders days, pre-Mitchell brothers shaved heads that amazingly made it look cool to be completely bald. This was at a time when the best known bald man in Britain was David Nixon the TV magician. Five minutes later I was out on the Finchley Road looking at my reflection in every shop window as I walked home. What the hell had I done?

It wasn’t actually my idea to go completely bald; that had come from a friend of mine, Jonny Whetstone the lead singer in The Look. One night down at The Marquee he had suggested that I tackled my severely receding hairline by going the whole hog and shaving the lot off. “It’ll look great,” he enthused. “Like a punked-up Ernst Stavro Blofeld from the Bond films. The girls will love it.”

And like a mug I fell for it.

But, as I reasoned, what was the worse thing that could happen? If it looked terrible, I could always regrow my limited thatch back again. Besides I had a new record coming out and I thought the shaved-head look would make an eye-catching cover.

By the time I got back to my flat from the barber’s, I was getting a bit worried about showing my new acquisition (or lack of it!) to the rest of my band so I bought a copy of the Evening Standard to kill a bit of time before meeting up with my colleagues for a rehearsal and what was almost certainly going to be a massive pisstake. It was whilst scanning through the newspaper that an advert caught my eye with such severity that I almost ripped the page in my double-take. It read:

Are you Bald?
Major film production
currently shooting in London
requires males completely bald
and 5ft 11ins tall

This was followed by a phone number to call. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There I was recently sheared, exactly 5ft 11ins high and here was a film company seeking that exact person. This seemed too good to be true. Was it fate? I quickly dialled the number and spoke to a mysterious female voice. After a few preliminary questions about whether I was male (yes), completely bald (yes) and 5ft 11ins tall (yes) - I was told to report to Shepperton film studios the next morning at 9am where I would be given further instructions. Before she hung up, the woman went on to say that traveling expenses would be fully reimbursed.

I had never been to Shepperton film studios before but a quick phone call gave me the information that all I had to do was to turn up at Waterloo station and catch a train to Shepperton where the famous studios were a ten minute bus ride away. That night I turned up for rehearsal in a very positive mood. Instead of continuous mickey-taking of my newly shaved look, everyone seemed impressed with the news of the film part. “What film is it?”, “Will you get your own trailer dressing room?” and the ridiculous “I suppose they’ll give you a wig to wear” from someone who arrived late and missed the whole point of my story.

The next morning found me at Waterloo station at 8am. It was a particularly wet morning and I had to fight through dozens of incoming commuters to find my platform. I jumped on the train and off we went. After a moment or two I started to notice that nearly everybody in my carriage was a man of about my height and completely bald! Some were dressed in jeans and trainers, others looked like they had just walked out of a City boardroom in their pin-stripe suits and Turnbull & Asser shirts. Most were ignoring everyone else and just staring out of the window, their reflection doubling the number of shiny pates on the train. One thing was for sure, they were men on a mission. I had no idea that there were so many bald young men in London. It was only later that I discovered that most of them had had their heads shaved the previous afternoon having seen the advert in the Evening Standard. Such is the draw of the film business. London barbers must have done a roaring trade the previous day.

The ten or so bald men in my carriage, however, were nothing compared to the fifty or so shaved heads that all got off the train when it finally pulled in at the little station of Shepperton.

We all followed like sheared sheep to the station entrance and someone asked the guy in the ticket office where to go. He muttered something about the buses not stopping that morning and pointed to a hand-written sign in a transparent cover clumsily tied with gardening string to a lamp post. The sort of thing people put up when they’ve lost a pet dog or cat. It had a badly drawn arrow in red felt pen and the words BALD AUDITIONS THIS WAY.

We walked along the pavement. The rain was lashing down.

There was a lot of moaning from our crocodile of possible Kojaks but a major film was a major film and if you had to walk a couple of miles in the pouring rain to be in the damned thing then that is what you had to do.

Fifty yards down the road was another sign drawing-pinned to a wooden fence. And then another a bit further along harpooned on the twigs of a hedge. Eventually the trail of red arrows led us all the way over the motorway bridge, past local shops and private houses until we reached the perimeter wall to the famous film studios. Later on, whilst traveling home, I asked the guy in the ticket office why we could not just have caught the local bus to the studios? His reply was swift. It seemed that the bus company had refused to pick up any bald men as they feared they were gangs of skinheads!

We eventually reached the security gate of Shepperton film studios and after a quick check by the two guards to make sure all present were totally bald (one man wasn’t allowed in as he had a full head of hair despite his protestations that he would definitely be shaving it all off once he’d got the job), we all filed in and were directed to a tiny windowless room called an ‘Audition Suite’. In fact it was a long cupboard where the vacuum cleaners, brooms and buckets were stored by the studio cleaners. Anyway there were a few chairs in there and a production assistant popped her head in every now and then to make sure everyone had a cup of tea.

By this time our numbers had swollen to well over a hundred and some people were having to stand in the corridor. Assistants scurried about with clipboards making sure that everyone was reimbursed for their expenses. Rail tickets were waved in unison as proof of that morning’s travel and one or two held up a petrol receipt. There was one smartly dressed French man who claimed he had flown in from Paris the night before after a friend in London had seen the advert in the Standard and phoned him. He wanted full reimbursement for his air ticket and nearly got it too. Unfortunately he over-egged his pudding. Realising he was on to a good thing in the claiming expenses department, he decided to add on helicopter transfers and even lengthened his journey as having flown first from Athens to Paris!

After twenty minutes or so an assistant squeezed himself into the room and asked us all to gather round (not difficult in that space) and to listen to what he had to say. The movie was Flash Gordon, the director was Mike Hodges and the producer was the legendary Italian Dino De Laurentiis. They were looking for twelve bald men to play twelve bald robots in the film. We looked at each other in horror. There were over a hundred of us going for twelve jobs. This would be a fight to the end. And to be honest everyone in the room looked pretty mean with their shaved heads.

The assistant explained that the producer Dino De Laurentiis was looking for a certain type. He wanted a strong face, athletic body but above all no hair. Diction didn’t matter because all the bald robots would be silent robots who would hum. There would be no dialogue. Nevertheless Mr De Laurentiis would personally handpick the twelve with all his experience and expertise gained in thirty-five years of international movie-making.

We were told to stand down for 10 minutes or so and then the producer would come and meet us. The assistant left the room.

There was an instantaneous rush to follow him. Thuggish looking men who had got up early and come to the studios to find they now had only a one in ten chance of being picked were colliding with each other to get into the Gents and make sure they were looking their best. As they jostled for position in front of the only mirror, suddenly for the first time that morning they were talking to each other. “Get out the way mate, I was here first,” “He won’t pick you, your nose is too big for a robot!” and “Has anyone got a battery operated Philshave?” could be clearly heard.

Eventually, back in the cupboard, we settled down and awaited our Master. The man whose expert decision could change our lives - Dino De Laurentiis. The giant of the film world. Unfortunately when he swept into the room surrounded by his four minders, hardly anyone could see him. The minders were all at least six foot dwarfing his slight frame. But it didn’t matter, here he was, the great Italian film maker. The man behind the Fellini classics, the man who gave the world Barbarella and the remake of King Kong.

And what method of selection would this great wise man of cinema use? We waited with baited breath.

“I’ll take you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you and you…” He said as his finger pointed to twelve astonished but grateful egg heads. He then swept out of the room followed by his entourage. He had been inside the cupboard for the best part of fifteen seconds.

There was an instant angry reaction from the hundred-odd bald men who hadn’t been selected.

The assistant’s voice nervously tried to rise itself above the hubbub. “Right, thanks everyone for coming. The twelve that Mr De Laurentiis pointed at will remain; the others can go.”

I was one of the lucky dozen. Apparently, I heard later, there was almost a riot at the bus stop as bald men who had been polite and tranquil in the morning when told they could not ride the local bus were having none of it on the way back to the railway station. A driver almost got lynched.

I went on to enjoy some wonderful weeks at Elstree film studios doing my bit as a bald headed robot (humming variety) under the orders of General Kala (Mariangela Melato) and Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) in Flash Gordon. One day, Jack Nicholson who was filming The Shining came on to the floor to admire our elaborate spaceship set. He stood in the midst of us and asked “Did you guys shave your heads especially for the picture?”

Eleven heads nodded yes, but one head could not lie.