All language subtitles for Intro to Byline A Dinner At Noon

Dinner at Noon is a film about a hotel.

I've had unfortunate
experiences in hotels.

I was once invited to Claridge's
by the late John Huston

in order to discuss
a script he'd sent me.

The script was bulky,
and that was what he wanted to discuss,

and looked like a small parcel.

Seeing it, and I suppose, me,

the commissionaire insisted
I use the tradesman's entrance.

On another occasion, during the run of
Beyond the Fringe in New York in 1 96 3,

Dudley Moore and I took refuge
from a storm in the Hotel Pierre,

where we were spotted
by an assistant manager.

Saying that there'd been
a spate of thefts from rooms recently,

he asked us to leave.

A small argument ensued,
in the course of which

an old man and his wife stomped past,

whereupon the assistant manager
left off abusing us

in order to bow to him.
It was Stravinsky.

We were then thrown out.

Dinner at Noon is a documentary
about the Crown Hotel in Harrogate,

which Jonathan Stedall and I made
for the BBC TV series Byline

in April 1 988.

In the year of Fawlty Towers,

it might seem folly to try and say
anything more on the subject

of the roles of staff and guests
in a hotel.

And certainly it became plain
in the first two days of filming

that a respectable study of hotel life
would take much longer

than the 1 0 days we were due to shoot.

And the finished film certainly
wasn't the one we set out to make,

and I hadn't intended Dinner at Noon
to be as personal or as revealing

as it turned out to be.

Or perhaps the intention had been
at the back of my mind

and this was just
a roundabout way of getting there.