At last - the film of the book

by David Whetstone, Culture

A Newcastle writer's novel which should have been a film in the 1940's is to reach our screen in 2008. David Whestone reports.

FILM director Bharat Nalluri (that’s him in the trilby) is talking to me from a set in New York. He is between ‘takes’ in a new TV pilot he is shooting for ABC.

Amiable chap that he is, he has managed to find the time to cast his mind back a couple of years to when he was directing Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, a feature film due for a UK release in August.

But obligingly he agrees to regress a little further, to when he was a pupil at Newcastle Royal Grammar School. The family had moved to the UK from India in 1971 and settled in Rowlands Gill.

Had young Bharat walked out of the front gates of the RGS in Jesmond and proceeded in a north easterly direction for about 15 minutes, he would have found himself at Matthew Bank. Possibly he would have been right outside the home of Mrs Winfred Pickering (née Watson) who, 70 years ago, was feted as the author of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.

“It’s a wonderful coincidence,” says Bharat.

“It was fantastic when I found out she’d been living in Jesmond practically all of my life. I was probably living right next door to her at one point. Her son even went to my school.”

There are two stories wrapped up in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day – the story it tells and the story behind  it.

The former has already proved itself a winner; the latter is no less fascinating and charming, full of triumph and tragedy.

Both illustrate the unpredictability of life and the power of serendipity – the way things sometimes work out for the best.

Back in 2000, I had a call from a woman at a London publishing company called Persephone which had been set up to reissue forgotten literary gems.

One of the titles they had found was Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, published in 1938. It had been written by one Winifred Watson. They found a phone number and, more in hope than expectation, rang it.

A voice answered. “Would it be possible to talk to Winifred Watson?” asked the caller. “I am she,” came the reply.

And so Mrs Winifred Pickering, widow of a timber merchant, was ushered back into the limelight more than 50 years after she had stopped writing for good with just six novels to her name.

I went to interview her, having been briefed first by her son, Keith Pickering, who had recently retired from his job with Guinness.

He told me, with affectionate amusement, about his mother’s smoking habit and fondness for a whisky. He said that up until recently, she had been thriving and as bright as a button at the age of 93, but had been set back by the shock of a burglary at her home.

But she was happy to be interviewed and was able to recall the enthusiastic reception given to Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.

It was her fourth book. Her others had been historical and had mainly rustic settings.

This one, straight out of her imagination, was sparkling, contemporary and a little risqué.

It unfolds over 24 hours and tells what happens when Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, a spinster who has led a sheltered life, is sent to the wrong address by an employment agency. Instead of finding a frazzled mum with young kids, she encounters a glamorous young actress, Miss Delysia Lafosse.

Miss LaFosse, the story goes, “had as many male admirers as Miss Pettigrew had had children to watch over in her long years as governess”.

But Miss Pettigrew sorts her out, advising on the suitors, deftly disposing of the cocaine in the bathroom and having a rip-roaring good time along the way.

A reviewer at the time called it “jolly, deliciously naughty and frolicsome”. Another called it “the type of book that will bring joy to every woman’s heart”.

Winifred was chuffed to bits because her publisher, initially, had been dubious about it, considering it too racy. Through a swirl of cigarette smoke, she told me, a triumphant glint in her eye: “I knew it would be a success. I remember telling them they were wrong.”

The book was a success here and in America where Hollywood picked it up. A film was due to be made with Billie Burke, who went on to play Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard Of Oz, lined up to play Miss Pettigrew.

Then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, America joined the war and feature film projects were shelved in favour of propaganda material.

Back in Newcastle, the Pickerings’ home was also bombed. Photographs from the time show the devastation.

In 2000 Winifred Watson recalled how mysterious intuition had made her bring baby Keith down from his cot upstairs just before the bomb obliterated her home’s upper floor.

Forced to move in with relatives, her writing slowed and eventually stopped.

“You have to be alone if you are writing,” she explained. “Also, I had the baby. I just stopped writing and I never took it up again. I forgot all about it. I suppose I couldn’t be bothered to write any more.”

Mrs Pickering (aka Winifred Watson) died in 2002, happy that her book had been well received all over again.

But she wasn’t to know that history was repeating itself and that the film version of the book was once again on the cards.

Neither could she know that the long-awaited film of her book would be directed by 43-year-old Bharat Nalluri who used to go to school along the road.

From New York, Bharat explains that since leaving Newcastle, he has done a lot of work for Kudos Film & Television whose joint managing director, Stephen Garrett, is the producer of Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.

“I was the original director of the pilot for their show which became Spooks and I created the show called Hustle. Then I did the pilot for Life On Mars.”

Bharat, who when in Newcastle directed the films Downtime and Killing Time, was also the man behind a mini-series called Tsunami: The Aftermath, for which he earned an Emmy Award nomination.

“We were known for doing action stuff but this was something very different,” says Bharat. “They gave me a book and a script and I thought both were great.

“That was before I knew Winifred Watson had lived in Newcastle. It was just a coincidence.”

Naturally modest, he says the book “does a lot of the work for you” as director.

“It is very light, which is why people love it. It’s a fun book and we tried to remain true to that.”

Frances McDormand, cast as Miss Pettigrew, knew the novel and loved it. Amy Adams, who recently starred in Enchanted, was delighted to play Delysia.

Bharat tinkered only slightly, developing some of the male characters - played by the likes of Lee Pace, Ciaran Hinds and Mark Strong – and moving the setting from 1938 to 1939.

“It’s set on the day Britain goes to war, just to give it a little bit more pathos and some historical context. It’s set in London and Britain is on the brink. Everyone was going to parties and having a great time but it’s as if they are dancing on the deck of the Titanic.”

Bharat removed the cocaine scene. “It didn’t work in the film we were making. Cocaine was almost regarded as a health product then.”

He reveals that he directed the film in a haze of love, having become engaged to More4 news anchor Kylie Morris.

The film, he says, has been “incredibly well received in America”. And there is “a little bit of homage to a Geordie accent in there because Lee Pace, who’s a bit of a dashing Darcy character, picked up my accent when we were filming”.

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (certificate PG) is to be released by Momentum Pictures on August 15.