Lunch with Lester

Abstract

Richard Lester is checking a scene from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum on a moviola in the cutting room at Twickenham Film Studios. His editor, John Victor Smith, shuts off the dual tracks and leans back thoughtfully. Lester has traded in the suntans and old sweaters of his roving days for black tailored trousers, slim and tapered, black pullover jersey and doe-skin suede jacket. His forehead recedes into a prematurely bald dome. Wisps of reddish-brown hair protrude from a thinning fringe, giving him the look of a precocious maestro. After eleven years in London, his accent is what Englishmen call mid-Atlantic, a cadence neither Oxbridge nor standard American but something in between. His smile, reminding you of the early Fernandel, is strictly send-up. He looks like a character from one of his films.