A YANK COMES BACK [Main Title]

Light-hearted documentary style film, written, produced, and starring actor Burgess Meredith who appears as an ex-Second World War US G.I., now filmmaker, touring Britain looking for inspiration for a script for his documentary about how the country is coping with the aftermath of war.

The film opens with “Mick Mike” street musician barrel organ player and cartoons drawn by Stephen Roth illustrating the ex-G.I. (Meredith’s) wartime service and return to the UK and a sung introduction the story of the film and “Freddy” and “Joe” the cameraman and assistant who walk past actress Paulette Goddard seated outside of film studio dressing room. “Joe” holds up a clapper board THE AIRPORT. Meredith exits a Pan American Airways Constellation aircraft. Clapper board NEXT SCENE IMMIGRATION OFFICE. Meredith explains to the seated immigration officer that he is visiting the country to make a film for His Majesty’s Government. Meredith becomes aware of the cameraman and assistant and explains that he is not ready to start filming as he has not written his script. Clapper board NEXT SCREEN GOVERNMENT INFORMATION OFFICE. Meredith exits a taxi in Trafalgar Square, with “Freddy” and “Joe” following him and filming. Shot of closed door of a Conference Room followed by shot as looking through the keyhole. Meredith seated at a table with five men discussing the script. Clapper board NEXT SCENE BUCKINGHAM PALACE. Panning shot of Buckingham Palace focusing in on actress Christine Norden in the crowd and using a mirror of a stick to see the Royal Family travelling in an open landau. Meredith and Norden push their way through the crowds and talk about his proposed film while seated on a part bench. Meredith then chats with the top hat wearing street musician barrel organ player “Mick Mike” and his assistant who recommend that Meredith takes the train to from Paddington to Cardiff if he wants to visit a coal mine. Dark interior shots in Paddington station. Shot at coal mine entrance and Meredith entering the lift with a coal miner – clapper board NEXT SCENE 750 YDS BELOW. The miner explains to Meredith that “everything depends on coal”. The miner and Meredith leave the pit and talk about the importance of coal and the need to increase production. Meredith takes a shower to remove the coal dust. Black board noting coal production figures OUT PUT PER MANSHIFT AT THE COAL FACE 1945 2.70 TONs 1946 2.76 TONS 2.85 TONS (end of reel/media item 1) Meredith thanks the miner for his help and gets on a bus for the steel mills. Meredith, frustrated that the cameraman and assistant are still following, tells them that his is going to climb to the top of a gas holder to get away from them. Shots from the gas holder looking over the smoking chimneys of the steel works. Meredith talks with a steel worker who tells him that production is going up, while the camera moves violently as if the cameraman was slipping from his vantage point on the side of the gas holder. Clapper board STEEL PRODUCTION TONS 1925 7 MILLION 1935 10 MILLION 1945 11, 800,000 1947 12, 500 000. Montage of shots of work and workers in a steel mill. Meredith exits the factory and jumps in the back of a passing removal lorry C.H. ROBERTS REMOVALS BEACONSFIELD. The cameraman and assistant request a lift from the driver of an open top car parked outside of the gates. Speeded-up shots of the car chasing Meredith in the lorry. Clapper board NATIONAL GAS TURBINE ESTABLISHMENT. Meredith looking at an engine part and talking with engineer (?) about production and the fact that the establishment is a place of research, with cameraman “Freddy” interrupting and stating that this is “the engine of the future” (the engineer introduces himself as the son of William Friese-Greene). Clapper board NEXT EXPERIMENTAL FLYING FIELD. Meredith pretends to attack assistant “Joe” and talks with “Freddy” about his script. Clapperboard NEXT SCENE ATOMIC FISSURE., immediately followed by CENSORED across the screen. Meredith says he want to see jet planes, followed by a brief shot of the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing in flight and Meredith in a factory shed looking over the production of a Bristol Brabazon. Meredith exiting a car by the side of horse-drawn United Dairies milk cart. Clapper board JUVENILE EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGE. Meredith talking with a female employee, and a boy and two girls, about their experiences and what the exchange offers (end of reel/ media item 2) Actress Paulette Goddard exits a large house in front of Meredith who is walking along the street distracted and thinking about his script. He stops her stating that he is looking for a typically English housewife, she takes his book and signs her autograph and looks confused as he walks away and then gets in cab and calls playfully “oh Yank, if you don’t find what you are looking for why don’t you come home and see me sometime”. As the cab drives away Meredith realises and looks back and shouts at the camera “why didn’t you tell me”, to which “Freddy” replies “oh you’re no ideal husband Yank”. Fast travelling shots along country roads. Clapper board A STREET IN ANY TOWN. Meredith talking with a milkman by his small milk van about the increase in milk production followed by “Freddy “talking about the increase in milk production going to infant children and expectant mothers. The milkman introduces Meredith to Mrs Jones (who is expecting a baby) and they both sit in the rear of the milk van as he drives off. Clapper board NEXT SCENE PRENATAL CLINIC TAKE 1. Mrs Jones and Meredith walk through the gates of a Maternity and Child Welfare Anti Natal Clinic. Brief montage of film clips of British countryside and bomb damage followed by brief shots a small children, Meredith and Mrs Jones, parents and children receiving bottles of orange juice, Meredith watching as a young boy is treated by a dentist, children washing and playing in a nursery, group of mothers holding up their babies for the camera. A midwife on a bicycle arriving at a suburban house with an anxious man waiting in the front garden. After the midwife and man hurriedly enter the house, Meredith tiptoes into the garden and listens at the window then smiles when hearing a baby cry with “Freddy” off-camera stating, “whatever else you say about us Yank, you can’ ne say that there is no production here”. The man comes out of the door and excitedly exclaims “a boy - we are going to calling him Winston Atlee Antony Bevan Jones”. Montage of brief shots of babies, young girls and boys, school children and young workers. Brief scenes of a mother trying to persuade her son to drink milk, with Meredith looking on “Freddy” then appears and pinches the boy’s nose to make him drink. Clapper board NEXT SCENE. Meredith approaches a group of women queuing outside saying that he is looking for a typical English housewife, one woman complains about the ration system and then the shop owner tells then that his has little meat available but does have tripe. The woman exclaims that she can’t do her work on tripe and Meredith ask her what her work is, and she agrees to show him – with the next shot inside a house showing her lifting weights and showing her muscles and picking Meredith up in her arms. Clapper board TYPICAL HOUSEWIFE FARMER! shot of farmer in a hay barn. Farmer talks to Meredith complaining that he can’t get spare part for his tractor and spends a large amount of his time filling-in forms but also agreeing with government controls “the farmer knows what he is going to get for various controlled products and housewives know what she is going to pay for them” (end of reel/media item 3) Brief speeded-up shot to of a train. Meredith approaches a woman in textile factory, who is looking at plans on a table. Meredith explains that he is doing a preliminary survey on textile production, which prompt the woman to lecture Meredith on surveys, committees and government “snooping”. After Meredith explains that he is movie man, she sits down with him and explains shortages, increased prices for imports and increased exports, in a rather confused comic turn. She ends up collapsing in Meredith arms with Meredith stating “all the best textile is made in England” (End of reel/media item 4) Meredith exits a telephone box and exclaims to the camera (and “Freddy”) that he has no script and after three weeks has “not a foot of film”. Clapper board PAUSE WHILE YANK COOLS DOWN. “Freddy” approaches Meredith and tell him that he will show him how people in Britain cheer themselves up when they have the “blues”, montage of very brief sequences including - large crowd at a stadium, female ice-skater, trees in blossom, beer being poured from a barrel, football players, motorcycle racers, pole-vaulter, Meredith and “Freddy” on bicycles, Monkey riding a pony in a circus ring, group inside an art gallery, man and woman walking along a street at dusk, cricket match, dancehall, man drinking from an oversized bottle of “Friary Ale”, boxing match, beauty contest winner, rugby match, man sleeping in a deckchair with newspaper over his face, view of bridge and church, women stacking hay, horse race, young man and young woman looking at racing programme, river in hillside, Meredith playing darts in a pub and raising his glass of beer to the camera. Meredith salutes the base of the plinth for the statue to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Grosvenor Square (still under construction), bemoaning the fact that he still does not have a script and explains his idea for the films to be titled “The Wounded Lion”, with the lion being the symbol of Britain rising again from its wartime wounds and remising of his time as a G.I. Close-up of the face of the statue of Roosevelt. “Freddy” offers to show Meredith some of the “odds and ends he has been filming” before he leaves. Clapper board PROJECTION THEATRE. “Freddy” and Meredith looking at the previous scene. Meredith runs to a taxi with his luggage and beckons “Freddy” for a close-up and says to camera “well as long as you are going to print this thing, will you let me say a few words of my own – thanks. Well, this is very difficult. The way I see it, you’ve had a bad war – a total war, which has cost you so much in blood and pounds that you should have collapsed afterwards, but you haven’t. It’s got a lot of other people down and confused: but it certainly hasn’t got you, and that’s fooled the experts. I get the impression that maybe you’ll never be as rich as you were. I don’t know. But what you have is going to be enjoyed by more people that it used to, and to me that’s a brave new world. I don’t know anybody else that’s doing it as well. Now, that’s the kind of thing you put on film. In the first place, you see, so few people would believe you; none of the British would – not even if the script was written by Shakespeare and polished by Walt Whitman, because it doesn’t make sense that this old lion should have gotten up out of his sick-bed. But he has, whether you know it or not. I could hear him all the time I was walking round Britain. I could hear him stretching and practising his vocal cords, and licking his wounds; and any minute now the world is going to hear him get up on his haunches and roar like hell, and rush right straight at the camera”. “Freddy” says goodbye to Meredith and with “Mick Mike” the street barrel organ player and his assistant signals to the camera to pan up to one of the Landseer lions at the base of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square to the soundtrack of a lion’s roar.

35mm