Once was in the film “The Seventh Veil” (where he sorted out the mixed emotions of Ann Todd enabling her to live happily ever after with James Mason), and the other was in the TV series The Human Jungle. Both times with great success.

“The Seventh Veil” was one of the best films of the postwar years. While The Human Jungle, where Herbert played the part of Dr. Roger Corder, brought him in a fan mail of 2,000 letters a week — mainly from women who saw him as the small screen’s answer to their human problems.

His success can be measured by the fact that Lom has played every part from the heaviest of villains (he’s just finished Simon Legree in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) to the lightest of comedians (with Peter Sellers in “A Shot In The Dark”).

Mr. Lom has carved a definite niche for himself in screen history. His versatile talent shines through whatever the role he’s playing.

Sometimes he’s the kind-hearted friend of the heroine, providing a clean white handkerchief and a sturdy shoulder for her to cry on. But seldom, if ever, does he get the girl.

Mr. Lom is no swashbuckler. He doesn’t look dashing or even romantic. But he does look intelligent. And the appeal he undoubtedly has for women has little to do with sex-appeal.

Herbert Lom’s attraction is definitely of the mind—intellectual and not physical.

If the Lom charm is based on brain-power rather than looks, it has certainly served to his advantage. He came to this country as a drama student from Prague 25 years ago and his services as an actor are still very much in demand.

He can talk of many things — the arts, the sciences, politics, history, travel, philosophy. But as we sat in his London home — a Victorian villa in Kensington in which, nevertheless, he houses his collection of madly modern paintings — we talked about Christmas trees.

Mr. Lom has two away-from-it-all pursuits. He paints, and he grows Christmas trees on his farm in Kent. “When I was looking for a farm some years ago, I couldn’t see myself breeding animals, and the Christmas trees which came with the farm seemed a nice idea.

“I make a little money out of them and I’m very interested in forestry as a result. I am inclined to get involved in whatever I’m doing because an actor just can’t help doing so. Surely, the whole business of acting is to get behind the character you’re playing, so that for a time you become that person.

“When I played Napoleon I read everything I could lay my hands on about him and his campaigns.”

“And when you play a psychiatrist?” I asked.

“Ah yes. When I played my first psychiatrist I happened to be deeply interested in the subject of psycho-analysis because I had a friend who had recently taken such treatment, and I really wanted to be able to be of some help. Besides which. I’ve always had a latent feeling for the mysteries of the subconscious.

“I even got a doctor friend to teach me how to hypnotise myself — all medical-students are taught hypnosis, you know. I had the rather selfish notion that by self-hypnosis I could cut down the time I usually took to learn a part from two to three weeks to two to three days.

“And for quite a few of the parts I played I did use hypnosis. So perhaps I do understand Dr. Corder’s motives a little more than I might be expected to. “Not that I would attempt – even if I had the time — to try to solve the problems of the women who write to me. I send them a sympathetic letter pointing out that I am an actor, not a qualified doctor and suggest that they seek professional advice. I can only hope that, in such cases, every little word of understanding helps.”

There was one other thing. In his middle years, after nearly 20 years of marriage and two growing sons, did he think — this most understanding of men – that his wife understood him?

“About half of the time, I would say,” he said. “Of course, the other half, I don’t want to be understood!”

A galaxy of guest stars

Dr. Roger Corder, the sympathetic psychiatrist with the mischievous teenage daughter, is back. He returns this week in a new 13-part series, exploring The Human Jungle.

Herbert Lom (Corder) and Sally Smith (Jennifer) resume their father-daughter relationship; Michael Johnson (Dr. Jimmy Davis) is again Corder’s assistant. Mary Yeomans (Nancy Hamilton) is his secretary.

A galaxy of film and theatre stars will make guest appearances.

Joan Collins, Sylvia Syms, Margaret Lock-wood, Flora Robson, Richard Johnson, Rita Tushingham, Peggy Cummins, Sonia Dresdel… are some of them.

Corder is faced with a wide variety of strange human jig-saw puzzles during the series. Among them are:

Why should an ageing, lonely schoolmistress receive menacing blackmail threats? … what is the story behind the long list of street accidents that keep happening to a young girl? … who is responsible for the mysterious fire in the home of a wealthy young couple? All the stories originate from real-life cases. To ensure accuracy a 35-year-old psychiatrist from Manchester has watched the series being made. He told me: “It has been my job to ensure that the stories have not been ‘over-dramatised’.”

The first episode in the new series, “Struggle for a Mind,” has Joan Collins as guest star, with Margaret Whiting, Kay Walsh and Clifford Evans in support.

Joan Collins (in her first acting appearance on British TV) plays a young woman who tries to commit suicide.

Corder’s plan to lead her back to sanity conflicts with the ideas of Dr. Tate, who is in charge of the case. But both have reckoned without the girl’s warped and hostile family.

The post In the ‘jungle’ of human emotions appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

An excerpt from ABC TV in Focus, a book given to potential advertisers in February 1963.

Programmes are moving pictures, music, voices-and captions, animated cartoons, still photographs, graphic designs. Studio cameras, gramophone records, magnetic tapes and microphones can take care of the former. But some other form of picture and sound device is necessary for the screening of filmed programmes like The Human Jungle, the animated triangle symbol that introduces every ABC production, complex caption and graphic design effects, and the slotting in of sequences that can be shot more easily and economically with a film camera.

The need for such a device led naturally to the development of telecine; in its simplest form a single-lens camera aimed at an image produced by a film projector. In its most highly developed form (a refinement of one of the earliest scanning devices used by Baird) it does away with the projected image and instead directs a spot of light – along a pattern identical to that followed by the electron beam that creates the picture on a television screen – through the film and onto a photo-electric cell. Each of these latest telecine units – there are three at Teddington – consists of a flying-spot projector, two machines for presenting 35 and 16mm film, and a slide carrier. All can be pre-loaded, and selected and operated from the control suite requiring the picture feed. Allied to each telecine unit is a caption scanning unit. This too can be pre-loaded and controlled by a Vision Mixer in any of the production control suites.

In it are two caption holders shaped like paddle wheels and each capable of presenting any one of sixteen captions, still photographs, or pieces of graphic design at the touch of a button; a VTR clock, an ABC-designed-and-built device for identifying video tape recordings and cueing the studio at the start of ‘transmission’ runs; and a roller-caption machine, used mainly for the moving ‘credits’ at the end of a programme. Each has its own light source and is scanned by a single vidicon camera through a multiplicity of prisms as it is selected and illuminated. As with other sources, the feed from each telecine/caption suite must be monitored; skilfully adjusted for perfect picture quality before being passed to the bank of pre-view screens in the Director’s suite. This is the Telecine Operator’s job. Following the studio through monitor and ‘talk-back’, alone in almost permanent twilight, he is alert for the cue ‘roll telecine!’

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The post The Human Jungle appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Jack Hedley and Billie Whitelaw in the award-winning Armchair Theatre production.

Police Surgeon

Ian Hendry as Dr Geoffrey Brent attending to the wounded in the cop drama.

Our House

Hattie Jaques and Charles Hawtrey in Norman Hudis’s comedy about surreal boarding house residents.

The Human Jungle

Herbert Lom as the psychiatrist who can’t stay professionally detached from those he hopes to help.

Glamour all the way

Acceptable then, cringe-worthy now, the first Miss TVTimes contest is judged by Patrick Macnee and Adam Faith and won by Valerie Martin.

Redcap

John Thaw fights crime in the army as a member of the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch.

World of Sport

Saturday afternoons mean sport – and owning ITV’s largest Outside Broadcast fleet means ABC brings you the programme, fronted by Eamonn Andrews.

Public Eye

Alfred Burke as the private eye with no gun and no mobsters lurking.

Intrigue

Edward Judd fights industrial espionage.

The Phantom Lover

David Buck appears in a supernatural drama series Mystery and Imagination, in this story opposite Virginia McKenna.

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

CS Lewis’s timeless classic, adored by children and adults alike.

Photographs: TVTimes/ABC/ITA

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