Monday, December 6, 2010

How Film Director Morgan Hutchins got his name



Me and my Allard, watching traffic outside the new flat
         I'd never realized until I was shuffling through some stuff and saw the photo on the left. I thought I'd just made it up, had had an idea for the incoming kid's name out of the blue. 

        Laurence must have shot that picture with my camera that sunny afternoon when we drove over to see Laurence and Pat Hutchin’s new flat on Pond Street across from the Royal Free Hospital.   Pat was expecting their first child in a few weeks and their new flat in Hampstead was a big step up. Pat was beautiful and Laurence was handsome. They were both gifted artists and the kid was going to be a great kid.
Karen twirls her Isadora Duncan scarf as
Bob gets the cover out of the boot in case of rain.









         Pat was on her way to being famous for her first children's book, Rosie’s Walk and world famous for her more than 25 books, novels and plays .  Laurence was an art director at JWT and would be famous as a commercial film director. Here’s a beauty called The Red Balloon he did for a new town called Milton Keynes.

           So they were just beginning careers that would take them all over the world and happily expecting their first child.  But they couldn’t agree on a name.  They knew the baby would be a boy, but John or Alan or Henry or William, or Keith . . . they’d been squabbling  about names for months and getting nowhere. Both of them stubborn as mules.  Or, more accurately, as stubborn as artists. 

Proud Daddy making a silly face. Pat with Morgan a wee bump.
             Their flat had a spectacular view and a small terrace where we looked out over London as had lunch and wine.  They both kept trying to get us to choose a name that the other one didn’t like.  And out of the blue I said, “how about Morgan?”  Pat liked it because morgan means morning in German. And Laurence liked it because it was the name of a roarty British sports car. 

           But who knew that the London Film Director, Morgan Hutchins, who is working on his first feature (‘The Postman’ Written by Harry Hill,) was named by a car that was blue.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I loved reading your reminiscences Bob. Laurence often spoke of you with great fondness. I think of him every day and am so grateful for what we shared. Jill