A Pembrokeshire pensioner has recalled how she brushed shoulders with Hollywood royalty during the filming of director John Huston’s classic movie Moby Dick in 1954.

Having been hired as a 16-year-old make-up girl, the then Margaret Underwood found herself working alongside Hollywood legends Gregory Peck, Leo Genn and Richard Basehart when Moulin Productions took over the Fishguard Bay Hotel for several months.

“The whole of Fishguard was caught up in the filming,” she remembers. “It created such a sensation in the Twin Towns and so many people became involved.”

Now an 87-year-old widow living at Cherry Grove, Haverfordwest, Margaret Andrews is delighted to learn the 70th anniversary of the cinematic release of John Huston’s classic 1956 movie will be celebrated by Fishguard and Goodwick’s Ar Ymyl y Tir/On Land’s Edge Festival in September.

Margaret Andrews, 87, fondly recalls working with Hollywood legends during the 1954 filming of Moby Dick in Pembrokeshire.
Margaret Andrews, 87, fondly recalls working with Hollywood legends during the 1954 filming of Moby Dick in Pembrokeshire. (Mike Lewis)

And she will be among special guests attending the launch of a Moby Dick exhibition at Theatr Gwaun on Tuesday, September 1 (5 to 6.30pm).

Margaret can vividly remember enjoying some of the ‘perks’ of the make-up job – whether it was dining on the finest cuisine prepared by an array of top chefs ferried in from London or being taxied back to her parents’ Fishguard home in the back of a Rolls Royce.

“I was a pupil in the lower sixth form at Fishguard secondary school,” she said. “Paul, my boyfriend – who later became my husband – was about to go to university.

“One day he said he’d been given a job with the new film company and was going to help them ‘make scars for Moby Dick’. I must have been a bit envious as he promised to get me a job as well.

“I ended up in the make-up department at the Bay and I was absolutely terrified.

“I was an only child, very nervous and shy, and the news that a movie about Moby Dick was going to be filmed locally caused quite a hullabaloo.

“When I arrived on my first day I found the entire ground floor had been converted into make-up rooms.

Gregory Peck – who played Captain Ahab
Gregory Peck – who played Captain Ahab (Mike Lewis)

“When the cast went off on a day’s shoot I’d have to tidy up the make-up rooms and get them all spick and span again.

“Gregory Peck – who played Captain Ahab – was such a lovely man. If you’re ever seen the film To Kill A Mockingbird he was exactly like the character he portrayed on screen.

“The film shoots depended so much on the weather, so Gregory Peck might be made up and gone, yet only two hours later he would be back and his make-up had to be re-done all over again!”

*See onlandsedge.co.uk for further info.