Early Years

John Piesse Coates was born on 7 November 1927, between the wars. A good year for champagne! It was also a seminal year for communication, and heralded some big changes in media and technology. It was the year of the first ever Oscar, the first transatlantic phone call – New York City to London – and the year of the Jazz Singer, widely regarded as the first talking picture, which opened to rave reviews. That movie effectively killed the silent movie era; ironic considering that the wordless 'Snowman' was to make John more famous than any of his other films. How he made the transition from schoolboy to eventual celebrated producer has been a fabulous odyssey and the subject of this book.

John was fortunate enough to be born into wealth. His mother was the money because she was a Rank, the family that made its initial fortune from flour milling and later, Rank Films. As a young boy, John admired his entrepreneurial Uncle Jimmy, by all accounts an illustrious character. He was a millionaire even back then and John remembers him fondly as a man who enjoyed racing, had plenty of girlfriends and liked a drink. The impassioned Uncle Jimmy was a fun influence on his young nephew, who has forever kept a love of horses, pretty women and the odd tipple, and not necessarily in that order. John's Uncle Arthur, on the other hand, was a strict Methodist and teetotal, a way of life that proved an anathema to John.

In contrast to his well-heeled mother, John's father, Major Coates, came from more humble stock. He was a chartered surveyor by profession but had been a flyer during WWI, which had a profound influence on the young John who developed a life-long love of all things military. The Major's army career ended abruptly when he was shot down in France by one of the much-feared Richthofen Circus, perhaps even by the infamous Red Baron himself. His plane tumbled into a shell hole and the wings stuck, cushioning his fall and saving his life, though he had a nasty gun shot wound on his leg afterwards.

One of four siblings, John was closer in age to his sister Anne (the Oscar winning film editor Anne V. Coates) than his older brothers, Michael and David. John and Anne shared a love of horses with their mother who kept show ponies and encouraged them to take part in competitions, in which they excelled. There were two major events: The International was held indoor at Olympia and Richmond Royal horse show was in the open air. Anne won the title champion rider of England (1938) and John claimed the crown the following year, 1939, age 12.

Anne was a rebel; she ran away from school at a young age and was always in trouble, which John loved because it kept the parental heat off him. David joined the family flour milling business, where the tradition was to work your way up from the factory floor, grafting, humping sacks of flour around. John was having none of that, though it was to be many years before he followed his sister andjoined the other family firm, Rank Films.

As a youngster, John lived in a bubble. He had a privileged life and thought having a houseful of servants and private grounds to run around in was the norm. His mother, better known affectionately in the family as "Pussyfoot" based on a 'wireless' character at the time, had a no-nonsense Yorkshire upbringing and ran the household and an army of staff with military efficiency. They lacked a butler, but the family seemed to have everything else: cook, maids and nannies, even an under nanny, a groom, a stable boy, a gardener and an under gardener, a chauffer and a mechanic. Over the years, "Pussy" managed all the domestic problems of her eccentric children as well as those of her many staff.

John's nanny, Evelyn, played a big part in his life. He was fond of his mum and dad, but it was Eve, as she was known, who looked after him in the years up to boarding school and to whom he was very attached. She worked on for his mother for many years and finally married Harris, the Head Groom. They had two daughters who went on to start up a very successful equestrian centre of their own.

While John was still in short trousers, the family moved to the country to Crutchfield Farm, a small Elizabethan manor house near Gatwick. Here, he acquired his love of rural life and grew from boy to young man. The Coates had two farms, both dairy and several hundred acres between them, and had moved into the country "to be seen to be" according to John. The family never farmed them, of course, tenant farmers did that, but they were a godsend during the war years, providing lots of milk, chickens' eggs and guinea fowl.

He had a few years of bucolic peace before Germany had the affront to invade Poland, provoking the Second World War on September 1st 1939. Soon afterwards, John was given a four ten shot gun, complete with very long barrel and known as a poachers' gun. He had to keep the larder full of game, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, and often went out hunting with his dogs, an ill assorted team of Springer spaniel, a Dalmatian, hopeless until he trained it, and a Lurcher that Anne bought from gypsies. In the end, they became three intrepid hunting dogs and John spent many happy days in the fields catching his quarry – even the wealthy had to cope with rationing ...

His family had to get used to the inconvenience of war. Although wealth kept things ticking along more normally than for people of moderate means, reality hit home when, one inevitable day, the air raid siren went off. In true blitz spirit and showing her Yorkshire mettle, John recalls his mum protesting: "I am not building an air raid shelter. If they're going to bomb me, they'll bomb...