Michael Stroud

Narcy Calamatta writes:

Two old Maltese peasants, wearing cloth caps and standing on a street corner, where a tiny birdcage hangs, are having a private chat. They give me a surreptitious glance every time I walk to the drinks cabinet in our sitting room at home. The one wearing a short moustache is not unlike Wenzu of TV comedy fame. Michael Stroud’s shy signature is at the bottom right corner. Quite unique! There are not many paintings of his around.

The first time I worked artistically with Michael was on a Neil Simon comedy at the Manoel Theatre in 1963. We needed a stage-set of an ultra-modern, rich bachelor’s flat and he painted a giant mural of a nubile, naked female flying in the air. It caused a furore in conservative circles.

Michael was most amused in his irascible (and typical English sense of humour), tongue-in-cheek smile. We were good friends.

He was a young but fully fledged artist. Fr Marius Zerafa, an art guru and artistic director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, had asked me to encourage Michael to put up an exhibition. Michael found a theme: typical Maltese rural characters. One day, he came to me and told me he had to stop painting as he was contracted to go to Libya to work on The Message, a major film production, in the art department.

He asked me to find him a buyer. My two brothers, Josie Coppini and I scooped up one each.

The next I met Michael was when he was doing research at the Bibliotheca in Valletta for another big film production, Omar Muhktar Lion of the Desert, which was being filmed in Libya.

His job in the art department was to design all period weapons and Bedouin daggers decorated in mother of pearl and gold inlay.

I learned a lot from his method of research and, in return, I taught him how to make wine from sultanas. This made him the most popular man in the filming camp under the shadow of prohibition.

Our next job together was when Michael saved my skin when I was producing a Bollywood movie and we needed a giant octopus tentacle. I arranged for him to go to Cinecittà in Rome to learn the technique. The professional tradesmen took him out to a big lunch and when he got back the tentacle was ready.

They wouldn’t show him their trade secrets. He brought back the giant latex finger, which was too yellowish and also promptly broke to pieces during shooting under water. They had used recycled materials. I summoned the Italian expert and put Michael in charge of him. This time, Michael made sure fresh materials were used.

Michael mended a crack and when the latex burnt to black he applied some paint with a hot flattened metal spoon and glazed the pigment into the latex. He had discovered a novel way how to colour latex and went on to camouflage the whole five-metre long tentacle in various textured colours.

For the same movie we had used a real dead shark. The producer did not like it because it was too sleek and pretty. Overnight Michael produced a fibreglass monster some four metres long. It was ugly and big and fat, with a wicked large mouth full of rows of teeth. He hated it. As we launched it, still in wet paint, into the filming tank, Michael whispered to me: “Don’t tell anybody I made this.” The producer was scared to look at it. For him it was a realistic mythical demon. Michael assured him that the stiff fibreglass will not bite.

His humour was what made him so pleasant to work with. His resilience and ability to work intensely round the clock was what made him so indispensable on movie sets.

For Robert Altman, on the production of Popeye, Michael produced 12 sailing-ship figureheads of mermaids much larger than life. They were to seem sculpted from seasoned wood, with cracks where the dried wood had split with age.

Altman was so impressed by this work of art that he took them to Hollywood with him to enhance the scenery dock in his studio. Michael had made meticulous clay sculptures from which he cast moulds and then produced the shell in fibreglass. Even in close scrutiny, no one could tell they were not sculpted out of old wood.

At one stage, Michael was lured to his pet love to help restore some Renaissance muskets at the Grand Masters’ palace armoury.

What started as a one-off odd job, turned into a veritable career. Michael was in his seventh heaven and helped supervise the providential rehabilitation of the entire armoury display.

This museum has now become a significant international reference point of its kind.

The few of us who had the privilege of working with Michael in his artistic and creative world will never forget his humility and generosity in sharing his many extraordinary talents.

May he find eternal peace.