By Peter Tonguette
The soundscapes conjured by British-born sound re-recording mixer Doug Turner range from the whir of whitewater rapids of “Deliverance” (1972) to the clang of swords and shields in “Excalibur” (1981) to the myriad moody sounds in the classic television series “The X-Files.”
No matter what sort of sound world he sought to create, Turner, who died on May 5 at the age of 93, approached his work with professionalism, good taste, and an abundance of charm.
“He enjoyed working with directors, and figuring out the moods, the soundscapes, and their goals with a film, and then collaborating with the sound supervisor and making sure that they got the sound the director wanted,” said his widow, Justine Turner. “He loved the people he worked with. He always used to say about his work: ‘It’s not a job—it’s my hobby.’ He loved what he did.”
And the people Turner worked with loved their colleague in return: In the course of a career in motion pictures that ran from the early 1960s to the turn of the millennium, Turner served as a dubbing or re-recording mixer on numerous films for leading directors. His collaborators included Golden Age veterans such as Otto Preminger (“Rosebud”) and Blake Edwards (“The Return of the Pink Panther”), as well as the leading lights of the British New Wave, among them Lindsay Anderson (“O Lucky Man!”), Ken Russell (“Savage Messiah”), and David Greene (“I Start Counting”). He also frequently teamed with American directors who found themselves working on the British Isles, including with Robert Altman on “Images” (1972) and Richard Donner on “The Omen” (1976).
Above all, Turner relished his collaborations with John Boorman on a series of films that included “Deliverance” and “Excalibur,” and David Lynch, with whom he collaborated on the late auteur’s first studio production, the true-life tale “The Elephant Man” (1980), starring John Hurt. In each case, Turner appreciated the sound knowledge of his directors.
In the case of “Deliverance,” Justine Turner said, her husband used innovative means to create the sonic environment of the film, which focuses on a group of ill-equipped but confident urbanites (Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty) who find themselves ultimately unable to contend with the environment, and the inhabitants, of rural Georgia. The film deserves its status as a classic in part due to its evocation of the place—how it looked and what it sounded like.
Justine Turner, an assistant sound editor who later enjoyed a long career in the trailer department at Walt Disney Studios, remembered her husband telling her that, on “Deliverance,” the sound crew was having difficulty capturing the way Boorman wanted the river to sound. “Doug said they actually used, for the first time he thought, a Moog synthesizer to create some of the water and river effects,” Justine Turner recalled.
Born in Richmond, a town in London, in 1931, Turner had an unusually tumultuous and eventful upbringing. After being given up by his parents, Turner was taken in by a foster family. As a young man, he found work as a projectionist in the Odeon Cinemas theater chain. While in the army, Turner met Jacques De Lane Lea, whose father owned De Lane Lea Studios in London. Upon the conclusion of his military service, Turner parlayed his projectionist experience into a job at the studio. “One day, they had a mixer who got sick,” Justine Turner said. “Jacques came to Doug and said, ‘Do you think you can mix some projects?’ He said he would give it a try and if the producer liked his mixes, they could pay him, but if they didn’t, he wouldn’t charge. The producer said, ‘Not only did I like the job that Doug did, but I don’t want anybody else to mix any of my projects ever.’” Turner ended up working for 19 years at De Lane Lea Studios as a mixer.
Turner quickly advanced through the ranks of the British film industry. Some of his earliest notable films include Stanley Donen’s “Bedazzled” (1967), Anderson’s “If . . .” (1968), and Stephen Frears’s “Gumshoe” (1971). “He was really great friends with almost all the directors and people that he worked with because of his talent and he was funny,” Justine Turner said. “He was easy to get along with.”
In 1986, Turner relocated to Hollywood from his house on the Amazon, where he had been living after doing the production sound on Boorman’s film “The Emerald Forest” (1985). He had been tasked with building a mixing stage for Cannon Films, with whom he had had an association in London. The following year, Justine Turner met her future husband while preparing a Chuck Norris movie at Cannon. “I was the first assistant in sound, and I heard that he wanted to use English cue sheets,” Justine Turner said. “I strolled down to the mix stage, and he was in the machine room. I said, ‘Oh, I hear you want us to use English cue sheets’—which are color-coded and are completely different than American cue sheets. And I said, ‘You know, I’m just here to tell you it’s not gonna happen.’ That’s how we met.”
Three weeks later, the couple was engaged, and three months after that, they were married. Having permanently relocated to California, Turner continued to work on films and, increasingly, in American television. He accumulated credits on “The X Files,” “L.A. Law,” and numerous made-for-TV movies. Previously nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Sound Track for “Deliverance,” Turner was among the sound crew nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Sound Mixing for a Drama Series for “The X Files.” On the night of the ceremony, Justine was nine months pregnant with their daughter, Sierra Rose, and initially wasn’t going to accompany him to the ceremony. He said he wouldn’t go unless she went with him, and she replied, “I just have a feeling you are going to win, so I am going to have to find a tent to wear.” The couple went, and he won. “I was so glad that I went because it was one of the few times he ever got recognition for his career,” Justine Turner said. Sierra Rose was born when Doug was 65 and Justine was 44. “We settled here,” Justine said. “He never went back to England after we got married.”
For his final film with Boorman, Turner worked on the prize-winning biopic “The General,” starring Brendan Gleeson as Irish crime figure Martin Cahill. In his review, Variety film critic Derek Elley singled out Turner’s work on the film: “A special nod is also due to Brendan Deasy and Douglas E. Turner’s digital soundtrack, which keeps the moderately accented dialogue clear at all times and proves that incomprehensibility . . . need not be a byword for accuracy.” Turner then went into retirement. By then, Justine was working full-time at Disney, and Doug relished devoting all of his time to their daughter. “He enjoyed being home with her, and he also started volunteering at an elementary school, teaching kids how to read, and doing other activities,” she said. “He also taught after-school soccer classes and coached soccer for a local U10 children’s league.”
In addition to his wife Justine and their daughter Sierra Rose, Turner is survived by his three children from his first marriage, Steve, Malcolm, and Glenis.
