The war years saw him work on the prosthetics used to transform Roger Livesey into a balding, pot-bellied blusterer in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
He reckons that - by putting all his life savings into the pot - he and his partner have enough cash to hold out for a year before they will go bankrupt.
Whenever you start working for a company, there are a number of things to learn about during your first few months that can make life easier: how to make a new pot of coffee, who knows where the office supplies are, and any internal politics that could blow up in your face.
One of his first employees was Douglas Ginsburg, who later in life would have to abandon his nomination by President Reagan to the Supreme Court because he had smoked pot.