Norman Spencer, co-writer and producer

I first met David Lean in 1942. I was a gofer at Denham Studios and he was a well-known editor, though not yet a director. We took a shine to each other – we were both mad about film and started going to the pictures together with our wives. I remember one time David saying: "The sound is terribly low on this – let's speak to the manager." The manager said loftily: "You don't understand. The film comes to us and there's nothing we can do." David said: "Let me up to the projector room." Imagine David Lean being told he didn't know about these things!

We started making films together: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Sound Barrier. When we'd finished one, we'd always want to make another right away. We'd haunt bookshops and he'd say: "Within nine feet of us is a wonderful idea for a film." David spoke of it as mental constipation. Hobson's Choice was a play by Harold Brighouse. It was David who fell in love with it. "What do we want to make a little Lancashire comedy for?" I said and he replied: "I think it will be damn good." He talked to Sir Alexander Korda, our money man and mentor, and they won me over.

It's the story of Henry Hobson, who runs an upper-class boot shop in Salford, and his three unmarried daughters. David wanted to cast the character actor Roger Livesey as the lead. But I'd seen Charles Laughton, a big Hollywood name, and thought he'd be better: a huge personality, a little fat, commandful. He was a Yorkshireman, too, though the accent was immaterial.

The studio work was done in 10 weeks in London with just eight days on location. Salford was about to undergo slum clearance when we went up to scout the location bits. People thought we were council employees who were going to get them these lovely new flats that were being built. Women would invite us in for a cup of tea to show us their damp – a comedy in itself.

David was so handsome. He was a huge womaniser: to my knowledge, he had almost 1,000 women. When we shot in the streets, people asked: "Who's that good-looking actor?" I had to say: "That's not the leading man, it's the director." We were lucky in our timing. Six months later and there would have been highrise flats in shot, not rows of little houses. Even then, the canal looked too clean and bright. We had to throw boxes of Daz in to make it look scummier.

Prunella Scales, actor

Hobson's Choice was only my second film. At the screen-test, David Lean sat behind the camera and asked: "What's your name?" In character, I said: "Vicky Hobson." He said: "Where do you live?" I said: "Manchester. I work in the shops." He asked: "Have you got a boyfriend?" And I smiled all over and said: "Yes, his name is Freddy Beenstock." I couldn't stop giggling. I was terribly impressed – a director like David Lean coming to the screen-test of a minor character. And I got the part.

My parents came from a theatre background but I kept schtum about those connections. You were meant to be Albert Finney from a raw working-class family with no theatrical antecedents. It's all right now: my son [Sam West] has two parents, three grandparents and two great-grandparents who have worked in theatre. But there was a feeling then that people who grew up in acting families didn't know about real life. Whereas Albert Finney did.

Hobson's Choice may have been in black and white, but it was a David Lean production filmed at Shepperton with Charles Laughton in the lead. So it was a big film – and it felt like it. The studio even sent a car to collect me! When I had started commuting into London for theatre school, I'd had to sell my uncle's stamp collection for £300. That kept me in digs for 18 months, though my son has never forgiven me. I shudder to think what it might be worth now.

We had a whole week's rehearsal, a luxury in those days. Robert Donat was playing opposite Laughton as Willie Mossop. When we met, he asked: "Are you any relation to Bim Scales?" And I said: "I'm her daughter." He said: "That makes me feel very old." She'd been in rep with him in Liverpool – Bimbo Scales, as she was then. Poor Robert: he dried up on his lines due to an asthma attack and the insurers wouldn't insure him. With a week to go, David had to get John Mills back from holiday in the south of France.

On the whole, though, David cast people with a north-country background. My mother was originally from Yorkshire and I spent a lot of my childhood there. Lancashire is different, of course, but I listened very carefully to the vocal coaches. I've always been fascinated by dialects and accents. In fact, I've rarely played straight English parts. I play character parts – and always will.

Hobson's Choice 60th anniversary DVD and Blu-ray are out now. Hobson's Choice is at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre until 12 July.

• This article was amended on 1 July 2014. In an earlier version Henry Hobson was called Harold Hobson.