Olivier, by Philip Ziegler (2013)

Of the three, great theatrical knights of the 20^th Century, Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) always came in third with Your Correspondent, trailing far behind both John Gielgud (1904-2000) and Ralph Richardson (1902-1983).  Olivier was indeed a great actor, but he lacked, to us, the poetry of Gielgud or the twinkle of Richardson.

However, it becomes clear in reading this champion biography by Philip Ziegler (born 1929) that of the three, Olivier was the most ambitious, the most tenacious and the most daring.  For Olivier, becoming a great actor was less a feat of artistry than an act of great will and determination.  Throughout his life, Olivier would seemingly set higher and more complex challenges for himself, stretching his powers as a performer, as an advocate for the theater, and as a man.  He sometimes fell far from his mark (most notably as a man), but as a record of passion, energy and drive, Olivier is hard to beat.

Olivier did not initially consider being an actor, but when his clergyman father (a distant, rather brutal figure) told him that he would be on the stage (“of course”), young Laurence took to it with alacrity.  He was fortunate in his early roles and in mentors … while still a young man, he was playing classical parts like Romero and Mercutio, while also finding offers to star in mainstream movies.  With successes in both Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940), it would have been easy for Oliver to take the easy route and become a movie star; instead, he stuck to his loftier ambition to become the premier classical stage actor of his day.

However, his success in film (something denied Gielgud and Richardson in their early years) also provided Olivier with insight enough to know that cinema was an important medium.  While he claimed that he didn’t fully understand ‘movie acting’ until rather late in the game, he was wise enough to make large-scale movie adaptations of several Shakespeare plays that provide us some clue as to his in-person dynamism.  His film versions of Hamlet, Henry V and Richard III – both as director and star -- are not only good Shakespeare, they are good movie-making.

But this complete man of the theater was unsatisfied with performing and filmmaking; he also wanted to be the man who created a National Theater of Britain.  It was a project to which Olivier would dedicate more than a decade of his life and his not inconsiderable energies.  As star actor, occasional director, business manager, spokesman and man-of-all work, Olivier faced the Herculean task of building a national theater that showcased both the classics and contemporary plays.  It was not for the faint of heart.

In a book with more than its share of delicious gossip and screamingly-funny theater bitchiness, Ziegler devotes most of the book to the almost day-to-day business dealings of building the National.  For one of the foremost actors of his age, the great dramas of Olivier’s life were born in board rooms, political gatherings and backstage meetings.  More than just an actor-manager of the old school, Olivier virtually carried the foundation, creation, formation and survival of the National Theater on his back.  When the Board, in a stunning act of treachery, let him go after it was up-and-running, Olivier’s physical and mental health were permanently hampered.  It’s odd for a theatrical biography to read like a business primer, but it is this heroic struggle that made Olivier so interesting, and what makes Ziegler’s book so out of the ordinary.

This is certainly a warts-in-all portrait, but more often it seems that Olivier was more sinned-against than sinning.  Ziegler looks at Olivier the husband and father, as well as at Olivier the artist.  It would seem that he was a man capable of great generosity, kindness and wit – but a basilisk if you crossed him or got in the way of his ambition.  Like many great men, he was a mixture of the petty and the perfect, of vaunting ambition and piddling meanness.

For those who love backstage stories, Ziegler does not disappoint.  One of the more interesting revelations for Your Correspondent was Olivier’s volcanic temper and gifted potty-mouth.  At one point, Olivier calls fellow actor Laurence Harvey a “fucking stupid, sniveling, little cunt-faced asshole.”  Though hardly Shakespearen, such invective is heroic.

But these aren’t the stories that resonate with Ziegler, amusing as they are.  Olivier had Olympian aspirations, and Ziegler wisely reflects those aspirations in the story of his life, matching them up against his very real achievements, which continue to reverberate in the world of theater today.  Ziegler, a biographer of Lord Mountbatten, actually closes his biography with notes on the similarity between the two men.  This is a book for those who long for star biographies, but with a little more depth.  Highly recommended.

Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in No Man’s Land, by Harold Pinter

Well … theater buffs have a stellar season this year.  Not only do we have three major Shakespearean revivals, but two of the finest actors of their generation have come to town for a repertory of two plays.  Any occasion when Patrick Stewart (born 1940) or Ian McKellen (born 1939) appear is one for celebration – when they are appearing together, it is an occasion for unbridled delight.

Sadly, Stewart and McKellen have chosen to come to Broadway not in Shakespeare, but in two plays by Harold Pinter (1930-2008) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). 

Though much-beloved by Modernists and other intellectual lightweights, Pinter’s plays most often leave audiences scratching their heads and thinking… what the heck was that about?  That reaction is mollified – to a great degree – by the delight of watching these two seasoned scene-stealers onstage together.

Pinter’s No Man’s Land premiered originally in London in 1975, with John Gielgud (1904-2000) as Spooner and Ralph Richardson (1902-1983) as Hirst.  This production transferred to Broadway for a 1976-77 run, and has entered into Broadway history.  (The original production with Richardson and Gielgud was filmed for the National Theatre Archive, and can be seen in three parts on YouTube starting at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd6iKPkXMqY).  Your correspondent saw an absolutely smashing production of the play in 1994 at the Roundabout Theatre Company with Christopher Plummer (born 1929) as Spooner and Jason Robards (1922-2000) as Hirst – and though the play was still incomprehensible to me, it was great larks. 

The plot, to call it such, is that Hirst – an alcoholic man of letters living in a posh abode somewhere near Hampstead – picks up Spooner, a seedy poet, taking him home for a drink.  Spooner stays on overnight as an unwilling guest, also interacting with Hirst’s menacing manservants, Foster and Briggs.  What is going on – and who really knows who and to what extent these are old friends, or strangers or potential lovers or … well, anything, are left ambiguous and up to the viewer.  (Kenneth Tynan was greatly disturbed by Pinter’s “gratuitous obscurity,” and to that we add, “Amen, Brother.”)  It is a play that has no business working, but it with the right actors, it always “plays.”

At first, I was a little trepidatious about the casting.  Spooner (originally Gielgud, later Plummer and here McKellen) does the vast majority of the talking, while Hirst (Richardson, then Robards and now Stewart) responds obliquely.  Though McKellen has a fine voice and a mighty persona, he is always more a character than an actor, and I had hoped that Stewart – the more accomplished and compelling of the two – would take center stage.  Moreover, Spooner is such a showy role that Hirst always seems gets lost in the proceedings – my memory of Robards (a great actor), for example, is practically nil.

However, I’m delighted to report that the casting was correct.  It would take an actor of mighty aspect and peerless technique to make Hirst the equal of Spooner, and Stewart carries off this impossible task with ease.  While McKellen makes catnip out of his outlandish verbal wordplay, Stewart stops the show with pithy, monosyllabic answers.  They are perfectly and evenly matched.

McKellen here resists his normal temptation to overact, and he is simply the finest Spooner I’ve ever seen.  He is complete control of his voice and manner, and he manages to command attention even when sitting at ease.  In his seedy suit, greasy hair pulled back with a rubber band, two-day stubble and dirty tennis shoes, he is the failed literary man to a T.  I have seldom seen him so …. human.

Stewart is fit and stunning is a gray toupee and tweeds, later in a smart blue suit.  Oddly enough, the addition of hair makes this seemingly ageless actor look older, which works for the overall conception of the part.  Stewart has several fine monologs, but the show really takes off in the second act when Stewart and McKellen reminisce (if reminisce they do – it’s possible they don’t really know one another) about shared wives and girlfriends.  It’s the kind of badinage that the audience craves from them, and is in such short supply in this play.

Special mention must be made of Billy Crudup (born 1965), who plays the vile Foster.  It is a nothing part, and I’ve never seen anyone do anything with it; however, Crudup, in his two monologs, nearly steals attention away from his more distinguished co-stars completely.  We need him on Broadway more than ever.

No Man’s Land is directed and staged with a sure hand by Sean Mathias (1956) and the set is wonderfully evocative.  The cast broke character at curtain to entreat the audience to support Broadway Cares, a worthy organization.

Readers of this blog know that your correspondent is no great fan of Modernism, and that my aesthetic is largely pre-Industrial Revolution.  As such, I admit to a possible antipathy to works such as this.  That said, however, No Man’s Land is a play so slight as to be nearly transparent.  It was always a vehicle for two great actors and this product provides that pleasure in spades.   One only wishes the vehicle equaled their talents.

The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Question

Jeremy Brett (1933-1995) has inherited the mantle of Sherlock Holmes from Basil Rathbone (1893-1967) – indeed, many who have never had the pleasure of seeing Rathbone’s definitive turn as the Great Detective now imagine Brett when mentally picturing Sherlock Holmes.  This is something of a shame.

The standard critical consensus on this is that Brett revitalized Holmes, that his characterization was the closest to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original conception, and that the episodes of Granada’s television series were the most faithful adaptations ever.

Well …. most of these perceptions are not quite true.

The Granda series did not revitalize interest in Sherlock Holmes; rather, the Granada television series is probably the culminating event in what was a decade-long revival of interest.  Throughout the 1970s, interest in Sherlock Holmes was nearly as high as it had been during Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime.  Holmes returned to bestseller lists with Nicholas Meyer’s novels The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1974) and The West End Horror (1976); in fact, Seven Per-Cent received a glossy film treatment by Herb Ross in 1976, starring a woefully miscast Nicol Williamson (born 1938) as Holmes and Robert Duval (born 1931) as Watson.  In addition, the Royal Shakespeare Society revived William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes, running for many years on Broadway with such actors as John Wood (1930-2011), John Neville (born 1925) and Robert Stephens (1931-1995) in the lead role, and Paul Giovanni’s Crucifer of Blood also opened on Broadway in 1978, starring a sterling Paxton Whitehead as the Great Detective.

So, when Granada launched its series in 1984, it was really riding the crest of an almost unprecedented decade-long renaissance for the character.

As for the series itself, it is also not exactly true that the series episodes – largely scripted by John Hawkesworth and Jeremy Paul – were particularly close to Conan Doyle’s stories.  To be sure the level of fidelity was higher than Rathbone’s anti-Nazi war-time excursions, but the series all too often tacked on endings found nowhere in Doyle, or added irrelevant digressions to pad running time.  Indeed, the most faithful adaptations of Doyle were committed not to television, but to radio in two excellent series of programs starring, alternately, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, and, Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley, as Holmes and Watson, respectively.

Which takes us, finally, to Brett.  Any dramatized Sherlock Holmes story passes or fails largely on the strength of the actors playing the parts of Holmes and Watson.  Brett was very lucky indeed in his Watsons.  For the first two seasons Watson was portrayed by David Burke (born 1934).  Burke’s Watson was not the boob he is often portrayed to be lesser films, but, rather a competent medico somewhat in awe of the Great Detective’s powers.  There was certainly nothing wrong with Burke’s performance, but it lacked warmth and that touch of complicity with the audience that makes a compelling Watson.  Watson is the stand-in for our selves and, as such, Burke perhaps looked a tad too much like the late Joseph Stalin for his characterization to be totally effective.

Burke was replaced after the second season for the rest of the series by the extremely talented Edward Hardwick (1932-2011).  Hardwick, son of actor Cedric Hardwick, was simply the finest screen Watson we have had: warm, intelligent, steady, comforting and capable.  He was an eminently watchable actor, and his recent passing is a great loss.

Which brings us, finally, to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes.   If I seem reluctant to address his performance, it’s because I am.  His turn as Holmes has always left me deeply ambivalent – Brett was a beguiling, amusing and melodramatic presence, but he just wasn’t Sherlock Holmes to me.

In the first two seasons, it seemed as if Brett was determined to be the nastiest Holmes on film.  In The Adventure of the Dancing Men, one of the earliest episodes, Brett’s Holmes is rude and condescending to a client in ways never found in Doyle.  In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle he bellows "I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies” in a manner more reminiscent of a possessed Linda Blair than Sherlock Holmes.  His boxing scene in The Solitary Cyclist is laughable, and some of his line readings in The Final Problem are simply bizarre.  His laugh is a strangled bark and he is too cool, too aloof, and too … reptilian.

None of these embellishments are particularly surprising when one keeps in mind Brett’s initial thoughts on the character – Jeremy Brett hated Sherlock Holmes.  In an interview with The Armchair Detective prior to the American debut of the series, Brett commented that Holmes was a dreadful man; indeed, he wouldn’t “even cross the street to meet him.”  This is hardly the Holmes of Doyle, who was capable of both great charm and great courtesy, whom Watson wrote of as one with a depth of “loyalty and love” and who had “a great heart as well as a great brain.”

However, after these first two years, something happened offstage that forever altered his performance as Holmes for the rest of the series run.  In 1985, Brett came to the United States to star in a Broadway revival of Frederick Lonsdale’s Aren’t We All?, also starring Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison.  (Brett and Harrison worked together, of course, in the 1964 film version of My Fair Lady.)  While in the US Brett was on the receiving end of a torrential flood of love and admiration from Sherlock Holmes disciples.  He was applauded, feted and lionized – he was, after nearly 30 years of acting – a star with groupies.

This, I think, more than anything changed his Holmes.  The change is evident in his return to the series immediately after his US tour, and in the first episode (also his first with Edward Hardwick), The Adventure of the Empty House.  This new Holmes is warmer, funnier, and more affectionate.  Indeed, his badinage with Henry Baskerville in the two-part Hound of the Baskervilles is almost … playful. 

However, despite all the softening of the character, Brett’s Holmes was still too mannered, too bizarre, and too twitchy to be fully embraceable.  Brett was an actor with melodramatic tendencies too deeply pronounced for him to etch a characterization on a more approachable, human scale.  And his Holmes suffered from his excesses.  In addition, unfortunate illnesses and weight problems so altered Brett’s appearance throughout the remainder of the run that at times he looked like a dissipated Peter Lorre, and sometimes more like Mycroft rather than Sherlock Holmes.  His obesity at times seemed to amplify a somewhat natural effeminacy in his line readings, and the overall result near the end was dire.

Now for the many Brett fans out there who feel as if I have spat on an icon, I just want to underscore that I don’t think Brett was a bad actor.  He delivered many fine performances, for example, in the television versions of The Picture of Dorian Gray (a superb Basil Hallward) and An Ideal Husband (simply the best Lord Goring I have ever seen).  He is certainly fetching in My Fair Lady, and he was always a dependable television villain.  Nor was he a terrible Sherlock Holmes – for that, simply look to Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, or Nicol Williamson – he simply was a poorly conceived one.

An Interview with Composer James Bernard, Part I

Composer James Bernard

In going through my files this weekend, I found an unpublished interview I conducted with film composer James Bernard (1925-2001).  Though primarily a film composer – writing mostly scores for a series of British horror pictures made by Hammer Films – he was also a screenwriter of note.  There were many surprises in store for me, as Bernard’s life was a rich and varied one.  So, onto the first part of our interview with James Bernard, conducted for a now defunct film magazine in April 1996…

After a career that included working with composer Benjamin Britten, helping the Allies break Axis codes during World War II, winning an Oscar for a story idea conceived with longtime companion Paul Dehn, and friendships with such film and theater notables as Sir John Gielgud, it is perhaps somewhat ironic that James Bernard is best known as the composer who scored Hammer's horror films.

But write the scores for these films he did. A delightful man with a warm and gregarious manner, Mr. Bernard tells stories with all the fun and enthusiasm of a much loved uncle. He graciously shared his memories with us, seemingly the least of which was his involvement with the Hammer House of Horror...

Could you give us some of your background?

I was born in a rather romantic place, really. My mother and father were English -- I'm going back, of course, in 1925, the days of what was known as the British Raj, when India was part of the British Empire -- and there was a whole section of the army out in India. My father was a career soldier, a very distinguished soldier. He was forced to retire just after he had been made what was then called a Brigadier General, because he had high blood pressure, which today, of course, they would've been able to cope with. In the end, it was what killed him. I was born, I think, before the partition of India into India and Pakistan. I think I was born in Pakistan, in a little hill station in the Himalayan Mountains. It was a rather romantic background!

How long were you there?

Well, one went rather to and fro. My father used to get leave, because when you were in a far flung corner of the Empire, you were in one place for about six months, and then went home for about six. Of course, one went by ocean liner, so it took two or three weeks to get home! So, I think I was back twice to Delhi, which was where my father was sort of ADC to the Commander and Chief. But I think I came back in 1930-31 or so, when I was about five.

And where was home then?

We lived a lot of the time with my mother's parents, who had, at the time, what you would've called "A Stately Home." That's English terms for this sort of great, big country mansion. It was in Gloucestershire, which is in the West Country of England. And they had a great big house called Puckrup Hall, and it was a stately home where my brother and I were brought up. This was in the days where these homes had a big staff: house maids, parlor maids, a chauffeur, a cook, and a nanny who looked after us.

It sounds like a dream.

It was wonderful! We had these lovely grandparents, my mother's mom and dad, and we were brought up near rolling fields and meadows. And there was a farm run by tenants who grew apples to be used for cider. We used to go down to the big orchid to see the apples trampled for cider. The horses pulled it round and round. That's the background.

Now when you were a child, were you interested in music?

Yes. I started playing the piano, we had a lovely upright piano in the nursery, when I was about six or seven. I was just attracted to this piano, it was quite a famous make, called a Broadwood, and I'm sure there's still a Broadwood in London somewhere upon which Chopin played. It was a celebrated English make of piano. And so I used to go to this piano and play around, and do whatever I felt, so my parents said I had better have music lessons. So I had lessons from the time I was seven.

Were you interested in composing early on, or did you see yourself simply as a performer?

At that stage, I thought I was going to be a performer. But I loved playing around, so I suppose I was composing in a totally disorganized way! Soon, I was sent to what we called a Prep School, which is quite different from what you in the states call a Prep School. One went to a Prep School, which means a Preparatory School, where one went from about seven or eight years old till about 14. I went on from there onto a school -- well, it's all very peculiar, because in England we have what are called public schools which are really private schools. So I went to a one called Wellington College, which was very well known and still going strong, and was founded by Prince Albert. You know, Queen Victoria's husband. It was supposed to be for sons of military people -- Navy, Army and like that. My father, being a regular soldier, sent me there. It's funny, for while the training was like a military academy, they had a very strong artistic side. And it's always been my theory that the sons -- it was all boys, you know -- that the sons of soldiers rebelled against their background and wanted to do something different. So we had a very strong artistic side. I was greatly encouraged with my playing and composing. I should also add that I'm directly descended on my mother's side from Dr. Thomas Arne, who was a 17th Century composer, who wrote Rule Britannia. He wrote a lot of operas, too, and stage music. And I've always thought that if he were alive today, he would be a very busy and very popular film composer!

How did you get from a career of straight composing and into films?

Well, let me go back. During my last term at Wellington, the composer Benjamin Britten was just writing his first great opera, Peter Grimes. Britten came to the school at the time, about 1943, because our Art Master was a man named Kenneth Greene, a celebrated theater designer. He wasn't in the armed forces, so he was teaching art at Wellington College. And Ben Britten, who I later worked for and became very friendly with, had written Grimes and wanted Greene to design sets for the first production of the opera.

I saw Grimes at the Met last year.

It's a wonderful opera, isn't it?

It is, but I prefer Billy Budd.

Well, I've just seen that again in London, and it's the one that I actually, personally worked on. So, when Ben Britten came to the school, he wanted to meet any boy who was considered musically bright. And I had already started composing little snippets, and such, so we met. I had shown him some bits I had written for an inter-house music competition, and he took a great interest in my work. He always used to call me Jim, instead of James or Jimmy, and he said just before I was going into the RAF in September 1943, "Jim, here's my address, keep in touch with me."

So I went to visit him in London, where he was living with Peter Pears, who was his great, life-long friend, and a celebrated singer. I became very friendly with them. At the time I was in Military Intelligence, which was all highly secret, but now has all been written about. A lot of that was covered in a recent book, which just came out to very good reviews, called Enigma, which is all about breaking of German and Japanese codes, and translating them.

More tomorrow!

The Heiress of 1949

I recently had the pleasure of viewing The Heiress, the 1949 film starring Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift, based on the 1880 novel Washington Square by Henry James.  It is a remarkable piece of work, essential viewing and accessible on DVD.

The film was written by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, who adapted their 1947 play.  It is a masterpiece of adaptation, one of the few instances of a film adaptation far outpacing its literary predecessor.

The film concerns Catherine Sloper (de Havilland), a simple girl of few accomplishments and much money.  She lives with her widowed, bitter father, Dr. Sloper (Ralph Richadson), who constantly compares Catherine unfavorably to her late mother.  Also in the household is Dr. Sloper’s sister, Catherine’s Aunt Lavinia (a magnificent Miriam Hopkins), a well meaning, but meddlesome and silly woman.

Catherine’s life changes when she meets the dashing Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), who woos and wins Catherine.  Townsend manages to do something unexpected – he awakens passion in Catherine, bringing her to life and providing excitement, energy, color and a sense of self-worth.  However, Dr. Sloper suspects that the handsome Townsend is a fortune hunter, and spirits Catherine away on a six month European cruise, hoping she will forget.

Upon her return, Catherine is in love as much as ever.  During a rainy night rendezvous, Catherine and Townsend make plans to elope.  She tells him her father has cut off his portion of her inheritance, but they will be happy on her smaller income.  They plan for him to take her away at 12:30 that night.

Catherine, with her bags (along with all of her aspirations, dreams of love and self-respect) wait for Townsend to arrive, but he never does.  Townsend only wanted her money, and the bitter, unyielding, frosty Dr. Sloper was right all along.

Years later, after Dr. Sloper dies, Aunt Lavinia arranges for Catherine and Townsend to meet again.  He has greatly come down in the world, working as a lowly sea-hand, and he once again promises her love.  She arranges for him to leave his seedy lodgings and marry her, but when he returns to the house at Washington Square, Catherine locks the doors, the light inside slowly fading as she climbs the grand staircase.  Townsend will never have her love or her money, and Catherine’s revenge is complete.

One of the many remarkable things about the film is that its most potent set pieces are nowhere found in James’ novel, which is a much more insular character study.  The changes wrought by the Goetz duo make for a more dramatically satisfying work.

For instance, in the novel, Townsend is never depicted as anything other than a smarmy fortune hunter; while in the film, this is ambiguous until he jilts Catherine after midnight.

Dr. Sloper in James is ironical and detached, but nowhere near as bitter and mournful for his lost wife as he is in the film.  And Catherine, for James, is largely swept along by events.  She’s delighted to be the object of a handsome man’s ardor, but nowhere is there the sense that here is a woman wretched, starved for love, and slowly dying from want of attention.

The two great set pieces of the film: Townsend’s desertion of Catherine and his later comeuppance, never appear in the novel.  In James, Townsend mostly drifts out of the picture … he appears comfortable and portly to Catherine 20 years later only to be politely sent away.

The Heiress is a textbook example of how to adapt a literary work.  The overall structure and plot are the same, yet incidents are invented (or dropped) to translate the work into a dramatic medium.  In addition, the characters are modified only to the extent necessary for actors to interpret them more effectively.

And interpret them they do.  The Heiress is a little master’s class in film acting.  De Havilland, so often the vapid love-interest of Errol Flynn, was a fine dramatic actress when given a chance.  Her transformation as Catherine Sloper is perhaps the greatest performance of her career.  From young, callow and somewhat insipid, to hard, bitter and vituperative, De Havilland etches a portrait hard to forget.  She won the Oscar that year for her role, and it is richly deserved.

Montgomery Clift is fine as Townsend, but he lacks dash.  He is certainly a handsome presence, and he is artful enough to mask his ultimate caddishness.  However, he is too modern a figure, perhaps, for a period drama.  Oddly enough Flynn, though too old at this point, would’ve been a perfect choice: it would be easy to believe his pretty face hid a black heart.

Miriam Hopkins, a leading lady and pin-up girl of the 1930s, is a revelation as Aunt Lavinia: intrusive, stupid and silly, yet also human and touching.  Why this remarkable actress did not work more steadily throughout the 1950s is a mystery.

Ralph Richardson was nominated for an Oscar portrayal, and he does a fine job.  Richardson played the part in London in the 1948 production directed by John Gielgud.  However, the part was originated on Broadway by Basil Rathbone, and one cannot but regret that this wonderful actor’s performance was not recorded on film.  (See photo below.)  All of Sloper’s character traits – the incisive reasoning, the frosty demeanor, the masterful carriage – were all Rathbone trademarks; indeed, Rathbone won the Tony Award for his portrayal.  Wendy Hiller, who played Catherine on Broadway, stated that his performance was definitive, and it must sadly remain lost to posterity.

The film was directed by William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver and scores of others) and the score was written by Aaron Copeland.  It is perhaps Copeland’s score that is the weakest link of the film: listening to it, one expects at any moment Washington Square to be besieged by Jesse James.

I recommend that anyone interested in the art of literary adaptation spend some time with the Slopers of Washington Square.

Gielgud’s Letters

Though the great actor Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) never wrote his autobiography, we get a wonderful sense of the man from his letters.  Gielgud was a regular, and somewhat indefatigable, correspondent, and many of his letters were compiled in Gielgud’s Letters, introduced and edited by Richard Mangan (2004).

Gielgud was active on the stage at a very early age, and continued to appear in films and television until the end of his very long life.  His career is almost unprecedented in its diversity of achievement, its adaptation to many styles of acting, great variety of mediums, and tremendous longevity.  Indeed, it is fair to say that Gielgud is one of the few figures of the Twentieth Century as famous in 1931 as he was in 1981 (or ’91 or 2001, for that matter).  Consequently, his letters cover a remarkable range of topics and people, with figures as diverse as Hugh Walpole and Noel Coward, to Dudley Moore and Debbie Reynolds.  A quick page through Mangan’s collection promises letters to (or letters alluding to friendships with): James Bond author Ian Fleming, Michael York, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Lauren Bacall, Burt Lancaster, William Walton, Clifton Webb, Ethel Waters … in short, if they were active in the world of theater (using the term very broadly) over a span of nearly 100 years, Gielgud either worked with them or knew them. 

What kind of man was Gielgud?  These letters, never written for publication or posterity, lays bare the soul of a generous and kindly man.  What is fascinating how often he writes to provide comfort or solace to friends, or to thank others for remembrance during his own troubles.  (A homosexual scandal in 1953 nearly ended his career – and his life, as he considered suicide.)  He was by no means deep or intellectual, but Gielgud was a great artist, and he saw almost everything through the prism of his art.  Gielgud was an aesthete of the most pure and devout kind, an acolyte who never sought to see things beyond his (theatrical) aesthetic appreciation.  (World events were largely lost on him … what really mattered was whether the theaters were open and that actors and playwrights were working.)

Gielgud in his letters was also a wonderful gossip, sharing news and scandal with a boyish sense of the naughty.  Here’s a 1962 sample from the party for the premiere of Lawrence of Arabia, while Gielgud was touring with A School For Scandal in Detroit, of all places: “Appalling city this, as I knew.  The theatre is huge and vulgar (but lovely big dressing rooms) and very hard to get the play going in the first act, as will always be the case in America, I’m afraid.  Too much of the women, and too much talk which confuses the audience, and of course, I have so little to do that I’m not much help.  A pity.  The weekend was great fun – huge party on the St. Regis roof, masses of people I knew.  I never stopped being kissed by gentlemen!  Peter O’Toole, Jason Robards, Tennessee, Quintero etc. – and a few ladies too!  Maggie [Leighton] was hysterical all the evening – late, no taxies, trouble with her dress, tired, sitting so long at the picture – 4 hours, etc. etc. but she was, as usual, very sweet.  Alec Guinness is not very good, rather like a benevolent old lady.  It is a great pity I didn’t play it – it would have been a marvelous part for me.  Never mind.  O’Toole is wonderful – and dishy too – and the whole picture is superb, except that it is really two films – one the story and the other the spectacle.  But it is dignified, breathtakingly beautiful to look at, moving, exciting and everything.  Only some common pseudo Rachmaninoff music, which is vulgar and the only blot, I thought.  All the other men wonderfully good, even Wolfit!  Mad audience – wigs, rocks, start, the lot.  I did enjoy the evening.”

Here’s another that I find amusing, from 1976: “I finally succumbed to play a small part for a lot of money in the Caligula of Gore Vidal.  Martin [Hensler, his partner of nearly 40 years] is very cross with me for accepting it as I was originally offered Tiberius (now played by Peter O’Toole) and my first scene was to come out of a pool, with a plaster over my nose and eczema all over my face, to reveal two children, boy and girl, emerging from under my tunic where they were dallying with me.  So I loftily refused and had a stinkingly rude letter from Gore saying he supposed I’d never read Suetonius, and how dared I go round saying good actors would be ashamed to appear in such pornography.  Then a week or two came an offer of this other part – an old Senator who cuts his veins in a bath and disapproves of everything, and I thought well, why not?  What Vidal and I will say to each other if and when we meet, I tremble to prophesy…..”

During the 1953 scandal, he wrote the following to friend Cecil Beaton: “Thank you very much for writing.  It’s so hard to say what I feel – to have let down the whole side – the theatre, my friends, myself and my family – and all for the most idiotic and momentary impulse.  Of course I’ve been tortured by the thought that I acted stupidly afterwards, insisting on tackling it without advice of any kind – but I expect it would all have come out anyway – and I just couldn’t bear the idea of a case and weeks of obscene publicity – even if I had got off with a clean sheet the slur would still have been there, and everyone would have gossiped and chattered.  As it is – well, I can only feel that I’ve been spoilt and protected all my life and now its something basic and far-reaching that I’ve got to face for many more years to come.  The miracle is that my friends have stood by me so superbly, and even the public looks like letting me go on with my work.  Both things would not have been so twenty years ago (though I don’t think either the press would have been so cruelly open).  There are many other things to be thankful for.  For one, I don’t think my Mother has realized the full significance of it, or else she’s the most wonderful actress in the Terry Family!  For another, I wasn’t actually playing in London at the time, and these four weeks of the tour are a sort of test both as regards the public and my own nerves.  There are some tricky lines in the play, but many are also compassionate and charming, and the character I play has sympathy without seeming to ask for it too much.  That is all to the good.”

We see Gielgud in this volume as we have never seen him on stage or screen: doubtful lover, dutiful son, amusing anecdotist, friend and benefactor, waspish gossip.  He emerges warm, loving and generous – and many readers will close the book regretting only that they had never met him.