Dame Edith Evans

Dame Edith Evans0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. This is the only extract the BBC has of this episode, and for rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plumley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:28

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

Presenter0:30

I'm very happy to introduce as our castaway this week one of the great actresses of our day, Dame Edith Evans.

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Dame Edith, have you ever daydreamed about being a Robinson Crusoe, alone on a desert island? No, no.

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Do you think you could endure loneliness?

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I think I should test

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How big a part does music play in your life? Ah, now. Musically, I'm very ignorant.

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But

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I think I'm

Presenter1:00

As I think Sir Thomas Beacham once said, the British public were

Presenter1:04

They knew nothing about music, but they love listening to beautiful sounds. So that's me. I hear music in a lot of things, but it's not conventional music, you see, as such.

Dame Edith Evans1:17

Yeah.

Presenter1:18

Do we play the gramophone very much? Uh not a great deal. At home at the weekend.

Presenter1:24

Are you choosing records mainly to evoke the past?

Presenter1:27

Oh, no, no. No, one or two are, because I think they're magnificent specimens of their kind. No, no, no, these are because.

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I like them because if I were stuck on a desert island.

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I think I'd like to listen to them and they've got people in them and lovely sounds and no, no, not the past at all. What's the first one you've chosen? It's Catherine Ferrier in The Brahms Rhapsody.

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Why do you choose this?

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Oh, why wait you hear, then you'll know why I've chosen it.

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An excerpt from the Brahms Alto Rhapsody with Kathleen Ferrier as soloist.

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They made a seawater Londoner. Oh, yes.

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Were you taken to the theatre a lot as a child? Oh, no, hardly at all. So it wasn't a childhood ambition to be an actress? No, no, nothing to do with the theatre at all. What did you do when you left school? When I was young, I was apprenticed to millnerry.

Dame Edith Evans3:18

Uh

Presenter3:22

Did you find that work interesting?

Presenter3:25

As interesting as an irregular job like that could be, but I love the materials and the colours.

Presenter3:32

That sort of thing. How did the theatre come into your life? Well, I had a very dear friend. I still have her.

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Used to do extremely good productions of Shakespeare plays. Amateur productions. Yes, but they were very good. She had a very high standard. And I played for her once or twice, and old William Pearl saw me.

Presenter3:54

And he was doing some of his rather specialized productions with some amateur and some professional players. And he asked me to go and play.

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And I played nothing short, the leading part, Christian, Trailis Christa. And I was offered a contract by Verdun and Idi from that. And that contract kept you in London for several years, I believe. Yes.

Presenter4:20

Two or three years. I played mostly in London, oh no.

Presenter4:24

You turn with Ellen Terrier, you know. Yes, I do.

Dame Edith Evans4:25

But yes.

Presenter4:27

Was she a very daunting person? No, she was adorable, but she was a great professional.

Dame Edith Evans4:28

No, she was at door.

Presenter4:32

Mm-hmm.

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Looking back, what do you think was the the first big opportunity you had? Was it sure?

Presenter4:41

No, no, I think the first one recorded, as it were, was a millimeter in the way of the world. Yes, your first big success in restoration comedy. Yes, restoration comedy.

Dame Edith Evans4:50

Yes, I'm not sure.

Presenter4:53

And that, uh quite soon after that, came your first season of The Old Vic.

Presenter4:57

I think it did. I never can remember, you know. I always have to look up the book and see what I've done. Well, I've looked it up for you. Yes.

Dame Edith Evans4:59

I don't know.

Dame Edith Evans5:00

It's a lot.

Dame Edith Evans5:04

Yeah.

Presenter5:04

And in that first season you played your enchanting Rosalyn for the first time? Yes.

Dame Edith Evans5:09

I mean it's

Presenter5:10

Yeah.

Presenter5:11

Let's have your second record now. What have we got next? I'd like a sonnet.

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Spoken by John Gilgood, a Shakespeare sonnet. Which one?

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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Why do you choose that? Oh, why do I choose it? Because perfect speech, perfect rhythm

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Uh

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Apart from being a great actor, he's a great speaker, I think, which I'm a listener.

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Tell them I think how beautifully he speaks English.

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I do think it's important.

Speaker 25:43

These days.

Presenter5:44

Yeah.

Speaker 25:44

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Speaker 25:47

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Speaker 25:51

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Speaker 25:57

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed.

Speaker 26:12

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

Speaker 26:27

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this.

Speaker 26:34

And this gives life to thee.

Presenter6:38

The voice of John Gielgud

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We were talking about your first season at the Old Vic.

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Shortly after that, you had a shot at going into management yourself. That wasn't very successful. Oh, no, no, that's horrid.

Dame Edith Evans6:47

That wasn't

Presenter6:51

Just experience though, it didn't do me any harm.

Presenter6:54

Well, let's think of the successes. A number of Shaw's heroines you created. Yes.

Presenter7:01

In all five, you know. I can't remember them straight away, but they were all. I was the first of those five.

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and Florence Nightingale and the Lady with the Lamp.

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Yes. And during the thirties mainly modern plays. Bevely Nichols's Even Song. Oh, yes, yes, I enjoyed that. And the late Christopher Bean? Yes.

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And in thirty nine, the part that perhaps above all you've made your own.

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Lady Bragnall and the importance of being earnest. Yes, well now we draw a curtain over Lady Bragnell.

Presenter7:34

I've had Lady Bracknell in every form. As I've said, it only leaves that I should play her underwater.

Presenter7:44

Well then, the war and the theatre in rather a curious state, and your first and only appearance in review. Did you enjoy that?

Presenter7:50

Oh yes, you mean diversion. Well, it was just a little gathering of people together, you know, to try and make something that they...

Dame Edith Evans7:53

Back.

Presenter7:59

Boys could come in and feel friendly watching a show. We only played in the afternoon.

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And then well trope theatres from from Aldershot to the Far East. Since the war, which plays do you like to remember most? James Bright is deaf. I think I do. You know, I had a great love for that play.

Dame Edith Evans8:16

Uh I think I do.

Presenter8:20

And I have to say, I also immensely liked The Dark Is Light Enough by Christopher Fry.

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It's a very beautiful play indeed there.

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And the chalk garden was a great place. Yes, yes indeed. The chalk garden that came. That played a long time.

Dame Edith Evans8:31

Yes, yes.

Presenter8:36

Let's have record three now. What next? Well, I would like to hear some Peter Eustina.

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some of his Grand Prix of Gibraltar.

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Because he's got the most miraculous ear.

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I've never heard anything to equal.

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Peter's ear.

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for accents and manners. Anyway, we'll hear it and then we'll see.

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Now here by my side is is Roland Thaxter of the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation. I hope I've got that right, Roland. Yes.

Presenter9:09

Yes, that's absolutely right. He is the ace commentator in Britain, and he will describe the scene as he sees it.

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Well, of course

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Jib

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Uh well well known uh to us.

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Uh and uh a very colorful uh sight.

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Just two of Peter Ustinoff's voices from The Grand Prix of Gibraltar.

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We haven't talked about the films you've made, Dame Edith. Well, we did mention, I think, briefly, Lady Bracknell, that you played in pretty well all the media. Which others have you enjoyed making most? Well, the the two last.

Presenter9:51

Um

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Last year, Tom Jones.

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Also last year, but time goes so quickly, doesn't it? I was going to say this year, the chalk garden, but it was last year.

Speaker 310:02

Uh

Presenter10:04

I've enjoyed both those very much.

Speaker 310:05

Uh

Presenter10:06

When you start to work on a podcast,

Presenter10:09

What do you work on first? You try to envisage the voice, the clothes, the appearance, the water. No, no, no, no, the life.

Dame Edith Evans10:13

Yeah.

Presenter10:15

The life in the in the person, the life in the woman.

Presenter10:19

To what extent do you feel the emotions of the character you're playing? Obviously, you do at rehearsal when you're molding the part. What about the hundredth performance? Well, I try. I try to do it every time.

Dame Edith Evans10:26

Well I

Presenter10:29

Otherwise I think if I didn't I'd be terribly bored.

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Unless I can

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Obviously, if I'm not up to the mark sometimes, but I do actually try to really live it every single time. And that makes it interesting. Otherwise, I wouldn't be very interested in acting, quite frankly.

Presenter10:49

What are your plans at the moment? You've just returned from the United States. Yes. What are you doing there? Well, doing readings, recitals with John Gilgood and Margaret Leighton.

Presenter11:00

And uh

Presenter11:02

Enjoyed it very much indeed. Now, just at the moment, I'm inclined to want to be free and have a little domestic life and a break.

Presenter11:12

Have you any ambition still unfulfilled? Any part that you've always wanted to play that you haven't yet done? Yeah, it's awful, isn't it? I haven't got any sort of.

Dame Edith Evans11:16

To a

Speaker 311:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter11:20

little niggling things inside me. I'm an absolute sort of open book or a white sheet or whatever you want to call it waiting to be written on. It's rather exciting in a way because you never know what's coming round the corner.

Presenter11:36

Where to have your fourth record, what now? Yes, it's Joan Sutherland. and custard diva.

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From Norma.

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Why? Oh, why?

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She sings so marvellously.

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as well as having this defined voice. When I hear her, I think I can sing. It's the most peculiar effect. She swamps one with lovely sound.

Presenter12:01

I feel if I open my mouth, that sound will come out of me.

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Couldn't be much more wonderful, could it?

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Do you know?

Speaker 312:15

See what

Speaker 312:42

Oh my son, oh my son.

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Joan Sutherland singing Casta Diva.

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What are we going to have next?

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Well, I thought it would be a good thing to choose one of Noel Cowards. How long have you known Noel Coward? Um.

Presenter13:23

I think he was 17 or about that, and we used to walk home together.

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Were you in a play together? No. I don't think we were in a play together.

Presenter13:32

I can't remember, so it's a long time ago.

Dame Edith Evans13:34

Dime and go!

Presenter13:37

We used to walk home together, and I remember once he told me he'd published something. I was overawed. Publishing, you see, that was terribly important and grown up. Yes, indeed. But this uh record it's a very old one, but I think it's absolutely of its kind.

Presenter13:55

Perfect.

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And I'd like to hear it.

Presenter13:59

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out to the Middle East and the Japanese don't care. Do Chinese wouldn't dare to Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one but Englishmen detest a siesta You know in the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare and the Malays states for a hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear at twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done But mad dogs and Englishmen go out to the middle

Presenter14:25

Oh, it's such a surprise for the Eastern Ice.