Ronald Harwood

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a playwright. Born in South Africa, the child of a loveless marriage, he was nevertheless spoiled rotten by both his parents. Aged seventeen, he set sail to make his fortune in England as an actor. In this he failed, and ended up as Sir Donald Wolfit's dresser, an experience he later turned into his most famous and successful play.

Presenter0:52

His work often reveals his passionate belief in freedom of speech, articles of faith, a novel about South Africa, taking sides, a portrait of Furt Wengler's decision to conduct for the Nazis, or his screenplay of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisevich. Highly prolific and happy working in television, film, and the stage, he confesses that writing is like being in analysis. That's why I never see a psychiatrist, he says. He is Ronald Harwood. So there's a lot of yourself in your work, Ronald, not to mention your problems.

Ronald Harwood1:25

Oh, I won't tell you about my problems. My problems are apparent in the plays I write.

Presenter1:29

As you say, we've heard a lot about them.

Ronald Harwood1:30

It is a form of analysis, you know. You have these anxieties and you write them out.

Presenter1:35

And and does that work them out for you? Does that d do you leave them behind you in the doing?

Ronald Harwood1:40

But no, if they're really serious, they keep coming back. That's why one seems to write the same play over and over again. One hasn't got rid of that particular problem.

Presenter1:45

Never again, man.

Presenter1:48

The problem is when you write about as you know only too well when you write about real life experiences it means you're writing about other people as well and often you're nearest and dearest and you have upset people as well.

Ronald Harwood1:58

Oh, I've upset people. The the Wolfit family were terribly upset.

Presenter2:02

This was your play, The Dresser, about working with Donald Woolvert.

Ronald Harwood2:03

The dressing is done.

Ronald Harwood2:05

It was inspired by Wolfit, there's no denying that. But the fact of the matter is that the dresser in the play the part of Norman, which Tom Courtenay played so magnificently, isn't me.

Ronald Harwood2:15

And Wolfit would never have had that dresser. He he was very homophobic, Woolfit.

Presenter2:20

But that wasn't what was offensive to the family, was it? What was offensive was that you made him a pretty monstrous figure. He was difficult, he was self obsessed, he was petulant.

Ronald Harwood2:27

What

Ronald Harwood2:28

I think I underwrote that bit about Wolfram. Wolfrit was a very difficult man. He was an enchanting man. He was kind to me and of course made my life in England possible. But he was very difficult. I mean, I knew a a chap in the company who'd been a prisoner of the Japanese during the war and been tortured by the Japanese, who hid rather than face Woolfit's wrath after a scene.

Ronald Harwood2:52

Absolutely true. He hid in a doorway. I remember it to this day. So don't let him find me, don't let him find me And off it swept by and

Presenter2:59

But another example of your so-called inverted commas betrayal was your sister was rather upset when you wrote Another Time, which was about your parents and the other person.

Ronald Harwood3:08

And I had sympathy with that, because she had to live in the society if the play was it was never shown in Cape Town.

Ronald Harwood3:16

I but I always say if you hadn't

Presenter3:16

So you wouldn't let it be shown.

Ronald Harwood3:18

I d I didn't yes, I I stopped it being shown. There was talk of a production. She was very flustered by it. And I said, All right, well we won't do it'cause she has to live there, not I. But the fact of the matter is that

Speaker 13:28

Oof.

Ronald Harwood3:30

If you have a writer in the family.

Ronald Harwood3:33

And you're proud if he does well. You have to take the other side the side that he will use that family, that he will transform it and uh make a work of art, if I can without wanting to be too pretentious I mean, create an artefact about that family. That's part of the penalty.

Presenter3:49

Yeah.

Presenter3:50

But it does mean, therefore, that you have a ruthless streak, really, because you're prepared to use these things.

Ronald Harwood3:55

Oh, it's a oh, absolutely. But you you you you know, a writer just writes what he has to write. And I don't think I certainly in my case, I don't make a judgment. Is this going to hurt people? Am I going to be offensive?

Presenter4:08

You don't think you should make that judgment?

Ronald Harwood4:10

Perhaps one should, but I don't.

Presenter4:11

Is there anything in your life that you wouldn't write about?

Ronald Harwood4:17

Except things that are private to me, you see. Precisely. Well, you wouldn't hurt yourself. No.

Presenter4:20

Well no, you wouldn't hurt yourself.

Ronald Harwood4:23

Although I think I'm quite severe on the character in another time, Leonard Lands, which is an autobiographical figure, I think I'm quite severe on him.

Ronald Harwood4:32

But not as severe as perhaps one ought to be.

Presenter4:35

We shall hear more about all of this. Tell me about your first record for this Desert Island.

Ronald Harwood4:36

In this case.

Ronald Harwood4:39

Well, this is the Emperor Piano Concerto by Beethoven, and I think it was the very first piece of important music I heard in concert. The the the sight of a pianist and an orchestra playing together absolutely dazzled me.

Presenter5:44

Alfred Brendel playing the transition between the second and third movements of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, number five in E flat, opus seventy three.

Presenter5:52

The Dresser was a great success, Ronald Harwood. And of course, the film with Albert Finney and Tom Courtney was nominated for five Oscars. Didn't we want to?

Ronald Harwood6:00

Didn't win one. And I went to the awards ceremony in Los Angeles and it was ghastly, ghastly. And I made a vow that I would never go again to an awards ceremony unless I was told I was going to get an award. Cowardice, pure cowardice. And recently a player of mine was nominated for 11 Moliere Awards in Paris and I went and we won one for best lighting. And I have never broke that vow again.

Presenter6:24

But there must be something that you had in common with Norman, the the the the Tom Courtenay dresser character.

Presenter6:30

I was a marvellous dresser, you said.

Ronald Harwood6:32

I was. I was a terrific servant because I didn't feel it demeaning.

Ronald Harwood6:36

And also a s a dresser has terrific power, you know. You guard the dressing room door. If anybody wanted to see Wolfit after the per performance, that'd come through me. I was eighteen and I was heady snuff, and I had no shame about cleaning his shoes or washing his undies or pressing his clothes. It didn't bother me at all.

Presenter6:56

You took a pride in all of that, in exactly how you put the jacket the

Ronald Harwood6:58

Exactly.

Ronald Harwood6:59

Oh, I'm very good at putting coats on to this day. People are surprised by the way I put on a coat, because I heave it on to their shoulders properly.

Presenter7:07

You don't make them break their arms.

Ronald Harwood7:07

You don't make

Ronald Harwood7:08

No, exactly. Oh, no, I'm very good at that. I did once get his tights inside out during a quick change. That wasn't so good. But that Norman isn't me. I've always tried and I think people who know me know that that's so. And it was based on my experience of other dressers after I'd uh stopped being an actor. And when I became a playwright, and I had famous actors in my plays, and I saw their dresses, and they were a sort of tribe, you know, of their of their own. And they spent most of the time in the wardrobe with the wardrobe mistress, and they had little drinks and cigarettes and

Ronald Harwood7:38

I didn't, I was very busy because Wolfrid played eight parts a week, you know, different parts.

Presenter7:38

Eisenhower.

Presenter7:42

You say that he he terrified you and and and and the rest of the company, but but did did he ever kind of stop being the great actor, or did he ever return to his roots as inside?

Ronald Harwood7:51

What inside the theater?

Presenter7:52

Well, no, just as a man as you think

Ronald Harwood7:54

Well the most human moment I remember of him is the day of his knighthood. I had been ill, and he'd arranged for convalescence for me, and ph telephoned one day and said, Ronald, I want you to come to Hurstbourne Tarrant, where he lived in Hampshire. I want to come and help at a party I'm giving. So I went over.

Ronald Harwood8:11

And I was told that night by his wife secretly that he was going to be knighted the next day. And the next day it was very exciting. All the telegrams came in. In the afternoon we had tea before the party. And Donald lay on his back on the lawn and suddenly kicked his legs in the air and peddled like a peddle peddling exercise. And he said in a broad Nottinghamshire accent, Oh, if only my mum and dad could see me now And it was so touching.

Presenter8:39

Nickel.

Ronald Harwood8:39

Uh Number two.

Ronald Harwood8:41

Well now this has to do with address and funnily enough this is from Schubert's Deschoena Millevin.

Ronald Harwood8:47

My wife introduced me to it. I was never very good at the human voice raised in song, but she loved it and she said this was a marvellous thing, and we listened to it a lot. And then I used to put it into the car uh cassette player when I drove from Lys in Hampshire to Pinewood Studios when we were filming The Dresser. And it lasted roughly the journey. And I think it's the most beautiful recording with a wonderful accompanist, Gerald Moore and Fisher Discar singing.

Speaker 39:12

Tiny spite, tightest my hair, once I see.

Speaker 39:38

The mesh dish haunt ein, meshte sois and woishten rigen ein, or naishtes eede bloomitch turn, to rigeste duftier for now turn, ye vobeken de nichtas made a twin.

Presenter10:06

Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, accompanied by Gerald Moore, singing Schubert's Ungedult from Die Schöne Müller in D seven nine five. Uh your play about um Wolfit, Ronald Harwood, um was a long time in the gestation, I think about twenty years, as was indeed your play Another Time About Your Parents, because you didn't write about them until decades later. But those arguments that they have, presumably you'd carried in your head all that time.

Ronald Harwood10:31

I did. I think I waited for my mother.

Ronald Harwood10:34

And to die, as it were. I think it I didn't write it until after she died.

Presenter10:35

I think we just

Presenter10:37

Mm.

Ronald Harwood10:38

Um

Presenter10:39

But how involved were you in those arguments at the time?

Ronald Harwood10:42

I was a spectator, but I then carried messages between them when they didn't speak. For days they didn't speak, and they'd be in the same room, and my mother would say,'Ask your father if he wants a cup of tea.' I'd say,'Dad, do you want a cup of tea?' He'd say,'Yes, you have shown' and that went on and on.

Presenter10:56

This was in Sea Point, outside Cape Town.

Ronald Harwood10:56

In Sea Point in Cape Town. But you see, I thought all married uh couples and all families were like that. It never occurred to me. I was not very unhappy. I don't think it did scar me, except it must have done

Ronald Harwood11:09

In certain ways, because I have to

Ronald Harwood11:11

I've returned to it several times.

Presenter11:12

Yeah.

Ronald Harwood11:14

And I don't think I'm finished with it yet. I don't know, but I don't think I am.

Presenter11:18

But at the same time they spoiled you rotten your phrase.

Ronald Harwood11:20

Oh, I well, I was the youngest of three, much the youngest. I was an afterthought. So I was spoilt by my brother and sister, by my parents. But I I bore all beautifully. I was not an unpleasant child.

Presenter11:31

You love it all. You quite a show off, I think.

Ronald Harwood11:33

Uh

Speaker 111:33

I don't know.

Ronald Harwood11:33

I am a show-off. Oh, God, yes. That's why I wanted to be an actor.

Presenter11:37

I wasn't using the present tense, I s you were a show of but still.

Ronald Harwood11:40

Um

Ronald Harwood11:41

Oh, yes, I am. I yes. I am

Presenter11:43

And and your mother encouraged you in all

Ronald Harwood11:45

She didn't chose me to be a shelf, she liked me to behave properly, and my wife too doesn't like me to be too flash. So I'm I have these senses around me.

Presenter11:53

But you don't censor yourself.

Ronald Harwood11:55

Oh, I have no taste. That's the trouble. Not really. No. I'm very vulgar.

Presenter11:59

We heard.

Ronald Harwood12:01

Yeah.

Presenter12:01

Oh, it's all coming out now.

Ronald Harwood12:02

It's all coming out now.

Presenter12:03

Yeah. Um but your mother sent you to elocution lessons. She she knew you wanted to be an actor and so did you.

Ronald Harwood12:06

Well s

Ronald Harwood12:09

I think I did. Firstly you must understand that both my parents were immigrant parents. My father was born in Lithuania and escaped to Pogrom in eighteen ninety. My mother was of Polish parents, but born in London.

Ronald Harwood12:21

and they somehow went to South Africa at the turn of the century, met and married.

Ronald Harwood12:25

My mother paid allegiance to London. To her that was the centre of the world, her birthplace. She couldn't bear the South African accent, and she ga had me uh take elocution lessons, as they were called, when I was about six, and I showed a talent for recitation.

Ronald Harwood12:42

I wanted to draw attention to myself too, Isis, but this was the showing off of it.

Ronald Harwood12:46

And so

Ronald Harwood12:47

I had that in my um

Presenter12:48

What about racism at home? Because you've had on a a short play called The Goodbye Kiss about a famous author who failed to kiss his.

Ronald Harwood12:55

Painter. He's a painter. I've transformed him into a painter in the. That's fine. That's how you do it. You see, then people don't think it's you.

Presenter13:02

But it was you, was it?

Ronald Harwood13:02

Yeah.

Ronald Harwood13:04

It's a story of a man who goes back to South Africa.

Ronald Harwood13:07

and goes and sees his old nanny.

Ronald Harwood13:10

And there's a guilt between them, because he never kissed her goodbye on the ship as they will. He kissed everybody else, all his white relations, obviously, but not her. She was coloured.

Presenter13:20

And why would he not do that then?

Ronald Harwood13:22

Because it wasn't done. Those were the givens of the society.

Presenter13:25

Hmm.

Ronald Harwood13:25

It's a true story, but I never went back to see my nanny. I tried once and I d no one knew where she was.

Presenter13:31

Did you know how much you'd hurt her in not kissing her?

Ronald Harwood13:34

I don't know, but I imagined I hurt her a lot. And it's a s it's not a pleasant story, and it's how it was.

Presenter13:40

And anti-Semitism, if that exists?

Ronald Harwood13:41

I knew that was because I was brought up of the Holocaust generation, and we were shown the films of the Holocaust nineteen forty six, and that was terrible. And it's also infected my work, I think.

Presenter13:54

But you didn't suffer anti-Semitism in your day to day.

Ronald Harwood13:57

Oh yes well, there was in South Africa there was a great deal. You must remember that the first government, the Nationalist Government of South Africa in forty seven, forty eight most of them were interned during the war for Nazi sympathies.

Ronald Harwood14:08

So there was a good deal of anti Semitism about at school and so on.

Ronald Harwood14:12

But the the most lively memory of that period

Ronald Harwood14:16

is when the king and queen came, when the royal family came, because that seemed to s make a statement for us, the English speakers. And I was in the welcome sign on Signal Hill. I was in the lower curve of the letter C. And I'm always very proud of that. I've got a picture of it.

Presenter14:31

What were you holding? Did you have a question?

Ronald Harwood14:32

No, no, we were all dressed in white. We had to be there at five o'clock in the morning. And it was a magical moment because the mist, there was a very low sea mist. We were all sitting there shivering. We had to take off our blazers and be be white. And then the mist lifted and HMS Vanguard, the battleship on which the Royal Family were coming into Cape Town, suddenly appeared in Table Bay. And I'll never forget it. Marvellous theatrical moment.

Presenter14:57

Next recovery.

Ronald Harwood14:58

Well, at that time, when I was about twelve in Cape Town, Laurence Olivier's film of Hamlet was shown. My sister gave me a set of seventy-eight records of the film of Hamlet, bits of, you know, the extracts. And I listened every day when I came back from school. I used to put my head under the radiogram so I could get close to the speaker, close to the sound of his wonderful voice. And the piece I most remember is speaking of, oh, that this too solid flesh would melt.

Speaker 315:26

Oh, that is too solid. Yeah.

Ronald Harwood15:29

Uh

Speaker 315:29

Bood melt.

Speaker 315:32

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew.

Speaker 315:36

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his cannon against self-slaughter.

Speaker 315:43

God

Speaker 315:46

God.

Speaker 315:49

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.

Speaker 315:57

File

Speaker 315:58

I'm fine.

Speaker 316:00

Tis an unweeded garden that grows to see.

Speaker 316:04

Things rank and gross in nature possess it mere

Speaker 316:09

that it should come to the

Speaker 316:12

But two months day.

Speaker 316:15

Nay, not so much, not too.

Speaker 316:19

So excellent a king.

Speaker 316:21

That was to this Hyperion to a Satya.

Presenter16:25

Sir Lawrence Olivier as Hamlet from Act I, Scene Two, of the play. The music was composed by Sir William Walton, and performed there by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Muir Matheson.

Presenter16:35

So you set sail, Ronald, for England, aged seventeen. It was the most exciting day of your life, you said, when you arrived here. Why? I mean, you don't seem to have cared to care at all about leaving France.

Ronald Harwood16:42

Yeah.

Ronald Harwood16:45

For a year or two before my father died in 1950 and I thought that was the end of my coming to England. My mother said, No, she'd work and I would get there. She was wonderful. And she let me go. I was the baby. I'd just finished my matrix. Didn't wait for the result. And my whole life had built to that purpose, going to London and landing at Southampton. I saw, oh, it was lovely. I kissed the ground when I came off the...

Presenter17:09

Tell me what you look like. This was what 1951, 52?

Ronald Harwood17:10

Me deck.

Ronald Harwood17:13

Devastatingly attractive, absolutely. I was thin. I had a corduroy jacket.

Presenter17:15

Yeah.

Ronald Harwood17:20

And corduroy trousers. That was that was that. And people terrified I was going to freeze to death. People in Cape Town say, Oh, you must have woolen gloves and all and I did.

Speaker 117:22

Yeah.

Presenter17:23

Yeah.

Presenter17:30

But you were quite obviously quite full of yourself, as you were saying.

Ronald Harwood17:32

Oh yeah.

Presenter17:34

Yes. Lot of charm.

Ronald Harwood17:35

Well, I don't know. But I mean, that you'd have to ask others. But I was very confident. And I did my audition for Radha and I got in. I thought it was dreadful, Radha. You hated it.

Presenter17:35

But as a f

Presenter17:45

You hated it.

Ronald Harwood17:46

I didn't like it at all. It was like a finishing school.

Presenter17:48

So that was really why you quickly got to be Wolford's dresser.

Ronald Harwood17:51

No, I really got to be because my mother wrote to me and said she couldn't afford the fees.

Presenter17:55

Now at what point in all of this then did you desi were you writing during it?

Ronald Harwood17:59

No, no, no, it didn't write until nineteen fifty nine.

Presenter18:01

That's after six years of working for Wolvert, so why suddenly then did you start to write?

Ronald Harwood18:03

Unritz

Ronald Harwood18:06

I've never really examined it, and I'm not sure I should in detail. But what happened the events were these. I was married, my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was out of work on the Dole, about to take work on the Hammersmith flyover, which was then being built.

Ronald Harwood18:21

And my father-in-law gave me a typewriter in the November November of 1959, and because I had nothing to do, I wrote a novel.

Ronald Harwood18:29

I didn't even know you had to leave two spaces between the lines. I just it took me three weeks. The day I finished it was one of the most extraordinary in my life, because I couldn't catch my breath.

Ronald Harwood18:40

And I my wife was out shopping and I got up and we had a tiny flat in Barnes and I walked up and down the corridor trying to catch my breath and it was so exciting.

Ronald Harwood18:49

And I thought perhaps I'm onto something. And my friend Harold Pinter was already well known as a writer, and so it wasn't so shameful to give up acting and become a writer, which I felt a sense of defeat becoming a a writer, to begin with.

Presenter19:00

But it's come so easily, it just flowed out.

Ronald Harwood19:02

Just flowed. And then I wrote a play called The Barbara Stamford Hill, which they did on television. And I was put under contract then to ATV, Binky Vision ATV.

Presenter19:10

And you started started to earn money.

Ronald Harwood19:12

Yes, first time in my life as one of the

Presenter19:14

Why don't you want to explore that too much? Why do you feel you should just leave it alone?

Ronald Harwood19:17

Because you know, a creative process, whether it be for acting or writing music or painting or writing books and plays, is a very delicate thing, and I don't think it should be disturbed. It shouldn't be analysed too much by the person who has to employ it. It's quite superstitious, of you. Oh, yes. Oh, well, of course. I'm Jewish.

Presenter19:35

Oh yeah.

Ronald Harwood19:39

Don't be the evil eye.

Presenter19:39

Don't be the evil eye.

Presenter19:42

More music, what is it?

Ronald Harwood19:45

Well, this is just a piece of music I absolutely do. I'm devoted to Beethoven, and it always puzzled me that he was deaf. I could when I was a child and I heard he was deaf, I couldn't imagine how he he would hear sounds like this, which is the violin and piano sonata played by Perlman and Ashkenazi, sonata number seven in C minor.

Presenter20:55

Itzak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazi playing the opening of Beethoven's violin and piano sonata number seven in C minor, opus thirty, number two. So just as you started to write then, Ronald, at the end of the fifties, it was this amazing turning point really in the history of English theatre, because of course it had all turned around with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Angry Young Man, Men, So on, Pinter. All the traditional rules of the theatre were being turned on their head. But you never wrote any of that. You didn't feel you could. You wanted to, but you couldn't. Why not?

Ronald Harwood21:27

Because they were all writing about the English social structure. The the class uh struggle in England has always seemed to me to be inside the English. You can't detect it properly if you're not part of it, if you haven't been to school, if you haven't been brought up in it and as a matter of fact it has very little interest for me.

Presenter21:46

But at the same time you seem to have wanted to be part of it. Somehow wanted to.

Ronald Harwood21:49

Oh, I wanted to be part of the theatrical experience, but I didn't I couldn't write the plays that were then fashionable.

Presenter21:53

Yeah.

Presenter21:55

But did that make you feel even more like a foreigner and outsider?

Ronald Harwood21:59

Well, yes, but I've always had that. Graham Greene said a wonderful thing. He said, I am at home everywhere and at home nowhere. And you're not allowed, you know, in England, to forget that you're a foreigner.

Presenter21:59

Uh

Ronald Harwood22:09

I've lived here fifty years. But Miss Oh, Ronnie, well, of course he doesn't understand about these. He's very born in South Africa, you know, whatever.

Presenter22:15

But you've also talked uh a lot over the years about your your characters feeling, not thinking. You suggested that that

Presenter22:23

I suppose that you don't trust your intellect?

Ronald Harwood22:25

That's absolutely true, and I think I've said that too. I don't trust my intelligence, if any, because I really often No, no, it isn't. I often don't know what to think. And I think uncertainty to be a very human characteristic. Voltaire said anyone who's certain ought to be certified.

Presenter22:31

This folks

Ronald Harwood22:41

People who are certain are terribly dangerous, you know people who tell you they know.

Presenter22:45

Of course. But it just sounds putting all that together as if you have some kind of inferiority complex, intellectual and

Ronald Harwood22:46

But it just

Ronald Harwood22:51

No, I don't no, I I don't have an intellectual I did for a bit, I thought, because I hadn't been to university.

Presenter22:53

Actually, I do.

Presenter22:56

But I think what you've always trusted, if if I'm right in sensing this, you've always trusted your emotions.

Ronald Harwood23:01

Always the emotion drives the rational decision.

Presenter23:06

Are you someone who cries easily?

Ronald Harwood23:10

Only it this is your life.

Ronald Harwood23:12

Bad reviews. Yes, that well I don't anymore. I did once, and never and never again. But this is your life, when they say, and you haven't seen her for forty-six years, here's your and I burst into tears. Oh, always.

Presenter23:22

Cool.

Ronald Harwood23:23

Oh yes.

Presenter23:25

Record number five.

Ronald Harwood23:27

What I'd

Ronald Harwood23:28

I came to this very recently, this uh piece of music. It was some friends of ours had their Golden Wedding and it was played in their honour by Sir Bernard Heitink and members of the Covent Garden Orchestra. And it's the Grand Partita of Mozart, and I thought it would be a lovely thing to take a piece of music I didn't know very well on my desert island so I could get to know it.

Presenter24:36

Part of Mozart's Grand Partita, Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K three six one, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler, someone about whom you've written in your play taking sides. You wrote about five years ago. One has to say that, of course, as a result of what you were saying earlier, you don't write about the society you live in. You either have written about your past or areas of political repression as in Nazi Germany or moral.

Ronald Harwood25:02

As in Nazi Germany. Or moral difficulties that people face. Furtwengler is a very, very ambiguous case. The real accusation against him was that he stayed in Nazi Germany and conducted. He was Hitler's favourite conductor. I, when I was writing the play, kept thinking, how would I behave in his position? It's terribly easy to be courageous a long way away from the battle. But he found himself in this position. Hitler's people used to phone him and say the Führer would like to come and conduct for him. It's quite heady stuff if the head of state calls. He just took an ambiguous line. It's true that he helped a lot of Jews to escape, Jewish musicians, but he auditioned them first.

Presenter25:45

Mm.

Ronald Harwood25:45

See if they were good musicians.

Presenter25:46

But others went, didn't they? I mean, obviously the Jews were Bruno, Walter, Otto Klemperer went. They were Jewish. But but other non-Jews went. I think the Bush is Adolf.

Ronald Harwood25:51

They were Jewish. But but are they non-Jews?

Ronald Harwood25:54

Fritz Busch and Adolph Busch went, and Kleiber, I think, are the only two non-Jewish conductors that left. Furtwengler did not become a member of the Nazi party, one has to say.

Presenter26:05

Which von Karrion did. Yeah.

Ronald Harwood26:06

Von Karian twice. As somebody says in the play, I guess he just wanted to show them that he cared.

Presenter26:06

Uh

Presenter26:07

Yeah.

Presenter26:10

But the issue is can art and politics be separate? Can you practice the one without condoning the other? Is really what

Ronald Harwood26:18

You can in a democracy, funnily enough, because democracies don't care about art. Democratic governments don't care about culture. They pay lip service to it when they're in opposition. The moment they come into power they don't care a damn about culture.

Ronald Harwood26:31

But int uh totalitarian governments always control the arts because they know they're very powerful.

Presenter26:37

Yes, and he was a preeminent he was the greatest conduction. So they needed him. He was being used by them. So at best he was naïve.

Ronald Harwood26:39

He was the greatest conduction.

Ronald Harwood26:44

At best he was naïve.

Presenter26:46

So you call it taking sides, you attempt to put both sides and balance it up, but obviously from everything you're saying you actually disapprove of what they're doing.

Ronald Harwood26:54

Oh, I don't know what gave you that impression. No, no, no. I called it taking sides'cause I refuse also, I don't like plays which lecture. I like plays which when you go in, you don't know what the author thinks and you have to make your own decision. That's what I like.

Presenter27:04

And you have

Presenter27:06

But now you've answered the question.

Ronald Harwood27:08

If you say so.

Presenter27:11

Record number six.

Ronald Harwood27:12

Record number six is again about a conductor, a fabulous, fabulous conductor called Bruno Walter, who started off as Gustav Mahler's assistant. And they recorded him with a special orchestra they put together called the Columbia they called it the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, but it was special, very highly gifted solo players. And he conducts first he rehearses the Linz Symphony by Mozart, and then you hear him conduct it, but it's the rehearsal that's quite wonderful.

Ronald Harwood27:40

Now then Maybe rehearse.

Speaker 327:41

Yeah.

Speaker 327:44

the symphony in six the introduction.

Speaker 328:00

A little shorter than thirty seconds. Rom, papa, papa.

Speaker 328:06

Bye-bye, once more.

Speaker 328:14

It's

Speaker 328:16

That means your ass your eights are too long.

Speaker 328:19

Papa Ba-ba In the moment I beat the next beat must be already out. Ra off.

Speaker 328:30

Off too long. It's too long. It's too long. Your eats are too long. Ra off.

Presenter28:40

The Columbia Symphony Orchestra rehearsing the opening of Mozart's Lindz Symphony, number thirty six in C major K four twenty five, uh with of course Bruno Walter, who did leave Nazi

Ronald Harwood28:51

Well, he had to leave. He was Jewish. But the story of him leaving, I think, is very fascinating. He finished a concert and the audience began to applaud. And he went off into the wings and somebody said, Maestro, get out now. You're going to be arrested by the Gestapo. And he went straight into a car to a private aeroplane, I believe, and got away. And the audience was still applauding. I do think it's fascinating.

Presenter29:12

And now you are on to another musician, Marla, you're writing about a play, yes?

Ronald Harwood29:15

Yes, a play. I'm calling it Marlowe's Conversion. Marlow was a Jew who wanted desperately to be conductor of the Vienna State Opera. You couldn't be unless you were a Catholic. And he converted.

Ronald Harwood29:29

And I think the conversion cost him. He felt he'd betrayed something, but he didn't know what.

Presenter29:35

Hm. He was quite a difficult man.

Ronald Harwood29:36

Very difficult temperamental man and then fell in love with this awful woman, Alma Mahler, and he became impotent and had to consult Freud. And the interesting thing is that Freud lived about two streets away from him in Vienna. He never saw him in Vienna. He waited till he'd heard Freud was in Holland on a lecture tour and he went to Holland to see him and they spent, I think, six hours in a park walking round and round. I think I shall have that scene. I know it'll last six hours, but it'll be a shortened version.

Presenter30:03

Are you, Ronald, as buzzing with ideas as ever? Do you need to?

Ronald Harwood30:06

I'm afraid so. Yes, I know. Because the critics will be so disappointed. Every time I get bad reviews, I feel as they're trying to write me off, but I've got news for them. One chap, after seeing goodbye kiss, said Mr Harwood is past retirement age. But I've oh, I have news for him.

Presenter30:07

Why are you free?

Presenter30:20

No writer's block, it all just pulls.

Ronald Harwood30:22

I've never had that, thank God, no.

Presenter30:24

But do you have any habits, any compulsive kind of in order to be able to write?

Ronald Harwood30:27

I have to smoke when I write. I'm trying to cut down. My doctor's very insistent, but then.

Presenter30:29

Please.

Ronald Harwood30:33

You know, somebody did a a German academic did a a paper on on my uh work and found that in every play I've ever written I attack the medical profession.

Ronald Harwood30:42

It's awful, isn't it, Gray? There we are.

Presenter30:44

Number seven.

Ronald Harwood30:45

Number seven.

Ronald Harwood30:47

Well, this has a very personal I've always loved the opera rigoletto, and I think the quartet is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.

Speaker 331:18

The boy laughed.

Speaker 331:32

Don't be afraid.

Speaker 331:45

Uh

Presenter31:46

Luciano Pavarotti, Shirley Verrette, June Anderson, and Leo Nucci, with the quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto, with the Orchestra del Teatro Communale di Bologna, conducted by Riccardo

Presenter31:58

So it's time to cast you adrift, Ronald Harward. You're too gregarious to last for very long

Ronald Harwood32:04

You're telling me

Presenter32:05

What were you gonna do with you?

Ronald Harwood32:06

I don't know. I'm really worried.

Presenter32:08

I'm not sure.

Ronald Harwood32:09

Yes. Within forty-eight hours I should last at all.

Presenter32:11

I've been so spoiled by parents and wife.

Ronald Harwood32:14

My wife, and all that, I don't know. I'm not a bad cook, you'll be surprised to hear, but.

Presenter32:18

Surprised to hear it.

Ronald Harwood32:19

It's the other bits, you know, knocking nails in and making rafts. I'd be hopeless. I mean, just to I am I said to somebody the other day, I'm to DIY what Thora Heard is to sumo wrestling. I mean, I it would be totally useless.

Presenter32:33

And are you ultimately an optimist or a pessimist? Will you agree that you are?

Ronald Harwood32:36

Oh, optimal style. You are. Yes.

Presenter32:38

So rescue on horizon any day, pop up, little ship.

Ronald Harwood32:41

No, I'm an optimist because I think things can't get any worse. And that's that's my fault. I'm not sure if that's optimism at all, but there we are. I'd look for ships, but I know, oh God, it would be terrible.

Presenter32:47

I'm not sure if that's what it is in the talk. There we are.

Presenter32:53

Last record.

Ronald Harwood32:55

My last record is combines two things that I think are in my play which I hope are in my plays. One is uh that the world is unbearably funny and unbearably sad. And in choosing Louis Armstrong singing Wonderful World, I think the lyrics are almost banal in their happiness, and his voice is so tragic that the combination's irresistible.

Speaker 333:27

I see trees of green.

Speaker 333:32

Red roses too.

Speaker 333:35

I see them blue.

Speaker 333:38

I mean you.

Speaker 333:41

And I think to myself.

Speaker 333:46

What a wonderful

Presenter33:49

Louis Armstrong and Wonderful World. If you could only take one of those eight records, Ronald.

Ronald Harwood33:55

I think I'd take the Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto.

Presenter34:00

And your book.

Ronald Harwood34:01

Am I allowed collected? No, I'm not really. No. Well, I'll take even war's decline and fall.

Presenter34:03

Ordinarily not.

Ronald Harwood34:06

I think it's one of the most marvellous books. I think Even War was the greatest prose writer of the twentieth century in English.

Presenter34:12

What about your luxury?

Ronald Harwood34:13

My bathroom.

Ronald Harwood34:15

Could I?

Presenter34:15

Hmm.

Ronald Harwood34:16

It's a lovely bathroom and I like bathrooms and I always think they're the very important part of the house. And you you I'm sneaking something in, because in the bathroom cabinet there'll be nail scissors, which I think would be also frightfully important.

Presenter34:30

Ronald Harwood, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Ronald Harwood34:34

Thank you.

Speaker 134:42

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.