Andrew Cruickshank

Speaker 20:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Andrew Cruickshank0:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:27

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? On our desert island this week is a very popular actor. It's Andrew Cruikshank.

Presenter0:34

Andrew, how successfully do you think you could adapt yourself to solitude?

Presenter0:39

Not very well.

Presenter0:41

But I would.

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What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Presenter0:45

Nothing. I love life here. Are you a musical person?

Presenter0:50

Tonight would seem

Presenter0:53

You play records a lot. Yes, Vedio. How did you set about choosing those ultimate eight records for your island?

Presenter1:00

Well, a mixture of ones, uh diverse interests in music.

Presenter1:04

and must tell you about the places one would been to and tied the two up together.

Presenter1:08

What's the first one on the pile with? That's Elgar's Cello Concerto. Why do you choose that? Well, it seems to sum up to me coming from...

Presenter1:16

The northeast coast of Scotland sums up that the wonderful rich middle belt of England.

Presenter1:23

Housman D.H. Lawrence.

Presenter1:25

Dear Sarah.

Presenter2:24

The opening of the third movement of Elgar's Cello Concerto with Jacqueline Dupre as soloist. What's your second choice?

Presenter2:32

Summertime from

Presenter2:34

Gershwin's poor giant best.

Presenter2:36

Why?

Presenter2:38

Well

Presenter2:39

I began acting when I was twenty in 1928. In 1934 I went to America.

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Playing Richard of Bordeaux.

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And uh

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It was a wonderful time with the group theatre, everything like that, and the jazz musicians, and I loved America enormously at that time.

Presenter3:26

Leontine Price singing Summertime.

Presenter3:30

Now, Andrew, you come from Aberdeen. Did you see a lot of theatre as a child?

Presenter3:34

That's a great deal.

Presenter3:36

It was the time of touring companies and a different play came to his Majesty's Theatre every week. Was the theatre an early ambition of yours?

Presenter3:46

Not deliberately, no, although I sang a new...

Presenter3:50

a cantata, sort of child before a peered with kilt and so on, things like that.

Presenter3:56

And then as I grew, one drifted into

Presenter4:00

to simply acting, acting and appearing through friends or something like that, in the arbitrary way one grows into the profession in amateur companies. Yes, in amateur companies everyone so that

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By the time I was 15, 16, 17, I was singing juvenile leads in things like Santoy, Quaker Girl, and

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with amateur companies and the theater. What did you do when you left school?

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What was your first job?

Presenter4:25

Well, people thought I'd be a civil engineer, but...

Presenter4:27

That wasn't very good at that. Yeah.

Presenter4:30

You always did musical shows, never straight shows. At that time. At that time, yes. What was it that decided you to become a professional?

Presenter4:37

Well, the awareness that I would be no good as an engineer, but a sort of intuition that I might be...

Presenter4:43

Tolerable as an actor, and that I had a voice, I could sing, I could stand, I had height, all these

Presenter4:49

normal uh quantities which

Presenter4:52

An actor was supposed to have. So what did you do about it? Well, I gave an audition to a Shakespeare company. It was an Aberdeen. Yeah. Which company was that? That was the Benton Shakespearean company. And about three months later, they were doing uh

Presenter5:03

The Twelfth Night and As You Like It, which were new plays in the repertoire, and they had a singer to sing a festi, and Amiens only invited me to join them.

Andrew Cruickshank5:09

And then

Presenter5:11

Yes. How long did you stay with them? Eighteen months?

Presenter5:15

And what happened after that? Well, I left them and came to London. Of course, you didn't know your way about the business. You didn't know about the London agents or? No, no, indeed not. What what one did was one wrote to management and I wrote to Morris Brown and they were putting on a fellow with Paul Robeson. I went to an audition.

Presenter5:30

And uh

Presenter5:32

Uh was implied.

Presenter5:34

to walk on an understudy in Othello at the Savoy in 1930.

Presenter5:39

So almost immediately you made your first appearance in the West End. Yes, I suppose.

Andrew Cruickshank5:41

Yeah.

Presenter5:43

Well this is the point where I think we might break off your next record. What next?

Presenter5:47

The quintet from the maister singer way.

Presenter5:50

Well, it was the first Wagner opera I heard, never did.

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Sung by the BNOC.

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British National Opera Company.

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And Wagner's been near one all one's life.

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The Maistersinger was the gayest partner.

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Attractive, like

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That's why I like it.

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The Pincad from The Meistersinger.

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A Berlin production conducted by Rudolf Kempe.

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So, the Savoy Theatre, May 1930, your first London appearance walking on an Athello. What was the next job?

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The next hour was a few tours.

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of various Western plays.

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And then I joined a company called the Ost League of Service Traveling Theatre, who pitups, yes indeed, in which there was a

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Great diversity of experience.

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Which one got? Ranging from folk songs, dances, to one-act plays by Macefield and Chekhov and so on. And you played in church halls and schools? That's that sort of thing, yeah. You went to New York quite early, yes indeed. After I had finished with the Arts League, I went into a musical comedy called One Performance.

Andrew Cruickshank7:43

Why does it have some data?

Presenter7:49

In there, it was Dennis King who had bought the rights of Richard Bordeaux. And he invited me to go with him to play the part of Maudlin in New York. This was 1934. And you joined the old Vic company, too? Yes, when I came back.

Presenter8:00

About 1937.

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It was with the old baked

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More or less from then until the outbreak of war, and indeed after.

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Didn't you go abroad in one of the first old victours that went abroad was sent out in 1939.

Presenter8:19

Yes. Your wife, Corigram Lewis, was in the company. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

Andrew Cruickshank8:22

Yes it

Presenter8:24

And we married s soon after that when we came home.

Presenter8:27

And you appeared in that famous production of Hamlet at Eltino Castle in Denmark. Yes, that's right. Gilgood had collected a company to.

Andrew Cruickshank8:31

Denmark

Presenter8:34

Celebrate the, if that is the proper word, celebrate the end of the Lyceum, and it was that production of him that went to Elsinore in 1939.

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And then the war, the war

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And you were away for quite a few years.

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When you came back to pavilion life from the army, was it fairly easy to take up the theater again? Yes, it was easy, because of a patruna.

Andrew Cruickshank8:52

Yeah.

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Streak of good fortune that tenants

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Go ahead, take in the letter camerasmith.

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decided to put on a play for people who had just come out of the army.

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And Evelyn Williams had written to me that the play they were going to do was a real written version of a play of his called Spring 1600.

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And they asked me whether I was free to play Burbage. And I was. And this started a whole lot more costuming. Yes. You went to Stratford on Avon, I mean. In 1915, it's right, yes.

Presenter9:21

And back to New York. Back to New York very shortly after that to play Warwick and St. John, yes. You were the only Englishman in the car.

Andrew Cruickshank9:28

Yeah.

Presenter9:30

Then a very successful thriller was to take you right out of the classical theater. Yes, indeed. Dial and for murder at the Westminster 1952.

Andrew Cruickshank9:33

Yeah.

Presenter9:38

Yeah. I don't think I've played. I don't think I've played in a classical play since then. I may have. But a number of thrillers you played. Yes, indeed. Dead on 9, House by the Lake.

Presenter9:47

For Robson, the Duke of York's thrillers and Ibsen really seen the pattern for a recently.

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I don't want to act in Shakespeare or anything like that, but I'd like very much.

Presenter9:57

To act in Ibsen, more and more Ibsen. Well, now you're having a very successful run at the Savoy Theatre in Alibi for a Judge. This is a a comedy rather than a drama.

Andrew Cruickshank10:07

Good.

Presenter10:07

That's a bit.

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Let's have record number four now, what Nick?

Presenter10:13

Faya's Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

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Why do you choose that?

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Well, I think all Scotsmen have a nostalgia for Europe, and particularly for the heat of Spain and France, colour and things.

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This seems to focus.

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The general feeling I have for this part of the world.

Presenter11:28

Arthur Ropenstein of Soloist in Fayer's Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

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You must have seen quite a lot of Spain when you were on location for El Ucid. Yes, thirteen weeks in Madrid.

Presenter11:39

Have films played a big part in your career?

Presenter11:42

No, they haven't.

Presenter11:44

Like most actors, I do act in films, but I don't like it. I prefer the theater and television. Oh, now television. You have done a lot of television before Doctor Cameron turned up. Doctor Cameron and Doctor Finlay's case book, the character as whom you are known to millions.

Presenter12:01

How did Dr. Cameron come into your life? Was it out of the blue? Oh, absolutely, out of the blue. It had nothing to do with me, really. It was just one of those.

Presenter12:11

chances by which the BBC were going to do a series that uh

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It didn't materialize?

Presenter12:17

And they'd had these plays and they thought they'd try them out and they did try them out and they went on and on trying them out. Did you know these stories of A.J. Cronin before? Not really very well, no.

Presenter12:27

I knew the Citadel and his novels like that. Cretan himself is a doctor, of course, and has practiced. Yes, indeed.

Presenter12:35

Now is uh Tanakh Bray based on a on a real Scotts time?

Presenter12:40

Originally it is where Cronin is, but with the extension of the stories...

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to include things like mining.

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The stirring

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wool mills and so on.

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We chose a part of Scotland to do the central thing and then go out to these various bits.

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the rest of Scotland where there are these sort of factories. So it really is a synthesis.

Presenter13:03

Of the middle belt of Scotland, where this industry and so on. Yeah, it's going on. How many times have you played Dr. Cameron now in how many episodes?

Andrew Cruickshank13:09

How many of you have

Presenter13:11

We are not gonna we're coming up to the hundred very soon.

Presenter13:14

You run out of the original Cronium story, isn't it? Yes, yes. But still, one says that, but still the creation is always his, of course.

Presenter13:23

Do you find you'll begin to identify w with this character after portraying so many facets of him?

Presenter13:29

Identify, identify. I find myself growing mannerisms as to have mannerisms manners rather than mannerisms because one tries.

Presenter13:38

To avoid them becoming clichés. You find yourself adopting mannerisms that you've invented for Dr. Cameron. Yes, indeed. Oh, yes, yes. Do you get people asking you for medical advice?

Presenter13:50

I used to. I don't think now. I think they're getting wise about Cameron now because he's got nothing to say to them from their point of view.

Presenter13:56

Are you worried that this identification with one character uh might harm your career? Oh no, my career. Roy, I'm fifty-eight.

Presenter14:05

What career I have? All I want to have is a nice, nice life doing the work I like doing.

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Have you any professional ambitions so far unfulfilled? No, no, no, no. My professional life, like my personal life, has been very happy.

Presenter14:19

Are your children following you into the theatre? Just the oldest girl, yes, she is. She's up at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, at the moment.

Speaker 214:26

Yeah.

Presenter14:26

Mm-hmm.

Presenter14:27

But the other two are not now.

Presenter14:30

Let's have your next record. What's number five? The next record is Beethoven's Quartet and B-flat, one of the late ones.

Presenter14:36

I've chosen this because this is pure music, it seems to me.

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And in my desert island, I'd like a piece of pure music to relate to other pieces of music to.

Presenter15:43

The Amadeus Quartet playing the third movement of Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat opens 130.

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Which brings us now to record number six. What's that going to be?

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Stravinsky is the secret division.

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The the first time I heard this record I

Presenter16:00

practically driven out of my seat by the sheer physical energy of it, its sensuality.

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It's primitive quality.

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And this is why I have chosen it as a contrast.

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to these others.

Presenter17:10

Pierre Monteur conducting the Paris Conserva to our orchestra in the closing passage of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

Presenter17:17

Andrew, have you any hobbies or accomplishments that would be useful on a desert island?

Presenter17:22

I don't think so. No, no, I I I I'm no good with my hands. I I I can't make tables or anything like that. I can't paint. I can't do anything. Can you cook?

Presenter17:31

Yes, in the most elementary way. I'm afraid elementary cooking is all one would have a chance of doing on a desert island. Can you cultivate?

Presenter17:40

No, by intuition I might, but not through knowledge.

Presenter17:44

I'm going to assume from what you said that you couldn't construct a craft, but if one was washed up, a raft or something of that sort, could you navigate it? Could you point it in the right direction? Well, if it were in the northern hemisphere, if your island were there, then I might, but certainly not if it were down the Pacific or somewhere like that. No, I couldn't. Would you try to escape? No, I would sit still, have patience and hope.

Presenter18:07

What's your seventh record?

Presenter18:09

Well

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This is

Presenter18:13

Or if you'll forgive me introducing a personal element into this, this is an extract from a reading.

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of the New English Bible, Paul's

Presenter18:23

A letter to the Colossians in my own reading.

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Why do you choose it?

Presenter18:29

Well, I find the New English Bible most moving and revealing in its insight.

Presenter18:34

The authorized version of the Bible is miraculous in its imagery.

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But uh

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The New English Bible seems to me to gain...

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Incentive.

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And it is wonderful.

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I think.

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That's why I've chosen it.

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Then put to death those parts of you which belong to the earth.

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fornication, indecency.

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Last

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Paul Criff.

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and the ruthless greed which is nothing less than idolatry.

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Because of these, God's dreadful judgment is impending.

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And in the life you once lived, these are the ways you yourselves followed.

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But now you yourselves must lay aside all anger, passion, malice.

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Cursing

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Filthy talk. Have done with them.

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Stop lying to one another.

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Now that you have discarded the old nature with its deeds and have put on the new nature.

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which is being constantly renewed in the image of its Creator and brought to know God.

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There is no question here of Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, freeman, slain.

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But Christ is all.

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And there's in-home.

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Then put on the garments that suit God's chosen people.

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His own his beloved.

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compassion, kindness.

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Humility.

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Gentlemen

Presenter20:07

Thank you.

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Be forbearing with one another and forgiving.

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When any of you has cause for complaint?

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You must forgive as the Lord forgave you.

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To crown all, there must be love.

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to bind all together and complete the whole.

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Let Christ's peace be arbiter in your heart.

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To this peace you were called as members of a single body.

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and be filled with gratitude.

Presenter20:43

An excerpt from the letter of Paul to the Colossians from the New English Bible.

Presenter20:49

Which brings us to your last record. What's that going to be?

Presenter20:52

The 23rd Psalm.

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A sound by the Glasgow Office Choir.

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This takes me back to my native land, Scotland.

Presenter21:02

Well now I was a buying ever dinner.

Presenter21:04

And I used to go to the music hall.

Presenter21:07

I mean the music hall. I don't mean music hall from the righty point here.

Presenter21:12

And on Saturday nights.

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about once or twice a year. The Glasgow Fisher's choir would come up, with Sir Hugh Roberton conducting.

Presenter21:19

And always at some time in the programme he would come

Presenter21:22

To the front of the platform and say, ladies and gentlemen.

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in the most high, gracious voice.

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We are now going to sing the twenty-third sound.

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To the tune Krima.

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I think you'll hear his voice on this recording.

Presenter21:40

Here is criminal.

Speaker 221:55

Once in mess he knows.

Speaker 222:06

In my

Presenter22:36

The Glasgow Orphia Squire conducted by Sir Hugh Robertson.

Presenter22:40

If you could take only one of the eight records you've let us here.

Presenter22:45

Which would it be?

Presenter22:48

Oh, I think the twenty-third Psalm.

Presenter22:51

And one luxury to take with you to the island.

Presenter22:54

Luxury luxury

Andrew Cruickshank22:56

Yeah.

Presenter23:00

Oh, I think because it has no relationship to anything. I think something like

Presenter23:05

Uh Renoir's painting then.

Presenter23:08

Bard the Follyberger.

Presenter23:10

Right. Get a colour. That's what I like.

Presenter23:14

And one book, apart from the Bible, and we'll let you have the New English version.

Presenter23:19

And Shakespeare.

Presenter23:21

I'd like something that started thought in me.

Presenter23:24

That wasn't a complete work of art such as a novel by Stondah or something like that.

Presenter23:31

And for the last 20 years,

Presenter23:33

I've been engrossed and fascinated by the thought of Kierkegaard.

Presenter23:38

The Danish thinker.

Presenter23:41

All through his life he kept a journal.

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Up a little

Presenter23:45

A little more sort of thing.

Presenter23:47

They're wonderfully evocative.

Presenter23:49

They start thought in me all the time.

Presenter23:51

And that is the book I have taken.

Presenter23:54

Kierkegaard's journal.

Presenter23:56

We'll have a a special

Presenter23:58

the banned edition of Kierkegaard's journal for you.

Presenter24:02

Thank you, Andrew Krupshank, for letting us hear your choice of desert island disc.

Presenter24:07

Well, it's been it's been a great pleasure. You've made me think.

Presenter24:10

That's always pleasant.

Presenter24:12

I think.

Presenter24:13

Bye bye everyone.