John Mills

John Mills0:00

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

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy three.

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Desert

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Island discs.

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This is a recording as it was being broadcast rather than the studio recording, and for that reason you may hear some interference and some degradation in the sound quality.

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As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

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On our desert island this week is the actor John Mill. John, could you take plenty of a long time?

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I wouldn't find it easy, but I think that I could take a certain amount of loneliness on a desert island because I'm mad about desert islands. Have you visited some? Yes, I have. I've made uh lucky enough to make a picture on uh Tobago, which is a beautiful desert island. I made Swiss Family Robinson there, and I've been to several of the others. What would you be happiest to have got away from?

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The pressure and the traffic and the pollution and the build up and the things that happen to to cities now, I think I would be very happy to get away from that. Do you play records a lot?

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Um yes, not as much as I would like to. Well, you're going to have plenty of time on the island. What was your plan in in choosing this pathetic ration of eight?

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Well, it was very difficult.

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I spent a great deal of thought on it. I'm

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Not greatly educated musically. I wish I was better educated, but I did try and choose things that I thought that I could live with.

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And I'm rather an emotional character, and therefore I think that the memories have become very precious. And so I do find that most of the things that I've chosen, although I've chosen them because I like them musically, do remind me of various things that have happened to me in my life and which I treasure. What's the first memory? Well, the record is is a is a record called Angels Sing, and I've chosen it for two reasons. One, I think that Bing is a master. And I remember Bing from his first record with the Paul Whiteman Rhythm Boy.

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He's singing a number called The Angels Sing, which I have to have with me because it was at a time which was fraught with all sort of emotion. Mary, my wife, was playing in London at the time and I'd just joined up. Then she left the play and she went to America chased by U-boats to play in New York and I found myself a sapper in the Engineers in Cambridge and she had one record of Angels Sing and I had the other and we played it constantly until they were both cracked and so it brings back tremendous memories naturally to me this particular number.

Speaker 32:51

Make it

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And the angels sing.

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And Leaver Music.

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Ringing off.

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Bing Crosby. What the second disc? Well, the s the second disc is um a piece of Tchaikovsky, uh Romeo and Juliet. It's one of my favorite, favorite pieces of of music. I think it's a marvellous, romantic, stirring piece of work.

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A theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karijan. What part of the country do you come from, Don?

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Well, I was born um in um Suffolk and uh started life with a slight Suffolk accent.

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I think I've just about ironed out. What, in fact, did you do when you left school?

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Well, I sold lavatory paper and uh disinfectant and uh various things very, very unsuccessfully because uh instead of selling them in the morning I was going to Zelia Ray's dancing academy and um having bought some tap shoes I was trying to learn to dance. I really

John Mills5:14

I really

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I cut down my visits to the afternoon and I I had very little success. I had a bowler hat and an umbrella and

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Diabetes.

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Although I was 19, I looked about four. What was your first job in the theatre? My first job in the theatre was the back row of the chorus at the London Hippodrome in a show called The Five O'Clock Girl with George Brosmith and Ernest Truix and Gene Collin. And I got the job. There were 16 chorus voice. I think there were 142 for the audition. And I just managed to scrape in. Well done.

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And after that?

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I was able to work for nine months.

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um after that brilliant success in the chorus and um having tramped the agent stairs for a long time, I was finally, in desperation by one agent, sent to um India.

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And I spent 18 months touring the Far East. Yes. What sort of plays? Well, we did everything. We did musical comedy, we did Funny Face, So This Is Love, The Girlfriend, Stop Flirting, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Young Woodley, When Nights Were Bold, No No Nanette, will you name it? We did it. Something for all takes. Something for everyone. Is this the celebrated company at which Noel Carte was? Yes, that's right. We were called The Quaints.

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Something for

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They were

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And Noel, driving through Singapore in a rickshaw, saw the Victoria Theatre Singapore, and it said the quaints in Hamlet.

John Mills6:30

Yeah.

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And he said, Well, this I you know, I simply cannot miss. And uh luckily I was a member of the company.

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Luckily for me. Had he played in Johnny's End? Yes, we one of the one of the things we played was with Johnny's End and he said that he'd always wanted to play Staneth and uh would we mind if he um took the part of Stannet? So of course everybody fainted and uh he learnt the part in a record um five days and it was really the most enormous.

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Feet of memory.

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And he went on, completely worth perfect in five days and played it with us for about a week. Yes. And on that tour you first met your wife, Mary Haley Bell. I met Mary, who had long red hair down her back and pigtails. And we were invited to this very grand house in Tin Sin, where her father worked for the Chinese government. And we were invited up there to play tennis. And that's the first time I met her.

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And when you return to London?

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Well, then I was out of work for a while, and then I gave an audition for Mr. Cochrane, who was then Mr. Cochrane, later knighted, which Noel arranged an audition for me. I gave an audition at His Majesty's Theatre, sang a song, did a dance, and ended up four bars ahead of the pianist, and did get a job in the 1931 Review at the London Pavilion. Yes, one of.

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That's right, it was an enormous flop.

John Mills8:02

But it is

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It had Ada May in it, Flarke and McCullough, the American comedians, and um I played lots of character parts. Several young actors were engaged in it. We all bought houses and flats because we all, you know, knew that Sir Charles would have a at least a year's run, and I think we ran two weeks.

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You were in Tom of Carlton's successes as well. Well, yes, I was. I I'm I'm very, very lucky.

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Because he wrote several things for me and um in musical and straight and uh you were in Cavalcade and in The Review, Words and Music. Yes.

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And I remember you on a delightful musical with Frances Day called Jill Darling. That's right, yes. With Arthur Risker. Mhm. And the farce with Robertson Hare. And that was called um Aunt Men Beasts with uh Alfred Drayton.

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And it was directed by a marvellous character called Leslie Henson. And I remember Leslie at the first rehearsal said, Now

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We are now playing farce, he said, and all I want to do is that you just have to walk down to the footlights and bark it into the abyss.

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Yeah.

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And what else from those pre-war days?

John Mills9:13

Ha ha.

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The old Vic I went to in nineteen thirty eight with uh Tyrone Guthrie and uh played Park in the Midsummer Night's Dream. He did a fabulous production of it and another marvellous production he did of Stoops to Conquer and I played Marlowe, and then I was going back to the Vic.

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Um in nineteen um forty it was arranged that I was going back to play Hamlet, Richard the Third, and probably Hotspur, and then of course you know what happened. Yes, you were a sapper in Cambridge. Yes, exactly.

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Well let's break there for your third record, what's that?

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It's to be a record of, I think, probably one of the most marvellous characters that I've ever met or will ever meet, and that's Noel Carr.

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Hey orchestra play, play something light and sweet and gay. For we must have music, we must have music to drive our fears away. While our illusions swiftly fade for us, let other orchestra song In the confusion the years have made for us, Serenade for us just once.

Speaker 210:23

Uh

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Narrow card in Las Vegas.

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Now staying with your stage career, John, you mentioned Mary's play, Men in Shadow, just now. You were in another h of her plays as well.

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Yes. A Miniature was the first play she wrote. Yes. Then Duet for Two Hands was the second. That was what I was thinking of. Yes. And then Angel.

John Mills10:40

Yeah.

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It was the third that I directed, but Men and Shirley was the most exciting of the lot in a way because it was her first play. Yes. There was a play of Guthrie's that you were. Tony Guthrie's called The Top of the Ladder. A most moving and interesting play. It was a really marvellous piece of work.

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Then for some years you were so busy with films you did hardly any stage work. No, I got caught up with celluloid. Yes. You played um Terence Radigan's Ross in New York? Yes, I did. Yes, about nineteen sixty, sixty one. I was there for nine months with that.

John Mills11:07

Yes I did, lots of snacks.

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And then the next thing was uh uh veterans uh with John Gilbert at the um Royal Court.

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And now you are happily settled in the William Douglas Hume play at the end of the day.

John Mills11:26

Yeah.

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A play about an election and sheer coincidence if you should happen to sound or look at all like uh Mrs. Roberts. Sheer and it's absolute complete coincidence. I mean just because I happen to be

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The share.

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The North Country Prime Minister and it takes place at the last general election and he loses. I mean, it seems strange, you know, that anybody would think that I might be anything to do with anybody we know. But they seem to. I'm called Henry Jackson in the program. And Henry Jackson, you're guessing. And Henry Jackson I am. Record number four, Peter.

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And hit

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Uh well number four is going to be uh Black Man in Off C minor.

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because um it's one of my favorite, favourite pieces of music and uh it uh reminds me very much of Men in Shadow because Mary played it continuously um while she was writing the play.

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The closing passage of the Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, Vladimir Ashkenazi, was the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrei Premin.

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We've dealt with your stage career, John. What was the first film you made?

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Um the first

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film I made. It's such a long

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time ago. Um at it was called

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Um Brown on Resolution by C. S. Forrester and um I played Betty Balfour's son in it.

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And um

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If my memory doesn't play me tricks, I think that you were in it, Roy.

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Well, I I was one of the sailors who helped you on who escorted you onto a platform. Escort it is a better word. Hoven Viaduct station. Right. Call that being in it. Well, yes, you were in it. And they changed the title shortly for the first time. Yes, it was it was started off my being called Brown and Resolution, and then it was called To Forever England.

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It's got

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Yes, I did.

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Remember that? You didn't change the title, did you? I didn't. No, no, no, no. That's what it is. That was.

John Mills14:10

Yeah.

Speaker 214:10

Yeah, I didn't

John Mills14:12

Uh

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No, no, no. I was actually this. That's uh

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How many have you done since then? Well, I think that uh

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Uh

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Uh Oklahoma Crude, which um as the one has just finished in in in in the West End, I I think that was my eightieth or my eighty first.

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It's quite a lot of it.

John Mills14:30

Yeah.

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I suppose you made your first really big impact towards the end of the world when you made all those service pictures.

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Um in which we serve.

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To wait for the stars. Yes, I think probably, maybe, yes. W Morning Departure. That sort of period around there. And then I started making with uh with David Lean. I did um praise Expectations with him. Mhm. Uh this happy breed.

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Um Hobson's choice. It was around that Denham period, wasn't it?

John Mills14:58

Period, aren't they?

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Yes, and you made Scott of the Antarctic, which was an excellent film.

John Mills15:01

With DNA.

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And on the last day shooting, I was the only one left alive.

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And it it really was rather extraordinary. It was the most it had quite an effect on me.

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Which other films do you like particularly to remember?

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Well, I don't like many of them really. I um they say many of them keep popping up on the television screen, don't they, these days? Um I like Tunes of Glory. Yes. Um I had a marvellous time with Alec Guinness in that. I think if I had to pick at random I'd say probably Tunes of Glory, Hobson's Choice, because it's another character and I've always enjoyed character acting much more than straight acting, and possibly Ryan's Daughter. Yes, for which you won an Oscar. Yes.

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Record number five, what's that? Uh record number five is uh is uh Beethoven.

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And um

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It's um

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One of the sonatas and of course it's the moonlight sonata.

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Um because I know it's played all the time, but I love it.

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And um I think occasionally I would need to meditate on higher things on the island and I think I could possibly meditate

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For the Moonlight Sonata, probably better than anything else, and I would certainly take the Moonlight.

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The opening of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played by Rudolf Servit.

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John, you've started a dynasty of filmmakers. Your daughters Haley and Juliet both stars. Your son Jonathan behind the camera as director.

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Hayley and Juliet both started very young indeed. Mhm. And you've made a number of films with Hayley. I started. Yes, I mean Tiger Bay was the first one she did.

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Yes, there is.

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Which is actually Marvel Cinnagle.

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And then I made a picture called Chalk Garden.

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Um something to do with spring.

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And I directed her in um

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Uh Skywasted Crooked which um uh my wife wrote. Yeah. There must have been a lot of problems, uh, tax and otherwise, in a household with a senior film star, two juvenile film stars and a successful playwright.

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Yeah, so the the big the major problem I think is to try and get an uh word in edgeways. I mean it's very difficult.

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Ha ha ha ha.

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We all talk at once. That that's the that's the great problem. Let's have record number six.

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Her record number six is um Elgar.

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Nimrod.

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Um I've just chosen this.

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Because I like it.

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Limrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations, Sir Adrian Bolt conducting the London Symphony.

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You mentioned Swiss family Robinson. Did that give you any ideas on how to be an efficient castaway? Could you run up a shelter fairly easily? I think I could.

John Mills19:41

I think I

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Um

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I'm always happiest when I'm outside a building.

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Um I love being in the open air and I love everything that that I would have to do on an island. I think I and I love fishing. I love underwater fishing, underwater looking. I'm a good swimmer and diver and um I don't think I'd have any problems in that direction. I think I would love it. Would you try to escape? Um, only if I could see some

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I certainly wouldn't

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Take off, I think, into the unknown, because I'm A can't navigate and I wouldn't know how to go about it. Admirable course.

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Record number seven.

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Record number seven is uh Gershwin. Uh

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The Rats are in Blue, um played by Andre Previn.

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Firchwind raptured in blew the London Symphony Orchestra with Andre Preven as pianist and conductor.

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Now your last record.

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Well the last record would be um The Last Night of the Proms.

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Because I would have to have Land of Hope and Glory. It was a very important landmark for me. I think it's it's absolutely glorious and I love it. And of course if I took that I'd also get other things thrown in. I'd get the sea champions thrown in and Jerusalem thrown in.

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And I'd be able to sing to the whole off and then end up by standing and singing God Save the Queen myself at the end of it.

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Colin Davis conducting the last night of the proms.

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Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969. If you could take one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

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Difficult, isn't it? I think it would have to be I think it would be Elgar because um on that disc there there's so many

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Variations of music. I think that there's there's so much change in it, I think I probably would

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The Enigma Variation. Yes. And one luxury to take with you? A piano.

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Piano, yes, upright piano. Grand.

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No, no, you can live underground. We've got a rule. It has to be an update.

John Mills23:52

Yeah.

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All right, well a very, very, very special Ahra. Right. And one book apart from beautifulness. Now I would like um

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The the best and largest book on zoology. Right. You shall have it. And thank you, John Mills, for letting us hear your desert island dis.

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Thank you.

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Goodbye everyone and Merry Christmas. And very merry Christmas.

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The guest in this evening's programme was John Mills, the interviewer was Roy Plumbley and the producer Donald Cook.

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John Mills is now appearing in At the End of the Day at the Savoy Theatre.

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Next Saturday, at two minutes past seven, the castaway will be Mrs. Jeremy Thorpe.

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You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

John Mills24:51

For more downloads, please visit the Radio4 website.