Leslie Mitchell

Leslie Mitchell0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

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For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1974.

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As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

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Our castaway this week is a celebrated broadcaster both in sound and television. It's Leslie Mitchell. Leslie, do you think you're the right man for a desert island existence? Could you endure loneliness? Not for a moment, I should think, but I'm willing to try under your tuition.

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Does music play a big part in your life? Music always has, yes. I think I can be called very musical without knowing very much about it. What do you want the records you've chosen to do for you on the island?

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I want them to remind me.

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moments in my life or times in my life

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which I should and do always remember. Turning points?

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People that have played a great part. Where do we start?

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I think with Chopin, because my mother

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adored Chopin, used to play it and in her times of melancholy she was a very beautiful, talented

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and wonderful woman, but inclined to

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I think you might call it melancholy.

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And so when she played the piano, she took the melancholy out of the music and superimposed it. It was really very effective. I think it's one of the reasons why whenever I listen to Chopin,

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I get sad.

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But I don't think she intended it that way.

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So can we have a shopper?

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The opening of Chopin's nocturnal number twelve in G major, played by Beno Moisevich.

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What's your second record?

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For the second one

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His debut is La Premidi.

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The premier fall.

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This comes about because when I was quite young, 1914, very young, my mother went to America.

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and was not allowed, as a civilian, to come back after the sinking of the Lusitania.

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and so for the entire length of the Great War.

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I was looked after by William J. Locke, the novelist. Yes. Into my head comes The Beloved Vagabond. That's right, probably his most famous one. Yes.

Leslie Mitchell3:10

Madrid, probably his most famous one.

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But he wrote thirty-three or more books and all of them seemed to be popular. He was really a very considerable novelist for his time. How much has he read today?

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Hardly at all. I uh in fact have inherited the rights of his books and I think they are

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Just in the wrong time between the Edwardian period and the Victorian period.

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They just don't gel with modern readers, partly because, of course, that we're talking about topping things and ripping things, which Yeah.

Speaker 23:42

Uh

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Get slightly under the skin of you. But I interrupted your train of thought.

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No, uh it was simply that he very generously took me over when my mother was in America, when she'd parted from my father.

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And uh

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looked after me and taught me.

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He had been a school teacher, and he had a genius for that.

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and taught me the things I ought to know about the arts in particular.

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He said to me one day, Well, I think one day you're going to end up, unfortunately.

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as an actor or some terrible thing like that.

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I'm not sure if I can do it.

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He really taught me all that I know about understanding because I didn't really.

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enjoying my school days. I didn't learn anything and I never went to.

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university, so I was never taught how to think.

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I've just caught up with it slowly.

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He reminded me of the story of the La Pere Medie d'Anfon.

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and the ballet in which Nudjinski had appeared, and this made an enormous impression on me, and I always see this fawn-like figure.

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is Les Prehonid Con

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And it made a great visual and musical impact on me.

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Debussy's Prédieu de la Prémid enfone, played by the Swiss Romonde Orchestra conducted by Anserme.

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Where do we go now?

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Well

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My mother came back from America.

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And while the locks apparently had even wanted to adopt me, she

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distinctly took the opposite view.

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So that was that. And she married a

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A Canadian banker.

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and took a large Riverside house near Windsor at Clerk,

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And I had my first taste of belonging.

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to a family. He had two children of his own, a little older than me.

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And

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Beautiful gardens.

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Everything was going fine.

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I was at school, but I enjoyed my holidays enormously.

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And uh

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Being on the river, I was, of course, every moment I could spare.

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in a pant or a motorboat or something.

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And I think probably this was one of the happiest times of my life.

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I thought perhaps

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The Delius represents to me

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The happiest moments, anyway, are those days.

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and I still get carried back to the scene.

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by his Summer Night on the River.

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Summer Night on the River by Delius, Sir Thomas Beacham conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

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Now you were educated at King's School, Canterbury. Then you went to Switzerland. That's right. I had an operation, quite a big operation, and it was thought better to send me to Switzerland. I had a very good time, I must say that. Yes. You were at a college there? Yes, near Chillon.

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What did you want to be? Uh WJ Lockard rather forecast that you might be an actor. Had you literary ambitions? What had you in mind?

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Well he noticed my tendency to show off, but he also thought he perceived some talent, so I suppose he must have been right. I had no great ambition to do this. What was your first job? Well my first job was a most unfortunate thing. My stepfather and the large house at Windsor and all that thing went fat because the bank of which he was manager

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uh went bankrupt and so did he and the whole thing was sold up.

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I was earning at the time a pound a week in the city, learning the business of stockbroking. Obviously I was quite useful.

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Passet being the son of a bank manager.

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But not.

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when he went bankrupt. So um I was left earning a pound a week, which I managed to force up to thirty bomb a week.

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Um

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They wrote to my mother and said they thought it would be advisable.

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that I should take some other job more suited to my obvious capabilities, but they didn't mention what the capabilities were. So it was that when a friend of the family, Nigel Playfer, found me in a near starving state,

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I slept in the park and did the proper things, you know, like

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Anybody else who doesn't know what I'm at?

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Life.

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Um

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He offered me a job at three pounds a week.

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to understudy.

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in the rivals.

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At the lyric theater hammers.

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And I had seen the lyric Theodore Hamm Smith because I was a friend of his

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Sun

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And I'd been, I think, twelve to fifteen times, it might have been, but very often, to see the Baker's Opera. And this kind of decided me that it might be a very enjoyable experience to get to the bright lights. And so I accepted.

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And uh

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I had only been a short time with him when his manager returned from a distant tour and saw me performing.

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A part.

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On the stage, in lieu of the principal,

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Took one look at me and went to see Nigel and said, That man must go. He doesn't know the first thing about it. I've never seen anything so ghastly. And I was sacked.

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So in fact, that was the beginning of my theatrical career. Well, at that point, a rather unfortunate beginning, but nevertheless, a beginning. Let's break off your next record.

Leslie Mitchell10:37

Yeah.

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I think I really must choose this big change in my life and what I remember about it. The biggest opera, the lyric

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When I first saw Frederic Ramelow and the beautiful Lovett Fraser costumes, the whole production really got into my mind.

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Let's have

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Frederick Granler singing

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If the heart of a man

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which was, I think, one of the more attractive numbers.

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If the heart of a man is depressed with cares, the mist is dispelled, when a woman appears like the notes of a fiddle, she sweetly, sweetly raises our spirits and charms.

Leslie Mitchell11:19

Yeah.

Speaker 211:19

Yeah.

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Roses and lilies, her cheeks low, But her ripe lips are more sweet than others Cress her, caress her with blisses and kisses, dissolves in blood

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Frederick Ranelo singing If the Heart of a Man from The Beggars' Opera

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Now, after that unfortunate start in the theatre, things began to look up. You were acting in the West End, I believe, when you made a very early television appearance.

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Uh yes.

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That's when I was working with Dame Maddie Tempest.

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in a play um

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at the hay market.

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And she called me to her dressing room one day and said, Oh, Leslie, I've just had a telephone call from mister Selfridge, mister Gordon Selfridge, who has asked me if I will go there to his store.

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and appear in front of a new sort of

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radio, do you call it or uh wireless

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Uh machine.

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which also takes pictures. It sounds nonsense, but

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He's a nice man and I said yes, I would go, but I would have to take somebody with me.

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So I've decided you shall go.

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So we went.

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And there was bed.

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and his early apparatus.

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Selfridge of course was supporting him at that time and trying to give him the publicity and the money to carry on.

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And we stared at the camera in turn, and she said, I think you go first.

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I might have known. She knew her stuff.

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I went on first, and the only drawback was that the moment you edged even a quarter of an inch to one side, top or bottom,

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Your face went out in a balloon shape, like one of those distorting mirrors.

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She, when she'd seen me, stood rigidly like a little rock, said a very nice little speech, and walked off.

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And that was all right. But anyway, on the way back to the theatre later, she said

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Interesting little man, mister Baird.

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But I don't think.

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That turns out.

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Machine is ever going to work, do you?

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You became a full-time BBC announcer in sound radio in in the mid 70s.

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There wasn't the specialization then. You'd do a concert of serious music, then a variety show. Yes, you you had the whole thing, including, you know, the news and things like that.

Leslie Mitchell13:34

Yeah.

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They're not a variety show.

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Yes, much more enjoyable. Much more, yes. In 1936, the BBC began the first scheduled daily television service in the world, and they needed two female announcers and one male. They chose Elizabeth Carl and Jasmine Bly and you. Do you know how many applications there were for the job of that male announcer? I should think quite a number of applicants. They even approached Robert Donut, I'm told.

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which was careless of them because I don't think he would have taken the salary.

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Did you speak the very first words on the television service?

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Yes, I did. What was that first programme?

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Pierre's Looking at You by Cecil Madden, who was of course one of the strawberries.

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Um it was a sort of composite variety show.

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which had everything in it to show off what television could do.

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Well, let's have another record. Watch that to be.

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I think I was by this time.

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forming my own opinions and likes.

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and I fell in love with the Spanish composers, particularly De Faya.

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I remember endlessly playing.

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Nights in the Garden of Spain.

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An excerpt from Fayer's Knights in the Gardens of Spain with Arthur Rubinstein as Saloist.

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How long did you stay in that television appointment, Leslie?

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Until 1939, it became obvious that we were not going to continue much longer if war broke out. And

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There were long discussions about when we would have to stop it and whether we would.

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And it became obvious to me that if we didn't have television, we wouldn't have the thing I love.

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And so I must I had for some time.

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Been working for the newsreel, Movutown News, and

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That ended up at about three o'clock in the morning because I went after they'd finished with me at Ali Pally, so it was quite a thing. Incidentally, you're still doing that newsreel, aren't you? Yes, I am. After all those years. The only living something I don't have.

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Well now, what happened next? What was the next move when you left BBC? The the newsreel wasn't the whole of your career.

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No. Um I started working for BBC Sound again as a freelance.

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and did quite a number of programmes, the two-way programme with Ben Grauer of NBC and BBC.

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Um

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Film programs, quite a number. Yes. And when you went back to television, you did a programme that you had helped to start before the war picture page. Yes, indeed.

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Uh that was a very nice pick up from the old days.

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And in fact, we saw quite a number of the

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People have been there, though, unfortunately.

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Many of them were never to be seen again because of the war and all the times between.

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When commercial T V started, you went over to the other side. Did you speak the first words for that service? Yes, I did. You did.

Leslie Mitchell17:31

Yeah.

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You ahead of presentation.

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Eventually, at first I was running the serious programmes, the talks and so on.

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Right, let's have record number six. What's that to be? The Enigma Variations by Elga.

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Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations, Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

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In a practical sense, how would you manage on this island, Leslie? Could you build a shelter?

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Yes, I can do that.

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Forage for food.

Leslie Mitchell19:02

Measure

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I could fish, I don't think I'd catch anything.

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Would you try to escape?

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I think it's unlikely, because all my broken bones would probably fail me at the last moment, or I'd fall through a hole in the raft, or something. I am a little accident-prone.

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Oh, well you stay where you are and we'll do our best to get someone to fetch you. Let's have record number seven.

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Bro

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Can we have

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The Champagne Gallop by Lomba.

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Champagne Gallop, played by the Copenhagen Symphony Orchestra.

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Now your last record. What's that? Well, because I've had such luck...

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good, bad and indifferent. But uh everything has depended on luck to an extraordinary extent in my life.

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Now I believe that it's quite possible that a whale might turn up, and you haven't allowed for that, have you? I haven't. Well, I think a whale might turn up.

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and as Louis Armstrong.

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has told me.

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A whale could provide a companion.

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And you thought of them?

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Uh

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Now Jonah must

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What I'm doing.

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Uh Bad man, he must have been a sinner.

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Yeah.

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Lord, what better fish Cause when the whale got him down, he didn't like his dinner.

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Lawyer, Lord, one beneficial Mm-hmm

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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Well, he swam around the ocean, sick as he could be. Lord, Lord, wasn't that a fish?

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And after three days, whoops, he had to set him free.

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Oh Lord, wasn't that a fish?

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So the whale spit Jonah

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Out on the dry land, Lord, Lord, one had a fish. And he went on to preaching like a righteous man.

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Lord, Lord.

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Uh

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One mana fish

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What now

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Uh

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And the people could Their sins when they hurried him into town.

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Yeah. Yeah. Uh

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Yeah.

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Mm-h

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Jonah and the Whale by Louis Armstrong. If you could take just one disc of your eight, which would it be?

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I think

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It would be

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Summer night on the river

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And Delius. Right. And one luxury to take with you?

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Well, luxury is rather a

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Curious word.

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I think

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is I think of all the things.

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I would bring this.

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Yes, it's a little silver gilt box, a patch box, isn't it? Yes, a patch box. About two inches by three and about an inch deep.

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Beautifully embossed, and and and what happened?

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Which a singing bird?

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They're quite rare nowadays. Everybody's tried to buy them at one time or another.

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He disappears down the trap. A beautiful little singing bird, not more than about half an inch long. Its beak

Leslie Mitchell23:05

It's great moves.

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It's well if it's brightly coloured.

Leslie Mitchell23:06

It's

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It's charming and of course it will bring you the sound of the English countryside. Yes, and I I wouldn't need to bother too much about companionship because he's so damn cheerful. Sometimes too cheerful perhaps.

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A good idea to take that to a desert island. One book to go with you as well.

Leslie Mitchell23:23

Hasn't it been

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I think perhaps the life of Leonardo da Vinci

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Uh everybody thinks that's a rather odd choice, but he was such an a fantastic man with so many original ideas about ordinary things and extraordinary things.

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Yeah.

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I would love to have had a mind, a brain, rather, like that, together with his artistic capabilities. Any particular volume, or is it one that you want to select or think about?

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No, I would take the biggest. The biggest and best. Irresponsible. Yes. Right. And thank you, Leslie Mitchell, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Very nice. See you again.

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Goodbye, everyone.

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The guest in this evening's programme was Leslie Mitchell, the interviewer was Roy Plumley, and the producer Ronald Cook.

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Next Saturday the castaway will be the novelist Susan Hill.

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BBC Radio 4

Leslie Mitchell24:29

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