Roland Culver

Roland Culver0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Roland Culver0:08

Are you a Londoner, Reverend? I am, yes.

Roland Culver0:10

Any president in the family for the theatre?

Roland Culver0:14

Uh not really, no direct.

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Yeah.

Roland Culver0:16

Yeah.

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Yeah.

Roland Culver0:16

Family What

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What did you want to be when you were small?

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When I was small

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I hadn't made up my mind. I thought I'd like to be an artist, but I wasn't good enough. My father was a very clever artist and a wonderful draftsman, but he wasn't a professional. But I.

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Wasn't good enough. And then when I got older, I decided I wanted to be an actor.

Roland Culver0:34

Did you go to the theatre a lot as a child?

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Oh yes. I we w we were taken to the theatre.

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Uh of course, I saw the pantomimes when I was very young.

Roland Culver0:43

I'm not sure.

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Eight and nine. I suppose I saw Peter Pan when I was about eight.

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I lived just uh uh between uh Crouch End and Highgate.

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And our local theatre was The Marlborough at Hornsey. And I saw...

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Mm my first

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sophisticated play there, which I think

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Was the three musketeers with Lewis Waller. Yes. And

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I'm not perfectly certain that that was the first. It could have been.

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A a Fred Terry in the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Roland Culver1:16

Uh

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In fact, when you left school, your first job was with the Royal Air Force because the First World War was still on. I was in the Air Force.

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But I I didn't get my wings. I wasn't in it long enough. What did you do when you were demobilized?

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When I was demobilized I went into my father's firm.

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which is manufacturing opticians. And I hated every moment of it when I said I wanted to go in the theater. I I had two and a half years battle with my father. He said no. He said if you go

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out of my business on to the stage, you go out of my house as well.

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Which I finally did, with, I must admit, not without a penny in my pocket. I had some support from my mother. Good for her. What did you do? How did you settle up? Well, I went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and uh I was given a scholarship in my second term, which saved my mother a little money.

Roland Culver1:59

Well I

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Where I remained for four terms. What was your first professional engagement?

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Well, I I I think it was a tour during the summer holidays from the Academy, but that was insignificant and of no consequence. The first one that was really any significance was understudying

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Ivanovella in Iris, a Panero play in which Gladys Cooper was the leading lady. I also understudied the butler.

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On one occasion the butler was off. Well the butler was a man of six foot.

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and at that time

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I was only twenty four, and I had quite a lot of fair hair.

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Unlike the present.

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And

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I covered myself in lines and wrinkles and

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did everything I could.

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But Gladys Cooper hadn't been warned that the butler was off.

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And I had to announce various people, so and so, misses so and so,

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And I flung open the doors.

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Not my cure.

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and said, Lady and mister Push,

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And Gladys looked at me and said, Oh, my God

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Yeah.

Roland Culver3:08

Ha ha ha ha.

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Uh

Roland Culver3:08

Now, Roland, for getting on for fifty years, you've been working in the theatre and having your successes and failures, which have been the highlights. What was your first

Roland Culver3:18

Success.

Roland Culver3:21

Uh

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Well, my first Smash success.

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and everybody in the cast was a success.

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was of course Rattikin's French Without Tears. That was in nineteen thirty six. I did make a slight success in a thriller about a year before that distinguished gathering, but uh

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But nothing like French Without Tears and that

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It really carried us all to the high spots.

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How long did it run?

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Well, for me, I was in it two and a half years.

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Uh Katie Hammond.

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Decided to have a baby because she didn't want me in it any longer. At least, I don't know whether that was her reason, but anyway, that's what happened. And she left.

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Um somehow or other Rex Harrison got out of it, and I know he had a run-of-the-play contract, but he contrived to get out of it after about eighteen months.

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You were in several other Ratigan plays, too. Two other Ratigan. Who is Sylvia, which is a very amusing play.

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where I start at the age of

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thirty or something, go on to the age of eighty.

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And that was very amusing part.

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And then of course the big success was Deep Blue Sea with Peggy Ashcroft and Kenneth Moore.

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And um

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That was great fun. Well, it was a very, very sad play, but it was very, very interesting,'cause it was something I hadn't really done quite such a serious play since I was in repertory, that is.

Roland Culver4:38

Let's have another highlight, pick another play that makes it

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Oh, well, I can easily do that, because it's the most beautiful production I've ever been in.

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Uh it was during the war.

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And that was An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. And it was Rex Whistler's last.

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a piece of designing. He did the sets and he did the uh the dresses. I've never seen more beautiful dresses and I've never seen more beautiful sets for a play of that kind. It was absolutely gorgeous and it was a marvellous part I had too, Lord Goring. I loved every minute of it. And you made a a a

Roland Culver5:10

Great success in five finger exercise.

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Yes, well that was an entirely different sort of player because hi that was an excellent player.

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And I was in that for nearly three years.

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I was fourteen months in England and eighteen months in America.

Roland Culver5:23

You wrote one play which did quite well in the West End.

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I wrote a play. It ran only six weeks in the West End. It got a terrible press. It was just about the time when the critics were really going mad about drawing-room comedies. They really hated it.

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And or they were determined to hate it. Actually, I've got tape recordings of the r audience reaction and they s laugh all the way through, but it was a very light piece of nonsense about the Henley regatta.

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You called it a river breeze and I called it a river breeze.

Roland Culver5:49

Have you written any more, please?

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No, I've got two that I'm got sort of halfway through both of them, and I haven't finished either yet. I hope I may finish one or both of them.

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By this time next year. What was the first film you have edited? Seven to seven Park Lane.

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I remember perfectly well that I got seven pounds a day for that, and I thought I was

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Getting a fortune.

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Yeah.

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Yes. Well, let's talk about some of the good ones. Not that 7-7 Park Lane wasn't a good one, but let's talk, for example, about the film version of French Without Tears.

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Well that was a beautiful production. I'm only sorry it wasn't in colour. It was very well done.

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and it was highly successful. It was one of the reasons that I was invited to go to Hollywood.

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Yeah.

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And then, of course, quiet wedding you were in? The quiet wedding I was in. That was just at the beginning of the war, I think.

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Uh as far as I remember, because I remember an air raid. Well, we were doing it at uh we were doing it on the river somewhere.

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Uh

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Uh

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Of course the the w the wartime films that you were in uh were singularly successful, first to the few.

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First of the few was very successful one, yes.

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And Secret Mission was another one I did, which was also a war film, which was very good.

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And then you went off to Hollywood. You had quite a spell there, quite a few years. I was there from 1945 to 1949. I first went there to play in Twitch's Own with Olivia de Havilland. Yes.

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Uh

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And uh then I came home because I'd already agreed to a picture before I went to Hollywood.

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Then I did that.

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And then I went back to Hollywood and did uh Down to Earth with Rita Haworth. Did you enjoy Hollywood? I must say that I am a very lazy person naturally, and if I can play golf every day, which I did, I lived in a house overlooking the Riviera golf course, and I was a member of the club.

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I played golf all day. There was a swimming pool. Weather's always marvellous.

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I of course some of the publicity and the boredom of the Hollywood thing of course that is true, but by and large it's a damn good life. As long as one isn't there forever. You were in a a Bob Hope picture? I was in the Bob Hope. That was the last picture I made. They were called A Great Lover.

Roland Culver7:53

Yes.

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And one Crosby fixed. And then Paramount got me under contract to do this thing with

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Bing. What was that?

Roland Culver7:58

Present.

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Mm-hmm.

Roland Culver8:01

Uh

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for six weeks to Jasper National Park, which is in the Rockies.

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It was supposed to be the Tyrrell.

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And uh there was a beautiful golf course just outside the hotel we were staying in, and we just played golf practically every day.

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Very nice life it's au.

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You've done a lot of television through the years.

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Yes, particularly the last two or three years. I have done an uh quite a large amount of television. You've had a great success recently as the Duke of Omnium in the palaces. Yes, well, that was great fun doing that. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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Uh I work for both the directors.

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Before, and they're both very helpful. How many episodes were you in?

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twelve.

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I have finished in the fifteenth.

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How long did each episode take to film?

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We were in the studio for two days, as a rule. We rehearsed for

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on an average ten days.

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Once or twice we rehearsed longer, but we didn't only do one episode at a t

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Time. And of course you had some gorgeous locations and stately homes.

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Well we went to several lovely stately homes and I can't regre remember all their names, I regret to say.

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But one of them

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made me become a member of the National Trust. That is, I desire to become a member as a result.