Gemma Jones

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our desert item this week is the actress Gemma Jones.

Presenter0:35

Gemma, are you a musician? Do you play an instrument?

Gemma Jones0:38

I don't play any instrument at all, no, I'm afraid. I wish I did.

Presenter0:42

Do you sing?

Gemma Jones0:43

I do sing, yes. I haven't often been required to sing professionally. I'd like to, very much. I I did at drama school quite a lot. I did quite a lot of review. Um but I haven't been very successful at singing auditions.

Gemma Jones0:55

Nerves, I suppose, made my voice disappear.

Presenter0:57

Would you like to sing in a musical?

Gemma Jones0:59

Oh, I would. I'd absolutely love to. Please.

Presenter1:01

Did you find it very hard to choose your eight record?

Gemma Jones1:04

I found it difficult to get it down to it. Yes.

Gemma Jones1:08

But I enjoyed searching for them.

Presenter1:10

What's the first one?

Gemma Jones1:12

The first is Chopin's nocturne in E flat.

Presenter1:15

Yeah.

Gemma Jones1:16

And I'm choosing this for my father, really, because he used to play it on the piano a lot when I was a child.

Presenter1:21

Your father, of course, Griffith Jones, the actor, what's he doing?

Gemma Jones1:24

He's at uh the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. Very busy and successful and happy.

Presenter1:29

And this was one of the pieces he likes to play.

Gemma Jones1:33

Yes, yes.

Presenter2:35

Chopin's Nocturn in E-flat, episode two, played by Alexis Weisenberg.

Presenter2:42

What do you feel about this desert island situation?

Presenter2:45

Could you be reasonably happy on your own if it wasn't for too long?

Gemma Jones2:50

I think I could, actually. Yes, I'm

Gemma Jones2:53

I'm quite good at being on my own dangerously so, I think.

Gemma Jones2:57

And also, mock not, but I used to be a not only a girl guide, but a queen's guide. Oh, no. Oh, yes, indeed. Oh, I was frightfully bossy and efficient, and I used to go to summer camp every year, which I absolutely adored, and uh build fires and pitch tents and uh make shelters, and I think all that would come back to me.

Gemma Jones3:16

Would you try to escape?

Gemma Jones3:17

No, I don't think I would try to escape. No.

Presenter3:20

I mean,

Gemma Jones3:20

I might hope that someone might find me, but um

Gemma Jones3:24

I think I'd be too scared to try and escape.

Presenter3:25

Record number two.

Gemma Jones3:27

Record number two, all my choices are unashamedly nostalgic, is again um reminiscing from my childhood, Gracie Field singing Fred Van Acapan. We used to have a wind-up gramophone, and we had nearly all Gracie Fields' records, I think. And we used to sit round and I used to this was my party piece, actually, Fred Van Acapan.

Presenter3:47

It's been a bit of bother through our sister Marie-Anne.

Gemma Jones3:51

She had a sweetheart and his name was Fred Benakapan. She said I'll bring him home to tea. He'd love to look around. So all our family turned up to see

Presenter4:03

See what she had found.

Presenter4:05

There was uncles and aunties and others of our clan all waiting to welcome

Gemma Jones4:12

Red Panaka Ban There was father and mother and sister Mary Ann all waiting to welcome.

Presenter4:20

Gracie Field.

Presenter4:22

Now, you come from a family with a theatre background. As a child did you go and see your father in the theatre very often?

Gemma Jones4:29

No, I don't think I did very often. Um I don't remember my childhood as being particularly theatrical. I think that was just his his job.

Presenter4:37

The theatre didn't fascinate you as a child.

Gemma Jones4:41

But I remember no, I remember being infuriated if he was working when we had our summer holidays. And I do remember my father

Speaker 14:46

The hide.

Gemma Jones4:48

Who tells a story quite regularly about my brother and I being taken to see a play that he was in.

Gemma Jones4:54

which was closing.

Gemma Jones4:56

And we were taken to the matinee, and my father happened to be on stage before the curtain rose, and suddenly he heard a little piping voice very clearly saying, But, mummy, they can't start yet nobody's here.

Presenter5:08

Oh yeah, that's a sad

Gemma Jones5:09

So I obviously did go to the theatre on that occasion.

Presenter5:13

When you left school you decided you want to be an au pair girl for a bit, in France.

Gemma Jones5:16

I did, yes. Um I lived in France for nine months with the family, in Marseilles.

Presenter5:21

That was your idea.

Gemma Jones5:23

Yes, it was. Yes. I thought that would be brave and adventurous and, um, grown up and uh

Gemma Jones5:29

I learnt French, but apart from that it wasn't very brave and adventurous, it was jolly hard work.

Presenter5:33

Now how did the theatre come into it, as far as you were concerned?

Gemma Jones5:37

I think my mother suggested that maybe I should go to drama school it was one up from going to a secretarial college. So I worked on my pieces while I was in France, and I came back and auditioned for my parents. They were sitting up Ibmed, I remember, and I had the audacity to do a piece from Lady Macbeth.

Gemma Jones5:53

And um I think my father thought, My God, well we better send her, because um we can't let her loose on the stage like this without some sort something being done about it.

Presenter6:02

And in fact, you went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where your father had been, and, like him, you won the Bancroft gold medal.

Gemma Jones6:09

Yes, I did. Yes, and we've both got our names up on the board in gold letters. And I think we were the first

Gemma Jones6:16

Two generations, yes, to get the same medal, which was very exciting.

Presenter6:20

Now leaving Radha, what sort of work did you want to do? How did you see yourself as an actress? misses Siddons, or Frances Day, or what?

Gemma Jones6:27

Oh, goodness. I I think I thought I was going to be a comedian. That's what I'd most enjoyed doing at drama school. In fact, I'd been quite successful in a small way.

Gemma Jones6:36

And suddenly I found myself being cast very much as a juvenile, and a rather winsome juvenile at that, which I wasn't

Gemma Jones6:43

quite prepared for and that's in fact my first job was being a winsome juvenile.

Presenter6:48

In what?

Gemma Jones6:49

Um, it was a thriller called no, what was it called?

Gemma Jones6:54

I can't even remember the name of it. It wasn't frightfully successful. It went on a tour, and I was the daughter of the house, who rushed on about twice an act and said, Oh, golly, Daddy, someone's at the door.

Speaker 17:00

Yeah.

Presenter7:00

Right.

Gemma Jones7:05

Um it wasn't

Gemma Jones7:06

I don't think an inspired performance.

Presenter7:09

And then what?

Gemma Jones7:10

Well, then I was very, very lucky to audition for a production of BAL.

Gemma Jones7:16

By Brecht, starring Peter O'Toole, and he'd just come back from Arabia, from doing his Lawrence of Arabia.

Speaker 17:20

What am I doing here?

Gemma Jones7:22

And um

Gemma Jones7:24

I got this very nice little part in this production, which was a very prestigious thing for a young actress to do.

Presenter7:31

Good.

Gemma Jones7:31

Yes.

Presenter7:32

Well, let's have your third record. Watch that.

Gemma Jones7:34

My third record, I'd like to hear a choir boy singing Away in a Manger, which will remind me of many Christmases and uh going to Mass on Christmas Eve.

Speaker 17:47

Oh yeah!

Speaker 17:50

Oh, creative Lord!

Speaker 27:53

Okay.

Speaker 27:56

Believe the Lord Jesus grace come.

Presenter8:01

Only sweet girl.

Speaker 28:07

God in the bright sky.

Speaker 28:11

What is

Speaker 18:18

Our Lord Jesus.

Speaker 18:22

That's me.

Presenter8:30

Away in a manger by the Choir of Saint John's College, Cambridge, and the soloist Mark Tinkler.

Presenter8:37

Things were pretty easy at the beginning of your career. Did they stay easy?

Gemma Jones8:41

Relatively, yes, I I guess they did. I mean, I have had periods out of work, but, um, sometimes I feel, you know, a little guilty that I didn't really do my my stint of stage managing and under studying and

Gemma Jones8:54

and uh sweating in the dole queue.

Presenter8:56

You had a long run in Alfie with John Neville.

Gemma Jones8:59

I did, which was very, very enjoyable, very happy and hugely successful. Yes. And then lots of applause, yes. Except on one.

Presenter9:05

Lots of applause.

Gemma Jones9:09

Fair occasion. In fact, I was doing Alfie when Kennedy was assassinated.

Presenter9:14

Yes.

Gemma Jones9:15

And um I remember that very vividly.

Gemma Jones9:17

Because I suppose the news came through to us during the first half of the show. I think the stage dorman had a radio or something.

Gemma Jones9:24

So by the interval all the actors knew.

Gemma Jones9:27

And we knew by the time the curtain went up on the second act that a lot of the audience knew, because it usually was a hugely successful comedy.

Gemma Jones9:35

and by the end of the show

Gemma Jones9:37

you know, usually we had ten curtain calls and tumultuous applause. The curtain came down to absolute silence, which was

Gemma Jones9:45

Very dramatic.

Gemma Jones9:48

I remember that very well.

Presenter9:48

Yeah.

Presenter9:50

And then you went out of town to Bristol and Nottingham. At Nottingham Playhouse you went into a play which was to be very important to you.

Gemma Jones9:58

Yes, indeed, we did a play called The Cavern by Hennoui.

Gemma Jones10:02

and uh I had a jolly nice part in it, and it came into London well I came into London and another of the actors in a different production.

Gemma Jones10:12

and it was enormously successful.

Presenter10:13

You had terrific notices.

Gemma Jones10:15

Yes, I did, yes. It was a bit of a con really, because I didn't have to say very much, I just had to look pathetic and scrub the floor a lot, and and then I had one speech in the last act.

Gemma Jones10:24

where I had to shout obscenities in a very loud voice, which was obviously very impressive.

Presenter10:28

Your father was in it with you.

Gemma Jones10:30

Indeed he was, yes. We never actually met on stage, because he was an upstairs character, and I was a downstairs character.

Gemma Jones10:36

Yeah.

Presenter10:36

Now more highlights. You played Saint Joan.

Gemma Jones10:39

I did, yes, at uh Wimbledon. Um but not very many people saw it, I'm afraid.

Presenter10:45

And some Shakespeare at the open air theatre. Was it a fine summer? Not too many performances in that tent.

Gemma Jones10:50

Uh it was a dreadful summer, I seem to remember. Yes, we got very hysterical and extremely muddy.

Presenter10:52

I think true.

Gemma Jones10:56

But it was great fun to do, yes.

Presenter10:59

What was the very first television job you did?

Gemma Jones11:02

Now the very first was a cocteau play called The Typewriter.

Gemma Jones11:08

With some

Gemma Jones11:10

The late Patrick Weimark was in it.

Presenter11:11

You haven't done much in the way of feature films.

Gemma Jones11:14

No, I appeared in um a film called In the Cool of the Day with Jane Fonder and Peter Finch many years ago, and disappeared just as quickly. Um and then I did The Devils with Ken Russell.

Presenter11:27

Mm-hmm.

Gemma Jones11:28

which I loved and rather hoped was going to be the beginning of my film career, but it appears to have been the end of it.

Presenter11:34

Oh well. Next record.

Gemma Jones11:34

Next slide.

Gemma Jones11:36

Now, where have we got to? Oh, the next record is a group called the Prokolharan singing Whiter Shade of Pale.

Presenter11:43

Where does this take it?

Gemma Jones11:44

A job I was doing at the time when it was being played a lot was, um, a television of a

Gemma Jones11:50

Walter Scott's Kenilworth, in which I played Elizabeth I.

Gemma Jones11:53

and I had a rather elaborate make up to play Elizabeth the First, which took a good hour sitting in the make up chair.

Gemma Jones11:59

And one of the actors in the company, Jeremy Brett, used to bring his um record player into the make-up room.

Gemma Jones12:05

And he was rather with it at that time and knew the latest records. And this was uh one of the records I used to hear while I was being made up.

Speaker 112:14

We skip a life and angle

Speaker 112:20

Turned cartwheels cross the

Presenter12:22

Oh no.

Presenter12:27

I was feeling kinda seasick.

Presenter12:33

The crowd called

Speaker 212:35

Call out for more

Speaker 212:39

The room was humming harder

Presenter12:44

Rekul Haram

Presenter12:45

Whiter shade of pale.

Presenter12:48

Now, back to the theatre. A very varied range of parts in the last few years. An Alan Owen comedy.

Presenter12:55

You played.

Presenter12:57

Queen Christina of Sweden, which was a good follow on to Saint Joan

Presenter13:01

Then you did an Alan Bennett comedy with Kenneth Moore. What was that called?

Gemma Jones13:05

Uh getting on. That was very enjoyable, yes.

Presenter13:07

Yes, and at the same time you were doing some Strindberg in a cellar.

Gemma Jones13:11

Yes, I was. Two of the actors in the company and myself in fact set it up, I boast to say. Um I hesitate to say we were bored with doing getting on, but um we did have a lot of leisure time during the day.

Gemma Jones13:23

And so we set it up and the open space theatre in Tottenham Courtlow lent us their space. So we used to dash from curtain down for getting on to curtain up with the Stringberg's creditors. I think we had about twenty five minutes between shows. And that was hugely successful.

Presenter13:39

Then you joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. How did you you enjoy being a member of a permanent company?

Gemma Jones13:45

Well, I was hardly a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company as such because I I joined them to go on their world tour of Peter Brooke's Midsummer Night's Dream, which was apart from the the main company obviously, and we rehearsed for six weeks in Paris and then we toured almost any European city you care to mention except we didn't go to Russia or Czechoslovakia.

Gemma Jones14:08

And we went to America and Japan and Australia.

Gemma Jones14:13

And that took me thirteen months, very instructive and constructive months.

Presenter14:19

And then you moved into the National Theatre Company.

Gemma Jones14:21

And then I came back, yes, and and joined the National Theatre Company, yes, and I did two plays.

Gemma Jones14:27

for them.

Gemma Jones14:29

a production of The Marriage of Figura, not the Opera, I hesitate to say. Um and then I got pregnant and battled on valiantly into my seventh month of very fat pregnancy, which used to make the company laugh quite a lot.

Gemma Jones14:42

I enjoyed that very much. Yes.

Presenter14:45

Well, let's have record number what is it, five?

Gemma Jones14:48

Number five is Karloff's Kameneburana.

Gemma Jones14:52

I think it's a record I'd find very hard to get bored with.

Presenter15:55

An excerpt from Karl Off's Camina Burana

Presenter15:58

Eugen Jochm conducting the choir and orchestra of the German opera Berlin. Let's go back to television, Germa. You've done some very distinguished work. I remember the Cherry Orchard, the importance of being earnest.

Presenter16:11

Igmar Bergman's The Lie, there was a series you did a few years ago that made rather an impact.

Gemma Jones16:17

Yes, Henry James the Spoils of Paunton.

Presenter16:20

That's right.

Gemma Jones16:21

Yeah.

Presenter16:21

And very recently you've been the heroine of the Duchess of Duke Street, based, I presume, on the lady who ran the Cavendish Hotel in German Street.

Gemma Jones16:28

Absolutely, yes. Loosely based, I would say. Yes, very

Presenter16:30

Yeah.

Presenter16:31

There have been those who have said rather cynically that it was a bit close to upstairs downstairs.

Gemma Jones16:37

And

Gemma Jones16:38

Yes. Well, I'm flattered in a way that it should be compared with Upstairs, Downstairs, which I thought was so terribly good, and I enjoyed enormously.

Gemma Jones16:46

Also, it is the same producer and it is his um overall taste on it. But I think we have veered well away from upstairs, downstairs since the the beginning really.

Presenter16:55

Yeah.

Presenter16:58

You're going to do some more work.

Gemma Jones16:59

Uh yes, we're going to do another.

Gemma Jones17:02

Fifteen I think next year. Yes, yes, which I'm looking forward to.

Presenter17:02

Yeah.

Presenter17:04

Which I'm looking forward to. So that's going to keep you wizard?

Gemma Jones17:07

It'll keep me busy up until next summer, yes, and then

Gemma Jones17:10

Who knows? Anything might happen.

Presenter17:13

Another record.

Gemma Jones17:14

Now, where have we got to? Um, the next one is Bob Dylan singing Le, Lay De Lay.

Gemma Jones17:20

which is to remind me of the first time I went to America.

Gemma Jones17:22

which was for a wonderfully exciting and romantic holiday.

Speaker 117:27

Lay, lady, lay.

Speaker 117:31

Lay across my big grain space

Speaker 117:40

Lay lay lay.

Speaker 117:43

Lay across a big breast baby.

Presenter17:50

Bob Dylan. Now we know what you're going to be doing until next summer, fifteen more duchesses. In which direction would you like your career to go then?

Gemma Jones17:54

Yeah.

Gemma Jones17:58

I'd like to do

Gemma Jones18:01

A lot more Shakespeare.

Gemma Jones18:03

which I think is about the most satisfying work I've ever done.

Gemma Jones18:07

Um, I'd like to do some more film.

Presenter18:09

Yeah.

Gemma Jones18:09

I'd like to keep busy.

Presenter18:10

Another echo.

Gemma Jones18:12

I'd like to have Wagner's Siegfried ideal.

Gemma Jones18:16

Now why am I choosing this? I know um a very sweet man who used to be the chorus master for the Covent Garden Opera and um I was fortunate enough to be invited to a series of rehearsals.

Gemma Jones18:30

A few years ago, and I saw rehearsals for Wagner's Ring, which was very entertaining. Lots of stout ladies in there.

Gemma Jones18:38

woolly boots and uh fur hats, rehearsing Wagner, and followed it through and actually saw the production.

Gemma Jones18:45

But I don't think somehow I would be

Gemma Jones18:49

Awfully happy to take Wagner's ring.

Gemma Jones18:52

on my desert island, but I would love to take uh the Siegfriedle again because it's

Gemma Jones18:56

The marvellously romantic idea of him writing it for his wife and playing it under her window as she was giving birth to Siegfried, I think is too much of a good thing to miss.

Presenter20:05

The Siegfried Idyl, played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by George Shelte. Which brings us to your last record. What's that?

Gemma Jones20:13

Roberta Flack singing Killing Me Softly with his song.

Gemma Jones20:16

And this does remind me of the Midsummer Night's Dream tour and again of America, where we played for about um six weeks, and uh it came out while we were there, and it used to make me feel very homesick.

Presenter20:31

Why in particular did it remind you of her?

Gemma Jones20:34

Well, I suppose'cause it was all about

Gemma Jones20:36

Love

Gemma Jones20:37

And that.

Speaker 220:56

I heard he say

Gemma Jones20:57

Sing a good song I heard he had a star.

Gemma Jones21:04

And so I came to see him to listen for a while.

Presenter21:10

Roberta Flack

Presenter21:12

If you could take only one of those eight records, which would you choose?

Gemma Jones21:17

I think I would choose the Wagner.

Presenter21:21

The Siegfried idol.

Gemma Jones21:22

PS

Presenter21:23

And one luxury to take with you, any one thing you would like.

Gemma Jones21:26

Yes, I would love a really deeply upholstered, comfortable arm chair that I could curl up in and listen to my records.

Presenter21:35

And one book apart from that select list, Bible, Shakespeare, Big Encyclopedia.

Gemma Jones21:40

Well, I'd like to take the Oxford Book of English Verse. I think that would again nostalgically keep me busy.

Presenter21:46

Good. And thank you, Gemma Jones, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Gemma Jones21:51

Thank you for having me.

Presenter21:52

Goodbye, everyone.

Gemma Jones21:53

Goodbye.

Speaker 222:03

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