Peter Ustinov

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty 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 seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our desert island this week is Peter Yustinov.

Presenter0:35

PDO, one of the

Presenter0:37

Most travelled men I know, have you had any experience of desert islands?

Presenter0:42

Uh not really desert islands. I was in Yugoslavia this year and there are quite a lot of uninhabited islands, but uh one is careful not to be wrecked on them, because it would mean one have to swim a hundred yards.

Presenter0:55

What would you be happiest you got away from?

Presenter1:02

I said this year uh on one occasion that my idea of paradise was a country without telephones.

Presenter1:10

And my idea of hell is a place where telephones don't work.

Presenter1:14

You have a very large collection of records. How did you set about cutting them all down to eight?

Presenter1:19

I've selected records on the whole which are difficult to remember, because those I can remember easily I can hum to myself, and some of the more energetic things. I think at my age my selection tends to be languorous, rather slow moving and majestic.

Presenter1:37

Which, of course, is a reflection of their owner.

Speaker 11:37

What is a

Presenter1:40

Wha what is the first one?

Presenter1:43

My first choice is by Berlioz, whom I always consider one of the most sensuous of all composers.

Presenter1:49

Le Spectre de la Rose, one of his songs sung by Janet Baker, who is certainly among the leading singers of to day and one of the leading musical intelligences around.

Peter Ustinov2:07

Yeah.

Peter Ustinov2:22

Hail, hey Lord

Peter Ustinov2:30

Mercy and Lord.

Presenter2:57

Le Spert de la Rose, sung by Janet Baker. And we talked about your travels. They started very early, didn't they?

Presenter3:05

Well, they started uh prenatally, really. I did an awful lot of travelling as extra weight.

Presenter3:11

And uh from Leningrad. I think my uh embryonic state was uh started in Lening Leningrad and uh I was eventually born

Presenter3:21

after a narrow squeak in Amsterdam,

Presenter3:25

In Swiss Cottage. Adelaide Road, to be precise. You went to one of the most English schools Westminster, top hats and tail coats. Were you bright at school?

Peter Ustinov3:26

No.

Presenter3:35

No, I was a matte finish on the whole, and uh I once said that I thought the British education was probably the best in the world. If you could survive it if you couldn't, there was nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

Presenter3:49

And I still feel that quite strongly on occasion. You are interested in in in writing and and designing and acting and and and producing and all those excellent things. Why did you opt for drama?

Presenter4:01

My mother's family is all painters, and i inevitably a family of large size with traditions of that sort tend to become a kind of mutual admiration society, or even a a m mutual condemnation society, which is just as bad. I was dying to do something slightly different for the rest of them.

Presenter4:19

And I even got a letter from my great uncle, uh, Alexandre Benoit.

Presenter4:23

when I actually started saying for centuries our family has been prowling round the theatre.

Presenter4:29

We have designed them, we have built them, we have d done scenery in them, we have conducted, we have composed. At last one of us has had the sheer gall to clamber upon the boards himself.

Presenter4:39

Your first job was at the Players' Theatre, doing a sort of variety turn. What was the first play you did?

Presenter4:46

Oh, the first play of all was an early version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, called uh The Wood Demon. Where did you do that? At the Barn Theatre at Shear, in Sussex. Or is it Surrey?

Speaker 14:53

Black

Presenter4:58

Anyway, I think that's a good idea.

Speaker 14:58

Sorry, I think.

Presenter5:01

and I was wearing my grandfather's smoking jacket, which was my only real connection with the past on that occasion.

Presenter5:07

And I was listening to the overture was Tchaikovsky's Polonaise from Eugene O'Negin, and I can't listen to this to this day without feeling stage-frightened. I don't suffer from stage fright anymore, but when I hear that, I remember the emotions of being on the stage for the first time. And I believe I had the first lines, which were as difficult to remember as any of Chekhov's. It was something like.

Presenter5:32

Will anybody have any more ham?

Presenter5:35

Those things are very difficult to remember. You were already playing a character part. Oh, indeed I was. What was your first film job?

Presenter5:43

My first film job was in an absurd film called Hello Fame on which I was on a spangled ladder climbing to a ceiling and waving, together with other promising young people. I had Jean Kent on the next ladder and she got to the top much quicker than I did.

Speaker 15:58

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

Ten feet by ten feet somewhere in Paddington.

Presenter6:05

We've got you launched. Let's have another disc.

Presenter6:08

Well, I think I will take a non vocal one, the second movement from Prokofiev's second violin concerto, which is an absolute when I first heard it I played it fifteen times without stopping, and it's played here by Mexico's Glory, the Polish violinist Henrik Schering.

Presenter7:19

The opening of the second movement of Prokofiet's second violin concerto, Henrik Schering with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter7:27

You had your own first play on when you you were only, what, nineteen? No, I wrote it when I was nineteen. It went on when I was twenty twenty one, really. Um I was twenty one, yes, in nineteen forty two. Yes, you had joined the army. You were a a not very dashing private, I believe. You had been rejected for the secret service.

Presenter7:48

Yes, I had indeed. I hate to talk about my failures in this way, but

Presenter7:52

My father engineered a meeting between a gentleman who was supposed to be reading the News Chronicle, which was then a popular Liberal newspaper, in front of Sloane Square's underground station.

Presenter8:05

which is there to this day, of course.

Presenter8:07

and I saw a man standing there who was very obviously not reading the paper, just looking at it.

Presenter8:13

and I was supposed to go up to him and say,'Excuse me, sir, can you guide me to number nine, Eaton Square?

Presenter8:20

and he was supposed to say, I am going in that very direction, and then we walked off.

Presenter8:26

I did that, and he looked at me, searching my face for evidence of all sorts of things. As we walked off, he said to me

Presenter8:33

Parli vous le francaise? I said Oui, monsieur.

Presenter8:37

Is pregnancy Dutch?

Presenter8:39

I said, Yah, mein herr he said, Good man.

Presenter8:43

And we walked a few paces, and then he said I would uh be informed, and he walked away and and then I got turned down after all my efforts. Uh a measure, of course, which disappointed me as a spy, but on the other hand gave me enormous encouragement as an actor, because he said, uh, unfortunately, my face would be uh very difficult to lose in a crowd.

Presenter9:06

Well, your talents were were pounced on and you began to work in the Army Kinematographic Unit with very distinguished people like Colonel David Niven and Captain Carol Reedon.

Presenter9:16

You had a headquarters at the Ritz Hotel, but you were still this not terribly military looking private. For a while you got by as David Niven's Batman, I believe. Yes, well, under the establishment of the British Army, which hadn't changed since Waterloo,

Presenter9:31

There was no possible way of keeping a private together with a colonel, unless one was the batman of the other.

Presenter9:37

so that I used to work on the script of the film we were doing, which was called The Way Ahead.

Presenter9:41

in the Ritz Hotel, with David hovering near the door, occasionally he'd say K V and I would throw the script away and pick up his belt and start polishing it and a general would look in and say Morning We'd both say good morning. I'd stand up and as soon as he'd gone I'd throw the belt down on the floor rather violently and pick up the script again. It was it was a series of absolutely absurd situations.

Speaker 19:57

Oh round about

Presenter10:04

Record number three.

Presenter10:06

Well, m record number three is quite uh interesting, I think, because I started in the theatre really. My mother's a designer. She was a designer and a painter. And in fact, I had to paint shoes and backdrops from a very early age to help her out.

Presenter10:19

And she did an a ballet with Anthony Tudor called Dark Elegies, the music for which haunted me from an early age, which was the Kindertoten leader by Mahler. And this is one of them, sung, of course, by the inimitable Kathleen Ferrier.

Peter Ustinov10:35

Fernand and Least Vid on all hearts, fellows.

Peter Ustinov10:59

Over the middle of the day, I'm going to go to the next one.

Presenter11:33

One of Mahler's Kintertoten leader of Denkisch sung by Kathleen Ferrier.

Presenter11:39

You've written Getting On for twenty plays, Peter. Which is your favourite play?

Presenter11:44

Of mine, yes.

Presenter11:46

I don't know. I think probably Photo Finish is, in a way, which I think went further than the others, and of course was tremendously experimental, in spite of the fact that it was absolutely naturalistic to look at. But the fact of a play running on four different time levels at once

Presenter12:03

uh is a technical accomplishment of which I'm rather proud because it actually works when you see it and I've seen it in the most extraordinary countries. But at the same time I hate saying which is my favourite play because there was a play more recently called Halfway Up the Tree which I was told by the critics and even partially by the public not to be terribly proud of. It was all right and it was played very very uh skilfully by Robert Morley in London, ran a long time. It was a disaster in Paris. It went well in Germany, but not terribly well in America. And I was told it was a lightweight piece. I saw it the other day in Leningrad.

Presenter12:39

Played by people that obviously did not have the benefit of my advice because I had no idea they were playing it.

Peter Ustinov12:43

Yeah, they were bad.

Presenter12:45

And I can only tell you that I really saw the play as it was written for the first time, and I began at the end to look at it as though it had been written by somebody completely different, and yet it was exactly they hadn't changed a word, and it was marvellous.

Presenter12:58

Latterly you've been playing a lot in other people's films. You've been playing all over the place. Rather extraordinary parts, some of them.

Presenter13:06

A one legged sailor, Yugoslavian sailor, isn't it? No, it's a one legged uh German uh sergeant major from the um Foreign Legion. That was Marty Feldman.

Speaker 113:13

Uh

Peter Ustinov13:13

Oh.

Speaker 113:13

Yeah.

Presenter13:17

who told at a press conference that he thought that I was a rather more verbal than physical comic.

Presenter13:25

I said, well, you really put me on one leg and you say that what else have you been doing?

Speaker 113:28

Say that

Speaker 113:31

Uh

Presenter13:34

Um then I did a a film in Ireland with a French director, and now I'm going to play A Cul Poirot.

Presenter13:41

Murder on the Nile. Death on the Nile.

Speaker 113:41

Murder on the Nile

Speaker 113:43

Yeah.

Peter Ustinov13:44

Uh

Presenter13:45

Record number four.

Presenter13:47

Record number four is after all you can't have a programme this sort and not take Beethoven along, and Beethoven is one of the more difficult ones to remember. You always get the things wrong, however well you know it.

Presenter13:58

And I've selected uh part of the um

Presenter14:01

Second movement of the third piano concerto, played on this occasion by Wilhelm Kempf, Professor Doctor.

Presenter15:04

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto with Wilhelm Kempf as soloist.

Presenter15:11

You've directed several operas, haven't you, Peter? Did you find that rewarding and exciting?

Presenter15:16

It's a very difficult thing to do, Artre New and all the listeners, uh simply because uh you're dealing with uh singers who of course know their parts musically in a most commendable way. I mean you very rarely find actors that are so up on their parts at the first rehearsal. In fact you never do.

Presenter15:36

And you're delighted. You say, My goodness, where have I been all this time? This is marvellous They all leap to the thing. Of course, the second uh rehearsal resembles the first enormously, because in the meanwhile they've sung Carmen and they've forgotten everything that you've told them. And so it goes on until the end. There are some of them who are better singers, frankly, than actors. There are others that are good at both. There are a few who are not terribly good at either.

Presenter16:01

And there are others who are so hardened in their profession that they

Presenter16:07

roll with your punch and then on the first night when you can't get at them do exactly what they've always done.

Presenter16:12

So that one starts out usually euphorically by the end you're thoroughly depressed, and then Mozart, or whoever it is, gallops to the rescue, because you've really rather forgotten the music.

Presenter16:25

I was very impressed to discover that you took singing lessons yourself at Rome Opera House.

Presenter16:30

That is M. M Mitra Golden Mayor trying to make

Presenter16:34

Crovade's the greatest film of all time.

Presenter16:37

I took three lessons at Rome Opera House.

Presenter16:40

from a man who confided in me that he only did it because uh he needed the money, because the grandmother is old and the children are young. I said, Well, uh th that consideration was not entirely absent from my thinking.

Presenter16:54

And he said in three lessons to teach you to see is impossible.

Presenter16:59

Three years, perhaps, perhaps, about uh three

Presenter17:03

Three lesson is impossible, but I will try and squeeze.

Presenter17:08

A year a lesson, I said fine. He said, The first thing I always tell to Gobi

Presenter17:14

The first thing to remember

Presenter17:16

is to breathe with the forehead.

Presenter17:20

I should walk.

Peter Ustinov17:20

Yeah.

Presenter17:22

Tra you must always try to breathe with the forehead. So I wrinkled my brow and tried to give the impression there was a small pulse in it, and he said You are really very quick on the haptake.

Presenter17:34

Uh it's very good. Tomorrow we will see how you improve.

Presenter17:38

So to morrow he I went back, he said, Now I will see how good your memory. You will breathe with the I said for it. Bravo But it's incredible, so quickly you learn.

Presenter17:51

Uh then the second lesson I'm always telling to gob

Presenter17:55

is not only breathe with the forehead, but think with the stomach.

Presenter18:00

I see oh, I see. So I tried to wear a rather constricted look, as though I was thinking with my stomach.

Presenter18:07

and not forgetting to wrinkle my forehead to demonstrate that a little pulse was at work there.

Presenter18:14

In the third lesson he said, I will see how much you, if anything, you remember of the lesson so far.

Presenter18:20

And I said yes. Then I ask you to think with the stomach. Bravo and to breathe with the forehead. It's incredible. I've never had a pupil so quick.

Presenter18:35

And now the last thing I must tell you, the third lesson, as I always tell to Gobby,

Presenter18:41

Remember always, under any circumstances, to sing with the eye.

Presenter18:47

and uh I'm afraid that on occasion I might have forgotten to

Presenter18:51

breathe with my forehead or to think with my stomach, but never, never did I ever forget to sing with the eye. I think that's probably the only part of me that was really singing at times. Yes. Record number five.

Presenter19:04

Record number five, while you were talking about producing operas, and probably the one I've enjoyed doing most, and which probably I did best so far, was The Magic Flute at Hamburg.

Presenter19:16

And this is the great Aria, the great consoling and serene Aria by Sarastro.

Presenter19:22

From that opera

Presenter19:24

by Mozart, of course, and on this occasion sung by the great Finnish bass Talvela.

Peter Ustinov19:41

Yeah.

Peter Ustinov19:50

We love heaven beast.

Peter Ustinov19:58

Oh, dreams my man shall find

Peter Ustinov20:12

Field sword free.

Presenter20:32

Within these sacred walls from the magic flute sung by Talvilla. One thing we haven't talked about this is your autobiography, Dear Me.

Presenter20:42

How did it feel to stand back and look at yourself so far?

Presenter20:46

Uh I was curious enough I found when I started more interested in my extreme youth and childhood than in what happened later on, which is really part of the the public record, or I mean I'm not being pompous, but at least people know more about that than they do about all the secret difficulties I had when I was beginning.

Presenter21:05

and which humanly interested me now much more. But that's perhaps a symptom of growing old, too, because I find that or I have found in my life that very, very old men remember things that happened in the first five years of their lives with a clarity which they never had when they were younger.

Presenter21:21

Uh we've got to record number six.

Presenter21:23

Well, Number six is a really spoken record, and it I u chose it in order to remind ourselves what things were like, how different they were, and yet how similar. It's the speech on the budget of nineteen nine by mister Asquith.

Speaker 221:39

I claim for the budget

Speaker 221:42

But it does not add a penny to the cost of the necessaries of life.

Speaker 221:48

But it asks all to contribute.

Speaker 221:51

to the nation's need.

Speaker 221:54

But it asks most

Speaker 221:56

from those who are most able

Speaker 221:59

Unleashed.

Speaker 222:00

from those who are least able to pay

Speaker 222:04

and that it provides an expanding revenue

Speaker 222:07

to meet expanding liability.

Presenter22:11

mister Asquith on the nineteen hundred and nine budget.

Presenter22:15

Where you Boy Scout?

Presenter22:17

I yes, I was a lion.

Speaker 122:18

A good one?

Presenter22:21

A lion with red and yellow things in the wind, uh or ailerons, or or uh stabilizers according to which element you chose to be in. A lot of badges.

Presenter22:32

No, I think I managed to light a fire with a match.

Presenter22:36

Well, that's the trick of the week. That's the trick of the week.

Presenter22:40

You are a sailor, of course. Yes, I enjoy that very much. So I would uh probably make every effort after my initial relief of being on a desert island, I would make every effort to uh build myself some kind of papyrus canoe in order to prove that Thor Hydahl was wrong on the way

Presenter23:00

Back to music. What next?

Presenter23:02

Back to music. Well, it's a revolutionary song sung by Mexicans, and I I've always loved Mexico and their negligent approach to revolution. The fact that they can't really sing together, they make noises, they get in each other's way, and eventually they shoot each other because they've got a note which displeases the others. And uh I love this kind of relaxed and lethal atmosphere.

Peter Ustinov23:30

Onto Pasio.

Peter Ustinov23:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Ustinov23:35

Yes, Lucky.

Peter Ustinov23:41

Son survival.

Presenter23:55

A revolutionary song from Mexico about Pancho Villa. Now we come to your last record.

Presenter24:01

This is a song by Musorgsky, orchestrated by Igor Markiewicz, called, I think, Little Star. And it's very redolent of endless, endless plains and gritty whitewashed churches with green or blue cupolas and the sound of distantly barking dogs and a feeling that for miles and miles in every direction there is the same thing.

Presenter25:27

Musorgsky's song Little Star sung by Marcia Pretit.

Presenter25:32

If you only had one of the eight discs you played us, which one would it be?

Presenter25:37

I think it would probably be the Mozart simply because he's the most enduring. The idea from the magic flute. And one luxury to take with you.

Speaker 125:43

Yeah.

Presenter25:47

One luxury

Presenter25:49

Oh, my goodness, that's a very difficult one. I might take a bathtub.

Presenter25:55

That's easy. We can heat the water with solar batteries. We can do all those tricks. Exactly. Exactly. I think I do that simply in order to get rid of the salt after I'd had my morning dip.

Speaker 125:58

Exactly. Exactly.

Presenter26:04

And one book, apart from that select list of the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. Well, I don't want to appear frightfully conceited, but I think

Speaker 126:10

What

Presenter26:13

The only book that would keep me quiet would be an exercise book.

Presenter26:16

at which I could fill myself.

Presenter26:18

Or perhaps if you would give me paper rather than book, I'd be happier. Yes, as much paper and pencils as you like, and thank you, Peter Yuvsinov, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for the privilege of being allowed to visit your Desert Island yet again.

Presenter26:34

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 127:00

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