Sir Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the BBC Gramophone Library. For rights' reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Sir Alec Guinness0:25

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website. The programme was originally broadcast in 1977.

Sir Alec Guinness0:34

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:53

On our desert island this week is a very distinguished actor, Sir Alec Guinness. Sir Alec, with what degree of dread would you view a long sojourn alone on a desert island?

Sir Alec Guinness1:02

Loan

Presenter1:05

Well, I suppose I'd fear for my mental stability.

Presenter1:08

On the other hand, there have times when I've thought I would like to be alone for a long time, so I don't quite know. How important to you is music?

Presenter1:17

I'm not musical at all. Have you studied at do you play an instrument? No, I don't play an instrument. I was put to the piano at about the age of eight, I think, or nine, at my prep school, and after about a year they begged

Speaker 21:20

Do you play an instrument?

Presenter1:30

to be taken away from it. Uh and I've never attempted anything else. But I enjoy listening to music very much.

Presenter1:39

You have your eight records in that neat little pile there. What is the top one? The top one is uh Pete Seeger singing Little Boxes. Why do you choose this? Two things. A, it suggests New York, which I happen to love very much, a certain brilliance in the air of New York, which suits me. I mean, you know, I feel terribly well there, and I've I've had very happy times in New York. And also I think if I was on my desert island, I happen to like the song very much. I would feel that the words of it justified my existence in being away from civilization as we know it.

Speaker 32:15

And the people in the houses all went to the university, and they all got put in boxes, little boxes all the same. And there's doctors, and there's lawyers, and business executives, and they all got put in boxes, and they all come out the same.

Sir Alec Guinness2:31

Time.

Presenter2:40

Pete Seeger singing Little Boxes

Presenter2:43

Now, your present activities, Alec, you're you're playing in Alan Bennett's excellent play, The Old Country, at at the Queen's Theatre. Do you find it difficult to find a play that that intrigues you?

Presenter2:55

Well, I don't think I'd do a play that didn't intrigue me unless I was sort of desperate for the cash.

Presenter3:02

Uh I've been very lucky in in recent years and anyway anything written by Alan Bennett is going to intrigue me before I've opened the cover, because I think he's a very brilliant writer. He amuses me and and he's an historian, you know, he's he's an extremely knowledgeable creature.

Presenter3:21

Your most recent film, which which we haven't seen yet, Star Wars, is science fiction, which is a brand new departure for you. What what do you play?

Speaker 23:28

What to

Presenter3:30

I don't know what I play. I play some sort of wise old or allegedly wise old character from outer space. And whether it's way in the past or way in the future, I couldn't tell you. Did you enjoy it? I think it's a what the Americans call a fun movie. I think it's very exciting and it's marvelous to look at. And yes, I did enjoy it. I read that it's making more money more quickly than any film ever has before.

Sir Alec Guinness3:52

I mean that it's

Presenter3:57

As you're on a percentage, that can't be bad. No, I read that also with the greatest interest. We look forward to seeing that. What's your second record? Polanc's organ concerto with De Rufflet at the organ.

Presenter4:13

I only came across this record a matter of about three weeks ago, so it's a new one in my life, and I'm kind of mad about it.

Presenter5:24

An excerpt from the Poulanc organ concerto was soloist Maurice Du Roufflet.

Presenter5:31

May we go back to the beginning, Sir Alec? You are a Londoner, are you not? Yes, I was born in London. Marinabon. Was there any tradition for the arts in your family? No, not at all that I've been able to trace. Did you go to the theatre a lot?

Presenter5:44

I think I first went to the theatre at the age of six when I was taken to Chu Chin Chao. Uh that impressed me a great deal. Was there any particular occasion when you said to yourself what that man is doing is just what I intend to do?

Presenter6:01

Very difficult to sort of be accurate about it, but I think I first fell in love with a performer when I fell in love with Nellie Wallace at the Coliseum in her elastic-sided boots and a funny feather in her hat and the rude noises she made whenever she bent down. And I used to fall off my

Sir Alec Guinness6:12

I'm gonna

Presenter6:22

See, I laughed so much as a kid at her and I I think that really set me thinking I would love to be able to do that sort of thing. Was the theatre your first job when you left school? No, I went into advertising. I wanted to go into the theatre, I just didn't know how to get started. Uh and I was found very kindly a job in an advertising agency, first of all as a copywriter and then layout, and I made a mess of it all, and then back to copyright until I was able to

Presenter6:50

Fortunately get a scholarship to the Faycompton Studio of Dramatic Art.

Presenter6:55

What was your first professional engagement? My first ever one was as a student.

Presenter7:03

It was on my twentieth birthday I got the job of

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Walking on and understudying two lines.

Presenter7:11

in a play called Libel at the King's Theatre Hammersmith, which then transferred to the Playhouse. Do you remember your salary? That was progress. That was progress. But I only got the pound a week'cause I made such a fuss and saying it didn't really help me to live.

Presenter7:33

What was your next engagement?

Presenter7:35

The next one was in a play by Noel Langley called Queer Cargo, which opened at the Piccadilly Theatre, for which I got the princely sum of three pounds a week to understudy all the

Presenter7:48

leading male parts and to appear as a

Presenter7:53

Chinese coolie in the first act, French pilot in the second act.

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and a British sailor in the third act.

Speaker 27:59

Tada

Presenter8:00

To cover all those rolls you were obviously giving them a reduction for quantity. Oh, there's a story that so dedicated were you that for the the Chinese walk on part you shaved your head. Yes, I shaved the top of my head, and everyone said, Oh, it'll all grow much better anyway when you have but it didn't, as you can see.

Presenter8:18

John Gilgood helped you a lot at the ISO.

Sir Alec Guinness8:20

Oh tremendously.

Presenter8:24

And you played in a number of his seasons? Well, various plays he did at the new theatre. I was in his definitive Hamlet in 1934, which is my first sort of really decent proper job. Oseric, we all know. That's right, yes. Seven pounds a week. And and then the Komosodjevsky Seagal, which Gilger was responsible for.

Sir Alec Guinness8:31

Do you have my p

Presenter8:45

And were the old vic. And then I, after a couple of years of that, what it was to the old Vic.

Speaker 28:45

And we're going to

Sir Alec Guinness8:45

Uh

Presenter8:50

under Guthrie's direction, back to Gilgood, then to the Vic again.

Presenter8:54

So it was a it was a largely classical background. You played in that celebrated production of Hamlet at Elsinore Castle. That must have been an occasion. That was L Laurence Olivier playing Hamlet. That was the first time the Vic had ever gone abroad and it was played outside in the courtyard of Elsinore Castle. We were swamped out on the first night and had to play in the ballroom of the hotel nearby with all the crowned Scandinavian heads present.

Presenter9:24

But I think the most memorable thing of all that was Lillian Baylis, who was still in charge of the old pick, of course, in those days, had the Elsinore Castle clock stopped, which had never been stopped in hundreds of years. But I mean, we couldn't have it peeling out during Hamlet's soliloquies, so they all said it couldn't be stopped, but she got it done. I can imagine her determination was terrific. Let's have your third record.

Sir Alec Guinness9:43

Uh

Speaker 29:43

Hello.

Presenter9:48

John Williams playing one of three Mexican songs by Ponce and arranged by Segovia.

Presenter10:42

A Mexican song by Ponce played by John Williams For You My Heart.

Presenter10:48

You spent the war years in the in the Royal Navy. Where did you serve?

Presenter10:52

Well, I went on the lower deck, did my training in Devonshire and then got pushed around like we all did. Um I think I even served on eleven different ships in one day. It's true. You moved on to such and such a thing, onto it when went and then having got there they said now you move on to that and it twenty four hours, eleven ships.

Presenter11:14

Uh then I went into combined operations.

Presenter11:18

That was after I was commissioned, and was in Loch Fyne and Scottish waters, for quite a time, then to the States. Was gi given an L C I L, which was a sort of two hundred ton.

Presenter11:31

job with a crew of twenty and told to bring it back across the Atlantic. Never knew where I was.

Presenter11:37

and took it into the Mediterranean, and nearly all my war was.

Sir Alec Guinness11:39

Yeah.

Speaker 311:39

Yeah.

Speaker 211:39

Yeah.

Presenter11:41

Or anyway, two and a half years of it served in the Mediterranean, and mostly in the Adriatic. You were in fact shipwrecked at one point. Yes, I was blown from Yugoslavia.

Presenter11:52

To uh a little place called Tiermale, uh which at that moment was just behind the Allied lines. If I got another

Presenter11:59

Five miles north in this hurricane that was blowing, I would have been shipwrecked.

Presenter12:04

behind the German lines.

Presenter12:06

As it was, I only lost my ship, no none of my men. Yes, you all got ashore all right. Now, at the invasion of Sicily, in which you took part, I believe you were the only person, apart from the supreme commander, who knew exactly where you were going to land. Well, I've always maintained that I was the first person to land, because I never received the signal. It was a very rough night, mind you. I never received the signal, postponing everything for half an hour. But I did know.

Presenter12:33

where I was going uh oh, about three weeks before the invasion, purely by accident.

Presenter12:39

Uh looking at some photographs.

Presenter12:42

All under huge security with my friend Peter Bull, who's in North Africa.

Presenter12:48

and um there was a little figure written, you know, two hundred and thirty or two hundred and fifty, whatever it was, at the bottom of the photograph, and it was near a lighthouse. And I say, What do you think that

Presenter12:59

figure, is that just the yards of film or what? It was all taken from a submarine, this film. Yes. These were briefing photographs. Little bri briefing things. I mean, no one was to know where we were I mean, we weren't told. It could have been Greece, it could have been France, anywhere.

Speaker 213:03

So these were brief.

Sir Alec Guinness13:04

Think photograph

Presenter13:12

And Peter said, Let's go back on board your ship and turn up the Mediterranean pilot, which we did. And then we scoured through that for a lighthouse of the same height as the figure on this photograph, and we found it. And that was at Cap Pasero in southern Sicily, and that's exactly where I landed, right by the lighthouse. So on the way, I you know, once I saw there's my lighthouse I saw, I knew I'd come to the right place. It seemed kind of familiar. Yes. I hope security's better these days. I do hope so. Your fourth record.

Sir Alec Guinness13:39

Seems kinda familiar.

Sir Alec Guinness13:41

I hope so.

Presenter13:47

Haydn's symphony number eighty five, Lorraine. Why have you chosen this one? Well, I love Haydn. I think he's my favourite composer, generally speaking, and I believe that it would help keep me sane. In fact, any Haydn would help keep me sane on my isolated island.

Presenter15:01

An excerpt from Haydn's Symphony No. 85 in B flat major Lorraine on Taldorati conducting the Philharmonia Hungarica.

Presenter15:10

After the war, you rejoined the old Vic. Is that right? Yes, when it was at the.

Presenter15:16

New theatre, which is now the Albury Theatre. One of the few things in your career that have come unstuck.

Presenter15:22

As something sticking out from this long cavalcade of successes, there was a production of Hamlet in which you played the part and directed it, and something went rather wrong on the first night. There was a mechanical failure in the lighting, wasn't there, for a start? Uh well, yes, that was disastrous, but I wouldn't blame the whole failure on to that. Um there was a new electronic board had been put into the new theatre, as it was, uh and that simply went haywire that night, and uh everything else did too. Scenery whirled away uh when it should have been coming in and oh horrors. I mean uh the actor's nightmare and I used to walk to the side of the stage in the middle of a Hamlet soliloquy thinking, I will just tell them to bring the curtain down and then I'll go out in front and explain that we've

Presenter16:11

lost our heads and it's all gone wrong. And but every time I kind of got to near the prompt corner, all the lights came right again, so I thought, ah, now we're in the clear And it went on like that throughout the whole evening, so it uh wasn't exactly a concentrated job on my part. You just forced your way through as best you could.

Sir Alec Guinness16:26

Sure will

Presenter16:28

Well now these successes I mentioned there was the Fedo Face, Hotel Paradiso, Yonesco's Exit the King.

Presenter16:37

Lawrence in Terence Radikin's Ross. Dylan Thomas, you played in New York but not here. Yes.

Sir Alec Guinness16:43

Yeah.

Presenter16:44

I was asked to do it here. Somehow I had the feeling that it it wasn't for British audiences. It was written by an American and it seemed to me it was a transatlantic play. Very good for there. But, you know, there are certain things that don't transfer. I felt that this wouldn't. Are there any parts in the classical repertory that you still feel that you should have a crack at?

Presenter17:10

No not really. I mean, I I regret

Speaker 317:10

Yeah.

Speaker 217:10

Uh

Speaker 317:10

Yeah.

Presenter17:13

That I haven't

Presenter17:14

Either seized an opportunity or made an opportunity to play certain things. I mean, for instance, Lear, although I've done that on radio. Yes, what about Lear?

Sir Alec Guinness17:22

Uh

Presenter17:23

Well, I think all those major

Presenter17:27

Shakespeare parts are really for young men or young-ish men. I don't know that after forty or so you can uh give them the the physical power that they need and the vitality that they need. I mean the fact that Lear is an old man, I I think it's f fairly disastrous to be elderly uh and tackle it for the first time anyway. Maybe if you've played it when you're young you can tackle it again when you're older, but I wouldn't like to now.

Presenter17:56

What's your next record? Marla, Symphony No. 5.

Presenter18:02

What intrigues me about this is a feeling of foreboding and a an historical feeling of fourteen eighteen war and the whole of the civilization.

Presenter18:13

the beginning of this century, possibly about to crumble, it kind of throws me back to just before I was born.

Presenter18:23

And uh

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A sort of the

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A discomfort which I maybe I would rather like on my island.

Presenter19:33

The opening of the Mahler Fifth Symphony, George Shulte conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter19:40

Many more people, of course, know you through your films than through your stage performances. You approached films with caution, didn't you?

Presenter19:48

I think I used to be a bit snobby about films when I was a very young actor and thought, well, that's not for me.

Presenter19:55

I did a day's crowd work when I was a drama student, and that was such misery.

Presenter20:02

and herded around and shouted and bullied at you know, with

Presenter20:06

hundreds of other people and I thought I'm never gonna do that.

Presenter20:09

Your first film part was one you'd already played on the stage and your own adaptation of the great expectations. Uh but that was a totally different kettle of fish. I mean that was immediately after the war. Uh David Lean and Ronald Neame who then had the admirable company of Cineguild, which was something of a revelation in

Sir Alec Guinness20:09

Your first

Sir Alec Guinness20:14

Yeah.

Speaker 220:25

Nib

Presenter20:29

uh British Filmmaking. It was an excellent film. Uh and it was a splendid film and that was uh oh, I was very proud to be in that. I was thrilled by it. And it and that that started me off on a film career in a way. You went on to play uh another Dickens part Fagin and Oliver Twist. So evil you were nearly banned in the United States, I remember.

Presenter20:49

Yes, and the Russians walked out of it in uh Vienna or somewhere.

Presenter20:55

And that splendid run of Ealing comedies. You were given full scope for your enjoyment of of make up and character playing in Kind Hearts and Coronets. How many parts did you play in that? Eight. Um I was offered two.

Presenter21:09

And I was on holiday w uh when the script arrived and it made me laugh so much sitting on a beach down in Saint-Jean-Deluze Angkor, was that? Uh and I immediately cabled back to Sir Michael Balkan, you know, would love to do it, love the script, uh but why only two parts? I mean two seemed arbitrary, one or all. A great economy too. What was your favorite of the Ealing comedies?

Presenter21:37

I think the one that I as a film, purely as film, which I think is is probably a real classic, is The Man in the White Suit.

Presenter21:46

And of course then there were the big ones that you made later, the Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, both screen classics. You never sold out to films, did you? Even in the days of of the big contracts, you you were never the the full-time contract artist. You kept your independence so that you could always go back to the theater. Well, I had a contract to do X-Men.

Presenter22:07

films over a period for the rank organization. I also had one with Cawder, which I I never fulfilled because he died. But I've always been determined not

Presenter22:18

to abandon the theatre. I mean, I think an actor needs to at least an actor like me, needs to contact an audience and to open his lungs and uh all those sort of things. And and in the film world you can become very, very

Presenter22:32

Small in your work.

Presenter22:34

And maybe I've um you know made a hash of both, but I've always tried to kind of keep a balance, a certain amount of filming to support me financially.

Sir Alec Guinness22:39

So

Presenter22:44

And then to do whatever I wanted to do, if I could get hold of it, in the theatre. Another record piece.

Presenter22:52

This is Eric Sati's Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear.

Presenter22:57

I don't quite know why I've chosen this, except there's a kind of

Presenter23:00

a sad coolness and a rather ironical quality which maybe is in my personality sometimes, anyway.

Presenter23:09

Uh and I feel kind of at home with it.

Presenter24:13

The opening of Eric Sati's Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear played by Aldo Ciccolini.

Presenter24:20

Now, as an experienced shipwreckee, you know the problems. First of all, uh shelter. Could you manage something like that? Oh, I think so, yes. You are a fisherman, are you not?

Presenter24:30

I had several years of being mad about fishing, and I still could be, but I have so little opportunity. I live in Hampshire, and not near any.

Presenter24:41

water, which is suitable. Uh I have far more equipment, uh weight of equipment than fish I ever caught um and alas I haven't touched it um any of it for, I should think about seven or eight years.

Presenter24:56

Would you try to escape?

Presenter24:57

How much of your navigation do you remember?

Speaker 224:57

Yeah.

Presenter25:01

My navigation was always a bit ropey. I never quite knew where I was. Uh I'd be all right with coastal navigation, I think. You know, if I can keep something more or less in sight or if it doesn't disappear for two years. All right.

Sir Alec Guinness25:12

A trip round the island

Presenter25:16

Record number seven.

Presenter25:18

Beethoven's Sonata No. thirty two This for me is the tops of everything. I first put it on the gramophone one

Presenter25:32

Warm summer night

Presenter25:34

and sat outdoors with the windows wide open and the stars were there and I

Presenter25:40

I was sort of dumbfounded by it. For me it's it's the the greatest sort of spiritual experience uh in music that I've ever had.

Presenter26:54

The closing passage of Beethoven's sonata No. thirty two in C minor

Presenter26:58

Played by Daniel Barrenboyn, which brings us now to Your Last Record.

Presenter27:04

Compline hymn sung by the monks of Saint Pierre de Salaim in Gregorian chant. I've been to Salaim twice, although I've never heard them singing this particular work there.

Presenter27:18

I think this is what I would like to play each evening as the sun went down.

Presenter27:23

It's a wonderful evening chant.

Sir Alec Guinness27:33

They pass away and say

Sir Alec Guinness27:43

You see a hundred policemen?

Sir Alec Guinness27:48

Yeah.

Sir Alec Guinness27:51

Yeah.

Speaker 227:55

Te amotiska nicin du akurgos tetraina.

Sir Alec Guinness28:09

Say yes or please do not need

Presenter28:32

accompanying hymn sung by the monks of the Abbe Saint-Pierre de Solemn.

Presenter28:38

If you could choose just one disc of your eight, which would it be? The Beethoven.

Presenter28:42

Sonata number thirty-two in C minor.

Presenter28:45

And one luxury to take with you to the island.

Presenter28:48

This can be a kind of just a little personal luxury. I have a little kind of little leather folding.

Sir Alec Guinness28:51

So we need to do it.

Presenter28:56

Uh job which can contain a photograph of my wife, my son and his family, my grandchildren, and uh I better not say above all, but certainly would include uh a photograph of my favourite dog. Right. And one book putting aside um that

Presenter29:17

Usual little list of the Bible and the works of Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Presenter29:22

Well, to begin with I thought I might like to take Maurice Baring's wonderful

Presenter29:27

Anthology, have you anything to declare? But it is a little slim, so I think I better go thicker than that and take the Oxford Twentieth Century book of modern verse. Right. And thank you, Sir Alec Guinness, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much for asking me, and rescue me soon, please. Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Alec Guinness29:56

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