Christopher Fry

Christopher Fry0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Christopher Fry0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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Our castaway this week is the playwright Christopher Frye. Now, Christopher, before we start talking about your career and about your plays, let's hear your first record. What's the first one on that pile though? The first is this may sound as though I'm going to be full of nostalgia, but it's not really so, because I think I would have chosen it anyway.

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But it's the first record I ever possessed.

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In some way uh I was given a grammophone, which was one of those HMV table models, oak, rather splendid things. Wind up. Wind up, yes. And uh the first record, which was such an excitement to me to put on and to hear the first notes emerging from this,

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Was the Schubert Trio in B-flat? Played by Casals and Corto and Thibault.

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The opening of Schubert's trio number one in B flat major, played by Corto, Thibault, and Casals, and recorded it says on the sixth of july, nineteen twenty six.

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What part of the country do you come from, Crystal? I was born in Bristol.

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where my father was working as a lay reader in a parish there. And he died when I was three and then we we moved from Bristol. And about a year later my mother took my brother and me off to Bedford, where she heard the education was very good. In fact you went to Bedford Modern School. That's right, yes. I believe you took to music very early in life.

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I I I used to get up and play the piano in some strange way from as soon as I could reach the

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The notes by ear.

Christopher Fry3:06

Uh

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Bye.

Christopher Fry3:07

Uh

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and at my kindergarten

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One day, the um mistress who was teaching us said, Could I play a march for the children to be marched out from morning prayers?

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And she'd heard that I'd uh composed a march at the age of six. At the age of six, I'd uh written two tunes, one called The Lover's Quarrel, which was played all on the black notes, and Pharaoh's March, with a very pom, pom pom bass, which uh the children marched out to.

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And uh at Bedford Modern School, I believe you had a dance band.

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Yes, I had a dance band called the Savoloy Orphans. We used to play at school dances and so on. Taken, of course, from the Savoy Orphians of those days. The Savoy Orphians, which were then the band we listened to on the

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Let's do

Christopher Fry3:54

Yeah.

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A very new thing and a great excitement. I can remember the first set I had when I used to use the cat's whisker on the crystal and and hear this music coming through in the evening.

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and could hardly tear myself away to do my homework.

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And I see you've got a number by the Savoy Orphans, not the Savoy Orphans, on your list. Yes, playing a tune called Dinah.

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The Savoy Ophians playing Dinah on October 30, 1925.

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Now, we've talked about your early musical interests. What about your early literary interests? You you wrote your first play when you were still at school.

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Yes, I did.

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That that at the age of eleven, I believe, and you wrote a a verse drama at fourteen. Yes, I think I did, and a comedy, I think, when I was about sixteen, which we did at at school.

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What happened to you when you left? I taught for almost a year before going to

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A strange place in Bath called Citizen House, which was half a social centre and half a theatre. It had a little theatre there. You were acting? I acted.

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there, in a way, and also was office boy and took the letters to the post at midnight.

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Yes, you can't walk a stage until you've swept it.

Christopher Fry6:16

Yeah.

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And then you became a schoolmaster again? Yes. I was offered a job at a prep school in Surrey, Hazelwood.

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And I was teaching the same age group all the time, b between I think they were between eight, nine, that sort of age. And after three years I found I'd

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Really, I just about learnt all that I was supposed to be teaching, so I thought it was time to leave.

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So, having decided to stop being a schoolmaster, in which direction did you grow now?

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Well, life became very complicated, um one way or another. I was.

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making my way back in somehow to the theatre because I wanted to write plays and I thought I'd better find out what the theatre was all about.

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And how it came about I can't quite remember, but I started uh

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The Tunbridge Worlds Repertory Players.

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Yes.

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And I wrote the music for a musical comedy in London at the

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Uh, Savil Theatre. What was it called? She shall have music.

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Was this a success? Not at all, I think. It staggered along for about two months. And then your first post school play, as it were. What was that? After I was married we uh went to live

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in East Sussex in the Ashdown Forest.

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at Coleman's Hatch, and the vicar asked if I'd write a play for the village to do.

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For the church jubilee. And I wrote a play called The Boy with the Cart. In fact, he brought me the subject. I said, What can I write a play about? And he brought along a book called Worthies of Sussex, which included the story of St. Cuthman. And this is the one I used for the play. And that was your first, first play? Yes.

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Let's have your third record. What shall that be? Well, I think.

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I shall need on the desert island something to um keep me on my toes. I think I'm most likely just to lapse into a kind of torpor unless I have something which stirs me up a bit.

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And there's that uh splendid Bure in Handel's The Faithful Shepherd. It's really rather like my Aunt Bessie, who is

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good-hearted but bustling, and I think would get me going on things again.

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The Boure from The Faithful Shepherd, the suite of handle tunes arranged by Sir Thomas Beacham, who was conducting, at the beginning of the War Christopher You directed at Oxford Playhouse.

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I think I went there in uh

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Summer of nineteen forty, I think or uh thereabouts. And after war service you went back in nineteen forty. I went back to do some productions, yes. Not there uh permanently then, but uh

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What about your own place?

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Well, I'd written a play not quite finished.

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called the First Born, which I had started before the war.

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Then I finished it immediately the war was over.

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And Martin Brown said, could they do it at the Mercury Theatre?

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which I felt was rather too small a stage for the play, and I said I'd write another play instead, so I wrote a one actor called Phoenix Too Frequent, which he did that.

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And that was then revived at the Arts Theatre Club. And I'd been doing some work for Alec Clooms there. I'd directed a couple of plays. And he

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made me staff dramatist and paid me a year's salary.

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during which year I wrote nothing at all.

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And uh so I had to make up for it the year when I wasn't being paid, which was the next year, and I wrote The Ladies Not for Burning Then Yes, which was of course a a tremendous success and first produced at the Arts. Yes. That was picked up by

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Yeah.

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Sir John Gilgood. How long did it run?

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Well, it ran until Gilgood had to go to rehearse at Stratford. He was doing the Stratford season. I think it was about nine months before he went there. And then when he came back, they went back into rehearsal for the production. He was taking it to New York after that.

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And I remember he's a wonderful man. He has so many ideas pouring in the whole time that

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he changes things the whole time, all through rehearsal, all through the tour, after we'd opened in London, he was still changing. And then when we came back to do the production for New York, he was starting again doing this. And I remember the the stage director

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Alison Colville coming to me and saying, Do stop him changing any more. I rubbed right through the pages of the script. So I went back to the stalls and was sitting just behind John.

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And he changed beginning to change something, and I was just about to tap him on the shoulder and say, Don't when he s I heard him say, Good, good it's always better when it's different.

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That's a nice story. It's time we had another record. What should we have?

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When uh

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I was teaching at the Prep School in Surrey.

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A man came on to the staff who was going to teach.

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French, I think.

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mathematics, possibly music, certainly and his name was Michael Tippett.

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And so I would like to take with me some of his music, and I think.

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The slow music, unforgettable slow movement of uh the Concerta for Double String Orchestra.

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The Beginning of the Slow Movement from the Concerto for Double String Orchestra by Michael Tippett.

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The London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley.

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Now, as a result of the success of The Ladies Not for Burning,

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You were commissioned to write a play by Laurence Olivier.

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Yes. It it was for the opening of his new management at the Saint James's Theatre in nineteen fifty. And it was been observed? Yes. How did you choose your subject?

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I don't know. It it it ev it evolved.

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It was a bit of a battle because of course

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Uh that was the opening date for the theatre.

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And I started the play and then couldn't see how to move across to the second act.

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And uh

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At this moment Peter Brooke came along and said, Would I translate an Anawi play?

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And I'd said I must get on with this other one, uh genus observed.

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And he found that I was rather stuck and said, Well, it'll do you good to get off it for a bit and do the translation. So I translated Ring Round the Moon.

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and then went back, by which time

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Time was getting a bit short.

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So it uh meant working, I think, about sixteen hours a day to get it finished in

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Time. Venus observed this this was a a modern play. Yes, but but they're all modern plays. Well, some of them in costumes, modern plays.

Christopher Fry15:16

Well, some of the costs are.

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Record number five.

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We have to think about the rainy season.

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And uh

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I thought first of all of the tune that that uh when I first met my wife we were playing on the gramophone which was stormy weather, and then I thought when my love and I are together wouldn't be very appropriate if I was on a desert island. So I think

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Singing in the Rain from that marvellous film musical.

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With Gene Kelly.

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I'm singing in the rain.

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You're singing in the rain.

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What a glorious feel, and I'm happy again. I'm laughing at clouds, so dark up a mile.

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The sun's in my heart, and I'm ready for love.

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Singing in the Rain Gene Kelly.

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You were recognized.

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now and publicized as the most successful playwright of of the decade after the war. But fashions change and and the romantic type of acting and the first play

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Sort of faded away rather quickly, rather suddenly. Yes.

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You went into films.

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I did uh

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The first, I think, was

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The Beggars Opera for Peter Brooke with Olivier and uh Dorothy Tootin. And then there was the coronation film that year. You wrote the the commentary for that. Yes.

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And then in nineteen fifty eight, I think.

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William Wyler and the producer Sam Zimbalist came over to England and said, Would I go over to Rome and do

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That's the last part of of Ben-Hurne. It would only take six weeks, and I hadn't seen Rome, so it would be good for me.

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So we went to Rome. And we were there for a year and two months. That was your sixth week. Yes. But Ben Hur has a marvellous story of it, but it must have been a delightful job to describe it. It was it was fun to do, yes.

Christopher Fry17:32

It is created.

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And what followed that? Several biblical. Then, yes, Dina Daurentis asked me to do one, which was.

Christopher Fry17:36

Yeah.

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From that novel by Pere Lagerkvist, if that's how you pronounce it, um Barabbas, which I did with Richard Fleischer, and after that I did uh

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the film that's called The Bible, but which in fact is in the beginning, which is the very first few chapters of the Bible, which I did with John Houston.

Christopher Fry18:04

Yeah, that's true.

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That in fact was to be one of those multi epics with a number of directors each taking a separate part. That was the first idea. There should be four directors.

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Orson Welles, Aubert Bresson and uh I think two Italian directors. But that was very difficult to manage, to uh bring them all together. And so in the end it was decided it should be one director only and Houston came in there. So we had to rewrite it again. Start again, and so instead of taking a year, I think we were nearly four years over.

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Well, since then, you've written some television plays, some adaptations.

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Now you've written an opera libretto.

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Yes, this is an opera which the Chicago Lyric Opera Company commissioned from the Polish composer Penderetzki.

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He'd chosen to do an opera of Milton's Paradise Lost, and Sam Wandermaker came and said, Would I think of doing the libretto? And I thought, This is totally impossible, with the Miltonic lines

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uncurling themselves would be very difficult to uh sing. However, you m you may me go and read through the whole of Paralyzed Lost again.

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So I made a kind of it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle with sort of the lines shortened and cut and replaced and few.

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things that I had to write in between.

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Um

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But it seemed to have faded out completely until, I think, about six months ago, when suddenly a a a cable arrived saying

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Desperately need twenty more minutes for Satan's Aria in Act I. And now it's it's it's opening at in Chicago in November this year. And then it's going to the scholar Milan in Milan, yes. And a book.

Christopher Fry19:57

The military.

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A book. Yes, a book about your family. Yes. This started when the the Oxford University Press asked if I'd do a book about my childhood, and I couldn't see how I could make a whole book about my childhood. But I began to get very interested in

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the family in my

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parents and grandparents and great grandparents and uncles and aunts and so on. And

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Fascinated to find how much I belong to them or how much of them belong to me in a way. And this is what the book's about. And it's called.

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Can you find me?

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which is a quotation

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From a postcard, my mother wrote to her sister saying she was sending a photograph of a sheep-shearing competition.

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Can You Find Me?

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Record number six.

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If the desert island doesn't have a spring, I think I shall have to make one for myself and.

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There is Britain Spring Symphony.

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With a

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That great lead up to isn't it from the Night of the Burning Pestle, a great speech about May Day, with Up then, I say, both young and old, both man and maid, a maying

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with drums and guns that bounce aloud, which leads into that marvellous entrance of Summer is a coming in.

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The closing passage of Britain's SPRING SYMPONY

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and it's conducted by the composer.

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How well could you adjust yourself to isolation and loneliness?

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Very hard to say until one tries it, but I think

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I could. How good would you be at looking after yourself?

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Not very good, I'm afraid.

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I um Not a handyman. Not really a handyman, no.

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What would you eat?

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Fishing? Fish, uh as well. I yes, I should I should have to uh

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bring myself to it. It would be a difficult thing. I don't like the idea of fishing.

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But uh to keep alive I would probably do it. And uh I think I could manage to cook.

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A fish wrapped in wet newspaper in a first find your wet newspaper. Any ideas on escaping?

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No, I don't I think I would let her

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life do what it would rather than fight against it.

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Some more music.

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I feel I would like to have one of the

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Beethoven Quartets

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And I probably should be taking something like the A minor, but.

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I feel I'd like to have the first that I heard, the first Beethoven quartet I heard, which was I remember very clearly it was in nineteen twenty nine, and that is the quartet in B flat.

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The Beethoven Quartet in B-flat, number thirteen, the fourth movement, and it's played by the Juilliard Quartet.

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And it brings us to your last record.

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There's uh

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An ending to the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalm.

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using the 150th psalm.

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Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

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And Stravinsky said of it

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The final hymn of praise must be thought of as issuing from the skies.

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Which sounds difficult. But at least it it somehow makes the human voice

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Part of space and the sky and the sea, and I think on a desert island would be very comforting.

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The closing passage of Strabinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Leonard Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and the English Bach Festival Chorus.

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If you would only take one disc of the eight, which would that be? Because I'd like to have the sound of human voices round me on the island, it would probably have to be Britain's Spring Symphony.

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And one luxury to take with you.

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Something of no practical use whatever.

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Oh, I think it must be a bit of practical use. I

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I think if I got to spend days on the Desert Island I can only do it if I have some proper rest. I tell you what I've got, which I'm very fond of, which is a rocking chair, apparently, and then you sit in it and you pull a lever at the side, and a footrest comes up.

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And then you press back against it and it gradually moves back, and you can move it back as far as you like until you're absolutely flat, so that at least I would get a good night's rest and could face the day with a certain amount of hope. Right. And you're allowed one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already there, and we don't allow big encyclopedias. It would be a splendid opportunity, of course, to read.

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the books that I've always meant to get right through.

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and have never quite managed it, such as Gibbons' Decline and Fall or even Don Quixote.

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But could I take um the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations? Yes, of course. Which would remind me of a great deal that uh

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Isn't actually in the book. The Oxford Book of Quotations. And thank you, Christopher Fry, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Roy.

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Goodbye everyone.

Christopher Fry28:46

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