Edward Fox

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 nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

This week, our castaway is the actor, Edward Fox.

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I am told, Edward, that music means a great deal to you.

Presenter0:38

Yes, it does, I think.

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Is there music in the family?

Presenter0:41

No.

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We're not a very musical family. You play the piano rather well. How did that come about?

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I

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Learned when I was at prep school.

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From the sweet teacher.

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called Miss Ticehurst, who's now retired.

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Uh she allowed my appreciation to develop. It's a terribly important thing, of course. And uh at an early age I suppose I

Presenter1:07

got imbued and got to love.

Presenter1:10

Music. Do you play discs a lot?

Presenter1:14

I suppose I I don't really. I find if I listen to music it's a serious business.

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I can't just turn uh the grammar phone or the tape recorder on and listen, because I find I stop doing everything else. Did you find it very hard to narrow your choice down to eight? Quite hard, yes.

Presenter1:37

What's the first one there on the pile?

Presenter1:39

The first one is Fats Waller.

Presenter1:42

Playing and singing my very good friend the Milkman. Why do you choose that?

Presenter1:47

Well

Presenter1:49

It's original talent and it's humorous. Now, I suppose in a f curious sort of way it's exactly the sort of thing that's always been said about uh Joanna's and my relationship. We're always being advised to marry. Which

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It's exactly the the advice that Fats Waller is being given in this song.

Presenter2:14

My very good friend.

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The milkman says

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That I've been losing

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Very much later.

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He doesn't like

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But now my key

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He suggests that you should marry.

Edward Fox2:31

Leave me.

Edward Fox2:34

Alternative Mapper Region

Presenter2:39

Pat's Waller playing my very good friend the Milkman, and you dedicate that record to Joanna David. I do. I do.

Speaker 12:44

Yeah.

Edward Fox2:44

Uh

Speaker 12:44

I do.

Presenter2:46

Now, your father was in the theatre, was he not? Yes, he was. An agent of the city.

Speaker 32:50

But he was an age.

Presenter2:51

After the war

Presenter2:53

And he was an agent for for all his life, as well as being other things as well. Now you turned down a Test for a film part when you were very young indeed. Yes.

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How old were you? I must have been about ten years old.

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And my brother William was about eight. He he took the part. He took it from you? He took it from me, yes. He he uh had more sense of humour, I think vastly more sense of humour. What was the part? It was the part of Mrs Miniver's son.

Presenter3:26

Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon were Mr. and Mrs. Miniver in a sequel of The Miniver Story. I'm not sure it wasn't called The Miniver Story.

Presenter3:34

Anyway, it was the second part of Mr. and Mrs. Menneve. And you turned down a chance like that. Why was that?

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I felt that it was appearing before the public, and I couldn't bear the idea of appearing uh naked, as it were, before the public.

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People.

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Now, you were at Harrow. Were you good uh uh at school? Did you achieve it? No, I didn't. I g uh became quite good at playing racquets.

Speaker 13:53

Roe.

Speaker 13:56

Yeah.

Presenter4:02

when I was a cult and then proceeded not to be good.

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I d I wasn't very distinguished at all at school, and I didn't know acting at all. What was your first job?

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My first job was working for Marx and Spencer. As what?

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I began as a porter. I was training to be a department manager. Were you good as a porter? Oh, I loved being a porter, yes. I adored unpacking apples.

Presenter4:29

But National Service got you out of that. Yes, it did. Mhm.

Edward Fox4:32

Uh

Presenter4:33

Which I did for two years.

Presenter4:36

Uh, not only in the guards. I d I began in the coastream guards. I didn't stay with the coaststream guards, or rather they wished.

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that I didn't stay with them. I went to the the North Lancashire Regiment. You weren't tempted to become a professional soldier.

Presenter4:49

No, I never was, actually. I loved the life, but uh I could see very clearly its uh confining aspects. What happened afterwards? Back to Marks and Spencer? For a very short time, yes. Uh back as what, a a porter again? Uh yeah, a little bit sort of farther o along the ladder um towards being that dreadful thing, a department manager. Or as I regarded it then a dreadful thing. It isn't a dreadful thing at all. Whose idea was it to give that up, Marks and Spencer's or you? Marks and Spencer's. Quite rightly. They didn't wish to court a a subversive. Was there any particular moment or incident or something that sprung the whole thing? Well, there was actually. It was a sweet, charming um store manager called Mr Margaret.

Presenter5:42

who called me in one Saturday because I'd come to work in a suit that had belonged to a deceased uncle.

Presenter5:51

It was rather a smart suit with a sort of country Prince of Wales check to it.

Edward Fox5:54

Mm-hmm.

Presenter5:55

And uh

Presenter5:57

This absolutely was not the right suit to wear at all.

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And uh he called me up to his office and he said, Really, you've gone too far now. Don't you know that you should be in Charcoal Gray?

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And uh I said no, frankly, I didn't. But uh i it was the straw that broke his back. He'd been observing my uh inadequacies for some time. I see. And he suggested I went on the stage, which I l I laughed at.

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I thought that was a very silly idea. So, what was the next step, having left the.

Speaker 16:26

Uh

Presenter6:28

Cradle, as it were, of Marx and Spencer's. It was to um

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bore my father to death with what I might do, and generally be a lackadaisical slouch at home.

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And

Presenter6:44

He said, Oh, well, I mean, if you've got the vaguest notion which I ha had, I suppose, the vaguest notion of going on the stage, I'll try and arrange an audition for you, which he did, very kindly, with a director called Glen Blam Shaw.

Edward Fox6:57

Yeah.

Presenter6:57

Mm-hmm.

Presenter6:59

Who listened to me.

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Giving a very bad rendering of Richard III and something else.

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And eventually he my father said to him, What do you think? Do you think he's

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Any good at being an actor?

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And mister Barmshaw said,'Well, now I should doubt it very, very much indeed. But of course you can't tell. He said to my father,'Give him no money at all never, never finance him in any way at all.

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If you can get him a course at a drama school, and after that leave him to get on with it himself. And it was the best advice.

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Funds have a big given. So you went to drama school? Yes.

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And what was your very first professional engagement?

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My first professional engagement was in Chesterfield rep.

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Uh-huh. And your first part?

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It was in French without tears.

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I can't remember the name of the part. How awful. Uh Babe, I think his name is Babe. Oh, one of the stores. Yes, he's the young one.

Edward Fox7:55

I want Bay.

Edward Fox7:57

Oh, one of the steels.

Edward Fox8:00

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:00

And then I went on to do Great Expectations, which is even nicer. Good. A Pip? Pip. Oh, splendid. Allegedly. Yes, oh, yes, yes.

Edward Fox8:06

Yeah.

Speaker 18:06

Ended.

Edward Fox8:06

Alec Guinness.

Speaker 18:07

Both

Presenter8:11

Let's have your second record. What's that to be? Now, my second record is Robert Donat speaking that lovely ballad of Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. I met a lady in the mead

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Full beautiful a fairy's child

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Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild.

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I made a garland for her head

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And bracelets too, and fragrant zone.

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She looked at me as she did love and made sweet moans.

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I set her on my pacing steed, and nothing else saw all day long.

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ROBERT DONEET READING THE LINES OF KEATS.

Presenter8:52

So they looked after you rather well at Chesterfield. Chesterfield was a a fortnightly rep, wasn't it? Fortnightly rep, yes. Did you play any weekly rep?

Speaker 18:56

Nightly rules.

Presenter9:00

I did at Wimbledon. Yes. Peter Haddon. Peter Haddon. Exactly. Did you play any wildly unsuitable parts in rap?

Edward Fox9:04

Exactly.

Presenter9:08

Oh, often, yes. But they were always the best value for one, really. Playing older was always something I loved doing.

Presenter9:17

What are the reps we win? What are the tans?

Presenter9:20

Ah, well, I had spent quite a long time in Dundee and Glasgow.

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And uh sometime in Canterbury and Ipswich.

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And uh Windsor? What were the best parts you did on stage in those early days? What do you look back on and say, Well, I was rather good as

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What?

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I love them.

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and playing Telyagin, the old man in Uncle Danya's, strangely enough.

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I love doing um Bregg's play The Good Woman of Setsuon.

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and Glasgow.

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I used to enjoy everything, actually, every part. One didn't feel the deep, anxious responsibility that sometimes besets one now. And there was the odd bit of radio and television I used to help out. Yes, there was.

Speaker 110:05

Yeah.

Presenter10:07

I mean a few days, a couple of days on a film was

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Absolute paradigm.

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Let's have another record. What number three?

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Number three is Art's Lovelits Elizabeth Schumann.

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Singing a Schubert song, Dubisti Rue.

Edward Fox11:14

Peace out and search for

Presenter11:25

Elizabeth Schumann singing Schubert's

Presenter11:28

You are peace. Now your brother William, or James Fox, as he was known professionally, was doing rather well in films. He'd starred in the Servant for Joseph Lozy, for example. Were you feeling rather left behind?

Presenter11:42

No, I didn't uh I didn't feel left behind. James and I were

Presenter11:47

sharing a flat in Maribourn at the time that the servant opened.

Presenter11:51

And I remember being delighted that he had this wonderful break in films, and they never thought that that film would do awfully well, and it proceeded to do extremely well in a commercial sense.

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and I was very out of work at the time.

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and we were doing a production of Hamlet.

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which we'd been rehearsing for five months by then.

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and we were eventually going to do three performances of it.

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And I d I th that to me was fun. Mm-hmm. That was more important really than than a film. I always knew that uh working in those sort of ways was the important thing. And you indeed played the name part. That was your your hamlet. That was my three night hamlet, yes. One of them I had roaring influenza. Of course y y your brother James has now given up acting. Yes, he has. You have a a younger brother, Robert. Is he in the profession too? Yes, he works in theatrical management.

Presenter12:47

And he's very good at it.

Presenter12:48

You were called to Hollywood for one picture, one of your earlier pictures. Yes, I was. Skullduggery. Skullduggery, yes, I gave it a rude name.

Speaker 112:54

Yeah.

Presenter12:59

Did you enjoy Hollywood or was it hot in We filmed in Jamaica. I never actually reached Hollywood. The unit had come from Hollywood and they were real.

Presenter13:09

They were very typical. It wasn't a very happy film, really.

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What was your first film breakthrough?

Presenter13:17

I think really it it was certainly the go-between for Joseph Lozzi. Which won you a British Film Academy Award. That wasn't a very interesting. Very lucky.

Speaker 113:24

That was very loud.

Presenter13:26

I had the best things in the film to play. Couldn't go wrong, really. Very modestly put. Let's have record number four.

Speaker 313:31

Ew.

Presenter13:33

Record number four is Noel Coward singing his own song, The Stately Homes of England. Why'd you choose it?

Presenter13:41

Because I adore Noel Coward uh and the song, but I wouldn't be without him around one.

Presenter13:49

Great genius.

Speaker 313:55

Lord Elderley, Lord Borramere, Lord Sicott and Lord Camp.

Speaker 314:00

With every virtue, every grace, Ah, what avails the sceptred race?

Speaker 314:06

Here you see the four of us and there are so many more of us eldest sons that must succeed We know how Caesar conquered Gaul and how to whack a cricket ball apart from this our

Presenter14:20

Neil Card.

Presenter14:21

Now, just six years ago, I think it was, you landed the top film role of the year in The Day of the Jackal.

Presenter14:29

Was that expected? Had your agent put you in for the part?

Presenter14:33

No, it was came quite out of the blue. I got a message one day to say that I was to go and meet Fred Zinnerman, the director, and had I read the book of the Day of the Jackal, which I hadn't.

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Therefore would I, which I did.

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and I then went to meet Fred.

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And that was how that came about. And he he actually had, I think, probably already made up his mind that he would like me to play the part, which was most flattering. Well, every English-speaking actor with his own teeth was after that part. Everybody. That's quite true. It was subtle casting, because the character is a professional assassin, and you don't look like one. No, that's right.

Presenter15:16

That was the whole point of it, really. Is it true that when you were making the film, you were indeed.

Presenter15:22

introduced to a professional killer or two.

Presenter15:25

Yes, it was, I think. I mean, I was never told that they were, but I always imagined they did, and they had. I mean, Freddy Forsyth had known uh mercenary action, probably not on his own account, but certainly he'd been around in the Biafran war as a war correspondent. Frederick Forsyth, who wrote The Day of the Jackal. Yes, yes.

Speaker 115:44

Yeah.

Presenter15:45

A wonderfully exciting film to make, I should think. A lot of travelling, a lot of location work. Yes, it was very interesting. Actually, apropos of being introduced to uh mercenaries of their type, Freddie one day said he'd come and have a drink in a bar near the Place de la Madeleine in Paris. It was quite late at night. So I said, Okay. I got to the bar and uh it was a real dive.

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And he was at a table with an awful lot of ladies who turned out to be tarts.

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It was announced that I was playing the jackal.

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and they immediately let out whoops and cries, and I was then made to stand up and felt

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My arms were felt and legs were felt and fingers were. I said, What are they doing, Freddie? He said, Well, they know how the jackal feels. Really? They knew the type of men who do that kind of thing. Now, despite the fact that it was one of the big box office successes of the year, it didn't bring you the flood of big Hollywood offers one would have anticipated. No.

Presenter16:50

I think you have to go to America and go to Hollywood, and rather pay court.

Presenter16:56

to uh get a Hollywood offer. You must do, if that's the sort of thing you want. Yes. It doesn't happen transatlantic actually. In in fact, some some pretty good film

Presenter17:07

Off as happened soon afterwards, you played in Joseph Lose's, using that name again, The Doll's House. Yes. And you had the opportunity to impersonate a living character, General Sir Brian Horrocks, in a bridge too far. Yes. Did you meet him? Yes, I did, and we do still.

Presenter17:23

We have a lovely friendship with Brown and Nancy. He thought that you were a convincing Horrocks. I think he did. He's nice enough to say it was all right.

Presenter17:34

And I I think he's telling me that his daughter couldn't tell the difference, which was seen very sweet of her. Record number five.

Presenter17:43

Uh record number five is um from the end of uh Act Three of Darrows and Cavalier, that wonderful duet.

Presenter18:51

Maria Olszewska and Elizabeth Schumann in the nineteen thirty three recording of Der Rosencavalier.

Presenter18:57

Now, you were talking of portraying a real person, and in your television series Edward and Mrs. Simpson, you played the part of the Duke of Windsor. That must have been a rather daunting assignment. If I thought about it now, I would be daunted, I must say, but I never really thought about it. I I thought, my goodness, this'll make a marvellous

Presenter19:18

Story. Yes. And part within a story. How many instalments were there? Seven. Of what, fifty minutes each? Of fifty minutes each, yes. Did you do a lot of research? A lot. All the time. We now know that the Duchess of Windsor was very upset by the whole thing. Did her views seep through to the studio?

Presenter19:39

Well, we read the newspapers at the time and learned that she was upset, but

Presenter19:44

I don't really know whether all those reports are really terribly accurate. Was there any official reaction or protest?

Presenter19:54

From Buckingham Palace? Or anywhere? No, there was no protest. I think there was a desire, uh quite right desire from from the palace that uh

Presenter20:06

Facts should not be r misrepresented, if at all possible. Yes. And I I don't think uh

Presenter20:14

They would like the story to be a great romantic uh violins playing thing, which it has been shown as

Presenter20:21

as, you know, in other ways in the past.

Presenter20:26

Uh which distorts the whole thing. Was the Palace Press Office, for instance, ready to cooperate in in providing details that you might have been short of?

Speaker 320:28

Was that

Presenter20:35

As far as they could, in a very informal sense, yes, I think so.

Presenter20:39

Now what have you been doing since?

Presenter20:42

Well, now since then I did an awful lot of publicising for the for the series, which is incumbent on one to do. I'm now doing The Family Reunion. T. S. Eliot. T. S. Eliot. Now, you have played that before. Yes, six years ago in Manchester. Mm-hmm. And we did we've done it in Manchester recently and just opened at the Roundhouse. And a very successful production it is, too. Well, you're very kind to say so.

Presenter21:09

Record number six.

Presenter21:11

Record number six is Arto Schnabel playing the last piano sonata of Beethoven, opus a hundred and eleven in C minor.

Presenter21:22

And uh he's playing a little bit from right at the end of the last movement.

Presenter22:26

An excerpt from Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 in C minor, opus 111, played by Arto Schnabel. Is that in your own repertoire, Edward? No, it definitely isn't. Definitely it is way beyond my wildest dreams. Now, as an ex-member of Her Majesty's Brigade of Guards, you you should be able to look after yourself as a castaway.

Presenter22:47

Yes, I should. I think I probably could.

Presenter22:50

Have you been on any tropical locations? We did a little bit in Kenya for this television series Edward and Mrs. Simpson, yes. Of course you did.

Edward Fox22:57

Yeah.

Presenter22:59

Little bit. Just ab about a week we were there. All useful stuff, if you're a good idea. All useful stuff, yes. It was lovely. Can you fish?

Presenter23:07

Yes?

Presenter23:08

Yes, I fish.

Presenter23:10

Small craft.

Presenter23:12

Um, small craft. Yes. Can do a bit in a small craft. Would you try to escape? Highly unlikely. You mean you'd quite like it there, or? Yes, I think I probably would.

Edward Fox23:21

Yeah.

Presenter23:23

I'm quite good at uh liking what is given me.

Presenter23:27

Yeah. Which is fortunate. You could adapt yourself to solitude, you think?

Presenter23:31

Easily.

Presenter23:32

Right.

Presenter23:34

Let's have another record.

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This record is of Winston Churchill.

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Making a speech

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In nineteen forty one to the Boys of Harrow School.

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of which he was a no-boy.

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and I remember him having very fortunately been to Harrah myself, I remember him coming down

Presenter23:53

Later on.

Presenter23:55

and listening to school songs. He was always very moved by hearing them, I believe. Floods of tears.

Presenter24:01

Start to finish, floods of tears.

Presenter24:04

and lot of raucous singing.

Speaker 124:06

For rights reasons, we are unable to bring you this choice.

Presenter24:10

Winston Churchill, part of a speech he made to the boys of Harrow School in October, nineteen forty one. Now we get to your last record. What's that to be? It is of Dino Liparti playing the piano transcription of Bach's theme, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.

Presenter25:28

Dino Lopati playing Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, The Meyer Herse Arrangement.

Presenter25:34

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

Presenter25:38

I would choose that last record. Jesus will joy of man's desiring. Yes. And one luxury to take to the island with you.

Presenter25:45

I would take a a large bottle of toilet water called Limes by Floris.

Presenter25:53

Well, one bottle is is very modest. You'd better have a case. Two cases, but you ought to promise not to use the the cases for making small craft. No, yes, I would throw them back in the sea. Right. And one book. The Bible and Shakespeare already on the island. We frown on big encyclopedias.

Presenter26:11

Yes. Well, you're safe with me. I would. But no, I would choose Evelyn War's trilogy: Officers and Gentlemen, Men-at-Arms, Unconditional Surrender, if I'm allowed to. Of course. They will be bound together for you. And thank you, Edward Fox, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. I've enjoyed it so much. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Edward Fox26:21

Of course.

Speaker 126:38

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