Alec McCowen

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

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This week, our castaway is the actor Alec McCarran.

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Alec, could you cope with loneliness for a long time, I mean? Oh, yes, I think so. I think I might quite like it.

Alec McCowen0:42

Really?

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What would you be particularly happy to have got away from?

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What would you

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All right, Woods. Is music an important thing in your life? Oh, enormously important, yes. Do you play an instrument? Are you playing? Well, I had uh piano lessons when I was um a a boy. I had a wonderful piano teacher called Miss Laflin.

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Do you play an instrument? Are you playing with the

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And uh I did study the piano for about eight years. I'm afraid I still play the same pieces now that I learnt then. Have you ever played them in public?

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Once or twice uh on the stage. Uh during play. During stage. Yes. Well this is a great asset for an actor, an actor who can play the piano. Yes, the one thing I cannot do is play the piano and speak at the same time.

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That is very difficult. How did you choose, what were your terms of reference in in choosing these eight records? Partly nostalgia and partly to give myself a first-class cabaret for the lonely evenings on the uh on the island. Fine, where do we start? What's the first act? Jack Buchanan singing Good Night Fianna, which was the first record I ever possessed, and somebody broke it.

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Oh, what a shame. Still, the BBC is presenting you with eight records to take for your island, so here's a brand new copy.

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Put a night PM

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You city of a million melodies. Our hearts are thrilling to the strings that you play from door

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Until the daylight dies

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Good night the end of Where moonlight fills the air with mystery.

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And eyes are shining to the gypsy guitars, dancing to the starry sky.

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Uh

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Jack Buchanan singing Good Night Vienna from the film of the same name.

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What influenced you, do you think, in becoming an actor?

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I think I started to act.

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At a very early age, I think I um tended to act

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Please people. Was there any drama at school? A little. I played Little Buttercup in um HMS Pinafor.

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and uh I was in a few Scout concerts.

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So how did you set about things?

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Well, I persuaded my father to let me leave school when I was sixteen to try to get to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and as it was wartime, this was very easy.

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because they were just desperate to have male students at the time.

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You didn't finish your course, did you?

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No. Why was that? Uh well, first of all, I thought I was going to get called up, but also I I was really not a very good student.

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I've always found it extremely difficult to act in a room, and also

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to act with with uh my colleagues looking at me. And I just longed to get away and to to to get in front of a real audience. So I answered an advertisement in the stage, the uh professional

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Weekly Paper

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to be a stage manager and juvenile character man,

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At a rep in Macclesfield. Macclesfield. Yes, yes.

Alec McCowen3:51

We're back.

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What was the first part you played in Maccleseal? It was a very lovable man servant called Mickey in Paddy the Next Best Thing. Right. You've trodden the boards professionally at this important juncture in your career. Let's have your second record. Well, my second record is a record I've only just bought, actually. It's um

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Vladimir Ashkenazi and Andrei Previn playing The Sweet No. Two for two pianos and I'd Love the Wolfs.

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The waltz from the second Rachmaninoff suite for two pianos, Vladimir Askenazi and Andrey Previn.

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So you made your debut as the man servant.

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In Paddy the Nexpa's thing at Macclesfield. Was Macclesfield a good rep? Weekly rep, was it? Oh, it was certainly a weekly rep, yes. Um I I only stayed there for six weeks. It was during the vacation from drama school. But uh then I only stayed at drama school for another term and then I went to rep at Rhill and Landidno and I was in rep at York and Scarborough and Birmingham and um what sort of parts were you most useful at? I mean in rep you have to play anything. Well I was a very very thin young man.

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And um I used to play a lot of parts much older than myself. In fact, the actual character men usually hated me. There was one occasion at York where I played the uh centenarian.

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In The Play A Hundred Years Old,

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And there was a character man in the company who was aged seventy five who had to play my grandson and he never forgave me. So I played um usually a great deal older than myself. But then um

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As the rep days went on and on and on, and uh I was I was in rep for about seven years, and I suppose by the time I was about twenty five I'd played

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150 parts.

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And then I was playing very much younger than myself. And your rep days took you to quite a few foreign parts. You you went to the Far East? Yes, I toured with Ensa in India and uh Burma and uh toured up and down England.

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And then I had an extraordinary um season in Saint John's, Newfoundland.

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What goes on old? We played in the school hall.

Alec McCowen7:07

Don't say

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The workers are molded.

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Yes, that was a rather bleak little season, but I did save enough money to um make my first journey to New York.

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And uh that was very exciting because I saw a play called A Streetcar Named Desire. Oh, yes. And uh with mister Brando. Marlon Brando walked on the stage and I I really felt I'd seen an actor for my own generation for the first time. I think

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in a sense, up to then I'd I'd been acting in order to

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Escape.

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From myself.

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I think after that trip to America I really became genuinely stage struck.

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Well, after seven years of rep it was time you made for London. What was your first London, John? Well, I played at the Arts Theatre in several plays.

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For John Furnald,

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And uh then

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John Fernal was casting a play called Escapade, and there was a part of a boy of sixteen.

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which he thought I could play.

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But he said I would have to convince the uh the producer, the very imposing impressario, the late Henry Sherrick. And he said I would have to dress up and convince Henry Sherrick that I really was sixteen. And I said I was twenty seven at the time. So I I wrote home and my mother sent me old school blazer, old flannels, and I put on plimpsoles and I

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washed my face with an awful lot of soap so that it shone.

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And I walked on the stage of the Westminster Theatre, and I remember Henry Sherrick crying out, It's all right, Sonny, we're all friends here And I did the audition and got the job. And later that morning I would celebrate in a well known theatrical pub and I was downing pints of draft Guinness and who should walk into the pub but Henry Sherrick and I was so nervous that he'd see me and I'd lose the part of a sixteen year old schoolboy that I

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confused everybody around by hiding behind a pillar.

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And then in the first day of rehearsal I realized I couldn't keep it up any longer. Nigel Patrick and Phyllis Calvert were the stars of the play, and as I walked in that first morning Henry Shaik cried out, My God, you're older than Nigel Patrick But it was too late. I had signed the contract.

Alec McCowen9:12

Goodbye.

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That was your first long run, wasn't it, Escapade? Yes, Escapade ran over a year.

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Your third record, what's that? Well, I would love to have um a song called Touring Days, to remember those touring days and those days in rep. It's by Noel Coward, and it's sung by my oldest friend, John Moffat, and the marvellous Patricia Routledge.

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Touring days, touring days, what ages it seems to B since the landlady at Norwich Served a mouse up in the porridge.

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And the beetle in the morning tea. Boarding.

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Days, alluring days, far back into the past we gave.

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Noel Card's Touring Days sung by Patricia Routledge and John Moffitt.

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Now, in Escapade, you played as schoolboy. You became greatly in demand as a as a Western supporting player in The Matchmaker, The Cane Mutiny Court Martial, um, Claire Rombard, that very interesting French play. Are you always playing very much below your age, youngsters? Yes, I was typecast for years and years, and I thought I'd never get away from it.

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And indeed it went on till I was about

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Till I was forty, and I think when I was forty I decided it really had to stop.

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and um I started to turn down.

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parts much younger than myself.

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And uh luckily, eventually, I was offered the part um of the author in a play called The Cavern by Unui and I had to have a grey wig made and um wore spectacles.

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And I wore that same grey wig and those spectacles in three plays in a row. The first was The Cavern, the second was John Bowen's splendid play After the Rain, which had great notices but didn't run, and the third one was Hadrian the Seventh. And finally the grey wig and the glasses paid off because I did Hadrian for, oh, over five hundred performances in London and New York. A splendid play, and and of course a a great rollicking, starring part for you. You can't ask more than to be dressed in white, sit centre-stage and have the rest of the cast kneel to you. Very satisfying, I'm sure.

Alec McCowen11:41

Yeah.

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Now there's a story that you told me a long time ago about Clairombard, that that that French play. Oh, Clarombard was a rather daring play for its time. And uh I think we were on tour in Liverpool, and one of the more religious members of my family, an aunt, came to see the play.

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in which there was a heavy seduction scene with my zettling, and also I think I

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Raped somebody on stage in a caravan. And after the performance, um

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My aunt came round and managed somehow not to mention the play at all, and we went to have supper.

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And she still didn't mention that she'd even been to the theatre that night, and at the end of the meal she finally said to me in a rather stern voice

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When are you going to start helping your father in the shop? Yes. Very encouraging. You you felt you had a fan in the family.

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Right, record number four. Well, I would like Lena Horne singing a wonderful co-porter number after you.

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Yeah.

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Who

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Could supply my sky of blue

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After you

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Who

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Could I know after you?

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Why

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Should I take the time to try?

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After you who? Lena Horn at the Waldorf Astoria.

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Now you've played quite a lot of Shakespeare.

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Quite early on you went to America to play Antony and Cleopatra with a very distinguished cast. I was. Well, I was only really walking on uh with Laurence Olivia and Vivian Lee and Antony and Cleopatra and Caesar and Cleopatra at the the old Siegfeld Theatre in New York. Uh yes, that was a great season. And then later you played a number of seasons at the Old Vic. Yes, it was a lovely, lovely season where I

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played Touchstone in As You Like It, and Ford in The Merry Wives, The Dauphin and Saint Joan.

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Richard the Second

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Uh Macutia in the Cepharelli production of uh the first Cefarelli production of Romeo and Juliet.

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Terrible Oberon in in Midsummer Night's Dream.

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Nevertheless, that's a list of lovely parts. Yes. What about the National? You have, of course, played at the National, too. Yes, well, the Misanthrop and Equis were both have the National. Recently you decided to take a year well, not off, but a year to relax a bit and think things out. Where did you go?

Alec McCowen14:18

There we go.

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Well, I went back to uh India.

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where I had played uh during the war, I went on a a Swan's Arts Treasure tour.

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with a lot of extraordinary people. I'm afraid I found the people perhaps more interesting than the um the actual.

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tour. But um

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I was looking at them from an actor's point of view. It was a marvellous selection of people: Americans, Greek, Germans, Spanish, Italian. And um.

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Is there was a wonderful lady, American lady, on the tour who discovered I was an actor and she said to me, What are you in?

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And I said, The uh the misanthrope. She said, What?

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The missing throat, she said to her friend, The missing throat? What is that? A hammer horror film?

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Right, record number five. Well, I have to have Sinatra.

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And I think I'd like just one of those things.

Alec McCowen15:27

Uh

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It was just one of those things.

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Just one of those crazy flings

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One of those bells that now and then rings

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Just one of those things. Uh

Alec McCowen15:54

Yeah.

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Frank Sinatra.

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Alec, you've had an outstanding success in a rather unusual theatrical enterprise. You've memorized the whole of one of the Gospels, and you recite it.

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Yes, this started as a as a hobby. I was um

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In the long run of a play called The Family Dance.

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During that very hot summer and found I was waking very, very early in the mornings and um

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decided I needed something to do and I thought I'd try and work out a one man show. And I eventually started looking at the Bible, because nearly everything else has been done.

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And um

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In my ignorance

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I started looking for some of the great stories of the Old Testament and failed to find them. And then I thought perhaps there are some good stories in the New Testament and I thought, well, really, there's the greatest story and I wondered why nobody had ever told it.

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I started at first to look at

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John

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which is the favourite gospel of most people. I found him

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Too difficult. I think John needs to be studied.

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Then I looked at Matthew. Matthew starts off with a daunting chapter of genealogy. So and so big out so and so, and I thought I could never learn that. Uh I looked at Luke.

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that Luke has

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Very beautiful style and I thought would lead me into rather indulgent.

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Speaking

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And finally I looked at what I'd always thought of as the rather the poor relation of the Gospels, which is Mark.

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And um

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Immediately loved the style of of Mark. A great feat of memory. How did you set about learning it?

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Very, very slowly.

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No, I I used to learn on average about three verses every morning.

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No production, you wander on in an open shirt and a sports jacket.

Alec McCowen17:45

Yeah.

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Where did you do your first performance, if that is the word? At the University Theatre, Newcastle.

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I did two rather chilly performances to very small houses. Then I did uh four Sunday matinees at the Riverside Studios at Hammersmith.

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And um

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The thing started to take off.

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Are you a devout churchman? No, I am not.

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But I am fascinated by the Gospels, and I am fascinated, I suppose, as an actor, by the character of Jesus. I am fascinated by the challenge of of of Christianity.

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And, um

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My father, I I suppose I inherited

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this from him. He had a a marvellously direct and irreverent approach to Christianity. He often spoke of Jesus as if he was a member of the family.

Alec McCowen18:41

Hmm.

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I think I had uh

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rather like Mark, a very blunt, direct feeling about it.

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It was a superb piece of idiocy when Equity said you couldn't do it on Sundays and then allowed the two Ronnies to do their review at the Palladium. Well, that was an unfortunate mix-up.

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Yeah.

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You you took the presentation to to America to the White House at President Carter's invitation? Yes, I played the White House um to President Carter and his wife and um his mother and his daughter, who should have been in bed.

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She recalled rather a lot. And 200 religious leaders. It was a most exciting evening. Well, you've topped that by going into the Lambeth Conference to an audience of, what, 400 bishops? 400 bishops, yes. That was rather like the old BBC programme Workers' Playtime. Another record. Well, I would love a song called Losing My Mind, sung by Dorothy Collins. from the Stephen Sondheim show Follies. I was lucky enough to be at the first night of Follies in New York, and I think I led the standing ovation for this number.

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The sun comes up.

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I think

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About you.

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The coffee cup?

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I think about you.

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I want you so it's like I'm losing my mind

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Dorothy Collins singing one of her songs from Folly's Losing My Mind. Now, we haven't talked about your films and your television appearances. Have you done many films?

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Well, well as a young actor, yes, I played a lot of very chippy neurotic

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Youngsters. What was the first one you did? I think it was called Time Without Pity, which I played a young man accused of murder. I was with Michael Redgrave. Then I did a film called Town on Trial, which I played an actual murderer, and John Mills

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Chased me up Roehampton Church Steeples, one of the most unlikely finishes, I think, in any movie. I hope they marked that up. You didn't have to go up the real steeple. No. Uh y they they actually built a church steeple on its side in the studio, and I remember

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Clambering along it was still quite high up.

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And uh we did this uh climbing shot the first time and the director said, Cut He said, I'm sorry we'll have to do that again He said, Alec, um

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Your sweat is pouring off your head and it should be running down your head. What do they expect? I mean, they didn't teach me that at Rhoda.

Alec McCowen21:32

Get back.

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It's a lovely story. But uh more recently I uh

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was in the film of Frenzy, which was directed by Hitchcock, which was a great, great thrill to work with him, and also in Travels with My Aunt, directed by another great Hollywood director, George Cucor.

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Now what about television?

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Well, yes, a lot of television. I did a lot of television, of course, in the early days when.

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When it went out live.

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Never pass Limegrove without remembering those very, very hectic nights. Um uh recently I've uh done television of a play called The Family Dance and uh

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I I had great thrill of doing Coward's Private Lives with Penelope Keith.

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You've recently published a slim volume, your your first book, Young Gemini, which I suppose one can describe as, well, the beginning of an autobiography.

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Yes, it's about growing up in Tunbridge Wells, just before and during the war.

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And uh

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I wanted to remember everything I could about my father, who was a wonderfully eccentric man.

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And I also wanted to analyse how I really started to act.

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And I I think I really did start to act when I was about four years old.

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And um

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The book records.

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The journey I made as a very small boy through school days

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To my first days at drama school, London till that first trip to America. Are you going to carry on the story? Are you going to.

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Do a second volume? Yes, I am uh already hard at work on uh on another volume now.

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Uh record number seven we got to. The overture to Gypsy. Why? I think it's the most exciting noise in the world.

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Be overtill to Gypsy.

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Taken from the

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disc of the American Broadway cast.

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Are you a practical person? Could you look after yourself? No, I don't think so.

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What about food? Can you cultivate?

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I'll have to learn to.

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Yes, I should start before you go. Can you cook?

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Flam shops on saddlebag. No, it's hopeless, Roy. It's hopeless. Would you try to escape? Oh no, no, no, no, I'm much of a coward. No, no, no, no.

Alec McCowen24:19

Yeah, it's

Alec McCowen24:22

Would you try to

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So much of a coward.

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Well, I should think this out a bit.

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Shall we start again?

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Too late we got to our last record. What's there?

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Well, while I'm on the island I think I shall be very homesick from time to time, and so I must have some Elgar.

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And I would love thee, Lar Ghetto.

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From the Second Symphony.

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Conducted by Sir John Barbara.

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The Largetto from the Elgar Second Symphony.

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The Hallay Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbie Raleigh. If you could take only one disc of your eight, which would it be? Oh, the overture to Gypsy.

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Right.

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And one luxury to take with you nothing of any practical use.

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Well, I think it's time I tried to paint, so I'd like unlimited paint and canvas, please. Right.

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And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and We Don't Love big encyclopedias.

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I would like to take what I think is the wittiest and most civilized book ever written, to contrast with the primitive island, George Meredith's The Egoist.

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George Meredith, the Egoist. And thank you, Alec McCarn, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It was great to get away. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 426:55

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