Rupert Davies

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This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

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Robert, where were you born?

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I was born in Liverpool, England, of Welsh parents. Yes. Any precedent in the family for the theatre? None whatever.

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Was acting a a childhood ambition of yours?

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Yes.

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I I would say that my first big acting thrill was playing Marley's Ghost at the age of about thirteen in a school production.

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I spent many happy weeks finding old D boxes, chains, padlocks, and it can drag the whole half ton of the stuff onto the stage, and had to go out we did some very clever ghost stuff with mirrors and

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A lot of white powder and trick lights, and I had to go out backwards through a glass window, apparently, uh emitting piercing screams and uh two old ladies were carried out fainting, so I knew at once there was money in this and it's been rankling ever since.

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Was acting your first job when you left school? No, I was sent off to a training ship to train for the Merchant Navy.

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and uh I went around the world to Australia se about seven times.

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That was enough. It's all very wet and um

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Then I switched to the Royal Navy. As what?

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Uh I wanted to fly. You see, I wanted to join the fleet air arm.

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So uh they took me on.

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This was before the war started. Yes, and I was qualified as Naval Observer.

Rupert Davies1:21

The slave

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Um just about time the wall started. Got posted to uh the aircraft carrier Glorious in the Indian Ocean.

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finished up in nineteen forty, based in Lincolnshire. We were carrying magnetic mines across to the other side.

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And one night, I think it was my thirty third of these flights,

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Um the pilot wasn't looking where he was going. I hadn't flown with him before or since, and uh he flew it into the sea. Fourteen hours in a rubber boat and the Germans fished us out. Yes, and that's when you started your five years as a prisoner of war that you talked about earlier. Yeah. You were in Starlagluft III, I believe, the camp from which Eric Williams and Company made their celebrated wooden horse escape. Yes. It wasn't till after the war that I found out what they were all standing about in the coal for with that vaulting horse. Were you involved in any of the escaping attempts yourself?

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Yes, I took part in a few, but um none of them worked, including one where I was bricked up in a in a room in a castle up a spiral staircase. This uh lasted for twenty-two days and nights, but it didn't come off.

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You were a leading light in the camp theatre, I believe.

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Yes, I used to pinch all the fat parts and produce plays, mainly comedy. Played everything from Macbeth to come and Miranda and um

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This was a full-time job. Oh, very full indeed. The day wasn't long enough for me. I was very happy. I had this bug, you see, I wanted to get out of my system and it wouldn't wouldn't go. And you think that was what made you become a professional actor? It definitely was. It was worrying me very much as to whether I should stay in the Navy and I thought about it for two and a half years, you might say.

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And suddenly I took the plunge after the one.

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So when you were liberated from the prison camp, Rupert, you decided to fulfil your childhood ambition and be an actor. Yes, that's right. What was your first professional job?

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Well, after a short skirmish in the professional atmosphere, but still being paid by the Admiralty, we did a big charity show at the Stole Theatre under Jack Hilton, which was the cream of our musical show from the prison camp. It was all done in aid of the Red Cross to say thank you very much for all those food parcels which kept us going. I remember seeing that, Back Home, it was called, wasn't it? That's right.

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And after that?

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Well, I got weaving, and the first job I actually got paid for was being a man with a headache, and I had to be hit on the head with a white hammer in close-up with a furrowed brow for somebody's pills. This took place over a garage in Kennington, S.E. I received five pounds in notes at the end of half an hour's work and thought it was a good start. Very good start.

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What followed it?

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Well, I saw in the Times

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that the company of four had been formed at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, with the object

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of discovering and encouraging new talent in all spheres of the theatre.

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This was really what I was looking for, so off I went and said, What about me? and they said, What have you done?

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And I say, Well, I'm new, of course. That's what you're looking for. You haven't done anything. I've played Macbeth in a prison camp.

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I didn't tell him I played Carmen Miranda as well, but uh

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Anyway, they said come and read and I had two readings and got a job understudying and that was ready to start on the stage. Six pounds a week at Hammersmith.

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Then a lot of rail probably.

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Loads of rep. Glasgow, Birmingham, about three years with the old Vic. Mhm. He went to America. Uh yes, at the end of nineteen fifty six they were over there already and there was one part they couldn't cast.

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For Tyrone Guthrie and he asked me to go and do it, which was Agamemnon. Now you had a spell with the BBC Drama Repertory Company, I believe. Yes, I've done eighteen months on

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I've done Mrs. Dale's Diary. I've uh in one show the um noise that made the bullets uh broke down. It had to be a ricochet, it didn't work.

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And I had to be a Frenchman being shot, but I had to make the bullet noise first and then go over to the other mic and and make a French exclamation. I've never moved so fast before or since. That's what's called really to play as a cast. Yes, to play as a caste. And of course I get a great deal of television.

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Oh loads. I did my first one at Alexandra Palace in 1946 and I don't know how many since I've been so busy I haven't got time to keep records but I think well over 100. Well now for Inspector Megrey. How did this turn out?

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Uh last year

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Just before Good Friday I was playing Caiaphas, the wicked high priest, in a passion play put on by the BBC in Bristol Cathedral. I drove home on the Good Friday.

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And in the evening Andrew Osborne telephoned me and said he'd got rather a long project which he thought might interest me, so I went over to him and talked about it.

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And that was the start of it. Yes. He went over to see Georges Simonard himself to learn about the character. Yes, because we found uh

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that it all had to be done rather quickly to fulfil their uh contract obligations about getting the first thirteen on and off the screen by January 61. So I said, well, I haven't got time to read up all the books and get background, let's go and see Simon. So we got in a plane and went. How many one hour films have you made so far?

Rupert Davies6:25

How's it

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We've nearly completed twenty-six. Yes. Yes, we do him in series of thirteen. We've nearly finished the

Rupert Davies6:32

Yes, we do them in second.

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Second series. Have you any idea how how long the series is going on for? Well, I'm contracted for thirteen more after that, taking it to thirty-nine altogether.

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Now, i it's considered sometimes that to play the same part too often can be professional suicide from an actor. In other words, you become so identified with Maigrey that the public wouldn't accept you in any other part. Well I think the public would, but the the producers are worried that they put on their play and as soon as uh you walk on they feel that uh ten million people are saying, oh that's Maigrey, when he's supposed to be somebody else, so they don't want to use him, you see. It's a sort of producer allergy.

Rupert Davies6:51

In other words,

Rupert Davies6:55

Oh well I think so a public

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So I had this in mind when we were ironing out the contract and asked the BBC to guarantee me three star parts on television within twelve months of finishing Megre, and this they agreed to do. So.

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How long does each film take to make?

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But, uh, ten or twelve days. Mhm. You do a lot of the filming in Paris, of course.

Rupert Davies7:32

Yes, just the exact

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Yes, just the exteriors, jumping in and out of French cars, entering the Surte and uh so on, you know.

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Altha although it's a very wearing job with the

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With a very close schedule, you're enjoying it, aren't you? Oh, very much, yes, yes. I go in phases of of dreading to have to pick up another script, and I've only still got the lines of the last one ringing in my head.

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It goes on like this all the time and then I feel rather triumphant when we've finally conquered it and um so on.