Sir John Gielgud

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. This is the only extract the BBC has of this episode. The surviving recording did not include the music, so we've recreated the programme, adding the castaways' choices. For rights' reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:27

So, John, you are a Londoner? Yes.

Presenter0:29

This theater blau

Sir John Gielgud0:29

On both sides of your family? Yes, my mother was a Terry, and my father had a Lithuanian grandmother who was quite a successful Polish actress. Yes. Ellen Terry was your great auntist.

Presenter0:39

So that's right.

Sir John Gielgud0:39

That's right.

Presenter0:41

Was it a foregone conclusion in the family that you were going into the theatre?

Sir John Gielgud0:44

No, the idea was that I should become an architect, and I was very anxious to design stage scenery, and I made a bargain with my father that

Sir John Gielgud0:51

As I couldn't do maths, I shouldn't become an architect, and I would like to go to a dramatic school for a few years. And if I hadn't succeeded by the time I was 25, I would go into architecture. What was your first?

Presenter1:02

Just a pip.

Sir John Gielgud1:02

Uh Yeah.

Presenter1:03

Uh On the professional stage.

Sir John Gielgud1:03

Oh, I walked on as a student at the old Vic under Robert Atkins in Henry the Fifth, and played a one line Herald.

Presenter1:11

Did you find things difficult at the start of your career, or was it hard to get started?

Sir John Gielgud1:14

Not very, because I was very lucky. My mother knew people, and Nigel Playfair and Barry Jackson, I think, both gave me auditions through influence, really. And my cousin Phyllis Nielsen Terry gave me my first job on tour as a stage manager. So I got on rather well through contacts, I'm afraid. And then you had a spell of weekly repertory at the Oxford Playhouse. Yes, that was in 1924 with J.B. Fagan, who was a very interesting man, and we did Congreve and Ibsen and Shaw and a lot of very good plays. And you played Romeo in London when you were only 19? That was with Gwen Franken Davis under Barry Jackson's management.

Presenter1:44

Yes.

Sir John Gielgud1:44

And afterwards you worked with Komisajevski? Yes, I met him because he came to see a Chekhov production of The Seagull that I was in by an English director, and I went with him to Barnes, which was a funny little theatre, now a cinema, the other side of Barnes Bridge, where we did several Chekhov plays. And I learnt a tremendous lot from him, worked with him in many productions.

Presenter2:01

Was it by determination or chance that you devoted yourself mainly at the outset of your career to the classical theatre? It was really by chance.

Sir John Gielgud2:07

It was really by chance. I I did a lot of Shakespeare in dramatic school, and naturally I was enormously influenced by the Terry legend of the Lyceum and Henry Irving. And when I began to play parts in Shakespeare, I found they appealed to me very much. And then by chance, I did the Ibsen and Chekhov and Shaw.

Presenter2:25

Uh

Sir John Gielgud2:25

Anyone Uh Engagement

Presenter2:26

produced a particularly significant success.

Sir John Gielgud2:29

Well, I followed Noel Card in The Vortex and then in The Constant Nymph, in both of which I had to play the piano as he did. And this was the first time I was in West End successes of a fashionable kind. Yeah. And then he went back.

Presenter2:41

to the old Vic where you had previously walked on.

Sir John Gielgud2:43

Yes, and played all the big leading parts, at least a great many of them, in two years with Harcourt Williams. I did about sixteen parts in Shakespeare, including Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth.

Presenter2:54

You were still in your early twenties when you when you played Lear. Yes, twenty-six, I think I was. And then you came down from those rather Olympian heights to play Inigo Jollipant and Priestley's The Good Companion. Yes, and there I was a juvenile playing the piano again.

Presenter3:06

And then a

Sir John Gielgud3:06

Tremendous success in Richard de Bordeaux. That was a great gift by Gordon Daviot, a new woman writer, who sent me this script out of the blue. And it was I think she'd seen me play the part of Richard the Second of the Old Vic in the Shakespeare play. And it was the same character only with much more humour. So it was uh a very fortunate thing. And I directed it also, which was very exciting.

Presenter3:26

Well, let's have your third record.

Presenter3:56

and he went very successfully into management during the nineteen thirties.

Sir John Gielgud3:59

Yes, we did four plays at the Queen's Theatre, the old Queen's Theatre, before it was bombed.

Sir John Gielgud4:04

uh just before the war, thirty seven, thirty eight.

Presenter4:06

One of your less successful roles at that period was Shylock, and you've attributed that to not being so good at playing unsympathetic characters. Do you think that is so? Well, I've tried

Sir John Gielgud4:17

I tried to like playing villains, but I tried to play the Duke and the Duchess of Malfi without enormous success, and lately I've played Othello and Macbeth and been very dissatisfied with myself in both roles. I think that in a part that needs a primitive savagery and really very violent

Sir John Gielgud4:34

nature. I'm not successful in conveying that to an audience. I have too much sort of uh withdrawalness, if you may call it so, to uh convince people of that kind of thing. Funnily enough, Leontes, which is such a violent, a jealous character, was rather successful, and I hoped from that that I might be able to play Othello better.

Sir John Gielgud4:52

But it doesn't reca but of course Othello is an is an inwardly powerful man, whereas Leontes is an extrovert with a neurotic nature. And I think I was more successful because I can convey a neurotic better than I can a man of really primitive power, which I haven't really got.

Presenter5:09

We can't possibly list all the parts you've you've played.

Presenter5:13

John Worthing and the importance of being earnest, Benedict and in much ado.

Presenter5:17

Yeah.

Sir John Gielgud5:17

Yeah.

Presenter5:18

Yeah.

Sir John Gielgud5:18

Uh Which

Presenter5:18

Which is your favorite?

Sir John Gielgud5:18

Well, Hamlet is the most exciting, Hamlet and Richard II, because they

Presenter5:18

What happened to

Sir John Gielgud5:23

seem to be nearer to my own private nature, and yet they have stretched and made me find things in myself that I didn't know I had, which seem to have touched the public and have satisfied me to some extent, if one can ever be satisfied with one's work.

Sir John Gielgud5:37

But I think that my sense of comedy, which is which was very useful in a great many plays, has stood me in very good stead in the tragic parts also and I have always felt that in a part like Hamlet, or even Lear, which has a touch of humour,

Sir John Gielgud5:50

I can carry it out more successfully than in parts like Othello and Macbeth, which not only are very powerful but are also very humorless. And it's hard for me to portray a man without any humor. I c I suppose because I belong to a generation which has always rather laughed at itself. It may be that's the reason.

Presenter6:05

Now you've played all the great parts in in the classical rectory. Is there any part you haven't played that you still want to tackle?

Sir John Gielgud6:11

There's the part of Henry the Fourth as an old man in Henry the Fourth, part two, which I hope to play again one I've never played, which I would like to play one day, and I hope again to play Prospero and Lear, perhaps in six or seven years, when I'm really the right age for them.

Presenter6:24

Now what about Martin plays? We've seen you in plays by Noel Card and Graham Greene in recent years, but you haven't touched anything yet in the new school of drama.

Sir John Gielgud6:32

No, I was asked to play an end game by Samuel Beckett, and I couldn't bear the play, and uh a play of Sartre was asked to be in. Once or twice things have come along, and I've tried to be courageous and say I like them, but if I don't like a thing wholeheartedly I can't give myself to

Sir John Gielgud6:49

the danger of letting myself in for a long and unhappy

Sir John Gielgud6:53

Uh

Presenter6:53

Uh

Sir John Gielgud6:53

Uh

Presenter6:53

Experiments. Well, you proved, of course, that you don't even need a play to delight an audience. I'm thinking of your one-man show, The Seven Ages of Man, which was so very successful here and in New York.

Sir John Gielgud7:03

Well, yes, that was a great piece of luck because I did it just uh for fun for the Arts Council for a private performance once. And in the war I'd done a certain amount of lecturing. Ivor Brown did me a programme on Shakespeare in Peace and War, so I had done something of the kind, but I had no idea it could be worked into a performance. But I did do thirteen weeks Gruelling tour in America, almost one night stands, in the universities and colleges, which taught me the form it had to take. Because in some ways the recital was largely a musical thing. Being alone on the stage, one had to

Sir John Gielgud7:35

uh find a form which would give variety of pace and range and use poems and excerpts which were in contrast to one another and yet had a certain peak and climax. And in listening to the best singers of uh

Sir John Gielgud7:51

Schubert and Schumann.

Sir John Gielgud7:53

one discovers so well not only the composer's wonderful arch of shape in a song, but also the way that the singer can put in varieties and cadenzas and colors and

Sir John Gielgud8:05

tones which decorate this

Sir John Gielgud8:09

piece of music

Sir John Gielgud8:10

In its own shape without losing the arc which makes the complete song. And this has taught me a great deal in speaking verse, I think.

Presenter8:18

Let's have record number four.

Speaker 18:25

Uh

Speaker 48:32

Is waxlist female?

Speaker 48:35

Mietwehr denote me.

Speaker 18:35

Yeah, after number

Speaker 18:38

Still.

Presenter8:48

Sir John, you've remained almost always a theatre man. You've done comparatively little in the cinema.

Sir John Gielgud8:53

I have made quite a lot of films, but none of them were successful except Julius Caesar. I like the technical work very well, and I've learnt a lot from doing films, but they haven't found very good parts for me, and I think that I've not been lucky in the actual subjects that I've done. Television hasn't tempted you. Well, I did one in England, The Day by the Sea, and one in New York, The Browning version of Terrance Rattigan, which I enjoyed very much and which was a great success.

Presenter9:18

You've seen the pattern of the theatre change quite a lot during your career. In recent years we've seen it shrink and contract, particularly in the provinces. Do you think there's going to be a theatre renaissance?

Presenter9:27

I don't know about

Sir John Gielgud9:27

About that, it seems that people are more interested in building new theatres and trying to find new ways of directing in the way of apron stages and theatres in the round and so on. But the great danger to my mind of the present generation is that the actors and directors are trained in so many fields that they find it difficult to make up their minds whether they're going to be loyal to one or the other. And unless you really concentrate on the theatre, I don't think you ever become a first rate theatre man.

Presenter9:55

Yes. Does the administrative side of the theatre appeal to you? Would you like to run your own theatre?

Sir John Gielgud9:59

Well, I used to think I would, but now, unless I had a wonderful business manager and somebody to advise me and discuss everything with me, I'd be very chary of doing it. I think it's too big a responsibility.