Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies

Speaker 20:00

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

Presenter0:08

Well, Miss Franken Davis, one may surmise from your name that you come Welsh stock. Were you born in Wales?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies0:13

No, I was born in Fulham. But of course my father was Welsh and uh had this uh beautiful voice that so many Welsh people have.

Presenter0:21

He was a very famous singer.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies0:21

He wants a bit of f

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies0:22

He was a very famous singer. He was really the most notable baritone of his day. He went into the church for a time, but found that his vocation really was to be a singer, so he left the church. Before I was born, he came to London, and then he made a very great career for himself. And of course, so all my early childhood and adolescent years were always associated with music and of course with serious music. When I never heard what is n was known as light music at all, it was just never heard in our house. My father would have gone up in the air.

Presenter0:54

Yet despite that atmosphere of music, you grew up wanting to be an actress.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies0:57

Yes, that's really strange. I don't know why it should have been so, but uh since the age of six I had a passionate desire to act.

Presenter1:03

What was your very first appearance, professionally?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:04

What was your

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:06

Oh, my first appearance professionally was uh as a singing fairy in the Midsummer Night's Dream, mostly behind the scenes.

Presenter1:13

Yes. Where where was this?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:14

Well, that was at uh at His Majesty's, at His Majesty's.

Presenter1:17

Yeah.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:17

And I remember going up for the audition and uh the only clever thing I ever did in my life really. The musical director at His Majesty's was a man called Adolf Schmidt, which as you can tell from his name, he was a German.

Presenter1:17

Yeah.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:28

And all the other girls were singing things like Bird of Laupe Devine and I thought to myself, look, if I sing him a bit of Schumann, it'll probably go down rather well. So I sang him De Mystreine Bloom, at which the old man nearly burst into tears and I got the job.

Speaker 21:40

And what after this, what happened?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies1:44

And oh yes, then of course I had to earn my own living. By that time my father was ill and so it was very necessary for me to earn my own living. So around I had to go to the the agents and auditions and things and got into musical comedy chorus. I was at one time a chorus girl at the Gaiety. I'm sorry to say a very unsuccessful one, usually in the back row, offstage if possible. And so I travelled around and did that for some years and then I joined Rutland Bouton, who had been my father's accompanist when I was a child and taught me music. And he asked me to join him in Glastonbury where he started.

Speaker 22:06

Uh

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies2:19

the Glastonbury Festival, which was really the forerunner of all these other festivals w that we have now, th and that was the first time that I sang Eten in the Immortal Hour.

Presenter2:29

Yes.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies2:30

And when we were singing at Lastonbury with Rutland playing the piano, because it was that kind of production, Barry Jackson came over with a man called Appleby Matthews, who was the conductor of the Birmingham City Orchestra. And he was very pleased with the work, and he said he would put it on in Birmingham if I would play at N. Which, of course, I was enchanted to do. So at last I had the chance to play at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, which I'd been trying to get into, and I may tell you, you know, every time I'd been to Birmingham I'd tried to get into it and been told there weren't any facets. So at last I was on the stage there. And then to my great joy they said, Would I like to join them and be become their leading lady for the next season? which of course that was absolutely my dream come true and I played.

Speaker 22:57

Yeah.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies3:10

Parts like uh Phoebe and Quality Street and Cleopatra and the

Presenter3:14

And wasn't it there that you created the part of Eve in Shaw's background?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies3:16

Yes indeed. Yes, I did. I created a part of Eve and Edith Evans was the serpent and Cedric Hardwick was in it, all sorts of people. And we did the very first performance of that very notable work of short.

Presenter3:29

And uh of course you played the Immortal R in London as well.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies3:31

Yes, then then we did. We came up um after I'd been in Birmingham about a year, we were asked to bring the Immortal out to London and we did at the Old Regent and it became a kind of hypnosis. People came, you know, anything up to fifteen and sixty times. And of course it was a very enchanting and lovely, fairly mystical sort of work. And I did love playing in it.

Speaker 23:49

Yeah.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies3:51

And so then after that I was with Barry Jackson under contract for about five years, but then he leased me out to do a performance of the Midsummer Night's Dream at Drury Lane, a very spectacular performance with a ballet and everything, everything in the wide world. And I sang to Tanya with song. It was that kind of production. Going up on a wire and flying.

Presenter4:09

But

Presenter4:12

What was the next important thing?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:13

Uh

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:14

Well, it's such a long time ago, now let me think.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:17

Um

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:19

Well, I suppose the next important thing was uh playing Tess in Tess of the Derbervilles in Hardy's adaptation from the book.

Presenter4:26

Did hardy work on that production himself.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:28

No, no, he was too old to come to London. But I went down to to Dorchester and talked with him and and worked with him on the script.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:37

And uh w I'd been told in London that nothing was to be changed, not a comma was to be altered. But anyway, when I got down there I was allowed to sort of suggest various things, and because I knew the book very well, I was able to say, Wouldn't it be nice if we put this bit in and took that bit out?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies4:53

Um he was so delighted to find that I knew the book that he more or less gave me cardee branches to alter, and I did do a good deal of of um, you know, editing and and alteration, and it was very exciting to meet him. It was one of the things that I shall always remember.

Presenter5:08

Now after Tess, there were of course a a lot of famous plays. You were Elizabeth Barrett, the original Elizabeth Barrett and the Barrett of Winthrop.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies5:13

Yes, yes, yes I was. That was a lovely play and a lovely part.

Presenter5:17

And a long run.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies5:17

Long run. And a long run. Yes, it was. It was rather too long. It was a year and four months. And as it was a part in which I had to always pretend to be ill, it towards the end of it I really began to get to to and to really be and feel quite ill. But other other than that, it was a lovely part to play. I have played a lot of real people in my life.

Speaker 25:31

Yeah.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies5:37

which I think is interesting and exciting to do.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies5:41

'Cause it gives one a great sense of reality'cause you can read about them and get a very clear idea of what they were like.

Presenter5:46

Yes. You had another long run shortly after that when you played another real person, Anna Bohemia, in the switch against John.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies5:51

That's right, yes, with John Gilgood and Richard of Bordeaux, yes. Oh, I played a lot of queens in my time. Any amount of

Presenter5:57

And another play that many of us will remember Gaslight, Thriller.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:00

Yes, yes, and that was that was a very it was a good play. And the first act was very brilliant. It was really Strindbergian. It was so good. Then the second and third acts were, I thought, a little bit who done it. But it was exciting. It was a wonderful part, yes.

Presenter6:16

And then the war came and in the early days of the war that wonderful production of the importance of being an artist.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:21

Yeah.

Presenter6:21

With everybody and ever.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:23

That was, yes, with John Gilgard and Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft and Jack Hawkins and Margaret Rutherford and me it really was quite some cost.

Presenter6:24

What?

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:33

Oh yes.

Presenter6:33

Later in the war you partnered John Gilgood and Macbeth.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:36

Yes, I did. That was when I came back from South Africa, where I'd gone with my friend and partner, Maude Van, to do some pioneering work in the theatre there, because at that time there wasn't really any professional theatre in the Union at all.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:48

And the work that we did has borne fruit and now there's um ooh, there are four or five professional organizations in Johannesburg alone.

Presenter6:56

Yeah, that must be very rewarding to be able to look at.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:56

You want

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies6:58

Well, it is. One sort of feels well. One was a bit useful.

Presenter7:02

You've spent quite a number of years doing this, backwards and forwards.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies7:04

On and off, backwards and forwards, yes, about ten years.

Presenter7:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:07

Not the

Presenter7:09

Last few years of your career, what have you been up to? You you played at Stratford for the first time.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies7:12

Yes, well I came back and played at Stratford in nineteen fifty when John Gilgood played Lear. And then I went back to Africa and then I came back again here and went to the Olvik, did the coronation production of Henry the Eighth.

Presenter7:18

There

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies7:25

And um after that, oh, I did uh Long Day's Journey with Paul Schofield and Sybil Thorndyke, and then I played Miss Madrigal in the Chalk Garden with Dame Edith Evans. Uh I played for about eleven eleven months, finished the run. And um Then of course the the most exciting thing that's happened in my latter days has been Long Day's Journey.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies7:46

which is the most wonderful part, and is to an older actress what Juliet is to the young actress,'cause it has everything in it of variety that you could wish most lovely.

Presenter7:56

And you played in the T S Eliot play Family Realty. Oh yes.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies7:58

Oh yes, that was earlier. Yes, T S Eliot.

Presenter7:59

Yeah.

Presenter8:01

And lately you've been you've done several plays with the Royal Shakespeare stuff.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies8:03

Yes, I've been with the Royal Shakespeare Company for about eighteen months. I was in Ondean and in Becket and recently in that enchanting play of John Whiting's Penny for a Song.

Presenter8:13

Mm, and doing quite a lot of radio as well.

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies8:15

Yes, quite a lot.