Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comic actress, best known for roles like Mrs Maliprop, Lady Bracknell, and her double act with Sybil Thorndyke in Arsenic and Old Lace.
On the island
Eight records
Du bist wie eine BlumeFavourite
A song my mother used to sing. She had a rather beautiful contralto voice, and uh so that that makes me remember her very well uh that song.
Original Cast Recording of Oh, What a Lovely War
It's a soldier's song they used to sing.
Choir of St. Philip's Church, Norbury
Morning has broken, yes uh that's a hymn, you know. I have been really rather naughty in church, singing in all our pews in the front row, and uh singing Morning Has Broken, pick up the pieces, stick them together all the day long of course, not the right words at all. And the choir could hear me and began to giggle.
It reminds me of a very grand dinner party I gave once… Paul Robeson sang Old Man River to us leaning on the on the uh mantelpiece, and that was some Something I've never forgotten it was so beautiful.
Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2
It's a a a little shop on our walls. Um I don't think I'll try singing it to you, because you wouldn't recognize it, but that's what I should like to take with me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07Were you born with the gift of making people laugh?
Well, I know the first time that I did make people laugh. I was only eight years old, and I was doing a little hornpipe at a special performance, and saluting as I went off, feeling very like a sailor, and my jaws fell off. And of course the audience roared with laughter, and I thought to myself, Ah, I see, uh what's ahead of me is comedy.
Presenter asks
5:01Did you come from a theatrical family?
Well, my brother was on the stage. My mother could have been an actress. Uh but of course it wasn't done in those days, you know. Nice people didn't go on the stage.
Presenter asks
5:43You had a very interesting neighbor who affected your decision, didn't you?
It means the brown ribs. who afterwards became Irvings. My mother knew Henry Broadby quite well. And uh I was taken up to meet him, which I don't remember at all. and he he suggested I I should try my hand at the stage. I don't know why. Poor man, what a dreadful thing. Simply beco because my mother had lived next door to him.
The keepsakes
The book
Gareth Jones
Well then I'll take my grandson's book. Called The Disinherited, which is a story of the Welsh Drovers, Gareth Jones is my grandson.
The luxury
a case of champagne and a Jeroboam
I'd like a nice bottle of champagne, but that wouldn't last me too long.
Presenter asks
8:46Tell me about your audition for the Academy of Dramatic Art.
Oh, yes, well. I they put me to wait. uh till they called me and I had a short sleeved coat, a light coat, with blong black sleeves right up to my oh Mr M elbow beyond my elbows, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to take off my black gloves and or to go in with them on. I decided to take them off that I'd got one off and they uh hadn't time to take the other before they called me in. So I went in looking rather like a zebra. However. What did you do for them? I did a bit of Rosalind. Poor Rosalind, I've caught her round the world really. I'm always doing a bit of Rosalind. And what did they think of you? Well, they told me to wait in the next room, and I thought I disgraced myself. And then they called me back and offered me a scholarship. They asked me, first of all, uh could I uh did I know about the fees? And I said no, but whatever the fees were, I was afraid. My mother and myself, we couldn't pay it. Because my father hadn't left us with much money. And so they called me in and offered me a scholarship and I never paid a penny.
Presenter asks
16:57Your favorite leading man was Nicholas Hannan, wasn't it?
That was my favourite. Hmm. I said to him, they said he was so charming. I said, Oh, I I think I see your charm quite impersonally, of course. Oh, why not personally? he said, as he ran past me. And that was the beginning of our friendship. which became map Marriage. And you were married for fifty years? We were called the devoted couple, we were held up as an example to everybody.
Presenter asks
27:31Do you feel it's a great privilege to have lived so long?
Oh, it's a great challenge, isn't it? Uh, if one hasn't bored everybody to death and disappointed one's uh dear friends and family. One must be very grateful. Well, I don't think I want to do it again, you know.
“Well, I know the first time that I did make people laugh. I was only eight years old, and I was doing a little hornpipe at a special performance, and saluting as I went off, feeling very like a sailor, and my jaws fell off. And of course the audience roared with laughter, and I thought to myself, Ah, I see, uh what's ahead of me is comedy.”
“Yes, well I do because I was taken to Droher Lane where he was performing in that play Bicket and came in for the death scene and he walked onto the stage and I looked straight into his eyes and fainted.”
“And one night when I was going through the empty auditorium, I saw an old lady sitting in the stalls, and I thought, Well, how perfectly awful, poor old girl She's got left behind And as I went out I said to the Commissioner, You know the audience hasn't really gone. There's an old lady sitting in the stalls. He said Oh, no, Miss Sarah, you've seen the ghost. She's often there. But there are very few people see her. So I saw the ghost of the Rante theater.”
“So the third night I thought, She can't surely do this again but of course she did, pointed to me and said, Oh, isn't she beautiful? So I made the ugliest face that I could think of and got the laugh myself. And she never did it again.”
“Carry on, we're all right.”