Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre critic, actress and producer who over seven decades brought Samuel Beckett to American audiences and persuaded Peter Brook to launch awards for artistic
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
It has a vibrancy and a vitality, and that was the b my beginnings in New York, being the dancer, being in the different shows. And then a group of us decided that we'd have an off-Broadway movement, and I had the sixth of the off-Broadway theatres called The Cricket. And then I started my children's theatre. This music has that energy of starting new things, and it has a lust of life, which is so wonderful, and it was such a vital period in my life. And I played it all the time.
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5Favourite
This is the um Bacchiana bracchialis, which I absolutely adore, and it has the voice of the soprano, which sounds like the birds. It's the essence of nature. And if I am to be on a desert island, I would want this kind of music to be with me, and it would be everywhere. It would people the island for me.
The Vron Clacerte Male Voice Choir
First place, it is a beautiful song, and secondly, I feel that music has to be a part of feeding you. And with Shenandoah, there are very few songs that are written about rivers. And yet every city that was ever built was built on a river. So I have a tremendous feeling about the river and its wide Missouri and those beautiful mountains of West Virginia. When I went up to Scotland I thought, It's Shenandoah, I just see the lakes and and and and the highlands, and I you can sing it out, and you know that that's part of what life is about itself. It's not just people, but land and water. And nature itself feeds you, and one must take in that life.
I would like to be able first because I love this song, and secondly, because I have a deep involvement with Sweeney Todd, I first co produced this play at Stratford East with Joan Littlewood. And at that time Joan had no money, it was going to close. And I said, Joan, this will save you. She said, Blanche, what will save us? We need something over the Christmas holidays. I said, The children will love this over Christmas. Let us do it. You will see. So we did. The swinny tart, and it saved Stratford East. The kids absolutely adored it. And it was such a hit, and at that point, and I said, I want Stephen Sunheim to do this into an opera, because this is a wonderful book. It will make a perfect opera. What I didn't know, I just discovered this about two months ago in a letter, and an unhappy letter, shall I say, from Stephen said, What makes you think you discovered it? I was on the track as well. I said I could not believe it. He was following it, and I was following him. Neither one of us realized that it we were coincidentally searching for each other. The play i i is is wonderful and it has a lifetime value to it. But it is Stephen Sondheim's finest work. It is musically one of the best, and Not While I'm Around is haunting.
Most people know the song from Billy Holiday and they have it out of its context. My husband produced on Broadway a very important play just after the war. Remember that the war suddenly opened up vistas to everybody, and suddenly we were going to change the world, and we were going to make a better place to live, and there was this wonderful sense of hope. And the play was about a black family moving into a white neighborhood. Now, that was a very big thing in the States at that point. It was also very important because it changed the whole essence for black actors who were only doing song and dances, and now they had serious acting parts to be able to do. And after the show, the meeting place was Cafe Society, which was a cafe where where Josh White sang, and at that point it was the beginning w of singing which Josh did, of Strange Fruit, and I would like everyone to know that it was Josh who actually first sang it.
Liebestod (from Tristan und Isolde)
Well, that's the famous love song, the Liebestoat, and that's the song I always think of in terms of Mark, who loved me with a depth that I shall never ever be able to have again. And every time I hear it, it's always. That identity with Mark. It's not memory. It's much more than memory. It becomes part of you, and it recreates not the man, but the love, the essence of love itself, which is an enormous force, and it's a force of life.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)
Well, w what we're going to hear now is Nimrod from Elgor's Enigma variations. Every time I hear it it's Mark, and he comes to life for me.
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488
My last piece is my metaphor because it is Horowitz at the age of ninety playing one of the earliest of Mozart's piano concertas. And you just have to listen to the way this man plays. And I am 87, and for me, as far as I am concerned, it is the younger generation, and that is why I do what I do in terms of the Peter Brooke Award. If we do not keep and feed the young generation and the next generation, there will be no civilization. And so, therefore, it is important that we do something in the creation of a vibrant next generation.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:47What are your memories of working with James Mason?
Very close, because you know James was a beautiful painter. And we used to paint and draw together, and we were able to sing folk songs together. He didn't just want to be involved in in the theatre, and he needed another kind of outlet. He was a very sweet and quiet and sensitive man, aloof kind of person, but very dear.
Presenter asks
8:50Why don't you like to talk about your youth?
Because if you come out of an unhappy background, you carry it with you if you don't leave it. And if you close the door on that and say, Look, I'm going to start from scratch. I shall begin a whole new life and I will be open for everything that happens in life. And I will never look back and I will never feel deprived. And I will always feel life is [fulfilled].
Presenter asks
14:33What did the telegram from Mark say when he asked you to meet him in Paris?
Actually, I was playing not only in Covadus, but I was the leading lady. I was Superman's girlfriend in all the short films which they which they actually then did stills of in magazines, and they would set me on these adventures, all these awful adventures. I was thrown out of planes, I was dumped into the Tiber River, all kinds of things, and I was always yelling for help, and he would have to come and help me. And then I did the Covatis, and in the middle of all of this I got a telegram saying Meet me in Paris. They killed me off on the little um short films and ran to Paris, and to my shock and surprise he said I've come to marry you.
The keepsakes
The luxury
my luxury would be as much paper as I can carry, pens and pencils, so that I can keep writing and keep drawing as much as I can, and it will keep me company for the whole time.
Presenter asks
18:06Tell me about meeting Tennessee Williams through your husband Mark.
Well, my my husband was going to be producing at that point on Whitman Avenue. It had not gone on yet, just you know, after the war. Now, Margot Jones directed on Whitman Avenue. She had been working with Thomas Williams. and uh they had done a play in ca in in Chicago called Glass Menagerie. Then they decided they wanted to bring it to New York. Now, Tennessee had never been in New York before. He was unknown. Now I was an actress, always running out for auditions and different things. But I, too, was just starting on Broadway, so that Tennessee and I were both terrified of what was going on. We were both not u used to the ways of New York. We were both of us very naive and unsophisticated. And we used to talk to each other. He said, Would you know I am not very happy about being in New York anywhere else. I've lost my roots and I'm constantly living in hotels. I hate living in hotels. And now the Tennessee Loved my name, and he said, Well, you know, to have a name like Blanche Zohar, it's beautiful. It's wonderful. He said, My name is Thomas Williams. I mean, isn't that awful? He said, You know. I am called Tennessee, but you know, can I do that as a writer called Tennessee I said, why not? Do whatever name you want. That's what you you can do. Three years later, a streetcar named Desire came, and there in the streetcar, if you see. Is Blanche? That's what writers do. He never said to me that he would do it, it's not that obvious. But I know that that's my name.
Presenter asks
19:47What was the young Tennessee Williams really like as a person?
Well, Tennessee and I had a great closeness together. He was a very, very sensitive man. And he couldn't ever recover, and never would recover, from the guilt that he felt over deserting his sister, and the lobotomy that was put upon her, and he would not have happened had he been there. And he said, you know, I don't deserve to be loved. And he punished himself his whole life over that. And the very sad thing is that he died in a hotel. The one thing that he was afraid of I met him years later. Many years later. And at that point he was already going downhill. He was taking the drugs. He was punishing himself all all along the way. And I said, Tennessee, look, all the wonderful things that have happened to you. He said, Yes, but that doesn't make life. I've never been able to have a home. I'm constantly on the move. and I'll never ever be able to forgive myself.
Presenter asks
23:27How old was your son Herbert when you found out he was deaf?
Well, I thought there was something wrong from the time he was born. And everybody said that I was being neurotic. But I said this child does not cry. He's not disturbed by any of the sound or noise. This was a child who was jolly all the time. I said, That's just not normal. So I spent a year and a half going from doctor to doctor, saying, Test his hearing. And they said, There's nothing wrong with him, there's something wrong with you. And finally, I they started a little audiology unit. It was the first that ever started. And when they tested him. They discovered they said he's he's profoundly deaf. And I knew that. But he was very animated all the time, and I always took him everywhere with me. When he was four years old I had him running the lighting board in my theater. I had him go backstage and take care of all the actors, so that he never I would feel cheated uh because he would participate in so many ways.
“Yes, you can, because if you have curiosity, you're incurable. So that it is maybe today, maybe in some little corner, I'm going to find somebody, because everything that I have done has been to find the new talented person, the the new play, the new actor, the new designer, the new music. Originality is is what makes the world go round, and the world is so vast you'll never live long enough to discover everything.”
“I had one of the first of the Off-Broadway theatres, and I went into the whole of the Off-Broadway movement, and I brought over the English plays. I did all the costumes, you know. But you know, that's what you did. You you cleaned the toilets and you did the costumes and you ran the lighting board and you did all the tickets, and you, you know, you did all you selected the plays. There was Beckett, and there was all the famous writers that I was pulling into my theatre, and then the next minute I'm putting in the lavatory paper. And the dressing up is for me. It isn't for anyone else, so that I get a a pleasure out of it because I think of all this that is called art these days. You know, if an unmade bed is called art, why shouldn't I then dress up myself and become the art piece?”
“I have found age the most freeing thing in the world. I can do just what I want to do. Take me for what I am, or don't take me. It's such a sense of freedom. And I get away with things I could never have gotten away with if I were younger.”
“He was a very, very sensitive man. And he couldn't ever recover, and never would recover, from the guilt that he felt over deserting his sister, and the lobotomy that was put upon her, and he would not have happened had he been there. And he said, you know, I don't deserve to be loved. And he punished himself his whole life over that.”
“He didn't want me to have to deal with a deaf child and himself in in in a process of deterioration and that that he couldn't he had always taken care of me. He would never allow me to take care of him. No, it was it was a sacrificial act. How could one be angry at that?”