Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A film actor and writer, known for the Doctor series, later films with Losey and Visconti, and his autobiographies.
On the island
Eight records
Consolation No. 3 in D-flat major
Basically because it is the constellation which I should need on an island. It's good for sunsets. And also it's a piece of music that I once had to play myself in the film.
Yvonne Printemps in this particular little song sums up for me the essence of France and certain of Paris.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major / Hungarian Fantasy
The piece I want to play in a moment for you, which I've chosen, is the hardest because it was a very exciting piece to play. It was the first time I played with an orchestra. My fingers literally split at the sides and bled.
This is a funny little number. I've tried to make her sing it a hundred times in her concert. She won't. It's on an LP called The Letter, which is hardly known.
I adore it. It's Vilia and it's sung by Schwarzkopf. Vilia particularly because the Merry Widow was brought out to Europe during the war. The Merry Widow is very important to us.
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 - 1st movementFavourite
Bruno Walter / Columbia Symphony Orchestra
My father had a huge collection of records when I was a child. I was brought up with this particularly. All my life I've always loved Beethoven's Life.
I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face
Rex Harrison is the one actor who has influenced my acting life in the theatre and on the screen more than any other actor or living person. I would have to have him on my island for that beautiful purity of diction and the splendour and power of the English time.
We've been given permission, which is terribly exciting, to play the actual soundtrack from the play. This is as Carol Channing sang it in Hello Dolly in the show.
Vissi d'arte (from Tosca, Act II)
I love her voice, and this recording is almost the last one she made before her voice began to get wobbly.
Yvonne Arnaud, Sir John Barbirolli (conductor)
This uh is is a piece of music played by an adopted godmother of mine. … and she's playing this piece of music which I've always grown up with and loved very much
Symphony in D minor, third movement (opening)
Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini (conductor)
I was given a very bad review in a film by uh a rather unpleasant New York critic. It was said that my performance was like Cesar Frank's Symphony in D minor. And I didn't know if that was good news or bad news, so I I rushed out and got it and bought it
Je t'aime (from Les Trois Valses)
This is a particular favourite of mine, Yvonne Pranto. People will know her, and she's singing here one of the most lovely songs from a film called Les Trois
Symphony No. 5, fourth movement (Adagietto)Favourite
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein (conductor)
This is all right. This is a bit of my favourite person. The opening of the fourth movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major (end)
Lazar Berman, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini (conductor)
He did teach me to play the piano. And I played eighty six minutes of music, and it took me nine months to learn it.
Waltz sequence from Der Rosenkavalier
Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel (conductor)
I first heard this as a full opera just after the Vienna Opera House was rebuilt, which is very exciting and that's why I want to play it now.
Boston Pops, John Williams (conductor)
it sums up I don't think I shall ever go there again, but it sums up a a a a city of such extraordinary glamour and horror. But it is one of the best and most evocative pieces of music about it
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Do you think you would endure the isolation of being on a desert island?
Quite frankly, no, I couldn't. I think I'd go absolutely stark staring barges. I should loathe it.
Presenter asks
1:16Do you have a religious philosophy that would help?
No, I'm afraid I haven't really. I'm a bit of an atheist, I suppose. I think I'd run out of prayers awfully quickly.
Presenter asks
4:06What was your first job in the theatre?
Well my first job in the theatre was cleaning up the gentleman's lavatory in the Kew Theatre.
Presenter asks
9:47Did you have any right of veto? Could you refuse a part if you wanted to?
Well, they were jolly good to me because they never made me do anything I didn't want to do particularly, but I had to choose one of three or four scripts that they submitted, which was only fair.
The keepsakes
The book
Ronald Blythe
I think it's the most beautiful and perfect documentation of England, of an English countryside that I've ever read.
The luxury
Probably didn't see any point sitting on the island with nothing to drink, either.
Presenter asks
14:36Have you any one great professional ambition that you haven't yet enjoyed?
No, none at all. I'm always asked, I don't play Hamlet or Romeo or anything. All I want to do is to go on acting in the cinema until I'm too old to act.
Presenter asks
17:18How would you manage on this island practically? Could you look after yourself?
Well, it depends what you give me. If there's water. Is there water? [PRESENTER confirms water and vegetation and a reasonable climate] Oh, I'd be fine. You could live off the land. Oh, yes, I'm very good at gardening. [Fishing?] Yes, excellent. I don't like killing them, but I'm very good at it if I had to. [Could you build some kind of craft eventually?] Yes, I should. I should cut things out. [You mean could I would I be capable of building?] Yes. Oh yes, I can nail things together. [You wouldn't have any nails.] Well, then I'd lash things.
Presenter asks
2:04Tell me about your hermit crab-like shell, which you've confessed several times to having created.
I used it in in in one of my books. I used to explain to people who who kept saying, Well, you never come out, you never come out I mean, they used to do that in France when I lived there. I don't like going. I hate parties. And I was in the worst profession possible, I suppose, for someone who really has an eye phobia. And doesn't like being looked at or stared at or spoken to in the street. I'm awful. I behave dreadfully badly. So. I wear silly clothes, you know, like great big things that nobody can really tell who I am. And usually a cloth cap. That gets me through. So that is a kind of form of protection.
Presenter asks
4:47You say you hate being looked at. Is that why you found being a matinee idol terribly tiresome?
Yes, I think it was, because i th there was a vast invasion of privacy. which I minded very much. … Oh well this still load. Uh wandering round i in the house, or in the gardens, you know. The Goth breaking and moaning one's name in the night, claiming one was the father of their children. Oh, I don't know, being being tasked and generous and then bombarding one with Rarely, frankly, in the end, unwanted presents. I I think it was the sort of where people don't mean to be unkind, but they're just unthinking. They just are not aware that you are a human being, that you can see or hear.
Presenter asks
15:03All of which must have had a profound effect on a young man in his early twenties. How and how much did it change you?
I think it may be very strong. Um It made me face up to what the rank organization could chuck at me later. Nothing could frighten me after that. And nothing did.
Presenter asks
18:49You've made it very plain that yours and his was not a homosexual relationship. Nevertheless, there'll always be those who will choose to believe that it was. Do you mind? Do you resent it?
I resented it enormously for his family. his grandson, whom I look after now, who's sixteen, and for my own family, of course I do. But wha what can you do? Especially in this country. uh with the press we have here and the cruelty of it.
Presenter asks
20:04Do you dislike the idea of growing old?
Yes, I do feel it. I I yes, I I resent it very much. Of course I do. I think anybody does. There are compensations for growing old, of course there are. Not many, but there are some.
Presenter asks
27:38Why did you leave Britain back in 1968? Was it to an extent that you felt less than appreciated?
Well, no, it's just because there I there was nothing for me to do here. I mean, uh I I think Sam Spiegel said if I hear I think Dirk's a great kid, but if I hear his name made on mentioned once again, he said, I'll just throw up. They'd seen me to death. They'd hadn't the audiences hadn't. But the people making the movies had. And the only offers I was getting were from France, from Jean Renoir, who wanted me to do a film there with him, which I wanted very much to do. That was at the beginning of the Eventmont in'sixty eight, so it collapsed. Visconti wanted me to do his big magical production of Macbeth, which turned out to be a something called Gotta Dammarung, and I was cut out of practically, and it became The Damned. I mean, there was a tremendous amount of work to be done in Europe. And my point of view then was, why not go and live there?
“Loneliness is the most important thing, but silence, I think, would be the next thing would frighten me to death.”
“From the very moment I started to breathe and they slapped my bottom, I think I cried and started to act.”
“I was eighteen and terribly conceited and very funny 'cause I got very good notices and it went to my head.”
“My fingers literally split at the sides and bled.”
“I have lost my nerve for the theatre. I suffer very badly from claustrophobia... the moment a curtain goes up on the stage, I'm just waiting to be sick, physically sick.”
“I don't like going. I hate parties. And I was in the worst profession possible, I suppose, for someone who really has an eye phobia.”
“I think it was the sort of where people don't mean to be unkind, but they're just unthinking. They just are not aware that you are a human being, that you can see or hear.”
“War is very unnecessary and evil. Situation, I didn't recommend it to anybody.”
“It was a total love affair without carnality, and it is possible.”
“I'm a deeply selfish person and I I'm too too into it and I I'm on better on my own, you know.”