Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies

You played in the T S Eliot play Family Reunion?

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

Gwen, I wonder if you were able to walk back on the stage tomorrow, in what part would it be and who would you be playing with?

That's a beautiful question. But I think Tilly On consideration, it probably would be the young Juliet. And I suppose John [Gielgud], as he was when I played it, when he was even younger than I was. It was the fulfilment of a dream. So it was for both John and me a thrilling time because we became rather the sort of, you know, the prize exhibits of that particular season and we were invited out and we you know, everybody made a great fuss of us and uh well I think we took it all with a certain amount of modesty, but of course we were very thrilled. I certainly was.

Well, Gwen, I know that you think age is an irrelevance, but when you're within a few years of a century, as indeed you are, it is inevitable, don't you think, that people should remark on your sprightliness.

Well, I think if I have sprightliness, and I suppose to a certain extent I am, I don't I do not think about age and and as far as I can, I don't admit it, and never have, because we never had birthdays in my family. We had Christmas, but I cannot ever remember having a birthday party. I think it was partly that my mother her philosophy was never record ages, because you every time you see him one one year gone, one year gone, and we didn't uh hold with that. You live in the present. So you've never worried about age, that's not a problem. I never worried about age. In fact, I became it was rather a phobia. I didn't want anybody to know my age, and I got jolly cross if anybody tried to find out how old I was. And I got away with murder. Because when I sang The Immortal R... I looked very young, and everybody thought I was about eighteen. I was going to on for twenty nine. And my Juliet I passed for fourteen and I was again nearly thirty. You certainly don't look your age. I was fortunate. I've always looked and and been uh a a good ten or twelve years younger than my real age and I kept my own age secret. In my day in the theatre, an actress's age was her own private property.

Gwen, at what point in your life did you decide you were going to be an actress?

I almost think there was never a time from that I could remember anything when I didn't know that I was going to be an actress when I grew up. But when I was absolutely certain about it, it was when I was still at school, I met a very interesting American lady who'd had an Academy of Dramatic Art in California, but had come to this country because she'd married an Englishman. Her name was misses Manning Hicks, and she used to give readings of plays. She was the first person that I ever heard give a reading of an entire play, um and she said she would start m training me. I was still at school, I was only fourteen. But Juliet uh was the the first um really Shakespearean part that I studied in depth with her and then also um Midsummer Night's Dream and she opened my eyes to Shakespeare. So my whole uh sort of ad lessons was in a way uh caught up with the the Shakespeare heroines.

So Gwen, you set out to become a great classical actress, but it was your singing voice which first led you to success, wasn't it?

Well, actually, you see, um I did want to be an actress and I did want to be um a Shakespearean actress, but I had to earn my living, and the only way I could earn my living was uh by getting into musical comedy chorus. So I I had quite a pretty little singing voice which was trained by a pupil of my father's, and so I was able to get work in the chorus. I must say I was always in the back row of the chorus, and if possible, he pushed me off stage. Um but I knew that I was destined for great things and I wasn't going to be put upon. So how did how did your great hour, your immortal hour, come? Ah, that was came m much later because Rotland Barton had been my father's accompanist and he taught me music when I was a child. He was a wonderful, wonderful, imaginative teacher. And when he started the uh Glastonbury Festival, which was to be on the lines of the early Bayreuth, but it was to be with the Arthurian legends as n as against the um the Teutonic ones, [Rutland] said to me, If I would join him and uh and and and play the sort of leading f female parts uh in they were going to do some theatre as well, I would play [the lead]. So I said, yes, yes, I would. And it was one of the most exciting experiences in a way of my life, because I was doing all the things that I longed to do. I was acting. True, it was acting with music, most of it. But it was not just being in the chorus and digging about, you know, and doing nothing. So it was the doors of heaven opened. That was the first time the doors of heaven opened. And that is where I first sang at in the Immortal Hour in a little green shift, my own hair, bit of mistletoe in, and no scenery at all in the local assembly rooms in Glastonbury.

Well now after that you played opposite all sorts of wonderful actors, John Gielgud, you mentioned Paul Schofield, Godfrey Turle. Who was your favourite leading man?

Oh, that's quite impossible to say. That would be invidious and and it it would be impossible. Um but I I I've only I think twice in my whole seventy-year-old odd years in the theatre, had Two um actors that I actively disliked and they actively disliked me. Otherwise I've had the happiest relationships.