Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An actor, producer, designer, film director, author, playwright, entertainer and singer who ran his own theatre.
On the island
Eight records
Well, one hymn I learned at school which I loved particularly and I'm glad I loved it. It was God Loves the Little Sparrows... And it was many years before I heard that tune played, and I learned that it was... Stolen from Schubert's De Forella, a song about a chap who goes out fishing. Here it is, here is being sung by Gerard Suze, I think the greatest of all lyric baritones of the last I don't know, fifty years, certainly.
Well, it's going to be um a record of Kjörsten Flagstad, a a great Norwegian singer, who helped me and Josephine, my wife, to build the Mermaid Theatre... I think all singers sing better in their own language. And she's going to sing a song with the words by Ibsen, her fellow Norwegian, and it's just Meden vanderlilly, and that's simply a song to a water lily.
And so we got to know Eva Turner very well. She came to collect the money from the gas meter once a month and we went down to her home and I would go and deliver the rent in the mornings and sit outside her music room hearing this huge and beautiful voice pouring through the door. And that's why I've chosen the next record which is Voie lo Sepete from Cavallaria Rusticana.
And here we have her singing one of the loveliest songs in a very early recording when the voice was fresh and un unprofessionalized, Sally.
And the one we're going to have is his greatest record and a great classic, West End Blues.
Oh good, and then we went up number six now aren't we? Yes. Oh that's me. I'm glad I put myself in. I had a big struggle because I'm by nature fairly modest... However, having had two great dramatic sopranos in, especially Kirchden Flagstad, I have a record, and it's um a take off, in a way, a little skit on Wagner and The Ride of the Valkyrie.
This is a jazz record, a great jazz record, by Art Tatum. He's a blind pianist, and it's a record which shows what the human hand can do with amazing agility. Apart from being a beautiful um record, it's um I'll See You Again Noelkaard's famous song played by a great virtuoso jazz pianist.
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491Favourite
I'm fascinated by the idea of what human beings can do with their bodies... and this also shows the same thing in a great classical recording. because I'm a mixed up kiddie a bit. And it's Mozart, it's the pianoforte concerto in C minor, one of the supreme works of Mozart in this field. Kirkel four nine one, played by a great pianist, Gieseking.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:50Did you sometimes make early morning trips to Covent Garden?
Well, I went with my father once or twice, yes. He would put me as the five-year-old I howl the place down to be taken... And the horse and cart, the van, went from Hillingdon from the nursery, Cowley, up to Coven Garden and started half past ten and got there about half past four in the morning or five in the morning. Yes, well it seems just a slow horse journey, sixteen miles, and then a stop on the way at the bottom of Nottinghill Gate to give the horse some food and take it out of the shafts and put another horse in and clean the lamps and give the driver and my father a piece of bread and cheese before we started off again. And I would lie amongst the flowers in the back of the van on his overcoat.
Presenter asks
5:04Did you go to the theatre a lot as a child?
No, never. Oh yes, I was taken by a school teacher to see some Shakespeare at the Old Vic, and we sat in the in the g in the gallery and I forgot what sixpence I think it was and there I drank in a lot of my early Shakespeare and love of the theatre.
Presenter asks
9:49What made you decide to give up schoolmastering and go into the [theatre]?
Well, because a friend of mine, Bailey Holloway, a wonderful act, a great comedian and one of the pillars of the old Vic in those days, mounted Shakespeare's Richard III at the new theatre, and I was handy with a saw and chisel, etc. So he asked whether I would come and do the props, make the props and play seven small parts, which I duly did. And then I was out of work for a while until I got an introduction to Dame Sybil Thorndike and her husband Louis Casson, who were taking out a tour of St. John, eighteen weeks, my first experience touring. And returning, I got my first opportunity to appear in a West End Theatre because the production went first to the Haymarket and then to Her Majesty's, His Majesty's across the road.
The keepsakes
The book
Homer
I would take the Odyssey of Homer, translated by WHD Rouse, which I think is the loveliest translation made into English.
The luxury
A box full of notebooks, pencils, and a pencil sharpener
Because I've had very great fortune. God's been very kind to me in having a really, I think, superlative memory. And I would like to write down from memory all the poetry I've ever learned.
Presenter asks
14:31What was your first appearance in a film, Bernard?
Oh, it was a film directed by Michael Powell out at um Wembley Studios, a little quickie called The Love Test. I did one or two films out there, one with James Mason called The Front Page.
Presenter asks
28:51Do you have any other skills that would be useful on a desert island?
Well, I think I could make um a shelter. Yes, I could uh I think I could look after myself fairly well. I would hate to kill birds, only. I think I'd starve. I'm a vegetarian.
“I know more hymns than I challenge anybody. than anybody else in England.”
“I think all singers sing better in their own language.”
“I'm fascinated by the idea of what human beings can do with their bodies. I'm working on the halls watching great jugglers, tumblers. The human being is a phenomenal animal”