[This is the fourth in an occasional series describing British actors
and performers who achieved fame in the theatre or in the movies.]
If one had to choose who was the greatest British actor of the 20th
century, one would probably nominate Sir Laurence Olivier; but if the choice
was the greatest British Shakespearean actor the palm would go to Sir John
Gielgud whose lovely voice, clear diction and consummate acting technique,
flowering particularly from the mid-1930s to the 1940s, astonished and
delighted the fortunate critics and audiences of that time in an 75-year
career.
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| A Young Gielgud as Hamlet |
John Gielgud (1904
– 2000) was born into the theatrical Terry family dynasty on his mother’s side.
Dame Ellen Terry, a hugely successful actress of Victorian and Edwardian England,
was a great-aunt and his mother Kate had also been an actress before marrying
City stockbroker Frank Gielgud, who in turn was descended from a distinguished
Polish-Lithuanian family, a grandmother being a famous actress there.
After school at Westminster, Gielgud asked to be allowed to
try the stage and was given a time limit of age 25 to succeed or else he would
have to go to university. His early efforts were not glorious. Shy and
spindle-shanked his drama teacher, Lady Benson, told him “You walk like a cat
with rickets”. He stumbled through as an extra at the Old Vic and minor roles
at the Oxford Playhouse. He spent a valuable year at RADA and in due course
played Romeo, a flop. However he
first found his feet as Trofimov in The
Cherry Orchard by Chekhov, thought avant
garde at the time receiving warm praise from the influential critic James
Agate. He understudied and in time succeeded Noel Coward in his sensational
play The Vortex in 1928 and then had
a long run in The Constant Nymph. He
had arrived.
From then onwards, Gielgud, both as an actor and director,
alternated busily between the “serious” and the “commercial” theatre. A
catalogue of his many appearances would be wearisome and I will only mention
highlights. He had a 311-night run in J B Priestley’s The Good Companions but at the Old Vic he made the role of Hamlet uniquely his own – he was
recognised as the finest Hamlet of his generation. He also shone as John
Worthing in Wilde’s great comedy The
Importance of being Earnest. He played classic seasons with his rival
Olivier and more with his friend Ralph Richardson at the Queen’s Theatre,
demonstrating his astonishing range.
Unlike his colleagues, he was not much interested in the
world of film. While they rushed off to sign remunerative Korda contracts, the
stage was his main love and he did not become a film regular until the 1960s,
when he had relaxed his acting style. Gielgud with his prominent beak of a
nose, his sonorous voice and high forehead was an unmistakably patrician
figure.
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| Gielgud as John Worthing |
For one so word-perfect on stage, Gielgud had a peculiar
talent for saying the wrong thing entirely in company – “Gielgoofs”, he called
them and they much amused his profession. To give a taste of his many faux pas;
-
Did you see that man just coming in?" he asked
his companion. "He’s the biggest bore in London, second only to Edward
Knoblock." At that moment he remembered that Edward Knoblock was in
fact the man sitting across from him. "Not you, of course,"
Gielgud quickly added. "I mean the other Edward Knoblock.".
-
To Maggie Smith whom he was directing in Private Lives; "For heaven’s sake,
Maggie darling, don't screw up your face like that. You look like that ghastly
woman in that film. What was it . . . Travels with My Aunt?"
-
On thanking the company at the end of a run: “and may I just mention the two leading
actresses (Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft) I hope I will never have the
pleasure of acting with them again!”
His conversation was a rich compound of theatrical anecdote
and bawdy; while performing (surely to his shame) in the Penthouse soft porn flick Caligula (1979) he commented comically on the sight of Helen Mirren’s orifices,
during one of several orgy scenes!
Gielgud was far from saintly. He was by nature entirely
homosexual at a time when male homosexuality was illegal. After various
liaisons (including with James Lees-Milne at Oxford), he took as his partner in
1928 John Perry, a struggling Irish writer, and they lived together until 1938
when Perry transferred his affections to the powerful head of theatrical
managers H M Tennent Limited, “Binkie”
Beaumont. All three remained staunch friends. Gielgud lived with interior
designer Paul Anstee for much of the 1950s and his final live-in lover was
Martin Hensler, a designer of Hungarian origin, who shared his life from 1962
until Hensler’s death in 1999. Gielgud was most devoted to the theatre and he
liked a quiet life without many emotional traumas.
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| Gielgud poses in character |
Gielgud’s gay proclivities were almost his undoing. He was knighted
in the Coronation Honours of 1953, but a few months later he was arrested in a
police trap in a West End public lavatory for “persistently importuning for
immoral purposes”. This was all part of an ugly drive by homophobic Home
Secretary Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe and was happily the last such convulsion in
England. Gielgud was convicted and fined £10 and he feared ruin; his audience
was luckily more tolerant and when he first reappeared on stage he was given a
standing ovation. It had been a humiliating shock and he was even more discreet
thereafter, avoiding all discussion of personal matters. He finally “came out”
in the twilight of his career in 1995.
In the 1940s Gielgud continued his busy round, playing
Shakespeare, inevitably Hamlet (he
performed this demanding role over 500 times in his career) and as Raskolnikov
in a 1946 Crime and Punishment – “one
of Gielgud’s finest performances” thought Agate. He had much success with Fry’s
verse play The Lady’s not for Burning.
The 1950s were more difficult for him as his kind of polite play was
disappearing from the commercial theatre while “kitchen-sink” drama took front
place. Gielgud found a vehicle for his strengths in the Shakespearean The Ages
of Man which he toured round Britain and America. He had a rare foray into
Hollywood in 1953 as a fine Cassius in Julius
Caesar, his effortless skill demoralising his co-stars Marlon Brando and
James Mason.
Gielgud found a second wind in London as the headmaster in
Alan Bennett’s allegory Forty Years On
(1968) or as a Hollywood character actor or in many cameo roles like the King
of France in Becket (1964) but his
big movie success was as the foul-mouthed butler Benson ministering to Dudley
Moore’s Arthur (1970). On stage he
teamed up with Ralph Richardson in David Storey’s Home, featuring two old men conversing in the garden of a mental
home. A great success in London it transferred to New York prompting Clive
Barnes to proclaim "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness
of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the
greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the
English-speaking theatre.” They appeared together again in Pinter’s No Man’s Land (1975) and Gielgud was
inevitably a moving Prospero. He finally retired from the stage in 1988.
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| Gielgud, Grand Old Man of the Theatre |
Working up to his last days, Gielgud died in 2000, a
venerable 96, at his beloved house South Pavilion at Wotton Underwood, which he
had shared with Martin Hensler for 37 years. The house was later bought by Tony
Blair. The plaudits and the honours had deservedly piled up. He was sincerely
loved within his profession, a cherished personality and inspiration: he had
brought incomparable distinction to the acting world.
SMD
25.02.2014
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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