My favourite English humourist, Arthur Marshall, used to
refer to gays as “wonky gentlemen” (he was a delightful one himself) and the
man I here remember, Terence Rattigan, was certainly wonky too. Yet Rattigan’s
well-crafted and engrossing plays were the civilised work of a true gentleman
and he found an appreciative audience in the UK and USA for a generation.
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| Terence Rattigan |
Terence
Rattigan (1911-77) was the son of a senior diplomat and was
educated at Harrow (he was opening batsman in the XI against Eton in 1929)
before progressing to Trinity College, Oxford, producing a promising
undergraduate play First Episode aged
22, replete with tangled passions, a Rattigan trademark. He took to professional
writing and had an early triumph with the comedy French without Tears (1936), about 4 businessmen at a French
language crammer invaded by a predatory woman.
During WW2 he served as a tail-gunner in the RAF and wrote
the morale-boosting drama The Flare Path
(1942) which, like many Rattigan plays, converted into a popular film The Way to the Stars featuring Michael
Redgrave and John Mills.
His most fruitful period was unfolding with The Winslow Boy (1946), based on fact,
the drama of the expelled naval cadet wrongly accused of stealing a postal
order and being brilliantly defended by Sir Robert Morton KC and stubbornly
supported by his father. The electrifying scene when the weeping Ronnie is
first brutally cross-examined by Sir Robert, accused of being “a liar and a
cheat” then described as being “obviously innocent” as Sir Robert takes on the
case, is a classic stage passage.
He followed this with The
Browning Version (1948) about the despised classics teacher Andrew
Crocker-Harris, with the unfaithful wife, unexpectedly moved by his leaving
gift from a pupil of Browning’s translation of Agamemnon. This tale made great theatre.
Rattigan wrote 26 plays and they appealed to the middle
class theatre-goer he targeted. Rattigan is often depicted as a tortured soul,
but the evidence for this is slight. Sleek and dapper, he was gregarious,
preferring the company of women, except in bed.
He had a number of gay liaisons but he was very discreet. He was generous
in his hospitality and as his wealth increased, Arthur Marshall tells us, he
indulged his passion for owning houses - in Sonning, Sunningdale, Wentworth,
Brighton and Eaton Square, in Scotland, Ischia and Bermuda. He liked to laugh
and recounted how, on rather tipsily signing a French hotel register, he later
appeared in the Continental Daily Mail
as “Recently arrived at the Hotel Crillon: Mrs T Rothbun.” On entering a
swimming-pool he invariably used a fairground barker’s phrase from his youth
advertising a female Houdini escapologist “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Aqua
will now lower herself into the tank”. He was a fun person.
Those looking for a Rattigan coded plot often cite The Deep Blue Sea (1952) a fine drama
about an abandoned woman who ultimately commits suicide – it was the making of
actor Kenneth More who played the faithless RAF pilot. Rattigan did have a
10-year affair at this time with one Kenny Morgan, who left him for another
man, was mistreated and gassed himself, but while there are parallels they
should not be taken too far. All artists use their own experiences to mould and
energise their work.
Separate Tables
(1954) is the amalgamation of two one-act plays, both set in a Bournemouth
private hotel, exploring the loneliness of four residents, notably in the
second play a frustrated spinster and a bogus Major. The original starred
Margaret Leighton and Eric Portman, playing all four parts. The 1958 Hollywood
movie earned 7 Oscar nominations and Oscar wins for David Niven as Major
Pollock and Wendy Hiller as the manageress.
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| Deborah Kerr and David Niven in the film Separate Tables |
Rattigan’s type of play slid into the deepest
unfashionability as the kitchen-sink school of drama came to prominence in the
later 1950s. He was derided for his unwise confession that his ideal playgoer
was middle-brow “Aunt Edna”, rather patronising his audience. His powers did
not fail as he produced, among others, the excellent Ross (1960) depicting T E Lawrence, A Bequest to the Nation (1970), about Nelson’s last days, or In Praise of Love (1973). He turned to
writing film screenplays, most lucratively, notably the star-studded The VIPs (1963) with the action
principally at London Airport and the less successful The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964).
Rattigan was knighted in 1971 and had long fled to Bermuda.
Afflicted with leukaemia, ill-health dogged him and he died in Bermuda of bone
cancer in 1977. He was only 66. His plays are regularly revived and still give
great pleasure. His dramatic mastery of the unpicking of emotions tantalised
and impressed his audiences. Rattigan’s solid merits are much missed.
SMD
30.08.16
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016
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