My mother died in 1986. I was in the middle of Legal Eagles in New York. The grief will be familiar to anyone who loses a parent. I was not able to get back to London for the funeral so I bade my farewell by way of a letter I wrote to her. In a gesture I felt she might appreciate, I set fire to it in Central Park, opposite the New York Athletic Club where I was billeted. Even as the coil of ash fell to the ground, I felt a measure of peace; but, very soon, on the walk back across Central Park south, the memories returned, bringing the sadness with them as I relived our life together.
Into this conceptual overlay came a few dominant words, “write it down,” which were repeated at intervals until I reached my monastic lodgings on the 20th floor. I found my pen, but the only paper available was the blank side of my script for the film I was working on. I turned it over and, opening it onto the back empty page, started to write.
I make no claim to literary merit. Yes, I am an avid reader, but other than a penchant for letters, postcards and greetings at Xmas, my well doesn’t exactly runneth over. On this occasion, however, I could not stop. There is usually a lot of time spent waiting about on a film set, and this one with Robert Redford and Deborah Winger was no exception.
Applying for a passport shortly after this assignment, I was tempted to fill in the question as to profession by printing: “Waiting.”
When Legal Eagles ended, my scribbling also came to a stop. I hesitate to call it a book. It was an outpouring of memories in close, medium, and long shot that flashed across the silent screen of my mind, just long enough for me to ink them onto the page. The scribbling took the pain away, as if transferring it to another dimension. It was a therapy that got me through the movie; although, most days I felt my eyes swollen with unshed tears.
The jottings ended up bound in a book, with almost no effort on my part. In sensitive moments, horizontal in bed descending into sleep or on waking, it makes sense to me that my mum had the wherewithal, even when embarking on the big sleep herself, to give me a last present. I awaited a sign that she had arrived in a safe haven. It is said that the grief tunnel has a duration of two years, but I didn’t hear from her. And then, just when I wasn’t looking…
***
In the spring of 1986, I had occasion to think of Orson Welles again.
My pal Jimmy Fraser, who had unearthed me at drama school over twenty-five years earlier, retired. I moved agencies. The new team weren’t yet familiar with my anomalies, and I was in the habit of dropping into their offices just across the road in Soho. If you don’t work regularly, “out of sight” is often “out of mind,” even if your representation is good.
On one such visit, I was in the agency when the phone rang—actually in the office of an assistant to whom I was chatting. It was an enquiry about my availability. She relayed the details to me as she heard them down the line. There was to be a tribute to Leonard Bernstein. A fortnight at the Barbican with the London Symphony Orchestra, to include an array of his compositions, plus a rarely performed work by his early musical guru, Marc Blitzstein, the Airborne Symphony, which had not been performed since 1946 in New York. The conductor would be John Mauceri. The full London Symphony Orchestra, opera stars flown in, and a choir would participate. Maestro Leonard would be in attendance. The symphony included a narration, the speaking part they hoped I would consider, originally spoken by Orson Welles. It was relayed to me as though I would find the fact inspiring. It had the opposite effect.
Frankly, every new facet relayed to me extended my fear threshold, until it reached critical mass.
Over the years earning my living, I had been compelled to address the fear factor on more than one occasion. The solution I arrived at was to ask myself, “What are the facts here?”
As I was hearing about the narration of the Airborne Symphony, I had the realization that the near nausea I was experiencing was out of all proportion to the gig on offer.
“I’ll do it,” I heard a voice curiously like my own responding. “Get the details.”
I stumbled out into Wardour Street and made an escape before my resolve weakened, gulping in air to stop myself from throwing up.
There is often in the arc of a part a click. A keynote that sets the octave for the performance: a pair of shoes that gives the character purchase, a second-hand suit in a thrift store that misfits just right. In this case, the click came in the shape of a bow tie.
Since my first Royal Premiere in 1962, I have always felt comfortable in white tie and tails. In spite of the tailor Doug Hayward, and Dimmi Major, the guy who cut it, coming to my flat to show me how to wear it properly, once I was in it, everything had gone well. Which usually happens when I feel comfortably dressed. So when the Barbican production team asked me what I would prefer to wear, I requested tails. They agreed, even though it meant everyone would have to dress the same. What the hell? Wasn’t it in honour of the great Leonard Bernstein?
On the other side of Piccadilly where I was living at the time, in the mouth of the small arcade opposite the Royal Academy, is one of the finest men’s outfitters in St. James. Budd is the shop’s name. As soon as I relocated to London’s West End from London’s East End, I had reconnoitred the village and sampled the best bespoke the capital had to offer. George Cleverley, who made Rudolph Valentino’s button up boots for Blood and Sand (he had a thank you letter to prove it) shod my idol Gary Cooper, and invented initialled velvet slippers for Winston Churchill, became my shoemaker. Budd made my linen shirts whenever they got their hands on some good stuff; the colours were limited, but I stayed with them until I discovered a Roman shirt maker who took his own dyes to the old country, where they dyed the Irish linen to order. My future ex-wife once remarked to my tailor, “He knows more about clothes than acting.” If she had known of the event I am about to relate, her remark would have been more perceptive than flippant.
On the morning in question, young Rollie was on the floor. I explained to him that my tails still fitted but I needed a fresh wing collar. He enquired what I would be doing and I told him. He suggested two objects, the first a period white tie. Unlike the modern variety, it wasn’t bow shaped but straight and, whilst it had to be knotted perfectly, drooped elegantly in the style of the Thirties. As the symphony was about the history of flight, culminating with the outbreak of World War Two, he felt it would be appropriate. I agreed. The second-hand tie he gave me for a couple of quid. This was the key note that set the tone of my performance. Yet it was his second brainwave that was to have even deeper ramifications.
One of the problems with the white tie outfit is that the detached stiff collar needs two studs to fix it in place, one back and one front. The back can be visualized as two brass spheres. The outer one is smaller and hinged so that it slides easily through the shirt band and starched collar before it is clicked into its holding position. The front stud is a different design. The base is a round sphere, but the end that holds both collar bands of the shirt and both ends of the winged collar is torpedo shaped for easy penetration through all four layers of material. This design can be seen as a miniature brass capstan no bigger than a fingernail. The whole contraption is covered and further secured when the bow is tied in place. Tying a bow was never a problem for me. It was a knack one learned at drama school, as actors in comedies of manners were frequently called upon to tie a bowtie as part of the action, often without a mirror. It was akin to serving tea in china cups without rattling the props.
Mr. Rollie displayed what was the modern generation of the front collar stud. Instead of the capstan design, it sported two spheres similar to the back stud, but the front, hinged part was the same size as its base button. I saw the sense of it instantly. It would feel more secure. I pocketed my purchases and left.
When I address a job, I try to keep it real, dealing with problems whether they be actual or in the mind. The first thing I looked at was redoing a work in Orson’s great shadow. The fact was that no one in the audience would have seen his rendition, save Mr. Bernstein himself, maybe. That knowledge alone gave me some relief.
I decided to prepare what could be prepared, allay my misgivings about my work, and trust something would happen in the alchemy of the night. I spoke to John Mauceri on the telephone from New York.
“Don’t worry,” he reassured me. “I will be in London for the rehearsals.”
“Rehearsals. When?”
“We have two days, one with the orchestra. Plenty of time.”
Plenty of time. A day?
“I don’t read music, Maestro,” I confessed.
“No problem. I’ll bring you in.”
“Could you get me something to listen to? Where the narrator speaks. Preferably, not Mr. Welles.”
“Yes. Yeah. I’ll get a tape sent. See you in two weeks.”
He was as good as his word. I received the tape. It wasn’t Orson, thank you, God. A girlfriend of mine lent me her portable tape machine and earphones. It became my constant companion. I ran into Prince Andrew in the Burlington Arcade.
“What music you listening to, Terence?” he asked.
I removed an earpiece.
“Learning my words, Your Highness,” I replied.
“What a good idea.”
It was. I don’t think I have known my wordies so well since my Iago days.
I also enlisted the help of my pal Nickolas Grace. Nick, or “Amazing,” as I call him, is one of those undiscovered, for the most part, genii that frequent the showbiz industry in Britain. You may have caught his performance as Anthony Blanche in the original TV version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. He was the character who stuttered so memorably. Nick is the first person I turn to for anything regarding voice or movement. His advice is always of the highest order.
We appeared together in the West End version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the critics had been intent on driving a stake through the heart of Terence, but… “It’s a bad wind that blows no one any good,” as my Granny Kate used to say.
Nick had plenty of experience with orchestras. He’d sung leads in Gilbert and Sullivan and also several versions of Bernstein’s masterpiece, Candide. He told me everyone uses microphones these days. Even the rawest of screamers were miked to the max. Educated voices were the minority.
“You’ll only need a minute with the mike and the sound engineer—on the day.”
I owned up that I’d had virtually no radio offers or voice jobs that other actors supplement their incomes with, despite the fact that I had worked on the breath from every angle east and west most days of my working life. And, as I was in the habit of preparing my roles vocally along with everything else, I had the idea that a dialect of English from a bygone age would be fitting. I likened what I was looking for to the voices that I had listened to with my mother on the wireless during the blackout of the Blitz.
I gave him a sample of some of the narrator’s lines.
“Are you learning it or reading it?” he wanted to know.
“I don’t like it when I am in the audience and a performer reads his lines. There’s no eye contact, less empathy.”
“So. You’re learning them?”
“Yeah. That’s the idea, anyway. I’ve been working on it a lot.”
“Good. Better.” He paused. “You know your delivery is perfect RP (received pronunciation). You’ve managed it without sacrificing the essence of your voice. In fact, all you need to create that wartime delivery is to lean on the ‘i’ vowel. Yeah. That’s what you should do—give the ‘i’ full weight.”
He pronounced, “Evil… the algebra of pure evil.”
It was extremely easy for Amazing. I grimaced.
“Look,” he said. “It’s extra work, a challenge. Go through the text, underline all the ‘i’ vowels. Evil is good because it is followed immediately by an ‘l,’ which you sometimes get lazy with. So, no dark ‘l’s for Lenny. Hey. You taught me about increasing the need.”
His outings at Sadler’s Wells had made him no stranger to staying on the beat.
During the last week before rehearsals, some of my family remarked it was a pity Ethel wasn’t around to see this concert. My mother had played piano by ear, the life and soul of the party. None of her offspring inherited her musical gift, another reason she would have appreciated an outing to the Barbican.
My chum Hester, who’d lent me her portable tape player, had been at Ethel’s bedside during her final days at the Middlesex Hospital. She was my representative amidst the family in my absence and, now, she would take my mother’s seat at the concert.
Maestro Mauceri arrived. We met. We rehearsed south of the river. He brought me in as promised, once. That evening, my chum Hester made me supper at her place. She asked me if I wanted her to take me through my lines, but I felt it was time I trusted my memory. I had done enough. In those days, I was living the food-combining regime, no protein with carbohydrates. That evening, we had salad and rice. During the meal, she commented on the length of my nails.
“Males shouldn’t have long nails; it’s effeminate,” was what she actually said—before setting to work trimming mine.