To begin with Michael was a walk-on and my understudy in Coward’s Hay Fever and Shaffer’s Black Comedy. We had met at Cambridge, when Michael had come over from Oxford in an OUDS production. Like me he had been to grammar school and acted for Michael Croft. He joined the National Theatre Company just over a year after me, in early 1964, at the time when Albert had joined, and also Ian McKellen, who stayed only a short while.
Michael and I acted together in John Arden’s Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, written in Arden’s abrasive and often incomprehensible Scottish. I had twenty-one lines in the first scene, which I felt utterly ill-quipped to deliver until mentored by Frank Wylie, a real Scottish actor in the company, who pointed out that it was very simple: every time I had an ‘i’ in a word I had to pronounce it as ‘u’. So my line, ‘Ah you’ve won the King but you didna win the kingdom,’ should be said as, ‘Ah you’ve won the Kung but you dudna wun the kungdom!’ It worked a treat, and still does every time I play a Scotsman (which is very rarely).
Ian was in this and he remembers that ‘We were covered in hair, in this scene of such complexity speaking this Lowlands dialect – Derek, David Ryall, Ted Petherbridge and I. It made us all laugh behind our beards. And then Derek, having played his scene, went off to watch the tennis!’
Ian didn’t stay long at the National: there were ‘an awful lot of us jeunes premiers’, too many for him. ‘I got out because I could see there was no future. What with Derek, Jeremy Brett, Ted Petherbridge, John Stride, Ron Pickup, Tony Hopkins, you just had to wait your turn to get the parts.’
Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, starring as it did Dame Edith Evans and Maggie Smith, was one of the biggest hits of these golden years and stayed in the repertoire for a very long time. I was landed with the young juve Simon, my counterpart again being Sarah Miles. Living with her lover, the impresario William Donaldson, Sarah was at the time carrying on a clandestine affair with Sir, which only Noël knew about, and he strongly disapproved. She tried to get Noël to change some of her inadequate and underwritten part, that of Sorel, which offended The Master, and brought down on her fierce retribution from Sir, who didn’t want to put Noël out of humour.
One night after a row with The Master, Sarah gagged on a fish bone, and she left the cast. Noël delivered the parting shot on the effect of the chop bone on her throat: ‘We all heard it at the read-through!’ Noël was directing, or rather non-directing: in fact Noël did no directing, but mesmerised us by his presence into giving good performances. So Sarah repeated her trick of early departure and again abandoned me.
Edith Evans was Judith Bliss. ‘The Dame’ – God rest her soul – engendered little love in the cast. The battle lines were at once drawn between the legendary Dame, sadly now a bit past her prime and shaky on her lines, and Maggie at the very first dress rehearsal. For Act II Maggie wore a ravishing black cocktail number with an exotic, fish-tail fan behind. When The Dame plonked her elbow down on the sofa where Maggie was seated, there issued forth a great tearing sound and off came the fish-tail fan.
‘Oh, that looks so much better!’ said Dame Edith.
When Maggie came on next it was with a large cigarette holder and she made a gesture of shedding a longer fish tail with the holder, twisted round and raised the holder in triumph. As well as being wary of Maggie, The Dame was wary of us youngsters, giving us notes, summonses to her dressing room, and tellings off. She did not like us getting laughs, declaring regally, ‘I’m like a well-bred racehorse and when I’m not expecting it (she meant a laugh she did not get) – I rear! I rear!’
As a first-night present Noël gave her a box with a box inside, with another box inside this, and another and another until it got down to a tiny box. Inside this were just two lumps of sugar.
She kept slipping up on one line in particular: ‘On a clear day you can see as far as Marlowe,’ saying instead, ‘On a clear day you can see Marlowe.’
Noël pulled her up sharp. ‘If you can see Marlowe, you can probably see Beaumont and Fletcher as well, but it’s not the line I wrote!’
To be fair to her, we had all been told before rehearsal to learn our lines and the message never reached her, so from the start she felt at a disadvantage.
Before we opened at the Old Vic we had a week at the Opera House in Manchester. Given The Dame’s variable humour, Noël had had the forethought to ask Maggie to understudy her. Just before we opened, Dame Edith refused to go on, claiming she suffered from ‘a dropped stomach’, and no saliva. Hearing this, Noël had gone to her room in the hotel, apparently shaken her like a rat, and told her she was a disgrace to the acting profession. A doctor had then been summoned to visit her, in spite of her allegiance (like Harold Hobson) to Christian Science, and had endeavoured to convince her to take a bromide.
‘Bromide?’ exclaimed Noël. ‘What she needs is a firecracker up her arse,’ and he sat down at the grand piano in his suite and bashed out ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. I wasn’t there, but did think by now they were ganging up on her.
When The Dame heard Maggie had been asked by Noël to take over her role of Judith Bliss, and had played a midnight dress rehearsal when The Dame failed to appear, sending her up so mischievously that Olivier and Noël were lying around on the floor in fits of laughter, she miraculously recovered. With help taking her through the lines from her old friend Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, also a Christian Scientist, she opened on the Monday.
When at last it came to the first night at the Old Vic, Noël gave a party in the dress circle bar. Mum and Dad came with Aunt Hilda and Henry, the only time all four were together to see something of mine. Judy Garland was there, and Rudolph Nureyev, and they were thrilled to meet them. I introduced Noël first to Mum, then to Dad. I was about to say, ‘This is Aunt Hilda,’ but stopped short because I saw The Master looking at her. No one said anything. Then he spoke:
‘You look like a Hilda to me.’
She practically fainted with joy. He had guessed her name.
At the Vic, The Dame and Maggie occupied adjoining dressing rooms. One matinée day during the run, between shows I could hear Maggie playing rather more loudly than necessary her favourite ‘Baby Love’ by The Supremes, so The Dame couldn’t have a nap and would be too tired to cause trouble in the evening performance. I even overheard The Dame berating Maggie backstage:
‘I understand you are covering [i.e. understudying] the role of Judith Bliss,’ she said, as if she did not already know. ‘I should like to tell you, here and now, that I shall not be off!’
To this Maggie answered in a flash, ‘Well, I sincerely hope not, because the cossies won’t fit!’
Yet The Dame was, after all, amazing, instinctive, commanding, and Maggie was to some extent standing up to her for everyone else.
Once we opened Hay Fever Noël invited each member with a speaking part individually out for a night on the town. My turn came and we spent a lovely evening together. We went to the theatre, then back to the Savoy where he was living, for dinner, then up to his suite for a nightcap. He reminded me how years before he had seen me play Edward II in the Marlowe production, and how much he had enjoyed it. The gossip was riveting, and it grew late (it was half past one), and next day I was rehearsing.
Still green as grass, I rose to leave.
‘Derek,’ said The Master, ‘might I ask a very personal question?’
All atremble lest the lovely evening was about to be spoiled by a Spriggs-like lunge, I stood my ground.
‘Are you circumcised?’
‘No, no, no,’ I stuttered in answer. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘What a pity. What a great pity!’ Noël answered mournfully. ‘You’re a very fine actor, Derek, but you’ll never be a great actor until you’re circumcised.’
‘But why?’ I asked frowning. By now, not at all knowing but fearing where this was leading, I was edging towards the door.
‘Freedom, dear boy,’ Noël explained airily, mystifyingly. ‘Freedom!’
And that was it. But freedom from what? I had a bet with myself he had said this before, but I was out of the door and away.
Next day I considered further what he might have meant. The Master must know something I didn’t, and maybe I should check myself into the London Clinic immediately. I did so want to be a great actor! And I was still far away from achieving this. I told this story to everyone in the canteen who would listen. The majority verdict was that at my age it would be too painful. I decided to carry on risking it as I was.
Michael York ‘covered’ for me as Simon in Hay Fever but never once went on to experience among other delights the pleasure of Maggie, a picture of enamelled nauseated horror, stroking my horribly sticky hair, and finding her fingers covered in grease.
While the ‘as luck would have it’ principle applied to me, to Michael it was ‘as looks would have it’. These stunningly handsome looks provided him with a springboard into his career, the glamour that demands attention and reward. Films are about looking at people, and Michael was soon to become a successful star.
Here again it seemed as a worshipper of beauty I was falling for a very attractive but straight man, so it was, as far as a sexual relationship went, unrequited, but a deep and close friendship. We greatly enjoyed being together, which was rather frustrating on my side as I wanted more, which was not forthcoming. It was virtually a prequel to the Sally Bowles–Brian Roberts relationship in Cabaret which Michael was later to film with Liza Minnelli!
When he was my understudy in Black Comedy we shared a cottage outside Chichester, and then shared a flat together in Neville’s Place, Earls Court, for a while. In the break between seasons after Black Comedy, Michael and I decided to drive to Italy in my soft-top Triumph Herald with the top off, and on the way back we passed through Switzerland.
‘Let’s call on Noël Coward,’ I suggested. Noël had said if ever I was passing through Switzerland to visit him at Les Avants, his home there, and he would be delighted to see me. We duly found where The Master lived, and knocked on his door. A butler answered.
‘It’s Derek Jacobi,’ I said. ‘Sir Noël told me, “If ever you are in Switzerland, do call on me.”’ The butler left us to confer with The Master, came back a little later and gave the reply: ‘Delighted to see you.’
In we went and at once Noël came over and embraced me. ‘Derek, darling, how lovely to see you! How lovely to –’
He turned to Michael and did a triple-take.
That was it! I was immediately ushered into the sitting room with a drink, and Michael was taken off on a tour of the house. I was the wallflower!
History now repeated itself in a strange fashion, for Michael and I ended up sharing digs in the same cottage in Shottery near Stratford belonging to Julia Hasty, where I had stayed eight years before with Richard Kay.
Getting very drunk one night, we jumped over the gate and pissed in Anne Hathaway’s garden. I’d like to have imagined it could have happened but it never did. Wasn’t this a further echo of my previous experience with Richard at Shottery? At some moment in the farcical proceedings, Michael was so drunk he projectile vomited across the room. That really put an end to any passion which may have started.
On the holiday in Italy we had been sharing beds but nothing ever clicked there, which again had been frustrating, but it was better than nothing, because I was madly in love with him.
Michael soon after met Patricia McCallum, a photographer, some years older than him, and they married in 1967. I was best man at the wedding and so I might claim that I gave him away. By the 1970s and 80s, after Accident and Cabaret, he had become very famous, but he started to live the trappings of fame and not the work, to my regret. One instance was when he was cast as Benedick in Much Ado opposite Penelope Keith for the BBC television series of Shakespeare’s plays, and would miss rehearsals because he was dining with Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, or the Aga Khan. What they filmed was so poor they pulled it, then remade it with Robert Lindsay.
I was outraged as well as saddened by a dinner I attended with Pat and Michael at their house in Eaton Terrace, where I met Angela Lansbury for the first time. They now had the butler, maid and cook. We finished our first course. Pat would ring a little bell, a flunkey would come in. It was all so pisselegant. Pat was outwardly sweet but she tended to shoo away his girlfriends and his close friends – though he was still so handsome that I’m not surprised if she had felt possessive.
However, I wonder if that had an adverse effect on his acting potential.