The Sir John Gielgud Centenary Gala
I was taken by a
thoughtful friend for a first-ever meeting with John Gielgud in 1978; it turned
into an eight-hour lunch for three, and he barely drew breath. Once when he
did, it was to ask what I had been doing at the RSC lately; I was glad, as I
thought I was having a natty season and he would be impressed. One by one, with
magnificent moues of distaste, he dismissed each of my parts as
unplayable, naming the most notable failures he’d seen in each – including his
own. It’s typical of him that this seemed to me to be an entirely friendly and
companionable thing to do; his acute pride always included a presumption of
likely failure for all of us.
What luck to have
known him for twenty years thereafter, to have worked with him on and off, and
been periodically reminded of this gift of his, both paternal and fraternal,
his correct sense of his own consequence balanced by an unforced ability to
welcome you. It wasn’t so alarming to do one of his old parts in front of him
because you knew his interest was genuine; it wasn’t hurtful when he resigned
as a patron of my English Shakespeare Company after a
year, because we both knew how much he disapproved of our modern dress and had
only wanted to give us a good start. Later on we filmed in Tuscany, John
Mortimer’s ‘Summer’s
Lease’, and he had to break off to go back to England for surgery. He
shouldn’t have come back as soon as he did, in days rather than weeks; but he
knew we’d run out of things to shoot without him, so back he bustled. He
continued working as if he had only paused for thought, despite his evident
frailty; as he got going, he literally seemed to puff up with air, the camera
rapidly turning him into his old self. It occurred to me, and continued to,
that as long as he kept working and talking he would probably live for ever.
However, while we
were out there, Laurence Olivier died. When the news broke, John was being
slightly upstaged on the set by Fyodor Chaliapin, the son of the legend, then
nearly 90, his voice, shaving off the Great Larynx, singing out in the silent
room. In any case, everyone at that moment was trying not to look at John.
“AAAAAAGH!” cried Chaliapin, raising his hands before him and clapping them
together in dismay. When they separated, a large fly lay horribly crushed in
one of his palms. Now, when I think of the passing of Olivier, this crushed fly
is what is see; but what I hear is Gielgud’s voice later in the day, talking
quietly about his relationship with Olivier, his admiration quite untinged with
envy, his slightly battered love for him, stressing always the things Olivier
could do that he couldn’t, never the other way around. Generous, humorous, sad
and undeceived, the sound was familiar; I was listening to the voice of Hamlet.
(The above is
Michael Pennington’s contribution to the programme for the Sir John Gielgud
Centenary Gala.)
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