Interview L 27 Before Fawlty Towers, Andrew Sachs’S Biggest Drama Was His Escape from the Nazis
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JEWISH CHRONICLE, May 11, 2007 INTERVIEW L27 Before Fawlty Towers, Andrew Sachs’s biggest drama was his escape from the Nazis. By Jenni Frazer. Photo: Michael Donald Manuel’s German roots It took a while, and Andrew was INTERVIEW still in Berlin during Kristallnacht, in November 1938: “I remember coming home from school and seeing Storm- ndrew Sachs has a slightly troopers breaking shop windows and evil gleam in his eye. He looting.” Another vivid memory is of a is speaking of his secret man with a professional business-plate ambition to work on Coro- outside his house, getting in and out nation Street: “I fancy being of a taxi. At one point, Sachs recalls, ANorris’s twin brother. We would drive the man ripped the metal plate off the Rita Fairclough mad.” Playing the wall, threw it to the pavement and twin brother of the supernerd played then gently smoothed it out before by Malcolm Hebden in Britain’s lon- leaving Berlin while the Stormtroop- gest-running soap would certainly be ers rampaged around the corner. an interesting departure three decades In December, the Sachs family took on from the role with which Sachs is a train to Hamburg and then sailed irresistibly identified in the public to Southampton on the SS Manhat- mind — the demented Spanish waiter, tan. The family started off in Hatch Manuel, in John Cleese’s incompa- End, Middlesex, eventually settling rable sitcom, Fawlty Towers. in London, in Swiss Cottage. His It always comes as a shock to realise father, who was interned briefly as an that only a dozen programmes were enemy alien, was, says Sachs, hardly made in the Fawlty canon. Cleese and ever there because he was working so his then wife Connie Stevens, who hard. In 1943, his father was found co-wrote the scripts, refused to write to be suffering from cancer. He died more. As Sachs observes, Manuel took the following year, aged 59. It was, up just three months of his time in a says Sachs, “a dreadful time” — the 50-year-long acting career. week before his father died, his elder We are sitting in the somewhat teenage brother, Tom, had a horrific Dickensian offices of Sachs’s agent in accident in a machine toolshop, sever- Covent Garden — and Dickensian is ing the fingers of one hand. appropriate, since Sachs is fresh from By the end of the war, Sachs was an audition for the role of Marley’s left without any discernible ambition. Ghost in a new Hollywood version of Except, he says with a wink, he was Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. “That desperate to be an explorer in Africa. would be a dream,” he says, smiling, Finally, enthused by a boy at school his only previous foray into Holly- who had appeared in several films as wood being a flight to LA 10 years ago an extra, Sachs joined the Aida Foster to record a two-line part in a Belgian agency in Golders Green and appeared part-animation film. in several films, including Nicholas This week, Sachs was the guest at Nickleby and The Guinea Pig, with the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s Richard Attenborough. “Liberation” event to mark VE Day, After a couple of preparatory terms reading excerpts from a letter sent at the Royal Academy of Dramatic home by a liberator of Bergen-Belsen. Art (“It was all about the history of It is one of a number of activities in the theatre. I didn’t want classes in which he frequently participates for that. I wanted to know how to cope the LJCC’s Holocaust education de- with mass adulation”), he went off partment, speaking to survivors. to be an assistant stage manager in Slightly to his own surprise, he says, weekly rep. the man born Andreas Siegfried Sachs In May 1949, he was called up for in Berlin in April 1930 is a survivor, national service in the tank corps. Two too — the youngest of three children years later (during which he never ac- of a Jewish father and a “completely tually entered a tank), Sachs returned Aryan” mother. “So half of me is Jew- to rep, in Worthing, before landing ish,” Sachs explains, gently. “Some- jobs in theatre and radio, building times I think it might be the better up a reputation as a character actor. half.” By 1975, when John Cleese came to His father came from “a family of him with the scripts for Fawlty Towers, extremely rich bankers” but had no Sachs was playing the lead in the long- real interest in money. His mother’s running West End production of No father was a writer and one of her Sex, Please, We’re British. He had also brothers a sculptor. “My father had begun to write his own scripts. Sachs been married before,” Sachs reveals, laughs as he remembers asking Cleese “and had stepchildren from his first if, in the interests of an authentic ac- marriage. One of his stepsons joined cent, the character of Manuel couldn’t the Luftwaffe and was killed just as the be German. This was immediately war began. My father, as a Jew, was not rejected by Cleese: “A German waiter very popular with him.” ANDREW SACHS IN BRIEF would have made sure everything He tells a sweet story of a phone call worked properly, John said.” received by his mother just before she Born: Berlin, April 1930 Brother and sister: Tom, hapless Spanish waiter His Jewish identity: He The rest is TV history. Yet, says, was due to marry. It was from a man three years older, lives in Fawlty Towers (1976- does a lot of work for Sachs, “I don’t often get recognised claiming to be “an official from the Married: 1962, Melody in Toronto; Barbara, 79), but has a huge cor- Jewish organisations, in the street. I was in a Tom Stoppard Vatican who had got wind of the fact Lang (who appeared in five years older, lives in pus of work as an actor some of which, he says, play, Jumpers — highly intellectual, that she was going to marry a Jew. He the Basil the Rat episode Delaware. Sachs is “very and writer, including The think he is “an errant great production, packed houses. One warned her very strongly against do- of Fawlty Towers ), three close” to both Gingerbread Man, That Jew”, though he doesn’t day after the show, an elderly couple ing any such thing, a good girl from a children: Bill and John Peter Kay Thing, The Bill. consider himself Jewish. waiting outside collared me for my German Catholic family. My mother from her first marriage; Career: Dominated by his Narrated Ricky Gervais He reckons to have lost 50 autograph… The man said: ‘I must was shaking. She reeled into the next Kate; four grandchildren portrayal of Manuel, the Meets Larry David relatives in the Holocaust congratulate you on your perform- room — just in time to see my father ance.’ And I said, ‘Where were you putting the phone down…” sitting?’ He said ‘No, no… as Manuel.’ In their comfortable home in Berlin, Sachs been happy to go somewhere else, but his feisty Sachs’s father was bundled off by the police, He’d just sat through two-and-a-half hours of says, he and his brother and sister had a blissfully mother insisted that they went inside. leaving his wife and children in the restaurant really challenging theatre, but…” happy childhood. He defined himself neither as “So they found us a table, a discreet one. But in a state of “deep shock”. Eventually, someone Somewhere in the world, every day, Fawlty Aryan or Jewish — until politics intruded into during the meal the police came in to check from the restaurant escorted the family home, Towers is transmitted, sometimes all 12 episodes the eight-year-old’s world. He and his best friend everyone’s documents. I remember his name; though Sachs remembers that, halfway across the in one televisual festival. Sachs still gets royal- Ralph had spent happy hours together collecting it was Captain Schneider, all in black. He came square towards their house, as the reality of the ties but, as he only got £150 an episode, he is not scrap metal for Hitler. “One day Ralph said, ‘My straight over to us — maybe we’d been pointed situation hit her, his mother collapsed. exactly rolling in money from the programme. father says I’m not allowed to play with you any out — and asked for my dad’s papers. Of course, A contact of Sachs’s father in the police was Instead, he has made a successful theatre and more. My dad says your dad is Jewish.’ And I they saw the red J [for Jew] in his documents. prevailed on to pull what strings he could to get TV career, ranging from his own plays — includ- said, ‘Yes? So?’ ‘My dad says the Jews don’t like That brightened their day. Then they made him him released. Plans were immediately drawn up ing one at the Chichester Festival — to making Hitler,’ Ralph said. I couldn’t understand it... but empty his pockets, and in his wallet they found to get Sachs senior out of Germany. well-received programmes for the BBC. One, that was the end of my friendship with Ralph.” a newspaper cutting. It was a satirical version of Britain was chosen because his father had a Berliners, which he co-wrote, traced contempo- One day in September 1938, the family went Little Red Riding Hood where she was the Ger- colleague in the insurance business who had set- raries from his German childhood.