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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/backwardglancesOOgiel John Gielgud Backward Glances Part One TIMES FOR REFLECTION Part Two DISTINGUISHED COMPANY LIMELIGHT EDITIONS NEW YORK First Limelight Edition July 1990 Copyright © John Gielgud 1972, 1989 Published by arrangement with Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London. Parts of this book were first published in the United States as Distinguished Company in 1972, by Doubleday & Co. First published in its present edition by Hodder and Stoughton Limited in 1989. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gielgud, John, Sir, 1904- Backward glances / John Gielgud. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-87910-140-7 1. Gielgud, John, Sir, 1904- . 2. Gielgud, John, Sir, 1904— —Friends and associates. 3. Actors—Great Britain-Biography. I. Title. PN2598.G45A3 1990 792'.028'o92-dc20 [B] 90-36754 CIP To Gwen and Peggy, my two dear and lovely Juliets CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Foreword ix Times for Reflection 1. Edith Evans: A Great Actress 3 2. Sybil Thorndike: A Great Woman 8 3. Ralph Richardson: A Great Gentleman, A Rare Spirit 13 4. Elizabeth Bergner 17 5. Vivien Leigh 23 6. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies 27 7. Golden Days: The Guitry’s 32 8. Eminent Victorians: Sir Squire Bancroft, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Dame Madge Kendal 37 9. Aunt Mabel Terry-Lewis 41 10. Annie Esmond: The Old Character Actress 45 11. The Wigmaker 48 12. The Tea Ceremony and The Sitwells 52 13. Lady Bountiful 60 14. Queen Mary 63 15. New York: Pauline Lord, John Barrymore, Jane Cowl, Leslie Howard 67 16. Promenade 73 17. Curtain Calls 78 18. Pause and Effect 82 19. W. Graham Robertson 85 20. The Glass of Fashion 88 vi Backward Glances 21. My Favourite Room 91 22. On Acting Shakespeare 94 Distinguished Company 23. Overture - Beginners: Chu Chin Chow, The Shakespeare Tercentenary 105 24. Family Portrait: Fred, Marion, and Ellen Terry 114 To Act a New Part 25. Brother and Sister: Edward and Edith Gordon Craig 125 26. Three Witty Ladies: Mrs Patrick Campbell, Lady Tree, Dame Lilian Braithwaite 134 27. Some Non-Acting Actors: Sir Charles Hawtrey, Allan Aynesworth, Gerald du Maurier, Ronald Squire, A. E. Matthews 148 28. Two Splendid Character Actresses: Ada King, Haidee Wright 155 29. Three Brilliant Eccentrics: Esme Percy, Ernest Thesiger, Robert Farquharson 161 30. Two Exquisite Comediennes: Marie Tempest, Yvonne Arnaud 167 31. Three Remarkable Character Actors: Leslie Faber, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Laughton 175 32. A Brilliant Leading Lady: Gertrude Lawrence 183 33. Two Forceful Actors: Robert Loraine, Claude Rains 187 34. Remarkable Hostesses: Lady Colefax, Lady Cunard 192 35. Music-Halls 197 36. Down to Earth 204 Index 209 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Between pages 54—55 John Gielgud as a boy Ellen Terry and Edith Craig in Henry VIII, 1892 Fred Terry Marion Terry with A. E. Matthews in Peter's Mother, 1906 John Gielgud and Mabel Terry-Lewis in The Importance of Being Earnest, 1929 Edward Gordon Craig, 1956 Lilian Braithwaite and Gerald du Maurier in Nobody's Daughter Madge Titheradge in A Doll's House Between pages 118—119 Lady Tree, 1935 Mrs Patrick Campbell, 1913 Viola Tree, C. B. Cochran, Sasha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps Cedric Hardwicke and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, 1930 Toni Edgard Bruce, Lottie Venne, Leon Quartermaine, Allan Aynesworth and E. Holman Clark in The Circle, 1921 Charles Hawtrey in Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure, 1921 Squire Bancroft, 1883 Willie Clarkson, 1929 W. Graham Robertson Lillah McCarthy and Matheson Lang, 1920 Violet Vanbrugh in Macbeth, 1912 Aubrey Smith, Marie Lohr, Irene Vanbrugh and Henry Daniel in Caroline Vlll Backward Glances Between pages 150-151 Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in Private Lives, 1930 Vivien Leigh John Barrymore as Hamlet Esme Percy Edith Sitwell, 1928 Ernest Thesiger Robert Farquharson in The Cenci, 1922 Ada King in The Queen Was In Her Parlour, 1926 Haidee Wright and Robert Loraine in The Father, 1927 Robert Squire, Yvonne Arnaud and Leslie Faber in By Candle Light, 1928 Marie Tempest, 1906 Elizabeth Bergner and Hugh Sinclair in Escape Me Never Lady Colefax and Rex Whistler, c. 1937 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Messrs Mander and Mitchenson for their invaluable help in supplying the illustrations. I would also like to acknowledge Sotheby’s for permission to reproduce the photograph of Edith Sitwell by Cecil Beaton, and the Radio Times Hulton Picture Library for the photo¬ graph of Elizabeth Bergner. FOREWORD In 1971, when I was acting at Chichester, I celebrated my fiftieth year as a professional player. During my leisure hours that summer I amused myself by concocting a small book of reminiscences, recalling a number of actors and actresses whom I had known and admired in my earlier years, but all of whom are now sadly dead. Since that time I have written various tributes and short pieces for various newspapers and magazines, and now these seem to have accumulated over the years into quite a consider¬ able number. Hodder & Stoughton have thought fit to wish to re-publish these in the form of one book, as well as to reprint my first autobiography Early Stages (1939) and a further book, Stage Directions, which I wrote in 1963. Both are now in paperback. With the help of Edward Thompson, an old friend (and my editor at Heinemann Educational Books who first published the other books), I have chosen and rearranged these later writing efforts of mine into a collected shape. The second part of this book is a direct reprint of my third book Distinguished Company (1972). The first part contains the various pieces, all connected with the theatre (but some only distantly so), and I am giving the whole book the title of Backward Glances, which I hope may convey an appropriate summary of its contents. I have also to thank the original publishers who have allowed me to rescue many of the new excerpts from their archives. John Gielgud, Wotton Underwood, August 1988 Times for Reflection EDITH EVANS: A GREAT ACTRESS How shall we best remember her? As heavenly Rosalind, or the lumbering peasant that was Juliet’s Nurse? As one of her ‘lovelies’ as she used to call them: Millamant, Mrs Sullen, Daphne Laureola, Orinthia in The Apple Cart? Or as one of the working women she drew so well - the maid Gwenny in The Late Christopher Bean, and her two great performances on film, as the saviour of the village in The Last Days of Dolwyn and the crazy old lady in The Whisperers? I first saw her act when I was a schoolboy towards the end of the 1914 war. Then she was playing supporting parts in various long-forgotten plays - spinsters, companions and even mothers in white wigs. The dragonfly had not yet emerged from the cocoon. The eccentric William Poel had discovered her, and cast her as Cressida (after rehearsing her first in several male parts in the same production). It was he who encouraged her to leave the Belgravia hat shop in which she had been working and become a professional actress. At that time she was considered plain, and leading ladies were expected to be beautiful, as they usually were. (Whether they could act as well was of course another matter.) Edith Evans was no beauty in the conventional sense. Her eyes, with their heavy lids, one set slightly lower than the other, gave her face an enigmatic originality. It was a fascinating canvas on which she soon learned to paint any character she chose. 4 Backward Glances In 1923 she was offered the showy part of a pork-packing Duchess with a gigolo in the original West End production of Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters. But she turned it down, saying she refused to be typed in yapid society roles, and decided instead to go to Birmingham, where she triumphed as the Serpent (doubling with the She-Ancient) in Shaw’s Back to Methuselah pentateuch. In her next big part, as Millamant in Congreve’s Way of the World under Nigel Playfair at the Lyric, Hammersmith, she took the town by storm. It was a unique and exquisite performance. She purred and challenged, mocked and melted, showing her changing moods by the subtle shifting angles of her head, neck and shoulders. Poised and cool, she stood like a porcelain figure in a vitrine, as she handled her fan (though she never deigned to open it) in the great love scene, using it for attack or defence, now coquettishly pointing it upwards beneath her chin, now rest¬ ing it languidly against her cheek, while the words flowed on, phrasing and diction balanced in perfect cadences, as she smiled and pouted to deliver her delicious sallies. She showed her superb taste by brilliant timing and control, never stooping to indulge an over-enthusiastic audience, and disdaining any temptation to overstress an emotional moment or allow too many laughs to interrupt the pace of a comic scene. Only tragedy eluded her, and this was perhaps because her nature was essentially sunny and resilient, besides which her voice, however athletic and articulate, lacked deep notes that she could sustain in her lower register. She always refused to attempt Lady Macbeth, whose explicit admission of evil she could not bring herself to accept. She grew to hate her success as Lady Bracknell, though it was perhaps the most popular and famous of all her great impersonations.