Daily Book Excerpt: Entertainment Biography/Memoir:
My Name Escapes Me
I know some people were disappointed by this book because there doesn’t seem to be much in it. It’s just a year in the life of Alec Guinness, his diary entries from his 82nd year. So not much is going on. He has lunches with old friends, he goes to mass and writes about the sermons (he was a devout Catholic), he and his wife enjoy their pets … sometimes he goes in to London for public appearances … he comments on the news a little bit … So I think some people felt the book to be a little thin.
I loved it. I love to read people’s diaries, though – it’s one of my favorite kinds of books … and when you read someone’s diary, you have to let go of looking for a narrative. You have to succumb to the everyday ups and downs we all experience, that may seem random, or chaotic. It’s interesting to me that Guinness chose to publish a book this way … with such an incredible career, I would love to hear more about it (from his perspective) – his working life, how he worked on a part, his experiences with different directors, all that – but this is not the book for that. I guess I knew that going in, so I wasn’t disappointed.
My Name Escapes Me is also honest, in a really refreshing way. Guinness obviously just handed over his diaries as they were … and let the not-so-flattering stuff remain. Or – it’s not that it’s not flattering, it’s that it’s so honest about himself it sometimes is like a punch in the stomach. “How I regret myself so often,” he writes. He writes about his Catholic faith, the masses, his contemplations on Holy Days. He seems to really be hard on himself at times (he’s rude to a woman sitting next to him in church for whatever reason and he is so upset about his behavior he has to write about it later in his diary: “I feel like I ruined Palm Sunday for both of us.”) I love that kind of honesty. Wow.
So while I would love to read, you know, a real biography of the man – this is a quiet intellectually satisfying read … and you get glimpses of who Alec Guinness was as an actor. He’s not sure if he will ever act again (at the time of this diary) – but there are moments when thoughts about it start percolating up again. It’s like he can’t help it. Someone mentions to him a possible opportunity – not even concrete yet – and he can’t help it: his imagination starts to go. That’s the kind of excerpt I chose. I like to see how it’s not even a question of the opportunity being real or not … that’s the whole thing when you’re an actor. You have to prepare for an audition and you have to want it. It takes time. You can’t just throw it together. I just like how automatic it is for him here in this excerpt … showing that he has lived his entire life in service to this craft, and there are some things that just come, you don’t have to work at it. He has been an actor long enough that he knows the questions to ask about the part (to ask to himself, I mean … investigative questions) … and his curiosity is alive and well.
Alec Guinness gave what I feel is one of the best performances by a male actor in the history of cinema in Bridge Over the River Kwai. I’d put it up there with any of Brando’s greatest moments. And I just love in the excerpt below, how … even despite himself …. his imagination starts going. He has no other choice.
Look at how he imagines himself into that part. Look at how DETAILED it is. Look at how before-sleep mental meanderings can be some of the most essential work that an actor does. John Strasberg (son of Lee Strasberg) told us in his classes, “Always leave room for dreams. Create a dream-space around the character. Inhabit your own dream.”
This is the kind of thing Strasberg was talking about.
EXCERPT FROM My Name Escapes Me
Sunday 19 November
Holy Communion was brought to the house this morning for M. There is always a special good feeling about this; a particular domestic blessing. I was scared the dogs would be unwelcoming with loud barks but they were absolutely quiet.
Yesterday evening Keith Baxter for dinner, who bravely risked my attempt at an Irish stew. It was O.K., but hadn’t enough white pepper. Always difficult to know what to drink with it. Whiskey, for preference, I think, but I didn’t offer that as Keith was to drive home. So we settled for champagne throughout the evening and it worked admirably. Not what you could call Potato Famine fare.
Keith asked me what my reaction would be if offered Friar Laurence in a production of Romeo he is thinking of. I said, which is sadly true, that I’d be fearful of being able to learn so many lines; also that the long speech the Friar has at the end, when he tells the assembled cast and the audience all that they have witntessed in the past two hours, is very tedious. I have seen weary actors trying to look interested and astonished at all the revelations and failing desperately. However, after I had gone to bed I had one of my somewhat insane fancies.
In a half-awake state I saw Fr. L. dressed correctly (for once) as a Franciscan, entering with his cowl pulled over his head. According to the lines it is first light, pre sun-up, and he is alone. He might appear as a rather sinister figure – Death perhaps, with a pruning knife instead of a scythe. He carries, of course, his osier basket of wild flowers and herbs. He starts with the rather pretty speech, in rhyming couplets, about the good and baleful properties of various flowers (and curiously enough, of stones) before he is joined by Romeo. He doesn’t see Romeo to begin with but, picking up a flower, says, ‘Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power.’ The speech ends with the words, ‘Full soon the canker death eats up that plant,’ and Romeo says, ‘Good morrow, father!’ Laurence acknowledges this with a blessing, ‘Benedicte.’ That is the moment, I think, when he should throw back his cowl and appear as the ordinary man he is. (I have written to Keith suggesting half a dozen actors who would be revealed satisfactorily, rather than me.) There is more to the part than I had realized.
In today’s Observer is a large photograph of a youngish man wearing pyjamas and looking sleepy. No explanation. After some thought I realized it was a still of me in the film of Priestley’s Last Holiday.
A few days ago, somewhere, there was an equally large photo from the dismaying A Passage to India. Again it was me, in Hindu garb, and underneath it said it me as Aziz. Not at all. Aziz was played by the admirable, young, handsome Indian actor Victor Banerjee. It seems the only press photographs we can rely on are of the Princess of Wales in gym work-out clothes. Aziz, of course, is a Muslim.
Wednesday 22 November
To London yesterday for a day and a night. Matthew came down to hold the fort here. Bank, a haircut, household shopping. Lunched alone at Wilton’s, wolfing an excellent Sole Colbert.
In early evening to a friend’s flat where I made my long overdue confession to a holy ad illuminating priest. It was a memorable experience which gently sponged away all my recent irascibility, anxieties and spiritual turmoil. Perhaps kneeling at a dining-room table is more relaxing than the upright coffin of an elaborately carved confessional. It would be good to think that from now on I shall spread only sweetness, light and understanding, but I fear I know myself too well. The bad habits of a lifetime, when tackled head on, seem only to bend, not break.
Dined with Alan B. National Gallery talk and wonderment over the palace drama which has riven the nation – in my opinion into the knowing and observant quarter of the population on one side, and the moist-eyed lovers of popular entertainment on the other. It is a series that is likely to run and run.
Thursday 23 November
A grey day. I have been thinking about Friar Laurence; or, rather, not about Fr. L. in particular but more to do with the prescience Shakespeare shows in some of the plays. Is it deliberate, accidental or wholly unconscious? Probably just the way his mind worked. In Macbeth, of course, it is deliberate. The first encounter with the witches contains an evil prophecy; their appearance brings to the surface his vaulting ambition, which possibly he hasn’t fully recognized until then.
In Antony and Cleopatra, at the beginning of the play, the Soothsayer tells Charmian’s future by reading her hand. He says, ‘You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.’ Charmian’s comment on that is, ‘O excellent! I love long life better than figs.’ At the end of the play the Clown brings Cleopatra a basket of figs in which are nestled the asps which will kill her, and a few minutes later will kill Charmian.
I like to think the same actor played the Soothsayer and the Clown. It would make a good double, as well as working on the audience’s unconscious memory of figs and death.
How could one by disappointed by the diary of Alec Guinness? Insights into the mind of one of our best film actors–and by “our” I mean the world’s, in the 20th century… from KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS to STAR WARS: simply marvelous in everything.
Pearl
I think if you went into it thinking it would be something else (and many seemed to) – thinking it would be more typical of other actor memoirs, etc. – of course you would be disappointed. The disappointment seemed to come from expectation … “I thought it would be a book like THIS … instead I get a book like this!”
I certainly understand disappointment coming from a sense of expectation like that … but I don’t agree, in this case.
I loved it. I loved his thoughts on the books he was reading, the sermons he listened to – and there are a couple of anecdotes in the book (particularly one involving Vincent Price’s wife) which made me laugh out loud.
And I just am in love with today’s excerpt … and how he imagines, almost like a director, the first entrance of Friar Laurence … It;s like it just pops into his head, fully formed … just a beautiful thing, and says a lot about who he is as an actor.
Oh you can say it, “Jonathan’s an idiot.” I was disappointed by the book because yes, I was hoping for something else. I love Guiness, no question about that, I just didn’t find many of the entries that interesting. They seemed repetitive but I did enjoy the breezy, honest writing. I didn’t dislike it, I was just wanted more. My reaction was probably all wrong. I flip through it often so maybe I like it better than I think I do.
JONATHAN’S AN IDIOT!
No, just kidding.
The main reaction I heard from other people was like you: one of disappointment coming from hoping it would be something else … I get that. I’ve had that with things before.
Just not with this book.
I don’t think I expected anything else from it, so I just enjoyed it for what it was … and while I would love to read a real “life as an actor” autobiography from him, I didn’t expect My Name Escapes Me to be that.
But I don’t think people who didn’t like it are idiots!!
:)
My cousin gave me this book as a gift years ago and I loved it. I loved his daily routines and I wanted to sit with them and have tea by the garden ..
As fond as I am of Guinness, I must admit that I was somewhat put off by those entries in which he savages people pestering him about Obi-Wan. I seem to remember one in particular (it might have been in another volume) in which he was quite rude about some little kid who wrote for his autograph. Of course, if I had a career such as his and felt that the only impression I was leaving on the wider culture was in my role as a “Jedi”, I probably would have been pretty churlish, too.
It occurred to me not long ago while watching Galaxy Quest to wonder if Alan Rickman didn’t have Guinness floating around in the back of his mind.
Yeah, when the book came out I remember that that particular section got a lot of attention, similar to yours
I wasn’t put off by it at all. Nothing against Obi Wan – I love him in that movie … but to me it would be like Marlon Brando only being remembered for his turn in Superman. Or Joan Crawford only being remembered for Faye Dunaway’s imitation of her in Mommie Dearest. Oh, but wait, as of now – that mainly IS what Crawford is remembered for! Never mind Sudden Fear or Mildred Pierce or A Woman’s Face!! It’s just about the wire hangers!
It’s funny that your last two first-person memoirs have been of Sir Alec Guinness and Charles Grodin, because they have that similar problem among casual movie fans – dolts like me. I remember Grodin for a few things, but first is for the Great Muppet Caper. “Theives aren’t breathing down your neck!” But a pro nails that part as well as the “important” ones.
Same with Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars and Bridge on the River Kwai – he’s a pro, he nails them both. And while it certainly isn’t fair to be remembered ONLY for framing a Muppet for theft, or for space opera, I think that it’s sort of nice that they made such an impression that they were remembered for those things. They didn’t treat it as a throwaway bit while they were doing it.
Sure, they’re great in everything! I love all the Muppet movies with these awesome cameos … it becomes such a fun guessing game!
I don’t speak for the “casual” movie fans, obviously. That’s not my perspective, and not where I write from.
I like having context and history – and there are some films that seem, flat out, more important (no quotation marks around important for me)… And context is important to me. So that I am aware that Orson Welles is not just the guy in the wine commercials, and Michael Caine isn’t just the guy in Muppet Christmas Carol (although I think he’s the best Scrooge I’ve ever seen).
It reminds me of a hysterical moment playing a celebrity guessing game with my friends – where you had to make the other person say the celeb you had, and you only had 30 seconds to do it. So careers were boiled down ALARMINGLY which led to some hilarious moments.
For example, Marilyn Monroe – a woman with a diverse and interesting career (when looked at closely) – was boiled down to: “Blonde. Bombshell. Dead.”
And my friend Steven had picked “Helen Hayes” – and his clue to Mitchell was – “She was in all the Herbie the Love Bug movies” – and of course Mithcell screamed out immediately HELEN HAYES. We howled about this later. Helen Hayes was one of the biggest stars of the stage America has ever had. She played everything. Mitchell was like, “She’s the First Lady of the American Theatre and we have boiled her down to ‘The Herbie the Love Bug Lady’.”
hahahaha
So that’s fine for just a game (and also quite funny) – but not fine for me as a movie-watcher, and for cinephiles like myself. I like the whole picture.
Guinness did not measure his career by monetary success, and he also did not measure his career by appearing in a cultural phenomenon like Star Wars. He thought about playing parts like King Lear, pondering Friar Laurence, and pondering the meaning of 12th Night. Star Wars? Bah. It was tripe compared to all of that. It was just a job to him, a very welcome job for a man his age. He didn’t babble about Joseph Campbell – he didn’t think the material warranted it. He had played HAMLET, after all. He’s an actor. He wore a silly brown cloak. He was surprised by the film’s success (like Harrison Ford was as well).
And it is his lack of reverence the fanboys cannot forgive. Because they need to be validated. Oh well. You can’t win them all.
I loved Star Wars, by the way. But to me it’s a teensy blip in the career of a great great actor.
And speaking of Charles Grodin – I think he has another book out, which I want to get … and is doing quite a bit of writing, and movie reviewing … but I do miss his acting.
Anyone remember Seems Like Old Times – with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn and Grodin? God, so so funny.
Nightfly – WOW. I sound WAY more snotty than I intended! What the hell is my problem?? I just re-read it hours after I posted it and it reads WAY differently now!! What I really meant to say was: I get why Guinness might be disgruntled at being remembered for what is, essentially, a bit part … and it’s funny: the other actors were virtual unknowns … so it made their careers … but he had this enormous body of work, so Star Wars just didn’t mean as much to him. It was a gig. A gig that happened to hit it huge. He always thought Star Wars was rather silly.
I know that my first introduction to him was thru Star Wars and it was only later that I went back and saw many of his greater parts … but if Star Wars introduces him to a younger generation (in the same way that the Muppet Movies can do) then that is, ultimately, very cool.
The Books: “A Lotus Grows In the Mud” (Goldie Hawn)
Next book on my “entertainment biography” shelf: A Lotus Grows in the Mud, by Goldie Hawn I have Annika to thank for making me pick up this lovely book. I want to give it to all my friends – mainly…
Sheila – don’t worry, I took it from where you meant to come from, I think. Didn’t find it snotty – just passionate! (Though I am laughing at your reaction – “What the hell is my problem?” HAHAHAHAHA) I love hearing how the true cinephiles watch a movie and devour the parts that make up the whole. You really feed my understanding of entertainment, and movies in particular.
I get the mental picture of Guinness and Peter Cushing sitting around at the wrap party, a little set apart from the crowd, and looking at each other, and then just ROARING with laughter at the thought of all the bizarre costumes and cheesy dialogue they just went through, and the wild swings in a long, successful career… and then one of them says, “This is going to close in a week, we’d better cash the cheque now.”
And then the whole thing becomes a cultural happening, and the two of them are probably thinking, “Thank goodness they killed my character!” (Not that it worked for Guinness, but still.)
Really, Guinness is the most extreme example of this I can think of, where someone of his stature wound up losing his professional identity so completely in one throwaway role. Others either didn’t have the stature, or wouldn’t have had much of a career without that role. FWIW I think he’s right not to give in to the fanboys on this, though I also agree with you – it’s cool if it makes people look deeper into his work. He was a big reason that it hit that big. He helped make it work, silly as it was. That’s a pro and a great actor.
Star Wars just flat out would not have worked as well as it did without his performance. (And James Earl Jones’ voice). Mark Hamill was so, well, GREEN … and it worked for his character, but his inexperience really showed … so to have him team up with this giant of an actor … it really just helped, I thought.
And I love the image of him and Cushing snickering at the wrap party – “Thank God THAT piece of shite is over …” and then being amazed by the response.
Nightfly – speaking of fanboy insanity, you’ll probably get a kick out of this.
Hahahahaha!
The Books: “My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor” (Alec Guinness)
Next book on my “entertainment biography” shelf: My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor, by Alec Guinness I know some people were disappointed by this book because there doesn’t seem to be much in it. It’s just…