{"id":325,"date":"2004-01-10T13:51:47","date_gmt":"2004-01-10T18:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2019-05-27T21:11:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T01:11:19","slug":"for-bill-mccabe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"Alec Guinness&#8217;s Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0140277455&#038;asins=0140277455&#038;linkId=BXV3QRG7D5ZCL6WU&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nAlec Guinness has published a volume of his journals which I absolutely love &#8211; It is called <i>My Name Escapes Me<\/i>. and is made up only of entries from 1995 and 1996 &#8211; Only a year from his life, and basically from way after he has mostly retired.  So it is not a journal of ambition, or great gossipy stories &#8211; just ruminations of a great actor, who loves his garden, loves going to Mass, loves reading with his wife.  His humor is so delicate, so wonderful.  Perhaps a bit slow for those looking for more juicy fare, but I found it a pleasant read.<\/p>\n<p>My particular favorite, my favorite in the whole book, is the anecdote he tells about Coral Browne, wife of Vincent Price, on Feb. 27, 1996, but here are some excerpts.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<i>Tuesday 21 February<\/i><br \/>\nToday I have picked up a rather good notice in an American film trade paper for a performance I have never given in a film I have never heard of.  It says that I am &#8216;almost unrecognizable&#8217; in the film.  I like the &#8216;almost&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><i>Sunday 26 February<\/i><br \/>\nThe amount of space in the papers given up to Stephen Fry&#8217;s defection from the Simon Gray play <i>Cell Mates<\/i> is astonishing.  His reported faxed statements from the Continent have been somewhat elaborate, very apologetic and sympathy-seeking.  Well, he will get the sympathy he needs, I&#8217;m sure, for what is presumably a sort of breakdown; but I can&#8217;t help fedeling an actor should be made of sterner stuff.  Most actors are as tough as old boots.  As Shakespeare knew.  <i>&#8220;After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;What do you want to be when you grow up, Billy?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I hope to be an actor.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;But Billy, actors don&#8217;t grow up.  And you, Lancelot?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;A drama critic.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Really?  That&#8217;s unusual.  I hope you won&#8217;t find it a bore after a year or two.  And you, Penelope, if you ever grow up?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I&#8217;m going to be a director, a director, a director.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;You always were a chatterbox, Penelope.  Not one of you has said you want to be a playwright.  How sad.  All of you wish to put the cart before the horse.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><i>Tuesday 14 March<\/i><br \/>\nWhen British actors go to the USA to sell their wares and set about their lawful business, the press in New York, LA, Boston or wherever treats them with great courtesy.  It is a pity that American performers visiting this country aren&#8217;t welcomed in the same way.  Many of them must dread the English experience.<\/p>\n<p><i>Thursday 6 July<\/i><br \/>\nSpent the evening reading Patrick O&#8217;Brian&#8217;s HMS Surprise.  The smell of the sea lifts off his pages together with that of tar and the oiliness of so many Mediterranean harbours.  His description of a storm in the south Atlantic catches one&#8217;s breath away with fear and excitement.  This is the third of his books I have read (in the wrong order) and I am now resolved to climb up the rigging of all of them.<\/p>\n<p><i>Monday 18 September<\/i><br \/>\nA smiling, pleasant chap, probably in his thirties, accosted me near the station with, &#8216;Could I have your autograph?&#8217;  He proferred paper and brio.  I was graciousness itself and wrote, &#8216;Good wishes&#8217; followed by my name.  &#8216;Thanks ever so,&#8217; he said.  &#8216;My granny will be thrilled.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><i>Thursday 12 October<\/i><br \/>\nYesterday I listened to Sir Edward Heath on the radio and thought how excellent and balanced he is.  I never cared for his premiership but now I feel he is the only statesman we have.  What is more, when seen on TV, he doesn&#8217;t smile ad nauseum as so many of the others do.  I don&#8217;t want to be wooed; I want to be truthfully informed in a straightforward manner.<\/p>\n<p>Many MPs seem to have been gulled, like Malvolio in <i>Twelfth Night<\/i>.  Maria&#8217;s fake letter reads in part, &#8220;If thou entertainest my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles become thee well; therefore in my presence still smile.&#8221;  I look forward to the day when Hon. Members will sport yellow stockings and cross-gartering.<\/p>\n<p><i>Wednesday 18 October<\/i><br \/>\nThis morning, accompanied by M&#8217;s sister Chattie, we were kindly shown round the Globe Theatre (still under construction) by Mrs Bladget.  There is much to be done but it is already impressive.  Considering what sniping and counter-sniping there must have been among so many Shakespeare academics it is amazing it has got off the ground at all.  The position, so close to the river and with St Paul&#8217;s Cathedral in the background, is very striking.  I just hope the poor actors, sweating it out under the summer sky, aren&#8217;t deafened by megaphones on the tourist boats informing the world, &#8216;That&#8217;s Shakespeare&#8217;s Globe, his &#8216;Wooden O&#8217; burned down during a performance of <i>Henry VIII<\/i> on 29 June 1613.&#8217;  By the time the guide gets that out his boat will have chugged under the bridge and another will have taken its place with the same information.  Overhead aircraft will be droning their way to Heathrow.  Oh, I wish the actors good fortune but I wouldn&#8217;t wish to be wearing their buskins or chopins and having to face such competition.  It is the acoustics that will cause the headaches.  I can&#8217;t see any line being able to be said &#8220;trippingly off the tongue&#8221; as Shakespeare requested&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The theatre looks larger than expected.  I can&#8217;t help feeling that, whatever the experts say, the stage is about half a meter too high.  Actors need to look down on a section of the audience in order to feel in control but I don&#8217;t believe the groundlings should have to crick their necks &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>One encouraging thing I learned from our tour of the Globe is that the plaster used around the walls is mixed with goat hair.  Many of our grand old provincial theatres have horsehair under their gilded decoration and this (or so I was told years ago) gives exactly the right resonance to the human voice.  Walk on to the stage of any of those big old theatres and you know at once that you are going to be heard with very little effort.<\/p>\n<p>You can stand in the center of the vast semicircular theatre at Epidaurus, which I did some twenty years ago, and speak a piece of Shakespeare in an almost conversational tone knowing your voice will carry to the distant heights of the back row.  For all our technology we don&#8217;t compare with the ancients.<\/p>\n<p><i>Saturday 16 December<\/i><br \/>\nToday I have felt querulous.  Behavior has been spiky; largely due, I think, to our affable postman dutifully pushing piles of junk mail through the letter-box daily.  It gets worse near Christmas.  The rubbish, the charity appeals (often in duplicate) and, worst of all, the photographs from <i>Star Wars<\/i> demanding autographs.  They mostly come from America and as often as not enclose a stamped addressed envelope &#8211; the stamps being US stamps, are useless here.  The English usually make their demand without photograph, envelope, stamp or money.  The nation has got acclimatized to asking something for nothing&#8230;Bills in the post are welcome in comparison.  It&#8217;s mean and hard of me but from 1 January 1996 I am resolved to throw it all in the waste bin unopened (bills excepted, of course); I no longer have the energy to assist teenagers in their idiotic, albeit lucrative, hobby.<\/p>\n<p><i>Sunday 31 December 1995<\/i><br \/>\nA New Year Resolution which surely I can keep: to greet each day with a verse from the Psalms, &#8220;Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness isn the morning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Should I ever act again (the idea doesn&#8217;t much appeal), it would be cheering to remember a verse from another Psalm, &#8220;The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places.&#8221;  Yet there would be small hope of me remembering the lines.  And most rehearsal rooms are dispiriting.  Such things were better catered for in the old days when you usually worked on the stage you were to appear on.<\/p>\n<p>We watched the Australian film <i>Strictly Ballroom<\/i> for the third time and found it as enjoyable as ever.  The credits slip by so swiftly, and in such small print, that I always miss the name of the actor\/dancer who plays the boy&#8217;s father.  All the acting is lovely but his performance is wonderfully subtle and true.<\/p>\n<p><i>Saturday  6 January 1996<\/i><br \/>\nWhen I played Malvolio in a poor TV of <i>Twelfth Night<\/i>, Larry [Olivier] came to the final run-through (Joan Plowright, Lady Olivier, was giving her Viola).  Just before we went on air, [Larry] said to me, &#8220;Marvellous, old cock!  I never realized Malvolio could be played as a bore.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><i>Tuesday 27 February 1996<\/i><br \/>\nVictoria Price telephoned.  She is writing a biography of her father, Vincent, and wanted to quiz me about him and Coral Browne, whom he married.  I have never met Miss Price but judging from our talk I bet she makes a good job of the book.  Vinney and I had dozens of meals together, either here or in LA or New York but, although I was charmed by him and liked him enormously, I never felt I knew him intimately.<\/p>\n<p>Coral was a close friend.  We corresponded regularly, at length and with affection&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Coral&#8217;s Australian cadence, which often surfaced, always added a witty harshness to her comments on people and life.  She sometimes sounded destructive but in fact she was wonderfully kind and generous in every way; it was just that she couldn&#8217;t resist raising a laugh with her use of words &#8211; which were, for the most part, unprintable.<\/p>\n<p>There are almost too many stories about her but one I particularly cherish because I witnessed it.  Tony Guthrie directed a production of <i>Tamburlaine<\/i> in New York starring her and Tony Quayle.  Guthrie invited me to the first dress rehearsal.  Coral came on stage before the performance to query some minor point.  As always, she looked magnificent and was gloriously dressed in some barbaric style, but perhaps there was a tidge too much hair in her wig.<\/p>\n<p>Tony G called out from the stalls, &#8216;Coral, are you happy with that wig?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>She stared out front and then said, &#8216;If you really fucking want to know, I feel as if I&#8217;m looking out of a yak&#8217;s asshole.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0140277455&#038;asins=0140277455&#038;linkId=BXV3QRG7D5ZCL6WU&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alec Guinness has published a volume of his journals which I absolutely love &#8211; It is called My Name Escapes Me. and is made up only of entries from 1995 and 1996 &#8211; Only a year from his life, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=325\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146997,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/146997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}