Nicol Williamson, R.I.P.

RIP indeed to one of the great acting talents of the British theatre and cinema. Nicol Williamson burst on the scene in the '60s - like the young David Warner he was a mesmerising Hamlet, he and Warner (whom I have been meaning to write about too, along with Alan Bates and Peter Finch) are together in the '68 drama THE BOFORS GUN, long unseen.
By all accounts a difficult man, as the respectful obituaries put it: "his prickly temperament helped derail what might have been one of the great theatrical careers" as he was "touched by genius" and "the greatest actor since Brando". Heady praise to live up to ...

He died aged 73 in December but his family have only released the information now. His 1968 HAMLET was filmed by Tony Richardson, with Marianne Faithfull as his Ophelia, and Richardson also directed him in his film of Nabokov's LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, where Williamson replaced another ailing hellraiser Richard Burton. This film is too little seen now, but I remember a tv showing if it ... His initial stage success was in John Osborne's INADMISSABLE EVIDENCE where his ranting solicitor (a rather more raging BUTLEY as played by Alan Bates) was a tour de force, he also played the role in the film. Other films included THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION as Sherlock Holmes (above with Vanessa Redgrave), and as Little John with Connery and Audrey Hepburn in Richard Lester's smashing ROBIN AND MARIAN in 1976 - which also co-starred Robert Shaw - another of those actors like Stanley Baker, Laurence Harvey and Stephen Boyd who died too young. Williamson too had alcoholic problems, like Robert Stephens who also never became quite the star people thought he would and made too many dud movies, as did the hellraiser in chief Richard Burton. Peter O'Toole seems to have survived all that ... It seems now that a lot of the hellraisers of the 60s like Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, David Hemmings, Anthony Hopkins became, if they survived, old hams in dud movies. Nicol Williamson didn't quite go that route having got bored with acting eventually and turning to music. What a fascinating man. He is fun too in my favourite snake-on-the-loose-with-people-trapped-in-a-house-under-seige movie VENOM with his ex-lover Sarah Miles (review at Sarah Miles label), and then of course there was his Merlin in John Boorman's EXCALIBUR!

The actor, who was known as a straighforward, private man, leaves his son, Luke. "He was the most honest, funny and intelligent man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing," writes Luke on Williamson's official website. "He was my father and words cannot adequately express how proud I am of him."

A Taste Of Honey - Shelagh Delaney, R.I.P.

I had been meaning to write about A TASTE OF HONEY, but the death of its writer Shelagh Delaney (1938-2011) has prompted this review. Delaney and Tony Richardson below:



The late '50s and early '60s saw the arrival of kitchen sink drama in England — gritty Northern industrial landscapes shot in moody black and white, which tied with the Nouvelle Vague in France and Italy's new wave too, those successful films, from plays and books, like Jack Clayton's ROOM AT THE TOP, Reisz's SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING, Tony Richardson's LOOK BACK IN ANGER. A TASTE OF HONEY too was a sensational play, both in London and Broadway (where Angela Lansbury played the feckless mother). The original play was written by 18-year-old Shelagh Delaney in 1958, as a riposte to the theate of the time, those plays by Terence Rattigan as she had seen some and thought she could do better, so A TASTE OF HONEY was like a breath of fresh air, and remains a much loved film.
The 1961 film was X-rated. Set in Salford, the tale of Jo(sephine), a lonely, neglected teenager, tackled teenage pregnancy, mixed-race relationships and feckless parenting (by Dora Bryan and her dodgy boyfriend Robert Stephens). The most sympathetic character is Jo’s gay friend, Geoff, at a time when homosexuality was criminal. Murray Melvin had worked his way up from tea boy at Joan Littlewood’s famous Theatre Workshop Company at London’s Stratford East Theatre to play the role of Geoff on stage, reprising it in the film. Similarly, Tushingham had joined the Liverpool Rep as a backstage odd job girl after writing many pestering letters.



Tushingham also starred in some cult favourites of mine like the Swinging London parody, SMASHING TIME, with her pal Lynn Redgrave (from THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES), Richard Lester's THE KNACK and others and is still working as is Murray Melvin, who probably played the first smpathetic gay character most of us saw at the cinema. It is always a pleasure to see him in films like THE BOYFRIEND or BARRY LYNDON, below: he and Rita recently.

Tushingham (who has a great website covering her extensive career) says of the early ‘60s: ‘It was a welcoming time. There was an energy. We need to do more to encourage young people to discover what’s inside them. The consumerism is not the point… 50 years on we still have the same emotions as we did then, but we are being sold more.’



Dirk Bogarde's VICTIM was also a key movie that year of course, I particularly like A TASTE OF HONEY with its lyrical moments among the working class background of Salford - a vanished landscape now. Dora Bryan is marvellous as the mother with her constant moolight flits (leaving lodgings without paying rent) and who returns to look after Jo in her pregnancy because she has nowhere else to go, thus forcing out Geoff, the sad little gay boy who does not fit in. It is extremely touching. Richardson directs with a sure hand with that marvellous black and white photography by Walter Lassally, it is a perfect Woodfall film. John Schlesinger then provided two more Northern classics in A KIND OF LOVING in 1962 and BILLY LIAR in 1963 which really ushers in the new Swinging London era with Julie Christie heading off to London leaving dreamer Billy behind at the railway station .... I really want to re-see those again now too. Two Edna O'Brien adaptations by Desmond Davis continued the trend: Woodfall's THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, Tushingham with Peter Finch, in 1964 and I WAS HAPPY HERE with Sarah Miles in 1966, by which time Swinging London was all the rage.

Shelagh Delaney continued to write but never equalled her early success. She also scripted THE WHITE BUS for Lindsay Anderson, CHARLIE BUBBLES for Albert Finney among others.

Priest of Love

PRIEST OF LOVE. Only 1 review of this 1981 film on IMDb? Ian McKellen’s first starring role in 1980 as D.H. Lawrence, didn’t attract too much attention at the time; I passed over it myself as I did films like RETURN OF THE SOLIDER, perhaps there was a glut of costume dramas at the time, all those Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson films. This was directed by Christopher Miles (brother of actress Sarah) who also directed the Lawrence tale THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY in 1970 and is another look at that Lawrence era of the 1920s lovingly recreated. Here D.H. and his German wife Frieda (a rather too strident Janet Suzman) have to leave England in 1914 due to the outbreak of World War I and they travel to the United States pitching up in Taos, Santa Fe as guests of wealthy patron Mabel Dodge Luhan (Ava Gardner, enjoying herself hugely) and Lady Dorothy Brett (Penelope Keith, ideal as their deaf companion and fellow artist). Later we move to Italy as Lawrence’s health deteriorates after the banning of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and the burning of “The Rainbow” and the raid on the art gallery showing his explicit paintings. John Gielgud is very diligent in his pursuit of the filth in Lawrence’s books, having to re-read them to extract full value.



The casting here is the thing, even to the smallest role. It intriguingly begins suggesting D.H.’s bisexuality showing him leaving his Cornish farmhouse and sleeping wife for an early morning naked swim where he is joined by a strapping Cornish farmer – Graham Faulkner, required to strip again but showing a more robust physique than he did as St Francis in Zeffirelli’s BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON. In Italy too the manager of their estate, Italian pop singer/actor Massimo Ranieri is pleased to disrobe to pose for D.H.’s paintings. Other names in the extensive cast include Julian Fellowes (now writing DOWNTON ABBEY) and Gareth Forwood (the actor son of Glynis Johns and Anthony Forwood, later Dirk Bogarde’s partner). Scripted by Alan Plater and filmed at the places the Lawrences stayed at it looks handsome and perfectly in period. Miles directs with a sure touch (his sister Sarah appears in one of the deleted scenes) and the new dvd has extensive interviews (including a new one with McKellen) and additional material. One wonders how that other Lawrence expert maestro Ken Russell would have souped it up?



For Miles's THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY review, see Franco Nero label.

Showpeople (15): Bogarde and pals

I have done some 'Showpeople' posts on Dirk Bogarde previously, with the likes of pals Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, meeting Rock Hudson - did the closeted British and American heart-throbs compare notes? - and with co-stars like Jean Simmons, Anouk Aimee (whom he knew since she was a teenager), Monica Vitti, Julie Christie, Lilli Palmer - did he and Lilli discuss the Rex and Kay story?, Lilli being the previous Mrs Harrison. (Left, another shot from that DARLING premiere with Christie and Vitti. Glamour!)

Below with Kay and Kenneth More in DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, and with Muriel Pavlow, another Rank Organisation stalwart and co-star, and with Capucine. Dirk and Kay were also guests at Kenneth More's "This Is Your Life" tv show in 1959.









I suggest that Lauren Bacall and Dirk really are the people who knew everybody - and SHE visited HIM the day before he died in 1999, and I love the photo of her with Kay, Vivien Leigh and Coward back in 1959, and with Kay at the theatre that year! [Showpeople label]. He worked of course with all the English talent of the time including those newcomers Courtenay, Fox, Miles ("dainty Miles" as he referred to her at one of his NFT discussions), Christie, Stamp, York - Michael and Susannah, etc. Then of course he knew all the European ladies: the young Bardot in DOCTOR AT SEA, Thulin, Seyrig, Aimee, Vitti, Mangano, and became great friends with Charlotte Rampling and Jane Birkin, he was also pals with Simone Signoret and Yvonne Mitchell though did not work with them, and of course his later co-stars like Lee Remick and Glenda Jackson. [It is a shame that Romy Schneider did not get to play the Austrian princess in Losey's ACCIDENT in '67, as originally planned - she would have brought so much more to the role and made her a real tease, rather than Sassard's blankness]. Then of course there are the Garland, Capucine and Ava Gardner stories, as per his books ... here is a further selection then:

Awards time in 1965 with Lee Marvin, Julie C and Patricia Neal - later of course he and Glenda Jackson did THE PATRICIA NEAL STORY for television; and that silent scene with Delphine Seyrig in ACCIDENT and with Anouk in JUSTINE, and Bjorn from DEATH IN VENICE!

Perfectly '60s (4): James Fox introduces The Servant & Performance

I had written here before on BLOW-UP and PERFORMANCE as THE '60s double bill ... but now we get Losey's seminal THE SERVANT from 1963 coupled with Roeg & Cammell's PERFORMANCE as a perfect double-bill, and introduced by James Fox, who stars in both of them. This double-bill is being presented on Tuesday 19th April, by London weekly listings magazine "Time Out" as one of their screenings on London movies, and should make for a fascinating evening with Fox present to discuss his work in both of them.

I have already written about these in depth at the Losey, Bogarde, London labels, so no point going over all that again. THE SERVANT should be marvellous on the big screen again - that terrific black and white photography, the Dankworth score (and Cleo Laine song), the Chelsea locations, Pinter's script from the Robin Maugham novel, Losey hitting his peak era and of course Dirk, Sarah, Fox, Wendy Craig ... and then the enigmatic, mysterious PERFORMANCE with all those allusions to Borges and that hip, modern, casual violence as the hitman on the run takes refuge with the reclusive rock star and his entourage ... no wonder Fox [now one of our senior actors and his son Laurence acts too] gave up acting for a decade after it.

Perfectly '60s (3): Rita, Lynn and Sarah too

Two perfect mid-60s British black and white romantic dramas set in Ireland - both from Edna O'Brien stories, and both directed by Desmond Davis are 1964's THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES and I WAS HAPPY HERE in 1966, starring Sarah Miles (a world away from her other overblown Irish romance for David Lean). I have written about these here before (Sarah Miles label and 1960s label). They do though make a perfect double bill. O'Brien's theme in both is the passage of love as her Irish country girls love and lose and set up new lives in London.

This was very relevant for me being Irish and new in London too then, as Miles goes back to her Irish village [Liscanor and Lahinch in Co Clare] and Rita and Lynn (wonderful as the feckless Baba) have their adventures in '60s Dublin as Tush is romanced by wordly older man Peter Finch (sterling, as ever). It [THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES] ends with the girls on the night ferry from Dun Laoghaire to England - a trip I did myself many times - and shows us Rita's new life in London - she works at the WH Smith shop in Notting Hill Gate just across from the Classic Cinema (above) - an old haunt of mine! whereas Sarah also ends up wiser .... both are perfect small films that pays re-viewing. Sarah went on to Antonioni's BLOW-UP (which according to her memoirs was not a happy experience for her) and then back to Ireland - Kerry this time - for the protracted shoot on RYAN'S DAUGHTER, released in 1970. Rita had the smash hit of Lester's THE KNACK among others, and she and Lynn teamed again to great comic effect in Desmond Davis's SMASHING TIME, great fun in 1968,as per reviews at labels.