IAN RICHARDSON: A MEMORY

I note with great sadness the passing, at the age of 72, of the actor Ian Richardson.

Although identified for all time with his performance as the Machiavellian politician, Francis Urquhart, in the BBC’s 1991 TV trilogy, House of Cards, Ian Richardson was an actor of extraordinary range and talent.

A founder member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played many of the Bard's greatest roles including (right) Hamlet for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1959. He starred in dozens of plays on the London and Broadway stage, but his popular fame rested on his performances in such memorable television productions as John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blues, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and Charles Dickens' Bleak House as well as a spell as a clinically incisive Sherlock Holmes.

Just three weeks ago, I had the honour to be in a BBC studio listening to Ian Richardson recording my book Shadowlands, the story of C S Lewis and his late-flowering love for Joy Davidman.

I was thrilled when my producer (and best friend) Malcolm Prince told me that Ian had agreed to present the book as a serialised reading on Radio 2. We couldn’t have been better served: he arrived early and worked flat out for seven hours at a demanding and unrelenting pace, refusing anything to eat or drink (other than water) until he had completed the recording of all eight fifteen-minute episodes.

Though fully prepared and clearly having given a lot a thought to the changing moods of the piece from episode to episode and how most effectively to portray the central characters, he invited criticism and delighted in being given notes.

When I offered a suggestion for an alternative reading of a short, six-word sentence that is one of the turning points in the book, he instantly seized on the thought and gave it that interpretation with perfection; and, on another occasion, when one of us offered an idea, he immediately responded: “Yes, yes! I see exactly how it should be read! Thank you! I love taking direction!”

Of course, any direction by us was minimal. What could we ever truly tell an actor with Ian’s prodigious talent and years of experience? Watching him at work, as he grappled with the emotions underpinning the story, and in particular the sense of overwhelming grief giving way to slowly emerging hope that is at the heart of Shadowlands, was a privilege.

I hope - not simply for selfish reasons - that the BBC will decide to eventually broadcast the reading: it would be a small tribute to a great actor…

One last enjoyable memory from a memorable day: after several noisy outbursts from people in the corridor outside the studio that had interrupted the recording, someone walked by whistling merrily. Ian got up from the microphone and went to the door and pointed out to the whistler that a red light was illuminated over the door indicating that a recording was in progress. When he returned to his seat, Malcolm apologized on behalf of a thoughtless colleague… “That’s alright,” replied Ian, “I don’t think he’ll do it again - I gave him one of my best Francis Urquhart looks!”

SNOW BUSINESS

It was here today and gone today -- or, rather, yesterday...

SEVEN INCHES OF SNOW FORECAST! ROAD AND RAIL CHAOS PREDICTED! yelled the newspaper headlines on the previous day. And so we dug out our wellies and waited with our anoraks, mittens and mufflers at the ready...

We duly awoke to the threatened whirling whiteness... HURRAH! But then, within a matter of hours, the long-awaited snow - feared or desired, depending on your age! - was reduced to little more than a sloppy, unwelcome mess of khaki-coloured slush!

The photographic opportunities I'd been hoping for - especially since David now has a Nice New Camera - proved, in the event, disappointingly limited, especially once everything had started to drip --- although David and his NNC did succeed in catching a drip - in the very act of dripping!


There were the usual examples of the way in which snow can miraculously transform our everyday world: turning a mundane, humdrum scene - such as an abandoned matress and a platoon of black bin-bags...


...into a snow-covered mundane, humdrum scene!

And there was also the chance to marvel at the defiant resiliance of Mother Nature as a flower-bed full of pansies bravely managed to keep their heads up and remain smiling despite the weight of an icy duvet.


Then there was the chance to remember - through the wide-eyed wonder and excited laughter of children - the snowfalls of our own youth...


... the fun of foot-writing in the snow...


...the sheer misery of realising that - somewhere en route to the park - you must have dropped one of your favourite gloves (and there are few more tragic sights in life than a lone lost glove)...


...and, of course, the ear-stinging thrills and spills of the snowball fight!


If only it could have lasted just a little longer...

Oh, well, maybe next year!


In the meantime, you can view some more photographs that David took with his Nice New Camera on the David Weeks blog; and you can enjoy some more of Button's snow adventures on his personal blogsite, a rabbit's ramblings.

[Photographs: © David Weeks and Brian Sibley]

'EAR, 'EAR!

It is truly amazing what you can overhear if, as I am, you are a dedicated eavesdropper...

Now, I know all about eavesdroppers never hearing any good about themselves but that's just a ruse (dreamt up by sniffy moralists) to discourage us from tuning-in for a bit of light entertainment to conversations that quite often sound like early drafts for a play by Alan Bennett.

This shouldn't be too surprising, since Mr B has admitted to doing a bit of eavesdropping himself... How else could he have come up with lines like, "I think at our time of life it's probably a bit late for branching out into yoghurt"?

Anyway, there we were in our local restaurant, enjoying marinated chicken breast with new potatoes and fine beans, when a woman at the next table suddenly announced:

"So, I said to her, 'Please remember that I know you didn't discover vaginal ecstasy until the mid-sixties!'"

All I need now is the rest of the play!

SPEECHLESS

Facing up to the challenge of writing a daily blog really does get to be somewhat exhausting: first you have to find a topic about which to WRITE and then you have to find something to SAY on that topic!

I increasingly feel that my efforts can be best summed up in the words of Ambrose Bierce's savage review of a public lecture given by Oscar Wilde during the Irish aesthete's visit to San Francisco in 1882.

Bierce, who was compiler of that satanic masterpiece, The Devil's Dictionary, wrote of the precious Oscar:

"That sovereign of insufferables, Oscar Wilde has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck... He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say---- and SAYS IT!"

So, there you have it - in a nutshell...

...when in doubt --- blog about nowt!

[Caricature of Oscar Wilde by David Levine; blog cartoon: Gaping Void]

FOREIGN INCONVENIENCES

What is it about the French and toilets? I mean, they invented the bidet - and, indeed, there are rumours that Marie Antoinette conducted audiences seated on hers - and yet public loos are either little better than a hole in the ground or, where they have the luxury of a pan, prefer not to bother with such trivialities as a lid or even a SEAT!

They also tend to be low down affairs, intended for acrobats for whom, presumably, limb-contorting squats are second nature when it comes to answering a call of nature…

On our recent trip to Paris, we stayed in hotel that despite lacking a bidet (the remnants of plumbing, glimpsed beneath a bathroom stool, showed where it had once sat) did have a properly designed lavatory pan…

Hurrah, I thought, till I discovered that I had been lured into a false state of confidence by a vindictive bathroom fitter with a grudge against tourists who had maliciously fastened the loo-roll holder at a distance from the pan where it could only be of use to a particularly long-armed orang-utan!

Medre!

SCANDALOUS NOTIONS

On yesterday’s Michael Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement I was reviewing the new film release Notes on a Scandal with its much-lauded and Oscar-nominated performances by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.

Based on the best-selling, award-winning novel by Zoë Heller, the scandal in question is viewed through the eyes of Barbara Covett (Dench), an acid-tongued spinster who teaches history in a tough inner-city school.

Barbara is a loner with no friends, until the arrival of the new and seductively sexy art teacher, Sheba Hart (Blanchett) who, as Barbara puts it, causes “a few ripples on our stagnant pond”!

When Sheba embarks on a passionate affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil and is discovered by Barbara, the older women uses her knowledge of Sheba’s guilty secret to blackmail her into showing a level of affection for which she has her own, deep, illicit cravings…

What is interesting about the way in which the characters are portrayed is that Barbara’s lesbian desires for the younger woman are seen as menacingly predatory, while Sheba’s illegal affair with an under-age child emerge as being more tragically ill-advised as opposed to being simply wrong.

Although director Richard Eyre claims that he was attempting to make a non-judgemental film, cinematic conventions overtake that intent and the bitter lesbian (as in The Killing of Sister George) clearly emerges as the villain…

Whilst re-viewing The Maltese Falcon (see yesterday’s post) I was struck by the thinly masked portrayal of gays as villains. Of course, Peter Lorre's depiction of Joel Cairo is, of course, screamingly obvious...


The white gloves, the gold-handled umbrella, the gardenia-scented handkerchief and and an over-dandified manner - in fact Hammett, who unlike Warner Brothers, didn’t have to worry about the censors, simply called him “queer”.

But there is also the implication of a gay relationship between Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper Gutman and his young body guard, Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jnr), whom he refers to as being like his own son. Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, on the other hand, doesn't mince his words, calling Wilmer a "gunsel" - a bit of obscure yiddish street-slang for a young guy in a sexual relationship with an older man that was, in fact, so obscure, that it managed to slip past the usually vigilant censors.

In The Maltese Falcon, great film though it is, the premise is as obvious as it was permissable to be: Gay = Bent (by which I mean both crooked and not-straight) just as it does in such other films as Hitchcock’s films Rope and Strangers on a Train.

What is interesting - and sobering - is that 45 years on, being gay can still provide a useful cinematic shorthand for creating a character who is essentially a villain and, therefore, undeserving of understanding or sympathy…

THE CALL OF THE BLACKBIRD

I'm a guest this morning on BBC Radio 2’s Michael Parkinson’s Sunday Supplement (presented by Clive Anderson while Parky is on holiday in Oz) providing the week’s entertainment preview. Radio 2 can be found on 88-91 FM, and I'll be on air between 11.30 and noon.

At the suggestion of my friend Ian (if you don’t read his excellent blog, Ian Smith’s UK DVD Review then you should!) I decided to preview the new two-disc DVD re-issue of Warner Brothers’ 1941 film, The Maltese Falcon which is released on Monday.

There's never been a better time to view this film version of Dashiell Hammett’s novel about hardboiled San Francisco private eye, Sam Spade, since the print has been impeccably cleaned up and the stunning black-and-white photography positively zings and fizzes!

There is also, amongst a motley bunch of ‘Extras’, a well-made documentary, tracing the genesis of the film from page to screen, which serves to remind just how much fortuosity and happenstance is always involved in filmmaking.

To start with, Warner Brothers studio had already made two earlier films based on Hammett’s book: in 1931 as The Maltese Falcon with Bebe Daniels as the femme fatale in a version which was, at the time, reasonably well received; and then again, five years later, as - believe it or not - a comedy entitled Satan Meets a Lady, starring with Bette Davis.

Why studio boss Jack Warner agreed to have a third attempt is anybody’s guess, unless it was that already owning the film rights in Hammett's book made a relatively inexpensive project. Anyway, a young contract writer at the studio, John Huston, decided to come up with a new script. As legend has it, he asked his secretary to type up the novel setting out the book’s dialogue in screenplay form and went on holiday. While he was away, Jack Warner wandered into Huston’s office, read the transcript and green-lit the project.

Well, maybe; certainly Huston “shot the book”, following not just the plot and using vast chunks of the original dialogue, but also adhering closely to Hammett’s characterizations.

But Huston was not a director. Yet, somehow, he blagged Warner into letting him get behind the camera and, on a budget that was shoestring thin, made a classic movie that launched his career as one of the great Hollywood filmmakers.


The movie also rocketed its lead actor, Humphrey Bogart, to a new level of fame as a bone fide STAR of the first magnitude.

And yet, Warner’s first choice to play Sam Spade had been George Raft and only when Raft turned it down (as he did several times on movies that later starred Bogart, most famously Casablanca) did the role fall to a man who came to personify the archetypal private eye: taciturn, inscrutable, fearless and, whilst living close to the edge, following his own ruthless morality.

The film itself now stands as a pre-eminent example of the style known as film noir with its claustrophobic sets (Huston repeatedly shows the ceilings of the rooms so that the characters look trapped), the moody lighting, deep shadows and low-level, upward-tilted camera angles of Arthur Edeson’s cinematography.

And Bogart is backed by a stellar supporting cast: Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the shady lady with multiple identities; Peter Lorre as the prissy dandy, Joel Cairo, and Sydney Greenstreet as “The Fat Man”, Kasper Gutman (who is fat but certainly not a “good man”) making his film debut at the age of 61 and being rewarded with an Oscar and on-going movie career that, again and again, paired him with Lorre in a fascinating oddball double-act…


Anyway, there you are: if you’ve never seen The Maltese Falcon, see it; if you have seen it, see it again!

As Sam Spade says of the Black Bird itself (in a slight misquoting of the Bard): "It's the stuff that dreams are made of..."

THE DOG THAT HAD HIS DAY

Try as he might, the Dog had never been truly content with his lot. He had lived a longish life and although he’d never bothered to learn counting, he knew that it was a good few years.

He had spent this life with a variety of people, good and bad: a family with a brattish Baby who had constantly pulled his tail, chewed his ear and banged him on his nose with a toy truck with sharp edges; a Society Lady who had kept him shut up in a penthouse apartment except for short, one-a-week walks round the block with the Butler; and, most recently, by an elderly Hobo who shared with him his bed (a draughty, leaky barrel by a railway siding) and his food: chuck-outs from smart restaurants and hand-outs from the Salvation Army.

Then, one day, the Dog woke up and the Hobo didn’t. The old tramp was cold and stiff and the Dog realised that another chapter of canine life was at an end.

It was only a matter of days before the Dogcatchers were after him and his doggy instinct told him that whatever the future now held it was, in all likelihood, not going to be good.

Nevertheless, he decided, he was going to give the men with their nets and leashes a good run for their money and he did.

He raced up and down town, tore here, there and everywhere: digging up flowerbeds; chasing cars, cats and chickens; knocking over trashcans; barking outside hospital windows; shaking rain off his fur in crowded hotel lobbies; leaving muddy paw-prints on newly washed doorsteps; frightening horses and startling old ladies; biting bicyclists and puncturing babies’ balloons.

They caught him at last, needless to say, but as they slammed the barred door on him in the Dog Pound and a man with rubber gloves and a syringe loomed up out of the darkness, he knew that at least he had, finally and very decidedly had his day --- and enjoyed it!

© Brian Sibley 2006
Read more of my Likely Stories

THE WHOLE HOG

Hogwarts is in turmoil…

Hermione Granger is locked in her room and is, according to close friend Ron Weasley, inconsolably distressed. Professor McGonagall has had several attacks of the vapours and Professor Dumbledore has had an unexpected recurrence of his Old Trouble…

What’s the problem? The fact that Harry Potter has run away from Hogwarts and is living in London where, it seems, he has given up magic in favour of an acting career.

Master Potter is about to make a controversial debut in Peter Shaffer’s disturbing psychological play, Equus, in which he is required to take off more than just his spectacles.

Hogwarts handyman, Mr Hagrid, who has known Potter since the young man was a baby, told The Daily Blog:

“I am very disappointed in Harry. Not because of the nudity thing, he’s been waving his magic wand around ever since he first came to Hogwarts, but because - if the photos are reliable - he’s agreed to appear with some kind of Muggle horse that hasn’t either a pair of wings or a horn in the middle of its forehead! That’s not the kind of attitude we expect of a Hogwarts lad and it’s going to cost Gryffindor a lot of house points this term…”

ROYAL RESPONSE

Following on from yesterday's blog about the Oscar-winning potential of British royalty, I keep fantasizing about possible Buck House conversations over the morning papers...

HMQEII: Ah... One reads that Dame Helen is up for an Oscar for playing One... Should One be amused, Phil, do you think?

DofE: I'll tell you what'd be bloody amusing - take her bloody Damehood back! QEI would have chopped her head off before you could say Walter Bloody Raliegh! And I bet she's like those other bloody lefty dames - Jackson and Redgrave! Probably can't act her way out of bloody paper bag and only got made a dame because she supports New bloody Labour!

HMQEII: Blood pressure, Phil! I'm going to ring Blair...

DofE: And about bloody time! Finally going to tell the bugger to pack his bags?

HMQEII: Don't be silly dear! No, if he can fix it for all these people to get honours out of One, then he ought to be able to swing a couple of tickets for One to go the Oscars!

DofE: What? You don't think I'm going, do you? Listen, d'you know who the bloke was who impersonated me? He was the guy who played the farmer in that bloody film about a talking pig! Well, you won't get me there for all the bloody tea in chinkyland!

HMQEII: Don't worry, dear, One'll take that nice Paul Burrell. One hasn't seen him in ages and he lives over there now, so One can save on the air-fares...

DofE: *@!%&$*!