Gawn Grainger

Behp 0738 T Gawn Grainger transcript

 

Gawn Grainger (GG)

Interviewer: Darrol Blake (DB)

Transcribed by David Sharp 2024.

DB: This is the 8th January 2019, and we are in North London and my name is Darrol Blake.

GG: My name is Gawn Grainger, I was born in Glasgow on the 12th September 1937. So, there we go.

DB: Right. And your family – were they in the business at all?

GG: No. I had a rather bumpy beginning to my life – my mother was married, with two children, two daughters, and my father was the lodger [laughs] and so, there you go! So at the age of six weeks, my mother had to run, and she brought me to London. In those days it was considered really, really, really, not on, if you were illegitimate as I was. And so that was my beginning – I was born in Glasgow and though it says Glasgow on my passport, I’m probably really a Londoner. We came to London in – well we came to London in 1937.

DB: And then later when you went to school, you went to Westminster City?

GG: Well this was quite some time later, this was after the War. But before that I’d been evacuated to Ireland and I spent three or four years in Northern Ireland with relatives of my fathers – which was an extremely miserable time, I hated it, but then I went to about two or three different schools there. I went to the village school in Muckamore, I went to a school in Antrim: various places. They weren’t used to children, so I was thrown about a bit there. I then came back I think at the age of eight or nine, and then we eventually moved to Holborn, my mother had a place in Holborn, and I went to school in Holborn, and I did, I got a scholarship to Westminster City School. But the whole thing about getting back to Holborn, was that’s where we were when I was evacuated, because we were – my mum used to take me at nights to Holborn tube station. We’d sleep on the station; and then on one particular night we went to the station, and the policeman said “We’re full. But go to Lincoln’s Inn Fields but go now.”, because we could hear the bombers coming and she put me on her back – she was a tiny wee thing and she put me on her back, and she ran like a [horse] in the Derby or something, and we got to the shelter, and there was a very, very, tall, to me, policeman on the door, and he said “You are the last in, go on.” And we went in and we stayed there for the night, and we came out in the morning, we were first out and as we came out my mum then quickly put her hands over my eyes, but I could see the policeman’s boots, and that’s when she decided that I would be evacuated. So that’s sort of a little coda to that story of coming back to Holborn. And then we came back there because the flat had been obliterated but if that had happened, to anybody, you were first in line [for accommodation]. So we had a place in Princeton Street, which was just off Red Lion Square. And there were still the trams and the trolley buses in those days: trams going down the tunnel. [Kingsway Tram Tunnel DS]

And I was lucky: I went to this tiny school, Princeton Street School, where they said that 90% of the class went to borstal, and the rest used to play for the Arsenal! So I actually got this scholarship and went to Westminster City.

DB: How then did you step into Italia Conti?

GG: Well, what had happened – that came later – what happened was I’d done a lot of little bits of drama at school, and then – yes I was in the Boy Scouts, and we were doing a little show at Bloomsbury Baptist Church, and unknown to me the scoutmaster had got in touch with a man called Ralph Reader, who was The Gang Shows and ‘Riding along on…’ you know, all that.

5 mins

 

GG: And he came to see it and took a shine to this 12 year old, which I was, and he wrote the first big Gang Show after the War, so I had sketches and things in it and there were 250 of us, singing ‘Riding along on the Crest of a Wave’, plus other songs and because of that I did quite a lot of broadcasts, and it led, one thing led to another and I did things called Schools Broadcasting which was – you went into Portland Place first thing in the morning, and you were on the air by 9 ‘o’ clock, live.

DB: Extraordinary.

GG: So I got, I did that and then by that time I was at Westminster. There was a time – yes, the BBC were looking for someone to play Richard the Second – as a boy, in a thing called March of the Peasants, and they saw me and they wanted me to do it, but the school of course weren’t going to allow that, so my mum, after a lot of thought, withdrew me from the school and I went to Italia Conti, and then did that. But I’d already performed before that, because when I was at school, at Westminster, I was coming back from school one day, I used to get the 38 bus and it used to go past the Palace Theatre, and I’d read in the paper that they were looking for a boy to take over from the boy in King’s Rhapsody, with [Ivor] Novello and as chance would have it I got off the bus, went to the stage door and said “I’ve come to see Mr Novello.”

DB laughs

GG: Stage door keeper says “Have you got an appointment?” “Oh yes, of course.” And he happened to be in the dressing room, so I was ushered in and I met him, and we talked for a bit and he said “Well you look a little like I did when I was your age. When can you start?” and gave me the job. But – it wasn’t a performing – well it was performing, there was no dialogue.

DB: Just crowned.

GG: I was crowned, nightly. I was crowned nightly at The Palace Theatre, and-

DB: I know – I saw it!

GG: Yes, that’s right. And I took the curtain call every night between Novello and Vanessa Lee – the first curtain call, then I’d run away and they would take them all.

DB: So we’ve established that you were 12 at the time.

GG: [agrees] 12, 13 something like that. So that was all prior to the television, yeah. And that television happened and then one television led to another, actually.

DB: That was of course BBC, because there weren’t any [other channels].

GG: BBC yeah. In Lime Grove – old Lime Grove. I can still smell it – that wonderful smell it had, yes? Extraordinary.

There were a group, a group of good young boy actors in those days you know, and we were all very competitive. The one who was probably the most formidable, Jeremy Spenser, he was always getting the best parts. But that’s how that part of my career began.

DB: Then, jumping ahead a bit you went into rep [repertory theatre] in about 1961 I think it was?

GG: Well, yes I did. Really what happened was, working at the BBC, doing the Schools Broadcasts, there was a man called Peter Hoare, who was on the rep, and he said to me one day “You know, you ought to do a bit of serious acting: come to Frinton. So I went to Frinton Summer Theatre, and did ten plays in ten weeks – the last one being Look Back in Anger, can you believe, opposite Vanessa Redgrave, and it was Vanessa’s first job too. So that was the beginning of me working in the theatre, and then I went to Dundee.

DB: Can you tell us a bit about what it was like working in a rep in those days? The whole thing.

10 mins

GG: Well – you mean weekly, or the fortnight?

DB: Well whatever it was.

GG: Well in Frinton for instance they used to have a first night on a Thursday so that people who came down for the week could see two plays. So, you do your first night on a Thursday and Friday you’d do a read-through, in the morning, of the next play, and you’d have the afternoon off – always had the afternoon off, supposedly to learn your lines but nobody did you were on the beach; then Saturday morning you rehearsed at one and then you did the matinee of the play that was running. Sunday you had off and Monday you rehearsed Act 2, Wednesday Act 3, then you did it again: first night on the Thursday. So, I mean it was amazing. How any of us ever learned the lines I’ll never know, but you did. But that was weekly: but there was not too much of that around.

DB: That was a finite season, wasn’t it? A Summer season

GG: Yes. Just a Summer season, yes.

DB: So the rep proper began in Dundee, yes?

GG: In Dundee. My rep life began in Dundee, and that was fortnightly, and it was – well, the Director was Antony Page and he was quite ‘in-depth’ about

Performances, so you had to go away and write the background and all that sort of thing. Doing that for two weeks was quite strong, but we did it, which in those days we seemed to just have such a good time. It was heaven – it was being a member of a family. I was there for a year and the Company was -probably one of the best actors I ever worked with was Nicol Williamson, but he was a sad case – you know, all that talent and threw it away. Nicol, Edward Fox, who else was in there, Bill Marlowe – there’s somebody else, oh Brian Cox was the teaboy [laughter] and there was an actress everybody kept on saying “I don’t know, she’s not that wonderful.” and her name was Glenda Jackson!

So we were there – oh and Kate Binchy was another, and it was a really, a very strong Company. And we did a new play every two weeks, sometimes a bit of Shakespeare –

DB: Was Antony Page there for the whole year?

GG: He was, he was there for the year.

DB: Wow.

GG: But the great thing about working in those Companies, and the later ones in other reps was that you learned, you learned Restoration for example, you learned to watch the older actor, and often in those Companies an older actor would come up, to play a lead in something or other and you know you’d watch them and you’d pick things up and you were always constantly, stealing, stealing, stealing and learning and learning. So that was a year up there – shall I go on about repertory?

DB: Yes! Yes, fine. Hornchurch was it?

GG: Well Hornchurch was just a one-off.

DB: Oh, I see.

GG: I did a Sean O’Casey play there. Which was called The Drums of Father Ned, and we tried it out there and I think that was the end of it.

DB: Now in the same sort of vein, you went to Bristol.

GG: That came later. I went from Dundee – there was gap – don’t know how long and then I got, I went to Ipswich, with Bob Chetwyn.

DB: Sorry, I meant Ipswich, yes

GG: And that was fantastic. And I was there for I think nearly two and a half years, well certainly two years, and that’s when Ian McKellen and I first knew each other and I became mates, who I see quite often now.

And that was very strong Company too, and Bob was wonderful. And that was a fortnightly rep, and we did – every now and again you did a new play which was exciting and you always thought inside you ‘perhaps this one will go to the West End.’ Of course, they never did. Or if they ever did it didn’t go with you. [laughs]

So that was two and a half years I think – and then I went to Bristol. Ian and I-

DB: [interrupts] Did you see that was a step up? Bristol?

15 mins

 

GG: Oh absolutely. Bristol was big. That’s where everybody wanted to go. You either went to Bristol or Liverpool I think, or Nottingham. And Johnny Neville had taken over Nottingham.

DB: Yes.

GG: And so Ian went to Nottingham, and I went to Bristol, yes, because it was three-weekly, you see.

DB: Oh? Very grand.

GG: Very grand, and –

DB: Who was running it then was it Val May?

GG: Val May, yes. But it was the most beautiful theatre. Still is – I think they mucked it about a bit over the years but in my day it was the most wonderful theatre to work in. And I went there playing sort of smallish parts to begin with and then I met one of the Directors, Denis Carey, and Denis was very kind to me.

DB: Had been an actor I think, before.

GG: Had been an actor, but he’d been there with O’Toole, and he directed O’Toole, and by luck I was slowly coming into playing those sort of parts. So then, my best season I think was, I played Musgrave – Serjeant Musgrave-

DB: The Dance?

GG: In the dance yes! [Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance] Then I played The Playboy, in Playboy of the Western World.

DB: You see you’ll have to complete the titles, because you are playing to an audience that doesn’t necessarily know about that.

GG: [I] Understand. Playboy of the Western World, wonderful play. And then I played Laertes in Hamlet, with Sir Richard Pasco, and then Ejlert Lovborg in Hedda Gabler; and finally, I was going to play Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and Val May came to me one day and said “Would you just come to the office for a minute old boy. Have a sherry.” Those days have changed now!

DB: Am I being fired? Am I being fired?

GG: Yes, exactly! And he said “Would you like to play Romeo? So I said “Yes, sure, I’d love to play Romeo… and so I played Romeo and I played is it Claudio in Measure for Measure. For Guthrie.

DB: Oh gosh.

GG: Tyrone Guthrie, the great man came down and directed that, and then Laertes in Hamlet. And they were the three shows that we took to America.

DB: Aah. This is your first trip to America.

GG: Changed my life! [laughs] Completely. We went to – it was quite extraordinary, it was successful, I mean Bristol, but we opened in Boston, and the local critic didn’t take a lot to my Romeo. He gave me a bit of a tanking, and I thought ‘oh well, this is it’ Misery, misery: Shouldn’t have read it. And then we went to Washington and then we went to Broadway – [telephone in background] and with huge success. [Do you want to stop while that’s going on or is that okay? The phone, do you mind – it’s gone]

DB: On we go.

GG: So we get to Broadway, the City Center, I think it was and I thought ‘well they’re going to kill me here.’

DB: But you are playing in repertory weren’t you?

GG: Yes, we were, so we opened in Hamlet. And then it was my turn. And Hamlet had done quite well. Quite well.

So there was a party on the first night, and everybody went off to party and I think they went to Sardi’s. But I didn’t, I went off, being very strong-willed Irish-Scotsman, I went off down the Village [Greenwich Village] and got hammered – and got back I suppose about four in the morning to these messages in my hotel, saying ‘Have you seen Walter Kerr?’ [Theatre critic] Turned round just like that – I got these fantastic reviews: again, times change. Then we went on a tour, we went to Los Angeles and then we eventually we were going to go to Israel and it was the Seven Days War- [I believe Six Days War. DS]

DB: ‘Sixty-seven.

GG: Yeah, that’s right. They said you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, but we all went. That was good.

20 mins

 

GG: Oh, the other thing I think I should mention is the Romeo I was playing opposite Janey [Jane] Asher. So, you know, she was startling to look at in those days. Sometimes I though ‘There’s no point in coming on.’

[laughter] She looked gorgeous. But her boyfriend was Paul McCartney.

DB: Sure.

GG: So that also helped the box-office, so it was huge. Then that came – then it was back to England, and I went back to Bristol for one play, I went down there and did The Devil’s Disciple -as a sort of “Hey” conquering hero back. And then from nowhere I get a phone call – because by this time I had an American agent – and they said “Would you like to do [There’s a] Girl in My Soup on Broadway?” and I said “Well yes.” I said “But where’s the offer coming from?” “Bob Chetwyn.” Extraordinary. And he had directed it in London.

DB: London, mm.

GG: And, because I’d been working there, I could get what I think is called an H something or other, which is like a green card now, so I went back to Broadway, with –

DB: In a broad comedy.

GG: Broad comedy. And we opened in Boston, where this critic had given me a bad time and his review was extraordinary, he said “The versatility of these wonderful English actors”, he gave me a fantastic Romeo, you thought, well I could have shot myself after the last one: Elliot Norton – I’ll never forget his name. So then we were going to Broadway and it was Gig Young playing the lead, Barbara Ferris, Jon Pertwee, Rita Gam and myself. And we went, yes on our way we went to Music Box-

DB: [clarifying] So, those people, other than you were already working there?

GG: Yup.

DB: Barbara Ferris of course English.

GG: Yup. They’d already been in the play in London.

[Telephone rings]

DB: Oh I see.

GG: Apart from Gig Young. In London it was Donald Sinden, so Gig was the new leading man, but there were major problems because Gig couldn’t remember his lines, that sort of thing, so when we hit town, the Company Manager said to me “Don’t get yourself an apartment. Book into a hotel, because you’ll be home before Christmas.”  [laughs]

DB: A vote of confidence!

GG: Oh, they were quite strong about these things. Anyway we did the previews and it was sort of so-so, but it had another first night which sort of took off, but – this is awfully blowing my own trumpet – but anyway, I got the reviews; I was playing a cockney drummer with a hangover, so it’s a pretty good part. And the Americans loved it, and so the next day I get a call from Michael Codron who was part of the management, who said “Come for lunch.” And he said “Now what are we going to do with you?” and I said “Why?” and he said “well you’ve handed in your notice.”, and I said “Have I?” and he said “Yes, your agent said.” “No, no, no, please that’s the last thing I want to do.” He said “Well there’s a thing in the contract that says a month either way, and I, having read the contract, thought ‘oh they are going to fire me on the road.’

You never think the right way round.

DB: No.

GG: And he said “No there’s a mistake, so if I double your wages and pay half of it in cash, will you stay for ten months?” I said “I’ll stay for ten years!” so that’s how it all came [about] so I stayed, with the show. But then because of that, that led on to Television.

DB: Yes, In America?

GG: In America.

DB: So you were able to do both you mean, or…

GG: It was very strange. They came and asked me if I would like to do a programme called What’s My Line? Which was a sort of joke [it was] my mother’s favourite programme in England. And I said “No, I don’t do that sort of thing.”

25 mins

GG: “It’s a panel game, I can’t do that.” “Well, would you just come and try it?” So, I went along to the Ed Sullivan Theatre on Broadway, or just off-Broadway, I don’t know, to do five shows: you did two in the morning, three in the afternoon, and I sat in what I thought was the make-up room, and nobody came, so I watched television. And eventually they said I was in the wrong room, went somewhere else and got done. When we got down on the show, I realised that I knew what everybody did. I was watching them rehearse, so I thought the best thing is not to guess anybody, so I didn’t. There’s a little ‘do’ afterwards – they are called Goodson & Todman, the producers, and Arlene Francis and Soupy Sales, and all these crazy people, we went for a little supper at a Chinese restaurant, and I said to the producers “I knew what everybody did.” And they were horrified, because there was a real strict –

DB: Oh, I see!

GG: - but apparently, they were so pleased with my being so honest, they asked me to go back. Well I went back and of course I was terrible at it, but the audience thought it was very funny, so it became quite popular. In fact you can still see it, there’s one at the moment, I was showing it to somebody the other day, it’s on You-tube, and it’s me with Arlene Francis, Soupy Sales, all these, introduced as “Gawn Grainger the Pride of Piccadilly.” [laughter], and then you have a mystery guest, there was a mystery guest on it, this is how ignorant I was of the scene, it was man called James Brown, probably one of the most successful [American] footballers- so I went on quite a lot of those, and then when I came back to England, every now and again they’d fly me over to do some. I used to fly Sabena Airlines, and I’d go to, I had to fly to Brussels, and then to New York, and on the first break in the programme, I’d say “Europe begins in Brussels. Fly Sabena. I do.” That’s all I’d say: I got free flights!

DB: Yes! Wow.

GG: Those were the days – they were fun. And then one thing led to another. And another and another.

DB: When you came back to Britain you went straight into the West End, a couple of shows.

GG: Yeah, I did. But – yes I did, that’s right. Richard Eyre’s first show, which was a complete disaster. It was called The Giveaway and it was done at the Garrick, with Dandy Nichols, Roy Hudd; and it got booed on the first night. Never experienced anything like it, and I hope never again. It ran for ten days. But during the course of it, Richard was going to direct another play, at Edinburgh, called The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, which was a very, very, good Irish play, but in those days Irish plays weren’t in vogue. So we did it and then we brought it into Hampstead, and that’s where it stopped. But because of that I then went from Hampstead to Windsor to do Dracula, and while I was playing Dracula I went down there one day and they said “There’s a phone call for you at the stage door, and it was my agent said “At the end of the month you are going to Hollywood.” I said “Of course I am! Big joke, big joke.” And what had happened was that while I was in New York doing Girl in My Soup, I was asked to do a screen test for a film and it got very exciting, and on a Sunday I was flown out to Los Angeles to meet the Producer, and then I did the screen test in New York, and the buzz was that I’d got the part. Well they had somebody under contract called Donald Sutherland. So he got the part.

30 mins

 

GG: It was film called Start the Revolution without Me, and he did it with Gene, Gene, the man who was in The Producers-

DB: Yes.

GG: Him! With Zero Mostel. [Gene Wilder. DS] So, I’d done this but I hadn’t got it. But the phone call in Windsor was because the people that I’d done the screen test for had sent the screen test to somebody else, who’d said “Yes.” So I went over to do a film called Mastermind, opposite Zero Mostel, and we went to Japan for three or four months.

DB: Wow.

GG: So that was all to do with – you could trace it back more-or-less to going to Ipswich rep and meeting this man called Bob Chetwyn.

DB: Yeah, yeah!

GG: So suddenly, there I was making movies.

DB: Can we just interrupt the flow just for a moment and can you talk about agents.

GG: Mm.

DB: Because obviously you’ve had several agents down the years.

GG: Yup.

DB: What is the average sort of relationship, good, bad, indifferent, whatever? I know it’s totally unpredictable, the business, but-

GG: Yeah, yeah.

DB: How do you deal with that? Part of it.

GG: Yes, it is difficult because you have to treat them as – well some people said you have to treat them as post offices [laughs] but the agents I’ve had have always been very sort of fatherly I suppose or brotherly. I had an agent for years and years and years called David White – I think I was his first client, and then David got sick towards the end of his life, and I went to – who are now called United Agents, I went to Dallas Smith and my relationship with him has always been wonderful, great.

DB: And you are sort of still there.

GG: I’m still there. During the last fifteen, ten, years, I’ve said to Dallas “I don’t want to work any more you know.” “Of course not.” And then these jobs come up. So I think I’m his oldest client now. But if something comes along, of course I’d do it, yeah.

DB: So we are heading up towards 1970.

GG: Yup.

DB: Now, dotted along the way you’ve done quite a bit of radio.

GG: Done a lot, yes.

DB: I think in 1970 – you got married.

GG: I did. You’re absolutely right, I did. [laughter] We got married: Janet Key, an actress. We got married, Finsbury Town Hall, and I think as I mentioned to you earlier, when I was actually in New York, Janet called me and said “I’ve found somewhere to live in Islington.” And I said “There’s no way I would live in Islington, ever.

DB: Because?

GG: Because when we were young in Holborn, going to Islington was called ‘You go up there and you get your ears chopped off.’ Anyway, I have lived in Islington ever since. So we got married and it was just when I did the film in Japan, so it was the first time I had enough money to get together to buy a house; and her parents did not approve of me. And obviously didn’t come to the wedding. Eventually over the years they relented. But yes, so we got married in 1970.

DB: Now, what is looming up is your first job at The National.

GG: Ah.

DB: We’ll need now to spend quite some time on ‘The National”

GG: Well The National.

DB: The newspaper play, wasn’t it? Front Page.

GG: The Front Page.

DB: That was the first?

GG: No it wasn’t.

DB: Ah! Beg your pardon.

GG: The first was Richard II. It was – well I suppose I ought to tell you how I got into the National: Janet’s best friend was Jane Lapotaire and Jane was I think married to Roly Joffe, and Roland said “Why don’t you join the National?” and I said “Yeah but how-?” and he said “well you’ll have to audition.” And I was actually playing the lead at that moment at The Duke of York’s, in a play called The Douglas Cause, with Andrew Cruickshank and Fulton Mackay: a Scottish piece, as you can imagine, and I said “Well can’t the casting people come and see me in the play?” And they said “Well yes, but you still have to audition.”

 

35 mins

 

GG: So, alright.

DB: Who was running The National at this point?

GG: Olivier. Oh yeah. So, the time came for the audition, which was at The New Theatre on the set of Long Day’s Journey… and I worked something out, I thought ‘Yeah, I know what I’m going to do.’ And I did it for Janet and she said “Well you’ll either get it or you’ll never work again!” So I went down, and I went into The Salisbury, right next door, and I had a swift vodka and tonic, and I was first up, and in the audience was [Laurence]Olivier, [Michael] Blakemore, Jonathan Miller, Johnny Dexter, I mean the full works. So I went on and did my ‘modern’, which was Musgrave, because I’d played that, that was alright, and then I said “I want you to imagine that I’m Edmund Kean, and I’m at the last days of my career, really, but I’ve gone up to Liverpool to help a friend, which was what used to happen in those days, on a ‘benefit’, but we’d gone out a bit sometime before the first show. So here we go.” So I went on and I started to do a bit of Richard II “No matter where of comfort no man speaketh” and then I did a deliberate dry, and went into Hamlet –

{Darrol is laughing]

GG: Did a bit of Hamlet, and then I was storming up and down the stage by this time, doing A New Way to Pay Old Debts and got completely pissed, went off stage and then came back on and said “If you think I’m pissed, wait till you see the Duke of Buckingham.” and disappeared. So I’d been on for about twenty minutes. And Olivier called me back: “Mr Grainger, where did you get the voice from?” And I said “Well, if you go to the British Museum, and you get the prompt copy, and you follow Kean’s Richard III it comes out “Now is the-“ [imitating Olivier] He said “Thank you very much.” [Laughter]

And I got in.

So it was then Richard II.

DB: Had you played Kean at that point?

GG: Yes, I’d played Kean.

DB: Aah!

GG: Oh yes – I cheated. I’d played Kean at Bristol, oh I used everything I could get hold of in those days.

DB: Right.

GG: Yeah. Learn from the best. Then I had to understudy in Richard II, and I always felt it was a bit of a wrap over the knuckles, because when I went to New York with The Old Vic, I was supposed to come back and either join the National or join the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company]. And I didn’t, I went off and had good time. I was away for two years. So, I always felt it was a bit like that. But anyway I covered in Richard II, I think it was Northumberland, the sort of part I would never play in a million years. I was covering an actor called Paul Curran, an old lovely Scottish actor, and he phoned me one day and said “I’m going to be off tonight.” I said “Are you really?” He said “Yeah.” So, I went in and did my impersonation of him, and that was almost the last time I understudied. I did it once more but I tell you that’s a completely different story. Because of that I got [The] Front Page, and then-

DB: Which a great success I remember.

GG: A huge success. We did that yeah. Michael Blakemore.

DB: How did The National organise things in those days because obviously they’d have an announced first run and then they were hit with a success-

GG: And then you in repertoire whatever.

DB: Ah, so that would mean some reorganisation for everybody I’d have thought.

GG: Well that was in repertoire with I think Jumpers, which was also very successful and then, what did we do after that? Oh I know, The Scottish play, [MacBeth] with Hopkins, Tony Hopkins, and in those days Tony used to come and sleep on the floor here. [laughter] Those wild days.

DB: Yes.

GG: That was in that season I think, as well.

DB: That was MacDuff, opposite himself.

GG: With himself and Di Rigg-

40 mins

 

GG: Then we started to rehearse The Misanthrope and Tony disappeared. And then Dexter then called me up to the rehearsal room and said “Do you want to play Oronte?” That’s another big breakthrough for me, it’s a wonderful part.

DB: That wasn’t Hopkins’ famous lack of – you know, panic and-

GG: Oh yes, it was. [They are alluding to stage fright. DS]

DB: It wasn’t the -?

GG: Oh yes, both. It was madness. I mean Tony and I from here, he’d get up at five in the morning and say “we’ve got to go to work” and we’d go to Smithfield. Have breakfast. Then go to work. But he was having a bad time, I mean you know, Tony today is incredible. We are both the same age and he’s, you know-

DB: He’s survived.

GG: He’s survived. He really did. Whereas a lot of the others didn’t. [wry chuckle]

DB: Bacchae?

GG: That was the same time, yeah. That was Roland Joffe, but they called that a – I can’t remember what they called it now but we went on the road with that. That was a touring thing, and I remember a story with that: there was no billing in those days, this whole thing at The National, it was alphabetical, so we went to – oh it wasn’t The Bacchae, it was ‘Tis Pity she’s a Whore, which was also Roly Joffe, and we were somewhere in Devon, Plymouth or somewhere, and it said Diana Rigg in ‘Tis Pity she’s a Horse’.

DB: [laughing] Unfortunate.

GG: I know. But that was about the same time as The Bacchae. The Bacchae again was not a great success. But there were a lot of us taking our clothes off and running round with nothing on.

DB: I see, yeah. One of those.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

GG: Oh Yes!

DB: Was that an Italian thing?

GG:  That was Zefferelli.

DB: Oh!

GG: That was a huge success. Yes, I’d forgotten about that. That was Joan Plowright, Frank Finlay, Denis Quilley

DB: Did that transfer to the West End?

GG: It did but I didn’t go with it.

DB: Ah, right.

GG: I didn’t want to go with it. Yeah, that was Franco, that was incredible.

DB: What was it like working for him?

GG: Well, it was wild. If I could say we started rehearsals, and the Assistant Director, who was, I think, rather friendly with the Director, disappeared, so the Director then went to find the Assistant Director so we spent some time on our own, and then he came back and gave us a really bad time about our accents and things, and we were taking the Michael out of the Italians, and then Anna Magnani died, and he disappeared again, so we were all really working on our own, but Olivier was in it too, of course.

DB: Yeah, yeah.

GG: And then we were coming up to the first night, and Franco wasn’t too happy with what was going on and then there was some huge row, and I don’t know what the row was about because I wasn’t in Act One but Franco went storming off up the Waterloo Road or something, so the next day Olivier said “Are you happy if I take over rehearsals?” “Yeah, sure.” So we rehearsed it, and then the first preview happened, and we knew it was a hit – you can smell success. Then Franco turned up and out of all this mish-mash it was a huge hit, and he won the Best Director of the Year Award! [Much laughter] So, it was an experience. But then I worked with him again, in what about ten or fifteen years ago in a play called Absolutely!! (Perhaps).

DB: In the West End?

GG: Yeah, it was in [2003]. With Joan [Plowright]. At the Wyndham’s.

45 mins

 

DB: The Party.

GG: Mm [acknowledges]

DB: Now, Next of Kin.

GG: That was way earlier. Next of Kin was in ’74.

DB: ’74. We are still in the Waterloo Road, of course. At The National.

GG: We’re in the Waterloo Road and it’s the end of Olivier.

DB: With Hopkins. Ah Right.

GG: Because the last play that Olivier was in, which I was in with him, was The Party.

DB: Oh yes. Yes, yes.

GG: And that’s where – that was extraordinary, And he…

DB: Tell us a bit about The Party. It’s a political party.

GG: It’s a political party, and it was written by Trevor Griffiths, and he – Olivier – centre stage on a sofa where you are now and I was sitting next to him, looking out front, and he had a twenty-minute speech with a Scot’s accent. He wasn’t so brilliant at some of the accents but he – the fire, the energy that was coming off him, and fear, was enormous. And I always remember on the first night: the [Old] Vic, in those days, there was a centre aisle, and the doors at the back, the little swing doors at the back, and I could see Joan Plowright and John Dexter leaving, during the speech, so I sat next to this extraordinary power and energy and that was the last thing he ever did in a theatre, and on the very last night, obviously all of us gave the stage to him at the end, and he walked down to the audience and he knelt on the stage and kissed it. Very theatrical but I think, full of love, and then he had this wonderful way with curtain calls: he got up and went [demonstrates] “Is this for me?”  [laughs]

DB: Me? Really?

GG: But that was The Party. And then after that came Next of Kin: John Hopkins.

DB: With his wife in the lead.

GG: No, it was written for her, but she didn’t do it.

DB: Ah.

GG: Gemma Jones played in it.

DB: Of course. Yeah.

GG: So, we did that and we took that on tour, to Birmingham and somewhere else I think, and it was a lovely play but the critics didn’t go for it for some reason. Harold Pinter directed it. First time I met Harold.

DB: Ah! How did you get on with him?

GG: Well.

DB: Because I know when I met him only briefly, he seemed a perfectly ordinary chap, easy and you know, conversation…

GG: Well I’ll tell you a story about him.

DB: Not like you’d expect from the plays.

GG: No, but I can tell you a bit more about him later, because he comes into my life very strongly much later.

DB: Yeah, yeah.

GG: But that was directed by him and then it was Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais, and I got to play Figaro. Which was heaven!

DB: Still in the Waterloo Road?

GG: Still in the Waterloo Road, directed by Jonathan Miller.

DB: How was that?

GG: That was grand. Had a ball. And that was lovely, it was again with Gemma, Gemma Jones, Derek Godfrey, who was a wonderful actor, and Nicola Pagett, and the whole base of The National Company. It was lovely and that was a big breakthrough for me.

DB: Hm. How did you get on with Jonathan?

GG: Oh, very well. Well I mean he used to make me laugh all the time, and he was dreadful – I loved him! And it was interesting working with Harold on Next of Kin, and then Jonathan on this. Harold was almost everything in miniature, just, just, perfect, and Jonathan was in big wide strokes, brushstrokes, but it was wonderful. I mean how lucky I was: to have worked with all these extraordinary people.

DB: Yup, yeah.

GG: So that was – then – Peter Hall had taken over, and the people were being fired in such a nice way, they’d go in the office, and [come out and] say “He says I’m due to go to the West End!” “I’m sure he’s said that to you but what he really means is, he doesn’t want you in the Company.

[Darrol laughs]

So two of us stayed, which was Denis Quilley and me. That was it.

50 mins

 

DB: Oh. There was a quick tour to America with the National, too.

GG: Yeah. That was with The Misanthrope. Yup.

DB: Uh. Osric?

GG: Osric, yes. [Wry smile] Peter offered me, I think Rosencrantz and Osric and I said “No, I just want to play Osric!” So…

DB: Whose Hamlet was that then?

GG: Albert Finney. It was Albert Finney, Angela Lansbury.

DB: [American accent] Angela Lansbury…

GG: She played the Queen, Denis Quilley played The King.

DB: He seems indestructible.

GG: Den. And Angela Lansbury.

DB: I know.

GG: 90 plus. She’s still there.

DB: 90 plus and still working.

GG: And who else was in that? Stephen Rea played the Second Gravedigger. He and I used to go for dinner every night, because we’d done every word Shakespeare had written apparently.

DB: Oh!

GG: It’s five hours. But at the same time we were rehearsing Tamburlaine.

DB: Mm. With Albert Finney.

GG: With Albert. But we were going to open the new theatre with it.

DB: Yes.

GG: And, of course, the new Theatre wasn’t ready. And I think we rehearsed it for six months. [laughs] And we even did it outside.

DB: What do you remember about the transition into the new theatre? Terrible memories of the delays and the work on the building?

GG: That was mainly what it was, it was delay, delay, delay, and it wasn’t ready, and I remember talking to Peter about it one day and I said “Why don’t we let the public know that we’re ready, and the theatre isn’t?” “How do we do that?” “We do it on the Terraces.” The next day it came out in the paper ‘Peter Hall has this wonderful idea.’ which is fair enough I didn’t mind that. But we did it on the terraces and that was extraordinary, looking back. But we did more than one thing on the terraces in those days.

DB: That first Hamlet, was that in summer or was it autumn, can you remember?

GG: I can’t remember.

DB: Oh, it doesn’t matter. I was just thinking about the weather.

GG: Oh we didn’t do Hamlet outside we did Tamburlaine outside. Because Hamlet had already gone in, to the Lyttlelton, the first theatre to open.

DB: Oh, I see.

GG: So we’d actually opened there but we couldn’t open the Olivier Theatre, ‘cos it wasn’t ready.

DB: The drum revolve – took a year, something stuck.

GG: Exactly. Well, it still gets stuck now. So that’s what happened, yeah, so we did it outside. So the move, it’s a funny old period that, I can’t – was it ’76, or ’75, something like that?

DB: Which one, which one?

GG: When we’ve actually moved into the theatre, moved into-

DB: Well, ’76.

GG: ‘76.

DB: It says ‘Osric, The Old Vic, December ’75 –

GG: And then we moved across.

DB: Then in March ’76.

GG: That’s it. It did.

DB: Then of course, as you left The Old Vic, there was attribute to ‘the lady’.

GG: Oh yes, oh yes.

DB: Tell us about that – and tell us who the lady is.

GG: Ah, it was Lilian Bayliss, who had – she was the mother figure to all the great actors of that time: Olivier, Richardson, Gielgud, all good.

DB: In the ‘20s.

GG: In the ‘20s and ‘30s, and she ran The Old Vic.

DB: Which was a temperance building.

GG: It was, yes! [laughs] – which it wasn’t then; This was a tribute, which was a huge – it was like Night of 100 stars. Everybody was in it. And Peggy Ashcroft played Bayliss, and Olivier was in it, Richardson was in it. Gielgud, and Edith Evans. Sybil Thorndike. It was extraordinary. Queen Mother was there. I always remember, there was a reception afterwards, and Sybil was in a wheelchair, and I was talking with her, and the Queen Mother came over, and to talk with her, she knelt down. Extraordinary. And my mother – who was such a Royalist – there was photograph taken – and this picture which my mother eventually had – I don’t know where it is now, which is rather sad. That was an extraordinary evening: Albert Finney and myself, and Richardson. Albert from the wing over there, and I’m on the wing over here [gestures]

55 mins

 

GG: And Richardson is in the middle, and he was brilliant at doing a sort of stand-up, and he was doing a bit of a stand-up and it went on and on and on, and after a bit I saw Albert go “come on, come on” [gestures] so we both went on and Richardson said “What are we doing?”

“Well, we’re doing a piece from Anthony and Cleopatra. The Barge.” “Well, what part am I playing?” So the audience were loving this. “And it’s the one with the most lines, sir.” So then, we, the three of us, did it, and afterwards I’d knocked on his dressing room door – the show is still going on – and he came and I said “I thought it went very well, Sir Ralph.” And he said “Oh, hey hey, did you see it!”

[Darrol laughs]

I’ll never know whether he was sending me up or not. So it was quite an evening. Fantastic, this evening with all these amazing people.

DB: I bet – I bet. So you were still at the transfer into the new building, still with the Company.

GG: Yup.

DB: Julius Caesar.

GG: Yup.

DB: Tell me about The Passion.

GG: Well, The Passion. It was an adaptation by Tony Harrison, who is a wonderful poet – and I’d worked with him before in The Misanthrope, and, well…it’s either set in the York Mysteries or The Wakefield Mysteries, I can’t remember, and Bill Bryden had formed a company which was called The Cottesloe Company which was the small theatre [Now the Dorfman. DS] and which I was part of, and The Passion was the most extraordinary piece: we did it in the round, or promenade as it was called, so that we were in the audience.

DB: Yes.

GG: We, I played one of the knights, Trevor Ray played a knight, Derek Newark played a knight, Tom Wilkinson played a knight, but then that varied, sometimes it was Tony Haygarth, and it was pretty powerful, strong, what they considered ‘butch’ company in those days [chuckles]

DB: Who was God?

GG: oh, Brian Glover. And Christ was Mark McManus and it was madness.

DB: Thick dialect, accents!

GG: Oh yes. And, anyway it was a huge hit, enormous hit, and at the end people would dance with us, and it was like – I remember a whole lot of nuns coming one performance and dancing with us afterwards, it was an extraordinary thing. But again, that was something we couldn’t open immediately, so we did that on the Terraces, and it was at Easter and we had the Albion Band, but it started to snow, and I remember Bryden saying “Well we can’t do it.” Because of the band – they’d get electrocuted or something. So Bryden and three or four of the rest of us went to the pub, thinking ‘well we’ve got the day off.’ Anyway, it stopped snowing, and there are wonderful photographs taken by Nobby Clark, where we took the cross with Christ on it, up those terraces, and you could see Waterloo Bridge lined with people. It was extraordinary. Anyway, that eventually went into The Cottesloe itself, and was an enormous hit, and that ran for a long time. At the same time we did something called Lark Rise to Candleford, and that was promenade as well. But all those guys that I worked with in those days, they are all dead!

DB: [sadly] Oh.

GG: I know, but they worked at it – I just got lucky.

DB: While you were playing in the Company all those years, did you do outside work, like television or film?

GG: I did the odd television…what did I do?

DB: Crown Court?

GG: Yes! We all did those.

1 hour

 

GG: And I did –

DB: Sorry.

GG: It doesn’t matter. It was something with Roger Daltrey which was called – oh the one about the highwayman and the songs and all that.

DB: Never mind.

GG: It’ll come back.

Voice off: Beggar’s Opera?

GG: That’s The Beggar’s Opera, yes. Knew I’d get it. [laughs]

DB: Writing. You’ve been scribbling away for quite some time prior to this I gather.

GG: Yes, I have – I had.

DB: Got a note that the first play to be produced – could be wrong – was in ’76.

GG: Yup!

DB: Something called Four to One?

GG: That’s it.

DB: Was that for radio or for theatre?

GG: No, for theatre. Yes, it was done at The National.

DB: Oh, at The National. I do beg your pardon.

GG: Right. It was on actually at The Young Vic, but it was still actually part of it. I’d always written, but you know what it’s like being a writer you think ‘oh, nobody’s going to do it’ and I wrote this play called Four to One and gave it to a friend of mine, Sebastian, who then put it in the system.

DB: Sebastian?

GG: Graham Jones. He changed the name. His son was called Luke and mine was called Charlie so we called it a play by Charles Luke, and it went to Peter Hall and he read it and he wanted to meet Charles Luke.

[DB Laughs]

And we did it. Unfortunately it was the same time when there was a strike at The National and so it was pulled short, so it didn’t do its run. But that was my beginning and then for –

DB: But there was a note in the cv that said you had something produced when you were 21.

GG: Oh I did yes [chuckles] I had a play – when I was at Frinton –

DB: Ah!

GG: There was a play, I wrote a play, and I remember the guy, Peter Hoar, said “Well I think you are quite a good writer, but this is not for me, this play.” But he said “I’ve got a play coming in, it’s an American piece, I want to adapt it, make it an English piece, will you have a go?” So that’s what I did and it was a play called Brook Hollow, and we changed the title to Murder on Arrival; it was a sort of Christie thing really, and we did it at Frinton, and invited Evelyn Laye, and her husband – can’t remember his name now, to come down and see it.

DB: Frank something wasn’t it?

GG: You’re right, Frank Lawton.

DB: Yeah.

GG: To come down and see it, plus Margaret Lockwood’s agent. Well it’s outrageous, weekly rep, but they came. And Margaret Lockwood’s agent picked it up. And so, it was done, but when they were rehearsing it, I was out of work: I was working as a stage hand – at Peter Pan.

DB: [laughs] Was it still in the Scala?

GG: Yeah! And Lockwood’s daughter, Toots, was playing Peter Pan, so every time Margaret came to pick her up, I used to hide. But she eventually caught me and she said “What are you doing here?” and I said “Well, I’m a stage hand.” And she said “But are we not paying you?” and I said “Well not so far.” £20 a week was given to me then which was a lot of money, and I then had to stop being a stage hand. The play then went on tour, and was going to come into town, and I thought ‘whoopee’ you know – Peter Saunders was putting it on, and I thought ‘well I’m going to be a rich boy.’ Very sadly, one of the actors, who was Aylmer, David Aylmer I think it was – he was Felix Aylmer’s son.

DB: I remember. I know what’s going to happen. Go on.

GG: He committed suicide, and she wouldn’t come in with the play. So, it didn’t come in and some time later, Rosamund Greenwood and somebody else, they picked it up and it was done, at what’s now called The Other Place, or The Palace or something. It was called – what was it called then in those days, that theatre – [Westminster Theatre. DS] it was on the corner of Palace Street which was really extraordinary because Westminster City School is in Palace Street, and I used to think of the schoolmasters who used to give me such a bad time, but I was an idiot.

 

1 hour 5 mins

 

GG: I wonder if they saw my name up there?

DB: Full circle!

GG: But that was the first thing I got involved with, I was twenty-one, yeah. Gosh, what a life!

DB: So we are coming, presumably, to the end of the time at The National, right? Gone on for some time.

GG: I left The National round about ’80.

DB: You’re right, you’re right. And of course you helped Olivier write a book. How did that come about?

GG: That came later – that came – I left The National in ’80 and then did one more show for them. I did The Crucible, at the – what is now called The Pinter, [The Comedy Theatre DS] and then I decided I was going to write. I wrote a play which was done at Guildford, called Jubilee, with Peggy Mount and Doreen Mantle, and I thought ‘this is the one that’s going to make me the fortune.’ It opened at Guildford and got destroyed by Nicholas de Jongh who came down. I said “we didn’t want any critics.” Anyway, he turned up and gave me a bit of  a smacking, but a lovely man producer, director, writer called John Bowen saw it, and said to me “Why don’t you write me a television play?” I said “Really?” and he said “Yeah.” He said “I’m going to produce a series of first plays.”

DB: At Thames.

GG: “-At Thames. Do one for me.” And I said “What about?” And he said “About hang-gliding.” I said “I know nothing about hang-gliding.” He said “Exactly. Go and find out and come back with a play.” So I phoned the Hang-Gliding Association, and said to The Secretary “Could you tell me if anything dramatic – “and he said “Well, I’m speaking to you from a wheelchair.” “Oh really, I’m very sorry about that.” He said “No, no, no, it’s alright.” So I said “Well how did that happen?” and he said “Well, I had an accident and got carried away.” He said “But I’m going to do it again.” And I said “Well how can you do it?” and he said “You don’t have to walk to fly.” I had a title. So, I phoned up John and said “I’ve got a title.”

So I wrote a play about a paraplegic who went hang-gliding. I gave it to a friend of mine, Bob Hoskins, and he said “Ooh, I gonna do this, ain’t I?” [Darrol laughs] and it became the first play of that whole series, and so that’s how I came to write for television.

DB: Yes.

GG: And after that, by now I had a wonderful agent who still looks after me now, called Judy Daish-

DB: As a writer.

GG: As a writer. Took me to lunch once, and then said “Why don’t you write about Robin Hood?” Everybody writes about Robin Hood: a modern Robin Hood.” So I wrote about a lot of people around here that I know, a lot of the villains.

DB: Yeah, oh I see.

GG: And it was about this particular man who spent most of his life gambling. [Darrol reacts] Exactly. So what happened was I gave it to, I think it was Yorkshire [TV] and they wanted it but because I didn’t have enough television hours, they wouldn’t allow me, they wouldn’t sign me to write the whole thing. I could write the first episode, and Judy advised me, she said “You’ve got to fight against this.” So I did and I turned them down. And then a very short time later, the BBC got in touch, and said “We’ve read your stuff, we’ve got a series going out at the moment and wondered if you would be interested in doing something. And it was called Give us a Break, which was about snooker and I knew quite a lot about snooker because I was a very naughty boy when I was young, and I wrote a couple of episodes and then Bob Lindsay decide he didn’t want to do any more, so it didn’t happen, but in the meantime, the other writer on it, called Geoff McQueen, had come up with an idea and they used my idea and his.

1 hour 10 mins

 

GG: And it became, it was called Big Deal. And it’s about a gambler and that’s how my television career really began.

DB: How many of those did you write?

GG: About 30, and I did about 14, I did the majority.

DB: And the producer was…

GG:  Bill…

DB: Not Bill – Williams?

GG: Yeah, him!

DB: I’m sure the production [schedule] was every ten days and hectic.

GG: It was, yes.

DB: A whole variety of directors.

GG: You know, you’ve experienced the same thing. So we’d do ten and then we’d have time off and then we’d do another ten, and then another ten. And it would have gone on longer but the leading man as always wanted more money! And they weren’t going to give it to him. No I thought he was doing rather well, in those days. But-

DB: So that took you on the other side of the camera.

GG: Took me on the other side of the camera.

DB: Tell us about that: what did you discover? How different was it?

GG: It was extraordinary. By this time I had two young children, so it meant I spent time with them. I mean when I was at The National I hardly saw my sons: I’d go to work at ten and come back at midnight, you know. So, I spent more time with them; working from home, from right at the top of this house, and we then – well, little things that you couldn’t do before. We’d have a month’s holiday every year. We’d go somewhere ‘glam’ like Portugal or somewhere like that. So my life turned round, in that way, but during that period I’d get a phone call, from Olivier, saying “Would I go down for the weekend?” and I assumed it was Hopkins, ‘cos he does a brilliant impersonation.

DB: Ah! Oh I see, yes.

GG: So I didn’t take any notice. And come the weekend, the phone goes: “Where are you?” And it was for real. So we’d go down there, and I’ve never known why this actually happened with Olivier, myself.

DB: You’ve been together for a number of years.

GG: I know.

DB: You’ve sat beside him when he was terrified-

GG: But we were suddenly best friends. In the old days he used to call me The Court Jester.

DB: I wonder why?

GG: And so we became really close friends, and I’d go down the odd weekend, and we were down one weekend and I remember the ‘cast list’ was – here we go again, I’m going to – this is what’s called a Merl and Pearl moment: we had two wonderful friends called Merl and Pearl – what was the name of that, you know the one,  [They mimic forgetfulness]

DB: He was married to-

GG: That’s him yes. So that’s one of those.

DB: He was in- yes.  [They laugh]

GG: Anyway, the cast list was Edna O’Brien, three or four women, I think Maggie might have been there, I can’t remember, and Jan and myself, and Larry and I used to go off on our own, and sit in a corner and get pissed or something and chat, chat, chat. But that night I’d gone to bed quite early and all the girls had stayed up and it had come about, who was going to write the book, because Larry had been asked to write Olivier on Acting, it was called, but he wasn’t really up for it so Edna was suggested, and Edna said “no, no, no, get Gawn.” So the next day Janet said “Let’s go for a walk. They are going to ask you something, you’d better be prepared.” “What’s that?” “They’ll ask you to write the book. Or to ghost the book.” she said, “So, you’d better decide what you are going to say.” Well the rest is… I said “Yes” and I didn’t realise how much I’d taken on. And also the publishers, Weidenfeld and Nicholson were pushing, pushing, pushing, because they wanted the book to come out before Christmas or something.

DB: By now he’d been ill, presumably, once or twice.

GG: Oh yeah. Quite a lot. I used to go see him in hospital. He was always in under a fictitious name. Yeah, we were like father and son, really.

1 hour 15 mins

 

GG: By then. So then I’d spend days with him and days, taping him.

DB: Mm. And this wasn’t an autobiography, this was about acting.

GG: It was about acting. Exactly. So, I was able to go run with it, and I’d started off with the Greeks and then went through. And talked about his first nights, First night of Richard III, Henry V, all sorts, and eventually finished the book. I remember just before, he and I went to Spain to Pam Gems’ place, for ten days, with a nurse, and that’s when I slowly finished the whole thing up. And it became very successful, which was great. It was lovely.

DB: Mm.

GG: But in the book, because of sales, it says Olivier on Acting, by… and then inside it says ‘I’m very grateful to my friend, Gawn Grainger who kindly edited this book’.

[They chuckle]

But then we became even closer, I went on seeing him and seeing him, and then of course he got really ill, and then I got the phone call, went down to say goodbye to him, which happened. I remember Maggie Smith and myself – it was a Summer’s day and we were sitting outside, on the patio. It was a bit like Chekhov, I said “This is like a Chekhovian play.” The doctor said “Well, you can come in if you want to.” And he said “Keep on talking to him, because that’s the last sense to go.” And I said “Do you remember my first auditions?” and we went on like that for some time, and that was the last time I saw him. And then Richard, his son, said would I speak at the funeral?”

DB: Oh.

GG: And I happily said yes of course.” And then realised ‘what have I said?’

DB: You’d never played Westminster Abbey before!

GG: Well, it wasn’t the Abbey-

DB: Oh!

GG: It was a little church, near Ashurst, which is where he lived, but The Abbey was the big one, which was the Memorial. So this was at this church, and I’ve never seen so many photographers on stepladders, and going in, I got up in the pulpit and I looked at these faces that I’d only ever seen in the movies. It was mind blowing, but instead of talking about him as an actor I talked about him as a human being, which was probably the better thing to do because all the rest was going to come later. So that was my farewell to Larry.

DB: Yeah. Yeah.

GG: God, I’m going on a bit, aren’t I?

DB: So that was the writing period.

GG: That was the writing period. It went on until ’90.

DB: Yes.

GG: So it was a good – I hadn’t acted for eight years.

DB: Something rather sad happened.

GG: Yeah. I get a phone call, from Harold Pinter. “Come and see me.” So I go and see Harold. “I’ve written a play. There’s a part for you.” “Well I don’t do acting anymore.” “ Yes you do!”

[DB laughs]

“Yes you do. You owe it.” I said “Who to?” He said “Yourself, you fool.”

So, I did a play called Party Time, which Harold directed. At the Almeida. With Mountain Language, a double bill with Dorothy Tutin. Lovely Dorothy. And a lot of lovely actors, and then we filmed it. At this point in time, Janet was very, very, sick. She’d cancer. So, I was in a way grateful to theatre again to have taken me in.

DB: Mm.

1 hour 20 mins

GG: Anyway, Jan then died. And just after that I became mum and dad, you know with the kids. We did a film of Party Time.

DB: In a studio or on stage?

GG: In a studio down at Teddington I think it was, and we were walking across the car park after filming one day, and I said to Harold “What are you going to do next?” He said “I’m going to do No Man’s Land.” I said “Oh.” And he said “No, I’m going to perform in it.” And I said “Oh, fantastic.” I said “My God, I wish I was a bit younger.” He said “Why?” I said “I’d love to play Briggs.” “Well, why do you need to be younger? I can’t offer you the part, but you can meet the Director.” So I went to meet the Director, who was David Leveaux, at the Almeida and we got on well, so because of Harold, my acting career started all over again. [Darrol laughs]

And we did No Man’s Land with Paul Eddington, and Duggy [Douglas] Hodge and it was very successful and we took it in to the Comedy, which as you know now is The Pinter, and we ran there for a bit and then it just went on afterwards, I did play after play. Right up to now.

DB: Yup. Yes, yes, yes. I mean you were last on the stage last year I think.

GG: I was. At The National. St George and the Dragon. [Laughs]

DB: Which were you! [laughs]

GG: I was of course the old man. I was George’s best friend! Father figures. I only play father figures now.

DB: Now, scattered all through this. There is quite a lot of radio, as well.

GG: Yeah, quite a bit, yeah.

DB: Can you remember what the high spots of that were?

GG: I can’t actually no.

DB: Oh. Okay.

GG: I did a rather good one not so long ago – it’s a famous play.

DB: I’ve got a little list.

GG: What have I done?

DB: Phoenix too Frequent. That’s way back.

GG: That’s way back yeah. I did quite a lot if his work actually; he was a lovely man. He wrote – erm, Christopher-

DB: Fry.

GG: Christopher Fry, yes. What else would I have done?

DB: Sorrow Beyond Dreams.

GG: Oh yes. That was a book. I did a Platform of that as well. That was to take it on the radio.

DB: A Change of Mind.

GG: Yup. Wow.

DB: Reading Samuel Beckett.

GG: Oh yes, did a lot of that! We used to go on tour, you know, well not tours, we’d go and do one night here and one night there. Harold Pinter, myself. Yeah, we’d do Pinter and we’d do some of Pinter’s stuff.

DB: Oh yes, just to a small audience?

GG: Yes, yes. We’d go to Bristol or somewhere else. It was always in little venues. Did a lot of Beckett, and then I did some Beckett with Peggy Ashcroft. I’d forgotten about that!  [They laugh]

DB: Vacant Possession.

GG: Yes, yes.

DB: Four plays about the sale of a house.

GG: Oh, I wrote that.

DB: Ah.

GG: Or I wrote one of them.

DB: Beg your pardon. Yeah. Johhny Warner [inaudible]

GG: Yeah, goes on and on. Boring!

DB: What a life! Oh alright. Come back to: The Artois. Actually you are back at The National once or twice.

GG: On and off yeah.

DB: Give Me Your Answer Do! Hampstead. And another New York!

GG: That was a Brian Friel play. I was the only one to go to New York with that. It was an American cast over there. I went to the Roundabout, so it ran from September until just after Christmas.

DB: Oh.

GG: That was 2000.

DB: The children are now presumably old enough.

GG: Up and gone.

DB: Up, up and away by now.

GG: On this was ’90…oh I was married to Zoe by then. Yeah.

DB: How did that come about?

GG: Met her on a movie.

DB: Oh. A movie!

GG: A movie! We did a movie called – probably one of the worst movies ever made - it was called The Raggedy Rawny: it was written, directed [by] and starred Bob Hoskins.

DB: Oh, I see.

GG: I was Bob’s Best Man, we were old mates.

DB: Oh, I see, yeah.

GG: Very old mates, he was often round here. He lived up the road and it was just after The Long Good Friday, I think. You know Bob suddenly hit the jackpot.

 

1 hour 25 mins

 

GG: He said toe me “Come and play the villain.” so I went out to Prague to play the villain, and I saw this lady.

DB: That was it.

GG: That was it, but it was some time later that we got together.

DB: I think we’d better name her.

GG: Her name is Zoe Wanamaker. [they chuckle] We got together some time later: she’s lovely.

DB: You haven’t, have you yet acted together in anything?

GG: No. We’ve always said “no”.

DB: Ah.

GG: We’ve been asked to a few times, but deliberately said we don’t want to bring it home.

DB: Yeah, okay.

GG: Which is fair enough, but the interesting thing about that is that when I was [a] fifteen year old, I went to the theatre every night if I could, and I used to go to the galleries, and get a stool which I think was sixpence; two-bob [two shillings] you got up to the gallery, and I went to see Michael Redgrave, who I thought was the bee’s knees, in a play called Winter Journey, at the St James-

DB: Googie Withers.

GG: Googie Withers. And this actor came on, through the audience, and they’d ‘broken the wall’ and it was extraordinary, and his name was Sam Wanamaker, and I was completely hooked on him and I went to see everything he did, and who knows, you know, story, story, I marry his daughter 40 years later, but yes, that’s when it first came about. Also, in mentioning in those early days I used to go to all the music halls as well.

DB: Oh wow! Which still existed in London in those days.

GG: Still existed: Collin’s Music Hall; The Holborn Empire; and The Met, Edgware Road. So I saw people like Max Miller; and people like Phyllis Dixey, strippers. This was because my dad who turned up every now and again, liked a drink or two, and you could-

DB: This was your real father. Yeah.

GG: And so at these theatres, you could get a drink in the afternoon, cos they weren’t done by the law. So he would go to the bar where they had a big glass window and watch the show and he put me in the stalls. So I’m sitting there watching strippers, I’m watching Max Miller…

DB: Yes!

GG: So, I think that had a lot to do with me becoming an actor.  But that’s jumping way, way, back.

DB: Absolutely beautiful, yeah. So… Tales from Hollywood. 2001. At the Donmar.

GG: Yeah, that was fun, that was great. I played what’s his name the man who wrote – Thomas Mann!

DB: Oh, yes. Good.

GG: Yeah.

DB: Now, quite a bit of Donmar, it says here, and Chichester. A Month in the Country at the Albery.

GG: Yeah. Did that with John Hurt and Helen Mirren. It was huge.

DB: Did that come in from-? Or straight to West End?

GG: No we went to Guildford.

DB: Ah.

GG: We played Guildford for three weeks perhaps and then we came straight into the West End, and we went to The Albery.

DB: As it was.

GG: As it was then yes. It was enormous- I remember one review saying ‘Roll out the red carpet, Mirren’s back in town!’ [they laugh] There was a young boy in it called Joe Fiennes – he played the boy. Who else was in it? It was lovely, it was a big cast.

DB: But you played all sorts of genres at The National.

GG: Yeah.

DB: So playing that sort of thing – standing on your head.

GG: Actually played so many, but it was a jolly good part, the husband. But while I was doing that, that’s when I get the phone call from Tony Hopkins.

DB: Ah.

GG: Who says “Do you want to come and play Astrov?” in Uncle Vanya. And I didn’t know the play. “I’ll have to think about it.” “Well, I’m going to make a film of it actually, first.”

1 hour 30 mins

 

GG: So we make the movie and then we do the play. So I phoned up somebody and they said “Are you mad? It’s the best part in the play, what are you talking about?” And by this time the children were old enough for me to be able to move, so this was again ’94 I think, ’94-’95 and so that was my next move: I went up to North Wales, where we filmed it.

DB: Because he’d adapted it from…

GG: From the Russian.

DB: …The original into Welsh.

GG: Yeah. So it was Welsh, and that was with Kate Burton, and a lot of lovely Welsh actors, and we made the film, which was called August, and then we did it in the theatre at Mold; and I’m trying to think, Duncan Weldon came up and said “I think of course you must bring this into the West End.” And Tony wouldn’t have it. “No.” He said “What do you think?” I said “Yeah. Let’s go to the West End.” Anyway, we didn’t. But we took it to Cardiff and then that was the end of it.

DB: [checking notes] You are back at The National for Sing Yer Heart out for the Lads.

GG: Oh yeah!

DB: Whatever that means. [laughs] I don’t recall that.

GG: That was a play, about football, by Roy Williams, a young black writer. I think it was one of his first plays. It was – it actually went very well it was quite successful. We tried it out in the little tiny sub-theatre, at The National which was built there, which I think Nick Hytner built there, and then we did it at the Cottesloe. It was set in a pub, so The Cottesloe was turned into a pub, and there was a lot of racism in it, really quite a heavy piece as far as that’s concerned, but I remember what was exciting about it was a lot of black people came to the theatre, who probably hadn’t been there before. And I remember they were sitting at tables and various things. I was playing the publican, who was very racist, and I had a speech at one time where I had to say “I didn’t think that Enoch Powell went far enough.” Well, these guys stood up and I thought ‘I’m going to be slaughtered here’… so it was very exciting theatre-

DB: Mm.

GG: -From that point of view. And yeah, that was me going back to The National after a time, yeah. Which was great, very enjoyable.

DB: Ah, The Bush?

GG: I did a play there called-

DB: Wishbone.

GG: Wishbone. That was fun: the last time I took my clothes off in a play! [laughs] There always has to be a last time, and that was the last time.

DB: Yes. But you said you ran around practically nude at The National in The Bacchae.

GG: Oh in The Bacchae, but that’s going back, way back yeah.

DB: How do you feel about that – I mean it became such a vogue at one time.

GG: Yeah, you said it.

DB: It’s passed on now. Now its gone into television!

GG: Exactly, exactly. Round about that time I did a television series, can’t remember its name, and I was playing a character anyway who had to get out of bed at one time and go over there, and the cameraman kept on saying “Well I can see your knickers”, so I said “Well okay, let’s take ‘em off then.” So we did that. Not that I’m particularly proud of what I own [laughs] but those are things that one did.

DB: Yeah, yeah. So much of theatre is that anyway, frantic changes in the wings and all the rest of it.

GG: Oh yeah.

DB: Within the Company of course it’s never a problem, but the public get – I don’t think they really do, but they pretend to be…[offended]

GG: They pretend to be, yes. But you know I had some changes in St George and the Dragon that were done within seconds. What one can do backstage these days is amazing. Rip your clothes off, and there’s another lot underneath.

DB: Oh yes, right. The Recruiting Officer at The Donmar.

GG: I did yes – that was Josie Rourkes first, and it was very successful and it was great. Great fun to do.

DB: Was there somebody called Mark … in that too?

GG: Gatiss. Yes he was.

DB: What did he do to you?

1 hour 35 mins

 

GG: We were talking in the dressing room one day, like the way we are, about one’s life really, in the theatre. And he said “Why don’t you do it? Why don’t you do it like a Frost/Nixon?” So I said “Okay, we’ll do it.” And we did it one day before a show, at six o’clock, full house. Story of my life!

DB: I’m so glad we’ve been rehearsed!

GG: Yup, we’ve been rehearsed. [both laugh] But he threw me to begin with, because he said “You seem to have two birthdays, why have you got two birthdays?” And he’d discovered something on Wikipedia or whatever it is: my genuine birthday is the one I mentioned at the beginning, but when I went to America for the first time, it was more romantic for some reason to be Irish, so I picked my father’s side of the family, and I thought ‘Well give myself a few more years’, I think I said I was born in 1940 or something, so I have two birthdays. So it says, I think, in Wikipedia it says, and you can’t believe anything they say anyway but it says he’s either born on – or…

DB: Yeah, yeah.

GG: So that’s how Mark started it off.

DB: Oh, I see.

GG: Which threw me, but then we got a few laughs from the audience, and off we went. Yeah. Gatiss/Grainger it was called.

DB: Right. Oh, back to The National, A Woman Killed with Kindness.

GG: Yeah. That was great, enjoyed it. Katie Mitchell. I’d worked with Katie in The Seagull for the first time, and then worked with her again in something called Some Trace of Her, where we made a movie on stage.

DB: As part of the action, you mean?

GG: As part of the action. So, everything had to fit in – if somebody got one thing wrong, the whole thing fell apart. That was quite exciting. With a young actor called Ben Whishaw.

DB: Ah. He auditioned with all the rest.

GG: I know, all of them, even way, way, back Ralph Fiennes, all these people.

DB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

GG: But then we did Woman Killed with Kindness, which we did at The National. That was great.

DB: How did it feel to be back there? After – well you’d never been away really had you?

GG: Not really. About every other year or something.

DB: But the management’s changed… backstage people have changed.

GG: Yes but that time it was Nick [Hytner]. Not always the backstage people. Some of the backstage crew I’d known since way, way, back, and when I was there last year there was still somebody that I knew from way back.

DB: Great friend of mine who some time ago I interviewed for this project was Coeks Gordon [BEHP Interview No 553] who was Production Manager at the Vic. Do you remember him?

GG: Yes, I do, yes.

DB: He had some [stories]…One of his early jobs was stage managing at the Metropolitan, Edgware Road. Pushing the nudes on.

GG: Yes!

DB: On their bikes or whatever it was.

GG: Yes, exactly I was probably watching!  A connection! Yes, so The National has always been part of my life really. I can’t remember how many shows I’ve done, but I think probably as many as most people, if not more. Because in those old days at The Cottesloe we were doing Despatches, Passion, Lark Rise…, show after show after show.

DB: Lark Rise… was an extraordinary play. You, everybody played about seven parts.

GG: That’s right, we did yeah. And we even cut the corn. [demonstrates]

DB: In mime presumably.

GG: In mime. No, but you could have believed it. So it was like – I always feel with The National when I go back, a family really. The stage door keeper, Linda, she’s been there forever. “Oh Gawn – you’re back again.”

DB: Yes, I’ve only been backstage once or twice, but to speak to chums, but I’m sure that it’s that way. Now the last thing on the list is Don Juan’s Father. At Wyndham’s last year.

GG: Oh yes, at Wyndham’s.

DB: How did that come about?

GG: Well, I was in The Entertainer. Playing old Billy.

DB: Where was that?

GG: At the Garrick.

DB: Oh.

GG: I played Ken Branagh’s dad. Billy Rice – fantastic part. Best part I’ve ever had in years, so I was doing that and Patrick Marber, who is a mate of mine –

1 hour 40 mins

 

GG: -And I had already done for him, at The National Three Days in the Country which was his adaptation of A Month in the Country.

DB: Yes.

GG: He came to see the show and it was my birthday, and he said “I’ve brought you a birthday present.” I said “What’s that?” He said “It’s to come and play in Don Juan.” So that’s how it came about, and then – I was very fortunate – we’ve got a place in Wiltshire, and it was snowing and icy, and I came off my bike in black ice, and I broke my shoulder-

DB: Ooh.

GG: And the rehearsals were due in about a month, I think, and I phoned him up and I said I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it, and they said “Well, we are going to hang on, and though I started rehearsals like this [indicates a sling] – anyway, I did it. I remember-

DB: Doctor Theatre!

GG: I know, I remember flying through the air thinking ‘There goes Don Juan’. But you’re right Doctor Theatre, and we had a ball because I played with David Tennant and you know how popular he is these days. We’d come out of that stage door and there would be 250 people. Screaming.

DB: Yes.

GG: I loved it! [laughs] I thought it was great fun. So that was my last West End.

DB: Ah, yes: To date.

GG: Well, to date. I think probably, I was thinking the other day, if that’s my last stage appearance, there you go. Which was – there was a gala of Harold Pinter.

DB: Oh, yes.

GG: And I read at the Gala, Mac, which is a short story appearance about his time when he was in Ireland, with Anew McMaster, and it’s a lovely story about McMaster, and it was a very grand evening, and I remember getting up on stage, spotlight, on my own, full house and I thought ‘yeah! This is where you want to be.’ So it never goes away.

DB: No, no. Well, thank you very much.

GG: It’s a pleasure.

DB: Unless we’ve left anything out or areas we haven’t covered.

GG: I think we’ve covered most things.

End of Interview.