Timothy Bateson
Richard Burton was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic, but he was very nervous and not at his best. John came round to his dressing-room afterwards, to find him stark naked. ‘I’m so sorry, Richard,’ he said. ‘Shall I come back later when you’re better — I mean when you’re dressed?’
To Vivien Leigh, after she suggested playing a scene from Romeo and Juliet for a wartime concert party: ‘Oh no, Vivien! Only a great actress can do that sort of thing.’
To Alec Guinness, then a rising young star, on meeting him in Piccadilly: ‘I can’t think why you want to play big parts. Why don’t you stick to the little people you do so well?’
Robert Lang
Olivier once invited me to dinner with Gielgud. During the meal he asked Gielgud ‘Did you ever read Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, which I played at the Royal Court?’ Gielgud said: ‘Yes I did, it was offered to me first.’ I got the impression this was news to Olivier.
Pinkie Johnson
After the read-through of The School for Scandal, John said to me: ‘Pinkie, you’re meant to be like a little ping-pong ball dancing on top of a fountain, but you’re like a slow drip of cold water.
Michael Craig
Cedric Messina was casting Shaw’s In Good King Charles’s Golden Days for television. Gielgud said to him: ‘James is such a boring part. Why don’t you offer it to Michael Craig?’
To Terence Rattigan, discussing whether he should appear in a double bill of Rattigan’s new plays: ‘They’ve seen me in so much first-rate stuff;do you really think they will like me in anything second-rate?
John McCallum
When Richard Wordsworth asked John to explain the Duke of Clarence’s lines in Richard II: ‘As in a theatre, the eyes of men/After a well-graced actor leaves the stage/Are idly bent on him that enters next,’ he replied: ‘It’s very simple, dear boy. It’s when Paul Scofield goes off and you come on.’
To John Miller, on rehearsing Laurence Olivier: ‘When I was rehearsing him as Malvolio in Twelfth Night he was very set on playing the part in his own particular way, which I thought was a little bit extravagant. He played it like a Jewish hairdresser, with a great lisp. He would fall off a bench in the garden scene, though I begged him not to.’
Paul Scofield
That wonderfully comic actor George Rose was playing Dogberry in his production of Much Ado About Nothing. It was a brilliant creation. In the middle of one of his scenes at the dress rehearsal John called out: ‘Oh, George, George, do be funny!’
To Jill Bennett, during a rehearsal of Much Ado About Nothing: ‘You, girl, move to the right. No, no, not you! The ugly one with the big nose.’
Donald Sinden
In Much Ado About Nothing at Stratford I was paying Benedick and Judi Dench was Beatrice. Over lunch at the Garrick I said to John: ‘When I saw you playing Benedick and Peggy Ashcroft was Beatrice, you persuaded me that Benedick was a very witty fellow. But now Judi and I have been taking the play apart in rehearsal, and we think tart Beatrice is the one with the wit, and Benedick has the bar-room humour.’ ‘You’re perfectly right, I made a great mistake,’ he replied. ‘Benedick is a very boorish fellow. You’ll be much better than I was.’
Christopher Miles:
While John was appearing as a valet in Coward’s Nude with Violin I asked him what part he would most like to play. He said: ‘A serial killer in Brighton.’
To John Copley, during one of the purely processional scenes in The Trojans: ‘Can’t we cut some of this terrible silent music?
Jonathan Cecil
I was auditioning for the part of a scout-master in Halfway Up the Tree. John said: ‘We’ve seen an awful lot of young actors, and they’ve been awfully amusing. The trouble is they would always have to pretend to be ridiculous, whereas you’ — and then he tailed off.
Nancy Nevinson
He was on horseback filming The Charge of the Light Brigade in Turkey. The director Tony Richardson twice gave him the signal to move forwards, but when nothing happened, he asked John if he understood the instruction. ‘I understand it perfectly’, he replied, ‘but does the horse?’
Helen Osborne
We were both guests of Tony Richardson in the South of France, and lunching at a beach in San Tropez. Topless was the new rage. I felt embarrassed, under-endowed and very English. ‘Go on, risk it,’ he said. ‘If you do it, I’ll take off my sun hat.’
Siân Phillips
Judi Dench and I went to see him backstage after a performance of No Man’s Land, and told him he was wonderful. ‘Oh, do you think so ?’ he said. ‘I’m so lucky to be doing it. It’s only because poor Larry is dead — I mean dying — I mean so much better, thank God.’
To John Heilpern:
‘Someone like Sybil never forgets anybody. She even remembers people she met in Australia.’
Peter Shaffer
After having lunch with John and his partner Martin Hensler in his rented apartment in New York, I felt tired so he suggested I have a nap. As I passed through the hallway I noticed a fish tank full of turtles, palpably dead. Just as I was closing my eyes I heard a squeal of fury from Martin: ‘Oh look at my turtles! They’ve been massacred!’ And John said: ‘Don’t look at me, I’ve done nothing. I don’t even know how they work.’
To Gyles Brandreth, on his contemporaries: ‘Most of my friends seem either to be dead, extremely deaf, or living in the wrong part of Kent.’
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