More Lothario than Hamlet

Ronald ‘Trader’ Faulkner is that relative rarity: an unassuming actor. In their memoirs most actors, after the obligatory two or three chapters describing the hardships at the outset of their careers, indulge in a paean of self-glorification — mentioning their failures, certainly, but only so as to highlight their far more considerable successes. Faulkner is different. At one point he refers to himself as ‘a struggling actor approaching middle age’. (His wife somewhat brutally agreed: ‘Let’s be honest, you’ve had your chance as an actor, and at 40 you still haven’t made it.’)

Faulkner (the nickname ‘Trader’ being bestowed on him in recognition of his prowess in stealing his Australian father’s boot-leg whisky and bartering it at school for marbles) played some distinguished roles and enhanced his reputation with a production celebrating the life and work of the Spanish poet Lorca, but he never hit the big time.

His memoirs make clear how, for most actors, life oscillates between the terrifying uncertainty of unemployment and the grinding tedium of playing a not particularly attractive part in a not particularly inspiring production night after night, month after month, with matinées twice a week and the limited delights of a seedy boarding-house awaiting one when work is done.

For Faulkner there were many compensations. He went everywhere and met everyone. Though he worked frequently with Laurence Olivier, his encounters with other celebrities were, however, often desultory. He came across Ted Hughes, but ‘in retrospect it is one of my greatest regrets that I never followed up his suggestion that we should meet for a drink sometime’. He met Marlene Dietrich and earned ‘a soft peck on the lips, but that that was the end of it’.

That was the end of it too with Noël Coward, who appeared at breakfast in an elegant dressing gown, smoking a de Reske cigarette in a long silver holder and exhaling perfectly rounded smoke rings.