|
||||||
|
||||||
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
| REVIEWS | BY GERALD ISAAMAN |
 In Sweeney Todd, 1980  Top: Receiving the OBE in 1990 with his wife Stella and their children Joanna and David  Denis Quilley and Stella Chapman in The Lady’s Not For Burning in 1950  Denis Quilley, Joan Plowright and Laurence Olivier in 1973 |
Happiness Indeed: An Actor’s Life by Denis Quilley, Oberon Books, £19.99 HE was standing in for Richard Burton. She for Claire Bloom. The play was Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning, directed by – and starring – John Gielgud at London’s Globe Theatre in 1949, an epic event in post-war drama. That was the moment when Denis Quilley and Stella Chapman clicked and went on to appear together in the production when Burton and Bloom left on the road to Hollywood. And together they created their own star-spangled romantic life together in Hampstead. “The Lady’s Not For Burning created quite a stir,” Quilley recalls. “The war had been over for more than three years, but food and clothes were still rationed, utility furniture was still in the shops, dried eggs and Spam were exotic treats, rumours of a delivery of bananas caused instant queues round the block, and girls were running up dresses from off-the-ration RAF parachute silk.” There’s the touch of reality in the life of a star struck-lad from the working class streets of Islington – he spent his first years in Tyndale Terrace before moving on to Ilford – and used his natural talents as an actor and singer to give a host of remarkable performances. There are so many to remember, from Privates on Parade to La Cage Aux Folles, from Irma La Douce to Sweeney Todd. The roll call is there, at the back of a book, an appendix that starts at the Birmingham Rep where, semi-paralysed with fear, he auditioned for Sir Barry Jackson and was given a job at £5 a week moving the scenery backstage. He was just 17, but the passion was there, the determination, the desire to entertain. So it was that he travelled the world, from New York to Sydney, from the Nottingham Playhouse to Golders Green Hippodrome, playing in Ibsen and Chekov, and, of course, Shakespeare, whose Hamlet helped inspire his schoolboy dreams. And he appeared, on stage, in films and on TV, alongside so many of the great actors of his day, from Olivier and Scofield to Hopkins and Rossiter. He became an admired part of that firmament of the British theatre that produced, in such amazing depth, a band of trusted actors of quality who worked together as a team, who used their hypnotic presence and skill to bring forth magic and delight. Hampstead was very much part of the life of Denis and Stella, from the moment when, earning a lavish £50 a week in Grab Me a Gondola in the late 1950s, he and Stella bought their house in Willow Road, Hampstead, and made it a warm and loving menagerie for children, grandchildren, relatives and those actors with an unfortunate need for a comfortable bed for the night or an uplifting walk on Hampstead Heath. This is a special book, as its very title shows, Quilley never happier than when he is entertaining others. We can see Quilley the gentleman who is there to help youngsters seeking to emulate him, Quilley the charmer, who refuses to indulge in murky scandal. He reveals no terrifying demons or dark sides in his life, worse still tell how he confronted them, but there were the personal tragedies, such as the death of his infant son. He prefers to give us a vivid, joyful and poignant taste of life behind the scenes in the theatre, and the sometimes crazy way performances are so often patched together. He singles out a few nasties, Sandy Wilson, creator of The Boyfriend, among them, and he launches a stinging attack on AS Byatt for denigrating JK Rowling and the Harry Potter children’s books on the internet. Quilley, who was 75 and a grandfather himself when he sadly died just six months before his autobiography was published, responds with an angry outburst. “Now I have never read a word of the Harry Potter books, so for all I know everything she says may be perfectly true,” he declares. “But that is not the point. “What is really unpleasant is the meanness (and jealousy?) behind such a vitriolic assault, in the most public way possible, on a fellow member of Byatt’s own profession. “I am sure that this is due, at least in part, to the fact that writers work alone, with only themselves as a sounding board, and inevitably become self-centred, whereas actors work as a team. “And you must believe me when I say that actors positively enjoy praising other actors’ work. “Can you imagine Simon Russell Beale slagging off Anthony Sher on the internet, and saying that his work only appeals to people of low intelligence and no imagination? No, of course not – it is absolutely unthinkable. Nor is it true that most actors are shallow and unintelligent – another popular misconception which is not helped by the inane prattlings of ‘celebrities’ who think that being famous for going to lots of parties and being photographed for Hello magazine qualifies them for a serious and difficult job.” He refuses to be “precious” about acting but points out: “It really is an uplifting meeting of hearts and minds, and it is never quite the same from one night to the next. It is, like life itself, unpredictable, dangerous and beautiful.” What an appropriate and inspiring epitaph for a man who so obviously enlarged life and love. |
|