Interviews

Actor. Lindsay Anderson; Arden of Faversham; audiences; Billy Liar; John Bury; The Dutch Courtesan; commercial Theatre; critical reception; The Good Soldier Schweik; Harry Greene; Rudolf Laban; Joan Littlewood; Ken Loach; lighting; Ewan MacColl; Mother Courage; movement training; Jean Newlove; The Old Vic; Gerry Raffles; rehearsals; Richard II; Theatre Royal, Stratford East; Theatre Workshop; touring; Twelfth Night; Uranium 235; voice training; Volpone; West End transfers.

Interviewed by Kate Harris on 17/04/07

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KH: This is an interview on the 17th April with George Cooper. I’d just like to ask, have we got your permission to put this into the British Library Sound Archive?

GC: Yes indeed.

KH: Excellent. OK, can I begin by asking how you started working in the theatre?

GC: Yes, certainly. In my part of the world – that’s Leeds – the thought of having a job as an actor was a joke. You know, it’s not a proper job sort of thing. But at the elementary school in Headingley in Leeds, I started being in all the plays etc. And one year I got hold of a little pamphlet thing of comic monologues, and I finished up by going round - at Christmas time - to all the classes in the school reading from this comic book. So in other words there was always the hint that acting was in the background… but as regards being a proper job – no way! – it just wasn’t a proper job.
So that passed, then the next time I tried any acting was in the army.  This was in India, in Deolali and we had the Royal Artillery Depot Players. And there was a very nice old actor called Joseph O’Connor who was in charge – he was a Lieutenant. And we did plays - we did a bit of Noel Coward, and that sort of thing. So that gave me a bit of a taste, you know, again for the theatre. I came back when I was demobbed in 1946 and joined an amateur company, so I was still keen on the acting bit, but it certainly wasn’t a way of earning a living. But they kept talking about this company called Theatre Workshop, who’d just been playing at Leeds University – just a month or so before I got back from the army – and how very interesting this company was. They didn’t like sort of boxed sets, 3-act plays and all this sort of thing, they were very interested in lighting on the stage etc, etc, and there was talk about this lady called Joan Littlewood, who was a terrific director. So I thought, ‘Oh that sounds interesting.’. But anyway, I carried on in my exciting job in the reinforced concrete world, and eventually I thought, ‘Oh well, I wonder if I could make a living as an actor?’.  And eventually after, what, three years – in other words in 1949 – I thought, ‘Right, I’ll have a go!’, because I was finding the working in this reinforced concrete business… I think the only word I can think of at the moment is ‘dull’ you know. And it gets quite involved in mathematics and I’m not a mathematician by any means! [Laughs] So I wrote off to Joan Littlewood, or rather the business manager Gerry Raffles. And although she hated doing it, she arranged for auditions. I mean, how can you tell the talent of an actor just by one simple little audition? Because you might be feeling nervous at the time, or you might be a little big off colour or something… She much preferred to have sort of little school sessions of about two or three weeks, and during that time she would look at you and see what talent you had – if any. And if, after the end of three weeks, she thought, ‘Well he could be some use to the company’, you’d be offered a temporary job. And a much better way of assessing people’s talent than just a one… what, a ten-minute audition sort of thing. So anyway I had to do this audition, and I was asked to go along with three pieces prepared: a piece of classical stuff, you know Shakespeare or something like that; poetry; and then bring shorts and gym shoes. So I thought ‘Hello, hello, hello what’s going on here?’ sort of thing. And of course it was all due to Jean Newlove, who later… well at the time of course was married to Ewan MacColl. And they were very interested in this movement business. So I went to do my audition and Joan said, ‘Oh my dear.’, you know ‘Oh what have we got! There’s going to be problems here.’. But anyway I did all this, and my bit with the gym shoes and the shorts, that seemed to go OK as well, because I was always fairly fit in those days.

KH: What did you have to do in the gym shoes and the shorts?

GC: Oh well, just sort of movement. You know, ‘can you sort of… let’s see what are you like on balance’ or something like that. And you know she followed the teachings of Rudolf Laban, and he used to talk you know about the ‘door plane’ [vertical movements]… I mean, the ‘door plane’, the ‘table plane’ [horizontal movements], and all these things about the room. And he developed a system of writing down movement so you could get a script with a notation thing which enabled you to interpret it and say, ‘Oh I see, yes, you stick your left leg there and you… oh yes and your right… you put your arm up there…’ sort of thing. And that I found very interesting actually because he [Rudolph Laban] was still alive when I joined the company and he used to come… because they all lived in Manchester of course. And old Rudolf was very interesting to hear about life… it wasn’t in Germany then, it was somewhere in the Balkans or somewhere. And he used to say how dance occurred in cafes and all that sort of thing. In other words I suppose, you’d be bit loose on the drink in the first place, and then do a little bit of, ‘Come on, let’s all dance.’.  In other words, movement was a natural part of your lifestyle.  So anyway Jean Newlove was his disciple, and she kept us – as I told you before – that half an hour every morning, before we started rehearsals and [Laughs] that would just about… you know, we could about survive I suppose, yes.
Anyway, after I did my audition I got this letter saying, ‘We are prepared to offer you a temporary part in the company. And during that period we will see if we can sort out some of the problems, which I noted during your audition.’ So I went along and my first play… they were doing Irwin Shaw’s The Gentle People, and an actor was leaving Theatre Workshop, and I took over his two little parts. And started at the Theatre Royal in Kidderminster, which of course no longer exists.
But the main thing that she saw I might be useful for, was a pantomime, because as usual everybody you know was low on money etc, and the work that they were doing… they were doing a Shakespeare for schools.  Whatever the School Certificate was - what choice of Shakespeare - they would do, so they could tour around and show the kids, you know, what it was like.  This pantomime was going to be her compromise with commercial theatre, and it was going to solve all the financial problems etc. It was billed - I think Gerry Raffles coined this phrase - as ‘sheer delight for young and old’. Instead it was a flaming disaster! [Laughs] It was so bad that… we played in Barnsley, we played at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East 15 of course, oh about six dates… Hastings, Llandudno… but we just didn’t get the audiences. So our attempt to compromise with commercial theatre was an absolute disaster. And after that it was all so disastrous financially that we just didn’t do anything. And I was living on my army money – you know when you left the army you were given a sum of money, I forget now what they called it – but anyway that kept me alive. And then eventually in the end of that year – 1950 that would be – Joan wrote and said, ‘We’re thinking of starting doing a one night stand tour in Wales.’ So you know, rehearsals start so and so, and so and so, and all the rest of it. So I reported back to Manchester. And the trouble was that they didn’t really have the organised transport that they should have had. And they bought an old post office lorry for £35 I think. And the top of a furniture van for… I can’t remember now how much that cost. And because I’d been associated with the building business, they gave me the job of sticking the two… the furniture van top on to the post office lorry! [Laughs] So anyway we managed to do that and set off for Wales. And this is a company of what, 19, 20 people – somewhere around there. And played I think three weeks was our first Welsh tour down there, playing at a different place every night of course.

KH: What were you playing?

GC: Oh we took a little fragment of the Commedia dell’Arte which Ewan had switched about a bit sort of thing, The Flying Doctor and it was great fun to be in. And then we had this play - which we toured actually in Scandinavia later on - and that was Uranium 235, a story about you know the… all sorts of incidents leading up to the development of the atomic bomb etc.  I quite enjoyed this touring business, I thought it was good but you had to be fit. I’ve always maintained that, apart from being an actor, you need to be a weight lifter! [Laughs] Because of all the equipment: your curtains, your props, the electrical equipment. And invariably we’d be playing in a Miners Hall with about three flights of steps into the hall sort of thing. So that was a bit of a problem but we all survived.

KH: What were the audience reactions like on this tour, when you took these plays round?

GC: Well not very helpful really, financially. And there came one tour – I forget which one it was now – where things got so bad financially that we had [Laughing] to write to somebody’s cousin or something and say, ‘Please could you give us a cheque for’ - you know, whatever the sum was – ‘to keep us alive, because we can’t pay for the digs etc, etc’. So it got a bit desperate really from time to time. So in other words it was yet another financial failure. That was the trouble.

KH: The people who did come, what was their reaction to the plays?

GC: What the people…?

KH: Who were watching.

GC: I think the few people that turned up did enjoy these plays. But I do remember one occasion – this must have been about the second or maybe even third Welsh tour, we were playing in Tonypandy, the Judge’s Hall in Tonypandy, and 11 people turned up for the audience, we were 19 people in the company. And we got all very bolshy and said, ‘We’re not going to do it. Eleven people…!’. Joan attacked us of course and said, ‘What! Call yourself actors… you know how small the audience is no consequence at all. You’ve got these people and you must do the play.’ But we didn’t. We were on strike in other words, really and truly. So that was a little… well quite a novelty actually because to have dared to disobey Joan was really asking for trouble. [Laughs]  Anyway we went on tour again, up in the North East. And then we decided on the East Coast of Scotland, and set off in our lorry. And proceeding up on that East Coast road - you know on the right hand side of course, the open side, there’s a sheer drop down to the sea – but we were in the left hand lane obviously. And we suddenly left the road and crashed into the embankment by the side of the road.

KH: Oh no!

GC: And Harry Greene came round – he was driving – with the steering wheel in his hand and said, ‘Oh it came off in my hand you know!’ [Laughs].  As a special concession for what we’d experienced in the way of accident etc, Joan said, ‘Oh well, we’ll cancel tonight’s performance.’ So it was very kind of her. So we didn’t have to do a show that night. And we got the lorry repaired more or less. Then we got as far - I think it was Peterhead, yes I’m pretty sure it was Peterhead, yes - and we went to find some cheap place to eat, when we came back there was a police lady standing by the lorry: ‘Is this your vehicle?’ ‘Yes, yes, and so yes.’. And she gave us a list, because of course with going off the road we’d damaged the side of the vehicle and everything else.  She gave us this list and said, ‘You know, you must do these repairs before you take it on the road again.’. And [she] took all our details etc, etc. So that really was the end of the one night stand tours. They weren’t paying, and Joan’s objective of taking the theatre to the people of the country who’d been ‘robbed’ of their theatre so to speak, as far as I could see it didn’t really apply because there was so few people interested in coming to see us that you know, they obviously couldn’t care less etc, etc. So anyway…

Interview continued...

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