Interviews

Actor. Acting styles; Berthold Brecht; Bristol Old Vic.; The Crucible; John Dexter; film; the National Theatre; the Old Vic, Laurence Olivier; make-up; Othello; repertory; Ralph Richardson; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; Royal Hunt of the Sun; television; theatre-going habits; Kenneth Tynan; Robert Wagner; the West of England Theatre Company.

Interviewed by Kate Harris on 06/11/07

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Interview continued...

KH: OK, not to worry. What was it, do you think, about the Old Vic that made it such a special place to work?

EH: I think it’s just the… I think it was the history. I mean, it’s a lovely theatre. It’s a lovely size. It had been altered a little bit. When the Vic Company went there they’d put a raked forestage on, which meant that the stage went… came into the audience a bit more than it had. It was just the history of the place, and the fact that it was… had all those productions and wonderful things had come from there. And it… for me it was wonderful because… I’d grown up going and seeing things with that company. So it was…
Corale Brown was in that company, and playing the Queen in Hamlet. And I remember the Queen – the actual Queen – came to visit the theatre, there was some sort of… and they were all standing on the stage, we were all on the stage in costume. I looked across and there was Corale, dressed as Gertrude. And I swear to you, you would have thought she was the Queen… It was an exciting time, thrilling.

KH: So what year was this when you were at…?

EH: That would have been ’55 I suppose… 1955… yes… no, what am I talking about?! No, no, it would have been about ’57, 1957.

KH: Right, OK. Were you… did you feel that things that were going on in other theatres at the time had much impact on what you were doing?

EH: Oh sure. I mean, Stratford was a place that we all used to try and go to [of course], and all the West End theatres. I mean, there were lots of terrific things going on. And also all the other reps: Birmingham, Manchester – the Library Theatre, Manchester. As I say there were theatres everywhere. But the main sort of exciting ones for young actors were the ones in the reps like Bristol Old Vic, Birmingham, Manchester, and there was one in Newcastle. I mean, they were all over the place. And I also worked [with a company] called The West of England Theatre Company, which was based in Exmouth and we had an old bus - a double decker bus - which used to lumber across Dartmoor. And we would play… one-nights in different towns. And this thing [bus] was always breaking down in the middle of Dartmoor in the middle of the night. Well a lot of youngsters with masses of bottles of cider and God knows what else would have a riotous time in the middle of Dartmoor, three o’clock in the morning.

[Laughter]

KH: How much influence did your parents have on your career?

EH: Well I had… sort of two things, I had… one negative influence which was my father… They were both incredibly encouraging themselves, but the negative influence was when you got a job you always had the feeling everybody was saying ‘oh, he’s only here because his father’s Cedric Hardwicke’. And that used to be a big… big burden to me actually. I got over it eventually. But in those days it was a bit unusual - not so any more - for actors’ children to go into the business. It wasn’t quite the thing it’s become. It’s now… you know, there are so many dynasties. And anyway he [my father] was off in Hollywood making films. He only managed to come and see me do one stage performance, which strangely enough was in the production of Much Ado at the Bristol Old Vic. And the actor playing one of the main parts… I can’t remember now. I was only doing a tiny part, and I was got out of bed the night before at midnight and said ‘Look, he’s ill, you’ve got to go on’. So I had to learn this between midnight and the matinée, which my father came to see. So that was horrendous, horrendous! But he was very, very sweet and encouraging.

KH: What did you do after you left the Old Vic?

EH: After I left the Old Vic. I did plays… I did some productions at the Oxford Playhouse. I went back to Nottingham again and did something. Then I was in a production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, which went to what was then the St James’ Theatre which [was subsequently] pulled down. I worked at the Arts Theatre at one point. I sort of shot about a bit. And I did a tiny, tiny bit of television, not a lot. But then I went back to Nottingham and I found myself suddenly… I remember very clearly, I was asked to be in a series called Colditz. And [at the time] I was in a production at Nottingham which I’d asked to do with Derek Jacobi. We were doing a Stoppard play. And Ian McKellan was directing it.

KH: Gosh!

EH: And suddenly this – and I’m not exaggerating – carton, big cardboard box was delivered to the stage door with 15 scripts for Colditz. Well I got… I mean, Derek and Ian gave me a terrible time and said, ‘how dare you do this?!’ - I mean joking! I remember we all went out to dinner and I was sent up rotten about the fact that I was doing this TV series. And that would have been… it would have been about 1959, something like that, I’m not sure… ’60. I can’t… no it must have been later than that. I’m terrible on dates.

KH: That’s OK.

EH: But it was from Nottingham anyway. And that… then that was a long stretch in television which, you know was a completely different world.

KH: When you say it was a different world, what was it initially that was so different for you?

EH: I mean, I think the thing about... I suppose one would have to say… acting, as long as it’s… you strive to be truthful. And if it’s truthful it can be big or small, it’s just a question of like turning the volume up and down.
But I do remember I worked with… Robert Wagner was in the series. And we became quite good friends. He was wonderful because he was film actor, you know and he’d… worked with Tracy and all sorts of people. And he used to just come up and say ‘don’t do that, don’t move your head, keep yours still’ or whatever. And I learnt a lot from him. I mean in the nicest [way]… You respected all that film background that he’d been though.

KH: What were people’s attitudes to you going to work for television, when you first started working in television?

EH: What, my attitude to it?

KH: Or other people’s, either.

EH: Well we were all a bit… all the theatre people were a bit grand about it. You know television… it’s not like the theatre… The Theatre! But I actually got to enjoy it enormously. The only trouble with doing something like particular series is that we had an exterior set which was supposed to be the courtyard of this prison camp. And over a long period, which we were doing, you did find yourself thinking ‘how can I lean up against this wall in a different way from last week?’! [Laughs] There are little tiny things like that, which sound ludicrous, but which kind of… get out of proportion. The physical limitations of something like that series are quite difficult to overcome.

KH: You were in the first… in the early days of the National you were in that cast weren’t you?

EH: Yes.

KH: I was going to ask you a little bit about that, how that came about maybe?

EH: It came about… I’m not entirely certain I know. But I was asked by John Dexter if I would like to come and be in the company. And for some reason it got put off, and I joined… a little bit after it first opened when Laurence Olivier did Othello. And I can remember that as clearly as anything, because we were asked down to London for the reading. And in those days the National had a prefabricated series of buildings which was called… Aquinas Street. It became known as Aquinas… we just talked about Aquinas Street. We were in what was basically a Nissen hut for the reading of Othello – a big sort of open space with tables round it. And I can remember all the designs were pinned up on the wall round the room. And I mean, I’m going back to ’64. I remember we were all in suits and we were going round sort of looking at the [designs]… [as if we were] in an art gallery.
And we eventually sat down and Larry Olivier said, ‘I hope we’re all going to embarrass each other.’ and then proceeded, very nearly to give the performance of Othello that he gave on the first night. So we were… I mean, I can remember I was playing Montano, which is not a very big part. But he’s got a scene in Cyprus and then he comes on right at the end. And once this reading started and this extraordinary… I mean it was… it was an extraordinary piece of acting. And I can remember he was somewhere down the middle of the table and… I can remember looking at the script going… tearing at the paper and thinking I must quickly read this before I make a complete fool of myself.

[Laughter]

EH: And it was a bit like that, so it was very, very nerve-racking. And that was my introduction to the National. [John] Dexter in fact had a wonderful idea for the production. And I know he’s a man who has got a sort of difficult reputation - people used to think he was… he could have a heart of gold. He could be quite tough with people…a bit of a bully, but he had a sensationally good idea for the way to direct Othello and make sense of it, because there’s a lot of things in it which are difficult to sort out. But it was… he was in a sense overwhelmed by [Olivier’s] performance. I mean, nothing wrong with that because it was staggering as a piece of… physical and verbal acting. I remember after we’d been doing it for quite a while, Olivier saying about the Pontic Sea speech that… I’m not sure which of the great actors it was, Kemble or something, had done it on one breath. And he said, ‘I was determined to do that.’. And so there’s an extraordinary thing with great actors like that, that it’s not just thought, there are also physical challenges as well. And if you’re on stage with him it was remarkable, just watching this man tearing this part off. A lot of people didn’t like, but you couldn’t help but notice it.

Interview continued...

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