雾漫英伦【书摘】Douglas Wilmer自传《舞台私语》
导读：今年1月8日，道格拉斯·威尔默（Douglas Wilmer）度过了自己95岁的生日。近年来随着福尔摩斯话题重新升温，作为在世福尔摩斯扮演者中最年长的威尔默自然也成了焦点人物，他不仅被各种福尔摩斯协会授予荣誉会员（包括伦敦福尔摩斯协会和贝克街小分队），应邀发行了福尔摩斯故事有声书，他于1964-1965年主演的BBC福尔摩斯电视剧也发行了DVD（遗憾的是，13集中有两集的拷贝不全），甚至还在《神探夏洛克》中客串了第欧根尼俱乐部的一位老者。
2009年威尔默出版了自传《舞台私语》（Stage Whispers），对自己的一生进行了总结，其中有许多鲜为人知的细节，比如他童年在上海长大，甚至能说一口流利的沪语。当然，这本自传中最受瞩目的依然是他对于扮演福尔摩斯的回忆。这段经历并不愉快，因为BBC的失信和安排不当，直接导致威尔默辞演第二季。威尔默还谈到自己的继任者彼得·库欣（Peter Cushing）对于接手这一角色非常后悔。以及曾有位年轻的演员拜访过他，并对他饰演的福表示过赞赏，这位年轻的演员就是杰瑞米·布雷特（Jeremy Brett）。
这里选译其中一段：“谈到已故的Jeremy Brett扮演的福尔摩斯总会有些争论，比如（他的表演里）包含了许多我曾展示过的特质，但是他的表演，请原谅我指出来，在很大程度上受了我的影响。说到这里，我想起有一天晚上Jeremy来到我在伦敦的住处共进晚餐，那时我演的剧集刚播出不久，他非常友善地赞扬了我所扮演的福尔摩斯。当然了，也许这仅仅是一个演员的花言巧语，但他并没有特别的原因提及此事，我当然更不会主动引出这个话题。那时他还是个非常年轻的小伙子，差不多正好20年后，他自己给出了漫长而令人难忘的诠释。”
我将书中第22章“福尔摩斯与BBC”（Sherlock Holmes And The BBC）全章内容摘录出来，并选了几张书中的图片，供大家试读。
作者: Douglas Wilmer
出版社: Porter Press International
副标题: Douglas Wilmer, the Memoirs
出版年: 2009-3-16
页数: 242
定价: GBP 19.99
装帧: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780955656491
豆瓣条目：http://book.douban.com/subject/10454369/
仅供试读，喜欢请购买正版
In 1963 the BBC created a series entitled Great Detectives. This included many fictional sleuths of note and was intended to serve as a collection of pilots, or try outs, for possible future series. Unsurprisingly, it was to include one of the Sherlock Holmes stories and to do a dramatisation of one of Conan Doyle's personal favourites, The Speckled Band.
I was approached to play Holmes and Nigel Stock was offered Watson. It was to be directed by the excellent Robin Midgley.
In due course it was put on and judged, with only one of the other pilots, to be good enough to warrant a series. I had only once before been in a serial, as distinct from a series: there was a great difference, as I was to learn fairly forcefully later on. I had played Charles II in Pepys’s Diary , a serial with Peter Sallis, for the BBC and had very much enjoyed the experience. When I was asked to do Holmes, assuming that I was on the same ground, I was perfectly happy to accept. This, however, was subject to an undertaking, promised by the overall producer of the series, of certain provisos. The first was that, as I was not a quick study of lines, I should receive each script no less than three weeks ahead and secondly that there should be no more than three directors in all, in order to ensure maximum continuity of style and that one of them should be the original director, Robin Midgley.
These conditions were all agreed by the production office. I very soon discovered, however, that they were far from being as good as their word.
The scripts invariably arrived late and were often of such unacceptable quality that I was obliged to rewrite them, burning the midnight oil, sometimes until two or three in the morning. They had been produced by six different writers with no interreference and, so far as could be seen, no supervision from the production office or the series script editor.
As to the second proviso, we ended up with no less than eight different directors, not one of them Midgley. Furthermore, half of them were on their first directorial assignment, having just emerged from a course at the BBC school of training.
In short, we were to be used as a teething-ring for novices. We were given four who knew their job. Mercifully, one of them, Shaun Sutton, borrowed I believe from Children’s Television, directed two of the episodes which was a great relief. Of the rest, one was a middle-European with apparently not a clue about the mores of Victorian England. He could not understand, as an instance, the predicament of the fallen woman in Illustrious Client. “Couldn’t she have got a job in a shop?” he asked. “Not without a character,” I had to explain. I do not think he got it,even then.
In near desperation at one point I ran into Douglas Allen, the head of what was, at that time at least, the more prestigious Department of Serials, and I told him something of our plight. He was very sympathetic. I had just seen Clellan Jones’s brilliant job of Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, which was, of course, a serial. I complimented Allen on it and asked him if we could not have this excellent director for at least one of our future episodes.
He looked at me, open mouthed and aghast. “You can’t have him: he’s Serials, you’re Series.” He did not say only Series, but I think that is what he meant. It was as if British Home Stores had asked Harrods for the loan of their Sales Manager in Christmas Week..
The bulk of the burden and responsibility of delivering the stuff on the night, so to speak, was to rest on my shoulders. Stock, while privately totally in agreement with me, had rather less to say on the matter. He had, also, considerably less to say in the actual scripts themselves. Holmes has to be dead accurate and razor-sharp at all times. One slip and he has lost credibility and is no longer in character.
The upshot of all this was that it invariably fell to my unhappy lot to insist on consistency of style and to the necessary corrections in the writing.
The direct result of this was that I became gradually more and more the exasperated villain of the scenario. The stress began to take its toll and I became, I fear, pretty short-tempered, particularly with the production office, to whom the series appeared to be just another no-account pot-boiler, where
practically anything would do.
Somehow we managed to get it all together and it is remembered by those old enough to do so as a piece of work which bore, at least, some quality. Both Nigel and I came out of it with a certain amount of credit.
My stock with the BBC drama department, however, was, perhaps understandably, at zero. At risk of self justification, perhaps, I will allow myself to cite one or two instances.
I was given a script entitled, The Red-Headed League. It contained no less than 14 characters completely extraneous to Doyle with names like Harry the Horse and stemming, apparently, from an over-addiction to Damon Runyon. The script opened in a “Mews Flat; [sic] with Merryweather the banker in bed with his mistress". The script writer called for “saucy pictures" on the walls and had a comic policeman climbing in and out of the window.
Instead of portraying John Clay, the villain, as so interestingly described in the original, as the bastard son of a Royal Duke, he was portrayed as a runof-the-mill roughneck of no particular interest. All reference to his lineage was simply disregarded, presumably as being of no consequence. I rang the production office at once and asked if they had looked at it. They said they had “been a little worried about that one”. That had not stopped them just sending it on to me without any previous comment. Possibly it had been hoped I would not notice.
When I told them I had not the smallest intention of appearing in such drivel, panic-stricken, they said, “But we start rehearsing next week”.
“Not with me, you won’t. It’s found a suitable home: in the waste-paper basket.” I added, “You can tell the script editor to get off his arse, have a good look at Doyle and just copy out the excellent dialogue, as written”. Thus far into the series, I had done his job for him. And that, of course, is all he had to do. There was no time to exchange courtesies. The result was fine.
At risk of labouring the point, there was, among many others, one particularly gross piece of mismanagement. When we came to do The Devil’s Foot , I was handed a script which was to fill a 50-minute slot but which contained exactly 20 minutes playing time. This slight discrepancy had clearly been through the Production Office, escaping their notice.
On this occasion, Stock and I had to buckle-to and produce a workable script. The unhappy scriptwriter, a man of some considerable reputation, owing to years of overwork, had suffered a mental breakdown, followed almost at once by his tragic suicide.
I believe it is not generally realised just how voracious a medium TV can be and this is particularly the case with scriptwriters whose work, unlike those writing for the theatre, is swallowed up in an hour or so and then, if the writers are in demand, as this one most certainly was, it is immediately on to the next assignment.
I was thankful when I reached the end of it all but when the BBC discovered it was regarded as a critical success, they got in touch with me in Hong Kong, where I was filming as Nayland Smith, a poor man’s version of Holmes in some twaddle, called Fu Manchu. They asked me if I would do a second series, adding, almost as an afterthought, that, for reasons of economy, the rehearsal period for each episode would have to be cut down to 10 days.
I said, “It cannot be done, or at any rate, not by me”. I had been momentarily hesitant about it, but a 10-day turn-around quite definitely put the tin lid on it. I hesitated not a second longer. The prospect had not been an inviting one in any case, but 10 days! What a nightmare!
Needless too say, this did not go down too well with the Beeb.
In the first place, they had been screwed down by Adrian Conan Doyle for a pretty hefty whack for the TV rights and he had insisted on them buying 52 stories or no deal. We had used up 13 of them and I am quite sure that the Beeb was confident that I would be perfectly happy to do the lot, in which case they
could hope to sell it as a package to the USA and points east for quite a tidy figure. Instead of attempting to come to some arrangement whereby I might be tempted to take up the cudgels again, they stuck to their 10-day schedule with an aunt-like drawing aside of skirts and started doing the rounds to see if
anyone else would be foolish enough to take it on.
I believe Eric Porter and John Neville were approached among others who refused the bait. Finally, they hit on that fine actor, Peter Cushing, who, in my opinion and later also in his own, as he himself told me, unwisely agreed to do it.
What the result of all this was like I leave to the judgement of those old enough to have seen it. Certainly the production values were in the firing line, although our particular producer cannot be held to account for that. As soon as our series was over, he left the BBC and took his talents to the Antipodes where I heard he prospered exceedingly.
I was in a Hammer Horror with Peter some time later and the subject of the series quite naturally came up. He said it had been the worst nightmare of his entire life, that he had hardly had time to breathe, let alone learn his lines and that when he watched some of the episodes, he did not think, “There’s Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes,” he thought only, “There’s Peter Cushing trying to remember his lines”.
He added, “I’d rather sweep Paddington Station for a living, than go through it again’’. It had clearly been another saga of incompetence. The BBC once again had shot itself in the foot and thrown away a splendid opportunity of making what should have been a fine classic series.
At the possible risk of exhausting the reader’s patience, I have gone into the foregoing exposé at some length, as it is, I believe, not often that someone in the far-from-unusual predicament in which we found ourselves to be able, without risk of reprisal, to blow the gaffe on the dysfunctions of that particular department of the BBC. Now, happily beyond the reach of possible
comeback, I am particularly well-placed to do so!
Whenever the end result appears to be smooth and lovely, it was very often because those in the firing line, so to speak, in this case Nigel and myself, who were left to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, actually did so. Things may well be different now, of course. One hopes so.
It may well be the case that the reader has had his fill on the subject of Sherlock Holmes; then he will certainly be forgiven if he skips the remainder of the chapter.
I persevere with it only because if there is any episode in what may derisively be called my career which is at all likely to have made any mark, this may be possibly it. I can hardly claim too much personal credit for this as the very nature of the subject of Sherlock Holmes is, apparently, of such universal interest as to be well documented and the raison d’être and focal point of numerous learned societies and publications.
The series was made well over 40 years ago and I have long ceased to be surprised by fan mail, which admittedly arrives no longer in torrents, but certainly still in a surprisingly steady trickle. I am also invited to appear at various public functions for this and no other reason, either to speak or read or simply to put in an appearance.
This situation is brought about largely because it appears that all the long term Sherlocks, other than myself, are long since gone to their Baker Street in the sky. It may be tempting Providence to say so, but sometimes I believe it has much to do with my determination to do no more of them, that I attribute my present extreme longevity. My sole lapse from this determination
was an unfortunate one, undertaken solely for the basest pecuniary reasons.
I refer of course to the film Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. But, as one of my critic’s once pointed out, even actors have to eat.
I am also not infrequently questioned about my attitude and approach to the character itself, how I arrived at it and so forth. I once gave an after-dinner speech to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London on the subject. Asked if I was an avid fan before the series, I replied truthfully that I was not, without adding however that, after the series, I was even less so. But I had most certainly enjoyed first reading the stories, which I had done many years
before and was indeed familiar with most of them.
I have for the last 10 years or so been an elected Honorary Member of the above-mentioned Society and enjoyed going, fairly regularly, to the Annual Dinner at the House of Commons. But I do not, however, dress up in Victorian gear and go with them on their European pilgrimages to the Reichenbach Falls. I
have also been made a Baker Street Irregular, an American society, much aspired to by all avid Sherlockians of the USA, election to which is strictly by invitation only. Also, there are a number of other societies, such as The Boston Bull Terriers , who have likewise done me the honour.
A frequent question I have had to answer is if I was at all surprised to be offered the role. I have replied quite truthfully that I was not too amazed. I was considered, at that time, an experienced and, possibly even, over-exposed TV actor and was therefore reasonably well-known. My suitabilities for the role, such as they were, could well be assessed beforehand. I could appear to have, when required, an incisive persona and an appearance that seemed to suit most people’s idea of the part.
I had, as the press were quick to notice, rather more than a passing resemblance to the original Strand Magazine illustrations by Sidney Paget. Quite how they were able to make this assessment, I am not quite sure, as most of Paget’s drawings of Holmes bear not over-much resemblance to each other and
certainly none that I can recall resemble him as described in the text. When asked if I had been familiar with other impersonations and, if so, had they had any bearing on my own construction of the character, the answer was “Yes” to the first and, superficially speaking, “No” to the second. Upon reflection, of course, they must have had some effect, subconsciously if in no other way.
There were obviously some aspects, for instance, that one would reject and others, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, that would have been assimilated. But had I modelled my performance on another?
The answer is most decidedly no.
To be truthful, I had never seen a character construction, which totally fitted the bill. They all missed out on what I considered, in my doubtless ineffable arrogance, some aspect or other; so that, for me, at any rate, they failed to add up to what I felt as a credibly satisfying whole. When I was invited to play the part and re-read the stories again, this conviction became even stronger. I made up my mind to do my level best to make good these deficiencies which I had quite clearly defined in my own mind. Whether or not I eventually succeeded in this bold venture, I have to leave to the judgement of others who saw it at the time or subsequently on the video tapes later published, at the continued insistence of the S.H. Society, by a reluctant BBC.
There is one small testimonial that perhaps is worthy of mention. It is something like a play-bill flyer. It is framed and hangs on the wall of the loo. It has two portraits of me as Sherlock from the series and bears the legend in large letters:
“The only man who ever got it right’’
A Celebration of Douglas Wilmer
as Sherlock Holmes
The Cremona Fiddlers of Williamsburg
Marshall-Wyeth School of Law
Williamsburg, Virginia
Sunday, 4 October, 1998
So, at least in one small exotic corner of the world, I had scored in my intentions, enabling me, in my occasional fits of despondency, to repair to the loo for total reassurance that not for nothing was I born.
In case it should be of some interest, as to how I approached the actual construction of the character, I can only say that it was in much the same way as I do so with any role. I first read and re-read the relevant story several times and, having switched on my imagination, I allow it to soak, so to speak. This would be a gradual process out of which would emerge the general shape of
the character. I would then, during the process of rehearsal, gradually elaborate the detail, always on the watch to preserve the truth of how the character would react to the situation in hand. In other words, I would proceed much as would a painter or sculptor, by trial and error, self-critical addition and subtraction with the further dimension, in the case of acting, of the critical requirements of the director.
Any artist or actor can create only within the limits of his imaginative and physical capacity and creative powers.Sometimes, one sees a performance where the actor seems out of his depth and appears out of touch with what Glen Byam Shaw was wont to call the truth of the character.
This can be for a number of reasons. The actor has failed to find the truth of the central core of the role; he may be miscast or it is possible that he has not devoted enough thought to the job. Or it may be because he is attempting something beyond his artistic comprehension. He could also have been misled by the director: a case of the blind leading the blind. Or more simply,
that he has missed his vocation and would be better employed selling groceries.
For a summary of the character as I saw, and continue to see, it, I can only reiterate a version of what I came up with on the occasion of the Sherlock Holmes Society Dinner, with apologies to those for whom it may be déjà vu.
From the experience of seeing previous Sherlocks, it would seem that, in many cases, they had either chosen to ignore, or failed to notice, certain salient traits in his nature. There has been a tendency to portray him almost as a Victorian paternalistic hero of derring-do, ever chivalrous, over-serious and, consequently, somewhat cardboard. Possibly owing to my own sardonic nature, the way in which I saw him, whilst certainly containing most of these elements, had also, I felt, a decidedly black side to his character which, possibly, it had been formerly found too difficult or unsympathetic to incorporate.
For whatever reason, I decided that I would paint him warts and all. He was a towering and commanding figure, often forbidding and silent. Such men cast great shadows. They can be intimidating and inspire fear.
He was totally devoid of the spurious values of the establishment, with no great regard for rank or material prestige. Witness his open contempt for the King of Bohemia and the Noble Bachelor, also the possible offer of honours.
He was certainly capable of chivalry to women, for whom, generally speaking, however, he seems to have had scant regard. He was also capable of complete callousness, as shown by his treatment of Milverton’s housemaid (he wooed her in disguise to obtain vital information about her employer’s house and his habits). It is true that these peculiarities are almost always relieved by humour, but it is not always humour of a noticeably kindly nature. It is more usually quirkily sardonic.
There is also his almost total and habitual lack of any consideration for the comfort of his faithful and long-suffering friend, whose capacity for toleration almost defies belief. Who else but Watson would put up with such a companion who, in a moment of ennui, would lie back in his armchair, a smoking
pistol in hand, decorating the wall with an enormous VR, picked out in bullet holes.
There was also his disagreeable habit of performing chemical experiments, resulting in Watson being driven out of the room by the appalling stench. There was his frequent adoption of lofty airs and arrogant and superior attitudes, punctuated by periods of surly silence and his playing of melancholy airs on the violin, whenever the mood took him. Also his total disregard of Watson’s medical sensibilities, by jabbing himself with cocaine whenever a black mood descended on him.
He has every qualification for the description, “A stablecompanion
from Hell” but he must have provided a great deal of adrenalin-charged excitement to make up for that and much else besides. There was, of course, very much on the credit side to admire but, as that is self-evident and has been amply demonstrated by most other interpreters of the role, there is no
need for me to go into it here. I have concerned myself in drawing attention to what I feel are the important aspects that are most frequently ignored and which I did my best to incorporate.
Such was the climate of the times that there was to be no mention in any of the scripts of anything so utterly depraved as a cocaine habit. I was therefore unable to include it, much as I believe it should have been there.
Tempora mutantur. [The times are changed]
It may be argued that the portrayal of Holmes by the late Jeremy Brett did, in fact, contain many of the elements to which I have referred. This is perfectly true but his performances, if I may be forgiven for pointing it out, were given considerably long after mine.
Perhaps then, it is in order at this point to relate that Jeremy came to dinner one evening at my house in London, not long after my series was shown, and that he was kind enough to express his admiration for my portrayal of Holmes. This could, of course, have been merely actor’s flannel, but he had no particular reason to refer to it at all. I had certainly not brought up the subject.
He was a much younger man then and it was 20 years later, almost to the year, that he was to give his own long and memorable interpretation. As matters stood, there were many complaints when my series was shown, that I had made the man too arrogant and unsympathetic. Well, I had tried to portray, not a sugar-coated version of Holmes, but a true all-round one, as I saw him and continue to do. I believe that I was faithful to Doyle’s intention and there are those who would agree with me.
This is not an apologia and if, in spite of the lighter touches and humour that I was able to introduce into it, my performance was ultimately unlikeable, then I must freely admit defeat and that I failed in the role.
I would like very briefly, however, to refer to the stories as written by Doyle.
They are narrated, with two exceptions, entirely by Watson and it is only on his say-so that we can be reassured that his idolised companion has any redeeming features. He is at pains to tell us of how his “clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time, I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain." Note, if you please, the one and only time. Elsewhere Watson describes him as an automaton and a calculating machine. He would appear to have had not a friend in the world, save Watson.
It is perhaps stating the obvious that such observations can have no explicit place in any dramatised version, but can find expression only in narrative form and as is clearly indicated in the original text. In a dramatic context, therefore, Holmes is thereby deprived of any softening qualities and we are left, unless we are very careful, solely with the cold, hard calculating machine. Small wonder most actors go for the Establishment Hero of, in my
view, popular misconception.
I have dealt at some greater length on the foregoing than was my original intention, for which I hope to be forgiven. I have done so as it was a major event in my theatrical life and therefore of some importance to me, if to noone else. These are, after all, my memoirs and they record six gruelling months, spent not entirely agreeably, in the production of a series purporting to deal with probably the most world-famous fictional character in literary
history.
My own efforts in that direction seem to have been appreciated more in retrospection than they were at the time, as fashion and trends apparently now favour the anti-hero rather more than they did. Sherlock Holmes is now seen, largely due to the efforts of Jeremy Brett and, before that, to perhaps a lesser extent myself, as no longer the straight-batting Establishment paragon previouslyso frequently depicted.
Doyle did not like him and I believe, at close quarters, not many would. Brett certainly did not and said so quite plainly. In the light of his words of sooth, I am able to feel, even if only to myself, largely vindicated and I can only hope that the foregoing has been of some interest.
At all events, I have at least got it - or most of it - off my chest after all these years.
As to the Sherlock Holmes Society, I owe a great debt to Tony Howlett, one of the original Founders and a most distinguished President. For many years, he laboured to induce the BBC to put out our 1964/5 series again, writing them countless letters. For reasons best known to themselves, the Beeb had been most secretive as to the whereabouts of the tapes and indeed to their
continued existence. It was generally believed that they had been wiped for reuse or otherwise lost: a belief that the Beeb was happy to nurture.
I had become reconciled to this state of affairs, when, without warning two of them, both in excellent condition, surfaced at the National Film Theatre. It transpired that the Beeb had them all in their archives, virtually intact except for The Bruce-Partington Plans, which had a chunk missing. So, thanks to Tony Howlett’s persistence, they at last decided to release two episodes: The Speckled Band and The Illustrious Client, under the banner of
BBC World-wide Productions Ltd . They told me that should sales be in excess of 5000 copies, they would consider spending time and money, brushing up the remainder, with a view to their publication.
I asked specifically if the format envisaged would be that which could be used in the USA, and I was assured that, of course, it would be. Consequently, I felt every confidence that, in spite of being one of the last of the series to have been made in black and white, this target could be reached, with the enormous possibilities of the American market. My optimism was, however, short-lived. Just prior to publication, the head-lady of BBC
World-Wide Productions Ltd . telephoned me in some embarrassment to tell me that, “Owing to a dreadful oversight,” the two videos had been made in a format unusable in the USA. She was full of apologies.
The remainder of the series still remains in the BBC Archives, unheralded, unsung and certainly unpublished. The target had nearly been reached, but without the American market, alas, not quite.
They had shot themselves in the foot, yet again.
It had been my intention to leave it at that, but I had subsequently been approached by Sir Christopher Frayling, the Chairman of the Arts Council and Rector of the Royal College of Art, who is writing a book on the culture of oriental evil in art and literature. He wished to ask me some questions, regarding my performance in two films, dealing with Fu Manchu, and based on
the novels of Sax Rohmer. As they, along with such dross as Jason and the Argonauts and Vampire Lovers were hardly high on my list of mentionables, I was proposing to ignore them completely and, as I was not happy with the result, I had jettisoned them from my mind as so much rubbish. When I told Sir Christopher this, he said that would be a pity as, in his opinion, what I had told him was worth recording. Furthermore, like so much preposterous twaddle, the films had now achieved some sort of cult status.
I hope he is right. He suggested that I write it as an appendage to Sherlock Holmes. My role was actually one of the longest in the film. It was the Commissioner Nayland Smith, the implacable enemy of Fu Manchu, the latter played with great conviction by Christopher Lee.
My role was a function, rather than a character, which could best be described, I suppose, as a filleted Sherlock but conceived, written and certainly acted, without the spark of life. His companion, Dr. Petrie, played by Howard Marion-Crawford, is a pale crib of Dr. Watson, while Fu Manchu is an oriental representation of Professor Moriarty, the most evil man in the
Holmesian world. In short, my role did the donkey work, leaving Fu Manchu to skim off the cream.
Nigel Green, a talented ex-student of mine whom I had taught at RADA, had played the role of Nayland Smith, in the very first of the films, reputed to be the best of the bunch, and had wisely declined to do any more, handing over the baton, as it were, to me. I was mug enough to take it.
One of the films was made in Hong Kong and later on in Dublin. I cannot remember much about the other, except that it was supposed by some to be the better of the two. The actual Brides of Fu Manchu in the title, consisted of an international gaggle of Beauty Queens, imported from the Lord knows where, who had nothing very much to do, except look decorative and yelp with terror occasionally. There was a formidable lady, appointed as a sort of police woman chaperone just to keep them in order. This unfortunate woman nearly went mad as hardly any of them had ever seen London before and frequently some went missing just when their services were required, having been picked up on the previous night by men of evil intent.
On the Hong Kong film, on our first evening in Kowloon, the Chinese actress, Tsai Chin, took me to a proper Chinese restaurant, some distance from the smarter area where our hotel was situated. I remember an enormous warehouse-sized eatery with hundreds of Chinese, all chomping and slurping, amid the deafening noise of chatter. We had what Tsai recommended, which was, to my untutored palate, bland and uninteresting. However, I felt obliged, out of politeness, to simulate the full enjoyment of a gastronomic experience.
Privately, I thought I had often done better in Soho.
On the way back to the hotel in a taxi, she was suddenly seized with violent stomach cramps and felt very unwell, just managing to make it in time. Ironically, I got away with it myself. I do not quite know how.
We started filming the next day in an appallingly grubby studio run by two Chinese brothers, fortunately most of it on the lot and therefore outside in the open air. I seem to remember a communal dressing-room, with wash bowls and pee buckets, also Christopher carrying his loose change around in a sock. During one of the set-ups, I saw him reading a paperback and asked if he was enjoying it. “It’s hardly for me to say,” he replied. “I wrote it myself.”
His name was not that on the cover. Perhaps he was using a nom de plume?
With considerable justification, of course, he always managed to give the impression that he held himself in the highest esteem and there was never very much humour about. But then, if one spends one’s life as the nasty in films, steeped in horror and gloom, perhaps that is understandable. I have always believed him to be a very good actor and much under-used in quality
drama. But had he done more of the latter and much less of the Hammer style of work, he would probably have been much less well-known.
When I first knew him, as a young man, before he ever went into the business of acting, his great ambition was to sing in opera. He indeed had a very fine singing voice. What a loss that there was never a musical Dracula.
His handling of the role of Fu Manchu was masterly, when it could have been utterly ludicrous. Tsai Chin was also impressive, as his equally villainous daughter. Indeed they were the only roles in the film of the smallest interest. I could certainly not bring Nayland Smith to life and I am not often defeated. When I saw the films on video, the impression I had of my performances was of a suit of clothes walking about.
In one of the two films, I believe it was the Hong Kong one, I was supposed to be a Chinese homicidal maniac whose face had been surgically changed to mine. Accordingly, I was obliged to appear at one point in the film, with my visage improbably seamed with cuts and surgical stitches, and not looking quite at my best. A stills photo, presumably to aid continuity, had been taken. Many years later, someone sent me a copy of a horror magazine, called Monsters, in which this particular photo appropriately appeared. It was captioned, much to my relief, “Who Is It?”
By a curious, not say suspicious, circumstance on the night of the very last shot of the film, the enormous Temple of the Heaven-sized Palace of Fu Manchu was mysteriously burnt to the ground.
Was it insured, I wonder?
2009年威尔默出版了自传《舞台私语》（Stage Whispers），对自己的一生进行了总结，其中有许多鲜为人知的细节，比如他童年在上海长大，甚至能说一口流利的沪语。当然，这本自传中最受瞩目的依然是他对于扮演福尔摩斯的回忆。这段经历并不愉快，因为BBC的失信和安排不当，直接导致威尔默辞演第二季。威尔默还谈到自己的继任者彼得·库欣（Peter Cushing）对于接手这一角色非常后悔。以及曾有位年轻的演员拜访过他，并对他饰演的福表示过赞赏，这位年轻的演员就是杰瑞米·布雷特（Jeremy Brett）。
这里选译其中一段：“谈到已故的Jeremy Brett扮演的福尔摩斯总会有些争论，比如（他的表演里）包含了许多我曾展示过的特质，但是他的表演，请原谅我指出来，在很大程度上受了我的影响。说到这里，我想起有一天晚上Jeremy来到我在伦敦的住处共进晚餐，那时我演的剧集刚播出不久，他非常友善地赞扬了我所扮演的福尔摩斯。当然了，也许这仅仅是一个演员的花言巧语，但他并没有特别的原因提及此事，我当然更不会主动引出这个话题。那时他还是个非常年轻的小伙子，差不多正好20年后，他自己给出了漫长而令人难忘的诠释。”
我将书中第22章“福尔摩斯与BBC”（Sherlock Holmes And The BBC）全章内容摘录出来，并选了几张书中的图片，供大家试读。
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《舞台私语》封面 |
作者: Douglas Wilmer
出版社: Porter Press International
副标题: Douglas Wilmer, the Memoirs
出版年: 2009-3-16
页数: 242
定价: GBP 19.99
装帧: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780955656491
豆瓣条目：http://book.douban.com/subject/10454369/
仅供试读，喜欢请购买正版
In 1963 the BBC created a series entitled Great Detectives. This included many fictional sleuths of note and was intended to serve as a collection of pilots, or try outs, for possible future series. Unsurprisingly, it was to include one of the Sherlock Holmes stories and to do a dramatisation of one of Conan Doyle's personal favourites, The Speckled Band.
I was approached to play Holmes and Nigel Stock was offered Watson. It was to be directed by the excellent Robin Midgley.
In due course it was put on and judged, with only one of the other pilots, to be good enough to warrant a series. I had only once before been in a serial, as distinct from a series: there was a great difference, as I was to learn fairly forcefully later on. I had played Charles II in Pepys’s Diary , a serial with Peter Sallis, for the BBC and had very much enjoyed the experience. When I was asked to do Holmes, assuming that I was on the same ground, I was perfectly happy to accept. This, however, was subject to an undertaking, promised by the overall producer of the series, of certain provisos. The first was that, as I was not a quick study of lines, I should receive each script no less than three weeks ahead and secondly that there should be no more than three directors in all, in order to ensure maximum continuity of style and that one of them should be the original director, Robin Midgley.
These conditions were all agreed by the production office. I very soon discovered, however, that they were far from being as good as their word.
The scripts invariably arrived late and were often of such unacceptable quality that I was obliged to rewrite them, burning the midnight oil, sometimes until two or three in the morning. They had been produced by six different writers with no interreference and, so far as could be seen, no supervision from the production office or the series script editor.
As to the second proviso, we ended up with no less than eight different directors, not one of them Midgley. Furthermore, half of them were on their first directorial assignment, having just emerged from a course at the BBC school of training.
In short, we were to be used as a teething-ring for novices. We were given four who knew their job. Mercifully, one of them, Shaun Sutton, borrowed I believe from Children’s Television, directed two of the episodes which was a great relief. Of the rest, one was a middle-European with apparently not a clue about the mores of Victorian England. He could not understand, as an instance, the predicament of the fallen woman in Illustrious Client. “Couldn’t she have got a job in a shop?” he asked. “Not without a character,” I had to explain. I do not think he got it,even then.
In near desperation at one point I ran into Douglas Allen, the head of what was, at that time at least, the more prestigious Department of Serials, and I told him something of our plight. He was very sympathetic. I had just seen Clellan Jones’s brilliant job of Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, which was, of course, a serial. I complimented Allen on it and asked him if we could not have this excellent director for at least one of our future episodes.
He looked at me, open mouthed and aghast. “You can’t have him: he’s Serials, you’re Series.” He did not say only Series, but I think that is what he meant. It was as if British Home Stores had asked Harrods for the loan of their Sales Manager in Christmas Week..
The bulk of the burden and responsibility of delivering the stuff on the night, so to speak, was to rest on my shoulders. Stock, while privately totally in agreement with me, had rather less to say on the matter. He had, also, considerably less to say in the actual scripts themselves. Holmes has to be dead accurate and razor-sharp at all times. One slip and he has lost credibility and is no longer in character.
The upshot of all this was that it invariably fell to my unhappy lot to insist on consistency of style and to the necessary corrections in the writing.
The direct result of this was that I became gradually more and more the exasperated villain of the scenario. The stress began to take its toll and I became, I fear, pretty short-tempered, particularly with the production office, to whom the series appeared to be just another no-account pot-boiler, where
practically anything would do.
Somehow we managed to get it all together and it is remembered by those old enough to do so as a piece of work which bore, at least, some quality. Both Nigel and I came out of it with a certain amount of credit.
My stock with the BBC drama department, however, was, perhaps understandably, at zero. At risk of self justification, perhaps, I will allow myself to cite one or two instances.
I was given a script entitled, The Red-Headed League. It contained no less than 14 characters completely extraneous to Doyle with names like Harry the Horse and stemming, apparently, from an over-addiction to Damon Runyon. The script opened in a “Mews Flat; [sic] with Merryweather the banker in bed with his mistress". The script writer called for “saucy pictures" on the walls and had a comic policeman climbing in and out of the window.
Instead of portraying John Clay, the villain, as so interestingly described in the original, as the bastard son of a Royal Duke, he was portrayed as a runof-the-mill roughneck of no particular interest. All reference to his lineage was simply disregarded, presumably as being of no consequence. I rang the production office at once and asked if they had looked at it. They said they had “been a little worried about that one”. That had not stopped them just sending it on to me without any previous comment. Possibly it had been hoped I would not notice.
When I told them I had not the smallest intention of appearing in such drivel, panic-stricken, they said, “But we start rehearsing next week”.
“Not with me, you won’t. It’s found a suitable home: in the waste-paper basket.” I added, “You can tell the script editor to get off his arse, have a good look at Doyle and just copy out the excellent dialogue, as written”. Thus far into the series, I had done his job for him. And that, of course, is all he had to do. There was no time to exchange courtesies. The result was fine.
At risk of labouring the point, there was, among many others, one particularly gross piece of mismanagement. When we came to do The Devil’s Foot , I was handed a script which was to fill a 50-minute slot but which contained exactly 20 minutes playing time. This slight discrepancy had clearly been through the Production Office, escaping their notice.
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威尔默与奈杰尔·斯托克扮演的华生 |
On this occasion, Stock and I had to buckle-to and produce a workable script. The unhappy scriptwriter, a man of some considerable reputation, owing to years of overwork, had suffered a mental breakdown, followed almost at once by his tragic suicide.
I believe it is not generally realised just how voracious a medium TV can be and this is particularly the case with scriptwriters whose work, unlike those writing for the theatre, is swallowed up in an hour or so and then, if the writers are in demand, as this one most certainly was, it is immediately on to the next assignment.
I was thankful when I reached the end of it all but when the BBC discovered it was regarded as a critical success, they got in touch with me in Hong Kong, where I was filming as Nayland Smith, a poor man’s version of Holmes in some twaddle, called Fu Manchu. They asked me if I would do a second series, adding, almost as an afterthought, that, for reasons of economy, the rehearsal period for each episode would have to be cut down to 10 days.
I said, “It cannot be done, or at any rate, not by me”. I had been momentarily hesitant about it, but a 10-day turn-around quite definitely put the tin lid on it. I hesitated not a second longer. The prospect had not been an inviting one in any case, but 10 days! What a nightmare!
Needless too say, this did not go down too well with the Beeb.
In the first place, they had been screwed down by Adrian Conan Doyle for a pretty hefty whack for the TV rights and he had insisted on them buying 52 stories or no deal. We had used up 13 of them and I am quite sure that the Beeb was confident that I would be perfectly happy to do the lot, in which case they
could hope to sell it as a package to the USA and points east for quite a tidy figure. Instead of attempting to come to some arrangement whereby I might be tempted to take up the cudgels again, they stuck to their 10-day schedule with an aunt-like drawing aside of skirts and started doing the rounds to see if
anyone else would be foolish enough to take it on.
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威尔默坦言完全想不起这是哪个故事里的情节 |
I believe Eric Porter and John Neville were approached among others who refused the bait. Finally, they hit on that fine actor, Peter Cushing, who, in my opinion and later also in his own, as he himself told me, unwisely agreed to do it.
What the result of all this was like I leave to the judgement of those old enough to have seen it. Certainly the production values were in the firing line, although our particular producer cannot be held to account for that. As soon as our series was over, he left the BBC and took his talents to the Antipodes where I heard he prospered exceedingly.
I was in a Hammer Horror with Peter some time later and the subject of the series quite naturally came up. He said it had been the worst nightmare of his entire life, that he had hardly had time to breathe, let alone learn his lines and that when he watched some of the episodes, he did not think, “There’s Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes,” he thought only, “There’s Peter Cushing trying to remember his lines”.
He added, “I’d rather sweep Paddington Station for a living, than go through it again’’. It had clearly been another saga of incompetence. The BBC once again had shot itself in the foot and thrown away a splendid opportunity of making what should have been a fine classic series.
At the possible risk of exhausting the reader’s patience, I have gone into the foregoing exposé at some length, as it is, I believe, not often that someone in the far-from-unusual predicament in which we found ourselves to be able, without risk of reprisal, to blow the gaffe on the dysfunctions of that particular department of the BBC. Now, happily beyond the reach of possible
comeback, I am particularly well-placed to do so!
Whenever the end result appears to be smooth and lovely, it was very often because those in the firing line, so to speak, in this case Nigel and myself, who were left to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, actually did so. Things may well be different now, of course. One hopes so.
It may well be the case that the reader has had his fill on the subject of Sherlock Holmes; then he will certainly be forgiven if he skips the remainder of the chapter.
I persevere with it only because if there is any episode in what may derisively be called my career which is at all likely to have made any mark, this may be possibly it. I can hardly claim too much personal credit for this as the very nature of the subject of Sherlock Holmes is, apparently, of such universal interest as to be well documented and the raison d’être and focal point of numerous learned societies and publications.
The series was made well over 40 years ago and I have long ceased to be surprised by fan mail, which admittedly arrives no longer in torrents, but certainly still in a surprisingly steady trickle. I am also invited to appear at various public functions for this and no other reason, either to speak or read or simply to put in an appearance.
This situation is brought about largely because it appears that all the long term Sherlocks, other than myself, are long since gone to their Baker Street in the sky. It may be tempting Providence to say so, but sometimes I believe it has much to do with my determination to do no more of them, that I attribute my present extreme longevity. My sole lapse from this determination
was an unfortunate one, undertaken solely for the basest pecuniary reasons.
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《福尔摩斯兄弟历险记》片场，吉恩·怀尔德指导威尔默拉小提琴 |
I refer of course to the film Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. But, as one of my critic’s once pointed out, even actors have to eat.
I am also not infrequently questioned about my attitude and approach to the character itself, how I arrived at it and so forth. I once gave an after-dinner speech to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London on the subject. Asked if I was an avid fan before the series, I replied truthfully that I was not, without adding however that, after the series, I was even less so. But I had most certainly enjoyed first reading the stories, which I had done many years
before and was indeed familiar with most of them.
I have for the last 10 years or so been an elected Honorary Member of the above-mentioned Society and enjoyed going, fairly regularly, to the Annual Dinner at the House of Commons. But I do not, however, dress up in Victorian gear and go with them on their European pilgrimages to the Reichenbach Falls. I
have also been made a Baker Street Irregular, an American society, much aspired to by all avid Sherlockians of the USA, election to which is strictly by invitation only. Also, there are a number of other societies, such as The Boston Bull Terriers , who have likewise done me the honour.
A frequent question I have had to answer is if I was at all surprised to be offered the role. I have replied quite truthfully that I was not too amazed. I was considered, at that time, an experienced and, possibly even, over-exposed TV actor and was therefore reasonably well-known. My suitabilities for the role, such as they were, could well be assessed beforehand. I could appear to have, when required, an incisive persona and an appearance that seemed to suit most people’s idea of the part.
I had, as the press were quick to notice, rather more than a passing resemblance to the original Strand Magazine illustrations by Sidney Paget. Quite how they were able to make this assessment, I am not quite sure, as most of Paget’s drawings of Holmes bear not over-much resemblance to each other and
certainly none that I can recall resemble him as described in the text. When asked if I had been familiar with other impersonations and, if so, had they had any bearing on my own construction of the character, the answer was “Yes” to the first and, superficially speaking, “No” to the second. Upon reflection, of course, they must have had some effect, subconsciously if in no other way.
There were obviously some aspects, for instance, that one would reject and others, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, that would have been assimilated. But had I modelled my performance on another?
The answer is most decidedly no.
To be truthful, I had never seen a character construction, which totally fitted the bill. They all missed out on what I considered, in my doubtless ineffable arrogance, some aspect or other; so that, for me, at any rate, they failed to add up to what I felt as a credibly satisfying whole. When I was invited to play the part and re-read the stories again, this conviction became even stronger. I made up my mind to do my level best to make good these deficiencies which I had quite clearly defined in my own mind. Whether or not I eventually succeeded in this bold venture, I have to leave to the judgement of others who saw it at the time or subsequently on the video tapes later published, at the continued insistence of the S.H. Society, by a reluctant BBC.
There is one small testimonial that perhaps is worthy of mention. It is something like a play-bill flyer. It is framed and hangs on the wall of the loo. It has two portraits of me as Sherlock from the series and bears the legend in large letters:
“The only man who ever got it right’’
A Celebration of Douglas Wilmer
as Sherlock Holmes
The Cremona Fiddlers of Williamsburg
Marshall-Wyeth School of Law
Williamsburg, Virginia
Sunday, 4 October, 1998
So, at least in one small exotic corner of the world, I had scored in my intentions, enabling me, in my occasional fits of despondency, to repair to the loo for total reassurance that not for nothing was I born.
In case it should be of some interest, as to how I approached the actual construction of the character, I can only say that it was in much the same way as I do so with any role. I first read and re-read the relevant story several times and, having switched on my imagination, I allow it to soak, so to speak. This would be a gradual process out of which would emerge the general shape of
the character. I would then, during the process of rehearsal, gradually elaborate the detail, always on the watch to preserve the truth of how the character would react to the situation in hand. In other words, I would proceed much as would a painter or sculptor, by trial and error, self-critical addition and subtraction with the further dimension, in the case of acting, of the critical requirements of the director.
Any artist or actor can create only within the limits of his imaginative and physical capacity and creative powers.Sometimes, one sees a performance where the actor seems out of his depth and appears out of touch with what Glen Byam Shaw was wont to call the truth of the character.
This can be for a number of reasons. The actor has failed to find the truth of the central core of the role; he may be miscast or it is possible that he has not devoted enough thought to the job. Or it may be because he is attempting something beyond his artistic comprehension. He could also have been misled by the director: a case of the blind leading the blind. Or more simply,
that he has missed his vocation and would be better employed selling groceries.
For a summary of the character as I saw, and continue to see, it, I can only reiterate a version of what I came up with on the occasion of the Sherlock Holmes Society Dinner, with apologies to those for whom it may be déjà vu.
From the experience of seeing previous Sherlocks, it would seem that, in many cases, they had either chosen to ignore, or failed to notice, certain salient traits in his nature. There has been a tendency to portray him almost as a Victorian paternalistic hero of derring-do, ever chivalrous, over-serious and, consequently, somewhat cardboard. Possibly owing to my own sardonic nature, the way in which I saw him, whilst certainly containing most of these elements, had also, I felt, a decidedly black side to his character which, possibly, it had been formerly found too difficult or unsympathetic to incorporate.
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威尔默的水彩自画像 |
For whatever reason, I decided that I would paint him warts and all. He was a towering and commanding figure, often forbidding and silent. Such men cast great shadows. They can be intimidating and inspire fear.
He was totally devoid of the spurious values of the establishment, with no great regard for rank or material prestige. Witness his open contempt for the King of Bohemia and the Noble Bachelor, also the possible offer of honours.
He was certainly capable of chivalry to women, for whom, generally speaking, however, he seems to have had scant regard. He was also capable of complete callousness, as shown by his treatment of Milverton’s housemaid (he wooed her in disguise to obtain vital information about her employer’s house and his habits). It is true that these peculiarities are almost always relieved by humour, but it is not always humour of a noticeably kindly nature. It is more usually quirkily sardonic.
There is also his almost total and habitual lack of any consideration for the comfort of his faithful and long-suffering friend, whose capacity for toleration almost defies belief. Who else but Watson would put up with such a companion who, in a moment of ennui, would lie back in his armchair, a smoking
pistol in hand, decorating the wall with an enormous VR, picked out in bullet holes.
There was also his disagreeable habit of performing chemical experiments, resulting in Watson being driven out of the room by the appalling stench. There was his frequent adoption of lofty airs and arrogant and superior attitudes, punctuated by periods of surly silence and his playing of melancholy airs on the violin, whenever the mood took him. Also his total disregard of Watson’s medical sensibilities, by jabbing himself with cocaine whenever a black mood descended on him.
He has every qualification for the description, “A stablecompanion
from Hell” but he must have provided a great deal of adrenalin-charged excitement to make up for that and much else besides. There was, of course, very much on the credit side to admire but, as that is self-evident and has been amply demonstrated by most other interpreters of the role, there is no
need for me to go into it here. I have concerned myself in drawing attention to what I feel are the important aspects that are most frequently ignored and which I did my best to incorporate.
Such was the climate of the times that there was to be no mention in any of the scripts of anything so utterly depraved as a cocaine habit. I was therefore unable to include it, much as I believe it should have been there.
Tempora mutantur. [The times are changed]
It may be argued that the portrayal of Holmes by the late Jeremy Brett did, in fact, contain many of the elements to which I have referred. This is perfectly true but his performances, if I may be forgiven for pointing it out, were given considerably long after mine.
Perhaps then, it is in order at this point to relate that Jeremy came to dinner one evening at my house in London, not long after my series was shown, and that he was kind enough to express his admiration for my portrayal of Holmes. This could, of course, have been merely actor’s flannel, but he had no particular reason to refer to it at all. I had certainly not brought up the subject.
He was a much younger man then and it was 20 years later, almost to the year, that he was to give his own long and memorable interpretation. As matters stood, there were many complaints when my series was shown, that I had made the man too arrogant and unsympathetic. Well, I had tried to portray, not a sugar-coated version of Holmes, but a true all-round one, as I saw him and continue to do. I believe that I was faithful to Doyle’s intention and there are those who would agree with me.
This is not an apologia and if, in spite of the lighter touches and humour that I was able to introduce into it, my performance was ultimately unlikeable, then I must freely admit defeat and that I failed in the role.
I would like very briefly, however, to refer to the stories as written by Doyle.
They are narrated, with two exceptions, entirely by Watson and it is only on his say-so that we can be reassured that his idolised companion has any redeeming features. He is at pains to tell us of how his “clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time, I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain." Note, if you please, the one and only time. Elsewhere Watson describes him as an automaton and a calculating machine. He would appear to have had not a friend in the world, save Watson.
It is perhaps stating the obvious that such observations can have no explicit place in any dramatised version, but can find expression only in narrative form and as is clearly indicated in the original text. In a dramatic context, therefore, Holmes is thereby deprived of any softening qualities and we are left, unless we are very careful, solely with the cold, hard calculating machine. Small wonder most actors go for the Establishment Hero of, in my
view, popular misconception.
I have dealt at some greater length on the foregoing than was my original intention, for which I hope to be forgiven. I have done so as it was a major event in my theatrical life and therefore of some importance to me, if to noone else. These are, after all, my memoirs and they record six gruelling months, spent not entirely agreeably, in the production of a series purporting to deal with probably the most world-famous fictional character in literary
history.
My own efforts in that direction seem to have been appreciated more in retrospection than they were at the time, as fashion and trends apparently now favour the anti-hero rather more than they did. Sherlock Holmes is now seen, largely due to the efforts of Jeremy Brett and, before that, to perhaps a lesser extent myself, as no longer the straight-batting Establishment paragon previouslyso frequently depicted.
Doyle did not like him and I believe, at close quarters, not many would. Brett certainly did not and said so quite plainly. In the light of his words of sooth, I am able to feel, even if only to myself, largely vindicated and I can only hope that the foregoing has been of some interest.
At all events, I have at least got it - or most of it - off my chest after all these years.
As to the Sherlock Holmes Society, I owe a great debt to Tony Howlett, one of the original Founders and a most distinguished President. For many years, he laboured to induce the BBC to put out our 1964/5 series again, writing them countless letters. For reasons best known to themselves, the Beeb had been most secretive as to the whereabouts of the tapes and indeed to their
continued existence. It was generally believed that they had been wiped for reuse or otherwise lost: a belief that the Beeb was happy to nurture.
I had become reconciled to this state of affairs, when, without warning two of them, both in excellent condition, surfaced at the National Film Theatre. It transpired that the Beeb had them all in their archives, virtually intact except for The Bruce-Partington Plans, which had a chunk missing. So, thanks to Tony Howlett’s persistence, they at last decided to release two episodes: The Speckled Band and The Illustrious Client, under the banner of
BBC World-wide Productions Ltd . They told me that should sales be in excess of 5000 copies, they would consider spending time and money, brushing up the remainder, with a view to their publication.
I asked specifically if the format envisaged would be that which could be used in the USA, and I was assured that, of course, it would be. Consequently, I felt every confidence that, in spite of being one of the last of the series to have been made in black and white, this target could be reached, with the enormous possibilities of the American market. My optimism was, however, short-lived. Just prior to publication, the head-lady of BBC
World-Wide Productions Ltd . telephoned me in some embarrassment to tell me that, “Owing to a dreadful oversight,” the two videos had been made in a format unusable in the USA. She was full of apologies.
The remainder of the series still remains in the BBC Archives, unheralded, unsung and certainly unpublished. The target had nearly been reached, but without the American market, alas, not quite.
They had shot themselves in the foot, yet again.
It had been my intention to leave it at that, but I had subsequently been approached by Sir Christopher Frayling, the Chairman of the Arts Council and Rector of the Royal College of Art, who is writing a book on the culture of oriental evil in art and literature. He wished to ask me some questions, regarding my performance in two films, dealing with Fu Manchu, and based on
the novels of Sax Rohmer. As they, along with such dross as Jason and the Argonauts and Vampire Lovers were hardly high on my list of mentionables, I was proposing to ignore them completely and, as I was not happy with the result, I had jettisoned them from my mind as so much rubbish. When I told Sir Christopher this, he said that would be a pity as, in his opinion, what I had told him was worth recording. Furthermore, like so much preposterous twaddle, the films had now achieved some sort of cult status.
I hope he is right. He suggested that I write it as an appendage to Sherlock Holmes. My role was actually one of the longest in the film. It was the Commissioner Nayland Smith, the implacable enemy of Fu Manchu, the latter played with great conviction by Christopher Lee.
My role was a function, rather than a character, which could best be described, I suppose, as a filleted Sherlock but conceived, written and certainly acted, without the spark of life. His companion, Dr. Petrie, played by Howard Marion-Crawford, is a pale crib of Dr. Watson, while Fu Manchu is an oriental representation of Professor Moriarty, the most evil man in the
Holmesian world. In short, my role did the donkey work, leaving Fu Manchu to skim off the cream.
Nigel Green, a talented ex-student of mine whom I had taught at RADA, had played the role of Nayland Smith, in the very first of the films, reputed to be the best of the bunch, and had wisely declined to do any more, handing over the baton, as it were, to me. I was mug enough to take it.
One of the films was made in Hong Kong and later on in Dublin. I cannot remember much about the other, except that it was supposed by some to be the better of the two. The actual Brides of Fu Manchu in the title, consisted of an international gaggle of Beauty Queens, imported from the Lord knows where, who had nothing very much to do, except look decorative and yelp with terror occasionally. There was a formidable lady, appointed as a sort of police woman chaperone just to keep them in order. This unfortunate woman nearly went mad as hardly any of them had ever seen London before and frequently some went missing just when their services were required, having been picked up on the previous night by men of evil intent.
On the Hong Kong film, on our first evening in Kowloon, the Chinese actress, Tsai Chin, took me to a proper Chinese restaurant, some distance from the smarter area where our hotel was situated. I remember an enormous warehouse-sized eatery with hundreds of Chinese, all chomping and slurping, amid the deafening noise of chatter. We had what Tsai recommended, which was, to my untutored palate, bland and uninteresting. However, I felt obliged, out of politeness, to simulate the full enjoyment of a gastronomic experience.
Privately, I thought I had often done better in Soho.
On the way back to the hotel in a taxi, she was suddenly seized with violent stomach cramps and felt very unwell, just managing to make it in time. Ironically, I got away with it myself. I do not quite know how.
We started filming the next day in an appallingly grubby studio run by two Chinese brothers, fortunately most of it on the lot and therefore outside in the open air. I seem to remember a communal dressing-room, with wash bowls and pee buckets, also Christopher carrying his loose change around in a sock. During one of the set-ups, I saw him reading a paperback and asked if he was enjoying it. “It’s hardly for me to say,” he replied. “I wrote it myself.”
His name was not that on the cover. Perhaps he was using a nom de plume?
With considerable justification, of course, he always managed to give the impression that he held himself in the highest esteem and there was never very much humour about. But then, if one spends one’s life as the nasty in films, steeped in horror and gloom, perhaps that is understandable. I have always believed him to be a very good actor and much under-used in quality
drama. But had he done more of the latter and much less of the Hammer style of work, he would probably have been much less well-known.
When I first knew him, as a young man, before he ever went into the business of acting, his great ambition was to sing in opera. He indeed had a very fine singing voice. What a loss that there was never a musical Dracula.
His handling of the role of Fu Manchu was masterly, when it could have been utterly ludicrous. Tsai Chin was also impressive, as his equally villainous daughter. Indeed they were the only roles in the film of the smallest interest. I could certainly not bring Nayland Smith to life and I am not often defeated. When I saw the films on video, the impression I had of my performances was of a suit of clothes walking about.
In one of the two films, I believe it was the Hong Kong one, I was supposed to be a Chinese homicidal maniac whose face had been surgically changed to mine. Accordingly, I was obliged to appear at one point in the film, with my visage improbably seamed with cuts and surgical stitches, and not looking quite at my best. A stills photo, presumably to aid continuity, had been taken. Many years later, someone sent me a copy of a horror magazine, called Monsters, in which this particular photo appropriately appeared. It was captioned, much to my relief, “Who Is It?”
By a curious, not say suspicious, circumstance on the night of the very last shot of the film, the enormous Temple of the Heaven-sized Palace of Fu Manchu was mysteriously burnt to the ground.
Was it insured, I wonder?