Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (13 page)

‘Oh, Larry, I’ve never seen the part of Victor so perfectly realized. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean that!’

A great friend (and employer) of Gielgud’s was theatre manager and producer Binkie Beaumont, who co-founded the highly successful theatrical production company H.M. Tennent and had control of half the theatres in London’s West End. Binkie was a larger-than-life character. Hugely powerful in the London theatre world, his social circle was very wide and impressive. While I, as a lowly understudy for the firm, was never invited to mix in such company, I did hear a very amusing story about Binkie and Gielgud.

‘John is coming over,’ Binkie warned his weekend guests at his country home. ‘And he is bringing a rather unsuitable young man with him, so be nice.’

Gielgud duly arrived with a young James Dean-type in tow, who, he said, ‘wanted to be an actor’ and, leaving him with Binkie in the hall, Gielgud went straight through to the kitchen. After a moment or two of awkward silence, Binkie asked, ‘Would you like me to show you around, Hector?’

The boy smiled sheepishly, and nodded.

Five or six minutes later, Binkie returned to the kitchen, furious with Gielgud.

‘Johnny! That boy is impossible! I took him to the garden and said, “This is the croquet lawn, Hector” and he just grunted. I took him around to the pool, and asked, “Do you swim, Hector?” and he just stood there, staring blankly at me and then stammered over a few incoherent words. And you say he wants to be an actor? He can’t even speak the Queen’s English!’

‘For God’s sake, Binkie,’ said Gielgud. ‘His name is Sebastian! Hector is what I call his cock!’

Gielgud’s continuing gaffs really were the stuff of legend, and I remember as he visited the ailing Laurence Olivier towards the end of his life, he reportedly exclaimed, ‘Larry! You’re dead! I mean ... you’re dying! I mean ... my poor darling Larry, you don’t look at all well!’

He once upset Richard Burton too, after going to see him backstage following a production of
Hamlet
, ‘We’ll have dinner when you’re better ... I mean when you’re ready.’

Despite delivering many fine performances in ‘classical’ parts on stage and screen, it was for his role as the butler in the film
Arthur
that he was given an Academy Award. He very nearly didn’t accept the role, however. ‘I turned it down a couple of times ... I thought the script was rather smutty, rather common. They just wanted a posh-looking Englishman saying rather racy things. Every time I said “no” the price went up and finally, when I accepted, they said “how clever of you”, which wasn’t the case at all.’

Gielgud continued working well into his nineties, though at his own pace and mindful of his advancing years. To keep the insurance companies happy, producers usually scheduled his scenes all fairly tightly together. I remember him saying, ‘In my last big parts, I kept thinking, “Suppose
I die in the middle? What is it going to cost everyone?”’

When he was asked to join MPs Glenda Jackson and Gyles Brandreth at the House of Commons for his ninetieth birthday celebrations, he replied, ‘Yes, I would be delighted to join them. You see, all my real friends are dead.’

Though perhaps some words of his I should heed, ‘When you’re my age, you never risk being ill, because everyone then says, “Oh, he’s done for”.’

Ah! the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds! Danny La Rue was unquestionably the most famous Dame – or if you’d prefer, drag act – in all Theatreland. In fact, he was one of Britain’s highest-earning entertainers of the 1960s.

In the days of my exposure to the variety world, a married couple who were close friends of Dorothy Squires produced and toured a couple of drag shows and Dot used to sell her old ball gowns to members of the troupe – one of whom was Danny.

Jack, who was the husband in the husband-and-wife-producing team, said to me one day, ‘You’d better believe in fairies.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘They’re real!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘One night I fired one of my leading ladies, and the next night, when I came out of the stage door, he pointed his unfurled umbrella at me and said, “The witch’s curse on you, Jack Lewis!”.’

Jack said that at the time he laughed it off and returned to his digs, only to open the newspaper the next morning to see headlines containing allegations about Lord Montagu
and boy scouts. That incident, for which Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was jailed for twelve months, killed drag shows for months afterwards. You see, audiences – probably not helped by the press stories – incorrectly associated transvestites and homosexuals with ‘doing things with boys’. Jack Lewis lost huge business – and never doubted the curse again.

Danny, meanwhile, with his dazzling coiffures, extravagant costumes, immaculate make-up, false eyelashes and high heels, went on to open a club in London’s Hanover Square, where he performed his wonderful impressions of Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich and many others. He also gave a break to a great many singers and comedians who were desperate for a leg-up in show business.

The club became extremely popular for its satirical revues long before
That Was The Week That Was,
and attracted celebrities and royalty – as well as coach parties from all over the country – in huge numbers.

Danny made no bones about ‘dressing up in a frock’ being just a job, not a lifestyle choice. He enjoyed his job greatly but when off stage, liked his privacy. When Princess Margaret knocked on his dressing-room door after a show one night, a stark-naked Danny threw it open and shouted, ‘Piss off!’

‘I was mortified,’ he said. ‘I thought she was Peter Sellers messing about!’

Liberace was another tremendous showman. I met Liberace, or Lee as he liked to be called by his friends, in Hollywood in the very late 1950s – though I can’t quite recall how I came to be invited to the party at his house. But you know me – anything for a free meal. To say the decor was kitsch would be the understatement of all understatements. I remember the ceilings being painted with frescos in the style of Rome’s Sistine Chapel and there being ornate marble pillars, diamond-encrusted chandeliers, countless pianos, and many huge paintings and photos of Liberace decorated the house. Everything was done to excess, but that’s how Lee liked it.

With Tommy Steele, Dot and Liberace at a party in LA. The hair is real – well, mine, at least.

Lee loved being around actors and he told me he’d always wanted to be a movie star. He did make a couple of films and I think even popped up as a villain in the
Batman
TV series at one point, but it never quite worked out for
him in that direction – though he did have his own hugely popular TV shows and guest-starred in many other variety and chat-style programmes.

I found him to be extremely polite, fascinating to talk with and very well read, and while I knew he was an accomplished pianist, it was only when I saw him perform in Vegas that I realized his genius was in taking popular well-known tunes, adding a huge dollop of bling and serving it up with masses of charm. There are many talented pianists and musicians in the world, but there are few who could match his showmanship.

It was relatively well known in Hollywood that Lee was gay, though the image he painted for his fans was of a man who hadn’t yet met the right woman. I still remember the huge controversy in the UK when fifty years ago Lee sued the
Daily Mirror
newspaper columnist William Connor (who wrote under the byline Cassandra) for implying that he was homosexual. Cassandra wrote that Liberace was:

‘...The summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want ... a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love.’

It was the suggestion of him being a mincing mother’s boy that led to a six-day hearing, during which Lee categorically denied being homosexual. The jury found for him and awarded a then-record £8,000 in damages (which I’m told would equate to about £500,000 in today’s money).

His legion of female fans never doubted his heterosexuality, even when his chauffeur and companion Scott Thorson sued him for palimony in 1982.

When Lee died in 1987, his publicists, agent and doctor gave the cause of death as being heart failure, and everyone believed them. Only later, when an autopsy was called for after the coroner expressed his doubts about the death certificate, was it finally acknowledged he had actually died from an AIDs-related illness. Even in death, Liberace was keen that his image should not be tarnished.

Invariably, comedians are asked to ‘tell us a joke’ and magicians to ‘show us a trick’ and more often than not I’m asked to ‘tell us about your practical jokes on set’. Of course, as there were so many over so many years, it’s impossible to think of one specifically, and it’s not something you necessarily plan or think about beforehand – it’s usually a spontaneous reaction to a certain moment in time. The times I’ve squirted crews with hosepipes, dropped my trousers in a tense dramatic scene, started giggling to put a co-star off, or re-written dialogue, are all well documented elsewhere. But I much prefer talking about things that go wrong, as they’re always far more memorable – so long as I’m not always the butt of the cock-up, that is.

The law of averages suggests that when you’re in a long-running play, or on a lengthy film shoot, then, despite your best efforts, something, somewhere will mess up. In a film, of course, we have the luxury of ‘take two’ and a clever editor, but it’s not quite the same in theatre.

As a young aspiring actor, I went to see John Gielgud in
Hamlet
at the Haymarket theatre in London and, as the curtain went up, we discovered the stagehands were still putting the planks in place around the graves, the first gravedigger was
shuffling on to take his place and the stage manager was walking across the back of the set looking up at the lights. I laughed – but I was probably the only one who did.