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'My name's Benedict Cumberbatch, and I'm going to take you back in time. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:07 | |
'Imagine driving around London's West End in the '40s and '50s. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
'You'd almost certainly have seen billboards advertising the plays of Terence Rattigan, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:23 | |
'the master of the well-crafted play, | 0:00:23 | 0:00:25 | |
'of upper-class manners and forbidden sexuality - | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
'a lost world of reticence and repression.' | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
Just over a year ago I was asked to take part in a revival of a Rattigan play, After The Dance, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:41 | |
and I had some preconceived ideas that gave me cause for trepidation, | 0:00:41 | 0:00:44 | |
as well as the usual actorly concerns - | 0:00:44 | 0:00:46 | |
"Oh, a bit typecast for me, you know, class-wise." | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
"It's a bit upper-middle class, stuff I want to get away from." | 0:00:49 | 0:00:52 | |
I think I had fears of him, as a writer, of not having any relevance | 0:00:52 | 0:00:56 | |
in the 21st century. I was worried about, "Why do this play now?" | 0:00:56 | 0:00:59 | |
But by experiencing an audience reaction to it, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
which varied both in demographic and age remarkably, | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
for what you'd imagine a Rattigan audience to be comprised of, | 0:01:05 | 0:01:08 | |
it just showed how universal his appeal was. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
I found myself at the start | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
of a huge upsurge of interest in Rattigan, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
and now, in his centenary year, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
it seems that people can't get enough of him all over again. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
But Rattigan himself remains an enigmatic figure - | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
a troubled homosexual with a gift for commercial theatre, | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
who yearned to be taken seriously as a playwright | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
but who always felt an outsider. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
So who was Terence Rattigan, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
and what does he still have to say to us today? | 0:01:38 | 0:01:40 | |
As one of the highlights of Rattigan's centenary, | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
his play Cause Celebre is being performed here at the Old Vic. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
It's the story of an upper-class woman who has a scandalous affair | 0:02:05 | 0:02:09 | |
with the young chauffeur she employs. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
-Let me take your cap. -Thank you, miss. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
By the way, it's "Mrs". "Mrs" three times over, as it happens. | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:02:19 | 0:02:21 | |
-Divorced? -Yes, | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
once. Other one died. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:27 | |
And now seven years gone with old Rats - | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
Mr Rattenbury, my present one. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
I'm giving things away, aren't I? | 0:02:33 | 0:02:36 | |
'The director of this production is a friend of mine, Thea Sharrock, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:41 | |
'who also directed me in After The Dance last year. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:44 | |
'I asked her what she thought Rattigan's appeal is today.' | 0:02:44 | 0:02:47 | |
When we first talked about After The Dance, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
I was reticent, very irritatingly, I remember. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:52 | |
-Do you mean when you said no? -Yeah, when I said no! | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
Well, you know, I had, I think, this prejudice. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
What would the sympathies be for these characters | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
in this privileged world between the wars? | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
How was a modern audience going to be drawn in? | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
Essentially, although the characters that he often writes about, | 0:03:06 | 0:03:10 | |
and After The Dance is a very good example of that, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
are of a very small sliver of society, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
what he is really interested in | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
is what it is that drives us, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
what it is that makes our hearts ache, | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
what it is that makes us laugh, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
what it is that makes us feel happy and take pleasure in other people, | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
and how we have an amazing capacity to hurt other people. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
He always said, "This is the class that I come from," | 0:03:36 | 0:03:39 | |
and he wrote about them because he understood them, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
but you don't have to be a member of the class to understand it, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:45 | |
and that is what's so brilliant about his writing, | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
and why he's been so misunderstood for so long, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
because people, like you, have made that mistake | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
of going, "Well, isn't it only that he writes about | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
a certain type of person for a certain type of person?" | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
And the answer is, no, he doesn't at all. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
Terence Rattigan, like me, was educated at Harrow public school, | 0:04:04 | 0:04:09 | |
a place that seems to have played an early role | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
in nurturing his interest in theatre and playwriting. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
Perhaps my prejudice of his limited appeal | 0:04:16 | 0:04:18 | |
came from my introduction to him whilst in this privileged bubble | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
of private-school education - | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
not that Harrow is particularly associated with theatre. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:27 | |
Many former prime ministers, statesmen, even royalty | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
have passed through its doors, as well as the odd commoner like me. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
Rattigan was at Harrow 65 years before me, | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
but in many ways, the school hasn't changed that much - | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
well, at least to look at. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:43 | |
Harrow is a boarding school, and there are several houses | 0:04:49 | 0:04:52 | |
where the boys live during term time. | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
I was at one called The Park, which was also Rattigan's old house. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
On Speech Day every summer term, | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
we would all be called together for the annual house photograph. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
1991... | 0:05:08 | 0:05:10 | |
Summer of '91... | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
Autumn of '95... | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
Yeah. That's me. I had to double-check! | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
Blond hair, you see? Proof that I was once blond. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
And look at those huge hands! Wicket-keeper's hands, I think, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
which is what I ended up being. That's first year, | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
so I go up to '95. And then there, hair getting worse... | 0:05:31 | 0:05:36 | |
'94, so '95's the last year. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
There we are. I think I'm wearing my Rattigan Society tie. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:45 | |
So many, many ties to remember. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
That one was purple with white rats on it. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
It was our theatre-going society tie, | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
and named in honour of the great man himself. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
And terrible centre parting, replete with curtains. | 0:05:56 | 0:06:01 | |
It's strange being here. It's wonderful, | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
but it's like one of the lyrics in one of the Harrow songs - | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
"your heart will thrill at the thought of the Hill", | 0:06:08 | 0:06:11 | |
and it's...it's...it's very true. You get a rush of memories. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
I wonder what Rattigan felt like at the same time. | 0:06:14 | 0:06:18 | |
Let's see if we can find him. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
Now, where is he? | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
He starts in, er, 19... | 0:06:25 | 0:06:28 | |
1927. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:29 | |
Where is he? | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
Rattigan. There! | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
Gosh! | 0:06:36 | 0:06:38 | |
Very stern. Very severe centre parting, as well. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:42 | |
This is the second year, '28. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
You can pick him out very easily. Right on the end here. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:50 | |
He's already got some kind of piping on a blazer, | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
which I presume is a sports colour. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:56 | |
So he was already achieving something in the world of sports. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
And then...'29. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
Then he's in his full flannels, and that would be for cricket. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:06 | |
A high achiever, and a very dapper dresser at a young age. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
He certainly looked the part. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
But in reality, without a scholarship, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
he wouldn't have made it to Harrow at all. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:18 | |
Rattigan was born into a civil-service family | 0:07:20 | 0:07:22 | |
in Kensington, London, in 1911. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
His father, Frank, was a diplomat, and from the age of two, | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
Terence spent much of his time with his grandmother, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
whilst his parents lived a glamorous life overseas. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
But in 1922, following a row with the foreign secretary, | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
his father was forced to retire on a small pension. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
It was a huge humiliation. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
But, by winning the scholarship to Harrow, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
his son Terence could still have the opportunity | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
to follow in his father's footsteps into the diplomatic service. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
But young Terence Rattigan's main passion was for drama. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
The first dramatic criticism I ever received | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
came from a master at Harrow, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
and was scrawled rather angrily in red ink | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
across the top of a one-page playlet in French | 0:08:09 | 0:08:11 | |
which I, with the rest of a very junior class, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
had been set to compose during prep. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
It ran, "French execrable. Theatre sense first-class." | 0:08:17 | 0:08:22 | |
I was awarded two marks out of ten. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
'The school library, the Vaughan, had a large collection of plays | 0:08:26 | 0:08:30 | |
'to keep the budding playwright inspired.' | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
Rattigan spent hours here in the Vaughan library, | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
poring over classical texts as well as modern playwrights, | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
Galsworthy and other authors, Barrie, Pinero. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
I think his interest was sparked mainly by Coke-Norris, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
a very dry classics teacher. who was teaching him Aeschylus's the Agamemnon. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:52 | |
In class it was a very arduous exercise, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
but he came to read the play here, and was just blown away | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
by its sheer power and emotion. | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
Whereas his classics teacher had treated the Greek story of Agamemnon | 0:08:59 | 0:09:04 | |
purely as an exercise in translation, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
Rattigan read it as it was meant to be read - | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
as a powerful drama. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:11 | |
"Do you see those who sit before the house, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:14 | |
children like the shapes of dreams, | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
children who seem to have been killed by their kinsfolk, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:19 | |
filling their hands with meat, flesh of themselves, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
guts and entrails, handfuls of lament?" | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
"Clear what they hold - the same their father tasted." | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
It's hard to see how that kind of drama could have been made dry in a classics classroom. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
Or is it? | 0:09:34 | 0:09:36 | |
Rattigan would soon become a central figure | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
in the theatre life of the school. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:42 | |
Frank Rattigan encouraged his son's playwriting, | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
but only as a hobby. It wasn't looked upon as something | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
to be taken seriously as a profession. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
A lot of parents who send their children to a place like Harrow | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
or Eton expect their sons to either follow in their footsteps, | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
if they are, like Frank Rattigan was, in the diplomatic corps, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
or perhaps medicine or the law. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:04 | |
But something, watching this school rehearsal of As You Like It, | 0:10:04 | 0:10:08 | |
resonates with me. Both my parents are actors, | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
and wanted me to do anything but become an actor. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
But unfortunately the bug bit quite early, | 0:10:14 | 0:10:16 | |
and involving myself in productions like this | 0:10:16 | 0:10:19 | |
where I played Rosalind, when I was all of 14... | 0:10:19 | 0:10:22 | |
I tried to persuade them that it was a good enough profession for me, | 0:10:22 | 0:10:26 | |
and, um, thank God, Rattigan did the same. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:30 | |
I was told that you couldn't make a living out of playwriting. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:36 | |
You couldn't make a living out of any kind of writing, | 0:10:36 | 0:10:39 | |
except possibly journalism, and I wouldn't have been trained for that. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
And I remember the argument, endlessly, endlessly, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
used by my father - "You can do it in your spare time, old boy." | 0:10:47 | 0:10:52 | |
But, of course, I later discovered this was absolute nonsense. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
You can't write in your spare time. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
'Martin Tyrrell, who teaches English and drama studies at Harrow, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
'directed me in my early days on the school stage, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
'and it was he who introduced me to Rattigan's work.' | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
What in particular do you think Rattigan drew on | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
from his time here, from the people and environs of this school? | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
I certainly think he would have found the community very exciting, | 0:11:17 | 0:11:22 | |
almost like a kind of soap opera, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
with mini-tragedies playing out. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
And he would have seen the marriages of some of the schoolteachers | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
teetering on the brink. He would have seen all the politics | 0:11:33 | 0:11:38 | |
that make for a boarding-school education, | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
and hierarchies, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:45 | |
and the drama of adolescent friendship and sudden enmities. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
It would really have been an extremely good training | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
for a playwright, I think. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:55 | |
While at Harrow, I was fortunate enough | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
to play many roles, but one of the most memorable experiences | 0:11:58 | 0:12:02 | |
was that of playing Arthur Crocker- Harris in The Browning Version, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
one of Rattigan's best-known plays. It's set in a boys' public school. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:10 | |
Crocker Harris is thought to be based on Rattigan's classics tutor, | 0:12:10 | 0:12:14 | |
Coke-Norris. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
A failed teacher, he's being forced into early retirement, | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
while at home, his unfaithful wife describes him as "dead". | 0:12:19 | 0:12:23 | |
-Wilson... -Sir. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
You were late for chapel this morning. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:29 | |
I have therefore submitted your name as an absentee. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
I wasn't really late, sir. Only a few seconds, sir. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
I was in the library, and you can't hear the bell. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
You will no doubt recount those excuses to your housemaster, Wilson. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
I fear I am not interested in them. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
The austere, deliberately off-putting Crocker-Harris, | 0:12:45 | 0:12:49 | |
a man who knows that he is a failure, | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
has projected this image | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
which has earned him the soubriquet of "the Himmler of the lower fifth". | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
Sir, I thought this might interest you. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
-What is it? -A verse translation of the Agamemnon - | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
the Browning version. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:09 | |
'And then there's this marvellous moment | 0:13:09 | 0:13:12 | |
'when Taplow gives him the Browning version of the Agamemnon.' | 0:13:12 | 0:13:18 | |
I think you will enjoy it more when you get used to the metre he employs. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:25 | |
Oh, but it's for you, sir. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
-For me? -Yes, sir. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:29 | |
I've written in it. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
'Crocker-Harris is moved to tears. It really strikes a chord...' | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
-The humanisation of someone. -Humanisation, | 0:13:38 | 0:13:41 | |
and also the stiff upper lip, which has been stiff and upper | 0:13:41 | 0:13:45 | |
for so long, being allowed a moment of... | 0:13:45 | 0:13:50 | |
-To tremble. -..trembling, yes. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
HE SOBS | 0:13:55 | 0:13:57 | |
'Rattigan's straitened family circumstances gave him the sense | 0:14:03 | 0:14:06 | |
'of not really belonging at the school. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
'Public schools in Rattigan's day could be brutal places, | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
'where you could be easily made to feel the outsider. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
'But he avoided being the target for bullying or exclusion, | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
'largely due to his brilliance on the cricket field. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:22 | |
He was an excellent batsman, and opened against Eton | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
in the annual games at Lord's. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
But it wasn't just Rattigan's social standing | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
which made him feel an outsider, but also his sexuality. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
It was probably in these formative years | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
that Rattigan would have realised he was homosexual. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:41 | |
At the time, homosexuality was illegal, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
and viewed as completely unnatural. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
He would have felt under great pressure to conform | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
to gender expectations and social expectations. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
He must have felt this wrench within him. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
That's why his plays are, you know, like Coward's, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
full of figures who are tortured by their sexuality. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:09 | |
In 1930, Rattigan won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, | 0:15:12 | 0:15:17 | |
to read history. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:19 | |
I didn't want particularly to take a degree. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
I wasn't going to do any work. I was determined about that. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
I was going to write plays, or...write something. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
I did very little work, and I spent most of the time | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
either going to plays at Oxford or coming up to see plays in London, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:37 | |
or, occasionally, performing - excruciatingly badly, | 0:15:37 | 0:15:43 | |
and once or twice writing, but usually obscene sketches. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
Whilst there, Rattigan worked on a play called First Episode, | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
which focussed on the experiences of a group of university friends. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
With a small inheritance, Rattigan put up money | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
towards the opening of First Episode in an experimental theatre in Kew. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
It then moved into the West End. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
Rattigan felt he had made it as a playwright, | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
and decided to quit Oxford. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
But after a couple of months the play closed, | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
and Rattigan found himself broke. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
Humiliated, he had to move back in with his parents. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
For the next couple of years he continued to try and prove himself | 0:16:20 | 0:16:24 | |
as a playwright, but had constant rejections. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
Then, in October 1936, his luck changed. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
A major show at the Criterion Theatre had unexpected flopped. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:36 | |
The management needed a cheap production for a six-week gap | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
until the next play was ready. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
Rattigan's rejected comedy, French Without Tears, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
was offered the slot. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
French Without Tears tells the story of five students | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
at a residential language school in France, | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
when a beautiful, man-hunting young woman, Diana, | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
is introduced into their midst. | 0:16:57 | 0:16:59 | |
It was later turned into a Hollywood film, | 0:17:01 | 0:17:03 | |
starring Ray Milland and Ellen Drew. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
I do love you, Alan. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
In it, Rattigan explores unreciprocated love, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
but to comic effect. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
Say that again, blast you. Say that again! | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
I do love you! | 0:17:16 | 0:17:18 | |
No! No! | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
Chris! Bill! | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
Bill! I'm starting for London tomorrow. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
Never leave me alone with that girl till I'm safely on the train. Promise! | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
-I promise. -I promise. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
Before the opening night, Rattigan was a bundle of nerves. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
Finding the right actors for this production hadn't been easy. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
Some of the tryouts had been a disaster. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
The dress rehearsal itself was also pretty spectacularly awful. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
So he paced the streets of London and went for a haircut, | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
a thing that was to become a ritual for him on first nights. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
He went with his family to a restaurant for a meal and a bottle of champagne, | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
and in the glum atmosphere, his mother, Vera, began another first-night ritual. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
She took the cork from the bottle and put it in her handbag | 0:18:04 | 0:18:07 | |
as good luck. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
And with an inexperienced cast, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
Rattigan was going to need all the help he could get. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
They were all unknowns. We had to cast it in a second - | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
I mean over a weekend. Every sign pointed to disaster. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
When they turned up, the family found an ill-tempered audience. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
It was a wet June night. Most of them had struggled through a very busy West End. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
There were other openings - a Marlene Dietrich film, for example. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
The first 20 minutes of the play went very, very quickly. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
The actors were incredibly nervous. Harold French, the director | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
cowered in his box for fear that it would all run away from them. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
But eventually they found their feet, | 0:18:46 | 0:18:48 | |
and the audience were completely beguiled by the charms of the play. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
And at the end, after many cries of "author, author", | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
French went to the back of the theatre and found Rattigan pressed against the wall, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
green with nerves, and eventually persuaded to drag him onto the stage | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
where he took his acclaim. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
The first-night success of French Without Tears was confirmed. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:18 | |
The theatre was packed with delighted audiences every night. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:22 | |
The play ran for more than a thousand performances. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
This huge commercial success launched Rattigan's career | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
as a playwright. He now had money and fame. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
After the success of French Without Tears, | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
Rattigan embarked on a writer's round of drinking, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
parties, gambling, and a slew of affairs with attractive young men. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:45 | |
All this living the high life didn't inspire any new work, | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
and whether it was simply that, or a writer's block, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
it would be a couple of years before Rattigan wrote another play. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
And when he did, it would turn out to be a far more serious drama. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:59 | |
After The Dance is set in 1938, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:02 | |
but looks at the 1920s generation of bright young things | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
who, although no longer bright or young, | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
insist on partying just like in the good old days. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
I've a good mind to slap you very hard indeed. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:15 | |
-Go on. Slap away, and I'll slap back. -Ooh! | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
At the centre of this world is the hard-drinking historian, David Scott-Fowler. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:23 | |
Joan, his wife, is unable to tell David the true depth of her feelings for him, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
even though, earlier that day, she has discovered he is in love with someone else. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
I'm glad we never made the mistake of falling in love with each other. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:35 | |
Sometimes I think ours is the best basis of all for marriage. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:41 | |
Perhaps it is. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
It's worked for us, hasn't it? | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
It might have worked even better if we'd fallen in love with each other, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
like you and Helen. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
That's something different altogether. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
I'm not even sure that I...like Helen as a person. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:59 | |
Not in the way I like you. | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
I know that I love her. That's something I can't explain. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
Unable to face her husband leaving, Joan commits suicide | 0:21:08 | 0:21:12 | |
by jumping from the balcony of their flat. | 0:21:12 | 0:21:15 | |
Rattigan's theme here, of unequal feelings within relationships, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
returns many times in his work. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
When rehearsing and performing David Scott-Fowler | 0:21:21 | 0:21:24 | |
at the National last year, | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
one of the discoveries was how the intensity of this drama | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
was amplified by the detailed stage directions. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:34 | |
Rattigan is a joy to perform. He's a very actor-friendly writer. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:38 | |
It's very clear, in the structure of his plays, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
what the character's emotional arc is over the course of the evening, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
and nowhere is that more in evidence than in his stage directions, | 0:21:44 | 0:21:49 | |
which can be sublimely subtle. It could be a turn of the head, | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
it could be the taking up of a cigarette, | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
the changing of a record, all of which speak for unspoken emotions, | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
words and thoughts. And I wanted to share one with you that happens | 0:21:58 | 0:22:02 | |
at the end of After The Dance. In the previous act, | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
David's wife, Joan, has committed suicide | 0:22:05 | 0:22:07 | |
by throwing herself off the balcony, and, this last scene, | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
David's left alone on stage. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:13 | |
"David goes to the window, hesitates a moment, and then steps out on to the balcony." | 0:22:17 | 0:22:22 | |
"As if making a terrific effort, he slowly leans over | 0:22:26 | 0:22:30 | |
and looks down." | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
"He stays in that position for a few seconds, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
and then steps back into the room, closing the window after him." | 0:22:37 | 0:22:41 | |
That, for me, said everything in that moment | 0:22:47 | 0:22:51 | |
about what David Scott-Fowler understood to be his fault - | 0:22:51 | 0:22:55 | |
the death of his wife, and how he was coming to terms | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
with the reality of what she'd done by looking over that balcony and facing his own future, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:03 | |
of pretty certain death by going back to the bottle. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
It's amazing stuff. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
After The Dance first opened in June 1939. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:13 | |
But war was looming. Audiences dropped off, | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
and the play had to close after just six weeks, | 0:23:16 | 0:23:18 | |
and, until our recent production, was rather a forgotten play. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
'I've come to the British Library, where many of Rattigan's letters and manuscripts are kept. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:29 | |
'His biographer, Michael Darlow, knows this material intimately. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:34 | |
'I asked him what happened to Rattigan | 0:23:34 | 0:23:36 | |
'when After The Dance closed unexpectedly early.' | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
After After The Dance, he got what, in effect, was a writer's block... | 0:23:41 | 0:23:46 | |
..which he actually later himself described | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
as a nervous breakdown, and he really couldn't write. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:54 | |
And he consulted this psychiatrist, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
who advised him to, um... | 0:23:57 | 0:24:01 | |
get into the services and see some active service. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
Following the outbreak of war, there was a huge surge of volunteers | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
wanting to join up and fight Hitler. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:17 | |
Rattigan wanted to join the RAF, but the competition was fierce. | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
He wouldn't have got into the Air Force, | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
but the interview board... Suddenly one of them said, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
"Oh, you're the chap who wrote French Without Tears!" | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
And so he got accepted for the Air Force. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:34 | |
Oh, boy! Er... I mean, thanks very much, sir. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
And he then launched into his training as an officer, | 0:24:39 | 0:24:44 | |
air-gunner, radio operator, | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
and he writes this letter, fairly early in his training, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
to his father, and describes the huge concentration required | 0:24:49 | 0:24:54 | |
to remember all the drills, all the knobs you have to turn | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
to get the radio equipment to work properly, | 0:24:57 | 0:24:59 | |
and how it demands such total concentration, | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
keeping your head. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
Suddenly, um, he was in a war, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
concentrating, having to stay alive, | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
having responsibility for other men. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
It transformed him, and the urge to write came back. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:17 | |
In 1941, whilst on a mission in West Africa, | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
Rattigan started a new play, Flare Path. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
He carried the handwritten manuscript in his kit bag | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
at all times, until one long, eventful flight to Freetown. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:33 | |
RATTLE OF GUNFIRE | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
On the way down... We were shot at on the way down. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
We were damaged, and one of the engines packed up, | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
and it looked as if we wouldn't make it. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:45 | |
We had to lighten the aircraft, and everybody's luggage had to go overboard. | 0:25:45 | 0:25:49 | |
And my own kit bag was just poised on the point of going over, | 0:25:49 | 0:25:54 | |
when I suddenly delved into it, and, regarded with enormous suspicion | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
by the rest of the crew, I began pulling the pages away | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
from the hardbacked notebook, and throwing the hardback | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
but keeping the paper. We arrived with two minutes' fuel. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:10 | |
We were really lucky to get down, | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
and I was lucky to have the manuscript of the play. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
The play features a group of airmen and their loved ones | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
during the night and the following morning | 0:26:25 | 0:26:27 | |
of a night-bombing mission over Germany. | 0:26:27 | 0:26:29 | |
It dealt with love, fear, bravery, | 0:26:29 | 0:26:32 | |
and the emotional trauma of war, | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
precisely catching the mood in Britain at that time. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
On seeing it, Winston Churchill apparently said | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
it was a masterpiece of understatement. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
Rattigan later adapted it into the film Way To The Stars. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
I know what you've come to tell me, Peter. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
-You do? -Yes. You see... | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
he didn't ring up this evening, | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
and I counted one plane missing when you came back over the town. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
Tell me just one thing. | 0:27:04 | 0:27:06 | |
How much hope is there? | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
I see. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
-No hope at all. -Not very much, I'm afraid. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
As well as Flare Path, many of Rattigan's dramas | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
were turned into successful films for which he wrote the screenplays. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
One of the most celebrated was The Winslow Boy, | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
a play which opened in 1946, | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
later made into a film by Anthony Asquith. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
Rattigan takes the real story of a naval cadet | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
who is expelled from college for an alleged minor theft. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
It charts his father's determination to get him a fair trial. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
Rattigan champions the rights of the individual | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
against the legal and political establishment. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:51 | |
It was seen at the time as part of a post-war move | 0:27:51 | 0:27:53 | |
to greater democracy. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:55 | |
-Have you ever studied Magna Carta, sir? -Not very closely, I'm afraid. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
-Have you? -Closely enough to know that there's a clause | 0:28:01 | 0:28:04 | |
which states that no subject of the king may be condemned without trial. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:08 | |
-My son, I presume, is a subject of the king. -Certainly. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:10 | |
-And he has been condemned without trial. -From the purely civilian point of view. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:15 | |
And from a purely civilian point of view, | 0:28:15 | 0:28:17 | |
I'm going to fight you, sir. And I'm going to win. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
Writing for films was a lucrative business, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
and by the late '40s, Rattigan was one of the best-paid screenwriters in the world. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
JAZZ-DANCE MUSIC | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
'His success bought him a lavish lifestyle, | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
'both in London and in the countryside. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
'He bought himself a mansion near Ascot, called Little Court. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
'It would become famous for its weekend parties. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
'The house has been restored to its former glory | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
'by the current owners. I'm meeting someone here | 0:29:00 | 0:29:03 | |
'who remembers those party days well, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:05 | |
'and who hasn't been back since the 1950s.' | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
-Hello. -Hello! | 0:29:08 | 0:29:09 | |
-Lovely to meet you. My name's Benedict. -Mine's Jean. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:12 | |
'Jean Dawnay, now known as Princess Jean Galitzine | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
'after marrying into Russian aristocracy, | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
'was a famous fashion model, | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
'and met Rattigan at a party after the war. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:24 | |
'They became very close friends, and many, including Rattigan's mother, | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
'thought they might one day get married. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:32 | |
'She's agreed to show me round and share some of her memories.' | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
-After you. Come on in. -Oh, lovely. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
Amazing. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:42 | |
It's unbelievable. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
And when was the last time that you were here, Jean? | 0:29:45 | 0:29:49 | |
Well, I would think about 50 or 60 years. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
-Wow. -It's strange to go back so much, | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
and still have clear memories. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:57 | |
I can even remember his mother sitting there. Isn't that amazing? | 0:29:57 | 0:30:01 | |
I can really see her, almost. She was a very distinguished woman, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:04 | |
very grande dame, very much a Victorian type of... | 0:30:04 | 0:30:07 | |
Silver-white hair and lovely blue eyes, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
which is where he got his blue eyes from. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
Is your memory of this room being used as an entertainment space | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
-in the evening? -Absolutely. I can practically see them. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
I remember one particular party was for Marilyn Monroe, | 0:30:20 | 0:30:24 | |
because she was here to make a film, The Prince And The Showgirl, | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
Laurence Olivier. And so we had everybody and his wife | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
you ever heard of in the theatre world. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
Great party. And she'd just got married to Arthur Miller, | 0:30:33 | 0:30:37 | |
and so she was trying to rather live up to his intellect, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
and she was sweet. Very touching. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
-It feels like it was a happy place. Was it a happy place? -Oh, very. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:46 | |
People longed to be asked, and they loved it when they came, | 0:30:46 | 0:30:50 | |
and so on, and it was always fun. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:53 | |
'Jean's relationships with various boyfriends | 0:30:53 | 0:30:57 | |
'were of constant interest to Rattigan, | 0:30:57 | 0:30:59 | |
'and some of her experiences inspired his female characters.' | 0:30:59 | 0:31:03 | |
-That's fantastic. -Most relationships are so complicated. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
One's more keen on the other, | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
or one's not sure of themselves with the other - whatever it is. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
-And did you share that in conversation with him? -Oh, yes, | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
and we would analyse it all - oh, what a woman feels. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
All the time, he would always ask me, "What did he say?" | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
If I had an argument with a boyfriend, | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
"What did he say that made you so cross, or you made him so cross?" | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
I could tell him anything, and we would talk about every situation. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
It was lovely. It was like going to a father-confessor. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:36 | |
You must have seemed like the perfect couple. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
We were so happy. If one could have a relationship like that... | 0:31:39 | 0:31:43 | |
-It's ideal. -Yeah. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
You know, he was...oh, homosexual. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
And, of course, now it's quite natural, | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
but those days it was not at all considered natural, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
and they put people in prison. Can you imagine? | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
I mean, it's unbelievable. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:01 | |
But it did cause... | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
People had to turn the other way, as if you didn't know. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
-And that's why I often wonder if his mother knew about it. -Mm. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
I honestly don't know whether she refused to admit it, | 0:32:10 | 0:32:14 | |
or didn't know, because sometimes people were very innocent then. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:19 | |
# Here we are | 0:32:20 | 0:32:22 | |
# Out of cigarettes | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
# Holding hands and yawning | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
# Look how late it gets | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
# Two sleepy people | 0:32:29 | 0:32:31 | |
# By dawn's early light | 0:32:31 | 0:32:34 | |
# And too much in love to say good night # | 0:32:34 | 0:32:38 | |
'Visiting Rattigan's house in the Berkshire countryside | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
'and chatting to Jean has given me a real sense of his lifestyle | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
'in the early '50s. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:47 | |
'He obviously spent lots of time writing here, | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
'but also knew how to enjoy himself, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:51 | |
'and it seems his diary was pretty full of socialising and parties. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
'But as Jean told me, behind the public persona, | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
'there were secrets. He had to keep his intimate relationships private.' | 0:33:00 | 0:33:05 | |
Hello, Benedict. You found your way, then? | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
-It's good to see you. -Lovely to meet you. | 0:33:07 | 0:33:10 | |
Come in and we'll have a little talk in the saloon. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
'One of Rattigan's partners at this time was Adrian Brown. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:17 | |
'Adrian started a six-year relationship with the 44-year-old Rattigan when he was just 22. | 0:33:17 | 0:33:23 | |
'I asked him how difficult it was to keep an affair like theirs secret.' | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
Well, it wasn't hard if you were gay, | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
because there were all sorts... HE LAUGHS | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
..of private societies, private clubs and this sort of thing. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
It was great fun, to tell you the truth. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:37 | |
No-one must know about it, because it wouldn't be nice, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
-and everybody had to be nice. -Did you ever meet Vera Rattigan? | 0:33:40 | 0:33:43 | |
-Did you ever meet his mother? -No. I never met her at all. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:46 | |
I had quite expected that tea parties would take place, | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
that sort of thing, but they never did, | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
so I never met the good lady, or did any of his other chums, | 0:33:52 | 0:33:56 | |
because Mother then might discover that he was not quite nice, you see. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
He had these strange proclivities, and Mother must be protected. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
The man of great sophistication and ease and bon viveur, | 0:34:03 | 0:34:07 | |
and the wit, the person who is comfortable in his skin in public - | 0:34:07 | 0:34:11 | |
was he at all different in private? | 0:34:11 | 0:34:14 | |
No, not really. He was always very witty and well dressed. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
He had a good tournure de phrase. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
He could bring back a repartee to any question. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
It was this, and the cigarette would be held up there | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
until he was ready to smoke it again, | 0:34:26 | 0:34:28 | |
and there would usually be a gin and tonic in the other hand. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:33 | |
-Dosing with both hands all the time. -Yes. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
'The social-butterfly image of Rattigan | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
'is certainly in keeping with his desire to entertain | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
'within his plays. However, he was not content | 0:34:41 | 0:34:43 | |
'to purely be a Noel Coward figure. There was another side to him, | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
'which wanted to be seen as a serious dramatist. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
He preferred to be thought of for the undertones | 0:34:51 | 0:34:55 | |
and the subtext writing that he could do in the Chekhovian manner. | 0:34:55 | 0:34:59 | |
He was not quite as good at the comedies as Noel Coward was, | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
but he was better at the serious plays than Noel Coward was, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
so he valued himself on the serious plays | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
like The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:15 | |
Those were where he thought he was going. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:17 | |
# I'm sitting on top of the world | 0:35:17 | 0:35:21 | |
# Just rolling along | 0:35:22 | 0:35:25 | |
# Just rolling along # | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
Alongside Noel Coward, | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
Rattigan was fast becoming one of the UK's leading playwrights. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
At the time, the theatre establishment was run by a small group of men, | 0:35:33 | 0:35:37 | |
an elite group, and at the head of that was a man called Binkie Beaumont, | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
a theatre manager of notorious influence and power. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
He was the puppet-master of the West End, | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
controlling exactly which productions would get the go-ahead. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
He was homosexual, and his preference for working with other homosexuals was notorious. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:56 | |
If you didn't fit into Binkie's set, you had no chance in the West End. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:01 | |
He would have a big influence on Rattigan's fate. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
He was said to be suave, sophisticated, well dressed | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
and well mannered, with a smile always on his face | 0:36:08 | 0:36:11 | |
even at his most ruthless. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:13 | |
With his background and his success, | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
Rattigan fitted naturally into Binkie's set. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
And although he wanted to be considered as a serious playwright, | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
he wrote a controversial article in 1950 | 0:36:25 | 0:36:27 | |
which linked him even more closely with the entertainment-driven commercial theatre of Beaumont. | 0:36:27 | 0:36:33 | |
There was a long tradition in British theatre, | 0:36:34 | 0:36:36 | |
going back to Bernard Shaw, of writing plays which engage with social issues. | 0:36:36 | 0:36:41 | |
But in his article, Rattigan attacked what he called | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
"the play of ideas" for being too concerned | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
with contemporary problems. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:48 | |
Rattigan says, "I don't think that ideas, per se, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
social, political or moral, have a very important place in theatre." | 0:36:54 | 0:36:57 | |
"They definitely take third place to character and narrative, anyway." | 0:36:57 | 0:37:01 | |
And then the bit that got him into real trouble - "The trouble with theatre today | 0:37:01 | 0:37:05 | |
is not that so few writers refuse to look facts in the face | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
but that so many refuse to look at anything else." | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
The critical storm that joined this article | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
was quite unprecedented. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:16 | |
He became identified with safe, conservative, commercial choices | 0:37:16 | 0:37:21 | |
in the theatre world. | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
And the commercial theatre of the time was still restricted | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
in what it could show. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:30 | |
All plays had to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
effectively a censor, before they could be performed. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
In 1952, Rattigan wrote a play inspired | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
by the suicide of one of his lovers, Kenneth Morgan, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
called The Deep Blue Sea. It's believed the earliest drafts | 0:37:42 | 0:37:46 | |
focussed on a failed homosexual relationship, | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
but this would never have been accepted. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:51 | |
The final version, with a heterosexual couple, | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
was a huge West End success. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
Deep Blue Sea ran for 500 performances, | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
and Rattigan wrote the screenplay for the film | 0:38:01 | 0:38:03 | |
starring Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
The Deep Blue Sea's main character is Hester. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
Driven by passion, she leaves her upper-class husband | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
to live with a younger man. But when he decides to leave, | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
her fragile new world starts to crumble. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:37 | |
Hes, this is our last chance. We're death to each other, you and I. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:41 | |
-It's not true. -It is, darling, and you've known it longer than I have. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:45 | |
-I haven't finished them! -Well, all right. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:48 | |
SHE SOBS | 0:38:48 | 0:38:50 | |
Oh, I'm sorry, Hes. Oh, I'm sorry. Please don't cry! | 0:38:50 | 0:38:54 | |
You don't know what it does to me. I've got to get out of here. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
Not this minute, Freddie! Not just this minute! | 0:38:57 | 0:39:00 | |
-You've got all your things here. -I'll send for them. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
But you promised you'd be in for dinner. You can't break a promise! | 0:39:03 | 0:39:06 | |
Don't leave me alone, Freddie! Don't leave me alone tonight! | 0:39:06 | 0:39:10 | |
Not tonight, Freddie! Not tonight! | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
Come back, Freddie! Don't go, Freddie! | 0:39:13 | 0:39:15 | |
-SHE SOBS -Don't go, Freddie! | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
Freddie, don't leave me alone tonight. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:21 | |
SHE SOBS | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
'As part of the wide revival of Rattigan's work, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
'a new feature film of The Deep Blue Sea is being produced. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
'I've come to a sound studio in Soho, London, | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
'where the film's director, Terence Davies, | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
'is adding the finishing touches to the sound. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:54 | |
'He's going to let me have a rare sneak peek at it.' | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
Beware of passion, Hester. | 0:39:57 | 0:39:59 | |
It always leads to something ugly. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:03 | |
What would you replace it with? | 0:40:06 | 0:40:08 | |
A guarded enthusiasm. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
My first experience of the play was seeing it at the Almeida. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
It was a school outing, and it was the most extraordinary experience, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:23 | |
and one of the main reasons why I took this nonsense profession up | 0:40:23 | 0:40:27 | |
and really had a go at being an actor. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:30 | |
I'm fascinated to know what drew you to The Deep Blue Sea | 0:40:30 | 0:40:34 | |
-as potential for film. -Well, it came out of the blue. | 0:40:34 | 0:40:38 | |
I didn't really know it. Sean O'Connor, one of the producers, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:42 | |
asked if I'd like to do a Rattigan, | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
and the only one I remembered was The Deep Blue Sea, | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
and so I said, "Well, I'll read it." And at first I was very worried, | 0:40:48 | 0:40:52 | |
because I didn't really know what it was about subtextually. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
So I read it a few more times, and I said, "I know what it's about now." | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
"It's about love, the nature of love, | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
of one person wanting a kind of love from the other person | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
which the other person can't give." Once I knew that, I said I'd do it. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:10 | |
Why I was drawn to it was that here was someone | 0:41:10 | 0:41:14 | |
who's actually very conventional, and has married for companionship | 0:41:14 | 0:41:18 | |
and not sexuality, because Collyer was a nice man, | 0:41:18 | 0:41:22 | |
and then she finds sex. She finds eroticism and sex. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:27 | |
And that's so powerful that it consumes her. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
She leaves her husband and goes and lives with a man. | 0:41:30 | 0:41:33 | |
That you did not do in the '50s. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:35 | |
What's she going to do? How is she going to live? | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
And she takes that risk without actually thinking about the risk. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
That's what's extraordinary - that you can be overwhelmed | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
by this emotion called love, | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
but also, I suppose, what I did respond to deeply | 0:41:48 | 0:41:52 | |
is the fact that she's an outsider, and I feel like an outsider. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
Always have done, even though I'm the eldest of ten children. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:59 | |
I've always felt as though I've been looking in at life. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
Other people participate in life, and I seem to always just look at it. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
And that's what I liked about it as well. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
'Rattigan, too, was undoubtedly an outsider. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
'Although he was hugely successful and mixed in all the right circles, | 0:42:13 | 0:42:18 | |
'he was an onlooker of life, | 0:42:18 | 0:42:20 | |
'unable to be open about his homosexuality | 0:42:20 | 0:42:24 | |
'in his private life, or directly express it in his work. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:27 | |
'In 1953, following the critical success of The Deep Blue Sea, | 0:42:28 | 0:42:33 | |
'Rattigan wrote a much lighter affair, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:35 | |
'The Sleeping Prince.' | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
Despite being commercially successful, | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
it disappointed the critics. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:44 | |
Rattigan was becoming highly sensitive to their criticism, | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
and used a preface to a new collection of his works | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
to argue that, just because his plays were commercially successful, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
there was no reason not to take them seriously. | 0:42:54 | 0:42:57 | |
To help his argument, he invented a comic character called Aunt Edna, | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
an aging lady theatregoer living in a Kensington hotel. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:04 | |
"Aunt Edna does not appreciate Kafka - 'so obscure, my dear, | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
and why always look at the dark side of things?' - | 0:43:08 | 0:43:10 | |
she is upset by Picasso - 'those dreadful reds, my dear, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
and why three noses?' - and she is against Walton - | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
'such appalling discords, my dear, and no melody at all'." | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
"She is, in short, a hopeless lowbrow, | 0:43:20 | 0:43:23 | |
and the great novelist, the master painter, and the composer of genius | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
are, and can afford to be as disregarding of her tastes as she is unappreciative of their works." | 0:43:27 | 0:43:32 | |
"Not so, unhappily, the playwright, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
for should he displease Aunt Edna, he is utterly lost." | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
"'Oh, it was so dull, my dears. Don't think of going to it at all.'" | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
"'So much talk. So little action! So difficult to see the actors' faces, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
and even the tea was cold.'" | 0:43:46 | 0:43:49 | |
Ugh! | 0:43:54 | 0:43:56 | |
Aunt Edna was intended as a light-hearted creation, | 0:43:56 | 0:43:59 | |
but she quickly came to be seen as synonymous with Rattigan himself. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:03 | |
Yet again, Rattigan had helped to pigeonhole himself | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
as belonging to a rather old-fashioned, | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
light, commercial theatre - a spectacular own goal. | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
But in his next play, Rattigan would once again display | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
his more serious side. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
Separate Tables explored the difficulties | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
of honest sexual expression. It opened in 1954, | 0:44:24 | 0:44:28 | |
and two years later was made into an award-winning film. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
One of the central characters, played in the film by David Niven, is the major. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
I rather think you mean a lot to her. | 0:44:36 | 0:44:38 | |
He's uncovered as a fraud who has been arrested for molesting women | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
in a local cinema. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
One's awfully apt to try and excuse oneself sometimes by saying, | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
"Well, what I do doesn't do anybody else much harm." | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
But one does, you see, and it's not a thought that I like very much. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
Well, mustn't miss the old train, what, what? | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
In Rattigan's original script, | 0:45:03 | 0:45:06 | |
the major's offence was a homosexual one, | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
but again Rattigan toned it down | 0:45:08 | 0:45:10 | |
to avoid the Lord Chamberlain's blue pencil | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
and appeal to a mainstream audience. | 0:45:13 | 0:45:15 | |
Paranoia about homosexuality had re-emerged with a vengeance | 0:45:15 | 0:45:19 | |
after the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
and there was a concerted drive against male vice, | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
with a huge increase in arrests. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
The early 1950s were characterised by a series | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
of notorious homosexual scandals. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:34 | |
The rich and the famous became targets, | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
including Sir John Gielgud, the foremost classical actor | 0:45:37 | 0:45:41 | |
of his generation. He was arrested for gross indecency. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:45 | |
His court appearance and arrest caused a sensation | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
in the tabloid press, and the exposure risked his both reputation | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
and his career. The judge fined him £10 and told him to see a doctor. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:57 | |
'With such stories hitting the press, | 0:46:03 | 0:46:05 | |
'it was understandable that Rattigan should feel constrained | 0:46:05 | 0:46:08 | |
'about addressing homosexuality in his work.' | 0:46:08 | 0:46:12 | |
But by 1956, the social mood in Britain was changing, | 0:46:12 | 0:46:16 | |
and, ironically, a more overt theatre was emerging, | 0:46:16 | 0:46:20 | |
but outside the commercial theatre of the West End. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
Here at the Royal Court in Sloane Square, | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
a man called George Devine was encouraging a new generation | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
of young writers and directors who hated the middle-brow, middle-class theatre of Binkie Beaumont. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:35 | |
Rattigan could hardly have imagined what effect | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
an evening trip to a new play at this theatre would have | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
on his future career. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:45 | |
Rattigan had an apartment here in Eaton Square, | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
so he didn't have far to travel on the night of the 8th of May 1956 | 0:46:50 | 0:46:54 | |
to Sloane Square, to attend the world premiere of Look Back In Anger, | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
a play by a very young new talent, John Osborne. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:00 | |
It was a night that was to mark the beginning of Rattigan's fall from grace, | 0:47:00 | 0:47:05 | |
and it would be many years until one of his plays | 0:47:05 | 0:47:07 | |
was applauded in a London theatre again. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
'Not for nothing would Osborne and other writers at the Royal Court | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
'become known as the "angry young men", | 0:47:16 | 0:47:18 | |
'as Rattigan was about to find out. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:20 | |
'Osborne's play was the catalyst for their new movement.' | 0:47:20 | 0:47:24 | |
If only something, something, would happen to you, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:30 | |
wake you up out of your beauty sleep! | 0:47:30 | 0:47:32 | |
If you could have a child, and it would die. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:36 | |
Let it grow, let a recognisable human face emerge | 0:47:36 | 0:47:40 | |
from that little mass of India rubber and wrinkles. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
Please, now, please! If only I could watch you face that. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:47 | |
I wonder if you might even become a recognisable human being yourself, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:50 | |
but I doubt it! | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
-CHURCH BELLS RING -Now the bloody bells have started! | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
In the central character of Look Back In Anger, | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
Jimmy Porter, a new generation had found its voice. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:02 | |
Stop those bells! There's somebody going crazy in here. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
Don't want to hear them! | 0:48:05 | 0:48:07 | |
# I feel the weather is changing | 0:48:07 | 0:48:11 | |
# You're growing colder # | 0:48:11 | 0:48:13 | |
To them, Rattigan and his ilk represented | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
what one of them would call "the pale side of the establishment" - | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
an establishment they intended to sweep away. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
Rattigan came here for the opening night of Look Back In Anger | 0:48:27 | 0:48:31 | |
with Binkie Beaumont, who had to restrain him in his seat | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
to stop him from leaving early. When the play did finish, | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
he was asked for his opinion by a journalist, | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
to which he flippantly replied it seemed to him | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
that John Osborne was saying, "Look, Ma, I'm not Terence Rattigan." | 0:48:43 | 0:48:47 | |
This glib response proved him dangerously out of touch with the younger generation, | 0:48:47 | 0:48:51 | |
and it was seized upon by the press to begin the damaging contrast | 0:48:51 | 0:48:54 | |
between him and the younger generation of writers. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:58 | |
Playwright David Hare was the resident dramatist | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
here at the Royal Court in the early '70s. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:05 | |
'Though inspired to become a writer by the angry young men, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
'he has a more complicated attitude to Rattigan, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:12 | |
'whilst respecting some of his work as a playwright.' | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
The two greatest plays are The Browning Version, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
which I think is a masterpiece, and The Deep Blue Sea, | 0:49:19 | 0:49:22 | |
which I think is also a masterpiece. There are some very good plays, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
like The Winslow Boy and Separate Tables, which are very good plays. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:29 | |
But his subject, in those great plays, | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
is so...harrowing, which... | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
And I would take Rattigan's true subject to be... | 0:49:35 | 0:49:38 | |
the impossibility of escaping who you are. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:43 | |
You're born with a character, | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
which is your fate, your destiny, and you can struggle, but you can't - | 0:49:46 | 0:49:51 | |
-It's a Greek theme. -Why do you think he fell out of favour? | 0:49:51 | 0:49:55 | |
It wasn't so much that Rattigan was out of favour | 0:49:55 | 0:49:58 | |
with the British theatre as that he'd written most of his best work. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
In my opinion, he wrote most of his best work | 0:50:02 | 0:50:05 | |
by the time the Royal Court came along | 0:50:05 | 0:50:07 | |
and different kinds of writers appeared. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
The Royal Court represented an attempt | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
to put plays into the repertory | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
which were not necessarily about mainstream, middle-class subjects, | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
but about the rest of the population. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:21 | |
The country's changing and the theatre's changing with it, | 0:50:21 | 0:50:24 | |
and when it happens, it's so... both invigorating to Rattigan, | 0:50:24 | 0:50:29 | |
and threatening to him at the same time. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
Rattigan's next play, Variation On A Theme, | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
was slated by reviewers. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
Any play I wrote was going to get smashed. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
I had no chance with anything. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:46 | |
They just didn't say why they didn't like it. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
They just said that it must be bad because it is old, effete. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:53 | |
It is the old theatre. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:55 | |
'Rattigan didn't do himself any favours | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
'by painting himself as a martyr, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
'but even so, the critics were ferocious, | 0:51:01 | 0:51:03 | |
'and one of those, Benedict Nightingale, | 0:51:03 | 0:51:05 | |
'now thinks that they went too far.' | 0:51:05 | 0:51:07 | |
I saw Look Back In Anger, and I was very influenced by that. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:11 | |
I put on my blue suede shoes and drainpipe trousers, saw the play, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
and to me at that time, Rattigan represented everything | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
that was reactionary, and because of the invention of Aunt Edna, | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
a bit Philistine, too. I feel I was wrong. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
I saw only one side of him. I think an awful lot of us did. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
He categorised himself as someone who was anti the zeitgeist | 0:51:27 | 0:51:31 | |
of the time, anti the social drama that was so important at the time. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:37 | |
# No money | 0:51:37 | 0:51:39 | |
# Forget the money # | 0:51:39 | 0:51:42 | |
Feeling rejected by the theatre world, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
Rattigan spent much of the '60s abroad, | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
living in Bermuda and spending time in Hollywood. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
He wrote many successful screenplays for television and film, | 0:51:49 | 0:51:53 | |
including The VIPs and The Yellow Rolls Royce. | 0:51:53 | 0:51:55 | |
But for me, it was a period | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
where Rattigan's quality of writing dropped. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
Softened by spongers and sycophants, | 0:52:00 | 0:52:02 | |
and stagnating by retreating into this old world, | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
he remained very out of keeping with the times. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
Nightingale's reviews of the plays would often get a reply from him. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
He wrote me quite a few letters, but he was writing everyone letters. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
I think he stayed up very late at night. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
I think he drank quite a lot. I think he was deeply unhappy | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
and alienated, and felt an awful failure, | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
and hated himself for all sorts of reasons, | 0:52:25 | 0:52:29 | |
and what he could do was simply scrawl and write. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
I mean, here are some of the...frankly, scrawls, | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
and they're rather incoherent at times. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:40 | |
This is a postcard Rattigan sent you from his home in Bermuda, | 0:52:40 | 0:52:44 | |
so it must have been quite late on. January the 24th, but not a year. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
It says, "Dear Benedict Nightingale, I must seize a wobbly pen | 0:52:47 | 0:52:51 | |
to thank you for a notice that has given me more pleasure and pride | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
than any that I can remember. I'm afraid that it's my own fault." | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
"I damned myself by that idiotic invention | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
in a hastily written preface 22 years ago of Aunt Edna." | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
"I've never been allowed to bury the old bitch, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
or even explain more seriously what I meant by her | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
(something like Shakespeare's groundlings, | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
who have to be satisfied). It doesn't matter." | 0:53:12 | 0:53:14 | |
"No regrets. Thank you again." | 0:53:14 | 0:53:17 | |
"Deeply, Terence Rattigan." | 0:53:17 | 0:53:19 | |
It's a terribly moving admission of a failing. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:24 | |
Things got very difficult for him. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
But his desperation is what shows through. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
That's what I find distressing, actually. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
He was desperate for acknowledgment, | 0:53:31 | 0:53:34 | |
much more than any other playwright I know. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:36 | |
He thought they were probably right about him. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
He thought he was a failure, and, my God, he was not a failure. | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
Rattigan's health deteriorated throughout the '60s. | 0:53:42 | 0:53:46 | |
It wasn't clear what illness he had, | 0:53:46 | 0:53:49 | |
but it can't have been helped by his heavy drinking. | 0:53:49 | 0:53:53 | |
But in 1971, Rattigan returned to England to receive a knighthood | 0:53:53 | 0:53:57 | |
in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
He was only the second playwright to receive such an honour | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
since the First World War, the first being Noel Coward. | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
A year later, he was diagnosed with leukaemia. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:09 | |
He was dying when he wrote his final play, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
Cause Celebre. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
Cause Celebre was based on a real-life scandal | 0:54:14 | 0:54:17 | |
that happened in 1935. Alma Rattenbury, | 0:54:17 | 0:54:21 | |
the wife of a retired architect, | 0:54:21 | 0:54:23 | |
began an affair with their 18-year-old chauffeur. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
The chauffeur, in a fit of jealousy and pique, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:28 | |
bludgeoned the husband to death with a mallet. | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
Both were charged with his murder and tried at the Old Bailey, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:35 | |
and you can see from newspaper articles at the time | 0:54:35 | 0:54:37 | |
that the trial caused quite a sensation, | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
with the public crying out for this scarlet woman's blood. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:43 | |
I remember the case well. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
I was, er...what, 24? | 0:54:45 | 0:54:48 | |
And I remember having violent arguments with my family about it. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:52 | |
Of course, naturally both my mother and father hated her | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
as a symbol of everything that was dreadful, | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
but I, as a budding dramatist, thought that she had a case. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:03 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:55:03 | 0:55:05 | |
-Oh, very good! -Well, I'm not quite Fred Astaire. | 0:55:05 | 0:55:09 | |
No, and I'm not Ginger Rogers. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:11 | |
Oh, I just want to go on and on like this. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
I want to go on and on like this till the end of the world. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
'I asked Thea Sharrock, the director of the recent hit production | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
'of Cause Celebre at London's Old Vic, | 0:55:35 | 0:55:37 | |
'why Rattigan chose Alma's scandal in the '30s | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
'for a play performed in the '70s.' | 0:55:39 | 0:55:43 | |
She was turned into a monster by the media, | 0:55:43 | 0:55:45 | |
because people couldn't believe a woman could behave | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
in the way that she did, and yet in 1977, | 0:55:48 | 0:55:51 | |
she must have felt so normal, and now she feels even more normal. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:54 | |
And so yet again he's kind of put his finger on the pulse | 0:55:54 | 0:55:58 | |
and managed to track down a particular character... | 0:55:58 | 0:56:01 | |
-And show the relevance across time. -Exactly! | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
Mrs Davenport, I understand from the jury bailiff | 0:56:03 | 0:56:07 | |
that you wish to be excused jury service | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
-on the grounds of conscience. -Yes, My Lord. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
From this particular jury on this particular case. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:17 | |
Interwoven with Alma's story is the fictitious Edith Davenport, | 0:56:17 | 0:56:20 | |
a sexually repressed woman thought to be based on Rattigan's mother. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
I... I have a deep prejudice | 0:56:25 | 0:56:29 | |
against that woman. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:31 | |
There's something really interesting about his last play | 0:56:31 | 0:56:34 | |
managing to kind of wrap up the big themes of love | 0:56:34 | 0:56:39 | |
and sex and marriage, | 0:56:39 | 0:56:41 | |
and somehow he's managed to put his own mother right in the heart of it. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
There's something really arresting about that. | 0:56:45 | 0:56:49 | |
Rattigan attended the opening night of his final play. | 0:56:51 | 0:56:54 | |
He was there to hear the applause | 0:56:54 | 0:56:56 | |
as Cause Celebre was acclaimed by both the critics and the public. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
After 20 years in the wilderness, | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
Rattigan's reputation was finally on the turn. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:09 | |
It feels very gratifying, and it's also something | 0:57:09 | 0:57:12 | |
I didn't think would happen to me. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:14 | |
I'd always thought they had been a bit unfair to me, | 0:57:14 | 0:57:17 | |
and I always thought that justice would one day be done. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:22 | |
Only weeks after Cause Celebre opened, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
Sir Terence Rattigan died. He was 66. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:29 | |
'It's been fascinating finding out more about Rattigan - | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
'a man who was a social insider, yet always an emotional outsider. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:40 | |
'The intolerance and prejudice of society | 0:57:40 | 0:57:44 | |
'forced him to hide his own sexuality. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:47 | |
'Many of his characters in his work | 0:57:47 | 0:57:49 | |
'have to live with their own inability to express themselves, | 0:57:49 | 0:57:53 | |
'creating a powerful tension at the heart of his plays. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:56 | |
'And yet I see his work as a plea for openness and honesty.' | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
One of Rattigan's ambitions was to write plays | 0:58:02 | 0:58:04 | |
that would be remembered 50 years on, | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
and in this, his centenary year, he certainly achieved that. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
He was a master of human emotion, and he wrote plays | 0:58:10 | 0:58:14 | |
that contained themes which were relevant universally | 0:58:14 | 0:58:17 | |
to all human relationships. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
I think it's that that truly makes him a great playwright, | 0:58:19 | 0:58:23 | |
and someone who's revered even today, | 0:58:23 | 0:58:25 | |
100 years after his birth. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:30 | 0:58:34 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:34 | 0:58:38 | |
. | 0:58:38 | 0:58:38 |