And Furthermore (3 page)

I had a lovely time at Central. I stayed right across the road at a hostel run by Charis Fry, daughter of the cricketer C.B. Fry, next to the Royal College of Organists, so there were a lot of musicians and actors living there. It was only a four-minute walk to Central in the morning, and I saw every play in London during those three years. I was there with Jeremy Kemp, Philip Bond (father of Samantha Bond), Ian Hendry, Julian Belfrage (who became my agent), Vanessa Redgrave, Rowena Cooper, and Jenny Daniel (with whom I shared a room).

For the first year we weren’t allowed to open our mouths, we just learnt to do a lot of breathing exercises and the Alexander Technique. Clifford Turner taught us dialect, and although he couldn’t do an accent he was a brilliant voice-teacher, and so was Cicely Berry, with whom I have worked throughout my career. I used to adore movement classes with Maggie Rubell, leaping about all over the place, learning relaxation and co-ordination of the body. Nobody ever cured me of falling over, however, which I still have a habit of doing on first nights.

That marvellous old actor Walter Hudd, who was Head of Drama, told us that at some point we would be asked to do a mime, and we wouldn’t know when it was coming, but we had better be prepared. Well of course it flew straight out of my head, and then one morning we were all sitting there, and Walter said, ‘Right, this is the morning of the mime.’

I thought, The mime? The mime! Good grief! And then Walter called me up first. I could still do it now. I thought that this could only be minimalist. I will walk into a garden that I had been in a very long time ago. So I bent down and picked something and smelt it, then I picked up a stone and threw it into a pool, and just stood there watching the pool, and then I sat on a swing, and that was all I did. At the end of all the mimes Walter gave me top marks, to my astonishment. ‘You’re like a little Renoir,’ he said to me. I will never forget it. I got this fantastic notice from him, and it was in my report at the end of the year. So suddenly I thought that perhaps there is something in this, I do really badly want to do this. It seems terrible now to say that when I went to Central I still didn’t know for sure that that was what I wanted to do.

Later on I got really told off by Walter for laughing. We did a performance of J.B. Priestley’s
Time and the Conways
, and at one point I was hiding in a bay window. Richard Page-Jackson had to come and pull open the curtains so that I was discovered, and one night he pulled the curtain so hard that it came off the rail and the whole thing came down and hit me on the head. My next line was, ‘I suppose you do that to all your girlfriends’, and the audience howled, and I howled too. I was weeping with laughter, and I was rightly told off for it. Walter said I was highly unprofessional, it was a very naughty thing to do, and I was never, ever, ever to do that again. However, when I got to the Old Vic Walter Hudd was in the company, and I have never seen anyone laugh onstage like him. I was playing the Princess of France, wooed by Donald Houston as Henry V. Walter was the King of France, and he laughed his whole way through it. I thought, Oh my cup is full, it’s come full circle.

At the end of our third year at Central we all had to do our final show at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End, with only about six people present from different theatre managements. I did Miranda’s speech from
The Tempest
: ‘Alas now! Pray you, work not so hard.’ Julia Wootton was there for the Old Vic, and she must have gone back and said something, because Walter Hudd came to me and said, ‘Judi, they want you to go and audition at the Old Vic.’

I thought they wanted me to walk on, and that was my dream come true. But I was terrified when I got there, because there were masses of people, and John Dexter was organising the auditions. He said, ‘Oh, Judi, would you come forward please,’ and I did Miranda’s speech again. Then Michael Benthall, the Director of the Old Vic, came up and said, ‘Will you go away and learn Ophelia’s speech: “Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown?”’ He kept asking me my height, so I really thought it was to walk on. I went back on a Saturday morning and did the speech, and Michael walked up on to the stage and said, ‘I’m going to take an enormous risk, I’m going to cast you as Ophelia. If it’s not working, I’ll ask you to step down and you can understudy. I don’t want you to tell anyone. OK?’

WHEN I RETURNED TO YORK
for the Mystery Plays I had to obey Michael Benthall’s instructions about keeping the Ophelia casting a secret until he was ready to announce it. So I just told everyone that I was going to the Old Vic, and people said, ‘Oh wonderful, maybe one day you will be playing leading parts there.’ I only told Mummy and Daddy and swore them to secrecy, and naturally they were both thrilled.

I arrived in 1957, the final year of the Old Vic’s five-year-plan to perform all the plays of Shakespeare.
Hamlet
was the only play to be repeated. In the first year Richard Burton was Hamlet with Claire Bloom as his Ophelia. I was now to play her opposite John Neville, who had succeeded Burton as the leader of the company. Both men had brought new young audiences flocking to the Old Vic, because of their charisma and great acting talent. When I turned up on the first day for rehearsals I met Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Adrienne Hill and Juliet Cooke, and said, ‘How do you do.’ Everybody addressed each other as Mister or Miss, it was what you did then.

I took over a flat in Queen’s Gate from Bill Johnson, who had been a year ahead of me at Central, when he left to go to another nicer one. I left for a much worse reason. The owners supplied sheets and laundry, but I developed an awful allergy to the washing powder they used. The day I arrived to do the nunnery scene in
Hamlet
, my left eye was completely closed up, and I was covered in spots. That night on the way home I went to St George’s Hospital at Hyde Park Corner, and sat down by some people waiting. After I had been sitting there for about an hour and a half, someone said, ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I’m waiting to see a doctor.’

She said, ‘You don’t have a number,’ and sent me away.

I vowed I would never go in that place again ever, and I never have, even though now it has been converted into that very posh hotel, the Lanesborough.

Coral Browne, who was playing Gertrude, said, ‘You’re allergic to Michael Benthall!’ She and her husband Philip Pearman had a lovely house on Chester Terrace in Regent’s Park, and they moved me into the separate flat there on the top floor. We opened with
Hamlet
in Liverpool for a week to run it in – this was long before public previews – and when we got back to London, Barbara and Juliet asked me, ‘Do you want to come and share No. 9 Eaton Terrace with us, at £3 a week?’ They had been sharing with Adrienne Hill, but she was moving somewhere else.

In my first year I was being paid £7.10s a week, which went up to £9 after I had been there a year. It was a wonderful flat, and we kept it scrubbed and clean, it was just like a new pin. I still think that was such a smart address, but there were moments when it didn’t feel like it. One night coming home out of the Sloane Square tube station, I was walking by the pub on the corner past the Royal Court just as a man was being thrown out of it. He came flying into me, and we both ended up in the gutter. I thought, Well, that is pretty unfair.

The Liverpool reception for
Hamlet
was tremendous, I got notices the like of which I have never had since, saying things like ‘The Vic takes a gamble, and a star is born’. John Barber, who was to become drama critic of the
Daily Telegraph
, came round and interviewed me. The press did make quite a thing of it prior to the London opening, so they were gunning for me after that. Richard Findlater was so outraged that he wrote in the
Sunday Dispatch
: ‘How dare they use a completely unknown person…this is the equivalent of our National Theatre, how dare they do it.’ Some years later Richard apologised handsomely to me, both personally and in print. But it did me a lot of good at the time. If you get bad notices for the first thing you do, it doesn’t half bring you up with a jolt. I will have more to say about critics later.

I carried on and played the part for a year, and every single night I watched every play in the season from the wings. I don’t think that is allowed any more, but I learnt so much from watching others. I was also playing First Fairy in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, Juliet in
Measure for Measure
, Maria in
Twelfth Night
and I walked on in everything else, including
King Lear
. Paul Rogers was Lear, Coral Browne played Goneril, and Barbara Jefford was Regan. When the king entered, followed by his three daughters, they were followed by Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Adrienne Hill and me, with Barbara carrying a huge sword, Adrienne had a big tree, and I had an enormous smoking egg-cup, which excited not a little comment! One notice said: ‘It was only too apparent who were the understudies, walking behind them all.’

I also walked on in
Henry VIII
, as well as understudying Anne Boleyn, when John Gielgud played Cardinal Wolsey to Harry Andrews’s King, with Edith Evans as Queen Katharine. Sir John was so terribly funny; one night he came on with red spots all over his face, carrying a carnation, in the Cardinal’s scarlet robe and biretta, and afterwards I heard somebody say, ‘Sir John, that was a very puzzling make-up.’ He said, ‘Yes, well I suddenly read that he had a frightfully bad skin.’ So we had this absolutely wonderful moment of dancing at Hampton Court, with Sir John in the middle, scarlet from head to foot, including his face.

It was from him that I learnt the beginnings of how to speak Shakespeare. I have always said to students that if you really want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir John and Frank Sinatra will teach you. Because one used to present the whole arc of a speech, and the other presented the whole arc of a song, without any intrusive extreme emphases. When I saw John Gielgud’s one-man Shakespeare recital
Ages of Man
in New York I was absolutely bewitched by it. I didn’t know him very well then, so I was a bit shy of going round, but I wanted to say thank you. About fifteen people were waiting to see him, but when he came out of his dressing room with somebody he suddenly saw me at the end of the queue and called out, ‘Oh, please, Judi, do come in.’ Then he turned to the rest of the queue and said, ‘Judi and I were at the Old Vic together,’ as if I had played leads with him instead of just walking on. There is nothing I would not have done for him then, or especially later when he restored my confidence at a very difficult time for me when I joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.

For
Henry V
I was wooed by three different actors playing the King. The most difficult time was when I was simultaneously playing the Princess of France opposite Robert Hardy in
The Age of Kings
on BBC TV in the daytime, and with Donald Houston at the Vic in the evening, with totally different costumes, totally different moves, and a few different cuts. After that, I could cope with Laurence Harvey taking over Henry when we went on the Old Vic’s American tour, even though he never looked into my face, he just looked above my head; I felt nobody could be
that
tall!

The Old Vic was where I learnt how to be part of a company, and John Neville showed me how a company should be led, which he did so brilliantly. When a lot of people caught Asian ’flu, we were so short of extras that on the line ‘Let four captains bear Hamlet like a soldier from the stage’ it was actually three girls and a rather old man struggling off with him. In
Henry VI
there was nobody left to play the Cade rebels except several girls. Then I got a bout of that ’flu as well, and went on to play Ophelia and cried the whole way through the performance. John really ticked me off afterwards. He said, ‘Never ever, ever, ever do that again. That’s not what they come to see you do. If you can’t do it, let your understudy do it. What they come to see is the play and a story, and you having ’flu isn’t part of it.’ It is rather a harsh lesson to learn, but nevertheless it is no good saying, oh, my father has died or something, and I don’t feel like it. That is not what the audience ever comes to see, they come to see that particular story and how you interpret it. So you have to learn to put those things in a little side-compartment sometimes, and draw on them when you need them.

In 1958 the company was about to embark on a six-month tour of America, and Michael Benthall sent for me. When I went in, he was standing, looking out of the window, and I think he found it quite difficult to break the news. He was a sweet and considerate man, with the best interests of his company always in his mind. He said, ‘Judi, you didn’t get very good notices as Ophelia. So when we go to America, you are not going to play her. How do you feel about it?’ So I gulped a bit, and then he said, ‘Do you still want to go?’

‘I do, I do still want to go.’

‘Well, you’ll be out of
Hamlet
altogether, I wouldn’t ask you to be in it. But I still want you to play the Princess of France, and Maria.’ Both of those were very good parts. John Neville was waiting for me, because he knew what was coming, and I cried a great deal. Then I went and had all my hair cut off.

I must say it was quite hard not being in
Hamlet
when we got there. At the end of the tour it was to be televised in New York. I thought, What am I going to do? because by then I had seen most of the shows. So I put a notice up in the theatre saying: ‘If anyone has any mending or things like that which they want doing before we go home, please leave it in my dressing room.’ I got there the next day and I couldn’t open the door: they had piled all their clothes up so that I just could not get in.

When we came back home, the company were asked to go to Yugoslavia with
Hamlet
and I got the part of Ophelia back. Michael asked me to his office and he said,

‘Now, Miss Dench, I think you’ve learnt a lot in six months.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Well, I think you ought to play Ophelia in Yugoslavia.’

We played Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, and the audiences went absolutely mad. The students could not afford to come, so about six or seven of us went off to the university and did as much of the play as we could, just for them, for free. It was so exciting, I felt I played it better because I had watched Barbara play it in America, and I couldn’t copy her performance because I am not like her, but I felt I understood it better.

If
Hamlet
had its difficult moments for me, then
Measure for Measure
was difficult for everybody. The American director Margaret Webster arrived at rehearsal with a broken leg in plaster, which only added to her famously bad temper. She certainly got off on the wrong foot with John Neville, who was playing Angelo. Barbara Jefford was Isabella, a part she had played at Stratford opposite John Gielgud, and on that very first day Margaret Webster turned to Barbara and asked her, ‘I wonder what it was that made Sir John so wonderful as Angelo?’ right in front of John.

At that time there was no Equity ruling about when a rehearsal had to stop, so whenever they were off everyone used to go to the wonderful old pub next door (now known as Bar Central). John used to lean against the door at half-past five, and when the door was opened he would fall on the floor and say, ‘Sorry I’m late.’ At the Technical Run there was a lot of stopping and starting, and at one point John came on to this vast timber set, well the worse for wear, struck a match and said, ‘I name this ship
Disaster
.’ Barry Kay was the designer, and Margaret Webster once gave him a terrible dressing-down. I felt so sorry for him; she screamed at him, and a lot of his costume designs were cut.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
was much more fun, directed by Michael Benthall. To play Bottom, he cast the comedian Frankie Howerd, who was wary of the Shakespearean actors he was joining. He was lovely, and wonderful in the part, but he was a bit mean, and would never buy a drink for anybody, always managing to be the last one in the pub. All the actors playing the mechanicals very much stuck together, and had a dressing room upstairs whilst he was in Dressing Room One. Once when they were told to break for lunch they all came down and waited on the bend of the stairs until he came out. When he did, he glanced up and saw them, and along the corridor he suddenly stopped to do his shoelace up, so they all stopped as well. He said, ‘What’s wrong with you lot?’ They said, ‘We’re waiting for you to tie your shoe and go in and buy us a drink at last.’

Another imaginative piece of Michael’s off-beat casting was Tommy Steele as Tony Lumpkin in
She Stoops to Conquer
. I think the pop star was just as scared as the comedian of sharing a stage with classical actors, but his fans in the audience were quite restless until he came on. I still have the letter which one of them wrote to Tommy Steele during the run, which said:

Dear Mr Steele
,
My wife and I are coming to see
She Stoops to Conquer
on Friday
,
and as it’s my wife’s birthday would you mind singing
‘
Little White Bull’?

The stage doorkeeper, Ernie Davis, liked this letter so much that he asked Tommy for it, and now I have it.

Twelfth Night
was also great fun to play, especially with John Neville as Aguecheek, Derek Godfrey as Feste, and Paul Daneman as Sir Toby Belch. In the early rehearsals I began by playing Maria without an accent, and then one day Michael Benthall asked me if I could play it in anything else. I said, ‘Yes, I could play it in Yorkshire’, which I had heard often enough when I was growing up, and it seemed to fit the character very well. We had a lovely time doing it, and it is one of my favourite plays; I have done it twice more since then.