Night Must Fall

I was listening to Desert Island Discs the other day and the guest was Anne-Marie Duff; now there's a name to conjure with. She is an actress, although she calls herself an actor, and hit all the headlines in her portrayal of Saint Joan at the National Theatre, here in London.

That was about ten years ago and I was still living in Los Angeles in those days so I didn't see it. I have never been to the National in any case I probably wouldn't have gone in any case.

I'm not one of those actors who never go to the theatre as I love it, but she mentioned a quote by Michael Gambon saying he never goes to the theatre as you don't see pilots going to the airport to see their pals taking off. It's a funny quote but the pilots shouldn't be performing despite some of the headlines of late.

In the interview, on Dessert Island Discs, she was asked how she felt when she waited back stage waiting to go on that first night for Saint Joan, was she nervous, apprehensive or anything and she replied that she felt full of energy. It was a huge audience and she felt as if she was going out at Glastonbury like a guitar god about to take the place apart . . . and I got to thinking if I had ever had that feeling and my thoughts went back to when I did a play called Night Must Fall.

I have done a few plays since, where I had a showy leading role, but I never got that feeling again.

Night Must Fall was written by Emlyn Williams who was also an actor so he set it up perfectly for himself: a murderer who chopped off women's heads and kept them in a hat box; plenty of quotes from the bible, in the wonderful Welsh accent, Richard Burton as opposed to Max Boyce, to be played with charm. charisma and everything any actor would die to play. The play is a bit creaky and melodramatic but, even though it's hard work for all, well worth while.

I had first heard of the play when I was at drama school: when some of you go out and into rep you will do 'Night Must Fall' although I doubt of any of you here today will play Danny . . . was the kind of encouragement we got from a very strange teacher at college who would take up about ten blogs to describe; I won't mention him by name but he was called Richard Ryan.

We moved to Northamptonshire to try and get on the housing ladder and be within easy access of London and I contacted the local theatre to see if they were doing any casting.

Some time later they called and asked me to come in for an interview and I was cast in The Alchemist by Ben Jonson – someone must have dropped out for that to happen, I thought, and that is what had happened.

So it was good to drive in to Northampton each day for rehearsals; it was my first job in the theatre after leaving drama school, although I had worked at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Rep, whilst still at college, and since leaving had worked on television in The Newcomers, Crossroads, Z Cars and quite a few others. It did seem at one point that I would have some kind of TV career without ever working in the theatre but it didn't work that way as for the next ten years or so I did more theatre than TV.

When I was doing The Alchemist one of the cast asked me if I would ever consider joining the company for a season and I said I would consider it, of course. A few days later another cast member asked me the same thing and said they would pay me £40 a week; that was good money for those days as I had £10 for my little episode at Birmingham Rep four years earlier. Again I said that that sounded okay.

A few days later I got a call at home to see if I would come in and have a chat with the artistic director and I made the appointment.

After the small talk the director told me that the manager of the theatre bar had been asking him for years if they could do his favourite play Night Must Fall and he would usually tell the guy that he would if ever a Danny came along.

He said 'the bar manager came to see me the other day and said we've got a Danny haven't we?'

That was me, of course; the director said 'Now about money; we always think that £30 is a good wage here' and I said 'What about forty?' he said 'thirty five' and I said 'okay!' and that was it.

I didn't hear from them for a while after The Alchemist finished; I did some filming in Belfast and Bangor in Ireland and round about the end of July, I noticed that the new season had started at the theatre; they published the cast in the newspaper and I wasn't mentioned.

So that was that; I thought I should have accepted the £30 per week.

I also noticed that a guy my age was also in the company so I got to thinking.

Mmnnn!

Eventually I got call to meet them 'in the pub' one of the lunchtimes; I went along and it doesn't take a great deal of skill to notice which ones the actors are in a pub!

I could see the guy of my age and when I was within earshot, although he didn't think I was, he said to the woman he was sitting with 'now we know.' 'yes now we know' she said.

It was quite obvious to me that he thought he was going to play Danny – or Dan as it appears in the cast list; in fact he told me this when I met him on a train about 10 years later.

After this I went to the library and borrowed the play – there were lines upon lines upon speeches on nearly every page and I thought this is going to be hard work.

We gathered on the stage for the first 'read thru' on chairs and one or two people wanted to sit by me – it was quite obvious because one said to another 'I wanted to sit by him' and 'I saw him first!'

So at least two members of the company, including the fella from the pub, thought I had a problem with my hearing.

When we broke for coffee an old grand actor, wearing a black Crombie overcoat came in to the green room to say hello and wanted to know why everybody else had a script except me as I was still using my library book.

'It was different in my day' he said in his wonderful baritone voice 'we would always give the leading actor the script first.'

Of course I remember that after all these years; who wouldn't?

There were indeed a load of lines and I had two weeks to learn them; half way through rehearsals a notice went on the notice board with the cast of the next play; another lead role this time in Alan Ayckbourn's Time and Time Again.

This went on for a further eleven months, apart from a break to do five episodes of General Hospital for ATV and it was wonderful. Going to the notice boards to see what the next play was and what you would be playing is the most wonderful thing for an actor.

But the first night of the play came; I started the play wearing a messenger boy's outfit that a hotel messenger would wear complete with the pill box hat.

The stage direction was that I was to enter smoking a Woodbine cigarette and when I came on to the well to do drawing room of an old lady I flicked ash on the carpet which got a huge laugh – so I was in.

The other thing I wore was a kind of short jacket and a bow tie. I think I had the idea, being a little charmer, that he should be like a ventriloquist's dummy.

The play was set in the 30s.

My pal came to see the first night and was with me back stage before I went on; I remember him saying 'aren't you nervous?' because I didn't look it but I knew I had it all; not in an overconfident way, as I was wary of that, but everybody else slowly left the backstage area. My pal first as he had to go to his seat, and then, one by one the rest of the cast.

The cards were there in their silence, their make up tins laye bare with their good luck charms and paraphernalia and eventually I was ready.

So I stood up and went in front of the full length looking glass in the dressing room and looked very closely in to my eyes and everything came to me; I knew it was a full-house which was just under 600 and, like Anne-Marie Duff, I could see the determination in my eyes as I strode up there to be a Guitar God!

Good Night again.

I quite like this post. For some reason a lot of people have looked at this recently. One requested I put it up again - I wrote it Christmas 2013 so not that long ago; it intrigues me that they are still being read.

For a little while – well quite some time to be honest – when I first went to America I had never actually been in to anybody's house. Never crossed the portal which separated their public and private lives. I had seen inside their houses many times through the magical world of the movies but that was fiction.

Sometimes I would sit and look at a family sitting at an airport or restaurant and try to listen in to their conversations to see if they would somehow drop the American accents and call each other mate. When the great Australian writer (and broadcaster) Clive James first came to Britain he would think the same about the English accents but he was listening to received pronunciation (RP) like Stephen Fry or John Cleese and I was expecting the more common type like Liverpool, London or even oo ah rural. But that wasn't the only thing I listened for; I couldn't believe that they actually said 'have a nice day' or 'have a good one' or even called each other honey or hun!

I would look at their clothes at the airports and wonder if the men were dressed for golf or travel as their clothing seemed strange; all the naff things from Britain seemed to be acceptable in America: baseball hats and white socks, for example.

I used to love the 1950s movies where white socks were worn – Martin and Lewis films; Superman, White Christmas etc. I longed for those fashions when I went to America and in Los Angeles I found them. I loved the 1950s look of LA, the Superman buildings downtown, the 1950s architecture and the fantastic winged motor cars on their never ending freeways but do you know what I never heard? The phrase 'good night.'

Straight away I'm going to be called a romancer or someone having problems with the truth as I did hear it from time to time, but when I stayed at various people's houses I didn't hear it at all.

I was listening to David Sedaris on the radio last night, who was talking about his family and it reminded me of this phenomenon; he said 'my family never said good night; they just disappeared.'

That's what I mean; David Sedaris lives this side of the Atlantic now and has probably noticed that over here people have the manners to excuse themselves when leaving a room and if they're not coming back it would be 'good night' or 'goodbye.'

When I stayed with people over there, or even lived with them when I first got there, I would notice that when it was bed time, they would just disappear; never a good night, kiss my arse or nothing.

One time I was watching TV with the landlady, when I first arrived and I went to the loo. I was out of the room less than three minutes and not only did she not say good night, she turned the TV off and left the room in darkness; not thinking that I might want to finish watching the programme or even moving my stuff from the chair I had been sitting on.

Sometimes she would disappear for weeks – never saying where she was going or even when she would be back; not that it was my business but you know what I mean.

That was when I first went to America; for the first eighteen months I was by myself; living in a shared house at first and then in an apartment by myself. I had gone from evenings of my children kissing me good night to me having to kiss my own arse for company and in this season of good cheer let me be one of the many people to wish you good night and if I'm the only one, you'll have to do what I did – kiss your own arse goodnight.

Which reminds me of a few lyrical lines from the days when everybody expected to be blown up by a nuclear bomb:

So when the nukes come raining down
It's great to be alive, well
World War Three can be such fun
If you protect and survive
Protect and survive

For they give us a four-minute warning
When the rockets are on their way
To give us time to panic and Christians time to pray
So when you hear the siren's going
Place your head between your thighs
Whilst maintaining this posture
You can make a final gesture
And with a little muscular pressure
You can kiss your arse goodbye

Roger Bannister

Look at that picture above; that is the great Roger Bannister whose death was announced today. He was my greatest hero and the feat he did all those years ago was deemed impossible before he did it. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I always thought that it was live but found out later that it was on film. The news would come on the TV at 7.15 and the lead story was the race – all four laps. I went out and played being Roger Bannister for the next 60 years.

I met him a couple of years ago and told him and he said 'you played me?' He thought it was in a play.

This is a blog I wrote not long after I met him; by the time you read it he would be a mile away.

This may seem familiar to you but it should become clear. I wrote it as a post about heroes and Memorial Day in America but I just stole some of it from that post, maybe corrected (edited it) added some more thoughts and then got to the reason I used it again – see what you think:

Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile barrier in May 1954; I was a little boy watching my friend nearly drown at Moseley Road Swimming Baths and finding out that another friend had died by drowning in one of Birmingham's infamous canals.

I lost a lot of time at school as I suffered from conjunctivitis which developed into ulcers; I remember seeing the horrible white things on the blue of my eyes and I was told that this was because I rubbed them so much but I couldn't help it; the pain and the itching added to my problems facing the light and water would consistently run from my eyes.

That was really the end of my education as I failed the eleven plus - but that's only an excuse as I can clearly remember sitting the examination and looking out of the high windows at school and handing in a blank sheet of paper.

One day the news came on the TV, reporting the first sub 4 minute mile; the race came on and there were only 3 runners in the race that we could see; the other 3 were invisible.

Christopher Brasher was ahead with Bannister just behind, up to about half a mile, and then Chris Chataway took the lead with Bannister close by up to half way around the final lap and then on the final lap Bannister took the lead and made history; to a ten year old boy this was like an orgasm.

Later in the year was the 'Bannister/Landy Miracle mile' and that was the best mile race I have ever seen – do yourself a favour and look for both races on YouTube.

John Landy of New Zealand had broken the world record for the mile and then the two of them met in the Empire Games. Have a look - it will bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat.

Because of my eye trouble, I had to go a place called Burcot Grange; this was, and still is, a very large house in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. It is a Victorian building and was donated to the Birmingham Eye Hospital by its owners to give prolonged treatment to children suffering from inflammatory conditions of the eye associated with the 'harsh city life.'

It was also a place where squint operations were performed and a lot of the other children had eyes removed because of inoperable eye injuries. Some of those children would take the patch from their removed eye socket and look in to a looking glass for their lost eye. 

One said to me that he could clearly see his missing eye 'in the corner' he said 'can you see it?' - of course I couldn't but I said I could. He had been the victim of a stray dart thrown at him in the vicinity of the renowned Birmingham inner city monstrosity called Saint Martin's Flats.

It was at Burcot Grange that I was introduced to elevenses which was a snack at eleven-o-clock; maybe a biscuit and some orange cordial.

It was like being let loose as there were 5 acres of open grounds; we played cowboys and Indians with real hills, real valleys and real big bushes to hide behind.

The other thing I did was run; I ran and ran every day just like Tom Courtney in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; I was going to be a Roger Bannister and I ran around those acres every day.

My mother came to see me every week, with a tear in her eye, and encouraging one in my own infected ones; I cried when she left and then forgot about her for a while when I ran.

One of the nurses was my girl friend; she was nurse Hollingshead and maybe 15 years older than me. She was very kind and wrote to the little boy that was me for quite some time after I left; I was presented with a book by Enid Blyton called, Round the Year. It was a nature book and they wrote in the inside cover to Christopher with lots of love from Burcot Grange. I still have the book which is at my daughter's in Suffolk.

As we sat there in the sun the nurses would 'time' me as I ran around the grounds. I could complete the course in about three minutes; one day one of the nurses, who had timed me, called another nurse and said 'Hey! Is it the four minute mile or the four mile minute.'

I can just imagine the four mile minute!! - 240 mph!!!!

When I eventually returned home I would run around the block and I managed to get a sucker to beat every day. His name was Roger and he looked more like Roger Bannister than I did; I would let him run ahead of me so I could run passed him along the back straight which ended just by the lane where we lived at South View Terrace on Moseley Road.

We would do the Bannister/Landy race which meant he had to look over his shoulder as I overtook him round the other shoulder; when I approached each day I would shout 'now' to make him look one way as I overtook him. Each day the race would take twenty minutes as I would time it from the public clock outside Clements the chemists; maybe more than a mile, I reckon.

That's why Roger Bannister has always been my hero; he ran for many years after that to keep fit although he retired from competitive racing early after the 'Golden Mile' to continue his studies as a doctor; he worked at Northwick Park Hospital as a neurologist and later as Director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and a trustee-delegate of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington.

A few years ago I bought his book called The Four Minute Mile, of course, and just as I was coming up to the Golden mile on page 224 I found the page was blank. The next page was there and from there till the end of the book many pages were missing.

I called Amazon, where I had bought it, and they referred me to the publishers, The Lyons Press, and when I called them they hung up on me.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about Harold Pinter, which was published by the magazine The Oldie and since then they have sent monthly invitations to their Literary Lunches. When I came back from America I decided to go to some of them and this month one of the guest speakers was none other than Roger Bannister.

I sorted my Bannister book out, the one with the missing pages, and arrived at Simpson's in The Strand with ample time before the lunch.

Sir Roger, for that is what he is now, sat behind a table and I was the first one to take a copy of his new book for him to sign. I asked him to make it out to 'Chris' – which he did – and then I told him that I used to play 'Roger Bannister'- “You played me?” he said, as if I'd played him as an actor and I said “No. I would run around our block pretending to be you.”

“When I first started” he said “I would run around the streets and people would shout at me 'Who do you think you are, Sydney Wooderson?' Later, many years after I had retired from running they'd shout 'Who do you think you are, Roger Bannister?”

We both laughed and I found him very tactile, tapping my hand and laughing – then I showed him the book with the missing pages - “I couldn't help that” he said “must have been published by the Australians.”

He signed my book in the missing pages saying 'sorry about this' and when he got up to speak, later, he paid tribute to his wife to whom he had been married for 60 years; he said she didn't know anything about sport, before he met her, and thought he had run four miles in a minute!!