Television
Melancholy
Jeffrey Bernard
Homosexuality—Towards a Christian View (Thames Television) was a short sharp reminder at the ungodly hour of 12.40 am that the Almighty is keeping abreast of the times. His back-to-front-collar workers— has any other firm ever had so many public relations men ?—discussed the Christian attitude towards homosexuality and, of course, so as not to appear too toffee-nosed, that dreadful woi d 'gay' popped up. Now, as it happens, I know very little about God. At one time I used to pray to him to send me a certain 'Miss Right' but judging by what he sent I can vouch for the fact that he moves in very mysterious ways indeed. What I'm getting at is that 'gay' people are playing with fire if they drag God into it. Take it from an old 'melancholy' like me. Someone actually implied that God might do Gays a favour by changing them into Melancholys, but it wouldn't work like that.
In the beginning I thought sex was for fun. Then one day—Christ I'm slow—Dr Bronowski said it had been made nice so that the human race might continue. Well, if that's true—and I believe everything Dr Bronowski ever said—then God in his wisdom as well as his odd sense of humour might possibly arrange for 'gays' to have babies. In that event there would have to be an entirely new television series of programmes about Melancholys and the church's attitude towards us. Would the Church, would He, condone Melancholy Lib? I doubt it. A sad business really. As one 'gay' acquaintance said to me, 'Our tragedy is that in our most wonderful moments, we can never look into the eyes of our lovers.' Never mind, they can always look at the boils on the back of their necks. But 'gay'. What an unaesthetic word.
It's almost impossible to watch television as much as I do without getting the odd obsession here and there. Current fantasies, hopes and dreams concern the actress Alison Steadman. In two recent Play for Today parts—in Nuts in May and Through the Night—she was excellent, and in last Saturday's Second City Firsts, Early to Bed (BBC 2) she was again just right. The thing is, she is always just right, so she must be a very good actress. Furthermore she is living proof of the fact that you don't have to be unattractive to be a good actress. I say that since there is a school of confused thought, related to the one that thinks that no one 'real' lives south of the Trent, that confuses character acting with acting par excellence.
The tendency is not to take an actress seriously unless she is plain and if you happen to be plain you go into the back of Spotlight under the character section. Miss Steadman
is not only a good actress, she is lovely to behold.
Also lovely to behold, if you can savour slobs, was Johnny Meadows who played her husband Frankie. The play was beautifully simple and very well written by Alan Bleasdale. When the disgusting Frankie went off to the pit in the morning, the lad next door, Vinnie, nicely played by David Warwick, popped over the wall to bed Helen, Alison Steadman. Vinnie, something of an athlete in all areas, eventually wins a place at Loughborough and off he goes just as Helen tells Frankie he's a cuckold. The end credits rolled over Vinnie sitting on a bus uncomfortably trying to ignore the fat and furious Frankie chasing the bus with shaking fist.
There was a nice bit of directorial restraint here. Most adults in that situation would have allowed themselves a grin of triumph as the bus outsped the angry husband, but Vinnie sat there on the edge of his seat all the way to safety. A fish and chip shop scene in the middle of the play was one of the few drunk scenes I've ever seen that carried conviction. It was a wonderful antidote to International Match of the Day playing at the same time on BBC I. I had hoped Miss Steadman might be Miss Right, but I gather she's Mrs Right.
Sunday evening brought two extraordinary films to the box. The ridiculous Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on BBC 1, and Connecting Rooms on London Weekend. I watched Connecting Rooms and then switched over to G WCTD for the cop out. Connecting Rooms was about what happened to Michael Redgrave after The Browning Version. He ended up in bedsitter land, if you want to know, falsely accused of homosexuality at `Tintern' the public school where he 'moulded' youth for thirty years. In the next room, on the other side of a thin and useless door, there lived Bette Davis busking, would you believe it, with a cello to theatre queues while pretending to be an orchestral performer. She probably had a sister, Joan Crawford, doing the same somewhere with the spoons. Anyway, as is the wont of people in bed-sitters, Michael Redgrave spent some of the time crying himself to sleep. Had he been crying because the rent was too much or because Bette Davis was next door you could have understood it. In the end, when he discovered Miss Davis to be as big a fraud as he was a loser they linked arms and walked off into the night to take the door down for good.
British film makers wax very sentimental about losers and bestow upon it the dignity that those with office jobs bestow upon physical labour. Quickly switching over to GWCTD I just got the denouement, which was again a pretty tearful business. Spencer Tracy was reciting from memory a travel brochure about how to go on life's journey with a spade for a son-in-law. Katharine Hepburn sat in the background looking like a skull that had just heard bad news. The rest of the cast just looked embarrassed and I wondered if there was a
chance of anyone making a film about a family of black power blacks with a daughter who announces that she wants to marry Melvyn Bragg. They'd kill him of course.
Much, much later, after some more of
God and Homosexuality, I went to bed in my melancholy way and cried myself to sleep. I could hear my downstairs Bette Davis-like neighbour moving about and sobbing and I fell asleep wondering will I ever get to meet Alison Steadman ?
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