Wi l l
Waspe
Sir Alec Guinness, I hear, is immensely displeased by the Ang4oItalian film. Hitler, the Last Ten Days, in which he plays the Filhrer and to which he devoted more even than his usual amount of careful preparation. While making the film, he had so far absorbed himself in the part that he went around greeting friends with a Nazi salute. Now that he has seen the finished version, he declines to talk about it.
Kings in check •
Musicals about English kings seem to have been peculiarly illfated ever since Camelot — some might even say including Camelot, but at least it did reach the public. That is more than can be said for Great Harry (about Henry VIII) which Bernard Delfont was going to put on at Drury Lane, hut didn't. Or for His Majesty's Pleasure (about Charles II) in which Kenneth More was going to star for John Gale, but didn't. Last week another lavish project, Agincourt (about Henry V), was called off with half the casting done and rehearsals only a couple of weeks away " insurmountable production difficulties," they say, which can be translated as either, " The money ran out " or " Somebody read the
script." .
Back to school
More alarming to National Theatre actors than even the prospect of a marriage with the Royal Shakespeare Company with the blessings of the ubiquitous Lord Goodman (a marriage mooted but unlikely to ' take place) is the prospect of what Ii learned Dr Jonathan Miller has ii store for them. " What I'd like to see," the ,Sunday Times quoted him as saying, " is an educational programme . . . visits by university lecturers . . someone from the National Gallery to talk about, say, the seventeenth-century face ..."
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