All his world a stage
Jonathan Croall
GIELGUD'S LETTERS edited by Richard Mangan Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, pp. 564, ISBN 0297829890 A. s in the theatre, so in his letters: John Gielgud was a man of many parts, and acutely aware of his audience for all of them. In this comprehensive volume of 800 letters spanning nearly 90 years, we see the great actor in a range of roles: loving son, wicked gossip, star actor, indecisive director, anguished lover, brilliant anecdotist.
Some parts he plays with style, others with affectionate wit, yet others with sympathy, courage or blazing honesty. One of the many attractions of this absorbing and deliciously entertaining book is Gielgud's capacity for self-criticism. He was by his own admission vain, impulsive, often selfish, totally impractical in ordinary life, and quite oblivious to the world outside the theatre. 'You know how blinkered I sail through life,' he reminds one actress friend.
Yet it is precisely his obsession with the theatre that makes this book historically valuable. Gielgud stood centre stage in the English theatre for half a century, working as actor or director (and often both at once) in some of the finest and most influential productions of the day. His detailed, witty and sometimes despairing accounts of working with figures as diverse as Edith Evans, Noel Coward, Judith Anderson and Richard Burton give a fascinating glimpse into the joys and woes of rehearsing.
I found much arresting new material here. Richard Mangan, a discreet but informative editor, has unearthed scores of valuable letters not previously available to biographers. They include many written to close friends — Irene Worth, Hugh Wheeler, Lillian Gish — that provide a wealth of new detail about Gielgud's work on stage and screen.
The letters to Laurence Olivier will prompt a reassessment of their complicated relationship. Gielgud admired many aspects of his talent, and often tells him so; yet there are also elements he dislikes. 'His gift of mimicry (as opposed to creative acting) sticks in my gizzard at times,' he tells one critic, while directing Olivier as Malvolio. To George Rylands he writes, perhaps not entirely in jest, 'How dare you, sir, presume to compare my art with those two posturing mountebanks Messrs Wolfit and Olivier?' Yet Olivier, contrary to received wisdom, and despite his obvious jealousy of Gielgud, offered him several parts while he was running the National.
Among those Gielgud turned down were the Inquisitor in Saint Joan, Menenius in CorioJanus and Robespierre in Danton's Death. It's fascinating also to discover the many projects of his own that he failed to get off the ground, including a production of The Browning Version (a play Rattigan originally wrote for him, but he rejected), various attempts to play Brutus in Julius Caesar, Pirandello's Henry IV with Visconti as director and, on the film front, an Orson Welles treatment of Death in Venice.
The letters to his long-time lovers. Paul Anstee in England and George Pitcher in America, are the most personally revealing. As a gay man Gielgud was forced to live outside the law for most of his life. The letters show him to be an inveterate, often reckless cruiser. He continued to take huge risks even after his arrest for importuning in Chelsea — to which he reacts here with courage and dignity — and an attempted blackmail in New York, where he was rarely able to resist the gay bars and parties. His frank descriptions of casual encounters may shock what he used to call 'my public'. Yet these sometimes painfully intimate love letters also show him forging genuinely loving relationships, and attempting, not always successfully, to be honest within them. As a writer Gielgud has style, panache, and an exquisite eye for detail. The letters are shot through with mischievous humour, and a delight in puns (Lost Horizon, set in Tibet, he retitled Hello, Dalai!). There are many unexpected, often waspish descriptions of theatre folk: Thornton Wilder is 'a funny little nervous man, like a dentist turned professor'; Irene Worth in Tiny Alice 'looks like a Blue Cross nurse who has lost her collecting-box'; Edward Albee is likened to 'a surly pirate with a drooping moustache'. But often Gielgud turns his wit upon himself. After his disastrous Othello he notes: 'Quite a lot of people have come round after with tears in their eyes, but whether from boredom, horror, or pity for my temerity in attempting it, is rather difficult to judge.'
Born into the theatrical Terry family, Gielgud has often been caricatured as an aloof, patrician, Edwardian figure, notorious for an ability to commit unintentionally wounding gaffes. This splendid book reveals an infinitely more complicated and attractive character: self-deprecating, down-toearth and scurrilous, with an idiosyncratic gift for friendship, deep veins of loyalty and generosity, and an impressive desire to keep up with the times. We may not look upon his like again.
Jonathan Croall is the author of Gielgud: A Theatrical Life (Methuen 2000).
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