Postscript
Lean times
P. J. Kavanagh
Spring has been arriving incognito this year, in dark and wind. So instead of observing what is nearly invisible I have been thinking about David Lean.
He was in the news recently because of his film Passage to India, and this reminded me that I once had a part in his film Lawrence of Arabia. This in turn reminds me of the old story about the long-out-of- work Scottish actor who at last landed the part of the doctor in Macbeth. At home, asked what Macbeth was about, he said `Well, there's this doctor. . .' Well, in Lawrence of Arabia there was this ad- jutant.
After being measured for uniform and riding boots (those, also, bespoke) a chauf- feur in a Rolls took me to the airport. He was deferential until we had a puncture, then he began to swear because he did not know where the spare wheel was. He was a mock-chauffeur, and therefore an appro- priate part of the whole experience.
I was to fly to Seville first class, which I looked forward to, never having travelled that way. But there turned out to be no first-class on my aeroplane. Never mind, there was always the return journey.
We were shooting in a Royal Palace in Seville, which contained rooms the size of aeroplane hangars, with marble floors, and in these we filmed. There was immediately an air of unreality about everything. As I stood next to Peter O'Toole in a freezing corridor, waiting for our cue, I wondered why his eyes were so unnaturally blue, his hair so unnaturally yellow, and why he had had a nose job. It was no surprise that studio gossip reported he had been christ- ened 'Florence of Arabia' by studio execu- tives in the US, but he was not that kind of actor and Lawrence had been rather a plain-looking man; so why?
Then there was a break in the filming, because of some disaster; directorial tem- per was frayed and we four players, partici- pants in the same scene, sat waiting for two days in a small cold room. O'Toole enter- tained us with absurd stories, while Donald Wolfit sat implacably waiting his turn to speak and Claude Rains just sat, When Wolfit did speak it was always at length and always, rather endearingly, about him- self. 'It was Philadelphia and we opened on the Thursday to a packed house. I myself was playing the Merchant, and I remem- ber. . .' I swear I heard him resonantly ask O'Toole, 'Have you ever played The Gloomy One?' After a while I missed Claude Rains and came across him alone in the Throne Room wrapped in a rug in the semi-dark and sitting on the throne: 'I can't stand any more of that man's stories,' he groaned.
At last filming started. I opened the door on cue and announced 'Colonel Lawrence, Sir' to Wolfit-Allenby but the glass in the door had flashed and it had to be disman- tled. An hour later I opened it again but my bespoke boots made too much noise on the marble floor and were removed from me to be resoled with felt. (This was a relief because I had had difficulty keeping my balance in front of a hundred pairs of impatient eyes.) An hour later, everyone mad with anxiety by this time, for each hour lost was costing thousands of pounds, I entered again and my bespoke breeches split down the seam. True.
During one of the delays I saw David Lean pick up a family photograph from the Allenby-Wolfit desk and express displea- sure. Later I learned that a wig had been flown from England, put on a Spanish actress, a picture taken and the photograph replaced. It was never going to be in shot. O'Toole had praised Lean's attention to detail, but this substitution struck me as megalomania. If he really cared for detail why had he made O'Toole appear as a blond bombshell? More and more it be- came a film I had no wish to see.
However, there was still the first class flight to look forward to, and the cham- pagne. Several of us settled ourselves luxuriously into our seats. I saw Claude Rains outside on the tarmac, looking sad as usual. An anxious official approached us: `Mr Rains has the wrong ticket. Would anyone care to change to second class?' His eye caught mine. . . . I never did get to travel first class, or see the film.
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