Dames of Classic Drama at the BBC, BBC4

[Stanley Stewart]

Dames of Classic Drama at the BBC, BBC4, Sunday, 8 Nov, 20.00hrs (60mins) will partner last Sunday's 'Knights' documentary. Timely reminders of several outstanding performers and it would be encouraging if a selection of archival material could later be seen in full.

Les girls will feature on Sunday: Judi Dench as a delinquent in a clip from a 1963 Z Cars, before her memorable performance in Talking to a Stranger, Diana Rigg, Eileen Atkins, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, although I'm eager to see an extract of Maggie Smith as Beatrice in a recently found tape of 'Much Ado' from 1967, hopefully remastered for future screening. A 60 secs clip will only be frustrating.

I did let forth a loud 'eureka' when finding on an off-air video recently, a 15 mins extract of Athene Seyler at 100 (1989) - the great actress died a year later in 1990 - was accompanied by her friend, Sarah Miles, with Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox and Richard Briers as guests - lovely memories of 'Dicky' alongside two dotty sisters (Athene and Sybil Thorndyke in a mid 60s revival of Arsenic & Old Lace - but I first fell in love with her after seeing her play Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals at the Saville Theatre, mid 50s - the 'odorous comparisons' deliciously timed - a wonderful practitioner of the craft of comedy. I hope she is included in the documentary. Asked to recite in her centenary programme, she opted for Rosalind (As You Like It) which she had tackled for her RADA audition in 1909 and, reciting from memory, only hesitated on her first line, paused, and continued fluently and en route found the surging energy and breath control of the verse.

Rosalind advancing on Silvius & Phebe... "And why, I pray you?
Who might be your mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once
Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty,-
As, by my faith, I see no more in you
than without candle may go dark to bed,-
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?
Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature's sale-work: - Od's my little life,
I think she means to tangle my eyes too! -
No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;
'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship.-
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south, puffing like wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman. 'Tis such fools as you
That make the world full of ill-favoured children:
'Tis not her glass, but you that flatters her;
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her;-
But, mistress, know yourself; down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love:
For I must tell you friendly in your ear, -
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets:
Cry the man mercy; love him. take his offer:
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.
So take her to thee, shepherd; -fare you well." Act IV, Sc 1

Thunderous applause from the studio audience for her assurance and emotional truth. Memorable.

[Lat-Literal]

Dames of Classic Drama at the BBC, BBC4, Sunday, 8 Nov, 20.00hrs (60mins) will partner last Sunday's 'Knights' documentary. Timely reminders of several outstanding performers and it would be encouraging if a selection of archival material could later be seen in full.

Les girls will feature on Sunday: Judi Dench as a delinquent in a clip from a 1963 Z Cars, before her memorable performance in Talking to a Stranger, Diana Rigg, Eileen Atkins, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, although I'm eager to see an extract of Maggie Smith as Beatrice in a recently found tape of 'Much Ado' from 1967, hopefully remastered for future screening. A 60 secs clip will only be frustrating.

I did let forth a loud 'eureka' when finding on an off-air video recently, a 15 mins extract of Athene Seyler at 100 (1989) - the great actress died a year later in 1990 - was accompanied by her friend, Sarah Miles, with Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox and Richard Briers as guests - lovely memories of 'Dicky' alongside two dotty sisters (Athene and Sybil Thorndyke in a mid 60s revival of Arsenic & Old Lace - but I first fell in love with her after seeing her play Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals at the Saville Theatre, mid 50s - the 'odorous comparisons' deliciously timed - a wonderful practitioner of the craft of comedy. I hope she is included in the documentary. Asked to recite in her centenary programme, she opted for Rosalind (As You Like It) which she had tackled for her RADA audition in 1909 and, reciting from memory, only hesitated on her first line, paused, and continued fluently and en route found the surging energy and breath control of the verse.

Rosalind advancing on Silvius & Phebe... "And why, I pray you?
Who might be your mother,
That you insult, exult, and all at once
Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty,-
As, by my faith, I see no more in you
than without candle may go dark to bed,-
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?
Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature's sale-work: - Od's my little life,
I think she means to tangle my eyes too! -
No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;
'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship.-
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south, puffing like wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man
Than she a woman. 'Tis such fools as you
That make the world full of ill-favoured children:
'Tis not her glass, but you that flatters her;
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can show her;-
But, mistress, know yourself; down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love:
For I must tell you friendly in your ear, -
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets:
Cry the man mercy; love him. take his offer:
Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.
So take her to thee, shepherd; -fare you well." Act IV, Sc 1

Thunderous applause from the studio audience for her assurance and emotional truth. Memorable.

I believe Judi Dench has an honorary degree from York University? I like her. She and Michael Williams were both in The Bell at Outwood not very far from here when the latter apologised profusely to my mother for absolutely nothing. Bizarre. But she had a slight taste for him and was very impressed that he was "exactly the same in real life". I'm hoping Glenda will be in the programme, Stanley. Always the nervous but intellectually capable junior, I was "sent" into places supposedly on a higher level than my grade on the grounds it was needed for reasons of my "personal development". In truth, such things happened when the bombastic felt there was a task they might find just a bit too hot to handle. Consequently, not long into Blair's reign, I ended up in a room that had been especially sealed to contain cigarette smoke just as a public ban was contemplated. The Non-Blairite Ms Jackson, "A Minister", had insisted on it for herself. She was a delight. Lovely to me on noting they had shoved an official nonentity across to her to provide shaky advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtHNrRk3lQM

[Cockney Sparrow]

I believe Judi Dench has an honorary degree from York University? I like her. She and Michael Williams were both in The Bell at Outwood not very far from here when the latter apologised profusely to my mother for absolutely nothing. Bizarre. But she had a slight taste for him and was very impressed that he was "exactly the same in real life". I'm hoping Glenda will be in the programme, Stanley. Always the nervous but intellectually capable junior, I was "sent" into places supposedly on a higher level than my grade on the grounds it was needed for reasons of my "personal development". In truth, such things happened when the bombastic felt there was a task they might find just a bit too hot to handle. Consequently, not long into Blair's reign, I ended up in a room that had been especially sealed to contain cigarette smoke just as a public ban was contemplated. The Non-Blairite Ms Jackson, "A Minister", had insisted on it for herself. She was a delight. Lovely to me on noting they had shoved an official nonentity across to her to provide shaky advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtHNrRk3lQM

Would I need to have watched the programme to understand your post, Lat-Lit?

[jean]

And clips of Parkinson oilily questioning them on how they felt about taking their clothes off on stage...ugh!

[Lat-Literal]

Would I need to have watched the programme to understand your post, Lat-Lit?

Erm, it was simply a post about memories and connections with some positive comment about Dames and their associates. Judi Dench has an honorary degree from the university in the city where Stanley lives. It is an establishment I know well. Her husband was the late Michael Williams. They were both actors in productions together and lived close to me in the south. My parents encountered them in a local pub when all four of them and many others were having Sunday lunch. Williams spoke to my mother along the lines of "terribly sorry, terribly sorry". Very charming as she had always considered him to be on the television and she was puzzled about the reason why he was apologising. I think he must have felt that he was standing in the way or their dog was in the way but anyway neither were. He was just a genuinely nice man and she was thrilled by his demeanour.

Glenda Jackson was an actress of considerable repute who is also remembered fondly for a comic performance in the series Morecambe and Wise. That is the clip and it links across to their "Bring Me Sunshine" which was a link I posted for "Remembrance Day". Jackson left acting to become a left wing Labour MP in 1992 and continued in that role until 2015. She is now 79. Although different politically from Blair and very often opposed to him, she was appointed a Government Minister in the late 1990s. A smoker in a building of Civil Servants where smoking in the workplace was recently banned, she had her own office which I was told by several people had with consideration been sealed so that she could continue to smoke and not impact on other workers. That was where we met. Although briefing Ministers face to face was hardly for someone on my grade, I did that on perhaps 40 occasions and she, actually, was my first. Managers were concerned not to put their foot wrong with a political actress. I was sent and nervous. She was charming too.

[jean]

Glenda Jackson didn't feature in the programme because she isn't a Dame (Neither is Vanessa Rdgrave, but she's thought to have refused the honour).

[Lat-Literal]

Glenda Jackson didn't feature in the programme because she isn't a Dame (Neither is Vanessa Rdgrave, but she's thought to have refused the honour).

Well, I thought about that one. I wasn't too sure and was also somewhat surprised by the reference in the OP to Vanessa Redgrave. The variety of "information" on the Internet didn't provide much clarity on the matter - for example, this among many - http://www.theguardian.com/film/2000...00filmmoments2. But when I read the OP title at the outset, my feeling was that it was a reference to "dames" in the wider sense of that word, ie an actress of some standing and opinion. That was the interpretation I chose when I posted. Bette Davis who Stanley has mentioned elsewhere was occasionally referred to as "Dame of the Screen". It conveys an essence and is clearly not a reference to anything more.

The general point really was that there can be an implication in that sort of notion of a "dame" of someone who is potentially fiery, formidable and not necessarily easy-going in personal relations. Much the same could be said of a wide range of people in the public eye. Senior managers did not know quite what to expect of Glenda the politician. It was early days. Had it been Joe Soap MP as that particular Minister, I doubt they would have sent a junior - ie me - to test the water for them. She was pleasant and understanding.

[Stanley Stewart]

And clips of Parkinson oilily questioning them on how they felt about taking their clothes off on stage...ugh!

Indeed! Nudity on TV, or in the theatre, was par for the course from the late
60s and throughout the 70s, along with the tedious ranting of the Festival of Light contingency. "Mrs Mary Whitehouse/caught sight of a lighthouse/ it did not escape
her detection/that erection."

Otherwise, I was delighted by many of the clips of many well remembered performances in an era which also saw the gradual changeover from monochrome to colour, 1968ish, and the panic at the BBC TV Centre when they realised their disastrous mistake in not shooting The Forsyte Saga in colour. I also anticipated a clip of Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth R, 1971. In particular, I relished the sequences showing the potential of Judi Dench as she made her first professional performance on leaving the Central School of Drama by playing the Virgin Mary in the York Mystery Plays, 1957 production, which also included yours truly! Indeed, the Dench family was well represented as Olave, Judi's mother, was the formidable wardrobe mistress and her father, Dr (Reggie) Dench played Abraham, and her brother Jeffrey was a member of the nearby rep co at the Theatre Royal. A lovely, closely bonded family, and I recall the excitement when she told us that she'd just signed a contract to play Ophelia at the Old Vic a couple of months later. She was 22 at the time and the future looked promising.

Glad, too, that I stayed the course for the following programme which provided an in-depth interview with Greg Doran and Antony Sher, adroitly presented by Sue MacGregor. More, please,

[Mary Chambers]

I was rather disappointed in this programme. It seemed so bitty. I don't know what I was expecting - in-depth interviews or something, perhaps, rather than a collection of snippets. Interesting, all the same, to see early appearances, some of which I remember.

I much prefer Maggie Smith to Judi Dench. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it about a National Treasure, but I find Dench a trifle irritating. It's the voice, I think, so very recognisable and so little-girly. I suppose the face, too, looks not quite grown up. Perhaps she is just so distinctive in several ways that I always see Judi Dench, not the character. On the other hand, I know a couple of people who've met her and they both say she is absolutely delightful and very funny.

[Richard Tarleton]

By coincidence an interview in today's Times with Alice Eve (daughter of Trevor Eve and Sharon Maughan) whose latest offering is a short film, Lithgow Saint, written and directed by her brother Jack, 'a dramatisation of an infamous 1975 interview given by Helen Mirren to Michael Parkinson, in which he introduced her as the sex queen of the RSC and ended by quoting a critic who said she was "especially telling at projecting sluttish eroticism". The interview continued in much the same vein, although Mirren somehow retained her composure.'

I was always mystified by Parky's success as an interviewer, and by the high opinion everyone seemed to have of him. I always found him a drearily wooden conversationalist on TV.

Wasn't it said of the younger Ms Mirren that she would keep her clothes on in a film, but only if it was artistically strictly necessary ?