Strange how these things
work isn't? There was working for the girls grandmother
and now there was the grand-daughter working with me. Before
I became involved with modelling money was scarce, but I
still believed in living wy beyond my means. But that I
mean I would buy a packet of Passing Cloud cigarettes rather
than Woodbines, and have two cups of coffee when one would
have been enough.
Doorn went off to Portugal for a month to
do an ice show. When she came back I rustled up enough cash
to pay for a taxi from Victoria Station back to Streatham.
On the way back she asked me if I had decided "to give
up this stupid business of acting." She tought I should
get a regular job. She said: "You'll never be an actor.
Your face is too weak, your jaw's too big and your mouth's
too small." On top of the reactions of the film world
and the casting directors, that really should have put me
off acting for good. Instead, all
we did was row about it. I moved out of the oneroom flat
and miserably went back home to my parents. Almost immediately
I landed a job. It was in the touring version of "Miss
Mabel" with Mary Jerrold. I played the part Peter Murray
played in the West End.
Soon after I started rehearsing,
Doorn and myself came back together. This was about mid-1949
and around the time I changed agents; reluctantly. But the
offer I had was better and actors are selfish like that.
The relationship between Doorn and myself was bound to suffer
because of the times we spent apart. It was the old story
of show business marriages I suppose. There are enormous
pressures in such a business to stray - and of course, the
flesh is weak (Thank God). Whatever the rights and wrongs,
within a year the marriage had broken down completely. I
was barely 23. Just before then I remember doing a play
called "The Lady Purrs" with Eleanor Summerfield.
I played a tom cat called Julius Caesar. Then came my stripped-to-the-waist
period. It seemed that every play I auditioned for they
said: "Take off your shirt". It reached a stage
where I bought an audition shirt with a zip fastener to
save wasting time on buttons.
Also I hooked on doing auditions. I seemed
to be doing nothing else. I felt liketeh actress who did
so many of them that when they told her she'd got the part
she said: "Oh, I don't take parts, I only do auditions."Even
back in R.A.D.A. days I'd leap off anywhere to do an audition,
frequently not knowing what it was for. At R.A.D.A., in
fact, I heard about an audition at the Palace Theatre and
three of us dashed round there. They shoved us into line
and eventually there was 10 of usleft on the stage. They
told the other nine to leave the stage and I was left there
alone. A very plummy voice from the front - which I later
learnt belonged to Richard Tauber - said: "Where's
your music?" I said: "I don't sing." I said
feeling a fool. "Well, you'll dance," said the
voice. "Do a time step." I didn't even have a
watch to tell the time much less know what a time-step was.
So they threw me out, which was probably good for me because
if I could sing or dance I would probably have finished
my days as a chorus boy in Richard Tauber musicals. Then
came a time when I seemed to be understudy to the entire
West End theatre. Finally I passed an audition that made
sense. It was understudy to both Geoffrey Toone and David
Tomlinson in "The Little Hut". One night six months
later I came in late and they screamed that I was on for
David Tomlinson. Now I was only second understudy to David
and my experience of his part was confined to one walk-through
with a script in my hand.
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