Jeremy Brett: Interview
In 1988 Jeremy Brett, then at the height of his fame as TV’s ideal Holmes, decided to take the Victorian detective from the small screen and on to the stage. He appeared, with his second TV Watson, Edward Hardwicke, in the two-hander ‘The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.’ It was during the London run of this play that I interviewed Brett in his dressing room in the Wyndham Theatre. The interview was subsequently published -a heavily truncated and sanitised version -in a tiny circulation fanzine, ‘Cox and Co.’
After moving house several times and spring cleaning regularly over the intervening years, I thought the taped interview lost. However, recently I found a copy of the tape that I had used in the transcription process. So here, after nearly twenty years, is the ebullient Mr Brett expressing his unedited views on the character that dominated the last years of his career, his different approach to acting for the stage and the camera, his feelings about critics and fans, even why he changed his hairstyle while playing the great detective. His mood during the conversation moved from garrulous to defencive, and from expansive to reflective.
We first discussed the difference between playing Holmes on TV and on stage. Although, Brett said he enjoyed stage work he told me he found it easier to portray the character through the medium of television.
“The thing about working on the stage that makes it harder is that film is so instantly near it can see right into the person’s soul. With someone so unbelievably isolated and closed, as Holmes is, it’s sometimes easier to get the internal workings of the private man across on camera. He is such a private creature… and with the camera you can slide in and see the flicker of things across his face. You can see little things that sometimes at the back of the theatre you can’t see. Little disappointments, little angers, little changes of mind. Of course, the other things you can get across on camera are his brilliant deductions and observations, but also his amazing intuition. And that’s easier to do on film.”
Brett explained that he hadn’t radically altered his characterisation for the transition from screen to stage, as he believed the techniques required were roughly similar.
“I call the camera lens the winking moose’s eye. A big brown moose eye that you look into and act toward. It’s also the shape of a rectangle and, therefore, you are aiming to fill that particular frame. So, if you are standing facing the camera that is the point of the triangle which you are aiming toward. Now in the theatre you just reverse the triangle and you are aiming outwards, in two different directions, so it’s wider.”
Brett found the relationship between Holmes and the theatre audience difficult at first. He said, he saw Holmes as, “a man of isolation… a very private man.” So he strove in his performance to bring out the inner workings of the character. He told me he tried to show the audience Holmes’ “shyness… his sense of detachment,” personality traits he believed would have been amplified by the character’s “constant pursuance of his special subject,” But he did not let them see these aspects of the character from the start. To convey the feeling of lonely introspection he let them in gradually.
“I try not to look at them for the first fifteen minutes… I don’t even look at Watson very much either… I kind of gradually open up to them. That was the hard part of moving into the theatre. But my director [Patrick Garland] helped me with that. He said, ‘put a pane of glass down between you and the audience and don’t look at them, ignore them, and then after about fifteen minutes warm-through let them in.’”
I asked him how he approached playing a character like Sherlock Holmes.
“When I have been playing Holmes… and what I prefer to do is sink myself into the character and leave myself behind. I always take the image of a sponge - which is me. And I squeeze out the liquid of myself out and draw in the liquid of the character I am playing.
“To bring it off the printed page for myself, I invented little stories about him. About the loneliness of his university days, of his brilliance at sports, and his total removal from any kind of social activity… Which are little images I have had for the last six years of what it might have been like. To throw any more light one can possibly think of on to what might have made him and Mycroft so… typically Victorian I hasten to add… Probably he didn’t actually see his father till he was twelve, and his mother was just a lady moving through a passageway, because they were taken care of by a starch-crisp nurse… So, everything to bring a bit more illumination.”
Brett’s musings were incorporated into the play and added to the interest of the piece. The actor, who worked closely with the author in this regard, praised the handling of both the familiar and unfamiliar elements of the play’s text.
“I’ve got this marvellous author, Jeremy Paul, and we’ve done four together of the original short stories [on TV]. He did ‘The Speckled Band,’ ‘The Naval Treaty,’ ‘The Wisteria Lodge,’ and ‘The Musgrave Ritual.’ So I have known him over the last five, nearly six, years.
“I sent him eight hours of tape. I just rattled off my ideas, and so when it comes to moments of leaving the canon – like when [Holmes] talks of his childhood – Jeremy [Paul] has taken them directly from the tapes.
“The thing I love about the play is that it gives Watson much more to say than the canon does, because naturally it was in the first person. I remember David Burke [the first Watson], when we finished ‘The Speckled Band,’ saying, ‘I had only thirty-six words to say in the entire film!’ And this play does give Watson a platform to speak. Which I think is vital.”
He referred several times to the ‘canon’, the original stories as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which he believed should be the touch stone for every actor playing Holmes. He, also, believed that it was important to have a good Watson, to give reality to Holmes, as he thought of them as a part of a duality.
“Watson and Holmes are two halves of the same person. They are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s a brilliant creation their friendship, and it needs both, you can’t have the one without the other, it’s impossible.
“The play is about friendship, which I think, is terribly important, because, it’s a bygone thing. It’s a Victorian thing, it’s a Greek thing. But in the eighties it has lost its way through the rise of feminism - nothing wrong in that… But, men have lost all dignity in their personal friendships. And therefore, I think it’s quite foreign to the young, and, obviously, to the middle-aged as well… I mean two gentlemen sharing. It’s immediately suspect, or the ‘odd couple.’ So, that’s really what the play is about… it’s about love actually. I am so glad that several of the critics have managed to tune into that… not in a jaundiced sense… That’s what we were aiming for, to show these two remarkable men.”
Brett hoped the play would, “persuade people to see that Doyle is the literary giant that he is. Because he wrote thrillers he has been dismissed really, and he is up there with Dickens. He has not yet been put historically, I think, into the right place. So, I am hoping this play will help.”
The played contained some of the best of Doyle’s writing. Passages usually cut out when the stories are dramatised. Brett cited two example, calling them, “beautiful pieces of prose.”
“The speech about flying through windows… and the speech about what a lovely thing a rose is, which is directly taken from ‘The Naval Treaty.’ In the play they are lifted verbatim from the page.’
“When we move into the coup de theatre of the second half, I think it’s a divertissement of some density. But I don’t think it matters too much, and Dame Jean Conan Doyle has been very gracious about it, and has indeed have the Sherlock Holmes Society, who have given it their blessing, because we come back full circle to them together in Baker Street, and maybe you have had a little tiny extra glimpse of these two remarkable men, that which you may not have seen before.”
The play also displayed the wit inherent in the original stories. With most of the humorous touches coming directly from Doyle’s originals.
“Yes they’re there. It’s extraordinary… But you see, when you are reading a thriller you don’t laugh… If I’ve done anything I’ve brought in a little humour, which, I believe, people are grateful for.”
The play brought Brett into contact with people who admired his TV portrayal. He admitted he found this, “slightly overwhelming.”
”First of all it’s thrilling. I’ve had people at the stage door, which I’ve not had for the last six years – because I have been filming and going back to the hotel. So I’ve had people asking for my autograph from Alaska, from Japan, from New Mexico, from Australia, from East Germany, New Zealand, from all over, all round the world.”
“One reads that we’ve sold the films to over seventy counties now. And, of course, it’s exciting that it’s being shown in China, as they’ve never heard of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so they’re reading the books.
“I think that’s one of the pleasing things, about the films particularly, that it’s taken people back to the books. So many children are coming to the show, and they’re carrying the canon! They’re into Doyle, that’s very exciting, television taking people back to literature, it’s incredible! Lovely”
During the course of filming the Sherlock Holmes TV series Brett changed the character’s hairstyle, from the traditional swept back look to a more radical, shorter, brushed forward cut. I asked him why the style had been changed.
“It’s so trivial it’s hardly worth mentioning… But, the thing is when you wear your hair as I was, and am wearing it again now, I have to gel my hair. Now gel is a very nasty thing to wear on a daily basis especialy when it’s as severe as it has to be. And sometimes when I have been filming I’ve had to gel twice in one day. And you really feel like a… It sets like cement, and it’s very uncomfortable. And I thought if I could get the same effect with short hair - and, I think, to a large degree I did – then I wouldn’t have to gel… gung my hair. So that’s why I did it and I think it worked. I think it made a nice change.”
Brett told me he had drawn inspiration for the style from one of Sydney Paget’s original ‘Strand Magazine’ illustrations of Holmes, “the one where [he] is drawing up his knees up under his chin. He is smoking the small clay pipe he uses when in one of his meditative moods.” The portrait, from ‘The Red-Headed League,’ shows the great detective in profile, and does resemble the hairstyle Brett had in later episodes of TV’s ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes.’
“I have gone back to the old one, because the terribly dangerous thing about the short one was that it could also look modern. I remember when I first had it done, I walked down the street and saw someone walking toward me with almost exactly the same haircut, and I thought, oh god!
“The one I have now is also wrong, for me anyway, for it looks too much like Noel Coward. Nancy Banks Smith, who I call the Bag Lady of Fleet Street, was very unkind about ‘Scandal in Bohemia,’ she wrote that when I took my makeup off, as the disguise of the groom, there was Noel Coward underneath. And these little things get under your skin you know, and it really upset me that. So I thought I’d try something else… And anyway f..k her, if you’ll excuse the expression. Now I have gone back to this.”
Nancy Banks Smith, at the time the ‘Guardian’ newspaper’s TV critic, actually praised ‘Scandal in Bohemia.’ She described it as “luxurious, even luscious, way of passing the time.” Her remarks about Brett’s Holmes resembling Noel Coward were obviously light hearted. Brett’s reaction to the review seems to be uncalled for in the extreme.
Brett told Holmes expert David Stuart Davies that he changed his hair so that, “I can play with [it], run my fingers through it, ruffle it… it’s something else to help me play the character.” His second Watson, Edward Hardwicke, believed he cut his hair because he had begun to hate the character of Holmes. It may have been a combination of the three different reasons Brett gave for the change (and Hardwicke’s conjecture) – the problem with gel, it added to the characterisation and as a reaction to criticism. However, I think the latter had the most weight, as he told me (after first blaming the gel) that his real upset at the criticism was why he thought he’d “try something else.” During the course of the interview he would often return to the subject of his reaction to Bank’s Smith remark. For instance, he quite plainly told me, “It is true that little remarks can get under your skin. I mean little things like that… and that’s why I changed my hairstyle…” His then five year held resentment says less about Bank’s Smith’s review and more about his insecurities and emotional fragility. When I asked him how he reacted to negative criticism of his portrayal of Holmes – particularly from some sections of the American Sherlockian fan community - he changed suddenly from being friendly and open to being tetchy and defensive.
“I have had nothing but praise. I have received twelve plaques from twelve societies for being the best Holmes ever. I haven’t heard any negative criticism [from America]… I was over there in ’85 and I think we had got as far as number seven [in the first TV series] and I was given the plaque for the best Holmes ever then by the Sherlockians and the Doylians.”
Brett, however, did admit that he believed any actor playing Holmes would find it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve universal acceptance in the role.
“The trouble is… what you’re actually doing as an actor, if you’re playing a part as famous as this creation of Doyle, is all I’m doing is a brass rubbing. Everyone is Holmes men women and children. Everyone has their own image of Holmes, I have my own image of Sherlock Holmes, we all do. We all have a picture of him when we read the stories, and therefore, you’re just doing a kind of brass rubbing of it. A transparency of it, which one hopes isn’t going to upset the image the other people have of him.
“In New York I saw this six foot four Blackman, walking along with a deerstalker and meerschaum pipe, and I thought, there you are he’s tripping, he’s Sherlock Holmes today.
“Then we had the Sherlock Holmes Society in New York, and they met me to give me this thing, and I walked in, and I was the only one dressed as a civilian. Everyone else was dressed as either Holmes, or Watson, or Moriarty, or Irene Adler, or as Mrs Hudson. But I suddenly thought, of course, what one is doing is only an impression, that’s all actors can do to a monument like this.
“Bennet the chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London came down to see me in Guilford, and was terribly sweet. He showed me a picture of the unveiling of a statue of Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls. And it was back to the big ears, the hooked nose, and the deerstalker, and meerschaum pipe. But, that is the image, that is the cliché. That’s the way it will be for so many.”
However, Brett said he had one consolation:
“I have this lovely blessing over my head; Dame Jean Conan Doyle says I am the Sherlock Holmes of her childhood. That helps a lot… I don’t have to think of Nancy Banks Smith very often!”
By this point in the interview Jeremy Brett’s good humour had returned to a certain extent. When our conversation was almost drowned out by fire engine sirens from outside, he jokingly said, “I am sorry about this noise I think London’s on fire!”
I ended my original version of the interview with the following observation, which I believe still holds true nearly twenty years on.
’Jeremy Brett’s Holmes is fundamentally faithful to Doyle’s original. The magnetism of his bravura performance attracts a new generation of admirers to the stories. In the years to come it will be his face they see when they read the books, and it will be his voice they hear when the great detective speaks. A little part of the monument, that is the legend of Sherlock Holmes, has Brett’s name indelibly carved on it.’
After moving house several times and spring cleaning regularly over the intervening years, I thought the taped interview lost. However, recently I found a copy of the tape that I had used in the transcription process. So here, after nearly twenty years, is the ebullient Mr Brett expressing his unedited views on the character that dominated the last years of his career, his different approach to acting for the stage and the camera, his feelings about critics and fans, even why he changed his hairstyle while playing the great detective. His mood during the conversation moved from garrulous to defencive, and from expansive to reflective.
We first discussed the difference between playing Holmes on TV and on stage. Although, Brett said he enjoyed stage work he told me he found it easier to portray the character through the medium of television.
“The thing about working on the stage that makes it harder is that film is so instantly near it can see right into the person’s soul. With someone so unbelievably isolated and closed, as Holmes is, it’s sometimes easier to get the internal workings of the private man across on camera. He is such a private creature… and with the camera you can slide in and see the flicker of things across his face. You can see little things that sometimes at the back of the theatre you can’t see. Little disappointments, little angers, little changes of mind. Of course, the other things you can get across on camera are his brilliant deductions and observations, but also his amazing intuition. And that’s easier to do on film.”
Brett explained that he hadn’t radically altered his characterisation for the transition from screen to stage, as he believed the techniques required were roughly similar.
“I call the camera lens the winking moose’s eye. A big brown moose eye that you look into and act toward. It’s also the shape of a rectangle and, therefore, you are aiming to fill that particular frame. So, if you are standing facing the camera that is the point of the triangle which you are aiming toward. Now in the theatre you just reverse the triangle and you are aiming outwards, in two different directions, so it’s wider.”
Brett found the relationship between Holmes and the theatre audience difficult at first. He said, he saw Holmes as, “a man of isolation… a very private man.” So he strove in his performance to bring out the inner workings of the character. He told me he tried to show the audience Holmes’ “shyness… his sense of detachment,” personality traits he believed would have been amplified by the character’s “constant pursuance of his special subject,” But he did not let them see these aspects of the character from the start. To convey the feeling of lonely introspection he let them in gradually.
“I try not to look at them for the first fifteen minutes… I don’t even look at Watson very much either… I kind of gradually open up to them. That was the hard part of moving into the theatre. But my director [Patrick Garland] helped me with that. He said, ‘put a pane of glass down between you and the audience and don’t look at them, ignore them, and then after about fifteen minutes warm-through let them in.’”
I asked him how he approached playing a character like Sherlock Holmes.
“When I have been playing Holmes… and what I prefer to do is sink myself into the character and leave myself behind. I always take the image of a sponge - which is me. And I squeeze out the liquid of myself out and draw in the liquid of the character I am playing.
“To bring it off the printed page for myself, I invented little stories about him. About the loneliness of his university days, of his brilliance at sports, and his total removal from any kind of social activity… Which are little images I have had for the last six years of what it might have been like. To throw any more light one can possibly think of on to what might have made him and Mycroft so… typically Victorian I hasten to add… Probably he didn’t actually see his father till he was twelve, and his mother was just a lady moving through a passageway, because they were taken care of by a starch-crisp nurse… So, everything to bring a bit more illumination.”
Brett’s musings were incorporated into the play and added to the interest of the piece. The actor, who worked closely with the author in this regard, praised the handling of both the familiar and unfamiliar elements of the play’s text.
“I’ve got this marvellous author, Jeremy Paul, and we’ve done four together of the original short stories [on TV]. He did ‘The Speckled Band,’ ‘The Naval Treaty,’ ‘The Wisteria Lodge,’ and ‘The Musgrave Ritual.’ So I have known him over the last five, nearly six, years.
“I sent him eight hours of tape. I just rattled off my ideas, and so when it comes to moments of leaving the canon – like when [Holmes] talks of his childhood – Jeremy [Paul] has taken them directly from the tapes.
“The thing I love about the play is that it gives Watson much more to say than the canon does, because naturally it was in the first person. I remember David Burke [the first Watson], when we finished ‘The Speckled Band,’ saying, ‘I had only thirty-six words to say in the entire film!’ And this play does give Watson a platform to speak. Which I think is vital.”
He referred several times to the ‘canon’, the original stories as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which he believed should be the touch stone for every actor playing Holmes. He, also, believed that it was important to have a good Watson, to give reality to Holmes, as he thought of them as a part of a duality.
“Watson and Holmes are two halves of the same person. They are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s a brilliant creation their friendship, and it needs both, you can’t have the one without the other, it’s impossible.
“The play is about friendship, which I think, is terribly important, because, it’s a bygone thing. It’s a Victorian thing, it’s a Greek thing. But in the eighties it has lost its way through the rise of feminism - nothing wrong in that… But, men have lost all dignity in their personal friendships. And therefore, I think it’s quite foreign to the young, and, obviously, to the middle-aged as well… I mean two gentlemen sharing. It’s immediately suspect, or the ‘odd couple.’ So, that’s really what the play is about… it’s about love actually. I am so glad that several of the critics have managed to tune into that… not in a jaundiced sense… That’s what we were aiming for, to show these two remarkable men.”
Brett hoped the play would, “persuade people to see that Doyle is the literary giant that he is. Because he wrote thrillers he has been dismissed really, and he is up there with Dickens. He has not yet been put historically, I think, into the right place. So, I am hoping this play will help.”
The played contained some of the best of Doyle’s writing. Passages usually cut out when the stories are dramatised. Brett cited two example, calling them, “beautiful pieces of prose.”
“The speech about flying through windows… and the speech about what a lovely thing a rose is, which is directly taken from ‘The Naval Treaty.’ In the play they are lifted verbatim from the page.’
“When we move into the coup de theatre of the second half, I think it’s a divertissement of some density. But I don’t think it matters too much, and Dame Jean Conan Doyle has been very gracious about it, and has indeed have the Sherlock Holmes Society, who have given it their blessing, because we come back full circle to them together in Baker Street, and maybe you have had a little tiny extra glimpse of these two remarkable men, that which you may not have seen before.”
The play also displayed the wit inherent in the original stories. With most of the humorous touches coming directly from Doyle’s originals.
“Yes they’re there. It’s extraordinary… But you see, when you are reading a thriller you don’t laugh… If I’ve done anything I’ve brought in a little humour, which, I believe, people are grateful for.”
The play brought Brett into contact with people who admired his TV portrayal. He admitted he found this, “slightly overwhelming.”
”First of all it’s thrilling. I’ve had people at the stage door, which I’ve not had for the last six years – because I have been filming and going back to the hotel. So I’ve had people asking for my autograph from Alaska, from Japan, from New Mexico, from Australia, from East Germany, New Zealand, from all over, all round the world.”
“One reads that we’ve sold the films to over seventy counties now. And, of course, it’s exciting that it’s being shown in China, as they’ve never heard of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so they’re reading the books.
“I think that’s one of the pleasing things, about the films particularly, that it’s taken people back to the books. So many children are coming to the show, and they’re carrying the canon! They’re into Doyle, that’s very exciting, television taking people back to literature, it’s incredible! Lovely”
During the course of filming the Sherlock Holmes TV series Brett changed the character’s hairstyle, from the traditional swept back look to a more radical, shorter, brushed forward cut. I asked him why the style had been changed.
“It’s so trivial it’s hardly worth mentioning… But, the thing is when you wear your hair as I was, and am wearing it again now, I have to gel my hair. Now gel is a very nasty thing to wear on a daily basis especialy when it’s as severe as it has to be. And sometimes when I have been filming I’ve had to gel twice in one day. And you really feel like a… It sets like cement, and it’s very uncomfortable. And I thought if I could get the same effect with short hair - and, I think, to a large degree I did – then I wouldn’t have to gel… gung my hair. So that’s why I did it and I think it worked. I think it made a nice change.”
Brett told me he had drawn inspiration for the style from one of Sydney Paget’s original ‘Strand Magazine’ illustrations of Holmes, “the one where [he] is drawing up his knees up under his chin. He is smoking the small clay pipe he uses when in one of his meditative moods.” The portrait, from ‘The Red-Headed League,’ shows the great detective in profile, and does resemble the hairstyle Brett had in later episodes of TV’s ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes.’
“I have gone back to the old one, because the terribly dangerous thing about the short one was that it could also look modern. I remember when I first had it done, I walked down the street and saw someone walking toward me with almost exactly the same haircut, and I thought, oh god!
“The one I have now is also wrong, for me anyway, for it looks too much like Noel Coward. Nancy Banks Smith, who I call the Bag Lady of Fleet Street, was very unkind about ‘Scandal in Bohemia,’ she wrote that when I took my makeup off, as the disguise of the groom, there was Noel Coward underneath. And these little things get under your skin you know, and it really upset me that. So I thought I’d try something else… And anyway f..k her, if you’ll excuse the expression. Now I have gone back to this.”
Nancy Banks Smith, at the time the ‘Guardian’ newspaper’s TV critic, actually praised ‘Scandal in Bohemia.’ She described it as “luxurious, even luscious, way of passing the time.” Her remarks about Brett’s Holmes resembling Noel Coward were obviously light hearted. Brett’s reaction to the review seems to be uncalled for in the extreme.
Brett told Holmes expert David Stuart Davies that he changed his hair so that, “I can play with [it], run my fingers through it, ruffle it… it’s something else to help me play the character.” His second Watson, Edward Hardwicke, believed he cut his hair because he had begun to hate the character of Holmes. It may have been a combination of the three different reasons Brett gave for the change (and Hardwicke’s conjecture) – the problem with gel, it added to the characterisation and as a reaction to criticism. However, I think the latter had the most weight, as he told me (after first blaming the gel) that his real upset at the criticism was why he thought he’d “try something else.” During the course of the interview he would often return to the subject of his reaction to Bank’s Smith remark. For instance, he quite plainly told me, “It is true that little remarks can get under your skin. I mean little things like that… and that’s why I changed my hairstyle…” His then five year held resentment says less about Bank’s Smith’s review and more about his insecurities and emotional fragility. When I asked him how he reacted to negative criticism of his portrayal of Holmes – particularly from some sections of the American Sherlockian fan community - he changed suddenly from being friendly and open to being tetchy and defensive.
“I have had nothing but praise. I have received twelve plaques from twelve societies for being the best Holmes ever. I haven’t heard any negative criticism [from America]… I was over there in ’85 and I think we had got as far as number seven [in the first TV series] and I was given the plaque for the best Holmes ever then by the Sherlockians and the Doylians.”
Brett, however, did admit that he believed any actor playing Holmes would find it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve universal acceptance in the role.
“The trouble is… what you’re actually doing as an actor, if you’re playing a part as famous as this creation of Doyle, is all I’m doing is a brass rubbing. Everyone is Holmes men women and children. Everyone has their own image of Holmes, I have my own image of Sherlock Holmes, we all do. We all have a picture of him when we read the stories, and therefore, you’re just doing a kind of brass rubbing of it. A transparency of it, which one hopes isn’t going to upset the image the other people have of him.
“In New York I saw this six foot four Blackman, walking along with a deerstalker and meerschaum pipe, and I thought, there you are he’s tripping, he’s Sherlock Holmes today.
“Then we had the Sherlock Holmes Society in New York, and they met me to give me this thing, and I walked in, and I was the only one dressed as a civilian. Everyone else was dressed as either Holmes, or Watson, or Moriarty, or Irene Adler, or as Mrs Hudson. But I suddenly thought, of course, what one is doing is only an impression, that’s all actors can do to a monument like this.
“Bennet the chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London came down to see me in Guilford, and was terribly sweet. He showed me a picture of the unveiling of a statue of Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls. And it was back to the big ears, the hooked nose, and the deerstalker, and meerschaum pipe. But, that is the image, that is the cliché. That’s the way it will be for so many.”
However, Brett said he had one consolation:
“I have this lovely blessing over my head; Dame Jean Conan Doyle says I am the Sherlock Holmes of her childhood. That helps a lot… I don’t have to think of Nancy Banks Smith very often!”
By this point in the interview Jeremy Brett’s good humour had returned to a certain extent. When our conversation was almost drowned out by fire engine sirens from outside, he jokingly said, “I am sorry about this noise I think London’s on fire!”
I ended my original version of the interview with the following observation, which I believe still holds true nearly twenty years on.
’Jeremy Brett’s Holmes is fundamentally faithful to Doyle’s original. The magnetism of his bravura performance attracts a new generation of admirers to the stories. In the years to come it will be his face they see when they read the books, and it will be his voice they hear when the great detective speaks. A little part of the monument, that is the legend of Sherlock Holmes, has Brett’s name indelibly carved on it.’
He's Decided to Stick with 'Sherlock Holmes' to the End (Interview)
Things are looking up once again on Baker Street. A few months ago, Jeremy Brett was telling the British press that he was thinking about giving up his acclaimed portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Granada Television series based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of the great detective. But it seems Brett, who most recent series of Holmes stories runs Nov. 14-Dec. 12 on PBS' "Mystery!", has had a change of heart. In fact, he told ANGLOFILE on an October visit to Atlanta, he may end up filming the entire Holmes canon! Next to be seen in Britain will be "The Master Blackmailer," a two-hour Holmes special based on Doyle's "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton," which Brett finished filming about three weeks before his Atlanta visit. Chris Liaguno talked to Brett for ANGLOFILE; here's the first installment of their wide-ranging conversation...
At one point, you said that this most recent Holmes series would be your last....
Ah, changed. I took a year off, actually got as far as five months, rang up my "angels" [Mobil and Granada Television] and said if they were willing, I was willing, and did I have their blessing and they said yes.... We're selling to 83 countries now, and the last one cleared a bit of ground...Russia. So they're pleased, Mobil's pleased, because it means their Pegasus—you know, their sign—goes to Russia. And my studios are pleased, Granada. They're all pleased.
Anyway, I'm going to finish the calendar. I'm going to do another 20 films.
What changed your mind about doing it?
Well, largely because they're very sweet to me. I mean, money people are usually quite brisk, but mine aren't, and they keep on giving me spaces so that I've been able to go on and do plays and films. I'm going back to make a film with Harrison Ford. I did a play in '85 on Broadway. I did a play in London in '87-'88. So with those little spaces, I can do it.
I thought, why not, I've just got enough steam, and I may have walked away with two sticks and blindfolded, but nevertheless, I'll try and finish it. They're game...and I'm just about game.
So you're going to stick it out till all the series are filmed?
Yeah, I think....Well, it's never been done before, so why not? Let's have a crack at it.
You've also spoken in the past about the "burden" of playing Holmes and of how at one point you suffered a nervous breakdown. How have you come to terms with that?
Well, that was more the death of my wife [Joan Wilson, who produced "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!"]. And, I think, as a matter of fact, Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation, You Know Who, possibly helped me.
How so?
Well...it was such a shock. She died in '85 on July the Fourth—quite a day to go, being American...and I was absolutely lost. And I couldn't see the point really in anything, least of all S.H.
And in '86, I had this whopping great collapse...but what put me back on my feet was getting, what we say in England, "back on the bicycle."
Yeah, and so I went off to the studios and made five more and I began to feel a bit better. I took about--I'm still getting over it--about three years, really. So that was really the reason for that.
I think I enjoy playing...I don't think I was really properly cast, because of my part. I play parts like King Arthur, and Henry the V, and heroics and romantics....Robert Browning, Lord Byron...and the classics...Hamlet, in my younger days.
Do you like playing those more so?
Yes. The provocation with Holmes is the fact that he's described by Doyle as a man without a heart--all brain...and that's very difficult to play, or even indicate.
I made a terrible fool of myself...my camera test, way back in '83. I looked like a gargoyle [laughs] 'cause I was so determined to look right. But I had a white line down my nose and velvet under my chin...and my producer said, "Is there going to be anything of Jeremy in this performance at all?"
And I calmed it down a little bit, but it's still quite a... it's not the easiest part to play. Also, it's better read, really, that's the truth of the matter.
Why?
Well, the stories leap from the printed page. I mean, when it says, "Holmes crawls through the bracken looking for a clue like a golden retriever," you can see it with your mind's eye. When you do it [laughs], it's hysterically funny.
And so I've had wonderful Watsons--I've had two who kind of go [groans], "Holmes is doing it again." And, I mean, I've even had people in the studio, when I had suddenly crawled across the floor, say, "Not another of those" [laughs]. And that's the lighter side.
The other thing is, of course, if you go into the canteen for lunch dressed like what I call the "damaged penguin," no one will really sit with you, because you look like death warmed-up [laughs]. When you've got the mask on, and the black hair and the black suit, you really are frightfully cheerful to have lunch opposite.
You have said that you're finding Holmes easier to play. How do you keep it interesting? How do you keep it challenging?
Well, I haven't reached him yet. He's one field ahead of me all the time. That's fascinating. That's fascinating.
I think the more I play him the more I realize he's impossible to play. I mean, the great models I had--of course the great Basil Rathbone; Robert Stephens, who did the Billy Wilder film, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes." Robert Stephens is my best friend in England. I met him last June when I went to see him giving a brilliant performance in the theater and he said, "You know what I think? The trouble with you is that you never realized something. Holmes is hollow." He said, "When I tried to do it, I nearly killed myself....I had a breakdown, tried to kill myself, terrible disasters, but you, of course, with your bubbling sparkling essence bit, you just fill it all up with champagne and Perrier water. Your well is so filled to the brim, you've hardly noticed that there's nothing inside [of Holmes]."
The thing is, of course, Robert and I are the same kind of actors. We're both what we call in England, "Becomers"--you become the part you play.
What I do is always build up an interior life: Like I've worked out where Holmes was born; I've decided what his nanny was like; he didn't see his mother until he was 8 years old, probably held the rustle of her skirt. The Victorian nanny didn't do anything except rub him and scrub him, tuck him up in bed and dump him. Didn't meet his father until he was 20, and he was a prided, frightened little man, as indeed was his brother, Mycroft.
There may have been this beautiful girl, that he feel flat for, but she didn't look at him. So that broke his heart and he thought, "Well, I'm not going to be rejected again," so that's why he's the way he is.
So, I've built up this internal life [for Holmes], which has kind of saved my life, really. It's not easy.
You've also said you're not anything like Holmes and ....
Well, hang on, wait a minute, there's something more insidious than that....He creeps in. I have to watch him like a hawk. I have to be very careful....
One of the wonderful things about this glorious holiday trip I'm on is that I'm in public with people. It hasn't been inclined....I don't know--something to do with the death of my wife. It's inclined to make me isolated. And I blame Holmes entirely for that. He encroaches a bit.
How do you handle that usually?
I go out heaps. Don't stay in, go out. But I'm conscious of it. That's probably my own problem, nothing to do with Doyle or You Know Who at all.
One wonders when you're a "becomer." What a "becomer" means is I'm a sponge, right, I'm an actor. You squeeze the liquid out of your own essence, and draw in the liquid of the part that you're playing. Like Stanislavsky in Russia, like the "Method" here, but that's not quite the same thing. And, if you've got a man without a heart, you've only got a hole.
So you basically filled in with your own portrayal of what you thought that would be like?
Yes, and I picked up essences along the way.
Because you're a "becomer," doing that probably helped you and your character.
Well, it does help and also the fact that, unbelievably, we've never seen Doyle before. Now, don't ask me why that is, I don't understand. All these years, no one has done his stories. They've done derivatives. They've taken the names of Holmes and Watson, but they've never done his stories. I cannot think why. At least that gave me something to do.
Also, the fact he [Holmes] only wore the deerstalker hat in the country...that he never smoked a calabash pipe--that was brought in by [actor] William Gillette in New York, at the turn of the century...that he smoked a long, thin, cherry-wood in his disputatious moods, and a grey pipe in his meditative moods--that's the beginning of "The Copper Beeches."
So, all these things you can get from Doyle, and when other actors who play Holmes and just pop on the deerstalker, and his cape and the pipe and walk straight through it, puff...puff...puff--and get on with the next thing--that's probably the safer way to train [laughs]--but it's not exactly being true to Doyle. It's just an image, like a cliche, which is not real.
Children love him.
Why?
I'm not quite sure. [Pulls out a crumpled note from a child with drawings on it.] From Michael McClure II, age 8. [Looking at the note still] Holmes is riding on a dragon...I think he's killing the dragon.
So this is a role model for them.
I think for the kids, they think he's a hero. I rang [the child's] mother this morning because I wrote him a letter and I wanted to make sure it arrived. He got it through St. Louis, because it was fairly heavy going in St. Louis, fantasywise....I mean, Sherlockian-wise and fan-wise.
The two-hour story you recently filmed is based on Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" but it's been reported that the title has changed to "The Master Blackmailer." Why that departure from the original?
Well, this is the first time, and the reason is this: We've done 34 films, over nine years. Some of them, and I'm sure Doyle will forgive me for saying so, need a little help. Then comes "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton." And Dame Jean, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's daughter, who is a wonderful, remarkable lady, said that she liked the script. It's adapted by Jeremy Paul, who I think is one of our best adapters. And "Charles Augustus Milverton," as a matter of fact, is a very, very short story, only six pages long. "Blackmail" stretches a bit further than just one blackmailer, one piece of blackmail. So we've got four. And, I must say, I was very nervous about tampering with Doyle, but I do believe it's worked. I've not seen it yet, 'cause we've only just finished it, but the news is good.
I can give you another example. When I was playing Troilus in Troilus and Cressida, long before you were born, on Broadway, opposite Rosemary Harris, the great towering Guthrie said to us, "At this moment in the play, Shakespeare needs a bit of help." Well, of course, we were so excited we could hardly believe it [laughs]. You try and climb, to survive Shakespeare. And that's really what I think now...we've done the best stories. Little bits of help will be needed but I hope they're done subliminally and carefully so that they're Doylian.
The trouble with adapters is, of course, that it's not a natural job. Adapting things means that you really haven't got a creative idea of your own. You're making some money on the side. They consequently, all the time, try and do their own thing. I sit there and read the script and I say, "But don't you think Doyle is better?" That's been the problem all the way through--trying to do Doyle.
Now we've reached the point where Doyle needs a little bit of help, but I'll watch that as best I possibly can. And Dame Jean is very close to me, and she gets all the scripts before we shoot things. So, we'll try not to let Doyle down.
Can you tell us anything about the film and who is in it?
Well, my leading lady is a wonderful actress called Dame Gwen Ffrangeon-Davies, and she's 100 years old. She was a leading lady in the theater--and I'm sure Doyle would have seen her, because he died in 1930. She was John Gielgud's leading lady for 30 years, and she stepped out of retirement to play. At the end of the film, she said, "I've enjoyed this so much, I think I'm going to make one film a year from now on."
She drinks champagne, smokes Camel [cigarettes], and is a Christian Scientist. So I've only got Christian Science to go [laughs]. I'm ready, I'm going for it. She's wonderful.
I've got a brilliant actor playing the blackmailer, Charles Augustus Milverton. You've probably seen him. Do you have a series here which we love in England called "All Creatures Great and Small"? Do you remember the guy, the older vet...Siegfried? Robert Hardy. He's playing the villain.
Sophie Thompson, Emma Thompson's younger sister, is playing Agatha, who is my girlfriend in the film. Because Holmes has a disguise--I play a plumber. My motto is: We plumb the depths. She takes a shine to him.
It's a fairly horrendous story. I mean, it's all there in Doyle, but when you read: "Lady Diane shoots Milverton in the chest six times and then crushes him in the face with her heel"--that's alright, you can read it. But when you actually manifest it....
How do you do something like that?
Very carefully. Very bloody carefully.
That brings me to this question: When you're doing a part, how much of a say-so do you get in the script? Do you actually do any of the writing, not just in "Holmes," but in other characters as well?
I tell you where I come in. First of all, Granada Studios, which are located in the northwest of England, Manchester, in 1983 they kicked me off with only a week's rehearsal. And I said, "I can't make this. If you want me to last, you have to take care of me. I need two." And bless their hearts, they organized that I got two.
So, the first week is me with the adaptation down, the producer and the director, and we just--I brought Doyle--we go through it. I bring it back to Doyle, but they've done the adaptation and the spacing before.
Then, the second week, the cast comes in and we rehearse so that we got at it with a little rehearsal. Also, it gives the researchers, costume designers all that time.
That's a pure luxury and that's what I'm in--that first week. I try not to be too impertinent before that because I am only employed as an actor, and actors in England have to know their place.
WGBH has scheduled only five parts of the "Casebook" series for "Mystery!" this fall. Do you know what their plans are for "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax," which isn't scheduled?
Six parts. There are five now, but they're holding one back for the pledge. They're holding back "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax." The writer, Trevor Bowen, and [director] John Madden, who's a lively lad, went off and they decided they'd do their own Doyle, so it's the least Doylian. We finished all those films December 12 last year. We start shooting again in January and I'm doing six next year. I think one is "Sussex Vampire" and another is "Red Circle." And those will be out probably the end of next year.
Talking Heroes & Villains With TV's Sherlock Holmes
Last issue, Jeremy Brett talked about coming to terms with his television alter ego, Sherlock Holmes. In this concluding half of his ANGLOFILE interview with Chris Liaguno, conducted last fall in Atlanta, Brett discusses some of his other work and his likes and dislikes when it comes to acting...
Any non-Holmes projects that you've done recently or have in the works like the film with Harrison Ford? Could you tell us about that?
Yes, it's a Patrick Page. I'm playing an Irishman. I told them not to give it to me till I get on the plane to go back to London from Chicago, because I've got quite enough on my plate already. I'm sure it will be lovely and I'm grateful it is...so glad. Then, I've written a play.
Tell us about that.
It's a two-hander. It's nothing to do with Holmes and Watson at all. It's about someone who's a psychiatrist, who lives in Iceland, and a man comes to him who is very distrubed. At the end of the play, the man who was mentally disturbed walks away completely perfect, and the psychiatrist has a breakdown...that's basically the story.
Is that coming out any time soon?
Well, no. I've got to think it through. The first draft is done. It's just a bit long.
Do you find at all that Holmes has typecast you, or are you still offered a variety of roles?
I've just been offered Hector in "Heartbreak House" by George Bernard Shaw, starting rehearsals next week in London. I've just been offered, starting this week, "HenceForward," which is an Alan Aykborn play. I don't really mind actually [the Holmes typecasting]. I must be very gratful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because we are in the deepest recession in England, and only five percent of my profession are at work. I'm one of them at work, so I'm not knocking it.
Is the Alan Aykborn a comedy?
Yes, but it's a roboty one. I don't like it. I've also been asked to run a preview on the stage, which I did for "Masterpiece Theater," but my darling, Penelope Keith, doesn't want to come into London because she's had a rough time with the critics. So, I'm not doing that. I've got to start work in January. I might just have a chance to go skiing and that's about it.
You mentioned some of the roles you liked earlier. Do you have any specific ones you would like to play in the future?
Well, I've played Prospero in "The Tempest" in Canada in 1982. I played him without a beard, and angry, and nutbrown. After all, he is a Bermudian, and it's quite hot in Bermuda. And I had a Miranda and my two sides of Prospero's spirit--Ariel and Calaban--are played by the same actor. And I like to do that. I've been asked by the National to pick what I want to do.
Do you ever want to play the villain at any point?
No, I'm playing one now. The villain is not for me. I mean, Holmes is a lovely man, I'm sure, on Tuesdays [laughs]. Villains are very, very boring to do. They're so much easier than heroes. I've just been watching, again because it's the only thing I can get, "Robin Hood--Prince of Thieves." I think the greatest star in American at the moment is Kevin Costner. I think "Dances With Wolves" is probably the greatest film I've ever seen--one of them. It's about a love inside of America that I adore. About courage and strength and pioneer's clarity. And he's brilliant as Robin Hood, and I'm afraid Alan Rickman, who plays the Sheriff, is appalling. I said to him, "Now, I know you're playing a villain, love, I know you're trying to register, I know you're trying to get a better part for the next one, but if you're overacting, it's disgraceful."
Americans love him [Rickman]. When he underplayed in "Die Hard," nobody noticed him. A lot of people were saying the villain overshadowed Kevin Costner in "Robin Hood."
I think he's a disgrace. He's a very good actor, too, and that makes it worse. He was brilliant onstage in "Liaisons Dangereuses." Why he's done this--it must be desperation or something. But Kevin, he is my new hero. My old hero, of course, is Robert DeNiro.
So DeNiro is your ideal?
Oh, I wish I could find a part [in a film with DeNiro]. I thought maybe I could catch a ball in "Awakenings." But I don't fit into "The Deerhunter." I don't fit into "Raging Bull." I would give my eye teeth to work for him, with him, whatever. Oh, I think he's wonderful. What invention, what courage.
What sort of hobbies do you have outside of acting?
Archery. Riding. That's why I was so impressed with Kevin [Costner]. He bothered to learn. He really took his time; he really learned it.
Anything else?
Piano. [long pause]. My incense.
Your incense?
My smoking [chuckles].
Ah, a smoking meditation.
Yes, I meditate and do yoga. I sit cross-legged and try not to levitate too much. Most of the time, I'm off the ground in any case, so I try to get grounded [laughs]. Holmes took yoga from time to time. I was into meditation with the Maharishi, but it was Holmes who took yoga. There are lots of good things about him. I must be careful what I say.
About Holmes?
Yes. He's an upholder of the law. He's also a law unto himself. In other words, he releases people and Scotland Yard says "How could you do that?" He also loves children because I've wondered where his love is channeled. Because no one can be that [unemotional]. But I think there is an intimation from the Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins, and I think he pays them...you see, I'm into fantasy again.
But it seems as if it really helps in your portrayal.
Yes. So whenever I can, I have the Irregulars around. I think Holmes loves children.
Is that what you admire the most about him?
I think it is his power of deduction which is--you see, children have it until the age of 8, and then they lose it because they're told not to look out the window and to concentrate on their Latin. Holmes has been endowed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the antennae of a child. Also, something else--feminine intuition, which I didn't realize until I played him for awhile. He makes these little leaps. You know how a woman can get an answer that a man has to work his way towards, get all the facts?
Did you grow into that?
I got that while I was playing [Holmes] over the last nine years. I think he's also probably a role model demanding to be wished, in one or two respects. One is the fact that to be self-sufficient is really quite strong, and he is. I mean he only asks Watson in to help pay the rent. He doesn't really need Watson. I mean, Doyle needs Watson because he needs another person there to tell the story.
You don't think Holmes needs Watson?
Not really. I don't think Doyle meant him to. I do, but I don't think Doyle meant him to. I think he's meant to be a marble statue. And I used to say that I would try to put a crack in the marble, just so I have a place as an actor to go in.
You mentioned what you like about Holmes. What do you dislike? The fact that he seems so solitary, so isolated?
Well, what I don't like is the fact that he's so bloody difficult to play [laughs]. That's what I don't like; the rest is fine. I think that I've made a mistake in being born in this time when we're shooting in color. I think Basil [Rathbone] had it better off in black and white. I think it's more dramatic, for one. Also, makeup-wise, because it takes a lot to put my makeup on. I have eyes that are rather large which I can't make up and with a white makeup, my eyes look red and my lips inside are red, so I look quite ill. If that was in black and white, it wouldn't show.
How would you like to see the Holmes character develop?
Well, I'm nervous now, because in the last film, I'm beginning... I hope not, but I felt when we had finished, I said to them, "Gosh, let's be careful. I'm beginning to peep through."
You mean the real you?
Because in "Milverton," I get my first kiss [cheers]. And it's like Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler [laughs]. It's set up like that. He's walking, trying to get into this house, taking disguise, he's Ralph, and she says, "Kiss me," and he says, "I don't know how," which, of course, Holmes doesn't. The next scene, she jumps on him from a tree, knocks him over, and falls on top of him. That's when they come closer and closer and closer. And there's this great smacking, wonderful kiss. And I'll give you two guesses what Holmes does.
Faints?
Bursts into floods of tears.
So how long will we have to wait for that one?
I guess it will be coming out in England as a Christmas special, and I guess it will be here next Christmas or something like that. But I better be careful. I mean, it was such fun, because I'm 55 and I look like an old crocodile and I went to rehearsal--I took my toothbrush [laughs]. And I used to go back to the bar for the evening and we all sit around and bitch and say, "Ah, this recession is terrible." And I say, "Isn't it ghastly? I've been working so hard today. I've been kissed five times by a 22-year-old girl." And they went, "I beg your pardon. What?" [laughs]. I said, "I've been kissed by a 22-year-old girl and I'm getting paid for it!" It was wonderful [laughs].
Do you have anyone special in your life now?
Yes, I do. I have a wonderful girlfriend and three beautiful children-- Caleb, Rebekah and David. And they're all incredible. [Pulls out photos to show.]
Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I've got this card with me--now don't ask me why I've got it because I can't tell you. When I was in the National Theatre in Britain, for four years, I played in "Love's Labour's Lost" by William Shakespeare which [Laurence Olivier] directed. And this was his first night note to me.
That was actually a note that he gave you?
That's right. It was laminated by some little Johnny in England when I was in Dallas because this was being passed around. I'm really grateful, except I'll never touch it again [laughs]. It says: "Darling (Jeremy) These are the do's and don'ts of acting: Do's: Think. Keep your neck back. Think. Be frank. Think. Perceive. Think. Listen. Think. Be in love with Joan. (That's his wife, who was in the play.) Blaze. (That means to be on fire. So easy to do) [chuckles].
"The Don'ts: (Don't be) Ingratiating. Soft. Adorable. Glamorous. Earnest. Polite. Decorated. Gablesome."
[turns card over].
"Love wishes. Love gratitude. Love admiration. Love from Larry."
Isn't that a lovely thing to have?
At one point, you said that this most recent Holmes series would be your last....
Ah, changed. I took a year off, actually got as far as five months, rang up my "angels" [Mobil and Granada Television] and said if they were willing, I was willing, and did I have their blessing and they said yes.... We're selling to 83 countries now, and the last one cleared a bit of ground...Russia. So they're pleased, Mobil's pleased, because it means their Pegasus—you know, their sign—goes to Russia. And my studios are pleased, Granada. They're all pleased.
Anyway, I'm going to finish the calendar. I'm going to do another 20 films.
What changed your mind about doing it?
Well, largely because they're very sweet to me. I mean, money people are usually quite brisk, but mine aren't, and they keep on giving me spaces so that I've been able to go on and do plays and films. I'm going back to make a film with Harrison Ford. I did a play in '85 on Broadway. I did a play in London in '87-'88. So with those little spaces, I can do it.
I thought, why not, I've just got enough steam, and I may have walked away with two sticks and blindfolded, but nevertheless, I'll try and finish it. They're game...and I'm just about game.
So you're going to stick it out till all the series are filmed?
Yeah, I think....Well, it's never been done before, so why not? Let's have a crack at it.
You've also spoken in the past about the "burden" of playing Holmes and of how at one point you suffered a nervous breakdown. How have you come to terms with that?
Well, that was more the death of my wife [Joan Wilson, who produced "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!"]. And, I think, as a matter of fact, Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation, You Know Who, possibly helped me.
How so?
Well...it was such a shock. She died in '85 on July the Fourth—quite a day to go, being American...and I was absolutely lost. And I couldn't see the point really in anything, least of all S.H.
And in '86, I had this whopping great collapse...but what put me back on my feet was getting, what we say in England, "back on the bicycle."
Yeah, and so I went off to the studios and made five more and I began to feel a bit better. I took about--I'm still getting over it--about three years, really. So that was really the reason for that.
I think I enjoy playing...I don't think I was really properly cast, because of my part. I play parts like King Arthur, and Henry the V, and heroics and romantics....Robert Browning, Lord Byron...and the classics...Hamlet, in my younger days.
Do you like playing those more so?
Yes. The provocation with Holmes is the fact that he's described by Doyle as a man without a heart--all brain...and that's very difficult to play, or even indicate.
I made a terrible fool of myself...my camera test, way back in '83. I looked like a gargoyle [laughs] 'cause I was so determined to look right. But I had a white line down my nose and velvet under my chin...and my producer said, "Is there going to be anything of Jeremy in this performance at all?"
And I calmed it down a little bit, but it's still quite a... it's not the easiest part to play. Also, it's better read, really, that's the truth of the matter.
Why?
Well, the stories leap from the printed page. I mean, when it says, "Holmes crawls through the bracken looking for a clue like a golden retriever," you can see it with your mind's eye. When you do it [laughs], it's hysterically funny.
And so I've had wonderful Watsons--I've had two who kind of go [groans], "Holmes is doing it again." And, I mean, I've even had people in the studio, when I had suddenly crawled across the floor, say, "Not another of those" [laughs]. And that's the lighter side.
The other thing is, of course, if you go into the canteen for lunch dressed like what I call the "damaged penguin," no one will really sit with you, because you look like death warmed-up [laughs]. When you've got the mask on, and the black hair and the black suit, you really are frightfully cheerful to have lunch opposite.
You have said that you're finding Holmes easier to play. How do you keep it interesting? How do you keep it challenging?
Well, I haven't reached him yet. He's one field ahead of me all the time. That's fascinating. That's fascinating.
I think the more I play him the more I realize he's impossible to play. I mean, the great models I had--of course the great Basil Rathbone; Robert Stephens, who did the Billy Wilder film, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes." Robert Stephens is my best friend in England. I met him last June when I went to see him giving a brilliant performance in the theater and he said, "You know what I think? The trouble with you is that you never realized something. Holmes is hollow." He said, "When I tried to do it, I nearly killed myself....I had a breakdown, tried to kill myself, terrible disasters, but you, of course, with your bubbling sparkling essence bit, you just fill it all up with champagne and Perrier water. Your well is so filled to the brim, you've hardly noticed that there's nothing inside [of Holmes]."
The thing is, of course, Robert and I are the same kind of actors. We're both what we call in England, "Becomers"--you become the part you play.
What I do is always build up an interior life: Like I've worked out where Holmes was born; I've decided what his nanny was like; he didn't see his mother until he was 8 years old, probably held the rustle of her skirt. The Victorian nanny didn't do anything except rub him and scrub him, tuck him up in bed and dump him. Didn't meet his father until he was 20, and he was a prided, frightened little man, as indeed was his brother, Mycroft.
There may have been this beautiful girl, that he feel flat for, but she didn't look at him. So that broke his heart and he thought, "Well, I'm not going to be rejected again," so that's why he's the way he is.
So, I've built up this internal life [for Holmes], which has kind of saved my life, really. It's not easy.
You've also said you're not anything like Holmes and ....
Well, hang on, wait a minute, there's something more insidious than that....He creeps in. I have to watch him like a hawk. I have to be very careful....
One of the wonderful things about this glorious holiday trip I'm on is that I'm in public with people. It hasn't been inclined....I don't know--something to do with the death of my wife. It's inclined to make me isolated. And I blame Holmes entirely for that. He encroaches a bit.
How do you handle that usually?
I go out heaps. Don't stay in, go out. But I'm conscious of it. That's probably my own problem, nothing to do with Doyle or You Know Who at all.
One wonders when you're a "becomer." What a "becomer" means is I'm a sponge, right, I'm an actor. You squeeze the liquid out of your own essence, and draw in the liquid of the part that you're playing. Like Stanislavsky in Russia, like the "Method" here, but that's not quite the same thing. And, if you've got a man without a heart, you've only got a hole.
So you basically filled in with your own portrayal of what you thought that would be like?
Yes, and I picked up essences along the way.
Because you're a "becomer," doing that probably helped you and your character.
Well, it does help and also the fact that, unbelievably, we've never seen Doyle before. Now, don't ask me why that is, I don't understand. All these years, no one has done his stories. They've done derivatives. They've taken the names of Holmes and Watson, but they've never done his stories. I cannot think why. At least that gave me something to do.
Also, the fact he [Holmes] only wore the deerstalker hat in the country...that he never smoked a calabash pipe--that was brought in by [actor] William Gillette in New York, at the turn of the century...that he smoked a long, thin, cherry-wood in his disputatious moods, and a grey pipe in his meditative moods--that's the beginning of "The Copper Beeches."
So, all these things you can get from Doyle, and when other actors who play Holmes and just pop on the deerstalker, and his cape and the pipe and walk straight through it, puff...puff...puff--and get on with the next thing--that's probably the safer way to train [laughs]--but it's not exactly being true to Doyle. It's just an image, like a cliche, which is not real.
Children love him.
Why?
I'm not quite sure. [Pulls out a crumpled note from a child with drawings on it.] From Michael McClure II, age 8. [Looking at the note still] Holmes is riding on a dragon...I think he's killing the dragon.
So this is a role model for them.
I think for the kids, they think he's a hero. I rang [the child's] mother this morning because I wrote him a letter and I wanted to make sure it arrived. He got it through St. Louis, because it was fairly heavy going in St. Louis, fantasywise....I mean, Sherlockian-wise and fan-wise.
The two-hour story you recently filmed is based on Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" but it's been reported that the title has changed to "The Master Blackmailer." Why that departure from the original?
Well, this is the first time, and the reason is this: We've done 34 films, over nine years. Some of them, and I'm sure Doyle will forgive me for saying so, need a little help. Then comes "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton." And Dame Jean, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's daughter, who is a wonderful, remarkable lady, said that she liked the script. It's adapted by Jeremy Paul, who I think is one of our best adapters. And "Charles Augustus Milverton," as a matter of fact, is a very, very short story, only six pages long. "Blackmail" stretches a bit further than just one blackmailer, one piece of blackmail. So we've got four. And, I must say, I was very nervous about tampering with Doyle, but I do believe it's worked. I've not seen it yet, 'cause we've only just finished it, but the news is good.
I can give you another example. When I was playing Troilus in Troilus and Cressida, long before you were born, on Broadway, opposite Rosemary Harris, the great towering Guthrie said to us, "At this moment in the play, Shakespeare needs a bit of help." Well, of course, we were so excited we could hardly believe it [laughs]. You try and climb, to survive Shakespeare. And that's really what I think now...we've done the best stories. Little bits of help will be needed but I hope they're done subliminally and carefully so that they're Doylian.
The trouble with adapters is, of course, that it's not a natural job. Adapting things means that you really haven't got a creative idea of your own. You're making some money on the side. They consequently, all the time, try and do their own thing. I sit there and read the script and I say, "But don't you think Doyle is better?" That's been the problem all the way through--trying to do Doyle.
Now we've reached the point where Doyle needs a little bit of help, but I'll watch that as best I possibly can. And Dame Jean is very close to me, and she gets all the scripts before we shoot things. So, we'll try not to let Doyle down.
Can you tell us anything about the film and who is in it?
Well, my leading lady is a wonderful actress called Dame Gwen Ffrangeon-Davies, and she's 100 years old. She was a leading lady in the theater--and I'm sure Doyle would have seen her, because he died in 1930. She was John Gielgud's leading lady for 30 years, and she stepped out of retirement to play. At the end of the film, she said, "I've enjoyed this so much, I think I'm going to make one film a year from now on."
She drinks champagne, smokes Camel [cigarettes], and is a Christian Scientist. So I've only got Christian Science to go [laughs]. I'm ready, I'm going for it. She's wonderful.
I've got a brilliant actor playing the blackmailer, Charles Augustus Milverton. You've probably seen him. Do you have a series here which we love in England called "All Creatures Great and Small"? Do you remember the guy, the older vet...Siegfried? Robert Hardy. He's playing the villain.
Sophie Thompson, Emma Thompson's younger sister, is playing Agatha, who is my girlfriend in the film. Because Holmes has a disguise--I play a plumber. My motto is: We plumb the depths. She takes a shine to him.
It's a fairly horrendous story. I mean, it's all there in Doyle, but when you read: "Lady Diane shoots Milverton in the chest six times and then crushes him in the face with her heel"--that's alright, you can read it. But when you actually manifest it....
How do you do something like that?
Very carefully. Very bloody carefully.
That brings me to this question: When you're doing a part, how much of a say-so do you get in the script? Do you actually do any of the writing, not just in "Holmes," but in other characters as well?
I tell you where I come in. First of all, Granada Studios, which are located in the northwest of England, Manchester, in 1983 they kicked me off with only a week's rehearsal. And I said, "I can't make this. If you want me to last, you have to take care of me. I need two." And bless their hearts, they organized that I got two.
So, the first week is me with the adaptation down, the producer and the director, and we just--I brought Doyle--we go through it. I bring it back to Doyle, but they've done the adaptation and the spacing before.
Then, the second week, the cast comes in and we rehearse so that we got at it with a little rehearsal. Also, it gives the researchers, costume designers all that time.
That's a pure luxury and that's what I'm in--that first week. I try not to be too impertinent before that because I am only employed as an actor, and actors in England have to know their place.
WGBH has scheduled only five parts of the "Casebook" series for "Mystery!" this fall. Do you know what their plans are for "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax," which isn't scheduled?
Six parts. There are five now, but they're holding one back for the pledge. They're holding back "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax." The writer, Trevor Bowen, and [director] John Madden, who's a lively lad, went off and they decided they'd do their own Doyle, so it's the least Doylian. We finished all those films December 12 last year. We start shooting again in January and I'm doing six next year. I think one is "Sussex Vampire" and another is "Red Circle." And those will be out probably the end of next year.
Talking Heroes & Villains With TV's Sherlock Holmes
Last issue, Jeremy Brett talked about coming to terms with his television alter ego, Sherlock Holmes. In this concluding half of his ANGLOFILE interview with Chris Liaguno, conducted last fall in Atlanta, Brett discusses some of his other work and his likes and dislikes when it comes to acting...
Any non-Holmes projects that you've done recently or have in the works like the film with Harrison Ford? Could you tell us about that?
Yes, it's a Patrick Page. I'm playing an Irishman. I told them not to give it to me till I get on the plane to go back to London from Chicago, because I've got quite enough on my plate already. I'm sure it will be lovely and I'm grateful it is...so glad. Then, I've written a play.
Tell us about that.
It's a two-hander. It's nothing to do with Holmes and Watson at all. It's about someone who's a psychiatrist, who lives in Iceland, and a man comes to him who is very distrubed. At the end of the play, the man who was mentally disturbed walks away completely perfect, and the psychiatrist has a breakdown...that's basically the story.
Is that coming out any time soon?
Well, no. I've got to think it through. The first draft is done. It's just a bit long.
Do you find at all that Holmes has typecast you, or are you still offered a variety of roles?
I've just been offered Hector in "Heartbreak House" by George Bernard Shaw, starting rehearsals next week in London. I've just been offered, starting this week, "HenceForward," which is an Alan Aykborn play. I don't really mind actually [the Holmes typecasting]. I must be very gratful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because we are in the deepest recession in England, and only five percent of my profession are at work. I'm one of them at work, so I'm not knocking it.
Is the Alan Aykborn a comedy?
Yes, but it's a roboty one. I don't like it. I've also been asked to run a preview on the stage, which I did for "Masterpiece Theater," but my darling, Penelope Keith, doesn't want to come into London because she's had a rough time with the critics. So, I'm not doing that. I've got to start work in January. I might just have a chance to go skiing and that's about it.
You mentioned some of the roles you liked earlier. Do you have any specific ones you would like to play in the future?
Well, I've played Prospero in "The Tempest" in Canada in 1982. I played him without a beard, and angry, and nutbrown. After all, he is a Bermudian, and it's quite hot in Bermuda. And I had a Miranda and my two sides of Prospero's spirit--Ariel and Calaban--are played by the same actor. And I like to do that. I've been asked by the National to pick what I want to do.
Do you ever want to play the villain at any point?
No, I'm playing one now. The villain is not for me. I mean, Holmes is a lovely man, I'm sure, on Tuesdays [laughs]. Villains are very, very boring to do. They're so much easier than heroes. I've just been watching, again because it's the only thing I can get, "Robin Hood--Prince of Thieves." I think the greatest star in American at the moment is Kevin Costner. I think "Dances With Wolves" is probably the greatest film I've ever seen--one of them. It's about a love inside of America that I adore. About courage and strength and pioneer's clarity. And he's brilliant as Robin Hood, and I'm afraid Alan Rickman, who plays the Sheriff, is appalling. I said to him, "Now, I know you're playing a villain, love, I know you're trying to register, I know you're trying to get a better part for the next one, but if you're overacting, it's disgraceful."
Americans love him [Rickman]. When he underplayed in "Die Hard," nobody noticed him. A lot of people were saying the villain overshadowed Kevin Costner in "Robin Hood."
I think he's a disgrace. He's a very good actor, too, and that makes it worse. He was brilliant onstage in "Liaisons Dangereuses." Why he's done this--it must be desperation or something. But Kevin, he is my new hero. My old hero, of course, is Robert DeNiro.
So DeNiro is your ideal?
Oh, I wish I could find a part [in a film with DeNiro]. I thought maybe I could catch a ball in "Awakenings." But I don't fit into "The Deerhunter." I don't fit into "Raging Bull." I would give my eye teeth to work for him, with him, whatever. Oh, I think he's wonderful. What invention, what courage.
What sort of hobbies do you have outside of acting?
Archery. Riding. That's why I was so impressed with Kevin [Costner]. He bothered to learn. He really took his time; he really learned it.
Anything else?
Piano. [long pause]. My incense.
Your incense?
My smoking [chuckles].
Ah, a smoking meditation.
Yes, I meditate and do yoga. I sit cross-legged and try not to levitate too much. Most of the time, I'm off the ground in any case, so I try to get grounded [laughs]. Holmes took yoga from time to time. I was into meditation with the Maharishi, but it was Holmes who took yoga. There are lots of good things about him. I must be careful what I say.
About Holmes?
Yes. He's an upholder of the law. He's also a law unto himself. In other words, he releases people and Scotland Yard says "How could you do that?" He also loves children because I've wondered where his love is channeled. Because no one can be that [unemotional]. But I think there is an intimation from the Baker Street Irregulars, the street urchins, and I think he pays them...you see, I'm into fantasy again.
But it seems as if it really helps in your portrayal.
Yes. So whenever I can, I have the Irregulars around. I think Holmes loves children.
Is that what you admire the most about him?
I think it is his power of deduction which is--you see, children have it until the age of 8, and then they lose it because they're told not to look out the window and to concentrate on their Latin. Holmes has been endowed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the antennae of a child. Also, something else--feminine intuition, which I didn't realize until I played him for awhile. He makes these little leaps. You know how a woman can get an answer that a man has to work his way towards, get all the facts?
Did you grow into that?
I got that while I was playing [Holmes] over the last nine years. I think he's also probably a role model demanding to be wished, in one or two respects. One is the fact that to be self-sufficient is really quite strong, and he is. I mean he only asks Watson in to help pay the rent. He doesn't really need Watson. I mean, Doyle needs Watson because he needs another person there to tell the story.
You don't think Holmes needs Watson?
Not really. I don't think Doyle meant him to. I do, but I don't think Doyle meant him to. I think he's meant to be a marble statue. And I used to say that I would try to put a crack in the marble, just so I have a place as an actor to go in.
You mentioned what you like about Holmes. What do you dislike? The fact that he seems so solitary, so isolated?
Well, what I don't like is the fact that he's so bloody difficult to play [laughs]. That's what I don't like; the rest is fine. I think that I've made a mistake in being born in this time when we're shooting in color. I think Basil [Rathbone] had it better off in black and white. I think it's more dramatic, for one. Also, makeup-wise, because it takes a lot to put my makeup on. I have eyes that are rather large which I can't make up and with a white makeup, my eyes look red and my lips inside are red, so I look quite ill. If that was in black and white, it wouldn't show.
How would you like to see the Holmes character develop?
Well, I'm nervous now, because in the last film, I'm beginning... I hope not, but I felt when we had finished, I said to them, "Gosh, let's be careful. I'm beginning to peep through."
You mean the real you?
Because in "Milverton," I get my first kiss [cheers]. And it's like Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler [laughs]. It's set up like that. He's walking, trying to get into this house, taking disguise, he's Ralph, and she says, "Kiss me," and he says, "I don't know how," which, of course, Holmes doesn't. The next scene, she jumps on him from a tree, knocks him over, and falls on top of him. That's when they come closer and closer and closer. And there's this great smacking, wonderful kiss. And I'll give you two guesses what Holmes does.
Faints?
Bursts into floods of tears.
So how long will we have to wait for that one?
I guess it will be coming out in England as a Christmas special, and I guess it will be here next Christmas or something like that. But I better be careful. I mean, it was such fun, because I'm 55 and I look like an old crocodile and I went to rehearsal--I took my toothbrush [laughs]. And I used to go back to the bar for the evening and we all sit around and bitch and say, "Ah, this recession is terrible." And I say, "Isn't it ghastly? I've been working so hard today. I've been kissed five times by a 22-year-old girl." And they went, "I beg your pardon. What?" [laughs]. I said, "I've been kissed by a 22-year-old girl and I'm getting paid for it!" It was wonderful [laughs].
Do you have anyone special in your life now?
Yes, I do. I have a wonderful girlfriend and three beautiful children-- Caleb, Rebekah and David. And they're all incredible. [Pulls out photos to show.]
Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I've got this card with me--now don't ask me why I've got it because I can't tell you. When I was in the National Theatre in Britain, for four years, I played in "Love's Labour's Lost" by William Shakespeare which [Laurence Olivier] directed. And this was his first night note to me.
That was actually a note that he gave you?
That's right. It was laminated by some little Johnny in England when I was in Dallas because this was being passed around. I'm really grateful, except I'll never touch it again [laughs]. It says: "Darling (Jeremy) These are the do's and don'ts of acting: Do's: Think. Keep your neck back. Think. Be frank. Think. Perceive. Think. Listen. Think. Be in love with Joan. (That's his wife, who was in the play.) Blaze. (That means to be on fire. So easy to do) [chuckles].
"The Don'ts: (Don't be) Ingratiating. Soft. Adorable. Glamorous. Earnest. Polite. Decorated. Gablesome."
[turns card over].
"Love wishes. Love gratitude. Love admiration. Love from Larry."
Isn't that a lovely thing to have?
Jeremy Brett Interview-November 6, 1991
Jeremy Brett Interview, November 6, 1991
Interviewer: Kevin P. Murphy
April 17, 2006:
For the past 20+ years, I have worked as a freelance writer in addition to whatever "day job" happened to make competing claims on my time and attention. I spent much of that time writing about live theater in the greater metropolitan Chicago region and, occasionally, beyond that. Throughout all that time, my wife, Joann, was employed by the Chicago Public School system, first as a classroom teacher, later as her high school's service learning coordinator/coach, and finally, as lead teacher/principal of a new small school that she established within that high school.
To Joann, taking time off from her work was something that was justified, perhaps, by three events: death in the family, jury duty, or major illness. Only once, as I recall, did she make an exception, and that was the day we commonly refer to as "Joann's 'Hooky' Day"--the day I was to interview English actor, Jeremy Brett, regarding his then-young Sherlock Holmes television series on PBS.
I did interview Jeremy Brett that day, and was delighted that I was the sole interviewer during the 30+ minute duration of that interview (with Joann "riding shotgun," of course).
The interview took place at the WTTW studios, 23 N. Michigan (IIliniois Center Building, 18th Floor), Chicago, Illinois. Later, I wrote a condensed version of the interview and sold it to The Times of Northwest Indiana. That article, titled, "Solving the mystery of Sherlock," appeared in The TImes on Friday, November 22, 1991, and may be viewed at the Times URL, http://nwitimes.com/articles/1991/11/22/export79205.txt.
Life went on, while many more interviews and reviews joined the Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes article in my portfolio. In time, I forgot about the fact that the Times article had represented but a few minutes of the more-than-thirty that we spent being charmed by our ideal Sherlock that day. Then, recently--perhaps three weeks ago--something reawoke the memory of that interview and I discovered that there are a lot of web sites devoted to Jeremy Brett, and, especially, to his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. Reading some of the material on those sites, I wanted very much to share the interview with other Brett devotees, and Sherlock fans.
Like most things we undertake, there are always the unexpected glitches to be overcome. I first had to find the full text of that interview, conducted 15 years earlier. Thanks to a packrat tendency to preserve such things, and the power of Macintosh's "Spotlight" search tool, I found that old file. However, it was a file that had been written, originally, in Wordstar, or some other, equally archaic, word processing software. After all, in those days, I was still using CP/M-driven computers, and the wonders of Lotus, AmiPro 3, WordPerfect, and (shudder!) MS Word, were still in the future. So the 11-page (single-spaced) document was filled with partial words, because translation into later word processors over the years had dropped end characters and, occasionally, small words from the document.
Surprisingly, examination of the text proved that the assertions about people being able to read jumbled and fragmented text are essentially correct, but it was a labor-intensive, word-by-word process and, frustratingly, some phrases were not comprehensible. Then, I thought, "Wait a minute--what if I still have the original recording of that interview?" Another intensive search revealed that I had kept it--in my library of "Ancient--Frequently Useless-Recordings."
The full text of that interview is contained below. Please note that it is laid out as follows: the letter, "J," in front of text indicates that it is Jeremy Brett's response; the letter, "K," indicates a question or comment by "Kevin" (that's me, folks). Three other people appear, briefly, in the interview. Diane Srebro, represented Jeremy Brett's host, Public Television Station WTTW, and her full name is used in front of her comments. Rob Brown, a Times photographer, whom I had arranged to have photograph Jeremy, to support the article that I planned to write for The Times, is represented by the letter, "R." My wife, Joann, was the third person. To avoid confusion, I use, "Joann," instead of merely her first initial.
Please note, too, that in one or two places I could not clarify what Jeremy said, despite seemingly endless (in one instance) replaying of the segment. In such cases, I've indicated parenthetically that it wasn't possible to clarify that part.
If you'd like to know what that experience was like, fifteen years ago, I can only say now that I believe that both Joann and I were probably "high" for a couple of weeks afterward--and, of course, every time we view an episode of Sherlock Holmes, we again mourn his passing so prematurely, while delighting in the memory of our brief contact with Jeremy Brett.
The November 6, 1991, Jeremy Brett interview begins here, when the tape recorder was first activated:
K That's something you wouldn't object to . . .
J No I certainly would not. He's (Sherlock Holmes) a great hero of mine, and he's kept my family in sandwiches for about the last nine years.
K Which is not bad, either.
J Not bad.
K We were glad that we were able to arrange an interview with you . . .
J Well it's a very exciting time, because I haven't been in Chicago for a while, but I love it so much. I've acted here twice before, [to Joann] once before you were born, I'm sure.
Joann: No.
J I was playing Troilus, in "Troilus and Cressida."
K Which theatre group were you with?
J It was the Old Vic, and it was at the Shubert. Rosemary Harris was my Cressida, and Coral Browne, Vincent Price's late wife, was Helen of Troy, and John Neville was Thersites, and we played here in 1957--and I remembered it vividly because it was summer and I was honored by being given a yachting thing, at the Chicago Yacht Club for the time I was here--and I was [whooshing sound] in the day time and I loved it! And, then, I came back as recently as 1980, and this great critic of yours, this lady . . .
K Hedi Weiss?
Diane Srebro: Cassidy.
K Claudia.
J Claudia--gave me a rave review for my "Dracula," and so we had a thrilling stay here that time. That, again, was at the Shubert. That was winter, and I stepped out of the Ambassador and went down to see my beloved Lake Michigan [My father, Joseph Murphy, emigrated from England to the United States as an adult--I always got a kick out of his pronunciation of "Michigan," which sounded like "Mitch-igan"--Jeremy pronounced it that way, also--kpm]--I mean, yours, too, but also mine, and the chill caught me, and I was dressed as badly as I am now.
K Oh my.
J I ran for my life! My nose was cold! My ears were cold! I hadn't realized just how cold it could be!
K It can be murderous.
J Yes.
K We had a group come through here a couple of years ago that was duplicating La Salle's trek through the region, and they got to this part of the area and the winter was so uncharacteristically cold that it almost put an end to La Salle.
J Really?
K Yeah. Had it been like that when he'd gone through, perhaps he would not have made it. So they were almost devastated by it, and they were much more familiar with the region.
J I think that's what makes Chicago so unbelievably special, is that lake. It's like what the sea does to Rio. I think that conjunction of water and industry and city is very, very, exciting.
K Oh, yeah--Nicholas Pennell was doing a program at the Court Theatre last year, "Brief Lives," and I had interviewed him, and he was talking about Chicago, compared to some of the other world class cities.
J He's a very nice lad.
K His interest in it was the neighborhoods, the existence of neighborhoods still.
J He moved. He was so good in "Forsyte Saga," and then he moved to Canada. And when I went to Canada in '76, I went with a little actress called Maggie Smith, and she was my Millamant when I played Mirribel in "The Way of the World." And on the other side of the company, there was Nick, and he was doing some absolutely beautiful work and had really become almost Canadian! The last time I saw him was when he came to England with Miss Smith, and they were doing "Virginia Wolff," and he was playing opposite her in that--in London.
K We love him.
J Nice man. Do give him my best when you speak to him. He's a nice man, Kevin. I hope I get a chance to talk to him again. Joann, he's been at Stratford for many a year now.
K Uh-huh.
J Yes. Bought a house. That's rooting, isn't it?
K We made a special trip up there just to see him in a--oh gosh, what's the guy's name--like the hair-dresser--Sassoon--[World War I English poet, Siegfried Sassoon] play about Sassoon. We drove up just to see it, and drove back the next morning.
J [To just-arriving Times photographer, Rob Brown.] Come in, come in! Hi, good morning!
R How are you?
J Very well, thank you.
K The Times?
R Rob Brown.
K Rob! It's been a while!
R No mustache.
K Yes, that's the difference.
J Dropped ten years. Took the 'tache off [Laughing.]
K We'll get started, and do whatever you wish to do.
J [To Rob Brown] I'll tell you what--get in as close as you can, and crawl across the table, but take me while I'm chatting. I always think they're better don't you?
R Yeah.
K Rob does some excellent work, too. He did that front piece section . . .
J I'll show you, just to intimidate you, my favorite one so far. [Displays a photograph.] I think that one's quite fun.
K [Laughs.]
R That is good! It's really good.
J Just to give you a standard.
K Rob did Nick Pennell and Nick Rudall together when they were preparing for "Brief Lives" for a cover on one of The Times sections, and it was one of the best--for me--I looked at it and thought, "That's the way I think of these guys." He had captured them perfectly.
R That's good to know. Thank you. One thing, Kevin, would you be comfortable sitting right here?
K Sure.
R That would give me . . .
J A chance to get in?
K Let me move these [My cassette recorders]. [To Jeremy.] I don't write well at all, and I can't read what I write.
J I prefer these, but also I prefer them because I'm inclined, when someone's writing, to slow down for them, and then I lose my train of thought. I like these.
K Good--I'm glad. One of the things that I wanted to deal with rather quickly was the fact that I don't trust press kits. For instance, the press kit that was given out prior to your arrival said that James Mason played Holmes. I know he played Watson.
J Exactly.
K In Murder by Decree.
J That was with Chris Plummer.
K Yeah, right, Plummer was Holmes. Sometimes they [Referring to the afore-mentioned press kit] almost hit the target but don't, and one of the things that they said about you and I found I couldn't accept it--they quote an unidentified critic as saying that you had captured Holmes' coldness perfectly, and as we watch--Joann and I--we don't see the coldness. We see barely suppressed, deep emotion that is controlled by tight intellect. But, as we see it, there is a depth of emotion there that just is barely constrained . . .
J But, you must understand that I have upset the applecart completely! Really, seriously, because--I mean, over the last nine years I've upset the applecart--because my studios, God bless them, they're wonderful--Granada Studios--have allowed me--with me begging, of course--to do Doyle-- to do his stories. Also, to follow the Paget drawings which accompany the stories, for the look of him. And many Sherlockians whom I've met--there is a breed of mature people called "Sherlockian"--have their image, which is nothing to do with Doyle. Sherlockians believe that Watson wrote the stories, and that Doyle was the literary agent, but we know otherwise. But that's what they believe. So, I can be in a room in London, in Oslo, or Japan--we're now showing to 84 countries, and into the room will come Sherlockians--all dressed wrongly! He only wore the deerstalker in the country. He never smoked a calabash. That was brought in by William Gillette at the turn of the century. I think I know why. Because it's the one pipe that you can keep alight, and if you're acting on stage, you don't want your pipe to be going out all the time. He [Sherlock Holmes] smoked a long thin cherrywood in his disputatious moods, and the little clay pipe in his meditative moods. It's there at the beginning of "The Copper Beeches." So, when I started to do Doyle, I upset quite a few of the people who were the aficionados, because they were wearing the cliche. So, I get all sorts of different impressions, which I find fascinating! As far as playing it is concerned, of course I'm completely miscast, which is probably just as well, because it's much more challenging to play a part that you're not really suited for. I had to hide a lot of me, because I'm a heroic actor. You know, I was Olivier's young leading man at his National Theatre for four years. I played parts like King Arthur, Henry V, Macbeth. Those are very heroic. So, suddenly to be put into this constriction was different. And I'm afraid I peek through, and I try not to, and for me to play the cold, calculating person who is totally self-sufficient--which is exactly what Doyle wants--is difficult for me, because I love company.
K Hmmm.
J I really enjoy--[Reference to Rob and the camera] look at this lad, this great eye looking at me----I really enjoy company! And, so, I need a Watson [Laughing heartily] I mean, I need Watson-as a man-me--especially as it's played by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke. And that's the reason why, of course, the whole thing was set up, which is to put literature straight.
K Um-hmm.
J For Doyle, in regard to Watson.
K Yeah, thank God.
J That he wasn't the fool.
K Nigel Bruce.
J I'll not mention any names.
K I liked Nigel Bruce as an actor, but I think they constrained him quite a bit, too. He was capable of doing more . . .
J Oh, yes.
K ...than what they had him do.
J But because he was Nigel, and I guess--it's interesting. I don't know. You see, Basil Rathbone is my Holmes, and always will be, because he's the one I saw.
K Uh-hmm, we grew up with him.
J That's right. But when one starts to take literature seriously and, for Doyle's sake, I'm thrilled, because his daughter is still alive. Dame Jean Conan Doyle is still very much alive and living in London. And, so, for the first time in a hundred years--unbelievably-- Doyle's stories are being done. And I can't think why they've never been done before.
K I don't know, but I think we find it's much more credible to us--I don't believe in the "human machine," first of all. We [Joann and I] come out of the behavioral sciences. That's our background. I don't believe in the human machine. I think you can play that game, you can try, but people are not calculators with voices and, so, what you're showing, I think, is much more believable, in that I suspect that's where Holmes was.
J But, I'll tell you what I had to do, because I've had a long talk with a very great, famous actor in England, called Robert Stephens--with an e--and he had just given a brilliant Falstaff at Stratford-upon-Avon, and we were talking last June about it. And he played Sherlock Holmes in the Billy Wilder film, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," with Colin Blakely playing Watson, and he said, "You must remember, Holmes is hollow. And it's all brilliant trim, so you have to fill it, give him an inner life." And, of course, that's what an actor does. I'm what I call a "becomer." I'm one of those actors. You know, I squeeze myself out and draw in the moisture of the person I'm playing and--um--quite safe--[unclear phrase] on the sponge and that's the way you squeeze the moisture out of the sponge, just to hold the moisture of the character. But, with Holmes, one has to invent an inner life, because Doyle's given him this veneer. I call him a statue--like marble. And, truthfully, of course, he's better read. That's the truth. Doyle's stories are better read, and to be foolish enough to try and lift him and visualize him, then you come up against all sorts of problems. But, what I think is strange is that no one has ever trusted Doyle before my studios, Granada Studios--and we're doing the stories, and that's why they're selling to 84 countries...
K Um-hm.
J ...because they're doing Doyle!
K It's not surprising. I think we destroyed the Tarzan series and made it rather ridiculous, whereas the story, itself, was a rather interesting story.
J It's a wonderful story isn't it?
K Yeah, but it has never come across on the screen. Frankenstein, the same thing...
J That's right.
K ...has never come across----What effect has Sherlock had on your career?
J Made it! I think the place for romantic heroes was getting smaller and smaller. I mean, I can't see myself, really, in "The Terminator."
K [Laughs in agreement.]
Joann: That's good!
J Maybe I could just sort of creep in and move a little close to Al Pacino in "Goodfellows," but I'd have to wear a lot of makeup. Umm, no, I think that romantic heroes are sort of in low demand. The world needed heroes--in spite of what Tina Turner says.
K Um-hm, um-hm.
J And, um, well, what I didn't realize was "You-know-who: S.H." is a great hero to the children. That, I've learned over the last nine years, largely from the play I did. I commissioned a play called, "The Secret of you-know-who," for his 100th birthday.
K This is the one you're hoping to bring to the States yet.
J I don't think I've got time now, because I'm going to complete the canon. That will take until 1995. Then, I think I'll just pass the torch on to Daniel Day Lewis, I think. Let him get on with it, because I'll be over the hill by then. Umm, it's the fact that I used to say to the house manager that there are so many empty seats. He'd say, "Mr. Brett, just look again. The lights are on, now. Look again." And, of course [motioning to show eyes just barely peeking over the back of the seats]--children! Little faces! Absolutely unbelievable! They adored him, and I think I know why. I think it's to do--this has all happened over the last year--this particular idea has only recently come to me--through a little boy, called Michael McClure II, age 8, of St. Louis, about four weeks ago. And he gave me a picture of Holmes killing a dragon. And I said, "Michael...," and he said, "Oh, he kills my dragons. I don't have nightmares anymore!
K Oh, my!
J Wow! Good news! Then, there are the children who recognize that Doyle has endowed his hero with all the antennae and sensibilities of a child--that's what his deduction and intuition is all about! Children lose it at the age of 8, I think, when they're told not to look out of the window, get on with their books, and it closes in. Whereas Doyle endowed "you-know-who" with all that. That's why the kids absolutely love him. He's also a great upholder of the law. So, when Mom and Dad are fighting, they say "I'll get S.H.," and they've got a little strength there. So, he is a hero to the children. Three-year-old Solomon is there in Dallas--a little aficionado--has all my films, and knows every word! I couldn't believe it! Solomon!
K My mother's first foray into literature was through Sherlock Holmes. Despite parental censorship, she was able to get into it.
Joann: Through the priest.
K It had a profound impact on her.
J [Whispered, incredulously.] Really!
K So, it goes back a long way, too.
J I think Doyle has been taking care of children--of all ages--for a long time.
K Do you have the opportunity, now, having become so involved in the Holmes series, to do much of other kinds of theatre work?
J Yes, they're wonderful, and act like my angels, as I call them--the "money"--that's a theatrical term. "St. Peter"--Peter A. Steen--who is the head of Mobil, has been simply marvelous to me. I took a year off this year, and I did six films last year, which, I think you are seeing now in November--five, and the one next year for the Pledge--and I thought I'd better stop. I'd better see if I have got any hobbies left. Can I play the piano? Can I still ride a horse? Can I do my archery? The answer is, "Yes." And I discovered that by March [laughing], so it wasn't quite a year, but I rang up Peter and said, "If I said I was prepared to complete the canon, what would you say?" and he said, "You would have our blessing. It's our most successful series," he said, "but one thing"--and this is what's amazing--he said, "You must have breaks so you can go and do other things." [Overcome with emotion.] Stunning! So I will be going off--the last play that I did was, of course, "The Secret (of you-know-who)." The one before that was in '85, when I did "Aren't We All?" on Broadway with two brilliant little juveniles called Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert, and little Lynn-y Redgrave. Claudette said a thing which I love her so much for. She said "I've given Rex top billing, but it's me they come to see!" [Laughs heartily.] And she's right! She's right. Go down to the stage door, and they've got photographs of her as Cleopatra still showing--with Clark Gable.
K One of the P.R releases that I read quite some time ago--probably an article, actually, somewhere, indicated that not only have you been in My Fair Lady, as Freddie, but also that singing was something that you are very much involved in.
J Well, it's very sad, really, because I really wanted to be a singer more than anything else. I mean, I really wanted to be an opera singer. And I had the most--I know because I've heard it on record--the most marvelous soprano voice. So, when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, I was singing things like "Ye Are Now Sorrowful," from the Brahms "Requiem." I was in every major cathedral in England. And "with histrionic tendencies. . ."
K [Chuckles.]
J ...I was accused of. I would act out these wonderful arias. And, then, the voice broke, and I went to Rome to make a film of "War and Peace," and I was there nine months, and I met a Professor [unclear name], a wonderful singing teacher, and she said, "You have a wonderful tenor voice. Now, are you going to take this seriously--which means, really, you should stop acting. You really have got to dedicate your life to this." And I made some noises in her room which nearly excited me as much as my soprano voice, but the trouble was that my soprano voice was completely and utterly natural. It was like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. My tenor voice was work. And I sustained it for a while and, of course, the cream on top of the coffee was "My Fair Lady." But what is so sad about our profession is the fact that if you sing, you are not taken seriously as an actor. And I know Michael Crawford is not going to have that problem, because he came to singing late. But I'm talking of the beginning, and I had this real dilemma, and the last thing I sang was Danilo, in "The Merry Widow." And, then, I stopped, because I realized I was being thought of as a singing actor, and that's a different genre, apart. So, I stopped. It was a sadness--but, now, not really. I'd rather listen, oddly enough. Singing is extremely exacting, and I'm bowled over by, especially, the tenors, because it's not a natural placing of the voice. And your little cords work very, very, hard, indeed. You can't be in a draft. You very seldom---you can't speak for three days before you sing. It is a complete dedication. And when I see Pavarotti, or I see Placido, when I see Jose Carreras, it is a miracle of sound. And I don't miss that. I'd rather listen.
K And perform. It mentioned that you wanted to start your own theatre in London.
J No, not now. I tell you, it's all changed. I've done that. I did that in Canada. I went to Canada and I did a production of "The Tempest," in 1982. I produced it, directed it, and played Prospero. I hobbled away afterwards. I was exhausted. I also did it with Robin Phillips, the great Robin Phillips, who is still in Canada. We did a year of--company theatre, it was called--in Greenwich. Again, I tottered away. And I think my services would be most appreciated by possibly the new young Olivier, Kenneth Brannagh, and I may, at a given moment, go and offer my services and say "Can I sweep the stage?" or "Is there anything I can do for you?" I think I should join a company, not create one, and make my contribution that way as a--whatever--a talking head, whatever. "Pick my brains. Do you want to know anything about Lawrence Olivier, my mentor? Is there anything that he said that might help you?" One thing, of course, Olivier said, "Every actor should have a full orchestra at his beck and call, vocally, and the body of a god." And he had both and he was 57 at the time. So people could sort of bounce off me. I think to actually go, "Here I am, this is the new company," is misleading. I've got to go and do something with the National [Word unclear]. They keep asking me, too. And I will, but it's just a question of when.
K I hope sometime you get an opportunity to do something with the Court, which is our local--I think--is our local classy theatre.
J Well, you've got a springboard in this town of immense talent. I mean, Broadway is practically furnished by Chicago.
K The region that--I do theater reviews primarily, not TV--and I cover community theater, and I'm amazed at the talent that we have. These are so-called amateurs, and they are anything but.
J This is your "competence center" of the United States of America, theatrically.
K Oh, yeah, I wouldn't argue with that.
J I think this is where it happens. It's amazing. If you go through the cast lists of plays on Broadway, they're nearly all from one of your theaters here.
K Um-hm. Yeah, we do furnish quite a few these days.
J That's right.
K Was the series success a surprise initially to you? And to Granada? Were you surprised by it?
J [Pause.] Stunned! [He chuckles.] I mean, the thing was that none of us wanted to do it--least of all me. I thought, well, first of all, detection is not really my cup of tea. Um--I prefer history and pictures like our glorious Jane Seymour. No. And my son David said "Dad"--we went to this dinner when I was asked--and he said, "You don't really want to do it, do you?" And I said, "No, I don't. I think it's an old chestnut. It's been done." Anyway, it was taken away, because it was cancelled. So, I was thrilled, and I shoved off to Canada and did "The Tempest," and while I was doing Browning, in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," with beloved Jane Lapotaire, as my Elizabeth Barrett--wonderful actress--I think you may have seen her play Edith Piaf on Broadway.
K I missed the production.
J She was a wonderful marvelous actress. And they came back to me. And in the time, my host in Barbados, Senator Dean--after I had done "The Tempest"--I was thinking of committing it to film, and I was looking for a location--and he had the canon. It had been given to him by his nephew. So, I read the stories, one a night. And, so, when they came back, I found all sorts of things that had not been done, so I thought, "Yes, I'd like to have a go." It was only six films--with an option for a further seven. Well, we finished the first six. They were sold at the Cannes Film Festival to 35 countries, straight off. So, we did the next seven. That took us to the end of '84. And, suddenly, people began to want to be in them. Guest stars wanted--queued up--to come in--lighting cameramen wanted to light it. The studio suddenly began to move toward it. Umm--I didn't have to fight quite so hard for Doyle, because every time I went to rehearsal, I'd put down the canon and say, "I love your adaptation. Bless you. Lovely, very nice, but don't you think that this is better?" Well, that went on. They used to dread my doing this!
K [Chuckles.]
J So, the first week of rehearsal was Doyle, getting back to Doyle. Then, the second week was practicing, and then, five weeks filming. Slowly, slowly, slowly, it began to dawn on all of us that Doyle was being heard. You see, in London, in1982, when I came back and tried to buy The Strand Magazine, I couldn't find one. I couldn't find Doyle's complete works. I did, eventually find one in Foyles, in London, and it was an American edition, which had been sent over and not been collected, and that's how I got one. Now, Doyle is everywhere. Everywhere! So, that's pleasing to Dame Jean, particularly, because she's the last of her line . . .
K That's sad.
J . . . and longs for Daddy to be in his proper place.
K We have the American version. It's quite old now, but I'm glad we were able to get it . . .
J It's in a red cover.
K It's--yeah, I think so.
J It is. That's the one I've got.
K It's quite thick
J That's right.
K An excellent book. We enjoyed it very much. "Charles Augustus Milverton"--is that the sixth one that is going to be...?
J No. That's the one I just completed. That is an incredible story! When you read something that says, "Lady Diane empties six shots into Milverton's chest, and rams the heel of her shoe into his mouth and screws it to the ground..." that's fine, but when you do it, it's not pretty. [Laughs.] And I had a wonderful leading lady in this last film. Dame Gwen Ffrangcon Davies. She's 101, which is intriguing, because Doyle, of course, would have seen her, because he died in 1930, and she was, of course, born in 1890, and we were filming, and she said, "That lady is improperly dressed." And I said, "What do you mean, Dame Gwen?" And she said, "Well, I know, because I was there. She would have on a hessian petticoat--very starched petticoat--and she would lift her dress as she walked across the gravel." Can't knock that, can't question that. She was there. So, that was thrilling. Lovely, lovely, lovely, lady.
K When will we have the opportunity to see that?
J That will be Christmas for us in England, and I think Christmas for you, next year.
K Uh-huh.
J I'm going back to do a pick-up shot on Monday and I think the composer moves in--the brilliant Patrick Gowers--the following day, and I think, December 17, there's a press showing in London and then, I think, it's coming out on January 2nd.
K What kind of schedule are you on now, on this tour of the United States? Are you on a whirlwind tour, or do you get a chance to breathe?
J Yes. I've had this holiday. This is all a gift from Mobil's "St. Peter." They said--I've just finished the movie--it's a two-hour special--"Would you like to see the world?" And I said, "Yes." They said, "Well, if you'll trust us, we'll get it all set up." And I said, "You must remember, I just finished filming and really need a 'hol'--(holiday)." And they said, "Fine." So, I flew to New York. I think it was about September 28th. And I had a week there. I had days off, so I could go to the galleries, or I could go to hear some opera. I even could tiptoe into a theatre. Then, I had a week in Los Angeles, in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I could swim between interviews. So, I mean, I would, for example, swim three lengths, come out and meet someone. So, I got fit. And I had three days off there. Then, I went to Atlanta--no I didn't--I went to Dallas, which I fell in love with--absolutely fell in love with Dallas! I was in the city-within-the-city, called Loews Anatole Hotel. It was built for Reagan, in 1984. And I was in the tower, which is immensely high and very metaphysical--that's the only way I can put it--and, then, I went to Missouri-[Jeremy sings a snippet of "Across the Wide Missouri"] and I flew in, and I heard from this wonderful old man what I must do when I come back, and that is, take the "Mississippi Delta Queen" from St. Louis down to New Orleans. It's a very slow--[Makes a noise like a paddle-wheel boat] "bum-bum-bum bum"--boat, and it takes seven days, so I have to come back and do that. Then, of course, I went to Atlanta, which was on fire with excitement with the Olympics--and the Braves, while I was there. And, so, I wore my tomahawk, in spite of Jane Fonda . . .
K [Laughs.]
J And, then, I nipped up to Detroit and I put one foot in Canada, and beamed a smile on C.B.C. right across to Newfoundland and right off to Vancouver. So, that was nice. And one of my greatest fans is J.P., aged 6, of Resolute Bay, Alaska.
K Oh, gosh!
J And he wrote me this letter saying, "Please do more Sherlock Holmes. Makes my Daddy happy." So, I was able to say that I was going to . . . and I was able to wave to him.
K Excellent.
J Then, I went from there to Philadelphia, which is wonderful, because I love Philadelphia. Been there before. Washington, of course. Been there before. Love Washington! Seat of power--all those helicopters, going "whung-whung," all going off for their weekend holidays.
K [Laughs.]
J That was thrilling. Then it was Boston. A little snobbish for me, Boston, but all right. But WGBH is very important to me, because that's my wife's station. My late wife created "Mystery Theatre," "Classic Theatre," "Piccadilly Circus," and sustained "Masterpiece Theatre" for the last 17 years of her life.
K Was she the original producer of . . .?
J Yes.
K Oh, God!
J Joan Wilson.
K Yes.
J And she died. Really, this is in memoriam to her, this whole trip, really--and her children. [Pauses.] Yes, it has been a while to see that point of view. I've been able to talk about her, and make sure that she is remembered.
K You mentioned your son, David, among the children . . .
J David is . . . from my first marriage.
K Are any of the children theatrically inclined?
J No, none of them. David is now a painter, and a good one, an artist.
K In the arts.
J In the arts. Caleb is a lawyer. And a good one. And an extremely interesting person. He's just travelled the world, slowly, over three years, and he's really a very remarkable man. And my Rebecca--and she is--"the dimpled one," I call her. She has one dimple caused by a tooth brush when she was young. And she is remarkable! She has three glorious children, who I was with last week. The newest is called Christine. She's this big [holds hands about a foot apart]--with a mane of hair--born with a mane of hair! Incredible! They're lovely. So all that's been marvelous. This has been like a holiday.
K How long will you be in Chicago?
J I have to fly home, sadly, on Thursday night, because I've got to get myself turned around, to film by Monday. I was hoping I might be able to pinch one more day, but I must get back, because I can sleep it off--the jet-lag--and make quite sure I'm not too hollow-eyed.
Diane Srebro: Kevin, I hate to interrupt, but I've got somebody else.
K Time? O.K., let's wrap it up. Are there things that we haven't discussed that we should have, before we wrap it up here? Anything that we didn't get from you that we should, in terms of questions asked?
J Yes, there's just one, and that is Edward Hardwicke sends much love, but he's doing a play.
K: That ties in with our conclusion: On behalf of Joann and me, and all of us who appreciate the series, we wanted to thank you both, because your characterizations--and the meshing of those characters--for us, are of a level of perfection that we delight in--we truly delight in. So, please, convey that to him.
J Right.
K Okay.
[Kevin shook Jeremy's hand, and Jeremy blew a parting kiss at Joann.]
###
Interviewer: Kevin P. Murphy
April 17, 2006:
For the past 20+ years, I have worked as a freelance writer in addition to whatever "day job" happened to make competing claims on my time and attention. I spent much of that time writing about live theater in the greater metropolitan Chicago region and, occasionally, beyond that. Throughout all that time, my wife, Joann, was employed by the Chicago Public School system, first as a classroom teacher, later as her high school's service learning coordinator/coach, and finally, as lead teacher/principal of a new small school that she established within that high school.
To Joann, taking time off from her work was something that was justified, perhaps, by three events: death in the family, jury duty, or major illness. Only once, as I recall, did she make an exception, and that was the day we commonly refer to as "Joann's 'Hooky' Day"--the day I was to interview English actor, Jeremy Brett, regarding his then-young Sherlock Holmes television series on PBS.
I did interview Jeremy Brett that day, and was delighted that I was the sole interviewer during the 30+ minute duration of that interview (with Joann "riding shotgun," of course).
The interview took place at the WTTW studios, 23 N. Michigan (IIliniois Center Building, 18th Floor), Chicago, Illinois. Later, I wrote a condensed version of the interview and sold it to The Times of Northwest Indiana. That article, titled, "Solving the mystery of Sherlock," appeared in The TImes on Friday, November 22, 1991, and may be viewed at the Times URL, http://nwitimes.com/articles/1991/11/22/export79205.txt.
Life went on, while many more interviews and reviews joined the Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes article in my portfolio. In time, I forgot about the fact that the Times article had represented but a few minutes of the more-than-thirty that we spent being charmed by our ideal Sherlock that day. Then, recently--perhaps three weeks ago--something reawoke the memory of that interview and I discovered that there are a lot of web sites devoted to Jeremy Brett, and, especially, to his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. Reading some of the material on those sites, I wanted very much to share the interview with other Brett devotees, and Sherlock fans.
Like most things we undertake, there are always the unexpected glitches to be overcome. I first had to find the full text of that interview, conducted 15 years earlier. Thanks to a packrat tendency to preserve such things, and the power of Macintosh's "Spotlight" search tool, I found that old file. However, it was a file that had been written, originally, in Wordstar, or some other, equally archaic, word processing software. After all, in those days, I was still using CP/M-driven computers, and the wonders of Lotus, AmiPro 3, WordPerfect, and (shudder!) MS Word, were still in the future. So the 11-page (single-spaced) document was filled with partial words, because translation into later word processors over the years had dropped end characters and, occasionally, small words from the document.
Surprisingly, examination of the text proved that the assertions about people being able to read jumbled and fragmented text are essentially correct, but it was a labor-intensive, word-by-word process and, frustratingly, some phrases were not comprehensible. Then, I thought, "Wait a minute--what if I still have the original recording of that interview?" Another intensive search revealed that I had kept it--in my library of "Ancient--Frequently Useless-Recordings."
The full text of that interview is contained below. Please note that it is laid out as follows: the letter, "J," in front of text indicates that it is Jeremy Brett's response; the letter, "K," indicates a question or comment by "Kevin" (that's me, folks). Three other people appear, briefly, in the interview. Diane Srebro, represented Jeremy Brett's host, Public Television Station WTTW, and her full name is used in front of her comments. Rob Brown, a Times photographer, whom I had arranged to have photograph Jeremy, to support the article that I planned to write for The Times, is represented by the letter, "R." My wife, Joann, was the third person. To avoid confusion, I use, "Joann," instead of merely her first initial.
Please note, too, that in one or two places I could not clarify what Jeremy said, despite seemingly endless (in one instance) replaying of the segment. In such cases, I've indicated parenthetically that it wasn't possible to clarify that part.
If you'd like to know what that experience was like, fifteen years ago, I can only say now that I believe that both Joann and I were probably "high" for a couple of weeks afterward--and, of course, every time we view an episode of Sherlock Holmes, we again mourn his passing so prematurely, while delighting in the memory of our brief contact with Jeremy Brett.
The November 6, 1991, Jeremy Brett interview begins here, when the tape recorder was first activated:
K That's something you wouldn't object to . . .
J No I certainly would not. He's (Sherlock Holmes) a great hero of mine, and he's kept my family in sandwiches for about the last nine years.
K Which is not bad, either.
J Not bad.
K We were glad that we were able to arrange an interview with you . . .
J Well it's a very exciting time, because I haven't been in Chicago for a while, but I love it so much. I've acted here twice before, [to Joann] once before you were born, I'm sure.
Joann: No.
J I was playing Troilus, in "Troilus and Cressida."
K Which theatre group were you with?
J It was the Old Vic, and it was at the Shubert. Rosemary Harris was my Cressida, and Coral Browne, Vincent Price's late wife, was Helen of Troy, and John Neville was Thersites, and we played here in 1957--and I remembered it vividly because it was summer and I was honored by being given a yachting thing, at the Chicago Yacht Club for the time I was here--and I was [whooshing sound] in the day time and I loved it! And, then, I came back as recently as 1980, and this great critic of yours, this lady . . .
K Hedi Weiss?
Diane Srebro: Cassidy.
K Claudia.
J Claudia--gave me a rave review for my "Dracula," and so we had a thrilling stay here that time. That, again, was at the Shubert. That was winter, and I stepped out of the Ambassador and went down to see my beloved Lake Michigan [My father, Joseph Murphy, emigrated from England to the United States as an adult--I always got a kick out of his pronunciation of "Michigan," which sounded like "Mitch-igan"--Jeremy pronounced it that way, also--kpm]--I mean, yours, too, but also mine, and the chill caught me, and I was dressed as badly as I am now.
K Oh my.
J I ran for my life! My nose was cold! My ears were cold! I hadn't realized just how cold it could be!
K It can be murderous.
J Yes.
K We had a group come through here a couple of years ago that was duplicating La Salle's trek through the region, and they got to this part of the area and the winter was so uncharacteristically cold that it almost put an end to La Salle.
J Really?
K Yeah. Had it been like that when he'd gone through, perhaps he would not have made it. So they were almost devastated by it, and they were much more familiar with the region.
J I think that's what makes Chicago so unbelievably special, is that lake. It's like what the sea does to Rio. I think that conjunction of water and industry and city is very, very, exciting.
K Oh, yeah--Nicholas Pennell was doing a program at the Court Theatre last year, "Brief Lives," and I had interviewed him, and he was talking about Chicago, compared to some of the other world class cities.
J He's a very nice lad.
K His interest in it was the neighborhoods, the existence of neighborhoods still.
J He moved. He was so good in "Forsyte Saga," and then he moved to Canada. And when I went to Canada in '76, I went with a little actress called Maggie Smith, and she was my Millamant when I played Mirribel in "The Way of the World." And on the other side of the company, there was Nick, and he was doing some absolutely beautiful work and had really become almost Canadian! The last time I saw him was when he came to England with Miss Smith, and they were doing "Virginia Wolff," and he was playing opposite her in that--in London.
K We love him.
J Nice man. Do give him my best when you speak to him. He's a nice man, Kevin. I hope I get a chance to talk to him again. Joann, he's been at Stratford for many a year now.
K Uh-huh.
J Yes. Bought a house. That's rooting, isn't it?
K We made a special trip up there just to see him in a--oh gosh, what's the guy's name--like the hair-dresser--Sassoon--[World War I English poet, Siegfried Sassoon] play about Sassoon. We drove up just to see it, and drove back the next morning.
J [To just-arriving Times photographer, Rob Brown.] Come in, come in! Hi, good morning!
R How are you?
J Very well, thank you.
K The Times?
R Rob Brown.
K Rob! It's been a while!
R No mustache.
K Yes, that's the difference.
J Dropped ten years. Took the 'tache off [Laughing.]
K We'll get started, and do whatever you wish to do.
J [To Rob Brown] I'll tell you what--get in as close as you can, and crawl across the table, but take me while I'm chatting. I always think they're better don't you?
R Yeah.
K Rob does some excellent work, too. He did that front piece section . . .
J I'll show you, just to intimidate you, my favorite one so far. [Displays a photograph.] I think that one's quite fun.
K [Laughs.]
R That is good! It's really good.
J Just to give you a standard.
K Rob did Nick Pennell and Nick Rudall together when they were preparing for "Brief Lives" for a cover on one of The Times sections, and it was one of the best--for me--I looked at it and thought, "That's the way I think of these guys." He had captured them perfectly.
R That's good to know. Thank you. One thing, Kevin, would you be comfortable sitting right here?
K Sure.
R That would give me . . .
J A chance to get in?
K Let me move these [My cassette recorders]. [To Jeremy.] I don't write well at all, and I can't read what I write.
J I prefer these, but also I prefer them because I'm inclined, when someone's writing, to slow down for them, and then I lose my train of thought. I like these.
K Good--I'm glad. One of the things that I wanted to deal with rather quickly was the fact that I don't trust press kits. For instance, the press kit that was given out prior to your arrival said that James Mason played Holmes. I know he played Watson.
J Exactly.
K In Murder by Decree.
J That was with Chris Plummer.
K Yeah, right, Plummer was Holmes. Sometimes they [Referring to the afore-mentioned press kit] almost hit the target but don't, and one of the things that they said about you and I found I couldn't accept it--they quote an unidentified critic as saying that you had captured Holmes' coldness perfectly, and as we watch--Joann and I--we don't see the coldness. We see barely suppressed, deep emotion that is controlled by tight intellect. But, as we see it, there is a depth of emotion there that just is barely constrained . . .
J But, you must understand that I have upset the applecart completely! Really, seriously, because--I mean, over the last nine years I've upset the applecart--because my studios, God bless them, they're wonderful--Granada Studios--have allowed me--with me begging, of course--to do Doyle-- to do his stories. Also, to follow the Paget drawings which accompany the stories, for the look of him. And many Sherlockians whom I've met--there is a breed of mature people called "Sherlockian"--have their image, which is nothing to do with Doyle. Sherlockians believe that Watson wrote the stories, and that Doyle was the literary agent, but we know otherwise. But that's what they believe. So, I can be in a room in London, in Oslo, or Japan--we're now showing to 84 countries, and into the room will come Sherlockians--all dressed wrongly! He only wore the deerstalker in the country. He never smoked a calabash. That was brought in by William Gillette at the turn of the century. I think I know why. Because it's the one pipe that you can keep alight, and if you're acting on stage, you don't want your pipe to be going out all the time. He [Sherlock Holmes] smoked a long thin cherrywood in his disputatious moods, and the little clay pipe in his meditative moods. It's there at the beginning of "The Copper Beeches." So, when I started to do Doyle, I upset quite a few of the people who were the aficionados, because they were wearing the cliche. So, I get all sorts of different impressions, which I find fascinating! As far as playing it is concerned, of course I'm completely miscast, which is probably just as well, because it's much more challenging to play a part that you're not really suited for. I had to hide a lot of me, because I'm a heroic actor. You know, I was Olivier's young leading man at his National Theatre for four years. I played parts like King Arthur, Henry V, Macbeth. Those are very heroic. So, suddenly to be put into this constriction was different. And I'm afraid I peek through, and I try not to, and for me to play the cold, calculating person who is totally self-sufficient--which is exactly what Doyle wants--is difficult for me, because I love company.
K Hmmm.
J I really enjoy--[Reference to Rob and the camera] look at this lad, this great eye looking at me----I really enjoy company! And, so, I need a Watson [Laughing heartily] I mean, I need Watson-as a man-me--especially as it's played by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke. And that's the reason why, of course, the whole thing was set up, which is to put literature straight.
K Um-hmm.
J For Doyle, in regard to Watson.
K Yeah, thank God.
J That he wasn't the fool.
K Nigel Bruce.
J I'll not mention any names.
K I liked Nigel Bruce as an actor, but I think they constrained him quite a bit, too. He was capable of doing more . . .
J Oh, yes.
K ...than what they had him do.
J But because he was Nigel, and I guess--it's interesting. I don't know. You see, Basil Rathbone is my Holmes, and always will be, because he's the one I saw.
K Uh-hmm, we grew up with him.
J That's right. But when one starts to take literature seriously and, for Doyle's sake, I'm thrilled, because his daughter is still alive. Dame Jean Conan Doyle is still very much alive and living in London. And, so, for the first time in a hundred years--unbelievably-- Doyle's stories are being done. And I can't think why they've never been done before.
K I don't know, but I think we find it's much more credible to us--I don't believe in the "human machine," first of all. We [Joann and I] come out of the behavioral sciences. That's our background. I don't believe in the human machine. I think you can play that game, you can try, but people are not calculators with voices and, so, what you're showing, I think, is much more believable, in that I suspect that's where Holmes was.
J But, I'll tell you what I had to do, because I've had a long talk with a very great, famous actor in England, called Robert Stephens--with an e--and he had just given a brilliant Falstaff at Stratford-upon-Avon, and we were talking last June about it. And he played Sherlock Holmes in the Billy Wilder film, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes," with Colin Blakely playing Watson, and he said, "You must remember, Holmes is hollow. And it's all brilliant trim, so you have to fill it, give him an inner life." And, of course, that's what an actor does. I'm what I call a "becomer." I'm one of those actors. You know, I squeeze myself out and draw in the moisture of the person I'm playing and--um--quite safe--[unclear phrase] on the sponge and that's the way you squeeze the moisture out of the sponge, just to hold the moisture of the character. But, with Holmes, one has to invent an inner life, because Doyle's given him this veneer. I call him a statue--like marble. And, truthfully, of course, he's better read. That's the truth. Doyle's stories are better read, and to be foolish enough to try and lift him and visualize him, then you come up against all sorts of problems. But, what I think is strange is that no one has ever trusted Doyle before my studios, Granada Studios--and we're doing the stories, and that's why they're selling to 84 countries...
K Um-hm.
J ...because they're doing Doyle!
K It's not surprising. I think we destroyed the Tarzan series and made it rather ridiculous, whereas the story, itself, was a rather interesting story.
J It's a wonderful story isn't it?
K Yeah, but it has never come across on the screen. Frankenstein, the same thing...
J That's right.
K ...has never come across----What effect has Sherlock had on your career?
J Made it! I think the place for romantic heroes was getting smaller and smaller. I mean, I can't see myself, really, in "The Terminator."
K [Laughs in agreement.]
Joann: That's good!
J Maybe I could just sort of creep in and move a little close to Al Pacino in "Goodfellows," but I'd have to wear a lot of makeup. Umm, no, I think that romantic heroes are sort of in low demand. The world needed heroes--in spite of what Tina Turner says.
K Um-hm, um-hm.
J And, um, well, what I didn't realize was "You-know-who: S.H." is a great hero to the children. That, I've learned over the last nine years, largely from the play I did. I commissioned a play called, "The Secret of you-know-who," for his 100th birthday.
K This is the one you're hoping to bring to the States yet.
J I don't think I've got time now, because I'm going to complete the canon. That will take until 1995. Then, I think I'll just pass the torch on to Daniel Day Lewis, I think. Let him get on with it, because I'll be over the hill by then. Umm, it's the fact that I used to say to the house manager that there are so many empty seats. He'd say, "Mr. Brett, just look again. The lights are on, now. Look again." And, of course [motioning to show eyes just barely peeking over the back of the seats]--children! Little faces! Absolutely unbelievable! They adored him, and I think I know why. I think it's to do--this has all happened over the last year--this particular idea has only recently come to me--through a little boy, called Michael McClure II, age 8, of St. Louis, about four weeks ago. And he gave me a picture of Holmes killing a dragon. And I said, "Michael...," and he said, "Oh, he kills my dragons. I don't have nightmares anymore!
K Oh, my!
J Wow! Good news! Then, there are the children who recognize that Doyle has endowed his hero with all the antennae and sensibilities of a child--that's what his deduction and intuition is all about! Children lose it at the age of 8, I think, when they're told not to look out of the window, get on with their books, and it closes in. Whereas Doyle endowed "you-know-who" with all that. That's why the kids absolutely love him. He's also a great upholder of the law. So, when Mom and Dad are fighting, they say "I'll get S.H.," and they've got a little strength there. So, he is a hero to the children. Three-year-old Solomon is there in Dallas--a little aficionado--has all my films, and knows every word! I couldn't believe it! Solomon!
K My mother's first foray into literature was through Sherlock Holmes. Despite parental censorship, she was able to get into it.
Joann: Through the priest.
K It had a profound impact on her.
J [Whispered, incredulously.] Really!
K So, it goes back a long way, too.
J I think Doyle has been taking care of children--of all ages--for a long time.
K Do you have the opportunity, now, having become so involved in the Holmes series, to do much of other kinds of theatre work?
J Yes, they're wonderful, and act like my angels, as I call them--the "money"--that's a theatrical term. "St. Peter"--Peter A. Steen--who is the head of Mobil, has been simply marvelous to me. I took a year off this year, and I did six films last year, which, I think you are seeing now in November--five, and the one next year for the Pledge--and I thought I'd better stop. I'd better see if I have got any hobbies left. Can I play the piano? Can I still ride a horse? Can I do my archery? The answer is, "Yes." And I discovered that by March [laughing], so it wasn't quite a year, but I rang up Peter and said, "If I said I was prepared to complete the canon, what would you say?" and he said, "You would have our blessing. It's our most successful series," he said, "but one thing"--and this is what's amazing--he said, "You must have breaks so you can go and do other things." [Overcome with emotion.] Stunning! So I will be going off--the last play that I did was, of course, "The Secret (of you-know-who)." The one before that was in '85, when I did "Aren't We All?" on Broadway with two brilliant little juveniles called Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert, and little Lynn-y Redgrave. Claudette said a thing which I love her so much for. She said "I've given Rex top billing, but it's me they come to see!" [Laughs heartily.] And she's right! She's right. Go down to the stage door, and they've got photographs of her as Cleopatra still showing--with Clark Gable.
K One of the P.R releases that I read quite some time ago--probably an article, actually, somewhere, indicated that not only have you been in My Fair Lady, as Freddie, but also that singing was something that you are very much involved in.
J Well, it's very sad, really, because I really wanted to be a singer more than anything else. I mean, I really wanted to be an opera singer. And I had the most--I know because I've heard it on record--the most marvelous soprano voice. So, when I was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, I was singing things like "Ye Are Now Sorrowful," from the Brahms "Requiem." I was in every major cathedral in England. And "with histrionic tendencies. . ."
K [Chuckles.]
J ...I was accused of. I would act out these wonderful arias. And, then, the voice broke, and I went to Rome to make a film of "War and Peace," and I was there nine months, and I met a Professor [unclear name], a wonderful singing teacher, and she said, "You have a wonderful tenor voice. Now, are you going to take this seriously--which means, really, you should stop acting. You really have got to dedicate your life to this." And I made some noises in her room which nearly excited me as much as my soprano voice, but the trouble was that my soprano voice was completely and utterly natural. It was like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. My tenor voice was work. And I sustained it for a while and, of course, the cream on top of the coffee was "My Fair Lady." But what is so sad about our profession is the fact that if you sing, you are not taken seriously as an actor. And I know Michael Crawford is not going to have that problem, because he came to singing late. But I'm talking of the beginning, and I had this real dilemma, and the last thing I sang was Danilo, in "The Merry Widow." And, then, I stopped, because I realized I was being thought of as a singing actor, and that's a different genre, apart. So, I stopped. It was a sadness--but, now, not really. I'd rather listen, oddly enough. Singing is extremely exacting, and I'm bowled over by, especially, the tenors, because it's not a natural placing of the voice. And your little cords work very, very, hard, indeed. You can't be in a draft. You very seldom---you can't speak for three days before you sing. It is a complete dedication. And when I see Pavarotti, or I see Placido, when I see Jose Carreras, it is a miracle of sound. And I don't miss that. I'd rather listen.
K And perform. It mentioned that you wanted to start your own theatre in London.
J No, not now. I tell you, it's all changed. I've done that. I did that in Canada. I went to Canada and I did a production of "The Tempest," in 1982. I produced it, directed it, and played Prospero. I hobbled away afterwards. I was exhausted. I also did it with Robin Phillips, the great Robin Phillips, who is still in Canada. We did a year of--company theatre, it was called--in Greenwich. Again, I tottered away. And I think my services would be most appreciated by possibly the new young Olivier, Kenneth Brannagh, and I may, at a given moment, go and offer my services and say "Can I sweep the stage?" or "Is there anything I can do for you?" I think I should join a company, not create one, and make my contribution that way as a--whatever--a talking head, whatever. "Pick my brains. Do you want to know anything about Lawrence Olivier, my mentor? Is there anything that he said that might help you?" One thing, of course, Olivier said, "Every actor should have a full orchestra at his beck and call, vocally, and the body of a god." And he had both and he was 57 at the time. So people could sort of bounce off me. I think to actually go, "Here I am, this is the new company," is misleading. I've got to go and do something with the National [Word unclear]. They keep asking me, too. And I will, but it's just a question of when.
K I hope sometime you get an opportunity to do something with the Court, which is our local--I think--is our local classy theatre.
J Well, you've got a springboard in this town of immense talent. I mean, Broadway is practically furnished by Chicago.
K The region that--I do theater reviews primarily, not TV--and I cover community theater, and I'm amazed at the talent that we have. These are so-called amateurs, and they are anything but.
J This is your "competence center" of the United States of America, theatrically.
K Oh, yeah, I wouldn't argue with that.
J I think this is where it happens. It's amazing. If you go through the cast lists of plays on Broadway, they're nearly all from one of your theaters here.
K Um-hm. Yeah, we do furnish quite a few these days.
J That's right.
K Was the series success a surprise initially to you? And to Granada? Were you surprised by it?
J [Pause.] Stunned! [He chuckles.] I mean, the thing was that none of us wanted to do it--least of all me. I thought, well, first of all, detection is not really my cup of tea. Um--I prefer history and pictures like our glorious Jane Seymour. No. And my son David said "Dad"--we went to this dinner when I was asked--and he said, "You don't really want to do it, do you?" And I said, "No, I don't. I think it's an old chestnut. It's been done." Anyway, it was taken away, because it was cancelled. So, I was thrilled, and I shoved off to Canada and did "The Tempest," and while I was doing Browning, in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," with beloved Jane Lapotaire, as my Elizabeth Barrett--wonderful actress--I think you may have seen her play Edith Piaf on Broadway.
K I missed the production.
J She was a wonderful marvelous actress. And they came back to me. And in the time, my host in Barbados, Senator Dean--after I had done "The Tempest"--I was thinking of committing it to film, and I was looking for a location--and he had the canon. It had been given to him by his nephew. So, I read the stories, one a night. And, so, when they came back, I found all sorts of things that had not been done, so I thought, "Yes, I'd like to have a go." It was only six films--with an option for a further seven. Well, we finished the first six. They were sold at the Cannes Film Festival to 35 countries, straight off. So, we did the next seven. That took us to the end of '84. And, suddenly, people began to want to be in them. Guest stars wanted--queued up--to come in--lighting cameramen wanted to light it. The studio suddenly began to move toward it. Umm--I didn't have to fight quite so hard for Doyle, because every time I went to rehearsal, I'd put down the canon and say, "I love your adaptation. Bless you. Lovely, very nice, but don't you think that this is better?" Well, that went on. They used to dread my doing this!
K [Chuckles.]
J So, the first week of rehearsal was Doyle, getting back to Doyle. Then, the second week was practicing, and then, five weeks filming. Slowly, slowly, slowly, it began to dawn on all of us that Doyle was being heard. You see, in London, in1982, when I came back and tried to buy The Strand Magazine, I couldn't find one. I couldn't find Doyle's complete works. I did, eventually find one in Foyles, in London, and it was an American edition, which had been sent over and not been collected, and that's how I got one. Now, Doyle is everywhere. Everywhere! So, that's pleasing to Dame Jean, particularly, because she's the last of her line . . .
K That's sad.
J . . . and longs for Daddy to be in his proper place.
K We have the American version. It's quite old now, but I'm glad we were able to get it . . .
J It's in a red cover.
K It's--yeah, I think so.
J It is. That's the one I've got.
K It's quite thick
J That's right.
K An excellent book. We enjoyed it very much. "Charles Augustus Milverton"--is that the sixth one that is going to be...?
J No. That's the one I just completed. That is an incredible story! When you read something that says, "Lady Diane empties six shots into Milverton's chest, and rams the heel of her shoe into his mouth and screws it to the ground..." that's fine, but when you do it, it's not pretty. [Laughs.] And I had a wonderful leading lady in this last film. Dame Gwen Ffrangcon Davies. She's 101, which is intriguing, because Doyle, of course, would have seen her, because he died in 1930, and she was, of course, born in 1890, and we were filming, and she said, "That lady is improperly dressed." And I said, "What do you mean, Dame Gwen?" And she said, "Well, I know, because I was there. She would have on a hessian petticoat--very starched petticoat--and she would lift her dress as she walked across the gravel." Can't knock that, can't question that. She was there. So, that was thrilling. Lovely, lovely, lovely, lady.
K When will we have the opportunity to see that?
J That will be Christmas for us in England, and I think Christmas for you, next year.
K Uh-huh.
J I'm going back to do a pick-up shot on Monday and I think the composer moves in--the brilliant Patrick Gowers--the following day, and I think, December 17, there's a press showing in London and then, I think, it's coming out on January 2nd.
K What kind of schedule are you on now, on this tour of the United States? Are you on a whirlwind tour, or do you get a chance to breathe?
J Yes. I've had this holiday. This is all a gift from Mobil's "St. Peter." They said--I've just finished the movie--it's a two-hour special--"Would you like to see the world?" And I said, "Yes." They said, "Well, if you'll trust us, we'll get it all set up." And I said, "You must remember, I just finished filming and really need a 'hol'--(holiday)." And they said, "Fine." So, I flew to New York. I think it was about September 28th. And I had a week there. I had days off, so I could go to the galleries, or I could go to hear some opera. I even could tiptoe into a theatre. Then, I had a week in Los Angeles, in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I could swim between interviews. So, I mean, I would, for example, swim three lengths, come out and meet someone. So, I got fit. And I had three days off there. Then, I went to Atlanta--no I didn't--I went to Dallas, which I fell in love with--absolutely fell in love with Dallas! I was in the city-within-the-city, called Loews Anatole Hotel. It was built for Reagan, in 1984. And I was in the tower, which is immensely high and very metaphysical--that's the only way I can put it--and, then, I went to Missouri-[Jeremy sings a snippet of "Across the Wide Missouri"] and I flew in, and I heard from this wonderful old man what I must do when I come back, and that is, take the "Mississippi Delta Queen" from St. Louis down to New Orleans. It's a very slow--[Makes a noise like a paddle-wheel boat] "bum-bum-bum bum"--boat, and it takes seven days, so I have to come back and do that. Then, of course, I went to Atlanta, which was on fire with excitement with the Olympics--and the Braves, while I was there. And, so, I wore my tomahawk, in spite of Jane Fonda . . .
K [Laughs.]
J And, then, I nipped up to Detroit and I put one foot in Canada, and beamed a smile on C.B.C. right across to Newfoundland and right off to Vancouver. So, that was nice. And one of my greatest fans is J.P., aged 6, of Resolute Bay, Alaska.
K Oh, gosh!
J And he wrote me this letter saying, "Please do more Sherlock Holmes. Makes my Daddy happy." So, I was able to say that I was going to . . . and I was able to wave to him.
K Excellent.
J Then, I went from there to Philadelphia, which is wonderful, because I love Philadelphia. Been there before. Washington, of course. Been there before. Love Washington! Seat of power--all those helicopters, going "whung-whung," all going off for their weekend holidays.
K [Laughs.]
J That was thrilling. Then it was Boston. A little snobbish for me, Boston, but all right. But WGBH is very important to me, because that's my wife's station. My late wife created "Mystery Theatre," "Classic Theatre," "Piccadilly Circus," and sustained "Masterpiece Theatre" for the last 17 years of her life.
K Was she the original producer of . . .?
J Yes.
K Oh, God!
J Joan Wilson.
K Yes.
J And she died. Really, this is in memoriam to her, this whole trip, really--and her children. [Pauses.] Yes, it has been a while to see that point of view. I've been able to talk about her, and make sure that she is remembered.
K You mentioned your son, David, among the children . . .
J David is . . . from my first marriage.
K Are any of the children theatrically inclined?
J No, none of them. David is now a painter, and a good one, an artist.
K In the arts.
J In the arts. Caleb is a lawyer. And a good one. And an extremely interesting person. He's just travelled the world, slowly, over three years, and he's really a very remarkable man. And my Rebecca--and she is--"the dimpled one," I call her. She has one dimple caused by a tooth brush when she was young. And she is remarkable! She has three glorious children, who I was with last week. The newest is called Christine. She's this big [holds hands about a foot apart]--with a mane of hair--born with a mane of hair! Incredible! They're lovely. So all that's been marvelous. This has been like a holiday.
K How long will you be in Chicago?
J I have to fly home, sadly, on Thursday night, because I've got to get myself turned around, to film by Monday. I was hoping I might be able to pinch one more day, but I must get back, because I can sleep it off--the jet-lag--and make quite sure I'm not too hollow-eyed.
Diane Srebro: Kevin, I hate to interrupt, but I've got somebody else.
K Time? O.K., let's wrap it up. Are there things that we haven't discussed that we should have, before we wrap it up here? Anything that we didn't get from you that we should, in terms of questions asked?
J Yes, there's just one, and that is Edward Hardwicke sends much love, but he's doing a play.
K: That ties in with our conclusion: On behalf of Joann and me, and all of us who appreciate the series, we wanted to thank you both, because your characterizations--and the meshing of those characters--for us, are of a level of perfection that we delight in--we truly delight in. So, please, convey that to him.
J Right.
K Okay.
[Kevin shook Jeremy's hand, and Jeremy blew a parting kiss at Joann.]
###
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