The Defiant Ones lobby card set image courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries

Producer-director Stanley Kramer and United Artists brought The Defiant Ones to movie theaters in 1958. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier play the shackled cons on the lam, with Theodore Bikel and Charles McGraw as their dogged pursuers.

Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones

Nedrick Young (a blacklisted writer/actor using the pseudonym “Nathan E. Douglas”) and Harold Jacob Smith wrote the screenplay for Tony Curtis’ Curtleigh Productions and Stanley Kramer’s Lomitas Productions. Stanley Kramer (On the Beach, Judgment at Nuremberg, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) produced and directed. Ernest Gold created the offbeat music score, all of which emanates from radios.  

Tony Curtis (Johnny “Joker” Jackson) and Sidney Poitier (Noah Cullen) head the small cast. Other players include Theodore Bikel (Sheriff Max Muller), Charles McGraw (Captain Frank Gibbons), Lon Chaney Jr. (Big Sam), King Donovan (Solly), Claude Akins (Mac), Lawrence Dobkin (Editor), Whit Bissell (Lou Gans), Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer (Angus), Kevin Coughlin (Billy), Cara Williams (The Woman), Harold Jacob Smith (Prison Truck Driver) and Nedrick Young (Prison Guard).

Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr. were reportedly the original choices for the convict roles. In his 1993 autobiography, Tony Curtis wrote that Marlon Brando had been Stanley Kramer’s first choice for the role of John Jackson, but was unavailable.  

The Defiant Ones Filmed in California

Budgeted at $1 million, The Defiant Ones was filmed from February to April 1958, primarily at Malibu Creek State Park in Calabasas, California. The memorable freight train sequence at movie’s end was shot on the Southern Pacific Railroad between Piru and Fillmore in Ventura County.

The Defiant Ones proved to be a physically exhausting picture. One of the most difficult scenes to shoot was the famous clay pit scene, in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier try to free themselves. No stunt doubles were used; it was just Curtis and Poitier down there in the water and muck, trying to claw their way out.

Another tough scene was the water rapids sequence, in which the two convicts cross the river. Most of the work was performed by the actors themselves, but stuntman Bobby Hoy did double for Tony Curtis in some of the more physically demanding scenes.

The Defiant Ones: Escaped Convicts in Black and White  

The Defiant Ones opens in a driving rainstorm, with two prison guards transporting a truckload of convicts. After being sideswiped by another vehicle, the prison truck veers off the road and plunges into a culvert. Escaping from the overturned truck are two convicts, the white John “Joker” Jackson and the black Noah Cullen, who are chained together.

A massive manhunt is now underway, led by the laconic Sheriff Max Muller and the zealous Captain Frank Gibbons of the state police. Brought in to track the escaped cons is a local named Solly, who uses his beloved bloodhounds and muzzled Dobermans for the task.

The fleeing convicts are soon at each other’s throats, trading racist insults as they make their way through the dangerous countryside. In order to avoid detection by a passing wagon, the two are forced to dive into an open clay pit, eventually making their way to the top through grueling teamwork.

The two cons happen on a company town, where they break into the general store and waylay a man while trying to escape.  An angry mob quickly forms, with their leader, a man named Mac, proposing that they lynch the pair. But ex-con Big Sam is having none of it, as he knocks Mac unconscious and later sets Jackson and Cullen free.

Sheriff Muller and his posse eventually close in on the escaped cons. A freight train is approaching, and Joker and Cullen are running to catch it as the bloodhounds can be heard yelping in the distance.

The Defiant Ones Opens in New York City

The Defiant Ones opened at New York City’s Victoria Theater on September 24, 1958.

“A remarkably apt and dramatic visualization of a social idea – the idea of men of different races brought together to face misfortune in a bond of brotherhood – is achieved by producer Stanley Kramer in his new film, The Defiant Ones,” reported Bosley Crowther of The New York Times (9/25/58).

“One of the best motion pictures to hit the screen in many a year…” crowed Variety (8/6/58).

“A film that Stanley Kramer, the motion picture industry, and every American citizen can be proud of…” opined Arthur Knight in Saturday Review (7/26/58).

The Defiant Ones Academy Award Nominations, Trivia, DVD

• The Defiant Ones earned nine Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director,  Best Actor (Curtis, Poitier), Best Supporting Actor (Bikel), Best Supporting Actress (Cara Williams), Best Story and Screenplay (won), Best Film Editing (Frederic Knudtson), Best B/W Cinematography (Sam Leavitt, won).
• Sidney Poitier’s reaction after reading the script: “It was an explosive piece of work that left me in a state of sweaty-palmed excitement.”
• Tony Curtis insisted that Sidney Poitier receive co-star billing.
• The movie’s theme song: “Long Gone,” adapted from “Long Gone (From Bowlin’ Green),” with music by W.C. Handy and words by Chris Smith.
• Theodore Bikel excels as the southern sheriff with a conscience. His best line, spoken to Solly who worries constantly about his animals: “I sure hope you treat your grandmother the way you treat those dogs.”
• Sheriff Muller’s annual salary: $6,800.
• Sentences for the two cons: John Jackson, 5-10 years for armed robbery and attacking a guard; Noah Cullen, 10-20 years for assault and battery and attempted murder.
• Cara Williams’ offer to Tony Curtis to forget Cullen and run away with her: $400 in insurance money.
• Because of the racial climate at the time, The Defiant Ones did not do well in southern states.
• The Defiant Ones marked the last film appearance of Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer of Our Gang fame. On January 21, 1959, the 31-year-old Switzer was shot to death during a drunken dispute involving a $50 debt. The incident was ruled justifiable homicide. “You, douse that radio,” Charles McGraw barks at Switzer’s music-loving character.
• TV-movie remake: The Defiant Ones (1986), starring Robert Urich and Carl Weathers.
• On DVD: The Defiant Ones (MGM/UA, 2001).

“Cullen, we gave ‘em a hell of a run for it, didn’t we?” Tony Curtis tells Sidney Poitier.

Bowlin’ Green…sewin’ machine.

Directors and their producers want to see dynamic people, not sleepy heads or lethargic sorts when it comes to audition. If you’re going to come in moody and pouting because you have not had a fair deal along the road to success, that won’t help either. It is tough to stay positive but it pays to at least pretend to be so if you want to leave a good impression of your professionalism and talent.

It is always better to come in with a hard copy of your resume and a decent head-shot that does not hide parts of face or is obscure. The resume should be in an acceptable form and there are free templates on line the novice can use to fill out and hand in casting agencies. In Europe the system is quite similar to what is done for LA or other North American cities. As long as you list the name of the production, the role you played and the director or studios name you are alright as far as listing film credits in North America nut care should be made to separate the categories of credits into film and art milieus. In Europe listing clearly your information is also a plus but the studios name is not required. There they are lmore interested  to see what principal parts you ahd and which ones were supporting or just smaller acting roles.

Auditions may require you to do a cold read or to act out a part on or off camera. For the most part the director and perhaps an assistant will have you either sit in front of camera and have you say your name and perhaps your phone number or some other personal information like agent’s name in order to classify you on video. It cuts down on paper chasing and looking up contact numbers when their is a time shortage. The cold read requires no previous knowledge of the part you are about the play. A role play with another actor allows you to exchange lines with another actor so that the director can get an idea of the dynamics that could be developed further on set. It can also allow him to test for a range of emotions between two characters.

The cold read is not to be taken for granted just because you did not have to remember any lines. It gives the director a change to hear your intonation. If emotion has to be expressed along the way, he will see if the actor has to be coaxed along or not. Being spontaneous and able to intuit a change of character is a plus for the actor.

Once the actor is done, he should never ask when the director will get in touch with him. Usually the director will say something bland like he will call if the par has been granted but asking is a little bit to informal to do and the director may not have a clear answer because the casting may be extended.

A good actor will not criticize an audition process in front of the people he is going to work for even if it is going to be a freebie. This will ruin chances of being chosen again, unless of course conditions are so bad that it is not worthwhile for the actor to pursue working there.

There have been some complaints in Stratford recently about the staging of the RSC’s two Russian plays, “The Drunks”, and “The Grain Store”: complaints that the RSC should stage only Shakespeare, which, of course, is a load of nonsense. There’s been a tradition – going back to 1879 – of staging new works in Stratford, which is vital if new drama is ever going to get its head above the lonely foxhole of writing, and bring new theatre-goers – who otherwise may never sample the delights of the RSC – to give Shakespeare a go. Let’s never forget that Shakespeare was a new playwright once. Anyway, enough of that.

Last Thursday, 24th September, 2009, was press day for those plays, and I have to say I had a few misgivings about devoting some five hours of my life to two new plays. I needn’t have worried.

If we think of Russian literature (and we should) the names that spring to mind, inevitably, are Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Pasternack, Soljenitsin, and Sholokhov, who were all novelists. Now try and think of a few Russian playwrights? Er…the only ones that come to my mind – without too much thought and reference to Google, who isn’t a Russian playwright – are Chekhov, Pushkin and Gogol. And if you came up with the same names as me, you’ll now need to add three new names to that list – Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenkov ( two delightful brothers), and Natal’ia Vorozhbit, whose talents are extreme, and a direct literary and dramatic link to Tolstoy and the rest. In other words they’re very good.

The Drunks (translated by Nina Raine) is one of the funniest – and blackest – pieces of modern drama I’ve seen for a very long time, which, in the hands of director, Anthony Neilson, uses some of the best established RSC devices to keep the thing moving along at a cracking pace, not least the use of crates and boxes that become trains, catwalks, boardroom tables, prison cells, whatever. This device was reinvented for the RSC’s superb Nicholas Nickleby of the 1980s, and a good many productions after that.

The action of the The Drunks is not in any way original, but a tried and tested story of a soldier, Ilya – played with an extraordinary and impressive weariness by Jonjo O’Neill – returning after the war in Chechnya, although it felt to me much more as if Ilya was returning from Afghanistan in 1980s – to find his village in the hands of a rather ridiculous and seemingly always drunk mayor, played lurchingly, and rather disconcertingly, by the superb Brian Doherty, who is backed-up sublimely in the ridiculous and drunken stakes, by the impressive Darrell D’Silva’s totally mad military governor, who couldn’t organise a piss-up in the no doubt overworked local brewery. These two idiots decide, with the news of Ilya’s return, to turn the soldier into a local hero, with devastating results for all concerned.

And this lurching, reeling sensation, is at the core of this strange and funny play, because we realise pretty soon that it’s a metaphor for a reeling and lurching Russia, where institutionalised alcoholism is at last – quite literally – bringing modern Russia (as it did the USSR) to its knees, where wars, any wars, can no longer – coupled with the alcohol – divert the public’s attention from the ineptitude and rottenness of the state, and where the individual has even less hope of freedom – in whatever form that might come – than under Stalin’s iron fist of the 1930s and 1940s.

But why is it funny?

The humour is in the writing, but not so much in the actual dialogue as in the visual irony the Durnenko brothers set up, most notably at the start when a group of fellow train passengers persuade Ilya to take a drink of Vodka. When he does – having, surprisingly, stayed pretty much on the wagon during his military exploits – his fellow passengers remove their jackets to reveal CCCP tee-shirts and great him with…

SECOND PASSENGER: Back to the real world

PASSENGER: Back to reality.

It’s a chilling image and, oddly, very funny.

I then realised that we were laughing at the brilliant ensemble acting as much as the ironic situations, in the same way we laugh at  Carry-On films.

My only gripe is the over use of the “F” word, which is quickly becoming redundant in modern drama, and rather jars in this production.

But that to one side, these two young playwrights (who hugged and kissed each other at the end of the performance) are undoubtedly changing the concept of theatre in Russia, and probably here too.

The Grain Store is a very different kettle of fish altogether.

Written by Natal’ia Vorozhbit (translated by Sasha Dugdale), this epic of a play – set in 1929 – could only be Russian, and has the feel, colour and grit of Mikhail Sholokhov’s sprawling novel, And Quiet Flows The Don.

It also has the same mix of hope and hopelessness as a village community comes face to face with the realities of collectivisation as their land and religion is taken away from them; with their ability to feed themselves and their community replaced by a need to grow crops for export to pay for Stalin’s rapid industrialisation. It was a brutal, uncaring and murderous time.

And all these elements are beautifully caught in Vorozhbit’s writing, and Michael Boyd’s superb direction, with Sam Troughton’s portrayal of actor, Ivan Ivanovich (who leads a neo-realist acting company trying to re-educate the local populace), an absolute joy to watch. Every time he and his motley group were on stage the production lifted wonderfully, creating a chilling spectacle of how art can be used for bad as well as good.

Again, the RSC ensemble work in this show is precise and concentrated, with marvellous performances by Arsei Pechoritsa, Kelly Hunter, Geoffrey Freshwater, John Mackay and Forbes Masson.

But for me this play has one star, and that’s Kathryn Hunter, whose portrayal of the young boy, Gavrilo, was  truly exceptional, poignant, terrifying and, at time, very very funny.

My only problem with this play – which will become a classic – is that it is too long, far too long. And although it had  been cut during rehearsals, it needs to be cut again, by at least twenty minutes, which will make it even more powerful, and less ponderous toward the end.

Both plays are now starting a UK tour, and, I understand, will return to Stratford next year.

The legend of Richard III as a deeply evil, misshapen, ‘hunch-backed’ criminal is largely based on Shakespeare’s very vivid characterization. Richard is very much the central figure and his language is daring, dangerous and dramatic. In the figure of the devil-king, Shakespeare indicates the fate of a country which suffers from the misrule of weak monarchs and institutions: this of course was calculated to put him in good favour with the court, since of the many criticisms that could be leveled at Queen Elizabeth I, being weak or overly tolerant of dissidence or incompetence could never be one of them. Further, since religion at that period was an important and occasionally a burning issue, it was necessary for Shakespeare to show the possibility of redemption. This had a double purpose because, once Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 (the last time that an English monarch was killed on a field of battle), it enabled the Earl of Richmond to take the throne as Henry VII – the grandfather of course of Queen Elizabeth. Hence, the House of Tudor (established by Henry VII) could be portrayed on the stage as the saviour of England and as a force for good in a universe in which the potential for evil is always present.

Owing to the power of Richard III as a character and the power that he wields over others through the power of his intimidating personality backed by his willingness to use state violence to achieve his goals, the play has frequently been restaged as a study in totalitarianism in both rightist and leftist manifestations. However, readers will find much to amaze in studying the character of Richard III as presented in the play irrespective of any external freight of political meaning. He is in some ways similar to the Satan presented by John Milton in Paradise Lost in becoming such a compelling figure he is almost able to overthrow the bounds of morality.

Self-Education

Go to plays, read scripts and books about plays, and get involved in local theater production. It’s not necessary to go to theater school to become a director. For example, Eugenio Barbo, one of Europe’s most respected theater directors, is largely self-taught.

Even if you choose to attend a theater school such as Carnegie-Mellon, a good foundation in play production is essential. Most theater schools expect you to have some experience.

Attend as many plays as possible. If money is tight, attend matinees or look for discounts. Most theater groups offer student and senior discounts, or free admission for volunteers. Some professional groups sell tickets for dress rehearsals for a fraction of the regular price. Attending a professional dress rehearsal gives you the added bonus of seeing the play before opening night.

See how others do it. Watch theater productions with an eye on the technical details such as set, costume, lighting, style and direction. Every director is different, but you’ll notice similar techniques in different plays. For instance, the pyramid or triangle arrangement is a common directorial technique, but the variations are rich and plentiful.

Supplement your experience by taking other roles in theater production. Try acting, set design or backstage work. Understand the various aspects of stage production, and the roles other people play, to enhance your working knowledge of theater.

Read theater books and publications. One classic text for theater production is “The Magic Mask” by Marguerite R. Dow (MacMillan, 1966). Although “The Magic Mask” came out in the sixties, the information is timeless, and teachers of theater still use this book today.

Join performing arts organizations. For a nominal membership fee, you’ll have access to resources, information, funding opportunities, travel, training and workshops. Local costume shops and other businesses often offer discounts to members of arts organizations.

Get Involved

Join community theater, or volunteer with a local professional theater company. Community theater is always looking for participants. Directors are always looking for assistants. Some community theater directors act as mentors. A mentor will work with you to develop the skills you have, identify any problem areas, and give you the creative freedom to try new things on your own.

The best way to become a theater director is, basically, to direct a theater production. Direct your own play independently. Learning by doing is one of the best forms of experience. If theater direction is a passion and a career choice, build up your credentials. Register for a local Fringe Festival. Produce and direct a small production, gain valuable working experience, make contacts and pad your artistic resume.

Volunteer with a professional theater company and learn first-hand how things are done. Professional and amateur theater companies usually treat their volunteers well. You’ll see the show for free, meet people who work professionally in theater, gain experience in stagecraft, and enjoy other perks such as free meals during production set-up.

Go To School

Take workshops in stage direction and other aspects of theater. Enroll in night classes or a community college program.

Professional theater schools are an option. They often have high admission criteria. If you qualify, the best-known professional theater schools include:

*Carnegie-Mellon (Musical Theater) – Pittsburgh, PA

*Brown (Drama) – Providence, RI

*Vassar (Drama) – Poughkeepsie, NY

*NYU/Tisch CAP21 studio (Musical Theater) – New York, NY

*Julliard – New York, NY

Do your research. A theater school may have a lofty reputation, but it’s only as good as the current faculty teaching there.

Qualities of a Theater Director

Personality is most important. A theater director works with actors, stage manager, crew and publicity personnel, and may also answer to a producer. Creativity and independent vision is important, but a theater director needs good people skills. Theater is a vital, interactive form of art, and the director is part of a larger group energy. While crotchety but brilliant theater directors are legendary in the media, few beginning directors can afford to indulge in overblown egos and temperamental behavior.

Personality traits of a good theater director include flexibility, patience, the ability to listen, willingness to consider the opinions of others, and good problem-solving abilities. Developing a play from the script to the final stage production can take weeks or months of hard work, dedication, and focus. A good director must be willing to work long hours. The director’s attitude will influence and motivate others, so a positive attitude is a must.

Mistakes are inevitable. Learn from mistakes, and don’t let them get you down. Keep at it. If theater is your passion, you will soon bounce back, bigger, better and stronger than ever. In theater, the work is hard and can be emotionally draining. The rewards are worth it. Hold on to your dream.

It’s a few days before the battle of Worcester in 1651, and Oliver Cromwell and his army of 30,000 men are billeted in and around Stratford-upon-Avon.

Cromwell and his second-in-command, Major General Thomas Harrison, are staying at the Black Swan Inn (today’s Dirty Duck), where the final plans for the battle are to be discussed. They are also very hungry, tired, and very angry that this battle with Prince Charles (later Charles II) has to be fought. Will their anger and their emotions get the better of them?

Why not join Cromwell at Stratford’s famous actors pub for dinner and find out?

You will be intrigued by some of his fascinating family and comrades, and by someone who is not all he seems to be.

And you will be fed authentic (almost!) 17th century victuals, with intoxicating drink ( or non-alcoholic), that is almost of the period. All for £35 a head.

Starring former Hollywood actor, Garrick Huscared as Oliver Cromwell.

Sunday November 15th, 2009, at 7.30pm & Sunday November 22nd at 7.30pm

Tickets are now available from the Dirty Duck, Southern Lane, Stratford-upon-Avon – 01789 297312.

So come and enjoy an evening of high drama, intrigue, music, song, not a little laughter, and some of the finest food Stratford can offer.

With the RSC’s temporary, and splendid, Courtyard Theatre (built on the car park of The Other Place, which was itself the site of the temporary 1864 theatre), having proved itself a truly wonderful acting space, I was reminded of all the fuss that blew around the town when the idea was first mooted a few years ago, and of a letter in The Stratford Herald asking why the RSC couldn’t use an old warehouse space they already owned and had used twenty years earlier as a theatre. The answer is it was a dreadful place which has now, thankfully, been demolished and replaced with housing.

Although I have to say the old warehouse, back in the mid 1980s, did make for a rather different kind of acting space, and was considered rather daring and innovative at the time to have a play, Mary, After the Queen, which was about local people, acted out in the aforementioned rusty, echoing old brewery warehouse where the actors – including the formidable Peggy Mount – had to shout every line to make themselves heard above the incredible din made by at least a thousand starlings happily chatting to each other on the roof.

Verisimilitude it was not, and I have my doubts if the writer of that letter had actually seen a performance there. It was dire, it was dirty (with interval drinks available from a couple of vending machines), but it was a space that was seen as hugely significant by the then Guinness drinking (they’ve now moved back to white wine) intellectuals, and the play as something of a working-class protest (by very middle-class actors, writers, and directors) against Maggie Thatcher and her regime; and in the 1980s the RSC was on something of a mission to give Maggie something of a bashing.

It all started when Angela Hewins wrote her book, The Dillen, about George Hewins, her husband’s grandfather.

George was one of Stratford’s many characters who was considered by most who met him to be a foul-mouthed old devil. I only ever spoke to him once back in the 1960s. He was walking toward me, with the use of a zimmer frame, and as we passed he grabbed my left arm in a vice-like grip and growled:

” I say, what’s the time, old man?” ( I jest of course – he was much more succinct).

” Ten thirty,” I replied.

With that he spat on the pavement and told me to go forth and multiply (he used fewer words) and then went his merry little way.

Angela’s book is a superb piece of social history, and beautifully put together (although you won’t find George using any foul language), and it was inevitable that the RSC (then run by the fearless Trevor Nunn) would see The Dillen (with George portrayed as something of a working-class rebel) as ideal material with which to clobber the Big T.

The book was quickly turned into a play by Angela (and the RSC’s writer in residence at the time, Ron Hutchinson), with direction by Barry Kyle. It was produced in 1983 as a promenade piece that kicked-off at The Other Place, before marching around the town doing several scenes on several relevant street corners (again with Peggy Mount) before ending-up back at The Other Place. It was hugely successful, and perhaps for the first time many Stratford people were able to access their own theatre company, and feel part of the action on those street corners, including several newer versions of George Hewins who made their own very colourful, and very verbal contributions. It was all very 80s, and a bit ugghh!

Mary, After The Queen, Angela Hewins’s sequel to The Dillen was a book about the lives of George Hewins’s children, especially their working lives at the canning factory. The book was less of a success, but like its predecessor it was quickly turned into a play by the same team.

I remember, back in those dark days of the 1980s, it was a common RSC trick to have the actors mingle with the audience to try and get as much inter-action going as possible, with the Guinness drinking intellectuals loving it and trying to give clever replies, which fell dreadfully flat when the actors rightly ignored them. I used to hide behind my seat hoping no one would see me.

Anyway, that sort of stuff has never really been tried since, with a rather disgruntled Trevor Nunn resigning in1986 when Thatcher started putting the financial clamps on the RSC.

And poor old George was feted for a bit before he died in 1977, having his photo taken backstage at the theatre, and shaking hands with the mayor, and no doubt asking him the time.

But George too had had his theatrical day back in 1912 when he was one of Frank Benson’s supers for a season, earning between sixpence and a shilling for each performance, which was quite a lot for a builders labourer who only earned two shillings for a ten hour day. Apparently Benson liked George because he thought he looked a bit like Shakespeare and may easily have been a descendant of one of the Bard’s many bastard children.

And who’s to say he wasn’t?

Now though, I’m thinking acting is just about being a different version of youself, not a completely diffrerent person. That thought appeals to me greatly. Though, I understand that some role characters are so far from who you usually are that it cant really be called “you”, not without getting yourself into a personality crisis. Either way, acting isn’t about escaping from, but exploring yourself.

Taking it even further, I suppose theatre and movies doesn’t have to be called “an escape from reality” either. Every theatre and every movie, no matter how obtuse have roots in reality. So I’d say it’s about taking reality and making it larger, more multi-layered, more vivid. Exploring things and discussing things that you might otherwise never have thought of.

The River Avon is a deceiving and dangerous river. It’s not very deep, no more than five or six feet at its deepest, but the currents are fast, and treacherous. And looking at the river this morning I was reminded of a little known tragic incident way back in the summer of 1947.

June 1947 was hot and sunny, and the river clear and much deeper and faster flowing than usual, with an icy temperature that lingered as a result of some of the worst winter weather Britain had experienced in over 100 years. It was a combination that would claim the life of a young 18 year old actor by the name of Albert Forster.

Albert was a promising talent, and his first job in 1946, after leaving drama school, and his native Edinburgh, was with the prestigious Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He was a handsome young man who looked a bit like Gordon Jackson, and by all accounts sounded like him too. His potential was soon spotted by none other than Sir Barry Jackson (who had run the Birmingham Rep, and was now running the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) who asked the startled young actor to join his company in Stratford the following winter. Naturally Albert Forster accepted and made a very expensive long distance telephone call to his proud parents. The young Scotsman was not the only young hopeful to join Jackson’s company in 1947.

Joss Ackland had received a similar invitation from Jackson, but was not so thrilled at the idea of working in Stratford (he’d have preferred to stay in London where there was plenty of theatre and radio work, and the chance of the odd film role), but his agent said it was a good move, and would do his image a power of good, so he went.

Ackland remembered that the Memorial Theatre was like an island amidst the winter flood water that freezing February of 1947, and that the only way to get to rehearsals was by rowing boat, and for a non-swimmer like Ackland that was pretty scary. Albert Forster and Joss Ackland were in good company that season.

Donald Sinden and Paul Scofield were both 25 years old, and enjoying their first flush of stardom in Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Dr Faustus, and Measure for Measure. Albert knew he only had to look, and watch, and listen for some of the magic of Sinden and Scofield to rub off.

The season progressed and the little company of players grew ever closer to one another, with Albert Forster’s genuine talent soon becoming obvious to everyone. And all agreed, over the odd pint or four at the Dirty Duck, that they would do everything they could for each others careers in the future. It’s what actors, good and generous actors, do.

Eventually the floods subsided, and spring turned the Warwickshire countryside into a haven of green, with the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations one of the most colourful since the end of the war. Throughout the late spring and early summer thousands of visitors came to Stratford to enjoy the river, and eat an ice-cream in the shade of the old trees along the river’s edge. Even Joss Ackland was beginning to enjoy himself.

June the 5th was a particularly hot day, and the morning rehearsals for that evening’s performance of Measure for Measure had gone well, but were exhausting. What better way to cool off than go for a swim?

Albert Forster, unlike Joss Ackland, could swim, but not well, but nonetheless felt relaxed in the jovial company of his new friend, assistant stage manager, Ernest West, who was a strong swimmer. The two young men set off in a canoe for the so-called ‘safe’ bathing area of the river alongside the town’s camping ground slightly up river from the theatre. When the two young men reached the bathing area Ernest stripped and
dived yelling into the achingly cold water, leaving Albert messing about in the canoe pretending to be a Red Indian.

Suddenly Albert’s war cries stopped and there was a splash. Ernest turned and saw his friend floundering in the water, the canoe upside down. The young assistant stage manager then struck out for the canoe, but Albert was gone. Ernest dived frantically again and again in a bid to find his new friend, but to no avail. He never saw him again.

The police found the young actor’s body several hours later some distance downstream.

That evening’s performance of Measure for Measure went ahead as planned as something of a memorial to Albert Forster. Joss Ackland remembers it as a very subdued and tearful affair.

Early next morning Ackland arranged to have swimming lessons, and vowed never to return to Stratford.

I think it about time to see a play over such a complaint and hear the message that the letter accusing the actor of falling for underage girls in the form of a play. It was all meant as only ironical. Instead the woman used adjectives as lascivious to describe the play and referred to it as a threat to the well being of the audience. In the meantime the actor got compliments even from government officials over it and Shakespeare himself was a master of lecherous lines. The actor comically refers to other abhorrent behavior in the audience to add weight to his case against the shamefulness of the accusations he received.

To conclude, all I can say is that evidently the spectator is one of the very few odd balls that would go as far to report the actor rather than write her complaint to a review or voice her differences in a less antagonizing mode. The negative energy that the actor acquired from the three page complaint was channeled into a thought provoking play over how people can be senseless about their should or should not appear on a fringe play set.