"A Date (well, really we went on a picnic) with Alan Bates"

by Barbara Frum
Chatelaine, August 1967

There he was, the engaging star of "Georgy Girl" and "Zorba,"
alive in Stratford, Ont.,
so we passed him a soggy Danish and asked...

"...how do they treat famous movie stars at Stratford?"
"Nobody's taking me seriously here, I'm afraid," he laughed. "Not that I'd want them to, of course. The minute a repertory company has a few people acting like stars, the company is finished."
Alan Bates and I were picnicking on the banks of the Avon River just under the hill of Stratford's famous Festival Theatre. It was one of those somnolent afternoons that the lovely, languorous town stage sets for itself every summer, the now professional swans gliding casually down the river, newly acquired black ones dramatically punctuating the flocks of whites.
It was Sunday, which meant a welcome break for him from the daily grind of rehearsals in the Festival Theatre. And because it was also Mother's Day the park was crowded and gay with families picnicking.
We sat on the lush green lawn, feasting on hot steak sandwiches, sipping on red wine, listening to the music of a resplendently uniformed high-school band that was parading in honor of the day.
And maybe it was the presence of the movie star, but suddenly in my mind's eye I could already see the scene playing at our local cinema in Technicolor and wide screen. Except that at that very moment Bates jumped up and sprinted across the park to retrieve my two young children who had just spoiled my idyllic scenario by threatening to fall into the river.
My family, you see, had insisted on accompanying me to Stratford -- my husband on the grounds that impressionable young women shouldn't be allowed to spend lovely afternoons alone with movie stars, and the children because -- well, what's a Mother's Day without a mother to share in the day's festivities?
Not that the children seemed to bother Bates. If anything they had made a rather good impression on him the instant they met by exclaiming, after one very quick gander, "Hey, that's the guy we saw on TV!" And so Bates, possibly with an eye to future fans, was making sure that my children didn't prematurely drown.
Between recurring dashes to rescue the children from the river or traffic, we demolished my handmade picnic, hurrying before someone complained to the local constabulary about drinking wine in a public park on Sunday (an Ontario ruling Bates found amusingly antique).
The sandwiches and wine were a hit. Bates had been famished when I'd arrived, but my choice of dessert was a triumph -- soggy toasted Danish that had gone even soggier in the waxed paper wrapping. So taken was he with this unexpected delicacy that he wrapped up the leftovers, and saved them for himself for later.
"It must remind you of the cooking over 'ome," I teased.

+ A revved-up mod outfit +

Bates was turned out for our picnic in an immaculate toffee-beige suit, the kind of revved-up mod outfit that the character he'd played in Georgy Girl would have gladly worn had he been able to afford it. The hip-length jacket was outfitted with big patch pockets and a vent in the back that extended up to the back-belted waist. Pants and jacket clung to his body in an expensive way.
Besides the elegant clothes, the first thing you notice about Bates is his hair. Wavy, unparted, uncombed, it trails down into broad sideburns that widen even farther at the jaw, and altogether gives the appealing suggestion that he just got out of bed.
His actual features, though they are bringing him instant recognition on Stratford streets these days, aren't in themselves particularly noteworthy -- a strong, broad nose, a friendly mouth, and under a pair of wildly shaggy eyebrows, clear and shiny bright-green eyes that are kind, outgoing and wary all at once.
He's shorter than I'd expected, with a compact, strongly muscled, solid body. He looks more like anyone's slightly mod, college-age brother than a movie star, and conveys, above all, approachability and an easy-to-be-with quality that's as intangible as it is convincing.
In spirit he seems close to the character he played in "Georgy Girl" -- bright, stylish, irreverent, very much alive, the epitome of the new Englishman. And he admits to an admiration for the sense of style that now pervades London.
"I guess I'm part of the new wave in England. I know I find it very exciting that England is suddenly setting the style for the rest of the world, but I really don't know how much my personal life resembles the swinging life you read about in the magazines. Certainly I admire the mood of slowed-down time, of savoring every sensation and making time last."

Though I found Bates disarmingly mod, the Toronto press had described him right after his arrival in Canada as a shy, diffident, standoffish, almost Establishment type. Perhaps because that afternoon in Toronto Bates had worn the pin-striped, vested banker's suit he had saved from his role as a young social climber determined to break into the Establishment, in "Nothing But the Best," and those Establishment pinstripes might just have influenced him. Certainly in his mod beige he's a radically different personality. As Bates says, "Roles tend to get a hold on me. When I played that weak Englishman in "Zorba the Greek," for example, I found I was depressed all the time. That character was so repressed he finally got to me. Parts do get a grip on the actor, you know."
Or it could just be, as his Stratford director John Hirsch claims, "Alan is a very fine actor. He's almost human plasticine just waiting to be molded into the part."
Bates, still a bachelor at thirty-three, says he spends money on few external effects, just clothes, a car wherever he is, and a place to live.For the four months he'll spend in Stratford he has rented an old farmhouse fifteen miles out in the country.
"Alone?" I asked.
"Well," he allowed, "for the time being."

+ Grateful smiles...voluminous thanks +

I wanted to see what behind the scenes at the Stratford theatre was like, after a good half-dozen seasons of fascination on the audience side of the footlights, and asked him if he'd give me a tour. We walked up the hill to the backstage door (Bates had to convince the guard on duty I wouldn't steal any pre-opening secrets), and then we strolled through the dressing rooms and workshops crammed with masks, lances, new "ancient" furniture, racks of costumes, onto the famous apron stage.
"Have you ever been on this stage before, Barbara?" he asked. "It's unbelievably wonderful working here. The audience completely surrounds you. This is one of the most intimate theatres in the world."
None of the stagehands or set designers working madly overtime that afternoon, trying to meet the opening-night deadline, seemed to pay any special attention to Bates. Not that he looked as if he expected it. If anything, his attitude is much closer to "new boy" than lord of the manor.
And that I expect is what everyone finds immediately appealing about Bates. He's a real nice guy. In the course of that afternoon with him I watched him charm everyone he came in contact with. He bestowed grateful smiles on a hotel desk clerk for a rather routine favor, a gas-station attendant got voluminous thanks for his mundane services. I watched Bates obey a press photographer's instructions to cavort and clown for an hour, a chore most actors openly despise, but he cooperated uncomplainingly.
Bates erects none of the artificial barriers associated with "stars" to keep all contacts at arm's length. In fact he seems indifferent to his enormous reputation. (The presence of a camera is the one exception. He turns on for cameras.) Still the overriding impression is of someone easy, unceremonious, open.
It's not that I saw Bates under particularly auspicious circumstances, either.
True, the invitation to perform at Stratford, from artistic chief Michael Langham, was a flattering one, a tribute to the drawing power of his name at the box office. But for Bates there must have been the at least subliminal panic and fear of potential failure. This was his first chance at the Bard since his beginning job in theatre ten years ago, right after graduating from London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and h was about to face judgment of his talents in one of North America's most prestigious theatrical events. With the responsibility of creating two major roles, King Richard in "Richard III," and Ford, the cuckolded husband in "Merry Wives of Windsor," no one would have blamed Bates for acting the put-upon prima donna. Yet there was no trace of jitters, no nervous mannerisms. If there was any panic, he was intent on not letting it spoil our day.

+ A look under the bonnet +

We soon left the theatre because Bates had this "little problem," and it needed solving before nightfall. His new red Mustang had run out of gas the night before on the road back to Stratford from London, Ont. At two in the morning, unable to rouse the proprietor of a roadside gas station nearby, he had abandoned the car and returned with the other car in the party.
So festival public-relations chief Tom Patterson drove us fifteen miles out of town to search for the car. And a search it turned out to be, because unfortunately, Bates couldn't quite remember past which country church he'd left it.
On the way I asked him why he would turn down exciting film opportunities to come to Stratford.
"That upsets me the way people keep saying what do you want to be here for. I'm here because I want to be. I wasn't forced to come. This is one of the most fantastic theatres in the world, you know. Besides, a chance to do parts of this size, in a classical work, is one of the reasons I wanted to be an actor in the first place.
"Of course I'm lucky that lately movie actors are getting a chance to work on the stage. Until two years ago actors were expected to make a choice. It was practically stated, 'Well, what are you going to settle for, make a choice, stage or film.' Now, thank goodness, actors no longer have to make that choice.
"But it's exhausting to keep both stage work and films going. Combining them takes quite a toll because the physical demands are so different. In the theatre your effort is intense and constant. In movies the energy drain is more deceptive because you have to be ready to do any section of the film at any time, although you actually only do one scene a day. Also the effort goes on much longer. The strength that takes is very real, even if you aren't consciously aware of it."
We finally found the car, stranded approximately where he'd remembered, and after Bates lovingly applied the emergency gas supply we'd brought in a can, he drove me and the new Mustang back to Stratford.
Bates drives as he does everything else, with matter-of-fact sureness, no ostentatious tricks. He found the roadside gas station of the night before and pulled in for more gas and a "look under the bonnet."
The attendant smiled indulgently at the term. Out in rural Ontario a word like "bonnet" applied to a car sounds just a bit queer. And if Bates had originally said it unself-consciously, he was soon smiling to himself over the effect he had created.
To complete the old man's anecdote for him, Bates found himself unable to make up fifteen cents out of the pocket full of nickels, dimes and quarters in his pants -- Canadian currency being foreign to him.
"Money never feels like money in a foreign currency does it?" he shrugged as the attendant politely relieved him of a dime and five pennies. "It's like play money. Only shillings and pounds feel real to me."
By this point the station attendant had undoubtedly recognized Bates as one of those "actor fellows" with the arty English accents who descend on Stratford each spring.

+ Recognition +

Did Bates enjoy the recognition?
"It's nice. Obviously it means that to some degree the thing they've seen you do in a film has meant something to them. So that's nice. In fact it's pretty disappointing if they don't recognize you. Then you always feel that what you've done accounts for nothing. But I better watch the way I answer such a question. I might give the impression of being vain.
"I don't look at praise as just for ego. You always need people to tell you how good you are. Even if you know that something is working well, you still need people to like it because it's for an audience that you are doing it, after all. And that's what being recognized means really; it's an indication that people like what you've done."
When I commiserated with him about the premature crease in the rear of what I'd assumed was a brand-new car, Bates went to great lengths to let me know he'd bought the car used, with the crease already in it. "It was probably a demonstrator. They cost less that way," and he said it sounding quite pleased at his own frugality.
Unlike so many English pop idols now, who boast newly "in" lower-class backgrounds and accents, Bates was born into a middle-class family, hence his middle-class attitude toward money. He's even too embarrassed to discuss it.
"I really don't like to talk about finances, if you don't mind. I don't think about my career in terms of money. Naturally if I do a big picture, I try to get as much as I can, but for a small picture, I often take much less."
We arrived back in Stratford late in the day at the Queens Hotel where Bates was living until his rented house was ready for occupancy. (When I'd jokingly referred to him as a transient he'd looked noticeably hurt, though he's been on the move so steadily in the past two years, he still hasn't lived in the town house he bought in London a couple of years ago.)
As a temporary residence, the Queens has the added virtue of serving as an actors' hangout between rehearsals -- that is, before the summer crowds to Stratford arrive and spoil it for the actors.
Bates wouldn't admit to any pre-opening jitters, but what he told me about capturing a new role was a good cue that the panic was more real than any nontheatre person could ever imagine.
"What you hope is that the tension and excitement that build up toward opening night will create the spontaneity that will make your performance suddenly as surprising to you as it is to the audience. It must come out as a shock to you, and only then is it clear that you've got it. If you are lucky, that insight into the role will come on opening night or perhaps in a rehearsal, and what you do from then on is recreate it over and over. But of course sometimes you never get it."
I asked him if being a star complicated his choice of roles, now that he has status and reputation to maintain and a public image to nurture.
"I hate looking after images and career progress. I'd much rather do whatever I want, if I really want to do it. Personally all I really care about is that every role I do count and be truthful. It still may not come off, but that's immaterial. At least people will feel when they see it that originally there was a point in doing it. In the long run you might as well choose parts that way, because if you don't like what you're doing, ten to one you'll do a bad job and have a miserable time doing it besides. Maybe both."

+ Live a full life +

How much longer would he be able to play mod parts like "Georgy Girl," I wondered, even if he did look like a slightly ripe twenty-two and not his actual thirty-three years at all.
"Lots of actors are conscious of age, but I'm not. I feel twelve, really. Oh sure, every decade there is a new bottom limit to the age you can play. I can't play under twenty-five anymore, but I don't care. If you live a full life, your age doesn't bother you, and at its best, the life of an actor is a very full life."
Why is that?
"Because you look at everything and comment on everything that happens around you. You don't accept the events around you uncritically as others do."
Bates describes his personal life as "fragmented." He has no crowd and claims to live a life of no particular style. And he insists, despite his great success, he himself has not changed.
"Sure, it's possible to become different, but what's more likely is that you've only changed in other people's eyes. I think if you've achieved something, then others just assume you must be different, though in fact you may be exactly the same. All that's changed is their attitude toward you, not you."
And almost to verify it, Bates revealed that he's really not that sure of himself at all.
"Yes, I have moments when I question myself. It's just a phase, nothing prolonged. Usually it happens the minute things go very well for me. And then I start to think, too good, watch it, and I start to worry if what I'm doing at the moment is really terrific, or if I've really got what it takes."
Three years ago when he'd just finished making "Nothing But the Best" and gave the hilarious performance that made him known to North American audiences, Bates told a reporter that he still had two goals -- to play Shakespeare and to be a movie star. He added he'd like them to happen in that order.
Well someone up there must have been listening, because if the sequence wasn't fulfilled, the achievements were.
At the end of the afternoon as I left Bates in the hotel lobby, a breathless lady tourist tugged at my sleeve to ask, "Is that by any chance the English actor Richard Harris?" I had to go back into the hotel to see how Bates would react to my answer to her -- "No, madam, that's merely Bob Jones." Bates broke into a lovely laugh.
"Great," he said, "That's great." |||