i n t e r v i e w
Waiting for Alan
Bates
by Sarah Meysey-Thompson,
Petticoat No 40, 19 Nov 1966
 "You
must meet so many interesting people. All those film stars! Interviewing
must be super - I suppose you just chat up dishy men and then
write up what they say. I'd love to do that..."
 I
love it too, so budding showbiz writers beware! But it's amazing
how some people see my life. As if I float through a kind of
3-D Technicolor dream like a glossy Hollywood movie. You know
- all chauffeur-driven cars, coffee on the set at Shepperton,
lunch among the famous at Pinewood, champagne at the Savoy and
long, lingering dates with my favourite film stars.
When, I wonder, do they think
I write my copy or answer all those queries about everyone from
O'Toole to Rudolph Valentino? It's not all star-studded social
occasions and "those dishy men" aren't always as co-operative
as they might be. There are the ones who arrive hours late, without
apology (some don't even turn up), the ones who won't give a
thing (you run out of questions pretty quickly when all you're
getting is a "yes" and "no" response) and
others who are just plain rude.
Not surprisingly, since they're
Big Names they're also very elusive. You need a kind of private
detective instinct plus the patience of Job to track them down.
Take, for instance, the time I went to interview Alan Bates.
It wasn't his fault in any way but one rendezvous with him took
me no less than 16 hours.
 HOUR ONE BEGAN at 8 o'clock on a Monday morning
when Derek Berwin, our indispensable photographer, appeared to
drive me to Weymouth where Alan Bates was filming "Far From
the Madding Crowd" with Peter Finch, Julie Christie and
Terry Stamp. when we arrived, four hours later, it was to hear
that shooting would go on through the lunchbreak which meant
- I hardly dared to look at Derek or my watch - a six-hour wait.
Well, just how would you pass
an afternoon in an out-of-season holiday resort when it's freezing
cold? There was lunch (an hour) and tea (another half-hour) and
a three and a half hour walk round the local sights - my beautiful
wig wobbling perilously in a Force Something Gale. ... only one
hour to go.
Six o'clock and word reached us
that the day's filming was going so well everyone would be working
overtime. we needed a drink. We had one. We had dinner (another
hour) and sat in the hotel lounge spinning out our coffee and
hoping. after all, I told myself, Alan Bates was worth waiting
for, wasn't he?
At 8:30, when the swing doors
of the hotel whirled open to reveal the man I'd waited 12 hours
to see, I knew every minute had been worth it. Alan Bates had
come straight off the set, hurriedly changed and joined us without
eating. He could have been disgruntled, angry, ill-tempered and
one would have understood.
o A
charming companion o
But
he wasn't. He came in, exhilarated with the day's proceedings,
apologised for having kept us hanging about and obligingly sat
in the hotel sun loggia to let us photograph him. The strain
of working a six-day week does not seem to tax him at all. A
drink, a packet of nuts, a French cigarette and he was soon talking
freely. And when Alan Bates talks to you he does it properly:
he concentrates and his attention never strays. All of which
makes him a charming companion.
Success rests easily on his shoulders
and leaves him as unassuming as one imagines he was when he left
his Derbyshire home for RADA several years back. There are traces of the
North in his accent, still, and when he talks about home it is
with affection.
"When I first left I hardly
ever went back, but I think you always feel like that when you've
just left a place. Now I go there often and always with great
excitement." He breaks off for a moment and laughs at himself:
"That sounds terrible, doesn't it? Very corny - sort of
going back to trace your roots and visit your birthplace, but
I do love it very much. Obviously I couldn't go and live
there at the moment, but I do think about it."
o A
difficult role, really o
At
the moment he is living in what he describes as "a folly"
- an old mill-house - for the filming of "Far From the Madding
Crowd," screen version of hardy's classic, in which he plays
Gabriel Oak, one of three men in love with his sheep-farming
neighbour Bathsheba (Julie Christie).
"Gabriel is rather a difficult
role, really," he explains, running a hand through his sun-streaked
brown hair and trying to describe his part. "Hardy is speaking
through him so it's very personal. On paper he seems very simple
but he's really more wry. The sort of man who knows a situation
so well that he can afford to laugh at it a bit."
Perhaps you could also say that
about Alan Bates. He's calm and not easily unnerved. People like
working with him and other people like him working for them.
For a 29-year-old actor he has an impressive list of credits
behind him - "Whistle Down the Wind," "A Kind
of Loving," "The Caretaker," "Zorba the Greek,"
"Georgy Girl," "Nothing But the Best" - and,
looking back, it seems that he has in fact done "nothing
but the best." Is it luck? Good judgment? Good timing? Or
just sheer professionalism?
He's very modest about it. "'The
Running Man' didn't really work, but when I read a script I can
usually tell whether it's worth doing. I twice did films I didn't
have complete faith in and both times it was disaster. You can't
make something you don't believe in work completely - ever. But,
definitely, you need a lot of luck."
He rarely knows which film he'll
do next and it doesn't worry him. But obviously he isn't going
to rest only on his acting laurels.
o Everyday
things o
"There
comes a point," he tells you, almost shyly, "when you
want to direct or write or adapt. I've half written an idea already
and I'd love to set up some of D. H. Lawrence's stuff. I think
he's an author who writes marvellous images from specially personal
relationships - and all they've done is 'Sons and Lovers.'"
His work is, without doubt, the
all-important thing in his life. Talk to him, as I did, about
anything outside of it and you can watch him positively unwinding
from the part he is currently playing to try to come back to
the more everyday things of life.
"I think things are easier
now than they were 10 years ago," he says, talking of the
time when he was a teenager. "There are an awful lot of
people actually thinking up and doing things that other people
wanted to do for a long time. They are getting much more out
of being young."
Alan Bates has a lot of the spirit
about which he talks so enthusiastically: "I want to do
everything that it's possible for me to do."
Is this the secret of his success,
I wondered, but he hastily amended it: "Sorry. That sounds
very pompous, doesn't it? What I mean is that I don't want to
fall into any part I can always rely on."
"A challenge, perhaps?"
I suggested, then stopped, realising that that sounded rather
pompous too.
But Alan Bates smiled his slow,
gentle smile and replied: "In the end everything sounds
corny, doesn't it? Let's just say that I want to do everything
I believe in - even if it's a flop."
o Never
a flop o
On
the way back to London, trying to decipher my shorthand by torchlight
in the car, I knew one thing for sure - a meeting with Alan Bates
would never be a flop. Even if it took all day to get to him.
Even if it was midnight when I finally returned home. Even if
being a show biz writer wasn't always glamorous.... |||
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