Leader
Victor ludorum
At 75, Victor Spinetti is still touring - and thriving on it.
The actor talks to Steve Pratt about meeting The
Beatles and looking forward to exploring Darlington
WHEN veteran Welsh actor and raconteur
Victor Spinetti goes to talk to
drama students at college, the first
thing he says they have to learn is
the three Rs - redundancy, rejection
and resting.
They'll become intimately acquainted with all
three as actors. "If you can handle those, do it. Don't
do it because you want something, but because you
have something to give," he tells them.
At 75, Spinetti is neither redundant, rejected or
resting. He's on the road for several months - with
planned stopovers in Harrogate and Darlington - in
the comedy play, Come On Jeeves.
This was written by PG Wodehouse and Guy
Bolton in 1952, a good year perhaps but not as good
as 1964 for Spinetti - he won a Tony award for his
performance in Oh! What A Lovely War on its transfer
to Broadway. And this was the year of A Hard
Day's Night, the movie that introduced him to the
Beatles and the start of a long and happy friendship
with them.
He's a performer who's been in a lot of things, met
a lot of famous people, befriended some of them and
has many amusing anecdotes to relate in the nicest
of ways. His love of his work and his fellow actors
shines through his conversation.
He tells me he's touring until mid-July and seems
over the moon about it. None of
this grumbling in which some actors
indulge at the thought of
being in a different place every
week. Spinetti positively thrives
on it.
"A lot of actors won't tour. They
must be mad," he says. "I'm not
only being paid to get out of bed
and do something I enjoy, but I'm
also seeing the country."
He was in Lichfield when we
spoke. He raves about the medieval
market town and how the
first sight of the cathedral is astonishing.
"Fab-lus, as they say in
Wales," he enthuses.
In Come On Jeeves, which also
features Anita Harris and Derren
Nesbitt, he plays great white
hunter Captain Biggar. A politically
incorrect sort of chap, he likes nothing better
than shooting rhinos and bearing the white man's
burden. While Bertie Wooster is out of town, his
gentleman's gentleman Jeeves is on loan to the Earl
of Towcaster who, losing heavily on the horses, becomes
a bookie in the guise of Honest Patch Perkins
and gets himself in a real mess.
"This turned up, I read it and said no one has ever
asked me to play a white hunter. The director said
he wanted an actor who's mad and eccentric. That's
what the character is. It's fun to do. It's like a shouty
Terry-Thomas."
He likes to explore the towns the play visits, already
planning a trip to Bettys in Harrogate and investigating
Darlington's railway history. "I love
mooching about and I find up North there's great
mooching about places," he says.
The joy of being an actor hasn't worn off. He's always
finding out something new. Last year while
touring in The Ghost Train, suddenly in the middle
of a performance, he discovered a fresh way of
saying a line.
The Beatles were responsible for putting him in
the public eye. He was already doing well enough
on stage but, after seeing him in Joan Littlewood's
theatre company at Stratford East, the Fab Four
asked him to be in their debut film, A Hard Day's
Night. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Paul McCartney once described Spinetti as "the
man who makes clouds disappear" (which sounds
profound but what does it actually mean?) although
it was with John Lennon that he really hit it off. He
co-authored In His Own Write
with Lennon, directing the play at
London's Old Vic in 1968.
"John Lennon had no ego. People
find that amazing, but by that
I mean he had no ego about his
work. I said once to him do you
have a drawerful of songs to be
discovered?' and he said no. He
was the Beatle I was closest to. We
talked into the night about things
like that."
His sound advice about the
three Rs to students indicates that
Spinetti might not have been so
bad at his first career choice -
teaching. He was told by the master
in their village that his ideas
were too radical and to do something
else.
He'd always felt a bit apart from
other children, perhaps because of his parentage.
His father was Italian and his mother Welsh. "There
was always a bit of a difference in attitude to me as
a kid, especially during the war," he recalls.
"It wasn't good to have a name like Spinetti during
the Second World War. I had to find different
ways of getting home from school because of the
gangs. I began to realise there's no such thing as a
state, only a state of mind."
He came into his own working with Joan Littlewood's
Theatre Workshop on productions including
Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and Oh! What
A Lovely War. "That was my university," he says of
his six years with the company. "She was absolutely
amazing. What she liked was the fact that I'd run
away from drama college in Cardiff and went on the
halls where I had an act."
This causes him to recall playing opposite Judy
Campbell in Edward Bond's play, The Sea, on TV.
He says that the author told him "I'm glad you're
in my play, I don't usually have actors in my plays".
Spinetti has never regarded himself as an actor
- although his CV would surely say otherwise - and
offers as proof that he's never joined any actors'
clubs. "I was asked to join the Garrick but no. My
idea of hell is going in, seeing Donald Sinden and
saying the usual' to the waiter," he says.
HE'S never been ambitious, never been competitive.
He even turned down $1m to go to
Hollywood. The offer came from US producer
Hal Wallis, the man who made the Bette Davis
and Elvis Presley pictures. He was producing the
historical drama Becket, in which Spinetti played
the "tiny part" of a French tailor to Gielgud's King
of France.
"I remember the director saying to me after rehearsals
are you going to do all that? This is a scene
in which Sir Donald Wolfit and John Gielgud appear,
this is not a film about a French tailor'."
The problem was that the US contract wouldn't
have allowed him to do any more theatre work and
he was set on going to Broadway with Oh! What A
Lovely War. "Hal Wallis said he didn't want me to
do the show in New York. He said anyone who's anyone
had seen me in London," says Spinetti.
He rejected the Hollywood contract, a decision
he's never regretted. He points to Anthony Hopkins,
who said he took to drink to survive there. "I
knew that. I was old when I was born, I am young
now. If Gene Kelly hadn't invited you to one of his
parties, you were finished. Who would want to live
like that," he asks.
He's not writing at present, although his autobiography,
Up Front, is due out in paperback in July,
he informs me. His first choice title for the book was
rejected. He thought F**k Me, I'm 100 was a funny
title - and a reflection of what he felt like when he
woke up some mornings.
■ Come On Jeeves is at Harrogate
Theatre from May 6-10 (tickets
01423-502116) and Darlington Civic
Theatre from July 1-5 (tickets 01325-
486555)
10:39am Monday 28th April 2008
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