Michael Jayston remembers playing Captain Hardy in the film "Bequest to the Nation" ("The Nelson Affair", 1973), the actors he worked with - Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, Nicholas Lyndhurst (with whom he worked again in ''Only Fools and Horses''), Dominic Guard. He talks about rehearsing, filming battle scenes, Ralph Richardson, director James Cellan-Jones,
The film stars - Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, Michael Jayston, Anthony Quayle, Dominic Guard, Margaret Leighton, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Nigel Stock, Nicholas Lyndhurst. Directed by James Cellan-Jones. Screeplay by Terence Rattigan.
The film stars - Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch, Michael Jayston, Anthony Quayle, Dominic Guard, Margaret Leighton, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Nigel Stock, Nicholas Lyndhurst. Directed by James Cellan-Jones. Screeplay by Terence Rattigan.
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00:00Well, I think it was an offer. I didn't have to go and meet anybody. Sometimes you have
00:09to go and meet people. And I remember once going up for something where it was hush-hush,
00:14don't talk about it. And so I said, well, I'll wear a suit. And I went along, and it
00:20was for the part of a tramp. So I didn't get the part, because they're hush, we mustn't
00:24talk about this. But I know that was an offer.
00:32Close the door, John.
00:40Have you kept your promise?
00:42Did you doubt me?
00:43That proxy admiralty, I always doubt you. Did you tell them you wouldn't go out again?
00:47Yes, my love. And I've so displeased their lordships that perhaps I'll never be asked
00:52to go out again.
00:53Oh, let it be never again.
00:56Let it be.
00:58Oh, you don't mean that.
01:00I do. I do.
01:05Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch didn't get on because Glenda wanted to rehearse, and
01:12Peter was a film actor. He just wanted to... And he wasn't lazy, but he didn't like rehearsing
01:20because he said, I lose the impetus. And I could see it. Glenda hadn't done many films.
01:25I think she'd done one film, which she was up for an Oscar for. I'm not sure about that.
01:30But so they never got on well. And I played, my part was comparatively quite small. I think
01:37Jim had cast me because he directed me on a First World War poet. But it had a marvellous
01:47cast. Margaret Leighton was in it. He died about five or six years later. The writer
01:54turned up occasionally. Nigel Stock was in it. And yeah, it was quite a good cast, actually.
02:01But there again, I was only on it for about... It was great doing that battle scene where
02:07Kiss Me Hardy and all that, because he was great to work with. And I got on very well
02:12with him. And actually, Peter wasn't drinking all that much at the time, which helped. I
02:22don't think... Well, you see, I don't think it ruined his career the same as it did Burton's,
02:27the drink, because he could take it.
02:31Do you see how careless I've become?
02:33I'll send a midshipman to your cabin.
02:36I think the time has passed for changing turrets.
02:42Bad gunnery. They'll be firing at each other next. Some time before we can open fire, so
02:53we continue our walk.
02:56Well, I was lucky because I'd worked with Glendron, so she and I got on all right. And
03:01I couldn't say much, because I did say at one point, I said, listen, I said, Peter's got
03:08a totally different idea. He's a film actor, and he doesn't like rehearsing. She said,
03:12well, I don't care. I'm used to rehearsing, and I wish he'd compromise. And they should
03:17have... Jimmy Kettle and Joan should have got them together and said, listen, but he
03:21didn't. He should have said, don't behave like that, either of you. I want a compromise
03:27between this. But I had a lovely scene after. I have to tell her that Nelson has died afterwards.
03:43Forgive me, my lady. I have more to tell.
03:48I know you have, Captain. I know what other news you are bearing to the Admiralty.
03:53How? Who has told you?
03:56No one has told me, for no one needed to. I knew when he left, I would not see him again
04:01alive. How else, if you are Nelson, can you leave this life except at the moment of your
04:07greatest triumph?
04:10I've worked with Glenda. I did a... I did the Scots play with her, well, the shortened
04:16version on radio. But I had good memories of that, and I got to know Finch quite well.
04:25And I saw him once or twice afterwards. Dominic, in fact, had a... quite a bad stutter. But
04:35he was okay if... I mean, Jimmy directing him was marvellous because he said, just take
04:42time. So once he got into it, he was alright, but he... And Jimmy was very... very kind
04:55with him. I'd seen it on stage, actually, with Ian Holm playing Nelson, and he was very
05:04good. But it wasn't one of Rattigan's best plays by a long way. And Rattigan... When
05:13you think of Margaret Leighton playing a tiny part in that, I think it was towards the end
05:17of her career. But he did have some good people in it.
05:21Oh, come on, Minto, don't just sit there. Lend a hand.
05:25Pull for the shot, is it? Right.
05:29Oh, where were you last night? The court ball, I suppose.
05:34Yes, yes. I was surprised not to see you there.
05:36It's a proxy lie. You knew we wouldn't be asked.
05:38Oh, an oversight, surely.
05:40An oversight, my arse. They won't have us at any price.
05:43The scenes on the shit, because they didn't have all that much money, they used a lot
05:48of stuff from other films, and nobody... no critic got hold of it. They used battle scenes
05:54from other films, because they didn't have any money. That was shot inside the studio.
06:00Inside the studio, because Rocky Taylor, one of the stunt guys who was still around, and
06:08Nicholas Lindhurst said to me when I was working on Only Fools and Horses, he said, I was one
06:16of the gunpowder boys on that, but didn't have any lines. And he was, he was only about
06:2216 or 17, and he was on it. I said, I didn't know. He said, well, you wouldn't have known
06:28who I was. I said, I didn't treat people... He said, no, no, it was just one of those
06:32things. It was strange, wasn't it?
06:39I think the special effects and everything were so fantastic that it made it look as
06:43if we were sailing along on the crest of a wave. I think Hardy was a Devonian, I'm
06:52not sure, but I mentioned to Jim, he said, no, no, no, don't just play it as yourself,
06:57because we don't want to get that kind of thing in there. But I think, I may be wrong,
07:04but to me, in some ways, it didn't have any great depth. He was just a great mate of Nelson's
07:15and was very upset when he died. So there was no great depth to go into with the characterisation.
07:21But I do remember once when we were filming in Richmond, and I was in my full rig out,
07:29and we shouldn't have done this, but I said, I'm going to go into the local bank in my
07:34full rig out with all the finery. And I said, excuse me. And she was a lady of about 30
07:41odd. I said, I invested some money here in about 1810. Could you tell me how much?
07:49She said, well, hardly anything. Well, there might be. How much did you invest? I said,
07:54a few hundred pounds. And I was dressed in this. She didn't bat an eyelid, but she did smile.
08:00And I said, I'm sorry, I'm just being silly. I did it for a bet. She said, it doesn't matter.
08:06But she did work out that the £100 invested in 1810 would have been worth around about,
08:13I don't know, wasn't all that much. It was about a thousand.
08:18It's very strange when you think of wearing a costume, because you obviously don't want
08:25to look ridiculous. I mean, it's okay if it's something like Hardy, because I was dressed
08:30in the full regalia of a captain of a ship. But Ralph Richardson used to say, as long
08:40as I get the shoes right, it's okay. Now, I know what he meant, because if he felt happy
08:48walking along, especially on stage in his shoes, that was it. And I remember working
08:53with him once. And he'd got about, he used to wear brown shoes on a Monday, black shoes,
09:02et cetera, et cetera. He had about 10 pairs of shoes. This was in 1980-something, that
09:10he'd bought before the war at Lobbs for a fiver. I mean, 1938-39, a fiver was quite
09:21a lot of money. He still got 10 pairs of shoes that he burnished and burnished. I mean, it's
09:28amazing. He also bought about 20 umbrellas that were worth quite a lot of money after
09:37the war, because he said, well, I think there's going to be a rush on boots and umbrellas
09:43after the war. But these boots were then, what, nearly 50 years old, and he'd still
09:52got 10 pairs of them. I know, because I asked him. He said, oh, I've probably got a dozen
09:57or so, and I'm sure he had. But you've got to get the right costume, and sometimes you
10:04can... I've never been all that perturbed about wearing a costume I didn't particularly
10:10like, I suppose.
10:17Although the first costume, it was one of the reasons that made me go into acting, I
10:25suppose. I was playing a pantalone, an Italian kind of clown, in a pantomime in the amateur
10:36group in Nottingham, and I had one word which was gosh, which I said about 30 times, gosh,
10:47gosh, various types of gosh. And I remember one matinee when, well, we only did about
10:53seven or eight performances as amateurs, I had to go into the audience, and this little
11:00girl, and I think she was spina bifida, she was about, I don't know, nine or ten. She
11:08said, I love you, Mr. Gosh, and I thought, if you can have that effect on somebody like
11:15that, it was a real... I was about 20, I suppose, when that happened, and I thought,
11:23yeah.
11:26After an unremitting cruise of two long years in the stormy seas off Toulon, to have proceeded
11:34without going into port to Alexandria from the West Indies, back again to Gibraltar,
11:40to have kept your ships afloat, your rigging standing barely, yes, it's quite so.
11:48Met Roland about, and I knew some of his sons when my son was acting in America. We met
11:54Roland in a pub, and there was this Welshman, you know him? And he said, yes, and Roland
12:03was one of those gentleman actors. I said, would you like a drink? He said, well, what
12:08time is it? Oh, yes, yes, things over the yard arm at the moment, yes, I'll have a whiskey,
12:14please. Because he was, people nowadays wouldn't know who the hell he was, but he was a very
12:19fine English actor, like Richard Vernon and people like that. Yeah, I liked him a lot.
12:27I only had the one scene with him, I think. He was very, very good.
12:33Thank God I have done my duty. For which, more, much more than you will ever know.
12:45You should thank my darling Emma.
12:55It's difficult to see you.
13:02Kiss me.
13:12Well, they say that it was Kismet Hardy, you know, somebody Arabic, but Kismet, in fact,
13:20is Turkish for fate. But I don't believe that, because I think the majority of people wouldn't
13:28believe it now, because I know they've been on various campaigns, but he wouldn't have
13:33said Kismet, fate, because it kissed me hardy and, you know, that was it, I'm going to die.
13:40And, you know, I've got a photograph of that, it's quite, it was a lovely scene to do.
13:48Peter Finch, after that, put me up for Lost Horizon with Liev Ullman, who I had, who auditioned
13:57for Nicholas Alexander and didn't get the part, because Sam Spiegel said she'd got a foreign accent,
14:03but that's beside the point. But Peter was sweet, because he put me up for the part, and I couldn't
14:10do it for some reason, or, no, the script was so awful I couldn't do it, and it got torn to pieces.
14:17Michael York played it, and it, I mean, it wasn't very good at all, I'm so glad I didn't do it,
14:24but it was sweet of him, because he put me up for another part after that, and I couldn't do that,
14:28because, you know, it's nice when, I try and do that still. I was lucky, because Olivier and Guinness
14:38were so generous, generous-hearted, and they put people up for various things, which is good of them.
14:45Well, it was just enjoyable meeting Peter Finch, but there again, it was one of those films that
14:51it came and went, and I enjoyed myself on one or two others, but it was great meeting Peter Finch.