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,
00:14hush, don't talk about it. And so I said, well, I'll wear a suit. And I went along and
00:19it was 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, no, 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 Peter
01:12was 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 is par for changing turns.
02:42Bad gunnery. They'll be firing at each other next. There's some time before we can open
02:52fire, so we continue our walk.
02:56Well, I was lucky because I'd worked with Glenda, and so she and I got on all right.
03:01And I couldn't say much because I did say at one point, I said, listen, I said, Peter's
03:08got a totally different idea. He's a film actor, and he doesn't like rehearsing. She
03:12said, well, 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'd worked with Glenda. I did a... I did the Scotch 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 all right. And Jimmy was very kind with him. I'd seen
04:57it on stage, actually, with Ian Holm playing Nelson, and he was very good. But it wasn't
05:06one of Rattigan's best plays by a long way. And Rattigan... when you think of Margaret
05:14Leighton playing a tiny part in that, I think it was towards the end of her career. But
05:19he did have some good people in it.
05:22Oh, come on, Minto, don't just sit there. Lend a hand.
05:25Pull for the short, is it? Right.
05:31Where 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. It was 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 film. I 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.
06:50I think Hardy was a Devonian, I'm not sure, but I mentioned to Jimmy, he said, no, no,
06:56don't just play it as yourself because we don't want to get that kind of thing in there.
07:01But I think I may be wrong, but to me in some ways it didn't have any great depth. He was
07:13just a great mate of Nelson's and was very upset when he died. So there was no great
07:18depth to go into with the characterisation. But I do remember once when we were filming
07:23in Richmond and I was in my full rig out, and we shouldn't have done this, but I said,
07:30I'm going to go into the local bank in my full rig out with all the finery. And I said,
07:36excuse me. And she was a lady of about 30 odd. I said, I invested some money here in
07:44about 1810. Could you tell me how much? She said, well, hardly anything. Well, there might
07:52be. How much did you invest? I said, a few hundred pounds. And I was dressed in this
07:57suit. She didn't bat an eyelid, but she did smile. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm just being
08:02silly. I did it for a bet. She said, it doesn't matter. But she did work out that a hundred
08:08pounds invested in 1810 would have been worth around about, I don't know, wasn't all that
08:15much. It was about a thousand. It's very strange when you think of wearing a costume
08:23because you obviously don't want to look ridiculous. I mean, it's okay if it's something like Hardy
08:29because I was dressed in the full regalia of a captain of a ship. But Ralph Richardson
08:38used to say, as long as I get the shoes right, it's okay. Now, I know what he meant because
08:47if he felt happy walking along, especially on stage in his shoes, that was it. And I
08:53remember working with him once and he'd got about, he used to wear brown shoes on a Monday,
09:01black shoes, et cetera, et cetera. He had about 10 pairs of shoes, this was in 1980
09:09something, that he'd bought before the war at Lobs for a fiver. I mean, 1938, 39, a fiver
09:21was quite a lot of money. He still got 10 pairs of shoes that he burnished and burnished.
09:28I mean, it's amazing. He also bought about 20 umbrellas that were worth quite a lot of
09:36money after the war because he said, well, I think there's going to be a rush on boots
09:42and umbrellas after the war. But these boots were then, what, nearly 50 years old and he'd
09:52still got 10 pairs of them. I know because I asked him. He said, oh, I've probably got
09:56a dozen or so and I'm sure he had. But you've got to get the right costume and sometimes
10:04you can, I've never been all that perturbed about wearing a costume I didn't particularly
10:10like, I suppose. Although the first costume, it was one of the reasons that made me go
10:24into acting, I suppose. I was playing a pantalone, kind of Italian kind of clown, in a pantomime
10:34in the amateur group in Nottingham. And I had one word which was gosh, which I said
10:44about 30 times, gosh, gosh, various types of gosh. And I remember one matinee when,
10:52well, we only did about seven or eight performances as amateurs. I had to go into the audience
10:58and this little girl, and I think she was spina bifida, she was about, I don't know,
11:06nine or ten. She said, I love you, Mr. Gosh. And I thought, if you can have that effect
11:14on somebody like that. I was about 20, I suppose, when that happened. And I thought, yeah.
11:24After 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, 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 this Welshman, you know him? And he said, yes, and Roland was one
12:04of those gentleman actors. I said, would you like a drink? He said, well, what time is it?
12:09Oh, yes, yes, things over the yard arm at the moment. Yes, I'll have a whiskey, please.
12:15Because he was, people nowadays wouldn't know who the hell he was, but he was a very fine
12:21English actor, like Richard Vernon and people like that. Yeah, I liked him a lot. I only
12:27had 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, you
12:47should take my darling Emma. It's difficult to see you. Kiss me.
13:03Well, they say that it was Kismet Hardy, you know, and somebody Arabic, but Kismet,
13:19in fact, is Turkish for fate. But I don't believe that, because I think the majority
13:27of people wouldn't believe it now, because I know they've been on various campaigns,
13:32but he wouldn't have said Kismet, fate, because it kissed me hardy and, you know, that was
13:38it, I'm going to die. And, you know, I've got a photograph of that, it's quite, it was
13:45a lovely scene to do. Peter Finch, after that, put me up for Lost Horizon with Liev Ullmann,
13:55who I had, who auditioned for Nicholas Alexander and didn't get the part because Sam Spiegel
14:01said she'd got a foreign accent, but that's beside the point. But Peter was sweet, because
14:07he put me up for the part, and I couldn't do it for some reason, no, the script was
14:12so awful I couldn't do it, and it got torn to pieces. Michael York played it, and it,
14:21I mean, it wasn't very good at all, I'm so glad I didn't do it, but it was sweet of him
14:25because he put me up for another part after that and I couldn't do that, because, you
14:30know, it's nice when I try and do that still. I was lucky because Olivier and Guinness were
14:40so generous, generous-hearted, and they put people up for various things, which is good
14:45of them. It was just enjoyable meeting Peter Finch, but there again, it was one of those
14:50films that it came and went, and I enjoyed myself on one or two others, but it was great
14:59meeting Peter Finch.