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CHAPTER FIVE

London, the Glorious City

IN THE FIFTIES, we regarded London as the greatest theatre center. Since in London the stage work was in the city and filmmaking was in its suburbs, an actor could work on a movie during the day and appear onstage at night. Stateside, where Hollywood had succeeded in luring film many miles from New York, the disciplines are more segregated. We had fine plays by then, by O’Neill, Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, but Shakespeare and the classic playwrights of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reigned in London.

I started my Fulbright year in London by painting scenery at the Old Vic, center of classical theatre. I was assisting John Collins, who painted in thin build-ups of transparent color. It was not the most glamorous time to be in London. We were still rationing, London was a pile of rubble, and it was freezing in the paint shop. On one wall we painted a huge Tudor fireplace and a roaring fire, and that helped keep us warm.

Roger Furse (who designed Olivier’s films of HENRY V and HAMLET, and the two CLEOPATRAs brought to Broadway in 1951) was designing THE MERCHANT OF VENICE for the Vic and was running late. I could draft construction plans. I was sent to help. (I was on a federal grant and cost nothing for Roger and the Vic.) That began a year of delightful assistance and friendship.

From Roger’s scene sketches (or “renderings”), I made cardboard models of the set, including furniture if needed, and we’d modify them as needed. Then I created accurate architectural drawings for the builders. I also outlined the individual units of scenery on good illustration board and Roger would color them for the painters.

We worked in his seventeenth-century studio in Chelsea. Among my projects was drafting the original scenery for THE MOUSETRAP. That show is still running, more than sixty years later. (After a meeting about THE MOUSETRAP, Roger complained, “I asked for a small weekly royalty, and they refused. Oh well, what the hell.”) I also drafted THE SLEEPING PRINCE (directed initially by Alfred Lunt, taken over by Olivier).

Roger hated meetings. He came back to the studio one afternoon, grumbling about wasting two hours on King Arthur’s round table. “If it’s too small, we can’t get enough knights around it. If it’s too big, we can’t get the cameras around it.”

I bought a bicycle and raced about the great city. My roommate was Norman Geschwind, who became one of the great neurologists of the past century. One reason I loved wondrous London was its magical fogs, and during my spring there, in 1953, the last of the great “black fogs” fell on us. Truly, your hand was dim in front of your face. Theaters closed because audiences couldn’t see the stage. Even on normal days, a thickness in air held the city. Men and women were merely shapes, the city of Johnson and Wren and Baker Street was cloaked. After that black fog, burning soft coal was banned. In years to come, when I went over to visit or to mount one of my shows, the clean city lacked that mystery of my youth, that smell of burning stone, and I was disappointed. One especially disappointing afternoon, the new owner of Roger’s home and studio refused a visit from my wife and me, and I discovered that the cozy pub across the street had become a French restaurant. But that evening, on that same city street, we saw a fox climb an eight-foot garden wall. An omen? Sudden magic? Roger’s spirit? Though the connection is not entirely logical, this moment makes me recall the most marvelous of all stage directions, in Act II of THE CHERRY ORCHARD, during a picnic. In Stark Young’s translation: “Suddenly a distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, like the sound of a snapped string, dying away, mournful.” Something unexplained, haunting.

At the Vic, I also met and assisted Leslie Hurry, a superb — and crazy — designer. Perhaps, he said, his mind had been affected by growing up above the family mortuary. Leslie didn’t have a studio, but knelt by his bed and set a pad of paper on it to draw. He slowly built up his sketches, like John Collins, though he used transparent inks rather than paints. One of my jobs was to take a fresh pad of paper and make a small wrinkle or smudge on every page. Leslie couldn’t face the challenge, the unlimited possibilities, of a blank or, as he said, “virgin,” page. During the war, he had stacked a dozen paintings in his room, and a piece of shrapnel tore through the center of the stack — leaving gaping holes in a dozen canvases. At that moment, he told me, “I got an immediate stabbing pain in my thigh, and it’s never gone away.”

Here’s a valuable comment from Leslie Hurry. Director: “Leslie, you’ve just contradicted yourself.” Leslie: “So what?”

WHAT I LEARNED

One of the principal things I learned in London: do not slurp your tea to cool it.

I also learned not to begrudge the praise and recognition of others in your field. Alfred Lunt visited Roger almost daily to watch the set develop for THE SLEEPING PRINCE. He would end these meetings by describing his experiences with other great designers: Oliver Messel, Eugene Berman, even Christian Bérard. I said one day, after Mr. Lunt left, “Doesn’t it annoy you, Roger, how he praises these other designers?” Roger replied, “Nonsense, David. He’ll praise me just as much next chance he gets.”

We continued that show for Olivier after Mr. Lunt left (or was asked to leave). As usual for Roger, we were somewhat late. We were hard at work playing pinball at the Eight Bells, the pub opposite Roger’s house and studio, when Sir Laurence himself walked in. Rather than giving a craven apology for our moment of leisure under pressure, Roger barked, “Hah! Caught! And badly!” A good lesson; a good reaction. I have not used it enough.

Roger wanted me to stay another year, and asked Olivier to write my draft board for an extension. Can you imagine my small-town draft board opening a letter from Lord Olivier? It was written, and Olivier handed it to me, the envelope open. “May I read it?” “Of course, dear boy.” I read the letter, thanked him, and sealed the envelope. “No, dear boy, this is how you should do it: take the unsealed envelope, thank me, then with a flourish” (he demonstrated this flourish), “seal it unread.”

Roger taught me a useful basic technique: When you make a sketch of your proposed setting, draw it carefully, then put on a free wash of color. Cover the whole sketch when you do this. You can “cut it up” (define the details) later, on this base. Again, when you draw and color a rendering for a set, work all over your paper, don’t get stuck on a detail — do those last.

I learned that if you have the proud title of “assistant” or “apprentice,” you run, you do not walk, to your assigned jobs, and whatever is asked, you do — even if it is the middle of the night. Today the word “apprentice” seems to be replaced by “intern,” a position that is still unpaid, but with a higher-class title.

From London, I was able to travel to Spain, France, Germany, and Italy, and I learned to stand in front of a painting or sculpture for an hour of study. (I cannot do that now, but if you are a student reading this, do it.)

EXERCISE

Do exactly what I did in those Fulbright days: Stand in front of a painting for a full hour. Try a complex painting, perhaps a Bruegel or a Bosch or that great Seurat in Chicago. Then try simpler but equally profound works (there are too many to mention). Keep in mind Elia Kazan’s comment: “It’s hard, but not complicated.”