Thursday, April 22, 2010

Jack & Jackie

It was rather late in my illustrious career that I finally began to grasp the full subtext of what Mr Aloysius Louder, my voice teacher at the Royal Academy, had meant when he told us that, “An actor is a Jack of All Trades and Master of None.”

There were ten of us in the class when he uttered these profound words.

We were lying on our backs staring up at the flaky, peeling ceiling. Humming gently and using our inter-costal diaphragmatic breathing technique and our lower rib cages, we were supposedly increasing our lower tonal resonance. I was musing on the fact as to why the George Bernard Shaw Trust, which financially supported the Academy at the time, could not afford a tin of paint.

Gently prodding me in the ribs with his highly polished patent leather shoe, Mr Louder disturbed my contemplation.

“Would you not agree, Mr Poole?”

“Most certainly, sir,” I replied. It seemed, at the time, the best answer to give. I was wrong.

“Why?” he asked.

My mind was still locked into the peeling paint and the large damp patch that surrounded it. I was about to say something about building and plumbers, but luckily my friend Toe-Jam Hamilton piped up, “’Cause we’ll be a bank manager one day, an earl the next and with a bit of luck an IRA bomber the following week!”

“Quite right, Mr Hamilton.” replied Mr Louder. “You will have to gather information about people in all walks of life. From Lords and Ladies to the most beggarly tramp. You’ll use that information when you play all the different characters that you are cast in. But you will never be a Lord or a Lady. Or, I hope, a tramp. Yes, a Jack of All Trades but a Master of None.”

Thirty-five years later I was again lying on my back when Mr Louder’s words of wisdom floated back into my grey matter.

On this occasion I was underneath the hand basin in a bathroom at the Rotterdam Hilton hotel. I had been in residence at the hotel for twelve weeks whilst I was playing the leading villain in a Jackie Chan picture. Whilst being an astute businessman, Mr Chan is a “Star” and has an inert kindness backed by a heart of gold. He is also a man of extraordinary talents. Not only does he design, choreograph and perform all his own stunts but, as and when the mood takes him, he takes over the job of the cameraman, the make-up artist, the wardrobe dresser and even the director. A “Man of Means” is Mr Chan. As he explained to me one day on the shoot, “Ah, Sir Cless, in American picture, producer he tell me what to do. In my picture I tell lem!”

Unfortunately he had not told his producer that I was also “a Man of Means with NO Means” and the per diem I received was minimal. It didn’t even cover the daily cost of refilling Toddie with the highly refreshing Dutch jenever gin I had grown partial to.

I was therefore forced to cater for myself in the cramped surrounds of my twenty-first-floor bedroom. Dining out on my meagre allowance was out of the question, so I shopped in the local markets for my protein and fresh veggies. I borrowed a small gas cooker from a friendly member of the crew, who also enjoyed his gin, and set up my own catering department in my room.

My days “off-set” greatly exceeded my days “on-set”, so I spent lengthy sojourns “on ’oliday”, as the 2nd assistant director, Ms Lee Wung Sue, aptly called my non-working days.

It was on my ’oliday days that I toured the city of Rotterdam on the marvellous tramway system using my “Plonkie”. A Plonkie is a strip card that could be purchased for a few guilder and it allowed you to take as many tram rides as you could manage within a specified time. I hopped from tram to tram, gaily inserting my Plonkie into the automatic machines placed neatly on the boarding platforms of all the trams. I would return to the hotel in the early evening feeling young at heart, but weary, exhausted and hungry.

With diverse cosmopolitan communities resident in the city, the outer suburbs of Rotterdam had a wide selection of grocery stores, selling produce from across the globe. One day I would return with yams, pigs’ trotters and a couple of chillies, and cook Jamaican; the next it would be pasta and veal knuckles and I’d don my Italian chef’s hat. Every day I felt like Floyd diving into a new culinary experience. My little gas cooker and small wok worked wonders.

The only problem arose at the start of my final week.

I used to fillet all my fish and meat and prepare all my vegetables in the bathroom, which also served as my laundry room. I mean, a man has to have clean socks and Y-fronts, doesn’t he? It was while I was delicately filleting some pig’s tripe that I noticed my problem. A blocked drain.

Eleven weeks’ worth of fluff from my woollen socks, bones from my eels, and gristle from my pork hocks had taken their toll on the functioning of my bathroom basin’s U-bend!

Mr Louder’s words were at the forefront of my brain as I loosened the U-bend with my Leatherman. In no time at all I had disposed of the offending items blocking the drain and reattached the bend. I stood up smiling, looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “I wonder if the multi-talented Mr Jackie Chan has ever played the part of a plumber.”

I asked him on set the very next day. He replied, “Ah, Sir Cless, no I lav not. I am Jackie Chan not Jack of all Tlades."

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Games

Ah, yes, games. 

We all do love them, don’t we? We all play them, and many of us often pay a fortune to watch them, especially if we are past that stage in our lives where we can hobble onto a playing field or be wheeled sedately into the nearest casino.

I now class myself as an armchair-sportsman. Or rather, I should say, a park-bench sportsman.

There is nothing more gratifying than watching twenty-two or thirty or so physically magnificent young men or women thrash the living daylights out of each other from the comfort of your favourite armchair. Or even, as I now find myself, neatly tucked up in newspapers on the pavement outside a television and hi-fi store’s window.

I find team sports more enjoyable to watch than one-on-one contests. This is strange because in my youth I was a reasonably ranked league squash player.

How, you may ask did I manage to play this highly physical and strenuous game.

Well, inter-twixt my marriages and divorces of the fifties, sixties, and even the seventies I had a pretty impressive physique.

You titter? 







Yes, it’s true. The gymnasium was always the second port of call on my daily routine. Even if I found myself in unknown surroundings after my previous night’s exploits, my tactical military training gained at the Royal Academy sprang to the fore.

Tea for the Missus-of-the-time in bed; the sprogs up, teeth brushed and a weaving drive to the nursery or primary school. That was my standard routine for many years of my early life.

The return home was the ominous part of the daily habitual journey.

Was the Missus-of-the-time still in residence? This question was of supreme importance as all my “Ladies-in-wedlock” have disapproved of my indulgences both in alcohol and in nicotine, so preparations always had to be made. Peppermints or “Fishermen’s Friends” in the vehicle’s cubbyhole and deodorant under the car seat. I highly recommend both to any husband-to-be or even to a bride-in-waiting.

Another jobbing actor’s golden rule stolen straight from my lifelong hero’s manual - Lord Baden-Powell’s scouting hand-book: Be prepared!

I digress, my apologies.

Where was I?

Ah, yes, the gymnasium. 

The derivation of this now yuppie-stock-in-trade word “The Jim” is in fact from the Greeks. Their word “youvoc” literally translates as nude, that’s bollock-naked to you less-educated Philistines.

So it’s not surprising then, is it, that a handsome young man in his prime should make the gym his second port of call on a daily basis? It also perhaps makes you realise the hidden depth of my fellow knighted businessman’s astuteness in calling his health-gaining conspiracy Virgin-Jim-nasiums?!

Now, it may seem strange that at these dens of supposed iniquity I always had the inordinate pleasure of meeting the common man. “The Civilian”, if you recall my monologue on the relation of the armed services to the acting profession. The Civilian is anybody who has either the fortune or the misfortune not to be involved in the entertainment industry.

And what an entertaining bunch they were. The plumber with a prosthetic arm, Kevin; the high-wire electrical engineer, who’d had a knife jammed through his larynx, Fennel. Prince, an African bricklayer who was in love with his Pedi tribal rain queen, Modjadji, and a well-endowed-with-glandula-mammaria Justine, who was the personal assistant to a local coffin manufacturer.

These civilians were part of my daily life for a good seven or eight years.

It is amazing what wonderful titbits – excuse the pun – of information you can glean from such a diverse crowd of people with whom you grunt, moan and sweat on an almost daily basis. Topics of conversation in the sauna ranged from the mundane hedonistic to the spiritually rewarding. In the seventies the late Bertrand Russell was the order of the day, and when we’d polished him off we still had John Lennon, Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, Castro and the ailing Breshnev to chew on.

Word association. Now, that’s a game, isn’t it?

Every child and actor has played it and, believe it or not, it’s still a game that I greatly enjoy, because in my present decrepit state it’s the only game I can still actively participate in. The great Bard himself summed it up very succinctly, as he always does, in his masterpiece Hamlet. When Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading, the perplexed scholar and juvenile delinquent of his day, Hamlet, replies, “Words, words, words.”

So, a word of advice for you younger readers. The next time you are “googling”, “sms-ing”, “blogging” and annihilating the vermin from your most up-to-date downloaded PC game, give a thought to us armchair sportsmen who can still knock together a word or two.

Perhaps give a thought to the fact that life is not all about the nude-asium!

Sunday, April 11, 2010

No Acting Required

The origins of the often-used expression “N.A.R.-ing” in my profession are many. It has been reported that John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, James Stewart and even the legendary Orson Wells coined the phrase.

Rumour has it that “The Duke” John Wayne, when he was offered a role, used to demand a full shooting script for his perusal. He would then retire to his ranch in Iowa and page through it notating each page that he thought would require no acting. Once he was satisfied that over sixty percent of the script could be “N.A.R.-ed” he would allow his agent to continue negotiations with the producer. Another rumour tells that Big John’s personal script of True Grit, with two thick black pencil lines and the large letters N.A.R. (no acting required) scrawled across every third page, was offered at a Sotheby’s auction shortly after his death.

My own experiences with a spot of “N.A.R.-ing” go back to the mid-seventies.

I was playing the lead in a made-for-TV period cowboy drama set in the early days of the gold rush in Australia. The scene involved the arrival of the leading villain, the leading lady and myself in a fictitious town called Muckinbuddin. We had already shot the following scene, which showed us climbing out of the stagecoach and entering the saloon. There were a few minor lines of dialogue in this sequence. As it was the first time the audience was introduced to the slick smooth-faced bank manager, who would fleece the unsuspecting inhabitants of their newly panned gold, several close-ups were required by the director. It was also the first time my love interest, Ms Henrietta Sweet, played by Miss Courtney Ashbourne, appeared in the story.

Miss Ashbourne was straight out of drama school and had secured this, her first TV role, after spending an evening on the casting couch with Herr Otto Geltmann, a German with Jewish connections in Australia and Bonn.

She was very nervous and the make-up and wardrobe departments fluttered around her, especially when her close-ups were being shot. Obviously Herr Geltmann had issued instructions, and the stylists wanted to make sure they would collect their weekly wages.

A late friend of mine and a fellow student of the Royal Academy, Mr Andrew Letagé, played the crooked bank manager, Mr Cyrus McFarlane. Andrew was a tall good-looking Anglicised Frenchman and, as he was a couple of years older than myself, I looked to him when I needed advice. His advice was always courteously given, and he was dutifully rewarded with a hastily taken sip from my Toddie.

In those days I had taken a liking to gin.

I had developed a marvellous adaptation of the pink gin cocktail. Working on twelve shots in Toddie, I added thirty-two dashes of Angostura Bitters, to gain the full effect of my cocktail. To help disguise the smell of alcohol from prying noses, I arranged with the continuity supervisor that I could store a jar of pickled onions in the side-sack of her ever-present camping stool.

I can not claim full credit for this delicious drink. A wonderful white-haired ex-Major in a Gurka regiment introduced me to it while I was filming a documentary in the Nilgri tea-laden mountains in India. Apparently the “Gin-onion” was a regular pre-noon drink for many officers in the British India Army.

I’m sorry, I digress.

We had started filming the two-minute in-town scene at eight in the morning and, because the stylists carefully rearranged every stray strand of Miss Ashbourne’s lacquer-encrusted hair before, after and sometimes during every take, we only wrapped the scene at three in the afternoon. By the time the whole sequence was in the can, Andrew and I had polished off the full contents of Toddie, and sucked and chewed ten pickled onions each.

The director then suddenly announced, “I need to get the preceding scene. A single long lens establishing shot. And I want to catch it as the sun sets over there.”

He pointed to a dirt track on the distant horizon. “How long to set up?” he asked.

The assistant director quickly conferred with the camera crew and the horse wranglers.

“An hour and a half,” he said. “It’ll take them that long to get the stagecoach over there. But I can send the actors with them to speed things up.”

“Good,” said the director.

I excused myself for three minutes, and darted off to refill Toddie, and replenish the supply of pickled onions from the caterer’s van.

One hour later Miss Ashbourne, Andrew and I were seated in the stagecoach atop a small hillock overlooking the town of Muckinbuddin. The camera with a long lens was positioned in the high street approximately a mile and a half away from us. The wrangler in charge of driving the stagecoach had been given a walkie-talkie so that he could receive instructions, and be given a cue to commence action. This was our only means of communication with the base camp.

The words “Stand by!” crackled through the walkie-talkie and suddenly Miss Ashbourne went into a state of apoplexy. The director, prior to our ascent up the mountain, had instructed her to look out of the stagecoach window and admire the breathtaking scenery.

“It’s the first time you’ve seen the place, and it’s going to be your home for the next thirteen episodes, that’s your motivation! OK? You got it?”

The poor girl, now in a state of near panic as the make-up department was over a mile away, turned to Andrew and said, “What about my hair? They haven’t checked it? Does it look all right?” 




Andrew calmly offered her my Toddie and I gently placed a pickled onion in the palm of her hand.

“Don’t worry, ma cherie,” gushed Andrew, “we’re doing a bit of “D.O.T.H.-ing”

 “What’s that?” She asked.
 “Dot-on-the-horizon acting, my dear. Dot on the horizon. Very similar to N.A.R.–ing.”

“Action!!”

As the sun set majestically in the background, the silhouetted stagecoach with its three pinprick dots peering drunkenly out the window weaved jerkily down the dusty track into Muckinbuddin.

Thank you, Major Maguire.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

An Empty Bladder

Only the other day I was struggling. I was trying to commit some lines to my memory.

Funny thing, memory, isn’t it? Like the endless ebb and flow of the tide.

My ability to retain my lines was remarkably good. In my youth Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and even the great Mr Shakespeare used to flow off the page through my crystal-clear blue eyes into my brain with considerable ease. Even after a highly festive night with my fellow Thespians, nursing the worst hangover you can imagine, my retentive aptitude was always in tip-top condition.

Time and tide, coupled with senility, wait for no man. I am now beginning to realise that over sixty years of abuse with the noxious substance stored in my never empty Toddie, has had some detrimental effect on my grey matter.

I have been asked to make a cameo appearance in a forthcoming television mini-series. This in itself will be no great problem for me, as my character is named as “the drunk in the toilet”. What is causing me a great deal of consternation and in-depth soul searching is that the script I’ve been faxed gives my character about thirty lines.

As a man with an inbred knowledge of the art of inebriation, and with a lifetime of experience to draw on in the field of toilets, I am having difficulty convincing myself that any character, in such a state of drunkenness, would be able to deliver a single word, never mind eight sentences.

It is when confronted with a problem like this that all actors say, “Thank God for the director!” It is to this captain of the filmic ship that we all must turn. However, as the director is a new young protégé of Johnnie Woo from Hong Kong, and apparently doesn’t speak a word of English apart from “Laction” and “Clut”, I’m preparing myself for a torrid time. I will have to - as most of us jobbing-actors have to - fall back on my own devices.

An old late friend of mine, the legendary Mr Oliver Reed, would have been perfect for this role. So I shall follow the advice he gave to me almost thirty years ago when he was still in his prime. It was the early eighties and Oliver was filming in Johannesburg. I was playing a young sergeant who was assisting Mr Reed’s villainous character whip some frail and tender virgins. It was a period piece and we were all respectably clad. I don’t want to give the impression that Mr Reed and I were engaged in anything pornographic.

Mr Reed had taken a shine to me during the course of the day’s shoot, as he had espied my “Toddie finding its way to my lips during those endless hours while we were “hurrying up and waiting”. At wrap he invited me to join him in his trailer and have a glass or two of an exceptionally good single malt whisky. I was then asked if I’d care to join him and three other acquaintances for a meal at his hotel.

We enjoyed a splendid meal accompanied by several bottles of a delightful full-bodied South African red wine. It was my first time in the country, but Oliver had been there many times before, and was in the position to recommend some excellent Cabernet Sauvignons.

It was well past the bewitching hour when the hotel staff suggested that we leave the hotel lobby – the bar had already closed - and adjourn to Oliver’s room. My memory of this stage of the evening is now a trifle hazy. In fact it was extremely hazy the following morning. But I do recall that at about 4am the conversation was centred around some of the most diabolical scripts we as actors had had to deal with, and I was asking Oliver for his advice.

It also transpired that Oliver had surreptitiously made an assignation with a young female during our evening meal. This nocturnal meeting was to occur in her room, which was adjacent to his.

At this point my memory limps towards total amnesia.

For some forgotten reason Mr Reed was standing naked on a small ledge that connected his balcony to the young lady’s next door. We were on the fifteenth floor and the ledge was approximately one foot wide.

With his hands placed delicately on the wall behind him, he urinated whilst his voice boomed into the night, “My dear boy,” he roared, “just hit your mark. Say your line. Don’t fall over and always empty your bladder!”

What the exact question was that I asked of him to prompt this reply now escapes me but it did, and still does, seem to be excellent advice. I shall take full cognisance of it when I attempt to converse with Mr Jackie Loo Wong tomorrow on the set.

I’m sure I will be able to convince him that I can improvise my eight sentences into a couple of monosyllabic meaningful grunts and groans, and I most certainly will hit my mark and empty my bladder!