The Light's on at Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser Read Free Book Online

Harrison stands by registering polite concern.
    Time out, and Graham Stark is busy snapping away with his camera, something which he does, he tells me, on all his films—his collection should be worth a fortune one of these days. He is telling me what I suspect will be a scandalous story about Michael Curtiz, when Rex Harrison, who has been rehearsing with Heston and Harry Andrews, strolls over—and who can stroll like him?—and murmurs to me that now that Henry’s line to Norfolk has been changed, he feels that he’d like something stronger to say in reply. Could I possibly…? Sensing a slight needle here, I do a quick think, and give him a line off the top of my head which pleases him inordinately. I’d say it was passable, no more, but he writes it carefully into his script (left-handed), crinkling happily and repeating it with obvious enjoyment. When they come to rehearse the scene again, he drawls it out, Heston’s head jerks up in what may be well-acted royal displeasure or sudden suspicion that he is being upstaged (either way, it’s a perfect reaction), and Harrison opens his mouth and laughs silently.
    The word is that he is notoriously a bastard to work with, and I have heard horror stories about his temperament, but I can onlysay he seems extremely easy and reasonable to me—of course, I don’t have to photograph, produce, direct, record, attire, or act with him, and in my experience actors tend to be more friendly with writers than with anyone else, possibly because they have to depend on them. I’d given him a line, and he’d been happy with it; when I ask him if he has any thoughts about the rest of his part he leafs through the script and delights me by giving a sudden guffaw and exclaiming: “I like this!” It proves to be an exchange between him and Hertford (Harry Andrews) who has been sent to arrest him.
         
    Hertford: In the king’s name!
    Norfolk (pretending to be taken unawares): Henry, I believe.
        
    It looks nothing on the page; as said by Harrison, with his perfect timing and expression of feigned surprise, it worked beautifully.
    We talk about Arthur Barbosa, * and I ask Harrison if he saw French Without Tears on TV last night. He frowns and says he did, recalling his own appearance in the original play forty years ago. “I don’t know—these chaps nowadays, they seem so bloody young .” Sigh. “I suppose we were bloody young, too.” He reminisces affectionately about Roland Culver, Guy Middleton, and Trevor Howard; in the background Henry VIII is hauling an enormous mattress onto the grass and collapsing on it, robes, staff, and all.
    Lemonade is served from a large urn; Harrison, whom one naturally associates with wines of rare vintage, looks doubtful, but exclaims after an appraising sip, “Not bad, really.” He tries for a refill, but the tap yields nothing, so between us we up-end the urn to get the dregs and manage to extract two paper cups-full. Harrison sighs contentedly, savouring the bouquet, and wonders when lunch is.
    A buffet has been set up in a tent, and Fleischer, Heston, Harrison, Stark, Mark Lester, and I help ourselves, Heston unbelievable without his robe; he is clad in long johns with an artificial potbelly strapped on. Graham Stark is worried about his lines: is his accent right, is he doing them well? I assure him that not since Barrymore’s Hamlet…and he cheers up sufficiently to ask Fleischer if his Shropshire accent is acceptable (I gather he has been researching Will Somers, Henry VIII’s jester). Fleischer, who wouldn’t know a Shropshire accent from Cantonese, says so long as he’s comprehensible, that’s fine. Mark Lester’s nervousness is wearing off.
    After lunch discuss children with Heston, and the question of which other monarchs he might possibly play. Since he is a dead ringer for Edward I—bone structure, height, and presence—I suggest that he’d make a fine Hammer of the Scots, but have a feeling he’d rather