A trip to Marx's grave
I used to watch "Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment" all the time when I was at school. Of all the fictional, whimsical pests the sixties had thrown up, David Warner's Morgan was the only one I wanted to share a cup of tea with. He didn't seem to have that rockstar ego. He seemed like a listener. It made sense that my parents said he was the Hamlet of his
generation. A lot of people said that. It was only when Warner died in July that I found out my old neighbout turned housemate Morgan had been named after him, also that I was now
living on exactly the same slopes of Notting Hill where the film had been set – have I said I've moved to Notting Hill?
I can't find any way of seeing his Hamlet now, but here are some photos taken by Lord Snowdon which, according to the captions, show the actor in character. Researching the original production I can't find any confirmation, but I hope the captions are right. Look at him enjoying himself...
Once I'd left school I actually got to share a cup of tea with David Warner. I was in Hollywood for my gap year, and he knew my Dad because they'd been in the Royal Shakespeare Company together back in the sixties. He was a gentle giant. Later, when he would come to London, he and Dad would reminisce about the night he tried to jump out of a window because he thought he'd be caught by a cloud. It was the first time I'd ever heard the word "bi-polar", encunciated by David with arms oustretched in a shrug as wide as I was tall. Over tea in Los Angeles, I asked him why he'd stopped working with the RSC and he explained that they'd wanted to cast him as Romeo, and he said he'd only do it if he could choose his Juliet, so they fired him.
He'd asked for Frances de la Tour.
David and Dad worked together again years later, on a television production of "Love's Labours Lost" that I rewatched the night he died. I posted a few clips on instagram, because I think they're just gorgeous together. Here's one...
So, yes, now the death of Her Majesty has brought me back to the blog, I thought I'd catch up on my old In Memoriams. And having moved, I'm also sorting through my boxes once again. I found this: the fax David Warner sent me when I came to play Hamlet myself at University. Director Simon Godwin's face was a picture. David said he had no advice, but I took it anyway.
How wonderful. I knew David Warner primarily as the voice of whatever mad wizard was in whatever radio production called for a mad wizard (amazing how those have fallen off since he retired), but there was always some special depth and delight to his mad wizards that separated them from everyone else just doing a bit. He seemed genuinely to enjoy whatever role he was playing. It was only after he died that I learned what range and celebrity he had prior to the mad wizard years. How brilliant that you knew him. He seems like an utterly delightful person.
ReplyDeleteTealin (commenting anonymously because I can't be bothered with Google's two-factor authentication)
Depth and delight are perfectly chosen words for him. I only ever seem to hear him on the radio in adaptations of Gormenghast. Either as Sepulchrave, or in this one as the Artist https://archive.org/details/TitusGroanBBCr4/1.+Titus+Arrives.mp3
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