Man Without a Face

...Complaint is held at the level of charming irony: "The director, particularly a world-famous one like Carol, is always right...

...part of their craft is to tell stories on stage in sundry voices and in the words of many skilled writers...

...In fact, there is not much mauling...

...besides Ernest Milton (whom 1 wish I had seen), they are Pierre Fresnay, Charles Laughton, and Cyril Cusack, three who could make "their own center-stage wherever they were, even with their backs to the audience...

...I have often noticed that dedicated actors who work exclusively in the theater are usually contemptuous of those who work in films—that is, until they themselves are inveigled into a film and find that money can be just as satisfying as artistic integrity...

...blinkering himself, as so many of us do—but his generation particularly—with the worship of art and science and the hope of social science...

...Occasionally he does sound smug, as when he quotes Judy Guthrie's remark upon his return from the wars: '"You have become very grand and veddy Brid-dish...

...But his praise of his direc-tors—Guthrie, Carol Reed and David Lean (with whom he had a long falling out, eventually patched up)—is nearly unstinting...

...As Taylor remarks about him in that fine, insufficiently known 1950 film, Last Holiday, "The character is at the beginning a tabula rasa, the quintessence even of nothingness...

...Very good, too, though abit skimpy, are the memories of Alec's early life in London, first as a lowly clerk, then as a penniless acting student...

...Matthew gets well, goes to a Catholic school, and is received into the Roman Church at 15...

...Once away from religion, however, Guinness does generally well enough...

...We hear, for example, of the time when, as commander of an LCI(L), he mistook a porpoise for an Italian mini-sub and ordered a depth charge fired...

...What kind of God would rej oice in the value of a renounced pat of butter or glass of wine...

...The statement that may contain, perhaps unconsciously, a slur is, "Of all the actors of repute in our time, he was, I think, the most interesting as a man...

...On the other hand, in various references to the Guthries, Guinness is scrupulous and affectionate about both their admirable and their absurd sides...

...Sir Alec Guinness meets all the above requirements and his autobiography has some marvelous things in it, yet in some ways it slightly disappoints...

...With great fairness, Guinness, for whom shooting the film was enough, adds that Tynan "was undoubtedly the finest [English] dramatic critic...

...He has a certain dullness about him and his 'big' moment seemed contrived...

...A boy and a girl...

...What his face does, his book does too...

...Guinness' relationship to organized religion seems to me just as peculiar...

...Again, despite his admiration for Tony Guthrie, he is eloquently persuasive in his denunciation of theater in the round, promoted by Guthrie...

...Need we find pretension misspelled as "pretention," and sola topee, that old pons asinorum, as "solar topee...

...Thus, while he does convey Edith Evans' unhinged aspects, it is done sympathetically, humorously rather than jeeringly, and not without self-criticism, as in an episode where he inadvertently causes the great actress to have an onstage fit...

...His tributes—whether long or short—to Gielgud, Edith Evans, Ernest Milton, Sybil Thorndyke and her husband Lewis Casson, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, and a number of other actors, are impressive in their kindness yet evenhandedness...

...I had disliked the man on meeting him but now I loathed him...

...Guinness' own problem has been a tendency to underact, impeccably but sometimes a bit coldly and unstirringly—albeit not in some of his rousing comedy parts...

...Autobiographies should be chronological ; in that way we get a sense of progression and development, of the different phases of the life and their exact relation to one another...

...Lawrence in Rattigan's very successful play Ross came...

...Noel Coward may nevertheless have been right about Guinness in Our Man in Havana:" He is a beautiful actor but, to my mind, he plays the whole thing in too minor a key...

...Because if it had gone off it would have blown your arse off...

...LikeGuinness, Hove the story of the great set designer Roger Furse advising young Alec on how to make a Navy Board grant him his officer's commission: " Just actiht part...

...Or is the implication that Sir Alec is fine on the larger virtues, and it is merely these puny peccancies he needs some extra help with...

...I have always suspected she was a dangerous woman," says the doctor, and Guinness comments...

...Let me give a couple of examples of Sir Alec's charmingly mocking and self-mocking tone...

...Or is it the Supreme Being who is to be impressed by the humility of this "fairly pitiful ambition...

...If they have worked within a rich theatrical or cinematic tradition, and have a gift for writing, the result can be delightful...

...As for that "quarter of a century of genuflection," was it a great sacrifice in exchange for which he is asking for something very small indeed...

...67 and 68, where we read how young Guinness, who had a scholarship (but one that carried no grant) at the Fay Compton Studio "was kept from starvation by the gift of jam sandwiches and fruit generously provided by fellow students and a weekly blow out, given by an old advertising copywriter friend at the Charing Cross Lyons Corner House.' Guinness continues: "I lived on less than 30 shillings a week in a squalid little room...

...As a man" may suggest that Richardson was less interesting as an actor, but I doubt it...

...Does Guinness expect us to give him credit for the modesty of his aspirations...

...I thought such bargains with God were confined to the novels of Stendhal and Graham Greene, but never mind: Let each man work out his salvation as he chooses...

...Sir Alec does get a bit confused: On page 73, "Guthrie did more than anyone to revitalize English theater...

...Guinness' involvement with the supernatural, for instance, is complex and, to my way of thinking, distasteful...

...British actors, including those of the flamboyant sort such as Laurence Olivier, or of the eccentric kind such as Ralph Richardson, are not big on spilling their guts...

...Thus in 1939, after their first meeting in Cairo...

...There are occasional inaccuracies, too, such as a reference to the Moscow trials "of the early '30s...

...Gossipy readers thirsting for shocking self-revelations and American actors craving tricks of the trade will close this book unfulfilled, but lovers of good stories gracefully told will not feel let down...

...But gradually he blossoms, takes on shape and color, becomes a person...

...since James Agate...

...One may, however, wonder about the treatment of Ralph Richardson, arguably the greatest actor of our age...

...After his son is stricken with polio, Guinness drifts into "a rather tawdry little Catholic church" on his route home and strikes a bargain with God: If Matthew recovers, his father "will never put an obstacle in his way should he wish to become a Catholic...

...In contrast to many an actor, he was eager to be in the thick of it, and, though somewhat inept and often errant, gave his best, doubtless doing some brave and good things as well as the bungling and ludicrous ones he understatedly tells about...

...Walking everywhere, often carrying my shoes to save the leather, I was remarkably healthy and looked uncomfortably thin...

...Sir Alec's verdict on the actors he has found most fascinating is of interest...

...And what is so wonderful about a small generous gesture of prayer for someone you dislike (perhaps that ear specialist) to make it worth mentioning in your autobiography...

...There are excellent chapters, e.g., "Damage to the Allied Cause," wherein, with modesty and good humor, Guinness recounts his service in the Royal Navy during World War II...

...Ernest Milton "met [Shakespeare], in Hamlet, on mutual and loving ground...

...It was almost as though we were watching Guinness' creative process as an actor, seeing how the man without a face could little by little assume one...

...Most of the early phase of Guinness' acting career is told amid recollections of his first teacher, Martita Hunt, and the first actor-director to give Alec a break, John Gielgud...

...29 and 30 should logically be followed by one on pp...

...asks an amused Commander to whom Lieutenant Guinness reports the incident...

...Or is Sir Alec making fun of all that ceremonial...

...In 1960,93 and bed-ridden, Cockerell writes, "Alec Guinness, who is taking the part of T.E...

...One should see everything if one's an actor...

...in the end, they learn how to tell a story in their own words...

...For actors are among the best storytellers...

...Or often so...

...I believe I had something of that attitude myself, and any time now may revert to it...

...What further complicates matters is the book's organization...

...there should be a colon here, not a semicolon] I am unaware of ever having lost a friend...

...That I can understand...

...as soon might a skier ask for a reward for years of waxing his skis...

...In Hollywood, Guinness meets James Dean, and the two take to each other...

...If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.'" Sure enough, "At four o'clock in the afternoon of the following Friday James Dean was dead, killed while driving the car...

...There is very little about Merula, Sir Alec's wife, and still less about Matthew, the only child...

...And if, after reading Blessings in Disguise, we merely flip through the illustrations to ,4/iv Guinness: .4 Celebration by John Russell Taylor, the variety and expressiveness in those pictures should remind us yet again what a multifarious and winning actor Guinness was and continues to be...

...allowing myself sixpence a week for a gallery seat at the Old Vic...

...original, shrewd, knowledgeable, com-monsensical and yet visionary, with a great love of animals, a respect for inanimate objects and a passion for books...

...Chesterton, who, of all Catholic Gods, seems to me the most credible...

...As a result, sections of his life emerge as marginalia to the accounts of their doings, and chronology is played havoc with: Some incidents are torn asunder, others are told ahead of time or delayed beyond appropriateness, several recur more often than needed...

...three days after an operation for a hernia and sitting up in a hospital bed, the door to my room was pushed slowly open...

...Charming, then, is the word for Sir Alec Guinness, save when he was confronted with Somerset Maugham, who slightly turned his stomach...

...He also wore a blond' piece' which was too bright and remained blandly intact even after he had been beaten up and buggered by twelve Turks...

...Why turn on the doctor...

...Less generously, he adds that Cockerell "enjoyed the de-risionsofhis period, class, attainments, and scholarship...

...From adolescence on, he veers between atheism and a variety of religions, obviously needing some kind of belief desperately...

...When, in a moment of crapulous enthusiasm, she greets him with a box on the ears that leaves his hearing permanently impaired, he turns violently on the specialist who treats him...

...Certainly notthe God ofG.K...

...Genuflection comes with the territory...

...Sixteen knots...

...In that case, why bother with Catholicism...

...and, more positively, findawaytomakesomesmall generous gesture without forethought, and direct a generous prayer of good will toward someone I dislike...

...to be verbally humiliated...

...There speaks the man of faith not a little blinkered himself...

...Because actors, more than the rest of us, are emotional, irrational creatures...

...Guinness, perhaps to indulge his penchant for anecdotes—or out of real or assumed modesty—quickly abandons the logical order of the early chapters to devote the later ones to tracing his own experiences largely in terms of bright friends or mentors, comets or meteors, that crossed his path...

...There are some mistakes in grammar and syntax that the copy department should have caught...

...That "gods" may seem curious coming from so dedicated a Catholic as Guinness, yet his love of Hunt brings out his most unchristian side...

...He insults the physician, pays him, and erases his name from memory...

...It is instructive to look up (in Wilfrid Blunt's excellent biography of Cockerell) what Sir Sydney said about Guinness: "A charming young man of 24, very serious about Shakespeare and about his profession...

...It is a fairly pitiful ambition after a quarter of a century of genuflection...

...Particularly exhilarating are the stories of Yugoslav partisans invariably shooting at the British vessels bringing much needed food and supplies...

...My own theater dressing-table betrays my amateur streak, everything laid out spick-and-span as if for a sale of cosmetic goods...

...The famous get to write their autobiographies, and then the anecdotes—about themselves, other performers, renowned or obscure people encountered in and out of the theater—really fly...

...What does repel me, though, is Sir Alec's pious smugness...

...You're lucky, aren't you...

...He is splendid in his brief but moving account of Edward Sheldon, the American playwright slowly, bravely dying, blind and paralyzed, of a horrible disease...

...There is not much about the extraordinary cinematic career either, and even about the theatrical one, which Guinness clearly esteems more highly, the revelations are rather selective...

...But, on the whole, you tend to trust him...

...He was absolutely charming, as he always is...

...Must we read "any-oneinbetween.particularlyiftheywere well-known personalities, was likely...

...The pieces do not come together in the end...

...Strange business, this...

...And about the abovementioned Ross: "Alec looked very like Lawrence of Arabia and played it well enough, but there was something lacking...

...Nevertheless, Blessings in Disguise is unduly tight-lipped about all manner of things...

...What speed were you making...

...And this, about Ernest Milton's dressing room: "Everything in it looked as if it had been chewed for half a century...

...Dean shows him a new sports car he has acquired, and Alec hears himself saying "in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own [such a more or less disembodied voice occurs elsewhere in the book, too]: 'It is now 10 o'clock, Friday the 23rd of September, 1955...

...it didn't detonate but shooed away the pursuer...

...on page 71, it was "Gielgud and Guthrie who did more to liberate English theater than any others, and John in particular...

...Guinness is especially believable and amusing in his literary evocations, whether it is going to lunch at the Bernard Shaws or the story of his relations with Edith Sitwell or Sir Sydney Cocker-ell, the man of letters, museum director and friend of many great cultural figures...

...It is good to see the underrated Fresnay and Cusack justly appreciated, and to recall that even in Laughton there was, beneath the ham, a terrific actor...

...He could be very tiresome...

...I shudder to think of such an act of impiety on his part...

...He quotes the mother of Nancy Kelly, one of his co-stars, "My, he's got big ears...

...in any case, some of the anecdotes Guinness tells about him, though not particularly illustrative of common sense, are enough to make us enthralled with the doer and indebted to the teller...

...In due course, his father and mother follow him...

...Guinness is right to observe that "in more dramatic circumstances, he could have been an English equivalent of Alexander Herzen...

...the book ends with, "Of one thing I can boast...

...The last chapter is meant to fill in the lacunae, yet the catch-all does not catch the essence...

...He writes: "Just a little more effort, I hope, and I may deny myself that extra pat of butter, the third glass of wine, one lascivious thought, and achieve a moment when irascibility is controlled, one bitchy remark left unsaid...

...I suppose it's your officer's uniform.' They [Judy and Tony Guthrie] couldn't disguise their disapproval of an actor they had once known as a 'bit' player putting on what they considered 'airs.' They didn't realize I had grown up a little...

...Guinness, whose birth was illegitimate and who never found out who his father was (although there was a very likely candidate and a second, one of the Guinnesses, not wholly unlikely), had additional reasons for acquiring the habit of uncommunicativeness...

...It is a faultless performance but actually, I'm afraid, a little dull...

...Happily, they always missed them, and once the stuff was unloaded, they changed the UK and USA labels to Russian ones before cartingit off...

...Typically, some of these passages are scattered through different chapters: A passage on pp...

...In the course of the latter, Kenneth Tynan offered Sir Alec one of his two tickets for an event staged by Fidel Castro: "They are shooting a couple of 16-year-olds...

...Since then, I have rarely read the critics, except for amusement...

...He gives an ebullient description of a famous Hamlet put on at Elsinore under Tyrone Guthrie's direction where everything went wrong, except that the mishaps simply brought about a great all-round performance...

...Under the self-irony there may be a touch of complacency, yet at least Sir Alec is free from vanity...

...Very nice, and Blessings in Disguisesill make its author additional friends, but surely the story of an artist ought to go beyond that...

...Part of their training is to observe people and learn how to become them...

...If Olivier is treated with a certain gingerly remoteness, this is hardly surprising, Lord O. being a bit of a barnstormer and not the nicest of men...

...Actually, Guinness thought little of critics after his 1947 Richard 11 ("a performance of which 1 am still ashamed") was described by one critic as having no music in the speaking, and by another as like listening to Bach...

...I wonder, though, if it was necessary to quote Lady Guthrie, near death, about her late husband: "A very tiresome man...

...The tribute to Hunt is particularly charming: "Martita should have been, had the gods been kinder, what she yearned to be: a great actress and a great star...

...In England, Robert Morley has taken Guinness to task for badmouthing a much greater artist than himself, but to my ear the lovable crazinesses recounted in riotous anecdotes ring both true and ingratiating...

...Though he has read all these remarks of Coward's, Guinness is much nicer about Noel, contenting himself with remarking to his favorite bookshop that the Coward Diaries would be more suitable on the fiction shelf, and recalling amiably some bizarre incidents during a stay at Coward's Jamaica house and the filming of Our Man in Havana...

...The book is studded with occult occurrences, of which I cite one...