The students’ general impression, however, was that the academy had not moved on. Brian Bedford recalled:
We felt that RADA was a very old-fashioned organisation. It was tired and out of sync with the times. Maybe theatre was out of sync with the times. It wasn’t until Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger that working-class people were viewed as interesting theatrical subjects. And at the school we were taught that if we wanted to play leading men, we had to be six feet tall, aristocratic-looking and speak with an Oxford accent!
Yet Bedford also remembered that he and his fellow students were surprisingly self-assured. ‘[We were] all hell-bent on having the best possible time. We had this amazing confidence and I have no idea where it came from.’13
Gillian Martell noticed a brazen attitude from Finney – not arrogance as such, but an imposing swagger. ‘He did that great moody thing and would wander around with his head down. I remember asking him about it and he explained, “I go downstage with my head down, then I look up and give the audience my eyes.”’
That sounds rather Brandoesque. And indeed it would have been surprising if Dean and Brando were not role models for the students. Brian Bedford recalled seeing On the Waterfront several times with Finney. ‘To this day I still see the influence that Brando had on Albert in every performance,’ he said.
Finney also charmed the ladies. Yet much of it was just larking around. Valerie Singleton remembered a fun evening with Finney at a party in Chelsea. ‘He was quite boisterous but we didn’t make love,’ she recalled. ‘We just kissed passionately while rolling from side to side. We were on a pull-down sofa bed worryingly close to a fire, and I remember fearing that we might be set alight.’ (Strangely, or perhaps not given the passage of time, although Singleton later lived near Finney in Chelsea and they sometimes met in the newsagents, Finney would always introduce himself. He had clearly forgotten about the incident.)14 A bit of a lad, our Albert.
He was developing a reputation as a maverick, someone who could buck the system. Back then, all Brits did two years’ national service (the draft ended in 1960). All Finney’s contemporaries were conscripted; but not Albert. Rumour had it that he cleverly dodged it by feigning madness. It was probably an easy feat for someone of his talent. Apparently, he took to sitting on one of the rafters in a Nissen hut. He refused to eat anything and from time to time he fainted. Finney was duly discharged, avoiding the nuisance of a two-year stint away from the important things in life, like drinking and chasing girls, as well as acting.
It was a time of a great many parties. While at RADA, Olivelli’s Italianate café was a favourite, along with a local pub called the Gower Arms. Finney, later in life, acquired a reputation for enjoying what Brits call a ‘booze-up’. And so he did. But attempts to bracket Finney as a hellraiser, in the O’Toole/Harris vein, won’t wash. He was never as self-destructive. I can find no record of him throwing books at teachers or climbing down chimneys, let alone thumping people. It seems that Finney was a drinker, yes, but when he got drunk he did so in a civilised fashion.
Another key difference between Finney and O’Toole was in accent. O’Toole eradicated any trace of a regional background whereas Finney’s slightly flat northern accent stayed. It was to become his trademark. Clifford Turner, who later wrote a classic book on voice, taught Finney, O’Toole and Bates. Peter Bowles later recalled that his Nottinghamshire accent was knocked out of him at RADA. ‘When I came out, I didn’t know who I was,’ he says. ‘That, if anything, hampered my acting.’
Frank Finlay also recalled the irony of having to eradicate his local accent:
It was still the time when the reps were doing Who’s for Tennis? plays. So we spent days losing our north country accents. Yet within two years of my leaving they had a full-time voice coach teaching the students how to sound as if they came from up north.15
Meanwhile, Finney’s reputation was permeating around Bloomsbury. A young man from Hull named Tom Courtenay was studying English at University College London (UCL). Courtenay was interested in acting. He realised that UCL was near enough to RADA to keep an eye on the actors’ exploits. He also performed with the dramatics society. One evening, a RADA student came to see Courtenay in what he described as an ‘awful play’, The Duchess of Malfi:
Our director, Anita, had a friend who was a RADA student, name of Bill, who came to see her production. He was tall, handsome and laid back, with a soft Scottish accent, and he had a lot of authority because he didn’t gush. I was very pleased when he told me I would have no difficulty getting into RADA, even though he thought there would be plenty for the teachers to work on. I didn’t in the least mind being raw material. No point in going there otherwise. He went on: ‘There’s a wonderful boy at RADA at the moment. He’s very charismatic. Strangely enough, you have something in common with him. You’re not at all like him temperamentally and I can’t really say why you remind me of him. But you do. I suppose you could be his younger brother.’ Intrigued, I asked his name.
‘Finney. Albert Finney.’16
In February 1956, Finney appeared at the Vanbrugh Theatre in the first of a series of plays to be staged by RADA students as part of their training for professional productions. Fernald chose Ian Dallas’s The Face of Love, a modern-dress version of Troilus and Cressida. Finney played Troilus, Susan Westerby was Cressida, Peter Bowles was Hector and Keith Baxter was Philo. The Times said:
Mr Albert Finney and Miss Susan Westerby handle the parting of the lovers with a sincerity which draws out almost all that there is to be drawn from a beautifully written scene. Her voice control is surest in the softer passages, but Mr Finney is able to let himself go and still keep the tension unbroken.
Kenneth Tynan, then the up-and-coming theatre critic, exalted Finney, writing in the Observer that he was a ‘smouldering young Spencer Tracy … an actor who will soon disturb the dreams of Messrs. Burton and Scofield’.
Finney had one final commitment before he left. RADA staged a final, showpiece production, a matinee, before agents, friends, families, critics and judges.17 Finney and his peers gave their show at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 27 March 1956. Sitting in judgement were the playwright Clemence Dane and actors Margaret Leighton, Laurence Naismith and Eric Portman.
Students performed excerpts from various plays. Finney, as Petruchio, did scenes from The Taming of the Shrew opposite Liz Yeeles. Finney and Peter Bowles also appeared as longshore men in Eugene O’Neill’s The Long Voyage Home, in which Keith Baxter had the lead as a Swedish sailor. Students then reassembled at RADA to be told what prizes, if any, they had won.
Gillian Martell won the gold medal. Richard Briers was awarded the silver medal for what was described as an excellent comic performance in Moliere’s Sganarelle and Chekhov’s The Proposal. Briers also won the prize for best diction. Keith Baxter was awarded the bronze. Finney won the Emile Littler Award, for the student who had shown outstanding talent and aptitude for the professional theatre, for which he was given the princely sum of 25 guineas.
While still at RADA, Finney and Peter Bowles received letters from Philip Pearman at the Musical Corporation of America (MCA) inviting them to an interview at the talent agency’s offices in Piccadilly. Bowles tells what happened when the agent addressed Finney:
‘My dear,’ said Mr Pearman, the nicest of men. ‘First think for a moment of the poster: “Albert Finney as Hamlet.” It sounds as though a footballer is trying his foot at acting.’ [There was a famous footballer named Tom Finney playing at the time.] ‘I really think you ought to change your name, Albert,’ he said.
Finney, who nevertheless became one of Pearman’s clients, did no such thing. Later, Sam Spiegel, producer of Lawrence of Arabia, would urge the same. No way.
By the time of The Face of Love, Finney had already been wooed by Binkie Beaumont from London theatrical management company H.M. Tennent as well as by the Rank Organisation, the latter offering him a seven-year contract starting at £1,500 a year, rising to £10,000. What did Fin
ney do? Why, he rejected both, in favour of £10 a week at a repertory company where he could perfect his craft. As always, Finney went his own way.
What did Finney want from acting? We have already noted his confidence. Did that mean he wanted to be a big star? Both he and O’Toole had the purpose and commitment necessary to be stars. Finney also had a huge advantage over his peers; he simply loved acting. Several years later, after the release of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Finney was still disclaiming ambition:
I don’t give a damn whether I’m a star or not. It’s splendid to have money because then you needn’t think about it, and that’s a great advantage. But I just want to have a go … to act, and to mean what I say, whether it’s said jokingly or seriously. If I should incidentally become a star – well, all right, I’ll be a star as well.18
Although unemployment among actors is commonplace, most RADA graduates found work when they left, thanks to Britain’s many repertory companies. O’Toole went to the Bristol Old Vic and Finney headed to the famous Birmingham Rep, whose alumni included Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Stewart Granger, Paul Scofield, Cedric Hardwicke and Edith Evans. It was at the Rep that Finney, still only 20, first played big parts. The young Finney would give performances that theatregoers still talk about sixty years later.
2
THE YOUNG GREAT WHITE HOPE
And there was this one young man who came, and he was completely different from anybody else.
Pamela Howard.
Pamela Howard worked as a scenographer at Birmingham Rep. She said Finney was the first person she had met who wore jeans and a T-shirt and said ‘fuck’. She also noted that you couldn’t take your eyes off him even when he was a spear carrier. That’s star quality.
Bernard Hepton, later the director of Birmingham Rep, became the pivotal figure in Finney’s professional life. You wouldn’t notice Hepton in a crowd. He was like the late Fulton Mackay, an incisive player able to get under a character’s skin – an actor of unobtrusive brilliance. On-screen he is best known for playing Albert Foiret, the brave and austere hero of Secret Army, the series mercilessly parodied years later in ’Allo ’Allo! Hepton was ideal for the role. He always looked like he harboured a secret. He usually played second fiddle to the leading man, but what a tune he struck, whether as a cowardly villain in Get Carter or one of the more sensitive-looking ne’er-do-wells in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils.
Hepton had arrived at Birmingham in 1952 to take minor parts in Henry VI Part III. He was overjoyed:
I went and did these two little parts and I thought, ‘I’m here at last, and it is wonderful.’ It was a lovely little theatre. They called it ‘the little brown box’ in those days, and all the upholstery was brown leatherette. It was just delightful.
Such is the fame of Birmingham Rep – a building then based in Station Street, one now occupied by amateur companies – that it attracts visitors from all over the world who just want to savour the atmosphere. Sir Barry Jackson was the wealthy impresario behind Birmingham Rep. He used the fortune inherited from his father’s provisions firm to build a 440-seat auditorium, which opened officially in 1913. It was under Jackson’s stewardship that it acquired a reputation as a regional cultural capital, producing plays by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Jonson, Wycherley, Goldsmith, Shaw and Schnitzler. It was a place where actors could hone their craft.
Professor Claire Cochrane, senior drama lecturer at Worcester University, has described Sir Barry as one of the most important theatrical entrepreneurs of the thirties and forties: ‘He was a shy man, and people described him as the quintessential English gentleman. He was highly educated, spoke several languages and he was very, very loyal to the avant-garde theatre.’
Jackson was also gay – hardly worth mentioning now, yet he had to be discreet about his conduct at a time when homosexuality was illegal. He, rather like Charles Laughton and Lindsay Anderson, probably had an eye for young male beauty that passed his way. Hepton offers his own take on Sir Barry:
It was his theatre. He built it himself out of his own pocket and it was his pride and joy. He was a gentleman, he was a scholar and he was a very talented man. I had never met anyone like him. To meet him, he was like a ramrod, very, very straight and he was always smoking cigarettes through these extraordinary holders that he used to make out of paper himself … he used to come to the theatre probably once a week, twice a month, not very often, but he was the reason why we were all there.
Hepton remembers that the theatre was:
Very sparse … the bottom foyer was not decorated at all, it was a place of work. I went back to unveil plaques to Sir Barry, and I went into the theatre, the first time I had walked in that place for an awful long time, and it was like a palace! There was carpet on the floor, concealed lighting, there was a bar. I thought, ‘Good Lord, if it had only been like this!’ But it wouldn’t have been the same.
Sir Barry might have been in overall charge, yet he gave his directors total autonomy. He never addressed actors about their performance. Hepton recalls Sir Barry passing a note to another director producing a play about Lincoln. Hepton was playing a southern gentleman. ‘Trousers on Hepton are too short!’ said the note.
The company, said Hepton, was very close:
We were all great, great friends and I’ve never known a company like that either before or since. That all traces back to Sir Barry and the great influence of this man. It is very hard to actually pin it down, what his influence was, but it was there and it was actually in the theatre.
Birmingham Rep had one distinct advantage over other similar companies; it was a monthly rep. Actor Paul Williamson said:
You had plenty of time to rehearse properly, to take a play apart and put it back together again. Whereas with weekly rep you just got the bloody thing on, in fortnightly rep sometimes you fell between the two stools because you just had time to take the play apart but not time to put it together again. Monthly rep was a luxury.
It was Hepton’s predecessor as director of productions, Douglas Seale, who had actually accepted Hepton into the company on Fernald’s recommendation. Hepton took over in 1957, although Seale continued to oversee the occasional play. And Hepton directed Finney’s first role in Julius Caesar. Birmingham Rep had a policy of putting on new plays alongside the classics. So Hepton was busy not only staging and directing plays but reading fresh material.
When Finney reached Birmingham, the rest of the company, which included Geoffrey Bayldon, were intrigued to see the newcomer whom Tynan had heralded. It was an inauspicious entrance. Finney was an hour late, looking distinctly nervous and wearing an old duffel coat. Yet the group’s verdict, on breaking for lunch, was unanimous. Finney was special. Before Finney’s arrival they had joked that he would have to change his surname. Now Hepton knew he was in the presence of no ordinary actor. ‘It was the only time that I saw someone cold and knew that he was going to be a star,’ he recalled.
Not all Finney’s roles were prominent, obviously, but, rather like Richard Burton, Finney compelled attention. Coincidentally, one of Finney’s early small roles was as the orphaned clerk Richard in The Lady’s Not for Burning, a part in which Burton had excelled. Finney had not only a handsome, forceful face but also hypnotic blue eyes. Even when he was scrubbing the floor, when he had his face to the audience one’s gaze fell on him.
In another play, a piece of Irish whimsy called Happy as Larry, Finney caught the notice of Michael Billington, later a distinguished theatre critic: ‘He was one of a chorus of dancing tailors, and there was something about this stocky, square-shouldered figure that instantly drew the eye. He was a 19-year-old fresh out of RADA. It was fascinating to see him mature with every production.’
Billington also remembers walking past Finney near the city’s train station:
What struck me was the confidence with which he held himself. It was that certain set of the shoulders. He didn’t so much as walk as swagger in a curious kind of way –
call it, perhaps, saunter aggressively – as if he knew exactly who he was and was very, very sure of himself.
It helped that everyone liked ‘Albie’. Finney, with Hepton’s help, had moved from the rather downmarket Balsall Heath to Pakenham Road, Edgbaston, into the home of Winnie Banks, a housekeeper to a hostess known for her theatrical digs. Finney became friendly with Winnie and continued to visit long after he had become a major star. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, both Finney’s immediate successors as ‘juvenile lead’ at Birmingham Rep, first Ian Richardson and then Derek Jacobi, also stayed with Winnie. Jacobi later recalled that Finney had decorated his bedroom, ‘At one point I asked the landlady if I could change the wallpaper in the bedroom. She said, “No, no, no – Albert put that up”.’1
Finney had also met the actress who was to become his first wife, Jane Wenham, at a party in Stratford-upon-Avon. Wenham, nine years older than Finney, had joined the Old Vic at the age of 17. She had won excellent notices in Grab Me a Gondola and was appearing in three important roles during the 1957 Stratford season – as Celia in As You Like It, as Calpurnia in Julius Caesar and as Iris in The Tempest. Finney soon moved into her flat in West Street, Stratford.
Meanwhile, Finney’s roles continued. The Lizard on the Rock ran for a month in the summer of 1957. Set in the Australian desert, it tells of a successful man reassessing the value of wealth and power. A critic wrote, ‘Albert Finney, Geoffrey Taylor and Colin George clearly differentiate the senator’s three sons.’
Douglas Seale was still officially the director at Birmingham when he cast Finney as Henry V. Seale had built his reputation on Shakespeare’s histories, notably the cycle of the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III. He was now trying his luck with Henry V. The production also featured a young Michael Blakemore, who was hoping to be cast as a member of the French court – the dauphin or the constable. Instead he played Exeter. He recalled that Finney’s appearance as Henry V was the first time he had seen an actor playing the part without make-up. Hepton was also in the chorus.
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