Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

by Sladen, Elisabeth

  Couldn’t you have thought of a different line? I wondered.

  But he had to be the consummate professional, didn’t he? So there we were, eating the bloody stuff and trying not to vomit.

  Of course, the bleeding didn’t stop, so I remember taking the tie off my trousers and winding it around his hand to stem the flow. I was not happy. Brian had gone with it so I followed, but when we came offstage I said to the stage manager, ‘You make damn sure that tin is opened properly in future!’

  * * *

  I shared a dressing room with Sara Kestelman, Jeanie Boht and Maria Aitken, who’d also both come over from Liverpool. Jean had got to know David Scase because she was an amateur operatic performer, but she was a natural comic. The pictures of her in my scrapbooks are hysterical. Maria, on the other hand, was like a creature from another planet. When she first turned up we said, ‘What do we call you?’

  ‘Maria – as in Black.’

  She used to saunter in, wrapped in expensive furs, and just drop them wherever she stood. Jeanie and I would dive down, scoop them up and dust them off. We couldn’t bear such exquisite things getting dirty but Maria didn’t seem to mind – or notice. Maybe people had always picked things up for her. She was a sweet girl but coasting on a different plane to the rest of us.

  My mum and dad, bless them, used to come over on the train to see every single play (eight a season) and every weekend I would go home with Brian. The station was very near Manchester Library Theatre – it’s not there any more – and we’d wait for the final curtain on a Saturday before flying out the door. If we missed the 10.30 it was hours until the next one. Of course, we’d both be in full stage slap and it took most of the journey to get it all off. God knows what the other passengers thought.

  It was worth the effort just to walk into Mum’s house and smell her cooking. Wonderful memories! She used to send me back with a big cake every week – that was our little treat.

  Living with Brian in Whalley Range might have been inconvenient as far as seeing my family went, but it opened up other opportunities. Manchester was a thrilling place to be in the 1960s. So much of acting and the media is based in London these days that it’s hard to imagine a time when the capital didn’t dominate so much. It was still the centre of theatreland, of course, but other cities were a lot more important then. Leeds had a strong radio scene under Alfred Bradley and Alan Ayckbourn, and there was a buzz about Granada TV because Jack Rosenthal and the Stables Theatre Company had begun doing great work there for the drama department. I hadn’t been at the Library long when I began to hear of work going there. Warren Clarke got his first TV role in Coronation Street, as a lad called Barry, and every other day someone else would be popping over to film this or that. You could just jump on a train when you weren’t busy and record for a day then get back to your own bed. Granada loved that because they didn’t have to pay you subsistence.

  A lot of actors today can’t wait to get onto television. And then when they get there, telly is just a stepping stone to film, which is then a way of getting to Hollywood. Theatre seems to have been left behind slightly. That’s why it was so impressive to see David Tennant take on Hamlet while he was still the Tenth Doctor. An RSC old boy, he didn’t want to forget his roots.

  Obviously I’m known today for my work on television but at the time telly wasn’t a road I particularly wanted to go down. My only ambition was to work, and so far the theatre had been very good to me. But when Margaret Crawford, the delightful Granada casting director, rang and offered me a day’s filming on a Sunday – my day off – I leapt at it. Why act six days a week when you can work all seven? Just remembering that makes me feel tired – I’d do anything for a day off now!

  The programme was an ITV Playhouse episode starring Patrick Wymark. (Patrick had been considered as a replacement for William Hartnell on Who at one point, so, once again, there are the connections.)

  I don’t know if it was the arrogance of youth or plain naïvety but I turned up at the Granada drama department without a care in the world. I knew I could act. I knew theatre production inside out. And I’d been filmed on Search for a Star, even if I was too nervous at the time to take much of it in.

  Whatever you throw at me, I’m ready.

  Or so I thought.

  ‘Can I see a script?’ I asked the director.

  ‘You won’t be needing one of those.’

  Welcome to the wonderful world of TV.

  I got into my costume and the director introduced me to Patrick and John Wood.

  ‘John’s your boyfriend, Patrick’s your father-in-law. Now just stand there.’

  And that was it. No script, no lines, and no discussion about characterisation. I was plonked in front of the camera, the director called ‘Action!’ and Patrick Wymark started screaming three inches from my face.

  It was a joke, it really was. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I didn’t know if I should look scared or defiant or amused or angry. I didn’t know anything about the character or how she should react or what on earth her father-in-law was mad about. I wasn’t sure what expressions I should be giving. There was no direction at all.

  All I knew was I couldn’t wait to get back to the Library, back to proper acting.

  I swore I’d never set foot in Granada’s studios again. Then Margaret Crawford rang back. They’d been delighted with me. I’ve no idea why. ‘We’ve got a speaking role in another Playhouse episode,’ she said. ‘Will you do it?’

  Go back to that place? It was acting. Of course I would do it.

  This one was called If Only the Trains Come, based on the Chekhov story Ward Six, and I played a hotel maid. This time I had some lines – and a script! Barry Davis was a very pleasant director, so refreshing after my last experience, and it starred Bernard Archard, who of course was so crucial in the Doctor Who story Pyramids of Mars later.

  I don’t think I even told my parents about the first play. This one, on the other hand, they really looked forward to watching. I’m sure if you blinked you’d have missed me but, bless them, they said it was a triumph.

  But I wouldn’t know – I was on stage when it was broadcast. I remember friends and neighbours telling me that I must have been so sad to miss it. I had to laugh. Coming from theatre, you get used to never seeing your own performances.

  I learned so much at the Library under Tony and got some nice reviews as well. All the broadsheets sent their critics up so every opening night we had people like Michael Billington, Keith Nurse and Robin Thornber with their pens poised. The Telegraph said I had ‘some highly effective moments’ as Mary Warren in The Crucible; the Guardian said of my part in Mother Courage: ‘Elisabeth Sladen, as usual, puts everything into the rewarding role of the dumb Kattrin’, while Simon Hoggart, writing even back then for The Times, reviewed The Plough and the Stars by saying, ‘Of a remarkable cast, the best is Elisabeth Sladen’. Mum and Dad were prouder than I was but I kept everything in my audition book to show prospective employers. It never hurts to have nice crits.

  Tony was such a marvellous friend and important figure in our lives that it made perfect sense when Brian asked him to be the best man at our wedding on 8 June 1968. We’d been engaged for a year by then. I don’t think it surprised anyone when we decided to make our relationship formal. There was no song and dance. Brian did the old-fashioned thing and asked Dad for my hand, which was the easy part. He then had to find the ring that I’d already identified – sort of. I love Jane Fonda, and when I saw her in a film called La Ronde, wearing this fabulous aquamarine band with two diamonds, I said, ‘That’s the ring I want.’ Poor Brian spent days looking for the right one.

  We were such a tight-knit company at Manchester. I think if you asked any of us we’d all agree it was the happiest time of our lives. Warren Clarke had joined us from Liverpool as well and he was so funny – you’ll always have a good time with him around. He actually got married a few days before us, to Gail, a sweet little girl, and of course we all we
nt along to the wedding and a week later they attended ours. We were like family.

  All the arrangements for the wedding were done on our weekend visits to Liverpool. I realise now that I must have loved playing Desdemona so much my wedding dress looked just like hers. It would have been cheaper to use the same one!

  Typical Brian refused to wear tails, which my parents didn’t like at all. Everyone else was in their finery and he strolled up in a normal pin-striped two-piece. He said, ‘No, I’m having this suit and that’s the end of it.’ I thought he looked lovely, though.

  For my entrance song, we went back to another important play in our lives. Twelfth Night was where Brian and I had first met on stage, so we chose the clown’s song, ‘O, Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roaming?’ and hired the choir to sing it. A couple of nights before the wedding, the vicar rang my mother. He said, ‘You can’t have that song.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘The words are rather suggestive – and this is a holy occasion.’

  Mum wasn’t having any of that.

  ‘Well, we’ve paid for the choir now – they’ll just have to hum it!’

  So that’s what they did. I couldn’t help smiling as I came down the aisle, on Dad’s arm, accompanied by my young second cousin, Jane Palmer as she was then, on one side, and my old Saturday drama friend from when we were both five, Lizzie Gay, on the other.

  The reception was at Dovedale Towers in Penny Lane. Afterwards we all went back to the house. Uncle Bill was still living there and he and a cousin had festooned the place with this exquisite display of petits fours and flowers. It was so moving to see everyone crammed into that house for us. We’ve got a grainy old piece of film somewhere that shows guests hanging out of windows and one of them, an actor friend Ray Lonnen, stumbling around the road pretending to be drunk. We showed it to Sadie a while ago. She was horrified!

  The photos are pretty funny as well. There’s one woman in every shot and nobody has a clue who she is – I think she must have been a professional wedding crasher. No one noticed on the day. I suppose that’s how she got away with it.

  For our honeymoon we flew by Pan Am to New York. This was before the era of budget airlines, although we were certainly watching the pennies. Anywhere that was free, we went: the Guggenheim, Central Park, walking all over the place. The day after we were in the Park, some neo-Nazi guy went on the rampage with a gun. I think he killed two people before the police got him. That must have been horrific but even after that we never felt unsafe – although in my case that was more naïvety than anything else. Sometimes, though, I wonder if Brian just liked walking on the wild side. We saw quite a bit of off-off-Broadway, and I remember him one day suggesting we see a show in Harlem. When I tell people this now they’re amazed we dared to go there. White faces in the late 1960s weren’t exactly encouraged, it seems. I didn’t have a clue but you can bet Brian bloody well did. I’m sure he found it hilarious watching Little Miss Innocent stroll about, oblivious to everything. If we did get any harsh looks, I certainly didn’t notice.

  The first time I noticed anything really out of the ordinary was when the play began. Everyone on stage was black. Everyone in the audience was black. And then there was us. It didn’t matter but, unless I’m working, I always prefer blending in to standing out and until the curtain went up, I swear I could feel every pair of eyes trained on us.

  The play was an audience-participation number and I hate audience participation with a vengeance. I can’t stand it. We did a show like it at Manchester and as soon as you’d get people up on stage they’d start talking to you.

  ‘Oh, I loved you as Desdemona last week.’

  ‘I saw your mother in the supermarket. She’s very proud.’

  It’s as if the second they reach the stage, they forget there’s a show on.

  I remembered this in Harlem when they invited everyone up on stage. Though I tried to hide against my seat, as I’ve said, it was pretty hard in that audience not to stand out.

  ‘Oh God, I’m not doing that,’ I said, shrinking as far as I could into the seat.

  ‘You have to,’ Brian said, ‘or else they’ll think you’re racist.’

  Reluctantly I dragged myself up into the aisle. A minute later I’m up on stage dancing and generally making an arse of myself. I looked round a few steps later and saw Brian still rooted in his seat. I could have throttled him. Of course I don’t know if he could make out the swear words I mouthed at him, but he looked to be having a great time.

  * * *

  Before we knew it, we were back in Manchester with a season to finish at the Library.

  Knuckling down to work on Mother Courage was quite tricky after all the excitement of getting married. It didn’t help that it was such hard work. The stage at the Library rakes quite severely and Jeanie Boht and I had to manoeuvre this large wagon around the scenery. It was so heavy that one lapse of concentration and it was rolling me straight into the audience.

  We were on our second day of technical rehearsals and Jeanie and I had just kept it out of Row A.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to scrap the scenery.’

  The look on Dickie Marks’ face! No one else would have dared to speak to him like that. I certainly wouldn’t. But Jean was a character. And she got her way.

  We weren’t far into rehearsals when I noticed Tony hadn’t come in to work. Someone told me he had gone to hospital with colitis. I had no idea he was even ill. And I certainly didn’t realise just how severe it was – he’d seemed in good form at the wedding. It was a sombre cast that went on stage that night.

  John Blackmore, Tony’s assistant, had to take over. At rehearsal a few days later I was sitting inside the wagon that had caused so many problems. There’s a part in the play where Kattrin has to stay there for quite a while, so I was looking around at the back of the stage. Because it was just a rehearsal, the great big dock doors at the back, where this thing would be wheeled away to the storage area, were still open. Tony preferred it like that – it meant he could pop in from his office and see how we were getting on.

  I still had a few minutes to wait when I looked up and there was the familiar sight of Tony walking past, tapping his fingers on his brown briefcase as usual. He gave me a smile so I waved back. It was so good to see him up and about.

  The next day I turned up for work and found Jeanie and John Blackmore in the dressing room looking very down. I decided to leave them to it and went off to get some tea. Before I got there, Mr Colley, the theatre manager, called us all into the auditorium.

  What’s this about?

  Everyone shuffled in and Colley cleared his throat.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘as I’m sure you all know, Tony died in hospital last night.’

  I froze. ‘Died last night’? That was impossible – he’d been at work in the afternoon. I’d seen him, we’d waved.

  People were crying but I was in too much shock. Apparently Tony hadn’t left hospital since being admitted after the wedding yet I’d seen him with my own eyes. I know it was Tony. I know that’s exactly who I saw and now I know he was saying goodbye.

  Not everyone believes me. Some people think I dozed off in the wagon and dreamt it. I got the same thing later during similar events at Wookey Hole when we were filming Revenge of the Cybermen.

  But God, I wish I’d spoken to Tony. I owed him so much – we all did.

  Chapter Three

  How Do You Keep Your Shoes So White?

  ONE OF the nicer moments while I was in Manchester came when a chap introduced himself as the agent Todd Joseph, of Joseph and Wagg. He liked what he’d seen and said he’d be interested in representing me.

  ‘But only when you move to London. I can’t do anything for you while you’re up here.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to move to London?’

  ‘You will. And when you do, give me a call.’

  What a cheek, I thought. Why would I leave Manchester?

  In
fact, why did I need an agent at all? I was doing all right, thank you very much. When we hadn’t been disappearing at weekends to plan our wedding or film at Granada, Brian and I had taken the occasional trip over to Leeds to record for the BBC’s Northern Drift strand. I loved radio. It was great work, and easy to fit in around downtime at Manchester, so ideal for a little extra income. No book, no makeup, no costumes nor any rehearsal really, just acting, script in hand. It’s so liberating, and that’s why I was keen to work with Jon Pertwee on the Doctor Who radio plays later, and why I love reading the Sarah Jane audio books: you can be anyone you want on radio.

  Our producer at Leeds was Alan Ayckbourn, who was still starting out as a playwright. When he was appointed director of productions for the summer season at the Library Theatre in Scarborough, I thought we wouldn’t see him again, but he invited Brian and me up to join the company. The timing couldn’t have been better – with Manchester closed until autumn – so off we went.

  There were three plays in rep. The Dynamic Death-Defying Leap of Timothy Satupon the Great and A Little Stiff Built Chap were funny little things, but the big one, the one everyone really cared about, was How the Other Half Loves. This was Alan’s first play since The Sparrow so there was a lot riding on it for him. Not that you’d have guessed from his behaviour. We were performing the second play at night and we’d started on rehearsals for How the Other Half Loves during the afternoons. For some reason Alan only gave us the first act to work on. A few days later he handed out the second. We had a week until opening and eventually someone said, ‘Alan, have you got copies of the final act?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I haven’t written that yet. I work better under pressure!’

  Alan reminds me of a gnome at the bottom of the garden when he works. He is very insular, always thinking, always taking notes under the table. You know he is studying you, catching everything. I came in once wearing a nice new dress and Alan said, ‘That would be perfect for Mrs Featherstone’ – this ridiculous, mousey character. I still wasn’t a drinker at the time and so whenever we went out together I’d ask for a tonic water. ‘Just a tonic water, please’ became a bit of a catchphrase for the company, but I didn’t realise how much so until I saw the final draft of How the Other Half Loves and Mrs F was given my line! I know Alan must have had a good old laugh about it but I could have poked him in the eye.