#CHRISTOPHERLEE SATURDAY! This text is taken from part if an interview Christopher Lee
did on the BBC tv show 'Wogan' back in 1985. It must have been terribly
frustrating for him to, always have to retread this whole spiel about
HIS versatilely and volume of work, that had little or nothing in
connection with the fantasy genre .. Over at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE wer'e asking, HOW versatile do you think
Christopher Lee was on screen? What's your fav non-fantasy Christopher
Lee role???
QUITE
EARLY ON in my tv and film watching habits, I learnt that the actor,
Freddie Jones, was always worth watching. Even if it was a new tv drama,
a film or even a radio play at my grans, whatever I was up to, while
passing through the room, THAT voice would immediately capture my ear.
YOU COULDN'T WALK AWAY. My Mum and Gran were huge fans too, 'It's Freddie
JUNUCE!' she would say. My mother was brought up in the South Wales
valleys and had a habit of pronouncing certain words, names, as a
somewhat strange 'Hilda Baker' wrapped and tongue twisting, weird
mangled malapropisms...'Jun....uce!' 'Yes!' I would smile and agree
.'With a surname like that, he's obviously Welsh!', she would gleam with
pride. He wasn't, but I wouldn't dream of breaking the spell for her.
WE
HAD ALL SEEN JONES, in an ITV play version of 'Sweeney Todd' back in
1970. We were terrified. But something I noticed, far more than the
tension or the murders..was his delivery. His words, his prosody! Next
time I saw him was in Cushing's 'Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed' . .
again there it was. The pauses, the rhythm. It was tense and it and he
pulled you in with each pause.
WHAT WAS HE GOING TO SAY NEXT? I don't think Freddie Jones actually was
capable of being dull. Listen and watch his performance as Prof
Professor Julian Keeley, with Peter Cushing in Christopher Lee's last
Hammer Dracula film, 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula'. It's a master-class
in 'How to terrify an audience, with no props, masks or make-up and yet
a full tool kit of quivers, nuances and dialogue super charged with,
suggestion!
FIND YOURSELF, five films or tv shows.. and you'll see, when
he speaks, everyone is listening. I watched 'Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed' in a midnight double bill cinema, packed to the gills, with
drunks, dribbling into free fall and slopping into back row seats just
after closing time. Del Boy's with dates and 'men with dirty-macs'.
Nearly all were diving into candy's, crisps, cans, scraping and trawling
the bottoms of slimy twin ice cream tubs while sucking to collapse,
their cardboard cartons of Kiora. It was annoying and noisy...except
when Freddie was on the screen. Then, it went quiet and everyone tuned
in . .
MORE ON FREDDIE JONES and 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula' in our
PCASUK GALLERY and REVIEW : HERE!
WE
COULD POUR over the many, many gold star roles and others that do more
than just twinkle, when the rest of the cast and film, were not even
sparkles, in Jones' beady-eye😚 ! I wish I had seen Jones in Ronald Harwood’s affectionate
near-portrait of Sir Donald Wolfit in 'The Dresser' (1980), an old ham
called “Sir” who faces disaster in the mirror while preparing to play
King Lear. It was a huge success. You can see how he filled that role,
that theatre. It is said, 'After his 1980 run, no following actor, in
The Dresser – Albert Finney in the 1983 film, Anthony Hopkins on
television in 2015, nor Ken Stott in the West End in 2016 – matched the
rumbling thunder of Jones in Manchester and subsequently at the Queen’s
in London!' Sadly, I didn't see it and we have to make do with snippets
and a radio version on YouTube.
BETTER THAN NOTHING.😕😏 He was certainly better than most gave him credit for.
But there's gems to find, for sure! Quality, if not quantity. And for
that we say thank you, with bended knee.
Happy
Birthday, Freddie Jones. He once said, ' “My life springs from my wife,
my family, my work and my whisky.” . . Well, in remembering, we'll
celebrate and certainly toast to that - Marcus Brooks
YOU ARE MOST WELCOME TO JOIN US at the FACEBOOK PCASUK FAN PAGE! With posts every day, rare images and photographs, features and prize competitions.. all celebrating the LIFE and CAREER of Peter Cushing OBE
