The Eyes and The Voice
The Memoirs of Vladek Sheybal
1923-1992
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Chapter One.
Vladek's House
Fulham, London circa 1991.
Sorry for my chaotic talk. Funny, I am looking now at my painted cupboards in the kitchen. I painted them a sort of orange-red with some flowers on them. My kitchen looks very Polish; my house in London is very Polish too I think. My mother once said when she came to visit me that it's a little replica of our country house in East Poland, Ukraine as a matter of fact.
My thoughts have to go back into my paradise, into my childhood - it was so happy. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to survive this asylum, this exile, this situation - it would be too difficult. Now everybody I loved has gone. My parents are gone, my beloved sister, Janka has gone. I will never forget them.
I remember the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. I remember it vividly, because it was the time in which I had to go to my acting classes in our 'underground' college, which took place only in private apartments, like the old studies in Warsaw were aonducted in private apartments. It was inthat part of Warsaw, which was far away from the centre. When the ghetto uprising started, the tram which ran next to one of the walls of the ghetto had to stop before it reached the ghetto itself because the Germans were shooting at the ghetto. Jewish people, who were taking part in the uprising, were shooting back at them from the ghetto too. This meant that people had to walk quite a long distance, at least one and a half miles around the outside of the ghetto, then board another tram on the other side of the ghetto - which would take people to this district where my classes were being held. The atmosphere in Warsaw was very grim and depressing, and the people of Warsaw really went through hell with this uprising. The Germans were fighting street after street, house after house, burning the Jews and killing them. It had a tremendous affect on us. We were completely helpless - we couldn't do anything at all. The Germans brought in tremendous amounts of arms, and completely surrounded the remnants of the Jewish ghetto. Some of our Polish boys were fighting arm by arm with the Jewish people there. One of them was Urick Zelfan - a great friend of mine, who killed himself when he didn't have any choice to escape; a typically Polish gesture, ridiculously fantastic but also chivalrous and tragic. When the uprising was just ending its tragic existence, and shortly before he died Urick pulled a few Jewish friends out of the ghetto, taking them as far as The Povonski Cemetery in Warsaw, trying to save their lives as well as his own. Once they reached the cemetery they were to be redirected to some private apartments, or the forests outside Warsaw to join the Polish Partisan army. Suddenly they realised they had been surrounded by the Germans, who knew about certain people from the ghetto running away to the nearby cemetery and then on to further destinations of safety. They started shooting at him and he was shooting back. Finally he shot out his last bullet. He didn't have any more bullets, so he just took the gun of his Jewish friend who was standing next to him and said.
“Shoot me.”
“No, I can't do it” his friend replied.
So Urick shot himself - just like that.
Strangely enough, Urick's Jewish friend survived and later on the story trickled into our family. My mother adored Urick. I met Urick's parents in London later on and I told them his story. They only knew that he died, but they didn't know the circumstances. So he died like that.
The whole of Warsaw was absolutely horrified by this uprising and all our lives became subject to what was going on in the ghetto. First of all you heard shooting all the time, then you smelled burning houses and burning bodies as well. A huge dark cloud of smoke filled the whole of Warsaw giving us a reminder of what was going to happen to us, and indeed it did happen, a year later the Warsaw uprising started. It lasted 63 days, in which the whole of Warsaw was then almost completely destroyed. The Polish Underground army had an agreement with the Russian army which was already on the outskirts of Warsaw - when we started the uprising, the Russians stopped advancing. The playing of music was cancelled, parties were cancelled and people were praying for the Jews in the Churches. In their incredibly sadistic way the Germans built two 'merry-go-rounds' at the side of the ghetto. They wooed the children with sweets to get on, the music was playing and the happy children were going round and round on the roundabouts. When the parents tried to take their children off the merry-go-rounds, the Germans threatened to shoot the children. It was all absolutely ghastly. Obviously the Jews heard this merry music outside. God knows what they were thinking. Some of them most certainly were thinking that we on our side, were enjoying them dying in the ghetto!. In order to counteract this kind of German sadism, the Polish people, women especially, built lots of little altars all around the ghetto and masses of people came to kneel in front of these altars and pray. Priests came too and were giving mass. People were singing songs, church songs and psalms as a way of encouragement to the Jewish people in the ghetto as a way of saying that we think about you, and we are praying to God for some kind of miracle. The Germans tried to stop it all but then they gave up. The merry-go-rounds were dismantled too. I had to be there three times a week because of my travelling to classes. Life had to go on. The show has to go on, we say. We've got to get on with life in spite of the ghetto tragedy. This was especially true when we knew that the next turn would be ours, and indeed it was. So this is my little tragic account about the ghetto uprising - my recollection of what I have seen myself, and I have to add a little episode which has imprinted itself on the core of my brain. One day travelling to my classes I stopped at one of these altars, to kneel down and to pray with the people for a miracle for the Jewish people. Suddenly in one of the windows in one of the burning houses inside the ghetto (I think perhaps it was the fourth floor), I saw two people; a man and a woman. With a tremendous yell, and holding each others' hands they threw themselves down into the flames and certain death. We all gasped. A year later, during the Warsaw uprising I saw similar scenes happening in Warsaw. We are linked with the Jewish people in this incredible inhuman martyrdom of dying - for what? For black and white? For Jew and non-Jew, or Catholic and non-Catholic? I never understood it. I never will.
I see today is 11th February (1990?). Anatol Sharanski has been exchanged to the West on the bridge in West Berlin, and flew to Frankfurt to join his wife who hadn't seen him for 12 years. Then he flies on to Israel, as a symbol, as a hero and as a human being as well. I feel very deeply moved, and I can understand his feelings of being deeply moved when I saw him on the television screen. A kind of diminutive man with clothes much too big for him, he was smiling but it was a strained smile. He was walking into the free world after years of gulags; after having been a prisoner and a harassed man in the Soviet Union.
Within a few hours (it can only happen nowadays with modern techniques) he's whisked from this cold winter and snow of the gulags and Russia into freedom. Into a warm country, into Israel. They wait for him there in his new home country. I thought how I felt when I walked from my concentration camp during the war and into freedom. Then how I felt the second time when I left my country in 1957. Away from communism, away like a mad man and how I felt when finally my train crossed the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria and into freedom. I know exactly how he must feel. Very moved. I am very happy for him. For this development. For Anatol Sharanski. Then, as he walked from the plane in Israel led by his wife, onto the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv (which I knew so well), his face already was kind of having a colour in the shape of the sun. He was turning into the sun. Sun came into his life.
My kitchen downstairs in my house in London has a very intimate atmosphere with this red lamp on the table, my cardigan drying above the radiator and here I separate myself from the world by drifting into this kitchen. Whenever I walk into my kitchen, I walk into some friendly surroundings. This is not just a kitchen, but a space which has become broken into positive fragments. The image of the concentration camp has gone. I don't know. My kitchen has become something special, a new world for me, funny.
Vladek in his kitchen with Donald Howarth's Jack Russell - "Rumi."
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Chapter: Two
Halina Dohotska and her sister.
Both were Jewish ladies, and both women survived the whole of the German occupation and they were always smiling, always looking very elegant and beautiful. They were living in the same apartment that they both had before the war in Godgera Street, not far away from where we were. Everybody in the street knew that they were Jewish and nobody ever moved a finger to harm them. Halina would be coming into our flat to talk to my auntie Sophia, who used to be a singer, they were very close friends, doing their shopping in the little shop which was just round the corner. One day while getting drunk, our caretaker started threatening my father, saying that he knew there were lots of Jewish people staying in our flat and started threatening the security of Halina Dohotska and her sister as well. My father was very angry with him. “Please I advise you first of all not to get drunk” he said, “secondly not to talk about these things, because you know what the reaction of our underground army will be … it could become dangerous for you.” The caretaker got a bit frightened, but after a while he got drunk again and again started threatening us as well as Halina and her sister. My father decided to convey this to our underground army and one morning we learned the corpse of our caretaker was lying in the field nearby. On his chest was a piece of paper which stated that he was executed because he wanted to denounce the Jewish people. After this execution, of course, there was the fear that the Germans would come and round up our district and start taking us one by one for shooting. After two days the body disappeared. Apparently our resistance army wanted to make a kind of spectacle of him, and also give out a warning to all other possible denouncers of the Jewish people. Then they removed his body in order not to endanger the whole district. Years later, in my flat in London, Halina told me that she was also blackmailed by a Jewish friend of her father.
In 1939 with the beginning of the war, everything collapsed and the whole world went dark.
Here I am, again in my capsule, my kitchen with the lovely glow of this red shade on the lamp and whenever I have to go upstairs, with every step up, I feel I'm reaching freedom. I'm going out of my concentration camp. It's a funny feeling, I already condemned myself again in 1986 in February, again to the concentration camp, to imprisonment and to this awful inhuman experience of not being able to be an individual. These were the Dark Ages for me, but in the end, what ever matters is what is inside us. I think you can always carry it with yourself as I did. Now I understand how much I did carry with myself, my own sense of justice and independence.
All the professors of our college in Krzemieniec were being arrested by the Gestapo and shot, executed. The Germans were getting rid of the Polish intelligentsia from a list prepared by the Ukrainians. My father was not on the list, thanks to his very humanitarian attitudes towards all minorities and especially towards the Ukrainians. So the Ukrainians showed their gratitude towards my father by not putting his name on the list, but they warned him and he had to leave Krzemieniec. He lived in hiding with some friends in the country.
* * *
Chapter: Three
The Warsaw uprising started 1st September 1944. I will always remember this moment and this day when I saw from the balcony of our flat a girl, her name was Oscenia. She was pointing to something first left, then right with her hands going like a sort of windmill as though she was directing traffic. The shooting had started. It appeared that the girl was from our resistance army who was really pointing to certain people, where they should go, in which direction, and in which street and whatever. And then Warsaw went through 63 days of hell, 63 days of desperate fight. We were utterly powerless - not having enough arms and being constantly bombed by German planes. They were flying very low, almost laughing at us and simply dropping their bombs. At the same time the German artillery destroyed houses, and these awful new weapons; we were calling them mooing cows. They were making this incredible noise like 200 or 2,000 or 2,000,000 cows and then spitting out about 30 or 40 mines or bombs which were falling onto three or four blocks of flats at the same time, and destroying them completely. Towards the end of this 63 days I was desperately looking for some medicine for my father who was very very sick in the cellar, literally dying. He had typhoid, he was dehydrated already, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth and my mother was praying. Her face was white and in her eyes was a beautiful expression which suggested the only hope and justice is in God. I went to another district of Warsaw where there was a doctor friend of ours, to get some medicine for my father. The only way to get there was to climb the mountains of rubble in the streets, take a chance on being burned by the fire from burning houses on both sides of the streets, and run across squares which had Germans shooting from both sides. There was no choice but to run and hope that no bullet was going to hit you. Finally, you would have to go down into the cellars. Warsaw became like a rabbit warren underground, and down in these cellars there were signs for the streets above. There was a complete underground city. Certain streets could be reached by the trenches which were built under the streets. Finally I found this doctor who I hoped would give me some injections for my father. Suddenly, out of the blue, I was caught by the Germans who appeared from a doorway of one of the houses. That is what street fighting is all about. We were here, Germans were there. We were around the corner here, Germans were round the corner there. It was all very flexible and interchangeable, constantly. When I was caught by the Germans I was shifted along with another 200 people who had already been collected, we were all being kicked and hit by their rifles and guns. The Germans were always shouting and making incredible noises. More crowds caught, people appearing from left and right like rivers, into one big river. After a few hours of this senseless run with the Germans pushing us like cattle, we stopped on a big plain in the centre of Warsaw. A huge student house dominated this plain. It had been a student's house built before the war but during the Warsaw uprising it was turned into Gestapo headquarters. This huge plain was covered with grass and streets were all around it. You could say it was a square, but it wasn't a square, the only description is a plain. There were already thousands of people caught in Warsaw and of course some of them were in an awful condition. Some of them were wounded and some carried parcels, possessions. Some of them didn't have anything, like myself. We were all instructed through loudspeakers (in Polish) to sit down on the ground and wait. We knew that outside Warsaw there was already a kind of transitory concentration camp for millions of Warsaw people and here I am going to make a digression:
During the 63 days of the Warsaw uprising, half of the population was killed or burned. Warsaw counted two million inhabitants before the uprising and one million inhabitants were killed during those 63 days.
We knew that we would be selected but of course we didn't know our fate, we didn't know what they were going to do to us. According to some stories coming out of Warsaw (which was looming in the distance and was full of smoke), we heard tales of fires, shooting and explosions and people dying - and here on the German side, perhaps just one mile away, we were sitting on the grass in the sun and waiting. It was September and it was very very hot, not a cloud on the sky. Unfortunately, like in 1939 the whole sky was cloudless and therefore German planes could absolutely ravage the skies and the ground, throwing death with their bombs everywhere, without anyone or anything to stop them.
Radar had not been invented then or wasn't known, so the only times there was no bombing, during the Warsaw uprising in 1944 or at the start of the war in 1939, were the nights when the planes couldn't fly. We knew that eventually we would be taken to Prushkov, a big transitory temporary concentration camp and from Prushkov, God knew what was going to be our fate. I was sitting on the grass and kind of looking around taking in a little bit of sun, but my heart was very much in Warsaw. I was thinking about my parents, especially my father. I was absolutely sure he didn't have any hope to live. I was looking at this blue sky and then I was looking at the sea of heads, at the people. Somehow I don't remember if people were crying or talking. We were all sitting in silence, an apocalyptic silence. It was the silence which moved me so much, there was a closeness in it. This silence was already sculpted by the powerlessness and hopelessness of our situation. There wasn't any room for tears anymore, there wasn't any room for words anymore. There was only room for beating hearts and for thoughts, and perhaps for fear, though I don't think we feared very much. We went through such hell that fear didn't exist anymore in our hearts - rather keep your head straight and show this to these Germans that you have a style and your dignity. I was looking at this big house so far away in front of us with the big steps leading to the middle of the big wooden prison-like gate; it would open and close from time to time. It all looked to me like a Fellini film: The entrance to heaven or the entrance to hell. Behind this gate were the headquarters of the Gestapo, and there were a few Gestapo soldiers standing on these huge steps with rifles at the ready, watching us - this silent crowd of slaves who were waiting for God to make the little sign with his big finger, and determine what would happen to us. As I was looking at the house I suddenly had a very strange feeling as if my thoughts were detached from me, as if they flew out of my head and went forward to this big gate, because there on these steps was standing a person, a Gestapo officer with a big dog. The officer looked at all of us. He couldn't possibly have thought about seeing me or spotting me, this little tiny speck somewhere in the middle of this crowd, and yet my feelings and my thoughts jumped up out of my brain and hit him. There was a kind of strange and frightening vibration which went from him into myself and hit my heart too. My heart stopped beating and I stopped breathing for a second. I got frightened for the first time and I didn't know why. An uncanny feeling. Similar things have happened in my life before and I decided not to provoke anything. Anyway he was so very far away, he was a tiny little figure there in the distance by this huge gate to hell. And yet I realised that I had to look at the grass, I had to look at the earth underneath me. I shouldn't send any vibrations towards this person because he was going to represent doom, the fate in my life. He was going to become somebody important in this very moment, in what way important I couldn't fathom, but he would change my life. Something was going to happen because of him. After looking at the grass for another hour or perhaps two, like an empty inanimate object, I looked up once again and I saw this Gestapo officer with his dog already inside the crowd of people. He was stopping, looking at everyone as if he was looking for someone in particular. The dog sniffed the people too. The Gestapo man asked some people questions and I saw them handing him their documents. He would read them, and then give them back to the people. With tremendous trepidation and fear, I realised that he was walking nearer and nearer to me and I knew something was going to happen. I knew he was my fate. Another half an hour of agonising waiting; I began talking myself into not being afraid. Stubbornly I looked at the grass and the earth underneath me, trying to take the freshness from this nature into myself but I was already paralysed with some kind of strange uncanny fear. Suddenly I heard the dog sniffing very near me. I didn't dare to look up and then I saw the big black boots stopped next to me. Then I had to look up and this man was standing above me and looking at me, holding the dog on the leash and the dog was looking at me as well. “Can I have your documents - Kenkarte?” he spoke in perfect Polish. (Kenkarte was the German word for document). A quick thought: In my photograph I had no spectacles, I handed him my Kenkarte and I took off my spectacles. I remember that when the Germans were pushing us in front of them through the streets of Warsaw, a few hours previously, I had put on my spectacles. I had been short-sighted all my life and I wanted to see the whole horror of destruction of Warsaw and to see the faces of the people, to be witness of this apocalyptic inhuman scene. A scene from hell, from Dante's hell, a scene which was all in grey and black; there was no other colour. The Gestapo man looked at me.
“It doesn't specify in your Kenkarte that you wear glasses as well.”
“No it doesn't” I said.
“Why doesn't it?”
“Well, simply I didn't have glasses then, I started wearing glasses quite recently.” “I see.”
He handed me back the Kenkarte and he said to me, in a kind of very detached way: “Will you please get up and go to the main gate.” He pointed at the big house and the huge gate - to heaven or to hell , already looking at the other people, victims that he might prey on. He didn't repeat his instructions and moved on. I understood every single word and my stomach turned, my heart sank. I got up and I saw the other people looking at me with compassion. The orders were in the air, the orders were inside me. I thought I could do something, I could kill myself now for instance, because I had been arrested, and yet I was like a stupid idiot going through the crowd of people sitting down on this green grass, to this big gate and I am going to be singled out and perhaps shot or killed or tortured, or whatever. Of course, I didn't know what all this was about - with the Germans you never knew. You never asked them what this was all about, you were a Pole and that's that. That was the accusation; like being a Jew. I stopped by the gate. The Gestapo soldiers who were standing there at the ready didn't even look at me, and I was the only one on the big steps standing by the door facing the whole plain with the crowd of people from their side - from the German side. Now I understood my fears. I was afraid that I should look at the whole scene in reverse, like in the mirror and here I was on these steps, standing - the only person there, except for these Gestapo soldiers. I was facing the whole scene from the German side, from the German point of view, sort of like Jesus on the cross already. I stood there for about an hour perhaps and then I saw him - this Gestapo man with the dog coming back very slowly and deliberately. He made a sign with his fingers to his Gestapo soldiers, one of them saluted him and yelled:
“Heil Hitler.”
Then he opened this big gate and my German Gestapo officer pointed at me, gesturing at me to step inside.
I went inside the courtyard and the big gate closed behind me. This was the end of my life, I thought. I had been parted from my people with my likes, with my soul, with my blood, with my Warsaw, with my everything and here I am on this fearful territory which is German Gestapo territory. The officer with the dog was standing near me, he never looked at me properly, he was just treating me like an object. He spoke to me in Polish again, looking at the wall, not at me.
“Would you follow me please?”
So I had to follow him.
There was this big courtyard and there was some kind of little wooden shed in the middle of it. He led me across the courtyard to the side door leading to other floors and offices. I could hear the typewriters and some muffled German voices inside the house. There was nobody in the courtyard except for a woman and a man sitting on the steps by the entrance to the side door. My Gestapo man left me there by the entrance. He walked inside the house and here I was looking up at the blue sky with my heart already stopped beating, knowing that this presumably is the end of everything in my life. I had already said goodbye and I remember that I had a thought - I was very near a wall. If I jumped the wall, there were houses on the other side with no people in them. In this part of Warsaw there were no people because they had been thrown out or evacuated, shot, killed or burned out already. Then if I start running … then came another thought - no, don't do it, because if you start doing something, immediately they will start shooting and obviously you are dead. I tried to stop my heart beating too fast. Suddenly this woman who was sitting there spoke to me, in Polish.
“Did you know him?”
“Who?”
“This officer.”
“No.”
“Ah” she said, “you have been arrested.”
“Yes.”
“We are not arrested” she said, “we - my husband and myself, we came here - we ran from the Warsaw uprising - we came here to meet our friend who works with the Gestapo, he'll help us to get out of here safely.”
I thought they must be these collaborators I had heard of.
The vast majority of the Poles were fighting the Germans fiercely, but of course there were some collaborators. She looked at me again.
“You are frightened, aren't you?”
“Reasonably” I said.
“I know” she said “you must be a Jew.”
I decided not to answer this question, what was the point?
“Ah, you see” she hissed, “you are afraid to talk.”
At that moment my Gestapo man came out without the dog and he looked at her, then he looked at me and he said again in Polish.
“Will you come with me.”
He led me to another door and up the staircase to the first floor. I saw the corridor with the doors and locks like in a prison, yes, it was a prison. He said something in German to one or two Gestapo soldiers who were guarding these doors and they led me to the third or fourth door. They unlocked it with a big clink-clonking sound - typical of a prison - and they pushed me inside a cell. Then the door was locked behind me.
Back to my kitchen in Fulham. The fridge is murmuring peacefully. The red lamp gives a nice warm glow, and yet - I feel scared. I have the urge to lower myself down to the floor and diminish myself to nothing. There is still in me this tremendous insecurity.
Fear.
If, at this moment, somebody knocked on the front door, I would presumably jump up with fear and yet I know I have this tremendous power - an invisible camera in front of me filming my close ups, my thoughts and feelings. That's how I went through all this experience without such fears. I was acting. Acting in a film ... constantly.
* * *
Chapter Nine
On the third or fourth day of my stay something incredible happened; it was uncanny and completely incongruous. The Polish officers told me that one of them had had an operation for appendicitis (his appendix had developed an infection) and had died two days previously. His funeral was to take place the following day, and the Germans were allowing the Polish officers to attend the funeral. We would go outside the walls of the hospital (which is the camp hospital, or hospital prison), but we would go under heavy armed escort to the cemetery in Stargadt. When we arrived, we were to pay the tribute to, and salute this Polish officer. It's a German gesture - they wanted to show that they were doing these things. So it would be a gala performance for an officer prisoner of war. There would be a delegation of officers: English, French, Italian and Polish officers as well - and one from the Warsaw uprising - me. Everyone in the whole building was already talking about the Warsaw uprising - which was so famous and reverberated with news - all over Europe and the concentration camps. Their spying systems knew quite a lot of things, and hidden radios would enable them to listen to London to the tune: ‘Da da da dum’ - BBC radio. I was asked to dress very carefully, and they gave me a kind of elegant suit, shirt and tie. I shaved and attended the funeral of this man. I had to salute him in our Resistance Army fashion, which meant that I had to take off my hat, and salute with my head naked when the coffin was being lowered in this beautiful afternoon. Again the sun was shining and it was very very cold. The leaves were already yellow and red on the trees and lovely. As the coffin went down, we all threw a little bit of earth on it. I did it as well and I prayed for the soul of this man, this officer. I was very very moved and I looked at the Polish officer who was with me, from the Polish delegation. He touched my hand.
“You've gone through quite a lot, now” he said, “you never thought about attending a funeral of a Polish officer under the German guards in Stargadt from the hospital for the war prisoners?”
“No” I said, “I had never thought about that.”
Then we came back to the building; waiting in suspense as to what the authorities had decided to do with us. As always it seemed, in the middle of the night, without any warning, the German guards walked into the room and woke us up. They asked us to put on our clothes and the Partchovi said goodbye to his Badolios, the Italians - Ari ve derchi, Ari ve derchi [sic].
They were very moved these Italians - I always loved the Italians very much. Very superficial people but good hearted. We asked the Italians to tell the Polish officers about our sudden departure, and that was that, I never saw the Polish officers again. Although I had very strange encounters later after the war with some people from these times - my encounter with Fotefethell B in London was a case in point - I never came across any of them again. So, again we were taken to the railway station and put on a train. We rode north for about two hours - I already knew from Stasz, how to locate the directions of the Earth - north, south etc. We were going north - towards a town called Kiel I think, I can't remember now. We eventually arrived at another concentration camp. It was of course, much worse than the hospital; and we were pushed into this camp. Already they were treating us like prisoners, but the strange thing was that we were shown into one room with bunks and after about five minutes a young man came into this room, smiling at us. He told us (in Russian) that he was our doctor, that we were still being treated as ill, and that he would try to cure us. We would not be expected to work in this camp. There were plenty of things from the Red Cross for the prisoners, and of course there was food. The doctor started distributing from the big sack that he was holding, all the tins of steak, soup, coffee and concentrated milk. So all of us had a few things each, and quite a few people had conversations with him, and I told him of the Russian prisoners being treated so badly. He said he knew about it.
“What are you doing here” I asked him, “a Russian doctor in a German concentration camp?”
“Well, they need doctors” he replied, “and you know, I deserted. I simply deserted from the Russian army, and I decided to say ‘hello’ to the Germans, and here I am. I don't want to fight any more, I don't believe in communism, I never did, and here, I am the doctor. I hope that I shall survive the war.”
I wonder how he survived the war because I know that Kiel was taken by the Russians. Presumably they arrested him and sent him immediately to Siberia where he would rot away, or he would be killed off in one of the Russian concentration camps. However, at this moment he was alive. He started paying special attention to the very old Polish man (who was still spitting sometimes when he didn't feel well) - spitting at us to try to infect us with tuberculosis. The barracks were again surrounded by the pine forest, and the dunes; lots of sand and sun. It was already late Autumn and very cold indeed. We were not treated badly there, and we were given some more food and tins. I remember this old man started suddenly smiling at me from his bunk. He couldn't walk anymore. So I started getting close to him and he would whisper to me because he couldn't speak with a full voice anymore.
He would whisper to me: “Please when we are free after the war, could you remember or write down my name ... will you tell my wife if she is alive, my daughter, my son, my children in Warsaw that I died here.”
I cannot recall his name now.
Then one day he started crying - crying that: “I don't want to die here, Mr Vladek” as he had taken to calling me, “I don't want to be buried in these sand dunes. I want to die and be buried in Warsaw. That is where I belong. Why should I die here alone?”
It was absolutely heartbreaking.
He stopped spitting at us after that. He was preparing himself. He was already talking with God, and it was in his eyes.
I told you earlier that I remembered how he died in incredible circumstances. Well, it was an unbelievable little scene, he whispered to me to come close to him, and he asked me to give him all the tins from the Red Cross that he had. I put them very carefully under his bed. He was always afraid that somebody would steal them.
“Are the tins still there?” he would ask me quite often, “how many are there?”
“About five” I said.
“Yes” he would acknowledge that nothing had been stolen.
He asked me to put all the tins on his chest from underneath his bunk, which I did. As I put them all on his chest, he embraced them, very delicately, like caressing them almost with his very thin hands. He sort of smiled at me and his happiness was glowing in his eyes, that he's got his tins, that he could have opened one tin just now and he could have his condensed sweet milk or some nectar, something very good and he can feed. He could have the food for health to go back to life. All of this was in his smile, and that's how he died - embracing the tins of food on his chest with his beautiful smile and wide open eyes looking at me. Then I called other prisoners and I told them he had passed away.
“We've got to close his eyes” one of the others said. We didn't have any stones or anything heavy to put on his eyelids, so I had to hold one eyelid and another man held the other one and we prayed for him. We held his eyelids like that for a while and then we released our fingers and the eyes opened again - the eyelids just flopped back. So once again we had to do it for a much longer time and this time his eyes remained closed. When the doctor came I told him what the man had told me - that he didn't want to be buried here in the sand, he wanted earth. How funny - people want to be buried in the earth - the earth is calling us - calling us always to end our journey there, inside earth. That's why I am against burning the body - it's completely against nature. I want to be buried normally in earth. The doctor said he would take him away and to bury him somewhere. He couldn’t promise whether he will find a piece of land for the earth, but he will try to do his best. Later on I asked him and he said: “No, we had to hurry up because my Commandants were very eager to dispose of his body because he had tuberculosis, so he was buried in the sand.” So much for him - goodbye my dear friend.
One day, the doctor arrived with news for us that we were being transferred to yet another camp.
“Which one?” I asked.
“I can't tell you” he replied.
“Well are we going to go further to the north?”
“No” he said, “there is no camp there as far as I know. So the only way for you is to go either to the west or to the south.”
The south I was dreading because south would be Auschwitz. But still, we didn't have any choice. I was still kind of postponing in my mind a last resort, such as my jumping off the train to escape, but everybody knew that the end of the war was coming; we had already smelled it in the air. Everybody was talking about it, that the war was going to end soon. Yet as we neared Poland, I felt that if they sent me to the south, then before we reach Auschwitz, I would jump off the train and start walking towards Poland. I never thought about walking towards the allies - which was perhaps my greatest mistake. I should have done it but I never thought about that. All I was thinking about was reuniting with my family and my country - funny. So, again we were put onto the train and again we started trundling along. We travelled along beside fields, and through some fantastically beautiful scenery which was shrouded in mist. There were trees with their beautiful yellow and red leaves already shedding and the wind was blowing. Then suddenly out of the blue, after about two hours journey, we felt an explosion outside the train. We suddenly realised that we had just arrived at a tiny little station which was being bombed viciously by masses and masses of planes - obviously English and American. Huge planes throwing the bombs onto this train, onto the station and all hell broke loose. All our guards ran away immediately, so we ran as well. We ran from the train and everybody tried to flatten themselves to the ground. I remember that the power of the explosion, and of the air being shaken was so immense that I had to hold onto something sticking out of concrete. I found a piece of metal and I held on tight, I was being shoved left and right, almost with my legs and feet flying in the air when the bombs were exploding. I thought by this time that this was the end of my life, but at the same time my heart was singing - believe me I was singing - the allies were bombing the Germans! I didn't feel the fear that I would die, but felt that I was witnessing the end of the war, and the allies' power. The Germans were petrified and running away, and we were free now. When the bombing ends I thought, I can walk across the field, I don't have any guards any more, because they left us alone. They were so frightened to lose their lives. I even remember that at a certain point I wanted to wave at these pilots and to say: “Hello. Please throw more bombs and do your job. Do it, do it.” The spirit of fighting against the Nazis was so profoundly inside me. The bombing lasted about five minutes, no more than that and I realised that I was free. I could do whatever I wanted to do and this was the moment I was waiting for. God gave me the opportunity to run away, so towards the end of the bombing when a few bombs were flying (with the sounds that I knew so well from the Warsaw uprising) I got outside the station and I just started running. I hid in the very tall grass behind a tree waiting for the bombing to end, and then I could assess the whole situation more easily. The bombing ended. As quickly as they arrived, the planes, God bless them, zoomed off into the air. I saw, from my position, that the whole station was completely reduced to dust - there was literally nothing left. I realised that my guards had all been killed, but the train strangely enough, was still there. People started coming out from behind the ruins of the station, and a few people were talking to each other in German. I completely lost track of my friends, but I think they all went across the dunes. As a matter of fact I met one or two of them later on in my journey, in another concentration camp when I was recaptured by the Germans. One of them told me that he just started running across the fields, not thinking about what would happen to him - that is the human reaction - once you're free, you're free. Once you feel the feel, you feel the feel. When you are in touch with God, with the air, with the trees, with nature, you eat it up. You think that all is inside your system. You don't wait for people, prisoners and guards to come with rifles and say you are not a prisoner anymore. You don't wait for them - you're free. I decided to remain where I was in my vantage position behind this bush. There was not a soul around me. After about two hours had passed, a locomotive came to the station, and I could clearly see the Germans loading the bodies of their comrades killed in the air raid onto it. Then they started clearing the other track, so I thought there was going to be another train coming. I learned from Stasz, God bless his soul, so many tricks and so many signs and signals to survive. The survival kit as we call it here in this country - that you have to know what to do - you have to know what to do. You have to expect. You watch very carefully around you - the whole thing, every detail and assume that now upon one thing happening, a reasonable conclusion can be reached, and eventually I could use it. Indeed I stayed the night behind this bush. I was frozen and hungry, and in the morning I dusted myself off beautifully. I was still wearing the suit which was given to me by the Polish officer - quite a presentable one. Once I had dusted myself off, I combed my hair by running my fingers through it. I remember that Stasz once said to me: “If you are running away, you can't stick out. You've got to look more or less like the people around you. Look in the mirror. Look at your face. Is it dirty, is there dirt on the face? Dirt on the fingers shows immediately.” So I found a piece of glass somewhere in the grass and somehow I was able to put my hair in order and to find that my face was not that dirty. Later in the morning I heard a train approaching as it travelled towards the station. I couldn't believe it. There was not a soul on the station. The train stopped and I saw the people on it - civilian men and women, German soldiers, all looking out from the windows and commenting on the bombed station and on our train being completely useless - standing there and not being able to move, because the track had been damaged or something. Then I noticed that some workmen arrived by car and they eventually began repairing the track, the rails in front of this passenger train. People were talking to them and I understood a few bits and pieces of conversation. They were saying that it would take them a few hours before the track could be repaired; then the train could continue its journey. The repairs took up the whole day, and towards evening when dusk was already falling down slowly and languidly, I heard them shouting that everything was all right, everything was ready and we could move. Luckily enough again, God helped me. The darkness was already falling and I made a dash toward the train, I didn't think for a split second what I was going to do - I knew what I was going to do. I dashed across towards this train, towards the last wagon and I jumped onto the step. I couldn't believe the door opened easily. There was such a commotion with everybody looking out of the windows and commenting to each other, very excitedly. They were telling each other that they were all right now, the train was going all right and everything was ok, and nobody noticed me. Of course the first thing I did was to go into the lavatory. Again I had the mirror, so I looked into it and washed my face. Again I combed my hair with my fingers and dusted myself off. Slowly I came out of the lavatory, and already the train was moving fast alongside the fields. The light was dimmed inside the train because of the fear of allied bombing, but the corridor was already empty. People in the compartments were falling asleep, reading or talking, whispering, chatting to each other. Already you felt the whole of the German impudence being diminished - diminishing itself and turning into a kind of nervousness and anguish. They felt as well that they were losing the war. I had no idea where this train was going, so I stopped in the corridor and looked out through the window at the dark landscape. Suddenly one of the doors to a compartment opened and I smelled perfume; it was very beautiful perfume. Then, a young blond woman was standing next to me looking through the window. She was smoking a cigarette. I looked up at her and she was really very beautiful, very clean. She was wearing a white blouse with a cardigan round her shoulders. She looked at me and smiled, so I smiled back. She didn't have the slightest notion that I was a prisoner and I was petrified now. I thought that if she started talking, and if by any chance I couldn't make myself speak German without any trace of my Polish accent, then I would be in trouble. You see when I was in the concentration camp I could have an accent, although I spoke German well enough - I could have an accent there; it didn’t matter. If I had an accent here, it would give me away. The next second I really trembled and my heart stopped because she spoke to me in German.
“Auch na Berlin?” - 'are you going to Berlin as well?'
I was sweating with fear.
“Jabuhl” I said, as that was all I could manage.
She looked at me a little bit strange and then there was silence. She drew on her cigarette again.
“You know that we are not able to reach Berlin station because all is destroyed, so we are going to stop outside Berlin.”
She mentioned the name of the station but I can’t remember it now.
“Zer gutt” I said, trying to make myself sound German as much as possible. Thank God for my mother teaching us German. I was making lots of mistakes in German like I make lots of mistakes in English, but I could make the accent (like I make the French accent) completely, with no foreign intonation. I could speak with the German accent if I really wanted to.
“Gut nacht” - 'good night,' she smiled at me and went back to her compartment. I didn't dare walk into a compartment, and after a few hours I was still standing in this corridor. After a while I started walking along the corridor, I didn't have a ticket and I didn't know what would happen if a guard came to check up. I didn't know if there were any tickets available during the war in Germany, or whether people were going freely. I knew for certain that we were going towards Berlin, and this was the fast train. It stopped at one or two stations along the way. After walking for a while, I sat down somewhere near the lavatory and eventually I started dozing, but whenever I heard footsteps I got up and pretended that I was just looking through the window. We stopped at a station. It was still night. This was the last station before Berlin, so I got out of the train and started walking along the platform. I walked towards Berlin and after about three hours, I reached it. I was terribly hungry but I found some apples on some trees and I ate them, then I found some tomatoes in a garden. Finally I remember when I started to see the bombed houses, I knew that I was then definitely in Berlin. As I was walking towards the centre of Berlin, I saw the signs and names of the streets. People already looked very much like people in a besieged town. Although Berlin was not yet completely ruined by the bombing, it had still been heavily damaged. It very much started reminding me of Warsaw. I felt very tired, and I was walking aimlessly. Although I was terribly hungry, I wasn't defeated - I didn't feel defeated at all. I was still in very good spirits as I looked around me, to the right and left - taking in the bombing, the ruins. I didn't care about being captured again. I simply felt I knew that everything would be all right. I came upon a bench on a little square and I sat on it and relaxed a little. I saw people walking here and there, and some cafes were already open very early in the morning. Life was going on, in a way.
I continued walking, and after about an hour I decided to stop somebody and ask if I could get some work, anything to earn my living or whatever. As I was thinking about that, the bombing started again. The same massive, gigantic bombing by the allies. Again, there were hundreds of planes in the sky. They called it 'teppich' bombing which means carpet bombing. Simply one carpet of the allies' planes were covering Berlin, throwing bombs, then another carpet was coming and whatever. Wherever you were you had to find a shelter. I ran across the street and into some kind of courtyard. People were running in every direction; shrieking and yelling. The Germans behaved very badly during these bombing raids, they were very hysterical and I was just thinking how we behaved during the Warsaw uprising, being exactly in the same situation, being bombed like mad - like hell. I dashed into a cellar, a few people were already inside. Some were crying, some were praying and of course everything was shaking. The noise was absolutely of that kind that you can’t describe it, it is simply there - gigantic and frightening. All the time we could feel the tremors going on, and the ground shaking. As I sat in the corner of the cellar, I was once again watching people in hysteria - absolute hysteria.
They were shouting against Hitler, against the Ferruchter: “Deutschland Ferrucht. Hitler Ferrucht” - 'he is a mad man,' and things like that. I felt that the whole house above me was falling to pieces, so I didn't stay there any longer. I ran out into the street and I saw in the same courtyard, literally the wall, about five or six floors high, falling apart - into pieces and these pieces were already flying in the air, falling towards the ground. I ran faster across this courtyard, and reached the door on the other side. I ran down into the cellar and as I reached the corridor, I saw only one other person - a woman. She said something to me in German which I didn't understand, and I behaved rather stupidly then, because I think I answered her in Polish, saying that I didn't understand. It was just a conditioned reflex. The woman disappeared, and I couldn't get out because the bombing was at its heaviest. Then she appeared once again and she looked at me.
“Du bis ein trichtlinger, eine gefangener” - 'you are a prisoner, aren't you?' she came closer as she spoke, “you are not kein deutsche” - 'you are not German.'
I was very tired by this time, and I must admit I just gave up.
“No, I'm not German” I said (perhaps I trusted her - I don’t know).
“Come with me” she said.
She took me to her own cellar which contained her bed, a lamp and table and lots of candles.
She told me that the electricity was being cut off every so often, and then she asked me to sit down, which I did.
“You must be very tired” she said.
“Yes” I said, “I'm very tired.”
“Well, I'm not going to ask you any questions now, you must eat.”
She gave me some potato (kartoffel) soup then, and I had no idea of the time, perhaps it was ten o'clock in the morning. After I had eaten the soup, I became dreadfully tired and needed to sleep, so she put a little mattress or cushions on the floor and asked me to lie down. She gave me a blanket and I slept until the evening when I woke up. The woman was just sitting there and looking at me all the time - I thought she was looking at me like I was the prey. The electricity went off and she lit two of the candles.
“Don't be afraid” she said, “I am not going to denounce you. Would you like some more to eat now?”
“Yes” I said, and again I was given more soup.
“I am just going to get some hot water, and if you would like to wash or take a bath, you can” she said as I finished the soup, “no-one will bother you here, this is my cellar. Anyway, they think I'm mad - ever since I have lost my child, my son.”
A little later on I took this bath (which was absolutely unbelievable for me). Then we just sat and talked. She told me that she noticed me in the corridor and immediately her intuition told her that I was not German - I behaved completely differently. Then she told me that she had lost a son on the Eastern front, and that it wasn't that long ago. But long ago she started hating Hitler and the Nazis, and everything that was going on. She had been a servant to a dentist who had lived and worked a little bit further away from this room, she told me it could have been on the fourth floor. This cellar belonged to this dentist, but the bombs had destroyed the whole floor where the dentist lived, and he and his family were all killed. She was saved because she was downstairs. When the bombing stopped she dragged a few things from the dentist’s house and arranged this cellar for herself, and she had been living there. A little while later I felt I had diarrhoea and I had to go to the toilet. I asked her where the toilet was.
“Ein keeble” - 'the bucket' she said, “it's outside, but you can't go outside in case someone sees you. They might know you are not German and I don’t trust German people anymore.”
So she brought the bucket inside, and of course I was very embarrassed.
“Do whatever you have to do” she said, “I'm not looking at you … and don’t worry about the smell.”
When I had finished I asked her if I could throw it out.
“No” she said, “I shall do it.”
She went out with the bucket and came back without it about ten minutes later.
“Whenever you want to use it again then I will bring it back in again. You must rest now and go to bed.”
“I’ll sleep on the floor” I said.
“No, you can sleep in the bed with me.”
“Oh” I said.
“Don't worry, I'm not thinking about what you're thinking” she said, “you are like my son, although you are younger, but I just feel very lonely.”
Berlin was a very strange place back then. People were already talking in different terms than reality, because reality didn't exist in Berlin anymore. This was a condemned city and this was a condemned nation - a condemned country. Everything was slightly larger than life, like in a big novel by Tolstoy. The sweep of the woman's statements were full of daring. There weren't just sentences and full stops, and when she said: “I feel lonely” she sounded as if she was quoting from the play by Chekhov. Strangely enough I accepted it, then she embraced me. She undressed then and wore a long night dress. She was in her early 50s or late 40s perhaps. Her name was Annie, or Anna or Anhian, like some people called her. She embraced me again, and I remember this first embarrassment so clearly when I was falling asleep. The smell of her body, the softness of her breasts, the warmth of her body and everything suddenly created an erection. I didn't want to do anything about it, but she was embracing me and sleeping in such a way that I felt that she must feel it. “I know how you feel” she said, “don't feel embarrassed. You are just a little boy. Well, we will sleep.”
She started stroking my cheek and finally my erection subsided and I fell asleep in her arms. In the morning I washed, and she gave me some milk, bread, margarine and marmalade and I began eating. Then, another air raid started. Without any word she put her arms around me. She was a very maternal, very lovely, beautiful German peasant woman. She told me she was from Bavaria and because of that her German accent was very strange; she told me that my German accent was very strange as well. She said I should be very much aware of it as the Germans might recognise immediately that I was not German; although I always thought I had a very good pronunciation, very good accent. In this air raid, people were heard yelling and crying from outside the cellar but nothing happened to us, nothing happened to the cellar, but after this air raid which lasted for about an hour I think, the teppich (the carpet bombing) started.
When it finished she said to me: “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go back to Poland” I said, “I want to walk, I want to find a way.”
I started crying again, she told me that the only thing she could do for me then was to give me another clean shirt.
“You have got to shave” she said, “there is my son’s shaving kit here, and I can give you some better trousers so you won't stand out too much. I will tell you which way to go. You can walk across Berlin - there is a station outside Berlin which I know is open, and you may find the trains taking you to the east, to Poland.”
“But what else can I do?” I asked, “I can't stay here with you.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, you can't” she replied, “I can keep you here, but you might be spotted by the people outside and you will be arrested.”
As she said that there was a knock on the door.
Somebody was shouting: “Annie, Annie.” I can't remember what her surname was.
She had to answer the door.
“Stay here” she said, “don't move, I'll try to talk to them.”
So she opened the door, and there were two policemen. They said they were looking for a man who came to this cellar, and they would be keeping watch, day and night. They told her they were looking for allied spies (which apparently later on I learned, that there were quite a number in Berlin at this time) - they were doing very effective work, signalling to England and telling them which parts of Berlin were damaged and the extent of that damage. Then the men saw me and they pointed at me.
“I can't help it, I'm, terribly sorry” she said to them, “I didn't know anything about him. He's not an ally. He is not English, he was hungry and I gave him some food.”
Then they took me away.
Later on after the war I learned what had happened to Annie, and I will come back to that later.
I was taken away to a police station where I was interrogated. They were trying to find out if I was English or American, so I didn't lie to them. I told them I was Polish and I was in the Warsaw uprising, that I had been taken to Altvarb and I escaped from there during the bombing. I understood from them that they didn't know what was going on in Germany any more, there was just complete confusion. They told me I could sleep on the floor of the station, and they would decide what was to be done with me the following day. I felt then that I was terribly lucky that they didn't just shoot me. The next day, they took me by car to the outskirts of Berlin. I was then put in a kind of detention (not camp) house. I spent two or three days in this house with some other people, and there were some Poles in the group as well. Then they took us by lorry to a railway station, and again I was put on yet another train. It started moving towards the East and although the Russian front was still far away, at that time the Russian front was not in the territories of Poland, and the Germans were still fighting inside Russia. We travelled as far as Luc, a Polish town before the war. It wasn't in occupied Poland, but that part of Poland which the Germans turned into the Deutsches Reiche, which means into Germany. There were lots of Polish people still living in this city and we were taken to a disused factory: a huge empty building. There again, on the first floor, were these huge rooms. I always remember these huge rooms with mattresses on the floor, and of course it was dirty. People were sleeping, and beetroot soup was being distributed. Once again I was suddenly behind bars. There was this very strange Polish woman who was very beautiful but completely immoral. She would sleep in the same big room on the bed - she was the only one who had a bed. I remember that when we were falling asleep the first night, the men were making very dirty jokes with her in Polish, and she would answer in such a foul language; I had not heard anything like that in my life. The next morning I knew that I would have to try to escape again. I knew I would have to ask this woman if she would be able to help, because she was very knowledgeable about everything. I learned from the Polish people that she was the mistress of two German guards who were sleeping downstairs. They would make love with her, and she was saving her life just because of that. I got to learn that she wasn't a bad woman at all. She would ask some kind of favour, then she would do something for you. So before I could ask her help I knew I needed something to trade with; then I remembered that Annie had given me a kind of leather belt for my trousers. This belt had a very good buckle, perhaps it was brass. I showed it to her and I said: “Can you sell this for me?”
“Why?” she asked, “do you want money? - you are in the concentration camp here and they will just send you on somewhere else. This is only the detention place, this factory. Perhaps you have a plan to escape?”
“No, no, no” I said.
“Well, don't lie to me” she told me, “give me this belt. I will see if I can do something.”
About an hour later she came back.
“Yes, I can give you something for this belt, but not money - food. What about that?”
“What can you give me?”
“I can give you a loaf of bread, I can give you some butter, a bit of sausage. Take it, believe me, take it.”
So I accepted it.
For the next two or three days I would hide my loaf of bread, because people would look at me when they could see I was eating something. We were all hungry, and the atmosphere was completely like in Kafkhar - an incongruous novel. This woman would still be talking in foul language, yet all the time she looked so terribly handsome with blonde hair, groomed, and looking so clean. As a matter of fact, as I was thinking about her, she was taking a shower downstairs with the soldiers or whoever. I very often think about her and wonder whatever happened to her. Where did she end up and how did she get into this position of being a kind of kapo? She was a kind of kapo to all these detained men in this transitory detention house. After a few days there, I was terribly cold. All the big windows had been broken and the wind was howling inside, all through the house. After a couple more days, some of us were taken to the railway station, and once again boarded the train.
This time the train journey was very short. We were being taken to Abienitze, a small village near Loritz where there was another detention camp waiting for us. I had decided finally about my fate and my future - this camp was to be my final camp. Before I go into that I would like to go back to 1979 when I was in Berlin for the first time (after this last story about the bombing in Berlin). I was shooting the film called: ‘The Apple’ with Menachem Golan as the director of the film, and Grace Kennedy (who hadn't yet become the great show-biz singer, Grace Kennedy) - she was just starting in a tiny little part playing in this film. Unfortunately the film itself was a complete flop, but my part was very good. I was dancing and singing songs.
I wasn't filming every day and so had some spare time. We were staying at the Untsor Hotel, (the Zoo Hotel), which was in Korfostiendam, in the centre of Berlin. Very often when I was not filming, I would just walk along the streets in a kind of dream. I had never thought that I would again be walking these same streets, the same pavements as I did then, in the war. Of course Berlin was completely different then during the war, because it had been bombed, almost to the point of devastation; there were very many weeds and much rubble. Now though, Korfostiendam was spick and span with neon lights, and restaurants next to each other. There were rows of cafes and night clubs with porn and prostitutes - male prostitutes and everything and anything - like a little island which was still menacing behind this wall of Berlin. There was a very strange atmosphere then and I also came across a strange Polish restaurant which was called, I think ‘PJashav Warsaw.’ I went inside it once to have a meal one evening and I came across this very strange Polish man, a Berliner. He lived in Berlin and I was a little frightened to see him but he insisted on meeting me. One evening when we met in the bar he got a little bit drunk and started asking me about communism. “I think it stinks” I said, “it's foul.”
Vladek as Mr Boogalow in "The Apple."
©1980 Golan Globus Productions.
“What do you mean it's foul” he shouted back at me, “here we are very close to the communist wall and we've got to cope with it … we've got to make up the understanding, even mutual understanding.”
I simply put down my beer on the counter and I left the pub, and I haven't seen him since. I would often walk along the streets in Berlin, and reminisce about the bombing. I was grateful now to just be enjoying life. One grey afternoon as I was walking near my hotel in Korfostiendam, I suddenly realised that a certain house on the corner reminded me of something. I walked over to it and through the main gate into the courtyard. As I was in the courtyard I realised that this was the same house, the same courtyard in which I had been sheltered during the allied bombing during the war. I was just standing there, looking very carefully at the upper windows. It looked to me as though the house had been rebuilt completely. An old German woman carrying a shopping basket came up to me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked me in German.
“Nothing special” I replied.
“Funny” she said, “because Berlin is the kind of city where you come across people who suddenly stare at houses or windows, and I just wonder, because these people usually have been in Berlin during the war. Have you been here before by any chance? There was something in your face that made me stop and ask you this question.” She sounded very friendly.
“Yes” I said, “I have been here during the allied bombing, in this courtyard.”
“Have you met anyone here?”
“Yes, a woman whose name was Annie or Anhian.”
The woman nodded.
“Yes, she was the servant to the dentist who used to live on the fifth floor.”
“That's right.” I said, amazed that I had found this place again after so long.
The old lady called upstairs: “Annie, Anhian.”
A woman appeared in the window.
“What do you want?”
“There's somebody here who wants to talk to you.”
“Well, ask him to wait.”
She came down after a little while, and I couldn’t believe it - this was my Anhian. She was very very moved, and very pleased to see me as I was to see her again. She told me she now had her own little apartment with her son who lives most of the time in Munich. She is an old woman now but I had to ask her: “Are you free?”
“Yes” she said, “I am free.”
So we went on to Korfostiendam and to a café. We had a long talk. She told me that after I left, the police started interrogating her. They interrogated her in her cellar for a few hours, but finally decided not to arrest her. She told me then she often wondered what became of me. She remembered the night we met and she remembered my appearance.
“I'm so terribly happy that you are alive.”
I told her that I was glad she had survived as well. I told her what I was doing now and why I was here, that I was filming and that I was staying in an hotel. I asked her for her telephone number.
“Can I invite you to dinner in the restaurant Anhian” I made reference to her number, “I will call you.”
So I rang her up, and we had dinner together. She was a very dignified little lady, rather pugnacious. I remember we both had tears in our eyes as we remembered together the horrors we had both gone through. She said that after the war she decided not to remarry, and her second son (I didn't know that she had two sons), also came back from the war. To cut a long story short, what was the significance? - well, after I said goodbye to her, she walked away from the restaurant to where she lived. She suddenly stopped and turned and said: “Listen, I wanted to tell you that you did make a mistake.”
“What mistake?” I asked, puzzled.
“That courtyard that you walked into a few days ago and you thought it was the one we were in … well it wasn’t ours. Ours was the next courtyard.”
“What was the significance?” I asked.
“The significance is that you were still in the wrong courtyard and you were thinking about me and what happened in the war, yet we were still able to meet each other again.”
“Why didn't you tell me right away, from the beginning?”
“I felt a little bit embarrassed, I don't know because you confused it, and anyway I thought it's fate again. You confused the courtyards. When it was bombed everything looked the same. Now your intuition was leading you into the right direction, into the wrong courtyard and yet we met again.”
Well we saw each other a few more times after that, and once when I was in London she telephoned me and told me she would be in Munich soon and would send me her address there, but she didn’t and I never saw or heard of my Anhian again. I later came across somebody who told me that she died of cancer or something like that - I can't remember now, but again I thought this was one of those incredible stories that happens in one's life. I wanted to emphasise the fact that my story is not an unusual one for Polish people. My story wouldn't even make the news in Poland, because almost everybody went through something like that or even worse - much worse than I went through. We would be bored in Poland to listen to these stories, because everybody in Poland had a story to tell. So there is nothing unusual or extraordinary in this story, and I never thought about myself in this respect. I very seldom spoke to my English friends about my past. Some of them knew fragments, but this is the very first time that I am really opening my soul and pouring out certain memories and certain pictures I can see engraved in colour - always in colour.
Vladek Sheybal circa 1960s
My voice is haunting - my face is sinister - how boring I thought. I remember now that whenever the London Academy of Film and Television advertised my acting classes, they always printed the advertisements in the papers with a photo of my face. I must say they never had any worries about the number of students. I also remember that Bette Davis once said to me: “You are in a unique position Vla-deek” (that's how she pronounced my name). Well, they always say I'm in a unique position. I wish I wasn't, I thought.
“A little bit like our Celeste Holm in Hollywood” Bette went on, “at the beginning no-one could ever remember her name, but everybody remembered her special kind of face. Then, like you, she became a star by the simple fact of appearing or showing her face with numerous stars, as a supporting character actress.”
Gil interrupted my train of thought: “The only thing is that I don't think we are interested in your career in Poland, you might mention it and then your war experience. For our public here, the important part is the day when you boarded the train from London to Oxford thirty years ago with only £10 in your pocket, to improve your English. Then how not knowing a living soul in Oxford things started happening, which led to your future career. The rest became history.”
I laughed.
“We want to hear about your films like ‘From Russia With Love’ about your work with Sean Connery. ‘Women in Love’ Glenda Jackson, Ken Russell, John Boorman etc. You see how many films and names are already there?”
“Yes” I reflected, “I am already a has-been.”
“Precisely” Gil cut in, “and you have all reasons to deserve it, think how many actors here can't even dream of being a has-been.”
I was still full of doubts. Then other strange things happened. Suddenly there was a demand for my voice! In my profession one telephone call can change your life. Things begin to happen, and start unfolding like a colourful ribbon in front of you. And you know that you have to grab it. For instance, a chauffeur driven limousine stops in front of your house, and a few hours later you are up in a Jumbo Jet in the luxury of first class, flying across the globe to Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro or somewhere that exotic. You are whisked to a first class hotel complete with air conditioning, and you start your new work smelling new smells, seeing new colours, hearing new languages, eating new foods. The impact and the sheer assault of all these elements is such that for the next month or so, you are running to the loo every five minutes with a ghastly upset stomach. This is when you start dreaming of the silence of your Fulham home in London, and longing to eat freshly boiled potatoes with a knob of butter. How can you explain all this to your dear civilian friends? You just say on the phone: “Yes, I just came back from Sri Lanka. Filming. Yes it was all right.”
What else can you say? - after all, this is your work. You still have to get up at five am to work in whatever city you are filming. You see the streets while you are being driven to the studio, and they all look the same. Workmen, with little shoulder strap bags containing their sandwiches and thermos flasks, are walking, bicycling, filling trams or trains - to work. How the various scenes in my life nowadays evoked those horrifying little flashbacks to the war, and my running to work early in the morning during my years of the Bolshevik occupation, and then the desperate years of the Nazi occupation. Peeling potatoes in my kitchen, amidst my secure life in London could suddenly trigger off with a painful twist of my heart, memories of risking my life in the Nazi camp, where I would run to a Nazi kitchen dustbin to pick out some potato peelings to eat them raw right away. Those peelings were more important than a possible German bullet through my heart. I was watching TV one day at home in London when I saw a girl drug addict from Edinburgh being interviewed. She was asked how she felt about the risks of getting aids from used syringes.
“When you have withdrawals” she said, “you don't care about getting aids” and I immediately thought about my potato peelings in my camp - the same sentiments exactly.
And now in London, this new search for my voice originating after so many years brought on a tragic flashback chain reaction. In the camp during the war, where the old man was dying of tuberculosis in his bunk, he would ask me to speak anything to him because as he whispered and wheezed, he said I had such a beautifully sounding voice, like the angels in the sky. He said it would make him less frightened to die, and less frightened to be buried in those German sand dunes. So I spoke to him for a few hours until he died. Another friend, Patrick Keiler, over the telephone expressed the same sentiments when he asked me to narrate a commentary on one of his very individual films for TV.
He started to say: “Your voice is sounding so ...” but I didn't let him finish the sentence. I started talking fast. I felt scared but asked him to please send me the script. This job was not going to be like many of the others, no first class Jumbo Jet to Tokyo. Instead, his rickety car took me to a cheap dark studio somewhere in Kilburn, the district I hate. It's dirty, spooky - but the work is the work, is the work. I adored Patrick's film and his rather intricate, but beautiful text, which I had to narrate. My heart filled with joy, and on my way back home, even Kilburn looked almost beautiful. One thing lead to another and Patrick's film was shown on TV. A few days later my phone rang, it was my agent: A young man, called Peter Hunt wanted my voice to read the fairy tales for his puppet film for children’s TV. I asked him to show me his film and I loved it. I loved the fairy tale as well. It was called: ‘The King and The Beggar.’ We recorded it in a private little kitchen-cum-studio in Islington. A sudden thought went through my mind - although I had already been to Rio, I had never been to Islington before. That's how I met the owner of the studio; a struggling young composer by the name of Simon Davison. He worked on a few of my song-lyrics, and we planned to do some concerts together. ‘The King and The Beggar’ was shown at an Animation Films Festival in London. As a result of this, Melvyn Bragg's ‘South Bank TV Show’ asked me to read a very moving private letter from the famous Czech composer Dvorak. This was supposed to be Dvorak's ‘voice’ against a background of a TV film about his famous 'Cello Concerto’ (this is what Gil Gibson also mentioned to me in his telephone conversation). The South Bank Show has a very high, and perhaps a slightly snobbish reputation. So I wasn't surprised when, after Dvorak's progress was released, I received an offer from a musical duo, already established in the business - The Conway and Garcia Duo (playing the flute and guitar). I was asked to do some concerts with them and read from the stage, some classical English poetry - between their music. I asked them for the tape, and I found them to be very fine and professional musicians. They said that they worked in this way with the well-known English TV Broadcaster Richard Baker, but he was not available and so they needed another person. They needed another known face and voice - me, again. The face and the voice, I thought to myself. It repeats itself like fate itself. Like doom, and I have to grab it. You see, in our profession there are so many bends and twists and corners. You can be walking on your way as usual, when suddenly on the left of this twist, or behind that corner there is a completely new project - a new opportunity and you must not miss it - you have to develop it. This is the sign that the ‘old’ things you have been doing begin to get exhausted. Life in its infinite wisdom offers you this new thing. It means you are ready for it. Ken Russell taught me that you have to have several projects in your mind. Like having lots of loaves of bread in the oven. If you see one of them starts to mature, don't hesitate - work on that one. It means you're ready for it, don't hesitate with your decision, work on it immediately. So I accepted the Conway and Garcia Duo offer. One thing that I had noticed now was that people had stopped talking about my English ‘accent.’ During a studio session with Patrick Keiler, he commented: “Your English Vladek, is not foreign English anymore - it's Vladek Sheybal's English. You astound me with so many surprising interpretations of my own script.”
After seeing me on stage recently in London, in the part of Nietzsche, Fenella Fielding told me: “I don't hear any accent in your voice darling. You simply developed your very own and original way of interpreting English. Like Edith Evans' English, like Sir Ralph Richardson's English, Martita Hund, Dora Brian, Joan Greenwood ...”
“And Fenella Fielding's English” I said, and we both laughed.
I think this all boils down to my acting training back in Poland. Technically, the voice production must be placed in the right place on the palate to make it sound vibrant. Your diction has to be perfect. Each word must have its beginning and its end. I heard that Edith Evans, in the very last year of her life would exercise her lips, saying: “The lips get lazy so easily and I want the public to understand every single word that I am saying on the stage.”
But the main point lies in the Stanislavski Method in which I was trained in Poland and in Russia. You have to act the subtext, the intention beyond your lines. Lines as such are not that important. People do understand the words, but they also have to understand the intentions, the feelings behind them. I think that due to being so thoroughly trained in all those principles of acting that the language in which I'm playing is not important any more; I simply apply these principles to acting in any language. It sounds very simple, but how many actors don't know how to do it? How many actors in the USA have been ruined by their typically American approach to the Stanislavski Method? They even call it a different name in the states - there it is known simply as ‘The Method.’ I saw some of these acting classes, and I thought with horror how they had vulgarised the Stanislavski Method; how easy it was to make the Americans believe in something when you charge them exorbitant fees. Even Marilyn Monroe used to attend these classes, but they could not ruin her talent. There's another thing that happened in the relationship between me and the English people - my voice together with my interpretation of English, sort of clicked. The English liked it. Long ago on the set of ‘From Russia with Love’ at Pinewood Studios, Terence Young, the Director said to me, and then, Ken Russell: “We like your way of speaking English.” God only knows why. There are some chemical things that work with some people and voices that appeal to other people, and some do not. It’s like whenever I played in an Italian film, in the Italian language. The Italians would say to me: “You have this special Venetian accent.” Why? Nobody knows. I certainly don't. It must be some subconscious combination of my personality and the position of the muscles of my throat, tongue and my lips. Therefore in Italian films I am always offered roles playing impoverished Venetian aristocrats. In French films I play pathetic ageing Frenchmen who fall hopelessly in love with the pretty young pretty girl. The French would say it was because my eyes looked so romantic, and my French was so softly sad. Et voila! Personalities and voices are like wines; they don't travel well. In the Anglo-Saxon world, in the English language, I became a star only because of my intonations and my face - even my smile, look, and my sound of being menacing. People compare my whispers, pauses and sometimes threatening intonations to those of Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt. I didn't do this deliberately at the beginning. As a matter of fact, I found acting in English and going through the lines, words and inflections too difficult, almost impossible. I had to resort to long pauses, mysterious looks and smiles before I could go smoothly through the next difficult word combinations. So my style was a desperate act of necessity to survive the pronunciation of difficult words, and those impossible English ‘th's, o's and awls’ and hundreds of other vowels and consonants. So, when people would praise Vladek Sheybal's style of acting with his ‘famous pauses, long looks and his very own ways of suspending his voice’ that was the reason behind it all. But this is how things often happen in life. Picasso's famous ‘blue period’ originated also from necessity as blue paint was, for some reason, the cheapest to buy then and Picasso did not have money at that time.
In the acting profession, mainly in international films, you have to be lucky enough to be explored and exploited in one way; this is known as ‘type casting.’ Actors grumble at it. They would like to play all different kinds of roles, and they are right. The deep actor's essence of expression is to turn themselves into many different characters, but not so in high budget films. Screen image has larger than life close ups which can almost be touched by the audience. The ‘old’ Hollywood system, based solely on box office returns, had to manipulate the type casting system to their best financial advantage. They created the ‘types’ and they made the audiences get attached to them. Every time Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard etc were on screen, the producer made sure that they did not step out of their ‘types.’ During her public interview at the National Film Theatre in London, Bette Davis was once asked: “Did you always play bitches?”
“Half and half” she replied, “but the people accepted me as ‘the bitch.’ Now, they like it, and expect me to be ‘the bitch’ that they simply couldn't see me playing an angel, and I played many ‘bitches.’ They still saw me as their beloved bitch.” When I got an offer to play in ‘From Russia with Love’ I was quite happy directing at the time for ABC TV, and then Granada TV. I didn't have to become an actor again I thought with horror, not any more. I decided (tactfully) to leave acting in England to English actors. Why should I try to do it in their country - they can do it better than I. I was quite happy being a director, and I think, more satisfied than being an actor. I saw directing as a more serious profession for a man; there was always in me an element of being slightly embarrassed by being an actor. It's certainly not the work for a man compared with, say, working in an office or bank. If I were asked what my profession was in any public place with people around, I would whisper: “Actor.” Little did I know then what fate had in store for me: Acting, international acting, James Bond. The rest was history as they say and the first international villain - Vladek Sheybal was born. After ‘From Russia with Love’ I started getting offers to play villains, so something clicked; but I didn't want to take them. Then one day Bette Davis told me that she had seen me in the film: “I saw you in James Bond, you electrified me with your first close up. What a face. What a personality. What a fantastic villain I thought. As a matter of fact, you reminded me of Abraham Lincoln.”
To this day this comparison is a mystery to me. I only know that she played Lincoln's wife. “Well, my dear Vla-deek” Bette continued, “you wouldn't have the slightest chance in international films to play a lead. You’re too late. You're too old. You have an accent and you have no connections. There are many actors with this ‘fight and kill for the role’ mentality in Hollywood, and even in London. But how lucky you were with your first appearance in James Bond. You asserted yourself in your type. You showed the industry that there is no one like you in the whole of the film world in this type of an elegant soivre, a proud and condescending villain. You must keep up with it. Develop it. You must fight for the parts of villains. Make them your own personal sophisticated choice and brand. Always keep your neck short like in James Bond. People love pride and style. Class. Fate is giving you a great opportunity on a plate and you want to reject it? When I started playing opposite the bitches in my early days in Hollywood, I went to Mr Warner (I always went to the top) and I told him that I didn’t want to play bitches. He looked me up and down for a long time. Then he said the same thing to me that I'm now conveying to you. Being born an American, I didn't wait for him to finish his speech. I understood my chance. I went out and started fighting for the parts of bitches. Whereas hundreds of other actresses were waiting for their leading parts and perished for ever. You've already been noticed, your villain Vla-deek, makes you stand out, makes you dominate, makes you a lead. Otherwise you would disappear, back to obscurity. Anyway you could always go back to directing if you don't like being an actor.” So I took Bette’s advice and I started improving and immortalising my villains. It was easy. “Look at your face Vla-deek” Bette continued, “you only have to narrow your prominent eyes, lower your voice and speak more slowly, be sophisticated, proud and chic. That's all. It'll be our personal trademark. Look at my face, I have the same prominent eyes like you, a low and menacing voice and this is all one has to have. To be a good villain is a great privilege. A good Iago will always outshine Othello. Who, for instance, remembers Macbeth, the lead? Lady Macbeth only has three or four scenes in this play and she steals the show because she's a murderess. People love villains, they are the most rewarding parts. And if in the future you play a good guy, always give him some sinister injection - don't ever lose it.” How right Bette was. Later in my career I played a good priest in a TV children's series. I found him so boring that after the third episode I asked the producer and director to let him lose his temper at least once.
“He is becoming unbearably boring in his goodness.” I said.
They agreed and the scene was written in. I, as the good priest lowered my voice to a menacing whisper, narrowed my eyes and it electrified the series; and thus I saved the part. I played a lot of positive characters later in my career, and unless I tried to inject into them some sinister characteristics, like in my part in the film ‘Leo The Last’ with the unforgettable Marcello Mastroianni and the great director John Boorman, the part was ignored by the public, the press, and finally forgotten.
Vladek with Masrcello Mastroianni
in Leo The Last
© 1970 United Artists Corporation
Now I am facing this utterly new period in my career - my classic poetry recitals. Naturally I included two sinister poems during the evening: ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning with that famous line about his former, very flirtatious wife: “I have command ... and all her smiles stopped together” … meaning that he killed her. Naturally, I included Iago's monologue from the second act of Othello: “And what's he then that says I am the villain” ... all mystics [sic], chin up, condescending expression, whisper and half smile. The audience loved it, and they even laughed. In the reading of Dvorak's letters, I also found a great deal of his cruelty, and I emphasised it towards his wife. Dvorak loved his own wife's sister all of his life. But to top it all I was asked, and started playing ‘The Greats’ during the last few years. This had become a completely new departure for me, and a new trademark of Vladek Sheybal on the English stage. I have already played Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Nietzsche. I’ve also played Oscar Kokoshke (a great German painter) then Diagilev in a new two hander play with Nijenski, a one man show about Casanova; in fact I’ve already played Casanova (with the late John Gibson directing), many years ago in a BBC TV film shot in Venice. All these new twists in my life made me think. I came to an astonishing conclusion that I can play ‘The Greats’ successfully because I know how to play the villains. It is astonishing how strong these selfish, cruel, and egocentric powers are in every great genius like Nietzsche, Mahler or Diagilev.
Playing 'One of The Greats.'
© Original Owners
It all makes me laugh, because I use ‘the villain's tricks’ while playing ‘The Greats.’ I narrow my eyes, I lower my voice, sometimes to a sinister whisper, I make long thoughtful pauses, I ignore and don't look at my partners when I am supposed to give them all my attention. Obviously every genius and every villain I play, I try to make him different. They also have different reasons to live on the stage. But certainly if you have the guts and the presence to play a successful villain, you can have all the same elements to be a successful genius.
Thank you Bette. What a pity you have disappeared from my life completely. I know it is my fault as well. I didn't contact you when you were so terribly ill, but I still have your lovely little letters, which you sent to my hospital bed with fantastic flowers years ago when I was ill. Thank you so much, and also for your overspilling multi-love bouquet of flowers. It caused a sensation in this grey London hospital and I blushed.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
I am sitting again in my little flat in Paris; it is 1990. I’d like to explain my reasons for crossing the communist borders in 1957. Thirty-three years ago ... would anyone here in the west ... my English, French friends and colleagues ever understand it. I could not understand it either. Getting the passport so easily … well, Lena (the great Irena Eichlerowna, my common law wife) helped me with everything. Lena was a great Polish actress, she was even admired by the ‘KGB’ officers. The year was 1957, on the main railway station in Warsaw to Vienna, and there I was on the train; I could not believe it. I could still smell danger and I didn't dare to look at the faces of the people in my compartment. I placed my suitcase on the shelf. I was perspiring; all that I owned in the world was in it. I’d had to say goodbye to my Lena, nervous tension ... our brief ridiculous parting ... her green umbrella, literally sailing away, above the heads of the crowds on the station ... I sank down in my seat in total silence. Everybody was frightened. This after all, was the train to Prague and Vienna; to freedom. We were prepared to go through three communist countries' borders to get there. We would be entering Czechoslovakia, leaving Czechoslovakia, and entering Austria - both Czechoslovakian borders represented a potential danger. I thought about my position - would the authorities make up their minds negatively, and send me back to Poland? As the train was moving south we all tried getting some sleep. Then, early in the morning came the first border crossing. Polish soldiers with no smiles on their faces solemnly checked and rechecked my passport. Relief washed over me - they didn't stop me. Then we were checked again by the Czechoslovakian soldiers, and again I felt relieved when they gave me back my passport. No smiles again. In communism, one learned not to trust anyone, not to trust any situation. A constant piercing thought in my brain: “Have they, for some reason, placed me on the list with a condemned ‘NO’ across my name, ‘NO - WILL NOT LEAVE POLAND’ stamped somewhere.” Yet the train was now speeding through Czechoslovakia towards the Austrian border. Another ordeal, another spasm of fear. Then it would either be back to ‘prison’ or on to freedom. It was only a very short journey across Czechoslovakia and then the train stopped. This was it - the Austrian border. Again, the unsmiling Czechoslovakian soldiers checked my passport, and this time I was really scared - they took my passport with them. The train was getting ready to leave, but the soldiers had not come back with my passport. All the other passengers were looking at me with annoyance and impatience. I could imagine their thoughts - why was I keeping them waiting? - what was the matter with me? - was I likely to endanger their safety crossing this last border? The tension was mounting, and I could feel the stares of the people sitting around me in the compartment upon me, hating me. Their collective expressions were of hatred, disdain and even triumph. They seemed to say: “We had our passports back long ago, and we are now ready to cross the border.” Under communism people become animals. I knew it, and I didn't expect any feeling of compassion from them for there is no compassion in communism, there is only fear. I didn't blame those people at all. After all they were trained by fear, they have lived with fear, and they couldn't help me with my predicament either. At last the soldier with my passport arrived, and began one more unsmiling performance. He looked at my passport ... then at me, then the passport and finally at me. Luckily for me, I had long ago learned to suppress all my feelings if I had to, and I looked back at him impassively. I remember a similar moment when a Gestapo soldier looked at me like this after the Warsaw uprising, and then finally decided to arrest me. So what, I thought, it will happen again. So, I was prepared for the same thing happening again. Any minute now he would ask me to leave the train with him, but instead he gave me back my passport and left the train. All around me, the people in the compartment heaved a sigh of relief; and so did I. The train started moving on. We were travelling very slowly because this was ‘no-man’s land.’ It was a significant moment, as everyone got up and went to look out of the windows. Watching as we left behind this hateful system - this communism. I leaned out of one of the windows, watching the Czechoslovakian soldiers getting further and further away, my heart was racing like mad. Then I saw the Austrian soldiers, smiling, waiting for us. Freedom was here at last, and I admit that I put up two fingers to the communists, they could not stop the train now. I made the gesture a few more times too. Now, the train was pulling slowly into the Austrian border station. The atmosphere was so immediately different; different faces, smells, colours, and smiles. I must admit that I did feel a bit of a coward making all these rude signs to the communists, when I already felt safe, and outside any possibility of their intrusion into my life. Unfortunately human nature is a coward's nature, or perhaps it is only an instinct to survive which is deep inside each of us. I looked back at my co-passengers. They all looked different now; all relaxed and smiling. We started shaking each other's hands and congratulating each other, for we all knew that we would never go back to communism. Then I went through two years of simply lifting my head up, opening my mouth and taking in and drinking in this indescribable feeling of freedom. People would ask me stupid questions: “Aren't you missing Poland? Aren't you longing to go back?”
They didn’t understand what it was like.
“No … no … no” I would just whisper with a smile and walk away.
“Aren't you missing being an actor?” they went on, “in Poland, you had star status in the theatre, and here you are washing dishes in cafes and restaurants.”
It was a strange feeling to explain to anyone, but I did not miss the theatre then. I simply loved washing dishes; I would look at the suds and the plates, and I would sing a song of happiness to myself. There were times when I was without work and I was hungry. At these times I would just walk out on the streets of Vienna, and later in Paris where I could look at the beauty of these cities. The sheer beauty of the architecture, but above all ... the beauty which came from the freedom of the people. Of course I was being pestered by letters from the director of the Polish Theatre. I would get desperate letters from the director, and from friends of mine who wanted me to play Hamlet. They could not understand me, naturally they thought I was mad. Why would I refuse the chance to play Hamlet and instead carry on washing my dishes, steadfastly refusing to ‘go back where I belong’ where my talent belongs. The more they bleated about it, the more I was certain that I preferred washing dishes in freedom to playing Hamlet in prison, and the dirt and fears of communism. I really didn't care what happened to me then, I was breathing for the first time in my life. I felt the sun, and I saw the really blue sky. I never realised how deeply I hated communism. Now I knew, and I was happy that I didn't have to hate it any more. I was outside it. As I am writing this, it is already ‘after Gorbachev and Perestroika.’ My only thought about it (the sad thought) is ... why did it come so late? Why did people in communism have to waste their lives for so long, living in this cruel and inhuman factory of nonsense?
Then came the day that I decided to go to England. I had kept this day secret to the very last moment. Now the ferry was crossing the channel, at last. Ahead of me were the white cliffs of Dover, and I felt so very moved. I didn't know at that particular moment, that I would make a completely new career in England, I couldn’t even imagine it, but in that first moment when I first stepped onto English soil, I knew that something extraordinary was going to happen here to my life. I knew I had found my new home. Destiny had already started plotting its new play for me. It was the beginning of the third and final act of my play, my life. London took me by storm with its relaxed, smiling people. Some English people I met on the boat gave me their telephone numbers and later I would ring them. I would immediately be asked to dinners and lunches, and they would organise guided tours of the city for me. They were attentive and loving. No superfluous fuss, just the straightforward non-imposing English way. The people at the Arts Council were friendly and helpful as well. They would generously give me tickets to theatres, and I was able to see Ralph Richardson, Lawrence Olivier, Dame Edith Evans and Celia Joanne Schofield … all legends in my profession. Then I was even invited to Stratford upon Avon, as the guest of Zoe Zeidler. Zoe already had a famous lodger upstairs in her charming cottage: John Gielgud. Unfortunately for me, he was out of the country touring, but I was shown his room. It all was like living in a fairy tale. Then, I was shown the theatre and of course, Shakespeare. Somehow Shakespeare in Stratford didn't appeal to me, and I don't exactly know why. Perhaps my delicate actor's intuition was whispering to me that it was stale; a bit, or perhaps, too traditional - the way you would feel about something which had been done again and again. Still, through Zoe, I was able to meet my very first English actress friend: Prunella Scales. But I felt I had been away from working in the theatre for too long already, so I didn't have any desire to walk onto the stage and act. I felt the theatre was already in my past. Communism killed the theatre inside me, but like everything in my life that was dreadful, there were some powerful forces that would mysteriously push me in the right direction, without any help from me. Little coincidences were being built up, and suddenly I was able to see the motivation of, and logic of the fact that followed later. Back in London, I walked to the Polish Centre. It was known locally as ‘Polish Hearth’ and it was an exclusive Polish Immigrant place. It was a strange experience for me, to see all those old generals and titled people. The old fashioned manners, old fashioned ladies and gentlemen. Somebody recognised me, and before I realised it they convinced me to play in their little theatre. I felt uneasy on that stage, and I felt uneasy with the immigrants. I didn’t know what it was, there was nothing bad about them - they were kind and smiling. I simply felt that I no longer had anything in common with them. On their political programme they had yet another political programme, and I felt trapped like I did in Communism. The Polish language surrounded me, and I was not making any progress in English. Again, I started to feel the power of indoctrination, and I felt there were things that I could not say to these immigrants. My last activity in this theatre was directing for them: ‘Miss Warren’s Profession’ by Bernard Shaw. The real reason for this choice was that I wanted to bring Lena here from Poland, where she was a well known and famous actress in Warsaw. The immigrants were ecstatic. They were happy to think they may have the greatest living Polish Actress, Irene Eichlerowna, guesting at their little theatre. I didn’t think the production was good enough, and so I don’t think that Lena, or I put too much enthusiasm into it. We only wanted to do it under the pretext of being able to see each other, to have long talks and decide what would become of us. Lena finished the play, and it was she who decided that I should stay here and she would go back to Poland. It was 1958 and we were both standing in silence at Heathrow Airport in London. We couldn’t look at each other, we both felt that this was it; we would not see each other any more. Lena was smoking cigarettes, one after another. Her beautiful slender hands were still inside the lilac coloured gloves she was wearing, and I remember thinking that there was no green umbrella this time. I remember so well Lena's green umbrella sailing above and away from me amid the dirty tragic crowd at the Warsaw railway station. I thought then that it would be the last time I would see her, but here at the Airport … well, this was it … for ever … or was it? Lena’s flight was announced and she looked at me for quite a long time; her fantastic green eyes were even greener now. Although they shined brightly there were thick drops of tears in them. I think that this was the first time in our relationship that I had seen Lena cry, she never cried. As I was about to embrace her, a rather angry stewardess came over and asked Lena if she was Miss Eichlerowna. Lena didn’t even have time to say yes when this stewardess yanked her quickly towards her, and then pushed her in front of her into the crowd of people. I stood there, bewildered. We didn't even get to say goodbye to each other. Suddenly I saw Lena's slender beautiful hand above the heads of the people, waving. She was far away in the distance already, where she was being pushed by this stupid stewardess towards passport control. All of a sudden I heard Lena's deep metallic voice: “Be happy darling.”
All I was able to think of then was why did she take off her lilac glove? Then I rushed along the corridors, and steps going up and up, until I reached the viewing balcony. I saw Lena among the people stepping onto the steps to the plane, she stopped at the top platform and with a gesture of a lost child turned and looked up to my balcony hoping to see me there. I started waving like mad and yelling: “Lena, Lena, I am here … here.” There was a fleeting moment when Lena sort of shook her head, but I am certain that she did not see me, she looked like a blind woman, blind and deaf - perhaps at that moment she wanted to be blind and deaf. She turned slowly towards the door of the plane and disappeared inside. I was still standing there on the balcony, helplessly hoping to see her in one of those little windows on the plane. Now my eyes were full of tears and the whole plane looked to me now like a huge coffin. The coffin moved heavily, and started to taxi along the tarmac. Then at last it took off. My moist eyes stayed on it as it flew higher and higher, and further and further away, until it had become only a small dot ... which disappeared after a while.
I stayed on the balcony looking into the sky as if I could pull her back to me.
A young woman standing nearby whispered to me: “Don't worry, she'll come back.”
I didn't look at her, but I whispered too: “No she will not.”
There was a pause. The young woman was waiting for an explanation, so I whispered again: “One doesn't come back from the communist system, from Warsaw.” I am not certain if the woman understood, exactly understood, the meaning of it. People in the west cannot possibly comprehend us - these people who lie behind the iron curtain. I looked at the woman now, and she smiled gently. I smiled back and felt slightly comforted. This was the strength of the delicate, gentle unobtrusive feelings of the English. I touched her hand and I walked away. Lena and I remained close, but I never saw her again, and in September of 1990 Lena died in Warsaw. I still feel the pain and the sense of guilt that I didn't convince her to stay here with me. Suddenly, I saw her waving goodbye to me again like it was on the station in Warsaw a few years previously. Again, she didn't have her green umbrella.
Before she died, she sent me a tape of her radio performance in Poland. She was reading extremely beautiful letters written in the 18th Century by a woman to her lover who left her several years previously; she cannot stop loving him and is still waiting for him. It is a rather haunting experience for me to listen to these letters, and Lena's unique and tragic interpretation after her death.
Photo [Left] Irena Eichlerowna 1908-1990
© Original Owners
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
Several months later a great friend of mine, a famous ballerina from Poland arrived. A friend of mine, Robin Nash, who worked at the BBC, was looking for a couple of dancers from behind the iron curtain for one of his programmes. So I suggested her to him, and my beloved Barbara Bittnerovna arrived in London, and we saw each other constantly. On the morning of her departure back to Warsaw, she telephoned me from her hotel saying that she must talk to me about a matter of utmost importance. I duly arrived in London and went to her hotel; she was already waiting for a taxi to take her to Heathrow airport. Barbara was somehow frightened, and insisted that we talk in the bathroom while she ran water in the bath (to make some noise in case her room was being bugged).
I laughed: “Barbara ... this is London, England. You are in an English hotel.”
Barbara ignored my laughter: “Listen to what I am going to tell you. It concerns you. Last night I had to go to the ghastly Polish Embassy, for a goodbye reception on my behalf - you know how hard all those communist aparatchniks drink. They love drinking champagne with vodka, and within one hour they were all were drunk on those lethal concoctions. The wife of our Ambassador, already quite high on this alcoholic mixture, came up to me and said: “Why is this friend of yours, Vladek Sheybal, doing such stupid things? He is an idiot.” So I asked her what you had done. “Well ... not long ago he went to Scotland Yard and asked for asylum for himself, here in England” she hissed triumphantly, “he's already got a criminal record with us after this fact, you see we know everything. We've got our people everywhere.”
I was speechless.
“Thank you Barbara for telling me this” I said eventually.
“I am your friend, aren't I?” she said, “you know I wish you the best possible good luck here, and you know how I hate communism and all those aparatchniks” she turned off the bath tap, “now you understand why I turned it on, here in London, as you said.”
I was shaken and after Barbara had gone, I went to Scotland Yard immediately. I saw Inspector Morris again in the same room as on the last time I was there. He was visibly shaken when I told him this story.
“Are you absolutely sure you can trust this Barbara?”
“Absolutely Sir.”
“Can we interview her right now?” he said quickly.
I shrugged my shoulders: “I’m afraid not” I said, “she is flying back to Warsaw at this very moment.”
“Damn and blast” he said, and it was the first time I had seen him lose control.
“Besides” I said, “she would be too frightened to be interviewed by you, even here in London. She has her family and husband in Poland.”
“And if I went personally to Warsaw with a letter from you, would she see me there?” he said.
“How are you so sure I would give you a letter” I said, “she would stop trusting me, she would think it was a trick.”
He looked at me apologetically.
“You don't trust us now, do you?”
“Inspector Morris I think I trust you but I think that after my life's experiences including the last one, I cannot trust anybody. I cannot trust the world; not anymore.”
A week later, Professor Coghill asked me to come to his rooms. When I got there, I found him agitated, and he was very generous in pouring my gin and tonic.
“Mr Sheybal” he started in a rather pompous way, and again he sounded like Dame Edith Evans in ‘Lady Bracknell,’ “Mr Sheybal, something important has happened and it has concerned me.”
I waited for him to continue. He walked over to the window and stood there silently for a while. It looked to me, as though he had to take his strength from nature in order to convey this event to me. When he started speaking, he spoke slowly.
“Inspector Morris came here today, to see me, to talk to me. Although he didn't say anything concrete, he gave me to understand that the British authorities will turn a ‘blind eye’ to your staying in this country indefinitely, and what's more, you are going to receive a work permit allowing you to teach acting privately,” he turned to face me, “what happened? he didn't give me any details.”
I paused: “In that case I don't think I should tell you the latest developments.”
Neville smiled: “I am glad that I can trust you.”
This was the beginning of a new bond between Professor Coghill and myself. A bond that lasted until his death. At the start of every New Year, I would receive a letter from him asking if there was anything he could do for me; I only had to ask. I appreciated those letters very much. He was a great man, and a great scholar.
Forgive me for the long digression. Now I must return to the beginning, when I made my way to see Dennis at his bookshop restaurant. The bookshop itself was situated in a small, graceful house. The front door was open - invitingly. I walked in, and I will always remember the soft smell of new books; I always loved this smell. I didn't realise then, that I had just walked into the beginning of a new chapter in my life. A very significant chapter, which reshaped my life in England, and which led to the beginning of my whole career in this country.
A little further inside, I saw a small restaurant. There were a few tables outside and people, mostly students, were sitting there and eating. I learned later, that this was a very fashionable meeting place for students, and the food prices were rather cheap.
I went up the few steps leading up to the entrance, and went inside and across the restaurant, which I found charming and colourful with its bright tablecloths. On the right there was a counter-bar, and a little bit further on I saw the door to the kitchen. Inside the kitchen, there was a table in the middle, and behind it a large sink, and on the right was a gas stove. A tall man was cooking something at the stove. He looked at me, and I liked him instantly. He had slightly crossed eyes, and he was almost bald. He had a pleasant round face, and a disarming smile.
“Neville spoke to me about you on the phone, so I was expecting you. I saw you in the film: ‘Kanal,’ you are a star aren't you?” he said, “well, welcome to my kingdom.”
“You mean?” I said incredulously, “that I have a job”
“It will be a privilege for me to have a film star working in my kitchen … can you make omelettes?”
“I’m afraid I can't.”
He laughed: “It's very simple, I will show you, you break the eggs in a bowl, and the secret is that you have to add a little cold water. Then you beat it all together, and pour it into very hot oil in a frying pan like soup. You wait until it starts to set, and then you gently swirl the pan so that the watery eggs run underneath and set. Then, according to the customers order, you either fold it onto a plate as a plain omelette, or you put some chopped mushroom or ham or green peas in the middle of it, and then fold it. Like so.”
He placed the omelette on a plate and shouted through the door: “Omelette is ready.”
A young man wearing an apron rushed in. Dennis pointed at me and said: “John, this is Vladek, a famous film star, and he is starting work here today” he giggled, “he has no work permit so he works illegally isn't it a fact?”
John laughed; he took the plate with the omelette and rushed out into the restaurant.
“The next omelette will be made by Vladek, a famous film star who works here illegally” he announced, “he has no work permit though.”
Dennis laughed: “It is fun isn't it?”
So, my new role began. An omelette cook, and I have to say that I became a real expert in making omelettes. Orders for omelettes would be shouted into the kitchen by the waiters: “Two mushroom omelettes, one ham omelette and three plain omelettes etc.”
The work was very hard, but I loved every minute of it. The atmosphere was friendly, and all the waiters were students of course. After a few days the whole of Oxford knew that Vladek Sheybal, a film star from: ‘Kanal’ was cooking omelettes in the Newman Bookshop Restaurant. The restaurant became a great success, and Dennis was ecstatic. Everybody used to drop into the kitchen to have a look at me. Then some of the students would bring their food, and come to the kitchen. They would sit on sacks of potatoes and eat. We would talk about theatre, film, Shakespeare etc, and so I became a sort of ‘star’ in Oxford; it seemed that everyone wanted to know me. Students used to ask others if they already knew me. Dennis didn't pay me much; as a matter of fact he paid me very little. I would get £1.17s.6d per week and my little room cost me £1 per week. I would start work at six in the evening. I couldn't afford to buy any food during the day, but I must admit that Dennis was very generous with the food for me; he made sure I had big portions of everything. He knew the situation I was in, and tried to help. In spite of all this, I considered this period as one of the happiest in my life. I met so many friends. I was popular. I was still a star, and my making omelettes added great deal of originality and spice to my ‘picture’ - my life. Adrian Brine, my student friend was constantly around me, he took it upon himself to become my ‘secretary and PR man’ and also a great friend. He was, I suppose, my manager, and as such knew those people who needed to be kept at a distance, and those who could be introduced. He kept my image going as a big star, and he had plans for me. He wanted me to direct some plays for OUDS, and I remember laughing. “Adrian, I don't want to work in this profession any more.”
“But think of your future.”
“This is my future” I would say, “I am a free man … can't you understand that?”
Of course he couldn't.
“But we need you here” he went on, “with your experience in the theatre and films. We’ve never had anybody like you here.” Yes, as I said, Oxford is a place where miracles happen.
One day a very energetic young lady walked into my kitchen. She was American and she was very loud. She was also very friendly and down to earth, and her name was Amy Mims.
“Well, Vladek Sheybal, what are you doing here in this kitchen?” she said, “you are wasting your talents and skills.”
“I am a very good omelette maker” I laughed.
“Listen Vladek, we need you here in Oxford. You must start teaching us acting.”
“How?” I asked.
“Leave it to me” she said, “I shall organise acting classes for you.”
“How?” I asked again.
I must admit that there was something in her determination which I liked, she smiled broadly. “It is incredible that I am facing you now in the flesh … I saw your film: ‘Kanal’ five times. You were magnificent. Your face, your eyes, were there up on the screen but I couldn't reach you, and now I am just standing in front of you - in front of a legend.”
I do not take success or any accolades for granted. Success never surprises me at all, yet when Amy said that I was a legend I felt a bit embarrassed.
“Please don't say that” I said, “I feel shy when you use the word legend.”
“But that is what you are. ‘Kanal’ is a cult film already, and you are playing one of the leading parts in it” she paused, “I suppose you would like to audition people before accepting them for your acting classes.”
“How are you going to do that?” I asked for the third time.
“Leave it to me, I shall be back here in a few days.”
Indeed, a few days later she appeared again in my kitchen. This time with Adrian Brine, and they were both beaming. Adrian spoke first: “We have permission from Neville Coghill to use my room at St John's College. It's large, and therefore it’s suitable.”
Amy interrupted: “I have already put up a poster in all the rooms in the college. I’ve written it myself” she handed me a copy. It read ‘Vladek Sheybal, the star of the famous Polish film: ‘Kanal’ will be holding auditions to choose students for his future acting classes.’ It went on to detail times, and places.
“Look at the bottom line” Amy said proudly.
It read: ‘As Vladek Sheybal is very familiar with ‘Three Sisters’ by Chekhov, please choose a piece from this play to perform at your audition. You have to know it by heart.’
I must admit, it was a very good poster, and I was pleased. As I have previously mentioned, this type of thing became a pattern for the years to come, and by that I mean that fate reversed its usual process. Usually when you are in a foreign country, people usually come to help you but with me the opposite happened. I was lucky. I never asked for help in England; it was I who was asked to help. When the day of the auditions arrived, Amy came to the kitchen to take me to St John's College. I must admit that Dennis, as much as he worried that he might lose me, was ecstatic and participated in the plans for me. As the three of us walked to Adrian Brine’s rooms at St John's College, I admitted to being nervous.
“Do you think there will be anyone turning up for the auditions?”
“Look” Amy said, pointing ahead of her.
I couldn't believe my eyes, in front of me stretched a mile long queue of young people by the College Gate.
“You see?” Amy was ecstatic.
I realised that this was the beginning of another page in my history; at least from that point my career in England took off. I was auditioning students for three days, and each day lasted six hours. At the end of it all, I was exhausted but happy. Finally, from more than 400 people, I chose twelve. I believed that I could only be really productive and constructive with a small number of pupils, and I have to admit that the number twelve had some appeal for me; twelve apostles. Thus I created myself as Oxford's Jesus Christ. Who can say now that I don't have a theatrical show of one's utter modesty?
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
SEAN CONNERY, LOTTE LENYA & PINEWOOD STUDIOS
I met Sean in 1961 when I was happily directing various plays for various television companies. At that time, I was directing a play by Anhouille and I offered the leading part to a beautiful blonde Australian actress, Diane Cilento. The leading man was Paul Massey (whatever happened to him?). Diane's current boyfriend and later her husband, was the virtually unknown Sean Connery. Sean was tall, manly and handsome with his Scottish accent and a disarming smile; he was an extremely kind man. He would often pick Diane up after the rehearsal, at a church hall somewhere in St John's Wood. One evening they suggested that we go for a drink together in a pub, which I thought was a very kind thought; as a matter of fact they were extremely sweet. Later, Diane would become very unhappy, feeling left alone in her career after the spectacular explosion of Sean's career as the famous James Bond. I never had any doubts about Sean becoming a star with his outstanding charisma. Back then I was certain he would make a successful career in the industry, but the only thing I worried about was his accent; I thought it would limit the parts he would be offered. At that time in his life he was a typical actor with no work, writing letters to agents and casting directors, or simply standing with a glass of beer in a pub next door to The Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, hoping to be noticed; but even his height was against him. One evening while we were having a drink with Diane and Sean (after the rehearsal) Diane said to me: “Vladek, look at Sean.”
Sean smiled, embarrassed.
“Cast him in a part in your next production, isn't he sexy, handsome and charming and I know he isn't a bad actor either; he can act.”
I didn't feel embarrassed as I had been in this ghastly profession for years already, but I thought a while and said: “There isn't a part for Sean in my next play … I'm sorry.”
Sean, relieved, nodded with a smile.
“I can see that he has very special looks and personality” I went on, “unfortunately this might work against him. Directors and producers have no imagination and fear risk of any kind. The fear of being unusual, so all they produce is the standard, mincemeat factory type of work. I myself go through a great deal of difficulty because I come from a different culture, and I have artistic ambitions. For instance: the fact that I cast you Diane in this part created tremendous uproar. You are too independent as an actress and too difficult to work with.”
“Am I?” Diane smiled.
“Not yet” I said and I smiled too, “but let me be a bit constructive about Sean. Would you like me to ring some casting directors I know: Maude Spector, or Rose Tobias Shaw about Sean?”
“Very sweet of you” Sean said, “but they all have my photographs already and they have never contacted me.”
We were all silent for a while, and I looked at them with compassion.
“Do you know why my career in directing goes well? Because I don't care and I don't fight. It all happened by chance; by mistake I think. So perhaps Sean has to wait, not pushing too much. Perhaps his chance will come sooner or later.”
It was the kind of philosophy they couldn't accept. But indeed within the next two years, I was very pleased to read about Sean's big breakthrough in the first Bond film: ‘Dr No.’
I didn't bother to see it as I thought it was not the kind of film that would interest me. I never registered the enormous international success of this film; instead I simply forgot about it.
Then two years later in 1963 there was a telephone call from my agent Peter Crouch (he was still Glenda Jackson's agent at that time too).
“A film script has arrived for you,” he said excitedly.
“To direct?” I asked with pleasure.
“No” Peter laughed, “to play in.”
I felt disappointed: I’m not an actor anymore.”
“Well, I'll send it to you anyway. Read it; I’ll indicate on it which is your part.”
So the script arrived the next day; little did I know as I was unexcitedly tearing open the envelope, that this film would change my life again.
The title of the film was: ‘From Russia with Love.’ Well, I read it and I hated it. I didn't care about my part either - Kronsteen - a world famous chess player.
There is one short scene at the beginning and then towards the end another two short, meaningless scenes and then my death, being kicked by someone wearing a poisoned spiked shoe.
This happened in real life, several years later on a London street, a Bulgarian man was pricked by somebody's umbrella, and he died of poison within 48 hours. The Bulgarian worked at BBC Radio, beaming anti-Communist propaganda to Bulgaria.
But back in 1963, the extravagant ideas including ‘the spiked shoe’ sounded quite ridiculous and cheap to me. Then there was the aspect of the size of the part; small and unimportant I thought. Back in Poland I was a star, why should I bother to play this? I was quite happy directing plays on television. Even the thought of becoming an actor de nouveau made me quite sick. The endless merry go round of studios, costumes, learning lines, endless waiting, actors around, gossip, yik; not for me anymore. When I conveyed all this to Peter, he was speechless. Then he said: “Listen young man, you don't even know what you are turning down. This is the second part of more films to come in the series, a new series which will shake the world. They call it the James Bond series. You are being ignorant. Every English actor would seize this opportunity without any hesitation.”
Pause. Peter's angry voice: “Are you there?”
Pause. “Yes I am, I said slowly. “Peter, I am sorry this is final. I don't want to be involved in this rubbish, it’s a waste of time for me.”
Pause. Peter hung up.
But as I said in some cases, or moments in our lives, fate effects a ruthless and relentless pursuit. It does not give up. It does the chasing, and it happened in my case. A few hours later my phone rang, and I couldn't believe my ears. It was Sean Connery.
“You complete idiot” he hissed, “how dare you turn down this part?” he was furious with me, “do you realise that however small the part, it will shift you instantly on to international film status. You'll become an i-n-t-e-r-n-a-t-i-o-n-a-l actor instantly. Hundreds of actors in England pray for this kind of opportunity, not to mention that I personally feel hurt. You refuse to play in my film, and it was I, I who suggested you to the producers Saltzman and Broccoli to play Kronsteen. I told them you would make this part important; vibrant. You are going to ring your agent, and you are going to play this part.” He slammed the receiver down. I felt quite exhausted but I took a deep breath and dialled my agent's telephone number and accepted the part. A few days later my contract arrived. I signed it, but I still felt uneasy about the whole business of going through all the various internal and external torments again. Then my telephone started ringing: Costume fitting, make up, hairdressers. Everyone was extremely nice and very productive with their ideas, while at the same time taking into consideration my own ideas. The fitting of the costumes was at Bermans and Nathans. They are international costumiers, and are situated near Leicester Square. Although there were usually a lot of actors on each floor, it was all very well organised, everyone smiled and there was an air of efficient calm. There was tea and coffee in plentiful supply, and it was here in Bermans and Nathans that I first met Lotte Lenya. She smiled warmly at me as she came over: “I know you are going to play Kronsteen” she said, “I am Lotte Lenya I am sorry but it will be me who will kill you with my spiked shoe … but I hope we will become friends in spite of it.” *
She sounded disarmingly sincere, and I found myself muttering: “Are you the famous Lotte Lenya? The wife of Kurt Weill?” “Widow” she whispered, “he is dead I’m afraid.”
We were silent for a few minutes.
“I heard you singing some fantastic Brecht songs, from records of course” I said, “I met Bertold Brecht and his wife Helena Tdeigel in Warsaw; we were talking about you Miss Lenya.”
She smiled beautifully: “Call me Lotte please.”
“I didn't know that you would be playing Rosa Klebb in this film. How fantastic” I exclaimed. Everything started looking better and easier now.
* [EDITOR’S NOTE: It was the character Morzeny, played by actor Walter Gothell who delivered the lethal kick to Vladek’s character Kronsteen, not Rosa Klebb as played by Lotte Lenya].
Pinewood Studios at this time was being used by many American films. It had enormous pace and several kinds of ‘lots.’ They could easily accommodate different types of towns, and it was not unusual to see a Mexican town, a Spanish village, and even a middle European city complete with cobbled streets. The houses consisted of ‘fronts’ and at the back there was nothing. I loved walking on the streets of these ‘ghost towns’ during my lunch breaks. It was a weird feeling. On one of the lots there was a huge swimming pool, filled with water and a very large, very real ship moored there. At some time, the backcloth behind the ship was painted with high mountains and snow. It was when they were filming ‘The Heroes of Telemark’ there. Kirk Douglas was in it. Of course, being a film studio, it was not unusual to see all those big stars during the lunchbreak in the studio restaurants. You would see Kim Novak, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, and Ava Gardner. You would literally rub shoulders with them. One day Lotte invited me to lunch there. The dining room was in a beautiful Victorian main building with long corridors, offices and a splendid garden behind. Sometimes we would film in these gardens which even had a pond, a stream, a waterfall and a few lovely birds. There was a porter at the front door, and he always had a big smile on his face. He would ask you about the days filming and greet you warmly. All the actors treated him like a member of our own family. He retired one day, and I don't know whatever happened to him. We entered the dining room with Lotte. It was already quite full, but we found a table and started studying our menus. Nowadays I don't eat lunch, but back then I was young and did not think of calories. To the side of where we were sitting, there was a raised area with tables and chairs set out. Diana Doors came in and sat at one of the tables, she was surrounded by some young actors. I didn't realise that she was filming something in the studio. She looked just like a doll, with her platinum blond hair and very voluptuous bust, heavy make up and artificial long eyelashes - obviously made up for the part she was playing. I could hear every word she was saying and it all sounded a bit loud and arrogant. Fading stars usually adopt this arrogant edge in their voices. I suppose it is a kind of self defence. Diana looked all around the room and said to her companions: “Who the hell are all those people? I don't know a single face. In my time I knew them, or they knew me look at them, mediocrities.”
Several years later when Donald Howarth, a fantastic playwright and a great friend of mine wrote a play ‘Three Month Gone,’ Diana Dors was already ageing, she had no parts and it seemed no career anymore. She was out; just like it always happens in films. It was all gone. One of the leading parts in his play was a suburban, vulgar but funny housewife. Donald sent the script to Diana, and she accepted the part. She was able to make a clever transformation into a character actress, and she was a great new success. I saw her in the play; she was splendid. I came to the conclusion that she was always a character actress, she didn’t fit being a glamour girl. Donald told me that when Diana rang him to say that she accepted, he was ‘over the moon.’ Diana asked him to come round to talk about the play; when he arrived at her house Donald was astonished seeing Diane's transformation. He was brought up on her glamour, and there she was with her new baby on her chest, salivating on her. She didn't pay the slightest attention to all this, she was real, as Donald said. A real mother, the glamour and make up had gone. Diana was married to actor Alan Lake then, a handsome man but not a very good actor. Diana arranged with Donald for Alan to be the male lead in Donald's play, but I don’t think he was good. I only remember Diana, and of course Jill Bennett in it - I had actually met Jill Bennett some years earlier in a TV play ‘The Ring of Truth.’ The play was a great West End success and ran for a long time. Afterwards Diana started playing character parts but soon afterwards she tragically died, she had cancer and Alan couldn't imagine living without her. He was always madly in love with her, and after she died his drinking problem became much worse, until he could stand it no more and he tragically committed suicide.
The day of my first shoot arrived. The car was waiting outside for me, it was very early in the morning and I’ve always wanted to know why you must always wake up so early - always, it never changes. Before the actual shooting would begin, you would already have been to wardrobe to have your costume fitted, then to make up; and only then were you ready to present yourself for shooting at nine a.m. Pinewood Studios were beautifully situated among fields and real pine trees. The studio is situated in Berkshire, which is about a two hour drive time from London. The undulating countryside surrounding it is very beautiful and very green. On the way there, I passed a retirement home for horses; a sort of old horses home you could say. I saw these old horses nibbling the grass, and thus nearing their death with dignity. They served us the people, they deserved this retirement, and each time I passed I would always wave to my horses. My car went through the impressive gates. There were always impressive large buildings marked Stage 2 or 3 to be seen as you went in. My car went through the maze of little streets, or tunnels between these blocks. Later in my life, when I was filming in various countries I came to the conclusion that whether you are in the Cinnecita Rome studios, or Tokyo Studios, or Madrid or Hollywood, the atmosphere is always the same; there are always hundreds of busy people moving around carrying pieces of sets or costumes, tools, or even trays with sandwiches and coffee. As my car stopped in front of the block where my dressing room was situated, Sean was there, he had been waiting for me with his lovely big smile. He helped me out of the car and said: “Welcome to James Bond.” Then he led me to my dressing room and checked that I have everything I needed: - proper light by the mirror, two towels in the bathroom, loo working, etc.
“You won't regret this I promise” he said, waving as he went out, “good luck.”
There was a knock at the door; it was the callboy.
“Your costume” he said indicating the hangers he was holding, “shirt, jacket, trousers. I would suggest that you put them on, then I'll call to take you to make up and the hairdressers. Ok? Oh, you don't have to put on your jacket … just the shirt, and here is your dressing gown.” Then he left.
The dressing rooms at Pinewood Studios were quite impressive. They were spacious and bright with lots of electric bulbs around the mirror. The mirror was full length so that you could see yourself from head to toe. There was a telephone on the dresser for internal use only, and the bathroom was excellent. I started to put on my costume and then the dressing gown over the shirt. The callboy came back to take me to make up and hairdressing as he had promised. In make up, I bumped into Lotte Lenya again, and the charming actress, Lois Maxwell, who for years played Miss Moneypenny.
A 'behind the scenes' shot of Vladek as 'Kronsteen'
From Russia with Love
© 1963 Danjaq LLC & United Artists Corporation
After I had been made up and had my hair done, the callboy took me down to the set for rehearsal. I walked into the studio and onto this huge set and my heart missed a beat. The set was fantastic. It was set up to be the interior of a casino in Monte Carlo, with slender marble columns, huge mirrors, fantastic bright armchairs and crystal chandeliers. In the middle of it all was a rostrum with a table where my character, a world famous chess champion, was supposed to win a chess match. Then while drinking water from a glass, I was to see a message on the bottom of the glass: YOU ARE REQUIRED AT ONCE (from Number One of course). All around us the chess players were sitting and watching hundreds of extras. There were women wearing splendid evening gowns and jewellery, and men with black ties. When I was led to the table in the middle I suddenly felt lost and shy. All the extras were whispering: “Who is this actor?” Then the director, Terence Young, arrived and we were introduced. I must admit that I was so nervous that I couldn't remember my few simple lines, but Terence whispered to me: “Don't fret, all will be ok you look splendid in your suit. I’ll give you plenty of close ups just look at me, I'll guide you through it.” True to his word he was always behind the camera as if hypnotising me, and I started regaining my confidence - my old acting routine came back. The close ups, which Terence had promised, by displaying my face up on the huge screen (the critics wrote that it was a new and splendid face) started my international career for the next three decades, and when I left the set the extras applauded me! Over the next few days I filmed the next scenes with Lotte Lenya, and at this moment I am looking at the photographs from these scenes - funny, I was so slim and young and Lotte so vicious and evil as Rosa Klebb, yet in real life she was the sweetest person I've ever known and we became friends for many years. Years later I saw her on Broadway in the musical ‘I am a Camera’ which was the first version of the film ‘Cabaret’ which starred of course, Liza Minelli. After the performance I went up to her dressing room and she invited me to dinner. On the set of ‘I am a Camera’ she was concentrating very hard. She was, in a way, so pure and naive as an actress that when Terence Young said to her: “Lotte turn your face towards the camera” she looked quite lost, and like a little girl she asked, almost in tears: “I am sorry Terence, where is the camera?” At that moment I wanted to hug her. The first thing all film actors know while filming is the placing of the camera. The camera is the most important essential, the central point of their lives. They fight to be on camera. In America they almost kill to get on camera, and here was Lotte, this great performer literally not knowing where the camera was.
I was relieved, he was very European in his manner. Immaculately dressed in double-breasted suits from London. At least I didn’t have to do anything ‘special Pakistani’ in this part, about which I wouldn't know anything.
But the thing which convinced me to take the part was when I suddenly looked at my father's photograph in my drawing room - my father looked just like Jinnah, and so I accepted the part .
All of the Pakistani actors who played my servants, secretaries, etc accepted me as Jinnah too.
Photo [Left] Vladek as 'Jinnah' in 'Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy.'
© 1986 maintained by original owners.
The same thing happened when I played the part of Casanova for the BBC TV documentary called ‘The Fall of Venice.’ We were shooting this film in Venice (of course) - all the extras were students from the Venetian University. One day I asked them how they felt about my being Casanova.
The reply was immediate: “You look Venetian, even your Italian accent sounds Venetian.”
I can't win; I am a joke … a mongrel joke.
I remember my father cutting short my intoxicating sessions with Aunt Wanda about my ancestry. He walked into the room and said to his sister sharply: “Enough of all this drivel. You are not going to confuse the child. I forbid you to tell him all this rubbish about the family's past. He is Polish, and that's that.”
It was a moot point really as I was too small then to have my own passport stating my citizenship. Soon afterwards war broke out, and on 17th September 1939 the Russian tanks rolled into our country, and thus automatically we became the citizens of USSR of Ukranian Province. I still remember the little red coloured document where they had written my name as Vladimir (Rudolf was omitted) which could be a perfect Russian.or Ukrainian name. The first half of the war was spent there living under Russian rule as Russian citizens. My father together with my family was not sent to Siberia, they were getting rid of the Polish intelligentsia and my father was a Professor of History of Art and Painting in the Polish college there. The local Ukrainians told the Russian authorities that we were Armenians not Poles. My father had to accept that as this saved all my family from destruction in the Siberian Gulags. When the Germans attacked Russia, the whole German front went through our country, practically above our heads. We spent the whole time during the artillery battles in cellars or in trenches in our garden. So with the Germans now occupying the country we decided to move to the West, notably to Warsaw where my mother's sister was living, but it was not as simple as that. My father was chosen by the Germans as an ‘open’ hostage, which meant that in the event of something subversive happening, he along with the other hostages would be shot. We all had to pass across an open border. I went through first and was followed by my parents. We found ourselves together, spending the second half of the war in Warsaw occupied by the Germans. Some rumours kept repeating themselves that the Germans would gas all Armenians. My father called all my family together and said: “From now on no Armenian language must be used, even in private. From now on we are Polish, and that's final.”
“What if the Germans find out that Sheybal is a Scottish name?” I said.
My father thought a little and said: “Then we must say this is an Irish name. Ireland is neutral.”
There was yet another cluster of confusion about our identities; in a way I always found this rather fascinating. I remember years later, I was filming a German-made film: ‘Tristan and Isolde’ in Ireland. After we finished shooting in this mesmerisingly beautiful country, I was sent to London for a few days before restarting studio work on this film in Munich. I was sitting on the plane next to one of our German crewmen. While we were chatting I asked him if he was really a German. He laughed and said: “Years ago, I would have been afraid if somebody asked me this question. No I am not born German, I am a Gypsy. But you know the Nazis were gassing the gypsies too, so my mother one day said to all of us children: “From now on we are not Gypsies. We don't speak the gypsy language even in private. We are Germans and we only speak German or else we will all die.”
Satirising The War!
Vladek as 'Goebbels' in 'Dance of The Seven Veils.'
A Ken Russell Documentary.
© 1970 maintained by original owners.
My father had this sort of special obsession ‘to belong.’ I often wonder what it was. Why did he try to push us into the idea that we belonged to Poland? Perhaps he had some bad experiences in his childhood? Our name - Sheybal - was conspicuously not a Polish name. I remember that whenever a new teacher came to our classroom, and started reading the list of pupils' names he would nearly always stop before my name, think a while and then read it all wrongly to the great amusement of the whole class. I was amused too but I was also very proud of my name. The combination of S H E does not exist in Polish - then comes this confusing Y which no one in Poland knew how to read together with S H E. The last B A L was easy. After my father's death my brother published my father's memoirs in Polish, and to my surprise my father writes there all about our multinational and multilingual family but he says: “In spite of this we had never had any doubt that we were Polish.” Well, I always have! My brother never gave it any thought - he easily adopted my father's way, whereas I always knew that I would one day live outside Poland. As I have already recounted earlier in these memoirs I became one of the outstanding Polish actors, and I was lucky to play in Poland with some of the greatest actors I have ever seen. I think that I made my career here in the West largely thanks to the knowledge I obtained in Poland, yet I always felt, and was treated like, an outsider there and I knew then that when I left Poland (in 1957) I would never return. After I had lived in London for several years, my mother started to visit me here regularly. One day she told me that my father hated the idea of me living in England. So, the following year I sent him a ticket so that he could come with my mother to visit. He sent the ticket back through my mother with a message, which read - ‘Let my son come to his country first, and then I shall visit him in London’ - so I never saw him again. England became MY country and London MY home. I had worked as an actor in Polish for 12 years and in English for 30 years – Voila! As a child I had to go to a Polish school, as it was on the territories of Poland before the war so I started speaking Polish; but I didn't realise that I spoke it with a heavy Ukrainian or Russian accent. When we found ourselves in the second half of the war in Warsaw, and I went to drama school (in Polish of course), I had to have special pronunciation lessons to get rid of my accent and to speak Polish correctly. Yet even as I became a young star in the Polish theatre my colleagues and Polish actors would say that whenever I played a very emotional scene, I would inevitably fall back into this melodic Ukrainian accent. For all the feelings I have regarding Poland, I always think warmly of her and the Polish people. I learned my craft, and all that I know in the field of acting from these schools, which I think, are the best in the world. For 12 years after I left school I was a young star in the Polish Theatre and I was lucky to play with the greatest living actors. I am sure that the knowledge I had learned gave me a great deal of security, and consequently I was never shy, insecure or frightened to play in English, and later in French, German and Italian. I felt self-assured. Acting is acting whichever language you play. The audience feels my confidence, and I am sure now that this confidence was one of the keys to my instant success as an actor in England. Every time I analyse my first years in my artistic activities in England I come to the same conclusion about the first, most important factor which made my career - and even a sort of Vladek Sheybal ‘legend’ - right from the beginning - those thirty years ago in Oxford, where for the first time I acted on my intuition. Unbeknown to me I had a ‘method’ of not caring, not having any ambition to make acting a career in England. When I read now about Greta Garbo's first years in Hollywood, I can see in her the same line as I had - she couldn't care less about her stardom. She would prefer to go back to Sweden. She hated Hollywood, the Americans, and the constant sun in California, she preferred the snow. That's why when the studios didn't want to pay her very high fees, she said she didn't care. She locked herself at home and told them if they didn’t agree to her demands then she would go back to Sweden with great pleasure. She also told them she would only wait for their response for a certain amount of time, and after a year of this silent struggle they had to yield to her demands. She won and thus became the greatest star in the world and a very rich woman. Her catchphrase of ‘I want to be alone’ was perfect for her, she meant it. Sometimes, my agents would apply the same words to me: ‘he wants to be alone.’
The second, most important factor was this business of not asking for help in this country, rather being asked to help. It was almost paradoxical, but inadvertently this happened to me right from the start and it is still with me. I am a helper, I love helping. I am very honest with myself and to other people. If I say I cannot do something then I don't do it. But when I can I will always help. I said before that in my life and career there was always a certain mysterious chain of events and coincidences that governed my destiny. Right from the beginning when I was recognised as one of the leading actors from ‘Kanal’ to the Oxford students I was a star, and a star of this extraordinary film. Consequently I can teach them something - once I, so extraordinarily strangely, and luckily found myself amongst them in Oxford. I would help wherever I could; after all, I had the best school and theatre in the world as my experience behind me. Language is no barrier if you really know how and if you want to help. Like becoming a star overnight, I became instantly recognisable in Oxford. Oxford is a place where miracles can, and do happen; it happened to me! The most astonishing thing was that for quite a long time I didn't realise it at all, I was just simply working with students, and giving my knowledge to them. I was unaware of my powers. But, inevitably, later this special position and adulation that I had in Oxford brought me enemies , simply a human jealousy, yet I still didn't see it at all. When I say I am stupid there you are, aren't I right? People were fighting for me there and I didn't see it: ‘I wanted to be alone.’
* * *
Chapter: Twenty Four
RAM GOPAL - OCTOBER 1991
Ram's voice sounded young and excited. He telephoned from Venice.
“Darling” he said, “we are coming to London, Claude and myself, tomorrow. I hope to see you there.”
He put down the receiver.
‘Strange’ I thought, I knew Ram so well. All his moods, his ups and downs, yet I couldn't fathom the meaning of this abrupt telephone call. Every single action of his, be it a spoken line, a smile, whether elusive or blatant, have always had meanings. He would not be such a world famous charismatic dancer without being affected by the subtext of meanings. Whenever I looked at his face or listened to his voice I could see in him the movement of his mysterious Eastern personality, and his magic of the Indian dance, I would see in his face a gentle or dramatic pirouetting . I would hear the jingle of the little bells he wore around his ankles, I would see the gentle sway of his knees, his eyes going right and left, his lips in the tremor of a gentle smile, his eyebrows moving up and down in his uniquely Indian expressions of horror, love, surprise, prayer to God, or mockery. The same dancing waves were always in his voice, whether triumphant or loving or hating, but this time there was nothing – just a void in his voice. At that particular moment I heard post being put through my letterbox, that rustling sound which always meant some change in my acting life. I ran to the door, sure enough there was an envelope. It was from the High Commissioner for India. I tore the envelope open impatiently. I knew the answer for Ram’s strange behaviour would be inside, and indeed it was. Inside was an invitation which read:-
|
The High Commissioner for India
|
What is this about? I thought.
There was a slip of paper attached to this invitation, and it said I would be meeting the Minister for Human Resources development, who would be investing Ram Gopal with the Fellowship of the Sangeet Natak Academy. My mind started searching for the meaning of it. Of course - they were going to invest Ram with a title and the honour of Pandit. It is the Indian equivalent of being knighted in this country and becoming a ‘Sir’ as in Sir Ram Gopal, or Pandit Ram Gopal - what a joy! Two days later Ram rang me from his London flat, he didn't sound excited anymore; he sounded tired and subdued. He was almost whispering into the receiver: “Well, what a pity they didn't think about this title some time ago. Now I feel it is too late. I burned out my inner fire. What do they all want of me? They forgot about my existence for so many painful years, and I have given them all my heart and soul and body. All my dancing time and all my … ” he stopped for a while.
“Are you still there” I asked?
“Yes I am here, well they rejected so many of my precious offers ... for films ... for organising a big Indian dance company to tour the entire world, Indira Ghandi herself promised me that would happen. In the end they were always turning their backs on me and now here I am. Too old to give them my magic; my fire - they extinguished it slowly but surely, and now I have to go there to feel and look ridiculous , never mind. Vladek please come with me and Claude, I have to have my friends with me, I have to have your support.”
“I will” I said.
The next day he rang again.
“They are sending a car for me at 4.45pm, will you be here by then and we can go together?”
“4.45?” I said, “but the invitation says the ceremony starts at 6.30.”
“I don't know” he said, “please don't ask any questions; just come.”
“All right” I agreed. I could feel the conflicting emotions wrestling inside him. It would do no good to argue now.
“What shall I wear?” I asked.
Ram smiled (it is true that I always knew when he smiled on the phone).
“Wear whatever you think you will feel well and beautiful in.”
When I arrived at Ram’s flat, Claude opened the door; she looked very chic and smiled at me as she always did, in a kind and friendly way.
“Look you are in red” I said as I looked at her dress, “and I am wearing a red bow tie as well.”
Ram appeared from the first floor, and I started laughing.
“Well ” I said, “Ram is wearing a red turban, it is good luck.”
Ram laughed, and I knew I needed to keep him laughing to get him out of his depressed mood. I always had this uncanny capacity to make Ram laugh. We would spend hours on the phone, and I would tell him all my little stories and do the imitations, and he would laugh like mad. We developed a certain ... vernacular between ourselves ... so that no one from the outside would understand what we were talking about. For instance, about a face-lift we would say ‘changing the curtains.’ Then I would imitate a funny stewardess walking in the first class cabin, on a flight to Dallas in a rather dreamy manner and pouring champagne in my glass in slow motion (I am sure she thought it sexy) and then screwing her face to me in a grin which she thought was friendly, and which was supposed to mean ‘well, spoil yourself.’ We would go through five octaves vocally to do these imitations and Ram never had enough of them. I had to keep repeating them each time, slightly improving the quality of the interpretation. So when Ram laughed at my remark I went through a few imitations and his response was lovely, he relaxed completely.
The telephone rang and Ram answered it: “Yes, yes, oh you are just around the corner, ok we are ready.” He put down the receiver. It was a secretary calling to tell him the car had arrived.
His natural activeness came back, he opened the front door, spotted the car, and as we were proceeding towards it a tall, handsome and rather butch looking chauffeur jumped out of the limousine and was waiting for us, opening the door with a polite gesture. We climbed in. The car moved on and Ram asked the chauffeur his name.
“Fernando” he replied. His English was perfect. He explained that both his parents were Portuguese, but he was born in London.
“A secretary from head office spoke to me on the phone, and almost immediately you were there in front of my house; that was fast” Ram said to him.
That was me calling you from the car sir” Fernando replied; he pointed at the telephone in the car.
“But Mr Gopal said it was a woman speaking on the phone” I said.
“No sir, it was me” he said. Suddenly his phone rang and he answered it. We all heard him and were puzzled as his voice changed completely, he was speaking on the phone in a very high pitched female-sounding voice. Claude looked at me with a smile and gave me a wink. I whispered to her: “This is his polite sounding phone voice. The poor fellow, not having any acting training he didn’t realise that on the phone he pushed his voice up into this polite sounding twitter of a woman.”
If only people had some acting training I thought, it would save them some embarrassment. We arrived at India House in Aldwych, London. The big front door was closed. Ram went up to it and knocked. No answer.
“I am sure that they will ask you who you are now” I said.
“Why?” asked Ram.
“Because I can see that this is all badly organised” I said. I pushed against the heavy door and it opened. Inside the building there was a porter sitting in his glass box. He scrutinised us and predictably asked Ram who he was.
“Didn't I tell you?” I said and Claude started giggling.
Ram bit his lip and said: “My name is Ram Gopal.”
Further down the large and rather monumental marble hall was a receptionist sitting at a desk, so I went over to her and said: “This is Ram Gopal and we are here for his investiture.”
She looked a bit surprised, but pointed to a few armchairs in the next hall and asked us to wait there. Meekly we all went in, like three silly lemons, and sat in the armchairs looking at each other in disbelief.
“Why did they ask us to arrive so early?” I asked.
Ram shook his head: “I don't know.”
“Then do you know the plan for us tonight, what is going to happen now, where and when will the investiture take place surely not in this hall and are we going to a banquet afterwards?”
“I really don't know” Ram whispered, he looked as though he were just going to accept the situation as it was. I got up and went back over to the receptionist. I asked her if she could let somebody know we had arrived but I needn’t have worried as she told me she had just spoken to the secretary for the High Commissioner and he was on his way to meet us. I went back to Ram and Claude and repeated this to them, then I sat down opposite them. A rather heavy silence ensued. A small Indian man entered the hall; he looked directly at us and started walking towards us. His movements were fluid, almost undulating and when he stopped in front of us and spoke, his voice sounded like a soft whisper: “The High Commissioner is waiting for you in his office, I am to escort you there.”
Ram looked very tired already, but he smiled gently, took Claude and myself by the arm and we went to the lift. We arrived at the third floor. There was marble just about everywhere, the ceiling was very high and gave off a sort of ‘Rule Britannia-Raj’ feeling. The Indian man opened one heavy wooden door and waved us in. Inside, the High Commissioner got up from his large desk and shook Ram's hand. His lips were constantly parted in some rather disturbing grin, and his very white teeth were clenched. “Welcome” he said. Ram then introduced Claude and myself, and we sat on three chairs placed opposite the High Commissioner's chair on the other side of the desk. Before we went any further the telephone rang. The High Commissioner started talking into the phone, grinning at us now and then it was a rather long conversation and we looked at each other. Ram started laughing at the absurdity of it all. The High Commissioner eventually replaced thereceiver and sat opposite us.
“Well, well, well” he said, “Ram Gopal is here. The great Ram Gopal, I cannot believe my eyes. I saw you on the stage dancing in Delhi in (he stopped to think) 1938.”
He roared with happy laughter: “How about that?” he said.
Ram nodded politely and then something strange happened. The High Commissioner looked searchingly at Ram and asked: “When were you born?” It was a real thunderbolt. We didn't dare to look at each other. The High Commissioner must have realised that he had committed a faux pas, as his grin became wider.
“One shouldn't ask this question of a lady” I said, “nor an artist.”
“I quite agree with you” Ram whispered.
“Well” I said, “consequently that question is not going to be answered.”
The door opened and another man walked in, he started whispering something to the High Commissioner. This man was tall with a dark moustache, and looked rather more Spanish than Indian. Another man then came into the room, smiled at us and then put a page of something in front of the High Commissioner, who was still engaged in a whispered conversation with the Spanish looking man, but he picked up the paper from the desk and started reading it. The telephone rang again. Now the High Commissioner was talking on the phone, whispering to the Spaniard and correcting something on the paper in front of him. Now, another man walked in (he was smaller than the others) came over to us and asked if we’d like any refreshment. Claude said she’d like tea, and I opted for coffee.
Ram thought a while then said: “I would like a little whisky and ginger ale.”
The small man looked frightened, and hesitated.
The High Commissioner, in spite of being engaged on two fronts, said to the small man in a rather loud and commanding voice: “Send for it then.”
The little man made a servile twist of his body, and the High Commissioner gave us yet another of his grins. The door opened again, and yet another man ushered us to a room containing two rather well built Indian ladies both wearing saris, and two men: One was Indian, and the other was English with grey hair. One lady had blind fear in her eyes for some reason, and the other was talking to the Englishman. The High Commissioner jumped to his feet and ran to them. They started greeting each other with both hands clasped together. Then we were introduced, and the frightened lady looked even more frightened. The High Commissioner ushered them to a sofa and a few armchairs behind our chairs and left us alone as they engaged in conversation – they were all speaking Urdu.
“What are we doing here?” I said to Ram and Claude, “we are sitting here like three lemons.” Ram put his finger on his mouth.
Then the door opened again, and the little man came in with our tea and coffee, and the cups on a tray. He danced around us, pouring our drinks and the smile never left his face for a moment. Ram whispered: “And my whisky?” The man smiled at him and nodded, then he went out, and immediately came back with another tray. This time, there was a huge bottle of Johnny Walker on it, a large glass, some ice and a bottle of soda water. He started pouring the whisky into Ram's glass, and Ram said politely: “But where is my ginger ale, this is soda water” and he pointed at the bottle. The man twisted his body dangerously, and the High Commissioner shouted from his sofa behind us: “If you don't have it, send for it.”
The man jerked his body away then desperately seized the tray with bottles and Ram's glass and ran out. Yet another man came into the room; this one was tiptoeing! He looked left and right as if looking for somebody. I assumed he was looking for the High Commissioner so I pointed him out to the young man. He ran dramatically to him and said something. The High Commissioner got up quickly and left the room, he was still smiling as he passed us. The man gave us an apologetic gesture and followed the High Commissioner out of the room. Again the door opened slowly, and again the little man appeared carrying a tray with whisky in a new glass, and a bottle of ginger ale. The glass was empty, and I wondered what happened to the whisky he had poured earlier – did he drink it himself or did he pour it back into the bottle? The little man was now busily pouring whisky into the glass, clinking the ice into it then looking apologetically into Ram's eyes as he slowly and deliberately poured the ginger ale into the glass of whisky. Claude looked at me with relief, and Ram had his first sip of whisky and started laughing uncontrollably.
“You must write all about this in your biography” he whispered to me.
“I already am” I whispered back.
Then our High Commissioner came back in, he was very excited.
“Ladies and Gentlemen“ he began, “please proceed with me downstairs, the reception is going to begin.”
The two well built ladies were struggling, trying to get out of the very soft armchairs they were sitting in; their husbands were helping them. We eventually reached the lift, and I now realised that the two ladies and their husbands would be better off in one lift, while we waited for another. We arrived at the grand hall downstairs and were ushered to a large room. There were quite a lot of people there already. All eating and drinking, and obviously not privileged like ourselves, to have been invited by the High Commissioner himself to wait in his office for the past two and a half hours! Waiters were pouring drinks into plastic cups (I learned later that it was pure orange juice). On a long table covered with a white tablecloth there were plastic plates with a few Indian cakes on them. Ram was already surrounded by lots of his friends and followers, and the High Commissioner asked us to walk to the next room, which looked like a small theatre. He led Ram to the first row and sat by him. Claude and myself sat in the first row too, across the gangway from Ram.
Just in front of us, on a little rostrum, Indian musicians were sitting in the lotus position. When the theatre was filled with people the musicians started playing an Indian piece. In the middle of the group of musicians there was a singer and on his right a drummer, on his left a man with a low and small keyboard/organ, and behind them a blond English girl with a very tall string instrument. Thus the magic of this elusive, and extremely beautiful Indian music had utterly changed the whole atmosphere. It was soothing, gently philosophical, romantic and crude. I was immediately pleased that I went through those two and a half boring hours at the High Commissioner's office. Yes, the second half of the evening started unfolding itself in a most fantastic way.
Photo [Left] Ram Gopal [seated] and Claude LaMorisse circa 1991
© Claude LaMorisse.
* * *
Chapter: Twenty Eight
Our filming of Shogun continued smoothly. The atmosphere on the set was friendly and Richard was still the easiest actor to work with. In a way, he reminded me of Marcello Mastroianni - with one difference - Richard was American, and as such he would defend every single line, every close up. Marcello didn't have any stipulations written into his contract, but he was incredibly generous while we acted together; he would give me his close ups and instead would have a nap on his chair. It was obvious that he was certain that in the end his talent and personality and charm would win, and he was right. Alan Badel on the other hand, started attending some secret meetings with Samurais. It was very strange, even alarming, and when we were filming on location on board the frigate, tempers started flying high; very high indeed. We were about to finish our filming in the Tokyo studios, when the production office gave me a nice little surprise. They were going south, to a little village, and as they packed away the equipment and the production office, they told me that they had already prepared the filming schedule for the immediate future - according to this schedule I was not supposed to film any of my scenes for at least the next four weeks. So they suggested that I stay in my hotel room in Tokyo, and they would pay my expenses. They told me they would call me in good time if they needed me sooner. I was very happy, being left alone and not working, not having to get up at 5am for a while. I had plenty of time to myself. The hotel was excellent, and on top of it all, I was still being paid my petty cash (daily pocket money) in advance. It was a substantial amount of money … a life of luxury … even if it was only temporary! After they had all gone, I started to really explore Tokyo in my own way, feeling completely and unequivocally free. On the ground floor of our hotel there was a maze of long corridors and arcades; little art galleries and hairdressers, coffee shops, boutiques, antiques, little restaurants etc. There were always crowds of people there; some from the hotel, but also from the streets. They were looking at splendid and expensive items in the shops, or even buying them. Access from the street was free, and there weren't any guards at the front revolving doors - just like in the film: ‘Grand Hotel’ with Greta Garbo. I had plenty of time on my hands, and I loved just being able to saunter along these amazing and splendid arcades. Very soon I realised that there was also a sort of ‘meat market’ - consisting of very beautiful prostitutes walking languidly through the arcades, and looking provocatively at the men. Then there were also a great deal of young men; toy-boys for women … and men. Strangely enough I was never molested. I think that was because I was there often enough, and often I had my room key in my hand - so they realised that I was living in this hotel. Perhaps they even knew that I was an actor from Shogun - as I said before this was a very popular book in Japan, and everybody knew that our headquarters were in the Imperial Hotel.
I started feeling restless in Tokyo. I’d met up with Andrew and Akiko now and then in small restaurants, and sometimes in their charming flat where her Japanese mother was preparing these fantastic dinners. They showed me some very specialised Japanese restaurants, like ‘curd’ restaurants, where all of the dishes were made of different kinds of curd. But the restaurant that I shall always remember was a very old traditional Japanese restaurant where they only served dishes of eels. They assured me that the variety of dishes would be so spectacular and vast, that I would be sure to find one or two dishes to my liking. Unfortunately Akiko suggested eel soup with brown beans for my first dish - the eel soup arrived. I looked at the dish and I froze - inside the bowl in the brown bean liquid, there were little baby eels floating and desperately looking at me. I looked at Andrew.
“What's wrong Vladek?” he asked apprehensively.
I tried to ask in a rather soft and polite manner, so as to minimise my confusion at those hopelessly tragic eyes staring at me from the soup.
“What do you do about their eyes and heads?” I asked, “do you cut them off?”
“No Vladek” said Akiko, “you eat them all with their heads, eyes, bones, fins, tails and all. They are delicious … look” Akiko demonstrated.
She scooped the little fish on the spoon, took them all in her mouth and started biting and chewing all the bones. I gasped, and tried to follow her ways. To my surprise and horror, I couldn't break their little bones with my teeth and I could not swallow them. In desperation I took a big swig of beer from the bottle and it helped wash it all down.
“Bravo” laughed Akiko, but then she looked very closely at me and said gently, “Ok … you can't eat it, let's go to another restaurant.”
Thank God I thought, and we did. But for a long time afterwards they would laugh hysterically as they described the expression on my face with those eels in my mouth, as if I were Mata Hari facing a firing squad!
I must say that ever since my experience with earthquakes, I couldn't banish from my mind the fear of them. I met a young English girl in my hotel one day and she told me she was an English teacher, but after four years of living in Tokyo she was going back to England. She went through three earthquakes in Tokyo, and was constantly living in fear. The last one started dominating, and thus damaging her mind. She couldn't eat, she lost sleep and she became a nervous wreck. She was constantly waiting for the slightest tremor. I believe that if you are obsessed with any kind of fear, fear itself becomes an electrified and dangerous magnetic pull; like the ripples on the surface of water, it weaves itself around you. Its snake-like power spreads through you, and crawls in all directions, with you as its epicentre. I believe that fear attracts all bad vibrations wherever you are. Together with all the other negative vibrations of other people, originates some fearful experiences and accidents - even fatal ones. The girl I mentioned above flew back to England, but when the plane landed in Hong Kong the plane had an accident of some sort. Most of the passengers escaped unhurt, but my girl was injured. She broke a leg when a seat in front of her collapsed, and she had to spend one week in a Hong Kong hospital; then she resumed her journey to England. I wonder if she developed, or multiplied her new fears and phobias about planes and flying. I had an opportunity to meet her later on in London, but decided not to; I am a very psychic person and I didn't want to be impregnated by her fears. I went to a few saunas in central Tokyo. They were like palaces full of large mirrors and zigzagging staircases, and of course those hot, very hot and steaming swimming pools on each floor. I had to get used to submerging myself in this very hot water - it didn't seem to bother the Japanese. The ritual went like this: After you undress, they give you a hip towel and they usher you to a room where you have to wash yourself very thoroughly - and I mean thoroughly, because they watch you all the time. They give you a wooden looking bucket filled with hot water, and a little wooden stool. You sit on this stool then they hand you a large, brand new block of soap and a new large sponge - all disposable after each wash. You have to wash the whole of your body, including all your intimate nooks and crannies, and you have to wash everything twice. They change the water in your bucket of course, and before each wash they place you in an alcove and spray you lavishly with hot water from hoses. Then, when they decide that you are really clean they let you go into the swimming pool with this scalding hot water. The swimming pools are built in circular shapes. Each man places himself at the bottom of the pool (it's rather shallow) with his head placed above the water and rested on the edge of the pool. Men usually soak in this infernal hot water for at least one hour, and there is complete silence. I felt this was a sort of sacred ritual.
Later, I started visiting all the Tokyo temples; there were quite a lot of them - usually situated in the parks or gardens. They were all extremely beautiful with oriental sloping roofs decorated with wooden eaves, often painted with gold. In front of each temple there was a circular ‘drum’ - inside this drum burned a constant fire - the snake-like flames were visible from outside. There was lots of smoke, billowing up to the sky. People would write their wishes on little pieces of paper, and then when their wishes were burning, they would fan the smoke onto themselves with hand held fans, or onto the part of their bodies which needed healing. The same healing powers of this ‘sprituality’ was the same the world over; at the wailing wall in Jerusalem, the Saint Antonio Church in Padua, and in Lourdes and in Mecca.
My time off had almost come to an end and I had a few more days before I’d need to leave and head south to resume filming. So I decided to go to Kyoto by the famous bullet train. The day was perfect and sunny. I was sitting by the window; looking at the Japanese landscape running away from under my feet at the speed of 160km per hour. I wondered at how totally different the Japanese landscape is from anything I have seen in my life. There in front of me were neatly designed green rice fields, with water glistening from the bottom among the pale green blades of rice, and of course the bent figures of the people working on the fields; wearing broad cone-like straw hats on their heads. They worked with very primitive looking tools in their hands; sickles of some sort. One could see that the traditional way of working survived, and hadn’t changed from centuries ago. Overlooking all of this in the background was the famous cone-shaped sacred mountain: Fujiama, which was white from half way up with brilliantly glistening snow. Japanese travellers as usual, pretended not to see me - a foreigner. I noticed this more so on the streets of Tokyo on more than one occasion. Once, someone was distributing some sort of leaflets to the fast passing throngs, but their hands were never moved in my direction; instead, their hands containing the leaflets would miss me swiftly and casually without them even looking at me. The hosts on the train started distributing neat little boxes containing food. I didn't know about this before my journey - obviously these boxes had to be ordered in advance; the smell of the sashimi rice and soy sauce was delicious, and made me feel hungry. Unfortunately I had no means to communicate with the hosts about it. But the Japanese are very smart in their reactions, and one steward came up to me and with a nice smile gestured to me ‘Would I like a box with food as well?’
I told him I’d like sashimi. He nodded and promptly brought me some. I offered to pay him, but he waved the money away. In later times, I would recount this gesture to Akiko; she smiled and told me that the price of the ticket didn’t include the lunch box, but that the Japanese like to make foreigners comfortable and pleased in their country.
Kyoto, the ancient city of Japan dating from the eighth century, is essentially a city of temples. There are temples everywhere - scattered among the breathtaking parks, lakes and little waterfalls; almost a mini ‘Alice in Wonderland.’
But by the middle of the afternoon I became aware that I had had enough of all those ‘miracles of art and culture.’ I had already seen hundreds of temples since being in Japan; after all a temple is a temple, is a temple. I decided to go back to Tokyo the same evening. I was glad to walk into my modern hotel room at the Imperial. The light by my telephone was flickering; there was a message from my production office. The following morning I would find a train ticket in my pigeon hole at reception, and in a few days time I would travel to Osawa (where they were filming). However, I still had time to re-visit Kyoto again, and then I was to board a little country train, to trundle me all the way to the south Pacific village of Owase.
Next morning I found my train ticket as promised, in my pigeon hole. The production office said that I would be travelling with a young lady, who was actually the fiancée of one of our English actors: Damien Thomas. The same evening as I was quietly sipping coffee in a bar downstairs, she came up to me to introduce herself. She was very beautiful with long dark hair cascading all over her shoulders. She had very pale skin and penetrating green eyes. She was charming, very relaxed and friendly. She was half Moroccan and half Spanish, and her name struck me as very unusual; it was Fuzzia, and she worked as a stewardess with Moroccan Air Lines. The next day we travelled together on a bullet train. Then without difficulty, thanks to her quick uncomplicated intelligence, we found our old fashioned and charming little train to Owase. As we were going south, the landscape changed, and our poor train trundled with difficulty among the mountains now covered with dense pine forests. For the first time I felt that we were really and truly in ‘Japanese’ Japan, and the names of the stations only seemed to confirm it: Himej, Okayama, Fukuyama and Hiroshima. As our train stopped in Hiroshima, silence descended on the train and everybody stopped talking. Everyone looked out of the windows; gazing into the space beyond; the space where so many died. Then we proceeded again to the South and finally we stopped in Owase; a little town on the extremely beautiful Pacific coast. As far as the eye could see there was the spectacular ocean with hundreds of little islands. Later on I learned that it was a famous resort for rich Japanese businessmen and their families. We immediately realised that no-one could help us here if we got into difficulties. People here were wearing real Japanese kimonos and hairdos; virtually no-one spoke any other language but Japanese. A few days later I was to discover this fact in a very painful way myself. However, when Fuzzia and I arrived in Owase there was no-one waiting for us. Between us we knew about eight languages, but it didn’t help us here. The international words like taxi, or hotel, didn't mean anything to the Japanese. Children were calling us strange names and their mothers slapped their faces. Later we learned that the names we were called were highly derogatory names for foreigners. Finally we spotted a car which could have been a taxi, and we tried hailing it but the driver looked visibly frightened, so he just shot off and disappeared. But then another car stopped by the kerb. Inside was a Japanese chauffeur, he waved at us and thankfully he wasn't scared by us; we went over to him and he showed us a card with the name of our hotel - in English! We were relieved - he’d been sent to collect us. So we got in, and within five minutes we were at our hotel. This hotel was not like the Imperial; it was not a modern building and it looked just like an old Japanese Inn. Fuzzia met up with her fiancé, and I went to reception; it was quite large but very Japanese with lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and Samurai swords on the walls. A man from our production office came up to me and thank God - he was English! With a very polite smile he asked me about my journey; then he explained to us that as this was a hotel for the Japanese only, they were prepared to "Europeanise" it for us - if we’d like them to. They could put a mattress on the floor instead of their usual quilted blanket (which was unrolled for the night and rolled up for the day). Most welcome of all was their offer to install a proper lavatory, as all they had in the hotel was the hole in the ground! Here, you would be expected to crouch down and do what comes naturally - in true old Japanese style. I knew of this way of evacuating yourself from my time in Paris. The French say it is the most healthy and natural position, and that in this position the evacuation is almost total. Nevertheless I opted for the proper lavatory seat as I was used to it from the beginning of my life. I also asked for a proper mattress on the floor, and later on I asked for yet another mattress on the top of the existing one; that way I felt more like I was sleeping in a proper bed. I went downstairs to a little restaurant to wait until they made the adjustments to the room, and I felt as though I was being watched constantly by all the Japanese people there. This never happened in Tokyo, and an old feeling from the war enveloped my heart with fear, as if somebody was keeping tabs on me. After a few minutes, I was ushered to the first floor. As I was walking towards my room along the corridor, I noticed with amazement that all the doors to the rooms were thrown open; Japanese families were having their tea with their children - in full view. I smiled at them, and greeted them with the Japanese word: ‘Konbanwa’- this meant good evening. These people were the tourists from Tokyo, so they kept smiling and replying: ‘Konbanwa.’ Later on I noticed that the doors to the rooms were always ajar; perhaps this was meant to show that they had nothing to hide. It's like in Holland - people don't draw their curtains in the evening - that way you can always see the people inside their houses - eating or talking, or whatever. It was explained to me that it was an old strict Presbyterian ‘must’ - don't hide anything - unless you have something to hide! My room looked neat, but in spite of the mattress it had only one armchair, no desk or table. I realised that in all the other rooms I had seen from the corridor there was no furniture in them either; the people were just sitting on the floor on little cushions.
In the evening, hotel staff would come round to each room with trolleys containing a fantastic display of food: lobsters cut through, caviar, sushi and sashimi, steaming rice, and of course lots of little dishes with their delicious dip sauces. They also carried drinks in little porcelain bottles, one of which was champagne; unfortunately there was no Japanese sake. These luxurious displays of food showed me how rich these people must have been. In some of the rooms, when the parents were dining from the trays on the floor, the children would be asleep nearby on the floor on the unrolled quilted blankets. After dinner, the hotel staff would collect the trays, then they would unroll the quilts on the floor for the parents, and then the doors would be closed; no-one was able to look upon them as they slept. In the morning, trolleys would again be brought round to each guest; the same procedure followed for lunch as well, and I often wondered why the other guests would not go down to the little restaurant downstairs. Later on I met a local Japanese couple. They invited me for afternoon tea in their little house; their son and his wife spoke English, and they were about to depart for London for two weeks. They asked me to suggest a hotel for them which would not be too expensive. I immediately suggested that they could use my empty house, and they could not believe their ears. To them this was the utmost display of real Samurai generosity, as was explained to me. I gave them my address, and I handed them the keys to my house. They all decided that this needed a special celebration, and the mother went to the telephone; ten minutes later three men wearing white coats carrying huge trays above their heads entered the house, and placed the trays on the table. What a treat - the trays were glistening with a colourful display of a huge assortment of different kinds of sushi, sashimi, little hot dishes and ‘slurping noodles’ - paradise! There were also a few bottles of sake - it was indeed an amazing feast! We became friends, and I was invited back several times to their little dinners and charming parties; their son and his wife stayed for their two weeks in my house in London, and came back with my keys - so there were no complications on that score. They even came to me a few years later. This time they brought their charming little son with them; his name was Tsutomu - a beautiful sounding name - almost like a song.
Meantime, we started shooting our outdoor scenes in a small fishing port for ‘Shogun.’ Richard as usual was relaxed and smiling, and Alan was still worried that he might forget his lines. Immediately after the first few hours of shooting, I sensed a sort of tension hanging in the air; the director and the crew were having loud arguments about everything - about the angles of the cameras, about the lighting - Jerry was even becoming impatient with the actors about their interpretations. I have seen these tensions, arguments and quarrels before. It usually starts in what I call the ‘long haul’ films - towards the end of the film, everyone is crowding each other, working in difficult conditions in a foreign far away land, and they start getting on each other's nerves. Once this happens, it only takes the slightest, insignificant incident to cause a tiny spark - which can then explode to the size of a large bonfire. As usual my method is not to be drawn, not to be involved in it. I stay completely outside all of this metaphorical thunder and lightning - but my intuition was telling me that this would soon blow up into a mighty storm; there would be casualties, and a few weeks later there were.
My dialogue with Richard was still stinging and venomous. Actually we both enjoyed this very much, and in between takes we would laugh and giggle. One day Richard produced from under his sleeve, a large Japanese fan and started fanning himself vigorously. It was indeed a very hot and sticky day. Next day I brought in my own large fan which I purchased in Tokyo, and as soon as Richard started fanning himself. I produced my fan, and started fanning myself as well. I was pretending not to look at Richard, but he started laughing like mad. So all this fanning had become a sort of camp dialogue between us. He would 'angrily' fan himself to me, and I would reply by fanning myself 'nostalgically' to him; and it went on and on. Then the dreaded day came when I had to be killed by dozens of deadly darting arrows. I hate these scenes in films - they can so easily become dangerous. Photo [Above] shows Vladek as Captain Ferriera
in Shogun ©1980 Paramount Pictures Corporation
In some films, I went through explosions in a house in which I was inside, through fire in another, I fell through water into a waterfall in another, and hung precariously from a balcony - with a drop of hundreds of feet underneath me in another film!*
* EDITORS NOTE: Vladek is referring to the film ‘After Midnight’ which was his last film, made in 1992. We assume that the stunt was performed by a stunt man, but in close up shots in the film, Vladek [in character, appears to be hanging from a balcony].
Of course, the most difficult and dangerous bits were performed by a stunt man wearing my costume and make up, but there are always some bits that you have to do yourself, and I have learned from bitter experience that you always have to have a little doubt about the efficiency of all those pyrotechnics and ‘specialists,’ who arrange those dangerous scenes; especially when they assure you that nothing, but absolutely nothing, could possibly go wrong! For ‘Shogun’ they invented a sort of contraption with about 15 wires, all of them attached to my chest. Along these wires, 15 deadly arrows were supposed to fly at me with incredible speed and lodge themselves in my chest. My chest of course was covered with a rather thick ‘corset’ made of cork. The arrows would be attached to these wires, and a special machine on the other end would release them with tremendous speed, and they would slide on some sort of loops attached to them along the wires. I investigated the possibility with the special effects man that there may be the likelihood that one or more of these arrows could break the loop to which it was attached, and instead of lodging itself in the cork on my chest, would lodge itself into my eye, or stomach, or private parts!. Jerry London was impatient and in a dark mood: “Oh come on Vladek … don't be so bloody obstinate” he said, “anyway we are already one day behind schedule with our shooting.”
“I couldn't care less” I retorted. I was really very angry with the whole set up by now.
“So what do you suggest Vladek?” Jerry shouted.
“I think that you should make a model, a doll in my costume, then fire the arrows and the arrows can pierce the doll, not me. Then you can film me at the last moment when the arrows are already inside me, making them vibrate, then shoot a close up of my face in panic ... then dying.”
Jerry was furious.
“We haven't got time to do that now” he said.
As always in moments like this, the instinct of the actor which is like an animal striving for perfection would win: “Ok” I said, “then let's shoot it as it is.”
All the actors gathered around me, and I saw Alan's worried face. Then I looked at Richard; he didn't smile this time, but shook his head to me with the meaning ‘don't do it’
But then, a feeling of bravado overwhelmed me, and I heard myself saying: “Go ahead.”
This shot could only be filmed once, so there were three cameras at the ready: one to film the flying arrows; one to film my chest at the moment the arrows pierced it; and one for my close up. My expressions were to be disbelief at first, then fear and finally panic. Then, like the famous James Cagney, dying slowly, slowly, never ending dying. Then it was the endless waiting for lighting, and the positioning of cameras. Waiting in films is one of the most difficult parts of being a film actor; it depletes all of your stamina and feelings. Then when the clapperboard goes down, and the director shouts: “Action” you have to draw on your reserves of adrenaline to deliver a performance ‘spontaneously’ - the best you can do. At last everything was ready; Alan and Richard waved at me a sort of ‘good luck.’ My heart was beating like a frightened crocodile. Then I heard: “Action” and in this moment, all my fears abandoned me; I became Captain Ferriera. My mind made an inner leap and I concentrated hard. I heard the devilish hissing sound of approaching arrows, and then I saw them, I acted fear, then panic. All 15 arrows hit my cork chest; the physical impact was enormous, and I almost lost my power to stand up; everything was pulling me down. There was a conflict from the gravitational force, and the human struggle against it. All this must have been helping my acting, as I felt I was doing all right; showing surprise; then dying, which I deliberately extended to almost inhuman length and effort. Then I tried to slide down to the ground, but was prevented from doing so by the wires which were holding me in a half suspended position over the earth.
Jerry shouted: “Cut” and the whole crew and all the actors burst into applause, but I hardly heard it. I was dazed; numb. This immense inner effort of acting this scene, coupled with the physical blows of 15 arrows hitting my chest anaesthetised me - I was annihilated. The whole crew rushed to support me and to cut loose the wires. Somebody gave me a cup of coffee, and I was put on a chair. Suddenly I felt pain in my right shoulder. I unbuttoned my shirt, and as I had predicted, one of the arrows had broken loose and pierced my sleeve, scratching my shoulder. I showed it to Jerry and to the special effects man. A nurse was rushed over to me and started disinfecting my wounded shoulder.
Someone spoke: “Yes, acting could be very dangerous.”
I looked up, it was Richard.
He held out a little bottle of brandy: “Have a sip Vladek” he said.
Jerry came up then: “Vladek I would like to do it again” he said. I was incredulous as he went on, “there were some minor points that I would suggest to you … so we are going to wire you again and … ”
I interrupted: “No Jerry, I am not going to do it again … period.”
Jerry looked livid. At that particular moment, the nurse said: “A small part of your wound needs stitching.” Jerry simply couldn't protest, so he walked away.
I will teach you a lesson I thought. When an actor wants to make the life of the director a misery, there are hundreds of ways to do it: Slow down the speed of working, disappear from location so that they start frantically looking for you - you find any way you can to delay proceedings, and you do it with all the innocence of a child. So after I was taken to the doctor to apply two stitches, I said to the nurse that I couldn’t film anymore that day and made myself sick on the floor in front of the doctor and nurse. Then I feigned fainting, they revived me of course, and then they took me back to my hotel room, where the doctor gave me an injection which he explained would make me sleep as I was in a state of shock. The next day I phoned the doctor and said that I was incapable of work; I felt weak and dizzy. The doctor examined me, and he told the production office that I must have a few days of complete rest; the production office had to reschedule the plan of shooting, and inside I felt this sweet, inner tremor of revenge. After two days of this innocently deliberate bliss, Jerry telephoned: “Vladek I know that you are all right now … I am sorry for this incident” he said, “so we have decided that you will have the whole week to rest. We shifted all your scenes on the ground to be played on your frigate on the sea, but all of it will be night shooting.”
I felt enthusiastic. So I had the whole week to myself to explore Owase, and the rice fields all around. I could go for walks in this fantastic scenery of undulating fields, and rugged ocean shores with thousands of little islands. I might even go to the jungle nearby, and I did. As I was strolling along a footpath enjoying the noises and smells of birds, trees and flowers, I saw a whole family of monkeys in a tree; they were all looking at me and they looked quite friendly. As I went closer I started talking to them; a little family group of both parents and about six babies.
They threw me a banana, and I said: “Thank you” and threw it back.
Suddenly all hell broke loose; they started making very unfriendly barking noises, and started bombarding me with bananas and any other fruit they could get hold of. I realised that something was wrong, so I decided to walk back but they all started following me, making very menacing sounds. I started running, and so did they; following me with ease. Again they began throwing anything they could at me; branches from trees, stones and rocks. I was literally running for my life; I was in real panic when suddenly they all gave up and went back to their tree. I was told later in the hotel, that these monkeys could become vicious, even dangerous. Well, so much for exploring the jungle. I also gave up the rice fields, as I was told that there could be some lethal water snakes in them, and instead I started venturing out, going down the hill to this charming little town of Owase. On both sides of the road there were beautiful little Japanese houses, with doors that slid sideways. Each little house was built on a sort of wooden rostrum, about one foot off the ground. But the real beginning of the house was on yet another rostrum or platform, which was one foot higher. People walking into the house would consequently leave their shoes on the first platform - as I said earlier in these memoirs - with the dirt and dust from the street, you pick up some evil powers, consequently when you step barefoot onto the house level step you leave the evil spirits one step below; they don't walk with you into your house. All the houses were spotlessly clean and neat. There were no front gardens visible from the street; they were all at the back of these houses. I noticed on a few occasions, an old Japanese woman sitting outside on a little veranda. She had large dark eyes; a lot bigger than you would usually see in Japan. She was watching, just sitting watching life going by; she always smiled at me warmly and I smiled back at her. Then she would wave with her dainty hand, a gesture of greeting and I waved back. One day she beckoned me to go closer. For some reason I was sure she had been a dancer in her youth. To my utter astonishment she spoke in English: “I gather that you must be one of the film company in this hotel up the hill.”
I smiled: “You know that you are the first person ever in Owase who speaks English.”
She smiled back: “Well … I used to live in Tokyo” she said, “I am a trained Geisha … I was taught how to dance and sing, and lead fascinating conversations. I was also taught English.”
I felt astounded.
“Now I live here in this house that was left to me by my parents” she went on, “I’m retired now of course, but I have had some fascinating times when I was young.”
“Do you still dance and sing?” I asked her.
“Oh yes” she said, “certainly … you never forget that.” Her eyes took on a reminiscent gaze, “come back here again tomorrow and have some tea, and I shall dance and sing for you.”
We set the time for my arrival at 4pm the following day. When I arrived at the allotted time she was not sitting on her veranda, so I took off my shoes and climbed up the two step platform. I gently knocked on the door, and then I heard her voice from inside asking me to go in. Her room was quite dark. There were two lighted candles at the far end of the room, and there was an armchair in the corner. When my eyes got used to the darkness, I saw that a human figure was sitting on this chair: “Is that you?” I asked but received no reply. Instead, she got up and with one swift gesture sat on the floor. She switched on a small electric lamp and I gasped with surprise: In the soft yellow glow from the lamp I saw her in full geisha regalia, complete with the huge black wig with the pins through it; she wore a red kimono and had a huge black bow at the back, and her face was painted white. Her lips were a dark crimson red, and her eyes and eyebrows were painted black. She was swaying rhythmically with dazzling grace … just like a purring cat. Then she started singing a song accompanied by a small string instrument. Along with the somewhat jerky movements of the dance, the rings of her white hand would perform a little dance too – and that, by itself, was an art – the art of a flying butterfly.
She finished her song: “It was a song of romantic love of a young innocent girl” she said. She posed for a while ... uncertain, innocent, just like a young girl.
“Did you like it?” she asked in a small, trembling voice.
“Did I like it?” I exclaimed. I couldn't find words - I was so moved!
“You are this young girl” I said, “you are simply beautiful.”
She danced with her hands, then said in French: “Je suis quatre-vingt quatre ...”
“Yes” I said, “I think that you are eighty-four years old, but you are a young beautiful girl … age doesn't change anything.”
She kept silent for a few minutes, then she said rather harshly: “Only death does.” Then she rose from the floor in one miraculous sweep, without assisting herself with her hands. She looked taller now in her wig, kimono and of course stilted shoes. She moved over to me like a sleek panther, and handed this precious little instrument to me; it looked like a little mandolin with only three strings. Suddenly I thought about Alan; he would have adored this; it all looked almost unreal, and pushed me back into the past by at least 500 years. I could have sworn that I saw a huge man - a samurai - standing there somewhere behind her, enveloped in the mysterious mist of the past; the past that still existed: thank God. She must have sensed that I was completely submerged, swamped in her delicate and unbelievable atmosphere: “Take this” she said, handing me the mandolin, “you will play for me, and I will dance for you.”
I couldn't believe my ears: “But I cannot play it” I protested.
“Yes you can” she told me, “everybody can play it - if I command it.”
She walked gracefully back to the middle of the room and froze in a sort of lotus position; then she swirled … once … twice. Then she stopped; waiting for me to strum the strings; I began to strum delicately on this miraculous little instrument.
“There, you see” she said, “you play it beautifully.”
Then she started really dancing as I played … I was incredulous … all of the positions she adopted; she was a butterfly; then a coy little woman trying to seduce me; then with her hands outstretched she became two fluttering birds. Like St Francis of Assisi she had the whole of nature at the tips of her delicate little fingers ... inside her frail, yet athletic body. She was like an ever swirling comet; confident and knowing in her movements … circling the universe. It almost seemed like she had a sacred white glow shining brilliantly inside her; then a long glistening but dark tail, trailing and zigzagging behind her - ruthlessly sweeping on to the ground. This art in which she had been trained by her teachers was sheer magic, they had taught her all those poses and gestures, and inside this frame of technique there was her shining talent. Just like in my profession; the sheer technique is not enough; you have got to fill the role with your feelings, with your magic, your unique talent … and she was unique - and the Samurai man was still lurking, somewhere in the dark and misty corner. She stopped. I strummed twice more and stopped as well. There was a long silence.
“Don't say anything” she said, “I know that you liked it; I can sense it from you; I can see it in your extraordinary eyes. They are huge, green and translucent; I have never seen eyes like yours. They helped me - without your eyes I wouldn't be able to sing and to dance.”
She threw a cushion over to me and I sat on it. She disappeared for a while, and I looked into the misty dark corner, but the samurai wasn't there anymore. Then she came back with a tray and all the dishes for making tea. She saw me looking into the corner.
“Oh” she whispered, “he's gone.”
I didn't dare elaborate on this remark.
She sat on the cushion and delicately put the tray on the floor; then she started making her tea in a little pot; she was humming something to herself; she was happy. Then she slowly poured tea for both of us … me first as the guest of course, then herself. I took the little bowl into my hand.
“No” she said, “not like that … take the bowl in both your hands. Then turn the bowl delicately, an inch to the right, then an inch to the left - stop and then two inches to the left. Again an inch to the right and stop. Concentrate on the power of the good Gods, then take a sip. Now you are already blessed by all good spirits. We sipped our tea in silence.
Then she started speaking softly, haltingly: “I was only 25 when my mother took me to this school … I mean to learn my Geisha profession. First we were taught relaxation; we had to imitate cats and their soft but sure ... never vague ... movements. Then we had to learn how to kneel on the floor without any effort ... and how to get up in one soft sweep. Then they taught us how to wear kimonos gracefully, how to smile at the man without being provocative … being gentle and reassuring instead. I heard that you had a school in England which taught charm … and our school was just doing the same. Then naturally things progressed to more difficult tasks; singing; dancing; reading books on every possible subject. Geography; music and composers; astrology - both European and our own so that we could lead the conversation with our men on anything they wanted to talk about. We had to be witty, intelligent and amusing; we had to learn how to serve food at the table; how to arrange flowers; how to pour sake … oh it was a very hard training … endless hours of exercising and practising everything. We had ruthless, but patient teachers, and they were all women. After two years of this tough schooling, I was allowed to begin my job: I went to one Geisha house in Tokyo; there were many of them at the time and I became an instant success. The men would ask for me, and I was in great demand. I was beautiful, and I was also genuinely modest and shy. Above all of that though, I knew how to listen to the men and their stories about their wives, children and work. Of course we had very strict orders. We were not allowed to make love to our men. They knew it too, and it was all right with them. Geisha back then, was a sort of sacred institution, a sage, a guru.”
She was suddenly serious. She looked off into space. Her dark eyes became even darker, and her gaze seemed to penetrate the world in front of her.
“But of course nowadays the Geisha houses today are not like they used to be” she paused, “of course in my time, there were times when a Geisha went with a man, but this must have been preceded by a strict ancient ritual, and only ever happened if the man wanted to marry her. She had to be initiated by him several times before he proposed to her.”
“How?” I asked.
She became visibly nervous now, but she looked straight into my eyes and started speaking.
"Well ... it involved honey and a rather intimate part of the female anatomy … as a matter of fact, it happened to me - I was the first one to come across a man who fell in love with me, he was an Englishman and I loved him too. One day he brought with him a little jar of honey, I trembled as I knew the meaning of it … I was going to be initiated by him … until he proposed to me so we could marry … he would come to see me every day for two whole months. One day he asked me to marry him, I accepted and I left the Geisha house. I started living with him in his flat in Tokyo, I was preparing myself to be married. I bought a beautiful kimono for the ceremony, but then after two weeks of this bliss he disappeared. I waited for him for three days and nights, and he did not come home. I started to worry and eventually went to the police and various organisations, but nothing could be done and he could not be found. This agony lasted a whole year - then I got a letter from him, it was from London. He told me that he was a married man; no address; no nothing.”
She started laughing gently: “You see I was the original Madame Butterfly … I went back to the Geisha house. I worked there until I was 60. There were other men who brought with them the honey pot … but I didn't want any of them. Now I have retired here to this house. I am now quite a happy person, and I’ve had my share of real, great love … I forgave him everything, and I don't cry anymore.”
Again there was a long gripping silence. I went back to her house with Alan one day; she had given her permission for us to go back there together. Alan looked at her, and she taught him to play for her, just as I did; and she danced and sang for him too.
About two weeks later we went back to see her but the house was empty; we did a little investigating, and learned that she had died a few days previously of a heart attack.
I didn't sleep that night; I cried.
Another era had gone: “A la recherche du temps perdue.”
* * *
Chapter: Twenty Nine
One day I went down the hill to Owase as usual. As I was walking along the main street I heard some extraordinary sounds; I looked up and saw loudspeakers all over the lamp posts. The sounds of gongs being hit were so loud - amplified to the point of almost being unbearable. Before I was able to assess the situation properly, I saw a huge crowd of people, men and women coming straight towards me, and they were beating drums and gongs, and chanting some typically Japanese song. Their eyes were fixed on me, and the whole crowd looked possessed by some evil power. I realised that all this was some sort of ritual; a religious ceremony; yet I couldn't move; I was seized with fear. The sound, amplified through the loudspeakers, coupled with the sharp beats of the gongs, and the whole crowd singing, became unbearable. Suddenly they were all around me - passing 'through' me as if I wasn’t there; as if I didn't exist. It took quite a time for this crowd to pass 'through' me, and finally to abandon me. I was left stunned, rigid, cataleptic. Later, I asked my interpreter if I had been in any actual danger. “I really don't know … of course I do know that was a religious ceremony for glorifying the spirit of the old Samurai” she said, “and the Samurai were dangerous and ruthless people. But since the people of this village have never seen Europeans before, perhaps they simply didn't know how to react to you and chose to ignore you,” then she added with an apologetic smile, “and you have those large green eyes … I know from the hotel staff that they are frightened of you - they think that you might be a reincarnation of some unidentified ancient spirits.”
Around this time in Japan, our social life so to speak, was centred in a bar-cafe on the beautiful lawn outside our hotel. We allowed the rather potent Japanese beer into our heads and most of us actors gathered there every evening to gossip and the place was filled with laughter. The local Japanese would be there as well in droves; we were the main magnet for them. Their curiosity was immense; their attention unequivocal.
Within the next few days filming began; our costumes were put on in the hotel and then we would all be taken by bus to the shore. There, far away, was my frigate; anchored out to sea. It was a beautiful wooden replica of an old Portuguese ship which used to come to Japan in the fifteenth century. I immediately fell in love with her; she was my ship after all and I was her captain. I looked at the sky high above … it was a beautiful night, but very hot and sticky. This night was the start of three long weeks of night shooting on the frigate … three weeks of torment. It was unbearably hot and there were lots of people packed onto this little ship, along with the cameras and big spotlights. It was so cramped that there was no room for any chairs so that we could at least sit down between takes. The director, Jerry was seasick as our boat was bobbing up and down and rocking sideways. I am not a good sailor either but such is an actor's willpower and concentration that he has to get on with it; what's more he can't afford to give a bad performance! I must add that we had 20 extras, and they were my sailors; they wore costumes of the period of course. They were extremely nice, and I understood immediately that there would always be a special bond between sailors and their captains. In this case I was their captain and they simply started looking after me; they would call me ‘captain’ and they would bring me cold drinks from under the deck. After a few days they even found me a little stool so that I could sit down while waiting. Richard started taunting the sailors jokingly, saying things like: “Well, I am the star of this film … why don’t you bring a stool for me?”
They would tell him that he’d have to ask the production office to get him a stool.
“Vladek is our captain … so we do it for him only.”
We would all be brought out to the frigate by little speedboats. We had to clamber up the side of the frigate by means of a rope ladder. My sailors would always help me to climb up, they would lean out of the ship and pull me up. They were always so cheerful and they always had fun. Last winter in 1992 I happened to be in Sydney, Australia. I was walking around Sydney Harbour when I bumped into the two of them, but I didn't recognise them. ‘Shogun’ happened a long time ago, but they recognised me and we celebrated with a bottle of champagne, and they still called me ‘Captain.’ I never liked filming at night because I couldn't sleep properly during the day. Therefore I was dead tired trying to act the following night, and so it went on and on. Finally it accumulated in unbearably psychological, mental and physical exhaustion; and in this case it was worse than ever before in my life. The frigate was bobbing up and down on the sea, and all the time we were hearing frightening news about gigantic typhoons raging all over south Japan. Our director stayed safely on the shore, albeit watching us desperately. All of this was a perfect backdrop for tempers flaring. The Americans have this distinctive twang, and when they shout this twang sounds like the squawk of a gigantic bird; all the assistants were fired one after another - I have never in my life heard so many squawks of ‘you’re fired.’ More would be flown in from Hollywood, only to be ‘fired’ after a few days. All those assistants already fired flying back to Hollywood, and those new ones flying out from Hollywood must have crossed each other in the sky every two or three days! Of course, we the actors were put in an unbearable position. Acting in films is always a combination of the effort of all the people involved, not just the actors. After a short time we all became a unit, and this was a must because it meant we had everybody’s co-operation: from the cameramen to the lighting designer, to the sound man etc, but above all, we got used to the most important man: The First Assistant. We got used to him shouting for silence; or hurry up boys, roll film etc. His tone of voice, and whether or not he placed more or less intonation on the instructions set our sensitive inner clock. So when the first assistant was changed once, that was already bad news for us, but when they change him several times, a sort of panic starts invading us actors. Alan was completely devastated, and I started missing the final magical pause of concentration, this split second of suspended inner breath just after the shout of ‘Action.’ This is the moment when the acting miracle begins. Your adrenaline kicks in at this moment and you start becoming, being a character. It’s almost as if there are a few explosions being set into motion inside you - if one explosion does not work because of the different assistant's intonation and timing, then you start falling into the abyss of inner confusion. Even Richard Chamberlain started losing his rhythm, and subsequently he lost his relaxation and smile until eventually, even he became irritable. We talked about it, agreeing that we would not fall into this trap because it started to affect our interpretations.
“We have to help each other” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“We must start watching one another's scene” he said, “just after they call ‘camera rolling’ we must look at each other with encouragement. This will perhaps give us the force to replenish our lost stability and lost strength.”
It worked, it really worked. We had each other for support, and even Alan relaxed. But of course ... the inevitable had already happened - we lost the 'wind' so to speak. Those American producers didn't know how much good acting depended on supportive circumstances, and if there's none of it, or only very little, how easily one could go down in the level of performance. Unfortunately, American producers are born and trained only in the culture of money making, but this is a very short-sighted policy in my opinion, not to mention their total crippling blindness because of it. Fortunately we the actors have a tremendous built-in sense of discipline, both of the physical and psychological nature, so the final result on the screen was not so bad. I would even say it was good … but, it could have been brilliant; magical - and it was not. Thus a new period of limping through the work programme began; I was so terribly exhausted that at daybreak my ‘sailors’ had to help me (literally) climb down to the speedboat, then once I reached the shore I would get on the bus, and go back to my hotel. Fortunately in this geographical latitude, the end of the night was a rapid one - it was something like a few seconds - from total darkness to dazzling sunshine, and all this happened in mere minutes as the big yellow-red fat sun appeared from behind the horizon; wait another few seconds and it would plonk up in full. There wasn't any period of dawn at all - just night and immediately, a full day. We were jubilant about this generous assistance from Mother Nature; this prevented the producer from saying: “I need another take.” He was unable to re-shoot his night filming because night ended so abruptly. Back in my hotel, I would take a shower and then fall onto my bed, and submerge myself into something between sleep and a half dream; an equally tiring, rancid state of catalepsy. By 2pm I would be wide awake and tired, and by 7pm the bus would take us to our location, to the shore where millions of little crabs would perform a weird fast dance, running on their very tall legs; sideways of course. All this was happening at our feet, yet the crabs would manoeuvre their running so skilfully that they never touched us. It was quite a beautiful and amusing sight. Sometimes when I came back to my hotel at dawn, good old Alan would greet me in my room with his perennial two peaches on a little plate, and his kind smile: “You must be exhausted Vladek, eat them” he would say, “they will nourish you a little.”
Bless you Alan.
One morning, I had arrived back at the hotel from night shooting, feeling completely like a demented monkey, and I fell in this unhealthy half-dozing state on my bed. Then I felt something like a sharp prick on my mind; my animal instinct urged me to open my eyes - wide. I couldn't believe in the first split second, what I was seeing - but there he was. On the ceiling just above me was a huge and frightful spider! Its legs were sprawled out on the ceiling, and it must have been about 10 inches across. The bulk of his body must have easily been 4 inches, and it was black in colour, with white and golden dots all over it.
In any other circumstances I would certainly consider it being beautiful; but in the present circumstances it spelt one word: Death! I had heard stories that it must be the heat of the victim, and his smell that attracts them. The spider then takes up position just above his victim and waits for an appropriate moment to make the deadly fall and bite - perhaps to death, or perhaps to make his poison work until the victim faints; then he would suck the blood … slowly.
A thousand thoughts burst through my mind - perhaps I shouldn't make any sudden, fast movements as this would be a sign for the spider that I intended to deprive him of his feast. I was already sweating profusely, thus exuding more of those delicious smells up to him. I decided very slowly and cautiously, to slide out of my bed, still looking at the spider as I did so to see if he would move, or not; he didn't. Once I was outside my bedroom, I ran to the door and out into the corridor. Luckily, I had my shorts on and thus attired, I ran full pelt to reception. I tried desperately to tell them about the spider, but they didn’t understand; they looked at me with no expression at all. So I mimed to them to give me a pencil and paper. A few seconds later, I was standing there in reception, in my shorts, drawing a picture of this wretched spider. The receptionists were following every 'step' of my drawing, and when it finally took the shape of the spider they threw their hands up in the air in horror, and began uttering those typically Japanese guttural sounds. From this reaction, I was given to understand that ‘my’ spider was in fact quite a dangerous one. All hell broke loose as reception called in a small army of cleaning staff. Suitably armed with vacuum cleaners and long tubes, they marched towards my room; I followed behind. We entered cautiously, and I realised that they were perhaps more frightened than I was. We looked up at the ceiling - no spider. We looked for him everywhere, but there was no sign of him. They mimed to me that the spider must have got out through the opened balcony door, and then everyone left. I thoroughly checked all around my bed, and decided to try and have some sleep … but before that, I closed the door to the balcony. I dozed for perhaps half an hour, and woke up with a start! The spider was back - just above me on the ceiling. Without any hesitation I darted out of the room, back to reception, and this time they understood that the spider was back. Once again, the army of cleaners were called back. This time they came armed with spray bottles full of insecticide, and again we all marched on my room. The spider was still there, and the women started spraying the deadly liquid at it. In self defence, the spider started running this way, and that - but the women were determined, and followed it with their deadly spray. The ghastly, ugly battle started, and the women started shrieking, and shouting like old Japanese warriors. Their eyes narrowed, and their faces were twisted with ghastly contortions - but there was pleasure in their expressions too; the pleasure of killing. I suddenly noticed that I was now on the side of the spider. I watched his futile, tragic attempts to save his life, but he was alone against 12 huge spray cans of poison. I felt sorry for him, he started moving slower and slower, then he would stop for a while, dazed. Then he would desperately try to resume his fight and run; he looked tragically heroic and beautiful in his desperate attempts to stay alive. Then when he reached a wall quite near the floor he stopped, and he just stayed there. The shrieking women sounded triumphant now, and they all rushed over to him spraying for all they were worth. They must have sprayed at least a pint each of this foul mixture on him. The spider started ungluing his legs from the wall. Then slowly, majestically, he unpinned himself. He fell to the floor, and landed on his back, but his legs were still trying to wave this way and that … perhaps he was expressing his ‘goodbye’ to the world. Then he stopped. I could swear that I heard a tragic metallic sound; like an arpeggio on the harp; it cut the air like a vibrating arrow. It reverberated for a while and then it stopped. The women swept this beautiful species onto a dirty dust pan amidst laughter and congratulations, then they left the room with the dead spider. I had tears in my eyes. I say to all the species in the world, including us humans, don't ever try to fight with chemical weapons - you simply cannot do it.
Towards the end of a particularly gruelling night’s filming, I developed a sort of pathological hatred towards the whole film production. Inside, I felt a cantankerous vicious fiend, a little monster who tried to wreck the work. For instance, I was deliberately slow to get up from my chair to get a position in front of the camera, and when speedboats would take us on shore to eat our dinner, I was the last one to finish eating. When Jerry London asked me how filming on the boat was going, I would say: “Lousy.”
I stopped talking to my fellow actors; they too were getting on my nerves.
When yet another assistant would call: “Camera rolling … action” I would not deliver my lines. The assistant would ask the cameraman to stop filming, and asked me why I didn’t say my line.
I would answer slowly: “I am sorry, I feel confused. Your voice is a new one. Yesterday it sounded different … I didn't realise you are the new assistant.”
“But we must finish shooting the film next week” he said.
“That’s your business … not mine” I retorted.
Your business … not mine - I always felt Richard standing somewhere there and laughing; he understood me - after all he is an actor too. Anybody who is not an actor cannot possibly understand an actor, and his delicate and intricate mechanism inside him.
Finally … finally, came my last of shooting. I could not believe my eyes as I read it on the call sheet (the plan of shooting for the next day) - It said: ‘Vladek alone (with only one Japanese oarsman) approaching his frigate by raft. Then he climbs the rope ladder and up onto his ship.’
It sounded so innocuous, so perfectly easy. Well, this was to be my last challenge; an ordeal which might have ended in my drowning in these hateful black waters of the Pacific Ocean! The camera shooting this scene, and the whole crew were positioned on a huge ... and I do mean huge raft, some twenty yards from the frigate. The ship was being lit from outside, and I knew it would look spectacular. In the last moment when all was ready, before shooting they shouted through the loudspeakers:
“Vladek, get out of the ship into the speedboat which will take you to your position on your raft.”
By that they meant a tiny 7 foot square raft bobbing up and down on the ocean, which was also some 20 yards from my ship. I got on to my raft, and immediately smelled danger: I was alone, here on this unsteady raft among the black waters, alone save for one tiny Japanese oarsman, who was more frightened than I was. I was wearing full costume, and my first thought was that if I fell into the water, I would go straight to the bottom like a bullet; and I was told that the bottom was some three miles down! I looked around, but the speedboat was too far away, so as not to be in shot.
I shouted to the driver: “If I fall into the water, how long will it take for you to come and try to rescue me?”
He shouted back: “You realise I have to start the boat, it would take me about five minutes.”
I shouted back: “That is too long. My costume would soak the water up immediately. In five minutes, I would be sinking towards the bottom … which is three miles down.”
Because the driver was in contact by radio with the director, Jerry heard it all.
“Vladek, can you swim?” he shouted over to me.
I started laughing.
“Why do you laugh?” Jerry asked.
“Jerry” I shouted back to him, “look at my costume, how can anyone swim in this heavy costume?”
At that particular moment, the raft suddenly lurched and I almost went in, but managed to stay aboard.
Jerry shouted again: “I want you to stay upright on the raft when it approaches your ship. You are to be upright and proud … very proud.”
So, the scene began and as usual, because I was playing a character - my fear left me. I even remember thinking, come on Captain Ferriera, if you drown … do it with style … show your sailors your style.”
The little oarsman started wiggling his tiny oar sideways, and slowly we started moving towards my ship. He was supposed to get me close enough to the rope ladder - so that I could climb aboard the frigate - but he missed it by five yards at least - consequently I couldn't get hold of the ladder. We went back time and again, and again he couldn't get close enough to the rope ladder. He was either too much to the left of the ladder, or too much to the right of it. In filming a situation like this everybody tends to become hysterical. Jerry started shouting to me: “Vladek tell that little Japanese idiot that he has to hit the ladder on the spot. Even if he doesn't, can't you just jump forward and cling to it?”
I shouted back: “You know very well I can't tell him anything … he doesn't understand English, and I don't speak Japanese … anyway he is not an idiot, he is just a very frightened little man. It's all your fault … you have chosen the wrong man … he is not professional in his skill. I am not going to make any desperate jump for the ladder Jerry; I am already risking my life as such.”
Jerry shouted back: “But we must finish this scene tonight … the sun will rise any minute now … we have to finish this scene tonight.”
I mimicked to the young Japanese oarsman that he must try to hit the ladder; he nodded that he knew what I meant, and he tried really hard to hit the mark. It was not easy on the 'moving' sea. Well, we tried once again; I assumed my proud position and my raft started approaching the ship. I kept my fingers crossed behind my back. I was desperate to finish this scene that night. My last scene in the film. If I didn’t finish it, it might precipitate a major psychological disaster - I was so fed up with this film already that, knowing myself, I might get on the train tomorrow, go back to Tokyo and fly back to England. I was counting the seconds. We neared the rope ladder; we must make it this time. My raft gently hit the ship just ten inches or so from the ladder. I saw the black waters of the Pacific beneath me but I made a gigantic effort, and leaped forward. Luckily, I managed to catch the ladder. This was such a super human effort in this dreadfully heavy costume that I stopped for a second; unable to move. I shouted to my sailors for help, but they couldn’t come down to where I was, and all they could do was shout encouragement. Their words had the desired effect and a new energy poured into me. I started climbing the ladder; I couldn't believe it - I even managed to climb it quite athletically with skill and grace. I was already three quarters of the way up this wretched ladder when the sailors were able to extend their hands and help me up the rest of the way.
I was standing on the deck when I heard Jerry shouting: “Congratulations Vladek that was splendid.”
He called over to the crew: “Check the gate.”
Another few seconds of suspense lingered, then the camera man who was inspecting the film shouted back that everything was fine.
Then came the words I had longed to hear.
“It's a wrap” Jerry called, “end of shooting.”
The sun chose this precise moment to dawn.
Richard came up to me, and embraced me warmly: “Well done Vladek” he said with a smile, “I saw your deadly climb … I kept my fingers crossed.”
Then Alan Badel came up with his congratulations, then all my sailors.
* * *
Chapter: Thirty
Over the next two days I went back to Tokyo, back to the Imperial Hotel. The Production Office phoned, and asked when I would like to fly to London? I had much better plans, and I always have after ‘long haul’ filming. I treated myself to an extended holiday. Before leaving, I would change my ticket from first class to tourist class - the difference was staggering. I was issued with a new tourist ticket which was £1,800 cheaper than first class. I was paid the difference in coupons, which I was entitled to use on any airline in the world, for the next three years. It was a very handsome financial advantage. With my JAL coupons I flew to Paris and Italy, and a few other places … who's going to say that I do not have Armenian and Scottish blood? This time I went to Hong Kong. I intended to stay there just a few days, but the beauty of this rock island was so devastating that I stayed there two weeks. Then I went over to Manila with its miles of golden beaches and palm trees constantly waving in the wind. Then I went to Bangkok, which I have to say I hated right from the start - there was a crowd of young men making a leap at me the moment I left the airport. They were trying to seize my luggage, at the same time proclaiming themselves to be professional guides. I caught a taxi, yet they all asked to be paid for this, asserting that it was they who had hailed the taxi! The streets were dirty and people were poor; the stench from the sewers was unbearable. The moment I arrived in my hotel room the telephone rang, so I answered it.
“Hi, my name is Bambi” I heard a girl's voice, “do you want to me to come up to your room, now?”
“No thank you” I said and no sooner had I replaced the receiver than it rang again.
The next girl was Fina, the next was Lea, and it went on, and on. Finally, I just took the phone off the hook. I decided there and then I would leave the following morning.
In the meantime, I went on a guided tour to see one of the magnificent golden temples - but the moment I saw it I thought oh no, not another temple. I hated it there, so the next morning I flew into Cairo, and of course ‘le must’ as the French say, I went to see the Pyramids, and the Sphinx. I thought I might go to Luxor, but I just didn’t have the energy. Instead, I flew to Rome, where during the journey I developed a gigantic craving; a hankering yearning for Europe so strong that I almost shouted to the pilot to speed up. At last, I was in my beloved Rome; the Eternal city. I stayed with a great actor friend of mine, and while I was there I revisited all the places in Rome I loved so much. After two weeks of this mental and visual relaxation, I planned to fly to Paris. Then as I was in the airport already I changed my mind. I had seen too many places in such a short time, and now I needed to go home. I went to the British Airways desk, and asked when the next plane to London was leaving. Twenty minutes later, I was in the air … London bound.
When we landed, and I was leaving the plane, my invisible camera was there - filming my big, happy close up. Somewhere above me, within the divine spheres, a huge orchestra was playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; I was back home. Then as it always happens when I come back from the luxury of a film location, where I would eat in the most sumptuous restaurants … I went to my local supermarket, bought some potatoes. When I got home, I boiled them until they were soft, I ate them with fresh butter, and they were delicious. What a divine fresh simple meal. Bliss.
Vladek Sheybal at home in Fulham, London. Date unknown.
The Eyes and The Voice.
The Memoirs of Vladek Sheybal [1923-1992].
Reproduced here by the kind permission of The Executors of the Estate of Vladek Sheybal.
* * *
COPYRIGHT ASSERTIONS;
Copyright © 1991-2019 and for life plus 70 years Executors of the Estate of Vladek Sheybal
These memoirs are subject to the conditions that they shall not by way of trade or otherwise be copied, lent, sold, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior written consent of the
Executors of the Estate of Vladek Sheybal.
To the best of the Executors' knowledge, this is the only place, and in the works of the Polish author Artur Patek, where the memoirs have been published; therefore any copies found circulating for sale or otherwise, electronically or otherwise will be subject to full weight of copyright law.
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All photographs used to illustrate these memoirs are from the Editor's own collection and others have also been provided by Brian Lamb and Donald Howarth & used with THEIR kind permission,
Other photographs are copyrighted to their original owners as follows:-
Vladek as Kronsteen in From Russia With Love © 1963 Danjaq LLC & United Artists Cropration
Vladek as Mr Boogalow in The Apple © 1980 Golan Globus Corporation
Vladek as Laszlo in Leo The Last © 1970 United Artists Corporation
Vladek as Captain Ferriera in Shogun © 1980 Paramount Pictures Corporation
Photo of Vladek as Jinnah in Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy © Original Owners
Vladek as Goebbels in Ken Russell's Dance of The Seven Veils © Original Owners
Vladek playing One of 'The Greats' © Original Owners
Photo of Ram Gopal and Claude Lamorisse © Claude LaMorisse
Photo of Irena Eichlerowna © Original Owners
Photo of Vladek at top of page and larger circa 1960 © VSOEditor private collection
Photo of Vladek's House © Brian lamb private collection
Photo of Vladek with Rumi in his kitchen © Donald Howart private collection
Photo of Vladek reclining in his chair at home at end of the memoirs © Brian Lamb private collection
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