on February 9, 1978.

JM: Some people call those series that the British produce that come out on

our public television high class soap operas. Have you ever heard that?

DJ: (laughs) No I haven’t actually. I suppose in a way Claudius was a soap

opera. I mean it was about a family, wasn’t it, albeit an imperial family.

JM: It had everything in it, rape and plunder.

DJ: Absolutely, violence. Yes, I suppose it could be. But in those terms

of reference you could say Shakespeare was very high class soap opera.

JM: Oh, yes, absolutely. But I mean The Pallisers. You know, I mean,

people...

DJ: Oh yes. Indeed, yes.

JM: And so forth. But I want to talk first of all, before we get into the

more philosophical ramifications, this new...(laughs)

DJ: (laughs) This hour of the day?

JM: No, the new venture your in.

DJ: The Shakespeares, yes.

JM: So tell me about it.

DJ: Well, I haven’t started yet, myself. They have started. They completed

one. The plan is to do the whole of Shakespeare over six years, six a year.

There are in fact 37, so they’ll have to do seven one year.

JM: There are?

DJ: Yes, if you take into account the three parts of Henry VI. They’ve

completed Much Ado About Nothing with Penelope Keith and Michael York.

They’re in the process of doing Romeo and Juliet now. And then I start

Richard II in March, beginning of March, with Sir John Gielgud playing John

of Gaunt. I’m thrilled about that, absolutely thrilled, because I did

Richard II 18 months ago on the radio in England. And Sir Michael Redgrave

played John of Gaunt in that. So I played that scene with two of the

knights. And it’s a great thrill. Great thrill.

JM: And Wendy Hiller.

DJ: And Wendy Hiller. And Mary Morris. And John Finch. And Charles Gray.

That’s all I know of the casting so far. I don’t think it’s completed yet.

JM: But, anyway, we’ll look forward to seeing that and you this coming year,

in the first year of the Shakespeare plays.

DJ: That’s right, yes.

JM: Well, let’s talk about I Claudius. Because that in a sense catapulted

you to fame in America, anyway. I’m sure that’s not true of Britain.

DJ: Well, in a sense, it sort of did in Britain, too. Because, you know, I

have been working nearly all my career in the theatre. And if you work

exclusively in the theatre, you become known by the theatre addicts, you

know. But, I mean, that accounts for 1% of the population. And I was at the

National Theatre for 8 1/2 years. And that was fine and I was known to be an

actor by those who frequented theatres. But it wasn’t really until Claudius

that the general public at large got to know that I was an actor. And I had

letters, many letters, from people saying: “I never heard of you before.

Have you ever acted before?” Suddenly, I been acting for o lo many years and

I had to write and say yes. (Laughs)

JM: Unintelligible.

DM: No, not yet. (laughs)

JM: But Claudius, as opposed to Shakespeare, who, you know, people have done

it before, have interpreted it before. You bring whatever you bring to it.

DJ: Yes.

JM: And add another dimension to, an interpretation of the role. But

Claudius was something new that you built. I mean you were the first.

DJ: Not quite. No. (laughs) The ghost of Laughton hung over the

proceedings very strongly at the beginning. You know, the film that was

never completed in 1938. And they showed me all the clips from that film.

And all the delay of the ghost of Laughton. Because, I don’t know. When I

first heard about I Claudius, on immediately thought of Charles Laughton.

Although the film was never completed, he was so much associated with that

character. But once I’d seen it, I had to forget it and put it out of my

mind and get on with my Claudius. And it was very exciting, cause it was, as

you say, the first time. And that made it doubly exciting.

JM: Well, you have a following here. I mean, thirteen weeks of watching you

every Sunday. We got it Sunday. You know, it is a soap opera.

DJ: Yes it is, yes I suppose it is.

JM: And you become...

DJ: Once you’ve identified with the characters, I think. That was the most

difficult thing, getting to know that family. Because in the early stages,

there were so many people to get to know. And some didn’t last very long

because Livia bumped them off. And as soon as you did get to know a

character, you found that he’d been murdered by the time the next episode had

started.

JM: But how do you prepare for something like that. Because you not only

had to affect a limp, you had to have a stammer. I mean that’s not easy.

DJ: Yes. Well, the stammer I was very lucky in that when I was a student in

college, one of my great chums had a stammer just like that. I really copied

him. And also the set designer on I Claudius had an assistant, he was always

in the studio whenever we did them, who had the genuine stammer. And of

course I’d listen to him and copy him. So that wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t too

bad. The twitch was more hazardous because, uhm...

JM: I forgot the twitch.

DJ: (laughs) You forgot the twitch. That’s a third of the performance.

Uhm. Because in the early stages, episode one in fact, in a scene that was

eventually cut, because the episode was too long, I dislocated my neck. I

twitched so violently, I stayed there, and I slipped a disc in the base of my

neck and had to wear a collar. And that was very painful. Oh, it was agony,

agony. And about two months later, I did it again. And, for me, one of the

legacies of Claudius is a sort of permanently weak neck now. If ever I get

sort of tired or head up or tense, I get neck ache. And I never did before.

But it’s from that, from that.

JM: You’re going to have to bypass all those parts that require a tic or a

twitch.

DJ: I’ll never twitch again. Never again.

JM: Well, let’s talk about doing a television series such as that. Is it

profitable for an actor, not only financially, but also for his career?

DJ: Uhm, speaking purely personally, apropos of Claudius, yes. And as I

said earlier about being basically a theatre actor, having spent most of my

career in the theatre, you don’t uhm... The financial rewards of theatre are

paltry. And so, in a sense, you have to subsidize yourself, you know, by

work in television and/or films or both. And that helps the bank balance.

It allows you to go back into the theatre and do the work you want to do in

the theatre without worrying too much about your mortgage and all that.

Also, it does give you a much wider exposure than theatre does. Many more

people can see you in their living rooms. But the good thing I’ve found with

Claudius at home was the fact that I wasn’t known by the general public

before Claudius. And then suddenly I did become known by them. And then,

I’m playing Hamlet at the moment. And we’ve been on tour with it. And we’ve

been packing houses all over the country. Now I know that 50% of those

people sitting out there have come to see the guy that played Claudius. And

he just happens to be in Hamlet. And it just happens to be Shakespeare.

But, they’ve come and they’ve stayed and they’ve enjoyed the show. And I’ve

had letters from them saying,you know, we came to see what you look like. We

stayed to enjoy Shakespeare for the first time in our lives. Now, if what

Claudius has given me, which is a sort of notoriety or fame. If that can be

plowed back into the theatre, that’s marvelous. Because it’s an effort to go

to the theatre. It’s expensive to go to the theatre. And if people would

actually turn off the telly one night, put on their overcoats, make the

journey to a theatre, I think the benefits of that sort of exposure can be

plowed back into the theatre. And that’s smashing.

JM: But I think England does have that tradition of regional theatre which

we’re just, I think, beginning to approach.

DJ: Yes, it has many, many reperatory theatres all over the country. And a

lot of the large cities now have, have big spanking new theatres.

JM: But it’s also a marvelous training ground for people like you who do get

your basic training.

DJ: Oh, indeed. Oh, indeed, yes. I started in Birmingham in England. I

was there for 2 1/2 years. It was my first job. And we did a different show

every three weeks. So we got through quite a lot of shows in 2 1/2 years.

It was marvelous.

JM: The British are very good at this kind of series, this I Claudius, the

Pallisers, Upstairs, Downstairs and so forth. Why do you think that is?

We’ve tried it here. We don’t seem to have the formula yet. I mean, at the

level.

DJ: Yes, I don’t know what the formula is actually. I mean I would say that

you are superb at musicals. Uhm, how do you do it? What is the formula for

that? I don’t know. I think it’s something that just happens. For

instance, Claudius done wholly in the studio with no locations. I think the

studio technique is very advanced in England. They do much less on film than

you do here. Whereas your film technique, the television series that we get

from America, are filmically...

JM: Such as?

DJ: Such as all the cop shows. Starsky and Hutch, Columbo, Kojak, Cannon.

All those. They are much more technically, filmically sound our equivalents.

I think. And I think most people in England would agree. The cutting, the

speed with which it’s all done. It’s much cleverer than we do. But we seem

to score in the studio. And particularly on period drama.

JM: There’s a question thought there of taste, too, someplace along the

line. I don’t know it that’s the right word. But, for instance, the kinds

of things that you choose to do are sold here for public consumption. And it

happens to be on public television, which you gather the audience is a

different ilk than the people that watch Charlies’ Angels every week.

DJ: Yes.

JM: I mean The Pallisers, Graves, Claudius.

DJ: Yes, I think it’s a question of audience involvement. I think, with say

a Charlie’s Angels, you don’t necessarily need to become involved in the

episode you’re watching. It is pure entertainment. You sit there. It’s

escapist entertainment. Whereas something like Pallisers or Henry VIII or

whatever, the Anne Karenina which is coming here soon, they are great stories

by great authors and require, demand almost, a sense of participation and

involvement on the part of the viewer. So that here you do want to know what

happens to the characters. And, in that sense, they are the soap operas, yes.

But they do demand a concentration and a certain effort as theatre does from

an audience. I think these do. And I think when the concentration and

effort pay off. I think then that you’ve got a big success. And people want

to sit there watching their televisions. And, in a sense, by their reaction,

are contributing to something. It’s much more alive. It’s much more a

living thing than just that little screen in the corner of the room which is

switched on as company, you know.

JM: Well, it might have something to do with culturally, too. Maybe the

basic education has a greater emphasis on the classics or things like that.

DJ: Yes.

JM: England is so rich. I mean their actors are so well trained. And their

writers of the English tongue. You know, we speak English, up to a point.

DJ: Yes.

JM: I wondered if that had anything to do with it.

DJ: Yes, I think it probably does. I mean, we, it’s tradition, isn’t it, I

think that we’re talking about. Uhm, that we have an enormous fund of

literary tradition. I’m not saying that America doesn’t. But we can call on

a thousand years of literature. And the breadth and depth of that and the

range of it is so enormous.

JM: Maybe we haven’t come of age yet in the same sense.

DJ: We’ve just got more of it than you have.

JM: I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong in that.

DJ: Oh, absolutely not. But there is just more material available, you

know. Home grown material.

JM: Because it is such a pleasure to see, I think. Yeah. I wonder though

if maybe some of the things that we’re talking about, sort of the high class

soap operas, would...Commercial television has not picked them up, here

anyway.

DJ: No.

JM: And only, you know, the public television, or non-commercial television.

Is that true in Britain as well?

DJ: Uh, it is less true. It’s not quite as divided as that. Uh, but

certainly non-commercial television in England has the edge and has far

greater output of this sort of thing than commercial television, yes, indeed.

Because one of the things that is difficult about commercial television is

if you are in the middle of, say, an episode of Claudius or whatever, and you

have to break to watch corn flakes, it does, it’s a question of the

concentration and the effort that I was talking about earlier. It breaks it

and the viewer does not want it to be broken. They want a through line.

They don’t want really to know how clean they can get their sinks at the same

time as taking all this in, I think. That’s the difficulty. That’s the

difficulty. But it’s not to say that in England commercial television

doesn’t do any high class stuff. They do indeed. They do some marvelous

series. Marvelous series.

JM: When you say it breaks the concentration, there’s a debate, at least

here, I don’t know whether it’s in the country generally, that doesn’t

believe that the audience has a time span or more than five minutes or so.

Now I don’t know. This is true of radio. I mean, I think that this is the

thinking cause a lot of our radio broadcasts are five minutes in length. And

that the reason for that is because they really don’t think the audience can

concentrate for any longer than that. And you’re saying, which is very

interesting, that they like to have the full flow. Maybe television with

pictures enhances that in their time span or attention span.

DJ: Yes, I think it probably does. I think it probably does.

JM: But in Britain, the radio is still a viable...

DJ: Oh, very much so. Very much so indeed. Yes, yes.

JM: I mean they have time for dramas and...

DJ: Oh, the drama output on radio is enormous, enormous. And has a huge

audience. Huge audience.

JM: Is the pace of life, I mean, they say that most people listen to the

radio here if they’re in their cars. Now, we’re a country of cars.

DJ: Yes, yes.

JM: But I wouldn’t imagine that England was.

DJ: No, it is becoming a land of cars. It really is. But, of course,

compared to the states it’s a drop in the ocean, really. No, people tend to

listen to radios in their homes much more in England. Housewives and... I

don’t know the figures actually, but I would think more people watched

television. But, you see, we don’t have television throughout the day as you

do. We don’t have as much television as you do. So the only other form of

entertainment in the home during the day is radio. We, you know, don’t

start, get up at six o’clock and switch it on and you can see an old movie or

something. We don’t have that. It doesn’t start til nine or ten, and then

it’s usually schools programs, designed specifically for schools. And then

you might get a cookery program or something. And then news at lunchtime.

Uhm, then a couple of things in the afternoon. The evening traditionally is

the television time, when it started there were no program. Five, six years

ago there were no programs during the day at all. Television started with

children’s hour at four, five o’ clock. And the screens were dark until

then. And it went on until midnight. And then you got the epilogue. There

was a news epilogue at midnight. And midnight was late, it was usually near

eleven. And it stopped until 4:30, 5 o’clock the following afternoon. So

there was no television during the day at all. Here in America you have it

24 hours. So people are accustomed to listening to radio much more in

England because it was their daily entertainment. Television was evening

times.

JM: Well, that may be the reason.

DJ: I think it’s one of them.

JM: Well, I wish you luck in your new Shakespearean series.

DJ: Thank you very much.

JM: Come back again.

DJ: I’d love to. Thank you.