The Brettish Empire

A tall, slender, handsome young man walks onto the stage. His name might be Mercury, or Troilus; Roderick, or Ron; Peter, or Reverend Highfield--or even Hamlet. He moves with patrician grace and speaks in a regal, cultured voice.

Who is this chap? Programmes rustle. Ah, here it is--"Mr. Jeremy Brett."

Long before Jeremy Brett portrayed the Sherlock Holmes we came to know and admire, he had a successful and distinguished career on the stage. His stage career spanned 35 years. During that time, Jeremy performed in plays ranging from the classic to the avant-garde; from grave drama to light comedy; and, he was privileged to work with some of the greatest names in international theatre.

Unfortunately, because of the ephemeral nature of the theatre--plays open and close, and many aren't recorded for future generations to enjoy--most of us never had the opportunity to experience Jeremy's theatrical performances. What follows is a glimpse at what we missed:

In 1951, Jeremy entered London's Central School of Speech and Drama, While at the Central School, Jeremy adopted the stage name of "Brett" and made his feature film debut in Svengali, starring Donald Wolfit and Hildegarde Neff. Although his name is not in the credits, Jeremy played a French art student in this obscure version of the famous Svengali story.

Before leaving the Central School in 1954, Jeremy participated in the annual "matinee" performance and received what may have been his earliest review in the Times of London: 

"The annual matinee by students of the Central School of Speech and Drama is always worth watching, and the performance at the Scala Theatre yesterday afternoon, which went to Shaw, Moliere, Mr. O'Casey, Mr. Maugham, and Henry Arthur Jones for its excerpts, once again introduced two or three young actors whom one would like, and rather expects, to see again. Of the hero and heroine of the afternoon there was no doubt whatever. The scene from The Misanthrope, in Mr. Miles Malleson's translation, had not been under way five minutes before it was plain that the brilliant bickering of Celimene and Alceste proceeded from a mutual affection as deep as it was differently expressed. It is not impossible to drill young actors into stylish performances, but when the characters begin to show between the lines, as Miss Wendy Craig and Mr. Jeremy Brett discovered Celimene and Alceste to yesterday's audience, we may be sure that it is the work only of strong natural talent. Since even good actors are better in some parts than in others, and may be quite bad in parts which do not suit them, it is the sensible custom at these matinees to show most of the performers in more than one role. Mr. Brett was fortunate in having, in the part of the disappointed host in the second act of The Liars, a part that suited him, and it must be said that the second act of The Liars was fortunate in having him." :)

The Times review notes that Jeremy was awarded the "Elsie Fogerty Prize" and the "William Poel Memorial Prize" following the matinee. (Some sources say that Jeremy also won the "Gold Medal" and the "Laurence Olivier Award" for "best all-around actor", but the Times review does not list a Gold Medal award here and the Laurence Olivier prize was actually awarded to another actor.) 

When Jeremy left the Central School in 1954, he became a repertory player at the Library Theatre in Manchester, England. His first role was "Mercury" in Amphitron 38. Young Jeremy specialized in juvenile leads and reportedly nearly lost his job at the Library because he made his older leading lady look...well, older.

Jeremy Brett as "Brother Martin Ladvenu" in Saint Joan 
at the Manchester Library Theatre
(with actress Jessie Evans, 1955)

Dazzled

Jeremy joined the venerable Old Vic theatre company and made his London stage debut in April 1956 as "Patroclus," the slave whose death leads to the tragic denouement of Shakespeare's Trojan tale Troilus and Cressida. Troilus ran in repertory with Macbeth (where JB played "Malcolm"), Romeo and Juliet (where he played "Paris" and understudied John Neville's Romeo) and Richard II (where he played "The Duke of Aumerle".

Also in the cast of Troilus and Cressida was Jeremy's future Sherlock Holmes sibling, Charles Gray, portraying "Achilles." (Both actors are shown below in the London production, JB at left and Gray at right, with Richard Wordsworth in the center as "Ulysses.") 

By the time this production reached Broadway in December 1956, Jeremy had graduated to playing "Troilus" opposite Rosemary Harris' "Cressida" (see below). 

Before the Old Vic reached Broadway, however, the company toured the UK during the summer of 1956. Troilus and Cressida wasn't presented on the UK tour. The tour repertory consisted of the three other plays performed in London:  Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Richard II. The itinerary included such cities as Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester. 

Then, the troupe traveled  with the three plays to Montreal and Toronto in Canada. In Toronto, the Star newspaper described Jeremy as "a stalwart if glum Paris" in Romeo and Juliet and "a handsome Malcolm" in Macbeth.

Finally, the Old Vic reached the US in late October. The tour's Broadway leg kicked off with Richard II, joined in rotation by Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. 

Troilus and Cressida re-joined the repertory in late December. Although it premiered last, it was hardly least. Troilus was the production which generated most of the publicity and reviews during the Old Vic's stint on the Great White Way. 

And, no wonder. The Old Vic's Troilus and Cressida was staged both in London and New York by Tyrone Guthrie, the famed theatrical director who had encouraged Jeremy to attend the Central School. Guthrie was known for his unconventional stagings, and this production was no exception. Some reviews described this version of  Troilus and Cressida as having an "Edwardian" setting, circa 1912. (In the play's program, Guthrie sets the date at "just before 1914.") 

However, elements of other eras were evident, as well. Some scenes seemed to take place in no particular era at all. Part of the cast wore Edwardian apparel; others wore Graustarkian garb; still others wore suits of armor. Guthrie wasn't overly reverential toward the material: directing Jeremy and Rosemary in a scene, he advised, "This is where Shakespeare needs a little help."

Critics didn't know what to make of this Troilus and Cressida. Brooks Atkinson called it "Mr. Guthrie's practical joke." He had kinder words for Jeremy: "Jeremy Brett's youthful, eager Troilus, who can hardly believe Cressida's treachery, is...a first-rate bit of straightforward acting."

Debuting on Broadway was a magical experience for Jeremy. He and his co-stars were caricatured by cartoonist Al Hirschfeld for the New York Times. (No, Jeremy's likeness didn't contain the "NINA"--that honor went to Coral Browne.) They were also sketched by caricaturist Sam Norkin (see above). Jeremy later told an interviewer about a star-studded party he attended with Rosemary Harris in New York. After going from room to room and glimpsing celebrity after celebrity--Edward G. Robinson, Charles Laughton, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, the Gish sisters, Judy Garland, Stanley Holloway--Jeremy told his leading lady he was going to lock himself in the kitchen because he was afraid if he saw any more stars, he'd faint!

In early 1957, the tour traveled to other US cities including Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Jeremy debuted on US television on March 4, 1957, as "Paris" in Romeo and Juliet. (John Neville and Claire Bloom played the title roles.) This NBC broadcast also marked the Old Vic's debut on US television, and was the last stop on their 1956-'57 tour. 

Accent on Youth

Jeremy still played roles with an accent on youth. For example, in 1958, at age 25, he starred opposite Margaret Leighton in Terrence Rattigan's Variation on a Theme (at London's Globe Theatre, following a six-night tryout at the Hippodome in Golders Green) directed by John Gielgud. "Mr. Jeremy Brett" (as the British reviewers customarily referred to him) played "Ron," a handsome ballet dancer who affects a French accent, and, according to one hysterical review, "has no hips and no morals." 

In Cannes, Ron meets "Rose" (Leighton) a consumptive, much-married older woman from Birmingham. Rose is planning to wed a wealthy German industrialist, but falls for Ron when she learns that he, too, is actually from Birmingham! This annoys Rose's fiancé, who gives Ron such a shove that the boy suffers grievous bodily harm. Rose is further dissuaded from pursuing Ron by a visit from his former "patron." Rose reluctantly dictates a "Dear Ron" letter and prepares once more to marry Herr Moneybags. However, Ron returns and tearfully asks her to reconsider. Rose is so touched, she abandons her fiancé to spend the final days of her life with Ron, the hipless wonder.

Despite the stellar talent involved, Variation on a Theme was an earthbound effort, generally dismissed by critics as a variation on Camille, retooled as a vehicle for Ms. Leighton. (Although Noel Coward wrote, "Young Jeremy Brett excellent.") The fault was not in the play's stars, however, but apparently in the characters themselves. One reviewer grumbled, "The two principal characters are utterly worthless."

(Incidentally, the Globe Theatre where Variation on a Theme was presented  is now called the Gielgud Theatre in honor of John Gielgud.)

Also in 1958, Jeremy portrayed "Eugene Marchbanks" in George Bernard Shaw's Candida. But, his most important role that year was "husband." On May 24, he took 21 year-old actress Anna Massey as his bride in a society wedding photographed by Lord Snowdon. Anna had charmed West End audiences as The Reluctant Debutante in 1955. Although Anna received no theatrical training before debuting in Debutante, she had a theatrical pedigree. Her father was Canadian-born character actor Raymond Massey, who had begun his film career in the 1930's playing Sherlock Holmes in a British version of The Speckled Band. Her mother was British actress and socialite Adrianne Allen. Anna's brother, Daniel, had attended Eton with Jeremy, and many years later played "Neil Gibson" opposite Jeremy's Holmes in The Problem of Thor Bridge. Jeremy's and Anna's only child, David Raymond William, was born on August 14, 1959.

Now with a family to support, Jeremy kept busy in 1959. He portrayed "William MacFly," the scheming secretary in Mr. Fox of Venice. As the program noted, "...Jeremy Brett has another rewarding role:  an unusual sort of major-domo with most unexpected duties in unpredictable situations. But, he is, of course, even in this early stage of his career, a young actor with a quite varied experience and a particular flair for the nonchalance essential to this type of part."

Critics weren't crazy about Mr. Fox, but Theatre World thought that all the actors, including Jeremy, brought "distinction to their parts."  

Later in the year, Jeremy played "Archie Forsyth" in the musical Marigold, and "Sebastian," an eccentric, lovestruck young duke in The Edwardians.

In 1960, Jeremy starred as "Reverend Richard Highfield," a conscientious East End vicar in the musical Johnny The Priest. The young clergyman ministers to a gang of hoodlums. He nearly succeeds in reforming one boy, Johnny, but faces a moral dilemma after the youth commits assault while stealing a telescope. Johnny asks the vicar to corroborate his false alibi to the police. However, Highfield refuses to lie for Johnny, and the boy is incarcerated.

It wasn't exactly West Side Story, and most reviewers didn't rave about the play, although they seemed to like Jeremy's performance. In fact, The Daily Mail stated, "Jeremy Brett...displays a compelling stage presence that holds much of the play's action together."

The Times of London said, "Mr. Jeremy Brett plays the vicar with sincerity, and sings his not very taking songs well, but some of his lines are terribly parsonical, such as 'I don't smoke myself, but I keep a few [cigarettes] for my friends,' or 'We must find you lads something interesting to do on these long evenings.'" 

And, from the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post: "Jeremy Brett, in particular, deserves credit for his presentation of Highfield. The danger in acting a man who will not tell a lie to save a friend is manifest; one touch of priggishness and the sympathy of the audience is lost. Mr. Brett gives him the honourable simplicity which convinces us that for him only one course of action is possible. Also, and this is a surprise to me at least, he sings acceptably." 

Unfortunately, Johnny the Priest was a bust at the box office. It lost a whopping 25,000 pounds in just 11 days at the Princes Theatre in London, and, not surprisingly, closed after only 14 performances. It also marked Jeremy Brett's last appearance in a British stage musical until 1977 (when he starred in Robert and Elizabeth). Although Jeremy loved to sing onstage and off, an unwritten code of the British theatre was "Serious actors don't do musicals." 

Jeremy personally thought such distinctions were "stupid," but, he wished to be taken seriously as an actor. Also in 1960, he acted in Donald Howarth's All Good Children, which examined the problems of a permissive society. And, in 1961 he appeared as "Alsemero" in the English Stage Company's Royal Court production of Thomas Middleton's The Changeling (which, incidentally, was the first time this Jacobean tale of lust and murder had been professionally presented since the 17th century).  

A Prince Among Players

And, Jeremy's next role was very serious, indeed: Hamlet.

In 1959, Tyrone Guthrie had planned a modern dress version of Hamlet with Jeremy in the cast. However, this production was never staged. 

In 1961, Jeremy played the melancholy Dane for director Frank Hauser on a nearly bare stage at the Oxford Playhouse. His performance was a critical success:

"...The text received full consideration and was delivered with good sense by every speaker, but, as to acting, Jeremy Brett as Hamlet was alone remarkable...Here, everyone was in black or dun and it testified to Jeremy Brett's fitness for the part of the Prince of Denmark that he did not seem to require greatly the usual sable sartorial distinction. He was manifestly a prince among players. His voice was pleasant and pliable, nor did he seem to tire, from his natural surprise and concern at the news of the apparition to the moment of sad realization of Laertes' treachery. Somewhat taller than most, he was princely in looks, manner, speech and authority, and had an easy transition of mood..." ("H.G.M.", Theatre World)

"Hamlet was directed with all Frank Hauser's customary refreshingly direct approach to Shakespeare, with its insistence on clear and musical speech so that sound and sense were indivisible, as, ideally, they should be. The Hamlet of Jeremy Brett came like a fresh cooling draught after our recent agonized wanderings in the desert of the Ian Bannen-Peter Wood Hamlet at Stratford-upon-Avon. Here was a Hamlet youthful, princely, embittered, passionate in his vengeance-seeking, mordantly witty in his encounters with Polonius and in the play scene yet, albeit, a man of whom Ophelia could very conceivably have referred to as 'the expectancy and rose of the fair state'--a man who in voice and mien suggested a royal personage.

"Mr. Brett's speaking of the language had a consistently fine and expressive musicality--I do not think in recent years I have heard the soliloquy 'How all occasions do inform against me'-- spoken with such a range of nuance and such flexibility of rhythm." (Frank Dibb, Plays and Players). 

The production then transferred to the Strand Theatre in London for a successful four-week run.

The London reviewers now had their say on Jeremy's Hamlet. Most were polite with their praise, calling Jeremy's performance "correct" and "acceptable," and crediting him with making Hamlet's sufferings understandable. Some critics said that the production lacked "depth" and "excitement."

However, Harold Hobson noted, "I have never seen Hamlet so brutal to Ophelia and Polonius as Mr. Brett is. But this seems to be Mr. Hauser's only innovation. The brutality must be deliberate, for it clearly is not part of Mr. Brett's own character or his stage presence. He is a slim and graceful actor, courteous in bearing, and he treats everyone in the play with careful consideration, except for Ophelia and her family. It would appear that this Hamlet's idea of marriage and love has been polluted by his mother and his uncle, and that, after learning of their treachery, he cannot bear to see anything that might remind him of normal relationships between men and women."

Actually, Hamlet's anger in this instance was apparently Jeremy's innovation. He revealed in a 1994 BBC2 documentary on Hamlet, "I couldn't believe the circumstances [of the story]...I thought they were so monstrous, and I was very rough on my 'mother,' I think. I mean physically rough. I think, yes, I was angry at that time--my mother had been killed savagely in a car accident in 1959, and I was very angry about that, because my son, when she was killed, was only three months-old. And I was--there was anger--it was interesting--there was anger in me. And I think that came through. I felt cheated--I felt my mother had been cheated--the rage of that came through."

(Also at that time, Jeremy's marriage to Anna Massey was falling apart. They were divorced in 1962.)

Still photos from the production reveal that there was probably never a handsomer Hamlet than Jeremy Brett. But, this didn't seem to matter to Jeremy, whose understanding of the role was more than superficial. In the end, he was his own harshest critic. In the afore-mentioned documentary, he summed up his feelings on his portrayal of Hamlet:

"I was too young in many ways--I was too young intellectually, I was too young philosophically. I was Byronic, I was very handsome, I had qualities--but I'd much rather seen other [actors]--I wasn't convinced by me."

Incidentally, a slip of the wrist led to an unexpected twist during the London run of Hamlet. One night while Hamlet was battling Laertes, Jeremy's sword suddenly flew out of his hand. It landed in the lap of a young woman sitting in the front row! Hamlet and Laertes stood like statues on stage and the audience remained hushed until the good lady handed the sword back to Jeremy. The duel resumed as if nothing had happened. Jeremy told an Associated Press reporter at the time, "The girl saved the situation and when we took a curtain call I blew her a kiss!"

Continuing in a serious vein in 1961, Jeremy played "Peter," a German cook who goes berserk after being jilted in Arnold Wesker's The Kitchen.  

Times were changing--a handsome, classically trained leading man such as Jeremy may have seemed out of place in the gritty dramas being written at the time by "angry young men"--but critics were impressed by Jeremy's first foray into "New Drama" (if not by his accent). The Times of London remarked, "Mr. Jeremy Brett['s] tragic Peter is played with an intelligence and sincerity that override his hardly consistent search for a German accent."

Someone's in The Kitchen with Jeremy 
(actress Sandra Caron, 1961)

In 1963, Jeremy performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre, portraying "Dunois" in Shaw's Saint Joan (Joan Plowright played the title role). The Chichester Festival cast also performed St. Joan at the Edinburgh Festival in 1963. 

Jeremy as "Dunois" in Saint Joan, 1963

At Chichester, Jeremy also portrayed "Maurice Sweetman" in John Arden's The Workhouse Donkey, which premiered July 8, 1963. Donkey, a play about political corruption in a West Yorkshire industrial town, is difficult to categorize. Was it a drama? A comedy? A melodrama? A musical? (All of the above?)

Jeremy later described The Workhouse Donkey to an interviewer: "It was a good, serious, profound play, and it kept the customers away in droves, while Joanie [Joan Plowright] in St. Joan packed them in."

John Arden saw The Workhouse Donkey as "...a straightforward classical comedy in structure. It's based on the sort of Jonsonian type of comedy in which you get a fairly large cast, a contemporary theme with social comment in it and then an elaboration of plot which is not realistic but fantastic, ending up in a sort of classical shape to the play--you know, the various threads of the plot culminating in a big scene at the end, for instance, in which everybody's exposed, and the use of verse to give an extra dimension to the goings-on. I'm also using some shreds from English music-hall and pantomime tradition, which are more apparent when the play's staged than when you read it because there is a sort of running musical background to the whole thing, which sometimes becomes the accompaniment to songs and and sometimes is just played behind speech. I call it melodrama in that sense, you know--a play with music. It's not a musical by any manner of means, but it has this integrated music with it."

The reviewer in Plays and Players threw in the towel: "As I have suggested, the plot is so hopelessly involved, and there is so much of it, that we are clearly not intended to take it in detail by detail, turn by turn (which is my excuse for not trying to summarise it here!) but simply to derive from it a general impression of little people scurrying backwards and forwards, grouping and regrouping like ants, while from this intricate pattern emerge two commanding, opposed, but not dissimilar figures, Alderman Charlie Butterthwaithe and Colonel Feng, the chief constable...the rest [of the characters] are modern, they are without principle, they work entirely by expediency from moment to moment; Butterthwaithe and Feng ...are lost in the present and this is why they are both doomed to defeat."

Anyway...Jeremy's Maurice Sweetman is the son of  Tory Alderman "Sir Harold Sweetman," who also secretly owns the tawdry Copacabana Club. Young Sweetman ends up drunk with a hostess bunny on his lap while Labour Alderman Butterthwaithe is visiting the club. Butterthwaithe has the Copacabana shut down on moral grounds. The elder Sweetman reopens the club as a toney art gallery, but Butterthwaithe stirs up demonstrators against it. The demonstration backfires and Butterthwaithe and the protestors are arrested. 

Also at Chichester, Jeremy met up with the man who would have a major influence on his career--Laurence Olivier.

References

1. "First Steps to a Stage Career - Central School Matinee". The Times of London, 6/10/54
2. BBC2 Radio Interview, 7/18/89.
3. Programmes, Old Vic Company, 1956-'57 UK/North American Tour.
4. "The Old Vic Unveils Its Final Production," Cue, 1/5/57.
5. "Mars Is Mauled," Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, 12/27/56.
6. Caricature, Al Hirschfeld, The New York Times, 12/23/56.
7. Caricature, Sam Norkin, The Sunday News, 12/23/56.
8. "A Shakespeare Tragedy by The Old Vic," The New York Times, 3/3/57.
9. Review, Meet Me By Moonlight, Cambridge Daily News, 7/16/57.
10. Review, Variation on a Theme, The Morning Telegraph, 5/17/58
11. Variation on a Theme, Theatre World, 7/58.
12. Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th Edition, 1965. Published by Burke's Peerage Ltd., London.
13. "To Be a Woman," Georgina Brown, The London Independent, 3/4/96.
14. Program, Mr. Fox of Venice, 1959.
15. Review, Mr. Fox of Venice, Theatre World, 5/59.
16. "Adaptation of Edwardians--Too Many Hares for Hunting," The Times of London, 10/16/59.
17. "A Musical, But the Music Misses," Daily Mail, Wednesday, 4/20/60.
18. "Music Does Not Help Johnny the Priest," The Times of London, 4/20/60.
19. "Songs Blunt Play's Edge - 'East Side Story'," W. A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 4/20/60.
20. "Johnny the Priest Loses 25,000 Pounds," Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, 4/26/60.
21. Theatre World Annual, London, No. 11, Frances Stephens. 1960, The Macmillan Co.
22. Theatre World Annual, London, No. 12, Frances Stephens. 1961, Barrie & Rockliff.
23. Review, Hamlet, Theatre World, 7/61.
24. "Plays and Players at Home...Frank Dibb in Oxford," Plays and Players, 7/61.
25. Five and Eighty Hamlets, J. C. Trewin, published by Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987, pg.115.
26. "A Man Without a Man Within--Prince of Denmark Compromises," The Times of London, 6/21/61.
27. "An Acceptable Hamlet," Harold Hobson, The Christian Science Monitor, 6/24/61.
28. Playing the Dane, BBC2 Television, 1994.
29. "Hamlet Throws Sword Away," AP News, 7/3/61. 
30. "Still Cooking," The London Times, 8/22/61.
31. Chichester 10--Portrait of a Decade, Zsuzsi Roboz and Stan Gebler Davies, published by Davis-Poynter Ltd., 1975.
32. "Arden of Chichester," Plays and Players, August 1963
33. Review, The Workhouse Donkey, Plays and Players, September 1963
34. JB Obituary, The Times of London, 9/14/95.
35. JB Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 9/14/95.

Theatre programme covers scanned from L. L. Oldham's personal collection of JB memorabilia.

Middle Stages