A Delicate Balance - interview with Betsy Blair (Katharine Hepburn, Paul Scofield)

oh I came to England in in 1962 and married Carol rice and have been here the last 40 years married to him and I think I said when I came I think I was thirty six or seven and I said to my agent actresses get food sometimes I said well listen I'm too old to be a national anymore and I'm not old enough to be anybody's mother and I've got three stepsons in this whole new life so really I think I'm not gonna push about working so that was he said well your I said I can't play English people anyway then he would occasionally telephone and say things like well the BBC wants you to be in Death of a Salesman with Rod Steiger should I tell them you're not interested I said no no no I want to do that so I did work probably as an actress about twice a year which is probably as much as I would have worked if I'd been trying and so when this came along Tony Richardson obviously thought of me and asked me to be in it and I of course said yes because it was very exciting it was such a good idea to be filming plays I thought the whole play and Tony it was Tony Richardson and Katherine Hepburn and Paul Scofield and I mean it was a very lovely thing to be asked to be in so I was and they were making these films here I imagine it was cheaper in those days or there was easy money I think that was the aid to the cinema from the English government or there was the American companies had money here I don't know I don't know the financial part why it was shot here except that Tony was English and many of the plays were English but this was an American one they shoot films wherever they have the money to shoot them an actors go wherever they wanted I happened to be here he said to me he lay they're in the dark with me this man and he said to me very softly like a little boy rather did they love us do they love us said let aside let's go by well as much as we love them I should think the hair on his chest is very grain soft would would we let them stay Edna almost a whisper and still again we went to Tony's house and he had cleared a room upstairs and we rehearsed first we read it was exactly like in the theatre we read through the play all together and then we did it several times we discussed the play the characters all together and then he sometimes started to call rehearsals with just the people in a particular scene so he had individual more individual or double rehearsals more intense but it was I think that David Watkins the the lighting cameraman was there so they were also setting up the idea of the shots you know he was getting an idea of exactly what he wanted to do because of course they were low-budget movies I don't remember how many weeks we shot but I think it was quite short but we had rehearsed so that makes a difference and the eyes I remember the rehearsals were quite intense and there were disagreements about I remember particularly Paul Scofield someone said to him please look at me when you're someone sort of method II acting American acting said please look at me when we're reading and he said well I'll try to but I was brought up in a different tradition and you know there were those little things like that and of course Katherine Hepburn was I guess she was always like that she was like you're young enthusiastic actress you know ready to work at all times and very alert and aware of everything that was going on yeah at all as intensive and good rehearsal and then the shooting of course is always different because it then becomes a film and and you wait around and you know we were actually performing almost like a play before the shooting you know doing the whole thing in a row Tony Richardson was a very extravagant man character personality that many many people including my husband's and Albert Finney and almost any actor who ever worked with him who can do can imitate people who does imitates because he had the most extraordinary vocal pattern and the most extraordinary kind of verbal imagination and he wanted to he didn't ever want to be bored for a second himself so a rehearsal shooting whatever it was because he was so impatient and against boredom he did keep everything lively sometimes I think it probably drove the technicians mad his abrupt impatience like that's finished when it wasn't even ready to start and but as it for actors he was wonderful because cuz it was fun no matter how grim what you had to do and there are many many famous stories about him saying to David Warner who said he couldn't ride a horse well just get on the horse and do something marvelous and you know I mean and with all that his ambitions and his accomplishments were serious I said Maya Alvia enormous Lee he was there a bit we all met him and but I think of him particularly then I think maybe even still as very very shy or I think he's very strong and definite about what he wants and yes but he is discrete and so I remember this sort of tall young person if it was the the author and I don't remember any I mean he was surely in closer contact with people like with Tony certainly and probably with Hepburn she is a presence a real presence I as a young actress adored and admired her and particularly when I lived in Hollywood and didn't want a fancy car because I was very left-wing and I didn't want the trappings of wealth although I was living a very luxurious life I could always point to her she didn't have a Lincoln Continental she just had a little car that she drove around it and that's all she always had particular things that appeal to anybody rebellious or anybody a woman and when she was in this film there was a moment when I sat down on the staircase on the set sort of half leaving like you would sit on a staircase I wasn't crouched I wasn't sitting all the way down I was leaning back and she went past she said I never could sit down in my costume and you see I see felt like I felt like a little girl that oh I shouldn't you know because of the respect or admiration that she inspired on the other hand when she told me that she got up at 4 o'clock in the morning you could telephone her about anything you know she was not sorry in that sense but only until 8 o'clock at night then she went to bed and at 4:00 in the morning she got up and had did some exercises had a cold bath she'd do her hair and then she'd have a giant breakfast bacon and eggs toast cereal and fruit everything and coffee and then she'd have another shower I think the second one but first more exercises then the shower then she'd do her own makeup at home and then she'd come to the studio and car would pick her up having looked at her script and having stuff today the day's scenes and at lunchtime she would only have Tiger's milk there was a powder then that you drank and then she would sleep for an hour during lunch and I was describing all this to my husband when I came home and I said you see I don't think I could ever have been a movie star I mean getting up at 4:00 in the morning and doing all those exercises and baths and showers and and he said probably never would have had a husband dialer he said but she was a great lady I could have had another son we could have tried but no those months or was it a year no more of this I think it was a year when my belly pleaseplease Tobias but no you wouldn't even say it out I don't want another child another last please please devised and guiding you trying to hold you I can't oh please I can take care of it we won't have another child but please don't leave me like that Joseph Cotten deny are the other couple the friends who arrived into what seems to be a richer than normal wonderful intellectual lively place and we arrived suddenly seeming to be the same kind of people they're close old friends suddenly lost in in ourselves in our lives and not knowing what to do and it introduces a note of reality I guess and almost horror fear nothing happen but nothing at all happened we got scared your friend there was nothing but we were very scared we're scared it's like being lost very young again with a dock and lost there was no thing to be frightened down but nothing we couldn't stay there so we came here you're our very best friends so we came here I never knew him in Hollywood I mean I'd met him but I didn't know him and he was doing it he was coming to London to do a professional job he had his own he has an apartment in London always I mean I didn't know in those days that there were these people who were international and intelligent enough to already if you lived in Hollywood and you had an apartment in London you know I didn't know there were people like that a new Cary Grant had an apartment in London and one in New York but that was different he was English and and and he had the same wardrobe so he could fly without suitcases in each apartment I mean I remember thinking that was the most if a wonderful glamorous thing I'd ever heard of but Joseph Cotten was absolutely lovely civilized very good actor seen it all perfectly happy wherever we were shooting or you know no trouble it's sad to come to the end of it isn't it nearly the end so much more of it gone by then left and still not know still not have learned the boundaries what we may not do not ask for fear of looking in a mirror we shouldn't have come I know for our own sake our own lack it's sad to know you've gone through it although most of it without that the one body you've wrapped your arms around the only skin you've ever known is your own and that it's dry and not one we had Kim Stanley and Kim Stanley is a great actress one of the great American actresses and I remember when I heard that she was gonna be replaced I said to Tony but Tony you can't do it because I knew Tony because of Tony and Carol my husband being friends so we used to play bridge with Vanessa and Tony I knew him socially and I said you can't do it I mean we'll all be better each person who's in a scene with it will be better if she's in it and he said he had to because there wouldn't be a movie if there wasn't care to Katharine Hepburn in it and so he had to now I for many years I had a feeling that I didn't talk about except you know Carol or something of how could she have done that how could if she insisted that Kim Stanley be replaced and it had to do with drinking and but I thought it was terrible and it was a disillusionment for me but I've since heard about a year ago I heard from a doctor that was a friend of Tony's who's long retired and who was one of those theatrical doctors who loved all the actors and was always at the theater and and he said yes there was a reason that and he was delegated to clear out the room well you know I've never lived with an alcoholic north been one and I don't know how difficult it is we've all read and we know it's difficult but that you know I was saying to Tony but she's not drinking now and she's a great actress well it seems she may be she was dreaming well that's I mean so she got replaced I mean I you know I do put Kim huija Hagen and Maureen Stapleton on a different level from the rest of us you know no matter how good Kate Reed or you know sometimes I'm alright whoever you know all the rest of us I think those three of our generation are the geniuses and they just die so but there was nothing against K Reed and she was very very good pretend you're very sick Tobias like you wear with that stomach business but pretend your insides feel all green and stink and mixed up and your eyes hurt and you're half deaf and your brain keeps turning off and you have peripheral your neuritis and you can hardly walk and you hate you hate with the same stinking green sickness you think your balance have turned in to yourself and everybody hate but oh god you want love l.o.v.e so badly comforted snuggling is what you really mean of course but you hate and you notice with a sort of detachment that amuses you you think that you're more of an animal every day you snarl you grab for things hide them can't remember where you've hid them like not very bright dogs you know often they film plays and they're not very good they're static and you can tell it's a film to play especially I mean the ones that are filmed armless in their theatre itself that's that's just a record of the performance but this was an effort to actually do the play as a film without changing adding explaining just do the words that were there on the page as a film and I think it was and they they they thought that this was a very good thing for universities and for any student of the theatre they had the actual play but performance that could be studied and seen besides enjoyed we hoped like that update right are you going Julia please are you going no we are not going oh yeah with a gun like that you return to your nest from your latest disaster dispossessed and suddenly dispossessing you scream the house down wicked we have rights here we belong we belong here do we not forever have you come to stay forever sorry a godmothers duty I remember that is quite hard and it may have been because I had ciphered it was hard to do you're never quite pleased with yourself you know there are always things you see you know at the end of every take you think oh I could do it better can we do one more well when the whole film is finished you think oh I think I could I could do better than so you never pleased with yourself I think I thought the film was very good and I was yes of course proud to be in it and then particularly pleased because Edward Albee said he liked it so that really pleased you

Channel: thedivinemisshepburn

Views: 9,207

Rating: 4.9130435 out of 5

Keywords: a delicate balance, katharine hepburn, betsy blair, paul scofield

Id: wYUQtC9X7LI

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2016