A Hungry Feeling - The Life And Death Of Brendan Behan.

a hungry feeling came on me stealing on the mice they were squealing in my prison cell then that old triangle it could go jingle jangle [Music] along the banks of the royal canal [Music] it must be wonderful to be free it must said i walked down the gangway passed a detective and got on the train for dublin if i'm anything at all i'm a writer he tells us most movingly of the mixture of good and evil in humankind brendan bean is the genuine art brendan has a gutsy humorous viewpoint about everything even death there can be no doubt about it as a writer brendan bean of dublin moves in great company thank you thank you thank you my dear boy [Music] we are all violently aware of the arrival of a boardy iconoclastic ex-irish revolutionary ballad singing jig dancing [ __ ] rumpled wild-haired 37-year-old dublin playwright named brendan behan often hailed as a genius and often arrested as a drunk mr bean told reporters that he is definitely on the wagon and intends to stay sober as a judge police said the burly being whose binges throughout the western world have become a show of their own went on the rampage at a nightclub at the box we don't like the english cops of all of the orange cops a lot of the french cops are not like honeycubs when brendan behan fell off the wagon recently the thud was heard in bar rooms around the world in the following way [Music] what would you like to have said about you in 50 years time celebrated by uh by 86 by 87th birthday dublin paid its final farewell today to brendan bien the wild-tongued hard-drinking irish playwright who died in a dublin hospital last friday at the age of 41. suffering from acute alcoholism he had been in a coma for several days bean's plays in his early prison memoir placed him among the most celebrated irish writers of his generation [Music] he spent a fifth of his life in jail both in england and ireland for his activities in the outlawed irish republican army he became known as iraq on tour and traveled widely in europe and america with his wife beatrice whom he married in 1955. she says i'd have to get him with the dirty big and be in the bar and lay tape and you know talk and sing and indulge in a little exhibitionism if you like we're here because we're queer because we're queer because we're here brendan could be in the east end of london in a pub that was open all night and that no one would go to work it was brendan was a theater himself he didn't need the abbeys yet the vising squad of the party brigade those glorious deeds child of a faith fandom always sang on top nobody nobody's drinking in this talking there's little room for anything else i met an american one time who raided farming the four types of irish in the states he said they were the venetian blind irish lace court nerdish the shanty irish and socially lost of all the pig [ __ ] he was an extremely entertaining fellow he had everything going for him he was i suppose like barnum on the whole circle i've seen them at the counter there meeting an american gi it was over in london and came over here for a couple of days and within a half an hour like there were booze and passed because brandon had that capacity he'd ask a person you know very intimate things and what the hell was he doing in london why wasn't he in paris he was right to come here to dublin you know and what had he got for his breakfast and he taught me a thing about people too no matter how um you know sort of low a person is or how well washed they've done there's always some good and that was a valuable lesson i learned because i used to look at some of the characters that would come home with him and i'd say god where does he get them sometimes they turned out to be nasty sometimes interesting but it was always something you know it was his ultimate feeling for people too you see i think that was it brendan's concern for people fills his writing his best known play the hostage tells the story of a british soldier held prisoner by the ira in a dublin brotherhood [Music] being a passionate irish nationalist nevertheless sympathizes with the trapped british soldier don't stop i like dancing there's a war going on in the north of ireland you're a soldier captured okay i'm a soldier i was captured i'm a prisoner of war but you can't shoot the prisoner of war who said anything about shooting what about the announcement on the radio all they'll do is hold you for a few days ah sure they might have mercy on them yet who me no the boy in belfast jail oh someone said that well the british government might think twice about it now they know we have you you'd bar me if you think that what's happening to me is upsetting the british government i can just see the secretary of state for war now waking up his misses in the middle of the night oh isabel cynthia love i can hardly get wink of sleep wondering what's happened to that poor bleeder williams i heard the irish will bow me but let's go in it well we'll tell you one thing an englishman can die just as well as an irishman can any day don't give me that old stuff about dying brendan had within him a great appreciation and love of human beings he had instincts about relationships people to people nations and nations um and this stuff kind of excluded from him uh whistler the english painter remarked that the world is divided the two classes in the leads and nurses i'm a nurse how do you make that you're a nurse i'm not an i'm a nurse in the sense that i in my place and in my book i try to show the world to a certain extent what's the matter with it everybody is not happy and i one time sailed on a ship with a sea captain a block rubber doll chat with a mind the size of a postage stamp the whole idea was to let brennan because what he wanted to do was somebody to listen he wanted somebody to listen to him while he went on and talked about anything and everything which he did he was a very shy man actually strange enough with quite a bad stutter and he got over all these inhibitions by a little alcohol it's very sad really he was not able to communicate at all until he'd had a drink yes he said at home we got a big fat pig and his name is dennis he needed uh other people to stimulate him like a like a an electric charge well i think the friend and discovered at a very early age that he could command the attention of other people that he could get it i think brendan in the end was uh willing wasn't he to gain attention almost by any manner of means i mean he squandered his talent he had so much talent and he squandered it i think but one of the reasons is because you can't actually fulfill your talent if you're always with other people i don't think he liked himself and if you talk to people and if you have bright lights and you drink you can hide it i mean you can get away from it [Music] one of the last conversations i ever had with brendan when he was in the hospital i asked him tommy was you know able to talk he said to me you know the only foolish thing you ever did was to marry me most people in dublin center should that last about four months and that'll be it she'll never put up with him [Music] we saw the two days we saw you know the heights and we saw the depths we had all the the glamour and excitement of success and then we saw the jails the hospitals that kind of thing so you know nothing really to complain about [Music] anyone that knew him that well uh still feels his presence [Music] all people who are close to him feel that we talk about him as if he were still there you know not some person that's dead and gone for some 20 years [Music] brendan rose from the slums of dublin to international fame as a writer and as a wild flamboyant public character he was born in february 1923 there were seven children in the begin family they lived in a working-class neighborhood in north dublin [Music] brendan's father a house painter enjoyed opera and played the violin he also loved to read to his children steven used to read literature to the little boys in their their beds in the tenement house he'd read zola gallsworthy shakespeare baudelaire oscar wilde marcus aurelius a pretty a pretty heady diet for little boys in a tenement house all glory to dublin his mother conveyed the tradition of fierce irish nationalism through a rich store of folk songs and patriotic and verses children will tell her their forefathers saw the red blaze of freedom as a young child brendan was a special favorite of his eccentric grandmother granny english she doted on brendan and showered on him a kind of attention he would require the rest of his life now i have many many good memories of that many good memories of brandon uh but my earliest memory of him was being thrown down the stairs by him because he said she's not your [ __ ] granny she's mine friend and was by far and away the most talented of us all and the person who demanded and got the very most attention in the family he was very very clever the christian brothers at his school marked one of his essays and came to my mother and said do you know mrs b and you're rearing a genius so that the attention wasn't just coming even from his granny it was also coming from his teachers the effect i think was to make him more and more anxious to win the attention of people outside himself to publicize himself to be an extrovert in addition to spoiling young brendan granny english introduced him to drinking i believe when they'd go out away excuse to take him out to wakes and weddings and funerals i believe he had his lasso beer like annie grown up and he must have been only about six years old and that i i didn't think that was right well did you ever tell the granny off for doing this no neil didn't drew you didn't why not no but why not well i wouldn't like to violate what that would i why i don't know i don't like falling at anyone just she was training brendan into a drunkard as a child but she wouldn't have stopped her it wouldn't have stopped her was it because she had the money in the purse strings yes yeah so we pulled up at the pub in the car and when mrs morby said to my grandmother do you think it's right to be given brandon stout yes it's my grandmother give it to them now and they'll never know the taste of when they grow up which i'm afraid was the grossest understatement of all time in my case anyway [Music] unto the floor i'm sinking give me loss my days shall pass in drinking [Music] i nearly fell off that bottom now [Applause] um [Music] in its home when the green flag went up and the crown rag came down towards the neatest and sweetest thing ever you saw for they play the best game played in avenger odd glory to dublin brandon grew up in a republican environment through the longer generations her fame will go down i think each and every one of our families spent some time little or long in jail the red blaze of freedom in england's difficulty is ireland's opportunity and when you're listening to that from the time you're five years of age or four or three or two or one you're bound to have some affection for what are some realization of what your parents have lived for and what all your family has lived for did you hate the english yourself at that time well i think i did should they gives a turban persecution for years and years and years didn't they they did well i was taught to hate themselves was i taught to empty them the same my father when the girls that have a lesson book there was a lesson in it god saved the queen and the first thing he done was to terrorize the page and burn it so i suppose that was born in us all wasn't it she came as a mother to her child who i followed little followed all day gently raised us from the slime and kept our hands from the harry's crime i am sent us to heaven in our own good time white quality by the night all day oh like holidays all day so we say hip bye come on and join the ira holidays our father's often now irishman no our fathers our fathers my father and his father wanted here together in 22. both brendan and i were involved in the movement from the time i suppose i was about five or six years of age and then when i was 15 years of age we were automatically transferred into the ira and we were rare in that tradition you see that the national freedom was an unfinished business we then naturally got involved in what was the only outlet then or to achieve those ends namely the ira he wanted to go to england but i hadn't the authority to send them to england and anyway i wouldn't have sent anybody to england under the that conditions you know so uh he kept pestering me and persecuted me until he wanted to be an action he was essentially a physical force man oh yeah oh yes no doubt about it he wants to get shoot not the pets or killing the breaths one way or another and eventually i said to them now you can go to england i won't stop you but i have no authority to send you so off event i respectfully submit the following report on brendan beam in possession of explosive substances under suspicious circumstances his offense was part of the political program of the irish republican army brendan was only 16 when he snuck into liverpool england in 1939 intending to blow up a british battleship he was caught almost immediately in possession of explosives and facility of tom his mind is lively and he enjoys juggling with words and ideas he loves the limelight it would seem that he is making an effort to compensate for a feeling of insecurity while awaiting trial in walton prison he was excommunicated from the catholic church for not renouncing the ira the church had always been a source of strength and comfort for brennan excommunication shook him badly i must inform you that your own clergy and hierarchy have excommunicated the ira you are automatically excommunicated unless you repent of your sin and being a member of us and promise god in confession that you will sever all connection with why should the bishops of england be allowed to dictate about politics to an irishman father the church has always been ireland's best friend in ireland here in england and all over the world with no disrespect to you father a synod of irish bishops 800 years ago decided to excommunicate any irishman who refused to acknowledge the king of england as his ruler but that was only three years after the normans had landed and held only a bit of the place even after the reformation i'm excommunicated and the bishop of this diocese won't let me have the sacraments because i questioned the right of his country to rule mine i was a father john murphy that was born aloy by the english yeoman excommunicators they tell all the people to give up their crops at the joy of the hunger in the ditches at home with the grass juice running green from the dead mouth of a mother clutching a live infant listening to her his patriots excommunicated wasn't my own father excommunicated so get the hell you fat bastard but the hell with england and the hell with rome not the republic walton prison had cured me of any idea that religion of any description had anything to do with mercy or pity or love a sixteen-year-old boy was sentenced at liverpool assays today three years boston detention he was brendan bean of kildare road dublin as bean went below he shouted god save ireland the judge said that parliament violence after months of waiting in walton prison brendan was tried and sentenced to three years in boston an english reform school he was surprised at his fair and friendly treatment when you hear somebody's coming to you that's been mixed up with the bomb outrages and ira it all sounds very spectacular you know and you sort of imagine some tremendous brute of a fellow coming in and i was completely taken by surprise when this rather smiling charming young man came in he said what's to happen to me am i going to be treated fair is this the well i said i hope so that's my object always has been my object in the service well then he said i can help you right from the start well i said that's fine now he said can i tell you straight away that i haven't any inhibitions and the complexes is all in order i said if the devil taught you that jargon he said you know i've been examined till i'm sick of it but you're not going no i said i'm not interested told him what you were i haven't a clue to what you're going to be but like everybody else i'm terribly interested in what you are at his catholic faith had been shaken now brendan's hatred of the english was challenged he was very confused he'd come from a long line of rebels who were very anti-english he'd been sent to boston and harzi bay where joyce the prison governor was very fond of him and very good to him and he met a lot of english people and he suddenly found that people hadn't been truthful with him his parents that the english individually were a delight and enchanting whereas he thought they were had been led to believe they were dreadful ogres uh he still disliked the english on mass but he could not dislike the english people that he met individually and this really did confuse him in his book borstal boy published 20 years later brendan recounts how he came to feel that the english lads could actually be his friends the cockneys had a contemptuous attitude to work of any description but when they got on some work they were interested in they became very enthusiastic took their jobs very seriously and even competed with each other people take to hard work as easily as to three it's a matter of getting used to it not at all disagreeable as the girl said to the soldier but i had the same rareness most of them dublin liverpool manchester glasgow london all our mothers had all done the pawn pledging on monday releasing on saturday we all knew the chip shop in the picture house in the falcony rush of a saturday afternoon and the summer swimming in the canal and being chased along the railway by the cops it's a lonely thing to be a stranger in a strange land but nowhere else have i met an almost classless society nowhere was i loved so well or respected so highly brendan had begun to discover himself but when he got back to dublin at age 18 he found himself embroiled again in the cause of irish nationalism and he was confronted by his continuing need to be the center of attention he grew restless at the annual ira eastern march after only a few months of freedom brendan thought he saw a nervous policeman about to fire at an ira officer hot-headed as ever he jumped into the middle of things so i took the gun off by officer and they fighted us i fought back at them i wouldn't actually shoot him didn't he oh no he missed him he sure he wouldn't hit the parties he was born and what he's talking about if ben didn't hit anything with the gun it was this year it was sheer accident in any case he didn't have the heart to hit anybody he didn't he didn't want to hurt anybody it was man it was mandatory on the military tribunal for carrying arms that you would be sentenced to death nobody nobody got off anybody who was caught with arms was shot i was not shot at sight my surroundings was taken into a custody one of the detective officers flipped me a package of cigarettes and a box of matches some would say to soften me up for to give information but i always look upon these things as manifestations of human charity well i was brought to a justice of the ministry tribunal i was sentenced to 14 years of pain and servitude brandon didn't like being imprisoned uh but he did still feel proud of the fact that he was in jail and had suffered i think i mentioned on another occasion you know like his great pride people he met who had been in jail uh he would say this to you like i remember him saying it in fact here on one occasion well you were there when you were needed you know like he had this great pride of having having been suffering in that in that manner here's a help to the men of the brave rank and file to the lionhearted women of aaron's green isle let true men salute them with wonder and all for they played the best game played [Applause] brandon francis 3501 537 double six two brendan was in prison again for almost five years he was finally let out in 1946 in the general amnesty he was nearly 24 years old he was locked up you may say from the age of 16 to 24 with only a couple of months and that's nine years that's nine years slice out of your life there you know those are the painful years of most people's adolescence when they're growing up and learning about relationships with other people and learning about themselves and i always felt that he had a sort of euphoria about being free you know that he was making up for all those years all those pranks and all the nonsense that he went on with it was something very lovable it was something very exciting and it made one feel free you know like this dublin i think tended to be a fairly conservative town at the time the most dangerous place to meet brandon was in public because he really reveled in you know making fun of you there was the occasion when i would cross the road rather than see brendan if i had people with me if you were 100 yards down the road he greeted you the minute he saw you and one morning i was going to the butcher and i was standing at the top of the queue and i saw brendan coming down the road and he pretended he didn't see me so i knew he was up to some trick you see so he started at the bottom of the queue and he started to beg and of course he was this was long before he was famous nobody knew him and they took him for a beggar but the story he was telling um was that he had these 10 starving children at home but he wasn't begging for the children he was begging because he said that they're crying from hunger was driving a med and he wanted to go and get drunk and of course the ladies in the queue were horrified so when he got to me he suddenly pretended to recognize me and out come the arms and the big bear hug and he said the blessings of god on youtube i've met you and he starts to tell everybody in the queue that i was the worst drunkard in dublin and that now he met me he was going to be all right for the day i was going to take him into the pub and so i was looking at the shirts and the ties and suits and not taking a lot of notice and it all suddenly everything went quiet and i looked round and there's brendan standing in the middle of shot with not a stitch on he'd take everything off he was standing absolutely naked in the middle they were going under honeymoon and brendan said would it be all right we went along too well now i would never say to anyone would be okay if i went on a honeymoon with you you know but we did and we enjoyed it you had to either accept him or to know him like peter you know somebody i i was asked one time had success spoiled me i said no i was always like this he was a wild man he was a wild smile he was the wildest dominant of this century he was like most of us he was already in small doses i never cared for him all that much myself well no i think it was marvelous like he taught us a lot he certainly taught me a lot about life about life and about honesty and about about people and about humanity and about inhibitions you know and about being uh having the courage to be yourself i adored brendan i loved every single twisted angel brand she says to me me challenge brendan worked occasionally as a house painter joined in a seagoing smuggling expedition and spent some time in paris where he wrote pornographic stories and worked as a pimp in harry's american bar no trouble back in dublin he continued house painting a trade he had learned from his father stephen but nothing very steady stephen never thought he'd stick to anything he started he kept getting into trouble he was arrested for drunkenness and fighting usually with policemen yeah he was up for we had some political demonstration i think in trinity the last time he was he was in mount joy which was funnily enough was about a month before we started going out together he'd been in mount joy and i said what is brendon it was a little bit in the paper you know writer jailed for assault he did 10 days for putting a policeman's head through trinity college railings he he got a great cake out of that sort of thing he was a very very outgoing person you know when he had a few drinks when he wasn't drinking now it was a different matter he didn't particularly want to be outrageous or you know during all this carrying on brendan was writing he sang and told his stories on the radio and he wrote newspaper pieces about dublin life he kept at it [Music] the early days when we just lived in our little flat and there was no great notoriety i think they were the best days really and they were certainly the best days for brendan because that's when he did most of his work he loved to write about the local dublin people he met in the markets and the pubs they felt his great affection and they opened up to him [Music] he wrote about people in a way that they were speaking to you you know he had that gift he came alive [Music] makes me think of my own little manny me first gonzaga ignatius hugger i called him for a pet name lost in the ball worm was never found wasn't he reconceptor not tall enough to pick shamrock all the same now he was lovely in his little pillbox hat and his dirty little face with the big black mustache now you could nearly pick him up be the two ends of it and he was the same about swine slime before pearls or diamonds or anything he'd get up in the middle of the night to eat swine today i ever tell you about the time i asked old mulligan the butcher for a pig's cheek well you never saw anything like the twisty i'd look and i'll get he threw up in front of me jesus mary and joseph mr mulligan society if i put that up in front of the hunger with the busy cabbage he do me what do you want from 106 to see rudolph valentino she got him hang on there a minute to see and i'll see if i can get you one that died with a smile i would say they were all real characters because that was the way brendan wrote he was a marvelous reporter really well i don't think that he was any wittier than his father or a number of dublin people from that kind of background it was already dubbed in wit what was so marvelous about him as a writer was that he was able to put down on his on paper all these things that other people really said brendan also wrote poems in gaelic the language of his irish heritage he had become absorbed in gaelic while in prison many of the political prisoners he met were men of letters who had organized classes in irish culture the gaelic language expressed brendan's nationalistic side which tugged at him always one of brendan's principal teachers was sean o'brien or the gaelic language mental heritage or history tradition something we believe in was the same as we believed in republicanism and freedom it's part of it's part of freedom part of nationality [Music] through the tradition of rural land the tradition of the gaelic language gaelic songs gaelic music went back thousands of years brennan used to maintain that he could speak and write and feel better in irish and i think the reason was that he could get down to his ancestral consciousness to the world uh that great reservoir of memory which is within us all the beginnings of language the beginning of himself the beginning of irish culture and it was almost as if he could get his toenails deeper into the earth when he was writing an irish you wrote at least 10 poems in irish you know which are good poems there's one particular very short poem he called it which means loneliness lost merida and the translation is the blackberries taste after rainfall on the hilltop in the silence of prison the trains called whistle the whisper of laughing lovers to the lonely [Music] i think there was a romantic aspect of it as far as brandon was concerned that i have such a limited leadership [Music] it's very difficult to write in a language which may well be dead before oneself [Music] but brendan soon turned from gaelic poetry he began writing about himself his own experiences a hungry feeling came on me stealing and the mice they were squealing in my prison cells the queer fellow is brendan's play about prison life he had found many of his fellow prisoners to be quite likable right now looks like that it's the left ones it's the right to show me well that's what i'm saying sister the left just be bad one day and the writers be bad the next day to be on the safe side sir i think you better do the two of them oh it's the mess you got so i'm not a centipede with the weather for tennis pull up the lady of toasters yeah yesterday yes this was a panic well a little lower down sir just a little lower down sort of it's all equal to you yes or oh i feel it going right down to me toes and do me a word of good sir all right now the other leg yes sir oh joseph so i told him i always say sir if you go did you out in the child so you might as well jewish wise oh my god you're just uh yeah well you must be the seventh son of the seventh son or wanted to leave some limerick of your mother's side brendan wanted his audience to face up to the brutal details of capital when punishment man entered the hang house at 7 59 at 8 30 the doctor pronounced life extinct that's a lot of my lab i've been there mr criminal in the first place the doctor has his back turned after the trap goes down and he doesn't turn and face it until the screw has caught the rope i mean an officer like me you're likely to be doing just that on the top of the careful and mr criminal come on kelly tell him what happens after he tries to stop the rope from wreaking you go and get your breakfast and you don't come back for a now then you cut the queer fella down and the doctor slits the back of his neck to see if the bones are broken who's to say what happens in the hour your man is swinging mr kriven i knew a screw once you smuggled out medical reports sold them to the sunder papers one shepherd said lived 17 minutes at the end of the road ah that's impossible righteous rights mr crimson there must be face remember catherine is glad i don't think it will fit yourself we don't have to be particular mr reagan's will do which cells are here this one he likes to wear a wardrobe's cap so the queer fellow won't suspect who he is he gets his weight from the doctor so he knows what drop to give him if he gave him too much one way he'd strangle him instead of breaking his neck if he gave him too much the other way he'd pull the head clean off his shoulders is a born dramatist with a rare talent for writing about people brendan bean has obviously had experience of life in prison has a knack for tapping the contradictions within human beings island's sacred duty to send over every few years a playwright to save the english theater from inarticulate plumbness the queer fella as directed by joan littlewood in our small avant-garde london theater was a great critical success the week after it opened brendan was invited to appear on the bbc television program panorama in an interview with malcolm muggeridge he was in the advanced state of intoxication and he was quite unable to speak i could had to conduct the interview myself sort of say to him well i believe that this play that you've got on the queer fellow the prison in that is actually based on your experiences in brixton prison i say oh well that's very interesting and the governor of the prison i believe was also song so we managed to stagger on for in that's in that way and then i remember that sometimes when people are very drunk they can sing when they can't speak and so i said to him well there is that little song in your play couldn't you perhaps sing it and in a very sort of little piping voice he managed to sing it brendan was fine at the rehearsal you see but they were he couldn't drink much for a famous drunk brendan couldn't drink much head diabetes and one drink and he was over 10 million people saw him on on this interview with morgridge you know and he thought nothing of it and when somebody said to me why are you drunk mr bean at seven o'clock in the evening he says because i'm usually drunk at seven o'clock in the evening you know he became famous overnight they're absolutely horrified the bbc switchboard was jammed for two hours with complaints coming through that was a cardinal crime and the bbc you don't appear drunk on bbc you don't the next morning london was at his feet saw you on television pissed last night brendan the bus drivers the taxi drivers it strikes me all you have to do over here is get drunk to be famous because the final payoff is in itself is a very comical two because it his the producer of his play out of stratfor told me that he may have been unable to interest anyone in the west and in it but the minute this he appeared drunk on television two west end managers rang out to say couldn't they have the equivalent and he was always very obliging when he referred themselves would say that it absolutely made his career [Music] brendan discovered he could use his outrageous behavior to attract attention on a grand scale [Music] everywhere he traveled he created a stir at age 33 he was becoming an international character the people they like to be horrified by the recreational activities of artists his literary stature also grew in the space of a few years the queer fellow opened in new york and he wrote a new play the hostage seen in ireland england and france the star kept rising during this time morsel boy was published every page in the autobiographical bostol boy shows him as an artist who takes writing seriously tolerance pervades these pages they are marked by a growth of understanding and a firm love of life extremely funny and often deeply affecting sparklingly written devastatingly honest book as a whole is a highly intelligent piece of planning brendan love the acclaim but it took its toll he began to find less and less time for his writing mr bien festival must congratulate you on the rapturous reception that you'll play the hostages had in paris thank you well now that you've had success as a writer then you become something of quite a literary figure in london has this success proved an added stimulus to you as a writer no very much the opposite to go home and you know and do a bit of work sometime well he began then you see to enjoy going around and telling stories rather than leading a quieter life and attend to his writings ladies and gentlemen uh they would expect him to travel give a lecture i have nothing further to say on the matter thank you and then after the lecture he would have to meet all the students and answer questions go to a dinner maybe entertain people but it turned out to be the queer fella on ice well not quite on ice but my play was a success there and then move on the next and give another lecture accept it he felt the people expected him to be the entertainer and he liked entertaining and instead of writing sitting down and writing he uh he spoke about it and entertained people does this thing work he enjoyed it i think but he was exhausted he was exhausted every every writer should be successful for a month and after that he ought to be given a pension and he should be allowed to work as he wants i gave an interview to the spanish newspaper one time and which i was asked what site would i most like to see in spain that said franco's funeral brendan was in london once entertaining people no lady met another old lady telling the stories until about three in the morning hello there mariah how are you you hadn't been drinking not too bad i said bren i don't know why you ever drank you you're more entertaining when you drink much more energy you know he said you know i need it sometimes brendan relied more and more on alcohol in his efforts to capture center stage he appeared drunk again on the cbs television program in 1959. let's start off with a very simple question what about this phrase the art of conversation how would you define it well i attacked the ideas that the art of conversation is gone from a number of reasons number one the art of conversation is gone they've been murdered by lunatic mostly from the united states and uh i may say that uh in ireland they will say why is an earliest american like a bicycle a broken saddle because both of them will give you a pain in the dead ear brendan yes i can listen to you are you you're a lawyer you're simply talking nonsense because i haven't said a word yet well go and say some words say some words jackie i'm surprised that you saved jack please let jack release the size award well here i go again i'm surprised that you say the art of conversation is dead in america and is alive in ireland after that bicycle joke i didn't say it was a live in ireland and i didn't say it was 11 america i immediately said it was an earliest american joke it's not a it's not a nerdist joke oh oh brendan would it be fair to say that you spent part of your life being uh a refugee from uh stuffed shirts conformity and occasionally even the pollution is not women no way no way no complaints over the condition of brendan bean on edward r murrow's small world telecast last night poured into the columbia broadcasting system because of brendan's condition he was cut out of the second half of the program with the help of alcohol he had once again found a way to create a public sensation do you have a feeling if you can stand outside yourself and look at yourself in the past two years that you've created perhaps unintentionally a bayonet legend the legend of the wild irishman who drinks and slugs [ __ ] uh do i feel that yes i suppose i do in a way i mean to say uh i didn't build the legend it just happened do you think that one of the problems of having fame um what is it that people usually say thrust upon you is that you have to be terribly self-disciplined to accept it without destroying yourself i used to go on a public drink of portal or stout or dare for enjoyment saying because it was in the gym seven company now for them doing it just just to keep on the on the [Music] march irish playwright brendan bean arrived in new york with his wife beatrice for the us premiere of his internationally successful play the hostage mr bean is attracted considerable attention for his drinking sprees and rowdy behavior but he says he has given up alcohol and has turned to milk to satisfy his need for liquid refreshment good luck mr bean a great deal has been said about your voiceless uh behavior would you comment about my behavior i think uh behavior is a sign of uh religion and uh good health mr b now that you've given up drinking do you think you'd like to address the women's christian temperance union well uh i could uh tell them to look a bit more cheerful i mean the h-bomb is not going to be dropped all that quick you've been on the wagon for quite a while now do you think there's any chance you might get back far every chance in the world converged upon it is algonquin hotel suite pursued in third avenue bars and followed on as rambles along the streets of new york mr bean hasn't stopped talking since he stepped off the plane and most of what he said has found its way into newspaper and magazine columns i love new york says being it looks more like a city than any other city a place where you won't get bit by a wild sheep one of the policemen says to me that being a celebrity i was probably well accustomed to having a police escort yes says i though usually with handcuffs all this and much more on at least two dozen subjects was poured out with hardly an interrupt while in new york brendan had quite a time of it getting to know the city and seeing to it that everyone became fully acquainted with him oh there was a lot of interest in a lot of publicity we would go to the algonquin people knew all about him and he used to hang out in downey's uh bar and restaurant and people used to come from all over this to see if brandon being was going to be there i remember that his being interviewed in caricatured like a theater personage he was visiting america i guess for the first time and full of energy and inquisitiveness so he came down the lower east side and came into our apartment we sat around the kitchen just talking he liked poetry um talked about yates and talked about irish poetry i was broke actually and so he offered to take us out to delancey street to the romanian jewish restaurants for uh for uh eats so all four of us went down and the thing i remember most vividly was that toward the end of the meal i went downstairs to the men's room and he got up from the table and followed me down and stuffed me in the hall or outside of the toilet and said you got any ammunition and i didn't understand what i mean so i said ammunition and then he said money and i said actually no so he pulled out of water bills and gave me about 80 dollars uh which i've amazed me because he was so generous and hadn't hardly any reason to do it except that he was open-hearted apparently he was making money on his uh play the hostage and being taken very seriously for the play which i he sent me tickets to see which i thought was really cute and uh profound actually the hostage became brendan's most famous play it's a jolly play it does a bit to cheer people up they seem to laugh when they see it there are homosexual dinners there are prostitutes here there's a rather sweet again there's a young fellow in it who was the british soldier a captain of this place the critics wrote that the hostage also directed by joel littlewood was a wild and rollicking drama full of songs and dances in the improvisational undisciplined style of the musical if they're in the quality of the musical i hope there is you won't get away with much on musical i mean on other stages i mean in the abbey theater you can go and say musha will you put down a panel of rashers and eggs for the decent man and uh i sometimes take the abbey i sometimes think that the abbey company must be the best fed copy of the whole europe because every time the action slacks they eat something but you can't get away with that on review [Music] anytime you're not cheering the people up but you've got something to sing a song or do a dance the appeal of the hostage was its wild almost improvisational nature behind the fun was brendan's concern for the trapped british soldier the british soldier two miles from armagh last night has been identified as private leslie to be held hostage williams places of prison in belfast and if the prisoner is hanged the ira will put the british soldier to death as a reprisal oh no no brendan irritated many irish patriots by sympathizing with the plight of the captured british soldier does it really mean they're going to shoot me i'm afraid so you're the hostage but i ain't done nothing surely one of you would let me go this is war who brandon caused further outrage by having the young irish chambermaid fall in love with the british soldier if i get away will you come and see me and i might of course i will i want all the blokes and the biller to see you they all have pictures on their walls well i never had any pictures but now i've got you i bet we could have a bloody good time in belfast together oh be lovely a store i'm due a weekend's leaving all i could pay my own way too long you wouldn't have to do that i've got enough for both of us [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] get down monster what there's a radon why the devil did you tell me that don't shoot do you see the wipes in their eyes there he is he's dead hickey's identification tag i get it leave it with him i gave it to him leslie love a thousand blessings go at you don't cry teresa it's nobody's fault nobody meant to kill him but he's dead so is the boy in belfast jail oh wasn't the boy in belfast that you were worried about all the six counties with your crippled leg in your last youth brendan the irish rebel cared for the calls brendan the writer cared for the man he died in a strange land and at home he had no one i'll never forget you leslie not till the end of time [Music] [Music] where is this [Music] goodbye to you [Music] [Applause] the boy gets up and sings a lovely song and everybody goes home happy and that's how this is how brandon wanted everybody to be he wanted everybody to go home happy he never went and happy himself the final bell for brandon was oblivion brendan bean ireland's gifted irrepressible playwright ended his dry run yesterday he resumed his favorite true life role last night in the court theater where his play the hostage was running brendan had consumed according to a witness seven bottles of champagne he was beautifully biffed and the audience loved it marching down the aisle as his play was progressing smoothly there was a noise in the audience and all of a sudden we looked from behind backstage and saw brandon coming down the audience and was drunk as hell and and was just reeling down the aisle and he came down to the right down to the apron of the stage turned around to face the audience and started ranting and raving and talking about new york and talking about the production of the hostage and how wonderful this was this was the best thing he'd ever seen and how new york was a great city and uh he just loved new york mr bean's drinking problems would be entirely his own business if i didn't get the uneasy feeling that they were indeed his business i suspect his public displays are closely tied to the state of his box office well i don't think it's just a search for popularity they might have been searched for affection mr bean is a caricature of the drunken irishman and i resent his contrived and profitable playing of the old popularity in the claim we had already affection is another matter every man deserves affection brendan was notorious for interrupting performances of his plays but it was not just another way to get attention it was as if the more successful he became the more he needed to sabotage his own achievement success did destroy brendan actually i think that events overtook him so to speak he wasn't happy with himself i think that he wanted to run away from himself brendan made several trips back and forth between ireland and america pursuing his successes he felt ignored in dublin the victim of petty jealousies and a city growing tired of his flamboyant behavior i mean people uh would come up and insult him they weren't all friendly i mean the fact that he was a being a famous man also aroused deep antagonisms in dublin deep hatreds deep jealousies particularly by artists who were very powerful in their own right but were not receiving any recognition these men felt that it was simply brenda's manipulation of the media that was enabling him to get all the publicity not his inherent qualities as an artist and there was a deal of truth in that when he had a few drinks and somebody insulted him in a pub or didn't insult him he was always spoiling for a fight i saw his face very badly cut in a pub in dublin and everybody took him away he kept saying to beatrice and myself let me go back and shake the man by the hand i want to tell him that i'm sorry and we both knew he didn't want that at all we wanted to go back and kill him if he could no longer able to concentrate on his writing brendan tried dictating his books to ray jeffs the idea originally was that i would get the words out of him on a tape recorder take him back to england type them exactly as they were raw and he would edit and make them into a book but brandon was far too professional to really agree that this was the way to make books and he that he was very ashamed of so he would never do it he never saw them again he never heard his words in the end it was left to somebody else to edit he occasionally would say you know i do try you know i feel that eventually i will start to write again but you know scott fitzgerald who used to drink as much as myself he was always able to write till the end dylan thomas was able to write to the end why can't i brendan used to seek respite in the calm and remote village of carol on the west coast of ireland what beautiful wild countryside very unspoiled i think we used to go there every year it was a very poor area of ireland and random like going there because he loved swimming and he likes speaking irish and he just like the people happy you know the majority of the people they liked him for what he was as a person not because he was brendan being the playwright well it's not that they weren't interested but you know they bothered things to occupy them and broadway successes you know and that's one of the reasons he loved county maryland because most people had never even read his plays [Music] most of them didn't speak english [Music] even when i went back to kanamera and this would be ten years after brenda was dead an old fisherman would come up to me and say to be an irish and i'm very sorry for trouble and shake my hand this would be some old fisherman that brendan had met probably when he had no money and said we have um john will have a point you know and they there he that's the way he's remembered there as a as a person rather than as a writer [Music] [Applause] [Music] but he could not stay away from the turmoil for long do you have a play in the works at the moment i've played richard's leg brendan had virtually stopped writing after the hostage now three years later at age 38 he claimed he was still working on the new play richard's cork lay i i would like to do some more walk right up but surprisingly concerned it's finished it's uh but he never did finish it i've applied to my mind mr bean what's the principal reason for your coming to new york this time uh my principal reason for coming to new york this time is that i want to uh come here anyway i come here for peace this is why he loved new york because at all times in the day and night he could find somebody [Music] when he was on his own he was like a little boy lost i when i first met him he was a marvelous entertainer and he could keep us all spellbound dreadful to watch this slowly getting worse and worse and worse was repetitive he was boring he'd lost the ability that i knew was there by now people had begun to give up on friends to find them boring and tiresome the irish americans now they detested brandon no you see he again he was too outrageous he was far too way out for them oh no they they didn't like but i i used to get threatened phone calls you know i got one in san francisco where this woman um rang up and she said if you don't get that drunken bum of yours out of here get yourself and your drunken husband out of this city i got them in toronto as well and brendan kept getting them but he never told me brendan bean had a few words yesterday for the judge who has barred him from the st patrick's day parade in new york city i have a new theory on what happened to the snakes when st patrick drove them out of ireland he said they all came to new york and became judges we were sitting with him in the algonquin one night which is rather elegant nice place first of all he's drunk when we arrived we all arranged to meet um beatrice brendan bernie and i and we and all of us he rises i don't like this [ __ ] place so bitter said oh brendan look we just got here and we're going to have a drink he says all right let's have a drink and they said you have to be quiet mr b [ __ ] you now go by and [ __ ] you and double [ __ ] you and mr bean said the manager we'll have to ask you to leave i'm not [ __ ] well leaving i live here i'm paid for my room we just leave us alone for jesus [ __ ] jack leave it alone don't get me wrong i'll get me wrong whatever you want to do we just want to be alone people used to say to me why don't you get a divorce what are you doing here [ __ ] you i i intended to i felt that when he was down at this stage like that wasn't the time to walk out perhaps if brendan had risen to the heights again then i would leave but you don't leave somebody like under you know no brandon what's your formula for being a successful rider my father business that's right the irish playwright was arrested for drunkenness after a three-day spree here and will appear in police court during brendan's round of taverns one gentleman got whacked in the mouth and another hapless fellow received the bloody a hefty knowledge for the whole affair who in 1956 appeared on a british television program while admittedly in his school today 40 shillings for having been drunk and disorderly in a neighboring village wednesday today to surrender himself to police before appearing in court bean has been confined to the hospital since he suffered two alcoholic seizures bench warrant was issued today for the arrest of brendan bean when he did not appear in court on charges of assault police today arrested brendan behan irish playwright as a drunk fears were expressed that he was drinking himself to death mr behan was arrested [Music] remember he flew to america one occasion he just went to a bank one i think he drew 500 pounds that was a lot of money then and he picked up this friend phil corley who i know and they got onto the plane to shannon and on the on the way down they tried to get drink but there was no drink on the plane so he asked phil have you got any after shave lotion phil produced a bottle of this and brendan just downed it he said to me if you ever locked me up he said the day i come out i shall drink myself to death so i i reckoned i had the right to commit him and he had been locked up so much in his youth i i you know it would have been interesting i suppose in hindsight had i done it but that's what he told me he said if you ever force me into a position like that he said the day i get out i'll drink myself to death so don't ever do it on me he said so i never did well they said that they were uh anyone who gives brendan bean a drink in the future is a murderer and if he does it on his own he is a suicide say friends of the irish playwright who has been inside brendan became sicker and sicker now hobbling about with a stick bean was committed finally in 1963 40 years old he went back to dublin for the last time he was in and out of hospitals he was a dying man he looked amused bewildered his face was very blotchy he was losing the use of his legs he looked in a terrible way i mean so much that i couldn't as i said just to one look at him and ran over to him and simply embraced him and held him my mother and father were in the public house with us so in that sense it was the last gathering before the final end but there was no way back by then for brandon the move of the presence minister for joseph shows a good heart and an irish hat in this late interview brendan is still trying to speak out against capital punishment but he is almost impossible to understand was there insides before likes going to the goddess because in various cases people have swung [Music] [Music] it was a sunday night i remember he sings the old triangle and it came over at the end they finished with it and he sat up and and the tears poured down his face and he said is that me singing [Music] he was close to the end there you see and he couldn't believe that he could sing as well as that as much as to say like that's that was mean this is me now you know that's really me along the banks the next morning i stood in the deck where the boat came into dunlery and looked at the sun struggling up over the hills and the city all around the bay passports travel permit or identity document please said the immigration man beside me i handed him the expulsion order he read it looked at it and handed it back to me kate mila fought you while you're out a hundred thousand welcomes home to you i smiled and said go to my god thanks he looked very serious and tenderly inquired it must be wonderful to be free it must walked down the gangway passed a detective and got on the train for dublin [Music] is [Music] came all me stealing [Music] and the mice were squealing [Music] down [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] place [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Applause] and all the fields are brown and the big white hopes that you cherished lad came tumbling trembling down then ago you too your corner lad the old the named among god grant you'll find the one face there lad [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh victory if you made [Music] left over now i say goodbye well thank you people for listening to me and you can tell that those who went away halfway through my discourse we hope they broke a leg you

Channel: Alexander Sebley

Views: 42,581

Rating: 4.8908381 out of 5

Keywords: Brendan Behan, Rae Jeffs Sebley, malcolm muggeridge, Alexander Sebley, playwright, Borstal Boy, Irish History, Irish writer

Id: 7LdKkPi1xQ4

Length: 85min 31sec (5131 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020