Joyce Grenfell OBE, 69 (1910-1979) UK comedienne

[Music] well tap on that gong should bring them from their daughters yes mr. Chetty pegasi Ajay said a tap you're not introducing a film [Music] I seem to know [Music] I you selfie yes are the most important assignment in sergeant oh good Sammy how many times must I tell you not to call me STEMI on the obvious sorry Sammy sorry before you joined the police you talked in a girls school yes I was against mistress great and that's the reason I've chosen you for this job I want you to go into a girls school in incognito of course and see what's going on there it's not some Trinian's I roped the school on your behalf applying for the post of games mistress they've accepted you what scary crawly that's you dear I couldn't use your real name but clearly that's terrible name and Crowley there call me creepy crawly still you're not I do it between heaps of fun working together side by side like this yes hasn't it pop I dare a fan viscosity call me sausage hey he's not you tell us what would you like our bunny rabbit to be called well I think Princess Anne is a lovely night for a boy bunny I mean we call him Bobby bunny rabbit well because it's his name not I happen to know we're not discussing it his name is Bobby bunny rabbits ooh don't kiss Neville he doesn't like it I know you do but he doesn't she just sort of imbued herself into me somehow because here was somebody who was famous who was glamorous but not beautiful who seemed to me to use all her Gork eNOS and who used humor as a weapon but not as a malicious probably from a defensive point of view now I think back about it at the time in the late fifties the full facts hadn't sunk in about the empire breaking up it was still United one of the things the United it was the media movies in particular and Joyce seemed the incarnation of the British stiff upper-lip middle class virtues that had got Britain through the war and looked like shaping it into the ideal welfare state and time his men is said to have made a mockery of that and I don't believe it I think those virtues were real and in many ways they've survived and make Britain worth living in still and she incarnated them oh I say jolly pals Robbie in the habit of writing your name all over the police cottage now mr. Church kindly stop doing you did what I didn't think I realized even then that's that you could use comedy to act I think I believed like most people still believe that comedy and acting were two different things and now I know of course that you can't be a comedian unless you can act when I was little the only film we ever saw things like school parties and Sunday school treats was bloody Genevieve which I have to say I loathe with the passion as I saw it so many times when I was a child we used to go and sit in the cloakroom they said oh it's Genevieve oh god let's go sit in the club but I do ma'am I love the music of Genevieve and I of her in that because she stay yeah she's the boardinghouse ladies you think you can't separate bathymetry of course tonight another if the bathroom please no the bathrooms are on the second floor landing the second yes you will see them on your way up and when you want to take a ball that would you be so kind as to sign the little book you'll find just inside the bathroom door sign right now I'm super sorry but hot water is provided only in the afternoons between half-past two and six there's no hot water his hot waters provided in the afternoon winds between half-past three and six darling I think we'd better go out but this is preposterous do I have to sign the book in order to have a cold bar with rule simply says the hot waters provided you and I can't even have a cold bath Wendy then he's sorry but I did not make the room well then who did oh never mind I don't want to know no one's ever complained before in many things she hated New York and I think a lot of people she said that too thought she hated because of the noise and the danger answer but she didn't like the idea of a manufactured tradition one thing that really made Joyce's choice wrinkled her nose was the idea of something declared to be old like one of those New York hotels that pretends to be how does he is all of that it is she actually liked the rub didn't warn quality of of British life can you humiliate me like this I'm an English woman with all the feelings of an English woman everybody thinks of joy says quintessentially English but of course she was nearly three-quarters American and I think this gave her an openness although she seems very English and the characters that she chose most of them a few Americans from one Australian but mainly she impersonated or created rather typical British characters she had an openness to people a curiosity about people which is very American a lot of advantages really and having a mother from Virginia you know she made very very heavy point about the fact that Virginia was settled by the British and my father was an Englishman with an American mother from New England I think she had a grandfather from Dundee I'm everything really she was about 13 her father took her to Hampton Court and he said look at the the color of those bricks and she said it's red and he said look again and she looked again and then began to see move purple gray black green and she realized there was a variety of colors and so the colors she said will wait there waiting to be discovered and I think that is typical of her whole life a sense of discovery he said at parties I never minded sitting on the sidelines I always knew who had worn what who'd been bored who'd flirted with whom I never missed a trick and she was rather still and rather reflective but my god it was all going in to the computer and it was all staying there and when they came home from parties she would do everybody who'd been there and of course that's that's how she got on the stage as you probably know she was she was the president after she just got married at 19 she was the president of the Women's Institute one day we had a lecture from a lady and I I've always been a slightly guilty about this I've said it in the book that I owe her royalties and I never paid her because I didn't know her name but she gave us a lecture on useful and acceptable gifts or how to make something from nothing and Buitoni heirs for the lapell to cheer up a tired winter sued made of beech nut husk clusters my gifts are not only easy to make but ever so easy to disposal waste paper basket tins and to obtain these tins you must make love to your grocer and tweedle him into giving them to you she was so full of it when she went to a party given by the radio drums of Steven Potter that she did some for the other guests and she did this this sketch and cost as in all good showbiz stories her but for Jim was at the party and he said would you come into my new review and perform it and Joe separately I can't I'm married but she did and she said she was glad she did and I went to BBC - one of the things BBC two tried to do is to do things in television that nobody else was doing at the time we wanted to be different and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a whole set of people who had been very popular during the war and had been popular in West End review who television was totally ignored they had just dropped out of fashion and head of the list by far the wittiest as far as I was concerned because she read her a material whose joy screen form and you can imagine them mostly what I mean why has he brought her in darling I don't understand it do you I'm watching it and then she comes out and does a monologue yeah there's Nellie Wallace who watched her from the wings and said what does she think she's doing out there talking to herself a way of going into the tea yes I am Oh Pat is going to be there let's all for gather I mean have a natter yes it is actually my first Oh girls reunion for far too long a time far too many moons yes I see in it yes I say aren't you windy placket if I thought you were I don't suppose you remember me yes you know I had forgotten isn't it ghastly well my name is now clinch I married a man called Keith kitch and we've been living out in not in the odds and tyne actually in Kenya and you have to call it kill no not only a moral asset on here Wendy what's your name now I'm still black it still placards yes well it's absolutely lovely I suppose the technique of a one-woman show is that you speak to single people in the audience even though there might be 2,000 of them there and that of course is to say it is the secret of good television you don't say there are 4 million people watching a show you say there are 2 or 3 perhaps at the most two or three sitting by themselves I mean in the living room and and the end she talked to one person and all she had to do was to project just a little less and the rest was simple oh it comes naturally to me my mother saying you know I suppose the artistic temperament I need it who haven't had that I think you're just born like that I just I just have there's been a big fluffy years like people in cartoons and there shoot out sideways when I'm sitting there people and I think that's what she passed on with her enjoyment of things that she'd overheard and people that she'd seen and that's her that I think that's the key to the her style she was just saying oh look I've just heard this girl's frabjous day Callooh Callay because her favorite things to go to lions to tea shops and observe people right I mean and if you were engaging conversation or something happened suddenly that no good forget the conversation it was drinking it all all in incredible you know she told me once about being sitting on a bus behind two ladies and she heard one lady say to the other you know miss Johnson I don't like those chiffon night is they show your vest in this particular notebook I have which starts in 1939 there's a delightful record of how one day she was sitting on a bus in Regent Street and she says on my way to lunch with Ginny Virginia Graham I made a mental list of things I didn't know how other people could manage without and this is the list Christian Science the head of it a husband like mine Virginia's London flat to soar up to for warmth rest and covers with of course Virginia there a raccoon coat Rennie her housekeeper and music [Music] down a circular here in Fayetteville [Music] Oh I [Music] oh is that fair down there without fear [Music] it's a funny see surely this go slow love that one only two feet dad gone but I don't understand how do you guys all go yeah mama thoughts yeah we always will at us Wow hold this two heads that's cheating knock it no I refuse to knock it and anyway what's the advantage you've got to change over from second huh never is a second half Oh give it to me precious me I thought hockey was a game but with you girls it's more like jungle warfare [Applause] josè grew up in the war completely she decided to join answer she wrote to her mother her weekly letter saying now you're not to worry about us we are extremely well busy and happy if were blown up we're blown up and life being what we know it is spiritual and therefore eternal it couldn't matter and then she says of course she says we will this is a safe area and she tells her out you know everyone walks about with gas masks tied over one shoulder and she says Virginia has ordered two cases of bromo lavatory paper and is giving packets of the precious stuff to friends for birthdays and Christmas I learnt a lesson in humility because when I'd left England I was gonna be very polished and jolly and all my songs were gay and rhythmic and that sort of thing but I just haven't quite imagined what the situations were they didn't want to be cheered up exactly and they like to laugh of course but what really did everybody good was to sing very slow songs loudly together [Music] there is nothing new to tell you we've said it all before but I'd like to say [Music] bread she wrote to her and said please come home after Italy enjoy Cyril I you know I think he's a bit lonely but I feel I must do Baghdad that no one will go there she said that she I bumped into her mining badly at the airport and she said Baghdad is the absolute end so I must go [Music] massive exploit no not really only soon if I'm lucky I hope to go to the Isle of Capri many romantic reasons for choosing happy no no no it's just the dump when I get mindful mystic I promise myself out travel we have expectations as good honestly I'd rather be divided ships the passing the night in his signals we care to exchange will borne away all the wind well I shouldn't say so but granny has said in so many words that when she passes over she won't forget me but naturally I hope nothing happens to her oh and just blew it she see whether or not we gather on this to her Manticore new era why oh yes do my close friends I'm known as Romney would you care to drive that happy ban thank you would you marry me Ruby yeah yeah well my love are you in a position to ask me I mean have I been married before but naturally twice as a matter of fact [Music] personally she was pulled between putting love and passion in two separate different brackets and I think that perhaps in her life if she did come up against passion and its rawest forms it frightened her away Oh Sammy you promised me faithfully but as soon as things were under control its and Trin's it would be a white wedding and the Isle of Wight well that was ages ago ever since then we seem to have drifted oh no we haven't ruled there yes we have I don't think you realize how much you've changed you used to call me your little blue lamp baby oh I've grown up a bit since then you know sometimes I don't think you really want to marry me at all you see yes something has occurred you promised to take me out tonight and I've had a bath specially I got some splendid news for your back my wedding leave comment down for Thwaites give me 28 days hmm 28 28 days oh well she said you only get spliced once and right well enjoy him Danny what's been our wedding I'm de Pena however sadly we mustn't quarrel now the news is too wonderful like I said let's not press some Trinian's guilty isn't it wonderful it means the end a terrible school mr. justice Stender will pass sentence tomorrow Sammy did you remember what you said to me on the clips at Ventnor you said when the Bell Tolls for some Trinian's that means they appeal for us that's something else well we don't know what the judge will see you do here I shall see metal tomorrow mmm you know myrtles West End modes they were the fish shop in the High Street it's the only place we had a wedding dress Ruby dear do you think we ought to rush at it like this rush after 16 years engagement Hey yeah I went about the dress in the window I know it couldn't be more fun encoded well I'd like to try it on please would you oh good miss cop car yes mrs. pargiter miss carpenter this lady wants desire under the Elms fudge bomb the lives are they miss carpenter will you take madam into one of the fridge fitting rooms [Music] [Music] it's and trillions they've done it again I better go and see what's happening my favorite character that I ever wrote was one of the last I ever wrote and she was the wife of a vice-chancellor of an Oxford University and the sketches were all called in Lit English Lit JA well I discovered her and I was cleaning my teeth and he didn't get to talk about me and I suddenly thought I wonder what sort of voice comes I've ever made and I went into the living room where my husband was still up reading and I said I think I've got my new character she's going to be very intellectual and I can't wait to write her and I started to talk to him about her and I loved her because she she's the kind of person I really admire she's very well-read she's literate she's articulate and she assumes you know as much as she does are you a member of this university and do I perhaps do you what is your name moving and Madden anything in particular Melvin will do yes I was a member of something called the Sydney University journalists club and Joyce had arrived in Sydney with great fanfare from the press and we daringly asked her to lunch and she confounded us all by actually accepting the invitation no we had an underground newspaper in this university it's ghost isn't that exciting has it been gay Khan's long two weeks triumphant we're very cocky and Joyce was rather chastening in that regard because she obviously was a person of accomplishment she wasn't just Swan EA of course she was what did she have gravitas which is quite a hard thing to have when you're funny I suppose you'll feel that it's very important that your paper should continue it has some mission to help us all on our way how do you see that happening to pull a marquee to Columbia you think anarchy in the abstract has a certain drawing power and then I stop and I think yes but who is going to be responsible for the drains plumbing is central to the better life never quite see it through I don't think the only time I ever caught her laughing at me directly although I'm sure she did have quite a lot of laughing at private was when I declared myself to be a socialist revolutionary and carefully pointed out to her that gradualism was useless that what was neither was a short child violent revolution I was eating I think I think I was eating her sandwiches while I was telling her this and for once I was very young and for once in her life she she burst out laughing at me took me a few years to figure out why but you know other people's blast her aside Joyce was the true was the true radical actually she believed in individual responsibility George Grenville requests the pleasure on tour and to my amazement when I got outside the theater there was no sign of anybody at all it's about quarter past seven then and I thought the start was half past seven and then my i alighted on a big poster which said evenings at seven I rushed like a mad thing to the stage door past a frenzied stage manager straight into the pit and heard the rest of the ensemble bravely battling with the overture sans piano lept into the saddle got a round of applause from the audience and didn't completely over to just a first possible cadence point stop up with the curtain music and on I have no wish to hear your excuses now or any other time and course I was full of contrition i all she said to me was you'll always remember that she didn't rebuke me or anything so I rushed out and got flowers and rewrote words so that there is a lady sweet and kind and some more proof I see I just rabbit something absolutely ghastly I forgot to go into the kitchen before we came to church to turn the gas off underneath the chicken bones I am turning into and my coat isn't insured we're going to sleep [Music] I suppose if I were to make a dash for it I might need a good rescue controlling that you're supposed to be my Picasso but I would far rather have my own photograph books and my cozy made from slippers [Music] excuse me [Music] I thought myself get on with it yeah EKU's for two to Madelia and then she added that on a ticket forever I'm doing it and she says first prize lady Clutton Taylor not credited with yeah well I mean she can afford to go on the cruise any day of the week nobody much cleped didn't know whether to laugh or cry you know it's disappointed and relieved at one and the same time and I was just bending down to pick myself up to go our phone when I heard my name called mrs. Moss to elma cottages bull Lane a lovely Levitt I look over and there's this woman standing on the platform with a rabbit in her hand did but still in its fur so I think to myself well I'm not going to be bothered with that so I'm not gonna let on I'm there you see I'll just sit there numb that mrs. and become big volume mrs. Knotts you've won a lovely ribbit I think she was very true to herself and she just did exactly what she could do and she didn't try to fit herself into anything that didn't suit her and that just made her you know she was very individual all the good people are very very different from each other and she just picked on the thing that she could do and and got better at it that's all any of us can ever do really remember although she was an heiress though she was by no means wealthy delivery lived a comfortable that modest existence and she got out and about and saw everything she wasn't separated by her by her status from everyday life not at all I'm on the bus now and I'm worried and how am I going to get rid of this said rabbit I couldn't leave it on the bus well you know some nosy Parker would come running after you you've lived and I couldn't just drop it into the gutter it was raining and I couldn't put it in my dustbin because they cleared it that morning and you know how they are now just once a week I mean if that because they please their cells and you cannot put a rabbit in a bin if the bins near the edge and the rabbit is still in its fur and the period is for any length of time and the weather's mild well I'm off the bus now and I'm walking up Queens ill and that pulse to get my breath and I find I am standing alongside a little lid car park like you know and it's got its window open a bit out there and before I knew what I done I posted that ready one way which distinction of spirit I think there's no other phrase for what would come through in her work was it the way that she would she would get beyond satire into into near tragedy actually there's a wonderful sketch where a woman is talking and she's the wife of a great musician a great instrumental is I think someone like Rubenstein or Casals one of those great instrumentalists who were attractive to women simply because of the quality of what they do in the music they play so you are going to write a book about my husband and I would like to help you all I can of course you know of his worldwide fame as a pianist but perhaps you are not also knowing that he was great if family men walk about my husband you know I think he would laugh if he could no he did not take himself so serious though no yes he goes on speaking about how much he loves a husband and where he goes in the world leaving her at home it becomes clear to the audience although not to her or apparently not to her that he's misbehaving all over the planet but then just what you're ready to think was what what a laugh or what a pity this woman is a sucker it turns out the chinos and subtly subtly the the the model log turns against the audience's assumption and you realize that she's made a bargain with life America he loved America he said the best audience in the world for music is now in America because that is where all the Europeans are and Hollywood yes in the days when Hollywood was a place you know Shelley boasted the comedian ah she is our family favorite I think she's so fat me I like her so much I did not know she was a friend for my husband he had very good taste no um you are going to write a book about my husband and I am going to help you all I can there is just one thing I would ask that you should know and perhaps you will have a member my husband always he always came home to me she would talk to young people not only about the the craft of comedy but also the craft of life the two things went hand in hand the the creativity of living how to be an artist in life and how to be an artist in her particular medium that she had chosen and there is a wonderful passage in one of her books where she says some the word magic for me does not mean abracadabra and fairy godmothers it means certain quite small experiences lit by unexplained excitement and she goes on to say that in her house which is in a Victorian conversion they have two large plate glass windows and Reggie has planted up bamboo sticks to sky-blue morning glories and he's trained them to go up and across and frame the windows the trumpets face outwards so the neighbors get a better view of them than I do but in the morning with the light coming through them they are absolute magical now visualize if you can here we have our sky-blue morning glories and in an outside window box some very white geraniums with a flashing red petunia pink and a sort of salmon marvellous and it's not over yet in an inside window box we have three African days --is a magenta a move and a purple got it [Music] and being more of a kind of nature girl I thought of it as a rose but of course it was a silver rose was it it wasn't Kalia yes yes that's right by expounds you know Oscars house called his cat house hello Lucy called his get to see Joyce not only kept the rules on the parlor game but she I think in invented a lot of them one of the things was that you had to confess if you didn't know what the answers were so that if you were faced by a piece of music was totally baffling some clever person asleep next to it would say just courage or something and then you would say well I suspect a little voice from my writer you were very arch about it I would say part of the absurdness of the game and once of the way I think about the second time I appeared Arianna Stassen applause was on the Arianna was a very big name in the gossip columns of London at that time when she was a brilliant lady and Joyce said we don't tell Ariana what the answer is because she pretends that she knew the answer how awful she was keen on tunes and she would know tunes and if she didn't know the name she had this lovely sort of silvery suparna or she would say yes we know how that goes on oh and I can't remove the core and add the name of it and you would know that only oh that the most base peasant would require who know the name the fact whilst Joyce knew the tune she knew what it was could call them and the name of it was but nonetheless she ought to have the point and I was saying Joe Cooper who was the chairman said yes Jane gave the points to her - Joyce every time my neighbor mrs. Fanshawe its Paula comfort game she must be on 467 if she is that day you might have thought that life was stolen it's wonderful instead I asked her all about it and this is what she said I joined an old-time dance club the trouble is are too many ladies over and no gentle men to spare it seems a shame it's not the same but still it has to be some ladies have to dance together one of them is me so just like we have secured Lydia I say lacrosse doing I danced witnesses [Music] she's light on her feet and Oh turn in the sky so can even be delightful evening dresses immersed [Music] when you dance it first two books you could have a quality of selflessness and if you here we go gets in the road you have to overcome it but you really start scoring as an observational comedian when you forget yourself and start seeing what other people are doing and she was an example in that there are people who have influenced you probably for good in some way people you admire for what they have said or for the way they've lived their lives for to repeat myself people who are what they appear to be people who disregard themselves very largely these are my heroes the power of good was what fueled her life good being close to God and she it was you know there's a wonderful bit in her in her in a sketch called first flight which I think he's her best piece of writing and I do it at the beginning of act 2 and she's talking to a man on an aeroplane it's her first trip to first flight where she says it's not exactly my first flight because I've lived the Channel Islands once but I didn't like it I came back by boat but this is my first proper flight with food well I haven't seen my son for five years he went out to America on a contract and he wasn't sure you know whether he'd settle or that but he hasn't honey he likes it very well he's done well he said several promotions and oh is in the electronics and when the last one came he wrote back and he said come on over ma'am I'll give you the trip yeah it is nice he is he's very bright but he's not spoilt with it well they live at a place called them I think it's called Stanford Connecticut you pronounce it well I shan't have to mention it when I'm there to meet me in New York yes yes he yes he has married an American girl she's an afro-american girl a black girl I don't hope I'm going to do it all right you know I'd like to be absolutely natural you know to make it easy for him that when the letter first came I did have a well you know I didn't cry at altar but I brought up my son keV and his sister both enough that it isn't who you asked what you are that matters and you know honestly I do believe that and at one point she she says to the to the man sitting next to her room there's this woman in our church and she says to me I don't know why you go on about us all being the same I look in my mirror and I am pink they look in their mirror and they're brown we are different we're meant to be different so I said to her people will always look different to people but in the sight of God we are all absolutely the same I'm sure of that and then she looks at the mirror and she says or hope he didn't man was saying that well because people don't like you to talk about God they get all embarrassed and start counting the buttons but I'm used to it well America here like come on to grandchildren to a boy and the girl it's a couple of list snaps of them once very very dark and the other honest read hardly notice and his wife is lovely looking and I know he'd never married somebody it wasn't nice she writes me such nice letters too she calls meet mother Comstock my name is mrs. Comstock and she says dear mother Comstock I like that I think you know it's kind of lively when I think of my mother-in-law I never called her anything for 25 years well you know sometimes deer in a time of crisis but that's nice you know mother come stuck oh then they met at a concert he's very musical is keV yes do you think this perhaps a place where they could be watching the airplane come in don't I have the kind of I don't know observation terraces or that well the plane is turning there's a building coming in now I think there are some people up there on a kind of terrace place yes that there there there they're all there oh I do hope I do it all right I just want to do it all right I think she was just a very very good person and it's not usual to find people in comedy who have that sort of warmth and generosity because none of her character she's not critical of any of her characters and I mean I like that I do like that I get I get fed up a very cynical act and she was very uncynical something is very nice as developed in my life I think when I began in the theater people used to come backstage and say oh you are funny oh you are this then the other and lately well I've retired from performing but it ended up by them saying oh we had such a good time now that to me is the tribute because it means that something was happening we completed a circle the artist and the audience and that is the biggest tribute I think you can make send it to an entertainer there's a very moving comment made by an elderly ma'am at her memorial service in Westminster Abbey people came from all over the country to Westminster Abbey it was packed with 2,000 people and this man said I never knew Joyce Granville but whenever I heard her on the radio or saw on television I felt that she knew me and that she loved [Music] [Music] [Music] so get a massage I try not to get my thickness and it took me an hour but to explore them and get this lot off my chest [Music] she was above all else a communicator and I think for a woman in that day and age that was almost unique and I think you know she may not be here but she'll always be with us [Music] [Music] I you

Channel: George Pollen

Views: 114,634

Keywords: Joyce Grenfell

Id: 0l9WGv_F56g

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/AromaMysteriosa]

She was amazing.