Margot Fonteyn - Margot (Full Film) | Tony Palmer Films

this is the story of how the most famous dancer that England has ever produced was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her of how a little girl called Peggy hokum brought up in Shanghai told her mother that she would one day become the greatest dancer in the world and of how in spite of being almost unable to walk she was still performing when she was 67 it is a story of courage and tenacity of unbelievable devotion to her art and to those whom she loved who in the end left her penniless and alone even to the extent that she was buried at first in a pauper's grave it is the stuff of fiction except that it is true even in my remote corner of wilderness in Canada she was a household name she was on everyone's tea biscuit tin and all that sort of thing I mean she really was she was a big name she was as big a name as the Prime Minister of England if not more you know she was up there with Churchill in my remote little dot on the globe so what she must have been here and loved and adored she was a household word you know she represent ballet she was she was ballerina she was Fontaine was ballerina that that's bat that was ballerina she had very bad judgment about people she definitely had bad judgment about people yes that was a where was her weakness and therefore a lot of people Jews to exploit his hurt she's his her but I think she rather like she didn't have very good taste of people who really wanted to know that rather separated her and me I couldn't quite face all the creeps I know that she was that she was having injections in her feet for the last few years when I was there because the AL Stratus was so bad and and fraid used to you know my good run across the stage and it's a market stop beetle crushing use your feet through the floor you know it was too painful but she was like the Queen she represented England she was it she was the face of the motherland she was a true heroine you identified with her I mean as a dancer or even as a member of the audience you just identified with the fact that this woman was there do sort of doing it for you that was the ability that that was that was the quality that she had that she was dancing in your place that if you could dance that was what you would do and she would embody it for you well she had one knee which hurt every time she bent it and I only found that out because I said to her why do always take your curtains on that leg so because every time it moved on the other leg kitchen was a shooting pain and would come into the dressing room sometimes and she'd be taking off her shoes and she take off her shoes and and and her feet were covered in blood because no matter how often you do things every now and then before dance so your feet bleed but she would always I mean I suppose I was privileged that she felt she could take them off when I was in the dressing room but if other people came in and her her stockings were special that she would hide her feet under the table so they didn't see [Music] [Applause] [Music] she was an invention really Margo the making of markers the most extraordinary thing she was a pudgy little girl plump little thing with a basin haircut did a little bit Chinese she had her nose changed since she found that there was a kind of glamour to dances that she felt that she needed she had a very low hairline and so when she pulled her hair back she she she used to pluck the hair around her round her for it to take her hairline back to give her a better line she dyed her hair but many dancers dye their hair that's not of this except there was in those days there was a sort of prejudice that you absolutely had to have black hair if you were going to be a dancer she wanted a long neck and she did achieve it you know her she she held her neck beautifully absolutely but if you see the pictures she was a little girl she didn't have especially long leg but she made herself into what she wanted to be when she opened her mouth it was dreadful she had a nice like this okay ready and she sometimes had to talk and they're doing it on interview and then she realized who she was it's terrible isn't it so she went in had a special voice lessons she was like a blank page she was something that people could write on she was like somebody in the cocoon actually she's like somebody coming out of chrysalis into this haunted beautiful bony face came out of this really unpromising material almost is on promising is her name really when it claimed of getting on stage I also thought it was her you know it isn't a good stage name and we changed it to a font s a Fontaine where my maiden name was fountas and that was the nearest we get to it who didn't want it to be too foreign everybody thinks that this the name Fontaine is very wonderful and wonderfully chosen had all the rest of it I would have to say that the facts are that it was chosen just because he became after another name in a telephone book and I think it was a hairdressers in the Charing Cross Road who supplied the magic because when the letter came back from the Fontes firmly saying on no account will we let our name be besmirched by theatrical associations Margo and her mother then went back to the telephone directory and looked down the eighth's and lo and behold there was a there was a hairdresser in the tran cross road Fontaine and they said write that will do [Music] [Applause] [Music] the first house that I can remember was in the London suburb of Ealing and there we were a happy ordinary little family of four with my father and mother and my brother Felix three years old with me the mother was illegitimate and had grown up without any experience of proper of mothering of being mothered and was pretty alarmed when she had children of her own this is this is BQ Hilda hokum to the extent that she actually tried to abort Margo and she was pregnant with her by throwing herself down the steps and taking strange potions that she read about in books and luckily she didn't succeed because I think you know to be illegitimate in the early part of the last century you would have been vilified and it was certainly kept a dark family secret all through Marcos life it never appeared in the press because she's been illegitimate I think it was the mother's sense of really having no existence of not being an authentic person with an authentic name made her put all her energy into Margot's life so I think that there wasn't room in Marcos life because she was so busy living her life for her mother there wasn't enough room for her to to move on into the state of motherhood an interesting new Margo died only two years after her mother her mother lived for her entire life they were if if Martha was married to anyone in the world she was married her mother they were a complete double act well originally I think my husband said something about deportment classes well of course in those days we didn't think anything about that sort of the dancing but anyway there was a dancing teacher just near and I took her there and I liked watching children particular this is my own child note and more gracefully than most there's a small child of about 40 one of those kiddie car things and it ran away down a hill and she fell off at the bottom as she bellend windows flew open doors flew open comes l had to bring the little girl in that I always have no customers no needs or bleeding and she took a couple more to match her up nobody sat in the drawing and the moment she got in that drawing room who could control yeah great big fun huh but she controlled us that even at that age without any saying from me so she's got a inborn natural control father had been working in London here's to having office overlooking some James's Park and when I was very tiny I used to go up to his office and look out across the park when he was at Manchester University he met my mother who was actually half Brazilian but had never been to Brazil in her life because she was born and brought up in Manchester at the great age of six with a few dancing lessons behind me I thought that I could do my favorite dance pretty well the Irish washerwoman's jig I was 8 when this happy family existence came to an end because my father accepted a position with a british american tobacco company to be chief engineer for their whole china division and for a variety of reasons we were in fact never again to live together as a family of four we arrived finally to Shanghai and the ship moored up in midstream the Wankel River opposite the famous Shanghai waterfront the bummer that must have been early of 1928 Marga and met in Shanghai when she was 7 it was spitting everywhere everywhere and my first memory was seeing a man in a faraway view cutting his charge led to make him a beggar with terrible terrible I took Marga who died she had no bones like anglo-saxons we all had bones sicker Margo flouted we told her the black cat she's always remained that little backpack to me what movement they clap their reserves came to life when she danced when I was 14 my mother brought me back to England because she thought that if I had any talent for dancing it was time that she took me somewhere too professional company if possible to see if I had any chances she brought into the Pheasantry in the kingsroad Chelsea where the princess Sarafine hasta Famer the famous ballerina from Imperial Russia had her dancing school so my mother arrived and said I want you to take my daughter for ballet classes she was rather old sad and tired at that time and she said no I don't want to take any more pupils she said I've had many pupils but they've grown up and they've gone away and they don't come to see me very often and I don't want to have more pupils so my mother stood her ground there and she said she said well I've come all the way from Shanghai just to bring my daughter to you you've got to take her previously I really didn't like ballet dancing very much because it was rather stiff and rigid and frankly boring and I liked something where I was banging a tambourine and stamping about in heel shoes I love that kind of thing rhythm and movement and everything but I didn't stop to think of my mother's special problem which was should she stay with me in London and try to advance me with my dancing or if I it really wasn't worth it and didn't have any talent we would go back to Shanghai and continue our life there so my mother felt that finding a dancing school but she has to get a real assessment and she took me to audition at the Sadler's Wells Theatre that was the school for the then Vik Wells Valley young company which much later became Britain's royal darling and its founder was Nina de Valois the presiding genius of British girl she was terrifying you know she would shout and stamp and get frightful across I mean she would even tell Margo offs and remember Margo was doing Swan Lake God had gone on for her first entrance and then you come off and there's a little gap before you go and do it the partager and she said your hair's not right and she ripped her headdress off and sort of put it all back on his she thought it was bit would be right you know Margo accepted it and went on school and secured camera but it is a fact if you look back on your life anyone in my position I was looking for talent with special people the certain people stand out but I do remember walking into the Sadler's Wells room there was chaos going on I saw a girl was no more than four fifteen I remember crossing the room she just hit me between the eyes like this I could even tell you the exercise she was doing and appeared in the corner a little girl as we looked at her then I was only about fifteen myself and she was two or three years younger so she really was a little girl with black hair a fringe shortcut under the - the ears we all looked at and watched her work and a bit of whispering went on she really was beautiful [Music] the first time that I ever came in contact with Margot Fonteyn must have been in 1933 or 34 [Music] I didn't get on with it and I found her inadequate what she was doing also she seemed to be to have a sort of superior attitude which didn't appeal to me and and also so I sensed a kind of streak of stubbornness [Music] she was rather social as I used to say to him your feet or rather buttery and so I bullied and bullied and bullied had she got more into a state and then finally she burst into tears and rushed up and put her arms around me and said I'm sorry but I'm trying my very best I can't do any more [Music] I think we fed each other tremendously and I mean I always enjoyed working with her and I think she enjoyed working with me and we developed each other I think in me in the course of thing I mean I taught her a great deal and she also enriched me Fred certainly needed somebody that he that he could mold and eventually shape into a muse his toy if you like he was going to create something and she was the plasticine she was the terracotta his thumbprint on that basic lump of clay and after a rocky start when she felt that she couldn't understand anything that he wanted very soon she said you are in charge if he saw her picking up the cigarette in the early days he would snap it out of her hand and say ballerinas don't smoke and that was how it was and it was a very profound relationship the principal dancer that Saddles Wells theater was Robert Helpmann who was a man of the theater if ever there was if he was on the stage nobody was going to look at me so this was the best training I could possibly have had to become a real artist of the ballet not just a dancer this amateur film of Giselle in which I'm dancing with Robert Helpmann was taken during a performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1937 I had seen Fontaine in the classroom and in fact she had played my son in a ballet called the haunted ballroom and I not taken much notice of her she was a leggy little girl with very intense black eyes and when de bal what told me that this was to be my new partner i must admit that i had certain fears until this child starts to dance and she had this curious quality of making one bout to cry even if she was doing something funny partnership was perhaps one of the most extraordinary experiences in my life because I danced with Fontaine for 25 years and I don't suppose for the first nine or ten of those years I ever spoke to her at all outside the rehearsal room or the dressing I'd say good night what time's the rehearsal in the morning but I never spoke to her I think it was because I thought she was standoffish and she thought that I was standoffish then we had this really superb musical director constant Lambert constant Lambert was one of the greatest influences on Fontaine's life he developed the taste not only in paintings but in literature as he indeed did with mine constant and he was open about all the time it seems unfortunately he was a very very heavy drinker and I mean this wonderful story told about constant when he was conducting Sleeping Beauty here what nice but he got staggered onto the podium he turned to the concertmaster and he said I think when the part of frog becomes the power to cease it's time for me to go home how Margo who is this rather sheltered girl suddenly fell into the hands of this wheel bohemian who led you know a pretty rough sort of life one way or another I saw I said what you know what made him such a good conductor and Ashton said very good Tempe very good he a very good sense of balance very large [ __ ] all in a sort of stream of equal equally valued things and I can remember looking at the pictures of constant I'm looking like a kind of ash heap I mean really quite disgusting actually miss sort of food down himself and the stories about him falling over drunk and you see this colossally bloated pastiche Churchill figure in at least one cigarette in his mouth if not several trying to put that in my mind next to the immaculate young form like Margot Fonteyn and really puzzling over a highlighted word she with the absent father always in her life which said welcome me to the idea of somebody who who was on the constant model and my god knew so much must have been fantastic to rule to such good fun she did have two abortions when she when she was young and one presumes they were constants children that weird thing of being in a company and knowing that this person had a huge power to wield and wanted to sexually and you know and I think she was frightened and didn't quite know what what to do her mother was certainly a thoroughly alarmed constant pretty enormous a lot of pressure on it to which she eventually succumbed and it sort of set the tone for mark all my best relationships which were always difficult men it's a difficult constant was that he was diabetic so that drinking made him not just drunk but ill so you know she had a terribly hard time with him physically and I mean that can't have been you know she was forever worrying and fretting about him but the thing about abortion in those days in the company the worst thing who do really was have a baby because dancers just didn't have children you made a decision were you going to dance are you going to divert your maternal side and there was no question that your entire you know like a nunnery you had to go in there and you had to absolutely cast out all thought of leading a double life people were reluctant to talk about their relationship was that she was probably still speaking under age and this made not a blood very good when it was brought out into the light of day dances particularly would not talk about it in fact several of them if I mentioned the subject got distinctly ratty about it Michael Soames I can remember saying if I see anything about I live in your book I will throw it the book on the fire and stoke it he actually once went to her flat and there she was on the floor with all these books that constant had given her ripping out the pages that constant had signed and that I know that upset Michael locked on he just couldn't believe what he was seeing but she did she she tried to destroy everything of evidence I think it has something to do with not just with her youth but with her underage two Ness shame and problems to do with that embarrassment shame and problems to do with that and much more to do with how her she must have felt having given so much when he turned away and got mad somebody else I mean that's a pattern of behavior that we can see all sorts of people repeating and but she had a very very very bad case of it's so bad that she even cut him out of her autobiography as a professional figure let alone as her personal world one day I was in the dressing room arguing an artistic point and I said but constant would have done it this way whatever that point was and immediately Margot's face which I had been talking to her in the mirror she swung around with panic written all over her face it oh no no no you don't understand you don't understand no it's not that she was stricken she'd actually been stood up at a registry office by constant I guess she was traumatized by the whole relationship and decided in her wonderful way and that goes into the box with the key that you throw away they were supposed to meet at a church and it was going to happen and he didn't turn up the idea that something else married him or was a terrible blow to Margo went very hard with her and she really in Aston's were cut the idea of him completely out of my life and sewed herself up and became a virgin again is what is what Ashton said you know it was a very very harsh thing for her to find that you know that somebody else had taken constant from her [Music] she was longing to give all her love to someone unconditional love to somebody that must have been very profound need in Marga I suppose she'd received so much love but what she odd to do is to give it she's received so much I don't mean mad from the public you know always been adored by everyone but actually is first what to do is to give it yes this he never really had the love she would have loved but he said you're gonna make me cry if I start thinking about it not more but it is a very she had a fulfilling life in many ways but we very often get control freaks in the theatre who need to keep you in your place because if you allowed that person to fly and they earn right would go beyond your wildest dreams I never saw her with a really close friend when we used to go nightclubbing after performance or dancing or partying and things she was just like sometimes a child about Christmas you know she was just having so much fun and she knew she should we only wish she'd be in bed and resting our feet for the next day's double performance but you know life's also gotta be live and I think that was also the loneliness that comes with the territory our Valley Korea it's a short physical career and when you're in you're in like pop stars and when you're out you're out and that's it but in between the soul of the person has to live and some people are strong enough as with the pop world some are strong enough to survive and others just turn to drugs or drink or or just fall apart or feel as though they're on the scrappy [Music] when the war broke out we were in Arnhem gun started and the Germans started coming down leaving out of their airplanes into onto the ground we could see these black objects coming down and landing all around us [Music] in the first into the lake payment said I don't think you ought to stay after the performance to suffer what you mean and they said well there's been an incident on the board it nothing and the next interval they said how quickly can you all get in the in the in the coaches how the Germans invading so we have to be quickly did take about three days before we got back to England invasion only two four days so it was quite an area stating we spent a day in the kind of I'm an Asha Country Club and there we were and I'm and I remember there were lots of old girls and they were all looking for before had for a fourth for bridge the whole time this at all they were wearing with the guns going and the distance everything and they were all looking for a bridge suddenly the door burst open and they said the buses are here women only and Nanette said then none of us go she said I'd rather take the boys and leave the women because the boys will suffer most so unless it's all and we all stayed but we had to leave everything behind us and there was seven years work tied up there yeah all our famous English scores were lost we couldn't get them out or our scenery all our costumes we had to get out we did squeeze out the last boat that left Holland had us on it and we went down a ladder and this was just the bare boards of a boat we curled up in a corner like this on straw like animals landed in Harwich they said Oh can't land here your papers aren't for Harwich the men were called up but the women were excused being called er providing we gave six weeks performances to the oops yeah in answer as it was called so we used to dance in hangers and we used to go to the army camps and we had a feeling of being part of the war effort you went into dingy old assembly halls or church halls with uneven floors and cold and smelling of coke phew Luzon we never had a holiday after the show Saturday it was a question of an overnight in the Train and we would sleep either on the luggage racks or put the cases between the seats and and put our legs across that way the audience's came came to enjoy the Ballad tremendously I suppose because it was such a complete contrast to the dismal depression and dreariness and horror of life outside the theater we were working in small theaters in the provinces where there was very intimate contact between the audience and the dancers and we had more acting ballets at that time which were very good in the small theater and had a tremendous impact our basic diet with sausages and only sausages and potatoes and in the dekes they were very naughty you know the landlady's they and we felt at least maybe they weren't but we felt that they pinched our bottom we only got we had two ounces of butter a weekend and two ounces marjorine we never knew what it was to have an empty house anywhere gradually this enormous public grew because people really haven't curls they have a little food they had no clothes there was nothing to spend their money on but theater and you never could get in now it was almost impossible to get into a Center was fantastic success did it did the Betty oh when the war ended it was decided to move Sadler's Wells ballad to Covent Garden then under its new director David Webster it was a dance hall during the war and that was sort of very exciting to think it was going to be an opera house full time she never had before it was only open four seasons before the war I said to me that if we must absolute at all costs go there we were all absolutely horrified besides the stage after the ones we've been used to if we'd gone back to smaller theatres we'd have been smaller company by being a great opera house a better thing had to expand had to grow through suddenly inherits the big house to have to have the right furniture to go with it I think the worst tenant in for me was going to come down and slowly wash them bring the plush seats up from the basement where they were under the floor there and [ __ ] back in that place it was a fantastic thing to watch this happening I can remember even when we first opened excitement one night in the gallery in retro and across sector of the seeds there very grim [Music] Stephen built a which opened the set our own favorite of the twenties 1946 designed by Nestle was one of the most successful productions we've ever done [Music] especially invited audience came to the first performance with led by the king and queen and princesses and queen mother be merry when Queen Mary arrived she was conducted upstairs by Sir David Webster to the Royal anteroom and she gave one piercing look round it he said what no fool that night was the mostess because nothing except what you could see existed in the theater I think when we moved to the Opera House the Sleeping Beauty I think we all felt we had to change our style considerably but I think the one who thought most about it was Margot Fonteyn and I think she studied the theater she spoke to people who'd seen dancers dancing there before the war she went into the whole question very thoroughly she got over to every seat in the house and that's what they was loved about [Music] nobody had the clothes to be very grand I mean they'd brought out on with our old evening dresses and things everyone today over they could dress up but I always said it was a girl of this smell strong with mothballs so they all did warn anything like that was so loud [Music] I would never forget Mardas physical or neuro was something so extraordinary and even just the running was sheer magic her ability to stand on point and hold that position and you were sort of gasping as I'm sure the dancers must have been - about how long she was going to stay up because they weren't quite net close enough for her to put her hand out for support because that's what she did not want she wanted them to be far enough away to give her the opportunity to show how she could stand on points like that and it was absolutely strong [Applause] [Music] and she did her relative relevant to balance health the balance and not distorting the music but she just held the balance and the audience held its breath [Music] I was doing leads on four-pounder wink and then it went up to four pound fifty and even at Covent Garden more sure and I went in at ten pounds a week and we had to fight to be raised to fifteen pounds a week between Webster and Annette one sent you to the other oh yes we weren't paid Margo was really one of the most important person in my life and I can say because it's true and it's deep and I'm very proud of it because I had seduced one of the greatest artists I've ever known we were young both of us as she had maybe a few years more than I but not much and working by the by the same in Paris and then we went down and worked by down near on close to the river and I said oh I would like to swim I never swim in this in the Sun because it's dirty you know swimming said I said I go I think I will go and swim lessons I started trying grass and I see Margo and somehow go and dressing and I did boom and she did boom in the water and we went on the other side swimming and we came back thinking we hope that nobody stole because we will both of us naked I was just the person at the right moment who opened the door she was flying by her own away from all the people around her at Covent Garden were making the low and were like this on her they thought they were owning her and she escaped and suddenly she was in Paris with there a young dancer and she had fun she was laughing I think she was laughing so much and suddenly she was somebody else I opened the door went in many nightclubs you know after the war these places on left bank where all the young celebrities and old one to everybody was there and I went in a few of them with Margo and we were dancing like mad you know their watch was the music a la mode at that time the host was not the heart was before the whole I found a little two days ago in my bedroom right oh she says that to me she says you know I owe you something very important it's that after I've worked with you I felt free she just decided that was another way of living so she was suddenly dressed like the most elegant woman she always looked immaculate I mean you never saw her in a pair of jeans I've you know or sneakers or anything like that heels and gloves and hats and do suits and all was perfectly groomed Harold's terribly tightly in a chignon you know not like today nothing wrong with it but you know she was immaculate and we were all sort of you know god that's that's what a ballerinas is all about at the time of the first Royal Ballet visit to America in 1949 the dancers were beginning to be seen by the Rotorua as good vehicles for their fashion being ambassadors for Britain all the girls all the men had to be impeccably dressed and there one or two members of the company and like Leslie Edwards for example who would check everybody and say but look you look awful change that you know get you have different and things like that and it was all part it was all part of this ballet image [Music] so he looked didn't want me to take it he only wanted me to take one act he said that America would never stand for a friend a better third time I says we either take it as a hold I'm not at all personally I mean I was terrified had this long attack of stage fright which really lasted for three months and journalists who tried to interview me in New York when we arrived their family absolutely mute I was so frightened I couldn't say anything I was so sure of failure I thought this is going to be terrible and I'm going to let down the whole company and Annette de paola it's going to be a ghastly thing and I was so stunned because I had but I was by then totally convinced that I was going to be a disaster and it was just so much Traverse she must have felt that the entire prestige of Great Britain was resting on her tiny shoulders this was before the Beatles invasion when Britain was almost a defeated country need to come out of the war in a very depleted state almost in reputation and I think that although America must have been happy to greet the plucky little English kids on the other hand there was a certain feeling that the English weren't particularly very good at the arts anyway I mean you know you didn't have English musicians you didn't have it the idea of the English dancing must have been a rather peculiar idea I remember especially that night in America of the Sleeping Beauty because the audience went wild and I remember after one variation that she did a man in a box nearly fell out he was so excited and New York was at her feet and she she couldn't believe it really we could [Music] we were all standing in the wings I was a knitting lady in the first act of Sleeping Beauty and so we all stood in the ring with him and I think everybody was crying and we had never seen Margo dancing like that never also the audience reaction which was very surprising to us you know the American habit of clapping in the middle of you know English audiences don't do that they wait until the very end but all of a sudden you know there's all this applause in the middle she got into an arabesque or into a great balance in attitude and there was this huge amount of applause nobody knew what they were going to see that night and when she ran on she ran on not as a ballerina at all she did run on as a very happy 16 year old there were none of the great presentations that a lorina might be expected to make she hurtled onto the stage smiling from the edge of a her went at it with a parent made total joy and before it was even a third of the way and the mayor of the city leaned around that post to Nanette Duvall WA and said you're in lady and she came to the famous Rose Adagio where the princess balances on the hand of all the princess and when she came to the third print she'd caught such a miraculous balance that she didn't even take his hand she just smiled at him but I thought the audience would explode and in that one miraculous balance Fontaine created the great reputation of the English merry [Music] [Applause] [Music] she was very very important to us at that period and across this incredible reception she got from the plastic which was America turned her into the International star ballerina of England and jaw she had an international name overnight [Applause] [Music] particularly during the first very difficult years when the subsidy was so small the only thing that had any possibility of making money was a barely and most certainly our first ten years in the States and the dollars we bought for here were of tremendous importance of this Opera House there were very big scale in fact the nickname we got after the first season was not the ballerinas but the Donner Amos but shows you the dollars must have been courting it at that time I knew she'd be a wonderful dancer a ballerina natural that was the word we use them for a few dancers ballerina and we knew that but I didn't know that she conquer the world simply dumbfounded by it first was when the magazines Time and Newsweek birth came out in editions with my picture on the cover I thought that it was something that only happened to heads of state or something Margo is one of those things that may not happen again for a very long time they're very few such Altis spring up in any company built in Russia you will see exactly the same thing we should had a dictation before we have another funky [Music] they had a room fame establish those barriers to the Casas which used to trundle us all the way over and all the way back and became home while like a circus I used to get quite sad at leaving it I mean I can even remember the name of my my steven kirsh was called fort wayne or something I got so fond ofor way [Music] I used to share a bunk with Moira Moira sheriff and sometimes she would be up and I would be done sometimes she will be tell her I'd go up the orchestra seemed to be very happy playing chess I tried to sleep and couldn't sleep on the train I tried sleeping tablets and they made no difference whatsoever so I gave there's a they just made me feel awful in the day when we toured in America on very very long long tours five months 16:20 one-night stands where we really lived on the train and I can't remember how we ever did our washing we had to get off the train by sort of half past eight or something and there was something like that in the morning but we got off at half past eight with the seams in our stockings exactly straight you know was before jeans and t-shirts so nothing about our appearance was casual it was so formal and Margo of course was you know the leader of this very formal decayed I remember having gloves with me I think we managed to ditch the Hat somewhere along the line but in the little room adjacent to the news we all struggled to keep our balance and get our stockings straight when the trains moving [Music] to be the leader of the company in her 20s was very very difficult but it was much harder in her 30s and harder in her 40s because she had such an enormous reputation to live up to all the time and I think that people expected so much from her because she was mostly flawless and I would have thought that it was extremely difficult for her I used to stand quite near her on the bar and and if I think about it now I mean I can see the texture of her skin I can see the color pink that her practice clothes were I can see the shape of her arm in front of me and how her hair was done she was just I think so completely disciplined and then she had this wonderful sense of humor she was funny she could go from leaning over the bar roaring was laughter giggling away and in a split-second be completely serious and absolutely focused and getting on with her job the thing I find so fascinating this control amazing control she had and her ability to keep an absolute consistency to all have a woman see didn't matter how many hundred Sleeping Beauty's which she sells been by she never fell below this particular standard of excellence because most of us we're all human and there are some days when perhaps who hit a really high point but there are other days when you are going to be a little bit below and you know it mind terribly but it was this consistency of performance said that everybody who saw her I would have thought over 30 years I saw a really good performance I was first asked to partner Margo when I was 19 and I was quite terrified to be supporting the greatest ballerina in the world was to say the least rather awesome there was one lift at the end of the main bothered her where she's at arm's length above my head horizontal to the ground and I have to run round the stage and spider down the body and then the budded er finishes and Margo in her enthusiasm on the first night did a tiny extra regal when she was above my head and unfortunately fell out of both of my hands and landed really heavily on the stage I was devastated the audience I think most of them had stood up it disbelief and I was ready to get back onto the next plane to London and Margo is wonderful she giggled and laughed I didn't simplify simplify simplify doesn't mean to say that there isn't a huge technical resource suggesting the simplification but she wanted everything to be clean and neat and clear and she hated fuss she hated trimmings she wanted the absolute essence of a thing it became rather like Chinese art that the hand hovers and hovers and others and then there's one stroke that the one stroke is the perfect stroke she danced for the purity of dance and the wonderful musicality I mean some dances beautiful dances I won't name them but I couldn't name several that had not told musical that Margo was unbelievable for you'd hear dee dum tum and you'd think she's not going to get there absolutely on the net everybody was waiting for her to make her first entrance and this fabulous smile would come on and she'd warm the whole theater not just the stage the whole theater you would feel always well with the world somehow but what struck me about her was this woman dancing and not just you know a dancer female dancer she was this real woman which I haven't seen in anybody else really she couldn't get into an ugly position you see even if she didn't do what was completely accurate which of course she did but if she didn't it wouldn't matter because whatever she did looked perfect her dark jet-black hair her huge arm and eyes much always wore bright red lipstick she radiated happiness something hard for people to understand nowadays but honestly when she came on the stage the kilowatts went up really they did if a principal walk down the corridor of our studios when we were in the school or in the company you you stood back and with the rosin box in the Queens you cleared if Fontaine was heading to the rosin huge respect and a bit of fear because we waited till you were spoken to music was royalty really it was a star performance you couldn't falter from the way she looked in rehearsals perfectly turned out to the glamour at the end of the show in anyway she heard us so it was a wonderful sort of example for all of us the technique had brilliant moments the young dancers looking at it they probably wouldn't be able to spot it because it was so amazingly disguised do you have the most perfect proportions and the strain of the body was evenly distributed that sounds terribly technical but it was one of the things that they kept her almost injury freeze it was beautiful training and a very very sound technique and a correct way of working there perhaps isn't easily detected the brilliance came in the understatement when I was in my 30s I thought the technique was it this is what dancing was about this is what we trained to do every day of our life to make our technique as beautiful as possible thus Margo taught us that it's not that it's not technique of course you have to have a technique to dance she had the most extraordinary way of telling a story of making it real from the beginning to the end so you believed absolutely everything she was doing no it was no arty-farty star there's nothing stitched on from the outside it actually came from inside her amazing ability to reach people to come across the footlights and actually feel you person sitting in the audience she was actually dancing for you and was able to bring you in all the legality and grace and a kind of year with the kind of spring in her step and of course you remember have we were the first boy you know that wonderful powers at the beginning of entrance [Music] I think that she felt trapped in the expectations of all these other people and she was a soul who actually tried to please she always felt inadequate she always wanted to do better and so gradually all these pressures built up from all parts of the compass and I think it actually split her personality every hour of the day in Margo's life there were seven people wanting something of her and they would want it then that afternoon there would be messages stacking up saying would you do this would you do that I haven't got seats for this you promised that you'd do this for my niece I mean she had a very parsing equation ship with what might be termed as normal life she's been treated as something odd special and in many cases controlled from a very early age she had the expectation of her mother nobody knew Valois she had the expectation of Frederick Ashton what was in it for them I don't think that she ever really got free of that crushing burden and I don't think she knew for a minute why she carried it she was a driven creature but anyone with a stroke of genius is a driven creature these people are sacrificed they really are sacrificial victims they put on the stone and they're pulverized [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] these are a present from for my birthday they are a pair of twin cheese owned by Margot Fonteyn I'm a big fan of Margot Fonteyn and I my friend bought them for me as a lovely birthday present studied Margot Fonteyn and her story of sort of them dancing in the face of adversity I suppose with her bad feet dancers often spend quite a long time cutting them so they can be wrong but she seems to have cut all the inner soles out of them which I know a lot of dancers do when they supposedly have bad feet to pronounce the arch when they're standing up on point in them and it seems that she stripped out layers of the the insole here and in these shoes she was married murdered and declared mental all in a day's work of course it was better than fiction at London Airport back only two days after release from Panama City Jail Dave Fontaine came home self possessed dessert you were taking about [Music] I don't see how to deal with the let's watch or trying to say don't do it did you carry a garden and answer that question I live as you can guess when I carried [Music] [Music] Indian cartoon to be double as a sort of gun-toting revolution mean I can't help what newspapers not no that would be completely on you people got any knowledge this revolution is - what are you trying to get me to say exactly I presume that something has all those things I am NOT going to say anything I'm the god beautiful day and she said it pretty grimly savagely she said oh she had to go to another tone Australia that seems a nice it ah God you can't he was too exhausted you can't do another immediately afterwards of America and then she looked at me and that doesn't we do guns don't come cheap she said today it'll establish you that's the only time she's ever to me oh I suppose that might remember I think the only time she ever revealed that she'd paid useful she said that they were in Panama and um suddenly the police came teacher said to her sit on their chest so she sat on chairs from pattered my conversation was perfectly charming and when they gone so why did I have to sit uncomfortable is it open it Sharon was real hang grenades [Music] the revolutionary tendencies embargo film town were extreme to the point of lunacy I actually at one period was heavily involved because she used to take me after meetings with Geneva based arms manufacturer dr. W and we got stuck in a very strange meeting place in North London there on a very very foggy evening I mean stupid paperbacks with thriller covers are not in it and we had this meeting with the good doctor who was thinking that he was going to sell her several million u.s. dollars worth of armaments and at some point when this is going onto my mounting horror I realized that she was pretending all this was absolutely real and her feet appeared to be still on the ground she had to go off to a nearby cafe to take a call from somewhere or other possibly the bank manager saying are you mad she decided she'd get more of a hearing from her Scottie steps on after all she knew his propensity for cooking up financial deals because God knows he he'd cooked up enough when he was still at school and so he took over the running and said well Margaux we can do this we can do that we can do the other anyway I think it's safe to say that on that particular time I mean she ended up with a small suitcase full of automatic weaponry but it probably only took her a few performances to pay that lot off but if we'd been stuck with the good doctor she'd have been dancing till she was 150 it was in Cambridge in 1937 that I fell suddenly and instantly in love our little company used to dance every year in May in the university town of Cambridge which coincided with the undergraduates final examinations but in spite of that they somehow managed to entertain us in an almost continuous floating party one evening I returned to find that the party had settled temporarily in our rooms two dark-haired young men were dancing they were dancing the Rumba which at that time was practically unknown in England I was fascinated by the younger of the two men I found out that his name was Tito the party line was that she met Jesus Gabriel absolutely fell for each other had to be parties then he reappeared in her life and she never looks at anyone before or since I know that was the party line and she steps through to her dying day and when Tito came along for the second time of course she totally exaggerated it she's never thought about anybody but her sister Kate we saw absolutely complete Buncombe I don't actually think she hardly remembers him he was dashing I'm shocked then he reappears he calls her in Atlanta then he vanishes again you know so hidden there for her but he's up there in her head obviously in some way then he reappears yet again at the Met backstage and the next day he says we can get married well first of all that's highly romantic second of all she was ready to be married third of all it's not so bad to be introduced to a world of Onassis and Winston Churchill and all those horrible fascist leaders who Marius was drawn to and would have been one had he ever really come to control Panama she had a South American connection with her Brazilian ancestry so that wasn't alien there he was and he assures her that his wife won't in the least mind divorcing him because Margot could not allow herself to see as a home breaker well and the more you know about Ras the less heat with a home person you couldn't break his home what was it [Music] we were married in Paris in February 1955 of the Panamanian consul the office was extremely small packed with people my parents even couldn't get near to pandemonium there's so many people you could hardly get in the door they were smart or and white just by do people I think the relationship with Tito was something that was totally manufactured in Margo's head Margo did say once that she had been bullied into the whole idea of marriage she had so many people pointedly saying my dear you are becoming rather distant you'll end up as middle-aged and average and she would try and stem all this as she saw it interference in her private life by saying very well I'll get married when I'm 35 and it's incredible chance that Tito arias suddenly appeared in her dressing room when she was something like 34 and 3/4 and it took her a long while to be persuaded that this was anything other than a complete folly I mean that's what she saw it is the time she didn't think that he kept his figure very well and that she knew that he was a philanderer and not least that he was a married man with three children why should she get involved with all of that but gradually it became part of the mantra well I've got to get married at 35 because I've said I'm going to and therefore it might as well be this one and then she kind of reinvented the whole romance of her meeting in Cambridge when she was 18 but in fact he stood her up in Cambridge afterwards we had a beautiful reception and we went off for a honeymoon in the Bahamas [Music] [Music] she's the epitome of everybody thinks is a ballet star and her life was horrendous she worked hard all her life and he was taking all her money she didn't man going out in little boats and smuggling guns was a mad situation not mad tragic situation really whenever we were traveling and Tito used to promise to come and join the tours with us and everything and he never did you know I mean he once he did but now go and I was sunbathing on the beach and at one point he was mostly in the water and then he came out and in front of me you know she actually pleaded seriously with him to go to bed with her in the afternoon because afternoon was the time they rested and danced at night you know and not a bit of it he was having too much fun in the water thank you very much he didn't give a damn and she was on the phone to him all the time and pleading with him he had no reason not to join the tour because of the time we were on tour money might turn up just once and say it was gonna stay a week and then he'd find somewhere to go like Monte Carlo and gamble instead but she had a huge bouquet of shorts every services of dark red roses arrives but every performance and it was from Tito but Jesus sent Marga the bill so she's perfect he was what is called an international lawyer I don't know what that means but that's what he was supposed to be and so space he spent his time internationally he used to know the cousin John Wayne and all these people I believe he used to work for them well Tito I first met when he came on a set of a picture that we were making called what was sniffing the picture I can't remember the name of the picture he was about 12 years old he and his mother were visiting up here from Panama and his father was then president I've known Tito to be a most brilliant young man he's the most objective thinking fellow that I ever met he can look at any situation without emotion which is so hard for a lot of us to do I think it was when they danced for Princess Gracie's wedding in Monte Carlo and Tito was there and I and he went into this room and there was all these sheets and sheets of stamps with Princess Grace little stamps and we just went and collected a whole load of them and started handing them out but it was typical of Tito you know he just would he he stole that way and he didn't he we went on honeymoon Tito had a yacht and we sailed around the Bahamas for two weeks not our return to London Tito arrived as ambassador for Panama the courtesan james's Tito is ambassador for three years Margaret really had a very poor deal on the diplomatic corps business when teacher was and best I once asked about this and his uncle's a dictator of the time and I said who I think I'd asked who was the previous ambassador she don't know Tito was the first ambassador he decided where he married me he wanted to be the ambassador so his father his uncle was a dictator so he fixed it and he said the president I don't think that they would call themselves dictators Margot bought the embassy in turn a place paid for furnishings and the art team and all the staff took her to the cleaners because of course she knew nothing about domestic line he wanted his wife up on the stage dancing that was the whole point of it it was it was his wife being on that stage without acclaim that got very important people into his box in the Opera House and that was what he was interested in he wasn't interested in what was going on on the stage he was interested in the people who were sitting in the box beside him and so therefore there was no question that he was going to ask his wife to stop dancing because there isn't d'etre of his business was that she was dancing and Ito allowed her to go on the wrong with her profession completely and that for elapid man is almost unheard of all its heard of now but at that generation it was almost unheard of and to run around the world by herself that was almost unheard of at that time [Music] [Applause] [Music] but during that time Tito was plotting his revolution and at the end of three years he resigned as ambassador because he was making a revolution really it was against the chief of police more than against the government of the time and it was quite an exciting event we boarded a little launch for the nola and we went out to sea meeting up with a shrimp boat some of the arms had arrived in Panama in the false bottom of a little dinghy and this dingy due to the weight of the arms sink splendid captain said oh I don't mind sharks at all and he dived in and he got the thing up and they broke open the bottom and they unpacked all these guns and ammunitions and things which are stacked all around on the deck very early a plane circled round well that was the policeman they had discovered us and I said what happen if you come back to Panama he said I'll be arrested and Tito clambered aboard the shrimp boat and it might seem no time at all there's this little thing was a speck in the distance Tito had said we were to go back to Panama is a decoy when she went off in the boat antes de huantar from one direction brave as a lion I don't think immediately they were caught leaving Margo in the little boat and that the boatman gave an interview the boatman in Panama's home and said o lady he had to row was in crying the entire way back to Panama and that Queen City she was terribly upset to read that into my little being cheers the whole time Wow they never told anybody the boatman said it said oh yeah how she tried her way back the harlot cried back so poor Mago and when she got back to Panama she was arrested and she went to jail the governor sent her roses from his garden when we went to film the prison dusk approach vultures were flashing over the jail this is their preference and finally we were allowed in and there was this superintendent so Scarpia figure and all the prisoners were looking up and we went out together we saw the place where she had been charged and we saw where she had been imprisoned but that was an extraordinary it was a terrible trailer finally they did ask me these questions I said as little as I could about who any of the other people were and then they took me a bit later into a car straight from jail into a car and out I was deported [Music] [Applause] the doctor said that a bullet had lodged against his spine and they couldn't be sure whether this might cause paralysis and after three days when the doctor was making an examination of him I saw that he shook his head most likely this spinal injury would be for life she was having affair with the man's wife why else how do you everybody knows that now I think the panamanian slightly they pretend is not sure but of course she was having affair with her wife well girl you've been trying to ring him frantically she could not five didn't know where he was the answers he got off into the mountains with the wife and he kid dissented from the Watsons came bound I didn't say them somebody says the wife was in the car that I don't know but I rather duck but sadly he came down and stopped the traffic lights that the husband was waiting boom boom that was that at first we were told by a doctor that my father didn't want to see us because they said he felt that he couldn't see us covered in blood and without his daily shave there were so many people there and they were so just such confusion there were people there's a line for giving blood the line went around the corner they were just could hardly get into the emergency they took us in another way and then we get there and it's pandemonium women screaming man I didn't think he was going to die you know you always think your father is a Superman never occurred to me that he was never going to be able to speak to me comfortably or hug me or walk we had political enemies and we had personal friends that were political enemies and we knew things about people and sorted enough that was part of our laughing means growing that and Tito had grown with that but to Margo that was an entirely different way of seeing things I said to Roberta what happened to the man who shot your father he said oh he's fine I saw him now today so I said didn't he go to prison and he said no and I said why I waited then he said in Panama dar things that we understand when Tito got shot it was bad timing well I know it was bad timing because when we're in Rome and he was supposed to turn up it was to discuss divorce that I know and he just didn't turn up and he'd been shot so there it was finished that was the end of the story it was over and I suppose she felt she couldn't leave him in that way she had decided at that station no this was not going to go on was it mr. fari know who shot him five times what expensive five bullets those were in terms of twisting her life totally but I mean the fact that matter is the the marriage was over [Music] as soon as possible the doctors in Panama thought it best to send him to the best rehabilitation hospital which is in England at Stoke Manuel Fontaine being Fontaine or if you want to say at Peggy hook'em being Peggy hook'em she was not gonna walk away from her husband who was turned into a quadriplegic there is another level once he was a quadriplegic he was in her hands the control had shifted there wasn't gonna be a lot of hanky and panky from then on she it's horrible to say but if she was going to have him she had him where she wanted him Marko needed to be needed that was her raise on debt she was loyal loving glorious friend but she needed to be needed and Tito had never needed her until those bullets went in his body now he really really needed her that would not be the time to walk away from Tito I mean she couldn't she couldn't divorce Tito them because that thing that flourishes in her was was being used when I said how long how amusing teacher was and what a pity of people didn't talk to him she said yes and rather wistfully she said to course it it's nice to me because it means he bothers with me now it's know what to mean she said well when we were married and we were living in London he was the ambassador days would pass him and when he wouldn't talk to me except to tell me how someone was because he thought I was stupid his secretary Marlena Worthington who was with him and has remained with him from when he was first shot and was in the hospital in Panama has been a tremendous influence in his recovery cd had this little secretary Marlena whose court that I once went to Grove the house a good place with Caesar Marga to his flat with might be so expensive for her poor thing as much as Karen Johnson and I went up and she said Jesus run away with Marlena he was paralyzed to the neck you mustn't wish she was quite something she said they left me a note the other sad thing was that Margo never really understood what he was saying you know after he was shot and when he came out of his coma he couldn't speak properly so it was very garbled when he was still at Stoke Mandeville and she was really spending her life down there then she was spending nights down there and getting up at god knows what al and insisted on feeding his breakfast to him and then catching an early train to be in class by 9:30 until garthe rude I mean I didn't know how she did it and then after performances she needed sandwich and get on the train and get back there said she was there to feed him in the morning she learnt to drive at that so that she could get herself from the hospital to the railway station and then on the train up to London coming into work at barons Court to the rehearsal studios looking very tired knowing that she danced the night before she never missed class she was always there one was very aware again of this fantastic focus but however terrible she must be feeling she focused on what she had to do and to do to get through class she never left class early she would stay right to the end and then if she was rehearsing she'd rehearse full-out [Music] I rang Margo and I said there's a guy called John Mary wants to come and see me you know these sons but you know if he sir do you mind coming around be with me he says she came round and he'd said to me I'll ring your doorbell three times and pleased to announce the door to anyone else it was like being in a James Bond movie you know absolutely petrifying and then it all amounted to virtually nothing you know it was just crazy I think he was just conning us but as he was leaving Margot said oh do you ever do mercenary work I thought here we go you know she's gonna start doing silly things again and she did get him to go there and I think was to get rid of somebody who was threatening to and when he came and demanded thousands of pounds from her for having gone to Panama and not done what he was supposed to do which was shoot someone it's a wild isn't it the deal is that this woman would want to employ a mercenary who she'd never met before to go and kill somebody virtually go and kill somebody and then he came back not having killed you wanted to add a thousand thoughts which wasn't me now you think doing a thousand pairs it's not much but for her it was everything didn't he threatened her for ages well you know she looked after Roberto when he was a boy going to school but he was 12 or 13 something like that he was livid was b/q mary's mother he was a monster when he was 12 he was a monster it's still a kid off your back if you'd put it done somewhere you know he was terrible well you know he was in prison him well your name's in prison everywhere he'd been impacting me every prison in South America and you see when he was in London he had the same name exactly the same name as his father and he would go to all these nightclubs and sell and use theatres name and run up tremendous pills and of course to teach which meant Marcus he was being held in interval for fraud then the he'd ask for books mend eventually he asks for money that's what I do you want money you come have money influence oh well I fi this one I just took this man that you will give him two hundred pounds and I should I I'm not two hundred pounds I'm not giving him any money and sure enough well my jewelry went when he was weak heedless Stoffer be Hugh he stole from me he stole from everybody you thinkin if you left anything lying about he used to run away and disappear for days and we'd all go out searching we don't used to walk the streets at night looking for this kid and I used to say when we find him let's kill him you know the Hugh comes lumbering out of the kitchen saying that little bastard that little pastor and the little bastard had left a very spiffing looking briefcase sitting right in the middle of the floor and she went right over it she had a glass in her hand she had already been tanked up on gin in the kitchen I thought has she broken and I can't believe what absolute chaos and and still Marga didn't come back and apparently she was kind of seen by people running along the Barons Court platform banging on the windows saying come back Robert even come back she's running she's trying to catch up but the train was the little devil it got on the train and gone she's she's running along into the carpets there's banging on the windows and there are two very students going Dave just pounded out the street and wooly carpet slippers I mean this is not a sane way to conduct domestic life this is a letter written by my father to Margot on January 1955 it is addressed to MU head of the need either which is Spanish for woman of my life he wrote do not despair my dear child do not be so terribly sad for in the quantity of your sadness is the same exquisite sensitivity that makes you so immeasurably lovable when I was the young boy who kissed you with trembling lips and tightly shut eyes I was crushed by what I believed to be then insurmountable odds lack of confidence in myself sense of insecurity geography careers and financial considerations this letter seems to be more for me and for you yes it is a need to confess that I have not recently allowed my better nature to guide my love unfortunately I do not always act as I write but today my better nature needs to dialogue with you without recourse into shallow heroics but all of teto the gentle and the violent the good and the bad the relaxedly serene and the emotionally tense loves you most dearly that I know to be my father style and even though it is not the first time I read it I find it reaches my heart in many a way because possibly this letter states what he felt until the day of his death [Music] oh the advent of Rudolph in tomorrow's life was extraordinary she tried so hard in her marriage she was bored so when Rudolph came on the scene it wasn't just that he restored her as a dancer he also came to time when as a woman she was flailing she'd felt that she would have to find another role for herself and suddenly he was this young man he didn't run away from Russia just because he wanted to get out of Russia he wanted to find out to know what was going on in the rest of his world in other parts of the world you won't believe this I said this russian boy varus's this russian boy i can't even dance with you she said never anything so ridiculous in my life oh the hell does he think he is that it she was very grand but she's a big grand you know and who does he think he don't never anything and I said right you're wrong it you know I would dance with him yes you danced with him actually what the heck you know I really only get a cow if he does with you who does them she's I won't she said I would how did you buster towards the end of the 50s I remember Margo rang me once or twice and she said look I think I'm beginning to come to the end of my dancing career I don't think ready I can go on much longer but what happened with new F was that he was this extraordinary sexual animal-like man and Margo was certainly completely bowled over by him and this is what created this most extraordinary dance partnership and one of the greatest duo's that Bell has ever seen [Music] I was in their first performance of yourself and it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience because there was a fusion and an electricity that was so tangible you could almost hold it happy part of all the peasant dancing was supposed to be smiling and cheesy grins and things the tears which and the makeup was just running off just the emotion on stage was amazing and their performance we had 30 curtain calls at the end we were there for an extra 45 minutes at the end of the performance I think after first two rehearsal so Giselle she trusts me and your interpretation is fantastic I haven't seen anybody doing coming more closer to your ideal and but it is not my way absent legs don't find place for myself I don't have there is somehow there is no rapport there will be no chance to have a conversation on stage so I better don't do it or would be unfortunate to have to change and she thought for the end and said all right total involvement and total investment she invests everything in me and then it is thrown out into the public rather than projecting into the public and then my comeback might not but it is something what we generate between ourselves I say it is absolutely we're face-to-face we play or we live for each other and then it is projected into the public a lot of people thought even if they didn't say sir that it would be quite a good idea if I decided to retire I ought he's 23 and 42 that's going to be like mutton dancing with lamb when you dance with somebody what about you could spend a lot of your days with them because the rehearsal are the same and you finished rehearsing at 4 o'clock in the afternoon you're going to have lunch together because nobody else is having lunch at that time so you do spend a lot of time together and of course a great great fast was made of Nureyev when he first came and I was rather low shoes by that time I've been dancing the medic from her I don't know 10 years already and there was a lady in the Russian tearoom who bore down upon whom great enthusiasm when she talked and talked and talked at him in Russian for a long time and I was sitting there and suddenly she turned and looked at me and she said who's that your mother it was in my hearing that the Rudolf decided to taunt Margo one day and he just happened it happened in her rehearsal and he said well so you are great ballerina show me [Music] I suddenly raised my slight horror that Marga was in love with him she suddenly talked like somebody who's in love other lo heavens I afraid you have actually fallen in love with him that mean rather lead to unhappiness well what more they were certainly behaved like a 2-level lovey dovey and holy hands and giggly and huggy and all that but what more whatever that's not for me to say I see exactly why she fell in love with him then she once said to me well you see if I'm going to have a real force with Rudy I have to be slightly in love with him she said slightly to apology to justify herself but it was off her way meaning really think it I've abandoned ISA my love but of course I just have to be friends we all have to act no didn't see Burton I have to fall in love with Rudy give the performance meaning it was sad yes she did I also had a conversation with the Rudolf about that sitting on a plane and he said he'd wanted to marry Molly and that she wouldn't leave teacher she absolutely loved him it was I mean anyone who knew her at that time you know was happy to see that she was enough it's what made her dancing at that time so enchanting so wonderful and so rejuvenated and it made her capable in the way that love does it made her capable of amazing feats things that she should have been long past she virtually learned a new body language with him it was a privilege to see them see them together [Music] if sex happened as well which I'm sure probably did it was incidental to this amazing artistic exchange we used to stand in the wings and it was it was always like you were seeing her the first time she recreated every moment I don't think I ever didn't watch those performances from the wings cuz I couldn't bear not to have another diet of Margo and those moments because she just made the sort of magic heightened emotion and created this incredible atmosphere and she would look at you with eyes absolutely brimming with tears it was a combination of Marguerite and Margo and I think one couldn't distinguish what it was but you you were drawn into the power of their performance so it gave you goosebumps because I mean she was completely living every second of it [Music] terrible awful artists in her feet she was having injections in them when I was in the company and Fred wrote this week or where her technique wasn't challenged but he used every finite cell in her body and of Rudys of the very best and most powerful artistic talents at their hand and - and that's why I believe I don't know if it's not truth but I believe that he actually said he didn't want anyone else it would never be danced by anybody else you know dancers get very tired and they get injuries and you get you know helped along and we had a very nice physio therapist at the time and I went up and I just flopped onto this bench waiting for my turn I suddenly realized that there was somebody on one next to me but we were head to toe and I looked at the feet and I went oh my god whose features they're mine that's where I had my nervous breakdown I mean they looked a mess he also taught her to value money he would consist that they were paid in cash in envelope for the forms and she learned from him that money could be conjured from dance so he changed her Mogga was used to not being you know because she'd been with the company during the war and everything and getting four and five pounds or something whereas Rudolph was adamant and rid of could demand anything when he first arrived could demand anything everybody wanted him so he did and he got it because you know the Opera House was full every time that happened and which one oh yes cash when we were on tours was a definite must and I usually carried the money in a bag that was it got bigger and bigger and whenever anybody is a company that were traveling with asked what it was we said it was the laundry bag it was their dance belts and things that we took home every night and said Margo thank God that that happened because she wouldn't have had a penny till the day she died I'd anything she was never good at being on her never the fact that Rudolf always wanted to be on the go and he wanted to see everything that went on he want to see all the shows on in the theater and movies and things she was a bit the same and the three of us used to run for one here's to another I mean Rudolf and I went to three plays in one night he saw one act went another and pretend we'd seen the whole thing you know she was quite a party animal too we were in San Francisco working one evening a nice game after the group of friends my husband and I and Marga and a medium faith were walking past and there was a big party going on and they called down and said come and join us at Citroen we said nothing's Morgan Rudy were up there like a shot and that made headline news because they were raided they were drugs there no no we have to keep this but if you want to copy it why you came the number is three one nine one ok Rudolph here sign you sign your name how do you feel about it how did you get a mom who want to know this do you who do dance this evening he has a plan they talked about [Music] are they treating have you arranged to make bail and get out of here miss Fontaine and a full-length Airmen coke was just as uncooperative well you'll mr. Neary have the fear tonight miss Fontaine their manager led the dancers into hiding after their release what we see in it dating miss Fontaine how about you ready will you drink this evening on say Mary F and Fontaine have to appearance is scheduled for San Francisco tomorrow one on stage one in Municipal Court it's only a job get on the dead driver come on come on get on get on [Music] [Applause] I had quite a small rat in Walpole Street which happened to be just off the Kings Road at the height of the excitement's of flower power and hippies and all the rest of it and Margot suddenly discovered that if she turned up at certain time the afternoon there would be quite an interesting array of pale rather silent children lined up around the walls presumably as a lot of pot had been inhaled somewhere up the Kings Road earlier so they were reached the silent stage and Margot would look at one and and say oh that boy in the chronic you know he looks really hungry and I said no no no he's quite all right temporary and she couldn't get it out of her mind that the reason they were looking rather still and silent it was because they were hungry so she disappeared to the kitchen a lot of cupboards banging in the stove turning on and after five seven minutes out she would come with a tray of very presentable food food that I didn't know I had in the kitchen or the fork and she would first feed the boy that she was particularly worried about the entry we'd look at around the others and back to the kitchen brew up another lot back again feeding all these little birds individually one by one over until they started to come alive and look quite intercept by the time she's gone back for the third cook up you know one of them saying all that Margot what a great chick I didn't think they had a clue who she was [Music] it had been decided in the next royal baton season in New York the company would open with Romeo and Juliet not with Sleeping Beauty Sol Hurok the American impresario who presented the company was uneasy about this believing that American audience would expect Citigroup did something they were going to get in a new ballet running Judith biochemist Machpelah have derivative those who can is easy and therefore he asked if the costume could be changed to allow Fontana new Raph to appear in the opening of the New York season and this became a very vexed question Kenneth Macmillan made Romeo and Juliet on lint Seymour and then Lynn was shoved aside and said that Margaux and rid off doubts the first nights and things like that because they brought the public in and so it it didn't help a lot of younger dancers I became the fifth cast the second one you know there were there but six people doing it before me and that that was the worst bit I could understand why Marco and Rudy should do it there was perfect sense in it but not that I should be demoted to the sort of last person to go on you know that was the hardest thing and I think that it was a very very bad way to treat a youngster to treat the three of us I think that they should have there should have been some consultation explanation etc etc etc to sweeten the pill a little bit I don't think it would be acceptable now nobody at Madelyn more than Margaux she adored Lynne and adored everything that she could bring to ballet as a newer generation the fact of the matter is that there was huge financial pressure behind the scenes that the administration of Yurok in in America was totally uncertain that this this this could all would work and they were absolutely insistent that Margot should do the opening of Romeo and Juliet and appear in the first night in New York otherwise they were not going to subsidize the tour Kenneth never really liked her in the role much too old for it and and wrong for it at that point and I think Kenneth felt very strongly that the people that he was wanting to bring on in the sort of way that he felt Ballet was developing were not getting the chance and therefore he was not able to develop it in the way that he wanted it to go Margaux actually took me to a meeting with Hiro in New York she tried and tried and tried to say no no no it's all right you can present all the other so I think I can come into the ballet later I'll go in as fourth or fifth cast he was not having any of that at all and I thought actually that when we left that luncheon I knew he had severe indigestion and I also thought that she had won her case and yet by the time we got on a plane and went to London he'd already been on the phone saying that's it decision made either she does it all the tour's off [Music] I mean you don't get to her level if you're not insatiable ambitious you have to be greedy to become a supreme ballerina but that's not a bad thing you know Margot didn't do any of the terrible things that other ballerinas have done ground glass in the toe shoe I mean this was not her nature she was generous people loved her when she was young she was a part of the company she never insisted on precedence she was modest she traveled the way they all did she didn't want special treatment but when it came down to it I certainly don't think she plotted her planned or deliberately did something wicked but I think the opportunity was so great and the pressure on her undoubtedly was so great that she had you want to put it caved in gave in exceeded allowed it to happen you can shade that any way you want the fact is it happened [Music] [Music] the Fontaine Nureyev partnership made Bali into something so special that this phenomenon created by both of them when you don't really see that anymore people would go on and in a wait four days to get a standing said to be able to to see them dance and in New York like everywhere you know she would arrive and she had so many people who would be just devoted to her when Roger came back to do I think it's her last performance of Juliet and she must have been by then in her late 50s she was having a lot of difficulties with her feet and everything but when she came on the stage I couldn't believe it was her she looked about 16 she looked a young younger the way she could made herself up her hair and everything and at the end of the performance Damian it and round and she rushed out to to him Marvin said this I cannot believe what I'm seeing you look like you were when you first join the company [Music] [Applause] the whole performance was so moving so wonderful and she looked so young she had this ability of eternal youth [Music] more than any other performing artist dances are being themselves they're being themselves to someone else but they are essentially being themselves they have very little to hide from very little to hide behind they have the choreography but the choreography doesn't doesn't shield them very much I went to see Fontaine and I saw Juliette fantastic but the special skill was you went to see Fontaine and not only did you see Juliette but you also saw Fonda [Music] [Applause] [Music] we never thought Marco would get off the stage I mean there was a hot there was a whole generation that suffered that suffered and not to mention the men that ruined their lives with the coming of Rudolf who revolutionized the revolutionized the whole thing but it was to the exclusion almost although any other man was not able to hold a candle to this creature they were wonderful dances around in the early days and also the lake there was actually at Sibley and Anthony town and Rudolph just annihilated him just out of the radar I mean it must have been really really horribly difficult from them and for Allen everybody got pushed back almost a generation it's not jealousy but when your time comes you know it's a very short career or normally it is a very short career and when you're blossoming you long for those occasions in that a first night to somebody like us my generation would mean everything because that's the night that everyone would come to it was like the first night in New York the last night in New York a big opening in London my generation learned so much from them and their hard work and so wonderful to see rudolph as well and Margo and but Antony and I and I know the same for other people we would get once one Lake a year in London one and she came in the auditorium and Kim walked across the stage to Rudy we were all hanging on to a bit of scenery warming up before the rehearsal she came and she whispered something to him and I have never ever seen him explode like that ever it was terrifying it really was terrifying she told him that she had just had a scare and Marga was 45 then I know that Rudy would have loved children he really would have loved children so the you know maybe it was their child I don't know but I've never seen such an explosion ever but atmosphere was just horrendous this is a woman who who perhaps was told that she could never have a child for medical reasons and then suddenly something happens and she's pregnant it's like a rebirth saying I'm a full woman again and I think that that Marga really became a foolin with with Rudy Buddhist influence on her sad they didn't have children [Music] [Music] the area's family tend to be more often in opposition than on the government side especially Tito he wanted to have some influence in politics and in order to do this in Panama it's really almost essential to be a deputy in the national assembly because deputies have immunity from arrest so he ran for deputy and he was elected by a very big [Music] due to have been shot at the end of an election campaign and as anyone in politics knows very well campaigns clean everybody right out of money so that obviously wasn't the time when I could even consider dropping my career he was a very soft man you know he was like a half-filled balloon you had these hands she's never done a day's work in their life she had this terrible surgery so you go to bed with him sort of fully clothed so she could wake up every three hours and turn in and she was a slight creature as you know and he was a big dead weight and if that wasn't killing her just that the business of getting up heaving this body around for 25 years I mean imagine it just imagine it and occasionally I would be involved in fitting that thing on his penis making sure that I went that way and not the other way and all the rest of it and I used to think thank God horrendous I mean even in the Grosvenor Hotel she'd come back from a performance no chance to get any food herself she is busy at the billing making proper blade nights after a mistake in whatever whatever and then she's busy feeding Tito so of course her bit is getting cold and I'm sitting there wolfing my bit down thinking thank God for this munching away and she's just got a bit of cold steak lying on the on the plate and I mean I didn't suppose she'd had breakfast either and she'd just done Sleeping Beauty for two and a half thousand people she knew exactly that she was being used always for financial reasons and not for artistic reasons she brings in more money you've also got somebody who is absolutely stuck with no financial resources behind the scenes and she has a husband's family who one way or another are treating her like a count with three others and milking constantly basically this is an extraordinary penalty for some woman who is of quite frail Constitution five foot four high and doing as much work as she can possibly do in 24 hours it stuff and I say to her to them both of them why don't you buy a farm in a farm you can build as many houses you want and she said well and they both apparently they start thinking about the possibility of buy a farm some friend of dr. arias came to him and said if you want to buy a farm there is a farm for sale about an hour and a quarter from here so he came with me to the farm when the market call he said to her Margaret I have found nice farm I want which should buy this farm well I'd heard so much about it before I went and she said it's just a Shack it's not finished it's listen sir it did have a corrugated iron roof and it was a bit tumble done it wasn't ok I really passionate the farm had no electricity and no phone line they had an electrical plan for the farm and sometimes for because it was a weekend or because they give the plant anything happened to the plant they were without electricity altogether there was nothing here there was absolutely nothing in this area there was in fact a little behind me there was a little hot made of mud without a roof they'd had fallen but there was all there was no immunities at all I mean no immunities to the point there wasn't even a hygienic facility they had to travel back and forth to a house they had rented 15 kilometres away the first thing they did was set up four columns and the tiny little roof made of leaves the farm was not producing much income and was becoming increasingly dependent on what Margaret produced because Teeter wasn't able to have anything and he got very serious during the 80s and more than once Marga would ring me from Palomar to say that she was really in desperate straits and was there anything I could do to help her there were many many people who would have loved have helped her but unfortunately they felt that any money that they gave to her would be given to Patito to spend on his cattle with his phone and teacher and he liked the best cattle a very very expensive and so they were very reluctant to give money to her but I was asked to take two or three thousand pounds in cash I met someone I didn't know a piece for airport and I felt really rather James Bondish now this money was passed over to me and I was afraid to carry it and warned in fact not to let the custom see it in Panama because they sometimes weren't paying for three or four months of trying so Noriega regime at that point so I concealed it about my person it's all the wrong German became a bit of a problem anyway I was met by teachers man Friday Ventura he had booked a room at a hotel say that the money could be paid over in in in secrecy there was a newspaper from Japan say Margot Fonteyn in a jungle in Panama there was a cow that grows inside of the house and they threatened with the murk you know every day and he was able to go from the kitchen to the bedroom sometimes he used to wake up I I saw it how are you Sarita was the name of the board and it became a bull and he was there seeing her you know and he touch him how can you imagine that somebody's not going to be happy doing those kind of things you know I mean it was person - it was almost desperation unfortunately she had no pension she never had either a manager or an injured and she used to negotiate herself she knew nothing about business and couldn't really say no when Tito wanted to buy some more cattle always had to be the best she was the one of course who kept track of which cattle was born and which died by name each one of them had a name and they referred to them as a name by their name and I just wonder having a couple of hundred a heads of cattle how could they know which was what I mean I have a hard time remembering people's names much less Carole's names I guess it was part of what she had to do to endure it was that how she'd love to be in Panama with the cows and the Sheep and that you know and the cows come inside and it's silver I mean you know and people that have been to Panama talked about that the sort of livestock that creeps and crawls around and snakes and clawed Oh Nina and here she was saying just how how just wonderful it was to have the cow in the kitchen when they're having been I mean just it was like my god and she you know and she's talked about that all the time oh no I had I have to get back because there's a car coming into season or something and want to be there for the rest she's totally you know nothing person and I don't know how much that was genuine you know from Dior suits and and you know seems up that four legs and two Elizabeth Arden died hammock from from that she went to this farmhand Frederick Ashton choreographed a new dance for me contribute to my 60th birthday in which I remember snatches of many of the valleys that he created for me in the past and he will join me in the last few bars on the stage [Music] [Music] the choreography just seemed to sort of pour out of him worried and I have an idea in my head and it would just pour out these steps is everything it seemed to flow so easily and always so sometimes when I danced it I felt that she really didn't want to I remember once she I said Omar gets packed out there welcome she said darling they've come to see a freak I thought that was really sad that she thought she was a fakin people would come to see this old woman still being able to terms I'm really worried about my bosom she was 67 I might say I think you know she said this costume it has to says everything has to be up and I'm all down and she cut there we got it is that someone from the theater the pins and everything and she was getting ready digging just took that then the other side putting that that music and then Frank and then he's got someone to and read it and she's absolutely fantastic she's got it just right with a sort of bit of cleavage showing but do you know in that performance and of course the audience went well they all knew about Fontaine the company on the stage they were in tears she was crippled but raga still could pull it out of the bag so to speak I don't know if you know her little giggle he very latakia and her smile was like that too but she used to breathe it was almost a fixed smile sometimes because when she was really touchy was breeding but it looked as though she wasn't in pain or she was smiling Rudolf Nureyev returns to the Royal Opera House tonight to dance in honor of his most famous partner Margot Fonteyn she'll be flying from her home in Central America to London to watch the special performance staged as a benefit for her it's ten years since she danced with Mariah and tonight's performance of Romeo and Juliet will VOC their most famous roles in the ballet they turned into a legend she's happy in that climate she's happy with her cows maybe it was empty this glamorous world and I think life with cows probably was more meaningful then we go to the curtain corn because they're all shouting in Spanish she suddenly touched me and said that's my I can't walk I can't walk out there she said you have to hold me you have to hold me out she was so thin she went so thin Michael said all those years that I'd partnered her and yet walking on the stage with her at that gala as you know she came on in that beautiful Christian Dior dress he said I felt that if I touched her to help her on the stage she break [Music] the word cancer was never mentioned never we used to refer to it as the treatment that she was receiving or as the sciatic nerve problem so it was either one or the other but the word cancer in that way she was sort of facing the illness in her own way cancer was you know already accepting death in those days so she wasn't accepting death she fought till the end until one day she decided this is it she said you know my health insurance is running out and I've had a letter from the insurance to say that I was the victim of the stay of a terminal illness and the day was shortly coming when they could no longer pay she literally starving she's no money at all when I said no money I mean nothing you deliver your cornflakes they literally should not nothing my father came to realize that he was becoming a physical problem for her she was in pain and she was hiding it and after he died life lost all Sparkle for her Annabella was his mistress while he was married to Fontaine and she started a routine of moving in with Peter when a Fontaine was away as she had to be away a lot dancing to make the money to cover his incredible medical expenses Fontaine might have had a clue as to what was going on she might have left some clothing or lipstick makeup stuff and the area's family would say oh yeah where we left that there and they would cover up for what was going on and this went on for 25 years she would move in and take over and become a sort of shadow wife when he died that very same day when Annabella heard about it she went in the bathroom had a home got hold of some swimming pool cleaner poison swallowed it and died in agony so the funerals of arias and Annabella were held on the same day and the same people were going to arias his funeral and then going on to Annabella's funeral because it was all this tight circle they all knew each other I do think that it might be important to ask how at the point when Margot was dying a posse of panamanians turn up in the hospital room of somebody who is after all at that moment unconscious with paperwork to do with the alteration of a will and surprise surprise they emerge with that will signed with an inky thumbprint now you have to wonder whether Margot weeks earlier said oh gosh I might just want to change my will at the very last minute so maybe I should actually go and register my thumbprint and she appeared with about three four five gentlemen I think another woman and they went into Margot's matter ma'am I thought what is Rosario it's her sister my spells so right and they gift us me what about the farm what's she done with the farm and I said and I didn't tell them maybe I should have said but I thought well and you're not supposed to tell people what's in her her well-nigh said I don't know what's in her will I said I couldn't tell you anyway and I don't suppose anyone I'll tell you till they read will and they went on about this and then they went him and they made her sign and she that she was out of it in Michigan tortures ding elevator with a thumbprint to say that the word this is an added codicil or something I suppose that the farm should go I think to rebuild her but I know she didn't want it to get her better because he used to steal all the cars and use their team to import drugs and things but I do miss him so many things they would have been happy to to see and yet the one thing I didn't want them either one is to live with pain I would I don't wish it on anybody and she made the promise that I get her back to Panama because I want to take back gender but she insisted she wanted to go to Panama to be buried with Tita I'm leaving the hospital getting to the airport career Lee was moving she told everyone who it was well this little old lady she was in my new by this time you know she wait I don't know what she waited and like she said I cover my face if you can I said well we'll put a scarf on to make him know bit over your head nobody see and we got onto the plane men career is telling this girl who she is what's mental with us we've got cancer is you're taking at home so I said most of them she was in there sort of covered up and they're people we booked happened down the plane trying to get a look at it you see that it's sitting area so no one could see her I mean she knew that she was going to die and she was moving her arm you know moving her arm like a like you know like she was nothing you know maybe she was maybe that was her at the end of her life the end of her life was dancing you're moving her arm I was holding her hand is something that happens I didn't realize that never heard it before to believe in her art I realize when I saw I was looking at her my suddenly sort that died it happens to your eyes apparently and I think they call it their eyes are blown and I think that's what I thought I saw them so leaving but anyway I saw it him unless I knew she was dead never were there and they were took the things back from how that they're giving it I thought I should go and see where they were both buried because they've been told they were buried together and I went to the cemetery symmetry of peace or something like that and I went to the custodian and he looked up in his book he didn't he didn't seem to know anything about hilarious and Fontaine and found it Fontaine's name was misspelled the grave looked as though it was for the poverty-stricken but what got me was that it was right next to a hedge and over the hedge was a garden and a house and you had washing blowing in the breeze almost over the grave of this magnificent ballerina and it was as though she had been she and he had been put there to be forgotten my children knew her and she lives I have to stop you know I think that she was so much part of all of us as he was and he's strange I don't recognize the people in the books I don't recognize them in articles they're so odd and thought out they weren't like that they did their best she knew what was required of her and she did it with such grace that word and such beautiful dedication that it became an expression of a true expression of her of her as a person and I don't think that it went that hard with her I mean you might you might might think that perhaps the cancer came upon her because of the unacknowledged anger that she might have felt but all that she'd been put through she made you feel good you know she really made you feel that she cared about you that she was fond of you that she appreciated you as much as you did her well it couldn't be true you know but it was genuine I wonder how many people did see her dance or did not see her dance and they they're interested in knowing who she was who was this woman who was this dancer so there are people that transcend transcend whatever where you pronounce it you know their life on Earth they become like highlights of humanity the charity event I have never understood why they should put somebody through that I mean if they hadn't had their pound of flesh from her over the years by god they got it that night if you want to do something for somebody why not just do it why not just write a check and leave it in a dead trees humph but why make a dying woman perform like that in a dress which she'd look so glorious and wonderful in 25 years earlier indeed I can remember taking enormous pains filming her in that dress when she was having the last fitting and to make her appear on stage for the assembled company of people who were supposed to feel that they were contributing to this woman's continued existence I think it's disgusting I mean at one point it was the dress that was holding her up but that's what they did and even then she died surrounded by bills in some ways I never forgive Covent Garden for that never never and I know it caused her huge Envy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gonzo Music TV

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Rating: 4.8574367 out of 5

Keywords: gonzo music tv, gonzo multimedia, documentary, full film, full movie, ballet, ballet dance, ballet music, margot, rudolf nureyev, fonteyn, margot fonteyn, british dancer, british ballet dancer, dance documentary, tony palmer, tony palmer film, ballet dancer, royal ballet, margot fonteyn interview, margot fonteyn documentary, margot fonteyn film, nureyev, nureyev fonteyn, nureyev documentary - part 1 of 6, margot fonteyn black swan, ballet film, full documentary, music film

Id: KSX8WhCELZs

Length: 163min 27sec (9807 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 05 2018