Richard Harris on Parkinson in 1973 Part 1

after a tribute to the late richard harris from 1973 his appearance on parkinson's [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening and welcome tonight a one-man show with a very singular person he started life as a rat catcher of all things and ended up a superstar of the screen in between times he's distinguished himself on stage raised hell in various premises both licensed and unlicensed written poetry and song songs who else fits that description except my special guest tonight ladies and gentlemen richard harris [Music] thank you i like the shirt football shirts yeah you're kidding cheers yeah i wear i wear oh my god isn't it terrifying i've done so many shows plays concerts and i'm dying with nerves really yeah it's terrible anyway i bought this you see i they're cheaper than wearing suits yeah when you go out in the night for a drink yeah or you fall down on the street or whatever you do and it's cheaper you see i'm sort of librion you know and sometimes you go into a bar i hate to see things disjointed unless i do it myself so if i see so if i see you know if i see sort of and the bar is wet and i order a drink i've got a habit of doing that and wiping it up seeing ruining my jacket and ruining my cashmere sweater so i took to wearing football jerseys 30 bob at time is cheaper you see do you ever get stopped at the door though at certain restaurants without the tie and things on no no i don't go to places like that you don't no i avoid i avoid contrary to my reputation i avoid trouble as much as possible i haven't been too successful that's true yeah but i do though i tell you a funny thing i shouldn't say this really actually i went to talk to ireland last week to see ireland play new zealand right and i had all these bunch of football jerseys i don't know four or five dozen and i put three or four into the bag because i knew it was gonna be one of those weekends in ireland you know i caught dublin the glue pot once you get you can't get out of it you see so so i prepared myself for a long long weekend so i put all these jerseys on and i put one on and i'm in the plane and air lingus and it's taking back the slime back down i took my coat off and overcut off and i'm talking to a chap and he said how is it now he's an actor it was obviously extremely wealthy where's a thirsty football jersey so i went through the whole thing about why i did it you see he said oh i see him but don't you think he said that you've picked the wrong colors and i looked at my football jersey it was red white and blue that's true can't believe it i got back to dublin for a football match red white and blue so quickly i dashed up dashed out to the toilet stripped it off you see and put my coat on and arrived in dublin naked naked but safe naked but all right richard i mentioned in the introduction there something else that i didn't know about you until i started reading the research and that's how you started life was this rat catcher well i'll tell you i tell you what it was in my unlike most of the sort of actors today the successful actors anyway today they all come from from working-class backgrounds and that you do too don't you yes yes a successful actor what no but you're very successful oh yes and and i and i anyway my family weren't just at all my family were very rich my great-grandparents were extremely wealthy we had flour mills and baking powder mills and bakeries and so forth except like this and anyway when i left school i wasn't extremely successful at school you know i'll tell you that there was a a special class in my school that was invented for 11 boys he said i was brought up a jesuit catholic and they're very proud of their sort of academical honors and the students they sent out to the world and there were 11 of us this particular time in this particular school that they didn't want to they couldn't kick us out really they didn't want us in the school so they invented a class just for the 11 boys that was totally non-existent even today if you go back to the school you'll be told the class didn't exist and these boys didn't exist in fact i remember well that an american journalist went home to limerick some time ago to do a story on me is her life story and he and she was she obviously and she went up she went up and she knocked at the school door and she asked she speaks prefect studies so he came down he said didn't dicky harris go to school here and he said why she said well i'm doing an article for american magazine she said and he said i prefer you didn't mention him in relation to this school that's true and there are and and we just get these school reports quite we get these school reports and i have ones that i haven't shown to my sons in the school reports in which you know that at the end of every term they sent back how you're doing academically in school and this you know said this is a it was a christmas term and it said uh uh mathematics out of 102 you know french out of 101 algebra out of 100 and that meant he didn't turn up you know and so there wasn't like there wasn't a pass and the accumulation of all the numbers there wasn't 40 in the entire thing right and my father had signed the end he's obliged to sign the end and take and tear it out and send it back to the school so he didn't bother at the end and he just said dear reverend father mclaughlin prefecture studies i am very pleased with my son dicky's progress at your school that was his reply right you see but so anyway when i left school what was i going to do so my father said we'll go into the business so you pop into the business so that wasn't much i could do anybody but they these huge big big big big barns and lofts and i i spent my day going with a stick you see frightening the mice away from the flower and anyway i remember when he finally got rid of me was that was that i thought that all these workers and millers and all that were sort of underpaid you know i thought even then i thought that they weren't being paid enough so i brought them all out and strike against my father and they paraded outside with signs like your son said we should have a neck more money so he goes no go on so anyway he got rid of me but i was going to ask that i mean that sounds a marvelous training for a trade union leader but not for an actor where did the acting thing start reaching well then i and then well when i just when i left school then i i unfortunately or indeed fortunately as the case has turned out because i've had my life to live again i would not have wished to erase this period was in which i got tuberculosis really yeah and i i was three years confined to bed you know and that and then i began to sort of study and read and uh read an awful lot and devour books and studied acting and stanislavski in there and then i think the whole sort of inventiveness came to me when i began to sort of you know it's a funny thing i mean i don't mean to be morbid or sentimental i'm not being morbid sentimental but you know that illness is a great is a great burden upon your friends you know because the first week or month they all come and say oh you'll be up in a month you'll be up in a week and they come and they pour in and then after a couple of months you've got 15 friends in a couple of months you've got six and then you've got three you know and then you have one and then you're on your tot from that moment either come at christmas or birthdays or they're looking for presents or giving presents one or the other and so i was kind of put on my own and then eventually thrown on my own resources and i just i just invent people out of out of um out of light bulbs and i just have conversations with people in light bulbs and i invented hundreds of people coming in and talking and i was sitting on a i was the king of england or i was the pope or whatever the pope can you imagine palace for pope can you imagine it would be fantastic and that's how it all started instant sin instant absolution sounds a good life indeed that's how it started i began to invent these things and then finally when you know that uh when i was cured clear i i came over here and i went to an academy but was it i mean do you have any entrance examinations to pass for that well you have to do what is commonly known as auditions and that's a very funny story can i tell you please well i arrived here uc and i studied some things when i was in bed i studied i studied uh richard iii and surrounded bergerac and some things like that you see and then when i was going first of all i went to i went to uh central school and you know all the students are about 16 and 17. now i was old then you know i was 23 i think at that time and it wasn't until the day of the pretty boy you know the fellas like me were told to stand back there and hold a spear open a door for the guy that was pretty see it's all changed no thanks very good let me drift back that way i don't mind i'm getting prettier anyways i get older so anyway so uh so i went to this i went for that audition central school that kind of looked at me like that and so and then i remember this fantastic huge big bench and i had to come down and do my little piece and then i walked down all these sort of arrows aristocratic english gentlemen sitting on top of glasses and they were looking back at me and saying well what are you going to do for us today young man and i said i'd do a bit of shakespeare but shakespeare the gravedigger maybe but not hamlet there was a legacy so anyway anyway i did my piece my audition they looked back and they said you know what right do you think you have to come into our profession i looked up at him and i said the same right as you have to be up there judging me you see then i was told little bell rang seeing a little man came in they did so they put me out and then i went and then i applied for an audition to lambda and i went to i remember so funny i was in hyde park and i was as nervous as anything it was an afternoon i had an audition at nine no in audition at four four in the afternoon and there i was in the middle of hyde park saying i must rehearse this piece and i'll hear correctly and there was an old man sitting down and sitting on a bench reading a newspaper and harris is going around the place you know now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by the sun of york and walking around the trees and all our yesterdays as righteous fools the way thus needed out brief calendar and there was his little fella sitting down his newspaper looking up like that crackers so after a couple of minutes anyway after a couple of minutes my first my first intercourse with oh my first we'll talk about that later with police in the bar my first intercourse with the police was then and i was going on and all our yesterdays have lighted full the way to dusty death out out brief candle are you all right lad i said i looked up there was a policeman were you all right i said yes thank you very much doesn't sound too good does it so i dashed back i got into the academy and i saw a little man standing at the door with glasses and i dashed up and i and i was now an hour and a half late that was it i missed the time and a taxi and i finally got to the academy and the little man there were glasses and he's and i said to him oh my god i said quickly take me to michael mccorn who was the principal of the academy and he said i am michael mccorn and i said good you've discovered me you see so then he said uh the academy was full he'd said i said you must take me i said because i have checked out the record of your academy and you haven't had one success not one success out of this academy yet now i am going to be the first success so if i were you i'd make a little place for me in there and i'd do it so i didn't did my auditions and i got in years later i met dear old michael mccorn again and we didn't drink and i said i said what was that audition like i did he said what can i tell you truthfully he said it was the worst audition that i have ever sat through and i said why did you take me in and he said i took you in because any man with the gall and the cheek to stand up in front of a you know examiners and to perform as badly as that has got to be a success when you said when you said that to him when you so blagged him on the stairs there i mean did you really mean what you said were you i did yeah you were certain i was how can you be that certain richard i think one has to think positively you know think think thin or think young hasn't done me any good but however i think you think positively it will happen and i i remember i tell you you know that tomorrow you were mentioning before we're chatting before and tomorrow reminds me of a great story in the dressing room upstairs that tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of john littlewood that's right and you work with us and i work with john for years everything i know or whatever i'm supposed to know about acting i learned it from this marvelous lady but i i was in i was in macbeth and finally after sort of being in the company for quite a bit and playing little parts here and there she finally said well you have a good partner and macbeth you're going to play ross and macbeth i said oh fabulous wonderful wonderful so she said so anyway shakespeare i thought me shakespeare this is it you see this is really it this i've been waiting for so i wrote to all my friends in ireland i said you must come harris is doing shakespeare this is we're going to show the english how shakespeare should be performed right come come i said everybody come mother father children brothers aunts uncles the rats from the firm anything the mice all kinds of bit out there in the front so indeed the stones of ireland opened up and relatives appeared for nothing and they flocked and flocked to ireland at a two-earned theater workshop and harris i was going home like i had only about four lines in it four or five lines in the play right like four weeks to rehearse four lines that without being a mathematical genius is one line a week right right so harris is learning his fallout's going home with the train going with the bus going to high park saying these four lines i was going to be sensational anyway came the opening night and harris had to stand back here and make an entrance with two other people in between it i had to walk down say these four lines as best as i could wave my arm go off and it was a modern version of macbeth and half the army go off stage right but harris you see so harris is learning his lines and suddenly he's standing at the back and he's all dressed up in his uniform with his button in his hand he need to put out his sword and do this to the audience you see so i stood back i'm ready to go and i hear everybody sort of doing their lines and i'm saying everybody's watching me we always think that you see everybody's looking at that wonderful that fella back there at the back where they stop little peppies no no nobody's watching macbeth the lady macbeth was harris at the back you see mouth so anyway harris goes on queue is about to arrive can you follow me by the campus it's true story now and the queue's about to arrive and i'm standing back like this you see raising my little sword and my spirit i'm ready and suddenly my cue comes and i take out the sword and i rush up to the front of the stage to stick out the sword like that and i can't remember a line that's a bloody line and i can hear my mother out front saying isn't he marvelous [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] how am i going to get off how am i going to get out so i flip the sword like that i look at all the audience and i went

Channel: Matthew F Holland

Views: 505,580

Keywords: Parkinson (TV Series), Richard Harris

Id: SchoNB1RjkA

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2011