Meditation 95

As I sit here beside my candle I have found that my thoughts have slipped back into Drama teacher mode. Please understand I have not been walking around my lounge as if I was back in my Drama studio at school, teaching an imaginary lesson to imaginary students. I am not living in the past, just yet! Although in an imaginary lesson the students are at least attentive, being invisible! However, in my teaching days, I would sometimes practice a lesson at home, especially if the text or topic was new.
My thinking this evening has gone into Drama mode because I have been considering different styles of acting, having recently returned to acting myself. An ex student who is now a film director asked me if I would like to take on a role in one of his projects. The film was going to be shot on location in South London, not in a major film studio like Shepperton down the road, sadly! He asked if I would play a nasty, racist pensioner. Not a very glamorous role for my professional film debut either! It was a professional engagement, as I was being paid a fee. It was also an important project: a short training film, sponsored by Southwark Council, about how to deal with racism.
A good friend of mine helped me develop a South London accent which is different from the quasi -Eastenders one I had been adopting when rehearsing at home. So I did engage in some research! Apparently, South Londoners have a tendency to play down ends of words (unless they are angry). This is the exact opposite of my vocal training, of course, which I passed onto my students. I was always telling them to make ends of words clear. This is very important on stage so as to be heard by the audience. So a slight mental adjustment on my part was needed. It was all about getting into role, after all.
So, there I was, a week later, standing on a landing in a block of council flats in Peckham, surrounded by the film crew, while verbally abusing a ‘Nigerian cleaner’ on the landing below. The cleaner, played by an actor called Glen, had no lines in the scene in response to my abuse. The crew had filmed him cleaning the floor first and were now filming his facial reactions while I repeated my abusive line off camera so that he could react to it. I also had to pretend to spit on the floor, shouting to him to clean it up. Yes: I was not a very nice character!
Then it was time for the crew to film me. My character was leaving his flat to go shopping so I had a couple of empty carrier bags under my arm. I had to pretend to close the door of the flat to my left, see the cleaner on the landing underneath, deliver my abusive lines, spit on the floor and then walk to the lift to the right and press the button to go down.

We rehearsed it a few times and then we were ready for a ‘take’. Alex shouted ‘Action’. I moved my hand on the door handle of of the flat as if I had just locked it. I was about to turn and see Glen below me, when the door of the flat suddenly flew open and a lady in a pink dressing gown stood in the doorway.
‘Here – what’s going on?’, she said to me (or words to that effect), ruining the scene. She thought I was a burglar trying the door. I can’t understand why she hadn’t heard Alex shouting instructions earlier, or me shouting my abusive line down the stairwell for that matter. Alex had to explain that we were filming. She then became demure, apologised and retreated back into her flat. Apparently, no-one from Southwark Council had informed the residents that filming was taking place!
Despite this unexpected interruption we were finished in an hour. I found it was quite a relaxing experience even though I had to focus and stay in the zone repeating my performance for the crew. I did not have to continually project my voice as on stage. Also, it was a very short scene, of course, and a long way from playing a major role such as Prospero from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ which I played several years ago.
I was experiencing what I used to tell my students in my classes: that film acting is more low key than stage acting and can therefore take less effort. I remember several actors talking about this in TV interviews.
However, film acting does demand acute concentration as I have just mentioned. You may have to wait around for a length of time too and yet be ready to go into your scene, to ‘be on’ as they say. The phrase comes from the Theatre and being ‘on’ stage, adapted to being ‘on’ camera. I had no waiting around at all.
Also, while you are performing, the crew is all around you and you have to forget they are there. It was quite cramped on the landing where we were filming. As well as Alex, the director, there were the cameraman, the sound man with a microphone, the lighting man and two ladies from Southwark Council in close proximity. It made me realise how more difficult it must be for an actor working on a major film in a large studio (or on location, even, as I was) with an army of technicians around them, and yet be in role, focused, ‘on’. I thought this while I was standing there waiting for the crew to change positions from filming Glen to filming myself.
I was reminded of this again a few weeks later when I attended a special screening of the new film ‘Maestro’ which is about the American classical conductor, composer, pianist and educator, Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1991. He is perhaps best remembered for composing the score for the musical ‘West Side Story’.
The screening took place in the IMAX cinema near Waterloo station in London and it was a special event because it was being introduced by the film’s stars Bradley Cooper

(who plays Bernstein and also directs the film) and Carey Mulligan (who plays his wife, Felicia). The film charts their marriage through the years with the conductor/composer’s phenomenal, high octane career as a backdrop. It is a remarkable film and both actors are remarkable in it, especially Bradley Cooper who not only gives a highly detailed performance as Bernstein (he is Lennie to the life!) but also directs the film. Mr Cooper had obviously done his research: but then there is so much archive footage of Leonard Bernstein as he was a media personality for most of his career, giving interviews, making his own TV programmes and documentaries, and there is endless footage of him in rehearsal and in concert too. Both actors also consulted Bernstein’s three children, to whom the film in dedicated.
There was nothing of the ‘star’ about Mr Cooper and Miss Mulligan, when they were interviewed before the screening. They were both very natural and down to earth, indeed, Mr Copper came across as being quite humble. It was such a contrast seeing them in person immediately before seeing the film, where they were towering over us on the huge IMAX screen. I remember Mr Cooper commenting on this himself, wondering what this intimate portrait of a marriage would look like on a larger than normal screen. His worries were unfounded: the intimacy seemed even more evident as if we were in the room with them. And the music on the IMAX sound system was something else! Watching the film reminded me of the big close-ups so prevalent in movies of the golden age of Hollywood, which we see so little of now in movies.
I do recommend the film: it is screened on the smaller screen on Netflix soon.
Well now that I have made my professional film debut I wonder where it will lead me? Will I end up emblazoned on a big IMAX screen? I doubt it. ‘Eastenders’? No thank you. However I would like to do some more filming in a modest way. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable experience and it enervated me, because I was acting again.
Yes it would be lovely to act again. Too late for panto now! And it’s too late to get a job playing Santa in his grotto too! Let’s see what the New Year brings.
Meanwhile, dear reader, wishing you a very Happy Christmas and here’s to peace on earth in the New Year. We need peace.
Ave atque Vale Neilus Aurelius
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MEDITATION 86

As I sit here gazing at the flame of the candle on the table beside me, I am reflecting on what I might have been.

A few weeks ago, I was travelling into town one morning by train to London Waterloo. The train was a fairly new one. There were two kinds of seating. Some seats at each end of the compartment were in twos facing each other, with each group of four on either side of the aisle.The other seats on either side of the carriage doors were long padded benches facing each other, which meant there was more space in the aisle between them as well as in front of the doors. I was sitting on one of these bench-type seats.

Sitting opposite me was a man slightly younger than myself I suppose, with what looked like a script in his lap. He had highlighted the pages with different colours. I couldn’t help noticing him because he was practicing his lines. He would mouth them silently with facial expressions. So he was obviously an actor and not a director.

He had presumably sat on one of the bench-type seats because by positioning himself there he had some freedom of movement. If he had sat in one of the groups of four, his mute rehearsal with gestures would have been somewhat obtrusive to the person or persons sitting opposite him as there would be little legroom between them. Perhaps he just sat himself down where he was and thought, ‘I’ve got a bit of space here so I’ll go over my lines.’

I wondered if he was going for an audition at first. But he wasn’t practicing a speech or a single scene as he kept skipping from one part of the script to another. So perhaps he was going to a rehearsal. Or maybe he was filming later. I wanted to ask him but he was too engrossed in his own little private rehearsal. I was itching to know what the script was and where he was going.

He didn’t look famous. I did keep looking up from my book to see if I recognised his face. Despite my encyclopaedic knowledge of the acting profession I couldn’t place him.

I was fascinated by his silent performance. So much so that I wanted to join in. I felt like offering to help him – ‘Hello I am a retired Drama teacher, need any help rehearsing your script?’ I could have read the lines of the other characters for him. It would have been fun. Although it would have been rather odd for the other travellers in the carriage to observe a slightly muted performance at 11 a.m. on the way to London Waterloo. But then they might have enjoyed it if it was a comedy, or possibly they would have been enthralled if it was a thriller or a ‘Police Procedural’ TV drama, which are all the rage at present. Just imagine it: ‘Happy Valley’ arrives at Clapham Junction!

Then the thought came to me that this could have been me. I could have been a professional actor. I could have been sitting on a train on a January morning with a highlighted script in my hand, going over my lines, on my way to the studio or rehearsal room. And before the question forms in your mind, dear reader, no – I did not feel even the slightest twinge of regret as I sat in that train.

Then another thought came to me. I have sat on a train or a bus going over my lines sometimes just like him, though I must admit without the strong facial expressions he was using. When you are working on a play, learning lines is a good way to use travelling time. Travel can be useful as a director too: I once worked out an entire production of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ while on a 9 hour flight from London to Vancouver.

Memories of learning lines on a train reminded me that I am an actor too. I just didn’t make a career out of it. Or rather I did but in an educational context. For all I knew, he could have been an amateur himself, using his spare time on the way to the office to go over his role.

If I had become an actor, and part of me wanted to when I was a callow stage struck young man, I would have probably gravitated towards directing and writing, which is what I have been fortunate to do in my school career. One of my Primary school teachers. Mrs Lavelle, predicted that I would become a BBC Drama producer or script writer. That was because sometimes I would write little plays for some of my class to perform. I always had the main role of course! But she saw a burgeoning talent of some sort and imagined where it might lead. And I have done the same, hopefully, in my own teaching career.

Acting is a craft not just a profession. I have practised my craft (or tried to) in the classroom as well as attempting to give the rudiments of that craft to others. Some of them, I am pleased to say, have gone on into the profession in one way or another.

I don’t think I would have coped with the precarious nature of the profession anyway. At least I have a pension! But then if I found myself a role in some lucrative Netflix series (as one or two of my past students have) I wouldn’t need one, I suppose. Or some bloated Hollywood blockbuster, for that matter. But then I do not need to be in a Marvel universe because I am in a universe of my own, as friends sometimes remind me.

Reflecting on what we might have been hopefully reminds us of who we are. For those of us with a little longevity, such thoughts may remind us of who we were as opposed to who we are now. Hopefully too, rather than ushering in regrets, reflecting in this way will help us to discover the multi-faceted jewel that each of us is and hold that jewel to the light.

For, after all, we are more than what we do.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 74

As I sit here beside my candle I am meditating on the Movies. I suppose I should be watching one instead! I have always had an interest in films and have loved going to the cinema since being a child. I am sure most of us are the same. Although, perhaps we go to the cinema less often now and watch films on TV or stream them. Entertainment has become rather complicated, hasn’t it? Or rather choosing how to watch a film has. Personally, I still think the best way to concentrate on a film and to hopefully become immersed in it, is to see it in a cinema.

I also have a keen interest in cinema history, which also developed in my childhood. At that time, the BBC seemed to be showing the back catalogue of movies made by the Paramount and RKO studios. Many were from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. I relished them all and would eagerly wait for the cast list at the end of each film to see who was playing who. I would remember their names and watch out for them in other movies.

In those days, closing credits were much shorter than the seemingly endless ones of today. The end credits were limited to a cast list. Only the stars and ‘featured players’ received a credit. Those in minor roles or ‘bit parts’ often did not appear in the list at all. Some studios (like 20th Century Fox) often placed the cast list at the opening of the film along with the technical credits. Not all the technicians who contributed to the film’s production were included either in the film’s opening credits. Only the major ones did: the director, screenwriters, music composer, director of photography, set designer, costume, hairstyle and makeup for example. The others, though equally important, were invisible studio employees.

I used to collect film actors the way other boys of my age collected football players. (Dear me, that sounds rather indelicate!) Eventually I came to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of film actors from that era and not just the stars but also the character actors too. I am sure I began to learn my acting craft by watching those movies. I never wanted to be a star but would have loved to be a character actor in Hollywood’s golden era. I still would.

When I was a child, my ambition was to be in a Disney movie at their Hollywood studios. At that time Disney produced a string of ‘live-action’ films as well as their animation ones. I remember entering a competition run by the Disney magazine and first prize was a trip to the studios in Hollywood. I was sure I would win and that when I was on the studio tour I would be talent spotted, which would lead to my Disney film career. Such are the dreams of childhood! I did win something: a signed photo of Hayley Mills their top teenage star at the time. But it was no consolation to me!

It must be wonderful to win an Oscar, BAFTA or other major award. I can’t help myself watching those ceremonies on TV and finding out the nominees in advance and hoping that my choices will win, especially if it is a film or performance I have very much appreciated. It must be so exciting and rewarding to have your craft acknowledged in this way or even just to be nominated, which is an acknowledgement in itself. Either way, I understand it makes you more ‘bankable’ for the future. Needless to say, I have my basic acceptance speech ready so that I can adapt it when the times comes. At this time in my life, it won’t be the award for Most Promising Newcomer but for Most Promising Senior!

Coming back to my celluloid youth, ITV showed quite a lot of British films then including those made by Alexander Korda at London Films in the 30’s and early 40’s. He established London Films at Denham in Buckinghamshire. His aim was to rival Hollywood in high standards, quality and opulence and he often succeeded. I very much enjoyed his films especially those starring Charles Laughton, one of my favourite actors. I find it strange that Korda was a Hungarian and that eventually Hungary would figure so prominently in my life. There is now a major film studio named after him (as it should be) outside Budapest where a lot of Netflix movies are made. Two of my ex-students, Archie Renaux and Tommy Rodger, have been filming a Netflix series there: Shadow and Bone.’ It is wonderful to think that their first appearance as actors in Hungary was in one of our school productions on tour there, and now they are back in Hungary filming a Netflix series. Life comes full circle: very quickly for them.

When I was a teenager, on one of our annual holidays to London, I bought a book called ‘Immortals of the Screen.’ It was a large book with potted biographies of film stars, going back to the silent days. All of the stars had passed way (hence ‘immortal’ in the title) before 1966, when the book was printed. Each little biography was accompanied by a portrait and stills from some of the films they appeared in. I imagine it must have been published in the U.S.A. and reprinted in Europe. It was one of those big books that Paul Hamlyn used to publish, usually printed in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps you remember them. Of course the book fired up my enthusiasm even further and I would watch out for the films mentioned if they came on TV or on a chance re-run at the cinema. Those were the days before VHS, DVD, Blue Ray and streaming!

Most of the silent stars would not be featured on TV of course. Thanks to Kevin Brownlow’s wonderful TV series, ‘Hollywood’ and his restoration of some of the classic silent films with superb scores by composer Carl Davis, which appeared on Channel 4, I was finally able to see some of those stars who featured in the book I bought years earlier. Eventually I became and still am a member of the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank where I can see these silent classics as they should be seen – on the big screen. I have also been fortunate to see some with a live orchestra next door at the Festival Hall. But perhaps my passion for silent movies should be the subject of another blog.

Being a fan of the Oscars ceremony, inevitably I watched the morning news on TV a few weeks ago to find out the winners. There on the news I saw the regrettable incident of the actor Will Smith stepping up to the stage and slapping the Master of Ceremonies Chris Rock. This was provoked by a joke made by Mr Rock about Mr Smith’s wife who was sitting beside him. The joke was interpreted by the Smiths as a nasty comment on her hair loss as she is an alopecia sufferer. Initially Mr Smith laughed – did he hear properly? – but it seems that his wife’s discomfort with the remark led him to walk up to the stage and hit Mr. Rock. Mr Smith seemed very emotional at his Best Actor acceptance speech with tears in his eyes. Perhaps this was part of the problem. His emotions must have been running high while he was waiting in the audience for the Best Actor category to be announced onstage. A few weeks earlier, he had won ‘Best Actor’ at the BAFTA awards in London so would he make it a double at the Oscars?

I am sure that the emotions of all nominees run high while waiting for the big moment. Moreover they probably do not really have any interest in the stand-up repartee of the MC. They are nervous and not a little uptight, which may have contributed towards Mr Smith quietly blowing a fuse, walking onto the stage and slapping Mr Rock, then returning to his seat and shouting at Mr Rock before he sat down.

In other circumstances, he would have been removed by security guards no doubt. Had he not been sitting on an aisle and fairly close to the stage, perhaps the incident may never have happened. Although he may still have stood up and shouted at Mr Rock from wherever he was seated.

It was ‘unacceptable and harmful behaviour’ on Mr Smith’s part in the words of the Academy’s official review published today and the Academy have banned him from the Oscar gala and other Academy events for 10 years. Mr Smith had earlier already apologised for his behaviour and voluntarily resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who awarded him his Oscar) and hopefully will regain his personal dignity in time.

In a way Oscars Night has ceased to be a ceremony but over the years has become a circus (certainly a media circus) with its fashion parade on the red carpet, the big production numbers on stage, endless interviews and wild after show parties. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1929 and was at a private dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel: very different from the world wide television event it has become.

Much attention has understandably been given to Will Smith as the aggressor. But surely we must also take into account his provoker, the compère for the evening, Chris Rock, when considering this regrettable incident. The comedian and actor Ricky Gervais has very recently referred to Mr Rock’s joke as ‘feeble’. It probably was compared to his own roasting of nominees when he has been Master of Ceremonies at awards evenings. Rather than physically attack Mr Gervais, presumably the objects of his comments suffered in silence.

He has also objected to Mr Rock’s joke at Jada Pinckett Smith’s expense being labelled as a joke against a disability. Whether alopecia can be defined as a disability I do not know, so he may have a point here. Nevertheless it is an ongoing medical condition which sufferers may feel understandably sensitive about as it involves their looks, especially if you are an actor and consort of a major movie star attending the Oscars, where your personal appearance is so high profile. She was diagnosed in 2018, it appears, and has only gone public about her condition on Instagram last December. It seems that Mr Rock was unaware of this. Perhaps it may have taken her some courage to attend the ceremony, we do not know.

It also appears that Mr Rock’s joke was unscripted, off the cuff, a sudden brainwave. He had said the wrong thing at the wrong time without thinking and hurt someone’s feelings as a result. We have all been guilty of that at times. I certainly have. But not in a high profile ceremony with a world-wide audience. It is easier to come out with a witty comment than to stop and think about who you are speaking to, especially when you are performing your act to a large audience on the stage of the Oscars. However, it is indicative of a wider trend in stand-up comedy of using humour to deliberately denigrate and demean others at their expense, to the extent that humour becomes vitriolic and tasteless. But then, Social media is riddled with unkind humour and comments and sometimes with tragic results, especially among young people. It is a sad sign of our times.

Perhaps, along with banning Mr Smith, the Academy ought to also review the role of the MC at the ceremony.

The singer and actress, Lady Gaga’s behaviour at the ceremony contrasts with Mr Smith’s and not in his favour. Later on the evening she was announcing the award for Best Picture with another famous actress and singer, Liza Minnelli, who was making a rare appearance. Miss Minnelli, an Oscar winner herself (for ‘Cabaret in 1973) appeared on stage in a wheelchair and had been in hospital only a few weeks earlier. She was understandably rather nervous and tongue-tied. Perhaps being back at the Oscars was rather overwhelming for her too and this was the last award of the evening to be announced so she had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for a long while. Putting aside her own feelings at losing the Best Actress award (the previous one to be announced) Lady Gaga gently and graciously assisted Miss Minnelli with the announcement. It was a loving gesture and showed respect for the star that Liza Minnelli is.

Sadly this beautiful moment, though widely publicised, has been overshadowed by the earlier dramatic incident.

Incidentally there is a film called ‘He who Gets Slapped’! It is a silent film released in 1924 and was M-G-M’s first ever production, starring Lon Chaney. The film is ironically set in a circus! Perhaps we are ready for a remake, only set at the Oscars.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 48

As I sit here writing my meditation on the kitchen table with the candle beside me, I am feeling disappointed. These last months have been a season of disappointments for all of us, haven’t they? So many plans have been cancelled or postponed because of the changing restrictions caused by the shifting motion of the pandemic. Who can contain it? It is like trying to catch all the silver fish in a slippery shoal with your bare hands.

Sadly, a magnet or two from Puglia in Southern Italy will not be added to my collection on the fridge doors for the moment. My retirement holiday has once again been postponed because of changes in Italy’s entry requirements. Now a quarantine is imposed on travellers returning to the UK from Italy as well and only yesterday further internal restrictions were announced in Italy itself. At present all human endeavour seems to be enmeshed in restrictions and requirements. But they are for our own good, I suppose, however weary and annoyed we may feel about them.

So here I am cheering myself up by looking at my magnets again and reminding myself of places I have visited. I am a much travelled man so I cannot complain. As I have said before, one of the ways through these difficult times is to be grateful for what we have and thankful for what we have had, rather than dwelling on what we do not have.

One magnet that has caught my attention is a photo of the iconic Hollywood sign. The sign is framed by palm trees high up on the brow of the Hollywood hills. I purchased it on my 60th birthday California road trip (which also included Nevada and Las Vegas).

Originally, the huge letters read ‘Hollywoodland’ and were erected in 1923 as a temporary advertising campaign by a real estate investor, keen to develop the land underneath. But as the Golden Age of Hollywood rolled out, the sign remained, without ‘land’ at the end. The real estate advertising ploy worked, as the hills soon became fully developed with estates and mansions almost touching the feet of the imposing letters themselves.

I visited there on a glorious day of L.A. sunshine in April 2014. My friends and I didn’t go to the top so that we could stand in the shadow of one of the letters and look down over the city. I am not very good with heights and in any case I don’t think you can go up there now or at least not very close to the huge letters. It was one of the highlights of our California road trip for me because Hollywood and its history have been a strand in my life since my childhood.

The sign is now a historic landmark as it should be. It is also tinged with tragedy. In 1932, Peg Entwistle, a 24 year old actress, climbed a workman’s ladder and threw herself off the letter H. I am surprised that her tragic story has never been turned into a movie itself during the decades since her sad suicide.

I was reminded of her by a recent Netflix drama series called ‘Hollywood’. It had at the centre of its storyline an attempt to make a movie about Peg and her sad demise. So at least she has been remembered obliquely in the glossy series which is set in the Hollywood of the 1950’s.

The sad incident is also referenced in the opening credits of the series. The young hopefuls who are the main characters climb up those enormous letters in the dead of night and use a workman’s ladder as poor Peg did. That is the tragedy of Hollywood. People are always climbing up or falling down in that town. Those who manage to climb up and keep their balance are fortunate indeed.

That 2014 trip was my third visit to Hollywood. My first trip was in 1990. I was so excited. I remember my friend John, who was my host, drove me from the airport straight to the Pacific Ocean and there behind us on a cliff overlooking the sea was the old home of Charles Laughton, one of my favourite actors. Then he drove me back up through Beverly Hills and pointed out some of the grand mansions of other stars, past and present. And I was staying only a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard too, in his apartment.

My stay in L.A. that time was for five days in the middle of a visit to my Canadian relatives who then lived in Toronto. It was quite a whirlwind trip and dotted with ‘this was filmed here’ and ‘he or she lived there’. I remember the Paramount arch, a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, a visit to the Getty museum and a show at the Pasadena Playhouse, where so many young actors and actresses honed their skills down the years.

But the highlight was a guided tour of Warner Brothers’ studios. As I walked through the studio gates, I felt I had truly arrived. Walking past the sound stages where so many of my favourite old movies were filmed was exciting and emotional. I also walked through two of the big sets : New York street (built for Warners’ 1930’s gangster cycle) and Town Square (built for ‘King’s Row’ in 1942) which have been dressed and re-dressed for so many movies over the decades (and they are still in use). It was strange walking through these huge sets in the sunshine and seeing them in colour as in my memories of them were in black and white!

We went through every department including the huge props warehouses. Warners never seem to throw anything away and they hire props to other studios too. There in in the middle of all this bric-à-brac was the throne from the 1938 ‘Robin Hood’ and the exotic lamps from Rick’s Cafe in ‘Casablanca’ – two of my favourite films.

My second trip, in 2006, was even more exciting. I went to a Hollywood party! I was mingling with dazzling stars, directors, screenwriters, musicians and even a movie mogul or two. And what a setting! I remember it well. Spacious beautifully manicured lawns glistened a technicolor green in the sunshine. The centrepiece was a lake with fizzing fountains and pristine white swans delicately avoiding the floating water lily patches. In the centre of the lake itself, on a small island, stood a shimmering small white marble building. It looked like an elegant summer house.

Actually it was a mausoleum. And the illustrious party guests were all dead. For I was visiting the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Well what else would an avid film buff do with only a few hours to spare before dashing to the airport for his return flight to the UK?

So there I was, with a large map in my hand, courtesy of the flower shop at the entrance, picking my way through the lush green swathes to find the resting places of my favourite movie people. In my quest, I was oblivious to other visitors dotted here and there in the distance as I was determined to find as many stars and movie luminaries as possible in the short time I had left.

Many graves had small squat headstones or brass plaques planted in the turf. It was an exacting task to locate the names which stood out to me in the long alphabetical list on the reverse of the map. I was often distracted in my search as I noticed other stars I knew. No autographs of course!

I gave up on the grand mausoleums where the deceased were stacked up from floor to ceiling in marble walls that looked like celestial filing cabinets. I only visited one where I struggled to find Rudolph Valentino, the heartthrob of the silent films of the 1920’s. I had recently read a biography of him that a friend had given me. I remember standing in one of the marble corridors phased by all the names in the walls. I said quietly ‘Sorry Rudy – I couldn’t find you and I have a plane to catch!’ Then I turned a corner to get to the exit and strangely there he was in the wall opposite!

I couldn’t miss Cecil B. De Mille, Hollywood pioneer and director of film epics, whose appropriately epic mausoleum was the size of a small house; nor mogul Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, and his equally bloated edifice. I realised the Hollywood pecking order clearly persists even in death.

As I peered among the plaques in the ground, one in particular made me stop. It read ‘Hannah Chaplin: 1865-1928: Mother’. I was surprised until I remembered that her

world famous son, Charlie Chaplin, brought her all the way from Lambeth in South London, to be with him and hopefully give her some comfort in her mental illness. And there she was at my feet, a long way from home, like many others resting here. But at peace now.

Several years later, I picked up a new biography of Charlie Chaplin when I was staying with my aunt on Vancouver Island. It was by an American psychiatrist, Stephen Weissman, and naturally Hannah featured in it a great deal and, in the book, there was a photo of her taken in L.A. a few years before she died. The book fascinated me and it led me to write a play for my school theatre group about Charlie’s childhood, youth and meteoric rise to being one of the first worldwide celebrities ever by the age of 25. It was called ‘Chaplin: the Early Years’ and was eventually performed in 2013. Despite reading the book and making copious notes, it was only when I started working on the script, that I remembered that I had seen Hannah’s grave. I hadn’t taken a photo of it. It didn’t seem right. But I remembered it clearly in my mind and still do.

Overheated from my search through the lawns, I sat on a shady bench, reached for my water bottle and admired the palm trees silhouetted in the sun. It felt right that I was there, not just as a film buff but to pay my respects and to say thank you. A month or so earlier at my school, I had produced ‘Mickey and and the Movies’ about the birth of the cinema. It was the precursor to my Chaplin play, I guess. At the heart of ‘Mickey’ was a GCSE Drama project I had devised as a result of my first trip to Hollywood in 1990. So yes: it was good to say thank you. These people had not only entertained me and intrigued me over the years but they had inspired me. Perhaps, in my visits, some of their creative energy had engulfed me too.

Not a few of the silent stars and filmmakers mentioned in my play were resting there now. But then all the stars resting all around me as I sat on my bench were silent now. Yet they are still alive on film. A kind of resurrection.

The stillness of the surroundings enveloped me. I felt cold. A sadness weighed down upon me like a pall. A chill miasma of unhappiness. Not just Hannah’s. But others’ too. In this place. In this town. Past and Present. ‘The boulevard of broken dreams’ – Hollywood Boulevard a few blocks away – is a tired cliché, yet for me at this moment, it was a tangible presence. I shivered. And it was gone.

Now I understood why I was really there. Not out of curiosity or thankful respect, as I thought. But to feel their pain. To be the celluloid imprinted not with their image but with their suffering.

I stood up, bowed my head and went home.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

The flame of the candle is flickering tonight as I write beside it. I suppose that brings me back to the subject of my previous blog: Laurel and Hardy and their movies. When cinema began, around 1900, movies were first called ‘the flickers’. That was because the projection machines were primitive. The image moved but it flickered, like the flame of my candle is at the moment. movies were very short. So the action was quick, far quicker than in a play on the stage. It was their attraction to audiences originally, I imagine, and still is today of course.

But it was also the sheer miracle of being able to see a picture that moves. When I was a child and a young man, going to the cinema was still called ‘going to the pictures’ (i.e.) to see the moving pictures and, to return to ‘the flickers’, going to the cinema was sometimes also called ‘going to the flicks.’ Another word for a movie, a film, was ‘a picture’ and still is. We still talk about a star’s next ‘picture’ or that was a ‘great picture’ and the motion picture industry.

However, originally the word ‘movies’ didn’t refer to the end product or to cinema in general. The ‘movies’ were the people who made them, the first colony who came out to Hollywood. It was a derogatory term. Those film pioneers who arrived in that quiet rural suburb of Los Angeles weren’t to be trusted, weren’t respectable: ‘Oh he or she is one of those movies,’ residents would say.

A few years ago I wrote a play about the early days of cinema. It was called ‘Mickey and the Movies’. I see now that my title had that double meaning of ‘Movies’: the films and the people who make them. In the play, Mickey Malone is an Irish immigrant boy in New York who gets himself involved in a studio there and eventually find himself going with some of the ‘Movies’ to Hollywood. By accident he becomes a child star. I was trying to portray the improvisational side of filming comedy in silent films: a basic scenario, a camera and improvised action (which was how our dear friends Stan and Ollie began).

When I wrote my own scenario, I wanted to include a scene where Mickey sees his first ever moving picture. I wanted to try to capture the wonder of seeing a picture that moved for the first time. And it is that wonder, that magic of celluloid (what the director Orson Welles called the ‘ribbon of a dream’) that intoxicates Mickey and leads him to take any old job at a studio in Fort Lee, just outside New York before ending up in Hollywood.

My play kept flickering in my mind as I watched the movie ‘Stan and Ollie’ the other week and it has come back to me since. Maybe I will revive it as my final production next year. I have been thinking about it, though it will need an extensive re-write. The script begins with Mickey and his father and brothers on the ship from Ireland to New York. But if I rewrote it the play would begin in the present (with a modern day descendent of Mickey) and in an entirely different location.

A year or so after we did the production, I was in LA, staying in West Hollywood for a few days and I found myself with a morning to kill before catching my plane home. I was in that limbo we’ve all been through: what do you do with your final few hours before you go to the airport. My dear friend and collaborator on ‘Mickey’, Phil Watkins, had given me a book on the silent star Rudolf Valentino as a gift after the production. So I thought I’d see if I could find dear old Rudy’s grave in my final hours in Hollywood. He was one of those stars, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, who tragically died young (aged 28) and he was buried, after unprecedented outpourings of public grief in both New York (where he passed away) and in L.A. (where he lived and worked) in the old Hollywood Memorial Park. The old cemetery had been beautifully restored but with the new kitsch name of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. So off I went to find him.

The grounds were so extensive, I could have spent all day there. In the dazzling sunlight, the beautifully manicured lawns were so green it was like they were filmed in technicolor. And there was a huge lake with swans in the middle. When I went through the gate I was given a map which showed where everyone was resting. So many stars, moguls, directors, writers, musicians dotted among the grounds and in several huge mausoleums, which is where I eventually found Rudy.

As I sat on a bench resting for a minute and looked over the verdant green it seemed like one big Hollywood party. Except there were no more cocktails, scheming, or intrigue or romance or just plain fun but only silence, the silence of the grave. All that intense striving in whatever direction was over now. Like the end of a movie, I was just left with the cast of characters, with the names, either elegantly carved on marble monuments or engraved more modestly on brass plaques in the earth. One I stumbled over, I found very moving: it said ‘Hannah Chaplin’ and ‘Mother’. It was Charlie Chaplin’s mother who had been brought over from London by Charlie and his brother Sid. It appeared that she had died there in 1928. Seeing that plaque led me to write a play about Charlie’s early life.

As I sat there in the heat, a chill of sadness came over me. It was the accumulated tragedy behind some of their lives I guess. I found myself saying a prayer for them and a thank you for all the pleasure they had given me through their work. I was there to pay my respects, I realised.

It was sad in another way too, because many of them were big stars with legions of fans and out there in the public gaze. But now, of course, so many were forgotten (except to film historians, students of cinema and movie buffs like me). I thought it would be sobering for some of today’s stars with their big egos and tantrums to sit on that bench, to remind themselves of their own mortality, to remind themselves that they might be forgotten too.

And that is where I would begin my script: with a descendent of Mickey looking for his grave in the opulent lawns of a Hollywood cemetery, looking for Mickey the forgotten star.

I used to have a big old book, when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was called ‘Immortals of the Screen’ and had stills and photos of old movie stars in it: basically any stars who had passed away before 1966, when the book was published. It included a lot of silent stars and the book helped nurture in me an interest in film history. Not a few of the stars in that book were buried in that cemetery. And in a way they are immortal: through the movies they appeared in. We can still see them and hear them and study them, especially the great ones. And we can still be entertained by them.

Moreover, so many great movies have been lovingly restored and are now streamed or on TV or DVD or blue ray. I was watching the blue ray of one of my favourites: ‘Casablanca’ the other day. It looked more pristine than it probably did when it was first released in 1942. The black and white photography glowed and Ingrid Bergman looked more beautiful then ever and even Bogart looked reasonably dashing. And my favourite actor, Claude Rains was as witty and suave as ever. But to think that I was watching actors from 77 years ago. Their performances were still alive, thanks to moving pictures. And here they were performing in my own lounge thanks to later technology, enabling me, if I was so inclined, to be able to watch them over and over again; to enjoy their performances even more or to study them. It is the same, of course, with recording and the human voice. We have over a century of recordings of musicians’ performances too. Quite a miracle isn’t it? A kind of resurrection. A shimmer of the true resurrection which I believe in.

In a few days time I shall be leading the annual school Drama tour to Budapest, which I have mentioned in a previous blog. Therefore I shall be in Hungary, known to Marcus as Pannonia, where he led his legions. It will be appropriate, then that hopefully my next blog will be written there, between performances.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius