Kenneth Williams on Parkinson in Australia (July 1981)

They were escorted to nco for a review that left London. They were civilians, you see, and all these civilians were given the honorary rank of officers because they were housed, they couldn't be put in a badakram. They had to be given fancy accommodation as the officers were given a single room so I was sent as Sporting nca for this review which was from Singapore by boat and we went by boat to Rangoon and then started a tour from Rangoon to Mandalay and finally mamia and this ship was the pride of the empire, I will never forget it and the main dancer of this show was a tremendously outgoing civilian dancer, I guess that's the word, isn't it?

Yes, extrovert. He used to do pirouettes everywhere and I walked around with quite a bit of makeup on my face, I mean, constantly in life, which I thought was quite disconcerting at first. I had never seen anything like it. I mean, we were an army mafia, you know we were the army and we didn't see gentlemen covered in makeup that weren't on the street and I was shocked and they said, well you have to take them with you and take care of them and I jumped on this. ship with them and this man this dancer was called drummer chat they put him in a cabin but at night the ship called at a swetnam port and embarked many other troops and this cabin was double and at night they put this other man in the cabin was a veteran of the Japanese campaign, an old colonel grizzler and they put him and he took the only bench available which was the bottom one and he ran up to the person and he made the most terrible scene the next morning because he said: "I woke up this morning in my bunk and I stuck my head out to find face powder cascading down on me from above and it was Sir Barry Chat sitting on this bench this makeup, you see, and he lent himself and said you better get used to this. deer, I slapped him every morning and this man just put a towel around his waist and flew to the purser and I had to take this lot to Yangon and when we got to the headquarters in Yangon a staff conference had been held and These The officers came out with several rolled up maps and binoculars or with red tabs in the staff offices and a conversation took place and he met them at the top of the stairs outside the conference room and did this pirouette, he did about three turns and He touched the nearest officer. on the shoulder and said tell your mother we're here dear and to tell your mother we're here dear put the kettle on low and to her everlasting uh you know, I really think to her lasting credit they didn't uh they didn't. they made Unblinking, they took everything with greater plum and this brigadier is one of those theatrical, now let's talk a little about those films, continue, which you did because you play an extraordinary variety of characters and those don't, I mean, You're also a broad caricature of what you interpreted and the hand luggage.

Yeah, I started out playing a pretty snotty recruit in the army, which I was perfectly prepared for, you see, having more or less experienced it in life, I did it and I did the agent thing in Caitlyn Constable, who was also a snotty, and then I played something quite different in the western we did, which was an old judge in a western country town who and I played everything because he always said, "I imagine." I did it this way and played it all right. I thought this way what we have to do. You see, we have to go out.

It's how to put all the baskets. I talked like that the whole time at the end of the first day of shooting. In absolute agony, huh, I been pleasuring the boys, oh, they're a side, man, if you've seen this shit wrong. I went to the doctor and told him I'm not going to count a jaw and he said have you been talking? and I thought I'm honey, no wonder your jaw is displaced and what you need to do is tie a silk scarf really, really tight every night until it goes back into position, so I went back to the set and said no more. could do that for us because you had to do it, you started doing it and now you have to spend the movie doing it so I was in agony how do you explain how inexplicable the kind of cult following those movies got, yeah it didn't start Well, it was really a random thing, wasn't it?

I mean, the first one where he was a second-hand sergeant was a hit, then they made him a police officer, which is a huge hit, but then the real blockbuster was continuing with the nurse, which was pretty rude, there really was , You know? during the period, I know you remember the weather of the '59s and '60s that you didn't do. the kind of thing they were doing, which was anal temperature daffodil in the yes, that was Wolfenheim White, who says he didn't know until today, he said determined to lay on my stomach and all they told me to do was lower my stomach so the nurse was taking my temperature and of course she was taking it from behind and it was Happy Jakes who pulled out the daffodil, you know?

And that was such a huge box office success that we were at the top of the global box office and I actually surpassed it, which is extraordinary when we look back on it. We crossed the bridge over the river in silence and that was what it was a budget of 8 million and ours was 150,000. Yes, what was it that made it popular? I mean, what I think it is. Combinational, I think it's a combination of institutional jokes because they were all based on institutions, whether it's the police or the army or whatever, and the English like jokes about institutions because it's an established thing and all good comedy is basically about something which is the state, that's something that's concrete and then you invert the values ​​that you're presenting and therefore they'll do that with institutional issues and the other thing was the McGill postcards, kind of the ingredients, you know, the fat lady urinating. in the sea and all that sort of thing with every little help written underneath that sort of thing is very enjoyable I think the English I don't know why I suppose it's almost scatological it's almost collegial certainly it's vaguely intelligent, but I think it's something that was prevalent a lot in that period.

I couldn't say certain things, there was one law for private conversation and the bar and a very different one for what was going to be publicly acceptable and between the two there was a great chasm and these films began to bridge it in a way that is surprising when In Actually, you look at your career because you have done absolutely everything, as I said, from cabaret to classic reviews and that kind of thing in the theater. For two years, you've done almost everything you once did in an open theater production of Moby. Dick with Orson Welles, right?

Yes, and my first experience on an open stage. He always worked with a set. What was it like working upstairs? Well, open stage. You see, the curtain rose on this bare stage and the door to the street. It was visible so anyone who showed up was seen immediately and we all played this thing that was Moby Dick, it was his adaptation of Melville's novel and we played it with Orson saying that the audience will take it for granted once you establish the fact that everyone you are Sailors in the pic quad and we are going to harpoon this whale, you will accept that this stage is a boat and if you all rock and keep rocking throughout the action, you will accept well the fact that you are in the sea.

I didn't think they did it at all, just a black guy, a bunch of people standing around like they were drunk, you know, and we stood there doing all this and he said let's take a stand down, we'll take the stand off the stage, take it down. towards the audience as if it were the boat that goes from the peg quad with the harpooner to tapu and the whale and we rehearsed this, we put the platform in the auditorium that was the main walkway and he told me, go to the front and be fooled by my lear and you kneel and I can't see anything when I come out and I'll feel your leg and then I'll say that whale, I'll take its blood, you see, I said, oh yeah, I am.

Well, we rehearsed it, we rehearsed it and then that night none of it had been planned because you see that night there are a lot of people sitting in that auditorium and this big grandstand came between them and everyone was judging a little bit and I was falling. over the people in the seats and a lady was there dressed in mink with a box of chocolates in her lap, but what is this? She actually fell on top of her and crushed her chocolate and she was saying: get down, I'll take it away from you, oh, hot with this terrible smell. a b.o because we smelled because we were working very hard with this big platform, you see, and great he was saying here, shut up, shut up, shut up, that whale, I will have his blood, it was chaos because then he had gone up to the platform. which was in the middle of the auditorium in the stalls and the Duke of York's theater had the dress circle, people were standing around saying where they went.

We were under the circle and the people behind them were saying: sit down, sit down, we can't see it. It was absolutely cannibalistic and the front of the house was backstage so you can't do that, they can't see and anyway it's going on too long and we ran about three and a half hours, three and a half hours, can you imagine it's worth the grief? The ambulance and something so incredible showed up the next night, so we'll cut it, we'll cut the whole play, I'll cut it as we go through the show, I'll just cut the show as we go, okay, oh.

Well, how do we know, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, I'll just cut when we get there, okay, and I had to come and do this long scene like a carpenter saying, "I'll make your wooden leg out of ivory." Look, because you, captain, they have a wooden leg, as you know, and I had to come and do the scene with him saying, uh, oh, my cue, a beautiful ivory leg, the captain, a beautiful ivory leg, the whiteness of the brides, the whiteness. of ivory and I went on and on and he showed up and said "fuck you", he told me to go away and I had a long way to go because since there was no stage, there was no stage, so I wandered around the stage saying oh.

Well, goodbye, good luck my love, God bless you and God be with you, I'll know what to say and I stood up, I stood up because you couldn't leave, so I stood on the edge freezing and I stayed there frozen, you see, as he began. talking again and I froze and joan flowerite now married to laurence olivier who was then playing pip the cabin boy is supposed to be colored so he put on burnt cork and was standing in the wings and said you're leaving quickly, aren't you? ? You and I said yes, he told me to get off, he told me to get up and he wasn't very polite about it, she said, oh how rude, how rude to tell you to get off, who's next in Mr.

Jew , no, it's me, I suggest that so long. speech about black and white, so she flew back and the producer had told her when you did the black and white speech by hand in mind because it was supposed to be a black boy and it was supposed to say put your hand in mine , oh captain, when the black meets the social white, the white becomes black and the black becomes white and everyone is lost in the whiteness and it blows again and again and she starts doing this and the producer says go between Orson's legs and make the sign of the cross So this is all crucifixion, you see, so you go between his legs, you see, you see, and she was supposed to do this right, she shot in a terrible panic, she got into between her legs and her head hit his crotch, she had a really terrible blow and he went, go and she said, well, I had the black with the white and the black on me, she'll find the white, but it sounded like some kind of favorable ad for washing powder and that was, well, one or two of the I mean, I told Orson I don't know how you do on stage because without a stage to hide behind you have to murder him and he said yes, we did an open theater production in New York of this and maybe Christians who were.

Not in this because we were doing repertoire with another work he came through the door in a matinee because he had left a bag of rehearsals and he didn't realize that there was a matinee because he just came back for a bag he said We entered through that door we were in the middle we were in the middle of the other stage doing the um doing the assassination of Caesar and everyone was in togas and he said she came in and couldn't get off she was in a leopard skin coat with a net bag with cornflakes Kellogg's and she did her shopping, music and he said she walked to get a purse suddenly realized she was in the middle of Caesar's assassination and said with great presence of mind she said, oh and she kept it up, He said hoping that as soon as the lights went out and the senators moved, she would make a beeline for the door and when she tried, when the lights went out, she started running and all these senators were moving to their next position and She mixed up with a bunch of senators and if the lights came on again there she was in a leopard skin cult on her Kellogg's cornflakes in the middle of another serious scene, so it never went well, we're back in A moment to close the show with Mr.

Williams' song, aside from everything he has done in movies and on stage, Kenneth Williams also, of course, starred in some of the best radio comedy series that ever existed. We think about shows like Hancock. half an hour andaround the horn around the horn made many voices created many incredible characters here is one of them rambling sid mr

kenneth

williams

oh hello dears i have been digging through my bag of geese and i came up with a very gloomy song that tells the story of a young suitor who serenades her light, a love beneath its bearer and she, he is a very small suitor but she has a very short bearer, it is the prevailing winds that you see and he sings to her in the light of Moon. he's plotting her truth in the moonlight, it's better to do it where he can see it because otherwise he can make a dog's breakfast with the old gibberish.

It's illuminating its truth, by the way, the truth is a little furry creature with fins, eh, it's kind of a cross between a sloth or sloth depending on your inclinations and a trout and a lot of people say they're extinct today, but I think they are lurking somewhere and will come out when they are angry, on second thought. I can see that you are a very referent audience guy, so I will sing a ballad. It was called the ballad of wagler moolie joe he was a young wangla mungree of the court he went and loved a bogler's daughter called chizik flow vain she was and his goose parts were fine but she made fun of his rope while hanging on the line, so he stole a moolie without walking to make a wedding ring, but the Bow Street joggers caught him and the judge said, "you'll swing "oh, they tied him to the post, nailed his moolie to the fence or to warn all the young cordon wanglas that it was a serious offense and there is a moral to this story, even if your cable management is poor, keep your hands off of other films that are foreign to you.