Vanessa Morton - The Performers Tale

The

Performers

Tale

Portrait of Patience Collier by Frank Freeman, c.1950; dress fabric by Pamela Freeman. Reproduced by kind permission of Sally Coles.

VANESSA MORTON

The

Performers

Tale

Nine Lives of Patience Collier

Foreword by

Dame Penelope Wilton

AN APOLLO BOOK

www.headofzeus.com

An Apollo Book

First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright 2021 Vanessa Morton

The moral right of Vanessa Morton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Editor: Sue Lascelles

A CPI catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (HB) 9781800245150

ISBN (E) 9781800245136

Head of Zeus Ltd

58 Hardwick Street

London EC1R 4RG
WWW . HEADOFZEUS . COM

In tribute to an extraordinary woman, and to all those who worked with her during this golden period of performance.

I T WAS BACK IN 2010 that I first heard about the actress Patience Colliers archive. Her daughters Susan and Sarah were discussing what to do with her vast array of boxes, held in attics and in expensive storage pods. It was valuable stuff, fifty years of performance and personal history. But what about the diaries, they wondered? and here they giggled. Wouldnt the collection need to be censored before it could be offered to a theatre archive?

Listening in vaguely to their conversation, I turned up the volume. A large, untapped, revealing archive? Belonging to Patience Collier whom I remembered from my teens: loud, fearsome, eccentric and always unpredictable? An actress whose perfectionism shone through in her every performance, and who appeared with every starry director and actor of her time? Though her name has faded from public consciousness she died in 1987 it still conjures cool memories of iconic television and film from the 1970s and 80s Sapphire and Steel , Who Pays the Ferryman, Fiddler on the Roof and The French Lieutenants Woman and startles with recognition in repeats of radio and television classics.

I jumped at the chance to explore the material. Sarah brought over box after box. Gradually, other bundles of letters and additional material turned up in family lofts and cupboards, or were brought out diffidently as my project got underway. Here in the collection were prolific scrapbooks of every production packages of stills green-inked and sometimes coded diaries gold-embossed albums from the early years of the twentieth century, a Central European world in Londons Bayswater startling letters, frank and pithy exchanges.

It soon became clear that here was a significant story of some fifty years of changing tastes, styles, culture and popular media from the 1930s to the 1980s: of a woman weaving her way through the twentieth century, mixing with the great and the good, the artists, the leftists, the world of entertainment. Of a woman with a late-blooming career in unsupportive times, constantly reshaping her presentation of herself to the world as the political mood and spirit of the times changed: of a thoroughly difficult and combative yet vulnerable person, drawing love and admiration, but also fear and dismay. Of a brilliant character actress who increasingly behaved like a grande dame. Why and how did she become this larger than life person?

A key if small part of the archive were the notes of Patiences great friend, the former radio producer Audrey Postgate. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she had worked with Patience on a potential memoir: when Patience died, Audreys whirlwind notes recording cogent memories and observations were added to the collection. Though needing to be pieced together from scraps of paper and notecards, these read as though one were in the room, providing a rich source of Patiences direct speech.

Crucial again were the interviews I was able to hold with dozens of her contemporaries: actors, directors, wig-makers and costume designers, stage-managers, children, grand-children, friends and even enemies. Through them I was able to circle round the Patience I was getting to know so pithily from her diaries and recollections, gathering memories so vivid it was as if she had died only yesterday.

A performer through and through, from a tiny child to her last days, this then is her tale.

Vanessa Morton, December 2020

Page from one of Patiences diaries. Photo by Alastair Campbell.

BY D AME P ENELOPE W ILTON

I FIRST MET Patience Collier in Alec McCowens dressing room, after a performance of The Philanthropist at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971. This was my first play in London and only my second job. It was a fleeting meeting and not a particularly warm one. I think she was rather put out that this young thing should be having a drink in the Stars dressing room, so I didnt stay long.

It wasnt until some years later when I married Daniel Massey that I really got to know her. Dan and she had worked in a revue together Living for Pleasure and he was devoted to her. On his own admission he was quite a volatile young actor, impatient and at times not easy to work with. But Patience seemed to understand him, and finally, under her instruction, got him to visit every dressing room before the show and say good evening. This apparently went some way to making a more serene atmosphere backstage!

I worked with Patience in Karel Reiszs film of John Fowles novel, The French Lieutenants Woman in 1980, in which she played Mrs Poulteney, a puritanical waspish old woman who employs the heroine played by Meryl Streep as a companion. That was just one of her creations. With the help of a good design team, whether in film or theatre, Patience herself would disappear and a totally different character would emerge. She had a reputation for being very exacting, but designers loved working with her, and she appreciated their skill. Acting is all about being very specific.

My own relationship with Patience was entirely separate from Dans or so it became. Perhaps the truth is I was easier to manage than Dan, and Patience liked things to be on her terms. So if she was coming for lunch she would ring and ask what we were having? I never knew a week in advance, so she would order what she wanted. Lamb chops were a favourite. This used to make me very annoyed and Id grumble and say I wont put up with this behaviour. But the day would come, the lunch would be prepared, Patience would arrive, and we would spend an afternoon of the best conversation. My lunch would be praised to the sky. I would be left feeling I was the most marvellous hostess, and my lamb chops a succs fou !

Lunches at her home at Campden Hill Road were a rather more formal affair. The kitchen was presided over by Alice, Patiences cook housekeeper. You would catch a glimpse of her through the hatch from the kitchen to the dining room. After what was always a very good meal the guests would be sent down to the kitchen to thank her. I once made the mistake of asking if Alice had had her lunch as a chicken was passed through the hatch and Patience shut the doors. She turned to me and said, Alice always gets served first and she gets the best!