John Gielgud Forum
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| by Ron Price FOUNDATIONS They were heroic years, those hiatus years of 1917 to 1937, heroic for the Baha’i community just beginning to take a new message around the world, responding as best they could given their limited resources to a Plan that was not yet being formally implemented by the several national Baha’i communities in the world in those years entre les guerres. They were heroic years, too, for Shakespeare’s theatre in England with John Gielgud debuting at the Old Vic in 1921 and making his screen debut in 1924, right at the start of the formation of Baha’i national spiritual assemblies. Olivier enrolled in a school of dramatic art at 17 in 1924 and joined the Old Vic in 1937 at the start of the Seven Year Plan. Foundations were laid in those ‘between the war’ years by these men, perhaps the finest actors of the twentieth century, two of the foremost interpreters of Shakespeare. A foundation, too, was laid for a teaching Plan that took a Movement that was claiming to be an emerging world religion around the planet. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, June 30th, 2004. His voice would be raised in great assemblies and from their lips would stream the flood of His/his praise. Often called the bard, this one was the Bard and He/he was coming alive all over the world, little by little in these years, entre les guerres. They were organizing things in these last of the heroic years1 building on established tradition on His/his writings and soon, very soon, they would launch a Plan2 and those Writings/writings of overwhelming originality, an inner companion for our lives,3 with a divine sense of the world, would permeate our world. 1 The passing of the Greatest Holy Leaf in 1932, the treasured Remnant of Baha’u’llah and the heroic age, marked, in a way, the end of the heroic age. 2 The Seven Year Plan: 1937-1944. An evolving theatre in England, building on that Old Vic foundation, led to the establishment of the National Theatre in 1963. 3 Madeline Clark, “The Eternal Self in Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” Sunrise Magazine, June/July 1982. Ron Price June 30th 2004 Comment on this... |
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| by Ron Price A STRANGE AND ELUSIVE THING As spring approached its mid-point in Tasmania I chanced upon the best library in the north of the state, the university of Tasmania library in Launceston. There I spent a pleasant hour before I started to get sleepy as I so often do and have in libraries in the last couple of decades of middle life. I had just been to the dentist that morning, had my first KFC lunch in three years and, before going home some 50 kms to George Town, I felt a need to do some browsing in the library as I have done in these first years of my late adulthood two or three times a year. It was not so much chance, then, that took me to the library as habit, custom, interest, desire even, as I say, need. After taking half a dozen books off a shelf in the theatre and film section at the far end of the library, I sat down at a table near the photocopying machine, anticipating some copying of pages from the books I had selected. One of the books I had procured for my small pile was a thick 500+ page tome on the life of John Gielgud.1 I copied six pages from the book on Gielgud seeing the makings of a prose-poem which I would write when I got home. Perhaps these pages would just serve as some interesting information for the two arch-lever files I had on drama in my study. –Ron Price with thanks to 1Jonathan Croall, Gielgud: A Theatrical Life, Methuen, London, 2000. As you say, John, getting old is strange somehow one never thought it quite possible.1 The theatre was your life, your hobby, joy, work, occupation, vocation, habit, avocation, obsession, your all. Always you worked, solitary man that you were, shy, timid, cowardly, even, as you said, enjoyed your own company, aloof, impetuous, modest, downplayed your successes. There is much in these traits that I see in myself, but the essential admixture was not, for me, the theatre, but a new religion—the Bahá’í Faith. And I, too, found growing old a strange and elusive thing. 1Gielgud in ibid., p.514. -Ron Price October 11th 2006 Comment on this... |
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| by Julie Peek Yes, John Gielgud did star in a version of the canterville ghost in 1986. I believe it was a tv version and was shown twice. I worked on some of the costumes, and have been trying for years to get a copy. It is possible to purchase second hand videos from the US, but they are playable only on US & Canadian videos. Comment on this... |
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| by Barbara Can anybody tell me if John Geilgud starred in a version of the Canterville Ghost, if so where can I get a copy from? Comment on this... |