Hello. Good evening to you, sir. I say, I like your new yachting blazer. >> [laughter] >> Did you know I’m Britain’s secret boring weapon? You don’t know what agony it’s been yearning for you, yearning to give you my all. >> But I don’t want your all. I don’t even want a little bit. >> I WILL NOT BE PUT OFF, not after I’ve done for you. Mitchum, no, please.
Oh, your hand. Maybe I could do something wild with a couple of creepers at his trellis. Well, now, here we are, Orton’s canal. Kenneth, restrain yourself a little, PLEASE. OH, YOU’RE VIRILE. I’m butch. Kenneth Williams’ memorable performances on radio, television, and film made him one of the best-loved comedians of his generation.
Good evening. Kenneth was the funniest man, [music] I think, I’ve ever met. What do you want? I’m your roommate. >> you’re not. Come on. Don’t miss that bell. But to many people, and certainly to Kenneth Williams himself, comedy was only a part of his extraordinary appeal. I have a cult figure.
You see, I have an enormous cult. I have. I have a cult. One of the biggest cults you’ll get around here, I think. >> [laughter] >> Kenneth was, in the best sense of a brilliant showman. Look in the mirror and go, “Oh, that Oh, that boy. What a dish.” I think all that. He was >> [music] >> a melancholic, um, depressed man with shot through with moments of delight.
He was a very angry, unhappy, lonely man who, out of that, found a tremendous kind of comedy. I mean, they all think I’m the most diverting, original, brilliant, energetic creature that ever walked across a stage. >> [laughter] >> He was a man with so many facets, so many characters, and he wanted you to see them all at once, immediately.
No, 12 of them, one after the other. I mean, he would if one said, you know, would the real Kenneth Williams stand up, I don’t think he I don’t think he could. I don’t think there really was such a person. Or, if there was, uh, I think he kept that Kenneth Williams behind closed doors. Behind closed doors for 40 years, Kenneth Williams kept a diary.
When it was published after his death in 1988, it revealed the gap between the public performer and the intense and solitary private man. He had a feeling of exclusion from the common pursuits of others. It must have been difficult for him to have been him, I think. Kenneth Williams’ solution to the problem of being him was a great success for a very long time.
He invented a comic persona that brought him the love and applause of an admiring public. But his dependency on the character he created ultimately cost him dear. From childhood, Kenneth Williams had a sense that he didn’t belong. The upper-class vowels he became known for were at odds with his true origins in a working-class area of London, just north of King’s Cross, where he was born in a one-room flat in 1926.
The family later moved to the poorer fringes of Bloomsbury when Kenneth’s father, Charlie, a hairdresser and barber, started a business which still trades today. Kenneth and his father never got on. He was a huge disappointment to Charlie, who wanted a son as tough as he was, as Kenneth’s only sister, Pat, revealed in a radio interview shortly before her death.
Nobody got on with Charlie Williams. He was a real old-fashioned Victorian bully. And Ken used to just look at him with utter contempt. A man, I remember, once came into the shop. “Oh, I’d like a blow wave.” And he said, “Blow? You’re getting no blow waves from me. I’m not doing no blow waves. Why you blooming iron? Iron off.
Iron. I’m not having no irons in my shop. Get out.” From his earliest days, all his love was focused on his mother, Louie. The real family [music] strength was between Kenneth and his mother. And he said in his diary, “I will never love anyone, never anyone as much as I love her.
” He just realized there would be no other important relationship in his life. I do love Louie. [music] She’s the only person I’ve ever loved. By love, I mean caring so much that it’s altruistic and feeling her presence [music] when she’s not physically there and missing her. Louie was very fussy. If there was any mess on the floor, she’d say, “Look at this mess. Simply disgusting.
” And Kenny would follow her around after her with a bit of rag saying, “Look at this mess. Simply disgusting.” >> [cough] >> But there was another reason why Kenneth was always Louie’s favorite, a reason that remained a family secret that no one could ever talk about. Pat was illegitimate, conceived when Louie had been engaged to a man who later abandoned her.
Three years later, Charlie stepped in and married her, but it wasn’t a love match. That came when Kenneth was born. Ken was her idol. She idolized him ever since he was a baby, you know. She was just I suppose because he was legitimate. He was her her baby boy, yeah. And everything was for Kenny, you know, I suppose.
Pat felt that she she didn’t belong anymore. And Dad [music] would come home with his present, you see. A present for his son. Here you are, mate. And I’d go, “Good. Where’s mine?” You ain’t got no present for the boy. And Ken would open his parcel, you see. A pair of boxing gloves. And he’d hold them up and he’d turn to “What am I supposed [music] to do with these?” “Put them on your bleeding fist and have a fight.
” “No, thank you.” And he’d just drop them in my father’s lap and walk out the room. But Kenneth’s defiance of his father could only go so far. After he starred as Princess Angelica in a school [music] play, Charlie Williams tried to push his son in a very different direction. He said [music] to me, “Acting is not You’ve got to have a trade, boy. You must have a trade.
” It was all din. You’ve got to have a trade. And so, Kenneth left school at 14 to pursue a career his father approved of, cartography. His apprenticeship was cut short, however, during the Blitz when he was evacuated to Bicester to the home of a bachelor veterinary surgeon. Kenneth had his first taste of educated middle-class life, >> [music] >> and he loved it.
The house was spacious as far as I was concerned. I’d come from very cramped quarters. It was this spacious with with four-poster beds, candelabra as he gave you to light your way up to bed, and a room full of fabulous books. His library was enormous. Kenneth [music] immersed himself in a whole new lifestyle and returned to London with a new accent.
I think that’s where he got the posh voice and all that, you know. I think he mixed with people that were Well, you [snorts] know, they >> [laughter] >> Bicester had a lasting impact on him in other ways. When he was [music] evacuated, he was on the bus somewhere and an older man got on and put his hand on his, uh, on his knee, and I think it went a bit further than that.
And Kenneth said that, you know, when the guy got off the bus, it was possibly the happiest days of Kenneth’s life so far. And why not? In 1944, Williams was drafted into the army and a year later sent to the Far East to fight the Japanese, one of the more unlikely soldiers in the British army.
I’d always had my own room, even when we were evacuated. I’d have their own room, you know. And suddenly, in this barrack room, I had to I used to take the trousers down, put the pajama bottoms on, and then do the rest. And they rumbled it. They rumbled it in the barrack room and said, “Oh, you’re frightened to show us your willy.
” >> [cheering and applause] >> And after that, after that, you know, I became I became quite uninhibited after that. Clearly not cut out to be a soldier, he soon shone off the training ground. There was about 20 of us in a hut with double bunks, and when the lights went out, that’s when Kenneth started his >> [laughter] >> little works.
He used to get up with a torch and shine it on himself and start reciting silly poems and stories, and I don’t know where he got these stories from. I think some of them were from his real life, actually. And he had us in absolute fits. If the chance came, he would take somebody off straight away. Well, put the beer out. For heaven’s sake, man, PULL THE STOMACH round to the front.
Kenneth was a natural performer and a perfect recruit for a new unit that would become a legend, Combined Services Entertainment. >> [music] >> Here, military life met business to entertain the troops. Fellow members of the unit included comedian Stanley Baxter and film director John Schlesinger, then a conjurer.
CSE for all of us was our first kind of encounter, as it were, with being professional performers. And I think that Kenneth was a genuine original. I remember the voices, I think, from day one. >> [music] [music] >> For many, CSE was a liberating experience. It was a place where some performers could openly acknowledge their homosexuality.
[music] There were so many like-minded people, um, in an entertainments unit, that it was uh, it was something of a revelation. Kenneth had by now begun to keep a pocket diary. It offers a revealing glimpse of his growing unease with his sexuality. Having a very vivid social life, I think. Met Peter in town.
Very camp conversation. P was looking for talent. Malaya C, I think that must be Malaya Club, getting quite gay. Now, I think that’s the the homosexual meaning of gay being used in 1947. Although the show that, uh, Kenneth was in at the time was called Going Gay, so you could never quite tell.
The last thing in the entry, and this happens a lot, this phraseology about this time, no traditional worries. I think that means, uh, no sexual contact. He was, uh, quite troubled, um, by his sexuality. Um, some of us had much greater ability to come to terms with it, I think. Um, but he didn’t. Williams returned to London in 1947 determined to go on the stage, but not as a comic or entertainer.
His ambition was to be a serious actor. For 5 years, he learned his trade in weekly repertory companies, but became frustrated by what he saw as a lack of vision in the theater. He wanted to run his own theater company. The The his approach to theater in those early years was curious. It was almost socialistic, you would say.
But he wanted, uh, a communal theater, an almost an egalitarian theater, an almost a socialistic one, where everybody was on the same level. They were all chums. There was a bit of J.B. Priestley in this, The Good Companions, and so on, too, I think. But attempts to find financial backing failed and the group disbanded.
Bitterly disappointed, Kenneth went back to live with his parents and took refuge in his other major passion, educating himself. He was a very serious thinker. He was very, very well informed, um, because he read a lot. He was always interested in literature, in history, and had this amazing memory. >> [music] >> Kenneth claimed that every day of his life he learned four new words from the dictionary and a new poem.
But his theatrical and bookish pursuits only widened the rift between him and his father. The father would say, “Who are you?” And, uh, as you I want come to see Kenneth. Kenneth, one of your poncy friends here. I I thought it was a ghost. I DIDN’T KNOW. MISTAKE. >> [screaming] >> HE WON ROLES IN TELEVISION DRAMAS and feature films, although fight scenes were never quite his style.
>> [music] >> But what he really wanted was success on the stage. His big break finally came [music] in 1954 when he was cast as the Dauphin in a West End production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. He was certainly the best Dauphin I’ve ever seen in, um, in many productions of Saint Joan. Uh, he was, um, rigorously in inside the role.
Mind you, there’s an awful lot of Kenneth in the Dauphin, an awful lot of the Dauphin in Kenneth, but, [music] uh, it was a fully thought-through performance. Saint Joan was a critical triumph for Williams and [music] marked the turning point in his career, but perhaps not in the way he might have imagined. He was spotted by Dennis Main Wilson, a BBC producer, who was on the lookout for talent for a new type of radio show.
>> [music] >> We decided with Tony that we would like to do a situation comedy on, uh, on radio without any funny voices and and just character comedy without jokes or funny voices. And instead of getting different actors, we decided to get one person to do the lot. Dennis Main Wilson came into us after one show.
He said, “I’ve just found I’ve just found him. Just found him. A wonderful actor.” Said, “He’s playing the Dauphin in the Saint Joan, too.” Uh, so we said, “Well, that’s, you know, that sounds ideal for a situation comedy, you know.” So he said, “Well, as long as you said no funny voices.” He said, “No, no, no.” So this, uh, this rather, you know, strange-looking young man that came to read to us.
And Ken came out with this voice saying, “Good evening.” I was like, “Hello.” And and and so funny voice straight away. And of course, when he did it on the show, he got an enormous laugh. Come in. Good evening. And instead of having the courage to say, “Look, no, we’re trying to do away with funny voices.” We said, “Well, we’ll use it.
” Radio was the ideal medium for the skill Williams had perfected since childhood, doing voices. Ken had four basic voices. He had his snide voice. >> Oh, no, stop messing about. Then he had his Felix Aylmer voice. >> That all your lives, your faith, your services. The Felix Aylmer was a very elderly actor at the time.
He had a very straight, uh, he had he had he had this wonderful plummy, uh, voice. The picture on the front cover of a young girl in a leopard-skin bikini. And Ken did an impression of him. Is he in the case? No. What a pity. He’s He’s left it at Nigel Balchin’s snide voice. Very upper-class twit. Sergeant Plonk, draw. Sir.
Get the arc light set up. Yes, sir. Right, you have cornered over here at 200 yd. Good evening. Go away, please. This is not a sideshow. Then he had his Cotterly, which was a broad, uh, that’s supposed to be an impression of his father, I suppose. Here you are, mate. Lever mouth building. That’ll be 6 and 9.
I’m not paying that. It’s only a mile and a half. Yeah, but we come a long way round, so I could wave to my girl. You seem to collect voices like other people collect stamps. Do you, in fact, borrow them from people that you’ve met or do you just pluck them from the air? Oh, yes, so they are, um, taken from people I’ve known, you know, pinched.
I’ve Um, the, uh, snide voice, that stop messing about one, mhm, uh, I met through I I met this boy who was working in an inn. And he was describing, um, how you were, sergeant, uh, when you were lifted in case with the suspect that you were taking out and everything. Uh, there shouldn’t be. And he described me, he had a petrol smile on his face and said, you know, and I, uh, you have to be very, very careful cuz otherwise you see I might kill you, tell you to take your clothes off and And so I thought it was a very good idea that.
I listen to your radio show every week. I think he’s rotten. All except that bloke with the funny voice. He’s a scream, isn’t he? >> [laughter] >> Oh, he has me in stitches. You know, there are actually people like that. >> [laughter] >> He turned out to be a grotesque, which is is quite essential. All of some of your great comic characters are basically grotesques.
Frankie Howerd was a grotesque. Tommy Cooper, in his own way, was a grotesque. And Ken had this this this quality, this um, the the it’s it’s a quality it’s not it’s it’s not natural, it’s supernatural in a way, you know. But Williams’ time on the Hancock show was far from happy. He believed that Tony Hancock resented his success.
You’re not like all the rest. You don’t like me now. No, I don’t. Oh, come on, let’s be chums. Make up. No. When the show transferred to television, Williams’ role in it diminished and he blamed Hancock, convinced he didn’t want his company either on or off the show. Had a chat with Tony. I don’t think he wants me in the setup in future.
He thinks that set characters make a rut in story routine. The only one he wants back in October is Sidney James, who’s mad about him. Nowadays, they go everywhere together. We were trying to get the subject matter and the characters more realistic. Um, you know, less cartoony, less, uh, farcical, more more character-driven.
There was nothing to do with any jealousy on Tony’s part, there were any resentment or any worry about Ken taking nothing like that at all. It was it was a purely professional decision. And in my opinion, a a correct one. Williams was by now living in the first of a succession of small spartan flats he would always inhabit [music] alone.
He shunned close personal relationships and the diary became his confessional and his confidant. Really, he says, fundamentally, and he puts it in italics and underlined, diaries are about loneliness and his certainly was. And it’s it’s having some sort of echo in your head of a voice that otherwise would have been another person’s voice.
If he’d been sharing his domesticity with somebody having conversations at the end of the day, how did your day go? That would have been fine. There would have been no need for the for a diary. Because there was no such person or because it was only Louie whose understanding of his feelings was necessarily terribly limited, he had to put it in writing.
Did the Hancock show from the Piccadilly? It was a general disaster, really terrible. This team is so dreary to me now, especially James and Hancock, so listless and disinterested, and their conversation is real pleb stuff. I don’t care for any of them at all. If people had asked me, you know, in the in the ’50s when I was working for him, who is one of the happiest people you’ve ever met, I would say Kenneth Williams cuz he’s always laughing.
Very funny man, life and soul of the party. And then 30 years later I picked up his diaries to found out that he hated every minute of it. I mean, I’ve never been so astounded in my life when I read the diaries. Yes, they are angry, they are waspish, they are bitter, but they are beautiful jobs of writing.
And I think that was his release, if you like. That was where he went to himself in private and told himself the real story. At the heart of the real story for Williams was his inability to come to terms with his homosexuality. [music] His diaries reveal he was tormented by this throughout his life. >> [music] >> I feel a sexual nature which I am thoroughly ashamed and disgusted by, and it colors all my life.
Everything. The sight of a navvy working in the street stripped to the waist [music] and golden tanned flesh and muscles, and I am back in square one, full of guilt and shame. Even if I did it, I know I couldn’t live with sex. How is your love life? How do you rate yourself as a lover? Oh, I don’t do it.
I’m not interested in or in a sexy or I should have been a monk. >> [laughter] >> I should have been a monk. No, I’m only I’m only interested in myself and I would regard any kind of relationship as deeply intrusive. I mean, I I regard and and privacy is the most important thing in my life and anything which invaded that would be a threat.
So, consequently, I live a life of celibacy. I am not interested in the other. But when he was in his early 30s, Williams did enter into a physical [music] relationship that was the closest he came to sharing his life with another. In 1958, he met 21-year-old [music] Australian Paul Florence. The two were close for 4 years, and after Florence returned to Australia, they visited each other and corresponded right up until Kenneth’s death.
When I see your familiar handwriting, >> [music] >> when I read lines only you can write, then I am plunged back into the past. [music] I am that tearful slobbering suitor of Ensley Court days, and I begin [music] to wonder if anything really alters. I feel that Kenneth did love me. Um when we first met, I was bowled over by by him.
There was a a bond between us which was very important to him and important to me. At one point it was even suggested that that he and I shared an apartment in the in the in the early days. I think he viewed the act of sex as something that was not and could never be part of his makeup. He felt that any physical relationship, no matter what form it it took, could be for him perhaps a form of destruction.
But his his sexual urges were the same as anybody else’s. But in future, Williams’ relations with men were confined [music] to brief encounters. And so what what there was instead was what he called in the diary traditional activity, which I think was just a sort of a disguised expansion of of trade, pickups of various kinds, and that was his sex life.
Always with these big strong men that he wanted. He always said he wanted strong arms to hold him. This is obviously what he wanted from from Charlie and emphatically never got. Williams’ extreme sexual repression drove him into another make-believe world. He said, “I have my own fantasies, and no human being could live up to them.
” I think because his imagination had always been fantastically vivid and because his the margins of his life were populated by beautiful people like road diggers and so on stripped to the waist, it had to be masturbation. That was his his chief sexual activity throughout his life, referred to by him as the Barclays, a Barclays Bank in rhyming slang.
And he was obviously a dedicated artist when in this form. My world revolves about myself. First thing in the morning I look in the mirror and think, “Oh! Oh, that’s What a dish [laughter] I think. Oh, it’s wonderful figure. I mean, you know this hair is spun gold. It’s been described >> [laughter] >> I’ve been described, do you know, a head of spun gold.
I hope hope they’re getting it in color. Snow blizzard whirling outside the windows all day. I hoovered the carpet in the lounge dressing only in bathing trunks. It was very daring. The atmosphere was charged with sex. If anyone had walked in, [music] they would have been irresistibly attracted. He was tremendously narcissistic, and this could take the simplest forms, just looking in the mirror and realizing how beautiful he was.
There would be a sort of transport of narcissism then that would reach to erotic heights. And I think the the Barclays, the famous Barclays Bank, would follow. >> [singing] >> While Williams could never accept [music] his homosexuality, what he did, incredibly successfully, was exploited in his professional life.
In 1958, Williams joined the cast of the radio program Beyond Our Ken, which later became the hit show Round the Horn. Together with Hugh Paddick, he created a legendary double act featuring the adventures of two outrageously camp chorus boys, Julian and Sandy. Oh, hello. I’m Julian and this is my friend Sandy.
>> [applause] >> Well, what sent you trawling off around the world like you did? >> [laughter] >> Oh, it was the call of the sea, Mr. Horne. >> Yeah. The call of the sea, Mr. Horne. I can’t resist it. I can’t resist it. He can’t resist it. He can’t When he gets the call, he’s got to go. He’s got to go, haven’t you, Julian? Oh, like a Like a shot. LIKE A SHOT.
YES, YES. Like a shot. So, I said, “Well, I’m game.” And he is, MR. HORNE. OH, NO, DUCKY. OH, HE’S he’s the only one game here. It was the first time that a couple of camp gentlemen had really ever been heard on radio. Ever. Uh uh and we were astounded. I think that it got past the censor because we had a censor then, of course. But it did.
It was a sort of conspiracy I always used to think between the the 8 million people who who listened who each would say individually, “Well, I understand it, but I don’t think my next door neighbor does.” Well, Mr. Horne, what brings you trawling in here? >> Oh, can you help me? I’ve uh Yeah, we’ve all erred, Ducky.
I mean, it’s common knowledge, isn’t it, Julian? Will you take my case? Well, it depends on what it is. We’ve got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time. Yes, but apart from that With a regular audience of 8 million, Round the Horn was the most popular radio show of its day. Williams enjoyed his time on the program chiefly because of the show’s urbane straight man, Kenneth Horne. Williams adored him.
For Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Horne was the father he never actually had. I mean, his own father was a rather gruff homophobic eurbic. Put on boxing gloves, you make a man of him. And Kenneth Horne was just a very very dear man, a very sweet, decent chap. And I think Kenneth thought, “If only he would be my father.
” And he just responded very much to him in that way. And I think Kenneth Williams all his life was looking for an ideal father. I think really, if you if you could put one line together to explain Kenneth Williams’ is he was it was Kenneth Williams in search of his father, the father he really wanted. Mrs. Horne.
But with the rest of the cast, Williams’ ego was all too evident as he fought to be the center of attention. Egotist everywhere. I think he would have preferred to have played them all. To have done all the parts. I think he would really. My part, everybody’s part. All the women, everything. And he would have been awfully good, I’m sure.
Awfully talented. If you met him for the first time and uh he he would size you up. And if he thought you were somebody out of his reach or alien to him, he’d probably tell you one of his dreadful dreadful jokes, bum bum jokes we used to call them. And if you were offended by it, he’d keep on and on and on until it hammered you into the ground.
It was as if some demon had got into him sometimes. I’ve been held back. [cheering] I have. I could have been a star. I could have been a star. I could have been somebody. I could have been somebody coming up to my house. They’re going to come up to my house and knock on my door and making me a very nice proposition. There, it’s out. It’s out.
He was so surprised that it came bursting out in comedy. And I’m glad. I’m glad. The other actors were very kind of laid-back. Kenneth Horne was archetypally English laid-back. And then you get Kenneth, this little manic, furious man. Can we go on now? Yeah, it’s all right. What is wrong with you, Mr. Horne? And all the suppression, all the rage, all the loneliness came out in those performances.
And that’s why they were so mesmerizing. Williams had become a radio star, but success made little impact on the way he lived his life. He discouraged visitors to his home, and the few who were allowed into his flat were amazed by what they saw. I’ve never walked in to any house which was a drab. There was nothing on the wall. There was just gray walls, these two chairs, a rug, and a one solid piece of furniture, really.
And that was all. It was It was startling in its absence of texture. >> [crying] >> There was just no color, no life in the room, no joy in the room. His musical taste at that time was leader. He used to listen to this very kind of esoteric leader. >> [singing] >> He hated me using the lavatory as well. Didn’t want me to do that.
I’ve only met, I think, one person who claimed to have used it. Even his own sister, Pat, was debarred from the bathroom. >> [music] >> He even put a plastic over the stove to keep things from penetrating. And that That See, I think that’s rather telling. I mean, s- he didn’t like being penetrated in any sense of the word.
This was really a little cave of consciousness that he had there. I mean, nothing came in except him. Williams spent the money [music] success had brought him, not on himself, but on his parents, for whom he now bought a flat in Kensington. The real power in the family had shifted from Charlie to his son. As Kenneth was getting more famous, Charlie had to tow the line.
He couldn’t say what he really thought, you know. As if Louie Ann. Everything had to be just so for Kenneth. Louie increasingly lived her life through her son, and was always his most loyal fan. Louie always was at every broadcast, which used to sit about two rows from the front. And it was a to my mind very weird sort of relationship, son-mother-son relationship, because all his most salacious remarks or or lines in the script would always be directed straight at his mother.
She just lapped it all up and probably thought he’s funnier than all the rest. >> [music] >> In the late ’50s and early ’60s, Williams was in big demand. As well as radio, his name topped the bill in a string of West End reviews. Review was an ideal vehicle [music] for Kenneth’s high-camp, quick-fire style, and he became a master at controlling an audience.
The review that launched him in 1957 was written by an unknown Cambridge undergraduate. He was absolutely perfect for the part was the first thing. It was a rather zany review, centered actually on a character very like him, who had the same sort of quirky separateness from everything that was going on around him.
It was sort of someone who stood back and sent up and commented on. So, I couldn’t believe when I came to the first rehearsals that there was anyone who was so exactly what, you know, I needed. And then, as a person, he was easily the funniest person I’d ever met at the time. Um I just was astonished. Orange, pink, maroon. Gray. Violet.
Brown. Blue. Orange. Green. What a ridiculous color for a suit. Lettuce green, if you don’t mind. Kenneth was in the middle of it, like a sort of malevolent elf, and he wasn’t he wasn’t like a real person, almost. Oh, don’t worry about them. They don’t like my [music] lettuce green suit, and they don’t like the fact that I grew my own lettuce just from an ordinary packet of seeds.
He primped around, [clears throat] and his little bum stuck out. And I mean, it was weird. It was a weird experience. He was hysterically funny, but like something from another planet. The sketch-based format of review was a perfect opportunity for Williams to win extra laughs through his own inventiveness. He became a notorious ad-libber.
A 5-minute sketch could go on for 20 minutes. And And he would beat the audience into submission. I mean, and then go beyond it. So, the audience began to shuffle uncomfortably, because it became quite scary. One day, he just rushed me into another room, and he said, “Now, look, you and I have got to remember that we’re the ones who going to go up there and take it.
And, you know, we’ve got to protect ourselves.” He said, “What we have to do with this piffle is ad-lib it and be prepared to improvise round it.” Outrageous was how critics described Williams in review, but the impulse behind his behavior was very serious. He now topped the bill. His reputation was on the line, and he could not allow himself to fail.
Do you get on well together on stage, or do you do you find, Fenella, for example, that Kenneth makes things up as he goes along? No. >> Well, he’s got a very inventive mind. >> Yes, but I’m always cooperative, very professional. Do you mind? Do you mind? No. The lines that you put in, if it comes to that, really.
Come come, you two. Williams’ reviews were attracting some of the best writing talent around, including Harold Pinter, John Mortimer, [music] and Cambridge Footlights star Peter Cook. Many of Cook’s most famous sketches were originally written for Kenneth Williams to perform. >> [music] >> I’ve got a viper in this box, you know.
Really? I’m good gracious me. Oh, yes. It is not an asp. Oh, good. Looks rather like one, but it’s not one. You know, I wouldn’t have an asp. No, I suppose not. Some people can’t tell the difference between a viper and an asp. More fool them, I say. But ironically, it was Cook who killed off Kenneth’s career in review when he began to perform [music] the sketches himself.
My viper eats like a horse. Like a horse, eh? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, like a horse. By 1961, review had a new look and a new breed of performers. Beyond the Fringe, starring Peter Cook and his Cambridge colleagues, [music] opened in the West End and was considered so clever that nothing else could compete. Beyond the Fringe in a way rubbished everything that had gone before.
I mean, a lot of a lot was said in the papers about how effete the past review had been and how it didn’t It wasn’t relevant today. And in a way, it wasn’t anymore. I mean, things things change. Things move on, and it was quite right that it should shift. Um And Kenneth certainly didn’t think he fitted into that extraordinarily clever world.
Uh although he was extraordinarily clever, ironically, he was extremely well read read and extremely knowledgeable, but he hadn’t been to university, and he felt, I think, like I did, very inferior to this new breed that suddenly swamped the theater. >> [music] >> Williams’ niche in the West End had collapsed, but work had started to come in from a very different direction.
He’d been spotted in review by producer Peter Rogers and offered a role in a new comedy film. Without thinking too much about it, Williams took it. Fleet Admiral here. Fleet Admiral here. Williams’ performances in the Carry On films would later overshadow all his other work. Over the next 20 years, he appeared in 22 of them, more than any other actor.
But what what happens if anything goes wrong? We have to amputate your leg. >> [laughter] >> But his attitude to them was always ambivalent. Your misreading of my potential is sublime in its totality. GET HIM OUT OF HERE, WILKINS. CHARMING. I think there was a great love-hate relationship there.
I think in terms of what was good about it, they gave him security. Which there’s no doubt about that. The sort of regular um films being made every year were bringing in regular money. And I think another plus was the fact that it was like an extended family. Some of the people on them he loved, some of the people on them he hated, but of course, all of that makes life.
The bad side of them was it was a lot of the sort of bums and tits jokes and sort of the very base humor that again, Kenneth found very easy to do. But I think underneath all that, that wasn’t the reason he became an actor. And I think there was a certain pull there. At this stage, the Carry On films were no more than a lucrative sideline for Williams.
Success in the theater was still what really mattered. There had been some heavyweight roles since St. Joan. [music] Orson Welles had cast him in his London production of Moby Dick, and he played opposite Alec Guinness in Hotel Paradiso. But his opportunity to show what a fine comedy actor he could be came in 1962 when playwright Peter [music] Shaffer, who would later pen Equus and Amadeus, chose Williams to star in the second part of his double bill, >> [music] >> The Private Ear and The Public Eye.
He loved what he called the literacy of the play, and he loved that. And he would say, “I really adore that kind of writing. It’s proper writing. Do you know what I mean?” And his nostrils would flare. And then he had this mixture of looking comic, but in fact he wasn’t being comic at all. He He was being deadly serious, and he was delighted and exalted by the prospect of speaking any words and sentences that had an elegance to them or sheen to them or a verbal felicity to them.
Playing opposite him was a rising young actress named Maggie Smith. She soon recognized his mastery of comic technique, and Williams became her teacher as well as her co-star. Ken eventually one day in that awful office at the Queen’s Theatre said, “Look, ducky.” >> [laughter] >> Awful day. He said, “You know, you’re being absolutely boring.
” And sort of went through it sentence by sentence and said, “You must make it. You would never say a sentence like that. You just wouldn’t.” I mean, I was literally learning a speech and just saying it. As a speech thinking, “Oh, how very clever. I’ve learned all the words.” I’d never thought of coloring things as vividly as Ken has done.
>> Yes, it is immediately in actual fact, which is the greatest kind of gift in comedy because the to make you know, it’s what you were saying earlier on about the challenge nightly with an audience to make it seem as though it is coming out for the first time. Yes, and also the thoughts that occurred. Also, yes, absolutely.
And that you surprise the audience an awful lot of the time. Kenneth’s relationship with Maggie Smith was more than just professional. They were twin souls, I think. That’s right. They were very alike in some ways. And they I was always aware that they had this >> [snorts] >> what I then called a kind of shining intimacy.
Would you say Kenneth had been a quite a big influence on you as a performer? >> influence. I mean, I pinched from him all the time. Can you give us some examples? Well, in in Black Comedy I’m doing a complete Kenneth. I mean, it’s outrageous. If you haven’t [laughter] seen it, you’d be laughing. This girl draws me like a magnet, and I am [music] inextricably involved with her.
It is a knot I will never want or be able to [music] untie. Friends like Maggie Smith were crucial to Williams and made his loneliness more bearable. More than anything, he loved family [music] life and spent a great deal of time at the homes of fellow actors like Richard Pearson. He was included in their families [music] very very much.
And I He loved that. He loved being part of it. He loved their children. Williams thought so highly of marriage and the companionship it brought that he even sought it for himself. I think he always felt that there was a domestic norm that he would like to conform to. He would like to be part of a married couple.
And there were women, possibly four or five women that he proposed a kind of celibate marriage to. Annette Kerr was to receive three marriage proposals over the years. The first when they appeared together in rep. One day Kenneth came downstairs and told us all off because we left the the sort of jelly bit under the soap in the in the soap dish.
It was very messy. And the thing that you had to do was to bring your soap uh your your nail brush like that, put your soap on top of it, and then you didn’t get the soap dish mucky. And so we all said, “Yes, Kenneth. Right, Kenneth.” You know. And uh so a little after this he suggested that I should marry him. So I said, “Well, Kenneth, I don’t think I could marry you. You’re so fussy.
” “Oh,” he said. But he was so terribly fastidious. He wouldn’t never in a way have been able to share accommodation of any kind with anybody else. And I think the fastidiousness is is uh one of the things that contributed to the celibacy. But Williams was looking for something more than a celibate marriage.
It’s clear from a previously unpublished diary extract that he had seriously considered adopting children and creating a family with one of the women to whom he proposed. I said to Norma, “We’ve both of us wasted our lives, [music] and the days have run through our fingers like bathwater.” And I went on about what we should have done 10 years ago and adopted the children and everything.
And I know that fundamentally she agreed. Meanwhile, Kenneth was having a difficult time with his own family. His parents’ relationship had gone from bad to worse, and Charlie was in decline both mentally and physically. And then the crisis came when he swallowed this stuff out of a bottle which said G-Linctus on it, which was I don’t know if it’s still made, but it was a cough remedy of the time.
But it turned out to be carbon tetrachloride. He does say in the diaries himself that it’s [music] mysterious how it got there. Charlie never recovered. Kenneth was later to confide in friends that he believed his father had committed suicide. So, it’s [music] all over. The doctor told Louie his brain was damaged, that the heart was very impaired, and kidneys in bad condition.
That it was in reality a good thing because he would have become much worse. Show went okay. Audience good. >> [music] >> Williams now had to face up to a crisis in his career, his first West End flop. He was appearing as a puck-like character [music] in a Robert Bolt play, Gentle Jack, starring Edith Evans.
I remember [music] after Gentle Jack there was terrible booing and shouting. And she said to me as the curtain fell, “Well, I heard one bravo.” And I said, “No, that was go home.” Later, Williams could joke about the experience, but at the time he was devastated by the criticism. He found he couldn’t [music] face performing without having the audience on his side, and he lost confidence in himself and in the play.
In a pattern that would repeat itself, Williams fell back on what he knew would win him back the love of the audience. The night I went was only about a week after it opened. He came down this rope, and as soon as he hit the floor he looked at the audience and went, “Hello.” And of course the audience fell about laughing.
And Dame Edith Evans wasn’t at all amused. Kenneth, you must stick to what’s written on the page, boy. And I think the problem there for him was always the danger of if you didn’t get any laughs, what’s going wrong kind of thing. He was used to laughs. Williams’ comic persona was now a means of self-protection. But his reliance on it damaged his reputation in the theater and meant he never became the kind of performer he’d wanted to be [music] and knew he could be.
>> [music] >> London in the mid-60s was the place to be. The capital was swimming, and change was in the air, but Kenneth Williams looked unlikely to play any part in it. Conservative of dress, lifestyle, and habits, he seemed a figure out of step with the times. But his outer conformity hid a fascination with the new sexual freedoms of the age.
It was swinging London, and Ken was always incredibly immaculately dressed. He was a very smart little chap. And he had a furled umbrella, I remember. And he was on the back of my Lambretta on the pillion. We used to sit rather straight on the pillion. In those times you could go around Eros. And for some reason I just thought, “I’ll go around Eros.
” So I felt a bit high. And Ken suddenly started shouting, waving this umbrella saying, “What What Where is it all happening? Where are all these orgies? Why haven’t we been asked?” >> [music] >> Williams’ wish to be part of the action was answered in 1964 when he met one of the most anarchic and flamboyant figures of the age, the playwright Joe Orton, who just caused outrage with his first West End hit, Entertaining Mr. Sloane.
>> [music] >> When I was with him in life, I found myself laughing so much of the time. He was terribly funny. I mean, often it would be impish [music] and outrageous kind of wit. Like Williams, Orton was gay, working class, and a prodigious diarist. Unlike Williams, Orton reveled in his sexuality. He lived with his long-term lover, Kenneth Halliwell, and sought [music] sexual adventure at every opportunity.
The freedom of his humor, the freedom of him of himself is what so appealed to Williams, who was so unfree in himself physically and intellectually. He was bound by convention and under wraps. And even if if Williams couldn’t in himself be unabashed, he could be part of someone’s story who was unabashed, and that was liberating.
>> [music] [singing] >> I remember one escapade in Leicester. He revisited Leicester and said we couldn’t go to my parents’ [music] house. So he took this bloke in instead to uh the porch, which was the only part that remained of a derelict house. [music] And he said that the sex having sex in this porch was peculiarly difficult cuz the [music] circumstances were a bit confined.
And he said, “My bum was outside most of the time, and it was freezing.” >> [music] >> But Orton wanted his friend to do more [music] than take vicarious pleasure in his exploits. As his diary reveals, he urged Kenneth to shed his inhibitions and become more like him. “I’m basically guilty about being homosexual, you see?” he said.
“Then you shouldn’t be,” I said. “Reject all the values of society and enjoy sex. When you’re dead, you’ll regret not having fun with your genital organs.” They always looked like two delinquent schoolboys to me. Both of them rejoicing in one another’s schoolboy cleverness. And both needed success. And didn’t want unsuccess at any price.
Orton was determined his new friend would star in his latest play Loot and cast him as the worldly and brutal Inspector Truscott. Williams was thrilled to be back on the stage in a work by the country’s hottest new writer. But their first and only collaboration ended in disaster. The play died a death during its provincial tour and never made it to the West End.
We were at Bournemouth and one usherette was reported to saying that it was unnecessarily filthy as if there really was a necessary amount of filth. >> [laughter] >> People were emptying the auditorium all the time, you know, with that production cuz we came under the watch committee in Manchester cuz we hadn’t got the seal of the Lord Chamberlain.
And we had policemen in the wings saying, “If you say that line, if you say that line, the watch committee I’m abandoning that line. If you say that line.” Cuz the policeman had to say, “Where do you do it? Where the streets are well lit? Are there no open spaces? Where do you do it? Five pregnancies in one week.
Where have you done it?” And the boy had to say, “On crowded dance floors during the rumba.” And they said it was a definite squalor and rudeness about the local dance halls. The offense the play caused was not the only problem. The cast couldn’t find a playing style that worked, and no one was struggling more than Kenneth Williams.
Although Kenneth was in love with the play, it seemed to me as we proceeded with the rehearsals that he was wrongly cast. After the show, I felt so suicidally depressed, I just don’t know what to do. [music] The utter shambles of this production is totally unbelievable. The cast is demoralized and the script practically in rags and some of it complete nonsense.
>> [music] >> I wish I’d never set foot near the rotten mess of it all. Orton had failed to revive Williams’ stage career, but he did transform his private world. In the summer of 1966, Orton and Halliwell took Williams on holiday to a place that would change his life. Tangier in the 1960s was a haven for gay men drawn there by the availability of sexual partners in a society tolerant of unconventional lifestyles.
Orton took to [music] it like Pinocchio at the fair, you know, I mean, Orton really could get into it, loved it, was sensual, was young, muscular, [music] worked on his body. Typically, Williams approached the Tangier experience with more restraint. Barry Wade [music] met him on his first trip there. He was wearing all his full clothes, [music] suit, tie, jacket, sit on the beach.
Completely dressed. Well, I’m not going to take my clothes off, obviously. But we would all go swimming and and Kenneth would have a few drinks and um plonk himself into a deck chair and go to sleep. Rather like that, as you can [music] see. He might take a jacket off if he got too hot. That’s about as far as he’d get, I think.
He would complain bitterly all the time and totally [music] enjoyed it. But while the temptations Tangier offered unsettled him, Williams couldn’t resist completely. He came to the villa. I used to rent a villa there for 3 months. And he loved all that to come up to the villa. Couple of parties.
Complain about them, of course. I shouldn’t be here. It’s immoral, the whole place. Jump on the back of a bike with a Moroccan and drive off. >> [music] >> Eventually, he took me to a sleazy apartment house in the Medina where a Spanish queen with an ill-fitting toupee showed us into a wretched chamber for 15 dirham. I’ll have another bit of that tomorrow.
He’d disappear. “Where have you been, Kenneth?” “Mind your business.” [music] So, um you don’t You weren’t expecting to get any information at all. It all happened uh out of sight, and then he could still say, “I’m celibate. I don’t do anything.” So, you say, “Yes, Kenneth.” In Tangier, Williams could skirt the fringes of a world that both repelled and fascinated him.
It offered an escape from his unhappy life at home, >> [music] >> and as these previously unpublished photographs reveal, somewhere that he could relax and feel part of life. [music] On all the occasions, I fled to Morocco because of some inner despair. [music] There wasn’t one really successful visit in the sense of spiritual replenishment, but they all worked after a fashion because new rhythms were created and the pendulum must swing.
It’s when the pendulum is motionless or barely [music] moving at all, that is the time of suicidal despair. But the relationship that helped create these new rhythms was cut tragically short. On August the 9th, 1967, Kenneth Halliwell beat his lover Joe Orton’s brains out with a hammer. He then took 22 sleeping tablets to kill himself.
The loss of his friends confirmed for Williams the danger of following Orton’s sexual creed. There’s no question about it. It is a homosexual entanglement that does it destroy Joe. There’s no question about that. I mean, Halliwell’s jealousy, I mean, his letter at the end says the answer to this can be found in the diaries.
And the diaries of Joe were entirely accounts of promiscuous sex. But one area of Williams’ life was unfailingly successful. His role as a Carry On star. S E T S E T sex enjoyment tax. Audiences loved their bawdy humor, and the series fast became the most successful in British cinema history. During the 1960s, Pinewood Studios were turning out up to three a year, most featuring Kenneth Williams.
>> So often what he gave in the theater, people said, “We want less of this.” Uh and with the Carry Ons, they said, “We want more of this.” And the audience says liked it, too. So, he had a hit on his hands, and we all would rather like a hit. Do not worry. We’ll make it easy for them. It will die the death of a thousand cuts.
Nonsense, child. The British are used to cats. Uh do you think that this is the type of part you’d like acting? Oh, I always do. It’s got to touch at the side as a minute, you see? And I’m very good at all that, being a bit nasty, you know? Yes. Enjoy that very much. They didn’t [music] want characters. They wanted the essence of what you had.
So, Kenny [music] was like himself. Do you think I’m an idiot? You wouldn’t dare do anything to me, and you know it. He was very snooty, [music] very grand, very arrogant. I’ll cut HIS TWO-FACED HIDE. HE USED to mug around and [music] joke around, and he did that in the front. >> YOU’RE WASTING [clears throat] YOUR TIME.
YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO FRIGHTEN ME. Come on in. Turn him out, Ronnie. Side. NO, NO, NO. I’M BLIND. I’M BLIND. HE BROUGHT A KIND OF RESTRAINED ANARCHY. Uh you never quite knew what he would do next. The others at Ealing said James knew exactly what they were going to do. Are you all right, doctor? Am I all right? Of course I’m all right.
But you watched Kenneth because at that time, he could suddenly surprise you in a in a very ordinary scene. >> [music] [laughter] >> I’m fine. Williams gave as much of a performance off the set as he did in front of the cameras. He liked to gather people around him and tell stories. That the whole cast and the all the staff even public who were watching would would be waiting for him to set up his stall to tell stories.
He was like the Pied Piper. Typical of Kenneth Williams’ sense of humor, the mayor of Wolverhampton came on the set one morning, and he was introduced to her and immediately went into a story that he does very well and tells everybody. And there is a tape of it uh where he’s playing it with Bernard Cribbins as the doctor.
And you may like to hear it. I must see you, doctor. It’s terribly important. Well, you see, it’s it’s this wind all the time. It’s dreadful with my work. You see, I’m always losing jobs. You see? What What What is your job? >> I’m a shorthand typist. Well, don’t you do that, as well. No, I eat anything. I eat all the time.
Oh, you know, anything. Corn flakes and porridge. Well, I think I better just examine you. And there’s there’s no sort of side effects other than these. Oh, well, the only The only thing is, doctor, there’s the noise. There’s no smell. That’s right. Yeah. You’re You’re not going to put that thing up my bum.
Well, no, I’m going to stick it up your nose, cuz if you think they don’t belly is your nose won’t hear it, TOO, ISN’T IT? >> [laughter] >> THAT WAS MY OLD. There was little Williams wouldn’t do to attract attention to himself. This Roman tunic I’m wearing in the film is really quite attractive in white and gold. Just a minute. >> [music] >> Give me a chance to look all sexy.
I continually lift it up and expose [music] my and everything at the unit. They’re all rather disgusted and laugh it off. Evening, Thanks, I’ll be ready. But quite a number of them have remarked, “Oh, Kenny, not again. Put it away.” The restaurant was full of people. And when he came in, he used to say, “Hello, Giovanni. Nice to see you.
Have you had your wank this morning?” Charmed, I’m sure. But the impulse behind these [music] antics was a desperate one. He could be appalled by his own behavior, but the reaction it generated filled an emotional gap in his life. [music] When I think of the shameless way I behave, anything for a cheap laugh, the dirty [music] mimes, the dirty songs, and the obscene dialogue, and the person that I really am at home with myself.
It is almost a [music] Jekyll and Hyde existence. And the first half gives me guilt and remorse. The obvious remedy is to stop the rude behavior, [music] but then I’m loath to relinquish the laughs and the crowd that gathers about me. I need them like other healthy [music] people need the affection of a partner.
I remember him coming to pubs. I remember Ted Smith. And he stood at the bar and said, “And I told him, I said, ‘You’re not getting anything Nothing out of me, mate. All the comedians I’ve known have been deeply depressive people, uh manic depressive. The moment you would talk to them, you realized what a colossal amount of despair that was underneath the facade which they desperately kept it at bay with.
They kept it at bay with this facade. It was their duty to channel a private misery into comedy. I suspect he was a prisoner perpetually of of the persona that he knew elicited the response of hilarity and of approval. Something orgasmic about the effect he wanted in you hearing the the story. I mean, he wanted uh that above all to to build something to a great climax of of crescendo of laughter and outrageousness.
>> [laughter] >> And then he would fall to fall silent. I did used to get concerned about him sometimes, and I used to try to say, “Are you happy?” and whatever. But he he didn’t really want to talk about that. I mean, I I was having counseling at one time, and he he thought that was ghastly in case it took away his his creativity.
He felt it would destroy something in him. He felt it would um uh stop him being what he was. The central relationship in his life was still with his mother, Louie. And in 1972, they moved into adjacent flats. They went almost everywhere together, took regular holidays on cruise ships, and shared a sense of humor. She’s very funny.
Great for the repartee. And she had wonderful sayings of her own. But he he she also used to borrow phrases from Kenneth. And sometimes the dialogue between them was really quite entertaining. But their conversation could be so uninhibited that friends were left speechless. When we first had Kenneth here with Louie, he was leaving and said, “I must take her home now and rub her tits with olive oil.
” And we thought, “Is this what he always talked like to his mother?” And if you said to Kenneth, “Really, Kenneth, you can’t talk like that to your mother?” Louie would interrupt and say, “Don’t you worry about my Ken.” The impressive store of general [music] knowledge that Williams had acquired during his drive to educate himself finally found a public outlet in 1968.
He was invited to appear on Just a Minute, the radio game show in which panelists talk for 1 minute on a given subject without hesitation, deviation, or repetition. [music] The subject is stopping hiccups. Can you tell us something about that in this game starting now? One of the best tips I can give you is to inhale deeply and then recite a long piece such as the old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world, comfort thyself, what comfort is in me? I have
lived my life, and that which I have done may He within Himself MAKE PURE, BUT THOU Peter Jones is challenged. You’d be better off with the hiccups. >> [laughter] >> So, before the program started, Kenneth wouldn’t go “Hello, I don’t like all this. Oh, no. I’m a cult. Everybody knows to kick his bottom right out.
I’m a cult. I’m a great big cult. I’m the biggest cult in the whole of BBC.” And they’d come and sit down. Kenneth always sat here, and Freud there, Peter Jones and myself over there. And as the program started, and Freud might be talking in his very slow, lugubrious way, “I took this dog out for a walk yesterday.
” Kenneth by this time would have his trousers rolled up and be flaunting his leg under Freud’s nose and Freud’s face, and then go over and nuzzle him up against his beard, stroking him. And Freud would still go on without being interrupted at all in a very slow way, looking straight ahead as though Kenneth didn’t exist. Now, Kenneth by this time would be looking at his mother.
She always sat two rows back in exactly THE SAME SEAT. OH, HOW LOVELY. OH, WONDERFUL. AND however rude he might be, everything went straight to his mother. He’s ejaculating like mad there. >> [applause] >> Keeping a stiff upper lip starting now. >> I have actually tried this myself, and inevitably one comes to resemble a ventriloquist dummy.
Just a Minute was more than just a game show to Williams. It was his chance to show a side of himself that he really cared about. And his anger at being contradicted was often all too real. What sound as if they start off as fantasy rages end up sounding more like real rages. And those performances were quite strange sometimes because you felt should this be being broadcast? This is too authentic to be entertainment anymore. It is a rope.
He was giving an example of how this word A buckle is a rope. It can’t be a knot. It’s a rope. It’s got to go up and down. A knot can’t go up and down. What are you talking about? A knot’s for tying, you great nit. >> [laughter] [music] >> But in real life, Williams could be far ruder and far angrier. I remember once a friend of mine from the country said, “Oh, Kenneth, how nice to see you.
What are you doing now?” “What am I doing? I happen to be appearing with Ingrid Bergman at the Cambridge Theatre, you bald-headed country bumpkin.” Even members of the public could find themselves at the receiving end of a Williams outburst. He related one such incident in a message left on a friend’s answer phone.
I did that Just a Minute yesterday. Oh, it was all awful. stage after and said, “Do you fulfill the strictures of Lord Reith, who said that everything should be for the glory the glory of Christianity?” I said, “Oh, shut I said, “People like you wear me out.” “Bless you. Bless you, my son. God’s bless I said, “Don’t give me that crap.
I don’t want to hear it.” “All right, I will pray for you.” I said, “Don’t bother. Uh your presence here has been very embarrassing. You cause nothing but exhaustion, like so many of your religious friends.” Williams grew to hate the attention he received from the public in the street, [music] regarding it as a painful intrusion into his privacy.
I feel the bleeding going on [music] inside. Every day I die more consciously. The staring, the stopping in the street, [music] the nudging of people when they recognize me, my fear of them, my hate of them, my desire to get away from their prying [music] eyes. Although one part of Williams shrank from public [music] curiosity, his ego needed reassuring that he had been recognized. Yeah.
We were going somewhere quiet. Down in the Fulham Road, I think it was. Because it was quiet, he said. It was quiet until Kenneth started. We got halfway through the meal, everybody in the restaurant knew who it was. And as soon as he’d got them all it is grasped. He said, “Oh, come on. I’m fed up with this.
Can’t stand these people.” And we left halfway through the meal. >> [music] >> Williams owed his high public profile to the Carry On films. But their success was trapping him in a stereotype. [music] His tragedy in a way was he was too clever for the material, and he knew he was repeating himself. He knew that he was doing really a lot of inferior stuff in among the good work.
What do you want? The one who calls himself Dandy Desmond. That’s him. He was insulted by every script he was sent because he thought nobody understood that he was really a much better actor. Which one [music] of you is looking for big dick? He is. I turned to the shooting script of the Carry On which arrived yesterday.
If anything, it is worse than the previous version. It is appalling. It lacks verbal wit. It lacks comic situation. It lacks any credible characters. It is a Carry On. Anybody who starts with Orson Welles must have a tremendous sense of what’s possible. And then to finish up in, you know, Carry On number 42 is not really a a a career move upwards.
In 1971, 6 years after Loot, Williams returned to the theater desperate to wipe out the memory of that notorious flop and to reestablish himself on the stage. He starred with Ingrid Bergman and Joss Ackland in Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, which did good box office but had very mixed reviews. Then came a bittersweet comedy, My Fat Friend.
[music] The play opened well, and Williams’ performance was much praised. He was ecstatic, as a letter he wrote at the time reveals. The joy, the utter vindication of all the suffering and the dreary days when you see one rewarding notice which treats you seriously and talks not only about your comic persona but about your ability to create pathos as well.
But even in a success, Williams couldn’t prevent his comic persona from taking over. The play became for him a sort of straitjacket in which he wasn’t allowed to break out and be himself and and be as funny as he could be. And what he wanted to do more than anything was to contact his audience. Contacting his audience meant only one thing.
Kenneth Williams, the comedy actor, became Kenneth Williams, the comic solo turn. We’d been a dialogue here, Kenneth and I, and uh perhaps they weren’t laughing as they should do out there. Kenneth’s getting very worried. So he leaves me and he dances down in this little sideling way, and I think, “Oh, no.
I know what’s going to happen now.” And he turns to the audience and say, “Hello. How are you?” The house would go up, and he was there for about 4 minutes, little quips and jokes, laugh building, he felt better. And so back he comes as if nothing had happened. And he’d turn to me and he’d say, “Your turn.” Williams eventually bowed out of the production on the grounds of ill health, causing an early closure.
>> [music] >> From the same place? Yeah, roughly. Apart from a spell directing two of Joe Orton’s plays in the early ’80s, he had little contact with the theater again. His career seemed stalled. When Round the Horn ended in 1969, [music] the BBC had tried developing new television and radio programs around him, but most, [music] like The Kenneth Williams Show, were short-lived.
And the high camp style he’d made his own was now being done by others, as his agent would explain. Peter Eade telephoned. We talked about why there had been no offers of work of any kind, and he pointed out that the Grayson TV show is a complete crib of my stuff. >> [laughter] >> And that Inman is doing the same thing on the BBC.
It hadn’t hit me before. Of course, they found other people to do it, and cheaper people in every [music] sense. He was a taker, and in fact he was furious forgetting him. Kenny Everett sort of went a bit further than than Kenneth. The The were people that sort of overtook Kenneth in that field, and towards the middle and the end of his life he he was probably a bit old-fashioned.
The waspishness increased. He became a little bit more difficult to be with, that people were a little bit frightened of him, that they couldn’t find a vehicle for his talents. >> [laughter] >> And I think increasingly he felt the shadows closing over him. But Williams held the shadows at bay once more. He began doing for the public what he’d been doing for years in private, making people laugh by talking about himself.
The 1970s and ’80s saw the heyday of the television chat show, and Williams became its king. His way with words is legendary. >> He is the most English of any of the English men I’ve ever met so far. >> A wasp with adenoids. A brilliant talker but is also unfailingly funny. Yes, shall we bring him on now, I reckon? The sublime Mr. Kenneth Williams.
>> [music] >> Kenneth Williams. >> [applause] >> Kenneth Williams. >> [music] >> Kenneth Williams is God’s gift to the talk show host. >> [applause] >> He was a huge show-off, and and he loved making people A, shocked and B, laugh. When I first worked with Maggie Smith, we went to Fortnum and Mason where she was after a particular kind of bra.
A very grand assistant in Fortnum’s, which was heavy carpeting, beautiful very soft pile. You hardly heard as you entered. This woman said, “Yes, I have a particular bra, madam.” And then she said it was seven guineas. And I said, “Seven guineas for a bra?” She would have your tits off. He got a fabulous memory for stories.
He had a great gift of invention. In other words, if he didn’t have a good story, he’d make one up. And thirdly, of course, and most important, he’s a most wonderful mimic. And I had my private dressing room completely private, I thought, and a knock on the door, [clears throat] and I said, “Who is it?” And the voice said, “Noel.
” And I thought it was the stage manager, and I said, “Piss off.” or something. >> [laughter] >> And instead of which the door opened, and Noel Coward came in. >> [laughter] >> I was sitting on this chamber pot because I had this warm water with which I was cleaning myself, and I shot up, and in shooting up when I saw him I upset the per and the water The water went all over the place.
He said, “What on earth are you doing?” >> [laughter] >> And I said, “Well, I was washing myself because I was told by the surgeon after an operation that I should never use toilet paper ever, but always wash it, completely wash it, you see.” And he said, “Oh, my dear, I do understand. Have you read my book Present Indicative? I discuss I discussed that very operation myself.
It’s a dreadful operation, piles.” And I said, “No. >> [laughter] >> I didn’t have that. I didn’t have that. I said, “No, my operation was for papillae. I had papillae, you see.” And he said, “Papillae? My dear, it’s an island in the South Seas.” >> [laughter] >> And then I said, “It is.” Williams didn’t just tell funny stories.
He sometimes used the chat show as a political platform. The idealistic young Labour voter had become a passionate and vocal right-winger, and as strike action intensified in the mid-’70s, something of a union basher. And yet they all get worked up over a couple of pound in in their pay packet or something and go on strike.
Why can’t they have Why can’t them if unions they care, if they’re really socialistic and say we care about our fellow man, why can’t they force Why can’t they march about something like that instead of another pound for themselves? Why do a job just for what you get. You do the job because you want to do it well.
Oh, but Kenneth, can I say I think that’s crap. I mean I’m I’m sorry. I really [cheering] I’ve never been so insulted. Williams’ forthright outburst caused a stir, and the following week he was invited back to argue his case with a heavyweight adversary, the trade union leader Jimmy Reid. Williams couldn’t resist the challenge and entered the contest determined to come out on top.
Kenneth was was incredibly competitive, and he regarded anybody else on the show with him as being somebody who was about to steal his thunder, and he would do anything to put them down. And I said to Kenneth, just him to bit of sound level. This is before the show started to do a sound test.
And he stood up and declaimed this poem to the assembled staff and then sat down and looked challengingly at Jimmy Reed who said, “Was that yes?” And Kenneth said, “As a matter of fact, it was. Yes.” Hmm. And so I said to I said then to Jimmy Reed, “Jimmy,” I said, “would you give me a bit of voice level?” He said, “I’ve got a poem for you.
” And he did this extraordinary poem. And at the end of it, he turned to Kenneth and said, “Who wrote that?” And Kenneth said, “I don’t know.” And Jimmy said, “I did.” Now, I’ve never seen Kenneth as discomforted during an interview or the interview that followed as as as then. And I think that’s probably the worst performance he ever did on a on a talk show that I did with him.
Your ordinary working man’s caught in the same trap because I’ll say to him, “Ask more for your house cuz you won’t if you want a better one. You won’t get it unless you ask more. You know what I mean?” So he’s caught in the same trap, isn’t he? The ordinary little man who owns a house, I mean. Not particularly.
Well, he is if he owns I’m telling you. No, he’s caught in a trap because he he must. If he’s going to provide The talk show performances mattered to Williams because he was doing little else. In 1979, he played in the [music] last of the Carry On films with few regrets. I will make you love me if it’s the last thing I do.
As the Carry On films reached their climax, they became almost caricatures themselves and coarsened and the last one, which I know Kenneth thought was appalling, was Carry On Emmanuelle. [music] He was quite embarrassed to have done it, but he did it out of [music] loyalty to the Carry On team, CARRY ON EMMANUELLE.
>> [screaming] >> THE FILM WORK HAD DRIED UP, THE STAGE work had dried up, the the Kenneth Williams presents on BBC television or whatever it might be, that had kind of gone and he had become that most forlorn of creatures. He’d become the person who existed because of game shows and talk shows. So from an enormous potential, he had reduced himself, brought himself into boxed himself into a corner.
And in a way, the same thing I think happened with his his in a sense much of his private life. He alienated his friends as the years went by by outrageous behavior. I mean, I remember being in the sitting room and he’d kept the table on a roll for several hours, but he had to go further and the next thing we knew there he was literally dropping his trousers and saying, you know, “The bum is hanging down in pleats.” And exposing it.
So I think maybe in terms of relationships, he painted himself into a corner and fewer people were phoning back. And the one relationship that had always worked was also disintegrating as old age took its toll on Louie. I’m virtually a prisoner chained to this elderly derelict, forever reminded of geriatric problems, the stained mattress, the cigarette burns on carpets and chairs, the conversational repetition.
Kenneth himself wasn’t a well man. Stomach ulcers, piles, bowel disorders all contributed to physical pain he found hard to take. If something is misery-making, turn it. Tell talk about it. Make it amusing. Make it funny. Make it creative. Explain why the illness, the malaise occurs. And you can do that with comedy.
He was taking things that were personal and sometimes painful to him, you know, his ailments, his strange voice, his curious manner, and almost sending them up or not almost sending them up so that he was inviting you to laugh at him while he was actually telling you something true about himself. Mr. Williams, you have a colon.
>> [laughter] >> So I’ve come into money. But he would pay a price for this public exposure. Oh, the fact is on these chat shows, I’ve been eating at myself for years, just living off body fat. And people say, “All he does now is go on and tell those old stories we’ve all heard before with his usual lavatory gags and his camp blether.
” Pathetic. He felt he was excavating himself in those chat shows, just giving more chunks of himself away. And I think he felt there wasn’t much left of himself. Williams’ diaries record he had mused on suicide from his earliest days, but in the last few months of his life, the idea of putting an end to his suffering began to obsess him.
What you mean like say you’d want to kill yourself or something like that? Oh, yes, I put stuff like that down in my little book about suicide and how one would go about it, what would be the best method, all that kind of thing, you know. Looking back on it, of course, it’s often, you know, quite quite amusing. >> Why do you think you want to kill yourself? Well, one went to one would think it at the time because of extremely low state of morale.
And one actually does write something down which is practical in terms of how one thinks one should go about it. Counted my [music] capsules of poison and I’ve got over 30, so there should be enough to kill me. Just have to work out the time and the place. A fortnight before he died, I saw him outside Broadcasting House and we stood on a traffic island.
He was very distressed. And he looked sort of gray and and Kenneth’s face in repose sometimes was an incredibly tragic face. He would go very sallow and and I remember thinking I was so preoccupied with my own things and I remember thinking, “Oh, I I should ring him.” But I didn’t. On March 21st, 1988, Williams’ diaries revealed that he attempted an overdose, but after taking two barbiturates, couldn’t go through with it.
On April 14th, he wrote what was to be his final entry in his diary. Had meal with Lou at 5:30. Saw the news, watched the dreary saga of murder and mayhem. [music] By 6:30, pain in the back was pulsating as it’s never done before. So this plus the stomach [music] trouble combines to torture me. Oh, what’s the bloody [music] point? The next day, Louie went into her son’s flat and found him dead in his bed.
The comedy actor Kenneth Williams has died at the age of 62. He was found dead at his flat in North London this morning. It’s believed He died from an overdose of barbiturates causing much speculation in the press. But the coroner couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an accident and recorded an open verdict. I believe that he took his life.
That is what I believe. I don’t know that for sure, but I believe so. He he could not find anything worthy in himself at all. He felt that his life was dross. At the end of the day, he died I think of frustration really, sexual, social, theatrical, professional. He just wasn’t doing what he wanted to do. Left [music] neatly stacked in Williams’ bookcase was his final legacy, the 41 volumes that documented his [music] innermost thoughts about himself and everyone who came into his orbit, candid [music] and uncensored.
You say you’re not going to want them published after your death. I’m surprised to hear you say that. I just thought you might have thought you’d you would want your diaries published after your death. Oh, I see. Oh, after death. >> Yes. Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you meant published in your lifetime. >> No. Oh, no. Oh, after death.
Yes, one wouldn’t mind that at all. Weren’t you worried about being unkind or catty? Oh, I wouldn’t care I wouldn’t care at all then. One would be out of the way. I wouldn’t mind that. I wouldn’t [laughter] mind it. And then then say then say, “Oh, well, he was a rotter to say nasty things about it.” I wouldn’t mind it all if I was out of the way.
That’s fine. He knew that he’d been a strange and somewhat dislocated personality all his life. Since a child, he’d known that. And he’d never managed quite to puzzle it out for himself. But I think he wanted to leave the evidence so that it was there on the table, literally on the table for us to to see and and sort out.
>> [laughter] [laughter] >> I feel sad for him that his life wasn’t as happy for him as he made it for all of us. Because as soon as you saw him, as soon as you heard him, your heart lifted, you broke into a smile, and sometimes into a belly laugh. He had the gift of creating laughter, but he didn’t have the gift of creating it for himself.
>> [laughter] [singing] [music] [music] [music] >> Pom, pom, pom. >> [music] >> Pom, pom, pom.
