Stage Struck 2

Q: Would you tell us a little about your early life?

DJ: Gosh, it was so long ago now! I was born in London just before the War, so I didn’t see my father until I was about five. Parents went out to work. There was no theatre in the family as such. I went to primary school, then I went to grammar school. I suppose it was there I started acting, and realised that I wanted to be an actor. Loved school! I had an idyllic childhood, actually. I was an only child. I thought at times I might have missed a brother or sister, but actually I got all the pocket money. From grammar school, I went to Cambridge for three years, supposedly reading history, but actually acting all the time.

Q: Was that to please your parents or yourself?

DJ: To do both, actually. I mean they were very supportive of me in whatever I wanted to do. I think they had in the back of their minds, “Oh well, if he’s brainy, it would be much better if he became a doctor or a lawyer.”, because that’s an accepted profession and an actor is not. So it was the old “second string to the bow” syndrome. I also wanted to continue my education as long as I could, because I loved school. But I also knew that Oxford or Cambridge were full of actors and that’s how a lot of actors and directors got started. So I combined my love of school, and schooling, with my desire to be an actor, and to act. Also, it’s also three years of paid irresponsibility, which I was quite looking forward to.

Q: So the academic work sort of fitted around the acting?

DJ: Oh, absolutely! Yes. I got what was the actor’s degree, which is a 2:2, which is absolutely in the middle. You’re not a dunce, but you’re not a genius. Then I left there and went to the Birmingham Rep for three years.

Q: You joined Birmingham Rep in September 1960 and your first play was One Way Pendulum. What do you remember about it?

DJ: I remember the play with affection. It was about this gentleman who taught a chorus of weighing machines to sing the Hallelujah Chorus upstairs in his attic, and his family. One of them built the Old Bailey in his sitting room. It was my first job, and it was also the first job of an actress called Rosemary Leach. Rosemary played the young girl- marvelously well, she was very funny. Liz Spriggs I remember played Mum. It was wonderful. I played Rosemary’s boyfriend; it was a small part, a couple of scenes.

Q: What about your singing in it?

DJ: I sang in One Way Pendulum? No.

Q: We met Rosemary Leach recently and she said to ask you about “You Can’t Chop Your Momma Up In Massachusetts", which you sang in close harmony through megaphones.

DJ: Oh, my goodness gracious! Yes, I do remember that! Gosh, it’s all coming back now. Yes, I did sing. I did sing that. Good heavens – it is nearly thirty years ago! That was the song he taught the weighing machines to sing.

Q: You giggled a lot, we were told!

DJ: Oh, yes, I’m a great giggler, I still am a great giggler. I giggle a lot on stage. Le-esss now than I used to, although I still do it a lot. So you can imagine how much I used to do.

Q: Was it at that time you considered changing your name?

DJ: No. I thought about changing my name when I was at Cambridge really. If I wanted to be an actor I wanted a name that was - I thought - a little more theatrical, a little more eye-catching. Mind-blowing! Something like….Terrible, terrible names like Ashley Clinton and that sort of thing. Oh, dreadful, dreadful names. But then when I went to Birmingham I also acquired my first agent, a wonderful lady called Patricia McNaughton. I mentioned to her that I wanted to change my name, because no one knew how to pronounce it. They said “Ja-co-bee” or “Jake-o-bee”, or “Jacobs”. She said, “No, that’s the very reason you don’t want to change it. If people are talking about you, and one says “Ja-co-bee” and another says, “No, it’s Jack-o-bee.”, that means your name’s been mentioned twice. That’s very good publicity!” So, taking her advice, I didn’t change it. But I’ve often kind of regretted it. I don’t mind people mis-pronouncing it, and all that, but I remember in America – they all say “Ja-co-bee” in America - I once did an early morning chat show in New York where he got it totally wrong, and called me “Eric Ja-co-bee” and I had to be Eric Ja-co-bee for an hour’s chat show.

Q: You wanted to join the RSC from Birmingham Rep, but they turned you down.

DJ: They did indeed. It was my first big disappointment. An actor’s life is full of such rejections, and that was a major rejection. I’ve had very little rejection in my career, compared with some others who have to live with it all the time. Birmingham to Stratford was the kind of accepted journey if you wanted to be a classical actor, because they were so near. Birmingham, in a sense, being an acknowledged classical repertory company. It was a kind of breeding ground for Stratford, and many eminent actors had done the leap. My turn came – I’d got to, kind of, leading role man in Birmingham – and I was asked to go to Stratford. They offered four small parts in four different plays. So I went to the powers that be in Birmingham and said, “look, would you let me go because Stratford want me?”, and they said, “Yes, go with our blessing.” So that was it - I was going to go! Then I got a summons to go to Stratford to meet Peter Hall and Co. I arrived and they put a copy of the Tempest in my hand and said, “Would you like to read Ariel?” I didn’t realise it was going to be an audition, and I knew nothing about Ariel. So they gave me ten minutes to read it, and then I read it, very badly, and at the end of it – they were all there: Peter Hall, Peter Brook, Michel St. Denis, Clifford Williams, John Barton, all of them – Peter Brook came down to the lights and said the equivalent of “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” A few days later I got a letter from Peter Hall saying, “We don’t really think you’d fit in.” So I was all for jumping in the nearest Birmingham Canal. I had to go back to the directors at Birmingham and say, “Could I have my job back, they don’t want me?” They said, “Of course you can. Sorry it didn’t work out.” But somebody up there was looking after me. It was totally fortuitous, because that coming season was Birmingham’s fiftieth anniversary – this was 1963, and it had been founded in 1913. To celebrate, they were going to do the three Shakespeare’s they’d never done. One was Troilus, one was Henry VIII, and the other was Titus Andronicus. They asked me to do Troilus, Henry VIII and Aaron the Moor in Titus. I ended up playing three huge classical roles, in repertoire, for twelve weeks, at Birmingham rep. It was during that season that Sir Laurence came into my life, and I went on to Chichester and to the National. So when, I did get to Stratford it would be twenty years later. I always like to think that I traveled from Birmingham to Stratford a mile, a year. It was that slow, but I got there eventually.