I, Jacobi, AKA Hamlet, As . . . Hitler?
LA Times, April, 1982

By Cecil Smith

       A few years ago, Wendy Hiller stood backstage watching John Gielgud, the greatest Hamlet of his generation, talking with Derek Jacobi, perhaps the finest Hamlet of ours.  “There,” she said, “is the tradition of the British theater.”

      We have a double dose of Derek Jacobi on television in May—first his Hitler, then his Hamlet.   He plays Adolf Hitler in the five-hour dramatization of Albert Speer’s memoirs, “Inside the Third Reich,” which ABC will show in two parts May 4 and 5.  The “Hamlet” is the BBC’s justly celebrated production shown on “The Shakespeare Plays” two years ago, which is to be reshown May 31 on PBS.

      After that, we won’t see Jacobi for a while, not on the tube.  “I have sold myself,” he told me, “to the Royal Shakespeare Company for 18 months.”      He said he’s delighted to be getting back on the stage.  “I’ve been doing nothing but films for nearly three years,” he said, “and I must get back in the theater, that’s where I belong.”

      There are those who would quarrel with that view, remembering his Claudius in the landmark production of “I, Claudius,” which made Jacobi world famous.  In fact, when you think of his gentle, stammering, crippled Claudius, playing the fawning fool or dribbling idiot or loony butt of the court jokes to keep from being destroyed by the bloodthirsty rules of ancient Rome, it’s not easy to see him as the murdering arch villain of our century, Adolf Hitler. “I couldn’t see it myself,” Jacobi said.

      The blond, rather elegant actor with a fine, elfin sense of humor was here briefly for some final process shots for “Inside the Third Reich.  “When they called me about it and I met with the producer, E. Jack Neuman, and director Marvin Chomsky and they told me they wanted me to play Hitler, I said: ‘You must be fooling: you’re putting me on.’   “I look nothing like Hitler.  There’s nothing in my work that even approaches Hitler.   With all the actors in America and England they could pick, I said, ‘Why me?’  For the first time in my life, I tried to talk a producer out of giving me a part.

      “When I was convinced they were serious, I asked what they saw in me that I couldn’t see in myself for this role.  “Neuman said: ‘We want you because Hitler was a very good actor,’  Well, after that, what could I say?”   Jacobi still had his doubts, particularly when on the day he agreed to play Hitler, Anthony Hopkins won an Emmy for his portrayal of Hitler in “The Bunker.”

      “Coincidentally, I was making a film with Tony Hopkins—‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’” said Jacobi.  “Tony assured me that my Hitler would be nothing at all like his Hitler because he played the haunted, raving madman of those last days while I would play the Hitler that Albert Speer knew and described.   “Perhaps the best reason for making still another film about Hitler is that Speer knew him so well, so intimately.  He showed us the private Hitler in domestic situations as well as the orator and the hypnotic leader.  He was originally drawn to Hitler as a man of great charm, with a love for architecture.  In the end, of course, Speer turned against Hitler and tried to kill him.  That’s what the film is about—Speer’s disillusionment with this man he first thought was God.”

      Speer was Hitler’s favorite architect, confident and a member of the Nazi hierarchy as minister of war production.  He wrote his memoirs while serving a 20-year sentence in Spandau Prison as a war criminal.  Speer worked with Neuman on the script of this film and was scheduled to serve as technical advisor, but died before production began.

      Rutger Hauer, the Dutch film star (“Soldier of Orange,” “Nighthawks”), plays Speer.  The cast includes Blythe Danner, Trevor Howard, Ian Holm, Robert Vaughn, Maria Schell, Eike Sommer, Rene Soutendijk (as Eva Braun), Mort Sahl (as a political satirist in Berlin) and John Gielgud.

      “The paradox for the actor,” said Jacobi, “is that here Hitler is not simply a monster but a very human figure, sympathetic at times.  How do you play him then?  Do you play him as a monster, as you would play Dracula or Caligula?  Or do you play him as Speer saw him—and as is implicit in the book and the script—as an ordinary man of extraordinary powers.  “Of course, you play both.  That’s the curious dichotomy.  One moment Hitler’s full of fun, frolicking with Eva Braun in the snow, the next moment, he’s screaming at his generals.  He was a chameleon.  He adapted himself to the situation.  If the film comes off, it should show him as if reflected in shards of broken glass, many images, many Hitlers.  As Neuman says, he was a very good actor.  He was always acting.”

      With the Royal Shakespeare, Jacobi said he will be doing Prospero in “The Tempest” and Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at Stratford-on-Avon this summer.  He will do “Peer Gynt” in the company’s posh new home in the Barbican, London’s $300-million arts center.

      Since the BBC’s “Hamlet” with Jacobi was first shown, there has been a constant demand for it to be repeated.  It’s a tough and vibrant “Hamlet,” sinewy and compelling, with Patrick Stewart a splendid King Claudius and Claire Bloom as a sensuous Queen Gertrude.  Jacobi gives us a prince in torment, his soldier militancy in deadly battle with his scholar philosophy.  His Hamlet probably has been seen by more people than ever saw any Hamlet before, including Jacobi’s own tours with Britain’s Prospect Theater.  He played the role in more than 200 cities, from London to Athens to Peking.  The performance in Peking was the first by a Western Theater troupe since China reopened its doors to the West.

      “It was an extraordinary experience,” Jacobi said, “because they televised it live and more than 100 million Chinese saw it.  They put sets into schools and army barracks and community centers across the country so everyone could watch.  Five Chinese actors worked in a glass booth interpreting the play for the TV audience.”  One of the interpreters was To Ying Ruocheng, who plays Kublai Khan in the forthcoming “Marco Polo.”

      “The Chinese knew ‘Hamlet’” said Jacobi, “from the Laurence Olivier film, and they were surprised to find my version different.  In their theater, there is never a new interpretation of classic plays—the roles are played exactly the same way century after century.”

      He said the Prospect Theatre is no more, the great classical touring company was done in by Britain’s economic distress.  Along with Jacobi, Ian McKellan and Timothy West were leading players with the company.

      His Hamlet was in the planning stage, he remembered, when he had a call from his agent to play Claudius.  “I thought he meant King Claudius in ‘Hamlet,’ and I said, ‘Oh no, I’m to play the prince,’” Jacobi said.  “’You fool,’ my agent said, ‘they want you to do “I, Claudius.”  That was a shock.  Everyone thought a major American star would do the part—there was talk of Charlton Heston.” 

   “I, Claudius had always been a jinx show, you know. There was that famous Charles Laughton production which was abandoned right in the middle.  And Tony Richardson tried for years to film the story without success.

      “Robert Graves, who wrote the book, had a very special relationship with Claudius.  When a production would fail, Graves would say, ‘Claudius didn’t want it to happen.’  I asked Graves if our production would come off when so many others failed, and Graves said, ‘Oh yes.  I’ve always been very good to Claudius and he’s been very good to me, and he knows I need the royalties.’”   

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