When Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor starred in a student play

11 February 2016

At the time of their Oxford sojourn, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were probably the world's most famous couple. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Getty Images

It is 50 years since Hollywood superstars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor took time out of their busy schedules to perform for no money in a student production. What was behind the grand gesture and what do people remember of these unlikely events today?

Now, it would be the equivalent of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ditching the glamour of their A-list existences for the modest stage of a local amateur dramatics club - and the British couple's return to the UK was described by the BBC at the time as providing a dose of "knockout voltage" glamour.

Burton had agreed to play the title role in Oxford University Dramatic Society's February 1966 production of Dr Faustus to thank Prof Nevill Coghill, who two decades earlier had championed Burton's acting talent when the young Welshman had a brief stint studying English at the university's Exeter College.

Remarkably, Taylor's non-speaking role in the play as Helen of Troy marked her stage debut.

Jackie Keirs was a choreographer and dancer in the play with Burton and Taylor, and also appeared in the film version as a sprite. Photo courtesy BBC News

During the week the play was staged, the celebrated couple, who had married two years previously, welcomed their undergraduate co-stars into their social world.

"They took over a floor of The Randolph [hotel] where they would entertain every night, and that was great fun," said Jackie Keirs, a student choreographer and dancer in the play.

At the time Taylor described her involvement in the production as "sort of like a giggle, really, for me to do".

Taylor described her involvement in the play as "like a giggle". Photo courtesy BBC News

"She would come into the wings with her wardrobe lady, her hairdresser, her make-up lady, her bodyguard - then she would come across the stage, Burton would kiss her, [then she would] come out of the other wings and be carried back to her dressing room by the same group of people," said Keirs.

The atmosphere surrounding the event was "electric", said Don Chapman, former drama critic at the Oxford Mail.

"Everybody wanted to get a ticket for it."

Burton agreed to perform in the production to thank Prof Nevill Coghill (right), an early champion of the Welsh actor's talent. Photo courtesy BBC News

However, for the production's assistant director Nicholas Young there was a certain amount of apprehension.

"I sort of wondered whether you could ever ask Richard to sort of 'move stage left', or whether from a great actor it just came naturally," he said at the time.

"Like a stage-struck 18-year-old, I was keen that I should have some role or other in this," said Richard Carwardine, who played Cornelius and the Pope. "I don't think I appreciated at the time just how unusual this was."

"Elizabeth, who did have a fiery temper, was a very, very kind person," said Carwardine, who is now president of Corpus Christi College.

"Richard was gracious, amusing, full of anecdotes."

"They had an aura about them when they were together," Keirs said of the golden couple.

Carwardine said there was "great excitement, a lot of speculation as to which of the male undergraduates would be able to get closest to Elizabeth Taylor".

Chapman made it clear in his review of the production that, despite the fact she had no lines, Taylor was the real star of the show.

"Say what you will, it is the presence of Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy - as much as that of Richard Burton in the title role - that will make the Oxford University Dramatic Society's production of Dr Faustus live in the memory," he wrote.

Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy in Dr Faustus (1967). Photo courtesy Columbia Pictures

Carwardine recalled how the generous-spirited Burton "took me under his wing" during the production.

Burton said of the students at the time: "The enthusiasm of course of my boys, as I like to call them, at Oxford is infectious and suddenly I feel much younger than my grey and 40 years."

The students' brush with fame was to continue when they were flown to Italy to appear in the film version of the play that summer.

"I remember vividly coming out after the rushes of our first scenes and he [Burton] put his arms around us and said 'boys, you did really well'," said Carwardine.

He added: "I did go to the premiere - several of the undergraduate members of the cast had their voices dubbed by professional actors, so it was a huge relief to me to discover what I heard coming from the screen was my own voice."

The film was poorly received by critics but proceeds from the stage play were used to create the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, which is now a popular venue for student, fringe and children's shows, and a permanent reminder of the time Hollywood came to Oxford.

Burton and Taylor were married twice during the course of their 15-year on-off relationship 
Photo: BBC News

Hollywood's golden couple

• Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor met on the set of Cleopatra in Italy in 1961 - at the time they were both married to other people
• Their affair made headline news around the world
  
• They married in 1964 and appeared in many films together over the next 10 years, including The V.I.P.s, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Tempest
  
• Known for their turbulent relationship and frequent break-ups they divorced in 1974
  
• Finding it difficult to live apart they remarried 18 months later
  
• They divorced for a second and final time in 1976
  
• Burton and Taylor reunited professionally for a final time in 1982 for a stage production of Noel Coward's Private Lives
  
• The Welshman died two years later, aged 58, while Taylor died in 2012 aged 79
  
• Their on-off relationship was the subject of a BBC Four drama staring Helena Bonham Carter and Dominic West in 2013

First published at BBC News, February 11, 2016

The real-life wars of Dad's Army actor Arnold Ridley

By Bethan Bell

BBC News

As the film version of Dad's Army is released at cinemas across the country, BBC News looks at the life of Arnold Ridley, the only actor in the original television series to serve in both World War One and Two.

Unlike the character he played, the gentle medic Private Charles Godfrey, who was a conscientious objector in World War One, Ridley experienced hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches and was seriously injured by a German wielding a bayonet.

On Desert Island Discs in 1973, the playwright and actor described his first stint in the Army as ”those dismal days” but added: "You know, memory is a strange thing. After a lapse of time, even the most miserable set of circumstances, roses seem to grow round them a little bit."

Roses, though, did not grow around his memories of World War Two, and while he could talk about his service in the first war, the "mental suffering" he experienced meant he would not speak of his time in the second.

He said: "To recount events, I would have to relive them. I am too afraid."

Born in Bath in 1896 and educated at Bristol University, Ridley made his acting debut in a production of Prunella at Bristol's Theatre Royal in 1913. But his stage career was put on hold with the advent of the Great War.

He had originally volunteered in 1914 at the age of 18, but was turned down as he had a broken toe sustained while playing rugby.

But the following year he was accepted by the Somerset Light Infantry and was stationed in Plymouth.

Years later, in an interview with the BBC, he admitted to being horribly homesick, having to cope with a "sadistic" regimental sergeant major and facing the prospect he might never survive the horrors of trench warfare.

He said: "I thought I was doing my duty for my country. I didn't know I was going to be treated like a convict. Did it make better soldiers of the callow youths we were then? I doubt it."

Private Ridley arrived in Arras in March 1916. He had removed his marksman's badge because he did not want to be made a sniper. He later commented: "I didn't go to France to murder people."

Within days of arriving he was hit in the back by shrapnel and shot through the thigh.

He had recovered by July 1916, and returned to the Western Front in time to take part in the Battle of the Somme.

The 20-year-old Ridley went into no man's land on 18 August. Fifteen of the men in his group were killed or seriously injured soon after leaving the trenches, when a preliminary barrage was dropped on them instead of the German machine-gun posts.

During the attempt to reach Delville Wood, Ridley's battalion suffered nearly 50% casualties. He later pointed out: "It wasn't a question of 'if I get killed', it was merely a question of 'when I get killed'.

"The trenches were full of water and I can remember getting out of the trench and lying on the parapet with the bullets flying around, because sleep was such a necessity and death only meant sleep."

Although a German bayonet was thrust into his left hand, cutting the tendons to his fingers, he survived. Ridley said "It's not altogether a right thought for a young man to hope he's been maimed for life - but I did. I thought 'well, if I've lost my hand I shall live. They can't send me out there again'."

After recovering in England, he faced the British Army Travelling Medical Board. A doctor suggested his hand injury was self-inflicted.

Ridley said he replied: "Yes, sir. My battalion is famous for self-inflicted wounds and just to make sure I cracked my skull with a rifle butt as well and ran a bayonet into my groin."

He was discharged from the British army on 27 August 1917.

Later that year he was given a white feather (a symbol of cowardice) by a woman in the street. He took it without comment.

When he was asked why a returning soldier would be treated in such a way, he answered: "I wasn't wearing my soldier's discharge badge. I didn't want to advertise the fact that I was a wounded soldier and I used to carry it in my pocket."

It can be seen as a foreshadow of the episode Dad's Army in which Godfrey is revealed to have been a conscientious objector in World War One.

The gentle medic has to face the wrath of the blustering and unsympathetic Captain Mainwaring - who derided him as a "conchie" - but it is later revealed that Godfrey had been a stretcher-bearer in the trenches, saved lives in the Somme and been awarded the Military Medal for exceptional bravery.

The time between the wars was an opportunity for Ridley to resume his career. In 1919 he joined the Repertory Theatre in Birmingham, appearing in more than 40 productions, and in 1923 he wrote the mystery thriller The Ghost Train, the most successful of his plays.

But they were not always good times - his wartime experiences led him to have nightmares. He said: "I would wake up drenched in sweat, sometimes I was afraid I would black out when I was on stage."

The outbreak of World War Two saw him join the British Expeditionary Force as an intelligence officer

Ridley, now a major, was sent to France in 1939. He later admitted: "Within hours of setting foot on the quay at Cherbourg in September 1939, I was suffering from acute shell shock again. It is quite possible that outwardly I showed little, if any, of it.

"It took the form of mental suffering that at best could be described as an inverted nightmare."

Ridley was evacuated from Dunkirk in May 1940 and, aged 44, was demobilised from the Army. He joined the Local Defence Volunteers - the organisation that later became the Home Guard - before touring bases entertaining the troops.

He appeared in numerous shows through the 1950s and 60s, including The Archers and Crossroads, until he was cast, aged 72, in Dad's Army in 1968. He played the role of Godfrey until the series finished in 1977.

Ridley married three times and had one child, Nicolas. He is also the great-uncle of Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley, although he died aged 88 in 1984 - eight years before she was born.

He was awarded the OBE in 1982 - but for services to drama, not his heroic exploits in two world wars.

Sources: Desert Island Discs, IMDB, Bristol University Archives, This is Your Life

First published at BBC News, February 5 2016