You really have to search hard for “Face to Face” interviews on the University of YouTube as they were originally broadcast in the UK between 1959 and 1961, but if you are prepared to delve the rewards are enormous.
A search will uncover interviews with some of the major world figures of the last century. Martin Luther King Jr, black rights activist. Cecil Beaton, photographer, and Hollywood movie designer, Carl Jung, world famous Swiss psychotherapist, Evelyn Waugh, novelist, to name just a few. Nowadays for tv interviews all we get are celebrity love-ins.
So to see an interview with teeth is such a treat. And not to see the interviewer at all, just the tip of his cigarette, well that really is how it should be. Because let’s face it, who cares about the interviewer’s reactions….. back in the black and white days they knew what was what.
The subject was the crucial thing. The camera is embarrassingly close in these interviews. Every nerve, every stonewalling, every evasion is stripped bare under its gaze. They could have been called the “In your face” interviews. It was rightly regarded as very brave to subject yourself to “Face to Face” with John Freeman, back in the fifties,
Gilbert Harding an English journalist and radio and television personality, was infamously reduced to tears during his interview. But not everything that is old is marvellous, the opening credits trundle on forever. (Even if they do feature some wonderful, eccentric drawings of the interviewees.) We have sped up a lot since then. Some of the interviewees give us a hotline to the nineteenth century.
It is impossible not to be moved when charming Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell laments the passing of beauty. Regarded by many as the world’s most important philosopher in the 20th century, his grandfather, British Prime Minister Lord Russell met Napoleon on Elba. He was almost 90 when his interview was recorded.He really did see the devastation of industrialisation. His advice to humanity at the end of his interview we should all get tattooed on our skins.
This interview with the poetess Dame Edith Sitwell, is a wonderful historical curiosity. She is as eccentric as her clothes. It’s worth it for her 19th century pronunciation alone. She talks about her profile….profeel! She uses her batty eccentricity to ward off John Freeman’s probing questions with ease. Although Freeman doesn’t get the insights he craves it is still a wonderful watch. Full of surprises. (Her unlikely friendship with Marilyn Monroe is just one example.)
Best of all in this interview you will hear the word “queer” as originally meant. Dame Edith was wonderfully, comfortably queer in the nineteenth century sense of the word. Revel in her “queerness” for an understanding of where ‘queerness” came from and what it brings o the party now!
(Some of the original classic Face to Face Interviews can be found on YouTube BUT if money is no object Amazon UK sell a rare DVD that contains most of them
Written by Richard Pearce Queerguru Contributor Richard Pearce Is a British actor primarily best known his voice acting in many successful animation films. He has worked extensively as a member of the BBC Radio drama company, and a career highlight was playing opposite Sir John Gielgud in Tales My Father Taught Me , His extraordinary variety of radio parts range from The Mekon in Dan Dare[4] to the last castrato in Angel of Rome. In 1992–93, and he appeared in the BBC Radio adaptations of The Adventures of Tintin, playing the eponymous hero.
Labels: 2019, Richard Pearce, Turn Back Time
