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I shared a dressing room with Sara Kestelman, Jeanie Boht and Maria Aitken, who’d also both come over from Liverpool. Jean had got to know David Scase because she was an amateur operatic performer, but she was a natural comic. The pictures of her in my scrapbooks are hysterical. Maria, on the other hand, was like a creature from another planet. When she first turned up we said, ‘What do we call you?’
‘Maria – as in Black.’
She used to saunter in, wrapped in expensive furs, and just drop them wherever she stood. Jeanie and I would dive down, scoop them up and dust them off. We couldn’t bear such exquisite things getting dirty but Maria didn’t seem to mind – or notice. Maybe people had always picked things up for her. She was a sweet girl but coasting on a different plane to the rest of us.
My mum and dad, bless them, used to come over on the train to see every single play (eight a season) and every weekend I would go home with Brian. The station was very near Manchester Library Theatre – it’s not there any more – and we’d wait for the final curtain on a Saturday before flying out the door. If we missed the 10.30 it was hours until the next one. Of course, we’d both be in full stage slap and it took most of the journey to get it all off. God knows what the other passengers thought.
It was worth the effort just to walk into Mum’s house and smell her cooking. Wonderful memories! She used to send me back with a big cake every week – that was our little treat.
Living with Brian in Whalley Range might have been inconvenient as far as seeing my family went, but it opened up other opportunities. Manchester was a thrilling place to be in the 1960s. So much of acting and the media is based in London these days that it’s hard to imagine a time when the capital didn’t dominate so much. It was still the centre of theatreland, of course, but other cities were a lot more important then. Leeds had a strong radio scene under Alfred Bradley and Alan Ayckbourn, and there was a buzz about Granada TV because Jack Rosenthal and the Stables Theatre Company had begun doing great work there for the drama department. I hadn’t been at the Library long when I began to hear of work going there. Warren Clarke got his first TV role in Coronation Street, as a lad called Barry, and every other day someone else would be popping over to film this or that. You could just jump on a train when you weren’t busy and record for a day then get back to your own bed. Granada loved that because they didn’t have to pay you subsistence.
A lot of actors today can’t wait to get onto television. And then when they get there, telly is just a stepping stone to film, which is then a way of getting to Hollywood. Theatre seems to have been left behind slightly. That’s why it was so impressive to see David Tennant take on Hamlet while he was still the Tenth Doctor. An RSC old boy, he didn’t want to forget his roots.
Obviously I’m known today for my work on television but at the time telly wasn’t a road I particularly wanted to go down. My only ambition was to work, and so far the theatre had been very good to me. But when Margaret Crawford, the delightful Granada casting director, rang and offered me a day’s filming on a Sunday – my day off – I leapt at it. Why act six days a week when you can work all seven? Just remembering that makes me feel tired – I’d do anything for a day off now!
The programme was an ITV Playhouse episode starring Patrick Wymark. (Patrick had been considered as a replacement for William Hartnell on Who at one point, so, once again, there are the connections.)
I don’t know if it was the arrogance of youth or plain naïvety but I turned up at the Granada drama department without a care in the world. I knew I could act. I knew theatre production inside out. And I’d been filmed on Search for a Star, even if I was too nervous at the time to take much of it in.
Whatever you throw at me, I’m ready.
Or so I thought.
‘Can I see a script?’ I asked the director.
‘You won’t be needing one of those.’
Welcome to the wonderful world of TV.
I got into my costume and the director introduced me to Patrick and John Wood.
‘John’s your boyfriend, Patrick’s your father-in-law. Now just stand there.’
And that was it. No script, no lines, and no discussion about characterisation. I was plonked in front of the camera, the director called ‘Action!’ and Patrick Wymark started screaming three inches from my face.
It was a joke, it really was. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I didn’t know if I should look scared or defiant or amused or angry. I didn’t know anything about the character or how she should react or what on earth her father-in-law was mad about. I wasn’t sure what expressions I should be giving. There was no direction at all.
All I knew was I couldn’t wait to get back to the Library, back to proper acting.
I swore I’d never set foot in Granada’s studios again. Then Margaret Crawford rang back. They’d been delighted with me. I’ve no idea why. ‘We’ve got a speaking role in another Playhouse episode,’ she said. ‘Will you do it?’
Go back to that place? It was acting. Of course I would do it.
This one was called If Only the Trains Come, based on the Chekhov story Ward Six, and I played a hotel maid. This time I had some lines – and a script! Barry Davis was a very pleasant director, so refreshing after my last experience, and it starred Bernard Archard, who of course was so crucial in the Doctor Who story Pyramids of Mars later.
I don’t think I even told my parents about the first play. This one, on the other hand, they really looked forward to watching. I’m sure if you blinked you’d have missed me but, bless them, they said it was a triumph.
But I wouldn’t know – I was on stage when it was broadcast. I remember friends and neighbours telling me that I must have been so sad to miss it. I had to laugh. Coming from theatre, you get used to never seeing your own performances.
I learned so much at the Library under Tony and got some nice reviews as well. All the broadsheets sent their critics up so every opening night we had people like Michael Billington, Keith Nurse and Robin Thornber with their pens poised. The Telegraph said I had ‘some highly effective moments’ as Mary Warren in The Crucible; the Guardian said of my part in Mother Courage: ‘Elisabeth Sladen, as usual, puts everything into the rewarding role of the dumb Kattrin’, while Simon Hoggart, writing even back then for The Times, reviewed The Plough and the Stars by saying, ‘Of a remarkable cast, the best is Elisabeth Sladen’. Mum and Dad were prouder than I was but I kept everything in my audition book to show prospective employers. It never hurts to have nice crits.
Tony was such a marvellous friend and important figure in our lives that it made perfect sense when Brian asked him to be the best man at our wedding on 8 June 1968. We’d been engaged for a year by then. I don’t think it surprised anyone when we decided to make our relationship formal. There was no song and dance. Brian did the old-fashioned thing and asked Dad for my hand, which was the easy part. He then had to find the ring that I’d already identified – sort of. I love Jane Fonda, and when I saw her in a film called La Ronde, wearing this fabulous aquamarine band with two diamonds, I said, ‘That’s the ring I want.’ Poor Brian spent days looking for the right one.
We were such a tight-knit company at Manchester. I think if you asked any of us we’d all agree it was the happiest time of our lives. Warren Clarke had joined us from Liverpool as well and he was so funny – you’ll always have a good time with him around. He actually got married a few days before us, to Gail, a sweet little girl, and of course we all went along to the wedding and a week later they attended ours. We were like family.