Learning on ScreenMr George Bernard Shaw in New Talk to Movietone
Series
- Series Name
- British Movietone News
Issue
Story
- Story No. within this Issue
- 3 / 4
- Summary
- MOVIETONE CARD TITLE: GB Shaw in New Talk to Movietone. DESCRIPTION: GBS reveals himself in happiest vein to Movietone. SHOTLIST: He walks toward the camera. He raises his hat and poses. Various shots stroking beard etc. SHOTS OF HIS PROFILE "Shots of my profile. I have got two, and the British Movietone have requested to exhibit both. Now will you have the kindness to watch in dead silence whilst I turn round from one to the other". (Shots of him turning round and round). "How was that".
- Researcher Comments
- TRANSCRIPT GB Shaw walks along the grass at Malvern and walks down the grass slope. He takes his hat off. "Well ladies and gentlemen, how do you do? Here I am enjoying myself down at Malvern and there are you enjoying yourself by allowing a photograph to talk to you. That you see is one of the marvels of the Movietone. It brings us together in a way that used to be entirely impossible. Now, I wish that the Movietone could bring you not only this picture of me, but I wish it could bring you the fresh air that I’m breathing at present". (Breathes in the air). "Now, I don’t suppose any of you want to get up and do that in the stuffy Theatre that you’re in at the present time and that’s a very good reason for your coming down here and having the fresh air and seeing my place at the same time. Of course, very soon this terrible invention of the Movietone, will bring the plays to you and I think that while we still have some of the old performances left, I don’t think you could do better than to come round here and share the festival. They call it a festival down here. In fact last year they called it a "Shaw Festival". A very excellent name." "Well now, we are getting along very pleasantly. There was a play of mine performed last night, the applause was tremendous, it was so fresh, it was so original, it was so new, it was so up-to-date. All these old plays that I have forgotten and have passed me by, well they’re just right for you and myself. I feel like a child again when I listen to them and I’m seriously thinking you know, of getting up a young appearance. I think I’ll dye all this sort of thing (touches his hair) and this magnificent forehead of mine which you are at present admiring and which they are terribly jealous of, down at Stratford, which is a very short distance from here. Well, I think I’ll cut that down a bit, you see. Now look, now look, you will see how much younger it makes me look when the forehead goes (puts his hat on). You see, like that, and if I straighten my shoulders a bit, like that, now you see I, I look almost like a young man of 62 or 63 or thereabouts and that gets me just about to the date of my play. However, perhaps that is not what you paid for. You paid for the Shakespearean forehead, so here it is again. (Takes his hat off touches his head). You notice the arrangement of my hair, it takes me 20 minutes every morning to get that up you know, to get it properly arranged for you to admire, it adds greatly to my reputation as a Playwright". "I’m in a difficulty at present, because I was expecting my friend Barry Jackson here this morning. Now Barry Jackson is a young man and he began very much as I did. He determines that he will give the public not what they liked, but what he likes. That’s just what I did. Oh by the way this is not a case of swelled head. I understand that I have just become very much larger, but I haven’t really you know, its one of the tricks that they have with these cameras of their’s. I’m just the same size as I was before really, but you get rather a larger view. I hope you won’t look too particularly, it makes me rather conscious of my teeth and things of that kind, so I think I must try and say something interesting. I was talking as usual about myself, no I think I did manage to bring in my friend Barry Jackson. Well he’s late for his appointment, he ought to have been here to speak to you and I still have some hope that he will come, and what on earth am I to say to you to fill up the interval. I haven’t got the slightest idea because I never take a mean advantage of an audience by preparing it all before-hand, I improvise everything that I say on the platform or in public, it always has the air of being improvised of course. I have said it about fifty thousand times before on different platforms, but still it always comes off with the same air. I think that all I can do is to end as I have begun to beat the drum in front of my old boom(?). To ask you to walk up, to ask you to come to Malvern and to breathe the beautiful air of Malvern and to see all those old, old plays of mine, that now appear to be so new, new, new. They are making the signal by which I understand that they have had about enough of me. I am very reluctant to leave you Ladies and Gentlemen, but you see they can cut me off at any moment and therefore to save myself from that humiliation, I must bid you Good Morning".
- Keywords
- Mass media; Entertainment and leisure; Curiosities; Fashion and costume; Writers
- Locations
- Malvern
- Card file number
- 825
- Length of story (in feet)
- 528
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