Britain's Largest Export

By Ed Gould

The following testimony by Sebastian Cabot, co-star of CBS' Family Affair, is part of a rambling conversation that took place at the actor's home at Deep Cove on Vancouver Island in Canada.

"I came to America for the first time in 1947 to do Love for Love with John Gielgud. We opened in Washington for a week, then did six weeks at the Royale in New York, a week in Boston, a week in Toronto, then London, Hamilton and Ottawa.

"I think the most vivid impression I first got of Americans was on the SS America coming over. I watched a man waving a lamb chop in his fingers like a baton. I'd heard of picking up chicken bones, but it was the first time I'd ever seen anyone pick up a lamb chop.

"I came back here to stay in 1955, when I did Kismet with Howard Keel at MGM.

"I met my wife Kay through a boy friend of hers. We were both movie extras in London. He was a poet and painter--unpublished and ungalleried. He introduced me as 'the man with a new bawdy story every day.'

"When the war came, I tried to join up, but the Army, Navy and Air Force all turned me down as physically unfit. So I tried the Merchant Marine, but I hadn't any papers, and in order to get papers, I had to sail first. In order to sail first, I had to get papers, and so on.

"I would have taken a job as oiler, or worked on a bumboat, you name it. Unfortunately, skippers of oil tankers didn't want inexperienced oilers or bumboatmen.

"I tried to get work in a munitions factory, but they told me I was too fat to stand on my feet all day. As if it was their feet I was standing on! That finally wiped out all my patriotic enthusiasm.

"I went back to acting, but very few films were being made, so my wife landed me a job in a paper factory. I was a guillotine operator. Then the government got onto my past educational history. I left school at 14, but the government found out I had an excellent in science when I was 12. They decided I was much too good to be wasted on cutting up pieces of paper so they sent me to the National Institute of Medical Research.

"I was given a job driving a truck to pick up umbilical cords at Harley Street. Seriously. They were used for medical research.

Funny thing about the war. Nothing was normal. A lot of people get nostalgic talking about it. We never took shelter, Kay and I. We went out to eat and to the movies. Once you got over the initial fright, it wasn't so bad. Closest I came to being hit was when a lot of shrapnel came down on the road near Hyde Park. Sparks everywhere when it hit the pavement. A piece went past my ear. We took shelter under a canopy in a doorway. We found out when it got light that the canopy was made of glass!

"Kay had an incendiary bomb she'd extinguished herself. Should have kept it. Could really have shown off in L.A. with that.

"We used to lie in bed with the windows open so any explosion would go right through. One night a V-1 rocket demolished the whole block. All we got was blown windows and a cracked wall. An old actor chappie upstairs ran down yelling, 'We've had it.'

"After the war I did years of repertory and a lot of one-liners in movies. I won a part in a Hitchcock spy thriller over a lot of other linguists, mainly on the basis of my knowledge of French. When I got the script, my line was 'One Wiener schnitzel and a glass of beer'--in German!

"I did my first TV series in 1954--The Three Musketeers, made in Italy for an American company. I played Porthos. Did a whole lot of films around that time. Heights of Danger, Dual Alibi, Babes in Bagdad, Laughter in Paradise, The Captain's Paradise. These were mostly cameo roles. I appeared in so many cameos I became known as The Cameo King. Always a Bride with Peggy Cummins. Ivanhoe with the two Taylors, Robert and Elizabeth.

"Liz then struck me as being a very silly girl. She's matured a great deal. I haven't seen her for years.

"Because I was abroad so much, I became known as Britain's largest export. I'm down 50 pounds now, since my recent ulcer operation. I did Wonder Kid, with Oskar Werner, in the Austrian Alps and Vienna, and Romeo and Juliet, with Laurence Harvey. It was really on the basis of the good reviews of my Capulet, especially by Bosley Crowther, that I got the Kismet role.

"My U.S. agent told me to lose my accent and he might be able to get me more TV roles. I appeared as a heavy on Gunsmoke after that, but there didn't seem to be much for me in Hollywood, so we planned to buy an old car and tour the States before going back to England.

"Then I got a lot more movie roles. Dragoon Wells Massacre, with Barry Sullivan. Black Patch, with George Montgomery. Terror in a Texas Town, with Sterling Hayden. Now there is a man who really says what he thinks! And does what he likes!

"Movie and TV acting is so different from the stage. I don't think I'll ever go back to the stage again. I remember when I first made the transition. I had been doing a lot of BBC radio work. On radio you don't have to project anything but your voice.

"At any rate, I was a dialectician, so I never knew from day to day whether I would be Greek, Portugese, French or what. On the schedule one day I was told to report to Alexandra Palace (the studios in London), where the TV installation was being tried.

"It hadn't been touched since the war and everyone was afraid the rats might have got into the transmitter or some such. But it worked. I played a swordsman in Julius Caesar. The director told me to hold the sword closer to my nose. I though I'd cut the ruddy thing off, but it looked a foot away on the screen.

"Some actors can never make that transition from stage to screen. John Gielgud has never made it. All his films have been flops. I think Michael Redgrave has done a good job of switching over. I think Mike is the best actor around--even better than Olivier. Mike is very, very shy, but we got on well.

"Another actor I admire is Orson Welles. I acted with Welles in The Lives of Harry Lime series on radio. Played all kinds of dialects.

"I haven't seen or spoken to Welles since once in Madrid a few years ago. He wanted me for a part in a movie he was thinking of making. He wanted me to shave off my beard.

"I was sitting in the chair, the barber clipping away, when I caught Welles giving the chap the sign to cut the whole thing off. I didn't mind a trim, but the damn man tried to force the issue.

"I remember one sequence in the Lime series where Welles, who always calls me Buster, was trying to get me to put on a particularly fruity accent. I told him I'd sound like a fairy.

"Welles said: 'My dear Buster...in America, every Englishman sounds like a fairy!'

"I was asked a couple years ago to make a movie in Canada--in British Columbia, near where I have a summer home. I would like to have taken the role, but the pay was far too low. You can take a 25 percent cut, but my agent drew the line at a two-thirds drop.

"Walt Disney was a notoriously low payer. Still is. His studio at any rate. I did a French-Canadian in Westward Ho the Wagons. Almost regret it now, the way those chaps are going on in Quebec. I also did a comedy heavy in The Sword in the Stone for Disney. And Winnie the Pooh. I've just finished doing a panther voice for Kipling's The Jungle Book for Disney studios. Phil Harris does the bear and Louis Prima is King Louis of the Apes.