PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Ronald Fraser, born April 11, 1930, in Ashton-under-Lyne, died in 1997 of an internal haemmorhage. During Army service, he was ADC to the Governor of
Cyprus. Films include: "Swallows and Amazons" (see below); "The Sundowners" (1960), as Ocker, "In Search of the Castaways" (1962) as Guard; "The V.I.P.s" (1963) as Joslin; "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965) as Sgt. Watson;"The Whisperers" (1966) as Charlie; "Fathom" (1967) as Douglas Campbell; "The Killing of Sister George" (1968) as Leo Lockhart; "Sinful Davey" (1969) as MacNab; "Too Late the Hero" (1970) as Campbell; "Paper Tiger" (1975) as Forster; "Hardcore" (1977) as Marty; "The Wild Geese" (1978) as Jock; "The Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982) as Longet; "Scandal" (1989) as Justice Marshall; "Let Him Have It" (1991) as Niven's Judge and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" (1993) as Dean. He was a regular in TV's "The Misfits" (1970) as Basil Allenby-Johnson; "Pennies from Heaven" (1978) a mini-series, as Maj. Archibald Paxville; "Spooner's Patch" (1979); "Fortunes of War" (1987) as Commander Sheppey; "Life Without George" (1988) as Harold Chambers and "Heavy Weather" (1995) as Sir Gregory Parsloe. He appeared in TV movies including: "Man in the Zoo" (1975); "Pygmalion" (1981) and "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders" (1996). He also guest starred on such series as: "Dr. Who"; "Danger Man" and "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles."
A tinkle in the glass of time: 1973 - Swallows and Amazons
The entrance is magnificent. Mr Ronald Fraser, that distinguished actor of stage, screen and cocktail bar, and possessor of an accent all fruity with well-modulated vowels, is dressed in what appears to be cricket gear.
"Well, then," he says, "I'll have a Fraser."
A Fraser is a drink of his own invention. It consists of a large vodka with a kiss of lime and a ton of ice topped up with soda in a tall glass. "You might not like the taste," he says, "but if you get the ice right it is very musical." It is, too. His ice tinkles quite merrily as counterpoint to his anecdotes which are many, outrageous, and largely unrepeatable. He is the better sort of actor whom everyone should meet at least once. A man's man. A joker's joker. He says he has been a lousy lover but loved to practise. He has a lady friend nearby, or round about, but when he talks and tinkles, the bar is his and he is oblivious both to time and, it appears to me, to her. He has a stage and he struts it with joy.
His friends and acquaintances, or at least the ones he most quotes, are at opposite ends of life's spectrum. Robert Mitchum, actor, who, he says, takes two hours to tell a two-minute story because he has total recall (they filmed together); Errol Flynn, the actor, of whom he tells a scandalous story involving a dozen or so girls secreted beneath the table during one of Flynn's all-male dinner parties. "I suddenly, and to my surprise, felt this hand on my digit." And Fred, an East End licensee much loved by Fraser, who referred to Irishmen as Turks, coloured people as Paddies, and those of Jewish persuasion as Timbuctoos. I was so impressed by the love he showed for Fred that I went to see him in his pub and observed him secretly.
Well, then, Mr Fraser has made this grand entrance in his filming gear at the Kirkstone Foot Hotel in Ambleside, where he and various members of a production unit are staying, and he has spent the day aboard a boat at Derwentwater, vying for film space with a bunch of very bright and active children and a parrot. Pretty Polly, a nipper of ears, should not be forgotten. This parrot spends much of its time in a cage at the rear of the boat 50 yards from shore and when the children call, it calls back. The words it called on this particular afternoon were scandalous. Just two there were. And one imagines that the old lady who owned it was nonplussed when it arrived back home from its acting career. If the technicians had guilt complexes, I would not be surprised.
The film is Swallows and Amazons from the late Arthur Ransome's classic children's book - "the adventures of six children as they sail, camp, fish, swim and enjoy a hundred and one outdoor pursuits during their summer holiday in the English Lake District in 1930."
The director, Claude Whatham, urges his children along with great patience and tact at those times of the day when they are not ashore in a double-deck bus which acts as a classroom.
It is at the end of these days of high endeavour that Mr Fraser emerges in the bar to startle and entertain. He is going through a period of great disillusionment. "They think of me now as an upper-class or upper middle-class type of person, but recently, someone at the TV studios said, 'We must change your image, Ronnie.' So he cast me as a funny man in a mental asylum."
Ah, one observes, but was not the character of Badger the one that best matched his true temperament? Badger, you may recall, was the gentleman returned from Singapore who found British life all changed.
"Nothing to do with me at all, that man," said Mr Fraser, "but I found a great sympathy with him because he had respect for everybody, a gentility and a hope for people. He did not condemn a man for having long hair. He condemned people for being rude and discourteous." Mr Fraser, one imagines, would not be rude or discourteous either. He loves people. (I was to meet him again, much later, in the lower bar of a Soho club, after pub closing time of 3pm, and he was accompanied by what appeared to be all the equally courteous vampires, seedy characters and toffs of British films. He announced to this motley crew that I was very OK with him, and, therefore, them. We solemnly drank to that immediate cementing of relationships.)
He was not, he said, a great drinker and he could have fooled me. Indeed, he did fool me. For I spent much time hiding round corners in the Lake District when he was ramapaging about in search of an appreciative audience and more Frasers. It was a cowardly act but it appeared to me at the time that it was a choice between his conviviality and the satisfactory condition of my liver.
So there he was, on his feet, glass tinkling, and he told this story:
"My agent phoned and said, 'Would you like to go to Italy to have your photograph taken?' I go there and it is pouring with rain and freezing cold and we get into a Ferrari with this Italian at the wheel. Next to him is a beautiful model. And next to me is another holding a white cat. Off he goes - vroom - screeching down the motorway shouting away all the time, and after an hour and a half of this, the lovely lady next to me goes - vroop. She throws up. She is unwell, you see. And the girls change places. Vroom - he is off again, still shouting. Then the second girl goes vroop, because she is unwell, too, and the cat has changed colour.
"An hour later, we arrive at this Italian village and they put me into a very slender polo-necked jumper and a sou'wester, which they spray with something blue and we go on a boat, out to sea. It is raining, freezing, and I have this cat, which is now green, on my lap. The blue stuff is running down my face and behind me are four handsome male models in false moustaches and Russian gipsy shirts playing violins. This Italian gentleman is in another boat with cameras.
"'Ronaldo, smile!' he is saying. 'Smile, Ronaldo!' And all the violin strings are going boing-boing because of the weather and our teeth are chattering. One of the violinists falls overboard and I am saying, 'Get him out,' but the Italian gentleman is shouting, 'No, Ronaldo, leave him, leave him. SMILE Ronaldo.' The violinist is shouting, 'I can't swim.' Well we do all this for two hours. We then come back to the mainland and with the poor young man close to death, and we have a banquet at which this Italian says, 'Fantistico, Ronaldo. You come again next week?'
"I could not speak for a month. I mean, how could you have it happen in any business but ours? When you are playing cowboys and Indians at our age, baby, you have to be a bit dotty."
He was too young to die, at 67. But then, I suppose there are times when heaven is in need of a good laugh.
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
20 October, 2007