Martin Shaw - The Biography. Stafford Hildred
of Olivier himself, then regarded as the world’s greatest actor, sweating away while going through his exercises. From that point he resolved to keep on exercising throughout his life.
Olivier was then in the sunset of his career, but Martin could not fail to be impressed by the way he retained his enthusiasm and drive, and still continued to challenge himself rather than resting on his laurels. ‘He was fantastic, a proper actor/manager in that he cast and auditioned everybody in his company. He knew everyone and everyone knew him, although it was very clear that he was the boss. He used to come and talk to us in the dressing room at night; it was a magical time.’ Though Martin’s stint at the National was brief, he also got to appear in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Saturday, Sunday, Monday – another worthy addition to his fast-growing acting CV.
‘He has a presence and a stillness that you can’t teach. He had a silly little part really but he worked hard and made the most of it. We knew he would be a star if he stuck at it’
Coronation Street star Peter Adamson
As a young man, Martin Shaw had enormous sympathy for the hippy movement. Their enthusiasm for free expression and rebellious challenge of authority struck a real chord with him. The ideals of anti-consumerism and resistance to corporate control were close to his heart. So in 1967 when he was invited to play a hippy in Coronation Street he was intrigued to say the least.
‘I had been working up at Granada on all sorts of drama for a while so I was delighted to get the chance to be in the Street,’ said Martin. ‘But I was a bit surprised to be told the role was as a hippy – I wasn’t aware there were any in Weatherfield!’
But it was an offer he had no intention of refusing and towards the end of 1967 he walked down the famous cobbles playing the posturing and rather over-confident Robert Croft who arrived with his friends at a New Year’s Eve party at Number 11 and flatly refused to leave. Croft announced that he and his ‘commune’ were taking over the house which alarmed occupant Dennis Tanner, who had been persuaded by early Street wild-child Lucille Hewitt to hold the party. Lucille was very taken with the young revolutionary and a brief affair began. Headstrong Lucille moved in with the group, much to the horror of her guardian Annie Walker.
The legendary pub landlady took immediate action and told property landlord Edward Wormold that her ward had been kidnapped by Devil worshippers. Ruthless Wormold was quick to take action. Dennis was behind with his rent so he quickly received a notice to quit. In a scene which brought many outraged letters of protest from traditional Street fans, the popular Dennis called Annie ‘an interfering old cow’ and said he would move on with the hippies as Croft and his group prepared to leave, although it was a threat he failed to carry out.
‘I was amazed by the professionalism and the team spirit,’ said Martin. He was just one of a promising group of young actors that included Kenneth Cranham and John Thaw, who were given a great deal of challenging work in drama productions by Granada. ‘We were their young lions,’ he recalled fondly later on. ‘But part of the price was that you were expected to pay your dues by making an appearance in Coronation Street. It was a great deal more enjoyable than I had expected. But I have always been surprised that it is so well remembered by so many people. I was only there for a few weeks but it was a memorable experience and I made some great friends.’ He enjoyed several drinking sessions with a number of the cast and most notably recalled time spent with Peter Adamson, who played Len Fairclough. ‘He was a real television star and a very nice bloke,’ said Martin. ‘He showed me that some moments in soap can be just as dramatic and well-acted and directed as in one-off plays or films.’
Adamson later insisted he knew that Martin was destined for greatness as an actor. ‘He has all the technical skills you could ever imagine,’ he told one of the authors. ‘But he has so much more as well. He has a presence and a stillness that you can’t teach. He had a silly little part really but he worked hard and made the most of it. We knew he would be a star if he stuck at it.’
But it was after work that the two men really bonded. ‘His ability as a drinker was even more impressive than his acting,’ smiled Peter. ‘I was drinking very heavily then but I always used to feel terrible the next day. Martin would breeze in full of the joys of spring after even the heaviest night. It must have been his youth!’
Martin’s short stint had only just ended when a young Liverpudlian actor called Bill Kenwright made his debut in the Street. Bill came in to play Gordon Clegg, who became the show’s first pin-up. Martin and Bill became friends and years later their careers would coincide again in even more glittering circumstances.
‘Macbeth is a violent play and I’ve never believed in cop-outs’
Roman Polanski
Towards the end of August 1970, an announcement was made to the press that a new film version was to be made of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The news provoked general excitement among lovers of Shakespeare’s great work about the Scottish lord who becomes king through deceit, treachery and ‘murder most foul’. But their excitement quickly gave way to apprehension on several counts once it was revealed who was behind the project.
It emerged that the film’s backers would be the London arm of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy organisation who were making a first foray into film production. The movie would be co-scripted by Kenneth Tynan and Roman Polanski, and the man at the helm for one of literature’s grisliest classics would be Polanski himself.
This was the same Hefner who had given to the world the Bunny Girl and an abundance of naked Playmates in his Playboy magazine; and this was the same Tynan who had most recently scandalised less liberal sections of the nation by writing Oh, Calcutta! – a brazenly full-frontal nude stage sex-romp which many saw as a step too far even for the permissive 1960s. This, too, was the same Roman Polanski, no less, the Pole who had built a reputation for exploring the darker side of human nature in movies like Repulsion, Cul-de-sac and Rosemary’s Baby, in which the said Rosemary chillingly gave birth to a child of Satan.
For many, still fresh in the memory was Polanski’s own personal tragedy of the Manson massacre just one year earlier. On Friday 5 August 1969, his beautiful young wife, actress Sharon Tate, had been brutally slain at their California mansion at 10050 Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. The crime was all the more horrific for the fact that Sharon was 8 months pregnant at the time. She had been murdered, along with 4 friends, in a savage ritualistic killing by the crazed members of the Charles Manson ‘family’. Several of the bodies had been viciously mutilated and the word ‘Pig’ was smeared in blood across the front door.
One year later, the start of Manson’s trial coincided with the announcement of the Macbeth movie project and inevitably threw the spotlight on Polanski. He was well aware of what the general reaction would in all probability be to his choosing to make a blood-soaked drama as his first film after the terrible Manson murders. But he figured he was on a hiding to nothing, whatever he did. If he’d chosen to make a comedy, people would equally have asked how he could possibly go for laughs after such horrific events had touched him so deeply.
Hefner, Tynan, Polanski… The track records of this unusual movie triumvirate prompted one newspaper to dub the project ‘Oh, Dunsinane!’ and to predict that this new big-screen Macbeth would be awash with gore and nudity. ‘Yes, there will be nudity,’ Polanski conceded when pressed on the subject, ‘but not much. Anyone who expects otherwise will be disappointed.’
If that assurance temporarily appeased serious Shakespeare aficionados, Hugh Hefner set the alarm bells ringing again when he promised that fans would experience ‘an entirely new interpretation of the line “Lay on, Macduff!”’ Despite the fears and misgiving voiced in some educated circles, there wasn’t a single actor or actress in Britain who