|
When Wilfrid
Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, stars of the hit
BBC sitcom Steptoe and Son, first met in 1962,
it marked the beginning of one of the most
successful double acts in the history of British
television. By the time Corbett died in 1985,
the two wished that they had never set eyes on
one another. But the extraordinary story behind
their bizarre relationship has never, until now,
been fully told. I was brought up watching
Steptoe and Son and, ever since, I've wondered
what the magic ingredient was that made the show
so hugely successful. Finally, I decided to make
a film about it. And the truth was stranger than
I could have imagined.
At its peak,
the program commanded an audience of 28million.
Brambell played dirty old rag-and-bone man,
Albert Steptoe, a festering, fly-blown
Conservative voter who lazed about the yard all
day, drank distilled paraffin and couldn't care
if he dropped a denture in his steak-and-kidney
pud.
Corbett played
Albert's son. By day, Harold Steptoe bought and
sold antique junk from a horse-drawn cart. By
night, he prepared for the socialist revolution
by reading books by Karl Marx and George Bernard
Shaw. Harold aspired to a life beyond the gates
of the family business. He was a connoisseur of
fine wine and dreamed of expensive foreign
holidays, but his every effort was rendered
useless by the need to care for his father and
the countless banana skins that the writers Ray
Galton and Alan Simpson threw in his way.
But the two
actors' real-life relationship was just as
bizarre - and even more fraught - than their
on-screen one. Brambell was gay and an
alcoholic, notorious for his outrageous
behaviour (on one infamous occasion he exposed
himself to a woman at a party). He routinely
told adoring fans who met him in the street to
"fuck off". Corbett was a womaniser
who hated his role in Steptoe and died a bitter
and disappointed man. When Steptoe finished in
1974, Corbett loathed Brambell. Within three
years, the feeling was mutual.
|
|
What were the demons that drove Brambell? Was he
frustrated that he couldn't be openly gay
because he knew prejudice could kill his career?
Or was he distressed by the public persona of a
cheeky and dirty old man, utterly at odds with
his self-image as a dandy? In truth, both
probably played a part, but an event earlier in
his life was a factor, too. In 1948, Brambell
married an actress, Molly Josephine. They lived
in a flat in London and took in lodgers to help
pay the bills. A young and handsome student
moved in and had an affair with Molly, and she
became pregnant. At first, Brambell thought that
the child was his. When he found out that it was
the lodger's, he filed for divorce. His close
friend Anne Pichon remembers the emotional shock
to Brambell. "He was staying in my home and
I would hear him wake up in the night, literally
screaming, howling with pain."
Did Brambell
ever share his anxieties with Corbett? It's
unlikely since, away from the cameras, the two
actors hardly ever socialised and seldom spoke.
Production staff remember script read-throughs
at which Brambell would be at one end of the
table, Corbett at the other. On the day that the
show was recorded, Brambell would prop up the
BBC bar, while Corbett would sit in his dressing
room, working on his lines and worrying if his
well-oiled co-star would deliver. On a tour of
Australia in 1976, they travelled for five
months in separate cars and never once shared a
dressing room.
Before Steptoe,
Brambell was a professional character actor,
known for playing old men in French drawing-room
farces. Corbett was an intense, macho, highly
political Method actor, a member of the
experimental Theatre Workshop Company and feted
for his performances as Richard II. While
Brambell chatted rep, Corbett spoke of the
collectivisation of the working class.
For Corbett,
the early years of Steptoe brought him a
lifestyle that was the stuff of Harold Steptoe's
dreams. He bought a luxury house in St Johns
Wood, London, where he hosted large showbiz
parties. He was a regular celebrity guest of
prime minister Harold Wilson. He tanned in the
South of France. Freddie Ross Hancock, Tony
Hancock's second wife, and a good friend at the
time, remembers a typical Corbett episode at the
airport in Cannes when she saw off one of
Corbett's girlfriends at departures, only to
pick up a new one at arrivals.
But in the
early '70s a rot seems to have set in Corbett's
mind, that was two-parts boredom with the
formula of Steptoe to four-parts frustration
with working with a dysfunctional drunk.
Production staff remember that Corbett gave the
impression it wasn't worth continuing rehearsals
because, after lunch, Brambell was often too
drunk. During recordings of the show, Brambell
would get on Corbett's nerves as, worse for
wear, the old man would take an eternity to move
a prop. Corbett became disenchanted by offers of
work outside of Steptoe that were variations on
his rag-and-bone character. Slowly, the coolness
of his relationship with Brambell turned to ice.
It was in 1976,
on a stage tour of Australia, that Corbett and
Brambell's professional partnership finally fell
apart. The Steptoe series had ended and the two
actors, desperate to make some money, played any
venue that would have them, in a show that
turned the Steptoe theme into second-rate
song-and-dance vaudeville.
On one
occasion, Brambell didn't turn up for a show,
and left Corbett to entertain a 1,000-strong
audience with impromptu juggling and stand-up.
The tour manager found Brambell round the block
in the front room of one of the theatre ushers,
drinking Guinness. In the day, while Corbett
looked at the sights, Brambell either stayed in
his hotel room drinking gin and calling the tour
manager to organise a pedicure, or cruised the
esplanade at Surfer's Paradise in a feather boa
with new-found friends. Brambell told the tour
manager that Corbett was a pompous and stuck-up
actor. Corbett would just remain quiet and get
on with the job, simmering inside. "Hate,
that's the only word I can think of," says
tour manager Kevin O'Neil.
It is said that
one of the great tricks of situation comedy is
to come up with a situation in which people are
trapped, because real comedy only comes from
tension and aggression between characters. In
Steptoe, writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson
sought to highlight the generational tension
between parents and children at the centre of
the '60s revolution. Harold and Albert Steptoe
were imprisoned in their relationship.
Throughout the series, they bicker and berate
one another. Whatever heights Harold aspires to,
Albert brings his son tumbling down.
Ironically,
after Steptoe, Corbett and Brambell appear to
have found themselves in a similar situation
offscreen. Typecast as a rag-and-bone man,
Corbett's creative ambitions bore little fruit.
His professional fate was inextricably tied to
the wild, secretive and unpredictable Brambell.
The old man had few ambitions, other than to
have a good time at his local in Pimlico and to
add to his collection of antique silver.
Art mirroring
life? Is this the reason why Corbett and
Brambell's performance in Steptoe was so good?
Tragicomedy on screen, tragicomedy off. Harold
Steptoe would have loved the idea. Albert would
probably have hated it.
The Guardian |
