It’s 8.25 pm on Thursday 6th September 1962. You switch on the TV and all around Europe the same programme is being broadcast by the BBC (UK), RTE (Ireland), RTF (France), ORF (Austria), SRT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), RAI (Italy), NTS (Netherlands) and YLE (Finland) as part of a project called The Largest Theatre in the World.
Why oh why didn’t they stick with this project? Now it’s the Eurovision Song Contest which, like the poor, is always with us – it started in 1956. But we digress, on that Thursday evening it was the turn of the BBC to contribute. They commissioned Terence Rattigan to knock out something. The result was Heart to Heart, a two hour play about a dishonest Labour politician being forensically interviewed on TV. Rattigan’s inspiration came from the absolutely brilliant Face to Face where John Freeman so insightfully delved into the psyche of his victims.
The irony is that Terence Rattigan never submitted himself to Freeman’s scrutiny – although Cecil Beaton and John (Look Back in Anger) Osborne did. TR’s personality was simple. He wanted all the laurel wreaths and, if they were not bestowed, took umbrage. He wanted to live life centre-stage surrounded by the rich and famous. He wanted to preserve his privacy, particularly regarding his sexuality. He wanted to square the circle.
Not all the cast of Heart to Heart were household names in 1962; many of them are now. Kenneth More, Ralph Richardson, Angela Baddeley, Wendy Craig, Derek Francis, Jack Gwillim, Megs Jenkins, Jean Marsh, Peggy Mann, Peter Sallis, Frank Godsell, Jean Alexander.
I will reread the biography of TR and see if I can come close to disparaging him as you do. On the face of it, though, why should not the world divide blamelessly between those who want to expose themselves to public psyche-scrutiny and those who would rather not, thanks? And I find it hard to blame anyone who seeks laurels and is sensitive to brickbats. Come to that, I see no modern obligation to out oneself as to sexual proclivities, and in TR’s lifetime, all sorts of homosexuals had even more reasons of all sorts to keep that matter private, or at least unadvertised.