“A True National Treasure”
North Carolina’s Rosemary Harris T
his writer recently had the privilege of facilitating a keynote address with celebrated theatre actress Rosemary Harris for the Southeastern Theatre Conference on the occasion of her presentation with their 2021 Distinguished Career Award. In a wide-ranging interview for Southern Theatre, Harris was exuberant when detailing her early years and the path that led to her stage, film, and television acting career, which has been honored with a long list of awards, including two Tony Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. At 94 years young, Harris was born a few months after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927. Always gracious, she replied to that fact with her usual wit and charm: “Oscar Wilde said, ‘A woman who tells her age will tell anything!’” From Europe to Asia to America The noted British actress was born in the parish of Ashby in Suffolk County but spent her early years in Asia. Her father was in the Royal Air Force and stationed in what is now India with his wife and two young daughters. They returned to England, which Harris thought “was a very cold and dreary place.” As a teenager, Harris thought she would become a nurse and applied to a hospital for training. Secretly wanting to be an actress, she found a “little, tiny repertory company in the town where I was living.” In a letter to the theatre, Harris asked, “Before I waste time and money on academic training, can you tell me if I have any ability?” She auditioned and was offered bus fare as her salary. “I had a wonderful time because I played all sorts of different parts in a different play every week,” she recalled. “I got moved up to another theatre company… also a different play every week, but two performances every night. I actually got paid for that, seven pounds a week; half went to my landlady. I had a bicycle to get back and forth to the theatre and was with that company for a year… that was a lot of parts under my belt.” Applying to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Harris had a private
audition with Sir Kenneth Barnes, the RADA President. “I got in… but I sort of did it backwards because you don’t usually start by being a professional actress and then go to drama school. But, in actual fact, it was really quite good for me because I knew exactly what I wanted to learn, which was how best to use my voice,” she said. “I have to rather self-consciously admit that I ended up with the gold medal.” American playwright and director Moss Hart came to England to cast a play that he had written, and the company Harris was working for had her read opposite all the young men auditioning for the show. After three weeks, Hart called her downstage to the footlights and said, “I’ve gotten used to you reading this part for so long; would you like to come to New York?” Harris said yes and made her Broadway debut in The Climate of Eden in 1952 before returning to Britain for classical theatre roles at the Bristol Old Vic, the Old Vic, the National Theatre, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal National Theatre. Leading Men in the Life of a Leading Lady The roster of leading men who played opposite Rosemary Harris reads like a Who’s Who of world theatre: Richard Burton, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, and Sir Michael Redgrave, among others. Harris played opposite Gielgud in his farewell stage performance. “Oh, that was a wonderful treat, and I’ve still got the letter he wrote [after] we both got cast in the play, The Best of Friends, in his neat, tiny little writing. He was 80 or 82, I think, and it was his swan song. Only occasionally did he stumble, but he got through it beautifully. Later on, we did a television play, Summer Day’s Dream, and we’d rehearse and break for lunch and, being [a] wonderful gossipmonger, John adored nothing better than a good gossip.” Asked to put her stage career in perspective, André Bishop, producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater in New York City, responded: “Rosemary
By Keith T. Martin
Harris is, to use a phrase that is no longer in fashion, a true leading lady. That doesn’t mean just playing all the best and biggest roles; it means being the leader of a company. Rosemary has had great success in England playing opposite Olivier and Gielgud—the famous Olivier Vanya and Gielgud’s final stage performance—but she has had equal acclaim in the United States. She stopped being a Broadway star for a while to start, with Ellis Rabb, the finest repertory company we have ever had, the APA [Association of Performing Artists], which then became the APA/Phoenix. She led it with Ellis, playing small roles and big ones and doing a million other chores that someone has to do in a company.” The North Carolina School of the Arts Our conversation took place on her lovely back patio in Winston-Salem, NC, home to the prestigious University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA). The school, originally the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA), was cofounded in 1963 by the late John Marsden Ehle, Jr., an award-winning author and staunch supporter of the arts who has been described as “the father of Appalachian literature.” He became Harris’ husband in 1967—a union that lasted over 50 years, until his death in 2018. “It was through NCSA that I met dear John,” she said, “He was only in Manhattan for one day with the search committee looking for a new chancellor at NCSA, but he found a wife instead!” After marrying, Harris and Ehle relocated to his home state of North Carolina, with homes in Winston-Salem and here in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Penland, NC. An emeritus member of the UNCSA Board of Visitors, Harris holds an honorary doctorate from the venerable institution, and has been a commencement speaker on several occasions. She even stepped in at the last minute to direct a production of The Royal Family for the School of Drama. “The school is very, very much in my heart and so much a part of my life—I admire it greatly,” she said, noting that their daughter attended UNCSA.
world-class 40 — Autumn 2021 CAROLINA MOUNTAIN LIFE
