Wasn't he so loverly?
The Oldie Magazine|February 2021
Wilfrid Hyde-White was as charming and mischievous in real life as in My Fair Lady, remembers Simon Williams, his friend and co-star
Simon Williams
Wasn't he so loverly?

A hundred years ago, two would-be actors – my father, Hugh Williams (1904-69), hotfoot from Haileybury, and Wilfrid Hyde-White (1903-91), just out of Marlborough, were new boys at RADA.

They became flatmates – and lifelong friends.

Forty-nine years later, when I rang Wilfrid to ask him if he’d do the address at my father’s memorial service, he answered wistfully, ‘Oh, my dear boy, I simply can’t – we shared a dinner jacket for three years at RADA’ (they had to take it in turns to go nightclubbing.)

Thereafter, he’d always send me a telegram on the anniversary of Dad’s death – sometimes with a racing tip.

As RADA students, during an elocution class, they were made endlessly to repeat ‘hip-bath’ – a short sound and then a long one. Wilfrid dared Dad to substitute ‘toilet roll’, and they were both sent out of the room for giggling. Wilfrid claimed RADA taught him two things: ‘That I can’t act and it doesn’t matter.’

In any event, voice production was wasted on Wilfrid – he was famously inaudible, choosing to perfect a mumbling naturalistic delivery. His performance as Colonel Pickering in the film of My Fair Lady (1965) is a masterclass of muttering nonchalance. When he was doing The Reluctant Debutante with Celia Johnson, she told him, ‘The only time I can actually hear you, Wilfrid, is when I’m on stage and you’re chatting in the wings.’

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة February 2021 من The Oldie Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة February 2021 من The Oldie Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.