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Profiles
By Kenneth Tynan
Nick Hern Books £14.99
449 pages
Dateline: 13th April, 2007
To add to the Ken Tynan resurrection, Nick Hern has brought out a new
edition of his Profiles, first published in 1989, as a companion
to Selected Writings.
Nowadays, Tynan is best known, if you ignore the TV swearing and sexual
shenanigans, as a theatre critic. In fact, his interests were far wider,
as this book of profiles demonstrates.
He starts as an embarrassingly gushing schoolboy, revering New Yorker
critic Alexander Woollcott and Orson Welles for the school magazine
- Welles is much favoured, getting two more goes later on in the book.
Soon enough, though, Tynan is into his mature stride, profiling people
from across the entertainment industry. Part of the fun of this book
though, is that, through its pages, you learn almost as much about the
writer as his subjects.
Although there are many other pleasures on offer, theatre lovers should
be desperate to pick up a copy of this book because so many of their
favourites feature. Pretty much every great stage actor of the twenty
year period from the end of the Second World War is featured.
Predictably, since he has a reputation for lionising Laurence Olivier,
that leading thespian features formidably. As a bonus, we also get a
case study of his Othello from the time when they were working
together at the National Theatre. The future Lord is portrayed as both
actor/director and friend but, to be fair, Tynan was still willing to
criticise him in order to offer a balanced view.
The writer had a rare ability to get to the essence of his subjects
and was not afraid to offend, thus providing fully rounded pictures
of the likes of Peter Brook, Tennessee Williams, Gordon Craig, Arthur
Miller and Bertolt Brecht, in addition to actors such as those named
above and Edith Evans.
The book goes well beyond the theatre with a particularly fine juxtapositioning
as those mad comedians The Crazy Gang find themselves in august company
between a pair of highly-regarded writers with religious leanings, Graham
Greene and C.S. Lewis. Almost as much fun is the final coupling of the
Brookses, comic Mel and loose-living, silent beauty Louise.
In fact, Tynan had a soft spot for comedians so that, in addition to
the Gang, others such as Sid Field, W.C. Fields, Lenny Bruce and Eric
Morecambe make it into the book and receive treatment no less respectful
than theatrical knights and Lords.
Jazzmen feature as another favoured species, with Miles Davis and Duke
Ellington receiving the treatment. Tynan also loved bullfighters to
distraction, represented in this collection by perhaps the greatest
of them all, Antonio Ordóñez.
The other surprise to those who were not around at the time when he
wrote is the author's reverence for the silver screen. Many theatre
critics turn their noses up at movies but Tynan would as happily write
about a Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich or James Cagney as a Gielgud,
Coward or Olivier (who were primarily stage actors even though all had
great film moments).
Long after he ceased to be a theatre critic, Tynan continued to write,
especially for the New Yorker who indulged him incredibly, so than his
profile of Tom Stoppard is practically novella length at over fifty
pages. This gives him space to write, enthuse and compare, in this case
of Vaclav Havel, in a way that few writers would ever have an opportunity
to do today, other than in book form.
One he got past the youthful extravagances, Kenneth Tynan became a
wonderful portraitist in words that have the rich, vibrant quality of
oil paints. While some might have been worried by his often pointed
criticism, most will have been delighted to get the call to offer their
lives to such a unique writer and it is only fitting that this great
selection of his work has been brought back into print.
The very highest praise that can be paid to this book is to say that
the writer has a knack of making one want to get more involved with
the subjects of so many pieces. After reading about, say, Humphrey Bogart
you want to see Casablanca, or Orson Welles, Citizen Kane
and more surprisingly, The Magnificent Ambersons. That must be
as good a recommendation for this book as anyone could ever ask for.
Philip Fisher
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