Born sometime in 1914, Bertram Joyce, Ireland's answer to Donald Sinden, was from an early age, obsessed with "Hamlet". He planned Planninga career in horticulture, but his life changed forever at the age of 19 when his father was found mysteriously murdered in the back garden of the family home in Ballsbridge and his mother, Gertie, set up home with his Uncle Claude.
Unable to confront his uncle about the suspicious circumstances of his father's death and the subsequent domestic arrangement with his mother, Bertram rashly decided to become an actor and cooked up a bizarre plan. He would spend his inheritance money playing the part of "Hamlet" and putting on _productions of Shakespeare's classic play in towns and villages all over Ireland.
He would then invite his mother and uncle to the _performances and, while on stage or standing in the wings, gauge their reaction. They would invariably leave just after "the play within the play" scene, not because they were feeling guilt-ridden and uncomfortable, but because the _productions were usually so appallingly bad.
As the famed theatre critic, Aubrey Davenport,, noted pithily after one woeful show in Portlaoise,: "To be elsewhere, or not to be elsewhere- - that is the question!"
Reacting badly to persistent dismal reviews and feeling that his ingenious strategy to expose his uncle was going to fail, Bertram decided to cut all ties with his family in 1935, and move to London to perfect his craft.
For a young thespian to acquire the necessary skills and experience in those days it was best to join a repertory company. Bertram did so, coming under the wing of the legendary and flamboyant Montague Keeble. If Gene Hackman is an actor's actor, and Alex Ferguson is a manager's manager, then Montague Keeble could best be described as an actor manager's actor-manager.
Renowned for conducting rehearsals in his silk pyjamas, Montague instilled in the young actor a complete lack of technique and an __over-reliance on rouge. In mid-1936, the actor manager's actor manager gave the young Irish tragedian a qualified vote of confidence by making him, his dresser's dresser.
Each evening before the performance, _Bertram had to painstakingly to dress Montague's dresser, Bunty de Marney, before Bunty went to work to dress Montague. After six months of this gruelling tedium, Bert ram plucked up his courage and told Montague he wanted to act, not work in a men's clothing shop. Impressed by the young Irishman's gumption, Montague promoted Bertram a step closer to the stage. He was made the understudy's understudy's understudy.
Bertram waited patiently for his English debut. And waited. And waited. One night, during a production of "King Lear", Montague, playing the lead, came down with appendicitis, and his understudy, a young Peter Finch, replaced him. When Peter Finch broke h is arm, with Montague still convalescing in hospital, an undiscovered Jack Hawkins took over. When Jack Hawkins ended up in Calais after an almighty drinking session, Bertram at last sensed his chance, but at that very moment he was called home to Ireland for his mother's funeral. She had inexplicably taken a drink from a cup of wine with poison pellets in it.
He returned to England in a restless and depressed state. With health fully restored to Montague, Peter Finch and Jack Hawkins, Bertram became increasingly worried that he would never get the chance to act, within his own lifetime, if he remained in Montague's troupe.
He sought employment elsewhere and gradually became a jobbing actor. After many years doing the rounds, playing in small theatres and staying in damp boarding houses, he became quite established in theatrical circles as "Bertram Joyce- - The Actor The Actor with the Bellowing Voice".
Sir Anthony Quayle, who was just starting off on a successful career, recalled years later: "Bertram, the darling boy, was such a bad actor that any time he'd made an entrance the audience would either fall asleep and snore or chat amongst themselves. I think he was playing Malvolio during a matinee in Torquay opposite a radiant Peggy Ashcroft ,when he came on, and everybody just picked up their newspapers and started to read. A volcanic anger built within him and he turned red, - well, redder, with all that rouge on, - and to get the audience's attention, he started shouting his lines. It was painfully embarrassing. And that's when 'Bertram Joyce, the -The Actor with the Bellowing Voice' was born."
When Bertram was in his full bellowing form, he could sound remarkably like Winston Churchill. And throughout the Second World War he was part of a group of actors who put on shows in the London Underground during air raids. For members of the public who stayed for the shows, his bombastic staccato delivery caused much comment and unintended laughter. Other would already be on their journey home, happier to leave the performance to face the uncertainty of the Blitz. However, British Intelligence decided to use him to impersonate Churchill for radio broadcasts, as a decoy to fool the Germans - and "Operation Ham" was to prove remarkably successful. After the war, the Rank Organisation wanted to make a movie on the subject. Bertram was asked to read for the main role and play himself. Sadly, he failed the audition. To add insult to injury, Jack Hawkins got the role.
Things changed after the war. By the early fifties 1950s, Bertram's style of quasi-camp histrionics and loud over-acting seemed quite dated. He found it difficult to find the right parts and drifted into long periods of "resting". To alleviate his boredom he started to write. He had become a big fan of some American writers, including Tennessee Williams, and in the summer of 1952 attempted to write a play which in retrospect was heavily derivative of "A Streetcar Named Desire". Once completed, the manuscript of "A Tram Called Lust" was sent to renegade theatre director Nigel MacBeth. Nigel loved the play and insisted on directing it with Bertram in the leading role. It was the beginning of a long pointless collaboration.
Every production Nigel MacBeth was ever involved in, ended in disaster, and suspicious theatrical folk maintained that this was because of his name. His demand to be addressed as "Mr. MacBeth" during rehearsals, this broke the timeworn theatrical taboo about uttering that particular word in a theatre. Others, meanwhile, claimed his failure was entirely because Nigel was an arrogant, talentless oaf. Whatever the reason, the production of "Tram", as it became known, was the nadir of Bertram's career. His attempts at a Louisiana accent were much derided.
Aubrey Davenport, the venerable theatre critic who had slated Bertram during his formative years in Ireland and who subsequently worked at the London Times, remarked in his review: "Why does this man act? He doesn't have presence, he has absence"."
Bertram Joyce returned to Ireland in the late 1970's. He moved back into his family home, where his elderly Uncle Claude still resided. Still unable to bring up the family past with his uncle, Bertram took to renting out videos of "Hamlet" and showing them to his uncle every night. This caused much tension between them and was thought to be the cause of the knife fight in their living--room that led to both their deaths in 1983.
Karl MacDermott is writer-in-residence at his home in Kilmainham