Feature: Look-in, September 1973
Saturday, 15 September 1973 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arthur_of_the_britonsThis article in Look-in advertises the second series of "Arthur of the Britons", which began airing on 12 September 1973. It includes some interesting biographical information about Oliver Tobias, and a quotation describing him, from Executive Producer, Patrick Dromgoole:
He has about him an atmosphere of brooding power. He is dangerously quick in his movements, an expert horseman and sword fighter, with the added qualities of charm, humour and wit. If we'd searched the world we couldn't have found a better actor to play King Arthur.
It also includes quotations from Oliver about the character he plays:
I immersed myself in Arthur's character. I discovered he was no butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-royal-mouth monarch, but a hard, often brutal, warrior, a master schemer in cavalry warfare, who rode his armies up and down the West Country fighting invaders, and winning battles, though often heavily out-numbered. He really was the stuff that legends are made of, but only one side of his character was ever remembered - his code of honour.
Of the stunt work which led to his injury - which in this article is said to have needed fourteen stitches, whereas in the TV Times, in December 1972, it was said to be ten - he said:
If I was to play Arthur I had to live like him. There was no point in letting anyone else do the dangerous stuff.
Full text:
The man said: “He has about him an atmosphere of brooding power. He is dangerously quick in his movements, an expert horseman and sword fighter, with added qualities of charm, humour and wit.”
And the man was not repeating a job reference for a factory canteen manager. He was Patrick Dromgoole, executive producer of Arthur of the Britons talking about 26-year-old Oliver Tobias, the star of the series which returns on Wednesday.
He goes on: “If we’d searched the world we couldn’t have found a better actor to play King Arthur.”
Which is just as well because before the first series, last year, there was Celtic grumbling about why a young man from Switzerland should play our great freedom fighter – “Would the Swiss like it if we sent Mick Jagger over there to play William Tell?” they asked. But now I’m sure those protesters would be the first to call on Oliver should the Swedes and Danes ever decide to invade us again.
There’s a constant stream of letters to Oliver from love-struck schoolgirls (and their sisters), while local newspapers report battered and bruised schoolboys littering the West Countryside following games of Celts v. Saxons.
Anyhow everyone seems to be getting the Arthur bug – which may be some compensation because we haven’t given Oliver a particularly smooth passage since he arrived here from Zurich at 10 not speaking English.
“The boys at my school were a lively lot,” Oliver recalls. “They would tell me to ask the masters things such as: “Please sir, my pen has run out, may I leave the room to try and catch it…” and I’d do it, not knowing what I was gabbling about.”
Why did Oliver come here? “My parents, both successful actors on the Continent, were always travelling,” he explained. “My education was suffering so they sent me to England as they believed English schools to be the best in the world.”
The family ability soon showed itself, and after appearing in a leading part in the school’s production of King Lear, Oliver, now speaking perfect English, found himself stage-struck.
“But when I left school there wasn’t much I could do about it. As I couldn’t get a work permit,” he said.
So he went to Germany and became a member of a pop group playing in a Hamburg beat cellar.
“Then I found I was destroying my voice, screaming at the top of my lungs every night,” said Oliver, “so if I was ever to be an actor I had to give that up.”
He returned to England and studied for nearly three years at an acting school. Having taken up British residency, Oliver was able to work in Britain and the first job he got was a plum – the lead in the musical Hair.
He moved on to Holland and then Israel – where he choreographed the show himself, made a couple of films on the Continent, appeared as Judas in a German stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar and was then spotted as a potential King Arthur and brought back to Britain to start filming.
“I immersed myself in Arthur’s character,” said Oliver. “I discovered he was no butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-royal-mouth monarch, but a hard, often brutal, warrior, a master schemer in cavalry warfare, who rode his armies up and down the West Country fighting invaders, and winning battles, though often heavily outnumbered.
“He really was the stuff that legends are made of, but only one side of his character was ever remembered – his code of humour.”
Oliver discovered that Arthur built such a reputation for himself as the heroic saviour of his country that countless parents named their sons Art or Arthur as a tribute to him. Proof of that is to be found in numerous church records.
Oliver does all his own stunts, riding with heavy shield and sword for as long as eight hours a day, quite a feat in itself. It was inevitable that at the end of one harrowing day he should mis-parry a spear thrust and land up in hospital with 14 stitches needed.
Said Oliver: “If I was to play Arthur I had to live like him. There was no point in letting anyone else do the dangerous stuff. Those days were vile. Arthur and his men fought because they were warriors. The peasants didn’t count – they just got slaughtered. If I had lived then, I know which side I would have chosen to be on.”
Caption: Oliver Tobias, as King Arthur, rides with his trusty squire, Kai to meet whatever dangers may occur. Tobias fights all his own battles with no “stand-in.”
He has about him an atmosphere of brooding power. He is dangerously quick in his movements, an expert horseman and sword fighter, with the added qualities of charm, humour and wit. If we'd searched the world we couldn't have found a better actor to play King Arthur.
It also includes quotations from Oliver about the character he plays:
I immersed myself in Arthur's character. I discovered he was no butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-royal-mouth monarch, but a hard, often brutal, warrior, a master schemer in cavalry warfare, who rode his armies up and down the West Country fighting invaders, and winning battles, though often heavily out-numbered. He really was the stuff that legends are made of, but only one side of his character was ever remembered - his code of honour.
Of the stunt work which led to his injury - which in this article is said to have needed fourteen stitches, whereas in the TV Times, in December 1972, it was said to be ten - he said:
If I was to play Arthur I had to live like him. There was no point in letting anyone else do the dangerous stuff.
Full text:
The man said: “He has about him an atmosphere of brooding power. He is dangerously quick in his movements, an expert horseman and sword fighter, with added qualities of charm, humour and wit.”
And the man was not repeating a job reference for a factory canteen manager. He was Patrick Dromgoole, executive producer of Arthur of the Britons talking about 26-year-old Oliver Tobias, the star of the series which returns on Wednesday.
He goes on: “If we’d searched the world we couldn’t have found a better actor to play King Arthur.”
Which is just as well because before the first series, last year, there was Celtic grumbling about why a young man from Switzerland should play our great freedom fighter – “Would the Swiss like it if we sent Mick Jagger over there to play William Tell?” they asked. But now I’m sure those protesters would be the first to call on Oliver should the Swedes and Danes ever decide to invade us again.
There’s a constant stream of letters to Oliver from love-struck schoolgirls (and their sisters), while local newspapers report battered and bruised schoolboys littering the West Countryside following games of Celts v. Saxons.
Anyhow everyone seems to be getting the Arthur bug – which may be some compensation because we haven’t given Oliver a particularly smooth passage since he arrived here from Zurich at 10 not speaking English.
“The boys at my school were a lively lot,” Oliver recalls. “They would tell me to ask the masters things such as: “Please sir, my pen has run out, may I leave the room to try and catch it…” and I’d do it, not knowing what I was gabbling about.”
Why did Oliver come here? “My parents, both successful actors on the Continent, were always travelling,” he explained. “My education was suffering so they sent me to England as they believed English schools to be the best in the world.”
The family ability soon showed itself, and after appearing in a leading part in the school’s production of King Lear, Oliver, now speaking perfect English, found himself stage-struck.
“But when I left school there wasn’t much I could do about it. As I couldn’t get a work permit,” he said.
So he went to Germany and became a member of a pop group playing in a Hamburg beat cellar.
“Then I found I was destroying my voice, screaming at the top of my lungs every night,” said Oliver, “so if I was ever to be an actor I had to give that up.”
He returned to England and studied for nearly three years at an acting school. Having taken up British residency, Oliver was able to work in Britain and the first job he got was a plum – the lead in the musical Hair.
He moved on to Holland and then Israel – where he choreographed the show himself, made a couple of films on the Continent, appeared as Judas in a German stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar and was then spotted as a potential King Arthur and brought back to Britain to start filming.
“I immersed myself in Arthur’s character,” said Oliver. “I discovered he was no butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-royal-mouth monarch, but a hard, often brutal, warrior, a master schemer in cavalry warfare, who rode his armies up and down the West Country fighting invaders, and winning battles, though often heavily outnumbered.
“He really was the stuff that legends are made of, but only one side of his character was ever remembered – his code of humour.”
Oliver discovered that Arthur built such a reputation for himself as the heroic saviour of his country that countless parents named their sons Art or Arthur as a tribute to him. Proof of that is to be found in numerous church records.
Oliver does all his own stunts, riding with heavy shield and sword for as long as eight hours a day, quite a feat in itself. It was inevitable that at the end of one harrowing day he should mis-parry a spear thrust and land up in hospital with 14 stitches needed.
Said Oliver: “If I was to play Arthur I had to live like him. There was no point in letting anyone else do the dangerous stuff. Those days were vile. Arthur and his men fought because they were warriors. The peasants didn’t count – they just got slaughtered. If I had lived then, I know which side I would have chosen to be on.”
Caption: Oliver Tobias, as King Arthur, rides with his trusty squire, Kai to meet whatever dangers may occur. Tobias fights all his own battles with no “stand-in.”