TALES FROM THE HILLS

(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)

Dorothy Gribble (DR) came up from Highclere one day delivering Westridge flyers, and a reminder that some young instrumentalist was playing that evening.

We happened to have another visitor – someone in TV production – so we talked about DR’s own TV work. She had appeared with some of the greats like William Hartnell, who was the first and the best ‘Doctor Who,’ and Rupert Davies, the only authentic ‘Maigret.’ Both shows stand out in TV history.

Looking at that photo of Hartnell as the ‘Doctor’ and DR as the slave girl in the skimpy dress, you can see Hartnell’s power, set off so well by DR’s vulnerability. They could easily be Lear with his youngest daughter, Cordelia: the one he scorned, but the one who loved him best. It has a tragic look, and she was always keen on Shakespeare. A children’s programme, but not for the nervous!

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the Australians wouldn’t buy that first series from the BBC. They said they found Hartnell ‘too dark’ for their children. Children certainly flocked round Tom Baker when he was the ‘Doctor,’ but probably not round William Hartnell. DR preferred the stronger ‘darker’ ‘Doctor.’

She was on TV again quite recently as a nurse in ‘Maigret,’ looking very French, with Rupert Davies. George Simenon himself said Davies was the authentic ‘Maigret,’ played just as he’d conceived him. Davies portrayed an intuitive man who solves his cases by relying not so much on sleuthing as on his own humanity and on his sympathy with the people he meets. The film-makers were lucky, too. They shot it in Paris in the 1960s, when Paris was still Paris, before it was “blanded and branded,” so the show has a very authentic quality.

When she tried to leave, she found her car battery was flat. We suggested a rolling start down Red Hill. But she wisely preferred the safe hands of the people from Ball Hill Garage.

I remember her saying that her car had been “speaking” to her. It only occurred to me later that it was only trying to say, “DR, you’ve left the lights on.”

 

Agricola