Issue #0

Alec Guinness

a celebration

Plot

This 70th-birthday tribute to Sir Alec is somewhat more than a flat documentary: author Taylor gives real attention to each of Guinness' stage/screen performances--trying to pin down the actor's elusive, unique, "interior" quality. Following young Alec from odd childhood to his persistent search for work in the early 1930s, Taylor conveys the young actor's combination of technical ineptitude, unpromising physical attributes, and strangely shining talent. By 1937, however, Guinness was a presence--starting with his Aguecheek in Tyrone Guthrie's "Twelfth Night," moving on to a low-key Hamlet, seasons at the Old Vic, an uncommon array of characters. And the postwar years brought an unusually steady, full film career for a theatrical knight: from "Oliver Twist" and "Kind Hearts and Coronets" to "The Bridge on the River Kwai," from "Lawrence of Arabia" to Star Wars and TV's George Smiley--with regular returns to the London stage through the decades. An agreeable catalogue-cum-meditation of Guinness' many performances.