 
|
|
| |
| Artikel |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
"Catweazle
in close-up"
|
Quelle: "Look-in" Magazin 23.
Januar 1971
Artikel als PDF öffnen
LOOK-IN reporter Angus Allan corners television's confused weaver of spells for an on-the-spot interview:
"Writer's scribbles, fade away! Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay!” Catweazle fizzed and fumed, and the notebook in
my hand ought to have turned red hot and vanished. But it didn't. Well, that's the way with Catweazle. I suppose someone else's notebook,
probably on the other side of earth, did the disappearing act. He isn't renowned for getting his spells right! Maybe he felt a bit out of place,
sitting up in the dressing room of that stately-type home in Hertfordshire, where the shooting of the second
Catweazle series was taking place. After all, there was someone else's name on the door -
Geoffrey Bayldon's. And below, the rooms were
crammed with all sorts of camera and lighting equipment, and men with beards in variety - all of them a thousand times neater than our favourite wizard's!
“How,” I asked actor Geoffrey Bayldon, “do you put up with it?
I know who you are. But every time I ask you a question, the whiskery make-up quivers, and out comes Catweazle with the answer!”
Geoffrey tried to speak, but as I'd thought, Catweazle surfaced first. “I live! I live yet in these plaguy times," he quavered. “This body
is a mere vehicle for me! The glass-screened seeing box upon which I appear is magic. My magic!”
“He really thinks it is,” said Geoffrey, taking off the beard and banishing the witch in him for the moment. “Catweazle
does exist and sometimes I'm terrified that he's going to take me over for keeps. Do you know, I find him coming to the surface (he twitched uncomfortably, as though it was
actually happening at that moment) even when I'm my normal self, and out of these ragged clothes!"
“Take my cat,” he said. “Now, in the days B.C. - that means ‘before Catweazle’, of course - I used to speak to him just like any other normal
British human being would. You know - 'puss puss pussums' and that sort of thing. Now I find myself hissing and fizzing at him just like
Catweazle would do - and, believe it or not, I think the cat likes me better that way!"
Geoffrey Bayldon, despite a sane career in serious theatre, really does believe in Catweazle. He sympathises with his bewilderment in this modern
world. “Catweazle has a marvellous time in the new series,” he told me. “I mean,
who wouldn't like to live in a deserted railway station called Duck Halt, and baffle the lives out of a hard-up family of nobility, trying to keep a
stately home together? He has this quest to find the twelve signs of the zodiac. And there are hilarious misunderstandings all the way! What
about his transport, too? The old tricycle he finds!" Now the beard went back on and Catweazle, obviously irritated at having been kept out so long,
burst back into life.
“Bah! This prattle-head Bayldon is a knave,” he shouted. “A varlet! Know ye that the toad's-spittle does not even
believe in the magic of the zodiac?” He thought for a moment, and then, with narrowed eyes, he peered at me and fingered Adamcos, the witch-knife, hanging round his
neck. “Believe ye in the zodiac, writer?”
I left, hurriedly, just in case he cast a spell to turn me into a companion for Touchwood. Not that I had any fear that I'd become a toad. But with
his spells, my fate might have been even worse!
(Photographs by Paul Stokes). |
 |
|
"A
Magician's Mate!"
An interview with Catweazle's co-star, actor
Gary Warren.
|
 Quelle: "Look-in" Magazin 13.
März
1971
Artikel als PDF öffnen
When you're a playmate of that
whiskery 11th-Century wizard Catweazle, a little bit
of the magic seems to rub off.
Just ask sixteen-year old actor Gary Warren, who appears with
him in the current series as Cedric.
For instance, you would think you would need a spot of old time sorcery to be allowed to leave grammar school at thirteen. Or to have the grounds of
a stately home in Hertfordshire turned into your own private learn-to-drive course. But it has happened
for Gary.
“I always wanted to be an actor” he said. “And I was lucky enough to land a small part as Pinnochio in the ITV programme
Disney
Wonderland when I was twelve. But it meant I had to have two days off school every week for rehearsals. Then I started getting parts in plays and in
Z-Cars which meant I was getting about four full weeks off each term.
“The
headmaster of my grammar school in St. John's Wood,
London, wasn't very keen on my missing out so much
schooling. So I left school officially
to go to the Aida Foster Stage School, where I could combine general education with dance and stage training.”
Gary graduated two years ago, and has hardly stopped acting since. He's been a consistent wage earner since he was twelve, and most of
his pocket-money is spent on pop records. He has a collection of well over one-hundred albums at his home at Neasden, North London.
He's also a soccer fan and supports Queen's Park Rangers. “I've only missed one home game this season”, he said. “And when you're on call at the studios as much as I am, it isn't always easy to dodge away to watch football."
Working in Catweazle alone meant Gary only had one day off (officially) in fourteen weeks - and he has also been busy in the film
The Railway Children.
Small for his age - he's exactly five foot tall - Gary gets a lot of parts playing boys younger than himself. “I don't mind as long as the script is good”, he said. “You don't feel soppy if you can believe in the words you are saying.” And he doesn't expect special treatment from his friends because he appears regularly on television and in films. “They don't keep on about it”, he said. “I'm just one of the boys.”
Gary has no serious girl-friends and travels about, like anyone else, on the bus and tube. “But I'm looking forward to being able to have my own car, when I'm old enough to apply for a provisional license in July”, he said.
“I've managed to get in quite a lot of practice. The cast in
Catweazle were super; they allowed me to use their cars in the grounds of the stately Collingford home in Hertfordshire."
|
|
|
"De
legendarische tovenaar van de beeldbuis"
|
 Quelle:
"Veronica" No. 13 / Dezember 1971
Artikel als PDF öffnen
"Thou art overbold in thy ignorance"
- "Gij zijt overmoedig in uwe onwetendheid! Wie had
er ooit kunnen denken dat kinderen (en volwassenen)
die bijna in de eenentwintigste eeuw leven
wildenthousiast gemaakt kunnen worden voor dit
taalgebruik? Catweazle, de skeletachtige
magier van onze beeldbuis is erin geslaagd en dat
niet alleen in Engeland, waar de
populaire televisieserie werd vervaardigd, maar ook
in ons land, in Belgie en Japan.
Catweazle is nu al de legendarische tovenaar van
onze beeldbuis en hij wint
aan populariteit bij ouderen en de allerkleinsten.
Catweazele heeft voor de
ouderen iets ontwapenends door het spontane onbegrip
waarmee hij, de tovenaar uit de middeleeuwen - in de
clinch ligt met de technische verworvenheden van
deze eeuw.
Voor de kinderen - en daar is de serie trenslotte
voor gemaakt - is Catweazle een ontzettend aardig,
maar toch ook wel griezelig schepsel, waar je het
liefst van onder de tafel of vanuit de veilige
beschutting van de familiekring naar kijkt. Een
beetje griezelig vindt ieder kind fijn. ls daarmee
het sukses van Catweazle verklaard? Helemaal niet!
De serie wordt
in de meest letterlijke zin van het woord gedragen
door de akteur Geoffrey Bayldon, een 46-jarige,
broodmagere Engelse akteur die de figuur Catweazle
fantastisch gestalte weet te geven.
De
wereldvreemde tovenaar is zo griezelig echt, zo
overtuigend, dat
jong en oud elke zondaga-vond vroeg aan de buis
gekluisterd zit, een schitterende, vredige
inleiding voor het zondags geweld dat even
later door "Sport en Beeld" wordt uitgezonden.
CatweazIe was enkele weken geleden in ons land. Dat
wil zeggen: akteur Geoffrey Bayldon was enkele dagen
hier. "Her is doodjammer" zegt Geoffrey, "dat in Engeland de serie na
tweeenvijftig
afleveringen is stopgezet. Nu wordt ik gevraagd om
hier te komen omdat Catweazle
Catweazle is deze weken druk in de weer met het
verzamelen van de tekens van de dierenriem. Hij heeft het
moeilijk met leeuwen en maagden en ook de
weegschalen maken hem het leven zwaar. De tovenaar
struint door ons beeld met de ontwapenende
argeloos-heid van de tuinman die plotseling achter
het schakelpaneel van een atoomcentrale wordt
gezet. De tovenaar woont nu in een verlaten stationnetje
met zijn magische pad en hij heeft zich in het
hoofd gizet alle tekens van de dierenriem te
verzamelen.
En daarbij loop je natuurlijk tegen vreemde dingen
op. Neem nou zo'n grammofoon, die ergens buiten
staat te spelen. Dat is natuurlijk een kast van de
duivel en het geluid wordt voortgebracht door ronde,
zwarte wielen, die Catweazle amper durft vast te
pakken. De situatie wordt voor een middeleeuwse
tovenaar natuurlijk helemaal te dol als me op zijn
gebied gaat graven met een bulldozer een soort
dynosaurus, maar ziet toch kans met behulp van een
wichelroede en een "magic stone" de bijgelovige
aannemer van het land te verdrijven. Een telefoon en
de televisie zijn natuurlijk helemaal te gek voor
Catweazle. Als hij stomverbaasd met een hoorn in
zijn hand staat en in Hendrik VIII-Engels vraagt
wat het is, brulden alle jeugdige supporters: Een
telefoon, natuurlijk!"
 Daarin schuilt de kracht van de Catweazle-serie:
het publiek leeft zich helemaal in. De 52 afleveringen
zijn ook grandioos geschreven. Richard Carpenter is de geestelijke vader van Catweazle. Hij
doorspekt de afleveringen met geniale vondsten.
Neem nu dat verhaal waarin Catweazle wordt
gekonfronteerd met een televisietoestel. De omroeper zegt net dat er een
duivel is ontsnapt die iedereen in steen kan
veranderen. In paniek rent Catweazle weg en in de
hal van het huis hoort hij een gesprek russen Lord
Collington en een beeldhouwer. die zegt dat hij His
Lordship best in steen kan uitbeelden. Voor
Catweazle is dat het eind van de wereld.
Geoffrey Bayldon is niet te herkennen als de
tovenaar Catweazle. Hij is klein van stuk, mager
en beweeglijk. In Maassluis waar hij enkele
weken geleden samen met een andere "ouwe jongen"
- Sinterklaas - zijn
opwachting maakte, herkende de jeugd hem pas
nadat hij enkele van zijn befaamde sisgeluidjes
had losgelaten.
Geoffrey Bayldon was op dat moment voor het eerst
in het buitenland als Catweazle. "Jammer dat
de serie ten einde is" zegt hij ons. "Als ik over
het sukses van Catweazle in Nederland hoor en ik
lees de krantenberichten over
de bijval in Engeland nog eens... In Engeland was
het 't suksesvolste kinderprogramma van de
afgelopen jaren. Wat ik zo belangrijk vind is dat
Catweazle zich niet staande behoefde te houden op
een goedkoop soort populariteit. Populaire programma's zijn vaak zo ontzettend slecht!"
Geoffrey Bayldon is eigenlijk architekt,
althans hij volgde een
bouwkundige opleiding. Vlak na de oorlog schreef hij
in voor de Old Vic Theatre School. In de jaren
vijftig speelde hij in het Shakespeare
Theatre in Stratford, maar tien jaar geleden stapte
hij over naar televisie en film. Hij speelde
belangrijke rollen in vier films en in drie
televisieverhalen: The age of the kind. Canterbury
Tales en Nicholas Nickleby van Dickens.
"Ik ben nu helemaal aan het medium televisie
gewend" zegt Geoffrey. "Vroeger had ik er een
ontzettende hekel aan! Ik dacht dat je op de buis
niet creatief genoeg bezig kon zijn.
Het idee van Catweazle werd geschapen door Richard
Carpenter. Hij reed in 1969 ergens in Engeland rond
toen hij op een bord het woord "Catweazle" zag staan.
Hij vond het een schitterend woord. Carpenter schiep
in gedachten toen de tovenaarsfiguur achter die naam
en werkte zijn gedachten later uit. Het uiterlijk
van de tovenaar, de persoonlijkheid heb ik zelf
geschapen. Make-up-lady Susan Barrowdale heeft daar
ook veel toe bijgedragen.
Aan het begin af aan zijn de troubles van
Catweazle met ouderwetse en hypermoderne demonen
een sukses
geweest. De kinderen werden eerst overtuigd, later
volgden de
ouderen. "Het is grappig" zegt Geoffrey, "dat de
hippies in Londen zo op Catweazle vielen. Ze
hebben mij tot hun idool gemaakt.
Dar is nu wat over, maar het gaf toch een kick!"
Bayldon verklaart het sukses van Catweazle zelf zeer
simpel: "Er zijn veel mensen die
moeite hebben om zich aan te passen.
Kinderen natuurlijk ook, omdat ze jong,
onervaren en vaak eigenwijs zijn. Dat is hun
charme. Die kinderen zien nu plotseling een
figuur die ook alles moet ontdekken, die zich
onzeker beweegt en die een afwijkend taalgebruik
heeft.
Het is toch gemakkelijk om je daarmee te personifieren? Ik krijg fanmail... tot uit
gevangenissen toe. Brieven van mensen met
aanpassingsmoeilijkheden. Iedereen vertrouwt
Catweazle, ondanks zijn uiterlijk. Hij is een kind,
weet je.. onschuldig, argeloos, en hij heeft een
hart
van goud. Bovendien heeft hij alle fouten die
kinderen maken. Hij heeft hun angsten en hij wordt
voortdurend gekonfronteerd met dingen die hij
absoluut niet kan verklaren!"
 Geoffrey Bayldon stelt zich op het standpunt
dat een televisieserie kinderen geen schrik mag aanjagen. Hij wil perse geen lange pedagogiche
en psychologische verhandelingen ophangen over wat wel en niet goed voor kinderen zou zijn. "De wereld is zo wreed"
zegt hij "kinderen zien genoeg Ieed. Ik vind dat er niet met kinderangst gemanipuIeerd mag
worden. Catweazle jaagt niet echt angst aan. Die is hooguit wat vreemd.
En dat is juist goed, omdat het kind geintrigeerd wordt door alles wat vreemd is. Maar ze vinden
het ook heerlijk om een beetje te griezelen!" Dat wekelijkse halfuurtje Carweazle heeft
langzamerhand heel jong en oud Nederland in zijn ban. Wat is en waar ligt het sukses van een
kinderserie. Thijs Chanowski's Fabeltjeskrant veegde ook alle "Woefs en Lamaars" van de kaart.
Niemand kan stellen dat het taalgebruik in de Fabeltjeskrant kinderlijk is en er zullen misschien
best pedagogen zijn die zich doodergeren aan het gesleutel van Ed en Willem Bever; misschien zijn er wel logopedisten
die het spraakje van Mevrouw Ooievaar afkeuren, maar de serie is ijzersterk. Er wordt volwassen in gepraat,
een weliswaar afwijkend taalgebruik toegepast, maar
de dieren worden in een reele wereld gesitueerd. Dat is met Catweazle ook het geval. In deze
serie geen middeleeuwse tovenaar die ronddwaalt in door ijle nevelen omhulde ruine, met zwarte raven op de
kale boomtakken, maar een vreemde figuur in een moderne wereld vol onbegrip. Gebruik deze formule
echter voor een nieuwe serie en het wordt gegarandeerd een flop. Want Catweazle is uniek en
dat blijft hij: thou can count on that!
|
|
|
"Catweazle
Prive"
|
 Quelle: "Tros Kompas" Nr. 52
/ 25.-31. December 1971
Artikel als PDF öffnen
Toen ik Catweazle op ging zoeken bij hem thuis, verwachtte ik een zenuwachtig mannetje te
vinden, dat met zijn uitpuilende ogen om de deur zou gluren om te zien wie ik was. De werkelijkheid
was volkomen anders: Catweazle is een heel kalme, zachtaardige man van deze
eeuw. Zijn echte naam is Geoffrey Bayldon en hij werd niet in de elfde eeuw geboren, maar op 7
januari 1924 en dat is nog niet zo heel lang geleden.
Hij woont ook niet op een boerderij en niet in een kasteel, maar in een heel doodgewoon huis aan een
lange straat in Putney, een buitenwijk van Londen. Ook al niet wat ik verwacht had. En zijn pad
"Touchwood", in Nederland "Tikker" geheten, was
nergens te zien.
FANMAIL
"Ik ben een acteur en ik houd van tegenstellingen",
vertelt Bayldon mij. Met a1 zijn vriendelijkheid en zachtaardigheid heeft hij er enorm veel plezier in de rol te spelen van die slordige,
gebaarde ondeugd met zijn tovertrucs. "Het is een prachtige rol voor een toneelspeler. Je kunt ervan
maken wat je wil".
En hij is er inderdaad in geslaagd er iets van te maken. Hopen fanmail vallen dagelijks in zijn
brievenbus. "En heus niet alleen van kinderen. Catweazle is typisch 'n familieprogramma
geworden. Het hele gezin kijkt ernaar". Maar op straat wordt Bayldon maar zelden
herkent. "En dat is een groot voordeel", zegt hij. "Het is erg hinderlijk als je
steeds maar mensen achter je aan krijgt".
 PERFECTIONIST
Het is niet zo vreemd, dat hij incognito kan blijven. Wie zou verwachten dat achter dat sIuwe gezicht van Catweazle een glad geschoren, rimpelloos gelaat schuilt. "Het kost me 90 minuten om me op te maken",
biecht Bayldon op, "en soms nog meer om het er weer af te krijgen" . Twee hete baden zijn
daarvoor nodig. "Het eerste ziet er uit als een dikke bruine soep, als ik er uit stap".
Hij geeft toe dat hij een perfectionist is. "Ik werk
heel hard aan iedere episode. We beginnen 's
morgens om zeven uur en werken dan de hele dag door". Hoe vind hij het om te spelen met kinderen?
"Ik was
er altijd bang voor. Kinderen, die toneelspelen of voor de tv werken, zijn vaak zulke monsters. Garry
Warren, de jongen die de rol heeft van de jonge aristocraat Cedric, is echter bijzonder aardig. En
Robin Davies, die in de eerste serie speelde, was al even prettig".
 PANIEK OM EEN PAD
En wat denkt hij van zijn pad "Touchwood"?
"Ik vond het in het begin een beetje griezelig. Ik bad uiteraard nog nooit een pad als mede-acteur
gehad en ze zijn zeker niet de mooiste beesten die je je kunt voorstellen,
maar het viel allemaal erg mee. Ik had altijd gedacht dat ze slijmerig waren, maar ze zijn heel
droog en koud". Niet al zijn herinneringen aan zijn pad zijn erg plezierig. "Tijdens een van de scenes
was het bloedheet in de studio. Ik moest een regenjas dragen in plaats van mijn gewone tuniek. Ik
had er niet aan gedacht dat er een gat in mijn jaszak zat en stopte de pad er even in. Toen we bijna klaar
waren met de scene, voelde ik plotseling kleine pootjes over mijn bezwete buik glibberen. De studio
was meteen in opschudding.
Bayldon houdt ervan voor de tv te werken. Hij heeft
herhaaldelijk meegespeeld in "De Wrekers" en "The
Saint" en speelde onlangs de hoofdrol in een detectivestuk.
"Ik vind het veel natuurlijker
dan toneel. Als ik naar de schouwburg ga, word ik altijd warm van verlegenheid. Ik begrijp nooit
waarom die mensen op het toneel zo tegen elkaar staan te schreeuwen". Maar hij
zou niet graag voor live-tv willen werken. "Dat is te vergelijken met wat de Romeinen met de
christenen deden: voor de leeuwen gooien. Ik houd ervan een scene over te kunnen doen tot zij perfect
is".
 ACROBATISCHE TOEREN
Natuurlijk heeft hij voor zijn rol een boel fantasie nodig.
"Ik heb allerlei nieuwe geluiden uitgevonden,
sissen, blazen, enzovoorts". En eigenlijk zou hij ook heel sportief moeten zijn.
"Ik val zo vaak in het water of moet een schoorsteen beklimmen, dat ik erg graag lenig zou willen zijn,
maar helaas is dat niet waar". Tijdens een van de eerste opnamen verzwikte hij een enkel, terwijl hij onlangs een ongelukje met zijn rug had.
Maar Bayldon heeft het ervoor over. Hij houdt ervan goed geld te verdienen en hij houdt van zijn populariteit. Dat
in Nederland kinderen hem gaan tekenen, vindt hij geweldig, ook al kan hij zichzelf in
Engeland in bijna alle speelgoedwinkels zien. London Weekend, de Engelse tv-maat-schappij die de serie
maakt, heeft namelijk stripboeken en puzzels uitgegeven met Catweazle als thema. Op die
manier hopen ze ook nog wat terug te verdienen van de f150.000 die de eerste serie van
dertien episoden gekost heeft.
CATWEAZLE IS ANDERS!
Catweazle is het produkt van Richard Carpenter, een veteraan op
het gebied van tv-stukken. Hij heeft er in totaal 300 geschreven en meegewerkt aan
"Z-Cars" en "Dock Green". Hij vertelde me nog, dat hij het idee kreeg toen hij naar iets nieuws
voor kinderen zocht. "Er waren zoveel shows op de tv met poppen of tekeningen, dat ik iets anders
wilde. Iets menselijks, grappig en met aantrekkingskracht voor kinderen en ouderen". Richard Carpenter is daar samen met Geoffrey Bayldon zeker in geslaagd. zondag NED 2:(19.05)
HENRI VAN DER ZEE.
|
|
|
"Magic Whiskers"
Another look at the strange old wizard, Catweazle
|
 Quelle:
"Look-in Television Annual" 1971
Artikel als PDF öffnen
"Tchach! Nothing works!" Catweazle flung down Adamcos the witch-knife so that Touchwood, his toad,
had to scutter nimbly out of the way. Catweazle had been asked to show us some simple magic, but, as usual,
no amount of spell-binding and muttering had done the trick. Perhaps it was as well, knowing the sort of
cock-eyed results he usually gets!
And yet, there is real magic about Catweazle. The magic that happens whenever
Geoffrey Bayldon, who plays the part, puts on the wig and whiskers, and swathes himself in the revolting old rags that Catweazle wears.
"It's the sort of magic," Geoffrey points out, "that made Doctor Jekyll into Mr. Hyde - turned him, in fact, into a completely different sort of person.
When I look like Catweazle, Geoffrey Bayldon ceases to exist, and I really become the old witch who's tumbled forward to the present day from
Norman times."
Forty-six-year-old Geoffrey, who lives a normal life in a London suburb, with a
normal cat that certainly isn't given to perching on flying broomsticks,
confesses that spells and the like aren't bis cup of tea.
His career, too, before Catweazle came along, has been most decidedly normal.  He trained to be an architect, then joined the Old Vic Theatre
School in 1947. Television appearances and films - they include 'A Dandy in Aspic' and 'To Sir With Love' - have been strictly non-magical.
"When we first started out on Catweazle," Geoffrey says, "We had to carry out a lot of experiments to get the old beggar's face just right.
Eventually, the make-up people messed about with the wig and those whiskers, and curled them into the appropriate shape. And the funny thing
was, when I put them on, I honestly began to feel fizzy and cantankerous !"
At the first filming, the old gown he wore didn't look right. "So everyone on the set got busy with scissors and started shredding me about.
Then came ink, mud, and all sorts of muck to make me look as filthy as possible."
It means two baths for Geoffrey every time a Catweazle shooting is over, and then it's back to normality. "You should see those baths,"
grins Geoffrey. "By the time I've finished they look like the sort of cauldrons Catweazle would be simply delighted with!"
|
|
|
"Unsichtbar? verschwunden? oder... überall
anwesend?"
|
 Quelle:
"Jamin Junior" Nummer2 1972Freie
deutsche Übersetzung des niederländischen
Originaltextes. Originaltitel: "Onzichtbaar? verwenen? of... overal
annwezig?".
Artikel als PDF öffnen
Der große Zauberer des Mittelalters Catweazle steht mit großen Augen auf unserer
Titelseite. Er erschreckte sich zu Tode wegen des
Blitzlichts unseres Fotografen, denn Fotoapparate
und Blitzlicht sind Dinge, die es im Mittelalter
nicht gab und die Catweazle deshalb nicht kannte.
Zurzeit vermissen wir Catweazle auf dem
Fernsehbildschirm, aber wenn wir gut informiert
sind, wird das nicht mehr lange dauern. In England
wird wieder
fieberhaft an neuen Abenteuern gearbeitet (und
Catweazle erlebt genug!).
In der Zwischenzeit ist
unsere Berichterstatterin Thera Esling in den Wald
von Brickendonbury gefahren, um Catweazle
aufzusuchen und ihn zu befragen. Speziell für Jamin
Junior. In dieser Ausgabe.
 Unsichtbar?
verschwunden? oder... überall anwesend?
Jeden Sonntagabend war Catweazle im
niederländischen Fernsehen zu sehen. Jetzt ist er
verschwunden. Vorübergehend? Endgültig? Oder lebt
er weiter als Herr Geoffrey Bayldon? Oder ist er
wieder zurückgekehrt ins elfte Jahrhundert?
Wie
auch immer, zuletzt wurde er in der Brickendonbury
Grafschaft Hertfordshire gesehen. Dort habe ich ihn,
bewaffnet mit Kugelschreiber und
Tonbandgerät, aufgesucht.
Es
war eine lange und mühsame Reise. Quer durch
knisterndes Laubwerk, dornige Sträucher und belaubte
Bäume. Ein kleiner Pfad wies mir fröhlich
springend den Weg. Bis ich schließlich über einen
schmalen Schlangenpfad durch einen Sumpf zu
Catweazles geheimes Versteck durchzudringen
vermochte.
Zuerst hatte ich große Angst. Aber er
verstand es, mich zu beruhigen. Mit Catweazle ist es
wie mit so vielen Zauberern, Hexen und Magiern.
Man muss ihn kennen lernen, dann ist er sehr angenehm. Catweazle bedeutet
KATZE - WIESEL. Der Name passt genau zu ihm, denn er
sieht in der Tat aus wie die Kreuzung
zwischen einer Katze und einem Wiesel. Aber mit den
Maßen eines Menschen. "Mein Vater war eine Katze,
meine Mutter war ein Wiesel", so Catweazle. "Das glauben
Sie mir nicht? Im
elften Jahrhundert, aus dem ich stamme, glaubt man
es. Deshalb haben sie mich aus dem elften
Jahrhundert vertrieben. Aber es dauerte so
schrecklich lange, bis das Fernsehen erfunden wurde.
Sonst wäre ich schon viel früher im Fernsehen zu
sehen gewesen. Aber ich habe bis zu diesem
Jahrhundert darauf warten müs-sen."
Catweazle
spricht eine Mischung aus Sächsisch und Gotisch mit
ab
und zu einem Wort Druidisch dazwischen. Ich kann ihn
aber verstehen. Ganz einfach, weil er den niederländischen Text in großen weißen Buchstaben
aus den Ärmeln seiner bemoosten Kutte schüttelt.
Genau wie die Untertitelung im Fernsehen. Während er
spricht, knattert und glüht mein
Tonbandgerät. Und zu Hause wird sich herausstellen,
dass seine Geschichte wie ein düsteres Geflüster mit
brüllenden Echos in umgekehrter
Reihenfolge auf das Band gekommen ist. Wirklich ein
Spaß für Catweazle. Glücklicherweise habe ich
sicherheitshalber auch Aufzeichnungen
gemacht. Unter dem Schreiben schlugen die Funken
der Spitze meines Kugelschreibers, so dass meine
Aufzeichnungen in das Papier eingebrannt
sind. Quer über elf Notizblockblätter. Fand ich
schon eng, aber man gewöhnt sich daran.
 Gibt es Catweazle wirklich?
Gibt es Sie wirklich? lautete
meine erste Frage an Catweazle. Hierauf begann er
finster zu lachen. "Das kann ich Sie auch
fragen" sagte er, mit Appetit eine handvoll
getrocknete Asseln verzehrend. "Gibt es Thera Esling?
Ihre Eltern, Ihren Bruder, Ihre Freunde, Ihre
Bekannten und jeden, den sie sehen, können Sie
jetzt denken. Aber wer weiß, vielleicht beruht das
auf einer magischen optischen Täuschung." "Ach
Gunst", sagte ich, ein wenig bestürzt, "ich habe
immer gedacht, dass ich existiere". "Ja-ha! Ha-ha!"
lachte Catweazle, "aber man kann so viel denken.
Sie müssen vorsichtiger mit Ihren Behauptungen
sein. Niemand kann beweisen, dass er wirklich
existiert. Wirklich ist nur die Phantasie, die sich
Wirklichkeit wähnt. Kann ich Ihnen mit einer
Spinngewebesuppe dienen? Oder wollen Sie lieber
einen Kaninchenköttelkeks?"
"He ekliger Kerl. Im
Fernsehen isst man immer viel weniger gruselig." "In
der Tat", sagte Catweazle "Man muss Konzessionen
machen. Selbst als Zauberer. Unser Ruf
ist ja nicht der beste. Außer der von Eurem
Nikolaus." "Nikolaus?" fragte ich erstaunt. "Ja,
Nikolaus. Nikolaus ist auch ein Zauberer. Hat genau
wie ich
schon seit dem elften Jahrhundert existiert. Der
Unterschied ist nur, Nikolaus kommt einmal im Jahr
und ich einmal die Woche. Es gibt noch mehr
Zauberer. Fred Kaps beispielsweise, der einmal
Weltmeister im Zaubern war. Ja, Sie denken, dass er
ein Gaukler ist, aber in Wirklichkeit ist er ein
Zauberer. Die meisten Zauberweltmeister übrigens.
Sie laufen im Frack herum und tun als ob sie
Menschen sind!" "Junge, junge Catweazle, darauf
wäre ich niemals gekommen".
"Sie können doch wohl
nachvollziehen, dass kein Mensch auf der Welt ein
Glas Wasser in ein Glas Milch verwandeln
kann? Wie Fred Kaps es tut! Darum gibt er sich als
Mensch aus. Dann erhält er vielmehr Anerkennung und
eine menschenwürdige Existenz. Deshalb
denke ich intensiv darüber nach, mich in Kürze in
einen Menschen zu verändern. Es hat viele Nachteile,
aber der Schnurrbart, die Kutte und die Lumpen
an meinen Füßen sind auch nicht alles. Ich habe
meinen Pfahlbau gegen einen verlassenen Bahnhof
getauscht. Nachts spuke ich dort herum, tagsüber
bin ich ein bisschen Mensch. Um mich an eine feste
Wohnung zu gewöhnen. Denn letztendlich will ich
einen Bungalow. Als Mensch dann. Aber die
Zaubersprüche wollen noch nicht. Ja was wollen Sie,
ein Gespenst ist auch nur ein Mensch. Ich habe noch
eine Menge Hokuspokus vor dem Bauch."
 Geistersendung
Als Zauberer", so Catweazle,
"findet man Geister und Gespenster meistens gut.
Aber die Gespenster belieben mir nicht mehr. Sie
wirken mir entgegen, wenn ich durch die Jahrhunderte
wandern will. Wissen Sie warum? Einfach aus Neid.
Weil ich Erfolg im Fernsehen habe! Sie
finden, dass man das als Zauberer nicht machen kann.
Darauf pfeife ich! Weil sie selbst zu viel Angst
haben. Denn es sind Tölpel, wissen Sie. So
bange wie ein Wiesel vor dem kleinsten Spalt
Tageslicht. Ich bin ein Katzenwiesel, deshalb habe
ich halb so viel Angst. Natürlich hatte ich Angst
vor dem grellen Licht der Fernsehkamera. Ja was
dachten Sie. Aber ich habe einfach mich selbst
beschworen."
Letzte Frage, wann kehren
Sie zurück ins niederländische Fernsehen? " Am elften
elften, bei Vollmond auf Kanal elf. Vorangegangen
von einem Testbild, das das elfte
Tierkreiszeichen sein wird", war die prompte
Antwort. Plötzlich begann es zu stürmen, eine
giftgrüne Wolke erschien und dann war Catweazle
verschwunden.
|
|
 Quelle:
"Look-in" Magazin 6. Mai 1972
Artikel als PDF öffnen
The old house that provided the background to the
series ‘Catweazle’ has a very strange story behind
it. Producer Carl Mannin retells how, before
they even knew that Brickendonbury existed, the
scriptwriter Richard Carpenter had described the
place he wanted Catweazle to live in. “Firstly, he
wanted a Norman castle to show Catweazle's escape,
but we realised how difficult it would be to find
one we could use. So then Richard wrote that the
house he imagined was situated on the site of the
old castle which was burnt down in the 1850s and was
rebuilt by the owners.
 Then we found Brickendonbury. There were stories
that it had been used during the war to train
British agents, and that Winston Churchill used it
as
his secret headquarters.
But what really stunned us was that we discovered it
actually had been built on an old castle site, and
it really had been burnt down in the 1850s!”
There's more to Catweazle than meets the camera...
|
|
|
|
"The young stars
- Gary Warren"
|
 Quelle:
"Look-in Television Annual" 1972
Artikel als PDF öffnen
Gary was born in July, 1954,
 and started to act when he joined the
Aida Foster School in 1967. There, he combined a general education with dance and drama.
Four-feet-ten-inches-tall Gary is an only child. He has always been exceptionally small for his age. This fact, combined with his acting ability, has
put him in great demand, and he has played leading roles in television, films and theatre.
His first television part, at the age of twelve, was as Pinnochio in Disney Wonderland. He also played young
Patrick in Mame, at the Royal Theatre, Drury Lane. His film appearances include The Railway Children, Up in the Air, and
Computers in Banking. But Gary is best known for his role as
Cedric, in Catweazle.Gary has many hobbies and he's very fond of sport; football, cricket, table-tennis and bowling are a few of the games he enjoys.
|
|
|
"So, why does Catweazle
want to return to his own time
- he'll only get burnt!"
|
Quelle: "All Star Television Annual" / 1973
Artikel als PDF öffnen
"Nothing works!” If you should hear that agonized cry coming from a lonely wood or a ruined castle, then keep well clear. For it's a sure sign that
Catweazle is at work - and if you get mixed up with that wacky wizard's spells you're liable to find yourself turned into a toad, if nothing worse!
Catweazle, the magician whose spells always go wrong, made his first television appearance back in February 1970. Viewers of the first episode saw
Catweazle, a Saxon sorcerer in 11th-century England, chased by angry Norman soldiers. To escape their swords, the old wizard mumbled a “flying”
spell - but instead of flying through space, his hocus-pocus sent him hurtling through time to the 20th century.
And that's when the fun began; Catweazle came from a time when all the things we take for granted - electric power, motor-cars, telephones, radio and
television and so on - were undreamed of.
In Catweazle's time, anyone who could light a room just by throwing a switch would have been recognized as a very powerful magician indeed - so to
poor Catweazle, the modern world is full of sorcerers who can perform all kinds of marvels.
And when those who befriend him, and they are few, try to explain that these modern wonders are not produced by magic - Catweazle just doesn't
believe them. To him, people like you and me are mighty enchanters, too jealous of our secrets to share them with a bumbling, fumbling warlock whose
only wish is to find a spell to take him back to his own time. Poor old Catweazle!
But were things really that much better for people like Catweazle back in the 11th century? Catweazle, remember, is a Saxon - very much a second-class
citizen in an England ruled by the Norman lords who swarmed across from France after William the Conqueror's victory over the Saxon King Harold at
Hastings in 1066.
The Norman conquest meant that the Saxons lost everything. The Saxon lords' castles and lands were taken away and given to Norman nobles, and the
ordinary Saxons - the labourers, clerks and merchants - found themselves ruled by proud and stern men speaking a foreign language.
 Saxon rule had
been fairly easy-going; the Normans introduced their much harsher laws, laws that meant a man could be put to death for seeming even to question
his lord's orders, or that a man could have his hands chopped off and his face branded with a red-hot iron for daring to set a snare for rabbits on his
lord's land.
And this is where Catweazle, and men and women like him, made their appearance in history. Armed revolt against the Normans was useless - the few
Saxons who tried it, like Hereward the Wake, were mercilessly hunted down and killed - so the superstitious peasants turned to magic and witchcraft.
It was a little like the French Resistance to the Germans in World War II, except that instead of blowing up railway lines and sabotaging factories, the
Saxon peasants cast spells and chanted rituals that, they hoped, would bring the forces of evil to take vengeance on the Normans.
One Saxon, a little more learned than the rest (and remember that very few people could read or write in those times), would set up as a witch, a
term then applied to both male and female sorcerers. He might believe that he really could work magic, which most people believed in at that time,
or he might like the power and respect that his supposed supernatural knowledge gave him among his fellow Saxons.
Around him, the witch would gather a band of followers, traditionally thirteen in number and called a “coven”, who met on certain nights (the most
popular being Midsummer Eve and Walpurgis Night, October 31, when the forces of evil are said to be at their strongest) to carry out secret rites,
dances and the chanting of spells, aimed at persuading the Devil to join them in the fight against the Normans. It was the beginning of what historians
call 'modern' witchcraft in England.
The Norman rulers, the Church (which had nearly as much power as the King in those days), and even the few Saxon lords who retained any power,
were all opposed to witchcraft - for it was a movement that threatened to stir up the peasants in revolt against the nobility. Cruel laws were passed
against witches and sorcerers: even to be suspected of witchcraft meant that a man could be arrested, tortured until he confessed, and then executed in
any one of a number of unpleasant ways.
In England, between the 11th and 17th centuries, several thousand people were executed as witches.
No laughing matter: but somehow one can't imagine Catweazle having much to do with the powers of evil. If he did try to get in touch with them, he'd
most certainly get a crossed line. And you can settle back to laugh at his antics, secure in the knowledge that behind the make-up, the rags and
whiskers, is actor Geoffrey Bayldon, whose “off-stage” activities include nothing more sinister than collecting old paintings and gardening. |
|
|
"Catweazle
episode index"
|
 Quelle:
"Starburst" No. 52 / December 1982
Artikel als PDF öffnen
By Richard Holliss:
This month's column carries a complete episode guide to the London Weekend Television series Catweazle, created in
1971 by actor/writer Richard Carpenter. His original intention was to write a children's
book, but finally decided to try his hand at a 13 part television series. The unusual title came from a name painted on a country signpost
and in the weeks that followed, Carpenter gradually built up in his own mind a character to suit the word - an old man clothed in rags - very
eccentric - quick on his feet - cunning and predictable. The opportunity also arose to incorporate time travel in to the story. In tbe first episode
Catweazle leaps, using his magic powers, from Norman times to present day. He had hoped to discover, through
ancient sorcery, a way to fly so his trip across the centuries was accidental. Being an 11th Century
wizard, he is bewildered by the incredible machines and invisible energies on display on the 20th Century.
 Fortunately
he meets up with a 14 year old boy called, appropriately, Carrot because of his red hair.
Together they share many adventures.
Catweazle is disturbed by everything that modern man takes for granted, a lightbulb, the telephone, television and
cars. ln this way Carpenter hoped the series would appeal to children through its funny script. "In
Catweazle there won't be any custard pies," he said, "I hope the children will be laughing at the words."
Carpenter went on to write a further 13 episodes and a later tv series entitled The Ghosts of Motley
Hall. In 1971 the Writers Guild of Great Britain awarded Catweazle the prize for Best TV Childrens'
Drama Script.
Geoffrey Bayldon, star of numerous films and tv programmes, portrayed the old wizard
and became totally engrossed in the role, giving an excellent performance. He was also ably supported
by a strong cast including Robin Davis as Carrot, Charles Tingwell as Carrot's father Mr Bennet and
Neil McCarthy as farm hand Sam Woodyard.
It is a pity if Catweazle is ignored by the present ITV audiences.
It is an exceptionally well made series and a worthy example of British Television fantasy.
(Im Anschluss an diesen Bericht sind alle Episoden aufgelistet.)
|
|
|
"Catweazle's Telling Bones Tales"
|
 Quelle:
"Fantasy Image" Issue 3 / June 1985
Artikel als PDF öffnen
An Article by Richard Marson:
Television fantasy is a flawed medium. Few of
the many fantasy series and specials made and screened over the years can really claim to be
original, dramatic and amusing all of the time. Some, like the banal American antics of Battlestar
Galactica, are just plain dreadful, while others
remain only fitfully successful. Catweazle,
recently re-screened in most of the ITV regions,
is one of the few fantasy shows that can legitimately claim to have achieved a consistent
and well-rounded success. Screened in two series of
thirteen and made by London Weekend Television during 1969 and 1970, it remains an example of
pure imagination winning the fraught battle of
children's television, and like all the best
children's shows, it soon proved itself popular
among a wide adult audience.
Catweazle started life when its creator and
author Richard Carpenter
was languishing in unemployment that is so often part of the life of an actor. With little in the
offing apart from the occasional school's programme,
Carpenter was on the look out for some way of
making a living that would enable him to stay
in his chosen career, as well as pay the mortgage on
his house and keep his family in corn-flakes! He
decided to try and write something for television, and his first idea came from a visit
he had made to his brother-in-Iaw's house in the depths of
Sussex. Deciding not to travel by the main road and
to use the scenic route instead, Carpenter soon found
himself well and truly lost. Stopping to look at the map and generally get his
bearings, he happened to glance at an old gate set back in an overgrown old
hedge. On the gate was a sign bearing the name Catweazle.
The name appealed to Carpenter and kept coming back
to him over the ensuing weeks. Then, on a visit to
the National Gallery, he happened to come across a painting by the
enigmatic medieval artist Hieronyimous Bosch, entitled
"The Crowning of Thorns". In the far corner
of the painting was the figure of an old, cadaverous
man, and, his mind shooting straight back to that strange signpost, Carpenter
knew he had found the image to go with the name
Catweazle. Going about the complicated
process of creating a television series based
around this character came in stages and the first was
inspired directly by Carpenter's work in school's
television. He had always been a bit perturbed by
children's ready acceptance of all things
scientific and he was worried that they weren't
inquisitive enough. He decided that it would be
interesting to explore the wonders of the modern world
through the eyes of someone who'd never had science
or technology before but who was intrigued and
interested, like a child, and yet not a child.
 Magic
However, this semi-educational slant certainly
didn't appeal in isolation so the character of
Catweazle had to be thought out in more detail.
Carpenter realised that he'd have to allow his medieval man the chance of accepting and
rationalising this new world, because he just be
frightened if he was without any kind of
psychological defence. Thus came the idea of making
him a magician and of his interpreting science as the new magic.
This basic misunderstanding provided
the basis for the whole of the series as Catweazle
finds himself embroiled with everything from telling
bones (telephones) through to the sun in a bottle (lightbulbs).
The setting for the series, a country farm, came from
the desire to keep the series in the open air and
also because to have plunged a man from 900 years
ago into a city or town environment would have
resulted in overkill, and the probable madness of
Catweazle. Indeed, Carpenter argued that it would
never be a good idea to have Catweazle in a big city
like London because it would rapidly
become sordid, serious, and it would take on an air
of social comment. In London, Catweazle would be
seen as a tramp and he'd end up frequenting the
cardboard box world of the slummier areas of the
city. The bad, gloomier side of modern-day life was
a kettle of fish the series could well do without.
In both series Catweazle's constant and put-upon
companions took the form of young boys. This idea
was to reverse the role of father and son with the
boy taking the father role and Cateazle the son's.
In the first series this worked particularly well, not only because Robin Davies as Carrot was better
than Gary Davies in the second season, but also
because we saw Carrot' s relationship with his
father too. Carpenter based the whole set-up on a
grandfather/grandson situation, in that children
usually spend far more time playing with their
grandfathers than with their fathers, who, more
likely than not, are out at work. Catweazle's one
screen encounter with little girls was not a success, since
they react very badly to the old man's beloved toad,
Touchwood, thereby earning themselves the magician's
instant enmity.
It took the influence of an article
to co-ordinate all Richard Carpenter' s initial
inspirations into a detailed series synopsis. He read the fateful
article in the glossy magazine Vogue, in which a top
television executive was quoted as saying that there
was no such thing as talent not getting
on in showbusiness. Carpenter knew from his own
experience as an actor that this was simply not the
case, as he'd had many talented friends
who never got the opportunities they deserved and,
in an extremely angry mood, he wrote to the
executive and protested at the man's callous and incorrect assumptions.
Realising this was all very well as a way of relieving his feelings, he recognised that he now
had to act with his ideas and submit Catweazle to a
television company. Having duly sent the plot
outline to Joy Whitby, head of London Weekend Television's children's department he is willing to
admit he would have left it at that had he received
the expected rejection slip.
 Timing
Timing, however, was on his side. Whitby had
received instructions to find some fresh children's drama from the
concerned IBA, who felt that children were getting a
very raw deal from the Independent companies. London
Weekend was particularly under scrutiny since it was
still a relatively new station, and as such, was
still proving itself. After a while, Whitby wrote
back to Richard Carpenter and asked him to come
and see her. Carpenter shrewdly took the chance of
expounding a bit more about his concept and Joy
Whitby rapidly got excited and told him to go away and write a script.
Carpenter did exactly that, basing his script style
on the knowledge he had about the business of
writing from his years in acting. He was then asked
to write four more, and just as he was getting
slightly impatient for some kind of monetary reward
for his labours, the decision came through that LWT
had agreed to go ahead and film a first series of
six episodes, planning to show them on Sunday
afternoons as part of a newlook children's service.
Geoffrey Bayldon's casting
The first major part that Carpenter had written also
became the only part he was ever to cast. The
assembled production team bandied quite a variety of
names about, and were particularly keen to offer it
to Jon Pertwee until they realised he was committed
to becoming the new Doctor Who. Carpenter, on the
other hand, kept suggesting Geoffrey Bayldon, a
character actor who had been through the same drama
training as the series' author, and so, Carpenter
argued could handle the fantastical side of the part
without totally depending on the comedy in the role.
In spite of hesitation, Bayldon was eventually
offered the scripts to look at and he jumped at
them. London Weekend quickly decided to extend the
first series to thirteen and, largely for sales
purposes, agreed to allow the programme to be made
entirely on film. With Bayldon filming the show as
Carpenter was finishing the final scripts, it soon
became evident that he was writing for the actor.
At the first read through it was discussed exactly how
Catweazle should speak. A variety of accents were
tried, including country yokel and cockney, until
Carpenter asked Bayldon to try his own natural
accent, Yorkshire. This impressed everyone,
particularly when it was later discovered that
middle English (the language of the medieval man)
used a lot of the same vowel sounds as the Yorkshire
dialect, so that, without being incomprehensible,
some attempt at authenticity had inadvertently been
made. The rest of the regular cast comprised Robin
Davies as Carrot, who later grew up to act alongside
Wendy Craig in her And Mother Makes Four series,
Neil McCarthy as the simple Sam and Charles Tingwell
as Carrot's father. Added to that a number of
excellent guest stars were contracted to appear in
the series, including Peter Butterworth,
Hattie Jaques and Dorothy Frere, all of whom were
experienced in the field of comedy.
Reaction to the first series was excellent, with
both critics and audience won over by the
charismatic old man, and his amusing antics. It was
not exactly unexpected, then, that a second series
was soon announced and wary critics expected the
format to pall and rapidly get repetitive. They were
to be proved very wrong, though, as Carpenter
totally re-vamped the second season to make the
situation as different from the first as possible
while retaining the programme's recognisable style
and structure. Out went the farm set-up and with it
the regular cast that had been a feature of the
first series. Magic became a more prominent part of
the situation, and the idea of a hunt for hidden
treasure was the
 inspiration taken for the second set of thirteen
episodes. In spite, of this series apparent success,
no more episodes were made and the show disappeared
somewhat abruptly, never to return.
The reason for Catweazle's cancellation lay within the arena of
television politics. The visual style of the first
series had largely been down to director Quentin
Lawrence, who came into the show from second unit
photography on The Battle of Britain film. He had
been to Stowe school and his English master there
was T.H. Lawrence, author of The Sword In The Stone,
so his grasp for the fantasy medium was unequalled. He had
been a close friend of Richard Carpenter, and wanted
to do the series as soon as he read it. In fact,
the author puts the success of the whole thing down
to Lawrence, with whom he was later to work on The
Ghosts of Motley Hall. However, after a series of
creative rows with the top brass at LWT, Lawrence
was dropped from the second series. This in itself
would not have caused the demise of the series, but
a further row behind closed doors at London Weekend
did. The head of programmes there, Stella Richmond,
left the company after severe differences of
opinion between herself and the board. Her successor, as is so
often the case, wanted to try out some new ideas of
his own, and in spite of plans for a third run of
Catweazle, axed the show from London Weekend's
planned schedules.
Third Series
The third series would have taken Catweazle back to
the disused water tank in which he lived during the
first series, and which he had named Castle Saburac.
The second series had concluded with the old
magician going off in a hot air balloon and the
third would have started with him still in the
balloon, but ending his journey by cutting the ropes
holding the basket onto the balloon itself. It wouId have been set at night and as the balloon landed
Catweazle would hear a tremendous booming sound,
like a great gong. Of course it turns out he's
landed on the water tank, which then acts as a base of operations for his adventures during the
season. Carpenter realised he couldn't have had the
same set-up in the farm, so he was planning to
write a scene where Catweazle visits the farm and
finds it deserted. As he leaves the camera focuses
on a For Sale sign. From this, the series could have
had a succession of people either renting or living
in the farm, and Carpenter was toying with the idea
of giving Catweazle two companions this time
round, with a girl to balance the familiar boy
situation.
Unfortunately these plans were never to reach
fruition, although Carpenter has an intriguing
treatment for a Catweazle film, which he plans to
start working on again when the series rights revert to
him this year. The only real problem with the film
is that Carpenter is worried about opening up the
television series too much and so losing the feel
of the original programmes. Suffice it to say that his idea is rather
more ambitious than the original serial and includes
the disappearance of a whole village, pomp-ous
military and government types, two rather bemused
children, Touchwood the toad becoming something of a
hero, and Catweazle languishing in a police cell.
 Highest selling series
Internationally, Catweazle has been one of London
Weekend's highest selling series, and it remains
Richard Carpenter's favourite piece of work.
On the basis of its success he was able to give up
his uncertain career as an actor and move into the
richer fields of television writing, a field in
which he has enjoyed considerable acclaim and
satisfaction over the last fifteen years. It started
off his fascination with the whole area of magic and
Catweazle always had an intentional element of 'if
you believe in it strongly enough it will actually
come true'. For children the series was a godsend
and LWT were singled out for praise by the IBA for
this particular network contribution. It has since been repeated several times, although in the
typically haphazard nature of the ITV networking
system. If one had any real criticism to make of
the series, one could perhaps attack it for being a
bit too whimsical and comic. However, such an attack
is petty and irrelevant when taken in the
context of the concept as a whole, since it was
clearly intened to raise a smile. Perhaps the trouble with many of the critics, particularly those
involved in the fantasy genre, is that it is
precisely their sense of humour which is lacking
and which results in so few series of this type
being thoroughly successful.
|
|
|
"Richard
Carpenter - An Interview"
|
 Quelle:
"Time Screen" Spring 1990by Stephen
McKay
Richard Carpenter was born in King's Lynn, Norfolk and grew up in the county. His
interest in acting lead him first to the Old Vic
Theatre School and
from there he went on to perform in rep, all over
the country and make (according to his publisher)
over three-hundred appearances on television.
We caught up with Richard Carpenter during a break
at the 1988 Greenwood II Convention.
We started by asking Richard how he came to make the
career change from actor to writer?
"Catweazle"
was my first job as a script writer. I had been an
actor for seventeen years and things were beginning
to get a bit tough. I had changed agents but it
hadn't really worked. I read an article in 'Vogue'
by the head of London Weekend Television saying that
if there was talent about it always got caught in
the net, no talent got lost, which I
thought was an absurd statement because I know a lot
of actors who could be stars today, but they're not.
It's the luck of the game, not that I would
have ever been a star, but I did quite well and had
a good run. I was doing a play in the West End for
about a year called "Wait Until Dark" and I had quite frankly got fed up with acting.
Annie, my wife, and I went down to my
brother-in-law's turkey farm and on the way back we
got lost so we stopped to try and find out where we
were
and there was a gate. On the gate was the word 'Catweazle'.
I thought that was a most unusual name, and I wrote
it on a piece of paper. From there I
started writing little things, and I suddenly saw
the character; I had a book of "A Hundred Details of
the National Gallery", and one of them was a picture
by Hieronymous Bosch, "The Crowning of Thorns". I saw this little old man and said to myself
'That's
Catweazle'. Then it came to me that he was a
magician. I had always been interested in things
concerning the manipulation of time, and I had never
seen a show where someone came from the
past into the present. I thought ‘who could come
from the past to the present and still retain their
sanity, except somebody who could rationalize it’.
And the only person who could make some sort of
sense out of what they saw would be a magician who
believed that he was in a world of new
magic. So from that it began to build up. I was very
lucky. It was the first thing I'd written. It was
accepted. I had a very fine script editor/producer
called Joy Whitby, and a wonderful director/producer
called Quentin Lawrence and we became dear friends.
The show won the Writer's Guild
Award for the best children's television programme
and the series became a bit of a cult. I wrote the
little book and everything else happened
and I haven't stopped writing since. So I owe a lot
to "Catweazle".
How did Richard submit the idea of "Catweazle" to
London Weekend ? “It originally started life as a
concept, I then wrote six scripts on spec. Joy
Whitby went off on holiday and lent me her office,
and I wrote them quite fast because I was excited at
the chance of selling to London Weekend.
Then I didn't hear anything for a long time and then
they said, yes, they were going to do six. By the
time we actually got round to starting to shoot the
first one they commissioned another seven, then they
commissioned another thirteen, so we did twenty-six.
There were a series of political changes at
London Weekend which meant that the people who were
there when "Catweazle" started, and who would have
continued the show had left and
the new broom always sweeps clean, they don't want
to do an old show. They wanted to do something new
so I'm afraid it got axed, even though the
public wanted it.”
 Was Richard Carpenter involved in the casting of
Geoffrey Bayldon for the title role?
“I wasn't just
involved, he was my choice. I think it's the first
and
last time that I've ever cast the lead of anything
I've written. Funnily enough, first of all they
wanted Jon Pertwee. Jon Pertwee was flavour of the
month,
but they couldn't get him or he'd turned them down
or he might even have got the role of "Doctor
Who" by then. So I said
‘What about my original
idea, Geoffrey Bayldon?’ And they got him in, and of
course he was so obviously right as by that time I
was writing for him. Geoffrey was an old friend
of mine. We both trained at the Old Vic theatre
school at different times, but I'd worked with him
as an actor on several plays. He was a good friend
and
I knew he could do it and that nobody would be
better. He made the part his own and he brought to
the role lots and lots of qualities which enabled
me to make the part grow. He was wonderful,
absolutely wonderful.
“I was also very lucky with the director; it was the
happiest show that I've ever been connected with. I
made a very great personal friend in Quentin
Lawrence. Of course we fought professionally, but we
became very good friends. We then did ‘THE GHOSTS OF
MOTLEY HALL’ together and were
going to do ‘MISTRESS MASHAM'S REPOSE’ the T.H.
White book. When he died unfortunately we were
planning to do another show together
because we had the same sense of humour. We did
eighteen episodes of ‘THE GHOSTS OF MOTLEY HALL’, three sixes and a special which was a
double episode, a Christmas show called ‘Phantomine’.
I pulled stumps on that particular series. They
wanted to do another season but I told them I
was written out, I'd written everything I could on
that particular subject. At least to keep going I
would have had to have a year off and come back to
it
afresh. I think that shows have a life-span of their
own, whereas with CATWEAZLE we could easily have done
two more seasons, I felt by episode
nineteen of ‘THE GHOSTS OF MOTLEY HALL’ we had
exhausted the show. I was told to write a show with
one set and that is what gave me the idea.
It is often very good for a writer to have
constraints because it forces you back to using
ingenuity and artistry. If you are told ' you've got
$40,000,000
budget, do what you like, you come up with nothing
really, nothing of any artistic value. But if you
are told ‘three people in a single room, an hour and
a half play’ then it's got to be in the writing. I
always try and limit the number of characters I use,
because the more you limit it the more you are
thrown
back into interrelating those characters in an
interesting way. Ultimately it isn't stories that
are important, it's characters, the way they react
and the way
that particular writer scripts that particular
situation. Because all situations are common to
drama, there are millions of the same situation
appearing
again and again, but it's the way the writer tackles
it that makes it unique and gives it a stamp of
personality.
What gave Richard the idea of the magic zodiac link
between the stories in season two of ‘CATWEAZLE’? “I knew I had thirteen episodes to write
and I was trying to think of some theme that could
be common for all thirteen. I thought, ‘I wish it
was twelve then I could do the signs of the
Zodiac’. Why not? Let's have a thirteenth
sign and then people are going to wonder what the
thirteenth sign of the Zodiac is. Actually, what
should have happened, we should have seen the magic
circle that Catweazle had and each week he should
have placed the object on the circle, but because
the Americans - there was a chance we would be
selling it to America - show everything out of
sequence except soap operas they didn't do it, so
the tightness that can be seen in the book was
rather lost as a result of this. It would have been
great to have seen all the objects from the other
episodes as the Zodiac builds up. Kids love that
sort of collecting.
After 'CATWEAZLE' I did 'THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK
BEAUTY', originally I was contracted to do two, but
I finished up doing about twenty.
That was when I formed a partnership with Sydney
Cole who used to be the production manager at Ealing
when they made all the famous Ealing
Comedies and was a great friend of Charles Crichton
who made 'A FISH CALLED WANDA'. Charles came and did
'..BLACK BEAUTY's for us and I
formed a great friendship with Charles similar to
that I had with Quentin Lawrence. He was a similar
man; educated, cultured, witty. He also possessed
enormous technical ability and experience. These are
the kind of people I like to work with, people who
know their job and, this might sound snobbish but I
don't mean to be, people who behave like gentlemen
and treat you as a human being and respect your work
and you respect them. You can still have
professional disagreements without being subjective
about it.
“After ‘THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK BEAUTY’, I had
formed a partnership with Sydney and with Paul
Knight who is a very, very talented guy.
Paul and I became good friends, again largely
because of his sense of humour, which is very dry
and witty. He reads a lot and has a ‘feel’. Some
people just have an instinct, like you can have an
instinctive actor. They may not be technically very
good, but they just go on and act. Paul, as
well as having all the technical know-how and
experience, has a sort of instinct which tells him
that this is going to work or this won't work and I
listen
to him, I listen to that voice. He's not always
right, but neither am I, so it worked very well as a
partnership.
“Then we did ‘DICK TURPIN’ and
‘SMUGGLER’ together.
After that we wanted to do ‘SMUGGLER’ again, to use
the same character, as we had Oliver Tobias.
We managed to sell the idea, ‘ADVENTURER’, to Thames
to do it in New Zealand, then we were sabotaged by
Thames who put the whole series out in
about two-and-a-half
weeks in 1987. It was very naughty, it had a lot of
quality. It was the best thing they had done in New
Zealand for a great deal of time, certainly for
children. They spent a lot of money on it. They
cared and they were extremely nice to us. Sydney
went out there and produced it, Chris Bailey, who
was a brilliant young New Zealand director directed
it. We had a very good cast. Only Olly was English,
the rest were New Zealanders. It's all a lot of
nonsense that New Zealand hasn't any actors, we had
a brilliant young Maori who was wonderful and so
were the other two; the Irish guy and the guy who played the Cockney who had never been to
London. But over here the show was totally sabotaged by
Thames, and you can put that on the record, I don't
care who reads that. In three weeks they
showed twelve episodes of a show that had cost a lot
of money and had taken twenty weeks to make. It
deserved a better crack of the whip than that, it
really did. Thames are saying that they aren't even
going to bother to repeat it because it didn't get a
very good viewing figure. Well how could it get a
good viewing figure when they deliberately swept it
under the carpet? The surprising thing is that it
has been repeated in New Zealand and it has also
been sold world-wide so New Zealand and Thames did
very well out of it thank you very much. I know by
the cheques that we keep getting for
repeat fees that the show can't be that bad. It
really annoys me that Thames should treat what was a
co-production with such a cavalier attitude.
They said it was too violent, and they gave various
reasons none of which held up. I wrote to the
programme controller at Thames, and I don't expect
I'll
ever work for Thames again, because I wrote a rather
irritated letter about the way it had been treated.
Not so much for my own sake, because I only
wrote the first two and the last two, but really
because if we are going to do co-productions,
particularly in a country with a developing film
industry as
they've got in New Zealand, and because we were
showing an aspect of life in another country with a
different backgrounds, different scenery and
different customs. There are a hundred stories in
New Zealand that people could watch that would be
internationally interesting and if you treat them
like
that they're not going to come back to you. I know
that John McCray, whom I got on extremely well with,
was the head of New Zealand's Drama series
and is now the head of the company, is very hurt,
and I don't blame him, by the way he was treated by
Thames. He's a really professional chap who
started off as a floor manager for the BBC, and
worked his way up to classic series and then went
back to New Zealand. “This was before the did
WORZEL GUMMIDGE DOWN UNDER
in New Zealand. I nearly got involved with doing CATWEAZLE in New Zealand,
but I thought better of it because I saw some of the
stuff from the second season of WORZEL GUMMIDGE and
quite frankly I wasn't too happy
about the production values or the money they were
going to spend. It looked like a sausage machine,
and I'm only interested in producing quality
shows. Whilst I can go on producing quality shows
here I don't see why the hell I should ruin a
success like CATWEAZLE by taking it to New
Zealand. Just to do it is not important. Does Richard think that there is a theme that runs
through Richard's work? “I've always been interested
in the person who is outside society
and in fact if you look at all my stuff from CATWEAZLE onwards it's all to do with loaners and
people who are outside society. In a sense that
is the hero; the heroic figure is the man who takes
on the world alone. I suppose that's in a sense true
of CATWEAZLE because he has to take
the world on alone because he's in a new world. It
wasn't true of THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK BEAUTY; but
that wasn't my format, that was
Ted Willis'. It was certainly true of DICK TURPIN,
it was certainly true of ROBIN OF SHERWOOD and of
THE SMUGGLER and ADVENTURER
character. And in a sense ghosts themselves are sort
of loaners, out of the mainstream of existence,
they're different people. There's a very good
book about the hero figure by a man called Joseph
Campbell. What he does is to take all the heroes out
of myths and compare them and point out
the similarities between them all. I think that if
you can get a gut reaction from your audience, it's
because deep, deep in their subconscious they
are attracted to this idea of being your own man
particularly in a society where very few people are
'their own man'. You're beset with VAT, parking
meters and mass advertising and all the things that
prevent people from really being individuals. I
think all artists are sort of sub-conscious
anarchists.
I think there is an element of anarchy in all
artists. They have a desire for change and possibly
to pull down the existing order of things. But I believe
in the essential goodness of man and the eventual
redemption of man by himself. Not by gods and not by
prophets that he turns into gods, but by himself, and when he grows up to the point of
accepting that he is responsible for the world, not
Jehovah, not Jesus Christ, not the local priest round
the corner, but he, himself, is responsible for the
world, then we will advance. I don't mean
materialistically, I mean morally. I wouldn't hold
my breath
until it happens, but I believe that it ultimately
would happen, and has to happen or we will destroy
ourselves. I think that the instinct for
self-preservation is so strong that man will
eventually turn round and say “unless we improve
we're not going to survive” and therefore
he will improve. I think the next big advance is
going to be in the evolution of the human brain. I
don't think we need to evolve physically,
because we've got machines that can lift heavy loads,
and we've got machines that can fly so we've got no
reason to grow wings. I think we
have still a hell of a way to go in terms of our
relationships with other people, and that the world
is a very tiny speck and that basically we
are all the same. These are my personal philosophies
and it has very little to do with the programmes I
write although obviously it does colour them
in some ways." |
|
|
"Richard
Carpenter - A Catweazle Start..."
|
 Quelle:
"TV Zone" Issue 46 September 1993
Artikel als PDF öffnen
Richard
Carpenter's most remembered success is Robin of
Sherwood which he created and wrote most of the
episodes for in the mid-Eighties,
but he started his writing career with another
Fantasy favourite, Catweazle. TV Zone joined Richard
Carpenter and his wife, actress Annabel Lee, two cats and
several dogs at his Hertfordshire home to talk about
writing for the small screen.
Richard 'Kip' Carpenter began his professional life
as an actor and acted fairly successfully for
fifteen years, but after that time decided to write.
“I was very lucky how I started because I wrote the
right thing”, he remembers. “I sent the idea to the
right person at the right time. It was something
they were actually looking for and so I didn't have
any rejection slips at all. The very first thing I
wrote was Catweazle.”
 Modern Magic
Catweazle was the wily magician from Anglo-Norman
England who found himself catapulted forward in Time
to the Twentieth Century where all
modern technology seemed like magic to him. The
series starred Geoffrey Bayldon as the confused
magician befriended by Carrot, the ginger-haired
farm-boy.
The inspiration for the series came from,
of all things, a gate. “Annie and I had gone down to
see her sister who's married to a farmer”,
Richard remembers. “We decided to go back home a
roundabout way and got completely lost and passed a
gate that said Catweazle on it and I just
thought that was rather intriguing and wrote it on a
piece of paper - this was before I started writing
properly. I just found this name in my pocket and
thought that would be a wonderful name for a
magician.
“Originally the thing was conceived as sort of an
educational programme for kids, explaining things
like electricity and various other things and then I
saw the comic possibilities in it.”
The idea was sent to LWT and Richard was asked to
write six scripts on spec by Producer Joy Whitby. He
did this in Joy Whitby's office which she
lent to him while she was on holiday. Because he had
no typing ability, Richard wrote the scripts in
long-hand and then dictated them to an LWT
typist.
As he remembers, the loan of an office was
not the only way Joy Whitby helped the scripts to
develop: “[She] was a very good teacher because
I didn't know anything about scriptwriting at all,
but I knew I could write dialogue, and she taught me
the rest - which is structure, the most important
thing of all...
“I had a lot of help from both the Director Quentin
Lawrence and Joy Whitby. And between them, I think,
they taught me how to write television
scripts."
 Catweazle Performance
One of the things which helped captivate the
audience was Geoffrey Bayldon's performance as
Catweazle. It was an inspired piece of casting and
it
was the writer's suggestion. “I always wanted him
from the word go. I was doing a thing at the BBC and
he was also working at the BBC and I said, ‘I've
written something for you’ and he said, ‘what is it?’
and I told him, and I said, ‘I'm hoping to get it
made’. I walked away from him and - he's
since told me this - [he thought to himself], ‘poor
bugger, it'll never happen!’ But it did. He was
ideal and he brought so much to the part.
He brought a particular magic.”
Catweazle's magic was always something that was
elusive. To him, twentieth century ‘electrickery’ or
voices that could be heard through the ‘telling
bone’ were more magical than anything he could
produce. But Catweazle and his magician's lucky
familiar, Touchwood (a toad that lived in his pocket)
kept trying to cast spells with unpredictable
results.
“I think the essence of good magic like the essence
of good writing is if it happens, it happens almost
spontaneously”, says Richard. “I don't like
omnipotent characters, characters that can do
anything, like Superman and these sort of characters.
I find them very boring because they can always
get out of trouble. You see, even Superman has to
have a weakness, so that he is no longer Superman.
In a way, Superman is only interesting when he
becomes human. These super heroes, they don't
interest me at all, it's human weakness that
interests me rather than human strengths.”
Palace Revolution
After the first series was a success, Catweazle
returned, but Carrot and the farm were replaced by
another boy, Cedric, who lived in a grand country
house. “There was a palace revolution at London
Weekend”, Richard remembers. “Various people went
and other people took over - it happens in
television, you know, there's this musical chairs
that they play, they've nothing else to do the
people at the top so they play this game and
Catweazle
suffered as a result of that. They sacked the
Producer/Director who'd made it successful, which is
fairly typical! I think they'd have sacked me and
Geoffrey Bayldon if they could have done. The whole
thing changed as a result. Somebody had the
brilliant idea that a stately home would be more
attractive to the Americans... So I had to go along
with it because I didn't have any clout and I got
talked into doing it. It worked, but not as well as
the farm.
“I wanted to keep the farm and keep the characters
and just keep going, do another series with the same
people. It would have been easy to bring
Catweazle back and for Carrot to have actually
forgotten or have it erased from his mind that he
actually saw Catweazle go back into the Past and
then
he would remain believing him just to be an old
tramp who was fooled into thinking he was from the
Norman period. That bit would be erased from
his mind by Catweazle with his magic. However, it
didn't happen like that.”
 Series Link
The linking theme through the second series were the
twelve signs of the Zodiac. Each episode dealt with
a different sign which lead people to
wonder what was going to happen in episode 13.
“I had no idea at the beginning”, confesses Richard
Carpenter. “It sort of dawned on me about half way
through that it was actual circle itself that was
the thirteenth sign... The zodiac he had on the
floor which should have just grown week by week as
the signs were found - we weren't able to do that
because we were worried about it going out in a
different order; but that would have been lovely if
we could have done it. That's how it was scripted,
but they couldn't do it because they were worried
about the fact that Americans scramble the order of
things and of course we didn't sell it to America
so it didn't even matter!”
Pulled Stumps
After two series Catweazle was cancelled. “They
pulled stumps on it as is their wont in this country”,
comments Richard. “[When] you get something
good they kill it as soon as they can. I'd have
liked it to have gone on for five or six years like
the Americans do... There have been attempts to
resuscitate it, but now I think I'm a little bit
frightened of it because it was so good when it was
done. And also a successful series acquires a golden
glow around it and consequently people probably look
back on it and see it as probably better than it was
so that you're really up against your own
myth if you're going to write some more. Annie and I
have an idea that it would make a great stage thing
for kids.”
“A musical”, Annie Lee adds. “You could have all the
magic in it, you see, and it'd be great!”
 Motley
Following Catweazle, Richard wrote twenty-two
episodes of Black Beauty, but returned to Fantasy
with The Ghosts of Motley Hall. The inspiration
stemmed from seeing a ghost when he was an actor
staying at a theatrical boarding house in Liverpool.
The memory re-surfaced when, many years
later, he was asked to write a family comedy show.
“I got to thinking, do they [ghosts] see us? And if
they see us, what do they think of us? That
started me off with the idea of ghosts. The guy that
directed Catweazle said, ‘We want to do a comedy
show that all takes place in one set and it's five
or six people, no more and may be one guest every
week’... and I thought, well ghosts can't get out,
they're sort of stuck where they are and they can
be from any period in history and jogging along
together so to speak. I sort of thought if there
were five ghosts in this empty house, they would
want
to keep it empty, they didn't want people in it at
all... They were five ghosts who sometimes got on,
sometimes didn't get on, but had to get on because
they were stuck there. Some people could hear them
and see them, and it struck me that if you could
create that sort of situation, you've got bags of
comedy going.”
The only ghost who could venture outside was the
stable lad who was the character children were
supposed to relate with. “In those days, and I
think still today, people have this absurd idea that
you have to have a child in the thing if kids are
going to watch it. That's rubbish of course.”
Space Boy
A rather more obscure Science Fiction serial he
wrote for television was The Boy from Space for the
BBC's schools programme, Look and Read. At
the mention of these programmes, Richard Carpenter
rushes into his study and emerges with a pile of
books that accompanied the series: “That was
about the most difficult thing I've ever written in
my life”, he says, “because you're restricted to the
first two-hundred words of the English language
plus a few words like telescope and telephone and
television.” It was originally shown in black and
white, but as colour became the television norm, a
problem arose when they wanted to show it again.
“The two children in it, who played Helen and Dan...
had grown up, they were now young adults. So we have
this wonderful opening where they're
sitting on Mill Hill observatory steps saying, ‘Do
you remember when we were kids and we first came to
the observatory?’ and you do a fade and them
as kids come up the drive on bicycles. Now I know of
no other film or television [programme] where that's
ever happened.”
Some of the stories were hosted by Richard Carpenter
himself. “I didn't do The Boy from Space, I think I
did... was it Cloud Burst?” He picks up the
Cloud Burst book from the pile on the table, opens
it and points to an illustration of himself inside
the front cover. “Yes, there I am.” Cloud Burst was
about the invention of a rain gun and the moral of
the story was that technology could be used for good
or evil. “I was getting at nuclear energy,
really.”
Even though Richard Carpenter went on to write
family programmes like The Smuggler, The Adventurer,
Dick Turpin and later Robin of Sherwood, he
has never turned his back on writing for children.
“Once I was interviewed by somebody and they said,
‘Why don't you write for adults?’ and I said, 'I'd
rather write adult programmes for children than
childish programmes for adults' - and the chance of
writing an adult programme for adults is fairly
remote
on television.”
Jane Killick
(In the second part of this interview, in a future
issue, Richard Carpenter talks about creating the
classic adventure series, Robin of Sherwood.)
|
|
|
"Middle Ages Magic / A Spell in
Look-in"
|
 Quelle:
"Time Screen" Number 21 / Spring 1995
Artikel als PDF öffnen
A new face in TV COMIC was Catweazle, the
wizard who fell through time from 1087 to 1970
in LWT's comedy-fantasy film series. The comic
debut came in Issue 949 (21st February 1970), a
week after its appearance on most ITV regions.
As a one page black-and-white strip drawn in mild caricature
by Bill Lacey, the humour and style of Richard
Carpenter's scripts and Geoffrey Bayldon's
strange performance were captured perfectly.
Initially, the characters of Carrott, the young
boy who befriended Catweazle, and his father Mr
Bennet also appeared, although they were
generally phased out after
Issue 978 (12th September 1970).
 Middle
Ages Magic
Lacey also continued to draw Catweazle through to Issue
1033 (2nd October 1971) whilst ITV screened the
second season in the spring of 1971. Accordingly,
the new second season sidekick of Cedric (played
by Gary Warren) made his debut in Issue 1009
(17th April 1971) but did not remain around for
long. One of the best and funniest serials
concerned Catweazle being admitted to hospital
for suspected poisoning, where he had an X-ray
and saw his bones photographed before him.
Skulking around the hospital that night, he then
found a skeleton and believed that all the bones
had been removed from his body! It was notable
that the subsequent story, in which Catweazle
got involved in a magician's stage act, would
form the basis for his next set of adventures in
LOOK-IN the following year.
 A
spell in Look-in
Like The Flaxton
Boys, another strip to make the jump from TV COMIC
to LOOK-IN was Catweazle, with a comedy /adventure
strip over two black-and-white pages starting in
Issue 2 (8th January 1972). Borrowing an idea from
its former incarnation, the new strip saw Catweazle
teaming up with a stage magician the Great Bondini
(Fred Bond) after leaping forward through time to
escape the Normans. The storyline, which was initially
drawn by John Stokes and then latterly by an unknown
Spanish Artist, was a generally rambling affair at
first, with long chains of incidents and
misadventures. Catweazle was befriended by Bond' s
son, Joe, and hindered the stage act in general,
through making Touchwood into a giant and winding up
by ruining a feature film. With' Issue 23,
self-contained stories were introduced featuring
Catweazle, Joe Bond and Bondini, some of which
again borrowed from TV COMIC. With the series having
completed its run the previous year, Catweazle bowed
out of LOOK-IN with Issue 48 of the 1972 volume. New
strips brought in during the year included Doctor in
Charge by Kerr, Elephant Boy, Pathfinders and
The Fenn Street Gang by Kerr. Current programmes like
ESCAPE INTO NIGHT and PARDON MY GENIE were featured
in articles. 1972 was the first year to see the
regular summer edition of LOOK-IN HOLlDAY SPECIAL, featuring a
three-page Catweazle strip. |
|
|
"Brothers
in magic - Catweazle returns"
|
 Quelle:
"TV Zone" Issue 107 / Oktober 1998
Artikel als PDF öffnen
Something
very strange, maybe magical, took place deep in the
heart of Surrey, on a glorious afternoon in May.
It's a bewitching scene, like a final episode of a
series that was never filmed, but is now taking
place...
GEOFFREY BAYLDON AND ROBIN DAVIES, Catweazle and Carrot, are enshrined forever in the legend that is
Catweazle; the odyssey of an 11th
Century magician transported 900 years forward in Time, capturing the hearts and imagination of millions of TV viewers along the way. The two actors
have returned to a place they called Hexwood Farm, the base for the locations of the first series, to talk about the series that changed their lives, and to
celebrate its first video release.
Geoffrey is visibly overcome by the reunion. Robin Davies, instantly recognizable as the boy who discovered the old magician hiding in the barn nearly
30 years ago, busily surveys the scene. It's a curious sight to see them together again, peering over hedges, looking around corners as if they might
both find something left behind from their past. “It doesn't seem to have changed a lot”, Geoffrey sighs as he captures a few images of the farm for his
camera, “and being here with Robin...” He pauses, dewy-eyed, aware of the years that have flown, “It's quite an experience.”
Robin Davies cheerily recounts his memories as a 15-year-old, talking with passion about the programme he loves so dearly, blissfully ignoring his
extensive television and stage career and his current blossoming career as writer/actor/director. Today he is here to talk about
Catweazle.
“Geoffrey and I will always be linked as Catweazle and Carrot, a bit like Tonto and the Lone Ranger, Batman and Robin, but I'd like to say Geoffrey, after
30 years you're still my friend”, he pauses, awash with a rush of memories, and asks for the filming to cease. They haven't seen each other since 1969.
Words and thoughts inevitably turn towards those fellow collaborators missing today. “I wish they were here”, pines Robin at one point, as if the
magic rediscovered today might materialize them: Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, veteran Australian who played Mr Bennet, Carrot's long-suffering father,
still periodically turning up in the occasional programme, most recently Neighbours; Neil McCarthy, who died a few years ago, the gentle giant,
unforgettable as farmhand Sam Woodyard; and of course Richard 'Kip' Carpenter, who's idea sparked it all
off...
 THE
IDEA
Back in 1968, Richard Carpenter already had 300-odd television appearances behind his belt and a wealth of stage and screen credits to his name.
He had the idea to write initially as a sideline, with the concept of Catweazle coming purely by chance. “We'd been down to my brother-in-law's
turkey farm in Sussex one weekend, and had decided instead of taking the main road home, we'd try a different, more rural route, and we got rather lost.
We'd gone down this narrow lane and I saw a gate with the word ‘Catweazle’ written on it, and I thought, what an unusual name. So I wrote it down
and put it in my trousers, and forgot about it. A fortnight later I rediscovered it when I came to send the trousers to the dry cleaners. I started musing
on it and imagining that this would be a great name for a wizard. So I began building up a picture over the following months of what he'd be like. Around that time I had a book called the
Hundred Details from the National Gallery and I came across a picture by Hieronymous Bosch called the
‘Crowning with Thorns’. In it there is a little man pointing up at Jesus on the cross, and I thought, this is what Catweazle would look like.”
Richard's initial concept was quite different. “I thought this could be a good educational schools programme where this wizard would jump through
Time and the boy would show him around the 20th Century and explain how things worked. But then I thought it's much more than that and
would make a good comedy series.”
Richard duly produced a series of storylines and presented them to the newly formed London Weekend Television who wanted to buy the idea, but
Richard convinced them that he could complete the task, and with the use of a loaned office at LWT, set to work.
 CATWEAZLE
Enter Geoffrey Bayldon, who at 45 was one of Britain's most respected and experienced character actors. He had previously worked with Richard
Carpenter at the
Old Vic. Bayldon recalls, “Richard Carpenter told me that he'd written something and it would be marvellous for me and to be honest, although I was
touched, I didn't take it very seriously. And then months went by and one day my agent said she'd just received a script, and instead of being cool as
agents are, she just said, ‘Geoffrey I've just read the first page, and I think it's yours... and it's magic’.”
The idea for Geoffrey Bayldon as Catweazle had been in Carpenter's mind for some time. He championed the part for Bayldon against London
Weekend's initial choice of Jon Pertwee. In a strange role reversal, Geoffrey was actually considered for the original Doctor Who, but had passed
on it. “Tell them too long and too old”, Geoffrey had told his agent, fed up with being presented with geriatric roles.
The idiosyncrasies of the character were Bayldon's own invention. Affectionately referred to by the crew as Catweazle's ‘Fizzes’, they came about
purely by chance. “Some of the voices came by accident when we were shooting the second episode”, recalls Geoffrey. “Robin found me hiding in a
wardrobe and I made this funny noise [making a Catweazle-like squeal] and the director Quentin Lawrence liked it and asked for them to be left in, and
they were eventually scripted.”
Six scripts were initially asked for which Richard duly completed. But then well into shooting, LWT, realizing the potential of the series, commissioned
a further seven
ON LOCATION
Filming began in the summer of 1969 and Home Farm was transformed into the production base for the crew. Castle Saburac, the water tower where
Catweazle created his magic, and one of the most memorable images from the first series, was constructed from fiberglass and located in a clearing in
the woods. None of the filming took place in the tower itself but in a mock-up on solid ground.
Daily, Geoffrey and Robin would make the trip to East Clandon from their homes in London. Bizarrely Robin would have to find his own way down
by public transport until Geoffrey demanded that he have a car to transport him. Travel wasn't the only problem for young Robin, as he would also
have to run the gauntlet of embarrassing glares during the occasions he'd have his golden locks dyed a shock of red for the part of Carrot by an
exclusive London hairdresser.
Eventually the filming drew to a close. The final moments shot against the backdrop of Boldermere Lake near Guildford were a tearful affair.
The old man and young boy bade an emotional farewell, leaving a lasting impression on Robin to this day. “It was the end of Carrot, the end of
Catweazle for me, and the end of my youth in a way... I had this line ‘Will you come back one day?’ and of course for
Carrot he didn't. The tears were for real and I didn't want the camera to see I was upset.”
In reality both Geoffrey and Robin had to project their lines at each other against the thunder of the A3 main road which borders the lake.
The tree where Catweazle arranged his memorabilia before leaving the 20th Century is still there, very much overgrown and forgotten
 A
WINNER
Catweazle's 13 episodes collected rave reviews, becoming an instant classic and earning Richard Carpenter the Writers Guild award for 1971.
Apart from the two books by Carpenter and a trio of large format annuals, nothing more was manufactured. Even a record of the familiar theme tune,
put to words and sung by Bayldon, was never released. Nevertheless the fame of the series continued, even extending to the most popular people on
the planet, as Geoffrey reveals “I did hear that the Beatles were great fans of
Catweazle from Ringo, when he directed a film I was in which we shot at
John Lennon's house. All of them had children and would drop everything on Sunday's to watch the series.”
Geoffrey and Robin ved sacks of fan mail, especially Robin, whose elfin features provoked a sizable proportion of letters from Japan and a request
for a photograph from one of the Kray twins! Scenes that would rival Beatlemania occurred in Holland as thousands gathered to see Geoffrey, in
character, open a sports stadium.
For a while it seemed children everywhere would disappear on Sunday afternoons. “I live in a small community, with lots of children”, recalls Bayldon,
“and at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon if I was out, I'd see these children rushing past me to watch
Catweazle shouting, ‘It's on in five minutes’.”
SERIES TWO
A second series was immediately planned, but director Quentin Lawrence, whose understanding of the concept had added so much was not
re-employed. Neither was Robin Davies. Other forces were at work to move the series into the commercial domain. A location and storyline was
chosen that would broaden the appeal of the series. Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire formed the backdrop, and Gary Warren, fresh from his
success in The Railway Children was chosen to play alongside Catweazle in a similar role to Carrot. The overall storyline of Catweazle attempting to
collect the signs of the Zodiac in order to fly was a novel idea, but mostly the magic was obscured by the playing for laughs.
Richard Carpenter observed, “As with anything that becomes successful, people were brought in who knew nothing about the series. There were a
lot of political shenanigans about. The idea was that if it had a stately home with a Lord and Lady, it's something that could be sold abroad. The
whole thing was slightly jazzed up, possibly for the American market, but it ended up falling heavily between two stools.”
 THE
END
Progress was nonetheless swift as the 13 episodes of the second series were completed during the summer of 1970. The viewing figures were
consistently high and for a short while the future seemed bright. The final episode ended with the weary wizard leaving terra firma in a balloon and
off into the unknown. Richard Carpenter had the idea for a third series to open with Catweazle's balloon drifting to a halt atop Castle Saburac, to
revive some of the magic pointedly missing from the second series; but given the changes within LWT, any notion of a third season was passed over.
The cast and production team moved onto other projects and the lovable sorcerer was left to fill re-run slots around the world. Rumours have persisted
of a screen adaptation, and although Richard Carpenter has a long completed script, nothing has come of it.
The greatest legacy of Catweazle is that people still talk about it. Both Geoffrey and Robin have strong opinions on why it has maintained its
popularity. Robin Davies: “Catweazle is a good all-round series, it's timeless. And although I'm proud to say I was Carrot, I lay the success
of the series down to Richard Carpenter and Geoffrey Bayldon. I was just lucky to have been there. Very lucky.”
“Magic”, . “We didn't sentimentalize it, because the magic did it for us. We relied upon the magic of the story and the humour
that comes out of someone seeing the 20th Century through 11th Century eyes.”
Four volumes of Catweazle, including the reunion footage at Hexwood Farm, are out now on Network Video, priced £10.99. The second season of
Catweazle will be released in October.
Simon Wells
|
|
|
"Magic Moments"
|
 Quelle:
"Dreamwatch" Nummer 69 / Mai 2000
Artikel als PDF öffnenSimon Wells returns to a more innocent age of children's television and recalls the adventures of the
mystical mage, CATWEAZLE...
BY THE SIDE OF A LAKE, LOOKING FORLORN, UNKEMPT AND FORGOTTEN, SITS A TREE WHICH HOLDS A SECRET.
Some thirty summers ago, two actors stood either side of this once green and leafy Scotch Pine to bade farewell,
on screen and off, and walk away; each touched forever by a children's television series that had magic running
through its seams.
For those not aware, CATWEAZLE is a fable of an eleventh century magician who accidentally fell nine.hundred years
through time and into the twentieth century. Looking very much out of place in the modern world, he nonetheless struck
up a friendship with a young boy called Carrot, who guided the loveable but hopeless wizard around the sights and sounds
of a new age to the magician's obvious bewilderment and wonder.
Most enchanting of all was the chemistry that existed between
the old man and the young lad; a sort of benevolent pupil-teacher relationship. Looking at it today, it belongs to a gentler,
more innocent time.
For a short period at the turn of the seventies, CATWEAZLE was, for many, the
number one star on children's television. It seems that even from its inception, the
series was destined to be cloaked in magic.
A drive in the country for its creator Richard Carpenter took him away from his
extensive stage and television profession and into a full.time writing career. His name is synonymous with quality children's
television through such shows as ROBIN Of SHERWOOO, THE GHOSTS OF MOTlEY HALL or THE BoRROWERS, but it all started on this trip
in 1968 when he went down to Sussex with his wife.
"My brother-in-law had a turkey farm in East Sussex," Richard recalls. "And we'd spent the weekend there. When we were about to go,
my wife said, 'Let's meander back'. So we did and got lost. We stopped, looked around, and there was a gate, and it had 'Catweasel'
written on it. I was intrigued by the name and I wrote it down and put it in my pocket. About three or four weeks later, I found
this bit of paper and I started thinking about the word, and from it came the character of a magician. It seemed such a good name.
I changed Catweasel to Catweazle; it just seemed to work better. At that time I had a book of pictures form the National Gallery
and in it I found a picture by Hieronymous Bosch called "The Crowning of Thorns" where there is this old man with a large nose and
a little beard who was a magician... And I thought 'This is Catweazle!'
 Idea in tow, Richard sent his concept to Joy Whitby, then the head of children's television at London Weekend Television, who remembers
with fondness her first exposure to the concept of Catweazle.
"Among the usual influx of unsolicited material that comes in was this one page of hand written exercise book, from Richard Carpenter,
a fairly well known actor, and it said he had this idea for a new series which centred on this old wizard called Catweazle. It really
was only an idea... But the name was arresting, a very well chosen name for a magical old wizard, who smelt as dirty as an old cat,
who had whiskers and was weaslely. But it was quite obvious that Richard was fairly obsessed with this idea.
What I remember as being one of the best concepts that sold it was his idea of seeing electricity as the sun in a bottle.
That really was an original piece of thinking."
The idea was thus commissioned, and with Joy Whitby acting as script editor to the neophyte writer, Richard set about to create an
initial six episodes, which were such a success for London Weekend Television, that a further seven were commissioned.
Richard had a friend from his days at the Old Vic in London, a gentleman by the name of Geoffrey Bayldon. Geoffrey was highly respected
in the industry for his stage, film and television work, but missing a role that would truly identify him with the public and stretch
his talent. Newly formed London Weekend Television had initially toyed with the idea of Jon Pertwee filling the wizard's shoes, but Richard
insisted that Geoffrey would be perfect for the role of Catweazle.
A script soon made its way to Geoffrey who leapt at the role of the loveable
sorcerer.
"Richard said to me one day, 'I'm writing something for you'," Geoffrey Bayldon recalls. "And I thought 'Bless him - how sweet', but
I didn't take it very seriously. When he mentioned it another time I knew it had been accepted. And then my agent rung up and said 'I've received
a script, and the first page is such magic'"
Carpenter's script also called for a young red headed boy, known simply as Carrot. A young actor called Robin Davies was selected to play the role
of the boy who would act as the wizard's guide to the 2oth century. He'd come fresh faced from a part in Lindsay Anderson's classic movie IF...
and successfully auditioned for the part of the sorcerer's apprentice. Charles "Bud" Tingwell, a housewives' favourite from the hospital drama,
EMERGENCY WARD TEN was chosen to play Carrot's recently widowed father, Mr Bennett- a single parent in a children's TV series was very daring
in 1969 - and Neil McCarthy was given the role of Sam, a simple farm-hand.
With all the main players assembled, a location was chosen in the heart of Surrey. A beautiful olde worlde village some ten miles from Guildford
called East Clandon was found and was perfect, dominated as it was by rolling fields and woods. Home farm was to become "Hexwood Farm" and was
perfect due to its cavernous barn and farmhouse.
Geoffrey had strong ideas on how he'd like to play the play the role of the sorcerer, even down to the costumes and the dialect.
The director, Quentin Lawrence, had an instinctive grasp of the child-like vision of the story, and would often instruct the cameraman to film
Catweazle in long shot, through the mist and against the pastoral backdrop of the woods.
Daily, Geoffrey would have to contend with the demands of transforming into character, and would arrive early to have his wiry frame dressed
to age the necessary nine-hundred years, a feat which took an hour and a half, and ended with a couple of baths to remove the make-up and
assorted gunge that had attached to him during the day.
Touchwood, Catweazle's free spirited toad "familiar" and fellow time traveller was as independently minded on-screen as he was off.
His piece-de-resistance was to relieve himself in the direction of the camera's lens as it would move in for a close-up, only to then
casually walk out of shot. To stop any embarrassing stains, a pocket specially lined in plastic was sown into Geoffrey's trademark cape.
Touchwood is the perfect listening companion for Catweazle to voice his feelings to, since otherwise he'd have to do a lot of talking to himself.
The summer rolled on with the cast basking in the atmosphere emanating from the magic of the fable. The final shots where Catweazle and Carrot
bade an tearful farewell were filmed at the side of an old Scotch Pine leaning over Boldermere Lake in Surrey.
Fittingly, it was the last scene of the series to be shot, and as such, was emotionally charged as Carrot watched Catweazle fade away and return
to his own time. It was the end of Robin Davies' association with CATWEAZLE and in a symbolic way, he was also parting with his childhood,
as he explains:
"I was upset that, as far as I was concerned I wouldn't see my friends again. It was the end, but it had been a great adventure. It was daft,
and it was make believe, and it had been a wonderful summer. But when I said 'Will you come back one day?', y'know, Catweazle never came back for
Carrot. It was the end. My childhood was coming to an end, and for me it finished then."
The filming drew to a close, and the production crew returned to Halliford Studios to piece It together for a broadcast date early in 1970.
Sunday 4 January duly rolled in and at 5.35pm, a few million homes took their minds away from the apprehension of the week ahead to wallow
in the beauty of the previous summer recreated so magically by the cast of CATWEAZLE. For the next thirteen weeks, the name Catweazle was on
everyone's lips. Words such as 'Electickery' and 'Tellingbone' became the chosen refrain in school playgrounds up and down the country.
The series was an instant success, earning Richard Carpenter the coveted Writer's Guild award for
1971.
 THE SUCCESS DF THE FIRST SERIES inevitably led to a sequel being commissioned, but it seems forces were at play to drive the concept away from the
rustic idyll of Hexwood Farm and into a more commercial domain.
Richard Carpenter: "Various things happened. We lost Quentin Lawrence, which I thought was devastating because we needed the continuity of the same
director. We also lost the farm, which I thought was a bad thing, and we lost Carrot. And although I was very thrilled that they were doing another
series, I had no real clout. It was decided by the powers that be to set it in a stately home with the son of a Lord and Lady. These were elements
that conflicted with the first series rather strongly. To me it lacked something the first series had. It didn't feel so warm."
Geoffrey Bayldon was naturally asked back, but the crew which gave the first series its unique style were not. Quentin Lawrence, whose cinematic
direction provided the first season with its rustic ambience, was left out, as was Neil McCarthy.
The greatest sadness was that Robin Davies, unaware
of the politics at play, believed he wasn't asked back because he had disappointed everyone with his performance of Carrot.
"I thought I didn't do the second series of CATWEAZLE because I wasn't very good" laments Robin "It's as if you're not invited to someone's party any
more, and you assume they don't like you. It hurt me deeply at the time."
Geoffrey, pleased beyond comprehension that his wonderful characterisation of Catweazle had led to a revival, realised early on that things had
changed. Catweazle was now being steered into a more slapstick domain. "I had misgivings," reveals Geoffrey. "I remember thinking
'Catweazle shouldn't have flour thrown all over him' Not from a thing of dignity, but it just wasn't the style".
The final episode found Catweazle, weary and growing unnervingly accustomed to the twentieth century, leave solid ground and fly off into the unknown
in a balloon. Of all the second series episodes, this final one was by far the most moving; so it was fitting that the story ended on a high note.
Unlike the end of the first season however, there were no plans to reconvene, as Geoffrey was keen to voice. "I was one of the first to say it's
stopped at the right time. I knew the standard had dropped, but more than that the Catweazle situation had played itself out. He was getting a
twentieth century mind."
Richard Carpenter did toy with extending the idea of Catweazle a little further, and had the balloon landing back on to of the water tower which
had been the wizard's retreat in the first series; but with London Weekend in the midst of huge political turmoil, the series was left as it was.
Despite huge repeat viewing figures around the world, no more thought was given to extend the tale beyond its twenty-six episodes. A feature film
had been considered a couple of times, even to the point of a draft script being written by Richard Carpenter, but even that was not pursued.
 In 1998, the world was looking back to happier, more gentle times, and somehow thoughts turned towards Catweazle again. Network Videos (who were the
first to release the series on video) brought Geoffrey and Robin back to the Hexwood Farm locations to reminisce about the series for a
documentary BROTHERS IN MAGIC. Later that day when Robin passed the lake that had seen the embers of his youth fade away, he whispered to himself
"Will you come back one day?" For Robin it was an emotional reunion, the first time he'd seen Geoffrey in thirty years; but it
wasn't something he'd entirely ruled out from happening.
Today Geoffrey, Robin and Richard are keen to stress the beauty of the story, especially its charm when set against the computer generated fare
churned out for today's younger viewers.
Geoffrey Bayldon: "It has enormous humour. It's very funny and it appeals to all ages, but especially children. Catweazle is a part of them.
It's totally un-vicious. It has a human feel, a magic feel."
Robin Davies: "What's happening now is exploitation, what happened then is entertainment. The likes of CATWEAZLE were designed to entertain children.
Why this series works so nicely is because there is a naivete to it. There's no bad language, no violence. Everyone gives a little gem. They were good
performances. We cared about how we did it."
The last word goes to Richard Carpenter: "In my opinion Geoffrey Bayldon is responsible for the success of Catweazle; more than any other person.
He seemed to latch exactly onto my original inspiration of Catweazle and then add another chunk of his own, so that we were completely at one with the
character. We were very lucky to get him. He made it."
|
|
|
"Aber die
Kröten sind alle schon tot"
|
 Quelle:
"Süddeutsche Zeitung" 7. April 2004
Was fand man denn daran einmal gut? Peinliche Gags, verwaschenes Bild, schlechte Schnitte. Alles
egal: Der Superstar unserer Kinderherzen hieß, nein heißt für immer Catweazle... Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay
nochmal, so heißt er natürlich nicht, sondern Geoffrey Bayldon, und der ist kürzlich 80 geworden.
(Martin Zips)
Manchmal stößt der alte Mann merkwürdige Laute aus. So etwas wie "Arara" oder "Tsatsa".
Er macht das unbewusst, im Gespräch. Doch bei jedem
"Arara", bei jedem "Tsatsa" fühlt man sich glücklich wie ein Kind, das gerade auf dem
Dachboden sein Lieblingsspielzeug wieder entdeckt hat. Schließlich hat auch Catweazle,
Fernsehheld aus Kindertagen, oft "Arara", "Tsatsa" und anderes Zischzeug genuschelt.
"Vorsicht", sagt der alte Mann: "Menschen, die sich
heute noch mit den Stars ihrer Kindheit
beschäftigen, leben genauso gefährlich wie die, die
sich immer nur um den Augenblick kümmern."
Das Orakel hat gesprochen und der Mann im grauen
Sakko spießt sich - Arara, Tsatsa - noch ein paar Kutteln auf. Es ist Geoffrey Bayldon, der in London beim Italiener sitzt. Er spielte den Zauberer Catweazle in der gleichnamigen britischen Fernsehserie. Das ist
lange her. Gerade ist Bayldon 80 Jahre alt geworden
- Zeit für einen Besuch. Er wundert sich.
In seinem Leben habe er doch nur unbedeutende Rollen gespielt. Den Psychiater in einem
"Der rosarote Panther"-Filme. Da war Peter Sellers als
Inspektor Clouseau der Star. Einen Mister Clapham in Folge 107 von
Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone. Da war Diana Rigg als Emma Peel der Star.
In Der Doktor und das liebe Vieh war er ein Kunstmaler, dessen Hund einen Tumor am Hoden hatte. Da war der Hund der Star.
"Ich bin der
meistbeschäftigte unbekannte Schauspieler der Welt", sagt Bayldon.
"Schon mit 22 gab man mir Rollen von 90-Jährigen."
Hunderte Rollen hat Geoffrey Bayldon, Sohn eines Schneiders aus Leeds, gespielt. Neben Laurence Olivier, Jon Pertwee oder Juliette Gréco.
Ein einziges Mal nur rief ihn Hollywood. Danach nie wieder.
Was bleibt, ist Catweazle, der mittelalterliche Magier aus dem Kinderfernsehen. Der Zauberer, der sich auf der Flucht vor den Normannen
versehentlich ins Großbritannien des 20. Jahrhunderts zaubert.
Hilfsbereite Heranwachsende kümmern sich 26 Folgen lang um den merkwürdigen Typen, der vor Autos, Telefonen und Glühbirnen furchtbar erschrickt.
Wegen Catweazle bekommt Bayldon heute noch, 35 Jahre nach Ende der Dreharbeiten, fast täglich Fanpost.
Für den Sänger Paul McCartney, ein großer Fan der Serie, mag es normal sein, auch Jahrzehnte nach der Trennung der Beatles Fotos zu unterschreiben.
Für Geoffrey Bayldon allerdings, den lebenslangen Nebendarsteller, ist das immer wieder etwas Besonderes.
Ein Dutzend Anfragen gab es in dieser Woche allein
aus Deutschland. "I’m of you a great fan. You are great actress."
Die Leute wollen wissen, was Bayldon macht.
"Was ich mache? Ich löse Kreuzworträtsel im Telegraph."
Sie wollen wissen, was aus Kühlwalda, Catweazles kleiner Kröte, geworden ist.
"Während der Dreharbeiten gab es Dutzende davon.
Heute sind alle tot."
Wann wird er wieder im Fernsehen zu sehen sein? Wann gibt es eine Catweazle-DVD?
"Das wüsste ich auch gerne." Was bedeutet "Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay"?
"Es bedeutet: Rubbish." Müll?
Der alte Mann wirkt plötzlich ungehalten. "Seit drei Jahrzehnten stecke ich Fotos, die von mir bezahlt werden, in
Kuverts, die von mir bezahlt werden", sagt Bayldon und reißt die blauen Augen auf.
"Meistens zahle ich auch das Porto selbst." Arara, Tsatsa.
Die Figur Catweazle ist eine Erfindung des Schauspielers und Autoren Richard Carpenter. In Sussex hatte sich Carpenter
einmal mit dem Auto verfahren, auf einem Scheunentor
las er das Wort "Catweazle".
Das könnte ein Magier sein, dachte er sich und entdeckte später auf dem Bild
Die Verspottung Christi von Hieronymus Bosch einen spitzbärtigen
Greis. So muss ein Catweazle aussehen, dachte sich Carpenter.
Boschs Greis erinnerte ihn an einen Freund von der Schauspielschule, Geoffrey Bayldon. Vor 30Jahren, am 28.April 1974, lief Catweazle zum ersten
Mal im deutschen Fernsehen. "Der Erfolg hat viele verwundert. Das Ding ist doch ziemlich primitiv gemacht", erinnert sich der frühere
ZDF-Jugendprogrammchef Josef Göhlen.
Noch heute gibt es im Internet Dutzende Fanseiten. 30- bis 40-Jährige
begrüßen sich hier mit "Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay" und anderem Nonsens.
In England wird Bayldon oft an der Stimme erkannt. "Plötzlich verhalten sich Taxifahrer wie kleine Kinder", sagt der grauhaarige Schauspieler.
Einmal sei ein Wrestler vor ihm gestanden und habe
gesagt: "Catweazle! Das ist der größte Moment in meinem Leben."
Und weil in der Serie eine Kröte seine Partnerin gewesen sei, sagt Bayldon, träfen sich heute noch Mitglieder diverser Catweazle-Fanclubs zur
Krötenwanderung an den Staatsstraßen.
In Deutschland ist heute Super RTL Marktführer bei den Jüngsten. Beliebte Kinderserien heißen
Dragonball Z, Jimmy Neutron oder Schwammkopf.
Und wenn gerade eine Staffel von The Tribe,
Die Pfefferkörner oder Die Hoobs zu Ende ist, so schreiben junge Zuschauer Protestmails an den
Kinderkanal.
Der Mittdreißiger wiederum schiebt sich heimlich eine Videocassette mit einer alten Catweazle-Folge rein und denkt sich: Was fand man denn daran
einmal gut? Peinliche Gags, verwaschenes Bild, schlechte Schnitte.
Andererseits: Schöne Titelmusik. Großartiger Hauptdarsteller. Gutes Gefühl.
"Catweazle war schon etwas Besonderes", sagt Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt,
Zeit-Literaturkritikerin und Übersetzerin der längst vergriffenen Bücher zur Serie.
"Bei ihm ging es um Humor, Fantasie, Anti-Rassismus und Freundschaft. Heute wird mir in Kinderbüchern und -serien zu viel gemordet. Kennen Sie
Twig oder Artemis Fowl?" Nein. "Da werden ganze Völker ausgelöscht."
Furchtbar. Also schnell wieder zurück in die Vergangenheit.
Bei einem Auftritt in Holland, erinnert sich Mister Bayldon, hätte es wegen ihm fast ein Verkehrschaos gegeben.
Überall Kinder. Die Mütter hätten ihm ihre Babys in den Arm gedrückt.
"Im Catweazle-Kostüm behandelte man mich wie Jesus."
Und immer, wenn wieder irgendwo die letzte Folge lief
- in Deutschland, Dänemark oder Australien -, schrieben ihm besorgte Eltern von
Heulkrämpfen ihres Nachwuchses.
"Bitte schicken Sie uns ein Lebenszeichen", baten die Eltern. Foto, Unterschrift, Kuvert, Briefmarke.
Wie viel Geld hätte Geoffrey Bayldon heute mit seiner Rolle verdienen können? In den Siebzigern war er nur auf Cornflakes-Packungen und
Programmzeitschriften zu sehen. Die Postkarten, für die er sich im Lumpenfummel und mit angeklebtem Bart neben den Guards der Queen ablichten ließ, wurden nie gedruckt.
Der Song, den er im Studio aufnahm, nie verlegt. Gäbe es heute einen erfolgreichen Catweazle-Film, so lägen sicher Armeen von Magier-Puppen in
den Kaufhäusern, Computerspiele und Gummikröten würden feilgeboten.
Die Trickfilmfigur Bob der Baumeister setzte in Deutschland 120 Millionen Euro um.
"Ich will das alles gar nicht wissen", sagt Bayldon, der seit 40Jahren geschiedene, kinderlose Charakterdarsteller.
Auf dem Weg zum Bus meint
er: "Ich wünsche mir für die paar Tage, die mir noch bleiben, zwei Dinge. Keine Inkontinenz! Und, dass sie keinen Catweazle-Film machen, so lange
ich noch lebe. Ich wäre für die Rolle zu alt - und einen anderen Schauspieler würde ich einfach nicht ertragen."
|
|
|
"Under
Catweazle's spell"
|
 Quelle:
"Liverpool Daily Post" 9. November 2005
One children's TV programme is still adored by
its fans - 35 years after it was first shown.
Mike Chapple reports.
FOR people of a certain age, there is one children's TV series which like the character it featured still casts a spell of enchantment
over them 35 years since it was first broadcast.
Catweazle told the story of the eponymous 11th century wizard who while trying to escape from a troup of Norman soldiers mistakenly
becomes stranded 900 years in the future.
In between trying to find a way back to his own time he becomes astounded by the everyday things that we take for granted. Items like
the light bulb - "electrickery" he called it - and the telephone - or "the telling bone" - are simply beyond his comprehension eliciting any
number of strange squawks and exclamations from Geoffrey Bayldon who memorably played the scrawny old wizard.
Created by Richard Carpenter, the series which was first screened in 1970 and 1971, was a cleverly conceived, often hilarious and sometimes
achingly poignant slice of entertainment for all the family, a concept that is almost unheard of in the minds of today's TV production companies.
Four of the character's biggest fans were the Beatles.
Ringo as director of the Marc Bolan tribute film Born To Boogie even cast Bayldon for a bit part saying: "We must have that bloke who played Catweazle in it."
Perhaps it's this nostalgia for a more innocent time that demand has brought the recent release of series one and two on DVD.
This has also sparked a boom in the membership of the Catweazle Fan Club which has nearly 700 members, 48 of whom live in the
Merseyside and Cheshire area.
One of them is 47-year-old Gail Nunn from Prenton, Birkenhead. She was only 12 when she first saw Catweazle but has remained fixated
with the adventures of the loveable wizard and his toad Touchwood to this day.
"Whereas other women got a craving for ice cream or coal, when I was pregnant I developed an obsession with trying to find out what
Catweazle's toad was called," laughs Gail, a domiciliary care worker who joined the fan club a year ago.
"It took me seven months to find out and the person who finally told me its name was Touchwood was my uncle who whispered it to me on
his death bed.
"I think what made Catweazle special is that it was something the whole family could sit down and watch. I had a rough childhood but I
remember it as the only programme the family were happy watching together."
Gill says her own daughter told her recently that one of her happiest memories from childhood was of the family sitting down and watching
Worzel Gummidge, which coincidentally also featured the great character actor Bayldon in another incarnation, the Crowman.
Another local member is Sashya Maloney, from Newsham Park, who, at 33 years old, was not even born when Catweazle was first broadcast.
Appropriately enough, she is the manageress of Worlds Apart, the popular memorabilia shop on Lime Street that sells cult TV and movie material.
The fan club's splendid paraphernalia apart, however, there is little else apart from the DVDs and the original videos available for fans to buy.
"Catweazle was always a bit of a strange, nebulous thing when it came to merchandise. When you've got a series such as Stingray for
instance, there's something such as a vehicle to hang it on. There's nothing really that could have been done with Catweazle apart from making a
figure of Geoffrey Bayldon which would have been a bit silly."
The fan club's co-founder Gary Bowers agrees that it's Catweazle's universal family appeal which was its attraction.
The former pharmaceutical technician founded it after a brush with mortality when he suffered a ruptured pancreas in 1998.
"One of the things about a near-death experience is that it makes you reflect on the past and one of the things I focused on was Catweazle
because it represented some of the happiest memories of being with the family," says 49-year-old Gary from Ewood, Blackburn, who founded
the club four years ago with another Weazle fan, Carol Barnes from Worthing in West Sussex.
"It's Geoffrey - he's the man who makes it special. That and British humour. Plus, there's no sex, no violence, no drugs - there's nothing in there
that can corrupt."
Ironic then that Gary says the politically correct brigade have ensured that Catweazle will allegedly never again be shown on television.
It is deemed too suggestive to feature an old man befriending a young boy, as Catweazle does when farmer's son Carrot tries to help him
understand the strange world in which he finds himself.
Gary says: "They say you can't show scenes where a boy goes into a forest with an old man.
But I've never thought of it in that kind of way. It's awful that three or four generations of kids have been deprived of watching something that's
so good especially when you look at TV now."
Geoffrey Bayldon himself believes Catweazle was an extraordinary series - but is keen to pass the credit elsewhere.
"It was magical," the 81-yearold actor tells the Daily Post from his London home. "It is very rare that an actor is given a script that's so
wonderful. The sky's the limit and you can do what you want."
Geoffrey says he would have loved Catweazle "to have gone of forever" but thought that two series were enough.
"I suppose you could have put him in a town. Then he could have been living in a semi-detached with his feet up, watching Coronation Street and
sipping a whisky. But it just wouldn't have worked."
He believes Catweazle is the product of a less cynical time, the like of which we might never see again.
"It's simplicity that's missing for one thing and the fact that actors on TV are not allowed to sustain a character and round them off with a good director."
He is still fired with enthusiasm for the show despite the fact that he will receive no royalties from the DVD releases.
And unlike some more precious members of his profession, Geoffrey revels in the recognition that his character provokes nearly four decades on.
He has gladly attended three of the fan club's annual summer fetes at the idyllic Home Farm near Guildford where the first series was shot in 1969.
"It's an amazing thing when you get a big butch fellow with a beer belly who will come up to you and growl 'Catweazle I loved it'. They talk just like children."
The latest incident happened when he got off the train at King's Cross station.
"I asked a taxi driver for directions and after he told me to turn left and all that sort of thing he said 'It's Catweazle innit?' Five minutes later and I
had to ask directions again, this time from another gentleman. He told me where I wanted to go and then he said exactly the same thing - 'It's Catweazle innit'?"
Ample proof, if it were needed, that Catweazle's
spell remains unbroken.
(The Fan Club can be contacted on 01254 723 462.)
|
|
|
"Catweazle"
|
 Quelle:
"SFX" #168 April 2008
Artikel als PDF öffnenWho did kids watch on telly in the early 70s?
A whiffy, mud-covered old magician from a millennium ago, that's who.
Sean Egan remembers a surprisingly successful show...
Early 1970. Sunday tea-times saw Btitish streets emptying as kids - and plenty of adults
gathered around the television set to watch a remarkable show with a peculiar title: Catweazle.
It was a series that was a rare thing on two counts: a fantasy tale that was also genuinely funny
and a kids' programme that was sophisticated enough to be thotoughly enjoyed by their parents.
Though its quality was undeniable, Catweazle also had another attribute that makes its memory burn
bright in the minds of its now grown-up demographic. With its unusually high production values - allied
to the fact that colour television broadcasts had only become universal in the UK the previous year - it
appeared at exactly the right time to make it seem a dazzling weekly doorway to another
dimension.
CATWEASELGATE
It all began when creator Richard Carpenter made a chance sighting of an intriguing sign on a rural gate: "Catweasel".
Though he would tweak its spelling, the word was c1early evocative for Carpenter, an actor by profession who had recently
turned his hand to scriptwriting. "The first thing I wanted to do was to find out what it meant," he says.
"It seemed to mean a person, so I had to discover what sort of person would be called Catweazle. It grew from that."
What Carpenter came up with was highly original. "He was an old magician," he explains. "What 'old' is I don't know.
It could be anything from 50 to 80. He didn't really know how (magic) worked and in the first series it didn't work at all,
except he could use ESP, which isn't really magic, although he thought it was, and he could hypnotise people, and that's really
all he could do." This was no kindly bumbling magic man, though. Catweazle was a petulant and childish - not to mention smelly
character. Carpenter says he never wotried that audiences might not find him sympathetic. "I wasn't bothered about whether people
would like him or not because I thought they would. I wasn't going to change him and play him sympathetically. He's a loner
and I'm always interested in people who are loners and not part of the common herd." The biggest twist was that Catweazle was a
magician from Norman times catapulted via one of his maladroit spells into the modern age. His bewildered reaction to 20th century
technologies - and his understandable assumption that they are the results of a superior form of magic that he must learn the secrets of
constituted the programme's chief comedy dynamic.
Joy Whitby, a producer at ITV regional franchise holder London Weekend Television, commissioned a series of 23 episodes.
By the time Carpenter had finished writing them, he already had a man in mind to play Catweazle. Though only in his mid forties,
Geoffrey Bayldon - an acquaintance of Carpenter's - had acquired a reputation for portraying old men, something that he considered
a bit of a bugbear, but he put his doubts aside when he received a call about the project from his agent. "My agent just said,
'It's here, I've just read the first episode and it is sheer magic'," he recalls.
The visual look of Catweazle was so instantly iconic that his raggedy brown robed, wild-haired, wispy-bearded image was used in
cartoon form in the show's memorable opening credits. Carpenter based the robe on a monk's habit. But Whitby and series director
Quentin Lawrence concluded it looked too neat and tidy and attacked it with scissors and mud. Meanwhile, Catweazle always had to look
dirty. Bayldon laments that this get-up ensured he spent "forever" in make-up. "I used to have to have two baths a day: one to get that
off and then another one to have a bath," he says.
Catweazle's way of speaking was even more iconic, even if Carpenter admits that the
likes of "Thou maggot!" and "I beseech thee!" which peppered the magician's speech were not exactly authentic to his time: "It's Elizabethan.
We don't know how they talked in Norman times so I thought, 'Well, let's set it back so that it sounds archaic,'and the easiest one that
we all knew about was Shakespearian speech."
Bayldon added a further twist to Catweazle's lingo. "When we did a reading, right at the beginning, I did it as a sort of conventional
old man," he says. "I thought, 'I'm not enjoying this'. Suddenly I said, in front of Miss Whitby, 'Can I try it North Country, exaggerated
and quirky?' Because that's possibly what they spoke." But it didn't stop there, because - as if by sorcery Bayldon brought something to the
character that Carpenter had no way of predicting when he'd first thought of him for the role, namely the
idiosyncratic hisses, gasps, squeaks and barks that we now associate indelibly with the character. In the second episode, Catweazle is
discovered in a wardrobe through his smell. Bayldon decided to express his character's fear with a sound he renders in demonstration
as "Waaahhck!" Reveals Bayldon, "Quentin Lawrence said, 'Geoffrey, I love that noise. I think we should use noises'. And as we had to
do a lot of the first episode again due to a camera fault I think, we had them in. It was wacky. That's the bit that I addedthe dottiness."
This engendered a crossfertilisation of ideas. "I saw rushes of what he was doing," Carpenter remembers, "then I would add little bits
into the script so that the script and Geoffrey's creativity and my creating the character were running side by side."
HANGING ON THE TELLING-BONE
Carpenter's premise had Catweazle finding himself on Hexwood Farm, populated by farmer Mr Bennet (Charles Tingwell), his teenage son
Carrot (Robin Davies) and two staff. Carrot becomes Catweazle's reluctant friend, hiding him from the world and introducing him to
such - for Catweazle - jaw-dropping concepts as the telephone (which Catweazle interprets as "Tellingbone") and electricity ("Electrickery"),
as the sorceror searches for a spell to take him back from whence he came. Catweazle's only other friend is his magician's "familiar", a toad
called Touchwood. Cannily, Carpenter had partly devised Touchwood in order to enable exposition: "Catweazle has nobody to talk to and he's
so close to Touchwood and Touchwood's so close to him that being able to talk to him made it easy to express what his problem was at
the time. It's quite useful." "Lovely," Bayldon says of his amphibious co-star. "I got it wrong. I thought they were slimy, which
of course they're not. He was Hell on earth at first. Naturally when they said 'Action' to a toad, he didn't exactly jump into action.
Then one day he turned to the camera lens and he started climbing up and put a paw straight onto the lens. From then on you couldn't stop him."
First broadcast on 15 February 1970, its hilarious dialogue, delightful acting, lustrous production, fine direction and intriguing cameo roles
from well-known actors like Hattie Jacques and Hilda Braid made Catweazle an instant smash and a second series an inevitability.
"Unfortunately the second series had a different producer and a different team," says Carpenter. "I wanted to keep the same cast.
I wanted to keep the farm." "They were thinking financially about going to America," says Bayldon. "They wanted it posh. So we had a lovely
lord and lady and a son to match. But it didn't sell to America." The first episode of Catweazle series two aired on 10 January 1971 and found
Catweazle who had discovered a way back to his own time in the finale of the first series - once again catapulted accidentally into the 20th
century. As with the first series, a teenage boy - Cedric (Gary Warren) - becomes his not entirely enthusiastically as he hides away from an often
terrifying new world. A twist is provided by the fact that both Cedric and Catweazle wish to crack a magic spell the boy has found in the
stately home in which he lives, Catweazle's motivation being that he believes it will give him the power
of flight.
During the making of the second series, Carpenter found himself having to resist the suggestions of script doctors, while Bayldon found himself
acting out some slapstick scenes that he detested. "There were episodes in it that are absolutely marvellous," he says, "but there were some that
really miss it. There were about two that I wish didn't exist. The humour of Catweazle is Catweazle. Not 'laugh because he's covered in plaster',
that sort of thing. You're laughing at his situation, not at him." While Carpenter and Bayldon agree
that the second series didn't match up to the first, they are unanimous in judging the finale to be majestic. In a beautifully shot scene, Catweazle -
who has now realised he is trapped in the modern age - commandeers a hot air balloon and exults in what he imagines is his capturing the coveted
power of flight.
END OF THE ROAD
Bayldon and Carpenter have differing memories about why Catweazle did not win a third series. Carpenter says that internal politics at LWT scuppered
it but Bayldon says he opposed one on the grounds that the character was running out of modern marvels to be amazed by:
"It was mentioned. I was firm. It was still marvellously popular, enormously so, and I thought, 'No. Catweazle's seen most of the 20th century'."
However, the beauty of the Catweazle concept has ensured an afterlife, whether via French time travel movie "Les Visiteurs" (1993)
which seems inspired by it, the lovingly complied and annotated DVDs or the belated Catweazle movie on the horizon. Carpenter feels he has
at least one explanation for this longevity. "The way to make fantasy work is if it looks real," he says. "You've got to
believe in Catweazle. He's funny but he's real. Magic for him ain't funny, ain't a game. It's his lifeblood and it has to be played completely for real.
It's funny because it's serious. Comedy is serious. That's the best sort of comedy."
Catweazle: The Movie?
A Catweazle movie has long been mooted but only now is it a serious proposition, courtesy of German production company Nimea.
Carpenter, who has completed a script, naturally asked Bayldon to reprise his role but was rebuffed because the 84-year-old
Bayldon feels himself too old, "I'm agin it," says Bayldon, saying the as-yetunnamed new actor will either, be someone "imitating me,
which will be horrible or doing It their way which will be unrecognisable". Carpenter though is thrilled by the project: "The first thing
that kicked me off as a writer was Catweazle and it will be the last thing that I do, probably."
|
|
|
|
 Druckversion
_______________________________________________________________________
© Alle verwendeten Bilder, Fotos, Grafiken, Logos und Namen
sind
möglicherweise urheberrechtlich geschützt und Eigentum ihrer
jeweiligen Inhaber. Webseite erstellt von Braun.
Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
2006 -
2010
|
|
|
|
Link: |
|
|
Offizieller Fan Club
| |
English
Fan Club
