81 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
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"I FELT LIKE THE
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PIED PIPER"
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by William Hartnell
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I was so pleased to be offered Doctor Who. To me kids are the greatest
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audience - and the greatest critics - in the world.
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It may seem like hindsight now, but I just knew that Doctor Who was
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going to be an enormous success. Don't ask me how. Not everybody
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thought as I did. I was universally scoffed at for my initial faith
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in the series, but I believed in it. It was magical.
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Before the part came along I'd been playing a bunch of crooks,
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sergeants, prison warders and detectives. Then, after appearing in THIS
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SPORTING LIFE, I got a phone call from my agent. He said, "I wouldn't
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normally have suggested you work in children's television, Bill, but
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there's a sort of character part come up that I think you'd just love
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to play."
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My agent said the part was that of an eccentric old grandfather-
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cum-professor type who travels in space and time. Well, I wasn't that
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keen, but I agreed to meet the producer.
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Then, the moment this brilliant young producer Miss Verity Lambert
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started telling me about Doctor Who, I was hooked. I remember telling her,
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"This is going to run for five years." And look what's happened!
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We did it forty-eight weeks a year in those days and it was very hard
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work. But I loves every minute.
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You know, I couldn't go out into the high street without a bunch of
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kids follwing me. I felt like the Pied Piper.
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People really used to take it literally. I'd get letters from boys
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swotting for O-levels asking complicated questions about time-ratio and
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the TARDIS. The Doctor might have been able to answer them - I'm afraid
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I couldn't! But I do believe there is life on other planets - and they
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know there's life here but don't have the technology to get through.
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Doctor Who is certainly a test for any actor. Animals and children are
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renowned scene-stealers and we had both - plus an assortment of monsters
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that became popular in their own right. Look at the Daleks. They started
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in the second series and were an immediate success.
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At one time (in late 1964) I thought we might extend the series and I
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suggested giving the Doctor a son and calling the programme The Son of
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Doctor Who. The idea was for me to have a wicked son. We would both
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look alike, each have a TARDIS and travel in outer space. In actual fact,
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it would have meant that I had to play a dual role when I `met' my son.
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But the idea was not taken up by the BBC so I dropped it. I still think
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it would have worked and been exciting to children.
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Memories? There are so many. There was the occasion when I arrived
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at an air display in the TARDIS and the kids were convinced I had flown it
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there! On another occasion I went by limousine to open a local fete. When
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we got there the children just converged on the car cheering and shouting,
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their faces all lit up. I knew then just how much the Doctor really
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meant to them.
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William Hartnell
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William Hartnell, the man that the Daleks could not kill, died
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on April 24, 1975, at the age of Sixty-seven. The proceeding essay
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were qoutes that he gave between 1963 and 1975.
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