Word: alec
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...role that Alec knows from painful personal experience. He began to study it in Marylebone, a lower-middle-class section of West London, where he was born on April 2, 1914. His absence of identity is an official fact; no record of his birth exists. Last week Alec cautiously made a statement on the subject to a TIME correspondent: "My father generated me in his 64th year. He was a bank director. Quite wealthy. His name was Andrew. My mother's name is Agnes. He was a handsome old man, white-haired. A Scotsman. I saw him only four...
...Never Make an Actor." Alec never speaks of the first six years of his life, but they were apparently fairly grim. His mother drifted from one resort to another along the Channel coast, from one boarding house to another. Little Alec tagged along, a quiet child, well-behaved, playing alone in corners. At six he was packed off to a middle-class English boarding school called Pembroke Lodge, where his expenses were paid from an education fund set up by his father. Being shy and peculiar and no good at sports, he came in for plenty of ragging. Says Alec...
...twelve he was transferred to Roborough, a somewhat better-known school, where the dramatic society specialized in Gilbert & Sullivan. Since Alec could not (and still cannot) carry a tune, he shifted scenery. One day he ventured to say he wanted to be an actor. One of the masters sadly shook his head. "You'll never make an actor, Guinness...
...Alec graduated near the top of his class, but could not afford dramatic school. So he took a job in London as an ad writer. Subjects: "bottled lime juice, radio valves, razor blades." Salary: ?1 (then $3.50) a week, most of which was spent for theater tickets. Guinness was good at the job, but after 18 months he had had it. "I felt I had to quit, and do something about the stage." But how to begin? He knew nobody in the theater. He called his favorite actor, John Gielgud, who listened sympathetically and sent him to study with Actress...
...then all at once the education fund ran out. Desperate, he went to see Gielgud, who got him a tryout-and another and another. No luck. Gielgud had nothing left to offer but a loan. Alec was close to starving. He had eaten nothing but a green apple, a bun and a glass of milk in 24 hours. His last pair of shoes were so far gone that he was walking the streets of London barefoot to save leather. But he refused the kindness and tottered out, weak with hunger...