(6 of 9)
It is a 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 or five times. I was taught to call him uncle, but I suppose I always knew he was my father."
"You'll 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 expressionlessly: "One was a most unprepossessing child." To amuse himself, he built model theaters and played imaginary parts. One day he tried out for the school play. The headmaster inspected the scrawny little chap and sadly shook his head. "You'll never make an actor, Guinness."
At 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."
At 18, 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 Martita Hunt. After twelve sessions with the drab young man, she sadly shook her head. "You'll never make an actor, Mr. Guinness."
The £3 Week. Encouraged, perhaps, by the "Mister," Guinness applied to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art and somehow won a two-year scholarship. But could he afford to take it? His education fund allowed him 25 shillings (then $6.25) a week. By eating one meal a day (usually baked beans on toast), he managed to survive, and even to see a regular Saturday matinee. At school he worked hard; after hours, he tailed pedestrians all over London, mimicking their gait and gestures; and at the annual recital, the judges—Actor Gielgud among them—gave him a top prize.