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And 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.
On the way home, he passed a theater. Lightheaded and confused, he found himself asking for a tryout—at the box office. The stage manager happened to be there, and ten minutes later he had three parts: Chinese coolie, French pirate, British sailor. Salary: £2 a week. "But isn't the Equity minimum £3?" Alec shyly inquired. "None of that talk around here," the manager snarled. Alec said no more, but next day he quietly called Equity and got his £3. He was worth every penny. He threw himself passionately into the role of the coolie, even shaved the top of his head. "It was great for the part," the joke goes, "but terrible for the hair"—which never quite grew out again.
Aching Sincerity. Actor Guinness has never been out of a job since. Three months later he was playing Osric to Gielgud's Hamlet, and the critics took special note of his "admirable popinjay." Then it was William ("a wondrous blank") in As You Like It, Sir Andrew Aguecheek ("a collector's item") in Twelfth Night, Lorenzo ("meditative, star-struck beauty that takes the breath away") in The Merchant of Venice. And at 24, he played his first Hamlet in an Old Vic production directed by Tyrone Guthrie. Most critics agreed that the Hamlet lacked force, but one wrote that "it was touched with sweetness and an aching sincerity." By 1941, when he joined the Royal Navy as a seaman, Guinness had played 34 parts in 23 plays by Shakespeare, Sheridan, Pinero, Chekhov, Shaw; and a small loyal public had begun to follow his star. "It was obvious," says Director Tyrone Guthrie, "that he was going to be tremendously talented. It was not so obvious that he was going to be popular."
Guinness had a comparatively good war. Commissioned, he was sent to the Mediterranean as captain of an LCI, assigned to ferry butter and hay to the Yugoslav Partisans. On convoy duty, he recalls, he had trouble keeping his ship in line, and once, after several days of bad steering, he received a terse communication from the flagship: "Hebrews 13:8." He looked it up in the ship's Bible: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." In the invasion of Sicily he was the first ashore—a mistake in orders. When the admiral arrived at last, Guinness blandly assured him that such a tardy entrance would never be tolerated in the theater.