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Tony Hancock Face to Face Interview Part 01
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- Опубликовано: 16 мар 2009
- First Broadcast - June 1960.
Hancock appears on the BBC's Face to Face, a half-hour in-depth interview programme conducted by John Freeman. Freeman asks Hancock many searching questions about his life and work.
Happy 100th birthday Tony! You are still one of the greatest British comedians.
He died aged 44....just saying
@@user-ly8bq3tx5j- 44 is no age, not these days anyway.
Its certainly less than 100
@@user-ly8bq3tx5j - Quite so. I'd like to think that wherever Hancock is, he would be flattered by our toasting him on his centenary.
@@alexdavies7394 I thought he was dead ?
Very sad that he was clearly so depressed and took his own life. He gave such joy to others, RIP Tony
As a young kid I watched an episode of his TV show because my family all said he was so funny. I couldn't bear it I could feel Hancock's unhappiness through his comedy and it really affected me. It was only years later I could enjoy his comedy .
you can see the sadness in his eyes
Still sadly missed. A genius comic that sadly suffered from illness. I grew up many years after he died but thankfully was able to listen to his comedy thanks to my dad. Thanks Tony, you still make our family laugh to this day! I hope to see you and the rest of the cast in the hand & racquet some day :)
After seeing this interview I have a craving for reading good literature, which I used to voraciously devour as a younger man, again.
This man has such sensitivity and depth.
Thank you for sharing the interview.
I felt just the same..I'm watching a lot of Hancock interviews and old clips at the moment and like you say, find him a deep thinking, sensitive man, who despite his very sad ending brought a lot of smiles to me..when I was a teenager I loved 'The rebel' and so many of my contemporaries had never seen it..now, I'm pleased to say, it is more widely appreciated...as is his greater body of work
I agree...I read all Dickens (Conan Doyle, Bronte, History)..but then, got a flippin phone! 😏
Need to start READING again!
- a Chapter at a time! 😃
Ah, the lad himself. Hancock one of the great comics of genius.
Poor Tony. I loved listening to Hancock’s Half Hour when I was young. Watching this man Freeman crassly attempting to expose, exploit, worm his way into honest overwhelmed Hancock made me both sad and angry for him. I lived around the corner in Belleview Hill Sydney from the apartment he died in.
Notice how this program focused almost entirely on its subject. In some ways this was John Freeman's series, but we hardly see him. Can you imagine any interviewer standing for that today?
Freeman insisted on anonymity throughout his remarkably varied career. He never wrote his memoirs, refused to be interviewed, rejected honors and ended his days in a retirement home.
Lovely man, taken advantage of, a master of his craft, god rest his soul.
You want to reach out and give him a hug. RIP Tony.
Very wise Tony.. very wise... Tony Hancock is one of the few entertainers that I never get tired of... must of been a rare talent.
It's astonishing to think he was only 36 in this interview, he was certainly wiser than his years, even if he looked older than he actually was...
That's what heavy drinking does to you and people looked older back then.
I think that was a feature of young people in the past,, they often had much harder lives than those of us from younger generations. Also young people wanted to seem older to be taken more seriously.
Just finished reading When The Wind Changed: The Life and Death of Tony Hancock by Cliff Goodwin and the background to his decision to do this interview is really interesting and a bit too complex to summarise here. If you're interested in Hancock, then I'd recommend this book - it delves really deeply into the mind of this very complex (and ultimately tragic) character.
A thoughtful man who was obviously nervous in the interviewee chair. But honest and intelligent. A truly great comedian it has to be said.
What Wonderful drawings of TH!
Along with the perfect music!
Fascinating. I like the way he kept coming back to generosity towards the subjects of his comedy.
A genius but like many geniuses a troubled soul and tortured by his own self doubt. We miss you Tony.
Tony Hancock, Robin Williams, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and many others have battled depression.
They could make others laugh but couldn't do the same to themselves.
We all wish we could have helped them have a happier life.
RIP!
4 of those were manic depressives. It’s a killer
How many present-day comedians have this depth of feeling and intellect?
if theyre real comedians Im guessing a lot
Plenty, there are thousands of comedians. Don't think of the Amy Schumers of the world.
Tears in his eyes as he spoke. He was a genius
The lost Hancock"s half hour showd are now on BBC Sounds. Amazing.
I totally see where he was coming from, I'm 68 now, but in my younger years i was the life & soul of the party, always good for a laugh, but really i was a very shy person & only after alcohol i became a completely different person, sadly i have suffered from depression for the past 35 years, but even when i was that laugh a minute character, when alone i can become so down & depressed. People like me have 2 masks, the one you put on when you walk through the front door & the one you put on when returning.
Tony ditched everyone, his writers Galton&Simpson, his Wife, his co-stars. And eventually Himself. 🥺
It's called depression
He seemed so much older than his years
According to Tony's brother, Roger, self-analysis is eventually what led to his suicide. And he firmly believed the decline to that began with this interview. "It was the biggest mistake he ever made," he said. I can almost believe this, given the rather high-handed and superior tone of John Freeman. At times, it almost feels as if he is questioning Hancock's intellectual integrity. 'Come on, you must know...' and suchlike comments. I found it a very uncomfortable interview - as Hancock did. I think that's quite obvious. Hancock was an intelligent man, but not an educated one. There's a deep sense of insecurity in him, possibly because of this. Freeman, at times, seemed to be taking advantage of that.
Yes I've long thought that. I was too young to have seen this when it was broadcast but saw it in my teens when I began to enjoy Hancock's work. It remains a fascinating piece of TV but perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Tony was an intelligent man, he spent a few years at Public School (i.e posh private school ) in his teens ,but never went to university. The same was true of his writers Galton and Simpson, I don't think either of them attended University either. This was a rare time in Britain when people from working and lower middle class families could make it big in the Arts and in comedy. The nobs took over again sadly.
There is added context here that Hancock was a huge admirer of Freeman. It is a wonderful interview … probing and seeks to explore at a deeper level. I was fully engaged throughout.
The interviewer didn't understand him, you can tell they're just not on the same page
Patronizing and condescending are the words that come to mind. Even though the interviewer probably thought he wasn’t. A product of the British so called ‘public’ education system. In other words, private school and superior. Nowadays he would be considered a pompous wanker that was not even in Hancocks ballpark.
Absolutely. A pompous, pretentious creep!
This interview was the beginning of the end, he was profoundly shaken by the experience. It sent him on a downward spiral that eventually ended his life.
When not acting, and speaking as himself, his Birmingham accent comes through.
Very interesting person.
Fascinating interview. I think John Freeman really has Hancock 'on the defensive' especially on his BBC salary, and his overall discomfort over the whole experience.
8:50 - £30,000 a year from the BBC was a truly enormous amount of money to be paid to an actor in 1960. Tony would also be subjected to high tax if he earned that salary in 1960.
Do you know what that is the equivalent in todays money, I'm interested thanks
@@evonneashley7834 Just over £700,000 in 2020 money. Also remember in 1960, the top rate of income tax was massive too for anything over £20,000 per year. Tony would have paid a whopping near 80% income tax and national insurance on that.
I don't think Tony would have been surprised by the interviewer as he would have expected it-he suffered depression and in those days there wasn't the help available
This really hurts
This entire series, from Hancock to King to Adam Faith - illustrates in technicolor what we have lost as a civilisation in 60 years. Depth replaced by tawdry superficial glitter. A tragedy for all of us in the UK.
We are circling the drain
Wonderful subject and interviewer
Sad that this man took his own life. His soul was evidently searching. I hope he found what he was looking for.❤️🙏.x
Very intrusive questions. This interview would never take place today - even if we had anyone as talented and intellectual as TH.
Tony was part of the original inspiration for Al Stewart’s classic song, “Year Of The Cat”…
i can't help noticing the so very sad look in his eyes.
yes v sad eyes
The first time I saw this program was as it is parodied in Harry Enfield's "Norbert Smith: A Life". I hadn't realized how accurate his parody was. This is such a strange style of interview, and it makes me uncomfortable.
His shows were very funny. I hear the repeats onthe radio. But, the image often hides the real person. I feel depression is something more common than what we think . It's a awful , nasty illness. It can take the best human beings possible away from us.
Please treat people with depression as more precious than gold . They have the most sensitive of spirits .
If I remember correctly during his working career John Freeman was the UK's man in Washington DC.
He had an incisive and charming way of questioning that took many interviewee's by surprise who because of this natural charm talked about themselves more openly than we suspected they would. It would be foolish for the interviewee to appear evasive in such close-up as the 'trap' was set by Freeman, in this (at the time) new style of television interviewing.
John Freeman: Saver of Hancock and Humens!
Anyone know where i can see the Gilbert Harding face to face?
interesting man
@BarnacleGooseInvalid Sorry to revive such an old comment but it is on the first page. I kind of see a link between this and the probing interviews now on programmes like Shrink Wrap and, to a lesser extent, Jonathan Miller on the superior In Confidence.
Tony Hancock was a great comic actor brought down by his own insecurities.
It is totally bizarre that he is interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face. There is no point to that arrangement.
Hancock needed to be interviewed by someone like Stan Laurel.
Now wouldn’t that be a momentous interview ...... Tony Hancock being interviewed by Stan Laurel😇
It seems to have been considered an honour to appear in this programme. I was too young to see it but have watched a number of them as an adult.
Oh Hancock! ..... Oh Berlioz! ...... Oh Life!
It's hard for people now to understand just how famous he was in Britain at the time. This was before The Beatles, he was the most famous celebrity in Britain.
Arguable.
Dirk Bogarde, Cliff Richard and Stanley Baker were as famous.
@stevebritgimp Yes he had the greatest of all writers but his imperfections are part of the man, it makes him human.
And good luck to you mate.
Funny how his accent is almost Australian.
This was a catastrophic interview for Hancock especially when Freeman asked him twice about his breakdowns, it was discraceful behaviour on the part of Freeman, I found it painful to watch then and still do now!
TH was a massive talent who went before his time. In this interview he was only about 36 but you'd think he was in his fifties. This begs the question: If he hadn't committed suicide, would he have seen old age anyway?
I doubt it. He was warned about a year before he died if he carried on drinking he had only three month to live.
It seems to me that a great deal of the philosophy that Tony Hancock alludes to here with regards his view on comedy, and indeed by extension that he portrayed through the comic character that was Tony Hancock, is mirrored in the approach that Stewart Lee takes in the portrayal of his own comedic personality. Comedy made manifest through the exposure of the absurdness that lays at the heart of nearly all human character. Weakness, flaws and the affectation built thereon. We are all indeed quite laughable in the final analysis and in laughing at them we are absolutely laughing at ourselves.
Except that Stewart Lee ain't all that funny and I would consider myself a comedy nerd.
Tony looked very nervous, did'nt he know what the interviewer was going to say?
Does anyone know the name of the music please?
Yea sod the interview the music's nice haha
Answering your question the music is an extract from Berlioz's opera "Les franc juges"
ruclips.net/video/HnKSfq9heeo/видео.htmlsi=Nw9ogvRsRCcR5OF0
Start at 5.00
Quite a revelation to hear the 'real' and more serious Tony Hancock, who is far more intelligent than his comedic persona. I just wish Freeman or the director had told him to pull down his trouser leg over his sock, it spoils the impression of seriousness Hancock was hoping to convey by appearing on the show.Ruddy philistines.
after 1961.he seemed to age very quick.
did you know that John Freeman is still alive? He is 95 and the last surviving member of of the 1945 parliament
He died at the end of 2014
@@alanberkeley7282 Enigmatic to the last. Probably the most mysterious public figure in modern British history: army officer, politician, journalist, TV interviewer, diplomat, businessman, professor and amateur bowling champion. He also had a string of attractive wives and girlfriends, but he simply refused to talk about them or anything else, and he never wrote an autogiography. Died plain 'Mr' too.
Who is "Helton"?
6:11 What does he say?
The questions are very quickfire.
Tony should've just been more careful, and more of a team player. Amazing to later see the toll of those 8 years between 60-68.
galton and Simpson!;-)
Almost an alternative version of Mastermind
Amazing to think how comedy has gone so downhill since his days and on another note we have gone from this intelligent thoughtfully conducted interview to sycophant interviewers like Graham Norton and the rest!
He seemed to have Aspergers as most creative people do
It would have been good if the interviewer had got a grilling to try to destroy him.
Rude interview, asking about money and religion. He was one of the greatest comedians, a very smart man.
The real comedy genius were GALTON AND SIMPSON.
Writers never get their due. I always speak up for good comedy writers like Ray and Alan, also Sid Green and Dick Hills, who used to write in their pre BBC days for Morecambe and Wise, when I think they were a lot funnier.
I really find it hard to see what the big fuss is about hancock. He had truly brilliant writers and supporting comedians and yet the evidence shows, that when he went it alone he was found wanting. I think some comedians work better when they bounce off other people. I believe hancock was one of those comedians.
@AirSea1000 I'm afraid I don't agree. Some of this seems more like an interrogation than an interview - especially the unnecessary prying into his income. I'd have told him to mind his own business.
I thought Spike Milligan would have been more sympathetic to Hancock's depression considering he was Bipolar
They would probably have ended up swapping gags.
Probably not, as there was no such thing as rehab in those days.
Yes there was. Only it wasn't called "rehab" and it was kept quiet.
Where has all the pomposity gone?
Long time passing.
Oh Tony, why did the camera shoot the bloody bare leg between your sock and your trousers. Now that's tragi-comic!
@peterdcarter1 My 'good luck, mate' was directed at Tony, but good luck to you too, bud - we all need it, else we fuck up bigtime, then there's no going back. Yes, it does make him human. It makes him a dead and missed human. Sid James drove past him once near the end on a London street, and he looked dreadful, and Sid regretted not being able to stop and help. Some of us need help I think (I probably do myself).
Was that when Sid stopped to say hello and Tony said "Come and 'ave a Turkish Bath" and Sid didn't have time? Tony probably just needed to talk to a fellow comic actor and former friend. It might have been another comic who told this anecdote but the sadness of it stuck with me.
@@thedativecase9733 No, that was Bill Kerr's story.
Evelyn Waugh took Freeman apart 😂
I am the same as Hancock in that a belief in God became simply gratuitous at around the age of 15 or 16. And also that I believe that there should not be a reward for acting in a loving and caring way towards others.
Geniuses always are troubled.
Depression is a serious illness but, not spoken of back then.
My mum had depression all her life but wouldn't admit it because that was like admitting you were "mad" so she never received the help which might have helped her.
I had no idea he was from Birmingham.
All you need to know is, while he's talking, he shows his shin above his sock. There is nothing funnier. Everything he's said is subordinate to that
@stevebritgimp more of a team player? maybe he should have got an office job and worked in HR. pffff
Oh wow, black and white times
This interviewer is terrifying. You don’t get that anymore.
I keep expecting him to ask “have you ever struck a pony in anger”
EDIT: “Now you do go abroad a lot don’t you, why?” - what a stupid question
Face to Face would struggle today. Difficult to find celebs with intelligence and integrity. The modern ones all have skeletons in the closet. However, it seems to me that they put them there in the first place so they could talk about them.
Being philosophical about comedy is like taking a rose apart and trying to see what it is by the pieces. Freeman should have kept off comedy and asked more about Hancock's ideas about life. The comedy questions went nowhere.
Tony, Bernie, Bobby, Tom, Steve, Pat, Mel, Jim, Don, Ron, Kenny, Kenneth, Benny, Kelly, Jimmy.
Ronnie, Johnny, Gary, Tommy, Bob. Bobby. All of them, where? And why not now? One has the sudden uncontrollable urge to read, to tower like Tony, intellectually, if it's in one. They were all ones. Giant ones. Where'd'all the giant ones go? One doesn't see no ones anymore. Load of crap now, that couldn't tower over an ant if it came up to them.
I can see where Nigel Farage got his inspiration from.
@peterdcarter1 Well maybe, then he might not have wrecked a marriage and ended up as a massive alcoholic, who committed suicide. Sometimes we need to acknowledge the talent of the writers we work with, and the other actors. Hancock thought he could go it alone, sacked the two best comedy writers the UK produced, and his agent. Good luck, mate.
.."You don't believe in God or might you adopt some other Christian religion?"
Excuse me John?
Not really sure of the point you are trying to make. Helton and Simpson are great writers, who without Hancock had a highly successful writing partnership, with hits such as a little known comedy, steptoe and son. The point I was trying to put across is that natural talent and ability always shines through. With or without good writing. I'm not saying Hancock was talentless. Just very overrated. Look at someone like Kenneth Williams.
Steptoe and Son was a massive hit in the UK and I have discovered also in places like Australia where it was shown. Americans also say Sanford and Son was superior not realising it was totally ripped off from Steptoe - the early scripts were just Steptoe scripts ( e.g. The Offer) tweaked for a US audience. Steptoe was at least as famous over here as Hancock, and kept going successfully for over a decade. There is a recording of the two Steptoe stars appearing at a Royal Variety Performance back in the 1960s when it was worth watching. The audience goes wild with applause before they have even spoken. You can feel the love coming from that audience even now, half a century later. I don't think many comic actors would get that kind of passionate recognition from a crowd now.
If you don’t like at least some of Hancock then you don’t really like comedy, although his humour, it must be said, was unconventional and was very much created between the character and the situation. Hancock loathed gags and forbade his scriptwriters to indulge in them, however at the end of the day he was only as good as the material they wrote for him. As a technician though he was flawless, possessing a sense of comic timing and facial expressions unequalled by anybody in Britain except Peter Sellers or Kenneth Williams.
Yes it's easy to be too hard on Tony, he really did come up the hard way as he points out. He was fortunate in hooking up with the brilliant Galton and Simpson.
Sounds like an Aussie here?
I think that interviewer would have been great fun on a night out ' now you say your happy but was does that mean what does it say about you Are you sure you ok with who you are.....
This interview doesn't really work. Even by Freeman's own standards, he is too pressing and it yields woolly, repetitious responses from an obviously uncomfortable guest. At the end of the day, Hancock (for all his comedic gifts) was nothing without writers of the calibre of Galton and Simpson. His failure to accept that was surely central to his premature demise. Tony was an essentially one-character, comic actor as opposed to a creative performer with 'funny bones'. A deeply sad story. Having said all that, the 'Face to Face' format deserves a revival (such as Jeremy Isaacs fronted very successfully in the 1990s), although very few subjects would be up to such intense scrutiny.
Neil Turnham
1 second ago
Fair point about his reliance on good scriptwriters. A great interpreter of material though which is a talent in itself.
I always thought that Hancock was a boring little snot, but then I was only 19 when he removed himself. Why the big fuss about him?
Get a life, Reg! ( "von Zugbach??" as if. )
Whilst Hancock as THE Hancock character written by Galton and Simpson is genius performance ,what always seems to be either missed or glossed over is that without GALTON and SIMPSON , tonys writing was absolute rubbish. His stage show was old fashioned ,boring and lacked any of the genius of the shows...
Here he is interviewed as tho he is the writer of the hancock character which he fantasises IS his creation.
Yes it's true some of the elements of the character are from the real Tony...it should be empathised more who were the REAL GENIUS of this character and show..Galton and Simpson..comedy legends.
I have read numerous books about Hancock and the Kenneth Williams Diaries. They all say the same thing he be nothing wthout good script writers and Tony Hancock did have an ego. His ATV stuff is awful his stand up was a flop. Then again Kenneth Williams was a one trick pony and needed writers, everything he did on his own never took off.
Can anyone help? Tony's accent is strange. Not quite full-on British. I detect traces of Australian.
Now - I know he went to Australia in the last year of his life, but that could be co-incidental to his accent. So - anyone who replies, pls just concentrate on his accent in this vid ...
Do you deny that you’re earning in excess of 30,00 a year? What? Mind you own f……g business……
Never found him funny.
He was never funny.
What an awful interviewer , he may aswell as answered himself