Wanamaker, Samuel

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 1988
SAMUEL WANAMAKER
to be Doctor of Laws

Like Doctor Dixon, Sam Wanamaker is something of a "bird of passage" who now makes his home in London but spends a good period of his time in L.A., and various other exotic spots around the globe. Born in Chicago, he may look familiar to many of you and this should not be surprising, for he is an actor and director of international stature, who for nearly fifty years has trod the boards and graced our movie and television screens.

He began his long life in the theatre at the age of eighteen when he played a myriad of parts in shortened versions of Shakespeare's plays at a representative Globe Theatre, which was one of the highlights of a World Exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio. After an intermission of a few years with the US Army in the South Pacific he returned to Broadway and the "big break." Every actor in the United States wanted to play the role of the director opposite Ingrid Bergman in Maxwell Anderson's Joan of Lorraine. He read for the part and won, even through at 27 he was much too young for the role. Within two weeks rehearsal he took over direction of a play which
became a huge success.

It would take all night to rehearse his dramatic credits since then, and I must content myself with a hop, skip and a jump through a truly formidable list. He came to London to make a remarkable film, "Christ in Concrete" and he quickly became the top American producer, director, and actor on the English stage. He capped this period of his early career by playing Iago opposite Paul Robeson in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre production of Othello. In 1960 he returned to the city of his birth to star in Macbeth and to restart a film career of over fifty films such as the "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" and "Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines." Most recently you may have seen him in a memorable role in the TV series, "Holocaust." If you are a lover of opera you will also know that he has directed War and Peace, the opening opera of the Sydney Opera House, two new operas at Covent Garden, and Pavarotti's debut in Aida in San Francisco.

Impressive as even this brief sketch must be, it is not for his distinguished achievements as an actor and director that we honour him tonight. Rather it is for his vision, his dream, and the determination and dedication which is bringing about the building of a new Globe theatre on the Bankside in London, just a few feet from the spot where William Shakespeare's playhouse stood. In July of last year his Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, presented to him and to the International Shakespeare Globe Centre an oak timber post from Windsor Great Park to join the 23 other posts staking out the perimeter of the new theatre. This event and the opening of the Centre have brought a twenty year dream close to fruition, and it is hoped that Shakespeare's birthday in 1992 will mark the formal opening of the Centre which is "dedicated to the study, appreciation and excellence in performance of Shakespeare's plays and to the reconstruction of his Globe playhouse on its original London Bankside site, as part of an international resource centre for people everywhere."

This new theatre will provide theatre historians and production scholars, actors and directors with the chance to test their theories with the production of Elizabethan plays on the stage and in the playhouse for which they were written. Such a working laboratory will be invaluable to all who are concerned with and fascinated by Shakespeare, and the English speaking world owes and will owe a great debt to Mr. Wanamaker.

He himself shares his delight and satisfaction with us when he writes:

This next joyous period ... consists of the exciting and creative tasks of fleshing out the vision, making the choices relating to the large permanent Exhibition which will tell for the first time the complete wonderful story of the Sheakespearean stage, the formation of a new first-rate acting company, their repertory and how they will function, and the development of an educational programme designed for the whole spectrum of needs from young children to research scholars, theatre students and theatre professionals. ... I shall be very proud and vindicated when it all becomes a reality. Being my life's work, so to speak, I shall feel that I have been able to contribute something of value to future generations.

I had thought of closing my citation of "Sam" by likening him to Prospero, but I am not sure that that really does him justice. After all. Prospero was a magus, a wizard who with a mere wave of his wand could command the elements, and conjure up Gods and Goddesses on the stage of "the great globe itself." Sam Wanamaker is as human as all of us, but he is also a man who has dreamed an impossible dream and is making it all come true through his seemingly inexhaustible energy and hard-headed determination. Much needs to be done — he confesses to being a "globe trotter" in search of funds — but a start has been made and his twenty year dream is now within his grasp. Knowing Sam, I am certain that he will neither relax his grip nor falter in the pursuit of his vision of Shakespeare being once again played on the London Bankside.

Insignissime Praeses, amplissima Cancellaria, tota Universitas, praesento vobis SAMUEL WANAMAKER ut admittatur honoris causa ad gradum DOCTOR1S in UTROQUE JURE in hac Universitate.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 2