Sir Anthony Quayle, RIP - obituary

National Review, Nov 24, 1989

Sir Anthony Quayle, RIP

SIR ANTHONY QUAYLE wasn't terribly well known to Americans: they knew him mostly from his subordinate roles in such films as Lawrence of Arabia and The Guns of Navarone, or from his few but triumphant stage appearances here--in Sleuth, for example, and Brecht's Galileo. The English were luckier. They could see him on the boards as Falstaff, Petruchio, Henry V, Macbeth, Antony, Aaron (in Titus Andronicus), and Shaw's Jack Tanner. He brought to these roles, and dozens of others, a powerful frame, a magnificent voice, and a versatile technique. He made an even greater success as a director at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. In his politics he was robustly conservative, an excellent thing in an actor. But it was in his art that he held his own in the era that included Olivier, Gielgud, Guinness, Richardson, Scofield, Redgrave, Hordern, and Burton, until his final exit at age 76.

NOTES & ASIDES

In our November 10 issue we published an editorial under the title, "Peggy Noonan Grosses Out." It was a severe criticism of the publicity fetched up by Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan, in the New York Times Magazine. The editorial, and the ensuing furor, suggest that it is time to reassert one editorial point, and to revise an editorial position.

The unsigned editorial, in any journal, represents, broadly speaking, the views of "management." That can be the publisher, or the editor, or the stockholders. It is generally assumed that an editorial also represents the views of senior editors.

In fact, often this is not the case. A famous historical example involved the New York Times when, in October 1952, Arthur Hays Sulzberger pushed the button that said: "Come out for Dwight Eisenhower for President." This was a commitment Mr. Sulzberger had made to the Eisenhower movement back when it was fighting against Robert Alphonso Taft for the soul of the Republican Party. But between the time the commitment was made and the time for its execution, Adlai Stevenson was born, and lo! the shepherds crowded round about the new liberal incarnation. None of the twenty-odd editors of the New York Times consented to write an editorial in favor of Dwight Eisenhower--so Mr. Sulzberger had to hire a freelancer. The "New York Times" came out for Eisenhower. The whole of the senior staff of the editorial department was for Stevenson.

Such anomalies, here depicting a lopsided polarization, happen. There are occasions when, at NATIONAL REVIEW, we publish editorials which do not represent the thinking of all the editors. When editors are genuinely provoked by such occurrences, they have (uniquely) the privilege of asking for an "Open Question." That is a column in which the dissenter gives the reasons for disagreeing with the editorial position taken by the journal with which he is associated.

The editorial against Miss Noonan was pretty severe, and it is worth while pausing to explain why. Our position dates back to the publication by the late Emmet John Hughes of a volume in which he described what life had been like working as a speechwriter for Dwight Eisenhower--who was still in office. President Eisenhower blew his famous lid, and let it be known that he considered that Hughes was guilty of violating professional confidences. We thought Ike's position both traditional and defensible, and have ever since tut-tutted the identification of speechwriters associated with any one presidential address. One of our senior editors has served as a presidential speechwriter and left no fingerprints. I have never identified the two speeches I have written for senior public figures.

But times have changed. Pat Buchanan writes us in his capacity as the man who "urged that Peggy Noonan be named to head [the Reagan speechwriting shop] when Ben Elliott resigned." He goes on to praise the quality of her work (never questioned in our editorial) and goes on to say, "On any famous speech," the press will identify its author. And adds, "now that the Reagan Administration is over, she [Miss Noonan] has the same right to publish her record of 'the way it was' as did Ted Sorensen, Richard Goodwin, Bill Safire, and Ray Price."

It was Bently Elliott who first hired Miss Noonan, and he makes another interesting point, challenging a point in our editorial. He quotes Miss Noonan's article in the Times: "Speechwriting in the Reagan White House was where the philosophical, ideological, and political tensions of the Administration got worked out." This sentence had struck us as vainglorious. Mr. Elliott explains:

"Read in . . . context, once competing views on policy were 'worked out' on that battleground called speechwriting, they were presented to the American people, often for the first time. Thus, to say that speechwriting was where the Administration got invented is, in fact, a shorthanded way of describing what often happened--even though that's not to say that Peggy Noonan is claiming personal credit for the tax cuts, SDI, Grenada, or anything else." And he closes, "Peggy Noonan was deeply devoted and personally loyal to Ronald Reagan. She helped to make a great man greater; so if, along the way, she has also reaped a small share of the credit, what's wrong with that?"