Picture this: Gertrude, chalice in hand. The King stands; "Gertrude, do not drink."

She turns to him, her expression confused at first. They stare at each other in silence, she studies his face.

And last one goodnight..

Anthony Quinn and Laurence Olivier during rehearsal for the stage production of “Becket” at the St. James Theatre in 1960.

—

“He gave his lectures in a very, very small room and didn’t address us, his audience, at all. In fact he looked the other way, with his face almost squashed up against the blackboard. He spoke in a mutter. His mind was on finishing Lord of the Rings, and he was really musing to himself about the nature of narrative. But I found this so fascinating that I came back week after week, as did one other person. I’ve always wondered what became of him, because he was obviously equally fascinated. And because we stuck there, Tolkien couldn’t go away and write Lord of the Rings! He would say the most marvelous things about the way you take a very basic plot and twitch it here and twitch it there–and it becomes a completely different plot.”

THE PLOT :