Picture of Dorian Gray

[00:00:12] Speaker A: It's Mystery Time. Time now for the best in mystery. Tonight, Mystery classic stars Sir Lawrence Olivier in the Picture of Dorian Gray. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Good evening, this is Don Dowd, your host for Mystery Time. Tonight, as on every Thursday night, Mystery Time brings you mystery classics. Great stories of crime and punishment performed by famous stars. Tonight, a real treat. Sir Lawrence Olivier, regarded by many as the foremost actor in the world, brings to life Oscar Wilde's chilling classic story of a man and his portrait, the Picture of Dorian Gray. Here is a powerful drama of temptation, of evil and of the consequences. It's sure to hold you spelled so now transcribed Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray Starring Sir Lawrence Olivier as Lord Henry Wootton. [00:01:43] Speaker B: It was in Basil Hallward studio that I first met Dorian Gray. Hallward and I had been friends at Oxford, and after a few lean years he had emerged as one of London's most fashionable and successful painters. I dropped in to see him one afternoon and found him putting the finishing touches to his latest picture. The full length portrait of a young man whose looks could only be described as beautiful. It's your best work, my lord. You must certainly send it next year to the Brooklyn. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. [00:02:21] Speaker C: I don't think I'll send it anywhere. I know you'll laugh at me, but I really can't exhibit it. I put too much of myself into it. [00:02:27] Speaker B: Too much of yourself in it. I can't see any resemblance between you and this young Adonis. He looks as though he was made out of ivory and rose leaves. [00:02:36] Speaker C: I sometimes wonder whether he isn't too good looking. After all, there's a sort of fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction. And Dorian Gray's beauty is enough. [00:02:45] Speaker B: Dorian Gray. So that's his name. [00:02:47] Speaker C: Yes, though I didn't intend to tell you. [00:02:49] Speaker D: Why not? [00:02:50] Speaker C: Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their name to anyone. It's like surrendering a pardon them. That's what you think. That's foolish. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I'm married. And the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary to both parties. [00:03:06] Speaker C: You know you don't believe that, Harry. You never say a moral thing and never do a wrong one. Your cynicism is simply opposed. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Being natural is simply opposed. The most irritating pose. I know, but tell me more. About Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him? [00:03:21] Speaker C: Every day. He's all my art to me now. I see him in everything I paint. Her. I suppose he would say he inspires me. [00:03:30] Speaker B: I look forward to meeting him. [00:03:31] Speaker C: I don't want you to eat, Mary. I know you far too well at the moment. Dorian's simple, sincere and charming. I know just how to amuse you at a change. All make him hard and cynical and vicious. All that you like to think you are yourself. I don't want that to happen. I want to keep Dorian the way he is now. Not only beautiful in looks, but in nature. [00:03:50] Speaker E: Oh. [00:03:52] Speaker C: Oh, come in. Dorian, this is Lord Henry Wood, an Oxford friend of mine. [00:03:58] Speaker D: How do you do? Lord Henry. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome. There was something in his face which made one like him at once. All the candor of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. [00:04:19] Speaker D: Are you really a bad influence over your friends, Lord Henry, like Basil says you are? [00:04:24] Speaker B: There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gregory. All influence is immoral. [00:04:28] Speaker D: Why? [00:04:29] Speaker B: Because to influence a person is to give him one soul. He does not think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passion. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. [00:04:42] Speaker D: I had never thought of it that way. [00:04:44] Speaker B: The aim of life is self development. I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy with would forget all our melodies. As it is, we are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Live the wonderful life. [00:05:09] Speaker C: It's certainly given the most wonderful expression. I really think I've caught it on the canvas. [00:05:14] Speaker D: Animation. [00:05:15] Speaker C: Sheer surprise of it. Come and see what you think. [00:05:18] Speaker B: I really think it's your masterpiece. I'll give you anything you'd like to ask for it. [00:05:22] Speaker C: Well, he doesn't mind to sell Harry. [00:05:24] Speaker B: What is it, then? [00:05:25] Speaker C: Dorian, of course. [00:05:27] Speaker B: He's a lucky fellow, then. [00:05:28] Speaker D: How sad it is. I shall grow old and horrible and dreadful. But this picture will always remain young. It'll never be older than this particular day in June. If only it were the other way around. If only it was I that would stay young and the picture that was to grow old for that I would give everything. There's nothing in the world that I wouldn't give. I would even give my soul from [00:05:52] Speaker B: the moment I first set Eyes on Dorian. I knew the power and influence I could exert over him. Within a month, Dorian was a new and vivid being. Never marry a woman like my wife with straw colored hair. Dorian. [00:06:12] Speaker D: Why not, Harry? [00:06:13] Speaker B: Because they're so sentimentary. [00:06:15] Speaker D: But I like sentimental people. [00:06:16] Speaker B: Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they're tired, women because they're curious. Both are disappointed. [00:06:23] Speaker D: I don't think I'm likely to marry, Harry. I'm too much in love. That is one of your aphorisms. I'm putting it into practice as I do everything you say. [00:06:31] Speaker B: And who are you in love with, Dorian? [00:06:33] Speaker D: With an actress. [00:06:34] Speaker B: An actress? That's rather a commonplace debut. [00:06:37] Speaker A: Who is she? [00:06:37] Speaker D: Her name is Sybil Vane. [00:06:39] Speaker B: Never heard of her. [00:06:40] Speaker D: No one has. But people will someday. She's a genius. [00:06:43] Speaker B: My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over moral. [00:06:56] Speaker D: Annie, your views terrify. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Never mind that. How long have you known her? [00:06:59] Speaker D: About three weeks. It would never have happened if I hadn't met you. You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life. For days after I met you, something seemed to throb in my veins. I began to wander all over London looking for new experiences. And I found her in a cheap little theater in the East End. She was playing Juliet. I have never seen anything so exquisite. She is a wonderful actress. [00:07:21] Speaker B: You've met her, I suppose? [00:07:23] Speaker D: I see her every evening. Her and her mother, who plays in the same company. Their home, the theatre. Everything else is mean and ugly and squalid. But Sibyl herself transmutes the world around her. She is the great passion of my life. [00:07:37] Speaker B: You mean she's the first romance of your life? This is merely the beginning. [00:07:42] Speaker D: Do you think my nature so shallow? [00:07:43] Speaker B: My dear boy, the people who only love once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty and their fidelity, I call their lack of imagination. How horrid you are. [00:07:54] Speaker D: I wish I had never told you about it. [00:07:55] Speaker B: You couldn't help telling me, Dorian. You'll always tell me everything. You. Dorian's love affair was really a considerable ball, as it meant that he was never to be found in a club for dinner. Like the new Dorian himself, passionate and exciting. I rather regarded that love affair as my own creation. And I was perfectly sure that I could put a stop to it whenever I felt so disposed. When Dorian solemnly announced that he was going to marry the Girl. Therefore, I felt that the time had come. I went with him to the theater to see his Juliet. And a flatter, more uninspired bit of acting I've never seen in my life. Even the gallery booed the poor guy. [00:08:46] Speaker D: But what on earth is the matter with her? I've never seen her act so badly. She was like a different. [00:08:51] Speaker B: She's very beautiful, Dorian, I grant you, but she certainly cannot act. [00:08:55] Speaker D: I can't understand it. Perhaps she was ill or something. Come round with me to her dressing room. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Thank you, no. I prefer the club. Why don't you come too, and forget all about it? We'll drink to the beauty of Sybil Vane, for she is beautiful, and what more can you want from that? After all, I don't suppose you want your. Your wife to act. Will you? So what's it matter if she plays Juliet like a wooden doll? After all, if she knows as little about life as she does about acting, she'll be a delightful experience. [00:09:21] Speaker D: Go away, Harry. I want to be alone with her for a few. I'm furious that you should have seen her give such a terrible performance. There must be some reason for it. I've got to find out what that reason is. [00:09:31] Speaker B: I might have explained to him that love is very much the same thing as art, since both are similar, simply forms of imitation as it was. His discovery of their interdependence threw him rather out of continence. As well it might if his account of the interview was correct. [00:09:47] Speaker D: Sybil, what on earth was the matter? [00:09:49] Speaker E: You mean how badly I acted tonight? [00:09:51] Speaker D: It was dreadful. Are you ill? You've no idea what I suffered. I brought a close friend to see you, told him that you were a Regina historian. [00:09:59] Speaker E: You should have understood why I was Besnard. Why I shall always be. Why she'll never act well again. [00:10:06] Speaker D: You're ill, I suppose when you're ill, you shouldn't act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friend was bored. [00:10:11] Speaker E: So was I, Dorian, before I knew you. Acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theater that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, Portia another. I believed in everything. The people I acted with seemed godlike. The painted scene, the were my words. [00:10:30] Speaker D: I don't know what you're trying to say, Dorian. [00:10:32] Speaker E: You taught me what reality really is. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I thought through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the part I was playing. I saw that Romeo was hideous and old and painted, that the scenery was vulgar and the moonlight false. The words I had to speak were unwell. Not my words. Not what I wanted to say. You were drawn something higher. Something which art can only try and reflect. What made me understand what love really is. Now you're more to me than all art can ever be. Take me away, Dorian. Take me away with you. Where we can be quite alone. I hate this page. I cannot mimic a love that burns me like a flame. [00:11:17] Speaker D: You killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. [00:11:24] Speaker E: Dorian. Dorian, don't say such terrible things. I love you. I love you. Don't you love me anymore? [00:11:31] Speaker D: Love you? I'll never see you again. I'll never even think of you or mention your name. I wish I'd never laid eyes on you. You spoil the romance of my life. [00:11:40] Speaker E: Dorian. Don't leave me. Not like this. Kiss me and say forgive me. I work so hard. I'll try and act well again. Don't leave me. Because I love you more than anything else in the world. [00:11:49] Speaker D: I'm going simply. I don't wish to be unkind. But I can't ever see you again. You've disappointed me. [00:12:01] Speaker B: That night, Sybil Vane played her greatest tragic role in earnest. She committed suicide. I was the first to bring the news to Dorian next morning. Morning. Hoping that he would not be too desperately upset by it. I must admit that he wasn't. He took it with a surprising degree of calm. I thought. [00:12:21] Speaker D: I'm glad you don't think me heartless, Harry. I really must admit that this death doesn't affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy. A tragedy in which I took a leading part, but for which I've not been. [00:12:37] Speaker B: You're wise to take it so philosophically. Mournful Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. But don't waste your tears over Sybil Vane. She was less real than they are. [00:12:50] Speaker D: We won't talk about it anymore. It's been a marvellous new experience, that's all. I wonder if life has any more [00:12:56] Speaker B: in store for me. Life has everything in store for you, Dorigan. With looks like yours, there's nothing you won't be able to do. [00:13:02] Speaker D: But suppose I become old, haggard and wrinkled headed? What then? [00:13:06] Speaker B: Then you may have to fight for your victory. As it is, they're given to you. No, Dorian. You must keep your good looks by the Way. Where's your portrait? Used not to hang on the wall there? [00:13:17] Speaker D: Yes, I. I sent it back to the picture frame. I wanted the frame, ultra frame. [00:13:25] Speaker B: But it wasn't the frame of the picture that was altered. The picture itself had undergone a strange alteration. Since that rather distasteful scene with civil vay, the expression of the painted portrait had become mysteriously different. The smile which had been so beautiful was beautiful no longer. It had twisted itself into a cruel sneer. Dorian Gray's wish had been granted. The wish that he had uttered in Basil Hallward studio. He had wished that he himself might remain young. And that the portrait might grow old. That his own beauty might be untarnished. And the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins. That the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought. And that he might keep all the delicate bloom and the loveliness of his youth. And impossible as it seemed, the wish had been granted. But now the portrait had become more than a mere work of art. It has become an accusing conscience which mirrored within itself all the thoughts and deeds which Dorian Gray strove to conceal from the world. And that was why the portrait must be hidden and locked away. Lest in the evil of its look, the world should see him to the soul. And Dorian Gray should be betrayed. [00:15:04] Speaker D: Mr. Bourbon's death means nothing to him, my dear Basil. It's only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself in end of sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. [00:15:15] Speaker C: Dorian, this is horrible. Something has changed you completely. You look the same, but you're different. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. Old Harry's influence. I can see that I owe a [00:15:28] Speaker D: great deal to Harry, Basil. More than I owe to you. You only taught me to be vain. [00:15:32] Speaker C: Well, I'm punished for that, Dorian. Or shall be someday. [00:15:36] Speaker D: I don't know what you mean by that, Basil. [00:15:38] Speaker C: Or what you want. I want the Dorian Gray I painted. By the way, where is it? Have you taken it down? [00:15:47] Speaker D: Yes. It began to depress me. I couldn't bear to look at it. But why not? [00:15:53] Speaker C: Where is it? Let me look at it again. [00:15:55] Speaker D: No, better. I don't want to show it to you anymore. [00:15:59] Speaker C: Not show me my own work? Are you serious? [00:16:01] Speaker D: Quite serious. I can't give you any reasons, and you're not to ask for any. [00:16:06] Speaker C: Well, if that's the way you feel about it. Really? It seems rather absurd. I'd changed my mind. I was going to exhibit it in Paris in the autumn. [00:16:16] Speaker D: Exhibit it? You mean put it on show for people to gape at? [00:16:20] Speaker C: I never thought you'd object to being admired. [00:16:23] Speaker D: I can't explain it the way I feel. There seems to me to be something fatal about a portrait. After a while, it begins to have a life of its own. [00:16:32] Speaker C: Eldorian, I can see no change in you. Not outwardly character. Yes. Not on your features. May they never change. For if you're serious, they're all that I shall ever have to remember my greatest painting by. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Oh, no. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was no longer a work of art that could be placed on exhibition. The portrait was becoming more revealing every day. The horizons of Dorian Gray's experience were rapidly. The beauty of Dorian Gray remained unchanged. It was only upon the face of his portrait that the harsh lines began to spread. [00:17:17] Speaker D: How horrible. So that's what I have grown into already. Within a year it is though Half a lifetime of meanness and spite and evil have been gathered into that age. Within a year. And hour by hour, week by week, the face is growing older. If it escapes the hideousness of sin, the hideousness of age is still in store for it. The cheeks will become hollow or fleshed yellow. Close feet will creep around the fading eyes and make them purple. The hair will lose its brightness. The mouth will gape or droop. Be foolish or gross, as mouths of old men are. It is more than horrible. It is desperate. Suppose that someone should find it here, break into the room and see it for themselves. Dorian Gray as he really is. Well, so for bars, the secret has been killed. No. You must admit that I don't age very much, despite my excesses over the last 12 years. [00:18:32] Speaker C: This is nothing to laugh about, Dorian. They're saying that you corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate. Quite enough. You enter a house with shame of some kind to follow after. [00:18:40] Speaker D: Isn't all this a little unnecessary, Basil? [00:18:42] Speaker C: Lord Tame will, one of my greatest friends at Oxford. He showed me a letter that his wife had written to him when she was dying alone in her villa in Mentone. Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I've ever read. [00:18:54] Speaker D: What of it? The story was probably true. [00:18:56] Speaker C: Lord Henry is your closest friend. Surely for that reason, if for no other, you shouldn't have made his sister's name a byword when you met her. Not a breath of scandal had ever touched her. Is there a single decent woman in London now who'd drive with her in the park? [00:19:10] Speaker D: Can I help the weaknesses of my friends? You also have known me? [00:19:15] Speaker C: I wonder whether I really do know you. Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul. [00:19:21] Speaker D: To see my soul, yes. [00:19:22] Speaker C: But you needn't worry. Only God can do that. [00:19:26] Speaker D: You shall see it yourself tonight. Come. It's your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world about it afterwards if you choose. But nobody believe you. If they did, they'd like me all the better for it. I know more about the world than you do. Come on. You've chatted long enough about corruption. Now come and see it face to face. So you think that it's only God [00:20:08] Speaker B: who sees the soul? [00:20:09] Speaker C: Basil. [00:20:10] Speaker D: Draw back that curtain and see mine. [00:20:12] Speaker C: Mad Dorian. [00:20:13] Speaker D: You won't. Then let me do it for you. [00:20:18] Speaker B: No. [00:20:18] Speaker D: I only recognize it. That is a picture of my soul. Years ago, when we first met, you flattered me and taught me to be vain about my looks. You introduced me to a friend of yours, which was explained to me. The wonder of you. Then you finished the portrait that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment, I made a wish. Perhaps you would call it a prayer. [00:20:36] Speaker C: I remember it. Oh, how well I remember. [00:20:38] Speaker D: That is the picture you painted. [00:20:40] Speaker C: Things Impossible. Mildew must have gotten the cameras. The painter who had some murder on poison. I don't believe it's my picture. [00:20:45] Speaker D: Why can't you see your ideal in it? [00:20:46] Speaker C: There was nothing evil in that. Nothing shameful. You were to me such an ideal that shall never meet again. This leprous thing. Torian. What a little lesson. What an awful lesson. [00:20:55] Speaker D: The lesson has come too late. [00:20:56] Speaker C: It's never too late. Kneel down and pray with my soul [00:20:59] Speaker D: there leering at me. [00:21:01] Speaker C: My picture. I thought you must have destroyed it. [00:21:05] Speaker D: You are wrong. Your picture has destroyed me. [00:21:10] Speaker C: Sorry. What you doing? Put that knife down. [00:21:23] Speaker B: Basil Hallward was dead. The uncontrollable feeling of hatred that had come over Dorian Gray might well have been whispered into his ear by the grinning face of the painting on the wall. The painting that had once been a picture of Dorian Gray. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. It stood before it for hours, a silver mirror in his hand, comparing the hideous likeness with the image of his own perfect beauty. Every sharpness of the contrast had once quickened his sense of delight. But now he felt no such pleasure. The picture had become no more than an accusing conscience to him, and he would destroy. There on the floor beside the body, was the knife with which he had just committed murder. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's. Servants. Hammered on the door in vain. When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as we had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor were two dead men. One was the artist who had painted the portrait, Basil Hallward. The other was an old man, withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage, with a knife driven into his heart. It was not until I examined the rings on his claw like fingers that I recognized who had water.