Royal54-07-2142Becky Sharpe-Vanity Fair

The National Broadcasting Company present, transcribed, Sir Ralph Richardson, your host in Frito Royal. This is Ralph Richardson. Today for our play, we're turning to a famous book, Vanity Fair, by William Packery.

In this masterpiece, Packery created one of the most exasperating and endearing of all feminine characters, Becky Sharp. To play the role of Becky Sharp is my guest. A charming English actress who I expect will be familiar to many of you through the films in which she has appeared, Margaret Lockwood.

Here then is Margaret Lockwood in some sequences from Vanity Fair, which we have called Becky Sharp. The sea is laid in a Brussels hotel in the momentous year 1815. Outside in the Belgian capital, or is excitement and dancing, music and revelry.

The feasting which comes before the farewells. For this is the evening of June the 16th, two days before the Battle of Waterloo. Two young British officers are just returning from a ball with their ladies.

George Osbourne, a rather wild impulsive young man with his demiura wife Amelia, Gordon Crawley, a hardened dandy with a dreadful reputation among the ladies and his wife the ex-governance and notorious beauty Becky Shaw. Captain Osbourne, do come in Amelia my sweetest come in. Why not Osbourne?

Come in dear fellow. It is so late Captain Crawley. Nonsense, it's early morning. Morning is never late. Late? On such a night as this, there is no such word as late. Oh, the bull, that perfect, perfect bull. I've danced till I'm exalted.

Yes, you triumphed Becky. You preferred not to dance. Had you shown inclination to dance, you would have danced as much as I. Some women had to refuse partners. Others don't attract them. Look at her, no diamonds, no bouquet.