Bob Hornery

Raymond Stanley; photographer unkownRay Stanley was a journalist specialising in the entertainment industry. He wrote for a number of publications in the UK and Australia, notably The Stage (UK),giving information on theatre companies, actors and forthcoming shows. He also interviewed a number of actors and became friends with them, establishing a long correspondence, keeping their letters.

In December 2020, Theatre Heritage Australia was contacted by one of the executors of Raymond Stanley’s estate, seeking assistance with the sorting and cataloguing of a box of letters and other papers ahead of donating them to a suitable institution.

The letters turn out to have an interesting take on the attitudes of people involved in theatre and shed light on what was happening at the time.

Decoding the letters often in difficult handwriting or simply signed with a first name meant a lot of detective work was needed. We were convinced that there was a Ted Bramphas, who turned out to be Edward Brayshaw. Another, whose signature seemed to be ^^^^^^  ^^^^^ was eventually recognised as John Krummel, OAM, actor, director and producer whose career dates from 1960. He has the distinction of being convicted of using obscene language on stage in The Boys in the Band at the Playbox Theatre in 1969. He was arrested by a policeman who confessed on the witness stand that he was not a playgoer and would not have seen this play, except that there had been a complaint about it and he needed to see it to express that it was offensive to him. Not long after the law was changed. John Krummel’s letters however are from a later date, when he went to England. He at times seemed to admire and at others despise the standards in the UK. He also wanted to emulate what was good but feared he would never live up to their standards. Luckily for him, and Australia, he came home and enjoyed a distinguished career.

Most of the Raymond Stanley letters date from the 1960s and 70s and give us a good insight into the people and productions of the day. Some are from very well-known figures, others from actors whose existence has largely gone from our minds. It is this latter group which holds the most interest. Those from the “stars” tend to be mundane.

Bing Crosby, detail of a photograph sent in response to a fan letter

Judy Leech collection

Bing Crosby’s letter to Raymond Stanley, sent from New York City, 18 April 1935

Letter from Phyllis Diller to Raymond Stanley, 12 April 1969

Letter from Cole Lesley, sent on behalf of Noel Coward, from the Chevron Hilton Hotel, Sydney, 31 May 1963

The earliest letter is from none other than Bing Crosby and was written in 1935 replying I suspect to a schoolboy with a crush on the singer. Crosby has courteously replied thanking Ray for his interest and saying he always appreciates suggestions. (What were they one wonders?). It is obviously typed by a secretary but is signed “Bing”. Our awe at seeing letters from people we may idolise is tempered by the fact that many of these have less than interesting contents. John Gielgud sent two letters; the first to Corporal Stanley dated 1943 saying that he is not interested in reading the corporal’s play, so don’t send it! The second is from 1950 and declines to do an interview. Phyllis Diller was more friendly, on her very decorative personal stationary she says she has no idea when she will next visit Australia but hopes it will happen—“I am so enchanted with Australia. The people and the country are great.”

Another youthful enthusiasm was evidently for Noel Coward. There are two letters written not by The Master himself but his 1943 secretary to Corporal Stanley saying that Mr Coward says “thank you very much indeed for your letter and your good wishes for the opening of his London season”—so no autograph there! Nor in the second letter written by Cole Lesley, for many years Coward’s companion. Mr Coward “wants me to tell you how much he enjoyed the interview with you, also what a pleasant change it was to receive such a charming letter of thanks for having given one”. Also supplied is the address in New York where a copy of the publication with the interview can be sent, and it appears to be the residence rather than an agent’s address.

While many of the letters are short and simply to arrange meetings, others, offer frank assessments of companies, directors and other actors, some of which are libellous. The identity of these writers is supressed, as is others who may find their youthful opinions now embarrassing.

For example one remark which is probably not intended seriously but slightly maliciously reads “fancy the Tivoli burning down. [Gordon] Cooper [joint managing director of the Tivoli] probably put a match to it himself—oh that’s libellous. Don’t quote me—I’m sorry.”

Lewis Fiander and Barbara Stephens in Rumors, Footbridge Theatre, Sydney, 1990; photographer unknown

Fairfax Theatre Archive, Beleura House & Garden, Mornington

First page of a letter from Lewis Fiander to Raymond Stanley, dated 1 September 1962, and sent from London

As Ray lived in Melbourne, inevitably the letters refer to people and productions interstate or overseas. Lewis Fiander writes in 1961 to say he is off to England to do Hughie in The One Day of the Year.¹ Meanwhile he reports on a production of The Merchant of Venice ² in Sydney. Lewis went on for two performances as Shylock which got him “a good-bad crit” in the Sunday Mirror and he reports that there were calls to the box office asking if he would be doing it again. He then did a play for Channel 7 (in the days when plays were broadcast direct from the theatre) of Shaw’s Candida.³ He complained that they had to produce one and a half hours of uncut Shaw in nine days.

The Old Vic was touring Australia and Lewis went to Twelfth Night,⁴ which he thought was hideous. He also saw Lock Up Your Daughters ⁵ in Sydney, which he didn’t think “was as well produced as it should have been. It just seemed rather brash and bawdy in a very unsubtle way”. He also saw the last week of Bye Bye Birdie:⁶ “ one of the best produced and cast musicals seen here for a long time.”

A year later he writes from a London address in St John’s Wood [very upmarket]. He reports on The One Day of the Year, which has the roughest last week of rehearsals. We eventually opened with three tough but very successful “press first nights”. The very first performance was greeted with cheers and three curtain calls taken with the house lights on, ordered by the Stage Director. “Having now learned what bastards the press can be;—looking back I realise how well the play was receive. Despite very good notices for me I was unhappy with my work, but during the last week and a half I gave what I believe to be my best work to date. Never have I been so close to a character as Hughie and the memory of the last scene with Ronnie will stick with me always.”

He continues that after a few weeks without work “out of the blue, this dreadful crazy American film man summoned me for an audition. I read the part—got it—and before I knew where I was, found myself in uniform standing beside Dirk Bogarde and 300 POW extras. Ray, the film was awful. Bogarde is a honey. My part—small. The producer a drongo. But as time went by this cheap six week epic (I was booked for 3 days but stayed for the full nine weeks duration) was thrown together and now I wait to shudder at the result.” For those curious the film was called The Password is Courage.

First page of a letter from Jon Finlayson to Raymond Stanley, dated 11 October 1967

Second page of a letter from Jon Finlayson to Raymond Stanley, dated 11 October 1967

Jon Finlayson had a long career as an actor, writer, director, producer and singer. After beginning by touring the whole country with the Australian Boys Choir, he went on to create several long-running intimate revues. He spent many years in musicals and appeared as a straight actor with several companies, including the MTC.

On the 11 October 1967 he wrote to Ray that he was “terrible at writing letters but very good at answering them!” He’s right! The answer is nine pages long and covers several months in Sydney, in which he describes “an incredibly busy, fraught year for me—dashing and whirling around and trying to do lots of things all at once”.

He described Gypsy ⁷ as being fraught with setbacks. “Lesley Baker who was just marvellous as Mme Rose, developed voice trouble just before the opening and had to go off for 2 weeks within 2 weeks of the opening. Would you believe that her understudy refused to go on—and I had to rehearse a replacement while I was in the middle of rehearsing the 2nd edition of the Revue. ⁸ Then, with the new revue opened but one night, and me off to Adelaide as one of the Guests of Honour at the Drama Festival (Combined Unis), Wendy Blacklock developed the same trouble as Lesley and went out of the revue for a week.”

“I arrived back to find Lesley back with Gypsy but one of the dancers out, injured, and had to replace her without the help of Sheila Guye [?] who’d broken her knee cap while I was away shocking the University professors with my attitude toward ‘academic theatre’! Lesley’s voice has broken down again and we’re closing Gypsy early with the replacement playing the last week.”

His plans for the immediate future went array as he had picked a dancer out of the chorus (“who, incidentally was just great!!”) when she had an offer to go to Hong Kong “just as I was preparing to utilise her very heavily in some of the shows coming up, like Bye Bye Birdie, Guys and Dolls (I hope), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (I hope) and West Side Story (I hope). Please, not a word about these as they are not yet settled. I want to find out what Nancye Hayes is up to also”.

“From this, you’ll gather that it seems likely that I’ll keep on with Menzies next year. I don’t know about the Astor [Theatre Restaurant] bit; I had such a drama with them about the last panto. They allowed me to approach a cast for an entirely new revue to open at the end of August and then (contrary to all our gentlemens (?) agreement) decided not to do a new show at all. Now, after I put in fourteen new items (once I’d started making changes I just couldn’t stop) they are kicking about having to pay royalties on some of the material. Really, they are the absolute end!!”

He continues that he was approached about the Phillip Revue but his calendar was so full that the dates made it unlikely he could fit it in. And then, after showing us [well Ray] that he was possibly the most experienced revue person around, he goes on to say that he truly doesn’t believe that revue is his medium.

He was asked to direct Rigoletto ⁹ for the Trust Opera Company “but wheels within wheels here; internal politics and a decision to do the concert from stock costumes and sets and not as I’d conceived it, made it impossible for me to accept”.

He also saw some productions at the Old Tote. He avoided The Dance of Death ¹⁰ because the cast of big names give him a pain in the neck. However “Jenny’s Hedda ¹¹ I’m a fraction more interested to look at, but somehow the clique-ness of The Old Tote and its audience is rather in-bred (perhaps because I’ve never been asked to work there?) and despite excellent notices for the production and cast, I really feel I must organise myself to go there, rather than want to go.”

“Saw Fiddler ¹² on opening night and will see it again next week just before it closes. Hayes [Gordon] is tremendous, quite remarkable. This is what it is all about to me! The best musical comedy leading man this country’s ever seen—bar no-one. His selflessness, his stillness his sheer hypnotic quality was a revelation, despite the appalling inconsistency of some of the supporting players … I haven’t seen a show at The Ensemble for an age—they are doing Miller’s Vichy ¹³ next and possibly I’ll do something if I can fit it in...”

Bob Hornery, with Dino Panozza and Barbara-Jane Cole, in a scene from Il Magnifico, Nimrod Theatre, Sydney, 1984; photograph by J. Van Loendersloot

Fairfax Theatre Archive, Beleura House & Garden, Mornington

Alan Edwards, Patricia Kennedy and John Krummel in Best of Friends, Northside Theatre, Sydney, 1989; unknown photographer

Fairfax Theatre Archive, Beleura House & Garden, Mornington

Bob Hornery, such a delightful actor who pretended to be so disreputable, also wrote from England. He first had a role in the Regent Park summer theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ¹⁴ Later he wrote: “I have been lucky enough to have been chosen to appear in the Chichester Festival … I have 3 lovely roles and I also understudy Danny Kaye, which I feel is a great honour. It is a practically all-star cast and I am doing 3 wonderful plays.” ¹⁵ Bob joins the coterie who admire the National: “I didn’t think I would ever see perfection in a theatre but there it is in every production at the National. Olivier’s Othello ¹⁶ was superb & the Crucible ¹⁷ magnificent.”

Patricia Kennedy’s opinion differed somewhat: “On the whole I believe the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] is stronger and better balanced than the National, though some productions had weaknesses, I think, and some immature acting especially in Twelfth Night.” ¹⁸

From Tony Llewellyn Jones comes a rare letter from Melbourne. This actor’s early career was with the MTC, where he managed to appear as the juvenile lead over several productions and years. He writes: “Sumner’s production of MUCH ADO ¹⁹ works I think (Just.) As you [are] no doubt well aware there are similarities to the Zeffirelli production [for UK’s National Theatre]—but so what? That production hasn’t been seen here except on television, and if things like the laundry, the singing & mock Italian accents work why not, use them? It is the first Shakespeare I’ve ever done professionally—and it has excited me—and continues to do so each night. I think I play against the text a number of times—so that it doesn’t really hang together, but dammit the play is full of inconsistencies & absurdities anyway, so (again) why not play for the moment? After the country tour of the production, I go back to the Nimrod Company to play Don John in John Bell’s production of the play!!! And then Buckingham in Richard Wherrett’s production of Richard III.” ²⁰

There is another mention of the National Theatre Production of Much Ado About Nothing²¹ from Brian James, veteran Australian actor, who visited England in 1967 and “saw Zeffirelli’s Much Ado, with Lady Olivier [i.e. Joan Plowright] playing Beatrice (Maggie Smith is pregnant)—a gay send-up of the Italian way of life—(Neil [Fitzpatrick] was awfully good, playing Baltasar [sic] as a sleezy, broad-beamed Italian singer with a weavey walk in a white suit and panama—and two lovely songs.)”

First page of a letter from Tony Llewellyn Jones to Raymond Stanley, sent from Hopetoun Road in Toorak and dated Monday, 14 July [1975]

First page of a letter from Brian James to Raymond Stanley, dated 24 October 1965, and sent from his Taylor Square address in Sydney

“Judi Dench is very moving in The Promise ²²—so good to be swayed between laughter and tears—in this beautiful little play set against the siege of Leningrad … Can’t get into Fiddler on the Roof—everyone is raving about Topol the star … Through Neil Fitzpatrick’s kindness I was able to get that rare thing a seat for Strindberg’s Dance of Death ²³—a strange pre runner of Edward Albee. What can one say about Olivier! Surely his Othello couldn’t have been better than this—such beautiful detail, effortless control, unexpected humour—and heart!”

Brian spent some time in Nottingham, where actor/manager John Neville was highly acclaimed through the country for his work in the Playhouse Theatre. “It is everything a theatre should be in a community—I do hope our new theatre in The Arts Centre will embrace some of the qualities this one has. The amazing thing is that it has acquired such stature under John Neville’s vital direction, in such a comparatively short space of time.”

In his next letter a few months later, he writes “ John Neville has, more or less, been sacked by the Nottingham Theatre Trust—justifiable uproar about this.”

He continues: “The months since April have been pretty exciting—and I feel I have learned a good deal, just by observing, seeing different standards of work—and studying. I hope it will show in any work as time goes by! It was so good to see Bob Hornery get such a hand at Chichester in The Farmer’s Wife ²⁴ as a randy 90 year old Devon man! Irene Worth was stunning, with John Clements, in Heartbreak House; ²⁵Trevor Nunn’s production of The Relapse, ²⁶ excellent … I’ve been very moved by Michael Blakemore’s production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg ²⁷—black comedy about young parents of a spastic child, but it packs quite a wallop. Glad that it is going to Broadway. Rumour has it that Kevin Colson will do the male lead in Cabaret ²⁸ opposite Judi Dench.”

There are two other letters from Brian James written a couple of years earlier from Sydney.

Brian thanks Ray for sending him notices of Inadmissible Evidence. ²⁹ “I really don’t think Palmer ³⁰ and Standish ³¹ understood what Osborne was trying for—Palmer’s reference to the playwright’s use of the telephone instead of bringing characters on stage is an example of this. No thought for the terrible isolation of Bill Maitland with the phone the only thing left to resort to … I will pass your letter onto Robin [Lovejoy] when I see him: he has been rather depressed by the reaction to the play: business, in the Tiny Tote, has not been good and, a fortnight ago, when the visiting interstate Trust producers came to Sydney for a weekend conference, not one of them made any remark on this production.”

Two months later he writes: “John Sumner was over here earlier last week with George Ogilvie—that’s an interesting appointment isn’t it?—and I spent a short time with him. I understand the last season has been quite a financial success at the Union; although he seemed rather disenchanted by the critics views of Inadmissible Evidence and The Homecoming³² as plays. It is quite possible that I’ll be working with him again shortly in some of the plays in the new season at Russell Street but I’ll await conformation by letter this week.”

“Virginia Woolf ³³ is doing very well at the Tiny Tote for its third season—never know why they can’t play a season right through and have done with it! They certainly sent the play to some outlandish places like Coff’s Harbour—which seems like plain stupidity to me.”

Sophie Stewart at her home at Church Point, Sydney, 1962; photograph by Alec Iverson

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Letter from Sophie Stewart to Raymond Stanley, dated Sunday, 29 November [1970], and sent from her Church Point home in Sydney

In a number of cases the writers show a motive to get help or advice about work. One such correspondent is Sophie Stewart, a Scottish actress who married the Australian actor Ellis Irving and managed to split her career between Britain and Australia. In about the mid-1960s she writes: “A very quick scribble to thank you so much for your letters, cuttings and for contacting George Fairfax [at that time at St Martin’s Theatre]. So far we haven’t heard from him—but we live in hopes! I’ve written to Johnnie Ladd at Bettina [Welch]’s suggestion—just in case George falls through.”

Sophie then says they will be driving down from Sydney to Melbourne for an unnamed production. “The publicity is fine—so pleased. Keep it dark—as yet—but I think I am going into My Fair Lady ³⁴ playing Mrs Higgins. It will be a tight squeeze for time and rehearsals but I can do it, I hope.”

In 1965 she writes from Sydney that she and Ellis are off to the UK. “While we were on tour with Hay Fever ³⁵ we had a very attractive invitation to play at the 1966 Pitlochry Festival. [Pitlochry is a small Perthshire town which for several years held an acclaimed summer season in its tiny theatre.] Negotiations went on for a month or two and it was only about a month ago that we got the ok from Pitlochry to give you the news … It was too good an offer to turn down, especially with things so quiet here. We are really thrilled about it and I am very excited at the thought of playing again in my native country! We are going to do The Cherry Orchard with Ellis playing Gayev this time; The First Mrs Fraser with us in the Marie Tempest and Henry Ainley roles; ³⁶ Lady from Edinburgh, ³⁷ the play that was written for me by Aimie Stuart and Arthur Rose, and which I played for 2 years at the Playhouse in London; … Pitlochry is holding back its announcement of our appearance until The Stage gets it from you … I have cancelled my Stage now, so if your article appears before we leave would you be a dear and send it to us.”

The couple later returned to Australia and found work difficult to obtain but she pursues several angles: “Bettina [Welch] has told me of your letter from Peter [Cotes]—dear Peter, so difficult—so I am in the picture! Anyway he can but wait and see. Things are deadly dull and one despairs of the theatre. However I have written and/or contacted everyone we can think of. I had a nice non-committal letter from John Sumner. I have written Irene Mitchell as you suggested about The Queen’s Highland Servant, ³⁸ but there hasn’t been time yet for a reply. John Tasker is madly keen to direct it and he tells me that Irene has already asked him to direct a play for her in the new season. So this might work out.”

“It’s so sweet of you to keep us in contact with things—we do appreciate it … Meanwhile if you are in touch at all with the St Martins, a persuasive word from you might help!”

1972 saw Sophie and Ellis back in Scotland where they bought a small cottage. Sophie had been offered work as a Lady in Waiting in Crown Matrimonial in London but as the contract was for twelve months she turned it down. She seems to have remained in Scotland until her death at five years later at the age of 69.

Letter from Henri Szeps to Raymond Stanley, dated 24 January 1971, sent from Sydney

Henri Szeps in Three Hotels, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, 1994; photographer unknown

Fairfax Theatre Archive, Beleura House & Garden, Mornington

In 1971 Henri Szeps wrote to say that he was planning a trip to England and “wondered if there are any people you could suggest to me or even if you could write me some kind of letter of introduction to someone. Please don’t go through any kind of trouble over that but if you can think of anyone I would be most appreciative”.

In 1963, Edward Brayshaw took the road of so many other Australian actors by going to England. If he thought it would be the road paved with gold he was disappointed. Shortly after arriving he turned down an invitation to understudy in a Ray Lawler play: “that is not what I came here to do” but took a very minor part in a film called 663 Squadron calling it “an awfully good break”.

Obviously Edward found work as 18 months later he writes: “Things have been going very well for me for the last 9 or 10 months. After the film was finished I had a pretty grim patch.” His agents were “no good for me so I changed and after being 4 months sitting on my prat! Now with the new one [agent], I am doing OK”.

A year later he writes “Ray, I love it here and want to stay permanently … Your news about the theatre scene in Australia is very depressing Ray, but this is really why I find the scene here not as pleasing as I had looked to expect. I feel that it lies in the writing or rather lack of it and it is the same everywhere London, NY and on the Continent. I feel in many ways, certainly in Britain, that the Angry Young Man period (while extremely good and very necessary) brought into the theatre a lot of unskilled people in all fields. Because at the time it was fashionable to shun the traditional, the experimental and the establishment, and replace it with a scruffy set of people who have none of these thing, who have got hold of the reigns and led us to a new ground and created their own ESTABLISHMENT which is just now dull and it will take some time for this to disappear and the pendulum to settle then we will have the interesting theatre again.”

Brayshaw remained in England and worked in the theatre and TV until he died of cancer at the age of 57 in 1990.

The view of a playwright, who I shall not name, is outlined in two letters from the 1960s. In the first he writes about the invitations he has to go to the UK for a production of one of his plays but he is wary. Through the letter he constantly repeats that he is wary because he knows “the behind scenes West End well enough to realise that rather than helping to clear up the muddle that always goes on at this stage, my presence would probably increase it”. He is emphatic that he is not vain or arrogant but at an earlier time a play of his had a “seedy run” at a prominent theatre company. “The reasons for the seediness are many … one of the main reasons was in the enormous amount of rewriting I did, quite placidly, for the director. Often I felt he was wrong but, since he was a reputable man esteemed in the West End, I rewrote without a quiver. This time I am being very wary … if it is muted down too much, is subtle-ized, made too sensitive (and even worse Anglicised) whatever the play has is gone.”

He persist in saying that he doesn’t regard himself as “Strindberg, or Tennessee Williams or Albee” but he still gets very irritated at the way he is treated. Nevertheless he is keener on a British production of his plays. “I have turned down offers from creatures like John Sumner, Robin Lovejoy etc... you’d better ask me about that. Briefly, I’ll admit to a preference for being launched in London even though I’m an enthusiastic lover of my own country: it’s only in its theatre area I jack up: it seems to me too too fantastic that our ‘national’ theatre should be dominated by pommy poofters, & that the Australian (!) Eliz[abethan] Theatre Trust is controlled by a refugee from the Vienna Boys’ Choir.”

First page of Bob Hornery’s letter to Raymond Stanley, posted from London in May 1966

Second page of Bob Hornery’s letter to Raymond Stanley, posted from London in May 1966

From England Bob Hornery writes that he enjoyed one of Ray’s articles in The Stage and “needless to say I agree with everything you say. Latest reports don’t seem to be so encouraging. The Tivoli close-down was a hell of a blow. Apparently little theatres—Union & St Martins, Tote etc are doing all the business. Is this so? I hear terrifying rumours that Carrolls & Williamsons are both pulling out! Surely not!”

Brian James also comments on Ray’s assessment of Australian theatre in The Stage ³⁹ when he comments on an article which is headed “Setback of standards in Australia”. Brian says “Congratulations! It does make one furious to read of the amateur standards continuing to exist in this organisation—and bad amateur at that, judging by your account I’m so glad someone has shown them up so publicly. And it makes one sad to think that young people like my youngest nephew, will be judging Shakespeare from this type of production.”

There are a number of passing comments from actors who either despair of theatre in Australia or praise it above the standards they are seeing overseas. For instance from England Edward Brayshaw wrote: “I have seen some of the worst theatre here that I’ve ever seen anywhere. The last two Old Vic productions were just so bad as to be laughable particularly OTHELLO. ⁴⁰ The one thing that I feel is that We at home have been very unjustly maligned and convinced into thinking we are fathoms below standard and in actual fact many of our shows are infinitely better particularly in the staging and regardless of what you are lead to believe give me any time the old Aussie DRIVE and ATTACK at least you can hear us.”

Letter from Marie Stopes, 24 June 1957, sent to Raymond Stanley prior to his departure for Australia in September 1958

Perhaps, to end, the most surprising correspondent is Marie Stopes, known best for her foundation of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. She had seen a letter from Ray in The Times, which was evidently about a book he was planning on William Archer ⁴¹ (best known as a journalist who wrote extensively about various aspects of theatre in the late 19th and early 20th century). Ms Stopes wonders if Ray would be interested in the fact that “Archer was one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society which I founded and of which I am still the President, and that he was very helpful and interested in our work”.

It is surprising how far an interest in one area can spread. Raymond Stanley’s love for and fascination with theatre began when he was a child and stayed with him through his life. He does not appear to have wanted to go on the stage but at one time was interested in becoming a dramatist and was an office holder of the Playwrights Club in London. I met him in the 1970s and 80s at various media conferences and other theatrical gatherings and his knowledge of theatre, playwrights and productions was extensive.  These letters add to our knowledge of the theatrical world and will one day be conserved at an appropriate place for others to study at their leisure.

Endnotes compiled by Elisabeth Kumm

1. The One Day of the Year was performed for the first time in the UK at the Theatre Royal, East Stratford, 23 October 1961.

2. The Merchant of Venice opened at the Palace Theatre, Sydney, 23 May 1961, with John Alden as Shylock. Lewis Fiander played Launcelot Gobbo and Robyn Nevin was Nerissa. Fiander took over the lead role during Alden’s indisposition.

3. When Peter Cotes was in Australia during the early 1960s, he directed a television version of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida for HSV-7. It was presented as part of the General Motors Hour on Sunday, 5 August 1962. Cotes’ wife Joan Miller played Candida, with Geoffrey King as Morell and Lewis Fiander as Marchbanks.

4. When the Old Vic toured Australian in 1961, they brought with them three plays: Duel of Angels, The Lady of the Camelias and Twelfth Night. With Vivien Leigh and John Merivale as the stars, Twelfth Night was directed by Robert Helpmann and featured sets by Loudon Sainthill. It was seen at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, in October and November 1961.

5. Lock Up Your Daughters with Hy Hazel and Richard Wordsworth played at the Sydney Palace Theatre from 8 June 1961 to 14 October 1961.

6. Bye Bye Birdie was seen at Sydney’s Her Majesty’s Theatre, 21 October 1961 to 25 November 1961, with Patricia Finley and Frank Buxton as the leads.

7. The first Australian production of Gypsy, directed by Jon Ewing, opened at the Menzies Theatre Restaurant, Carrington Street, Sydney in September 1967. Founded by Jon Ewing and Hayes Gordon, a series of ‘mini musical’ were staged at the Menzies during 1967 and 1968 including Brigadoon, Kiss Me Kate, Sweet Charity, Annie Get Your Gun, Little Me and Bells Are Ringing.

8. Revue at the Loo, written by John McKellar and produced by William Orr, opened at the Astor Theatre Restaurant in Woolloomooloo on 21 March 1967.

9. The Elizabethan Trust Opera Company’s 1967 season comprised five operas, staged at Sydney’s Tivoli Theatre from 26 August to September 1967. For Rigoletto, the director was Stephan Beinl and the designer Rob Reid. Roger Covell, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (20 September 1967), noted: “Stephan Beinl’s production did nothing actively objectionable, but also very little that was positively illuminating.”

10. Presumably Jon Finlayson is referring to the Independent Theatre production of  The Dance of Death which opened on 13 September 1967. This featured Ron Haddrick as Edgar and Jacqueline Kott as Alice. The director was Robert Levis.

11. The Old Tote production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler opened on 23 September 1967, with Jennifer Hagan in the title role. Robert Quentin was the director.

12. Fiddler on the Roof played at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, 16 June 1967 to 21 October 1967, and was revived the following year, 5 October 1968 to 1 February 1969.

13. Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy played at the Ensemble Theatre from 12 October 1967 to 2 December 1967; directed by John Macleod. Jon Finlayson was not in the cast.

14. A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened at the Open Air Theatre. Regent’s Park on 6 June 1966.

15. The three Chichester plays were: The Farmer’s Wife (30 May 1967), which starred Irene Handl; The Beaux’ Stratagem (5 June 1967), with Prunella Scales, Peter Egan and Anton Rodgers; and The Servant of Two Masters (8 August 1967), with Danny Kaye. However the last named was replaced by The Italian Straw Hat when Kaye pulled out of the show.

16. Othello opened at the Old Vic in London on 23 April 1964, with Olivier as Othello, Maggie Smith as Desdemona and Frank Finlay as Iago; directed by John Baxter, with settings and costumes by Jocelyn Herbert.

17. The National Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, directed by Laurence Olivier, opened at the Old Vic on 19 January 1965. Principal roles were performed by Colin Blakely, Robert Lang, Sarah Miles, Frank Finlay and Joyce Redman; with setting and costumes by Michael Annals.

18. Twelfth Night opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon on 21 August 1969, with Judi Dench as Viola and Donald Sinden as Malvolio. John Barton directed, with sets by Christopher Morley and costumes by Stephanie Howard. This production was brought to Australia the following year, with Dench and Sinden reprising their roles.

19. The Melbourne Theatre Company presented Much Ado About Nothing at the Russell Street Theatre, 17 June 1975 to 9 August 1975, with Jennifer Hagan and Frederick Parslow as Beatrice and Benedick; directed by John Sumner; costumes by Kristian Fredrikson.

20. Richard Wherrett’s production of Richard III opened at Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre on 24 October 1975, with John Bell in the title role. The following month, John Bell’s Much Ado About Nothing, with Anna Volska and Peter Carroll as the Beatrice and Benedick opened at the same theatre.

21. Franco Zeffirelli’s Much Ado About Nothing opened at the Old Vic in London, 16 February 1965, with Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens as the sparring lovers; with settings by Zeffirelli and costumes by Peter J. Hall.

22. The Promise by Aleksei Arbuzov, translated by Ariadne Nicolaeff, opened at the Fortune Theatre in London, 17 January 1966, with Judi Dench, Ian McShane and Ian McKellen; directed by Frank Hauser. In November 1967 the same production played at Henry Miller’s Theatre in New York with Eileen Atkins, Ian McShane and Ian McKellen.

23. Strindberg’s The Dance of Death (translated by C.D. Locock), opened at the Old Vic in London, 21 February 1967, with Laurence Olivier as Edgar and Geraldine McEwan as Alice; directed by Glen Byam Shaw, with designs by Motley.

24. The Farmer’s Wife. See endnote 15.

25. George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House was produced at the Chichester Theatre on 18 July 1965, with John Clements, Diana Churchill, Irene Worth, David Bird, Bill Fraser, Doris Hare and Anton Rodgers in the principal roles. It was directed by John Clements, with sets and costumes by Peter Rice.

26. Trevor Nunn directed the RSC revival of The Relapse at the Aldwych Theatre, 15 August 1968, with Barrie Ingham and Frances de la Tour as Lord Foppington and Miss Hoyden.

27. Michael Blakemore’s production of Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Eggwas first produced in Glasgow prior to opening at the Comedy Theatre in London on 20 July 1967. Principal roles were played by Joe Melia, Zena Walker, John Carson, Phyllida Law and Joan Hickson.

28. Cabaret opened in London at the Palace Theatre in 1968, with Judi Dench as Sally Bowles, Kevin Colson as Clifford Bradshaw, Barry Dennen as the Master of Ceremonies, Peter Sallis as Herr Schultz and Thelma Ruby as Fraulein Schneider. Harold Prince was the director, as he had been for the original Broadway production.

29. Inadmissible Evidence by John Osborne opened at the Union Theatre, Melbourne, on 18 October 1965. It featured Edward Hepple as Bill Maitland and Bunney Brooke as Jane Maitland. John Sumner directed, with scenery by Richard Prins.

30. Howard Palmer was the arts critic for The Herald (Melbourne).

31. H.A. Standish was the arts critic for the Sun News Pictorial (Melbourne).

32. The UTRC production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming was performed at the Union Theatre, Melbourne, from 8 November 1965 to 27 November 1965, with Frank Thring as Max, Alan Hopgood as Lenny, Edward Hepple as Sam, Malcolm Robertson as Joey, Frederick Parslow as Teddy and Jennifer Claire as Ruth. John Sumner directed and Kristian Fredrikson designed the scenery.

33. The Australian premiere of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf took place at the Old Tote in Sydney on 25 April 1964, with Jacqueline Kott as Martha, Alexander Hay as George, Wendy Blacklock as Honey and Kevin Miles as Nick, and directed by John Clark. After a nine and half week season, the play toured to Brisbane and Adelaide, returning to Sydney in August 1964 for a further four weeks at the Palace Theatre. Following another tour, it returned to Sydney for a third season, playing at the Tote from 30 November 1965 to 18 December 1965.

34. When J.C. Williamson’s revived My Fair Lady in 1970, Sophie Stewart played Mrs Higgins, alongside Robin Bailey as Higgins, Rona Coleman as Eliza and Kenneth Laird as Doolittle. John McCallum was the director.

35. Sophie Stewart and Ellis Irving toured Noel Coward’s Hay Fever (directed by Alan Edwards) throughout New South Wales, opening at the Orange Drama Festival in February 1964. The tour was jointly sponsored by the Arts Council of New South Wales, Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and Old Tote Company.

36. Sophie Stewart headlined the 1966 Pitlochry Festival. She appeared in four of the six plays: The First Mrs Fraser (9 April 1966), Dear Charles (16 April 1966) and The Cherry Orchard (31 May 1966) and The Way of the World (28 June 1966).

37. Sophie Stewart created the role of Cristabel in Lady from Edinburgh when the play was given its world premiere in November 1944 in France under the auspices of ENSA. She starred in the first UK performance at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, on 26 February 1945, and in Glasgow and Cardiff, prior to a sixteen month season (560 performances) at the Playhouse in London from 10 April 1945 to 10 August 1946. The play was revived for the 1955 Pitlochry Festival, with Agnes Lauchlan as Cristabel, but it was not a success.

38. The Queen’s Highland Servant by William Douglas Home was first performed in the UK in 1968 with Pamela Stanley as Queen Victoria. The proposed season at St Martin’s Theatre in Melbourne did not eventuate.

39. See ‘Setback of Standards in Australia’, The Stage, 17 August 1967, p. 20.

40. Othello opened at the Old Vic on 30 January 1963 with Errol John as Othello, Adrienne Corri as Desdemona and Leo McKern as Iago. The production prior to that was The Alchemist, which starred Leo McKern.

41. Raymond Stanley’s book on Archer was Tourist to the Antipodes: William Archer’s Australian journey, 1876-77, St Lucia Press, University of Queensland, 1977.

Grateful thanks to Leslie Cartwright, co-executor of the Will of Raymond Stanley for giving permission to republish the letters.

And a big thank you to Ingrid Hoffmann, Archives & Curatorial Manager, Beleura House & Garden, Mornington, for assistance sourcing some of the photographs.

 Iwas born in kensington, sydney, on 15 june 1937 in a private hospital called ‘Famenoth’ in Alison Road near Randwick Racecourse. My mother, Olga Jones (born in Sydney in February 1917) was descended on her father’s side (Sid Jones) from Rosa Harrison, a niece of Lady Martha Harrison who was a Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria, and an Irish photographer called Da Shannon (which was possibly Dara Shannahan). The name Jones was the name of Rosa’s first partner (a West Indian entertainer of colour called Thomas Jones who was in a travelling show) with whom Rosa eloped to Australia, probably in the 1870s, and had four children, although she never married Jones before he eventually left her. Rosa never married Shannon either but used the name of Jones for the two children she had with him as well as the previous four with Thomas Jones. Olga’s mother (Alice Partridge, known as Dolly) came on her maternal side from a Jewish family called Marks that ran a jewellery business, and paternally the Partridge family had a fish shop in Cleveland Street, Sydney.

My maternal grandparents Sid and Dolly Jones at Ettalong, Woy Woy, NSW.

Here is me as a baby with my Italian grandparents in their home in Gilderthorpe Avenue, Waverley, NSW.

My father, christened Bartolomeo Locantro (born in Sydney in 1905) but who always called himself Bob or Robert even on his Marriage Certificate, was descended from two families who originated on the Aeolian Islands, north of Sicily. His father, Antonino Locantro was born in Lingua, Salina, in November 1870, and his mother, Carmela Reitano, was born in New York in November 1883 from parents who had emigrated to New York from Lipari, the principal island in the Aeolian group. Carmela’s mother was Francesca de Luca whose family later ran the famous fruit shop in King Street, Sydney. In 1891, Antonino, who had been in the Italian Merchant Navy, emigrated to Sydney where in 1900 he opened a fruit shop at 191 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, at what is now Taylor Square. In 1901 he sailed to New York where he collected his 18-year-old fiancée Carmela and they sailed to Salina where they were married. They then immediately undertook the long voyage to Sydney, where they lived in premises in Oxford Street above Antonino's fruit shop, which was called the Darlinghurst Fruit Mart, and began raising a family. Soon afterwards the Reitanos and De Lucas from New York joined them in Sydney and they are all buried in Waverley Cemetery, along with many other families from the Aeolian Islands who also emigrated to Sydney around the same time with names like Favaloro, Natoli, Giuffre, Pellegrini, Costa, Tesorero and Beninato, whose gravestones always show the name of the Aeolian Island on which they were born.

Picture taken in Sydney c.1918 of my Italian grandparents Carmela and Antonino Locantro with their four children, (l to r) my father Bartolomeo (aged about 13), Francesca (about 15), Anna (about 17) and Antonino (about 11).

Bob and Olga Locantro at Cliff Avenue, Sydney.

My mother and her father Sid were great lovers of the theatre and the early movies. Sid (born in 1887) remembered seeing the early Australian productions of things like The Arcadians, Maid of the Mountains, The Mikado and other G&S operas and they both knew and sang all the early popular songs from the turn of the century through to the Hollywood era of Busby Berkeley. My father, on the other hand, had little interest in any of this and none of them ever listened to classical music of any kind.

From an early age I had a talent for playing popular songs on the piano. After a minimum of training—mainly from the Shefte College of Music—I began gigging in the 1950s in a rather primitive dance band while still at school. This was the Marist Brothers College, Randwick (now the Marcellin College), and the Brothers used to set me to playing the piano to accompany the school choir, even at the prestigious Eisteddfods where we sometimes won prizes. And being away from my classes while I was playing for the choir did me no harm as I went on to be Dux of the College in 1953!

When I finished school, I started my university degree course in Science in 1954 and in the next few years I played for several amateur revues (one of which was directed by the Sydney actor Bob Hornery) and a production of The Boy Friend, all with the Randwick CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation).

This picture of me as a teenager in one of my early professional engagements, playing piano in the Lounge Bar at the Kingsford Hotel with a drummer who worked permanently at the venue. I was just replacing the regular pianist for his holiday. Sydney. Possibly 1956.

The dance band also flourished and we played for weddings, birthday parties and dances in the local halls, and parties in private homes although, to be honest, we made a fairly unattractive sound but I guess our drummer provided the right rhythms for dancing which was the important thing. Later at Sydney University, I played for three revues in 1957, 1958 and 1959 plus HMS Pinafore and Victoriana, and met and worked with the actors, writers and directors Philip Hedley, Clive James, Leo Schofield, Chester, Peter Kenna, Kate Cummings, Madeleine St John, Pamela Trethowan and others of that ilk. These days are recalled in detail in the book The Ripples before the New Waveby Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters and I will write later about Clive James and Leo Schofield in London.

From Sydney to London

I left Sydney on Sunday 7 February 1960 on the Fairsky, a smallish liner owned by the Italian Sitmar Line. Their other ships at that time were the Fairsea and the Castel Felice, and many Australians of my generation sailed on them for their trips to London. The ship stopped at Brisbane, Singapore, Colombo and Aden, then Suez and Port Said (the towns at each end of the Suez Canal) and finally Naples before our ultimate destination of Southampton, and this gave Australians like me their first taste of visiting foreign places, albeit for just a few hours. This voyage is described in some detail in the book Australia’s Lost Tenor by Doug Holden in which the tenor Lance Ingram (later called Albert Lance) sailed on the Orontes to London in January 1955 and experienced the same sense of wonderment of an Australian going abroad for the first time.

On my voyage on the Fairskyamong my fellow-passengers there were a number of theatrical people, both professional and amateur, and to pass the time between stops we put on a revue. The singer Barbara Robinson had been in the Australian productions of Salad Daysand Grab Me a Gondola, Don McIntyre had been a dancer in the chorus of several musicals and there were also a number of people from an amateur company in Melbourne, including Peg Marks and a rather flamboyant lady of indeterminate age called Persia White. We were actually rather a good-sized and talented group and enjoyed rehearsing the revue in the main lounge after it closed at 10 pm every night and the rest of the passengers were sent off to their cabins. Barbara sang ‘My Biography’ from Grab Me a Gondola and the Melbourne people did several original revue numbers, including ‘The Hooch Joint’ and ‘Sadie the Sexy Soubrette’. There was also an academic and dance critic called Alan Brissenden who enjoyed amateur dramatics and who later introduced me to the joys of visiting stately homes, palaces and castles around England. Alan sang several Noël Coward songs including ‘Nina’ and ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. We gave just one performance of the revue, which we called Grab Me a Deck Chair, after we first entered the Mediterranean and then we still had another week of very boring evenings with bed at 10 pm before we finally arrived at Southampton. But we still had one last stop at Naples with a few hours for sightseeing. Alan Brissenden told me that the pizza originated in Naples so we found a pizzeria near the university and sampled an authentic Neapolitan pizza as our introduction to European culture.

Here is a scene from Grab Me a Deck Chair with Barbara Robinson singing ‘My Biography’ attended by Alan Brissenden (the tall one) and another of the performers as reporters.

London at Last

After five long weeks at sea, I arrived in London on Saturday 12 March 1960 on what I expected to be a working holiday for a year or two, but I found the place so congenial that I am still here. Philip Hedley had come to London just a few weeks before I arrived and he helped me find a bed-sitting room in Notting Hill Gate, but more importantly he booked some tickets for me to start sampling the joys of London theatre and in my first two weeks in London I managed to get to 18 different shows—including matinees and 5 pm performances of plays on Fridays and Saturdays—of an amazing range of things.

My first show on Monday 14 March was the brilliantly funny revue Pieces of Eight with Kenneth Williams and Fenella Fielding, which had a plethora of talented writers and composers including amongst others Peter Cook, Laurie Johnson, Sandy Wilson, Harold Pinter, John Law, Edward Scott, Lionel Bart and the Australian Lance Mulcahy. 

The next night I saw Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be, the Theatre Workshop production, brought to vibrant life by the famous theatre director Joan Littlewood, that had just transferred from Joan’s Theatre Royal at Stratford East. I was totally knocked out by the power and energy of this rather rude show about pimps and prostitutes set in the underworld of London’s Soho and eventually found time to see it a further five times over the coming months. Its lively music and down-to-earth lyrics by Lionel Bart were perfectly suited to the colourful story and given knock-out performances by Miriam Karlin, James Booth, Yootha Joyce, Wallace Eaton, Toni Palmer and the irrepressible Barbara Windsor. Also, in my first two weeks in London I saw two further Joan Littlewood shows, namely The Hostageby Brendan Behan and the musical Make Me an Offer, the first of which was wonderful but the latter not quite so good. This was partly because The Hostage was a Theatre Workshop production with Joan’s own actors like Murray Melvin, Brian Murphy, Dudley Sutton and Ann Beach, whereas Make Me an Offer was a normal commercial West End musical which Joan had agreed to direct.

The finale of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be with Glynn Edwards and Miriam Karlin in the centre and Barbara Windsor and Yootha Joyce behind with other members of the company.

My theatregoing was somewhat reduced when I took a job as lounge pianist in a rather seedy hotel in Bayswater four nights a week to bring in a bit of money, so that left me just three days for seeing shows. London had surprised me by being brighter and more colourful than the foggy, dark place I imagined from the black and white British films I had seen, so during the day when I wasn’t going to matinees, I enjoyed the tourist attractions of London and its environs. But in May I decided to look for what I expected to be a temporary job, and immediately found employment with the UK record company EMI Records Ltd in the Management Accounts Department. I had a degree of BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from Sydney University and I had been working for several years for the Commonwealth Statistician in Sydney. I saw an advert in the Evening Standard newspaper for an Accounts Clerk with EMI Records and was immediately given the job at my first interview—I guess that particular job and the low wage it paid were not of interest to anybody else, but everything I did from May 1960 onwards as a pianist was in my spare time while holding down a full-time office job.

Life at EMI

At that time the company was on a huge roll at the end of the 1950s with hit after hit from British stars like Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Adam Faith, Acker Bilk, Rolf Harris, Shirley Bassey and even unlikely groups like the Black and White Minstrels and the Big Ben Banjo Band. Before then most of the chart hits came from the USA and were by people like Frankie Laine, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin, Dinah Shore, Jo Stafford and Doris Day. The new British pop records, mainly from EMI, were produced by four in-house producers, all of whom I got to know quite well. These were George Martin, Walter Ridley, Norman Newell and Norrie Paramor. George was suave and sophisticated and was a classically-trained musician. His recordings were released on the Parlophone label and before his punt on The Beatles in 1962/63 he produced some classical recordings, some Scottish popular music by artists like Jimmy Shand and comedy albums by Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, the Goons and Flanders and Swann.

Walter Ridley had been in the music publishing business and become a successful song writer before coming to EMI as producer for Donald Peers and taking over the pop production for the HMV label. Wally, as he generally known, was small of stature but always seemed very busy. Norman Newell was a flamboyant theatrical type who recorded original cast albums of West End shows as well as other star artists like the singer Alma Cogan, the pianist Russ Conway and later Mrs Mills.

This picture was taken in 1961 at Abbey Road during the recording of the LP Wakey! Wakey!and shows (left to right) Russ Conway, Alma Cogan, the bandleader Billy Cotton, producer Norman Newell and Billy Cotton Jr. The man at the back eating a sandwich is the Balance Engineer Peter Bown.

Finally, Norrie Paramor, who seemed to be very ordinary, was a pianist and bandleader who had the Columbia label with Ruby Murray, Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Helen Shapiro and other stars. As an example of how the producers in those days interacted with the rest of the staff, which stopped happening in later years, when Norman Newell heard that I had been very impressed with the new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at Sadler’s Wells in June 1960, he invited me to the final recording session of the cast album at EMI’s famous Abbey Road Studios where I met the star of the show, the fabulous Australian soprano June Bronhill, who not only sang like an angel but as Euridice on stage looked extremely glamorous, rather like Betty Grable—an unbeatable combination!

The front cover of the HMV cast recording of the 1960 Sadler’s Wells Production of Orpheus in the Underworld.Three of the four principals pictured here are Australian (from left to right) Kevin Miller, June Bronhill and Jon Weaving. The fourth singer, Eric Shilling, was born and brought up in East London.

Some years later at EMI, I had the pleasure of compiling the 3CD set called June Bronhill—The Platinum Collection containing a selection of June’s EMI recordings for release by EMI Australia.

The Beatles at EMI House in 1963 with George Martin receiving a Silver Disc for their first LP “Please Please Me”. I met them around that time when they came into the building to record an EMI advertising programme called the Friday Spectacular for Radio Luxemburg in that same ‘Conference Room’ where I used to work for the Promotion Department sometimes in the evenings by operating the curtains and lights on the little stage.

Each of the senior producers had an assistant producer and when in about 1963 I heard that Norrie Paramor’s assistant was leaving I asked the Personnel Manager if I could be interviewed for the job. He told me that there was a young man called Bob Barrett working in a junior position for the company who had already had a successful interview to be the next assistant producer as soon as a post in that field became vacant, so he got the job. Bob went on to have a good career as a producer specialising in recording brass bands and later opened his own company called Grasmere. When Norrie Paramor left EMI in 1968 to go independent it was Tim Rice (at that time a Management Trainee with EMI) who went with him as a junior producer. I often wonder how my life might have panned out had I become assistant producer to Norrie Paramor instead of going into the international classical part of EMI, which I later did.

At that time EMI was also very strong on the classical side. The three famous sopranos Maria Callas, Victoria de los Angeles and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf were producing outstanding solo recitals and complete operas, and other classical singers like Boris Christoff, Tito Gobbi, Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were also exclusive to the company. There was a clutch of great pianists like Walter Gieseking, Claudio Arrau, Hans Richter-Haaser, Alfred Cortot, György Cziffra, Samson François and the Russians Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, and a whole gang of conductors whose names began with ‘K’ such as Rudolf Kempe, Rafael Kubelik, Paul Kletzki, Herbert von Karajan and Otto Klemperer, whose complete set of Beethoven Symphonies had caused a sensation a few years earlier. Conductors beginning with ‘B’ included Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham, and there was the very dapper Sir Malcolm Sargent and a young Australian called Charles Mackerras who was also making his mark after arranging and recording the music for the highly successful ballet Pineapple Poll. HMV’s legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin was performing and recording prolifically and the Russian violinist David Oistrakh was also with the company as well as his compatriot, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The complete Don Giovanni under conductor Carlo Maria Giulini, standing in for the indisposed Klemperer, had just been recorded in October 1959 with Joan Sutherland in one of her few recordings not for Decca and it would go on to be one of EMI’s all-time best-selling opera recordings. Yes, it was a rich time for the classical business too.

I tried to avoid meeting EMI’s classical artists but here is me (far left) at a luncheon for the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin (second from the right) with other EMI people.

In about 1962 I was given a job in marketing on the pop side of the company and a few years later I moved into the International Classical Division of the parent company EMI Ltd. I eventually became responsible for financial planning, royalty accounting and licensing in what by then was called EMI Classics and for a number of years I was responsible for dealing with licensing the Soviet Melodiya catalogue of Russian classical recordings for release by EMI in the UK, as well as making contracts for EMI to record the Soviet superstars in the West like the violinist David Oistrakh, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter among others. I was fortunate enough to visit Moscow twice and Leningrad once at EMI’s expense as part of my work to negotiate with various Soviet organisations responsible for classical matters, such as the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and enjoyed the status of VIP Visitor with the tourist authorities for my sightseeing to places like the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Despite the best efforts of my hosts to entertain me well, the food was terrible but the Georgian red wine and the vodka were excellent.

This picture shows me meeting with some Soviet executives in London. From left to right are Peter Andry (head of EMI Classics), Douglas Pudney (Repertoire Manager), Igor Preferansky (head of Mezhkniga, the Department of Soviet Foreign Trade in Moscow that dealt with exploitation of Soviet recordings in the West), me and Lev Ershov (from the Soviet Trade Delegation in London).

In 1991 I retired from EMI but continued to work from home, effectively full-time, as a self-employed compilation producer turning out literally hundreds of popular programmes in various series like Classics for Pleasure, Classical Favourites, The Very Best Of…. and other similar series.  I was particularly pleased with the series of operettas and musicals that I produced on Music for Pleasure with my colleague Andrew Lamb. This consisted of all the Sadler’s Wells opera and operetta highlights, including several with June Bronhill like The Merry Widow, Orpheus in the Underworldand La Vie Parisienne, as well as Madam Butterfly with Marie Collier and Carmen with Donald Smith, plus a number of studio cast albums from World Records and HMV, of which my favourite was The Desert Song, also with Bronhill. So skilled did I become at this work that in 1997 I was Grammy-nominated for producing the 10 CD set 100 Years of Great Music to mark EMI’s centenary, but alas, I did not win.

I also became the company’s expert on Maria Callas and produced a number of re-issue albums which sold huge quantities around the world running into millions of copies. I saw Callas perform live in concert and in opera six times in London and in Paris and I also met her at Abbey Road Studios when she came to listen to playbacks of some unreleased recordings for an LP entitled Callas by Request. Although the camera loved her, I was surprised to see in the flesh how coarse her features seemed to be, but I guess that’s why she was so effective on stage and how her dramatic performances reached the farthest parts of the world’s great opera houses. The photo below shows my appearance as a commentator in the documentary Legends of Opera—Maria Callas.

The cover of the first 100-page luxury hardback Callas 2CD album that I compiled for EMI: “Popular Music from TV, Film and Opera”. It was a major project and I had to produce versions in several different languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) and smaller editions with reduced packaging and normal booklets. In total it went on to sell close to a million copies world-wide.

I finally gave up my work with the company after more than 50 years when EMI Classics became part of Warner Classics and the operation moved to Paris. But I still had one last trick to play and in 2016, with my friend and colleague Roger Neill, I finally completed one final compilation on which we had been working for some 13 years: a four-CD compilation called From Melba to Sutherland, being a compendium of 80 Australian singers on record from the very first female recorded in Europe in 1898 (Syria Lamonte) to some of the more recent Australian opera singers of the present time. After being accepted and then rejected by several record companies both in the UK and in Australia, the project was finally brought to fruition by Cyrus Meher-Homji on the Decca Eloquence label of Universal Music Australia in a superbly packaged set.

First Encounter with Stratford East as a Pianist

Clive James in London

But, coming back to my main narrative, in 1962, I was asked by Philip Hedley to play for a cabaret that was being staged by the students of the first two intakes of the E15 Acting School (an offshoot of Theatre Workshop at Stratford East) of which Philip was one. The school was run by Maggie Bury, wife of the set designer John Bury, and continues to this day as one of London’s principal training grounds for actors. We rehearsed on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, but the show itself was put on in the huge, cavernous, Victorian East Ham Town Hall with dreadful acoustics, as entertainment during a fashion parade and was a complete disaster. But it was my first introduction to being involved with Theatre Workshop on the other side of the footlights, as it were. The cast included Ann Mitchell, John ‘Ginger’ Halstead, Annette Robertson, John Lyons, Janet Nelson and Kate Williams and there was a sketch about the fall of Troy by Clive James, by then living in London, that included a parody of ‘Zip-a-dee-doo-dah’ sung by Cassandra. Clive had written this sketch for the 1960 Sydney University revue Nymphs and Shepherds but it was heavy going for an audience in East Ham at a fashion parade although I expect the students were pleased to tackle it.

Clive James and Leo Schofield had both come to London in the early 1960s and I used to see Leo regularly at the opera at Covent Garden. In 1962 Anne O’Neill came to London to marry Leo and it was at their wedding, a very jolly affair, that I renewed my acquaintance with Clive. He had never been to see an opera and was intrigued that Leo and most of the guests at his wedding kept talking about what operas they had seen at Covent Garden. I offered to take Clive to an opera and a few weeks later we went to see Aida. Clive said he thought there was ‘something in it’ and this was the start of his life-long love of the art form. I kept in touch with Clive and a few years later I rescued him from a squalid bed-sitting room in Tufnell Park and invited him to share my modest flat (‘a set of rooms’ he called it rather grandly in Falling Towards England, one of his ‘unreliable’ autobiographies) just off Baker Street in Marylebone. Life with Clive was never dull. I continued to get opera tickets for him and he introduced me to the genre of American film noir of the 1930s and 40s at the National Film Theatre. We also used to go to jazz nights at various small-scale suburban venues around London and he played me some of his LPs by legendary jazz musicians, especially the clarinettist Pee-Wee Russell. Our relationship ended rather abruptly when his girlfriend arrived unexpectedly from Rome. We didn’t particularly take to each other and they moved out. Clive treats this episode somewhat differently in Falling Towards England, but I was very sorry to lose such a congenial flat-mate. After that, we lost touch. He studied at Cambridge University and then went on to achieve great fame as a newspaper TV critic, journalist, TV presenter, author and poet. I am pleased to say that in recent years we renewed our friendship by email and his last message to me just before he died made reference to the happy times we had spent together in the flat in Marylebone.

Opera and Ballet

At this point I will write a bit about some of the performances that I saw in London in the 1960s. Unfortunately, I no longer have my diaries which were disposed of in two recent down-sizing house moves so I have to rely on my memories and they will be random. Firstly, opera and ballet. I had already become interested in opera in Sydney in the early 1950s through the opera companies run by Mrs C.T. Lorenz in Sydney and the one run by Gertrude Johnson in Melbourne, and later we had the Elizabethan Opera Company.

I can still recall the excitement when the Melbourne company came to Sydney and the tenor Lance Ingram in the last act of Tosca was shot in the chest with a piece of walnut shell. He survived, and although I was not in the theatre for that performance, I did see Stefan Haag’s sensational production of Menotti’s opera The Consul starring Marie Collier which remains one of the most powerful and dramatic things I have ever seen. But my ‘road to Damascus’ experience with opera was the Elizabethan production of Verdi’s Otello with Ronald Dowd, Joan Hammond and John Shaw, which literally blew me away, from the violent storm scene at the beginning to the heart-breaking death of Otello at the end. Dowd found the part so taxing on the first night that he had to be replaced by Raymond McDonald for the remaining two performances but I saw all three and decided opera was what I really loved.

When I got to London in March 1960 I immediately made for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and started with a highly enjoyable Aida but soon realised that although the musical standards were high, the production values with sets and costumes and choreography were not always going to be so good. But within a few weeks, I had the opportunity to hear the legendary Swedish tenor Jussi Björling as Rodolfo in La Bohème and, despite the fact that he was already quite ill from a heart condition, he didn’t disappoint. He was dead within six months so it was a great privilege that he was able to fulfil his Covent Garden engagement.

Rosanna Carteri and Jussi Björling rehearsing La Bohème at Covent Garden in March 1960.

Also, in those early days I saw some amazing things at Covent Garden, like Boris Christoff in Boris Godunov, Birgit Nilsson as Wagner’s Isolde and the sensational production by Luchino Visconti of Verdi’s Don Carlo with Christoff, the Italian baritone Tito Gobbi and the Dutch soprano Gré Brouwensteijn. My first experience of Joan Sutherland was in Lucia di Lammermoorand then Handel’s Alcina, but I was disappointed with her droopy singing and poor diction until a few years later when her glorious performance in Bellini’s I puritani convinced me that she was totally worthy of her nickname of ‘La Stupenda’. In those early years I was lucky enough to see a number of operas with the great Tito Gobbi (Tosca, Simon Bocccanegra, Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff and Le nozze di Figaro) and I have to rate him as the finest operatic artist I ever saw, although Maria Callas in Tosca and Norma in 1964 in London and Paris was indeed something special. I also went regularly to see the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company in Islington in which many of the stars were Australian like June Bronhill, Kevin Miller, Elizabeth Fretwell, Ronald Dowd and Donald Smith. Some of the productions were outstanding, such as a thrilling Flying Dutchman in which the arrival of the Dutchman’s ship was a coup de théâtre that startled the life out of the audience when it occurred in Act 1, and a Carmen that seemed like a perfect realisation of Bizet’s masterpiece. Singing in English, the performers’ diction was much better than it is these days with the English National Opera (which the Sadler’s Wells company became) in the vast Coliseum Theatre in central London.

Queuing at Covent Garden

I should also say something about the system that was in place for booking tickets at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, when I first got to London, which was the same for both opera and ballet. The Opera House would issue a leaflet listing all the performances over a period of about two months and then the booking would open for those performances at 10 am on a designated day, usually a Monday morning. People who wanted to book tickets would start queuing well in advance and a whole ethos grew up about the queuing. There were three separate box offices covering tickets for the old Gallery and Upper Slips, the Amphitheatre and Lower Slips and Downstairs which included the Stalls, Grand Tier, Stalls Circle, Balcony Stalls and Boxes. The number of seats available in the Gallery and Amphitheatre was lower than Downstairs so there was a greater demand for those parts of the house, which of course were also the cheapest. In 1960 the demand for ballet tickets was not particularly great and it was usually enough to turn up on the first day of booking to get good seats for everything, until the Russian star Rudolf Nureyev arrived, when tickets for his performances became highly sought after and the ballet queues became almost as big as those for the opera, for which there was usually a heavy demand.

The first person to arrive at each of the three box offices to buy tickets for the new booking period would take it upon themselves to keep a list of everyone who joined the queue behind them. It was then necessary for each of the queuers to remain somewhere in the vicinity of the Opera House until the morning of the new booking, when ‘Queue Tickets’ would be handed out at 8.30 am with a time on which the person should return to the box office later in the day. Anybody arriving at the box office after the queue had dispersed at 8.30 am but while the queue ticket system was still active would also be issued with a queue ticket to return later. These times had been worked out statistically and the box office tried to be fair and serve people in the order of their queue tickets but the system did not always work perfectly if some queuers failed to turn up at their appointed times. But once one had joined a queue, the rules were fairly lax, except that everyone had to remain in central London not too far from Covent Garden and spend the night near the Opera House, sleeping in sleeping bags on the pavement (the doorways in Floral Street were favourite places to get). A few people actually brought cars to the area for sleeping which was not officially allowed but they usually got away with it. And this was at the time when the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market was still fully operational and things became very busy early each morning as the market came to life. For the rest of the duration of the queue one could attend performances at the Opera House, the Royal Festival Hall or somewhere in the West End and even go home but this had to be for a minimum time to change clothes or attend to other needs. When the morning of the booking arrived, the queuers would wake up early, usually disturbed by the market traders, and then visit the public toilets in the area, the best ones being alongside the back of the Actors’ Church in the Covent Garden Piazza. Some queuers avoided sleeping rough overnight and would just come down on the first buses or tubes to join the queues on the Monday morning, which was often good enough, but for those of us who wanted A56 in the centre of the front row of the Amphitheatre for the first night of a new production you had to be close to the front of the queue!

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (today) and queuing for tickets c.1960s.

Head doorman of the ROH, Sergeant Victor Martin and examples of Queue Tickets—Royal Opera House collection.

On the morning of the actual booking, the one person always in evidence was Sergeant Martin. He was the sort of Major Domo for the Royal Opera House and used to dress in splendid maroon livery with gold trimmings and wear a top hat.  His official title was Head Doorman of the Royal Opera House but he was very much in charge of things like the queueing system and oversaw the handing out of the queue tickets and the orderly operation of the actual queues later in the day.

I have reason to be grateful to Sergeant Martin because on Sunday 9 February 1964, the TV crews were at the Royal Opera House to televise the second act of Puccini’s Tosca with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi for a Golden Hour TV programme. The TV vans were parked in Floral Street and through their open doors one could see the TV monitors with the rehearsal going on for a shooting schedule to be worked out.  This was entertaining in itself because Callas and Gobbi were playing the fool during the rehearsal and pretending they were two lovers instead of sworn enemies, so when he said: ‘Come tu mi odi’ (‘How you hate me!’) she responded like an affectionate sweetheart!  Anyway, I was there in the street with a dozen or so of the other ‘regulars’ because the word had gone around that the rehearsal was taking place and we all wondered whether or not there was any chance of us getting in to see the actual performance.  The tickets had been distributed by the TV company to private individuals, but when it came time for the audience to arrive, Sergeant Martin, splendid in his usual regalia, appeared on the scene and, seeing the group of ‘regulars’ whom he knew by sight, he tipped us the wink to wait around unobtrusively.  And just before the starting time, he led us quietly into the Stalls and directed us to a row of empty seats at the very back. So whenever I see that iconic video of Callas in the second act of Tosca at Covent Garden I always say: ‘God bless you Sergeant Martin’.

I used to do the queue usually for one night or occasionally two and the longest queue I ever did was for the first complete RingCycle conducted by Georg Solti in September 1964, for which I started queuing on the Friday late afternoon and slept out in Floral Street for three nights. I hated Solti’s Wagner but had to be there for his first complete Ring, although I was one of the people who sometimes booed him at his solo curtain calls!

There was a great deal of camaraderie among the queuers and the regulars included Sir Brian McMaster and Nicholas Payne, both of whom went on to run major companies and events like the Welsh National Opera, Opera North and the Edinburgh Festival. Other queuers were known only by their nicknames (not always flattering) like ‘The Queen of the Night’, ‘The Seahorse’, ‘The Fat Boy’ and ‘Mad Heather’ to name just a few. And the regulars would meet at the performances in the intervals to discuss the pros and cons of what they had seen and heard, and there was always a lively exchange of tickets for the performances during each booking period as the days went by and we wanted to dispose of extra tickets we had booked for things that we didn’t like or to buy extra tickets for things that particularly pleased us.

The queuing system came under pressure with the Callas Tosca in 1964 when there were questions asked in Parliament as to why the wives of MPs could not obtain tickets after they had read the reviews. The whole booking system was then declared to be unfair on people who could not physically get to the box office on the first day of a new booking period, which of course included the bulk of the population of the UK who did not live in London. So a system of postal bookings was eventually devised, which was rather hit and miss depending on when one’s application was opened at the Opera House and then the Friends of Covent Garden scheme was invented which was also unfair in that it gave priority to people who could afford the most expensive tiers of membership. In fact, there has just been a scandal about the current series of performances of the opera Fidelio (March 2020) with Jonas Kaufmann because all the seats were bought by Friends and when public booking opened there were no seats left at all at any price!

Regarding ballet, I came later to this than to opera and my first introduction was through the influence of Keith Bain, a major figure in the history of Australian dance and particularly choreography for opera and musicals as well as traditional ballet and modern dance. Keith had begun as a ballroom dancer and it was on an episode in his early career that Baz Luhrmann based the film Strictly Ballroom.  Keith had come along to the Sydney University Dramatic Society at the request of the director Pamela Trethowan to provide some choreography for several of the numbers in the revue Lower Education that I played for early in 1957.  These were just small-scale duets and such but Keith’s charming manner and skilled choreography made them seem more significant than they actually were. I mentioned to him that I had never seen any ballet performances and he recommended that I should go to see the Borovansky Ballet Company which was at that time giving a season in Sydney at the Empire Theatre. Keith said that he always sat in the front row so I did the same. People generally avoided sitting in the front row at the ballet, believing it was too close, but I had no such qualms and found it was extremely rewarding. I did what was in effect a crash course in ballet and saw as much of the standard repertoire as I could, including things like Swan Lake, Giselle, Les Sylphides, La Boutique Fantasque and Petrushka. 

Keith Bain in a character role, 1950.

Borovansky Ballet programme cover, 1950s.

It was later in June that same year that the Borovansky Company brought Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes to Australia and showcased them in two different programmes based on Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. We also saw the New York City Ballet, whose Sydney season in 1958 was amazing, with a number of Balanchine’s spectacular large-scale works, of which the most impressive was the new work Stars and Stripes with the music of John Philip Sousa, performed by most of its original principals and complete with baton twirling, military movements and the corps de ballet as a regiment of rifle-bearing ballerinas all marching en pointe! There had also been a somewhat disappointing visit by the Royal Ballet which was in fact mostly members of the second ‘touring’ company and the school, although eventually we got to see a few stars like Svetlana Beriosova and the great Robert Helpmann.

In London I tried to see as many performances as I could with Margot Fonteyn, who was already past 40 and expected to retire at any time. I thought she was wonderful in Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Daphnis and Chloe, The Firebird and Ondine although I felt she seemed like an old lady in Giselle. But in the other ballets she remained young, or perhaps ageless would describe her better. She had perfect musicality, she filled every phrase, she never hurried but she was always exactly where she needed to be as the dancing progressed, and there was a magic to the way she moved that no other dancer seemed to have. I have still never seen any ballerina in Sleeping Beauty bring the magic and poise that she did to the first act and execute the Petipa choreography with such precision and yet such a sense of wonder and youthful excitement.  It was also noticeable that Fonteyn used her facial expressions more than the other ballerinas, who generally seemed more po-faced. For example, her beaming smile as Aurora in Act 1 of Sleeping Beauty was part of her characterisation of the role which the other ballerinas did not seem to copy. And her fear as the Firebird when captured by the Prince was also palpable on her face. When the Sadler’s Wells Ballet first moved into the Royal Opera House, the choreographer Frederick Ashton apparently went all around the auditorium checking that Fonteyn’s facial expressions registered in every part of the house and he made sure she paid attention to this. I suspect that De Valois and Ashton did not allow the other ballerinas to copy Fonteyn in this regard, which was perhaps their subtle way of ensuring that Fonteyn shone more brightly then the other dancers as the jewel of the company. She was in a class of her own and was the perfect ballerina assoluta.

Dame Margot Fonteyn as Aurora in Act I of Sleeping Beauty.

Fonteyn and Nureyev in Romeo and Juliet.

But then we had the extraordinary situation of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev defecting from the Kirov ballet company in Paris in 1961 and coming immediately to London where the Royal Ballet took him into the company and allowed him to dance with Fonteyn. They became a truly perfect artistic partnership, as well as international celebrities, and over the next few years I managed to see most of the ballets in which the pair danced … except Giselle which I still avoided.

And I have to say here that the greatest night I ever spent in the theatre throughout my whole life was the first night of Macmillan’s Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev in the title roles on 9 February 1965 at Covent Garden. Everything about it was incredible: the sets, the costumes, the dancing, the wonderful music and the charismatic performances of the two leads. Fonteyn was totally convincing as a shy young girl and Nureyev was ideal as the impetuous young lover. I went back and saw nine of the first twelve performances with other principals as well as Fonteyn and Nureyev and it was always like a great feast and totally satisfying in every respect.

Over the next few years I continued to go a lot to Covent Garden to ballet as well as opera and the visits by foreign ballet companies were always hugely enjoyable. The Bolshoi from Moscow brought their spectacular productions of things like Spartacus and Don Quixote with dancing of great energy and strength while the Kirov from Leningrad (now the Mariinsky from St. Petersburg) brought beautiful, romantic productions of things like Swan Lake, Giselle and La Bayadere with ‘white acts’ danced by a superb corps de ballet that were flawless. The companies also usually brought their own orchestras, which was an added musical bonus. I have to say that despite favourite performances of Swan Lake by Beriosova and Fonteyn as well as much-loved Giselles by Beriosova, the finest Odette/Odile and Giselle I ever saw were danced by Natalia Makarova with the Kirov. In the second act of Giselle she really looked ethereal and weightless, like a leaf floating to and fro above the ground in the breeze—an effect sought after by all ballerinas in that role but actually achieved by very few. George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet also provided some truly outstanding dancing in some glorious works, despite some unpromising names like Bugaku and Agon which the wags changed to ‘Agony’. But to see this wonderful company at full stretch in Bizet’s Symphony in Cwas to see ballet at its glorious best.

Musicals and Straight Plays

Now a few recollections of the legitimate and musical theatre in my childhood and youth in Sydney. From my early years, my mother often took me to see the variety shows at the Tivoli in the 1940s and as well as the comedians (especially George Wallace and Jim Gerald), acrobats, jugglers, etc, I have a very strong recollection of the Tivoli chorus girls, who seemed to be glamorous creatures who sang and danced as if from some other magical world. And I was intrigued by the three microphones at the front of the stage that rose up by themselves and descended again like snakes from a charmer’s basket. I also remember Jenny Howard who sang Gracie Fields songs and appeared as the thigh-slapping Principal Boy in pantomime and the French dancer called Micheline Bernardini from the Café de Paris, who did a titillating fan dance in a flickering spotlight, apparently naked.

Stars of the Tivoli – George Wallace, Jim Gerald, Jenny Howard and Micheline Bernardini.

But the one artist who is indelibly engraved in my memory is Ella Shields, the American music hall star. It was March 1947 and I believe she was the first major artist to come to Australia from America after the Second World War. I can still see her in immaculate male evening dress standing beside a grand piano singing popular songs like ‘If You Knew Susie’, ‘Let Bygones Be Bygones’ and ‘Cecilia’ and then in a separate scene, dressed in shabby, tattered clothes in front of a backcloth representing the Thames Embankment in London, singing her great hit song: ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’. What a polished artist she was.

I also remember my mother taking me to see The Desert Song and White Horse Inn when I was a child, but it was the production of Annie Get Your Gun with Evie Hayes in 1948 that hooked me onto musical theatre at the age of about eleven. I saw it a number of times and was totally immersed in the whole theatrical experience which, as it happens, is summed up so accurately by Irving Berlin in his song in that very show: ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’: ‘The costumes, the scenery, the make-up, the props’. Evie Hayes as Annie Oakley was irresistible and I was caught for life!

After that I saw all the big American musicals like Call Me Madam, Paint Your Wagon, Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate, Brigadoon, South Pacific, one British one Zip Goes a Million!and one Australian one Lola Montez, usually several times, as well as the wonderful revues at the Metropolitan Theatre and then the Phillip Street Theatre. In straight theatre an aunt took me to several of the British comedies like Sailor Beware! and Worm’s Eye View, and then for myself I discovered things like Nude with Violin with Robert Helpmann, The Chalk Garden with Sibyl Thorndike and Lewis Casson, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew in a spectacular Old Vic tour starring Robert Helpmann and Katharine Hepburn and the new Australian plays like The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler and The Slaughter of St.Teresa’s Day by Peter Kenna. I also attended the smaller theatres to see things like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Genesians and The Man at Hayes Gordon’s Ensemble Theatre. But the best thing of all was the Elizabethan Trust production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night with Dinah Shearing, Ron Haddrick, Neil Fitzpatrick and Frank Waters which was quite superb.

A selection of JCW and AETT souvenir theatre programme covers from 1949-1959.

Coming now to London, I have a strong if rather generalised memory of the Zeffirelli production of Romeo and Juliet in 1960 at the Old Vic with Judi Dench and John Stride. I remember the crowd scenes being very lively and the young principals being extremely moving. Also on Shakespeare, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s complete history cycle performed in London was something unique and with a top class cast brought to life Shakespeare’s great plays. I also saw Gielgud doing his readings from Shakespeare called The Ages of Man which was something very special. The funniest play I ever saw was Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear with Geraldine McEwan and Albert Finney where the audience was often helpless with laughter and the expression ‘falling out of one’s seat’ literally applied. Finney was a very charismatic stage actor and to my mind was more effective in the original National Theatre Company at the Old Vic than Laurence Olivier, who was technically very strong but less convincing in his characterisations, with his terrible Othello as an example, where Olivier spent all his time mimicking the physical actions of a black man and rather ignored the real acting, which was somewhat misguided as Othello was a Moor, not a Negro! But I also saw many top class actors and actresses like Ralph Richardson, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (in The Visit), Peggy Ashcroft, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness, Alistair Sim, Edith Evans, Charles Boyer and many others. To keep up to date, I assiduously attended the Royal Court Theatre for the plays of Arnold Wesker and enjoyed being shocked by the works of Joe Orton. But I also kept up with musicals and revues although I eventually had less and less time for theatregoing when I got more into piano playing most nights. Some of the musicals I remember enjoying include The Sound of Music, Flower Drum Song, Irma La Douce, Lock Up Your Daughters, Once Upon a Mattress, Oliver!, Maggie May, Sail Away, Follow That Girl, Bye Bye Birdie, She Loves Me, Mame, Sweet Charity, and many others.

Jump to 1967, and I was invited to come and see a revue that was staged by Joan Littlewood in a room upstairs in a pub in Angel Lane, just opposite the Theatre Royal. I think Joan was experimenting with entertainment in a pub as preparation for staging the Marie Lloyd Storyin the theatre starring Avis Bunnage. I was asked to play for the next edition of the show the following week, which I duly did and that was my first experience of working with Joan. She must have been happy with what I did because she gave me no notes on my playing and asked me to come back the following week for the next show, but I was not free and I never heard anything more of the venture. I can’t remember who was in the show apart from Myvanwy Jenn (who in 1963 had been the Red Cross Nurse singing ‘Keep the home fires burning’ in Oh What a Lovely War), Kent Baker and I think Stephen Lewis (known from the TV series On the Buses and The Last of the Summer Wine).

Joan Littlewood seated amid a pile of rubble with the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in the background.

As the years went on I gradually got involved with various small companies doing old time music hall and variety in and around London at such places as The Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal, Chats Palace at Hackney and the Pindar of Wakefield, a pub at King’s Cross, working for companies like Aba Daba, Hiss and Boo, Song and Supper and Gaslight and Garters. Some of the shows featured eminent people like Adelaide Hall, Tommy Trinder, Sandy Powell, Reg Dixon, Syd Marks, Sid Wright and other old stars who had been all but forgotten, as well as young actors just starting in the business who have gone on to have successful careers like Ruth Madoc and Marcia Warren. At Aba Daba we also had a contingent of Australasian actors including Bob Hornery, Terry Bayler, Davilia David, David Ryder Futcher, Elaine Holland, Beatrice Aston and Valerie Bader, and we did a very successful ‘Down Under’ show. Valerie leading the company in the finale with ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’ (written by George Wallace) was particularly moving.

To be continued...

Picture credits:

Chiefly from the Author’s collection with the exception of:

Pieces of 8 and The Hostage theatre programmes – Elisabeth Kumm collection

Rosanna Carteri and Jussi Björling rehearsing La Bohème– Private collection

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – Wikimedia

Queuing at the ROH c.1960s – newsreel film still

Sergeant Victor Martin, Head Doorman of the ROH – John Hall

Keith Bain in a character role – (Papers of Gertrud Bodenwieser), National Library of Australia – http:/​/​nla.gov.au/​nla.obj-234842080

Borovansky Ballet theatre programme – Rob Morrison collection

George Wallace & Jim Gerald – Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Jenny Howard – Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Micheline Bernardini – Pix,22 No. 18 (30 April 1949)

Ella Shields – Private collection

Tivoli theatre programme – Rob Morrison collection

Annie Get Your Gun theatre programme & Evie Hayes photo – Rob Morrison collection

Montage of JCW theatre programmes – Elisabeth Kumm collection (top), Rob Morrison collection (bottom)

Joan Littlewood photo – Private collection

 Appendix

IN THE PREVIOUS PARTS OF THESE MEMOIRS I have written about many of the people with whom I have been associated in my two musical lives at EMI and in the music hall and theatre world, but there are also many greatly talented people that I have not mentioned. So here in this Appendix I will set down a few words about some of them in both categories. I apologise if I have omitted any important names or said insufficient about some of them or got some details wrong but one’s memory tends to play tricks as time goes by.

Musician, record producer and administrator: Peter Andrywas a music graduate of Melbourne University. After working for the ABC in Australia and playing flute in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, he came to the UK in 1953 to study music under conductor Sir Adrian Boult and composer William Lloyd Webber, father of Andrew and Julian. He worked briefly as a freelance flautist and conductor and then in 1954 joined Decca as a classical record producer. In 1956 he moved to EMI with his fellow-producer Victor Olof and together, under David Bicknell, they ran the classical part of the famous HMV label. He later succeeded Bicknell as head of EMI’s international classical record business and so became my boss during much of my time at EMI.  Peter was an excellent work colleague with an urbane sense of humour and an easy manner with the sometimes difficult artists he had to deal with. He made a great commercial success of his thirty years at EMI and later went on to establish Warner Classics as a major international group.  He also worked with various charities including Music Therapy Charity, the Lynn Foundation and The Australian Music Foundation that supports young Australian musicians at the beginning of their international careers. In 1997 he received the Order of Australia Medal and in 2004 he was made an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen.

In 2008 I collaborated with the journalist Robin Stringer to assist Peter in writing his memoirs entitled Inside the Recording Studio: Working with Callas, Rostropovich, Domingo and the Classical Elite (Scarecrow Press).

Peter Andry with the Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland and HRH Prince Charles at an Australian Music Foundation Gala

Photo from Peter Andry’s personal collection

Peter Andry presenting to the German soprano Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf an award from the Hugo Wolf Society honouring her late husband, the EMI producer Walter Legge in 1981. (left to right) Keith Hardwick (EMI transfer engineer), Hugh Graham (EMI booklet editor), Shirley, Lady Beecham (widow of the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham), Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Peter Andry.

Robyn Archer.I never played for the Australian singer, writer and director Robyn Archer but our paths crossed in both my lives in music. I was working for EMI Classics in 1981 when I got a letter from EMI Australia asking me to set up recording sessions at Abbey Road for an Australian performer called Robyn Archer to make an LP of Brecht Songs. Ms Archer duly arrived at my office and we went through the procedure of organising the recording in a very formal and business-like way. For the project, I allocated one of EMI’s principal classical producers who found dates for the sessions at Abbey Road and engaged the London Sinfonietta and conductor Dominic Muldowney. At that time I was also playing for Aba Daba at the Pindar of Wakefield and a few nights later who should arrive to see the show but Robyn Archer to get some feeling of traditional music hall for her impersonation of Marie Lloyd in her one-woman show A Star is Torn. Needless to say, she was astonished to find this important EMI Executive (me) sitting at the piano in a fancy waistcoat and bowler hat bashing out 'Daisy, Daisy'!  The Brecht LP was a big success and she went on to record a second volume.

The next thing that happened was that in May 1982 Robyn appeared at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in A Star is Torn in which she brilliantly portrayed a number of female singing stars whose lives had ended tragically. These included Janis Joplin, Patsy Cline, Judy Garland, Bessie Smith and Marie Lloyd and I was there most nights playing for sing-alongs in the bar. So yet again, Robyn found me, the important record company executive, playing for the bar entertainment at Stratford East. I always felt that it was too much for a show like A Star is Torn that was entirely music, for the audience to leave one lot of music in the auditorium to find themselves bombarded with even more music of a similar kind in the bar during the interval. But Philip Hedley, who was running the theatre at that time, felt that the sing-alongs in the bar were a tradition at the Theatre Royal and asked me to continue doing them as many nights as I could manage. There were two pianists accompanying A Star is Torn at Stratford East (Grant Hossack and Jeremy Wesley) and when Robyn’s manager arranged for the show to transfer to Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End, Robyn asked me if I would like to play second piano at Wyndhams but I was still working full time in the office at EMI so I felt it would be just a bit too much to take on, especially if the show had a run longer than just a few weeks, which it did. I felt sorry to turn down an engagement in a prestigious West End theatre but it was one of those rare occasions where my two musical careers collided and I had to let EMI take precedence.

Robyn went back to Australia where she moved into the field of directing, mainly Arts Festivals in Canberra, Adelaide and elsewhere, and also carried on writing as well as continuing to perform. She later became a speaker and public advocate of the arts in Australia. Robyn has received a large number of honours and arts  awards including Officer of the Order of Australia and Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Letters (France).

(Left) Me with Robyn Archer signing LPs at Collets record store in London. (Right) Flyer for A Star is Torn in the West End.

Kent Baker was a highly personable actor and entertainer from the North of England who appeared in some of Joan Littlewood’s shows. He was a member of Ken Hill’s company at Stratford East and was in Ken’s adventure plays like Land of the Dinosaurs and for a long time he and Toni Palmer formed a superb duo singing in the bar for the entertainment before the show, during the interval and afterwards. When the bell sounded for the end of the interval he would say to the punters in the bar: ‘That’s enough of entertainment—now back to the show!’ Kent made a very effective music hall chairman, his friendly, engaging manner being quite unlike the pompous character portrayed by Leonard Sachs in the TV show The Good Old Days. Kent also had a repertoire of stage numbers including a Dixie song called ‘South of the Mason Dixon Line’ that he had written himself in which he had a set of false arms which kept getting longer and longer out of his sleeves as the song progressed. Another of his songs, which he wrote in homage to Liza Minnelli, was ‘Kent with an E’ although that was a bit rude! And he loved to do the Jimmy Durante number ‘A Real Piano Player’ with me accompanying as best I could. As well as Stratford East, Kent appeared many times at the Pindar of Wakefield as both Chairman and solo performer, and also at Chats Palace and other venues.

Kent Baker (left) as Widow Twanky in Peter John’s adult panto Aladdin at the Pindar (picture © Tony Locantro) and (right) singing ‘I love to go swimmin’ with women’

Larry Barnes was a genuine Pearly—the Pearly King of Thornton Heath— and his Pearly Queen was Maggie Stables who sometimes appeared in Hiss and Boo shows and was a magistrate when not singing cockney songs on stage. Larry had two main acts, one of which was interminably boring and the other a real classic. The boring act was Escapology in which he escaped from sets of real handcuffs from various eras and then got out of a genuine straitjacket as Harry Houdini had done in years gone by. He would get a volunteer from the audience to check the handcuffs and put them on his wrists before he escaped from them, and then the volunteer would strap him into the straitjacket and return to his seat. Larry would then start writhing and twisting his body to get out of the jacket in one minute while I played the Dam Busters March. As Larry got older this became more and more a physical effort for him and I had to keep extending the music until he finally stepped out of the jacket, clearly exhausted.

His other act was Paper Tearing, which he performed to perfection. He would come on stage with several rolls of newspaper and proceed to tear them systematically as he sang the music hall song ‘If it wasn’t for the ‘ouses in between’. After tearing each roll he would unwind it to reveal various things. Early in the song he would sing: ‘Wiv a ladder and some glasses, you could see to ’Ackney Marshes’, at which point a roll of paper, after tearing, would be shown to have turned into a ladder. When Larry suddenly extended the ladder up towards the heavens there would always a reaction from the audience: a gasp or a laugh or even a round of applause; it was a magical moment. At the end of the song, the final roll of paper when opened up would be seen to be a row of several houses hanging side by side. It was a brilliant act and a piece of authentic historic theatre. Larry also did a magic act, which was infinitely preferable to his Escapology, but it was usually the latter that he opted to do when he was on a bill. He constantly smoked a smelly pipe and one always knew when Larry was around by the pong of the pipe, but that was part of Larry. It is believed that he had genuine Gypsy heritage but I don’t know anything more about that, although he always carried a rather large knife, something like Crocodile Dundee, which he maintained was of Gypsy significance.

Maggie Beckitt was a multi-talented all-round performer in all kinds of musical theatre who proved also to be adept at music hall. She and her husband, the operatic tenor John Larsen, featured in many music hall bills I played for in places like the Pindar of Wakefield and The Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal, and they were part of my regular resident company at Rugantino’s, an Italian restaurant in Fleet Street, where I found myself unexpectedly presenting music hall for a year or so. Maggie was expert at doing comic songs like ‘Goodbye Little Yellow Bird’ and John brought a touch of class with numbers like ‘Girls were made to love and kiss’ and ‘Where is the life that late I led?’ John had been a member of the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company and scored a great personal success as a matinee idol when the company visited Australia and he sang opposite June Bronhill in The Merry Widow. He also appeared in Australia in a number of musicals like The Student Prince and The Desert Song.

(Left) Maggie Beckitt in pantomime (Dick Whittington) and (Right) John Larsen with June Bronhill in The Merry Widow

David Bicknellis of major significance in the history of my time at EMI. When I moved from the pop side of EMI Records (EMI’s UK operating company) to the parent company EMI Ltd in the mid-1960s, David Bicknell was head of the International Artistes Department, the part of EMI that made the major classical recordings all around the world that were too expensive or too important for any of the local branches to make. David had joined The Gramophone Company (better known as HMV) in 1927 as assistant to the legendary recording producer Fred Gaisberg in the company’s International Artistes Department. He continued as a junior producer until the end of the 1930s when Fred retired and David went into the armed forces when the war started.

After the war, Bicknell became the producer for the HMV classical label and recorded people like the Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles, the Italian tenor Beniamino Gigli, the American violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the Italian conductor Guido Cantelli. A few years later he was appointed head of the International Artistes Department where he remained until his preliminary retirement in 1969 when he became Company Archivist and he retired fully in 1971. Throughout his time with the company he retained the services of Gwen Mathias as his secretary and personal assistant. Gwen had joined as a young girl as clerical assistant to Fred Gaisberg in around 1914 and stayed on to work for Bicknell until well beyond normal retirement age. Between them they spanned the most significant history of the classical part of the HMV catalogue and I learned a great deal from them both about the classical record business and the history of EMI.

Gwen Mathias and David Bicknell on the occasion of their joint retirement from EMI in 1971

I first met Stewart Brown when I was still on the staff of EMI Classics and he came to me to licence some of EMI’s historical recordings for release on the Testament Label, which he ran as a hobby. He had been a professional clarinettist playing in the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and free-lancing in the major London Symphony Orchestras but he gave up the clarinet when he started to manage a portfolio of rented property which he inherited after his father died. After I retired from EMI I started to do some work for Testament on documentation, editorial and proofing and enjoyed being part of the success that Testament continued to achieve as it licenced recordings from EMI, Decca, Pathé Marconi, RCA Victor, the BBC and major German and Austrian radio stations.

The two Testament projects that afforded me the most satisfaction and pleasure were the release of the live recordings of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung from the 1951 Bayreuth Festival conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch and the first ever stereo recording of Wagner’s Ring cycle from Bayreuth 1955 conducted by Josef Keilberth and produced by Peter Andry.  Both these extremely important recordings had been ensnared in contractual difficulties involving Decca, EMI and Wolfgang Wagner representing the Bayreuth Festival Management that prevented their release, but Stewart, with his combination of business skill, charm and persistence, managed to resolve all the problems and issue the recordings on Testament to great critical acclaim.

Another Testament release that I greatly enjoyed was the 80^th Birthday Tribute CD to the great Australasian soprano Dame Joan Hammond in which we included her million-selling record ‘Oh my beloved father’ along with her other most popular titles. I was delighted to meet the diva, whose 78rpm discs I had collected back in Sydney and she came to dinner at Stewart’s house where after many years she met up with Stewart’s mother-in-law, the operatic contralto Monica Sinclair, who had sung Suzuki to Dame Joan’s Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden.

As well as having unerring judgement in choosing material to release on Testament, Stewart is also a great connoisseur of fine food and drink, and the greatest vintage French wines I have ever drunk were at Stewart’s dinner table.

Stewart Brown in New York

Photo © Tony Locantro

Me with Dame Joan Hammond (left) and Monica Sinclair (right) at Stewart Brown’s house

Photo © Tony Locantro

Deirdre Dee is a vivacious, bouncy singer, dancer and actress who had been in the ground-breaking musical Hair in the West End and who was adept at performing in music hall and variety with her ability to charm the male customers with whom she flirted shamelessly in songs like ‘You made me love you’. Another of Deirdre’s achievements was a one-woman show about the great music hall star Marie Lloyd, which she performed at many fringe venues, sometimes with me playing. When Deirdre and Michelle Summers formed the Song and Supper Music Hall company they suggested that I might be one of the regular pianists and I was very happy with this arrangement. On one occasion, Deirdre and Michelle organised a visit to Norway to promote Song and Supper and they took with them Geoffrey Robinson to be the chairman and me as accompanist. It was the depths of winter and we went to a large hotel in Trondheim where the snow was piled up outside against the windows. We did several small-scale shows using the drummer from the hotel’s resident band and I think we acquitted ourselves well under the circumstances but it was a hard slog and I don’t know how effective the visit was in increasing our audiences back in London. After Song and Supper closed, Deirdre opened a flourishing business organising corporate entertainment events like Mediaeval Banquets, American Hoe-Down nights, French Can Can nights and other similar jollies. Unfortunately, nobody wanted the Old Time Music Hall night that Deirdre offered, so work for me from that source dried up. At the time of writing Deirdre still offers courses in life coaching.

Publicity shot for Song and Supperwith Christopher Owen and Peter Spraggon on either side of me at the back, Michelle Summers in front of Christopher and a singer whose name I have forgotten in front of Peter, then Deirdre Dee in the centre

Dockyard Doris. Adelaide Hall may have been the most illustrious female star I ever played for and Barbara Windsor the most famous, certainly in the UK, but the one that was the funniest, the most glamorous in her own way and the most personable was Dockyard Doris. But, hang on a minute, Doris was not female—she was a rather grumpy man called Colin Devereux. But when Colin put on his wig, his frock, his jewellery and his make-up, the wonderful Dockyard Doris emerged in all her vulgar glory. It was at the Brick Lane Music Hall that I worked frequently with Doris and also at the Sebright Arms pub in Bethnal Green. To see Doris performing as Sophie Tucker, or singing the rather rude East End song ‘One Sunday Over the Lea’ or doing a tap-dance in a short dress singing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ as Shirley Temple was a joyful experience that could not be beaten. Doris was quite stout and had a round face that was full of naughtiness but she was immensely likeable, especially when she would stay as Doris off-stage and appear in public at social events in and around Hackney and rub shoulders with the Mayor and other Council dignitaries.

I have seen and worked with a number of drag queens, but Doris was the one that I remember with the most affection. Sadly, Colin Devereux died of cancer at the age of fifty but it was Doris that everybody mourned. I am indebted to Brian Walker for his recollections of Colin and Doris in his book Tales of the Old Iron Pot.

(Left) Here is Dockyard Doris at large on the streets of Hackney with Brian Walker (far left), Larry Barnes in Pearlies, Doris and me. (Right) Dockyard Doris with me at the Sebright Arms pub in Bethnal Green.

Picture © Tony Locantro

Brian Hall was a talented actor and entertainer with whom my association was all too brief. I first met him when he turned up at Chats Palace to see one of our variety shows and then Brian Walker invited him back to appear in the next show. I knew who he was from his appearance as the chef in Fawlty Towers and his roles as a hard man in films and on TV but I was surprised to find just how warm and amiable he was and what a loveable personality he had both off stage and on. He sang comedy songs like ‘Swim, Sam, Swim’ and ‘If you could see her through my eyes’ (referring to Fanny the Pig) with great effect and the audiences loved him. It was a tragic loss when he died from cancer at the age of 59.

Brian Hall in Fawlty Towers

John Harriswas a year ahead of me in Sydney at the Marist Brothers College, Randwick, but he was well known to the whole school because he was in the Cadets and played the Last Poston his trumpet on Anzac Day and other ceremonial occasions. Towards the end of my schooldays I teamed up with John and another young man called John O’Grady to form a dance band called The Tony Johns because of our names! The trumpet, piano and drums did not blend particularly well but our rhythm was strong and the sound we made carried well in the halls and other venues where we played. As described in the main text, the band was quite successful and was never short of engagements.  In the early days, the band also included John’s father, Reg, on banjo because we needed his services as a driver to transport us to our gigs but when John became old enough to get a Driver’s Licence at the age of 17 we discretely did without his father’s services when John could get use of the car without its banjo-playing owner!

This picture shows the band in its original form playing for a dance at our old school Marist Brothers College (MBC) Randwick in about 1954

Our drummer John O’Grady was a keen cricketer and for our gigs on a Saturday night we usually had to go and dig him out of a cricket match at some local oval in order to get him to the engagement. Our repertoire included a lot of ‘Old Time’ dances like the Pride of Erin, the La Bomba, the Canadian Three-Step and the Progressive Barn Dance as well as the usual Quicksteps, Foxtrots and Waltzes and seemed to please our dancers as well as those who engaged us.  We had several favourite numbers including ‘Harlem Nocturne’, Glen Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ and Woody Herman’s ‘Golden Wedding’ and we were at the cutting edge of Rock ‘n’ Roll when we started to play Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ from the 1955 film Black Board Jungle, which is considered to be the starting point of the ‘rock’ era.

Later, John Harris introduced me to the conductor of the NSW Public Works Department Symphony Orchestra, Volney Pursehouse.  John played trumpet in the orchestra, his sister Patricia played flute and his father Reg played cello. The orchestra needed a pianist to provide a kind of ‘continuo’ role, mainly for the lower parts during early rehearsals when only a few players turned up, but when a concert date approached then loads more instruments arrived including tubas, bassoons, cellos and double basses for the bottom end of the music, so the piano was hardly needed.  It was very cheeky of me to have put myself forward for this role as I had absolutely no knowledge of classical music and even less of what those strange Italian words on the music like Allegro, Adagio, Piano, Fortissimo, Sforzando, etc. meant. But, thanks to the patience of Mr Pursehouse, I got a crash course in score-reading and learned a great deal about classical music that stood me in good stead later with my job at EMI.  I remember a public concert at the NSW Conservatorium at which I had the nerve to play piano solos of Chopin’s Polonaise in A and his Waltz in C sharp minor, in both of which the left hand owed more to the Shefte College of Music than to Frédéric Chopin.  But the audience applauded so I got away with it!

Then in about 1956 I played for an amateur production of The Boy Friend directed by Maureen Walsh at the Randwick CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation) in which John Harris rather surprisingly set aside his trumpet and acted as conductor to direct the actors and the small orchestra positioned around the piano. At one performance he also played the role of the elderly Lord Brockhurst with great effect, extracting much fun from his song ‘It’s never too late to fall in love’. By then the company knew the work well enough to do without a conductor and I directed the performance from the piano. John only ever performed music as a hobby and had a long and successful career as an engineer in telecommunications.

(left) Here is a photo of John Harris and me in Sydney some time in the late 1950s (right) John O’Grady with Mary Helen McMahon in The Boy Friend

Vincent Hayeswas born in Galway, Ireland, but was brought up in London where he began working as an actor, touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He then developed his skills as a comedian and went into variety and pantomime and later music hall. At one time he was landlord of a pub in King’s Cross near the Pindar of Wakefield where the Manchester politician Allan Roberts got to know him.  In the 1980s, Allan Roberts, who used to come to the Pindar to see his fellow Mancunian Peter John perform with the Aba Daba Music Hall company, acquired a pub called the Lord Hood in Bethnal Green. This was an old run-down suburban pub left standing on its own in a small piece of public land after all the surrounding houses had been demolished. Allan installed Vincent as landlord and asked Peter John to put on music hall there. The performing area was quite small, as indeed was the bar in which the show took place, and the company had to make do with the minimum of space for what was laughingly called their dressing room. The stage, as it was, consisted of several upturned empty beer crates and the performers had to be careful they didn’t fall off it. Because of the lack of space there was only room to have a couple of performers on each bill and one of the men also had to act as chairman.  At Allan’s suggestion, Peter John encouraged Vincent to be in the show and act as Chairman and his rapport with the audience made it apparent that this was a role that suited him very well. I was the regular pianist at the Lord Hood and Roy Kean also appeared there frequently as Chairman cum performer.  But because the pub was so small and had only the one open bar it was not possible to charge admission for the music hall shows and financial difficulties caused the pub to close after about one year when it quickly fell into disrepair.

The sad wreck of the Lord Hood pub in Bethnal Green following a fire soon after it closed

Photo © Tony Locantro

Several years later, in 1992, Vincent opened the Brick Lane Music Hall in what was the worker’s canteen in the old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, East London. It was a spacious, handsome venue, with appropriate decoration by Brian Walker and ample dressing rooms in what had been a shooting gallery elsewhere in the building. Vincent always chaired the shows at Brick Lane and I played regularly there during its early days. The place soon acquired a reputation for top class entertainment with equally good food and drink available on the premises. In 2002 the Brick Lane Music Hall moved to a new location in Silvertown where it still continues to function at the time of writing.

This is the opening night of the original Brick Lane Music Hall in 1992 with Vincent Hayes in the centre. On his right are Brian Walker in white and Dockyard Doris and on his left are Judith Hibbert dressed as a nurse and Peter John in pearlies. Behind the principals are the Brick Lane Dancers who were soon dropped from the regular programmes.  

Philip Hedley I mention frequently in the main narrative but I would like to include him here to bring together some of the information about him if in a rather haphazard way. Philip was born in Manchester in 1938 and went to Australia with his English mother and stepfather (Lois and Leslie Gould) in the early 1950s where Leslie became Managing Director of the Australian branch of Philips Records. Philip did an Arts Degree at Sydney University and I first met him in 1957 when I played for the revue called Lower Education with the Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS). He was then in the next two University revues UNIK and Dead Centre in 1958 and 1959 and also in the very first Sydney production of Victoriana in 1959. As mentioned in the main text, all this and more from that time is documented in detail in the book The Ripples Before the New Wave by Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters. At the end of 1959 Philip returned to London a year after his parents had come back when Leslie was appointed Managing Director of Philips Records’ UK branch. Philip continued his association with theatre by joining the E15 Acting School in its very first year, after attending weekly acting classes at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop at Stratford East. He worked in various repertory companies as an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager) and was in charge of Lincoln Rep from 1968 to 1970 and then came back to Stratford East as assistant to Joan Littlewood from 1972 to 1974. In 1979 he took over running the Theatre Royal at Stratford East where he remained for the next 25 years.

A montage of some of the actors who performed at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, with Murray Melvin (top right), Anne Beach (centre left) and me just behind Anne at one of Philip’s memorial celebrations for a Theatre Workshop actor who had recently died

Graham Hoadly is an extremely versatile actor who has appeared in many stage productions of plays, musicals and pantomimes. In music hall he has worked for all the main London companies both as a chairman and also doing superb character numbers like ‘The Galloping Major’, ‘Sweeney Todd the Barber’, ‘Brahn Boots’ and many others. He also appears in the picture of the Hiss and Boo company with Dame Hilda Bracket.

Here is Graham performing ‘The Galloping Major’ at the Brick Lane Music Hall

Bob Hornerywas a few years ahead of me at school in Sydney and I remember being greatly impressed when I saw him playing the comic roles in amateur productions of Our Miss Gibbsand A Country Girl. He then produced the second revue I played for in Sydney called Stepping Outbut after that I lost touch with him. In about 1965 I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dreamat the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, which was before the present amphitheatre and large bar were built and the audience sat in deck chairs, so there was no shelter whatsoever if it rained. I was late arriving so had not looked at the programme, but was bowled over by the hilarious performance of the actor playing one of the rustics, who kept falling asleep standing up as they rehearsed their play. In the interval I was delighted to find this was Bob Hornery who had come to London to try his luck in theatre and film. He eked out a living but failed to establish himself strongly so went back to Australia where he had more success in things like Neighbours and in stage plays. He used his musical talent in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forumand received two major theatre awards including the Actors Equity Lifetime Award. At the end of his career (which spanned some 60 years) he appeared in a famous production of The Importance of Being Earneststarring Geoffrey Rush with the Melbourne Theatre Company in which he repeated his ‘falling asleep standing up’ routine as the butler to great comic effect, earning him a Helpmann Award. Off-stage he was one of the funniest people I ever knew and he would keep his fellow performers in fits of laughter. I wish I could remember some of his quips but the only one that comes to mind is Bob entering the dressing room at the Pindar and declaring: ‘It’s word of mouth that’s killing this show!’

Bob Hornery singing ‘The Man on the Flying Trapeze’ at the Pindar of Wakefield

Peter John is the ultimate old time music hall performer and seems to have been in just about every music hall show I have ever played for. His ‘Chimney Sweep’ song, which he wrote himself, is the perfect example of a Victorian or Edwardian music hall comedy number and he is adept at performing songs in drag including a classic interpretation of Marie Lloyd’s famous ‘Don’t Dilly Dally’. He also does a stand-up patter routine which is full of cleverly observed human characteristics and he never fails to enhance any bill he is on.

He began his career as an actor and in 1964/65 he appeared with the National Theatre Company under Sir Laurance Olivier at the Old Vic and at the Chichester Festival Theatre in three exciting productions: Much Ado about Nothing, The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Othello. After that he went into the famous production of John Osborne’s play A Patriot for Meat the Royal Court Theatre starring the Austrian film and stage actor Maximillian Schell. This play is based on a true story about a member of the Austro-Hungarian Intelligence Service called Alfred Redl who in the 1890s was blackmailed by the Russians into a series of treasonous betrayals because of his homosexuality. It includes a notorious scene in which members of Viennese high society appear in drag at a Ball.  This so offended the Lord Chamberlain, who at that time acted as censor of theatrical presentations, that he refused to grant a licence to the theatre for public performance and the Royal Court had to become a private members’ club to put on the play which caused them to incur serious financial losses. I remember the production well and the fuss it caused, which would hardly raise an eyebrow these days.

A few years later Peter first tried out performing in music hall with the Aba Daba company and this proved to be such a success that he has continued to this day working successfully in this field. It was with Aba Daba at the Pindar of Wakefield pub that he had the opportunity to create a new concept – a combination of pantomime and music hall in which the Chairman told a silly version of the panto story (as well as transforming himself into other characters as required) and the other artistes sang numbers appropriate to their panto characters. As related elsewhere in this piece, I played for several of these brilliant adult pantos and they were always a sell-out with our regular audiences.

I am grateful to Peter John for contributing to the above as well as providing information that occurs elsewhere.

Peter John appears in several group pictures in this piece (see Vincent Hayes and Dame Hilda Bracket) and here he is performing ‘Don’t Dilly Dally’ as an elderly Cockney woman who failed to follow the van to her new residence on moving day because she stopped on the way to have the old half quartern and now she can’t find her way home

Ian Jones was hired by me as a Royalty Clerk when I was at EMI Classics. Ian had trained at the Royal Academy of Music as a classical musician on the guitar and cello but was reluctant to try to pursue a career as a professional musician. When I was working for Song and Supper we generally ended our evenings with some music for the customers to dance to. On the Naticia (as described in the main text) this was usually just a short spell of me on the piano plus the drummer, but on occasion a longer dance session was required so I roped in the bass player from Chats Palace (Spike Morris) and Ian Jones, who I had discovered had a talent for playing popular music on the electric guitar in addition to his skill on the classical acoustic guitar.

Later, when Song and Supper had a residency at the Comfort Inn at Osterley, we became a regular trio with Ian on his white Fender electric guitar and our drummer Dan Simmons. Ian also had a brief try at busking on the London Underground on an acoustic guitar in a guitar duo with a house-mate called Tim and I got them to play in the bar at Chats Palace as the Ever Ready Brothers, but none of these activities on the acoustic guitar came to anything. Later, Ian moved to EMI’s Abbey Road Studios where he became a skilled remastering engineer working mainly on classical recordings and he was responsible for the remastering of From Melba to Sutherland—Australian Singers on Recordunder a pseudonym in his private studio at home. He later left Abbey Road to go into the Bed and Breakfast business in Wales where he continues to do audio restoration and remastering work as a sideline and plays Welsh folk music on his guitar and banjo as a hobby.

This is the dance session at the Comfort Inn at Osterley with Ian playing his white Fender and Dan Simmons on the drums. I like to think we sounded more lively than we look!

Picture © Tony Locantro

Roy Kean or Royston Henry Theseus Devere Kean, as he would introduce himself when he was acting as a music hall chairman, was a performer who went to no end of trouble with his costumes for the various songs in his repertoire. When he sang ‘Muffins and Crumpets’ he would don large prosthetic ears to make himself look rather like an elf, and his costume for ‘The Night I Appeared as Macbeth’ was more elaborate and complex than if he were dressing the entire company for a performance of Shakespeare’s play. And when he sang ‘On the Good Ship Yacki Hicki Doo La’ he made himself up as Long Jong Silver with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder and a wooden leg attached to his knee with his real leg strapped up behind his thigh, which must have been quite painful as he hopped around the stage during the song. And he carted all these costumes around on public transport, usually enough for three numbers when he was on a music hall bill. Roy certainly suffered for his art!

He was at his best when chairing music hall at the Lord Hood in Bethnal Green in the mid 1980s where I was the regular pianist. (See under Vincent Hayes above for more information about The Lord Hood.)  The pub was located in rather a rough neighbourhood and Roy’s chairman was hardly a macho character. For example, one of his lines was to say that he was ‘as happy as a pig in chiffon’, but the audiences at the Lord Hood absolutely adored him and it was his finest hour. The landlord, Vincent Hayes, moved on to open the Brick Lane Music Hall in Spitalfields, where Roy continued to appear, but not with the adulation that he had enjoyed at the Lord Hood. When we started the shows in Brick Lane, I happened to mention to Roy that Spitalfields was a very historic area where the grand houses of the original Huguenots still stood; the huge, rather forbidding, Hawksmoor church brooded over the landscape, and one could still see the actual locations of all the Jack the Ripper murders in nearby Whitechapel. Roy became so interested in all this that he researched further on London history and eventually went to work as a tour guide for the London Big Bus Tours Company, where his acting talent stood him in good stead for enlivening his commentaries. Royston appears in the picture of Christine Pilgrim.

Michael Kilgarriff or ‘Killy’, as he universally known, is a multi-talented man who is a first rate music hall chairman and a skilled author so it is not surprising that he has written the ultimate hand-book about putting on a music hall show: It Gives Me Great Pleasure and a second volume It Gives Me Further Pleasure. He has also produced a comprehensive guide to music hall artists and popular songs from 1860 to 1920 Sing Us One of the Old Songsand a large number of Joke books. In 2010 he delighted his friends and colleagues with a book of theatrical reminiscences from 1967 to 1979 called Back Stages.

As well as his work in music hall, Killy has had an extensive career on the stage (including playing giants in Palladium pantomimes), appearing a number of times on TV (especially in Dr Who) and recording numerous voice-overs for films and adverts. He is also an accomplished pianist so he has been known to accompany music hall shows that he was chairing, which is a clever trick if you can do it, which I certainly can’t!

Right is a picture of a group of distinguished guests who attended the launch of Killy’s book Back Stages enjoying an amusing speech being made by fellow thespian Johnny Dennis in June 2010 at the Groucho Club. From left to right: me, Johnny Dennis, Andrew Sachs (Manuel in Fawlty Towers) Peter Baldwin (Derek Wilton in Coronation Street) and Sir Donald Sinden.

Picture © Michael Kilgarriff, used by permission

Annabelle Lee, which was her real name, was one of the stalwarts of Aba Daba at the Pindar when I first joined the company. She sang some extremely saucy songs, whose clever lyrics were by her husband Richard ‘Kip’ Carpenter, a writer of children’s TV shows such as Catweazle and Robin of Sherwood. The songs included ‘I’m always in the saddle on a Sunday’, ‘Always take mother’s advice’ and ‘I was a good little girl till I met you’ for which Kip had written new lyrics that were much naughtier than the originals. For example:

‘We made love on a table once

We’d had too much champagne.

I don’t think we’ll be dining

At the Café Royal again!’

For each song Annabelle had an individual dress, each more glamorous than the one before. Sitting at the piano on stage alongside her as she sang I initially wondered whether my playing was too loud and covering what I thought was her rather smallish voice. I needn’t have worried. One night I was standing at the back of the room when another pianist was playing and Annabelle’s voice came pinging towards me like an arrow with every word bright and clear. What I hadn’t realised was that as an experienced stage performer, she had that technique called ‘projection’ which the younger generation of TV performers didn’t always acquire.

Here is Annabelle Lee in one of her typical glamorous costumes, this one specifically for ‘I was a good little girl till I met you’

Ian Liston was an actor who appeared in many TV series such as Crossroads, Coronation Street, Brookside, The Bill, Dr Who and The Onedin Line and several major films including Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, A Bridge Too Far and Scum. He produced a number of plays and musicals in the West End including Nunsense and Groucho.

He founded the Hiss and Boo Music Hall Company in 1977 and presented many famous stars in tours all over the country such as Barbara Windsor, Leslie Crowther, Dame Hilda Bracket and Roy Hudd. He also toured stage productions of Cluedo and Mr Men. His picture appears several times elsewhere in this piece.

Here is Ian Liston pictured as Chairman on a typical flyer for one of his Hiss and Boomusic hall shows

Joan Littlewoodwas one of the most influential British theatre directors in the middle of the 20^th century and has been called ‘The Mother of Modern Theatre’.  From the 1930s onwards she toured with her company Theatre Workshop doing outstanding productions that became widely noticed. In 1953 she and her company settled at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, where she directed a number of highly successful plays and musicals, several of which transferred to the West End, including The Hostage(1958) by Brendan Behan, Lionel Bart’s Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be (1959) and probably her most successful show: Oh What a Lovely War(1963).  After the premature death of her partner Gerry Raffles in 1975 she stopped directing and went to live in France. I mention Joan frequently in the main text and write about the shows directed by her at Stratford East in which I was involved.

Joan Littlewood

BBC archive

(Left) Statue of Joan Littlewood outside the Theatre Royal, Stratford East (Right) A personalised "thank-you" note from Joan

Jim McManus was an actor that I first met at the Pindar. He had worked for the BBC on the radio serial Mrs Dale’s Diary, which is where he had met Aline Waites and she used him as one of her regular performers at Aba Daba, both as an act and as a chairman. His solos included ‘Sister Sarah (Sitting in the Shoe-Shine Shop)’, which he did as a pantomime song-sheet number, the 1920s pop song ‘Brokenhearted’, and a sentimental monologue by Harry Chapin entitled ‘Mr Tanner’ to which I added a musical background. But it was as a chairman and variety show compere that Jim was at his best and he brought many an evening at Chats Palace to uproarious life with his clever ad-libbing as the host. Brian Walker includes recollections of several hilarious occasions involving Jim at Chats Palace in the chapter entitled ‘It Might Be Alright on the Night!’ in his book Tales of the Old Iron Pot. Jim has had numerous TV roles in series like Dr Who and Heartbeat and was in several films including Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Aberforth Dumbledore. Among his many stage appearances, was a particularly successful recreation of the comedian Tony Hancock. See picture under Violetta.

When I first met Ruth Madocat the Pindar in what must have been the late 1970s she was a jobbing actress who had already been in several films including Fiddler on the Roof, Under Milk Wood and The Prince and the Pauper. In our first shows together she was singing comedy songs like ‘The Next Horse I Ride On’, but she wanted to do something that involved straight singing and she brought along the music of the Rodgers and Hart standard ‘Ten Cents a Dance’. We found a suitable key and she went on to give a power-house performance of this torch song, in which I was able to pretend I was an orchestra as I hammered out the saxophones and trumpets on the piano. It turned out to be one of the most satisfying numbers I ever did at the Pindar and I had great admiration for the way Ruth sang it.

One day in 1979 she told us that she had been asked to appear in a new TV comedy series being written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. This was the hugely successful Hi-de-Hi about the staff in a holiday camp and Ruth’s performance as the Welsh camp hostess Gladys Pugh is still remembered by the public with great affection. Soon after filming had begun, Ruth told me that they had just done a scene that involved a sing-along around the piano and the pianist was hopeless. She said she had told the producers that she could get them a pianist who really knew how to play for a sing-along, but alas my phone never rang. Another disappointment, as Old Mother Riley used to say! Ruth went on to have a good career on TV and in the theatre. Very recently I saw her in the UK tour of The Wedding Singer where she was great, and after that she was in the tour of the Gary Barlow Calendar Girls musical.

(Left) Ruth Madoc  (Picture © Tony Locantro) (Right) Hillie Marshall

Hillie Marshallis a classically trained soprano who used to put on a number of different musical evenings such as Gilbert and Sullivan, Music from the Musicals, Variety and Old Time Music Hall: the last under the name of Edwardians Unlimited. I played for a number of these music hall shows, sometimes just Hillie and her colleague Julie Neubert, who both displayed great versatility to cover the whole range of music hall material. Hillie began as a radiographer in the NHS but moved into the theatre in stage musicals and pantomimes and also ran a very successful singles club Dinner Dates for over twenty years. In more recent times she has turned to writing books about personal relationships and has become an ‘agony aunt’ in newspapers, magazines and on radio, TV and on the internet.

Syd Marxwas another of those highly experienced Variety artists who was a pleasure to work with.  Like Tommy Shand, he was a multi-instrumentalist but unlike Tommy, who always wore shabby clothes and appeared rather dishevelled, Syd was always well turned out and gave a highly polished performance.  He played tunes on a variety of things, not all of which were musical instruments, including a carpenter’s saw and a stirrup pump.  He also played the unusual brass instrument called the post horn and his rendition of the ‘Post Horn Gallop’ always excited the audience. At the end of his act he would get the audience to join him giving the responses to the old song ‘Minnie the Moocher’ with which Danny Kaye had had such success at the Palladium in 1948.  Syd told me he was very pleased to find me as his accompanist because I could play old-fashioned traditional pieces of music on a piano whereas at many of the engagements he was getting at that time there would be a boy band with three or four guitars and a drum kit, which made it impossible for him to do his act in the normal way.

Syd Marx

Courtesy of the British Music Hall Society

Roger Neill first contacted me at the suggestion of the Australian director, critic and impresario Leo Schofield, who had known Roger when he was in Australia. Roger had started his career in a rock band and worked in advertising for ten years with Saatchi and Saatchi in the UK. He lived and worked in Sydney in the 1980s where he was chairman of the Lintas Advertising Agency before returning to the UK. He has made a study of Australians who went to Europe and had successful careers around the end of the nineteenth century like the sculptor Bertram Mackennal and the opera diva Dame Nellie Melba, and one such Australian was the photographer Henry Walter Barnett. When curating an exhibition of Barnett’s work for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia (which also showed in Sydney and Melbourne), Roger intended to produce a CD of some of the musicians in the exhibition but when the number of exhibits was reduced the CD project was no longer viable. Nevertheless, Roger had already contacted me at EMI to set up the CD and we have remained close friends ever since. When Roger attended a presentation I gave in 2003 at Australia House of ‘Australian Singers on Record’ he urged me to produce a set of records on the subject called From Melba to Sutherland which we eventually did together in 2016 as described in the main text. In more recent times Roger has published a book called DIVAS on the legendary singing teacher Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils, of whom Melba was one, and he is currently working on another book about a musical family called Simonsen who were based in Australia and I have been assisting him on both books with some editing.

Cover of Divas: Mathilde Marchesi and her Pupils, NewSouth Publishing, 2016

Toni Palmerwas in the original 1960 West End cast of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be, alongside Barbara Windsor as one of the two prostitutes, and then she had a principal role in Lionel Bart’s Blitz!Before that Toni had appeared as a dancer in a number of 1950s West End musicals like Pal Joeyand Guys and Dolls. She also worked in several London clubs such as Winston’s and Danny La Rue’s Club and appeared in a number of TV dramas and several major films. Toni was a good sport and threw herself into the bar entertainment at Stratford East leading the singalongs alongside Kent Baker, partly because her partner and later husband was Ken Hill who was running the theatre for a year or so and staging his colourful adventure plays like Land of the Dinosaurs, The Count of Monte Christo, Bloody Mary(starring Toni), The Invisible Man and other shows.

Toni Palmer and Kent Baker singing in the bar at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East

On one occasion in 1978, Toni asked me would I accompany her at an audition for a new West End musical, which was Bar Mitzvah Boy. For the audition, she was going to sing a number specially written for her, which I think was called ‘Flashlight Fanny’, a crib of the George Formby hit ‘Fanlight Fanny’, and she didn’t trust whoever was going to be at the theatre playing for the auditions.  So we bowled up one morning at Her Majesty’s Theatre and on the bare stage was a piano on one side and a table at the other side at which sat the creative team including I presume Jack Rosenthal, Don Black and Jule Styne as well as whoever directed it and the MD Alexander Faris.  I recognised Styne and Faris but the others did not mean anything to me.  Anyway, Toni sang her song and answered the questions put to her by the creatives and when I asked her later what transpired she said she was offered the part but in spite of it having a song, it was actually quite a short role and she didn’t fancy spending every night at the theatre sitting in the dressing room so she turned it down.  The show only ran for 78 performances so she might as well have done the part and had it as an entry on her CV.

Paul Peters was a handsome young man who ran his own music hall company in London for which I sometimes played. It was always a lot of fun as Paul and his artistes, including me, crammed into a small car with all our costumes and gear and set off with much hilarity to do a gig. Paul liked to do a range of comedy drag numbers and some of his characters can be seen in the montage below.  It was a great loss when Paul died at far too early an age, but I remember him with much affection.

Christine Pilgrimis an Australian actress that I first met at the Pindar of Wakefield with the Aba Daba company. She specialised in comic songs covering a wide range of material from genuine Victorian music hall songs like ‘It’s the same the whole world over’ to Stephen Sondheim’s ‘I never do anything twice’. She also did a stand-up comedy routine which was unusual for a female back in those days. I sometimes accompanied her when she took engagements in pubs and clubs as a solo act but that was really hard going because many of the audiences were extremely unresponsive and preferred to play Bingo than sit and listen to a female entertainer doing stand-up comedy. She also appeared in the Sunday Night Variety shows at Stratford East.

Christine Pilgrim with her son Tommy on a lorry touring the streets of Hackney publicising Chats Palace with me on the piano. Behind Christine is Roy Kean and on the left in full Pearlie gear is Larry Barnes. I have no idea who the little girl is – she just seems to have come along for the ride. The sign-writing at the bottom is by Brian Walker

Sandy Powellwas one of the veterans of Variety for whom I played only once, but it was a pleasure to work with such a polished artist….well,  he had been polishing his act for many years and it showed in the skill with which he got his laughs.  He had been a big star as a comedian in the days of radio in the 1930s and made a number of films but he never achieved the same popularity in the era of television that he had had earlier in his career.  His stage acts included using a ventriloquist dummy which fell apart with hilarious effect as he tried to operate it, and this is what he gave us at the Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal.

Sandy Powell with ventriloquist dummy

Geoffrey Robinson, who had the distinguished looks and demeanour of a military Major or Captain, regularly appeared as chairman with Aba Daba and Song and Supper. Geoffrey was a member of the Magic Circle and had appeared as a magician on children’s TV. He also played the musical saw, and his dry but witty chairman’s patter always added a level of sophistication to the shows. For example, after a particularly chaotic number by one of the company’s crazier comics, especially Terry Bayler who had appeared with Monty Python, he would usually say: ‘Thank you, Mr Bayler, for whatever it was you did!’

This is Geoffrey Robinson chairing the Song and Supper show on board the ‘showboat’ Naticia on the river Thames. I am seen at the worst piano it was ever my misfortune to have to play on. Its touch was heavy and unresponsive and I had to do battle with it three nights a week for several years during the summer months.

Photo © Tony Locantro

The Naticia on the River Thames alongside the London Eye at Westminster

Tommy Shand was an unusual comic performer: a mixture of talented multi-instrumentalist and sad clown. I don’t know much about his background except that he told Brian Walker that he had been in the army where he learned to play various instruments, which became the basis for his act. Dressed in shabby clothes and wearing a battered bowler hat, Tommy would play his eccentric instruments one after the other while strange things happened. He would usually begin with a trumpet with a typewriter keyboard attached on which he would play ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’, starting with a puff of smoke (powder) emerging from the horn of the trumpet with his first blow and then he would type a letter of complaint on the attached keyboard and end with a ‘ding’ on a bell also on the trumpet when a sheet of paper would fly out of this crazy contraption which he would catch in mid-air. The act proceeded with other curious performances on equally curious instruments and finished with a solo of ‘I’m in the mood for love’ on a saxophone out of which would slowly emerge a long thin red balloon, increasing in size as it inflated, causing great amusement, especially among the female members of the audience. Tommy was a one-off who never failed to bring happiness and fun to whatever show he was in. I am again indebted to Brian Walker after lifting most of the above from his book Tales of the Old Iron Pot.

This picture above is of Tommy Shand playing the clarinet at Stratford East in one of the Sunday Night Variety Shows. It shows the regular set up of the stage with tables and chairs where the performers could sit during the show and come and go as they pleased. I can be seen at my piano on the left at the far side of the stage. The man in the red jacket is actor Michael Elphick then to the right Terry Duggan and Anna Karen with Christine Pilgrim downstage.

Trevor T Smithwas a versatile actor and accomplished pianist who appeared in a number of Philip Hedley’s productions, one of which was Happy as a Sandbag in which he played the Warsaw Concerto on a piano onstage with his back to the audience. I always maintained that he was skilled at ‘back acting’, namely acting with his back to the audience but I sometimes wondered whether I was fantasising about this until I saw Jeff Goldblum in Speed-the-Plow and The Prisoner of Second Avenue.  In both plays Goldblum gave superlative examples of ‘back acting’ where he was able to convey to the audience a whole range of emotions, so I decided that was also a talent Trevor really did have!

(Left) Trevor T. Smith (Right) Jeff Goldblum

Peter Spraggonwas an imposing figure of a man who had started off as a policeman but decided to become an actor, so it was not surprising that he sometimes was cast in films and TV dramas as a policeman or a detective. He brought a lot of gravitas to his appearances in music hall, both as a solo performer singing songs like ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’ or acting as chairman when his personal authority worked to his advantage. I always enjoyed his repertoire of jokes, which he delivered in a rather lugubrious style, such as when he would say: “It’s Good Friday – It’s good any day” or announce that a woman stopped him in the street with a collection box saying: “Doctor Bernado’s Home” and he would reply: “I didn’t know he’d been away!” And he would sometimes out of the blue ask: “Who invented the jock strap?” then answer his own question with: “That master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock!”.

Peter worked with all the main music hall companies including Aba Daba, Hiss and Boo and Song and Supper, generally as chairman, and could always be relied on to add his own special personality to any bill.

(Left) Peter Spraggon as music hall chairman in 1980 at the Production Village in Cricklewood, West London. (Right) This is a publicity shot for Song and Supper with Christopher Owen and Peter Spraggon alongside a singer whose name I have forgotten at the back, me at the piano with Michelle Summers in the Pearly outfit and Deirdre Dee bottom left.

Michelle Summers is a soprano who began her career as a singer in TV’s Black and White Minstrel Show, sang regularly on the BBC’s radio programme Friday Night is Music Night, played the lead in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in the West End and often appeared with Ian Liston’s Hiss and Boo company in its national tours. Michelle contributed the bit of class with her popular ballads and songs from light opera that had been traditional in variety and music hall right back to the American days of Jenny Lind (the Swedish Nightingale) with Barnum and Bailey’s Circus and similar artists in the UK and elsewhere. Her two main party pieces were ‘My Dear Marquis’ (‘The Laughing Song’) from Die Fledermausby Johann Strauss II and ‘Vilja’ from The Merry Widow by Franz Lehár. We tried out other songs for her act but none ever worked as well as those two so those are what she usually did.

Michelle and Deirdre Dee formed the Song and Supper Music Hall Company and I worked for them a great deal. I have already written in the main text about the ‘showboat’ Naticia that sailed up and down the River Thames, and the shows we did in the Empire Rooms, but I will mention here another venue, which was the Comfort Inn at Osterley. After the music hall show, we had a more substantial session of dancing than we used to have on the Naticia. For this I moved from the piano to a rather cheap and cheerful SEIKO electronic keyboard, and as well as our regular drummer Dan Simmons, who played frequently at Stratford East and on the Naticia, we were joined by my EMI colleague, Ian Jones, on his white Fender electric guitar. We played the sort of music that the punters had been hearing on package holidays to Spain like ‘The Birdie Song’, ‘Strangers in the Night’ and ‘By the time I get to Phoenix’. This made a great change for me from my usual style of playing for music hall and variety and I greatly enjoyed it.

Rita Triesman While still a young actress, Rita Triesman first began performing Old Time Music Hall before the Second World War at the Unity Theatre in London. In more recent times, she set up her own music hall company at the historic Hoxton Hall, one of the last surviving purpose-built Victorian Music Halls in the saloon style in London. Because of the Unity Theatre's links with the Communist Party, Rita decided to call her new company The Karl Marx Music Hall Company but as far as I know, she never pursued this link with communism or socialism. By the time I played for the company Rita was no longer in the first flush of youth but I always found that she created a very enjoyable ambience and it was always fun to accompany her in her own repertoire of comedy songs including 'Hang on the bell, Nelly' and 'Our 'ouse'.

Poster

Courtesy of the British Music Hall Society

Tommy Trinder was an artist I played for only once in a variety bill organised by Brian Walker for Chats Palace at the Stoke Newington Town Hall.  He exhibited all the famous bonhomieand warm personality that I remembered from his films and recordings. I suppose he said: “You lucky people” in his patter but I don’t actually remember it!  He made a little joke at my expense when I failed to pick up on one of his cues but, in my defence, he didn’t deliver the cue very clearly and I suspect he did the same thing with all his pianists!

(Left) Tivoli programme, 1952 (Rob Morrison collection) (Right) Tommy Trinder

I first encountered Violetta(Violetta Farjeon) when I played for my first adult pantomime at the Pindar of Wakefield. These rather risqué shows had a script by Peter John and were hugely popular. Although born in London, Violetta, whose nickname was ‘Chou’, was brought up in France as a French speaker. She began her theatrical career in music hall in London and created the role of the French maid Hortense in The Boy Friend at the Players Theatre. She was totally fluent in English but was happy to put on a caricature French accent for her performances. She appeared in a number of films and on TV but it was in music hall and cabaret that she continued to work throughout her long life. She had a repertoire of solo numbers such as ‘Le Fiacre’ which I played for her at various venues like Crispin’s Restaurant in Vauxhall as well as at the Pindar. She was always fun to work with especially when she was putting on her exaggerated French accent.

(Left) Violetta (Right) Dressing Room picture of the cast of one of Peter John’s Aba Daba pantomimes at the Pindar of Wakefield (probably Dick Whittington which I think was called Dick and Pussy or it might have been Jack and the Beanstalk). Back row (left to right) Robert Lister, Jim McManus, Paddy Glynn as Principal Boy and Kent Baker as Dame. Front row (left to right) Martin Wimbush, Violetta and Pauline Menear). (Picture © Tony Locantro)

Aline Waites is an English actress who had been a regular cast member in the BBC radio serial Mrs Dale’s Diary playing the daughter Gwen. She had a successful stage career in Rep and also on TV and in 1969 she formed the Aba Daba Music Hall Company at the Mother Redcap pub in Camden Town with Barrymore Brown and the Australian actors David Ryder Futcher and Janet Browning. A year or so later it moved to the Pindar of Wakefield pub in Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, where it became hugely successful, playing to packed houses three nights a week. Aline directed all the shows, which changed every two weeks, and she performed in the annual Anniversary Show. She also devised the ‘scenas’ which were ensemble numbers for the whole company on a particular theme like the Train Scena, the Farmyard Scena and the Mother’s Day Scena. Aline had a talent for constructing these scenas in a way that made clever use of the material and produced something more meaningful than just a medley of songs.

In 1980 she produced a political revue called Downstairs at Kennedy’s in a venue in the King’s Road, Chelsea, and with others, including her partner Robin Hunter, she wrote a number of comedy musical shows such as Gone with the Wind 2, Road to Casablanca and Fanny’s Revenge, as well as a succession of political pantomimes.  In its heyday during the seventies, Aba Daba played three summer seasons in Copenhagen and toured successfully elsewhere in Scandinavia as well as in France, Germany, Canada and the USA.

(Left) Here is Aline Waites with David Ryder Futcher in one of the Aba Daba Anniversary Shows at the Pindar of Wakefield. (Right) The Pindar of Wakefield theatre pub at King’s Cross, London, after it was refurbished as The Water Rats.

Brian Walker is, in his own words, an East End guttersnipe, but an extremely talented man in a number of unexpected ways. When I first encountered him he was a member of a duo called ‘The Plastic Pearlies’ with his friend John Scott and they sang songs like ‘The Sheik of Araby’, which was hardly from the repertoire of the real London Pearlies! At that time Brian’s occupation was as a delivery van driver but he also did sign-writing in a colourful flamboyant style for the local shops and businesses in Hackney where he lived. He was also involved with a community centre at Homerton called Chats Palace where his other talents for building theatrical sets and making models was useful.

Although not a trained singer or actor, Brian loved to perform and his enthusiastic participation in the variety shows at Chats Palace always went down well with the local audiences. Brian soon found himself organising shows both at Chats Palace and at other places around Hackney, and he often booked me as pianist. When Vincent Hayes opened the Brick Lane Music Hall in the old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, it was Brian who did the characterful decoration of the venue and also appeared regularly in the shows. Later, Vincent engaged Brian to put on outreach shows on behalf of Brick Lane Music Hall in local venues, especially community centres and care homes. Brian became very skilled at making a little go a long way and with just one guest star, he and his talented accompanist Michael Topping, who sang while seated at his electronic keyboard, managed to put on a thoroughly enjoyable full-length show that seemed to be much more than the sum of its rather small number of parts. In 2016, Brian revealed yet another unexpected talent when he self-published a book called Tales of the Old Iron Pot, consisting of stories about his life and times in Hackney told in the most entertaining and humorous East End way.

Here is Brian on the cover of his wonderful book Tales of the Old Iron Pot(left) and as one of the Plastic Pearlies(right)

Maureen Walshwas an Australian performer who was a member of the Randwick CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation) Club who directed the CYO production of The Boy Friend that I played for in 1956 in Sydney. I also used to play for Maureen when she got engagements as a solo performer at places like the Sydney RSL Clubs (Returned and Services Leagues).  Her repertoire consisted of character numbers from stage musicals like ‘You can’t get a man with a gun’ from Annie Get Your Gun and ‘Adelaide’s Lament’ from Guys and Dolls.  As I found some years later in London working the same sort of venues with Christine Pilgrim, this was hard work and the audiences often were not interested in listening to a solo female artist doing a cabaret spot and preferred playing Bingo or working the poker machines.  But, like Christine, Maureen stuck at it and occasionally we would find an audience that responded well to the entertainment. Like many of my theatrical friends in Sydney, I lost touch with Maureen when I came to London in 1960. 

Here she is in a montage of her solo numbers

Picture courtesy Maureen Walsh

Dame Barbara Windsor truly needs no introduction and I would say that apart from her namesake Elizabeth Windsor (better known as Queen Elizabeth II) she is probably the best-known woman in the whole of the UK. She came to fame with her cheeky appearances in many of the Carry On films and then later she became even more famous when she played Peggy Mitchell, the landlady of the Queen Victoria pub in the soap Eastenders. She appeared on stage in Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be and many other shows including pantomimes and comedies like Come Spy with Me with Danny La Rue, in whose club she was a regular performer. Before she went into Eastenders, she said in her autobiography that her career was at a low ebb and that was when she started appearing in old time music hall, mainly as the legendary performer Marie Lloyd. I played for her in a number of shows, to which she always brought her own lively personality, and she was a great favourite with the audiences.

(Left) is me with Barbara Windsor backstage during an extensive Music Hall tour for Hiss and Boo around the UK (Right) Barbara Windsor and Toni Palmer in Fings Aint Wot They Used t’Be(1960)

Finale

The end of a typical Aba Dabashow at the Pindar of Wakefield (below) as I take my bow. The company had just finished the Farmyard Scene and the artists are (from left to right) Bronwyn Williams, Robert Lister, Annabelle Lee, Bob Hornery, Maggie Beckitt and chairman Kent Baker.

To conclude these recollections of my double life in music, I would like to pay tribute to all the distinguished colleagues I worked with in the record industry for over fifty years but more so to the incredibly talented artistes for whom it was my great privilege to play the piano in every kind of act in an amazing range of venues all over the UK. Irving Berlin was right when he wrote ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’ and I was lucky enough to be able to experience that for myself, thanks to all those wonderful people I worked with over many happy years.

Tony Locantro, London, October 2020

List of books referred to in the text

David Conville, The Park: the story of the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, Oberon Books, 2007

Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters, The Ripples Before the New Wave: drama at the University of Sydney 1957-63, Currency Press, 2018

Doug Holden, Australia’s Lost Tenor – from orphan to international superstar: Biography of Albert Lance (Lance Ingram),2015

Michael Kilgarriff, Back Stages: letters and diaries of a performer 1967-79, Callio Viva, 2010

Michael Kilgarriff, It Gives Me Great Pleasure: the complete vade mecum for the old time music hall chairman, including production guide and nearly 600 patter entries,Samuel French, 1972

Michael Kilgarriff, It Gives Me Further Pleasure: further ruminations upon the art of the music hall chairman plus over six hundred ready-made song introductions, Samuel French, 1996

Michael Kilgarriff, Sing Us One of the Old Songs: a guide to popular song, 1860-1920, Oxford University Press, 1998

Brian Walker, Tales of the Old Iron Pot, 2016

Picture credits

Chiefly from the author’s collection except where noted.

Tony at Theatre Royal, Stratford East rehearsing ‘Berkeley Square’ with Martin Duncan and Darlene Johnson.