Carol Raye

CAROL RAYE: FUNNY BUSINESSby John Senczuk, Arcadia, 2023

In 1964, The Mavis Bramston Showswept across Australian television, and TV would never be the same again. Created by and starring Carol Raye, with Gordon Chater and Barry Creyton, this one-hour of sparkling satire took the pomp and pomposity out of our sacred cows with delicious accuracy. It was based on the BBC’s That Was The Week That Was,which was hosted by David Frost and Millicent Martin.

Australia watched, and Qantas pilots even changed their schedules so they could catch the show. It was a phenomenon. Chater was the mainstay of the Phillip Street Theatre, Creyton was the villain of George Miller’s Music Hall in Neutral Bay, but who was Carol Raye? Little did Australians know at the time, but she was already a fully-fledged star.

This biography by John Senczuk is a marvellous nuts and bolts account of Raye’s accomplishments on the West End stage, her career in English films, and her time in South Africa before coming to Australia.

Raye was born Kathleen Mary Corkrey, the daughter of a Royal Naval Supply Officer, and his wife, who played piano for silent movies.

Her first stage performance was at the end-of-the-pier Southsea Theatre in No, No, Nanette,which saw her playing the leading role. She was only 16.

Bobby Get Your Gun, which starred Bobby Howes, Wylie Watson and Bertha Belmore, had been a moderate hit in London, but a provincial tour was planned. Carol had been taking classes with Freddie Carpenter in Dean Street, London, and this in turn led to her being cast in the show and her name change from Corkrey to Raye. Her next show Laugh, Clown, Laugh! also had a name change, to Funny Side Up,when it opened at Blackpool’s 3000 seater Opera House.A revue which starred Florence Desmond, Stanley Lupino, and Sally Gray, it was notable as the first time that Raye was likened in the reviews to Jessie Matthews. Later Raye appeared in Evergreen (one of Matthews’ hits) in a radio production for the BBC.

Fun and Gamesgave Raye her West End debut at Prince’s Theatre, and her most impressive performance to date. Loosely based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale, the ‘Old Shoemaker’ sketch gave Raye a chance to use her balletic skills as a fresh-faced young dancer trying on ballet shoes, and Richard Herne as the old shop shoemaker reliving his past.

Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliott headed a revival of The Merry Widowwith Raye as ‘Frou Frou’, and Arthur Askey’s first foray into a book musical, The Love Racket,provided her with her first ‘featured’ billing in publicity.

1943 was the year she moved to films, with Strawberry Roan,a movie set in Wiltshire about a farmer who falls in love with a chorus girl. It was the ideal role for Raye and allowed her to combine her dancing expertise with her equestrian ability.

Waltz Timewas probably her most successful film. A romance set in Austria, it starred Raye as Grand Duchess Maria, opposite Peter Graves as Count Franz von Hofer. Set in Old Vienna, when the waltz was considered immoral, its complicated story involved masks and a ring of betrothal.

After a round of publicity in the U.S. for the film, Raye returned to England and her next movie, Spring Song.It again featured Graves as a handsome test-pilot, Captain Tony Winter, and Raye as an actress Janet Ware, the owner of an heirloom brooch. Pre-publicity made much of the pairing of Raye with Broadway dancer Jack Billings and their dance number ‘Give Me a Chance to Dance’, which went through every type of dance from tap, soft-shoe, jazz, waltz and ballet.

On a publicity trip for While I Live in the U.S., Raye joined the Broadway bound, Bonanza Bound, a Comden and Green musical about the ’98 Alaska gold rush. It was exciting for Raye to be going to Broadway, but the excitement soon soured when the show folded in Philadelphia.

On her return Raye immediately went to work on two TV musicals, Yes, Madam? and Happy Weekend,followed by Vivian Ellis’ new musical Tough At The Top,about a Ruritanian Princess (Raye), and a musically-minded Boxer (George Tozzi), set in Edwardian London. Against the American imports (Kiss Me, Kate / Annie Get Your Gun /Oklahoma!) it didn’t stand a chance, but Dear Miss Phoebe, in which she got top billing, did. It was a musical version of Sir James Barrie’s Quality Street, with music by Harry Parr Davies and lyrics by Chrstopher Hassell, Ivor Novello’s lyricist.

During her career Raye had had several marriage proposals, but she eventually said ‘yes’ to Yorkshireman and veterinarian Robert Ayre-Smith, whose job took them to South Africa when he was posted to Kenya. It was the time of the Mau Mau, a secret organization determined to drive the white man out of Africa. Safety was the important issue and they carried guns at all times. Raye even had one in her apron.

TV came to Africa in 1962 and Raye was as its forefront, behind the camera and in front of it. She developed the first local programs Here and There, TV Fare, and With Reservations.

When Ayre-Smith was posted to Australia, Raye followed, along with their three children. They set up base in Epping and then came Mavis. She spent two years on and off with the show, and then freelanced on local drama and variety programs, I’ve Got A Secret, Beauty and the Beast and Riptide. David Sale created the Phillip Revue Lie Back and Enjoy It for her, in which she played opposite Hazel Phillips, and an ensemble that included Beryl Cheers, Al Thomas and Max Phipps, and successfully toured in David Williamson’s Travelling North, with Frank Wilson.

One of her most popular appearances was as a guest on Graham Kennedy’s Blankety Blanks, where her witty asides enhanced the format. It was during the stage season of The Pleasure of His Company that Raye was surprised to be asked to appear on This Is Your Life.

Raye stood twice for a seat in Federal Parliament, and failed, but she did accept a three year appointment to the Theatre Board of the Australia Council. Raye officially retired in 2000, following a guest appearance on SeaChange, a program produced by her daughter, Sally Jane Ayre-Smith.

Raye’s husband died in 2016 and Raye in 2022, a few months shy of her 100th birthday. She was posthumously awarded the AM in the Queen’s Birthday 2022 honors ‘for significant service to the performing arts as an actor and producer’. She is survived by her children Sally, Mark and Harriet, and three grandchildren.

It is only half the story, as author Senczuk says, ‘her family, her marriage, and her children all belong to a private life,’ and that’s another book. He’s done a particularly good job of seeding the life and times of Britain throughout the Second World War, helped by Raye’s scrapbooks (meticulously maintained by her mother Ethel), and there’s a long history of the Corkrey family in Ireland and Britain. There’s also a detailed show index, as well as a general index, and a marvellous selection of B&W photos, never seen before, from regional and London papers.

This review was first published in Stage Whispers, and is reproduced with their permission.

One of two photos featuring Carol Raye to be found in THA’s digital collection. This photo, which is part of the Nellie Barnes collection, shows a youthful Carol with Frank Leighton, in the 1941 revue Fun and Games.

Carol Raye on the cover of the program for the Marion Street Theatre’s 1982 production of Night and Day. The full program may be found in the THA digital collection.

Carol Raye, 1923–2022

I was well established in Sydney theatre by 1964, thanks to my series of villains at the legendary Music Hall Theatre and one revue at the Phillip Theatre which brought me to the attention of Gordon Chater, already a widely known and popular actor and revue performer.

At around the same time, Carol and her husband Robert Ayre-Smith had moved to Australia. With a BBC course of television production under her belt, Carol approached ATN with an idea for a program of topical satire in the vein of the BBC’s hugely successful That Was The Week That Was. She was fortunate that the man to whom she outlined her idea was the then general manager, James Oswin who, in the early days of Australian television, was an imaginative man open to new ideas.

One night in the spring of 1964, the paths of the above dramatis personae would cross mine. I was playing The Evil Men Do at the Music Hall for which I’d written my own part, and was aware of Gordon’s bawdy laugh echoing over all others in the audience. A surreptitious glance beyond the footlights confirmed he was indeed present, surrounded by Channel 7 chiefs and the glamorous Carol Raye. The following day I was approached to be part of a pilot for a new TV series of satirical comedy.

The pilot was a success and the ground-breaking Mavis Bramston Show was born. Gordon, Carol and I were the core stars, and a great deal of the success of the show depended on the chemistry between the three of us. The sanity of this disparate casting was at Carol's instigation and made sense—we three exuded establishment sensibilities, yet were playing anti-establishment material. The shock value was far greater than if three undergrads performed the same material.

Over the time we spent together in Bramston, we became a family. But as well as being a star and producer of the show, Carol had a family of her own to take care of. I enjoyed the company of her husband Robert Ayre-Smith and her three children, Sally, Mark and Harriet.

After the slog of two years on Bramston and a year doing my own show in Melbourne, In 1968 I relocated to London for ten years. By coincidence, Carol and Gordon happened to be there too in the late ’sixties. I did a revue at London’s Mayfair theatre with Gordon in 1969 (Ten Years Hard) and another with Carol in 1970 (This, That and the Other) produced by the celebrated Ray Cooney.

Carol Raye (centre) with Tom Oliver and Barry Creyton in This, That and the Other, Palace Theatre, Southend-on-Sea, 1970. Photo by John Alexander Studio.

Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation

When I returned to Australia, in the early ’80s, Carol suggested I might write a comedy spot for us to perform on the Mike Walsh Show. I wrote a sketch in which Carol played Margaret Thatcher about to wage war on the Falklands. It was a great success and the producers asked for more. I thought my grab bag of gags might run to about six sketches, but ultimately, we did about eighty over a two year period.

With minimal in-person rehearsal, usually in a dressing room on the morning of the show, the spots worked in great part because Carol and I knew each other so well, and were intuitively aware of what we would bring to a sketch in terms of character and timing.

At this time we also performed together in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off. Michael Blakemore came to Sydney to direct. He left the casting to the London Stage Manager who conferred with Stuart Wagstaff and producer Wilton Morley to put the actors together. It seemed like the perfect cast: Daniel Abineri, Frank Wilson, Anne Charleston, Carol, Stuart and I were all well known to audiences, and well suited to the characters. I’d worked with Michael in a play in which he directed me at the Royal Court in London so it was a happy reunion for me.

However, until we started rehearsing in earnest, I don’t think Carol fully understood how unglamorous the part of Dotty was. We played Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide with enormous success, but Carol tired of playing the character by then and decided to drop out of the rest of the tour. She was replaced by Jill Perryman who did the rest of the long and successful run.

In spite of the changes to Noises Off, I was still working with Carol weekly. She and I were still appearing every Monday on the Mike Walsh Show in sketches I wrote for us. I’d fax the sketches to her and then, Monday mornings, I’d fly into Sydney from wherever I was playing, we’d do the sketch live, and I’d return to Noises Off that night. It says a great deal for the rapport we had that we could rehearse for half an hour in a Channel 9 dressing room, then do the sketch live and never mistime a laugh. That kind of empathic relationship between actors is hard to come by and is treasure when it happens.

In the late ’80s I relocated to the United States where I’ve lived for thirty-five years. I saw Carol and Robert on every return to Australia, and she, Gordon and I were briefly reunited for a press pic in the late 1990s. This was the last time the three of us were together.

In 2004, Carol came to stay at my house in the Hollywood Hills. We spent a happy week touring the sights of LA. Carol’s energy and curiosity were unflagging and generally, she managed to walk me and my partner Vaughan Edwards off our feet as we inspected the city.

My trips to my homeland have become less frequent as I continue to live and work in the US, but my correspondence with Carol was regular over the years and more like that between family members than friends.

I’m greatly in her debt for pronouncing favorably on me on that night she and the Channel 7 team came to the Music Hall to give me the once over. I’m fortunate to have known Carol as a colleague, but much more than that, I’m blessed that we were good friends for much of my adult life. Her extraordinary talent alone set her apart from and above her peers, and endorsed her ‘star quality’; but her warmth, her sense of humor, her capacity for making friends of family and family of friends was a rare thing and to be treasured.

How lucky I am she entered my life fifty-eight years ago, and luckier still that she was a major part of my life since that night.

The Mavis Bramston Show

I heartily recommend Stephan Wellink’s splendid documentary, Pushing the Boundaries. Meticulously researched, and brilliantly constructed, it details the national social and political climates of the time, and how we changed them. We did indeed push boundaries. Australia was a deeply conservative country in the mid 60s—movies were censored, books were banned, Australia was ‘white’ and England was ‘home’ whether one had been there or not. Carol’s visionary idea was that Australians were ready to loosen up and laugh at themselves. And indeed we were.

As stated by the historians in the documentary, Bramston changed the way Australians thought about ourselves and our politics. It helped us move beyond the cultural cringe, the feeling my generation was bludgeoned with since birth, that Australia was a poor relation to the United Kingdom. It proved that we had a unique national personality, and one to be proud of.

Australian TV owes Carol an immense debt, as do many of the comedy shows which came in Bramston’s wake. She not only opened the way for female executives in the business, but was a multi-talented, glamorous performer to boot!