West End

By Elisabeth Kumm

MADAME POMPADOUR Musical play in 3 acts by Frederick Lonsdale and Harry Graham, adapted from the German. Lyrics by Harry Graham. Music by Leo Fall. Presented by George Edwardes (Daly’s Theatre) Ltd. Produced under the direction of Frederick J. Blackman. Scenery by Alfred Terraine and Joseph & Phil Harker. Costumes by Comelli. Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Wood.

Following the sucessful revival of The Merry Widow, which ran at Daly’s Theatre in London for over two years, James White (an English financier and speculator who had acquired a controlling intrest in Daly’s Theatre in 1922) was looking around for a new musical play to take its place.

According to D. Forbes-Winslow in his ‘biography’ of Daly’s Theatre, producer Frederick J. Blackman saw Madame Pompadour at the Berliner Theater in October 1922 and was so impressed that he immediately telegraphed White to join him in the German capital. After watching the first act, he acquired the piece for the English stage.

White engaged Frederick Lonsdale to adapt the original libretto, with lyrics by Harry Graham. The two men had previously collaborated on The Lady of the Rose (1922) for White, and would go on to work on Katja the Dancer (1925) and Lady Mary (1928). Sadly for White, though the musicals produced at Daly’s during his reign proved popular, he overstretched himself financially and in June 1927 he committed suicide, aged 49.

Madame Pompadour opened at Daly’s Theatre on 20 December 1923, with Evelyn Laye in the title role. It ran until 31 January 1925, 461 performances. The principal characters were played by:

The star of The Merry Widow was a young English actress Evelyn Laye (1900–1996). Prior to playing Sonia in this revival, she had been seen at the London Pavilion in Phi-Phi (1922) and before that had achieved some success as Madeleine Manners in Going Up (Gaiety Theatre, 1918) and as Bessie Brent in a revival of The Shop Girl (Gaiety Theatre, 1920). In 1951, Evelyn Laye performed in Australia with her husband Frank Lawton for J.C. Williamson Ltd., appearing in Bell, Book and Candle by John Van Druten.

The principal male role of René was played by Derek Oldham (1887–1968), an English tenor. Best remembered as a Gilbert & Sullivan singer (he was a leading member of the D’Oyly Carte Company, 1919–1922 and 1929–1930), he also performed leading roles in numerous musical comedies during the 1920s. These included the London premieres of Whirled into Happiness (1922), Rose Marie (1925) and The Vagabond King (1927), and the long-running revival of The Merry Widow (1923).

Bertram Wallis (1874–1952), who played the non-singing role of King Louis XV had been a major star of musical comedies. Performing alongside Isabel Jay in Miss Hook of Holland (1907), King of Cadonia (1908), Dear Little Denmark (1909) and The Balkan Princess (1910), he became a popular postcard actor. In the period following WWI, he stepped away from the romantic leading man roles in favour of character parts.

The principal comedy role was played by Huntley Wright (1869–1943), a musical comedy veteran. From 1896 to 1905 he was the comedy lead in all the musicals staged at Daly’s Theatre, including The Geisha (1896), A Greek Slave (1898), San Toy (1899), A Country Girl (1902), The Cingalee (1904), The Little Michus (1905) and See-See (1906). He was back at Daly’s in 1921, when he was seen in Sybil (1921), The Lady of the Rose (1922) and Madame Pompadour (1923).

During the course of the run, some roles changed, notably that of Mariette, Madame Pompadour’s maid. The role had originally been allocated to Ivy Tresmand, but she found it ‘insufficiently exciting’ and withdrew in favour of Kitty Attfield. With the show about to open, Kitty succumbed to influenza and Maisie Bell, a member of the chorus, was called on to take the part:

“I only had yesterday and a few hours the day before to learn the part, and I had to learn three duets, the dialogue, and the songs. It was very hard on Mr. Huntley Wright, who had studied all his songs and business with the other girl, but he was very kind to me and helped me through. At first I felt so nervous I wished I had never gone on the stage at all, but now that I have done it all right I feel quite confident again. It was the chance of a lifetime, and I am awfully glad it came. I have only been on the stage three years.” (Westminster Gazette, 22 December 1923, p.3)

Although Maisie Bell was commended for her performance, by January 1924, the role had passed into the hands of the more experienced Elsie Randolph. With the offer to play opposite Jack Buchanan in a new musical comedy, Toni, Elsie left the company, and in April 1925 Eve Gray took on the role. Eve Gray (1900–1983) was an English-born Australian actress. Anecdote had it that within three days of her arrival in London she was offered the role of Mariette. Eve Gray would go on to become a film actress appearing in some fifty films between 1927 and 1938.

Program courtesy of Rex Bunnett

Musical Numbers

The Sets

Act 1, The Tavern of The Nine Muses (Alfred Terraine). National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Act 2 Madame de Pompadour's Reception Room at Versailles (Joseph & Phil Harker). National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Act 3, King Louis XV's Apartments at Versailles (Alfred Terraine). National Library of Australia, Canberra.

The Costumes

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has a collection of drawings by Attilio Comelli as part of the Emile Littler Archive. Most of the costume drawings pertaining to Madame Pompadour are of Court Ladies and various unidentified female characters. A couple of the designs are costumes for Mariette and Madeleine. Others are clearly the riding costumes worn by some of the ladies in the Act 2 hunting scene.

Act 1 costume

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Act 1 costume

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Act 2, Court Lady

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Act 2, Madeleine, Comtess D’Estrades

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Act 2 costume worn by Miss Saxe Wyndham

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Act 2 costume

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

The Hunting Party: Mesdames Saxe Wyndham, Norman, Newton, Lee, Lovat and Robinson

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The Reviews

Evelyn Laye as Madame Pompadour

From The Sphere (London), 1 March 1924, p.19

Mariette (Elsie Randolph) and Calicot (Huntley Wright) singing the duet ‘If I Were King’

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Madame Pompadour

Audiences who go to Daly’s do not trouble themselves about the historical sense, nor about probability or improbability of conduct. They go with the enthusiasms of past, first nights in their veins, ready to acclaim the latest successor in the long line of musical plays for which this theatre is famous.

And so last Thursday there was applause all the way at Daly’s, and at times uproarious applause. The audience was delighted with the sensuous lilt and charm of the music, with the good singing and the acting very much above the musical comedy average with the staging and dressing, picturesque in the Tavern of the Nine Muses with elegant in Court apartments. With these attractive things provided, the truth of the central character did not matter to the audience. How Jeanne Antoinette Poisson le Normant d’Etioles, Marquise do Pompadour, shapes in the unnamed piece by Adolph Schanzer and Ernest Walisch deponent sayeth not, but probably the concept was as little like the “left-handed queen” who ruled not only France’s king but France itself for many years as Dr. Fall’s music is alien to the mid-eighteenth-century manner. The music is of the now familiar Viennese school, which, while it has lost its pristine freshness of a decade or two ago, has not for that. reason got any nearer to the Louis Quinze period.

No statement is made as to the year in which the action is laid, but here is no “petite Etioles,” who, angling to become un moreau de roi, caught the king at the Paris ball. She is here Marquise de Pompadour, the most powerful woman in France. Yet our authors or adaptors take her to an inn of ill-repute, where—not to put too fine a point upon it—she wants to have “a night out.” The motley frequenters of the inn are very anti-Pompadour, and their pet rhymester, Joseph Calicot—a sort of burlesque Gringoiro—entertains them with a ribald ballad about the king’s mistress. When she appears no one recognises her, not even René, Count d’Estrades. René has left his young wife, Madeleine, not because he has ceased to love her, but because, in the Palais Royal farce fashion, he wishes to make a night of it. The marquise and the count meet. He makes immediate love to her if that is quite the word and she gives him an assignation, “by the light of the moon,” an hour hence. But she has not reckoned with Maurepas, the Minister of Police, who has followed her to the inn, spies upon her in this promiscuous amour, and then publicly declares who she is, hoping by these means to disgrace her with the king. At this exposure the discomfited René joins in the refrain of the scurrilous verses that Calicot has just sung in her presence. The Pompadour takes matters with a high hand. René and Calicot are placed under arrest. But a new light breaks in on René when he finds that his sentence is to be enrolment in her own Guards, and Calicot is placated as well as relieved at the news that he is to become a Court dramatist.

Absurd as it all is, this first act has movement and also plenty to please the ear and the eye. The second act shows the Pompadour getting on with her adventure, if not quite in the speedy way that she intended at the inn. She orders the lieutenant of the Guards to place René on sentry duty for twelve hours outside her apartment, and having sufficiently plagued him, she tells him to await her in an inner room. Meantime she diverts herself with a second lover in Calicot, who, a very unwilling victim, yet finds her blandishments iiresistible. For his benefit she dresses up, in a daring costume, in the character of Potiphar’s wife, to whom she makes Calicot play Joseph. Why, with René waiting for her in another room, she should trouble about Calicot is of course that sort of thing that no one can understand outside musical comedy. In the midst of those diversions two awkward circumstances arise. A young- girl seeks an interview, and it turns out (1) that she is the sister of the Pompadour—a sufficiently remarkable coincidence—and (2) that she is the wife of René, which is the long arm with a boomerang effect. The other circumstance is the unexpected entry of Louis at the instance of Maurepas. The Pompadour satisfies Louis that Calicot—miserably and dilapidatedly emerging from a coffer in which he had secreted himself—is not her lover, as Maurepas alleges; but about René the king is not so easily persuaded. She explains that her sister Madeleine has come to her in search of the runaway René, and that René has sought from her a captaincy in her Guards, and that she is merely bringing the two together. With the sceptical Louis hiding behind the curtains René and Madeleine meet, and their conversation is more or less convincing. Louis wants to know whether Madame had thought of giving the count a place in her bodyguard; and she replies that she might have done so had she not been keeping the place for Louis. He calls her a rogue, which may be described as faire une politesse.

The Pompadour is frankly a show part, and one by no means sympathetic. Miss Evelyn Laye sings it brilliantly and plays it with an energetic pleasantness. She has some attractive numbers, particularly “Love Me Now,” which has a waltz refrain with a seductively broken rhythm; the duet with René, the melodious “By the Light of the Moon” and “Love’s Sentry,” a spirited duet in march time. In portions of the love songs Miss Laye is inclined to overact;  especially in some passages of the “Moon” song is there an abandon that might be much modified. Miss Laye also overacts in the scene where the Pompadour learns that René is married to Madeleine, for the count is no more than a chance acquaintance, and this tragic distraction of his loss is so much beating of the air. Miss Laye has personality, but it does not subdue itself to the part, or one might say rise to the part. What characterisation there is and there is not much is in the modern manner. Tho characterisation lacks colour and distinction, and it is also deficient in humour, for which musical comedy smiles and complacencies are not an equivalent. But the character itself is a travesty. Mr. Derek Oldham has this advantage in his part—that he has no great figure of history to sustain. He is just the backsliding husband of farce, and a mean one at that. But Mr. Oldham has the right touch of romance, and his René is as well acted as he is well sung. His serenade, admirably given, is perhaps the best number in the score. Mr. Bertram Wallis makes a masterful Louis Quinze, which that weak and libertine king was not. It is a strong and impressive performance, no doubt according to the intentions of the authors, whatever the history-book, if consulted, might say to it. Mr. Huntley Wright gets humour out of what is not very humorous as the boastful poetaster, and his ditty in style poissard is very cleverly done. Mr. Leonard Mackay, as the heavily official Maurepas, and Mr. Leonard Russell, as the assistant, are a comical pair. Mr. Noel Colne gives a glimpse of Boucher needless to say, the Pompadour was a friend of the arts as of literature—and other minor parts are neatly filled by Messrs. Fred Pedgrift, E. de la Touche, Louis Harrison, Desmond Roberts, and Stanley Rendall. Miss Maisie Bell, taking up Miss Kitty Attfield’s part at a day’s notice, acted very creditably as Mariette. Miss E. Stamp Taylor, as the very suddenly-discovered sister of the Pompadour, is duly countrified in manner, so much so as to make one surprised that the courtier-like René should ever have married so rustic a beauty. The not exacting music, under Mr. Arthur Wood, has ample justice done, to it by the accomplished Daly’s orchestra, and the mis-en-scene, with sets by Alfred Terraine and Joseph and Phil Harker, and dresses designed by Comelli, have a happy sense of the period that is, not so happily, peculiar to them.

The Stage (London), 29 December 1923, p.10

Madame Pompadour (Evelyn Laye) and Lieutenant (Donald Mather)

National Library of Australia, Canberra

King Louis XV (Bertram Wallis) with Madame Pompadour (Evelyn Laye)

National Library of Australia, Canberra

“MADAME POMPADOUR”

VIENNESE OPERA A SUCCESS AT DALY’S.

There can be no doubt of the popular success of “Madame Pompadour” at Daly’s Theatre; and that in the circumstances, at the season, is the main consideration. The first-night audience was distinguished and enthusiasti. The music had a good deal of charm and an interesting likeness to that of the period—a very innocent form of imitation. Then the production is extremely beautiful, and no doubt perfectly accurate. But here we may let the consideration history rest, as we forbear from comment on the journalist who describes the pompadours lover as the Grand Monarque! France chose the oddest names for its kings, and the odd name of Louis Quatorze was the Well Beloved. At any rate, Mr. Bertram Wallis’ imposing of comic opera heroes is nothing like him, so far as know. He is just a handsome, admired figure as usual. So, Miss Evelyn Laye is a prima donna of ever-increasing charm and popularity. But of all the “historical” figures that have strutted across our stage late, Louis and the Pompadour are the least historic; and the procession may now very well stop. Louis, of Daly’s, is referred as puppet king. He is, but he was not. Mr. Derek Oldham is the actual hero of a perfectly conventional story of comic opera intrigue. The acting success is emphatically that of Mr. Huntley Wright as a quaint little revolutionary poet.

The Era (London), 26 December 1923, p.6

Act 1 scene, Tavern of the Nine Muses, with Evelyn Laye as Madame Pompadour (centre). National Library of Australia, Canberra.

NEW MUSICAL PLAY.

MADAME POMPADOUR AT DALY’S.

MISS EVELYN LAVES TRIUMPH.

“Madame Pompadour,” which was produced at Daly’s Theatre last night, is an adaptation by Frederick Lonsdale and Harry Graham of a play not named, the lyrics are by Harry Graham, and the music by Leo Fall.

It was a success, and the chief feature of the evening was the personal triumph of Miss Evelyn Laye.

There is a biography of Mme. de Pompadour in the program which is a little Indiscreet, because it tells us that the Pompadour reigned with “grace and decorum.” The second of these qualities is entirely absent from her carrying on in this play.

DUAL LOVE.

She makes violent love to one man. while another is waiting for her a few yards away. The first lover is a young man to whom she has taken a violent fancy and enrolled in her bodyguard. He happens to be the husband of her sister. None of the characters really behave well, even according to the rules of musical plays.

The book is effective, however, and better written than most.

Miss Evelyn Laye—or the author for her—makes Mme. de Pompadour a feather-headed coquette with a gift of repartee. In the scene where, astonishingly costumed, she tries to attract the unwilling poet, her comedy was delightful, while in the scene where she realises that her lover is her sister’s husband, her unsuspected dramatic power brought the house down.

EXCELLENT SINGING.

Mr. Derek Oldham as the brother-Inlaw sang excellently; his serenade, “Madame Pompadour,” was musically the best thing of the evening Mr. Huntley Wright was most entertaining as the rebel poet turned courtier. Mr. Bertram Wallis was an imposing King, and some of the company pronounced French well, others in a way which might imperil the Entente.

Leo Fall’s music is typically Viennese. There is a great deal of piquant scoring, and the finales are well built up, but there is nothing in it which will take the town by storm. A.K.

Daily News (London), 21 December 1923, p.5

Evelyn Laye—Daly’s Theatre (prior to its demolition in 1937)—Arthur Wood

Memories of Madame Pompadour

Leading lady, Evelyn Laye recalled her starring role in the show in the following excerpt from her autobiography.

“… Jimmy White, to whom I was under contract, dumb-founded me one day by telling me he was sending me with my father [one-time stage manager, Gilbert Laye] to Berlin, to see a famous German star, Fritzi Massary, playing the title role in an operetta, Madame Pompadour.

“Ah’m relying on your judgment, luv,” he told me briefly. “No one else thinks you could play that, but ah do. Let me know. If you say yes, bah gum, we’ll do it.”

I had never been out of England before, and the excitement of crossing the Channel and travelling on a continental train was wonderful, let alone the exciting reason for the journey.

Mother saw us off at the station; Father bought one of those books which proclaim they tell you how to speak German in a day, and assured both of us that there was “nothing to be frightened of” in foreign travel!

In Berlin we had a wonderful reception at the theatre where I watched Fritzi Massary with awe. She was gay, she was polished, she had joy in her; and she played the stupendous part of Madame Pompadour quite flawlessly.

I saw her performance twice before I plucked up courage to wire Jimmy White:

“I long to play it, and will work terribly hard not to let you down.”

We returned to London, and the weeks flew in a daze of rehearsals, singing lessons, costume fittings.

The character of Pompadour, the bewitching courtesan, fascinated me, and I went to France, and to Versailles, to walk in the places where she had walked, and to try to capture some sense of the atmosphere and period of this beautiful scheming mistress of Louis XV.

One of my crinoline dresses, so heavy that Kate my dresser twice fell down the stairs while carrying it, was an exact copy of a painting of La Pompadour by the French artist, Boucher. Made of true oyster satin, which is in fact grey, with the faintest elusive touch of pink in it, it was hand embroidered with over 2,000 pearls, sequins and baguettes.

Till the moment the curtain went up on the First Night of Madame Pompadour the nervousness, the excitement, the well-wishers and the flowers were the same as for any other First Night, and already I had fourteen First Nights, little and big, behind me.

But this one was different. There was a tremendous amount of money invested in the show; it was an extravagantly ambitious undertaking resting largely on me. Though, by now, I was very well known, no one believed I was capable of such an exhausting and demanding role, except Jimmy White.  And, because I was well known, this First Night could do one of two things—it could show me as a nice, blonde, little musical comedy actress trying to outplay her limitations—or it could make me a star.

For the first time in my life the producer had to hold my hand in the wings, and give me a little push to send me on. I was paralysed with fright.

And at the final curtain I knew for the first time, too, the supreme thrill that an audience can give any actor—a moment’s hush before a thunder of applause.

There were endless curtain calls, and the stage was covered with flowers.

The next morning a telephone call from the theatre sent me leaping out of bed. In a dolorous voice, Terry, the office sergeant said, “Miss Laye, the guvnor wants you to come down at once ... he seems in a very peculiar mood.”

“But it was a success, a wonderful success,” I argued to myself in the taxi, nervous and apprehensive. What could have gone wrong?

With a strained funereal look, Terry took me to Mr. White’s office.

Jimmy was at his desk, writing, as I went in. He didn’t look up. With his left hand he fumbled to open a drawer, and then, head still bent over his papers, he pushed a small case across the desk towards me.

As I sat there he growled without looking at me, “Take that, kid.” I opened it. Inside, in its deep red velvet frame, was an onyx vanity case, studded with diamonds, bound in platinum, with a fine platinum carrying chain.

I gazed at it and my eyes flooded with tears. Jimmy looked up. “Aye,” he said gruffly, “that’s yours, kid. Ah’m bluddy proud of you,” and very swiftly he went back to his writing.

I looked at the most fabulous present I had ever yet received, and knew what each winking diamond told me. I was a star.

From Boo, to My Friends, Evelyn Laye, [Hurst & Blackett, London:1958], pp.67 - 69

In later years Evelyn Laye and Derek Oldham reprised their original stage roles under producer, Desmond Davis in a radio version of Madame Pompadour (adapted by Howard Cunningham), which was broadcast by the BBC Home Service on Friday, 20 June 1941 from 9.35 to 10.45 p.m., with the BBC Theatre Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Mark H. Lubbock.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Arthur Wood, who became Daly’s resident conductor under James White’s management, related the following anecdotes in an article published in The Sphere in October 1937, in which he reminisced about his tenure at the theatre.

“The stories about Jimmy White’s career are as varied, and very nearly as fantastic, as the Arabian Nights, and the strange thing is that most of them are true. But the commonest, that he was illiterate, is all wrong.  He never lost his Lancashire accent (I think he went out of his way to cultivate it) but at the same time he was one of the most widely read men I have ever met …

He started life as a bricklayer in Rochdale, saved some money with it and bought—of all things—a quarter share in a circus. Having sold that out at a profit, he bought and sold cotton mills, and within a remarkably short space of time he was a millionaire. Then he took over Daly’s [in 1922], and I moved in with him. I had been there before, but now I was resident conductor …

It may seem a strange thing to anyone not connected with the theatre, but up to this time [1923] I had never been backstage at Daly’s while the curtain was up. You must remember that the conductor’s place is in the orchestra pit, and if he does his job properly he stays there. The running of the show from the other side of the footlights is often a mystery to him.

During Madame Pompadour, the piece with which we followed The Merry Widow, I did go behind, however. In the middle of the show I was handed a note telling me that Mr. White wanted to see me urgently, and so I handed over the direction of the orchestra to my deputy and dived through the bolt hole under the stage.

As I reached the stage level someone said; “Can’t stop, old man. Cue in a moment,” and I caught a glimpse of Huntley Wright hurrying towards the wings. After him sped his dresser, a powder puff in one hand, and the inevitable glass of port in the other.

They used to say that you could tell exactly where the play had got to by the amount of port left in Huntley Wright’s glass. He invariably started the evening with it full, and moistened his lips before each entrance. After the piece had been running for a week or so, he got it timed so well that he finished the last drop a moment before his last cue.

I went on to White’s office, wondering what could be urgent enough to justify calling for me just before the first act finale, to find him with his feet on his desk. “Arthur,” he said “if you want to make a bit of money, back all my horses this week.”

I backed the horses, but it was the bookies who made the money.

From “Daly’s in the Palmy Days” Told by Arthur Wood, The Sphere (London), 16 October 1937, p.98

Evelyn Laye

Silent film footage from 1924, by British Pathe, features scenes from the London production of Madame Pompadour with Evelyn Laye:

Another film, also from 1924 , ‘The Stars As They Are—Miss Evelyn Laye’, shows Evelyn Laye ‘at home’ and arriving at the theatre in her chauffeur-driven car.