Stage-struck
‘YOU CAN’T BE A SERIOUS ACTOR UNTIL YOU’VE TROD THE boards first!’ was the adage of the old Shakespearian actors who toured until they dropped. They were quite inspiring to a young, hungry actor, though. While I spent much of the free time of my youth at the Odeon cinema in Streatham, south London, I also enjoyed visiting music halls and what you’d now call fringe theatres. One actor I seemed to follow around was a deliciously macabre chap named Tod Slaughter.
He was unintentionally hysterical and so over the top, playing maniacal villains with rolling eyes, a mad cackling laugh and over-exaggerated mannerisms. He was typecast to the point of being known as ‘Mister Murder’ and usually played in Victorian melodramas like Sweeney Todd, Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper. In the latter, at the end of the play he was ‘killed’ on stage and I remember one night when the curtains came down his feet were left sticking out beneath the curtain. His size tens were slowly withdrawn, only for him to reappear in front of the tabs seconds later for his obligatory, and highly theatrical, curtain speech:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, our story has been taken from the annals of Scotland Yard and is true in every aspect except the Ripper was never caught. But you saw him killed before your very eyes tonight and can now leave this theatre safe in the knowledge that you ladies don’t have to wonder, “Is he there? Is he there?” when you walk into the darkness.’
These monologues were often better than the play and Slaughter was certainly the last of the great barnstormers, ceaselessly touring the provinces in his hoary old melodramas right up until the day he died.
Talking of ladies leaving the theatre safely, my former wife, Dorothy Squires – who was not a particularly tall person out of heels, and so liked to wear quite high ones – exited the stage door at the Brixton Empress one night when some lout on a bicycle came up behind her and ‘goosed’ her, leaving his thumb in her rear end so all she could do was totter along, screaming for help as he pushed her along. Ever after, she always looked left and right for cyclists.
Another film star of my youth who I also saw on stage was Lancastrian comic and music hall entertainer Frank Randle, who actually only made ten movies and usually without his false teeth in. He often fell foul of the censors, particularly in Blackpool where they banned him from performing some of his material on stage, and it’s fair to say Randle did not take kindly to criticism or hecklers and would throw his dentures at them as a mark of protest. His many run-ins with the police led to a significant charge sheet being lodged with the Lancashire Constabulary!
With my wife, Dorothy Squires. Dot made her name on radio shows such as Variety Bandbox, and then went on to success in the US.
He once performed at my local, the Hackney Empire, and when the resident comic came on, Frank appeared on stage and started talking over him, stepping on all his punch-lines. Someone called from the audience, ‘Why don’t you shut up and let the other comic have a word?’
‘You bastards!’ shouted Randle. ‘You fucking ungrateful bastards!’ Next thing I knew, the iron safety curtain came down and he was dragged off stage.
Randle had his caravan parked around the back of the theatre, and immediately let the tyres down so the management couldn’t evict him from the premises. He then stood in its doorway, posing for the press with his shirt undone to the waist, showing off his torso.
A friend of mine was part of Randle’s travelling theatre company and for the only time in the history of show business the pantomime they were performing, in Birmingham, went on strike.
‘Ungrateful bastards!’ Randall shouted at the cast. ‘Who employs you?’
‘You do, Frank, but you haven’t paid us,’ they reasoned.
‘Well, I fucking employ you! What more do you want?’
The dressing rooms were all interconnected and the company discovered that by placing a glass on the radiator pipes they could listen in to Frank talking in the dressing room next door. One day they heard him talking to a police inspector. ‘Aye, that second lead of mine, he’s an iron hoof I tell you – he’s taking it up the bum. And that tall blond London chap, he’s been shoplifting and bragging about it.’
They realized that Frank was saying the most terrible things about the actors in order to get them arrested, so that he could get out of paying them.
Jimmy Wheeler was another music hall comedian I followed and got to know. He was a huge man who would come on stage with a violin, and his catchphrase was ‘Aye, aye, that’s ya lot!’.
A friend of mine was working with him in Australia and apparently one day Jimmy got into a taxi and banged the door hard shut. When they reached their destination the driver said, ‘I’ll thank you not to bang the door.’
Without missing a beat, Jimmy replied, ‘The only doors I want to bang is Diana fucking Dors!’
He was once on the same variety bill as Dorothy Squires in Great Yarmouth. Dot was to close the show, while Wheeler was set to go on last in the first half. However, as the interval began drawing nearer, they couldn’t find Wheeler. Dot, who was in the dressing room dressed in only her bra and knickers, suddenly heard her entrance music playing.
‘Quick, Dot! We need you on!’ came the call.
Dot threw on her dress, dashed out on stage and started singing, while the manager of the ABC was dispatched to the local pubs to look for Wheeler. Eventually they found him, half cut, propping up a bar:
‘Jimmy! You’re on!’ snapped the manager.
‘How am I fucking doing then?’ he replied ... and no apology was forthcoming.
On another occasion I remember him chuntering on about young comedians, and his wife, who had finally got fed up of dear Jimmy, said, ‘Why don’t you give it a rest, Jimmy? You’re only jealous!’
‘And why don’t you go and lie down for four-and-a-half fucking years?’ quipped the great man.
Another theatrical great who used to like to bend his elbow at a bar was Wilfrid Lawson. He was serving as a Special Constable at Bow Street Police Station during the war – where my dad was also stationed. Part of their daily routine was to go on point duty, controlling the traffic long before traffic lights came into being.
One afternoon, Dad told me that he had to go out and help retrieve Special Constable Lawson from The Strand where, far from directing traffic, he was crawling across the roads on his hands and knees – in full uniform. It was not quite the image the Metropolitan Police wanted to portray.
On another occasion, Lawson was rehearsing a play on stage with Nicol Williamson, but failed to report back after lunch. Williamson went into a violent tirade on stage about what a drunk Lawson was, how unreliable he was and so on. When he paused for breath, Lawson’s inimitable voice chirped up from the back of the theatre: ‘I thought that speech had been cut!’
I often hear ageing actors today bemoaning the lack of good repertory theatre as a training ground for up-and-coming thespians. I must admit I enjoyed my time in the suburbs, as a young aspiring actor, as not only did the fast-changing programme instil a terrific ability to learn on your feet, it also brought with it a sense of stage discipline, invaluable performing experience and the chance to tackle a fascinating variety of plays. Money was never very generous though and our staple diet often revolved around baked beans on toast and fry-ups.
Sir Donald Wolfit has often been described as the last of the great actor-managers. With his repertory group of players he would travel the provinces bringing the great stories to the masses – well, maybe not quite masses but a grateful few at least. Wolfit was an exuberant, larger-than-life personality who was perhaps most famously the inspiration for the character of ‘Sir’ in the film The Dresser, as played by Albert Finney. I’m told by those who knew Wolfit that he was a temperamental and difficult man to deal with and was, like Frank Randle, enraged by any form of criticism. He was also tyrannical with the companies he led. One young actor was put in his place quite firmly when he asked what the next production would be and what his part in it might be: ‘I’ll ask you if I think you can play some speaking roles by then,’ snapped Wolfit.
Wolfit was undoubtedly a fine actor, but one with indifferent feelings about film work – despite making thirty appearances on screen – considering film a ‘poor relation’ to theatre, though his talent and ambition in theatre was undoubtedly handicapped by the more modest venues he ended up appearing in. The great – if eccentric – English actress Hermione Gingold summed it up best by saying, ‘Olivier is a tour-de-force, and Wolfit is forced to tour.’
At the end of each show Wolfit would perform a curtain call speech, much like Tod Slaughter did. One week, he came out front of the tabs and in his ‘chewing the scenery’ theatrical drawl said: ‘Next week, ladies and gentlemen, we shall be bringing you Macbeth. I will be playing the title role and my wife ...’
‘Your wife is a whore!’ came a shout from the gallery.
‘Nevertheless,’ continued Wolfit, unfazed, ‘she will be playing Lady Macbeth ...’
There were many stories and rumours about Wolfit, including him haranguing the people at a cinema queue to leave it and attend the theatre – in another part of town – where his company was playing. Some even suggested that, to earn a few bob on the side, he sold insurance on easy payment terms to actors. I’d like to believe that one!
It’s not quite another Wolfit story, but one I’d like to think was from an actor-manager of his ilk (if only of lesser standing) for whom a young Welsh actor named Brian Ellis auditioned. When he offered Brian a role in the company he cautioned him that the pay wasn’t very good, but, in a negotiating ploy to seal the deal, he proudly added, ‘There is an edible pudding in act two every night.’
On his deathbed, so legend has it, Wolfit was still keen to offer words of wisdom to members of his rep company. One of his young actors asked, ‘Sir Donald, after a life so filled with success and fame, dying must be hard ...’
‘Dying is easy ... Comedy is hard,’ replied the great man.
For some unknown reason, though I think it might well have been jealousy, Wolfit hated Sir John Gielgud and referred to him as ‘the Enemy’. It obviously niggled at Gielgud, as when he was invited to speak at Wolfit’s memorial programme, produced by the BBC, he responded, ‘I couldn’t. You see we always regarded him as something of a joke.’
I made a film with Gielgud called Gold, though as is typical in this business we never actually met on set as neither of us appeared in a scene together. Gielgud had something of a reputation for putting his foot quite firmly in his mouth, and never really thought about what he was saying until after he’d actually said it. For example, when James Villiers (who played Bill Tanner in For Your Eyes Only) assumed Laurence Olivier’s role as Victor in Private Lives, Olivier later asked Gielgud what his performance was like.
‘Oh, Larry, I’ve never seen the part of Victor so perfectly realized. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean that!’
A great friend (and employer) of Gielgud’s was theatre manager and producer Binkie Beaumont, who co-founded the highly successful theatrical production company H.M. Tennent and had control of half the theatres in London’s West End. Binkie was a larger-than-life character. Hugely powerful in the London theatre world, his social circle was very wide and impressive. While I, as a lowly understudy for the firm, was never invited to mix in such company, I did hear a very amusing story about Binkie and Gielgud.
‘John is coming over,’ Binkie warned his weekend guests at his country home. ‘And he is bringing a rather unsuitable young man with him, so be nice.’
Gielgud duly arrived with a young James Dean-type in tow, who, he said, ‘wanted to be an actor’ and, leaving him with Binkie in the hall, Gielgud went straight through to the kitchen. After a moment or two of awkward silence, Binkie asked, ‘Would you like me to show you around, Hector?’
The boy smiled sheepishly, and nodded.
Five or six minutes later, Binkie returned to the kitchen, furious with Gielgud.
‘Johnny! That boy is impossible! I took him to the garden and said, “This is the croquet lawn, Hector” and he just grunted. I took him around to the pool, and asked, “Do you swim, Hector?” and he just stood there, staring blankly at me and then stammered over a few incoherent words. And you say he wants to be an actor? He can’t even speak the Queen’s English!’
‘For God’s sake, Binkie,’ said Gielgud. ‘His name is Sebastian! Hector is what I call his cock!’
Gielgud’s continuing gaffs really were the stuff of legend, and I remember as he visited the ailing Laurence Olivier towards the end of his life, he reportedly exclaimed, ‘Larry! You’re dead! I mean ... you’re dying! I mean ... my poor darling Larry, you don’t look at all well!’
He once upset Richard Burton too, after going to see him backstage following a production of Hamlet, ‘We’ll have dinner when you’re better ... I mean when you’re ready.’
Despite delivering many fine performances in ‘classical’ parts on stage and screen, it was for his role as the butler in the film Arthur that he was given an Academy Award. He very nearly didn’t accept the role, however. ‘I turned it down a couple of times ... I thought the script was rather smutty, rather common. They just wanted a posh-looking Englishman saying rather racy things. Every time I said “no” the price went up and finally, when I accepted, they said “how clever of you”, which wasn’t the case at all.’
Gielgud continued working well into his nineties, though at his own pace and mindful of his advancing years. To keep the insurance companies happy, producers usually scheduled his scenes all fairly tightly together. I remember him saying, ‘In my last big parts, I kept thinking, “Suppose I die in the middle? What is it going to cost everyone?”’
When he was asked to join MPs Glenda Jackson and Gyles Brandreth at the House of Commons for his ninetieth birthday celebrations, he replied, ‘Yes, I would be delighted to join them. You see, all my real friends are dead.’
Though perhaps some words of his I should heed, ‘When you’re my age, you never risk being ill, because everyone then says, “Oh, he’s done for”.’
Ah! the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds! Danny La Rue was unquestionably the most famous Dame – or if you’d prefer, drag act – in all Theatreland. In fact, he was one of Britain’s highest-earning entertainers of the 1960s.
In the days of my exposure to the variety world, a married couple who were close friends of Dorothy Squires produced and toured a couple of drag shows and Dot used to sell her old ball gowns to members of the troupe – one of whom was Danny.
Jack, who was the husband in the husband-and-wife-producing team, said to me one day, ‘You’d better believe in fairies.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘They’re real!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘One night I fired one of my leading ladies, and the next night, when I came out of the stage door, he pointed his unfurled umbrella at me and said, “The witch’s curse on you, Jack Lewis!”.’
Jack said that at the time he laughed it off and returned to his digs, only to open the newspaper the next morning to see headlines containing allegations about Lord Montagu and boy scouts. That incident, for which Baron Montagu of Beaulieu was jailed for twelve months, killed drag shows for months afterwards. You see, audiences – probably not helped by the press stories – incorrectly associated transvestites and homosexuals with ‘doing things with boys’. Jack Lewis lost huge business – and never doubted the curse again.
Danny, meanwhile, with his dazzling coiffures, extravagant costumes, immaculate make-up, false eyelashes and high heels, went on to open a club in London’s Hanover Square, where he performed his wonderful impressions of Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich and many others. He also gave a break to a great many singers and comedians who were desperate for a leg-up in show business.
The club became extremely popular for its satirical revues long before That Was The Week That Was, and attracted celebrities and royalty – as well as coach parties from all over the country – in huge numbers.
Danny made no bones about ‘dressing up in a frock’ being just a job, not a lifestyle choice. He enjoyed his job greatly but when off stage, liked his privacy. When Princess Margaret knocked on his dressing-room door after a show one night, a stark-naked Danny threw it open and shouted, ‘Piss off!’
‘I was mortified,’ he said. ‘I thought she was Peter Sellers messing about!’
Liberace was another tremendous showman. I met Liberace, or Lee as he liked to be called by his friends, in Hollywood in the very late 1950s – though I can’t quite recall how I came to be invited to the party at his house. But you know me – anything for a free meal. To say the decor was kitsch would be the understatement of all understatements. I remember the ceilings being painted with frescos in the style of Rome’s Sistine Chapel and there being ornate marble pillars, diamond-encrusted chandeliers, countless pianos, and many huge paintings and photos of Liberace decorated the house. Everything was done to excess, but that’s how Lee liked it.
With Tommy Steele, Dot and Liberace at a party in LA. The hair is real – well, mine, at least.
Lee loved being around actors and he told me he’d always wanted to be a movie star. He did make a couple of films and I think even popped up as a villain in the Batman TV series at one point, but it never quite worked out for him in that direction – though he did have his own hugely popular TV shows and guest-starred in many other variety and chat-style programmes.
I found him to be extremely polite, fascinating to talk with and very well read, and while I knew he was an accomplished pianist, it was only when I saw him perform in Vegas that I realized his genius was in taking popular well-known tunes, adding a huge dollop of bling and serving it up with masses of charm. There are many talented pianists and musicians in the world, but there are few who could match his showmanship.
It was relatively well known in Hollywood that Lee was gay, though the image he painted for his fans was of a man who hadn’t yet met the right woman. I still remember the huge controversy in the UK when fifty years ago Lee sued the Daily Mirror newspaper columnist William Connor (who wrote under the byline Cassandra) for implying that he was homosexual. Cassandra wrote that Liberace was:
‘...The summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want ... a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love.’
It was the suggestion of him being a mincing mother’s boy that led to a six-day hearing, during which Lee categorically denied being homosexual. The jury found for him and awarded a then-record £8,000 in damages (which I’m told would equate to about £500,000 in today’s money).
His legion of female fans never doubted his heterosexuality, even when his chauffeur and companion Scott Thorson sued him for palimony in 1982.
When Lee died in 1987, his publicists, agent and doctor gave the cause of death as being heart failure, and everyone believed them. Only later, when an autopsy was called for after the coroner expressed his doubts about the death certificate, was it finally acknowledged he had actually died from an AIDs-related illness. Even in death, Liberace was keen that his image should not be tarnished.
Invariably, comedians are asked to ‘tell us a joke’ and magicians to ‘show us a trick’ and more often than not I’m asked to ‘tell us about your practical jokes on set’. Of course, as there were so many over so many years, it’s impossible to think of one specifically, and it’s not something you necessarily plan or think about beforehand – it’s usually a spontaneous reaction to a certain moment in time. The times I’ve squirted crews with hosepipes, dropped my trousers in a tense dramatic scene, started giggling to put a co-star off, or re-written dialogue, are all well documented elsewhere. But I much prefer talking about things that go wrong, as they’re always far more memorable – so long as I’m not always the butt of the cock-up, that is.
The law of averages suggests that when you’re in a long-running play, or on a lengthy film shoot, then, despite your best efforts, something, somewhere will mess up. In a film, of course, we have the luxury of ‘take two’ and a clever editor, but it’s not quite the same in theatre.
As a young aspiring actor, I went to see John Gielgud in Hamlet at the Haymarket theatre in London and, as the curtain went up, we discovered the stagehands were still putting the planks in place around the graves, the first gravedigger was shuffling on to take his place and the stage manager was walking across the back of the set looking up at the lights. I laughed – but I was probably the only one who did.
I have rather a name as a practical joker … but thankfully as someone who can take a joke as well, as seen here when I was presented with a rubber octopus during a dining scene in Octopussy.
When I was in repertory theatre at The Intimate in Palmers Green, I once pushed hard on what I thought was a sticky door only to realize it was in fact a pull-door, and took down the entire set. On another occasion I was in a play called While Parents Sleep by Anthony Kimmins (the West End production of which starred Jack Hawkins) and in one scene I’m in a drawing room, having a bit of a fumble with a girl, when suddenly the lights come on and we both leap up to stand behind the settee as Lady Cattering enters. She, in turn, had some dialogue about forgiveness and I then had to bow my head down to her.
In rehearsal I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I bowed and banged my head on the settee?’ The ensuing silence gave me my answer – no, it would not be!
Come the first night, I bowed down, and quite inadvertently hit my head on the said settee, ending up on my knees having almost passed out. The audience thought it was hilarious, of course.
Actors have all encountered stubborn doors, sets that wobble and stage revolves that just won’t revolve, but there are also the technical bloopers such as phones not ringing on cue, gunshots sounding seconds after the actor has already fallen to the floor and doorbells that never ring, leaving the poor terrified soul awaiting his or her cue into having to ad lib. ‘Oh! Is that Aunt Agatha at the door? I’m sure I heard her car pull up just now.’
And what about the props that don’t behave as they ought to? Such as the time in a provincial tour of The Importance of Being Earnest when one character was supposed to pour tea for another, but the handle dropped off the teapot. Or maybe a trap door opens when it shouldn’t, as happened in the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, in which Nancy Opel broke her elbow.
Depending on the actor, they may prefer to ignore any mishap and continue, or perhaps admit something has gone wrong and let the audiences in on the gag, which can often add to the audience’s pleasure as they feel they’ve then been part of something that doesn’t ordinarily occur.
For example, in her 2013 record-breaking run of The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s glittering West End, Dame Helen Mirren made more headlines for her performance offstage – namely outside the stage door. Some friends of mine were in the audience on the fateful day. With the first half of the production beleaguered by lighting problems, the interval couldn’t come quick enough for the cast. When the interval curtain went down, Dame Helen took the opportunity to apologize to the audience for the technical glitches, which, she told them, were being ironed out, but she also added that she had been incredibly mindful of the noise outside too, which no doubt spoiled the first act for patrons.
She went on to explain that the drumming parade, moving through Soho to promote a gay music festival, had decided to stop outside the stage door for a full eight minutes. While supporting the cause, she didn’t feel it fair that they made so much noise during a performance and added, ‘I told the band to “shut the f*** up” as people had paid “a lot of f***ing money to watch the show” and that they were “f***ing ruining it”.’
One onlooker was later heard to say, ‘It was strange to see this little woman in tiara and pearls shouting like that. It’s not the behaviour you’d expect from the Queen.’
Dame Helen received a round of applause, and went on to offer the drumming band free tickets to see the show.
Michael Simkins was starring in a touring production of Dial M for Murder and with the murderer revealed in the final scene the curtain was supposed to drop – end of play. However, on one particular evening the stagehand pulled the wrong lever and instead of dropping the tabs, activated the sprinkler system. Thinking on his feet, Michael’s co-star, who had just left the stage, popped his head back through to help save the scene and said, ‘And you ought to get that leaky roof fixed too!’
Then, of course, there was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in June 2013, and a night the great glass elevator stopped working, leaving Douglas Hodge’s Willy Wonka and the child actor playing Charlie stranded above the audience. Within ten minutes they were rescued and the performance continued, with an apology to all from the manager. Mind you, that wasn’t quite as serious as in a Californian production of Aladdin I read about, in which a magical flying carpet tipped off the actors and left them hanging by their safety harnesses.
Wardrobe malfunctions also play their part, as in the case of Maureen Lipman in Candida in which she had opened the play and her skirt fell off, leaving her standing in only a slip while her co-star leapt to her defence, continuing to deliver their dialogue all the while.
It’s no wonder that actors corpse with laughter, and when one is set off you can guarantee the rest will follow – all trying extremely hard to keep straight faces.
Perhaps the ultimate stage cock-up was at the Wood Green Empire in 1918 when Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo (or William Ellsworth Robinson, to give him his birth name) was performing his popular bullet-catching trick. A gunpowder flash, used in a second chamber of his revolver, which produced the illusion of the gun being fired, actually ignited the bullet in the main chamber, causing the magician to be shot in the chest. Having never before spoken English on stage while adopting his Chinese persona, Chung Ling Soo was heard to say, ‘Something has happened. Lower the curtain.’ ... I’m afraid it was curtains for him and no encore for the audience.
We actors aren’t infallible. Alas, we are only human, as I’m reminded when I read through the obituary columns. It’s really quite worrying to see names I know in there, especially of people who are younger than me. Occasionally an actor, who, let’s face it, spends much of the working day on stage or set, is reported as having croaked it during a performance and the writer will add, as though hugely consoling, ‘he’d have liked to know he died on stage doing what he loved best’. Erm, that’s not really very comforting, I assure you!
No one made a career out of things going wrong quite like Tommy Cooper – it was his whole act – though, of course, to be such a bad magician meant he was actually remarkably good at magic. But when he collapsed on stage, live on British TV, the audience laughed hysterically, thinking it was all part of the show.
Similarly, when Eric Morecambe suffered a heart attack after a show in Yorkshire in the late 1960s it wasn’t perhaps treated as seriously as it would have been if he hadn’t been a comedian. Having returned to his hotel he suffered terrible pains in his upper arm and, recognizing the danger signs, decided to drive himself to hospital, but as the pain spread to his chest, he became unable to continue the journey. Thankfully he was rescued by a passer-by who took him to hospital where, with Eric lying on a trolley waiting to go into the operating theatre, a nurse appeared with a pen and piece of paper and said, ‘Before you go, would you mind giving me your autograph?’
Thankfully, Eric didn’t ‘go’ anywhere that night, and dined out on the story for years afterwards. Sadly, he died after appearing in a Q&A session at a theatre in Tewkesbury, collapsing in the wings after a standing ovation.
Sid James also passed away at a theatre, but he did it on stage at the Sunderland Empire in front of a packed auditorium. Theatre manager Roy Todds phoned The Mating Game’s producer, Bill Robertson, to tell him the shocking news, ‘Sid James has just died in Sunderland!’
‘Don’t worry,’ replied Bill. ‘Everybody dies in Sunderland.’
Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, leaving for location filming of From Here to Eternity in the early 1950s. Burt Lancaster was a wonderful actor but boy did he have a terrible temper at times!
