Tony Hart - A Portrait of My Dad

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Carolyn Ross. Tony Hart - A Portrait of My Dad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

BLANK CANVAS

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

STEPPING OUT

ITALIAN MARBLE

MY FATHER’S GALLERY

UPS AND DOWNS

RUBBING WITH RULERS

WEST TO EAST

INNER LIGHT

GLITTERING PRIZES

WHERE SHADOWS FALL

Epilogue

POSTSCRIPT

Copyright

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For Hattie and Ali who loved my father too.

Also to Ed Wilson and John Wordsworth who turned the project into reality.

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The roles he acted in subsequent school productions grew larger until he was eventually cast in the leading role of Francis of Assisi in The Little Plays of Saint Francis. Among the audience at one of these performances was Shayle Gardner, an American actor not entirely without influence in the film industry. He was so impressed by Tony’s performance that he wanted to take him to the States to pursue an acting career, and suggested this to Norman and Evelyn who, unsurprisingly, were not in favour of the idea.

In a letter penned many years later to Brian Davies, a fellow-pupil who played St Francis’s sidekick Brother Juniper in The Little Plays of St Francis, my father describes Shayle Gardner as looking like Toulouse Lautrec’s painting of Aristide Bruant – complete with black hat, scarf and cape. It seems Mr Gardner would not have been entirely appropriate as a guide and mentor to the young Tony, as he nonplussed the boys at All Saints by insisting that they all visit a London gallery to admire a nude sculpture. The insidious Father Foster also persuaded Tony’s parents that the American was ‘not suitable’ for a boy of my father’s age to travel with – a view shared by Brian Davies, who recalls Shayle Gardner as being a very strange man. This may have been the case, but it is interesting to reflect for a moment on what might have happened if he had gone. In his letter to Brian, Tony reflects that Gardner must have had visions of another Freddie Bartholomew – a British child actor who became popular in the 1930s in such Hollywood films as Anna Karenina and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

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