Читать книгу Clips From A Life - Denis Norden - Страница 11

There was a spell after the War when I was employed by the Hyman Zahl Variety Agency as a trainee agent and writer-in-residence. The latter duty entailed writing any scripts the comedians on his books needed for their ‘spot’ broadcasts. There were any number of those one-off radio spots available in programmes such as Variety Bandbox, Workers’ Playtime, Henry Hall’s Guest Night, Music Hall, Northern Music Hall, etc., and as Hymie represented some sixty-three comedians at that time, I did very little agenting.

To be fair, the writing chores were not quite as onerous as they first seemed. This was partly because most of the comedians arrived with a selection of jokes they refused to be parted from, which saved me a fair amount of work. But mainly it was because, in those days, every comedian was expected to finish his act with a song, which carved another helpful chunk out of his allotted seven or eight minutes. These songs were generally of a sentimental nature, giving rise to the axiom that the perfect solo broadcast spot was ‘Five minutes of gags about mother-in-law followed by two minutes of song about mother.’

As payment for supplying the script for such occasions, I would be given whatever ‘plug’ money the comedian would (illicitly) receive from the song’s publisher for performing it. It was not a princely sum, three or four guineas was the norm, but if it was a romantic number, you could sometimes augment it by finding an excuse to repeat part of the song again. This was generally achieved by following the first chorus with a fervently delivered ‘recitative’, an overheated monologue in which the song’s romantic theme would be comedically underlined before a return to its last eight bars. (‘You may not believe me, but I tried everything with that girl. Everything, I tell you! Flowers, chocolates, jewellery … They all worked.’)

By far the most profitable comedian to write for proved to be Issy Bonn. Besides being a top-of-the-bill comedy name, he enjoyed considerable recording success as a singer. Consequently, the BBC allowed him to finish with a medley. Three songs, three lots of plug money.

One of Hymie Zahl’s judgements that has stayed with me was addressed to a comedian whose full name those same years have erased but whose first name was Harry.

Harry had been one of Hymie’s artists throughout the War years and he was a byword in the Zahl office as ‘the comic who played Dover more times than any other performer’. During that period, many artists did not welcome being booked for a week at Dover because the town was within range of the German heavy guns across the Channel as well as being a regular target for bombing raids. The sound of the air-raid siren was frequently heard and theatre performances were regularly halted for an announcement offering audiences the choice of going down to the shelter or remaining in their seats for the rest of the show.

In most cases, they elected to remain and the performers would keep going until the ‘All Clear’ sounded. Harry, a stubby, cheery little man, would sometimes entertain audiences for hours at a time on his own, getting them singing and laughing, in complete disregard of the thuds and explosions that could be heard outside. In consequence, he became a local favourite and something of a legend.

When the War ended and I joined the office, he was fulfilling dates around the North of England – Halifax, Huddersfield, Attercliffe, etc. Unfortunately, their reports on his act were less than flattering and Hymie was obliged to call him into his office to discuss his future.

When Harry came in, his spirits were noticeably drooping and I can still remember the fragment of conversation I heard before they closed the door.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Harry said. ‘Does the fact that I played Dover more times than any other comic count for nothing, Hymie? Doesn’t what I did with those audiences down there mean anything these days?’

‘Of course it does,’ Hymie said. ‘But I’m afraid the time has come when you have to face the truth. What it amounts to, Harry, is that you are an artist who is only at his best during heavy shelling.’

At the Variety agency, Hymie allowed me to make occasional minor bookings off my own bat, especially where little or no money was involved. Thus it was I was able to book Harry Secombe into his first West End date, a prestigious charity show sponsored by the Albany Club. He performed the hilarious ‘shaving’ act that later became his trademark and it went down so well, he was given a string of bookings across the North of England.

At the first one, unfortunately – as I recall, it was either Huddersfield or Halifax – the manager came round after his opening performance. ‘You’re not shaving on my bloody time,’ he growled and paid him off.

My usual response to magic tricks is boredom if I can work out how they are done and sullenness if I can’t. However, while I was in the employ of the Hyman Zahl Variety Agency, one of my duties was to make weekly visits to the Nuffield Centre, a servicemen’s club which had become London’s foremost showcase for new acts. On one visit, I saw a magician whose final feat I found so totally baffling, it left me in a state just short of awed.

To demonstrate his exceptional powers of memory, he passed down to an ATS girl in the audience a copy of the London Telephone Directory – back then, you could get all the numbers in one book – and invited her to open it anywhere at random. After she had done so, he asked her to look at the two pages she could now see, choose one of them and tell him what page number it was.

‘Page 273.’

‘Page 273?’ He frowned thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Would you now look at the three columns of names on that page and select one of the columns.’

‘Okay.’

‘Would you tell me which column you’ve decided on?’

‘The middle column.’

‘Page 273, second column … All right? Next thing I’d like you to do is run your finger down the names in that column till you come to one you’d like me to try and recall. Tell me when you’ve picked it.’

‘Right … Got one.’

‘Good. Then all I need you to do now is, counting from the top, tell me how far down the column that name comes.’

‘It’s – the fifteenth name down.’

‘So – the fifteenth name down the second column of page 273.’ He closed his eyes and put both hands to his temples, as though at a sudden headache. Then, relaxing, ‘That name is Jarvis, Kenneth. The address is 23 Springfield Road, N16, and, just to round it off, the telephone number is Clissold 6232.’

When the answer was confirmed, the applause was so vociferous he repeated the trick several times, only going wrong once on a detail of the address. Next morning I wrote such a glowing report on his performance, Hymie told me to go back that evening and sign him up.

This time I entered the Nuffield by way of the Stage Door, which meant crossing the backstage area to get into the audience. I could hear the voice of my magician in front of the curtain asking someone to pick a column. But now I could see that, behind him, with only the thin curtain between them, sat a man with a London Telephone Directory on his lap, turning the pages as the directions were given and murmuring the information in a voice audible only to his employer standing the other side of the curtain.

My disillusionment was total, but the trick’s simplicity was so irresistible, I remained impressed. Sad to tell, however, it didn’t stand the test of the subsequent Moss Empires booking we got him. The curtains were too thick.

I would often eat at Olivelli’s, the famous theatrical digs in Store Street, London, not simply for the quality of their pasta but also for such titbits as the one I gleaned from Jack Wilson. He told me that one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power in the early thirties was to ban Wilson, Keppel and Betty from appearing anywhere in Germany.

Apparently they objected to the bare legs.

There was no end to the amount of time, patience and planning some Variety performers put into perfecting a comedy routine. Payne and Hilliard were a prime example. They were a male and female double act, she large and commanding, he short and fierce.

A staple of their well-established act was ‘our impression of Napoleon crossing the Alps’. For this, he would don an overlong military coat and equally oversized Napoleonic hat, while the curtains behind them opened to reveal a painted backcloth of a magnificent mountain range, the peaks capped with snow. After an exchange of pseudo-French dialogue, he would bark an order and, at his imperious gesture, the whole backcloth would drop to the floor. He would step over it and, at another gesture, the mountain range would rise up again behind him.

It never failed to get a laugh – even with audiences who had seen it several times before. But I always found myself marvelling at the logistics and ongoing expense it involved. As well as the considerable cost of a specially painted full-stage backcloth, there was the weekly outlay and worry of getting it transported from theatre to theatre. All that for one gag …

I had the same feelings about a moment in one of Sid Field’s sketches, where a yelping group of dogs would run on stage towards him. When they were halfway across, he would point a finger and say, ‘He went that way!’ Whereupon, the entire pack turned around and ran the other way.

The whole incident took no more than half a minute. But how many hours of effort and training went into making sure it worked every time?

Another couple of Variety acts my memory still curls around are Owen McGiveney and the Nicholas Brothers. McGiveney was a quick-change artist, a ‘Protean’ act, as they were called in American vaudeville. English by birth, he enjoyed enormous success in the States.

For a typical performance, he would offer a scene from Dickens, in which he would play all the characters himself, changing from one to another in lightning succession, altering not only his voice but also his clothes and entire physical appearance. He would scurry on and off stage, or sometimes nip behind a piece of furniture and reemerge split seconds later with a completely different costume and make-up. Obviously, there was an army of hidden helpers accelerating his changes but nothing I have seen since has been so brilliantly timed and executed.

As for the Nicholas Brothers, they were far and away the most spectacular dancing act I ever saw, repeatedly doing the splits at high speed, and finishing by bumping down a flight of steps, hitting each step with legs wide apart in the ‘splits’ position. To this day I cannot believe there is any way that this doesn’t hurt.

There was a time when comedians would move into their obligatory closing song by way of a formalised comic introduction, generally incorporating something along the lines of: ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to finish with a beautiful little song entitled “If I Had My Life to Live Over – I’d live it over a pub”.’

These ‘little song’ titles were in brisk demand. They were a useful linking device and any of them that proved particularly successful tended to be jealously guarded. They were often hotly fought over, accusations of ‘pinching’ being levelled and occasionally submitted for arbitration by a sub-committee of the Variety Artists’ Federation. Whenever an American comedian visiting the Palladium happened to promulgate a brand-new ‘little song entitled’, it would be heard in provincial theatres around the country within days, American sources being regarded as public domain.

It may be of interest that out of the hundreds of such song titles in service at that time, the few that remain lodged in my memory all illustrate that useful aid to comic timing, the comma in the middle. Thus, a little song entitled:

‘Don’t Play Marbles With Father’s Glass Eye, He Needs It To Look For Work.’

‘Get Off The Table, Mabel, The Sixpence Is For The Waiter.’

‘Will You Love Me Like You Used To, Or Have You Found A Better Way?’

‘She’s Only Been Gone For Seven Days, But Already It Feels Like A Week.’

‘You Made Me Do You, I Didn’t Want To Love It.’

‘When You Were Nine And I Was Eight, And We Were Seventeen.’

My memory mechanism is one that tends to retain words, rather than images. But a scene that has remained in sharp focus derives from a weekend Avril and I had at Knocke-le-Zoute, Belgium, in 1945, not that long after the end of hostilities.

For some reason, the local casino invited us to visit the only gaming room that had remained open during the War years. Its vaulted and chandeliered interior was in complete darkness, except for a pool of light at the far end where one green-shaded lamp shone down on a solitary roulette table. All the surrounding tables were shrouded in heavy linen sheets, while this one had only two white-haired women and three elderly men sitting at it. All were in full evening dress, the women in jewellery, the men with white bow-ties, and not a word or a glance passed between them.

As they sat staring at the table, the room’s silence was broken only by the roulette ball’s clattering around the wheel and the muttered announcements of the croupier. After five minutes, we tiptoed away, wondering whether that tableau had remained thus throughout the War.

For many years, I used to read imported copies of weekly Variety from cover to cover, devouring with special pleasure its lengthy reviews of vaudeville bills around the USA. Although I was unfamiliar with practically every name they mentioned, the characteristically pithy descriptions of their acts offered by Variety’s team of critics usually allowed me to construct a pretty clear picture of them.

Not always, though. Joe Cook was a frequently mentioned comedian, and while his Variety notices were always approving, they never failed to mention one detail that defeats me to this day. His write-ups would invariably run something along the lines of ‘As ever, Joe Cook was received with much joyous mitt-pounding, garnering special plaudits for his hilarious impersonation of four Hawaiians.’

Even now, I find myself puzzling over that last reference. How do you impersonate four Hawaiians? Yes, all right. But ‘hilariously’?

One further Variety memory. W. C. Fields took a full page ad in a Christmas edition that read, ‘A merry Christmas to all my friends except two.’

When Hyman Zahl’s top-line Variety artists were touring the country ‘on percentage’, the company manager would send Hymie the figures for each night’s theatre takings by coded telegram. It was a simple code based on the phrase, ‘Money Talks’, with each letter representing a digit (M = 1, O = 2, N = 3, and so on).

When a key figure in the Zahl office left for another agency, the security of the code was considered compromised, so Hymie deputed me to come up with another easily memorised ten-letter phrase in which no letter was repeated. After about ten minutes, I suggested – ‘Grand Hotel’. His admiration was so unbounded, he could hardly speak for a moment. Then he straightaway commissioned ‘at least three’ spares to cover any future defections.

It cost me a sleepless night, but next morning I arrived with ‘Dirty Jokes’, ‘Jack Hylton’, ‘Spanish Fly’ and ‘Mind The Gap’. He applauded them all, but I sensed a slight touch of disappointment.

Never mind. Over the intervening years, each of them has proved more than useful for encoding PIN and credit card numbers.

Manny Jay, another Variety agent, occupied an office on the floor above Hyman Zahl. A brooding, heavily built man, one of the cornerstones of his empire was the Ben Abdrahman Wazzan Troupe, a seven-man family of acrobats, much given to quarrelling violently with each other. Every few weeks I would hear a loud pounding of footsteps descending the wooden stairs and when I opened the door, there would be Manny brandishing a railway ticket to some remote provincial town and panting as he thudded downward, ‘Just got a phone call. More trouble with the bloody Arabs.’

Some imperfectly remembered scraps from my days in the world of Variety theatre:

The juggler who performed his act standing beside a screen prominently marked ‘Swearing Room’. Every time he dropped something, he would momentarily retire behind it. His re-emergence was always greeted with applause.

A musical act who dressed as a waiter and had a white-clothed table on stage, immaculately laid out as for a banquet, complete with bottles and bowls of fruit. He produced musical sounds from each item on display, skipping from one to the other, squeezing piping notes from oranges and apples, whistling down knives and forks, treating groups of wine bottles as a xylophone, revealing the hidden harmonica in a lamb chop. I was impressed not only by the complex dashing to and fro his act demanded, but also by the fact that he was always on-stage a good hour before he was due to go on, to make sure no one disturbed his meticulously positioned table layout.

The magician, rendered similarly nameless by my faltering memory, who would mutter admiringly to himself throughout his fairly run of the mill act, expressing astonishment at his own skills every time he completed a trick. He was also a favourite with Tony Hancock, who recalled hearing him murmur, after completing an elementary ‘disappearing an egg from a black velvet bag’ effect, ‘The man must be in league with the Horned One, a follower of the Left Hand Path.’