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