Now the fiddle came into play. The next time one of them was allocated ticket-tearing duties, he – in practically all the cases I came across, it was a ‘he’ – would take up his position at the stalls or circle door with a quantity of his collected half-tickets secreted somewhere nearby. Careful to select patrons who were engaged in conversation, or were in other ways inattentive, he would take their proffered ticket and, with a show of tearing it in half, ‘palm’ it and hand them back one of the half-tickets from his secret cache.
Later in the day he would take his collection of untorn tickets to the girl in the box office – again, they were practically always girls – and she would dispose of them one at a time to the next lot of patrons arriving at her desk; generally on the pretext that it had been handed back by someone who had mistakenly asked for too many, something that happened frequently enough to be unremarkable. At the end of the day, the pair would split the take, in what proportions I never found out, but over the course of weeks, the two of them could net a tidy amount.
They were always careful not to make their substitutions when the manager or anybody supervisory was about, so it was a difficult operation to police. At the Hyams Brothers weekly meeting of managers we would discuss ways of getting on top of it, sometimes going to the lengths of using ‘dummy’ patrons. We finally had to agree to concen-trate on the scheme’s main weakness, which was the degree of com-plicity it required between female cashier and male ticket-taker. With this in mind, we paid close attention to any such pairings, keeping a special eye out for the emotional outbursts the stress of that kind of relationship could lead to. Occasionally this watchfulness would turn up a culprit, but not often.
All in all, it was a fiddle we never even came close to mastering. In fact, I have it on good authority that, to a lesser degree, it’s still being played today.
At the State, Kilburn, my training as a projectionist included operating a Stelmar spotlight during the stage shows. As the ‘spot room’, a little space high up in the cinema’s roof, was above the projection booth, manipulating the bulky Stelmar’s powerful white beam to capture one of the tiny figures capering on the stage far below was a singularly empowering experience for a teenager.
And there were circumstances when one’s prowess could really be put to the test. If a performer suddenly decided to make an unrehearsed entrance from the wings, it needed something special in the way of reaction speed and accuracy of aim to make sure he was spotlit the moment he appeared and didn’t have to take his first few steps on-stage unnoticed.
Most satisfying of all were the occasions when I was called on to help bring about an affecting finish to a sentimental song. To achieve this direct assault on the audience’s emotions, nothing worked better than having the stage lighting slowly fade while, gradually and imperceptibly, I dwindled my spotlight’s circle down till it became no more than a pin of light on the singer’s face. Then, as the last note died, my headphones would relay the Stage Manager’s whispered ‘Dead Blackout’ and, ‘snap!’ – all was darkness.
A second of deep silence, then – if everyone concerned had done it right – up would come the roaring applause. I would hear the Stage Manager’s urgent ‘Full Up White!’, and it would be ‘snap!’ again as the whole stage became ablaze with light.
Umpteen years later, when David Bernstein and I planned our yet-to-be-staged ‘Festival of Schmaltz’, we agreed this was a moment that had to be included.
The week the Trocadero offered a full-scale circus as its on-stage attraction was a unique one in many ways. The first problem was finding suitable accommodation for all the performers and animals in wartime South-East London. This our never-fazed Stage Manager, Jim Pitman, accomplished successfully until it came to the question of housing the three ‘forest-bred lions’.
It was wintertime and their trainer refused point-blank to even consider housing them anywhere outdoors. After being turned down by every warehouse and factory in the neighbourhood, Jim was driven to keeping their cages in the back-stage area, flush up against the rear wall.
When a boilerman experienced the heart-stopping sensation of a large, furry paw silently reaching out to him while he was going from one side of this darkened area of the stage to another, I had notices hastily printed warning staff and visitors to exercise caution when crossing the stage.
What made this makeshift arrangement really memorable, however, was that we were showing an MGM movie that week. Every time the film’s opening came on screen and MGM’s Leo emitted his trademark roars, from somewhere behind him came a trio of answering roars.
It impressed audiences no end, while Jim and I enjoyed some time-wasting sessions trying to guess what the visitors were saying to Leo.
Among the acts we played in Variety or Cine Variety, one that has lodged himself securely in my memory is Olgo, the Mathematical Genius. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany, a charming little man who could square any three-figure number instantaneously in his head.
Unfortunately, first house Monday, when he explained his special powers and asked for volunteers to call out three-figure numbers for him to square, nobody in the audience had the faintest idea what he was talking about. His request was met by a silence, which grew and grew. As manager, I had to be out front during the first performance of every programme, so I hastily shouted, ‘Three hundred and forty-six’, to which he snapped out the answer while I hurried over to the other side of the auditorium and shouted, ‘Seven hundred and nineteen.’ I kept this up until someone in the stalls grasped the idea and called out, ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine.’ Other members of the audience caught on and shouted their own numbers out and soon the act took on a brisk pace and the Mathematical Genius was beaming.
As the week went on, I had to break the ice in this fashion for him at the start of every performance, with the organist taking over my role on my day off. Audiences never failed to pick up on it and, as far as I could verify, his answers were always correct. It was a rare talent, though I sometimes wonder how he adjusted to the introduction of the pocket calculator.
Another sharply etched memory is the unusually amusing conjuror who turned up for one of our Sunday Night Amateur Talent competitions at the Gaumont, Watford. While I was watching him from the back of the stalls, two uniformed military policemen appeared at my side. They told me that he was an Army deserter and would I give them permission to go backstage, in order to arrest him? As we made our way together down the side-aisle to the pass door, I could see him watching us from the stage, although his patter did not falter. Arrived in the prompt corner, the redcaps agreed to let him finish his act and, while we waited, told me that he had been on the run for more than six months, picking up money to live on by going from one talent show to another across the home counties.
Well aware we were waiting there for him, he brought his performance to a smooth finish and as he came off-stage held his hands out good-naturedly. Snapping handcuffs on them, one of the redcaps said, ‘Okay, Houdini, let’s see you get out of these.’
I had been secretly hoping he would make his exit on the other side of the stage, where a panic-bolt door would have taken him straight out into the High Street and on to a passing bus.
Another memory that has remained undimmed is the act performed by Edna Squire Brown. She was a dignified lady who did a genteel striptease, employing trained white doves. They would flutter above her, only alighting on her whenever and wherever concealment was required.
Although it didn’t happen on my watch, I was warned about certain occupants of the sixpenny seats who used to turn up for her Saturday night performances carrying packets of birdseed.