Typically when I make a posting an email containing the full blog is sent to all regular readers, and they can thus read the posting without going to the blogsite. But a posting I made back in September was too large for the email system, and notifications weren't sent. So if you are keen (and you'll have to be keen) to read the diary of the trip my wife Annie and I took to Europe and Egypt some 16 years ago you'll have to go to Pieces to share. GA
THEATRE-GOING WHEN
YOUNG – PART 4 of 8
19. Hippo Dancing
Actor Philip Stainton died, in August 1961…………. of a heart
attack on stage during his 423rd performance in East Lynn, a dramatization of the 1861 melodramatic novel of the
same name. He was 53. The performance was mounted by Bowl Theatre,
a company founded by Stainton after he settled in Melbourne. Stainton had had an extensive theatrical
career in England, and had played minor roles in numerous films during the
1950s. He came to Australia to fill the
principal part in Agatha Christie’s Witness
for the Prosecution, and stayed. He
was active in the early years of television production in Melbourne, and his
obituary in The Age describes him as
“one of theatre’s best-known personalities”.
One of those personalities was the foolish and idiosyncratic domestic
tyrant, “Hippo”, in the comedy Hippo
Dancing. The seven-week season was
staged in 1957 jointly by the Carroll organisation and H.M. Tennent of
London.
The playwright was Robert Morley, who had written the play and
the role of the Covent Garden fruiterer “for himself”. Morley was one of a number of geniuses of the
theatre who could write as well as act (or act as well as write), and possibly
sing and dance too – think Novello, Coward, Ustinov. Morley, notwithstanding his corpulence, lived
to 84, and through his long career acted in more than 30 stage productions [a number of which he wrote or adapted], and
more than 80 movies and television productions.
His fame does not depend on Hippo
Dancing.
20. Come Blow Your Horn
Come Blow Your Horn was Neil Simon’s first play. It was premiered on Broadway in February
1961, and ran for 677 performances.
Through some fast footwork it arrived at the Princess’s Theatre in
September 1961, while still in it’s original New York season. Fast footwork was a feature of the play
itself, numerous moments verging on slapstick.
The play and its characters were so appealing that Frank Sinatra took
one of the two leading roles in the 1963 film version. In Melbourne those leading parts were given
to Myron Natwick and Jonathan Daly.
Older brother Alan (Natwick) leads a swinging ‘60s lifestyle in his
bachelor pad. Younger brother Buddy,
aged 21 (Daly), escapes from the family home and the overbearing influence of
mum and dad, and into Alan’s seduction suite.
Over the course of the play Buddy develops into a tearaway while Alan
becomes serious about one of his girlfriends and jaundiced about the bachelor
life.
Just prior to his Come
Blow Your Horn appearance Natwick had been in Australia featuring in Frank
Loesser’s musical, The Most Happy Fella. In the U.S.A. he had had a diverse career – parts
in radio, musical comedy, indeed opera; and his face was likely familiar to
Australian audiences from his many film and television appearances. The puff in the programme vaunts him as a
star of each of these media, and “one of the most versatile entertainers ever
to visit Australia”. Although the
internet doesn’t describe a subsequent career that’s stellar, Natwick is still
working; and in Melbourne his star undoubtedly shone.
And Jonathan Daly? Daly had come to Melbourne, with partner Ken
Delo, forming the Delo and Daly
comedy team. Their tour covered
nightclub and television variety work.
While scheduled to stay for six weeks the team stayed for more than six
months, becoming in the process the “biggest single draw on our TV
screens”. The team returned home, but broke
up when Daly subsequently returned to Channel 9 (GTV9) both as performer and
producer………..and with the flexibility, apparently, to manage the Buddy part in Come Blow Your Horn for eight
performances a week, and direct the production as well. Daly had an infectious personality, and an
attractive comedy style. He was master
of the double take.
The programme advertises Victoria Bitter, which, for
unexpected guests, chills much quicker in the new King Size cans – 3/6 (35
cents) each. Imagine a time when
households didn’t already have a can or two in the refrigerator.
21. Barefoot in the Park
Neil Simon is one of the greats of the theatre. In his long career he has written over 40
plays, and many screenplays. Comedy is
his genre. He has won the Pulitzer
Prize, two Emmys, three Tonys, six Writers’ Guild of America awards and nine other
awards. He has made millions of dollars
for the theatrical industry. Barefoot in the Park was Simon’s third
play, opening on Broadway in October 1963.
It closed in June 1967, after 1530 performances. It was directed by Mike Nicholls making his Broadway
debut, with Robert Redford as the lead actor.
Redford reprised the role in the 1967 movie of the play, with Jane Fonda
as his foil. The Melbourne season
commenced on 8 February, 1964, this time a co-production of the Carroll
organisation and The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.
Cigarette advertising was then legal, and the programme
gushed: “Craven A: Light it……..you’ll like
it. Filter right! Flavour right! A right clean cigarette!”
22. The Big Show: Bob Hope
Whereas others of the ilk are theatrical entrepreneurs, Lee
Gordon was a promoter. Gordon was a
larger than life figure who had an unmatched impact on the Australian music and
variety scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was an American (birth name Leon Lazar
Gevorshner), and arrived in Australia in 1953 at age 30 to explore the market
for concert tours here. His early life,
if not shady, was somewhat obscure, but he seems to have “got his start” in the
business by promoting jazz concerts while at the University of Miami. Wikipedia talks of a subsequent mail-order
business in Peru, booking agent for a Cuban nightclub, and electrical stores
back home – which may have failed, or which Gordon may have sold for $550000. It matters little, because the fortune was
soon lost, setting the pattern for Gordon’s subsequent roller-coaster financial
career.
The salient point is that Gordon was successful as a
promoter, not as a businessman. From
1954 to 1961 he brought 29 Big Show
tours to Australia; and the collective line-up is extraordinary. Some of the big names: Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Johnnie Ray,
Frank Sinatra, Bill Haley & the Comets, Guy Mitchell, Little Richard, Nat
King Cole, The Platters, Sarah Vaughan, and a phalanx of up-and-coming rock and
roll performers. Indeed, in the eight
years of Big Show tours Gordon brought 472 American performers to Australia –
this according to Wikipedia, whose entry on Gordon is a fascinating read.
Notable was Gordon’s “pivotal role in the emergence of a local
rock’n’roll music scene”, in particular the promotion of Johnny O’Keefe and Col
Joye. Notable too his breaking down of
the long-standing racial barrier. The
White Australia Policy was still in force, and negro entertainers were not all
that welcome; and the attitude of the musicians’ union was not helpful. To his great credit, Lee Gordon was not
thereby deterred in his selection of black artists or of their integration into
his programmes. After some years of mental
breakdown, and financial distress, Lee Gordon died in a London hotel room in
1963, aged 40.
The Lee Gordon story rather overshadows the Bob Hope Big Show story. I confess that before sending the programme
to the State Library I failed to note particulars of the supporting acts. But I did note that the year of the tour was
1955. Of Hope I remember nothing, not
surprising I suppose because of his ubiquity on the world’s television screens during
the decades after the Second World War and beyond. One stand-up gig from Bob
Hope was much the same as every other - the same format, but newly-coined
topical material courtesy of his team of writers. He died in 2003 at age 100.
Wikipedia provides an anecdote on which to finish. The Bob Hope Big Show apparently lost money, clearly causing Lee Gordon some
grief; but Hope waived his fee, settling for expenses only. He had so much enjoyed his visit to
Australia! And I must give the absolute
final word to Hope himself, courtesy again of Wikipedia [this one just has to
be apocryphal]: when asked on his deathbed where he wanted to be buried, Hope
quipped “surprise me”.
23. The Big Show: The Record Star Parade
This Lee Gordon promotion was styled The Big Show: The Record Star
Parade. On the stage of the West Melbourne Stadium
were Don Cornell (crooner), Stan Freberg (comedian), Joe “Fingers” Carr (jazz
pianist), Buddy Rich (jazz drummer), the Nilsson Twins (female vocalists), Joe
Martin (Australian comedian) and the Tune Twisters (male harmony trio). A number of these artists would have been
headline acts, so the fact of so many touring together is an indication of Lee
Gordon’s persuasiveness, and his determination to mount top class shows.
Given that the underlying premise of the show was “record
stars”, the programme promoted the available recordings of (some of) the
performers, nearly all of whom recorded with Capitol. There is a curious note that “all advertised
Capitol discs are 78 rpm unless marked otherwise”. LPs were certainly available in Australia in
1956, but perhaps not yet of all these “record stars”. I recall that there was a hiatus of a couple
of years when American Capitol discs were unavailable in Australia because in
1955 EMI in the UK took over Decca
(which had until then been handling distribution of Capitol in the UK
and the Commonwealth), and the catalogue was still being realigned………..or
something like that!
24. Kismet
The idea of taking pieces and tunes of an established
composer, adding words to those selections, and turning the whole into a stage
musical, was not new – in 1944, lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest were
set to music of Edvard Grieg, and the resulting Song of Norway thrilled Broadway and the West End. The story line was a fictionalised take on
the early life of Grieg himself.
Alexander Borodin was not, manifestly not, the subject of Kismet, the 1953 musical based on
Borodin’s music, put together by the same Wright and Forrest team.
The word “kismet”, from the Persian, means fate or destiny,
and it was the fate of the musical to be liked by the public but somewhat
scorned by the critics. The public won
in this instance – 583 performances on Broadway, 648 in the West End, and a
successful movie, starring Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray and Vic
Damone. But ground-breaking modern
theatre it wasn’t, set as it was in the time of The Arabian Nights – exotic but not contemporary.
The Australian production had American actor Hayes Gordon in
the leading role of Hajj, beggar and poet of Baghdad. Gordon was a major figure in Australian
theatre, starring - in addition to Kismet - in Kiss Me Kate, Annie Get Your
Gun and Oklahoma. Gordon
had been effectively hounded from the U.S.A. by the odious Senator McCarthy
after refusing to sign the loyalty oath to declare that he was not a
communist. His gift to Australia was
enormous; not only his stage performances and his rich baritone voice, but his
founding of the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney (Australia’s first theatre in the
round), and the Ensemble Studios acting school. His adopted country recognised him with the
OBE in 1979 and the Order of Australia (AO) in 1997. Gordon died in 1999.
Kismet has not
had a history of frequent revivals. The
two most recent major revivals have been by opera companies – New York City in
1985, and English National in 2007. With
the Borodin score transformed into Bauble,
Bangles and Beads, Stranger in
Paradise, Night of My Nights and And This is My Beloved etc. the opera
stage is perhaps its natural home.
25. West Side Story
The creation of West
Side Story involved the collaboration of three giants of the theatre: lyrics
by Stephen Sondheim; musical score by Leonard Bernstein; and conception,
choreography and stage direction by Jerome Robbins. And all based on the story of Romeo and Juliet - although
Shakespeare’s contribution was not acknowledged in the credits, only in the
sleeve notes of the LP album. A clue to
the powerhouse of talent – if such is needed – is to be found in the fact that
the three Broadway creators together occupy 57 pages of Wikipedia.
Stephen Sondheim is both a composer and lyricist, and has
contributed these talents to twenty or so theatrical productions. His range is prodigious, from Gypsy (1959) to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) to A Little Night Music (1973) to Sweeney Todd (1979).
For each of these he wrote the words and the music. For West
Side Story (1957) he wrote the lyrics only, although the story goes
that he also wrote some of the music but that for royalty-sharing purposes he
agreed to let Bernstein take sole compositional credit. His work has extended from musical theatre to
film and television, and has not abated in his 80s (born 1930). I well remember the frisson of hearing on the
ABC the first airing of the Sweeny Todd
LP freshly-arrived from the U.S.A.; and the charm of a performance of A Little Night Music, in Amsterdam, in English.
Leonard Bernstein was likewise multi-talented, renowned in
his later years as the long-time conductor of the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra. He was a pianist of concert
standard, and a leading “classical” composer of his time. Karl Haas, himself no drudge in the field,
thought music educator was Bernstein’s greatest talent – based on years of
televised programmes for both adults and children. And all of this in addition to Bernstein’s contributions
to the stage – including Fancy Free
(1944), On the Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953), Candide (1956); and West Side Story.
The career of Jerome Robbins extended from dancer through
choreographer to theatrical producer and director. He won an Academy Award (for the film version
of West Side Story) and five Tony Awards,
etc. etc. His influential handprint
graced numerous productions for more than 40 years through 1989. His role in bringing to West Side Story the talents of Sondheim and Bernstein was pivotal.
West Side Story
opened at the Princess’s Theatre in October 1960 and ran for around four
months. I haven’t seen a stage
production since then, but my guess is that as a theatrical event it has worn
very well. It had a modernity, an
excitement, an authenticity striking at the time, and still today. In contrast to the saccharine of its Rogers
and Hammerstein predecessors and Music
Man, and a little later Gypsy and
Dolly, its visceral pull and
emotional clout broke new ground.
The programme has some memorable tidbits. Among the credits: spirits by Gilbeys, biscuits by Guests, pure
orange juice canned by Tom Piper, domestic refrigerator by Admiral, men’s shoes
by Raoul Merton, but men’s rubber footwear by Dunlop – with an accompanying
full-page advertisement extolling the virtues of Dunlop famed sporting shoes
both for champion athletes and for the cast of New York street gangs during
their rumbles. Moreover, there’s a note
of thanks to Pan American Airways [long gone] for facilitating the “biggest
ever theatrical airlift ever for any Australian Management”; an ad for
Stromboli Restaurant of South Yarra [also long gone]; a promo for the upcoming
tour of Diana Dors [long gone too] “the toast of London, New York and Las
Vegas” and “the First Lady of the British Screen” [gulp]; and, unbelievably, an
ad for Hunters’ Janitor Household Cleaner, used exclusively in the theatre [the
product long gone, but the business still existing].
26. The Marriage-Go-Round
There’s a story that the exotic dancer, Isadora Duncan, once
said to George Bernard Shaw: “As you
have the greatest brain in the world and I have the most beautiful body, we
ought to produce the most perfect child.”
The story is usually told with Duncan being rather less matter-of-fact,
and rather more insistent. So far as
re-tellers of the story are concerned, the point is in the rejoinder: “Ah, but madam, what if the child had my body
and your brains?” In preparing his
definitive Shaw biography, Hesketh Pearson interrogated Shaw on the Duncan
story. While neither confirming nor
denying the exchange of words, Shaw responded that the incident happened when the
two were together at a party, and that “there’s no smoke without a fire”. Duncan, Shaw said, invited him to call on
her, and that she would dance for him undraped.
But he forgot to keep his note of the appointment! The old wretch, not for avoiding the
encounter, but for telling the tale. And
worse, Shaw ungraciously described Duncan thus:
“Sitting alone on a sofa, clothed in draperies and appearing rather
damaged, was a woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and
someone had licked it.”
All of this is by way of preamble to The Marriage-Go-Round,
the Leslie Stevens play said to have been inspired by the Shaw/Duncan incident.
On Broadway, in 1958, the play starred
Charles Boyer as the professor, and Claudette Colbert as the wife and college
dean, with Julie Newmar as the blond with the interesting suggestion for the
professor. It had a successful run of
over 700 performances. In the 1961 film
the leads were James Mason and Susan Hayward, with Julie Newmar again. The Melbourne stage production premiered on 2nd
September, 1960, and capitalised on the availability of Honni Freger for the
would-be seductress part. Freger was a
fleeting star of early Melbourne television.
With family she had migrated from Germany in 1954, and had became a
citizen in 1959. She was a dental nurse
before becoming a fashion model, and
being crowned Queen of the 1959 Moomba Festival. Her part in The Marriage-Go-Round was, I think, her first acting role.
In contrast, the lead, Basil Rathbone, was one of the most
experienced actors on the planet. Born
in South Africa in 1892, Rathbone received his early acting training with Sir
Frank Benson in England, appearing (from 1911) in twenty-two Shakespearian
plays in some fifty-three parts. He was on
the New York stage from 1922, crossing the Atlantic many times through the ‘20s
and early ‘30s to fulfil engagements. He
was in silent films - in Britain from 1921 and America from 1924 – and from the
outset his roles were starring roles. The talkies welcomed his mellifluous voice;
and, in all, he made over 70 movies, including the 14 where he featured as
Sherlock Holmes (mostly pretty pathetic opuses, I concede, having re-watched
them all again recently). Rathbone won
the Military Cross in the Great War; and he was an accomplished swordsman. Despite having lost to the hero in Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) he was
confident that – in the real world – “I could have killed Errol Flynn”.
By the time he arrived on the Melbourne stage in 1960
Rathbone was 68. He was probably too old
for the role he played, but he handled it with ease – although perhaps dashing
through his lines with a little too much haste.
But how could he not have been a star?
Gary Andrews
