My Uncle Alan Camm, to say the least, was a
“character.” There were those, I
imagine, who would have called him a scoundrel; but my impression is that he
was merely one who was a little too ready to let opportunism come before
prudence; and, as a bank manager, prudence should have been his credo. He was apparently notorious around the Commercial
Bank (and Westpac after the merger) as one who “took risks” with borrowers –
risking the bank’s money, that is. He
was not a favourite with the inspectorial staff and senior management. He was tolerated, though, because he wrote a
lot of profitable business. Alan had
trained, and had gained responsibility, when systems were less controlled; and
although the systems changed he never did.
Alan’s early banking career was in rural areas – at bank
branches in Chinkapook, Nhill and Colac, and then his first branch managership
at Neerim South in Gippsland. Although I
spent a number of school holidays at Neerim South (my Aunt Lillian and my
mother were sisters), it wasn’t until Alan was posted to the Commercial Bank in
Bridge Road Richmond in the late 1950s that he and I became close. The bond strengthened when my father died in
1960; and, despite his foibles, I was happy to call Alan my friend until his
death in November 1996 aged 91.
The bank’s customer profile in inner-suburban Richmond was
quite different from the graziers and townsfolk of Gippsland, and business
customers in particular provided opportunities for creative banking. As a consequence, Alan’s below-stairs
cupboard was an Aladdin’s cave of whiskies, replenished each Christmas by a
brace of bottles from grateful clients.
Alan had one client par
excellence whose business was simple but extraordinarily profitable: the
man had an arrangement with the breweries to relieve them of the problem of
disposing of the huge amounts of mash left over from the brewing process - by
generously trucking the stuff away. He
then sold it as stock feed to pig farmers.
There must have been some banking favour at one stage (possibly
continuous!), because this client provided Alan with two tickets to every
performance staged by the major theatres in Melbourne – typically two aisle
seats, about seven rows from the front of the stalls. Aunt Lillian was interested only in the
ballet, so Alan had a spare ticket for all the plays and the musical comedies. I was the beneficiary of this situation. It was helpful that I lived about 300 metres
away from Alan’s bank, further along Bridge Road. (There was a residence for the manager’s
family at the Commercial Bank premises.)
And so began my serious theatre-going.
For a number of years from my late teens through my early twenties I saw
them all.
In those days the purchase of a programme was almost
obligatory, certainly knee-jerk, and the habit continued until more recent
years when I decided that theatre programmes were definitely not value for money. In the meantime, however, there had been an
accumulation of programmes post the Alan Camm days, including years of
attending Melbourne Theatre Company productions. Uncharacteristically, I recently acknowledged
to myself that the hundreds of programmes boxed in the garage were of
sentimental value only, and that it was time to shed them - hopefully not into
the recycling bin; so would any institution be interested? The Arts Centre Melbourne was not interested
for its Performing Arts Collection; but the State Library of Victoria was happy
to have them. The Library already had
years of Melbourne Theatre Company programmes, though, and didn’t want to take
duplicates. I said it was all or
nothing, but that they were free to cull whatever they didn’t want; and, in any
case, I had many 1950s’ programmes of the MTC’s predecessor, the Union Theatre
Repertory Company, which may well pre-date the Library’s present arrangement to
receive a copy from each MTC production.
It was only when the courier was due to arrive the next day,
and when I had a quick nostalgic rummage, that I had a sense – these 50-plus
years on – of how extraordinarily privileged I had been as a young man, and
what a huge amount of theatre I had seen.
So I selected a number of the programmes that I thought might be the
most interesting, made some notes, and what follows is the result.
But first, something about Melbourne theatre in the 1950s
and 1960s.
I don’t know whether it’s true to say that Melbourne has
“always” had a strong small theatre scene, but that was certainly the case in
the 1950s and 1960s, possibly more so than today. Quite aside from my Uncle Alan’s benevolence
I was familiar with the St. Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra (formerly the
Little Theatre) [the St. Martin’s folded in 1973]; with the Melbourne New
Theatre in Flinders Street [long gone], perennial presenter of the Australian
musical Reedy River; with the
National Theatre [then at Eastern Hill, now in St. Kilda]; with the Plaza
Theatre in Northcote [closed in 1957], where as a family we had occasional
exposure to vaudeville; and with the Tin Alley Players [long defunct] and the
Union Theatre Repertory Company [since 1968, the Melbourne Theatre Company],
both based at the University of Melbourne’s Union Theatre, from my campus
days. And with La Mama in Carlton from
its foundation in 1967.
Notwithstanding all this theatrical activity the theatre
scene at the time was dominated by three theatrical enterprises, that is, the “theatre
scene” as understood by what has been described as largely unadventurous
middle-class audiences.
The Tivoli Circuit had been a centrepiece of Australian
theatre entertainment from its foundation by an English music hall comedian in
1893. It was Australia’s foremost
provider of vaudeville and variety theatre, and presented its shows in Tivoli
theatres in the capital cities. The
Melbourne Tivoli was in Bourke Street.
On occasions, management presented musical comedies and other
non-vaudeville shows, sometimes in conjunction with other entrepreneurs. This became more common as the taste for
jugglers, stand-up comedians, lion tamers, semi-naked chorus girls (“Tivoli
tappers”) and the like waned. Changing
tastes, and the arrival of television in 1956 – light entertainment in your
living room, on demand – brought an end to this class of “live theatre”. The final Tivoli show was staged in 1966.
There were two “legitimate” theatre operators – J.C.
Williamson Theatres and the Carroll organisation. Williamsons pre-dated Tivoli by some years,
founded by American actor James Cassius Williamson. Having in 1879 secured the Australian rights
to present Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S.
Pinafore, Williamson formed a touring company; then leased his first
theatre, the Theatre Royal in Sydney, in 1881.
The Princess’s Theatre Melbourne was opened by Williamson in 1886 with a
production of The Mikado. Williamson became the consummate theatrical
entrepreneur, and – unbelievably - at one time J.C. Williamson Theatres was the
largest theatrical firm in the world.
After Williamson’s death in 1913, the management (and, later, ownership)
of the business passed to the Tait brothers, the last of whom, Sir Frank Tait,
was still involved in the early ‘60s.
The company was wound up in 1976.
Over the years the production of Gilbert & Sullivan operas was a
staple, with touring groups being organised every few years from 1914 to 1956
(when, while a schoolboy, I saw each of the productions on offer – paying my
own way for a change!); while the intervening years saw Williamsons presenting
present-day musicals “direct from Broadway” or “direct from the West End”.
The Carroll organisation was the creature of Garnet H.
Carroll, born at
Singleton, NSW, in 1902. From menswear shop assistant, to amateur
thespian, to song-and-dance man, to theatre manager, Carroll was versatile and
persistent. Later he worked for
theatrical entrepreneur Sir Ben Fuller and, in 1946, with Fuller as his
business partner, purchased the Princess’s Theatre. Fuller died in 1952, and the 12 years until
Carroll’s death in 1964 saw a constant parade of dramas and musical comedies……….most
of which I saw.
My re-acquaintance with the theatre programmes has triggered
the following ruminations:
- Paint Your Wagon
Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist, and Frederick “Fritz” Loewe,
composer, were one of Broadway’s most
successful musical comedy teams. There
were three early endeavours, not much heard of today, then Brigadoon in 1947. Later, in
1958, there was My Fair Lady, one of
the most popular shows ever; and sandwiched between the two came Paint Your Wagon (1951). Paint
Your Wagon took three years to trundle into Her Majesty’s Theatre, staged
by Williamsons from 27 November 1954. [Had
it arrived in 1951 it would have hitched to His Majesty’s.] The show has 16 musical numbers including Wandering Star, They Call the Wind Maria, What’s
Goin’ on Here?, There’s a Coach Comin’ In, I Talk to the Trees, and I
Still See Elisa, the latter two
certainly deserving of places in the Great American Song Book had that
compilation not ended at 1950.
The programme includes an advertisement for Australian
National Airways, spruiking “Australia’s
only PRESSURISED Super DC6 Fleet”.
Imagine, 315 miles an hour-PLUS, at 8000 feet.
2. How to Succeed in Business Without Really
Trying
Frank Loesser was one of the most accomplished twentieth
century writers of popular music – not front rank, but well up there. Aside from his theatrical compositions, his
best-known songs are Baby It’s Cold
Outside, On a Slow Boat to China, I
Don’t Want to Walk Without You, Heart and Soul and Once in Love With Amy. And
for the movie Hans Christian Andersen
he scored the lovely Inchworm and Anywhere I Wander. He wrote the not-so-memorable stage musical The Most Happy Fella (but it did feature Standing on the Corner), and the ever-so-memorable Guys and Dolls with its swag of
show-stopping tunes. With this latter,
although Loesser wrote both the music and lyrics the “book” was written by Abe
Burrows - with suitable acknowledgement to the infectious Damon Runyan stories
of New York low life. Burrows also
provided the “book” for the Loesser musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
The Melbourne season of How
to Succeed played at Her Majesty’s from August 1963. It is a paeon to success through brown
nosing, or through “getting something” on the boss, or both. The principal songs are The Company Way, The
Brotherhood of Man and I Believe in
You (sung by the upwardly mobile leading character to himself.). That leading part of J. Pierpont Finch was
played by one Len Gochman who had been the understudy for the original 1961
Broadway production. In the subsequent
movie the Finch part was played by Robert Morse, with Rudy Vallee as Finch’s
boss, both reprising their Broadway roles.
Sadly, Vallee was not in the Melbourne cast.
The programme reminded us that Cattanach’s, the jewellers,
had been in business since 1878, and that Abbots stout was good for us. And that if we joined the Concert Hall Record
Club we could buy our first three LPs for nine shillings (90 cents). There was an announcement of the forthcoming
tour of English comedienne Joyce Grenfell.
3.
The Reluctant Debutante
William Douglas-Home wrote some 50 plays, typically comedies
with an upper-class setting – not surprising, perhaps, given Douglas-Home’s
aristocratic lineage and his Eton/Oxford education. His brother Alec was British Prime Minister,
one of the first members of the peerage to renounce his title in order to
contest a seat in the House of Commons. The Reluctant Debutante is generally
regarded as William Douglas-Home’s most successful play…….which is rather
fortunate for Melbourne audiences who were spared from seeing one of his 49 less successful efforts.
The play, which debuted in the West End in 1955, was brought
to Melbourne by Williamsons in 1956.
Roger Livesey and Ursula Jeans had the leads, supported by John Meillon
and Diana Perryman. On the evidence of the
story line the play was mostly froth, and whether it was also bubble I have no
recollection. Hollywood thought
sufficient of its potential to film it in 1958, with Rex Harrison, and Kay
Kendall.
4. King Lear
Of the four great Shakespearian tragedies, King Lear is the one that evokes the
most sympathy for its protagonist. Macbeth is really a nasty piece, driven
to murder by lust for the crown, and by a singularly ambitious wife; Hamlet is a dreamer, a loner,
misunderstood, who makes for himself a bloodbath of revenge; Othello, while deserving of some
sympathy, is essentially a dill driven to kill his beloved through uncontrolled
jealousy. But Lear is just a foolish old
man whose error of judgement triggers the most dire consequences. And as the action proceeds our initial
annoyance at Lear’s stupidity in rejecting the daughter who declines to flatter
him turns to pity at what has been wrought.
King Lear brings you to tears
in a way the other three tragedies cannot.
Mind you, the tears are assisted by the parallel story and fate of
Gloucester, also foolish, who rejects his faithful son after believing the
calumnies spread by the usurping son. We
know that Lear and Gloucester have “brought it on themselves”, but still we
care.
I studied King Lear in my school literature class and,
indeed, played the part of Gloucester in our classroom reading. The fact that Gloucester has his eyes ripped
out is not, I trust, symbolic of…………..
Australian theatre has had a rich history of companies
touring from the “centres of world theatre”, and Shakespearian groups have been
prominent among them: not necessarily
permanent companies by the way (from Stratford, say), but often pick-up groups
put together by Australian entrepreneurs.
Thus in 1959 the J.C. Williamson Shakespeare Company was invented for an
Australian tour, a tour of three Shakespearian plays. The “all star local cast” was headed by Peter
O’Shaughnessy, “the brilliant Melbourne Shakespearean actor”, and John Alden
“Australia’s leading Shakespearean actor”.
For international flavour there was
Scottish actor, John Laurie, who alternated with Alden as Lear.
Laurie played Lear the night I attended. He had a long acting career, much of it
Shakespearian, and his spare physique, wild eyes, and unruly hair gave some
substance to his portrayal of the 80-plus-year-old Lear; but, sadly, the
performance hasn’t stayed with me.
In addition to his work in the theatre John Laurie appeared
in more than 60 films. It is somewhat
ironical that he is today best remembered for his part as Private Frazer in the
television series Dad’s Army. Laurie has been quoted, late in his life, as
saying : “I’ve played every part in
Shakespeare. I was considered to be the
finest Hamlet of the twenties and I had retired, and now I’m famous for doing
this crap.” But the same source
suggests that Laurie, himself, was being ironic, and that “he was a wicked and
impish man and he didn’t really think it was rubbish at all.”
Williamsons brought The
Pajama Game to Her Majesty’s in February 1957. The musical, by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross,
was a Broadway success from 1954, running for more than 1000 performances. In its Australian season it starred Tiki
Taylor, Bill Newman, Jill Perryman, and Toni Lamond. Its more memorable songs were and are Hey There, Hernando’s Hideaway, Small
Talk, Seven and a Half Cents and I’m Not at all in Love.
The programme announced the outstanding coming attraction,
the 1957 concert tour of Jan Peerce the Famous American Tenor - at the Melbourne
Town Hall, from 11 June. And it also
announced the Astor Concertmaster radiogram, with 9 valves, 3 separate
speakers, separate bass and treble controls, a Collaro 3-speed intermixing
record changer - all this in a “piano finish” cabinet by Gainsborough; and a
steal at 199 guineas ($417.90).
Can you bear to wait for Part 2?
Gary Andrews
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