14 Victor Borge
There was an uncommon bunch of newly-minted comedians on the
scene in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
This sounds a silly statement: surely it’s a truism that comic
performers are continually emerging, so why claim uniqueness for any particular
era? Perhaps because at the time I was
of an age to appreciate the anarchy that’s implicit in humour; perhaps because
of the then cold war backdrop; or perhaps it was actually so.
Think of Bob Newhart, who founded a stand-up career from his
first LP, The Button-Down Mind of Bob
Newhart, released 1960. Think of Allan
Sherman, who made a career of song parodies; and his best-known “hit” Hullo Mudda, Hullo Fadda from 1963. Think of Shelley Berman and his 1959 album Inside Shelley Berman – the first
stand-up comedian to perform at Carnegie Hall. Think of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and
their 1960 album An Evening With…Think
of Tom Lehrer poisoning pigeons in the park.
And think of Victor Borge.
In bracketing Borge with the aforementioned comedians I am conscious
that he was really of an earlier generation, but he had his greatest career
successes in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s – by which time he was middle aged. That career extended over 70 years. Borge, born 1909, died in 2000 a day after
returning to the USA from performing in Denmark, his birth country. The “Great Dane”, as he was sometimes known,
was a classical pianist, and combined his pianistic skills with droll humour
into a one-man comedy show.
Borge’s LPs Comedy in
Music and Caught in the Act,
released respectively in 1954 and 1955, were extracted from his stage
performances, and were extraordinarily popular in Australia. Much of the LP material then re-surfaced in
his Melbourne shows, to the delight of the audiences, myself included. One of Borge’s specialties was his phonetic
punctuation, and no show was complete without a reading complete with
punctuation out loud. Ditto his calling for audience suggestions of
pieces of music, and the turning of them into a bravura pastiche. Whether or not the evening spent with Borge
was entirely impromptu, that was the impression being fostered. The printed programme listed the night’s
entertainment as:
1. Frankly
2. We
3. Don’t
4. Know
5. What
6. Mr.
Borge
7. Will
8. Do
9. But
10. We’re
11. Sure
12. He’ll
13. Keep
14. Us
15. Posted
16. From
17. Time
18. To
19. Time
A little postscript.
Maybe comedy is good for the constitution. Excepting Allan Sherman who died at age 48,
the other comedians mentioned above have lived long lives. Mike Nicholls died at 83 and Victor Borge at
91. The others are still alive: Bob Newhart (87), Elaine May (84), Shelly
Berman (91) and Tom Lehrer (88).
Possibly of equal significance is the fact that, with the exception of
Newhart, all are Jewish.
15. The Big Show: Louis
Armstrong
Entrepreneur Lee Gordon mounted a series of Big Shows in
Melbourne in the 1950s, and this must surely have been his biggest. Most of his shows were at the West Melbourne
(boxing and wrestling) Stadium, later re-named Festival Hall, where the
capacity was huge. But Louis Armstrong
was brought to the Palais Theatre, a much more refined venue, from 5th
to 12th April, 1956, and on tour through Australia to the 24th
of the month.
Of all the big names I’ve seen “live” Louis Armstrong must
be the biggest. I saw Bob Hope, Maurice
Chevalier, Danny Kaye and Sophie Tucker [more on all of whom later] (although,
sadly, not Frank Sinatra), but Louis was without peer. It wasn’t simply that his performing career
was so extended – there were others who stayed just as long before the
footlights and in the front rank – but Louis was so influential in the world of
entertainment, and the world of jazz, and so damned good! A world celebrity - the accolade of
first-name recognition is bestowed on few – Bing, Frank………..and Louis.
Is anyone really able to write anything new or incisive or
revelatory about Louis Armstrong? No,
and this fan is not about to try. Except
to say that Louis had a pivotal role in the history and development of jazz;
and that he was not over the hill when he came to the Palais Theatre in
Melbourne. He was, at the time,
travelling with his “All Stars”, at least the latest incarnation of that group
– the same combination that had featured in the 1956 film High Society, namely Trummy Young (trombone), Barrett Deems
(drums), Edmond Hall (clarinet), Arvel Shaw (bass), and Billy Kyle (piano),
plus Velma Middleton vocalist. The
pre-interval support came from Rose Hardaway (one of America’s “brightest new
singing talents” – who a little later, in 1959, pleaded guilty to credit card
fraud and faded from view), Peg Leg Bates (tap dancer with a wooden leg, whose
previous appearances had been “in Paris, Vienna, Brussels and South America”),
and Gary Crosby (son of Bing).
In the early 1950s my uncle Bill moved to the country, and
gave me his collection of some hundreds of 78 r.p.m. discs (which I have to
this day!). He had been a collector
since his youth, and a devotee of jazz of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and Louis was a
particular favourite. Uncle Bill and I
attended the Palais performance together.
We were not disappointed.
16. Witness for the
Prosecution
Visitors to London have to decide whether to attend a
performance of The Mousetrap, the
Agatha Christie drama that holds the world record for staying power – first
presented in October 1952, and still running.
Its longevity is surely based on curiosity value, plus the huge floating
population of tourists, certainly not on its merit as a murder mystery. As of
September 2016, still confident of its drawing power, it’s taking bookings
through to January 2018.
Agatha Christie, in addition to her 70 or so crime novels,
wrote some 16 plays. A number are dramatizations of Christie
novels. After The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution is the best
known. It opened at London’s Winter Garden
Theatre in October 1953, having originally been a Christie short story,
published 1925. Hollywood director,
Billy Wilder, made a film version in 1957, starring Tyrone Power, Marlene
Dietrich, and Charles Laughton in extravagant form.
I haven’t been able to ascertain when the play was staged in
Melbourne, whether before or after the 1957 movie, but I suspect it was after,
capitalising on the film’s success. The
principal role (the Laughton role………a plum role which elsewhere was filled by
Ralph Richardson and Edward G Robinson) was played by Philip Stainton. Stainton had appeared in a number of British
and American films, in supporting roles, and brought his experience and a
portly countenance to the part. After
the run he remained in Melbourne, and appeared again on stage, and in
television dramas – until his sudden death in 1961, at age 53.
17. Auntie Mame
Although Patrick Dennis wrote about 20 books he remained a
one-shot wonder. He published Auntie Mame in 1955, and it became one
of the best selling novels of the 20th Century. At its peak it was selling upwards of 5000 copies
a week and, in total, sold more than two million copies. In 1956 it was made into a play, and Rosalind
Russell opened it on Broadway. Two years
later Russell starred in the film. Then,
finally (so far!), the 1966 musical adaptation Mame starred Angela Lansbury on Broadway, and the sadly-past-her-prime
Lucille Ball in Hollywood. All of this
from a slender tale, based on the larger-than-life personality and exploits of
Dennis’s aunt Marion Tanner. Dennis,
incidentally, was a somewhat ambivalent character – real name Edward Everett
Tanner III – whose mystery wasn’t confined to the two noms de plume he wrote under.
Other than Auntie Mame, the
books of Tanner/Dennis/Virginia Rowans had little staying power; indeed Mame
herself has probably left the room.
The stage adaptation of Auntie
Mame was made by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and was brought to the
Princess’s Theatre by Garnet H. Carroll, from 19 February 1959. It had a big cast, a number of whom, if they
weren’t already well known, certainly became so later: Bob Hornery, Carl
Bleazby, Frederick (before he was Fred) Parslow, and young Ian Turpie. The Australian production wasn’t quite able to
attract Rosalind Russell, importing instead as the star of the show one Shirl
Conway. My recollection is that Comway
stayed in Australia for a bit after the Auntie
Mame season, and gained some television work. She died, in 2007 at age 90, having spent her
later 40 or so years in Washington state, U.S.A., where she was involved with
the Harstine Island Theatre Club as founding member and performer. The IMDb website’s final reference to a Conway
professional performance is dated 1965, not so long after her stint down under. So she didn’t have a major career………………..but,
for a time, Shirl Conway was the most glamorous and exciting creature in staid
old Melbourne.
18. The Happiest Days of Your
Life
The Happiest Days of
Your Life was one of the best-received British comedy films of the early
post-WWII years. It screened in
Melbourne in 1950 at the Athenaeum Theatre, the “home” of British cinema
releases at the time. It starred
Alastair Sim (the master of the rolling eyes and the leer), Margaret
Rutherford, and Joyce Grenfell. Set in
the anarchy of St. Swithan’s School, the film became the precursor to the string
of St. Trinian’s School comedies. The St.
Trinian’s films were scripted around the comic drawings of Ronald Searle,
but The Happiest Days of Your Life
originated with the play of the same name, by John Dighton. The
Happiest Days, the play, was staged in London in 1948. Margaret Rutherford played the part of the St.
Swithan’s head………which, subsequent to the film, she then reprised in Australia from
29 January, 1958, on the boards of the Princess’s Theatre. As I recall, the film was successful at all
levels; and whether the Australian stage season had been an attempt to cash in
on the success of the film, or to exploit the fame of Margaret Rutherford, or
both, I cannot tell. Certain it was
that by 1958 Margaret Rutherford was a considerable drawcard. Her co-star was Australian actor Ray Barrett.
One would have to say that Margaret Rutherford was a strange
commodity – a leading actor in the guise of a character actor. She was frumpy and lumpy of figure, jowly of
visage, and not at all beautiful in a film star sense: romantic heroines were
not in her repertoire. And she seemed to
speak with a mouthful of marbles; although, surprisingly, not at the expense of
her diction. Indeed, before her stage
debut in 1925 she had taught elocution; and also piano. She included four turns as Agatha Christie’s
Jane Marple among her more than 40 film appearances; and in 40-plus years in
the theatre she enriched The Importance
of Being Earnest - playing Miss Prism in London and Lady Bracknell in New
York. The last word goes to Joyce
Grenfell from her autobiography, Joyce
Grenfell Requests the Pleasure:
“Margaret Rutherford…..read poetry better than almost anyone I ever
heard, even better than she played those endearing caricatures she was so
justly famed for……”.
Gary Andrews
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