42. Katherine Dunham and Her Company
Katharine Dunham was a world famous “modern” dancer, and with her large company she entertained us at the Princess’s Theatre in May 1956. But the programme notes do get a bit carried away – first the strange proposition: “Katharine Dunham a Dancing Scientist”; then the even stranger exposition: “Is Katharine Dunham’s reputation only the figment of a press agent’s mind? Is she a ‘cool analytical scientist’, or is she a ‘torrid, sultry performer of hot rhythms?’ Is it authentic? Is it theatrical? Scientist or artist, why this tempest raging around Katharine Dunham?”
Indeed, why this strange hype, sounding like a large dose of bullshit? Anyone reading the programme note would have already bought a ticket, and didn’t need to be gulled. Alternatively, anyone reading this stuff before buying a ticket would likely have been propelled into second thoughts.
Elsewhere, the programme notes detail Dunham’s determination and work ethic: from birth in Chicago, and public school (“where her life was uneventful save for the significant fact that she was elected to the Terpsichorean Club where her natural love of music was encouraged” – ugh!), to university - where her interest in ethnology was fostered.
Wikipedia gives us a much more appropriate view of Dunham’s life and career. “Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, creator of the Dunham Technique, author, educator, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theatre of the 20thCentury, and directed her own dance company for many years. She has been called ‘the matriarch and queen mother of black dance’.” And there’s much more in Dunham’s extensive bio.
Melbourne was privileged to have its visit from Katharine Dunham and her troupe; although not all of her lifetime of achievement had occurred by the time Dunham performed in Melbourne in 1956. She died in 2006, at age 96, perhaps epitomising the Latin motto, mens sana in corpore sano.
43. The Pleasure of His Company
Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899 to 1979), legendary – really legendary - American actress and writer, author of numerous pieces for The New Yorker collected into half-a-dozen or more volumes, and author of the delightful memoir of her post-Sorbonne days travelling Europe, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay - Cornelia Otis Skinner was coming to Melbourne. Coming to perform in the play in whose authorship she’d collaborated with Samuel Taylor. Taylor (1912 to 2000), in a long but sparse career wrote screenplays for Sabrina, The Eddie Duchin Story and Vertigo, and wrote stage plays Sabrina Fair and Nina; and also, the comedy The Pleasure of His Company. Inconsequential stuff, concerning the long-estranged, disinterested, and reprobate father returning for the wedding of his daughter – and causing havoc. Later, for Hollywood, the parents’ parts were played by Lilli Palmer and Fred Astaire; but in Melbourne, opening July 1960 - and, indeed, for the 474-performance Broadway premiere production in 1959 - the principals were Skinner and Cyril Richard. Richard had won the Tony for his performance that year.
Born in Sydney, Richard had an illustrious international career – ranging from a London stage debut in 1918 to Mary Martin’s 1954 Broadway production of Peter Pan. He starred in Hitchcock’s Blackmail in 1929, and in the film version of Terrence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy in 1948.
So, for once, Australia was not having to overpraise a cast of imported second-raters.
From the theatre programme we learn of two prominent night-time venues of the day: The Bamboo Room at the Chevron Hotel (cnr. Commercial and St Kilda Roads) “Australia’s Leading Hotel”; and The Embers night club in South Yarra, “the most exciting music and food in Melbourne – 5 course dinner 25 shillings ($2.50)”. [The Embers had recently been re-built after having been “burned to the ground” just after the announcement of the next song, Fire Down Below. Truth is stranger…..] And Harry Belafonte is coming to the Palais Theatre on 10 August, 1960. Pant.
44. For Amusement Only
For Amusement Only was an “intimate review” staged by J.C. Williamson’s at the Comedy Theatre from 28 November, 1958. The cast of around a dozen included four of Melbourne’s light entertainment luminaries, as it happens two wife and husband teams – Toni Lamond and Frank Sheldon, and Tikki Taylor and John Newman.
Born in 1932 (and with us still), Toni Lamond’s introduction to theatre and entertainment was both genetic and environmental – mother, actress Stella Lamond; step-father, comedian Max Reddy; half-sister Helen Reddy. Her extensive career in music included stints in New York and London, numerous stage shows in Australia, and years of television variety. Lamond had starred in The Pajama Game before For Amusement Only, and starred in many musicals thereafter.
Frank Sheldon’s career was less notable, doubtless foreshortened – after twelve years of marriage - through his death by suicide in 1966. Tony Sheldon, son of Toni Lamond and Frank Sheldon, has had a formidable career in music theatre.
Tikki Taylor and John Newman, too, were a notable Australian theatrical couple, and founded an entertainment dynasty. Off stage they were married for 57 years, until Taylor’s death in 2011 at age 83. On stage they performed together not only in The Pajama Game, but also Can-Can and Grab Me a Gondola. Taylor performed in numerous other musicals, importantly the landmark musicals of the 1950s – South Pacific, Oklahoma, Brigadoon, Song of Norway, and later, Hello Dolly. And they established Australia’s first theatre restaurant, Tikki and John’s; and subsequently, with the involvement of their sons, Squizzie’s, Crazy Horse, Dracula’s, and others.
I remember John Newman as the Master of Ceremonies at the Footlighters’ luncheons which ran for some 25 years – razor-sharp wit, not entirely choir-boy innocent, sartorially elegant; his microphone performance worth the price of the meal!
For once, the ever-knowing Wikipedia has let me down – I can find no reference to Newman’s death, and am hopeful that it has not yet occurred. As recently as March 2020 he self-published his autobiography, Tikki and John: An Entertaining Life. I am daunted from further enquiry by the fact that “John Newman” brings up 165,000,000 Wikipedia strikes.
45. The Sophie Tucker Show
In later years I have thought of Sophie Tucker as something of a triumph of perseverance over talent. There seemed (in memory) to be little of “big name” aura – no glamorous good looks, and an unremarkable voice. But reference to the numerous internet clips evokes something of the star quality that she undoubtedly enjoyed. Partly, I guess, this was due to her longevity as a performer – she lived to age 80, with her final television appearance a few months prior to her death. Partly, I think, it was due to the universality of her appeal. What’s not to love in an aging trouper, still glamming up, and trotting out her hits of sixty years ago? Well, a lot, really! But, like an old familiar tune, Sophie Tucker stayed with us in reality as well as in memory.
Sophie Tucker’s family migrated to the USA from what is today Ukraine, in 1887. They settled in Boston for some years, before moving to Hartford in 1893 and establishing a restaurant. Sophie was born in 1886, and from age nine she was singing to the Hartford customers. There’s an unattributed quote in Wikipedia that what with the onions and Sophie’s singing there wasn’t a dry eye in the house! Elopement at age 17 [1903], and the short-lived marriage, led Sophie to New York, and to the adoption of the professional name Tucker. There was a sparse professional career for a number of years – first theatrical appearance 1907, Ziegfeld Follies in 1909. In 1910 Tucker recorded Some of These Days on an Edison cylinder. [When she re-recorded the song on 78 rpm disc in 1926 it became a million seller.] In 1921 she teamed with pianist Ted Shapiro for a cabaret act, and they performed together for the next 40-plus years.
And so it was in Melbourne in June 1962. There were six supporting acts, including one after interval, hence Sophie Tucker wasn’t on stage for all that long. But the admiring public were content with her famous songs, and that’s what they got. Think I’m Living Alone and I Like It, Life Begins at Forty, and My Yiddishe Momme. These three together sum up the Tucker late life schtick – the first two, slightly risqué, suggesting that in maturity she’d shed the shackles of permanent male company, while at the same time welcoming the advances of virile younger lovers. The third, My Yiddishe Momme, is a sentimental hark back to Tucker’s Jewish background.
46. Maurice Chevalier
I conclude this series of reminiscences from my youth with the French singer, Maurice Chevalier. Sadly, although Chevalier was brought to Melbourne by J.C Williamson’s as a star of the international stage, even in 1960 when he was a mere 71 or 72 I thought he was a has-been. There were no accompanying acts, and he did the whole show supported by Fred Stammer at the piano.
The programme notes swooned that Chevalier would entertain us from a selection of twenty songs, and that although an intermission was “inevitable”, it’s length would be “indeterminate”. Just what the heck were they trying to say? That Chevalier was irascible. That he was unreliable? That he was tired? That he couldn’t count?
Maurice Chevalier was born in Paris in 1888, and from early age made a career as singer and dancer. He won fame performing at the Folies Bergere. Like so many others, his career and life were interrupted by the World War [the First, as it was later to become!] – perhaps providentially interrupted by being captured, spending two years as a German prisoner-of-war, and learning to speak English during his incarceration. Later, when performing in English, he adopted a strong “French” accent, although beyond the spotlight he was apparently accent free, albeit with a hint of American.
Chevalier had made a number of films in France during the teens and the twenties of the twentieth century, and made his first Hollywood talkie in 1928. Romantic lead: can sing, can dance, good looks, has sexy French accent! In the early ‘30s he was said to be the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. Urban myth? I don’t know, but clearly Maurice Chevalier was a big deal back in the day. Then he returned to his homeland - to cabaret, and to a steady career in film; and it was some 25 years before his resurgent movie career in the USA. That career included two films prior to his visit to Melbourne [Love in the Afternoon (1957) and Gigi (1958)] and one that was likely made, but not yet released before his arrival here [Can-Can (1960)].
I must say that I have rarely seen such an extensive biography in a theatre programme as the one provided for Maurice Chevalier – hundreds of words detailing a lifetime parade of engagements in cabaret, theatre and film. There is a quote from the London Observer: “Maurice Chevalier, by filling a theatre continuously with a solo act, has proved himself one of the greatest music-hall artists of the age. With his superb timing of every word and gesture, his wit, his rhythm, and most engaging personality, he enchants as completely as in his youth.”
All this makes my take on Chevalier in Melbourne 1960 sound churlish. So be it. The sad truth is that I remember the evening at the Comedy Theatre as the performance of an old man [let me interject that I have nothing against old men per se]: an old man with ill-fitting teeth; a weary old man in a dinner suit, wearing a straw boater, doing a halting soft-shoe shuffle; a sad old man trapped in the time warp of his once-familiar tunes.
Gary Andrews
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