Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (12 page)

He was unintentionally hysterical and so over the top, playing maniacal villains with rolling eyes, a mad cackling laugh and over-exaggerated mannerisms. He was typecast to the point of being known as ‘Mister Murder’ and usually played in Victorian melodramas like
Sweeney Todd
,
Burke and Hare
and
Jack the Ripper
. In the latter, at the end of the play he was ‘killed’ on stage and I remember one night when the curtains came down his feet were left sticking out beneath the curtain. His size tens were slowly withdrawn, only for him to reappear in front of the tabs seconds later
for his obligatory, and highly theatrical, curtain speech:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, our story has been taken from the annals of Scotland Yard and is true in every aspect except the Ripper was never caught. But you saw him killed before your very eyes tonight and can now leave this theatre safe in the knowledge that you ladies don’t have to wonder, “Is he there? Is he there?” when you walk into the darkness.’

These monologues were often better than the play and Slaughter was certainly the last of the great barnstormers, ceaselessly touring the provinces in his hoary old melodramas right up until the day he died.

Talking of ladies leaving the theatre safely, my former wife, Dorothy Squires – who was not a particularly tall person out of heels, and so liked to wear quite high ones – exited the stage door at the Brixton Empress one night when some lout on a bicycle came up behind her and ‘goosed’ her, leaving his thumb in her rear end so all she could do was totter along, screaming for help as he pushed her along. Ever after, she always looked left and right for cyclists.

Another film star of my youth who I also saw on stage was Lancastrian comic and music hall entertainer Frank Randle, who actually only made ten movies and usually without his false teeth in. He often fell foul of the censors, particularly in Blackpool where they banned him from performing some of his material on stage, and it’s fair to
say Randle did not take kindly to criticism or hecklers and would throw his dentures at them as a mark of protest. His many run-ins with the police led to a significant charge sheet being lodged with the Lancashire Constabulary!

With my wife, Dorothy Squires. Dot made her name on radio shows such as
Variety Bandbox
, and then went on to success in the US.

He once performed at my local, the Hackney Empire, and when the resident comic came on, Frank appeared on stage and started talking over him, stepping on all his punch-lines. Someone called from the audience, ‘Why don’t you shut up and let the other comic have a word?’

‘You bastards!’ shouted Randle. ‘You fucking ungrateful bastards!’ Next thing I knew, the iron safety curtain came down and he was dragged off stage.

Randle had his caravan parked around the back of the theatre, and immediately let the tyres down so the management couldn’t evict him from the premises. He then stood in its doorway, posing for the press with his shirt undone to the waist, showing off his torso.

A friend of mine was part of Randle’s travelling theatre company and for the only time in the history of show business the pantomime they were performing, in Birmingham, went on strike.

‘Ungrateful bastards!’ Randall shouted at the cast. ‘Who employs you?’

‘You do, Frank, but you haven’t paid us,’ they reasoned.

‘Well, I fucking employ you! What more do you want?’

The dressing rooms were all interconnected and the company discovered that by placing a glass on the radiator pipes they could listen in to Frank talking in the dressing room next door. One day they heard him talking to a police inspector. ‘Aye, that second lead of mine, he’s an iron hoof I tell you – he’s taking it up the bum. And that tall blond London chap, he’s been shoplifting and bragging about it.’

They realized that Frank was saying the most terrible things about the actors in order to get them arrested, so that he could get out of paying them.

Jimmy Wheeler was another music hall comedian I followed and got to know. He was a huge man who would come on stage with a violin, and his catchphrase was ‘Aye, aye, that’s ya lot!’.

A friend of mine was working with him in Australia and apparently one day Jimmy got into a taxi and banged the door hard shut. When they reached their destination the driver said, ‘I’ll thank you not to bang the door.’

Without missing a beat, Jimmy replied, ‘The only doors I want to bang is Diana fucking Dors!’

He was once on the same variety bill as Dorothy Squires in Great Yarmouth. Dot was to close the show, while Wheeler was set to go on last in the first half. However, as the interval began drawing nearer, they couldn’t find Wheeler. Dot, who was in the dressing room dressed in only her bra and knickers, suddenly heard her entrance music playing.

‘Quick, Dot! We need you on!’ came the call.

Dot threw on her dress, dashed out on stage and started singing, while the manager of the ABC was dispatched to the local pubs to look for Wheeler. Eventually they found him, half cut, propping up a bar:

‘Jimmy! You’re on!’ snapped the manager.

‘How am I fucking doing then?’ he replied ... and no apology was forthcoming.

On another occasion I remember him chuntering on
about young comedians, and his wife, who had finally got fed up of dear Jimmy, said, ‘Why don’t you give it a rest, Jimmy? You’re only jealous!’

‘And why don’t you go and lie down for four-and-a-half fucking years?’ quipped the great man.

Another theatrical great who used to like to bend his elbow at a bar was Wilfrid Lawson. He was serving as a Special Constable at Bow Street Police Station during the war – where my dad was also stationed. Part of their daily routine was to go on point duty, controlling the traffic long before traffic lights came into being.

One afternoon, Dad told me that he had to go out and help retrieve Special Constable Lawson from The Strand where, far from directing traffic, he was crawling across the roads on his hands and knees – in full uniform. It was not quite the image the Metropolitan Police wanted to portray.

On another occasion, Lawson was rehearsing a play on stage with Nicol Williamson, but failed to report back after lunch. Williamson went into a violent tirade on stage about what a drunk Lawson was, how unreliable he was and so on. When he paused for breath, Lawson’s inimitable voice chirped up from the back of the theatre: ‘I thought that speech had been cut!’

I often hear ageing actors today bemoaning the lack of good repertory theatre as a training ground for up-and-coming thespians. I must admit I enjoyed my time in the suburbs, as a young aspiring actor, as not only did the fast-changing programme instil a terrific ability to learn on your feet, it also brought with it a sense of stage discipline,
invaluable performing experience and the chance to tackle a fascinating variety of plays. Money was never very generous though and our staple diet often revolved around baked beans on toast and fry-ups.

Sir Donald Wolfit has often been described as the last of the great actor-managers. With his repertory group of players he would travel the provinces bringing the great stories to the masses – well, maybe not quite
masses
but a grateful few at least. Wolfit was an exuberant, larger-than-life personality who was perhaps most famously the inspiration for the character of ‘Sir’ in the film
The Dresser
, as played by Albert Finney. I’m told by those who knew Wolfit that he was a temperamental and difficult man to deal with and was, like Frank Randle, enraged by any form of criticism. He was also tyrannical with the companies he led. One young actor was put in his place quite firmly when he asked what the next production would be and what his part in it might be: ‘I’ll ask you if I think you can play some speaking roles by then,’ snapped Wolfit.

Wolfit was undoubtedly a fine actor, but one with indifferent feelings about film work – despite making thirty appearances on screen – considering film a ‘poor relation’ to theatre, though his talent and ambition in theatre was undoubtedly handicapped by the more modest venues he ended up appearing in. The great – if eccentric – English actress Hermione Gingold summed it up best by saying, ‘Olivier is a tour-de-force, and Wolfit is forced to tour.’

At the end of each show Wolfit would perform a curtain call speech, much like Tod Slaughter did. One week, he
came out front of the tabs and in his ‘chewing the scenery’ theatrical drawl said: ‘Next week, ladies and gentlemen, we shall be bringing you
Macbeth
. I will be playing the title role and my wife ...’

‘Your wife is a whore!’ came a shout from the gallery.

‘Nevertheless,’ continued Wolfit, unfazed, ‘she will be playing Lady Macbeth ...’

There were many stories and rumours about Wolfit, including him haranguing the people at a cinema queue to leave it and attend the theatre – in another part of town – where his company was playing. Some even suggested that, to earn a few bob on the side, he sold insurance on easy payment terms to actors. I’d like to believe that one!

It’s not quite another Wolfit story, but one I’d like to think was from an actor-manager of his ilk (if only of lesser standing) for whom a young Welsh actor named Brian Ellis auditioned. When he offered Brian a role in the company he cautioned him that the pay wasn’t very good, but, in a negotiating ploy to seal the deal, he proudly added, ‘There is an edible pudding in act two every night.’

On his deathbed, so legend has it, Wolfit was still keen to offer words of wisdom to members of his rep company. One of his young actors asked, ‘Sir Donald, after a life so filled with success and fame, dying must be hard ...’

‘Dying is easy ... Comedy is hard,’ replied the great man.

For some unknown reason, though I think it might well have been jealousy, Wolfit hated Sir John Gielgud and referred to him as ‘the Enemy’. It obviously niggled at Gielgud, as when he was invited to speak at Wolfit’s memorial programme, produced by the BBC, he responded, ‘I couldn’t. You see we always regarded him as something of a joke.’

I made a film with Gielgud called
Gold
, though as is typical in this business we never actually met on set as neither of us appeared in a scene together. Gielgud had something of a reputation for putting his foot quite firmly in his mouth, and never really thought about what he was saying until after he’d actually said it. For example, when James Villiers (who played Bill Tanner in
For Your Eyes Only)
assumed Laurence Olivier’s role as Victor in
Private Lives
, Olivier later asked Gielgud what his performance was like.