Behind the Scenes

‘Curtain Up’ (1952) showcases Margaret Rutherford at her eccentric best; while sparring with Robert Morley, who is more than up to the task.  The setting for the film is a dreary provincial theatre, where a third rate repertory company are meant to be rehearsing a new play.  They are less than enthusiastic. The play has been foisted on them by a member of theatre management, having been written by an amateur relative of his.  The task of putting the play together is then made even more difficult by the arrival of said author (Rutherford) who insists on interfering. With Morley as producer – well, anyone familiar with 1950s British films doesn’t need a description of the ensuing comedic situations.

Margaret Rutherford by @aitchteee

Although not a great deal happens – all of the film stays within the theatre confines – it is good fun.  There are some very funny exchanges and a wonderful cameo from Joan Hickson as Morley’s affronted landlady. The cast also features Kay Kendall – as beautiful and capable as ever.  Having dabbled in amateur dramatics myself many years ago (my Mabel Middy in ‘Wanted, One Body’ was a triumph - see my review below!) I can also see how there may be a lot of truth in this portrayal of life in rep theatre. It was based on a play written by an actor, Philip King, who must surely have known first hand what life was like there.

One of my clippings from the Derbyshire Times circa 1997, darlings

This was an interesting viewpoint.  Those of us who enjoy a good biography of our favourite 20^th century actor cannot fail to have read a lot about rep theatre. I’ve been doing a bit of that myself lately, while trying to trace the life of Thorley Walters (see my Facebook group page https://www.facebook.com/groups/669410206497159/) who followed up his Old Vic debut with a stint at Manchester Rep. Anyone worth their salt on screen in the 40s or 50s had cut their teeth in provincial rep.  It was the acknowledged training ground after theatre school.  Many actors loved and hated it.  It was hard work – they had to learn a new play every week, rehearsing one then performing another in quick succession.  They often had to live in rotten digs and put up with bitching and big headed colleagues.  But it taught them their trade and they learned a great deal from it.  They were days of promise – who knew when they might be spotted by an agent?

So to see a portrayal on screen brought a new dimension to that picture portrayed in so many diaries and autobiographies.  We see the petty jealousies, the little Hitlers and the over-inflated egos.  We also see talent going to waste and lack of talent triumphing due to an absence of self-knowledge coupled with a big mouth. Fascinating and fun!

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Love For Sale

They say that prostitution is the oldest trade, and I suppose that this saying has a great deal of truth in it.  As society has grown more complex over the centuries and more open to failure, the number of women who feel that they have nothing left but their bodies has increased.  It is a simple transaction and one would imagine that little has changed since the Romans were painting cheeky scenes on their Pompeiian walls.  As an outsider, I’ve always seen two different methods of work for a prostitute.  Firstly, there are those who work from the streets.  Then there are the brothels where a group of women work under the protection of a matriarchal figure.

Under the second category, there is also the escort agency, attempting to give the trade a semi-respectable façade.  I thought that this was one of the few modern manifestations, one that had grown up sometime in the 1980s.  I kind of associated it with travelling salesmen in their Ford Sierras doing overnighters in Travelodges.  But then – well, you probably know by now what’s coming next – I was proved wrong by a film.

I watched the 1936 Ealing film ‘The Lonely Road’, which had been adapted from the 1930 Nevil Shute novel of the same name.  This is a clunky old film which was at times difficult to follow. I have to admit to turning to a synopsis of the original novel to try and make sense of exactly what had been going on! But in terms of showing us snippets of 1930s life it threw out a few gems – not least the scene of a dual carriageway road containing a couple of cars and a horse and cart.  This dual carriageway road leads our hero, Commander Stevenson (Clive Brook) to Leeds and an overnight stay.  He has dinner and asks the waiter what he would recommend in terms of entertainment for the evening. The waiter points him in the direction of a Palais de Danse, where he can purchase a dancing partner for 6d a time. The ladies there are very respectable, he is assured.  At first this does indeed appear to modern eyes to be a very respectable transaction, a rather quaint one which I imagined to be closely policed by the management.  Commander Stevenson purchases a roll of 6d tickets in order to buy several dances with a young lady and then treats her to a banana split from the temperance bar.

So far, so tame. But then at the end of the night, the dancer goes to collect her coat and has a wager with a couple of other girls on whether he will give her a tip.  It then emerges that one of the others had recently gone to a hotel for the weekend with one of her dance partners.  She complains that he gave a generous tip to every person working in that hotel except her…even though he told her that it was the best 48 hours he’d ever had!  Not so respectable after all.  When Commander Stevenson returns and asks his dance partner to come back to his home in Devon for a week, she goes but obviously expects to have to pay for it in kind.  So here we have a look at a 1930s escort agency, where women are paid for their sparkling company, but were open to extra activities outside dancing hours. When it comes to the oldest trade, there is nothing new after all. 

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The Usherette Carries On With Graeme

Welcome to the first ever guest blog spot on The History Usherette. I’ve invited Graeme, who runs the wonderful carryonfan.blogspot.co.uk to give us his take on the Carry On film and social history.

From the Happy Wanderer to Els Bells: The Social History of the Carry Ons

The Carry On films are a cultural phenomenon. They hold a unique place in British culture and British life. No other series of comedy films has lasted so long, either in terms of the number of films produced or their durability. Nearly sixty years after Carry On Sergeant was released, the films are still shown regularly on television and discussed endlessly in blogs just like this one.

As well as being madly passionate about British film, the Carry Ons and their stars in particular, I also trained as a social historian ten years ago. I studied social history at Glasgow University, eventually clawing my way to a Masters degree. Had the focus of my thesis been on the Carry Ons, that distinction may have become a reality. I grew up on these films: cheaply made yet bursting with quality actors and memorable lines. As I have gone through life they have stayed with me, as a comfort blanket, as a hobby and most of all just for fun. The Carry Ons were meant to be churned out and be instantly forgotten but these days, in the digital age, they have become a time capsule. Although they often represent a Britain that never truly existed, they still provide a valuable insight into how much our country changed during their twenty year reign at the box office.

They started in black and white with National Service. Twenty years later, in glorious technicolour they crawled towards the end of the 1970s with a send up of the soft porn genre. For the likes of Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Connor, who appeared in the credits of both Sergeant and Emmannuelle, the changes must have been distinctly obvious. While neither of these films are my own personal favourites, the difference is plain to see - coy romance between Connor and Dora Bryan in the NAAFI in 1958 to plenty of flesh and mentioning the unmentionables in 1978. Had Britain really changed that much in those years? Probably.

William Hartnell in Carry on Sergeant by @aitchteee

To flesh this out, as it were, let's take two films from the series with a similar theme - Carry On Cruising, released in 1962 and Carry On Abroad, brought out exactly a decade later. Both films dealt with foreign travel and the challenges of taking Brits abroad. Both are excellent examples of Carry On comedy but they are light years apart in terms of content.

Carry On Cruising was the first film in the series to be released in colour. It revolves around a fairly upmarket ocean liner taking passengers on a cruise around the Mediterranean. Quite a commonplace activity in 2015, but in early 1962 just how many working class people (the Carry On's core audience) would have been able to treat themselves to such a holiday? The film is very reminiscent of one of the lighter, frothier Doctor films. It's all coy romantics from the likes of Kenneth Connor and Dilys Laye. Laye and Liz Fraser are the lovely young ladies on board however it's all sweet, innocent japes and nothing is taken too far. Laye wants a husband - that's the main plot thread. Everything is very polite and bright and middle class and the ladies parade around in an endless stream of gorgeous gowns and swimming costumes.

Kenneth Connor in Carry on Cruising by @aitchteee

Cruising is a delightful example of early 60s froth. It clearly shows a Britain emerging from the austere 1950s and beginning to live again. It lacks the social comment of earlier entries like Nurse and Teacher but it is still an enjoyable watch. Let's fast forward ten years now and see what had changed by the time Carry On Abroad was released in 1972.

Abroad is one of my all time favourite Carry Ons. It was a timely pastiche of the then ever growing popularity of the package holiday. The 1960s had seen a growing affluent middle class with a taste for foreign travel. Package holidays to Spain and Italy were commonplace as Brits became increasingly adventurous. At the same time, horror stories of awful accommodation and dreadful food were the stuff of legend. What better than to take the nation's favourite band of eccentrics and send them off a fictitious Spanish island?

From the very beginning, Abroad is a very different film from Cruising. Sex is very much on the agenda. From marriages on the rocks to young girls out for a good time and Barbara Windsor's suitcase full of underthings, it's all in your face from the opening credits. Britain was arguably a much more liberal place by the early 1970s and this is reflected in the attitudes in Abroad. Infidelity was very much a possibility and for the first time a potentially gay couple are seen on screen. A very cliched example of course, but there nonetheless. The film is also much more risqué with Barbara Windsor flashing much more than is strictly necessary throughout the 90 minutes.

At the end of the film, all is well in the world of Carry On. There is no infidelity (on screen at least), warring couples are reunited and one of the (possibly) gay young men finds the lure of Sally Geeson just too much to refuse. Everyone returns to Sid and Joan's pub for what must have been the best lock-in in cinematic history.

So Carry On Abroad provides the much needed happy ending, very much like that of Carry On Cruising ten years before. Were the two films that different all things considered? And can the Carry Ons really be taken seriously as a telling demonstration of how this country changed in the mid twentieth century?

Joan Sims by @aitchteee

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It All Adds Up!

I recently caught up with ‘Windbag The Sailor’, a Will Hay vehicle from 1936. This is the sort of film that BBC2 used to show regularly on a Saturday morning and I remember seeing it several times in my teens and early twenties. However, it doesn’t seem to have been on television for years – so a discovery of the full film on You Tube delighted me. The film is standard Will Hay fare, which I do not mean to sound derogatory in any way.  Standard Will Hay fare is miles better than most other stuff, and the belly laughs are guaranteed.

‘Windbag’ stars Hay at his “pompous ass” best, pretending to have led a heroic life on the high seas in order to secure an endless supply of free booze in the pub.  Of course it turns out that the nearest he has been to captaining a ship is driving a coal barge down the canal.   However, a gang of sea-faring criminals coerce him into captaining their ship and he soon finds himself lost at sea. His sidekicks Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott are with him all the way, adding to the delights to be found in Windbag’s company.   

Will Hay by @aitchteee

One of the trio’s bits of business on board the ship reminded me of a similar scene in ‘Oh! Mr Porter’.  In both films, they find themselves in the position of needing to solve a mathematical problem. In ‘Windbag’ this is working out how many miles they have travelled in order to find their approximate location. In ‘Porter’ the scenario is working out when the express train is due to pass.  I think that this spotlights the variety stage roots of Hay and his sidekicks. For the routine to be more or less repeated like this, I feel sure that it must have been something that was a great success in front of a live audience.  A Hay trademark, perhaps. And thinking about it, this would have been the case because it was so reminiscent of scenes in households across the land. We are watching a period in time before the invention of the pocket calculator.  People did have to rely on their own brainpower and a pencil and paper to make sure that their grocery bill was right.  Some people have a better aptitude for maths than others, and perhaps households or streets had their go-to person who was known to have a head for numbers.

Many years ago, my uncle apparently made a tape recording of my great grandmother and great aunt working out how much they owed each other for catalogue purchases.  He did this because the conversation was so convoluted that he found it very funny.  It was played repeatedly for family entertainment purposes. I have no doubt that they were not alone in regularly tying themselves in mathematical knots, just like Will and friends in these films.

Will Hay was a clever man with a good grasp of maths, which is probably why he came up with the routine.  He wasn’t afraid to make himself look the fool though, and I love the comic way that he uses his fingers to count on alongside the corner of his mouth. And as well as making us guffaw, he reminds us how daft a lot of us would have felt before we had access to our own mathematical machines.

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Mild Mannered and Mean

Peter Sellers was a more talented actor than many people realise.  Say his name these days, and a large majority of people would smile and begin to ape his most famous film character, Inspector Clouseau.  The ‘Pink Panther’ films were US productions, made when the flame of the British film industry had finally guttered out.  These films were OK, but not a patch on some of his earlier work.  I have already discussed ‘I’m Alright Jack’ and ‘Heavens Above!’ in the course of this blog, both of which were good British films and starred Sellers as strong leading characters.  Of course, he was also an excellent support character in one of my top five favourite films ‘The Ladykillers’.  However, the true test of an actor is to be able to successfully bring a lifeless character onto the screen. By lifeless, I mean one that is boring, one that has no charisma and not a great deal to say. In ‘The Battle of the Sexes’ (1959), Sellers does just this job with the role of Mr Martin. Mr Martin is a Chief Clerk in an old family tweed firm called the House of MacPherson.  Their working practices are Dickensian.  He is quiet, mild mannered and he indulges in no vices.  He has given his life to the MacPhersons and he requires no recognition or reward – only for his life to continue on in the same vein.  I think that it is fair to say that Mr Martin is the polar opposite of Mr Sellers.  In real life, he was known to have been a very charismatic man.  Liz Fraser writes about him in her autobiography (“Liz Fraser…and Other Characters”).  She says that he was a man of passions – the latest technology, cars, cameras and women were acquired relentlessly and never lasted long. But her telling line, when discussing his womanising is “Peter being Peter, you just forgave him.” To be able to put all of that strength of personality to one side and to play Mr Martin so convincingly shows how talented he was.  To share the screen with such a larger than life co-star as Robert Morley – and be the one that all eyes are on – it is a deft feat.

Sellers by @aitchteee

 So it is with regret that I have to admit that ‘The Battle of the Sexes’ is an appalling film.  Despite Sellers’ highly watchable performance, the storyline is mean spirited.  When old man MacPherson dies, his son (Morley) travels home to Edinburgh to take over the business. While on the Sleeper train down from London, he meets an American business consultant called Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings).  He takes her on at the House of MacPherson in order to modernise and rationalise the business. Her ideas and methods distress Martin, who sees no need for change and considers Barrows’ methods to go against everything his beloved old Mr MacPherson stood for. While things are initially going her way, Angela Barrows is confident, clever and articulate.  However, when Martin begins to quietly sabotage her work she plays the “I’m just a woman” card in a painfully sexist turn of events.  This is a blatant attack on women’s attempts to forge careers – and quite possibly an attack on Americans and their fancy new methods too.

After the end of World War Two, women were shoved back into the home and told to give up their jobs to men returning from the forces. Films, magazines and advertising gave propaganda support to this idea, the most virtuous women depicted as housewives and mothers.  But of course another compartment of the Pandora’s Box of women’s liberation had been opened by the war.  Progress continued to be made by trailblazing women in a range of jobs. This film appears to be a rallying call to clerks everywhere to help put a stop to it. I don’t believe that Angela Barrows’ nationality is a coincidence either.  In the 1950s, Britain was dependent on US aid to get the country back on its feet.  Their money and their culture began to infiltrate our culture, slowly starting the globalisation that we are subject to today.  Already the loss of the old ways was beginning to be mourned. 

Sadly, I don’t think that the subject matter is as historic as I would like it to be.  Globalisation has won hands down and there are still some businessmen with archaic attitudes to women. We continually hear about the need for more women in business and those that are successful face many more pressures than their male counterparts.  But we have won a few battles on the way and taken a few steps forward.

‘The Battle of the Sexes’ reminds me of the time at school, when the class bully singles someone out with a comment that is so cruelly witty that you can’t help but laugh along despite yourself.  But really, should this film be on television until the war of the sexes is finally over, and we can view this impartially as a historic record of what once was?

          

 

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Intermission No 5

NEW NOVELLA BY SARAH MILLER WALTERS

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In 1946, Harriet Clavering's husband, John, is de-mobbed from the navy, and he returns home to the English midlands town of Torchester. That night, he goes out to the pub...and he never returns home. Almost 40 years later, Harriet is a respected local Labour councillor and a CND activist. She continues to wonder about what happened to her husband and how different her life might have been if he had not disappeared. She encourages her grandaughter Caroline, who is also showing a keen interest in politics and the CND movement. 

Meanwhile, Harriet's son, Charlie, is at a loss for something to do. He is a carpenter, keen on DIY and is only happy when he is building. When Caroline jokingly suggests that he build them a nuclear bunker in the garden, he takes her up on the idea and begins to dig a large hole. Work stops however, when he discovers human remains. 
Who is the body in the garden? Where did John Clavering go to? Is Harriet about to be arrested? 

This light hearted novella skips between events in 1946 and 1985 - from Siren Suits to Doc Marten boots.

Extracts:

They settled down to read a set of meeting minutes. Charlie sauntered back in the room, hands in pockets.  He lifted the cream net curtain and stared out into the garden.  He let out a deep sigh, retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.  Then he lifted the net curtain again and repeated the sigh.

“Dad, you sound like you’ve got a puncture.  Will you please sit down?  Here.”  She handed him The Observer.  “Have a look at that for a bit.”

Charlie thrust his hands back into his pockets. “No, I’m not bothered, thank you.”  He sat down in the armchair and began to stare at the wooden fire surround.

Harriet took off her glasses and pointed them at him. “You know, you could always go and see if Margaret would like a hand in the kitchen.  Surely you can do more than just slice the meat.”

He continued to stare at the fire surround, engrossed in the scrollwork.  It looked good, but he often wondered aloud if he could have done it better.

“Dad needs a project, Gran.  Can’t you think of anything at your house?  Please?  We’re all going mental.”

“No, I can’t think of anything.  He’s done everything.  I can’t move in that kitchen for cabinets.”

Caroline thought, seeking out something for him to do.  There was so much friction about the house when he was bored.  She glanced down at the CND papers, then nudged Harriet.  “Dad?  What about building us a nuclear bunker in the garden?”

Harriet began to suck on the arm of her glasses.  The left hand corner of her mouth gave a small twitch.

“A what?” Charlie jumped out of his fire surround reverie.

“A bunker.  For when the bomb drops. Mind you, I’m not sure I want to survive it.  But it might come in handy.  Dig a big trench, stick a couple of bunks in it and a storeroom full of tinned food.  Cover it all over and make a door.”

“I’m not sure that would work.  Would it work?”  He was considering the idea carefully.  

***********

Dora entered the back door of the Duke of Wellington looking like a corpse in a peroxide wig. This cold had overtaken her body rapidly, making her nose glisten and her throat rasp.

“Blimey Dora!  Are you sure about this?”

The landlord studied her whitened face as he emerged from the cellar. At once he was pleased at his barmaid’s dedication and concerned for his own health.  He worried about the health of his customers come to that, didn’t want them staying in bed of an evening.

“Yes, yes I’ll be alright.  Rather be here then sat inside looking at them awful curtains.  Anyway all the fag smoke might do me good, help me get it off my chest.” She sniffed deeply, making the Landlord wrinkle his own nose in return.

“Here, have a tot of whiskey on me, perk you up.”

“Ta.” She knocked the contents of the tumbler that he offered her in one gulp, then blew her nose.

“You got a good supply of hankies? I can lend you a couple if need be.”

“I brought half a dozen.  Mind you, that one’s down already.”  She looked into her handkerchief and grimaced.  “At least it’s on the move.”

Dora applied lipstick to her dried out lips and went to open the doors for the drinkers already queuing outside. The customers were mainly sympathetic to Dora’s ill health.  That is except for Mrs Sim, who declared loudly that she remembered the flu at the end of the last war and her fervent hope that Dora wasn’t spreading certain death.  Dora was stood two more tots of whiskey.  One of these came from a man that she hadn’t met before.  As the stranger expressed such concern, she felt obliged to ask him about himself, although she really couldn’t care if he was the Grim Reaper himself.