Ella Shields

My earliesttheatrical memories are being taken by my mother and grandmother in the 1940s to sit in the stalls at matinees at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney to see the variety shows which they presented twice daily.  I was born in June 1937 so I would not have been more than a toddler, but I can still recall the chorus line of beautiful girls wearing fishnet stockings and I was particularly fond of Jenny Howard, who sang the comic repertoire of Gracie Fields as well as other popular songs. I am fairly sure that the local comedians George Wallace and Jim Gerald were in those shows but I cannot recall their acts although I do remember acrobats and jugglers, and performers who balanced on tight-ropes or slack-wires. There were also three microphones on stands across the front of the stage that rose up vertically when required and then subsided again back into their holes in the stage like snakes from a snake-charmer’s basket. These always intrigued me!

The one act that impressed me the most was the American-born Music Hall star Ella Shields, who was making a return visit to Sydney in March 1947. Immaculately dressed in men’s white tie and tails, with her silver-grey hair cropped in male fashion, she stood alongside a grand piano and sang songs like ‘If you knew Susie’, ‘Let Bygones be Bygones’ and ‘Cecilia’.  Then as a separate act, in front of a painted backcloth representing the Thames Embankment in London, shabbily dressed, she performed her immortal signature song: ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’. She sounded neither male nor female, but her voice had a unique quality that captured one’s imagination and made her one of the greatest stars of her era. She made a number of gramophone records and can be heard on YouTube singing ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’

Theatre program for the Tivoli show Laugh and Be Happy, starring Ella Shields

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

French strip-tease artist Micheline Bernardini

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

I continued to attend the Tivoli throughout the 1950s and saw stars like Tommy Trinder, Gus Brox & Myrna, Micheline Bernardini (a French strip-tease artist who first introduced the ‘Bikini’ two-piece swim suit), and Chico Marx (of Marx Brothers fame from the movies), whose comedy matched his cheeky piano playing. But in 1960 I travelled to London where I have lived ever since. My memoirs of theatre-going, working for a major record company and playing piano professionally for Music Hall and Variety can be found on Theatre Heritage Australia under the title The Adventures of an Australian in London: A Double Life in Music.

So much for my early memories of Variety. But, thanks to Trove, I can say with absolute certainty that the first stage musical I ever saw was White Horse Inn at the Theatre Royal, Sydney, between December 1942 and April 1943, when I would have been about five-and-a-half years old. I recall that when we entered the stalls to take our seats we noticed that the auditorium had been decorated to resemble a picturesque Austrian inn, like the real White Horse Inn on the lake in St Wolfgang in Upper Austria. The show starred Strella Wilson and Don Nicol and I was completely entranced by the singing and the dancing, but especially impressed by the scenic effects. The First Act ended with a rainstorm and a real curtain of water fell across the front of the stage. Then at the very end of the performance, what turned out to be a central revolve in the middle of the stage went slowly through a complete revolution to reveal the scenes we had seen earlier in the show. These theatrical wonders made such an impression on me that I can still remember them to this day. Many years later I visited the real White Horse Inn (Weissen Rössl) on the Wolfgangsee in Austria, which was reached by a ferry across the lake, but nobody was singing any songs or dancing and it was a bit of a disappointment!

Tommy Trinder with Toni Lamond at the Tivoli

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Max Oldaker as the Red Shadow in The Desert Song, with Joy Beattie

Tait Family collection

After White Horse Inn, I have another memory of a stage musical at the Theatre Royal, which is The Desert Song starring the inimitable Max Oldaker and Joy Beattie, in late 1945. For some odd reason, the scene that sticks in my mind is when the Red Shadow, to demonstrate his strength to Margot, breaks a sword over his knee. From the ‘crack’ that it made when it snapped, the property sword was obviously made of wood, but instead of spotting that a real sword would have been made of metal, the thought that entered my eight-year-old brain was that this must have been an expensive show to run as they needed a new sword for every performance!

But then it was Annie Get Your Gun with Evie Hayes in 1948 that really hooked me on musical theatre and I have written more about this in my memoirs.

Flyer for the 1942/43 revival of White Horse Inn at the Theatre Royal, Sydney. SB&W Foundation, Sydney.

Part 3: ‘It is my intention to produce only first-class laughing comedies. as I think the public want to be amused these days.’

The theatrical world may have written off Frank Neil as nothing more than a purveyor of over-familiar but crowd-pleasing farces, but they were in for a shock. In June 1929 he created what Everyone’s called ‘The biggest sensation this year in show business.’ A few months earlier, George Marlow, from whom Neil was leasing the Sydney Grand Opera House, had gone into partnership with the flamboyant producer Ernest C. Rolls. Their company, Marlow-Rolls Theatres Ltd, leased the Empire Theatre near Railway Square as the venue for a series of lavish musicals. The 2500-seat Empire had opened in February 1927, with the musical comedy Sunny. The theatre’s vast fan-shaped auditorium, cramped stage and minimal facilities made it unpleasant for performers and audiences alike. The first Marlow-Rolls production, Clowns in Clover, was a failure, and the second, Whoopee!, closed after only two-and-a-half weeks. The planned follow-up, So This is Love, was shelved. Marlow-Rolls’ loss was said to be £50,000—around $4.2 million today.

Neil knew that the shows were not bad, and he thought that there was potential for a revamped version of Clowns in Clover in other states. So This is Love was an attractive musical play by Stanley Lupino and Arthur Rigby; it had just closed at the Winter Garden in London after a run of 321 performances with the glamorous Australian couple Cyril Ritchard and Madge Elliott in the leads. But it was Whoopee! that had the greatest appeal for Frank Neil: it was a musical adaptation of The Nervous Wreck, a wild west farce in which he had achieved one of his greatest successes. The upbeat, jazzy score by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn included ‘Love Me or Leave Me’, ‘My Blackbirds are Bluebirds Now’ and, of course, ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, which had provided the show’s Broadway star, Eddie Cantor, with one of his signature hits. Florenz Ziegfeld had opened the show at the New Amsterdam in New York in December 1928, and it was still playing there to packed houses.

Ernest C. Rolls, 1929. Photograph by Sam Hood.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Program cover depicting the Empire Theatre, Sydney, 1927. Artwork by Cyril Samuels.

Author’s collection. 

George Marlow and Ernest Rolls had little option but to agree to the crushing deal that Neil offered. They reluctantly surrendered the Australian rights to the three shows, plus the costumes and scenery for the two already produced, for a mere £7500 ($628,000). Neil negotiated separate deals over contracts with performers, many of whom eagerly transferred to Neil’s management, including the American Charley [Charlie] Sylber, who had the plum Eddie Cantor role.

Stage hands posing on the set of Whoopee!, 1930

Scenic Studios and Theatre Heritage Australia

Sylber established several strong friendships during his visit. The two most notable were with legendary aviator Charles Kingsford Smith, co-owner of Australian National Airways, and with 20-year-old star in the making, May Daly. May was from Bondi and she had already appeared in small roles for Frank Neil and for other managements. She and Charley planned to marry in Sydney on 23 March 1931, but the wedding was cancelled when Williamson’s rushed her to Melbourne to replace the American star of Sons o’ Guns, Bertha Riccardo. Bertha’s husband, musical director Clyde Hook, was one of the passengers on the ill-fated Australian National Airways plane Southern Cloud which was reported missing on 21 March. Charley and May eventually tied the knot on stage at the St James Theatre in Sydney on 23 April 1931. They named their son, born in 1937, Charles Kingsford Sylber. Charley Snr went on to a long career in Hollywood as a film actor, special effects specialist, illusionist and proprietor of an intriguing emporium known as the Magic House of Charles.

Charley Sylber, 1928

Author’s collection

Mary Gannon, who played Sally in Whoopee!

Author’s collection

Neil closed his farce season at the Grand Opera House on Saturday 6 July 1929 and opened Whoopee! there the following Wednesday. After reasonable houses he decided to return to Melbourne, where he re-assembled his farce company for yet another season at the Palace. Simultaneously he leased the King’s Theatre in Russell Street from Bert Bailey and Julius Grant as a home for his musicals. He opened Whoopee! there on 31 August 1929. Charley Sylber continued ‘Makin’ Whoopee’, aided and abetted by Jessica Harcourt, Claude Holland, Forrest Yarnell, John Dobbie and Paul Plunket from the original Empire cast, supplemented by Harry Moreni and Mary Gannon.

The King’s Theatre, Russell Street, Melbourne, c.1910

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Whoopee! was still playing at the King’s when the stock market crashed. After a very profitable 12-week run, Neil closed Whoopee! on 3 November 1929, and disbanded the company.

The King’s was dark for a week while it underwent a much-needed refurbishment, including the installation of new seating. On 30 November 1929 it was ready for the opening night of Neil’s new production of Clowns in Clover, a bright, punchy revue written by Ronald Jeans. The score by Noël Gay was topped up by a big Vivian Ellis hit, ‘Little Boy Blues’. The London production in 1927 had featured Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge. For his localised version Neil starred a little-known young English impressionist, Ann Penn, plus Roy Rene and his recently acquired new wife, Sadie Gale.

The original Sydney cast rehearsing Clowns in Clover,1929. Producer Ernest C. Rolls is second from right.

Jon Fabian collection.

The show was a breakthrough for Roy because Frank Neil persuaded him to appear without his trademark ‘Jewish’ makeup. Rene reminisced: ‘He said to me, “Roy, people haven’t seen you as you really are. They think of you as dirty old Mo, and I want you to look the Beau Brummel, so that people can see you’re neither old nor dirty, and that you’re just as funny without your makeup.” He was right. He could take a comic apart and tell you what made him work. It was because of his understanding of my work that I proved a success.’ It was in Clowns in Clover that Roy Rene and Sadie Gale introduced their sketch ‘At the Stage Door’; it was destined to become one of the most popular in their repertoire.

In supporting roles were Len Rich, Mary Gannon, John Dobbie, Claude Holland and Neva Carr Glyn. A highlight of the show was Jennie Brenan’s ‘Young Australia’ song and dance revue. Among the dozen clever juniors was Dot Rankin, later to be a star in J.C. Williamson musicals. An odd addition was a tribute to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, then still three years away from completion. To conclude this scena Len Rich and Neva Carr Glyn sang ‘My Troubles Are Over’.

Centre page from the Clowns in Clover program, 1929. Author’s collection.

For the Christmas season Frank Neil conscripted the Clowns in Clover company to present matinees of yet another revival of his Mother Goose pantomime, while Clowns in Clover continued cavorting at night. It was during this stressful time that Roy Rene collapsed in his dressing room and nearly died. Sadie Gale lovingly nursed him through many months of recuperation.

Whoopee!, meanwhile, had been bought by Williamson’s. They recast it with Don Nicol in the lead and sent it to New Zealand as the holiday attraction at His Majesty’s in Auckland.

In late December 1929, Frank Neil wrote to Frank Tait of J.C. Williamson’s offering his farce company for a New Zealand tour ‘in about eight weeks’ time’. The repertoire Neil suggested was Up in Mabel’s Room, Getting Gertie’s Garter, Not Tonight, Dearie, Mary’s Other Husband and The Best People. There would be a company of twelve, plus a head mechanist, for a cost to Williamson’s of £260 ($23,000) per week. Williamson’s would supply transportation from Sydney to New Zealand and return and all other touring expenses.

Neil went on to say, ‘These plays have taken wonderful figures wherever we have played them and played at cheap prices. They should do the same in New Zealand. The idea would be to play stock seasons in each centre, just as long as business is payable. I am sure it would be a very satisfactory tour. I can show you the figures and balance sheets which show the drawing power of these pieces. Charley’s Aunt and Are You a Mason? have also been great successes with our Company, and these are available at five per cent royalty. If you want to carry my jazz band it would mean six more fares and an extra £60 per week, but with long seasons in each town the jazz band is quite a feature. It is of course understood that I supply, for the mentioned sum, all scenery, wardrobe, props, etc, which I have complete in Sydney. A further suggestion is that you may care to try the idea out in Brisbane as we have never played there. It would give you an idea of the drawing power of these plays at cheap prices, although perhaps the date suggested would not be ideal for Brisbane on account of climatic conditions.’

Frank Tait opted for Brisbane, and Neil’s farce company played at His Majesty’s there in February and March 1930, but the expected bonanza did not eventuate. Audiences for live theatre were dwindling and prospects for a quick end to the Depression were poor. As writer and theatre director Ngaio Marsh so succinctly put it: ‘All over Australasia one seemed to hear the desolate slam of stage doors.’

The talkies destroyed the careers of the army of musicians who had made their living playing accompaniments for silent films. Actors and variety performers struggled to find work, often forming ‘co-operatives’, hiring an empty theatre and ‘putting on a show’ to try to keep going. On the pavement outside the Orient Hotel at the north-east corner of Bourke and Swanston streets in Melbourne, was ‘Poverty Point’ where out-of-work thespians would gather for mutual support and the remote possibility that an offer of a job would come along. As one old-timer recalled: ‘Sometimes there were more acrobats, conjurers, dog acts, seal acts, dancers, singers, comedians, actors and “straight men” to the yard than at any other spot in Australia.’ There was a similar ‘Poverty Point’ in Sydney, on the north-east corner of Pitt and Park streets.

In desperation Frank Neil determined to leave Australia. He told the press that Arbitration Court awards and double taxation had made it impossible for him to continue production. ‘Arbitration Court awards have thrown upon theatre managements the whole burden of the losses which have followed the talkie boom. The wages of theatrical employees are fixed in a manner which shows a lack of knowledge of the industry and I for one cannot afford to pay them. Everybody connected with the theatrical business realises their position is very different now to a few years ago. In the talkies, the legitimate stage has a very serious and formidable competitor. People in comparatively poor circumstances can go to a picture theatre which is a veritable palace and sit in a luxurious seat for less money in some cases than they used to pay to see a stage show from the gods. The legitimate theatre will only be able to meet the competition by everybody connected with it making big sacrifices.’

On 4 January 1930, in the Melbourne Herald, Frank Neil announced: ‘After we finish at the King's I have arranged to take an All-Australian farce company to tour South Africa, and then go on to England. I think I can organise an Australian band of players that will make good in London and the English provinces. Now don't try to dissuade me, please. I'm going to do it.’

The familiar farce Nightie Nightclosed Neil’s King’s Theatre season on 31 January 1930. He followed this with a short spell in Brisbane. The Brisbane Daily Standard was most impressed: ‘Week by week now, audiences at His Majesty’s Theatre have been offered productions that for ripeness of humour and clever acting have been unsurpassed as sources of entertainment. Frank Neil’s comedians have scored a distinct success. The Brisbane season will be brought to a conclusion next Saturday night when for this gala farewell performance Mr. Neil will stage for the first time in Australia the reigning New York laughing success This Thing Called Love.’

On 1 April 1930 Melbourne’s theatrical elite gathered at the Hotel Australia in Collins Street to honour Frank at a farewell luncheon with Thomas Hayes MLA in the chair. On the following day he and his company of twelve, including his leading lady, Neva Carr Glyn, together with hundreds of costumes and 238 tons of scenery, sailed for South Africa on the White Star liner SS Ceramic.

Neva Carr Glyn, c.1928

Starstruck

George Wallace

Author’s collection

South African newspapers called his company ‘a topping team’ and hailed them as ‘the best ambassadors that Australia has ever sent.’ When the tour finished most of the players returned to Australia, while Neva Carr Glyn, Frank Neil and his manager, Eddie McDonald, headed for London. Frank and Eddie spent a month there, and made quick trips to New York and the Continent, securing the Australian rights for several current successful farces, including Almost a Honeymoon, which was in its second year at the Garrick, Leslie Henson’s It’s a Boy and A Warm Corner, and My Wife’s Family, which was doing good business at the Apollo. They sailed home in a small, unpretentious P&O liner, SS Balranald, arriving at Fremantle on 2 March 1931.

Neil’s observations were published in the program for Almost a Honeymoon under the heading ‘Laughing Old Man Depression Away’: ‘Everywhere one goes these times one hears the lament, “Times are bad.” It is the same in England, Germany, France and America. Even in South Africa, which has been a business paradise for many years, everybody was saying, “It’s not like it used to be”. However, travelling is a great education and in spite of the bad times we are experiencing in Australia there are plenty of places that are worse off and have been for years. Over a year ago I took a company of fourteen Australians for a tour of South Africa. I contracted to stay twelve weeks and finished up by staying nearly a year, one of the best records of any company that has toured that country. We played all the principal towns in the Union two or three times and were rather sorry when the tour was finished.

‘The audiences there are much like our own and, although the theatres are not as modern as they are in Australia, they are very good. The South Africans were rather tickled with our accent at first, but we soon discovered that they also have an accent, and we used to get many a laugh on this subject. It seems to be a peculiarity of every young country to develop a distinctive manner of speech, and when it’s all said and done with, what does it matter?

‘After my African tour finished, I made a quick trip to England and the Continent, on the hunt for new plays that might be popular in Australia, and I have obtained some of the best. These we intend to play in Sydney during the coming season. To see London and its theatrical conditions, no one would think there was any Depression at all. It is only when one goes into the provinces that you really see poor conditions everywhere. The prices for theatres in London are higher than ever—14 shillings ($65) for reserved stalls and dress circle for the straight type of play, and up to a pound ($96) for musical shows. When one compares the prices with Australia, it seems enormous.

‘I have always been a believer in low prices for my shows and during the current season I will only charge three, two and one shilling so that there should be very few people that should complain about not getting their money’s worth. It is my intention to produce only first-class laughing comedies, as I think the public want to be amused these days. The first production is Almost a Honeymoon, a very successful farce by Walter Ellis that has just finished a fifteen-month run in London.’

Louise Lovely, 1930s. Photo by Broothorn Studios.

Starstruck

Arundel Nixon

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

In Melbourne Frank Neil swiftly assembled a new farce company featuring himself and Louise Lovely, a vivacious Australian actress who had achieved considerable success in Hollywood silent films. He also recruited Field Fisher, Arundel Nixon, Yvonne (Fifi) Banvard, Agnes Dobson and Hal Percy. They opened on 4 April 1931 at Fullers’ former Melbourne variety headquarters, the Bijou, a few doors up Bourke Street from the Tivoli, premiering Neil’s new acquisition, Almost a Honeymoon. Neil himself played the comedy lead, Basil Dibley, a lovable but accident-prone bachelor. The Arguswas shocked: ‘Unnecessary trouble seems to have been taken to engraft indelicate scenes and innuendoes onto the production. There is a bedroom incident in which Miss Lovely comes from the bathroom partially covered with what looked like a large bath towel. A heroine so imperfectly clad looks neither impressive nor edifying.’ But the public loved it, and other favourite farces followed.

Eventually they transferred to the Criterion in Sydney, but audiences seemed to have tired of Frank Neil’s frantic farces. The Criterion season was a disappointment, as was a later one at the Grand Opera House. Noting the success of Mike Connors and Queenie Paul at the Haymarket and the Theatre Royal, Neil decided to try revue. Revue was replacing old style vaudeville, which was basically a succession of unrelated acts, a form known in Britain as music hall or variety. Revue frequently used traditional vaudeville acts, but presented them in a slick, fast-paced, glamourous show built around a particular theme, with a ballet, showgirls and a big headliner. Revues often included specially written musical numbers, a chorus and sometimes a compere. Revues always had a title; vaudeville shows did not.

In November 1931 Neil leased the Roxy from the Fullers. The Roxy, in Castlereagh Street, was Fullers’ old National Theatre, revamped for movies. It was almost next door to the Embassy, the cinema that had opened in June 1931 on the site of Rickards’ Tivoli. It was at the Roxy that Neil first presented revue.

Jim Hutchings remembers: ‘Frank was starting again! He called me and said, “You can do me a bathing house cloth with transparent doors to see the girls getting changed. It has to be done quickly, a one-day job.” My size and paint and brushes went down to the theatre on the back of a tram! Frank had a sword ballet with the swords sparking when they hit the anvils. I think he had an “angel”, a Mr. Blackshaw, who lost his money. But Frank was trying hard to revive his beloved show business. I went down to get my money. I settled for six quid and a few passes.’

Hector St Clair (left) and Roy Rene, 1931

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Maggie Buckley, one of the stars of Hello, Paris

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Frank Neil opened his Roxy season on 28 November 1931 with a twice-daily revue called Hello, Paris. His company included Maggie Buckley, Dot Brown, George Lloyd, Gwen Matthews, Claude Holland, and a brilliant acrobatic troupe formed by two boys and three girls, all siblings of the Morgan family from the Sydney suburb of Annandale. Calling themselves the Cleveres, they toured the world for years. Also on the bill was Fifi Adorée, a visiting French chanteuse presumably there to add some relevance to the show’s title. Top of the bill was English funnyman Hector St Clair. Imported by Williamson’s in 1920, he’d established a rewarding new career entertaining Australian vaudeville audiences. His act was built around a battered violin, which he would produce from the front of his baggy tattered trousers, while muttering his catchphrase ‘Isn’t it awful’. He suffered for many years with tuberculosis and died almost exactly a year after his season with Frank Neil. His violin and his baggy pants were buried with him.

This piece, published in the magazine Everyone’s on 2 December 1931, makes interesting reading: ‘“All things change, and we change with them.” We simply point to an amazing juxtaposition involving the Theatre Royal and the Roxy in the hamlet of Sydney. A few years ago the Royal represented respectability, while the Roxy, then Fullers’ Theatre, was frowned upon by our best people as a place of ribald revelry. Behold the difference last Saturday night. At the Royal, Mo was continuing his purple performances to a point where even The Sunday Sun deemed it wise to rise up in wrath, while at the Roxy Frank Neil was presenting a show so clean that the customers thought they had invaded a cathedral. After a series of reverses Neil has tackled the Roxy with revue. The outcome of the venture cannot be judged by he first week’s results. Neil has to find his way in a house which has passed through many vicissitudes during two years of talkies.’

Neil celebrated Christmas with a Cinderellapantomime which opened at the Roxy on 26 December 1931. Twenty youngsters frolicked as fairies. The scenes included ‘Underneath the Sea’, no doubt including Frank’s beloved baby pink roses. The production included real and imitation animals, with the latter including a dancing horse and Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The real participants were provided by Abdy’s Animal Circus. Its creator, Henry Abdy, was a British-born animal trainer who also worked as a professional whistler under the name Monsieur Poincaire. He died during the run of Cinderella. His animal activities were continued by his son, Harry Abdy, while his daughter, billed as Marie La Varre, became a stalwart of musical comedy.

Fifi Banvard, c.1935

Author’s collection

Ella Shields, c.1932

Travalanche

The response to Hello, Paris encouraged Neil to persevere with revue. His first real headliner was the great American male impersonator Ella Shields. Ella had toured Australia twice before—in 1921 and 1925—and had proved immensely popular. Her gramophone recordings, most notably, of course, ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’, had kept her art before the public, though her career in Britain and the United States had waned. To be blunt, though Ella Shields was still a big name, she was no longer an expensive one. Frank Neil put her under a six-month contract. To support her he gathered a lively troupe of local performers including Don Nicol, Hector St Clair, Lily Molloy, Molly Byron, Maida Jones, Maggie Buckley, Angela Parselles and Keith Connolly. Neil leased the Melbourne Tivoli from Connors and Paul and opened his show there in March 1932 under the title Follies of 1932. A second edition featured Josie Melville, an Australian musical comedy favourite, especially remembered as the appealing star of Sally in 1923.

From 3 September 1932 Frank Neil leased the Sydney Criterion to present Ella Shields in a new revue, Pleasure Bound. This time her co-star was the great Australian ‘ocker’ comic George Wallace, supported by Yvonne (Fifi) Banvard, Athol Tier, Billy Maloney, Arthur Clarke, Mascotte Powell and Miriam Lester. Neil transferred the show to Brisbane where it played a four-week season at the Regent from 22 October 1932.

In association with Williamson’s, Neil took the show to New Zealand, opening in Auckland in December 1932. When Ella Shields departed the company was led by George Wallace, Josie Melville and lugubrious comic Syd Beck. They even managed a Cinderellain Wellington in May 1933 and Christchurch in July, with Wallace as Buttons, Beck as the Dame and Josie Melville as Cinders. Dance director Maurice Diamond was reduced to playing the Cat. The New Zealand tour lasted a record-breaking eight months and played to over a quarter of a million people.

Program cover for Cinderella at the Theatre Royal, Christchurch, 1933. National Library of New Zealand.

Back in Australia, Neil worked again with Connors and Paul when he took the ‘new’ Sydney Tivoli (the renamed Grand Opera House) for five weeks to present a series of revues teaming Ella Shields with Syd Beck. The company transferred to the Palace Theatre in Melbourne, where they opened Pleasure Bound on 23 September 1933. After three weeks George Wallace re-joined the company. Pleasure Bound was reborn as The Laugh Parade in October. In its program Neil announced that he intended to continue presenting ‘bright new singing and dancing shows. In addition to all the best available Australian talent, soon a stream of English stars will migrate to Australia to join a happy band of fun makers at the Palace. The first arrivals will be Fred Miller, noted English comedian, and Millie Deane, an eccentric comedienne of exceptional talent. This clever couple will sail from London in a couple of weeks on the Strathaird.’ With what was a direct swipe at the Tivoli, the program note concluded, ‘Make the Palace your regular theatre for good, bright, clean laughing shows. Frank Neil will cater for your wants, and give you value for money all the time.’

To be continued

 Iwas born in kensington, sydney, on 15 june 1937 in a private hospital called ‘Famenoth’ in Alison Road near Randwick Racecourse. My mother, Olga Jones (born in Sydney in February 1917) was descended on her father’s side (Sid Jones) from Rosa Harrison, a niece of Lady Martha Harrison who was a Lady in Waiting to Queen Victoria, and an Irish photographer called Da Shannon (which was possibly Dara Shannahan). The name Jones was the name of Rosa’s first partner (a West Indian entertainer of colour called Thomas Jones who was in a travelling show) with whom Rosa eloped to Australia, probably in the 1870s, and had four children, although she never married Jones before he eventually left her. Rosa never married Shannon either but used the name of Jones for the two children she had with him as well as the previous four with Thomas Jones. Olga’s mother (Alice Partridge, known as Dolly) came on her maternal side from a Jewish family called Marks that ran a jewellery business, and paternally the Partridge family had a fish shop in Cleveland Street, Sydney.

My maternal grandparents Sid and Dolly Jones at Ettalong, Woy Woy, NSW.

Here is me as a baby with my Italian grandparents in their home in Gilderthorpe Avenue, Waverley, NSW.

My father, christened Bartolomeo Locantro (born in Sydney in 1905) but who always called himself Bob or Robert even on his Marriage Certificate, was descended from two families who originated on the Aeolian Islands, north of Sicily. His father, Antonino Locantro was born in Lingua, Salina, in November 1870, and his mother, Carmela Reitano, was born in New York in November 1883 from parents who had emigrated to New York from Lipari, the principal island in the Aeolian group. Carmela’s mother was Francesca de Luca whose family later ran the famous fruit shop in King Street, Sydney. In 1891, Antonino, who had been in the Italian Merchant Navy, emigrated to Sydney where in 1900 he opened a fruit shop at 191 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, at what is now Taylor Square. In 1901 he sailed to New York where he collected his 18-year-old fiancée Carmela and they sailed to Salina where they were married. They then immediately undertook the long voyage to Sydney, where they lived in premises in Oxford Street above Antonino's fruit shop, which was called the Darlinghurst Fruit Mart, and began raising a family. Soon afterwards the Reitanos and De Lucas from New York joined them in Sydney and they are all buried in Waverley Cemetery, along with many other families from the Aeolian Islands who also emigrated to Sydney around the same time with names like Favaloro, Natoli, Giuffre, Pellegrini, Costa, Tesorero and Beninato, whose gravestones always show the name of the Aeolian Island on which they were born.

Picture taken in Sydney c.1918 of my Italian grandparents Carmela and Antonino Locantro with their four children, (l to r) my father Bartolomeo (aged about 13), Francesca (about 15), Anna (about 17) and Antonino (about 11).

Bob and Olga Locantro at Cliff Avenue, Sydney.

My mother and her father Sid were great lovers of the theatre and the early movies. Sid (born in 1887) remembered seeing the early Australian productions of things like The Arcadians, Maid of the Mountains, The Mikado and other G&S operas and they both knew and sang all the early popular songs from the turn of the century through to the Hollywood era of Busby Berkeley. My father, on the other hand, had little interest in any of this and none of them ever listened to classical music of any kind.

From an early age I had a talent for playing popular songs on the piano. After a minimum of training—mainly from the Shefte College of Music—I began gigging in the 1950s in a rather primitive dance band while still at school. This was the Marist Brothers College, Randwick (now the Marcellin College), and the Brothers used to set me to playing the piano to accompany the school choir, even at the prestigious Eisteddfods where we sometimes won prizes. And being away from my classes while I was playing for the choir did me no harm as I went on to be Dux of the College in 1953!

When I finished school, I started my university degree course in Science in 1954 and in the next few years I played for several amateur revues (one of which was directed by the Sydney actor Bob Hornery) and a production of The Boy Friend, all with the Randwick CYO (Catholic Youth Organisation).

This picture of me as a teenager in one of my early professional engagements, playing piano in the Lounge Bar at the Kingsford Hotel with a drummer who worked permanently at the venue. I was just replacing the regular pianist for his holiday. Sydney. Possibly 1956.

The dance band also flourished and we played for weddings, birthday parties and dances in the local halls, and parties in private homes although, to be honest, we made a fairly unattractive sound but I guess our drummer provided the right rhythms for dancing which was the important thing. Later at Sydney University, I played for three revues in 1957, 1958 and 1959 plus HMS Pinafore and Victoriana, and met and worked with the actors, writers and directors Philip Hedley, Clive James, Leo Schofield, Chester, Peter Kenna, Kate Cummings, Madeleine St John, Pamela Trethowan and others of that ilk. These days are recalled in detail in the book The Ripples before the New Waveby Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters and I will write later about Clive James and Leo Schofield in London.

From Sydney to London

I left Sydney on Sunday 7 February 1960 on the Fairsky, a smallish liner owned by the Italian Sitmar Line. Their other ships at that time were the Fairsea and the Castel Felice, and many Australians of my generation sailed on them for their trips to London. The ship stopped at Brisbane, Singapore, Colombo and Aden, then Suez and Port Said (the towns at each end of the Suez Canal) and finally Naples before our ultimate destination of Southampton, and this gave Australians like me their first taste of visiting foreign places, albeit for just a few hours. This voyage is described in some detail in the book Australia’s Lost Tenor by Doug Holden in which the tenor Lance Ingram (later called Albert Lance) sailed on the Orontes to London in January 1955 and experienced the same sense of wonderment of an Australian going abroad for the first time.

On my voyage on the Fairskyamong my fellow-passengers there were a number of theatrical people, both professional and amateur, and to pass the time between stops we put on a revue. The singer Barbara Robinson had been in the Australian productions of Salad Daysand Grab Me a Gondola, Don McIntyre had been a dancer in the chorus of several musicals and there were also a number of people from an amateur company in Melbourne, including Peg Marks and a rather flamboyant lady of indeterminate age called Persia White. We were actually rather a good-sized and talented group and enjoyed rehearsing the revue in the main lounge after it closed at 10 pm every night and the rest of the passengers were sent off to their cabins. Barbara sang ‘My Biography’ from Grab Me a Gondola and the Melbourne people did several original revue numbers, including ‘The Hooch Joint’ and ‘Sadie the Sexy Soubrette’. There was also an academic and dance critic called Alan Brissenden who enjoyed amateur dramatics and who later introduced me to the joys of visiting stately homes, palaces and castles around England. Alan sang several Noël Coward songs including ‘Nina’ and ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. We gave just one performance of the revue, which we called Grab Me a Deck Chair, after we first entered the Mediterranean and then we still had another week of very boring evenings with bed at 10 pm before we finally arrived at Southampton. But we still had one last stop at Naples with a few hours for sightseeing. Alan Brissenden told me that the pizza originated in Naples so we found a pizzeria near the university and sampled an authentic Neapolitan pizza as our introduction to European culture.

Here is a scene from Grab Me a Deck Chair with Barbara Robinson singing ‘My Biography’ attended by Alan Brissenden (the tall one) and another of the performers as reporters.

London at Last

After five long weeks at sea, I arrived in London on Saturday 12 March 1960 on what I expected to be a working holiday for a year or two, but I found the place so congenial that I am still here. Philip Hedley had come to London just a few weeks before I arrived and he helped me find a bed-sitting room in Notting Hill Gate, but more importantly he booked some tickets for me to start sampling the joys of London theatre and in my first two weeks in London I managed to get to 18 different shows—including matinees and 5 pm performances of plays on Fridays and Saturdays—of an amazing range of things.

My first show on Monday 14 March was the brilliantly funny revue Pieces of Eight with Kenneth Williams and Fenella Fielding, which had a plethora of talented writers and composers including amongst others Peter Cook, Laurie Johnson, Sandy Wilson, Harold Pinter, John Law, Edward Scott, Lionel Bart and the Australian Lance Mulcahy. 

The next night I saw Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be, the Theatre Workshop production, brought to vibrant life by the famous theatre director Joan Littlewood, that had just transferred from Joan’s Theatre Royal at Stratford East. I was totally knocked out by the power and energy of this rather rude show about pimps and prostitutes set in the underworld of London’s Soho and eventually found time to see it a further five times over the coming months. Its lively music and down-to-earth lyrics by Lionel Bart were perfectly suited to the colourful story and given knock-out performances by Miriam Karlin, James Booth, Yootha Joyce, Wallace Eaton, Toni Palmer and the irrepressible Barbara Windsor. Also, in my first two weeks in London I saw two further Joan Littlewood shows, namely The Hostageby Brendan Behan and the musical Make Me an Offer, the first of which was wonderful but the latter not quite so good. This was partly because The Hostage was a Theatre Workshop production with Joan’s own actors like Murray Melvin, Brian Murphy, Dudley Sutton and Ann Beach, whereas Make Me an Offer was a normal commercial West End musical which Joan had agreed to direct.

The finale of Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be with Glynn Edwards and Miriam Karlin in the centre and Barbara Windsor and Yootha Joyce behind with other members of the company.

My theatregoing was somewhat reduced when I took a job as lounge pianist in a rather seedy hotel in Bayswater four nights a week to bring in a bit of money, so that left me just three days for seeing shows. London had surprised me by being brighter and more colourful than the foggy, dark place I imagined from the black and white British films I had seen, so during the day when I wasn’t going to matinees, I enjoyed the tourist attractions of London and its environs. But in May I decided to look for what I expected to be a temporary job, and immediately found employment with the UK record company EMI Records Ltd in the Management Accounts Department. I had a degree of BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from Sydney University and I had been working for several years for the Commonwealth Statistician in Sydney. I saw an advert in the Evening Standard newspaper for an Accounts Clerk with EMI Records and was immediately given the job at my first interview—I guess that particular job and the low wage it paid were not of interest to anybody else, but everything I did from May 1960 onwards as a pianist was in my spare time while holding down a full-time office job.

Life at EMI

At that time the company was on a huge roll at the end of the 1950s with hit after hit from British stars like Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Adam Faith, Acker Bilk, Rolf Harris, Shirley Bassey and even unlikely groups like the Black and White Minstrels and the Big Ben Banjo Band. Before then most of the chart hits came from the USA and were by people like Frankie Laine, Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin, Dinah Shore, Jo Stafford and Doris Day. The new British pop records, mainly from EMI, were produced by four in-house producers, all of whom I got to know quite well. These were George Martin, Walter Ridley, Norman Newell and Norrie Paramor. George was suave and sophisticated and was a classically-trained musician. His recordings were released on the Parlophone label and before his punt on The Beatles in 1962/63 he produced some classical recordings, some Scottish popular music by artists like Jimmy Shand and comedy albums by Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, the Goons and Flanders and Swann.

Walter Ridley had been in the music publishing business and become a successful song writer before coming to EMI as producer for Donald Peers and taking over the pop production for the HMV label. Wally, as he generally known, was small of stature but always seemed very busy. Norman Newell was a flamboyant theatrical type who recorded original cast albums of West End shows as well as other star artists like the singer Alma Cogan, the pianist Russ Conway and later Mrs Mills.

This picture was taken in 1961 at Abbey Road during the recording of the LP Wakey! Wakey!and shows (left to right) Russ Conway, Alma Cogan, the bandleader Billy Cotton, producer Norman Newell and Billy Cotton Jr. The man at the back eating a sandwich is the Balance Engineer Peter Bown.

Finally, Norrie Paramor, who seemed to be very ordinary, was a pianist and bandleader who had the Columbia label with Ruby Murray, Cliff Richard, The Shadows, Helen Shapiro and other stars. As an example of how the producers in those days interacted with the rest of the staff, which stopped happening in later years, when Norman Newell heard that I had been very impressed with the new production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at Sadler’s Wells in June 1960, he invited me to the final recording session of the cast album at EMI’s famous Abbey Road Studios where I met the star of the show, the fabulous Australian soprano June Bronhill, who not only sang like an angel but as Euridice on stage looked extremely glamorous, rather like Betty Grable—an unbeatable combination!

The front cover of the HMV cast recording of the 1960 Sadler’s Wells Production of Orpheus in the Underworld.Three of the four principals pictured here are Australian (from left to right) Kevin Miller, June Bronhill and Jon Weaving. The fourth singer, Eric Shilling, was born and brought up in East London.

Some years later at EMI, I had the pleasure of compiling the 3CD set called June Bronhill—The Platinum Collection containing a selection of June’s EMI recordings for release by EMI Australia.

The Beatles at EMI House in 1963 with George Martin receiving a Silver Disc for their first LP “Please Please Me”. I met them around that time when they came into the building to record an EMI advertising programme called the Friday Spectacular for Radio Luxemburg in that same ‘Conference Room’ where I used to work for the Promotion Department sometimes in the evenings by operating the curtains and lights on the little stage.

Each of the senior producers had an assistant producer and when in about 1963 I heard that Norrie Paramor’s assistant was leaving I asked the Personnel Manager if I could be interviewed for the job. He told me that there was a young man called Bob Barrett working in a junior position for the company who had already had a successful interview to be the next assistant producer as soon as a post in that field became vacant, so he got the job. Bob went on to have a good career as a producer specialising in recording brass bands and later opened his own company called Grasmere. When Norrie Paramor left EMI in 1968 to go independent it was Tim Rice (at that time a Management Trainee with EMI) who went with him as a junior producer. I often wonder how my life might have panned out had I become assistant producer to Norrie Paramor instead of going into the international classical part of EMI, which I later did.

At that time EMI was also very strong on the classical side. The three famous sopranos Maria Callas, Victoria de los Angeles and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf were producing outstanding solo recitals and complete operas, and other classical singers like Boris Christoff, Tito Gobbi, Nicolai Gedda and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau were also exclusive to the company. There was a clutch of great pianists like Walter Gieseking, Claudio Arrau, Hans Richter-Haaser, Alfred Cortot, György Cziffra, Samson François and the Russians Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, and a whole gang of conductors whose names began with ‘K’ such as Rudolf Kempe, Rafael Kubelik, Paul Kletzki, Herbert von Karajan and Otto Klemperer, whose complete set of Beethoven Symphonies had caused a sensation a few years earlier. Conductors beginning with ‘B’ included Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham, and there was the very dapper Sir Malcolm Sargent and a young Australian called Charles Mackerras who was also making his mark after arranging and recording the music for the highly successful ballet Pineapple Poll. HMV’s legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin was performing and recording prolifically and the Russian violinist David Oistrakh was also with the company as well as his compatriot, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. The complete Don Giovanni under conductor Carlo Maria Giulini, standing in for the indisposed Klemperer, had just been recorded in October 1959 with Joan Sutherland in one of her few recordings not for Decca and it would go on to be one of EMI’s all-time best-selling opera recordings. Yes, it was a rich time for the classical business too.

I tried to avoid meeting EMI’s classical artists but here is me (far left) at a luncheon for the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin (second from the right) with other EMI people.

In about 1962 I was given a job in marketing on the pop side of the company and a few years later I moved into the International Classical Division of the parent company EMI Ltd. I eventually became responsible for financial planning, royalty accounting and licensing in what by then was called EMI Classics and for a number of years I was responsible for dealing with licensing the Soviet Melodiya catalogue of Russian classical recordings for release by EMI in the UK, as well as making contracts for EMI to record the Soviet superstars in the West like the violinist David Oistrakh, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter among others. I was fortunate enough to visit Moscow twice and Leningrad once at EMI’s expense as part of my work to negotiate with various Soviet organisations responsible for classical matters, such as the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and enjoyed the status of VIP Visitor with the tourist authorities for my sightseeing to places like the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Despite the best efforts of my hosts to entertain me well, the food was terrible but the Georgian red wine and the vodka were excellent.

This picture shows me meeting with some Soviet executives in London. From left to right are Peter Andry (head of EMI Classics), Douglas Pudney (Repertoire Manager), Igor Preferansky (head of Mezhkniga, the Department of Soviet Foreign Trade in Moscow that dealt with exploitation of Soviet recordings in the West), me and Lev Ershov (from the Soviet Trade Delegation in London).

In 1991 I retired from EMI but continued to work from home, effectively full-time, as a self-employed compilation producer turning out literally hundreds of popular programmes in various series like Classics for Pleasure, Classical Favourites, The Very Best Of…. and other similar series.  I was particularly pleased with the series of operettas and musicals that I produced on Music for Pleasure with my colleague Andrew Lamb. This consisted of all the Sadler’s Wells opera and operetta highlights, including several with June Bronhill like The Merry Widow, Orpheus in the Underworldand La Vie Parisienne, as well as Madam Butterfly with Marie Collier and Carmen with Donald Smith, plus a number of studio cast albums from World Records and HMV, of which my favourite was The Desert Song, also with Bronhill. So skilled did I become at this work that in 1997 I was Grammy-nominated for producing the 10 CD set 100 Years of Great Music to mark EMI’s centenary, but alas, I did not win.

I also became the company’s expert on Maria Callas and produced a number of re-issue albums which sold huge quantities around the world running into millions of copies. I saw Callas perform live in concert and in opera six times in London and in Paris and I also met her at Abbey Road Studios when she came to listen to playbacks of some unreleased recordings for an LP entitled Callas by Request. Although the camera loved her, I was surprised to see in the flesh how coarse her features seemed to be, but I guess that’s why she was so effective on stage and how her dramatic performances reached the farthest parts of the world’s great opera houses. The photo below shows my appearance as a commentator in the documentary Legends of Opera—Maria Callas.

The cover of the first 100-page luxury hardback Callas 2CD album that I compiled for EMI: “Popular Music from TV, Film and Opera”. It was a major project and I had to produce versions in several different languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) and smaller editions with reduced packaging and normal booklets. In total it went on to sell close to a million copies world-wide.

I finally gave up my work with the company after more than 50 years when EMI Classics became part of Warner Classics and the operation moved to Paris. But I still had one last trick to play and in 2016, with my friend and colleague Roger Neill, I finally completed one final compilation on which we had been working for some 13 years: a four-CD compilation called From Melba to Sutherland, being a compendium of 80 Australian singers on record from the very first female recorded in Europe in 1898 (Syria Lamonte) to some of the more recent Australian opera singers of the present time. After being accepted and then rejected by several record companies both in the UK and in Australia, the project was finally brought to fruition by Cyrus Meher-Homji on the Decca Eloquence label of Universal Music Australia in a superbly packaged set.

First Encounter with Stratford East as a Pianist

Clive James in London

But, coming back to my main narrative, in 1962, I was asked by Philip Hedley to play for a cabaret that was being staged by the students of the first two intakes of the E15 Acting School (an offshoot of Theatre Workshop at Stratford East) of which Philip was one. The school was run by Maggie Bury, wife of the set designer John Bury, and continues to this day as one of London’s principal training grounds for actors. We rehearsed on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, but the show itself was put on in the huge, cavernous, Victorian East Ham Town Hall with dreadful acoustics, as entertainment during a fashion parade and was a complete disaster. But it was my first introduction to being involved with Theatre Workshop on the other side of the footlights, as it were. The cast included Ann Mitchell, John ‘Ginger’ Halstead, Annette Robertson, John Lyons, Janet Nelson and Kate Williams and there was a sketch about the fall of Troy by Clive James, by then living in London, that included a parody of ‘Zip-a-dee-doo-dah’ sung by Cassandra. Clive had written this sketch for the 1960 Sydney University revue Nymphs and Shepherds but it was heavy going for an audience in East Ham at a fashion parade although I expect the students were pleased to tackle it.

Clive James and Leo Schofield had both come to London in the early 1960s and I used to see Leo regularly at the opera at Covent Garden. In 1962 Anne O’Neill came to London to marry Leo and it was at their wedding, a very jolly affair, that I renewed my acquaintance with Clive. He had never been to see an opera and was intrigued that Leo and most of the guests at his wedding kept talking about what operas they had seen at Covent Garden. I offered to take Clive to an opera and a few weeks later we went to see Aida. Clive said he thought there was ‘something in it’ and this was the start of his life-long love of the art form. I kept in touch with Clive and a few years later I rescued him from a squalid bed-sitting room in Tufnell Park and invited him to share my modest flat (‘a set of rooms’ he called it rather grandly in Falling Towards England, one of his ‘unreliable’ autobiographies) just off Baker Street in Marylebone. Life with Clive was never dull. I continued to get opera tickets for him and he introduced me to the genre of American film noir of the 1930s and 40s at the National Film Theatre. We also used to go to jazz nights at various small-scale suburban venues around London and he played me some of his LPs by legendary jazz musicians, especially the clarinettist Pee-Wee Russell. Our relationship ended rather abruptly when his girlfriend arrived unexpectedly from Rome. We didn’t particularly take to each other and they moved out. Clive treats this episode somewhat differently in Falling Towards England, but I was very sorry to lose such a congenial flat-mate. After that, we lost touch. He studied at Cambridge University and then went on to achieve great fame as a newspaper TV critic, journalist, TV presenter, author and poet. I am pleased to say that in recent years we renewed our friendship by email and his last message to me just before he died made reference to the happy times we had spent together in the flat in Marylebone.

Opera and Ballet

At this point I will write a bit about some of the performances that I saw in London in the 1960s. Unfortunately, I no longer have my diaries which were disposed of in two recent down-sizing house moves so I have to rely on my memories and they will be random. Firstly, opera and ballet. I had already become interested in opera in Sydney in the early 1950s through the opera companies run by Mrs C.T. Lorenz in Sydney and the one run by Gertrude Johnson in Melbourne, and later we had the Elizabethan Opera Company.

I can still recall the excitement when the Melbourne company came to Sydney and the tenor Lance Ingram in the last act of Tosca was shot in the chest with a piece of walnut shell. He survived, and although I was not in the theatre for that performance, I did see Stefan Haag’s sensational production of Menotti’s opera The Consul starring Marie Collier which remains one of the most powerful and dramatic things I have ever seen. But my ‘road to Damascus’ experience with opera was the Elizabethan production of Verdi’s Otello with Ronald Dowd, Joan Hammond and John Shaw, which literally blew me away, from the violent storm scene at the beginning to the heart-breaking death of Otello at the end. Dowd found the part so taxing on the first night that he had to be replaced by Raymond McDonald for the remaining two performances but I saw all three and decided opera was what I really loved.

When I got to London in March 1960 I immediately made for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and started with a highly enjoyable Aida but soon realised that although the musical standards were high, the production values with sets and costumes and choreography were not always going to be so good. But within a few weeks, I had the opportunity to hear the legendary Swedish tenor Jussi Björling as Rodolfo in La Bohème and, despite the fact that he was already quite ill from a heart condition, he didn’t disappoint. He was dead within six months so it was a great privilege that he was able to fulfil his Covent Garden engagement.

Rosanna Carteri and Jussi Björling rehearsing La Bohème at Covent Garden in March 1960.

Also, in those early days I saw some amazing things at Covent Garden, like Boris Christoff in Boris Godunov, Birgit Nilsson as Wagner’s Isolde and the sensational production by Luchino Visconti of Verdi’s Don Carlo with Christoff, the Italian baritone Tito Gobbi and the Dutch soprano Gré Brouwensteijn. My first experience of Joan Sutherland was in Lucia di Lammermoorand then Handel’s Alcina, but I was disappointed with her droopy singing and poor diction until a few years later when her glorious performance in Bellini’s I puritani convinced me that she was totally worthy of her nickname of ‘La Stupenda’. In those early years I was lucky enough to see a number of operas with the great Tito Gobbi (Tosca, Simon Bocccanegra, Macbeth, Otello, Falstaff and Le nozze di Figaro) and I have to rate him as the finest operatic artist I ever saw, although Maria Callas in Tosca and Norma in 1964 in London and Paris was indeed something special. I also went regularly to see the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company in Islington in which many of the stars were Australian like June Bronhill, Kevin Miller, Elizabeth Fretwell, Ronald Dowd and Donald Smith. Some of the productions were outstanding, such as a thrilling Flying Dutchman in which the arrival of the Dutchman’s ship was a coup de théâtre that startled the life out of the audience when it occurred in Act 1, and a Carmen that seemed like a perfect realisation of Bizet’s masterpiece. Singing in English, the performers’ diction was much better than it is these days with the English National Opera (which the Sadler’s Wells company became) in the vast Coliseum Theatre in central London.

Queuing at Covent Garden

I should also say something about the system that was in place for booking tickets at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, when I first got to London, which was the same for both opera and ballet. The Opera House would issue a leaflet listing all the performances over a period of about two months and then the booking would open for those performances at 10 am on a designated day, usually a Monday morning. People who wanted to book tickets would start queuing well in advance and a whole ethos grew up about the queuing. There were three separate box offices covering tickets for the old Gallery and Upper Slips, the Amphitheatre and Lower Slips and Downstairs which included the Stalls, Grand Tier, Stalls Circle, Balcony Stalls and Boxes. The number of seats available in the Gallery and Amphitheatre was lower than Downstairs so there was a greater demand for those parts of the house, which of course were also the cheapest. In 1960 the demand for ballet tickets was not particularly great and it was usually enough to turn up on the first day of booking to get good seats for everything, until the Russian star Rudolf Nureyev arrived, when tickets for his performances became highly sought after and the ballet queues became almost as big as those for the opera, for which there was usually a heavy demand.

The first person to arrive at each of the three box offices to buy tickets for the new booking period would take it upon themselves to keep a list of everyone who joined the queue behind them. It was then necessary for each of the queuers to remain somewhere in the vicinity of the Opera House until the morning of the new booking, when ‘Queue Tickets’ would be handed out at 8.30 am with a time on which the person should return to the box office later in the day. Anybody arriving at the box office after the queue had dispersed at 8.30 am but while the queue ticket system was still active would also be issued with a queue ticket to return later. These times had been worked out statistically and the box office tried to be fair and serve people in the order of their queue tickets but the system did not always work perfectly if some queuers failed to turn up at their appointed times. But once one had joined a queue, the rules were fairly lax, except that everyone had to remain in central London not too far from Covent Garden and spend the night near the Opera House, sleeping in sleeping bags on the pavement (the doorways in Floral Street were favourite places to get). A few people actually brought cars to the area for sleeping which was not officially allowed but they usually got away with it. And this was at the time when the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market was still fully operational and things became very busy early each morning as the market came to life. For the rest of the duration of the queue one could attend performances at the Opera House, the Royal Festival Hall or somewhere in the West End and even go home but this had to be for a minimum time to change clothes or attend to other needs. When the morning of the booking arrived, the queuers would wake up early, usually disturbed by the market traders, and then visit the public toilets in the area, the best ones being alongside the back of the Actors’ Church in the Covent Garden Piazza. Some queuers avoided sleeping rough overnight and would just come down on the first buses or tubes to join the queues on the Monday morning, which was often good enough, but for those of us who wanted A56 in the centre of the front row of the Amphitheatre for the first night of a new production you had to be close to the front of the queue!

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (today) and queuing for tickets c.1960s.

Head doorman of the ROH, Sergeant Victor Martin and examples of Queue Tickets—Royal Opera House collection.

On the morning of the actual booking, the one person always in evidence was Sergeant Martin. He was the sort of Major Domo for the Royal Opera House and used to dress in splendid maroon livery with gold trimmings and wear a top hat.  His official title was Head Doorman of the Royal Opera House but he was very much in charge of things like the queueing system and oversaw the handing out of the queue tickets and the orderly operation of the actual queues later in the day.

I have reason to be grateful to Sergeant Martin because on Sunday 9 February 1964, the TV crews were at the Royal Opera House to televise the second act of Puccini’s Tosca with Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi for a Golden Hour TV programme. The TV vans were parked in Floral Street and through their open doors one could see the TV monitors with the rehearsal going on for a shooting schedule to be worked out.  This was entertaining in itself because Callas and Gobbi were playing the fool during the rehearsal and pretending they were two lovers instead of sworn enemies, so when he said: ‘Come tu mi odi’ (‘How you hate me!’) she responded like an affectionate sweetheart!  Anyway, I was there in the street with a dozen or so of the other ‘regulars’ because the word had gone around that the rehearsal was taking place and we all wondered whether or not there was any chance of us getting in to see the actual performance.  The tickets had been distributed by the TV company to private individuals, but when it came time for the audience to arrive, Sergeant Martin, splendid in his usual regalia, appeared on the scene and, seeing the group of ‘regulars’ whom he knew by sight, he tipped us the wink to wait around unobtrusively.  And just before the starting time, he led us quietly into the Stalls and directed us to a row of empty seats at the very back. So whenever I see that iconic video of Callas in the second act of Tosca at Covent Garden I always say: ‘God bless you Sergeant Martin’.

I used to do the queue usually for one night or occasionally two and the longest queue I ever did was for the first complete RingCycle conducted by Georg Solti in September 1964, for which I started queuing on the Friday late afternoon and slept out in Floral Street for three nights. I hated Solti’s Wagner but had to be there for his first complete Ring, although I was one of the people who sometimes booed him at his solo curtain calls!

There was a great deal of camaraderie among the queuers and the regulars included Sir Brian McMaster and Nicholas Payne, both of whom went on to run major companies and events like the Welsh National Opera, Opera North and the Edinburgh Festival. Other queuers were known only by their nicknames (not always flattering) like ‘The Queen of the Night’, ‘The Seahorse’, ‘The Fat Boy’ and ‘Mad Heather’ to name just a few. And the regulars would meet at the performances in the intervals to discuss the pros and cons of what they had seen and heard, and there was always a lively exchange of tickets for the performances during each booking period as the days went by and we wanted to dispose of extra tickets we had booked for things that we didn’t like or to buy extra tickets for things that particularly pleased us.

The queuing system came under pressure with the Callas Tosca in 1964 when there were questions asked in Parliament as to why the wives of MPs could not obtain tickets after they had read the reviews. The whole booking system was then declared to be unfair on people who could not physically get to the box office on the first day of a new booking period, which of course included the bulk of the population of the UK who did not live in London. So a system of postal bookings was eventually devised, which was rather hit and miss depending on when one’s application was opened at the Opera House and then the Friends of Covent Garden scheme was invented which was also unfair in that it gave priority to people who could afford the most expensive tiers of membership. In fact, there has just been a scandal about the current series of performances of the opera Fidelio (March 2020) with Jonas Kaufmann because all the seats were bought by Friends and when public booking opened there were no seats left at all at any price!

Regarding ballet, I came later to this than to opera and my first introduction was through the influence of Keith Bain, a major figure in the history of Australian dance and particularly choreography for opera and musicals as well as traditional ballet and modern dance. Keith had begun as a ballroom dancer and it was on an episode in his early career that Baz Luhrmann based the film Strictly Ballroom.  Keith had come along to the Sydney University Dramatic Society at the request of the director Pamela Trethowan to provide some choreography for several of the numbers in the revue Lower Education that I played for early in 1957.  These were just small-scale duets and such but Keith’s charming manner and skilled choreography made them seem more significant than they actually were. I mentioned to him that I had never seen any ballet performances and he recommended that I should go to see the Borovansky Ballet Company which was at that time giving a season in Sydney at the Empire Theatre. Keith said that he always sat in the front row so I did the same. People generally avoided sitting in the front row at the ballet, believing it was too close, but I had no such qualms and found it was extremely rewarding. I did what was in effect a crash course in ballet and saw as much of the standard repertoire as I could, including things like Swan Lake, Giselle, Les Sylphides, La Boutique Fantasque and Petrushka. 

Keith Bain in a character role, 1950.

Borovansky Ballet programme cover, 1950s.

It was later in June that same year that the Borovansky Company brought Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes to Australia and showcased them in two different programmes based on Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. We also saw the New York City Ballet, whose Sydney season in 1958 was amazing, with a number of Balanchine’s spectacular large-scale works, of which the most impressive was the new work Stars and Stripes with the music of John Philip Sousa, performed by most of its original principals and complete with baton twirling, military movements and the corps de ballet as a regiment of rifle-bearing ballerinas all marching en pointe! There had also been a somewhat disappointing visit by the Royal Ballet which was in fact mostly members of the second ‘touring’ company and the school, although eventually we got to see a few stars like Svetlana Beriosova and the great Robert Helpmann.

In London I tried to see as many performances as I could with Margot Fonteyn, who was already past 40 and expected to retire at any time. I thought she was wonderful in Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Daphnis and Chloe, The Firebird and Ondine although I felt she seemed like an old lady in Giselle. But in the other ballets she remained young, or perhaps ageless would describe her better. She had perfect musicality, she filled every phrase, she never hurried but she was always exactly where she needed to be as the dancing progressed, and there was a magic to the way she moved that no other dancer seemed to have. I have still never seen any ballerina in Sleeping Beauty bring the magic and poise that she did to the first act and execute the Petipa choreography with such precision and yet such a sense of wonder and youthful excitement.  It was also noticeable that Fonteyn used her facial expressions more than the other ballerinas, who generally seemed more po-faced. For example, her beaming smile as Aurora in Act 1 of Sleeping Beauty was part of her characterisation of the role which the other ballerinas did not seem to copy. And her fear as the Firebird when captured by the Prince was also palpable on her face. When the Sadler’s Wells Ballet first moved into the Royal Opera House, the choreographer Frederick Ashton apparently went all around the auditorium checking that Fonteyn’s facial expressions registered in every part of the house and he made sure she paid attention to this. I suspect that De Valois and Ashton did not allow the other ballerinas to copy Fonteyn in this regard, which was perhaps their subtle way of ensuring that Fonteyn shone more brightly then the other dancers as the jewel of the company. She was in a class of her own and was the perfect ballerina assoluta.

Dame Margot Fonteyn as Aurora in Act I of Sleeping Beauty.

Fonteyn and Nureyev in Romeo and Juliet.

But then we had the extraordinary situation of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev defecting from the Kirov ballet company in Paris in 1961 and coming immediately to London where the Royal Ballet took him into the company and allowed him to dance with Fonteyn. They became a truly perfect artistic partnership, as well as international celebrities, and over the next few years I managed to see most of the ballets in which the pair danced … except Giselle which I still avoided.

And I have to say here that the greatest night I ever spent in the theatre throughout my whole life was the first night of Macmillan’s Romeo and Juliet with Fonteyn and Nureyev in the title roles on 9 February 1965 at Covent Garden. Everything about it was incredible: the sets, the costumes, the dancing, the wonderful music and the charismatic performances of the two leads. Fonteyn was totally convincing as a shy young girl and Nureyev was ideal as the impetuous young lover. I went back and saw nine of the first twelve performances with other principals as well as Fonteyn and Nureyev and it was always like a great feast and totally satisfying in every respect.

Over the next few years I continued to go a lot to Covent Garden to ballet as well as opera and the visits by foreign ballet companies were always hugely enjoyable. The Bolshoi from Moscow brought their spectacular productions of things like Spartacus and Don Quixote with dancing of great energy and strength while the Kirov from Leningrad (now the Mariinsky from St. Petersburg) brought beautiful, romantic productions of things like Swan Lake, Giselle and La Bayadere with ‘white acts’ danced by a superb corps de ballet that were flawless. The companies also usually brought their own orchestras, which was an added musical bonus. I have to say that despite favourite performances of Swan Lake by Beriosova and Fonteyn as well as much-loved Giselles by Beriosova, the finest Odette/Odile and Giselle I ever saw were danced by Natalia Makarova with the Kirov. In the second act of Giselle she really looked ethereal and weightless, like a leaf floating to and fro above the ground in the breeze—an effect sought after by all ballerinas in that role but actually achieved by very few. George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet also provided some truly outstanding dancing in some glorious works, despite some unpromising names like Bugaku and Agon which the wags changed to ‘Agony’. But to see this wonderful company at full stretch in Bizet’s Symphony in Cwas to see ballet at its glorious best.

Musicals and Straight Plays

Now a few recollections of the legitimate and musical theatre in my childhood and youth in Sydney. From my early years, my mother often took me to see the variety shows at the Tivoli in the 1940s and as well as the comedians (especially George Wallace and Jim Gerald), acrobats, jugglers, etc, I have a very strong recollection of the Tivoli chorus girls, who seemed to be glamorous creatures who sang and danced as if from some other magical world. And I was intrigued by the three microphones at the front of the stage that rose up by themselves and descended again like snakes from a charmer’s basket. I also remember Jenny Howard who sang Gracie Fields songs and appeared as the thigh-slapping Principal Boy in pantomime and the French dancer called Micheline Bernardini from the Café de Paris, who did a titillating fan dance in a flickering spotlight, apparently naked.

Stars of the Tivoli – George Wallace, Jim Gerald, Jenny Howard and Micheline Bernardini.

But the one artist who is indelibly engraved in my memory is Ella Shields, the American music hall star. It was March 1947 and I believe she was the first major artist to come to Australia from America after the Second World War. I can still see her in immaculate male evening dress standing beside a grand piano singing popular songs like ‘If You Knew Susie’, ‘Let Bygones Be Bygones’ and ‘Cecilia’ and then in a separate scene, dressed in shabby, tattered clothes in front of a backcloth representing the Thames Embankment in London, singing her great hit song: ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’. What a polished artist she was.

I also remember my mother taking me to see The Desert Song and White Horse Inn when I was a child, but it was the production of Annie Get Your Gun with Evie Hayes in 1948 that hooked me onto musical theatre at the age of about eleven. I saw it a number of times and was totally immersed in the whole theatrical experience which, as it happens, is summed up so accurately by Irving Berlin in his song in that very show: ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’: ‘The costumes, the scenery, the make-up, the props’. Evie Hayes as Annie Oakley was irresistible and I was caught for life!

After that I saw all the big American musicals like Call Me Madam, Paint Your Wagon, Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate, Brigadoon, South Pacific, one British one Zip Goes a Million!and one Australian one Lola Montez, usually several times, as well as the wonderful revues at the Metropolitan Theatre and then the Phillip Street Theatre. In straight theatre an aunt took me to several of the British comedies like Sailor Beware! and Worm’s Eye View, and then for myself I discovered things like Nude with Violin with Robert Helpmann, The Chalk Garden with Sibyl Thorndike and Lewis Casson, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew in a spectacular Old Vic tour starring Robert Helpmann and Katharine Hepburn and the new Australian plays like The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler and The Slaughter of St.Teresa’s Day by Peter Kenna. I also attended the smaller theatres to see things like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Genesians and The Man at Hayes Gordon’s Ensemble Theatre. But the best thing of all was the Elizabethan Trust production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night with Dinah Shearing, Ron Haddrick, Neil Fitzpatrick and Frank Waters which was quite superb.

A selection of JCW and AETT souvenir theatre programme covers from 1949-1959.

Coming now to London, I have a strong if rather generalised memory of the Zeffirelli production of Romeo and Juliet in 1960 at the Old Vic with Judi Dench and John Stride. I remember the crowd scenes being very lively and the young principals being extremely moving. Also on Shakespeare, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s complete history cycle performed in London was something unique and with a top class cast brought to life Shakespeare’s great plays. I also saw Gielgud doing his readings from Shakespeare called The Ages of Man which was something very special. The funniest play I ever saw was Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear with Geraldine McEwan and Albert Finney where the audience was often helpless with laughter and the expression ‘falling out of one’s seat’ literally applied. Finney was a very charismatic stage actor and to my mind was more effective in the original National Theatre Company at the Old Vic than Laurence Olivier, who was technically very strong but less convincing in his characterisations, with his terrible Othello as an example, where Olivier spent all his time mimicking the physical actions of a black man and rather ignored the real acting, which was somewhat misguided as Othello was a Moor, not a Negro! But I also saw many top class actors and actresses like Ralph Richardson, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (in The Visit), Peggy Ashcroft, Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness, Alistair Sim, Edith Evans, Charles Boyer and many others. To keep up to date, I assiduously attended the Royal Court Theatre for the plays of Arnold Wesker and enjoyed being shocked by the works of Joe Orton. But I also kept up with musicals and revues although I eventually had less and less time for theatregoing when I got more into piano playing most nights. Some of the musicals I remember enjoying include The Sound of Music, Flower Drum Song, Irma La Douce, Lock Up Your Daughters, Once Upon a Mattress, Oliver!, Maggie May, Sail Away, Follow That Girl, Bye Bye Birdie, She Loves Me, Mame, Sweet Charity, and many others.

Jump to 1967, and I was invited to come and see a revue that was staged by Joan Littlewood in a room upstairs in a pub in Angel Lane, just opposite the Theatre Royal. I think Joan was experimenting with entertainment in a pub as preparation for staging the Marie Lloyd Storyin the theatre starring Avis Bunnage. I was asked to play for the next edition of the show the following week, which I duly did and that was my first experience of working with Joan. She must have been happy with what I did because she gave me no notes on my playing and asked me to come back the following week for the next show, but I was not free and I never heard anything more of the venture. I can’t remember who was in the show apart from Myvanwy Jenn (who in 1963 had been the Red Cross Nurse singing ‘Keep the home fires burning’ in Oh What a Lovely War), Kent Baker and I think Stephen Lewis (known from the TV series On the Buses and The Last of the Summer Wine).

Joan Littlewood seated amid a pile of rubble with the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in the background.

As the years went on I gradually got involved with various small companies doing old time music hall and variety in and around London at such places as The Tramshed at Woolwich Arsenal, Chats Palace at Hackney and the Pindar of Wakefield, a pub at King’s Cross, working for companies like Aba Daba, Hiss and Boo, Song and Supper and Gaslight and Garters. Some of the shows featured eminent people like Adelaide Hall, Tommy Trinder, Sandy Powell, Reg Dixon, Syd Marks, Sid Wright and other old stars who had been all but forgotten, as well as young actors just starting in the business who have gone on to have successful careers like Ruth Madoc and Marcia Warren. At Aba Daba we also had a contingent of Australasian actors including Bob Hornery, Terry Bayler, Davilia David, David Ryder Futcher, Elaine Holland, Beatrice Aston and Valerie Bader, and we did a very successful ‘Down Under’ show. Valerie leading the company in the finale with ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’ (written by George Wallace) was particularly moving.

To be continued...

Picture credits:

Chiefly from the Author’s collection with the exception of:

Pieces of 8 and The Hostage theatre programmes – Elisabeth Kumm collection

Rosanna Carteri and Jussi Björling rehearsing La Bohème– Private collection

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – Wikimedia

Queuing at the ROH c.1960s – newsreel film still

Sergeant Victor Martin, Head Doorman of the ROH – John Hall

Keith Bain in a character role – (Papers of Gertrud Bodenwieser), National Library of Australia – http:/​/​nla.gov.au/​nla.obj-234842080

Borovansky Ballet theatre programme – Rob Morrison collection

George Wallace & Jim Gerald – Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Jenny Howard – Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Micheline Bernardini – Pix,22 No. 18 (30 April 1949)

Ella Shields – Private collection

Tivoli theatre programme – Rob Morrison collection

Annie Get Your Gun theatre programme & Evie Hayes photo – Rob Morrison collection

Montage of JCW theatre programmes – Elisabeth Kumm collection (top), Rob Morrison collection (bottom)

Joan Littlewood photo – Private collection