Frank Neil

PANTOMIME AND PUBLICITY.

MELBOURNE. January, 1924.

The meaningless howlings of the cave-women, ranged round three sides of the forest clearing in a swaying semicircle, ceased abruptly as though one voice, suddenly and piercingly raised over all, but put them to rout:

“Aï, aï,” it said, as far as its words could be followed, “The goos-Mother!”

Thus heralded, the indescribable Ag, the widow-woman, propelled herself and her fur rags from Heaven knows what decent obscurity into their midst; a voluble dame whose chattering reduced the semi-circle to an appreciative silence. Rambling chatter it seemed, now of her lamented Ug (but lately the tit bit of some mastodonic meal), now of her conquests past, present, and to come; until, her garrulity swept aside by the march of progress, others of Nature's comedians took the ring, and the frequent “nap”; and Straightman, the son of Feeda, told Rednose the Baseborn how he was walking down the forest aisles when what should he see but—oojerthink? And Rednose’s reply sent such guffaws ricochetting through the green mansions that the imitative folk of the tree-tops took counsel the one with the other as to this thing of laughter, and thereupon, seeing that it was good, lifted it bodily to their hairy bosoms and called it thenceforth for their own. But all this by the way.

For Straightman and Rednose were now supplanted in their turn. The rude crowd, surfeited with laughter and looking for relief in any unlikely and unusual direction, easy through the branches Iglo, the son of Nugt, trapping moonbeams for little golden-headed Glitta to play with. Instantly guffaws gave place to sighs. Such a sentimentalising arose that the monkeys in their attics peered low with inquisitiveness and swung still lower, now clutching their brothers’ tails, now missing and falling with squeals of affrighted anger to the ground-floor; so that the watchers turned at last from Iglo and Glitta to this new interest, and by their laughter allowed that the simian acrobats had obtruded their speciality at the right moment. A noisy interlude, this, with the spectators joining in, drumming and stamping an insistent rhythm with their stoneheads on the rocks—louder, growing ever louder. Till the monkeys, suddenly scared, stopped and scuttled away to their forest fastnesses. Yet even louder, and the semi-circle itself broke up, marched down to face this thing bravely in twos, only to split before it to right and left . . . and away into oblivion, with Rednose and Straightman stumbling along behind. Louder, louder yet; and last of all came Iglo, the son of Nugt, with little golden-haired Glitta by his side, forgetful of all else, marching—marching—and the stamping and the drumming rose to a roar and a scream, as if to recall the lovers to the world they had forgotten. All in vain, of course. Hammer and shriek and scream as we may, the love interest still goes on …

“And that which we have just seen,” remarked Gloo-Gloo, the firstborn of Stickphast, to his affinity, linking his granite hammer beneath an aching arm and letting Affinity struggle into her plesiosaurus pelt unaided, “that is the origin of pantomime, you merit my words! When the ichthyosaurus ceases from troubling and the mammoth is at rest, that’s what our children and our children’s children are going to see and enjoy for all time. Selah!”

That’s what he meant: only, being prehistoric, of course he couldn’t express it so beautifully. He just made faces and strange hiccoughing noises. But Seecotina, trained by the movies, understood his every gurgle. “You do say such things, Gloo-Gloo,” she giggled. “What's the matter with mothers and fathers enjoying it, too, I’d like to know, huh?”

And, you know for yourselves, that is just how it has turned out. We’ve been conservative, we’ve kept out all improvements as far as possible, have we not? In this we are wise; the successful pantomimes are the prehistoric ones.

Amusement adverts

From The Herald (Melbourne), 11 February 1924

The Beaumont Smith film comedy Prehistoric Hayseeds (starring Hector St Clair) opened at the Melba Theatre in Bourke Street in February 1924

Children’s shows, first to last (and last to go.) I remember when I played Will Atkins at Hanley (I hate to boast, but I must make you realise who is talking) in the early days of the century (yes, this century) the applause-winning effects of “Robinson Crusoe” with the Potteries audience were precisely the applause-winning effects of “Mother Goose” in Melbourne, 1923–24—both pantomimes record successes. And these were identical with the a.-w.e., judging by my grandmother’s description, of a glorious pantomime-play she had been taken as a child to see in Drachtacachty (a few miles from Dingwall and the Vists, I believe) that snowy Christmastide of 1749. And l have no doubt she heard the same thing from her grandmother before her. So there we are. Let them wave the Red Flag of progress till they’re blue in the face, if I were putting on a pantomime I’d include a children’s ballet, and I’d bring the smallest child on to sing the principal girl’s and principal boy’s last chorus, and I’d have at least one “animal” in the show and plenty of slap-stick custard-pie comedy, and keep the old story well in evidence, and I’d edit the comedians’ gags, and I’d also have a couple of specialities to appeal to a different side of the children, and I’d make that fortune that we hear of. Anyway, if I didn’t I’d be completely nonplussed and absolutely in the jolly old quandary, wondering what the devil I’d left out.

Here in Melbourne, with the temperature round about 104 [°F], we play twice a day to myriads of screaming, shrieking, yelling, howling, crying children, festooned from gallery, circles, and boxes—young Australia at its noisiest—together with a sprinkling of listless parents, exhausted by long waiting in the sun for the doors to open. With such an audience broad effects are obviously asked for from the producer; and it is the pantomime that gives these most generously that wins out. And not only the pantomime, I think. To my mind Australia wants its dramatic fare generally to be on broad lines, as befits the wide sweeping continent it is. There is about its people a fine insouciance (so remarked in the late war) which perhaps blunts their sensibility to the subtler shades. You can trace this spirit in such everyday things as the contrast of blue serge tunic and khaki breeches of their mounted police, the corrugated iron roofings to “Theatres (Otherwise) Beautiful” and “Houses (Otherwise) Exquisite”; their black velour trilbied boyhood; their larrikins and hoodlums, whose barracking bursts so rudely upon the contemplative peace of their cricket matches; their unlubricated axles, as grindingly cacophonous as their aboriginal place-names. At present, in Melbourne at least, I am sure the tendency is for the spectacular and the sensational in its entertainment, and the best obtainable on these lines. But make no mistake, please, gentle readers (I am speaking to both of you). Australia is the most theatre-loving people in the world, and Australia wants the best we can give her, even if she appears at times content with something less than that.

But I wish they’d do something about this publicity business; I mean to say, they do rather go to extremes. Over–boosting  an artist, now. Not one artist in a thousand can hope to live up to the laid on-with-a-trowel stuff that greets them on their arrival. We may, in our own biased minds, be convinced of its truth; but, with the possible exception of our mothers, we are the only people who are; the majority (and what a majority!) hate the sight of us for it. To this, I am sure, may be ascribed much of the “non-clicking” of certain English favourites over here. They are too heavily handicapped—they carry too much weight; and if they don’t carry it they throw it about, which is worse. Things are altering now. Not the superlatives, they remain, unfortunately, but the credulity of those who read, or rather do not read, them. “Most astounding,” “epoch–making,” “world-beating,” “most wonderful” have had their day; it is merely meaningless padding in the public eye, and the newspaper advertisement manager is possibly the only member of that body pleased by it. As for myself, speaking quite personally, I have a definite grouch. By no means unused to triumphs at home as I am (even if I have to call you to Widnes to prove it), here I am, but “the celebrated,” “London’s famous,” “the flashing,” “the sparkling” (pooh, pooh! I might be a cheap Hock), “London’s idol,” “England’s foremost—” (Come, come, that’s better; but why this niggardly reticence? I can only suppose that they are holding themselves back for the real thing when it arrives. Seymour Hicks will be here in a week or so now, and daily we are expecting that rush of superlatives to the headlines.)

But give ear to the publicity gentleman, letting himself go on the subject of the theatre’s ventilation: “An unceasing supply of sweet air of dew-point coolness is wafted right through each theatre in vast volumes during hot afternoons and evenings, and every inhalation is as a breath of fragrance from some snow-clad mountain peak, Summer theatre-going is more than recreation: it is rejuvenation. Put it to the test!” Well, I mean to say! What do you know about that?

Australia is a young, vigorous, and progressive country. Her theatres are modern and well equipped, in some cases more so than many of ours. She wants the best in entertainment, and can, and will, pay for the best. Nothing too far advanced as yet; in fact, leaning at present a little heavily in the musical play direction. In the matter of native artists she has a long way off being self-supporting.

And there you are.

Why?

CHARLES HESLOP

THE STAGE,27 March 1924, p.15

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Charles Heslop interviewed

Comedian Who Creates

Sam Wells’ caricature for The HeraldCHARLES Heslop, the agile comedian who helps to make “Tons of Money,” may also appear in pantomime. Australians are certain to see him in original roles.

In England, this actor really creates his parts. He not only acts, but writes them. Until he appeared in “Tons of Money” for a week in London before leaving for Australia, Mr Heslop had not played a part that he had not created for a number of years. He writes sketches and appears in them in vaudeville and revue in London, and sometimes goes on tour with his own company. Mamie Watson was once with him, and Mr. Heslop is very gratified to hear of her popularity in Australia.

This actor has had a unique experience, but he will only put forward one claim to distinction. “I am about the only English actor who went on the stage straight from school,” he says. “At 18 I joined a musical comedy company which included George Graves. My humble duty was to come on as one of two powdered footmen in knee breeches. Very thin and tall, my resemblance to a billiard cue must have forcibly struck at least one member of our audience. On bowing low to announce ‘His Majesty, the King,’ my white wig fell into the footlights, and there came a delighted shout from the gallery, ‘Marker, the tip’s come off!’ “

After five years in the profession, Mr. Heslop says he was earning less than when he started from scratch, so he reluctantly agreed with his people that the theatre held no future for him. The young man was then articled to a solicitor, the family's friend, but soon realised that the prospects of succeeding in the law were more ominous.

This was the time of the limerick competition craze. Mr. Heslop won a prize of £57. With this he decided to try the stage again, this time as proprietor! Mr Heslop wrote and produced a vaudeville sketch, and played it at intervals for three years. Then he expanded it into a full evening’s entertainment, and except for incursions into drama, musical comedy, pantomime, and revue, has been his own manager ever since. His show was introduced into the West End just before the war, and he made a big hit with it at the Ambassador Theatre. After the war he revived the show, but was tempted into pantomime and revue, with most of his company supporting.

“I am anxious to play my own stuff before Australian audiences,” he says, “and hope some day to have the opportunity, though it would probably mean bringing some of my artists out from England. I formed a limited liability company just before leaving to carry on my work in England.”

Many amusing stories are told by Mr. Heslop. In his very young days he played a scene in a drama where he had to shoot himself. “I was very nervous,” he says, “and the stage manager provided me with a knife for stabbing purposes in case the pistol with which I was to shoot myself did not go off. ‘And if you can't find the knife,’ he added grimly, ‘knock yourself on the head with the butt end of the revolver.’ Of course, the pistol did not go off. I was very agitated, and groped for the knife. Then I stabbed myself with the pistol, knocked myself on the head with the knife, and expired. The audience were delighted with my thoroughness; but they shouted with joy when my faithful servant came in, discovered my body, and, not having heard any shot and over-estimating my resourcefulness, risked everything and exclaimed, ‘Poisoned!’

“People say I speak very rapidly on the stage. I got into that way through playing 25-mlnute sketches in 15 minutes on the music halls. If you weren’t finished, the curtain came down, so you had to be. A friend of mine suddenly took a fancy for this sort of work, and asked me to support him at his try-out. Our turn preceded some performing elephants, and when my friend dashed upon the stage after his first ‘lightning change’ he thought I'd grown a trunk!”

Sir John Martin Harvey and Mr. Heslop’s mother are cousins. “I called upon him once when he was playing ‘Hamlet’ at the Adelphi,” the comedian remarked, “and I was doing something very derogatory in pantomime. ‘Ah,’ he said to me, ‘how I wish I had had experience of the lighter stage. I could wish that I had played the dame in pantomime!’ This would bring a smile from anyone who knows the ineffable dignity of Sir John. I remember murmuring that the part would suit him, but cannot say whether he thought it was the right answer or not.”

Mr. Heslop laughed when he thought what the critics would say about Sir John as a dame. The comedian likes Melbourne audiences much better than its critics. “I should hate to have to play to a house full of these,” he says, “as much as they would hate to have to be there while I played.”

The Herald (Melbourne), Saturday, 3 November 1923, p.17, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243496526

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NEW COMEDY ROLE

Mr Heslop as Fitzrabbit

Though Charles Heslop, chief comedian in “Tons of Money,” is neither the Dame nor the Baron, he will provide plenty of fun in the “Mother Goose” pantomime. Mr. Heslop is playing a special part written to suit his particular type of comedy. This is Fitzrabbit, who makes his first appearance direct from winning the Davis Cup, the Gold Vase, Doggett’s Coat and Badge, the Marbles Handicap and other sporting trophies. Thus he is enabled to introduce his tennis and cricket scenes and golf sketch. Practically all the scenes which he does in the pantomime are his own property and of his own concoction. The golf sketch he played for two years and a half continuously in England and Scotland, but one does not need to know golf to enjoy it. 

This sketch has been the cause of episodes which were not allowed for in the original script. “On one occasion some revellers in the stage box were making themselves particularly objectionable,” Mr. Heslop recalled, “and I was casting about In my mind wildly for some means of retaliation when it struck me that I had to drive my ball—a soft one—in their direction. The ball struck one merrymaker full in the open mouth and silenced him effectually! The audience was delighted, and it is the only time I personally have ever enjoyed slicing my tee-shot.

“A nearly tragic episode occurred when the head of my driver flew off, whizzed past the manager of the theatre, who was leaning against the back of the dress-circle, and ‘plonked’ against the exit door. It was a terrible second or two while I realised that the club-head was careering away somewhere into the crowded house. Now I use a club that is guaranteed unbreakable.”

Mr. Heslop is looking forward to an Australian pantomime after a “very varied” experience with this class of work in England.

“I once put on a small pantomime myself,” remarked Mr. Heslop. “It was ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ but I had only some ‘Dick Whittington’ costumes. That did not matter. I thought out a big publicity scheme. By means of ‘clues’ artfully concealed in the pantomime dialogue children could discover the whereabouts of treasure believed to be hidden on Robinson’s Island. It seemed a great idea. I reckoned the most intelligent child would have to visit the pantomime 20 times at least, before getting on to the clues. I fear I overrated that child's intelligence!”

The Herald (Melbourne), Saturday, 1 December 1923, p.17, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243497189

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Ray Whiting caricatures for Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 26 January 1924, p12

A Comedian with Refreshing Ideas

Charles Heslop Chats at Rehearsal

CHARLES Heslop believes in reserve, not exactly the British reserve of manner that one hears so much about, but a reserve towards indiscriminate pleasure and life for an actor. This fact is learned when, in a somewhat grotesque “make-up” as Fitzrabbit, “the adventurer” in “Mother Goose,” he is sitting in the stalls during an interval of rehearsing watching a ballet scene being tried. 

He is what the old wives used to call “serious minded,” in spite of being a comedian, and a humorous writer by deliberate choice, which, in other words, means that he holds opinion’s of his, own, and is not afraid to express them.

The reserve he advocates is with regard to the life of a stage favorite, and the opinion is called forth by some remark that has gone before. 

Mr. Heslop is not reserved in himself, and enjoys meeting his fellowmen, has made many good friends in Australia, and thoroughly enjoys their company. But he holds the opinion strongly that it is a mistake for an actor or actress to accept what may be described as promiscuous hospitality where they would, in a measure, be on show.

There is method in his madness, however, for he contends that the pubic see an actor—or actress—over the footlights and form a mental picture of their personality, then when they meet them out, in ordinary society, perhaps, having a cup of afternoon tea, they are disappointed because he or she does not come up to this mental idea, being just ordinary man or woman.

He has, however, a more serious and legitimate reason. If you accept hospitality freely and indiscriminately, you give out too much of the nerve force that you need for your work. You must have a certain amount of restful reserve, that is quietness and retirement, if you are to give your best in your work. A quiet afternoon at home with a book would do you infinitely more good.

Besides, people are so often disappointed with you when they meet you, for one cannot always simulate or be humorous, he declares—with, however, small justification as to his own powers, as Mr. Heslop is a creator of mirth, for, besides acting comedy, he writes it.

He not only pleads guilty to writing his own sketches, which might amount to genuine authorship or merely the gradual building up, bit by bit, of humorous ideas and piecing them together, but he has a much greater claim to authorship. He for some years contributed two columns weekly to one of the best-known comic papers that we have had—the inimitable “Ally Sloper.” This, compared with the comics of to-day, was quite a literary, high-class, witty publication, and to have been able to keep up two columns a week to its standard argues an overflowing fund of humor of a high grade. When “Ally Sloper” changed its style and tone, Mr. Heslop was asked to change his style in his column, but the new way did not appeal to him, so he gave up these literary labors, and never tried another paper. By this time he had made his niche in the theatrical world, and had his own show, for which he wrote his own sketches.

“The question arose whether any ideas one had were not worth more to use there,” nodding towards the stage, “than they would be to send to a paper, so I have grown into the habit of keeping them to myself, and grafting them into my work.”

Mr. Heslop gives the cynical reason why most men go on the stage—“because they have failed at two or three other things.”

But that this has not always held good in his experience is proved by his own case, for, when asked how he happened to drift on, he confesses to having been stage-struck at about eighteen—too early to have tried other careers; much less failed in them.

Having resolved to become an actor, he began by walking on. His fancy was always comedy, “to dash about and be funny,” he explains.

It is suggested that school performances may be responsible for turning a boy's thoughts towards the stage.

“Perhaps,” he agrees, “though I don’t know. I used to take part in them, but we used to do Shakespeare and serious things in ordinary dress, I once played Lydia Languish in Elton clothes, with a fan and a wig to give it atmosphere, and I think that kind of thing would rather kill any leaning towards the stage by its absurdity rather than foster it. It was so ludicrous, and one felt so foolish.”

From the walking-on stage Mr. Heslop progressed to parts in musical comedy, and, after a time, came in contact with a man named [Ernest] Crampton, who was gifted in a musical way.

“We became friends, and used to write things together—I doing the words, he the music. Then, as time went on, and I found myself still playing parts that offered but small scope, and with very little prospect of doing better, I began to think there was a good opportunity for a little show on rather different lines, I started to plan it out and write it, while Crampton composed the music, and that is how our little show started. We built it up, and improved it from time to time. It was an interesting experiment, and went well.

“Yes, I like pantomime, because I can use my own matter, and build the part up. Pretty well all that I do in ‘Mother Goose’ is my own stuff that I have previously given in England.

“I have done every class of work except the circus, I think. Not tragedy, that does not come my way; but every kind of comedy.”

Mr. Heslop has more the appearance of the matinee idol off the stage than any suggestion of the comedian. With his fine dark eyes, dark hair, and tall, slender form, allied to a certain grave, semi-confidential way, he, when conversing, seems to suggest far more the type of the romantic hero than the funny man. But a twinkle of the eye and a flash of quiet humor here and there, uttered in the most serious manner, soon dispels the illusion, and puts the new acquaintance on guard.

In private life, Mr. Heslop is something of a student of men, it would seem, and one who enjoys life from the looker-on's point of view. He is a home man, who is the proud father of a small son who promises to follow in his footsteps, though, like most fathers on the stage, he tries to keep him away from the theatre, as he has other ambitions for him.

“But he will come, and what can one do?” his father says, with all a fond father's pride in a son's persistence along his own lines.

Mrs. Heslop, who has just come from the stage for a short spell—she also is in the pantomime cast—smiles complacently. Obviously she is satisfied with her big boy and small boy also, while her husband greets her as “My girl.” They are evidently a happy little family group, who keep together following fortune around the world, and making home just wherever they happen to be.

Table Talk (Melbourne), Thursday, 27 December 1923, p.35, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146467434

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THE CASE FOR RESERVE.

Stated by Charles Heslop.

Charles Heslop, who makes Fitzrabbit a versatile individual in “Mother Goose” pantomime, describes himself as probably one of the most unsociable actors. Certainly he is not often to be met at those functions where stars of the dramatic Armament foregather and sparkle, more or less brightly, for the benefit of society. Yet he is a man of many friends. However, here is his theory set out by himself: —

“I possess a theory, so strongly held as to amount to an absolute conviction, that in nine cases out of ten it is a grievous mistake for a public man of whatever capacity to hobnob with the public which makes him. The tenth case is where the man's personality—that vague magnetism which we call personality, anyway—is stronger in private than in public life. This case is so rare in successful public men as to be almost negligible. What do we find? Your ‘comic fellow, clown of private life’ type placed behind the footlights is too often an uninspired mediocrity—his ‘genius’ evaporates amazingly, suddenly, completely. Most of the richest, humorists of the stage are apparently dull, serious-minded fellows in more domestic circles. The exceptions are your George Robeys, your Leslie Hensons, whose public performances are accentuations of their personal idiosyncracies. Most artists, however, have dual personalities—one for private, one for public use—and there should be a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Artists to ensure that no one personality is overworked at the expense of the other. To ensure longevity for either personality, it stands to reason that that personality must be conserved—each personality must be drawn upon to as nearly as possible an equal extent. Thus two performances a day are a severe strain in themselves; add to these a lay tea party and a dance (where, in my experience, the artist is always expected to remain his stage self) and you are shortening your professional career, you are losing your mystery and you are exhausting (and probably disappointing) your public at one and the same time.

“As a stage-struck lad back in the good old days when artists were a race apart, when the world of the theatre was a terra happily incognita to all but the favored and understanding few, when the glamor of romance and mystery surrounded all the footlight favorites, I remember seeing the hero of my aesthetic dreams with a glass of beer in his hand (and a pink edged collar round-his neck) telling inhumorous stories to a crowd of sycophants in the trocadero long bar … I fled. With my castles in air crashing dismally round my ears, I fled, vainly trying to blot the horrid sight from my memory and failing miserably as I realised, perhaps for the first time, that idols, in this perplexing state called life, invariably have feet of clay, and those feet of clay had broken, buttoned boots...

“Well, times have changed. We know that. Nowadays we have illustrated interviews (showing Miss Violet Powder in her Rolls-Ford, in her bath, in her boudoir, in her peignoir, in her tantrums—not that, yet). Publicity in superlatives, night-clubs, movie-balls—everything conspires to make the actor—like our parks and museums—public property. At present the public is requested not to touch, but that will inevitably come. In the meantime, the public may comment, may talk ‘shop,’ and may become intimately familiar and familiarly impertinent. (I was asked recently by a quite new acquaintance at a private function whether I was getting as large a salary as Mr. —. I suppose, had I replied, we should have followed up by arguing as to which deserved the more, leading to the deduction that neither of us deserved as much!) Why do we do this?

Is business any better than it was? Are movie actors—necessarily remote—any less popular than actors of the speaking stage? I think, on the contrary, they have a very much greater appeal. In fact, I am sure of it. In any case, here is one who, from his love of his profession and from a true regard for his audiences (both English and Australian) prefers to remain as far as possible merged in the former and remote from the latter."

Table Talk (Melbourne), Thursday 3 January 1924, p.5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146467488

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Mother Goose reviewed in the Melbourne Press

“QUACK, QUACK!”

Mother Goose Succeeds

HER GOLDEN EGG

Though even our creditors are mute, and our tailors mum, the jolly old Xmas season of cheery goodwill cannot be complete with only puddings and presents and carols.

There must he a pantomime—a pantomime with fairies, goblins, song and jest, and many skirtless calves in dextrous dance and elegant parade. It must be a pageant of beauty and fantasy centred around the blithesome romance of some sweet, shy maid and a bob-haired boy, who merrily marry in the nick of time before the orchestra. cruelly ends the pretty story with God Save the King.

And all such things, and heaps more, are packed most charmingly into Hugh J. Ward’s Mother Goose, which laid her gilded egg of pantomimic splendor for the first time on Saturday night at the New Palace Theatre.

The show seems certain of success for many nights to come.

Dorothy Brunton, Amy Rochelle, Charles Heslop and Joe Brennan—a rollicking, gay quartette—romped gleefully through scene after scene of changing charm and beauty.

And waddling close behind them came the immense Anastasia—the goose that laid the eggs of gold, and occasionally trod on the ladies’ trains. There surely was never a finer bird than the same Anastasia, even though the program candidly admitted that her “works” are human—William Hassan, in fact.

NAUGHTY BUT ADORABLE

Miss Brunton was prettily there with all her old-time piquancy and grace, as Silverbell—the naughty, adorable maid who rewards Jack with her hand when he recovers the abducted Anastasia from the very horrid Demon Vulture. By right of conquest, and by popular vote, Miss Brunton belongs properly to the musical stage, and she had no trouble in emphasising the fact.

As Jack, Amy Rochelle shines vivaciously, and uses a rich voice of astonishing power in various pretty numbers scattered throughout the piece.

And Joe Brennan seems right in his natural element as Mother Goose, in whose roomy shirts he dames drollishly with the practised art of a comedian who gets his laughs often and easily.

He shares most of the fun of the show with Charles Heslop, the exhibition of whose prowess as a champion athlete and effacer of lions gave him even better chances for farcical by-play than Tons of Money. His adventure with a golf stick was one of his best things in the show.

Ruth Bucknall made a fairy queen in conformity with accepted story-book ideals, and Mione Stewart, who did but little, did that little well. Ida Newton was, as the program truthfully said, “a likeable boy,” and Maidie Field went grimly about the business of keeping a gimlet, eye on Fitzrabbit (Charles Heslop).

ORNITHOLOGICAL FREAK

David Hoffman made an interesting ornithological freak in the role of the wicked, plotting Demon Vulture, while Douglas Calderwood lounged effectively about in various disguises as a foil for the wit of the funny men, as did also Compton Coutts beneath and behind the waving whiskers of Starts, the servant. 

All these people, and a whole host of others, were neatly marshalled into the general scheme of things by Frank Neil, to whose production of the panto, much of its success must be credited.

Signor Mirano—he likes an accent, on the “sig”—does thrilling things in apparent emulation of a stone in a catapult, while the orchestra beneath him wonders what would happen to them if — —.

Then there is some clever juggling by the Littlejohn Duo, and the quaint and imperturbable Fredos play violins in a manner unorthodox and clever. And won’t the kiddies love to watch, and afterwards strive to emulate, the feats of the tiny-tot tumblers, the Royal Wonders!

But if it comes to that, the kiddies will love every moment of it all, and Ma and Pa, be they ever so staid, will warm too to the charm, the fun, and the irresistible brightness of Mother Goose, as readily as did the first-nighters on Saturday.

The Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne), Monday, 24 December 1923, p.5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article274234824

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MOTHER GOOSE— GLIMPSES OF FAIRYLAND.

Spectacular scenes, novelties and an array of pretty girls remain in the memory of those who saw Mr. Hugh J. Ward’s Christmas pantomime Mother Goose, which was presented on Saturday night. From the tiniest fairy to the lanky Heath Robertson effects of Mr. Charles Heslop, the pantomime is essentially a children's pantomime. The humor is clean, if rather devoid of wit, the dialogue having a tendency to fall back on very ordinary vaudeville patter, but the children cannot fail to see the jokes, and they still delight at the gorgeous scenes, and hold their breath at one or two thrills. The fact that the story rather peters out after the first act will hardly be noticed in the novelties, and even old turns, such as tumbling and fiddling clowns, who, like old toys, are just as beloved by the children as any of the novelties.

The curtain rises on a nursery where some of the children are expressing their doubts as to the existence of fairies. Fairy Paradise (Miss Ruth Bucknell) then arrives, and, in order to prove that there are real fairies, unfolds the adventures of Mother Goose in fairyland. She next alights in a woodland retreat of the Demon Vulture (Mr. David Loffman), as he is persuading Squire Hardflint (Mr. Oliver Peacock), to steal she goose that lays the golden egg from Mother Goose, and war is then declared between these influences for good and evil. A delightful village scene reveals the home or Mother Goose, and marketers gathered in dainty rustic costumes, and the first real interest is awakened by the arrival of Mother Goose (Mr. Joe Brennan) and Anastacia the goose (Mr. William Hassan); the dame living up to all the traditions of her character. while Anastacia, otherwise “Sticky Beak,” standing fully 6 feet high, is the image of any goose waddling in a farm yard, and is intensely human to boot. The arrival of Fitzrabbit, the world’s champion athlete (Mr. Charles Heslop) in a freak make up. sent the house into roars of laughter, and his antics throughout never failed to keep the audience in a merry humor. Miss Dorothy Brunton, as Silver Bell, the daughter of Squire Hardflint, might have stepped out of one of Hans Andersen's fairy tales, with her pink and white coloring, fair hair and robust little figure. Jack, Mother Goose's son (Miss Amy Rochelle) had all the dash and adventure of a principal boy, and made a resplendent lover of Silver Bell. The first trick in the war between good and evil is won by the Demon Vulture, with the stealing of the goose by Fitz and his valet, Starts, who has every appearance of having escaped from a lunatic asylum. The unfolding of the story and the eventual triumph of Jack is concluded in the first act, the last act being chiefly a series of vaudeville turns, in which the principals appear in various roles, with the wedding of Silver Bell and Jack as the grand finale.

The music was attractive at times, particularly in a melodious strain “Bebe”, sung with sweetness by Miss Dorothy Brunton, who also scored with Miss Amy Rochelle in “Love Came When I First Met You”, a delightful combination with a chorus of little girls, “Sitting in a Corner”, Ivy Towe, a talented little Japanese, adding an effective note with a plaintive interpretation of her solo. Miss Amy Rochelle lent the vigor of her personality to the fulness of her voice in a number of solos, including “Out of the Shadows” and “Lovelight in Your Eyes”, while a distinct impression was made by Miss Ruth Bucknell in an operatic number, “Behold! Titania”, and Mr. David Loffnan’s fine baritone had full play in “A Vulcan Am I.”

One of the beautiful scenes introduced the Littlejohns in Jewel Land, the stage being a glitter of jewels, against royal blue velvet curtains. The Littlejohns, a mass of gems, performed juggling feats on large jewelled balls, while a seductive dance was also given by Miss Littlejohn, the whole being a vision of Eastern splendor. Some quaint scenery was displayed in a great bird cage, to which birds of every feather trooped in fantastic dances, an artistic exhibition, being finally given by the nimble feet of a Bird of Paradise (Ivy Towe), and the Dancing Vulture (Phyllis Small). A ballet of mother of pearl shells also formed a lovely setting to Silver Bell at the conclusion of the first act, while brides from the Elizabethan and Louis XVI. periods to the far future made an exquisite scene before the final curtain of the pantomime.  Among the vaudeville acts, a thrill was created with the aid of a horizontal bar on top of an eiffel tower, at one end of which was attached an aeroplane whizzing round at a great pace to the accompaniment of a noisy engine, and at the other a trapezist, who performed daring feats on long and short poles set at right angles.  Mr. Joe Brennan and Mr. Douglas Calderwood as a monocled “silly ass” created a diversion, the latter occupying a box during the dialogue. A “little game of golf,” played by Messrs. Heslop, Compton Coutts and Calderwood add Miss Maidie Field, caused some hearty laughter, proving one of the most humorous “stunts” of the night. Others who added to the merriment were Trueheart (Miss Ida Newton) and Joybell (Miss Mione Stewart). A group of children also took part in an athletic turn.

The pantomime was produced by Mr. Frank Neil, while the ballets, dances and ensembles were arranged by Miss Minnie Hooper, and the costumes carried out by Miss Ethel Moar. Mr. Harry Jacobs was musical director, the lyrics and music being the composition of the Australian, Mr. Hamilton Webber, Mus. Bac. At the conclusion, Mr. John Fuller announced there would be matinees and evening performances every day this week, and spoke in appreciative terms of the work of the company, Mr. Frank Neil briefly responding. Numerous floral tributes were received by the artists.

Evidently, from Mr. Fuller’s announcement, there will be two performances on Christmas day.

The Age (Melbourne), Monday, 24 December 1923, p.8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206240719

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“MOTHER GOOSE”

Ward–Fuller’s First Pantomime

Of the audience that filled every part of the Palace Theatre on Saturday, many, no doubt, were inspired with curiosity to se how the relatively young Ward–Fuller combination would quit itself in its first essay at pantomime. By their very presence, however, they showed their confidence that the firm would not fail in a different branch of the entrepreneur’s art. That confidence was not misplaced.

“Mother Goose” was the pantomime chosen by Mr. Hugh Ward. The plot he adopted did not seem to be strictly orthodox—if there is such a thing as orthodoxy in the nursery legends on which all good pantomimes are based. Squire Hardflint, whose name is an index to his nature, is urged by the Demon Vulture to steal Mother Goose’s pet goose Anastacia, the promise being given that in the Demon’s good time he would be told the magic word which impels the bird to lay an egg of gold instead of an ordinary one. With the assistance of his nephew, Fitzrabbit, who after all, does not seem such a bad fellow, the Squire steals the goose: but Mother Goose and her sailor son, Jack, rescue the precious bird. Held to a promise to grant his pretty daughter Silverbell any request, as a birthday gift, the Squire is compelled to recognise as her suitor young Jack, whom he hates, but the magic word that coaxes forth the golden egg has not yet been discovered, and he gives the suitor one year in which to discover it. Aided by the timely intervention of the Fairy Paradise, Jack accomplishes his task, and the pantomime, like all other pantomimes, ends with wedding bells.

Chief interest centred on Miss Dorothy Brunton, who, in the role of principal girl (Silverbell), was making her first appearance in pantomime. Miss Brunton’s work in musical comedy is too well known for her to be treated in any sense as a novice, however. Let it suffice to say that her winsome personality and sure touch won for her fresh triumphs, even in the relatively slight role of a pantomime principal girl. Her songs and duets with Jack were sweetly sung. As Jack, Miss Amy Rochelle made a dashing and vivacious principal boy, her powerful soprano voice making the most of the songs that fell to her lot.  She wore some striking costumes. The comedy was in the hands of Messrs. Charles Heslop (Fitzrabbit), Oliver Peacock (Squire Hardflint), Joe Brennan (Mother Goose), William Hassan (the Goose), and Compton Coutts (Fitzrabbit’s servant). Mr. Heslop’s quiet humour lifted many of the scenes above the level of ordinary pantomime, his tennis and golfing burlesques being especially amusing. Mr. Brennan had a quieter style than many pantomime dames, but it loses nothing in effectiveness. Mr. Hassan is a veteran animal impersonator, and although restricted by the limitations of his part, he made to goose an entertaining bird.  Mr. Peacock made the most of the part of a villian who has his softer moments, as the father of such a girl as Silverbell should have. Misses Ida Newton and Mione Stewart acceptably filled the parts of Trueheart (the second “boy”), and his sweetheart Joybell, and Miss Maidie Field did well in a small comedy part. As the Fairy Paradise, Miss Ruth Bucknall acted and sang with charm; and Mr. David Loffman made an impressive Demon. Mr. Douglas Calderwood has only a small part as a circus manager, but he also has the responsibilities of stage manager on his shoulders.  A word of praise is due, too, to the daintily dressed girls taking part in the various ballets and ensembles, with special mention of the children—some of them very tiny tots—whose work told a story of intelligence and careful training.

Of the specialty turns, the Littlejohns presented one that was strikingly beautiful. The Royal Wonders, a troupe consisting of nine girls—some almost babies—and two boys, contributed some clever ground tumbling and pyramid displays; while the Fredos, two men, showed how it is possible to do tumbling and balancing, and play the violin at the same time. Oscar Mirano presented the “Flying Torpedo,” in which he does acrobatic feats while whirling around on a ladder which spins on a tower, his weight being counterbalanced by a partner seated in a torpedo-shaped airship at the other end of the ladder.

At the end of the performance Mr. John Fuller briefly expressed his thanks to the public for their reception of the pantomime. He specially mentioned Mr. Frank Neil, the producer, and Miss Minnie Hooper, the ballet mistress, both of whom had to respond to the calls of the audience.

The Argus (Melbourne), Monday, 23 December 1923, p.10, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page427359

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AMUSING AND COLORFUL

“Mother Goose” at the Palace

Should a pantomime artist be able to act? At first glance that question appears to be ridiculous, but when you come to think about It, there is almost an air of novelty In the idea that pantomime characters should be living beings with definite individualities, and not merely pegs on which to hang the delightful hotch-potch of sentiment, popular song, stunts and topical allusion which comprises a modern pantomime.

In “Mother Goose,” which opened to a big house at the Palace on Saturday evening, Mr. Hugh J. Ward shows that artists who are able to act convincingly strengthen greatly a pantomime cast. In this one, not only does a thread of the story run through the whole performance, but most of the characters bear an air of verisimilitude. Miss Dorothy Brunton, as the principal girl, for Instance, makes her part a witty, vivacious little person with a mind of her own. Mr. Joe Brennan, as the dame, abandons discussions on gin and/or late husbands, to betray the characteristics of an elderly female fond of her goose and her son.  Miss Amy Rochelle is as principal boyish as is compatible with that incongruous creation. Mr. Charles Heslop, more at home, and consequently funnier in this show than his last, makes quite a person out of the eccentric Fitzrabbit.

As a production “Mother Goose” is colorful, happy, quick-moving and refreshingly clean. It contains not one dubious remark or situation. Possibly that is because the whole cast is strong enough to get its effects without adventitious aids. If the show has a fault, it lies in the opening. The play takes some twenty minutes to get under way, during which the action is stereotyped and unimportant.  In the third scene the principals make their traditional entrances—cheers from the villagers, dame falling out of cart, and that sort of thing—but from that moment everything goes well. A little cutting down will set matters right.

The singing strength is unusual. Strong, true, tuneful voices are abundant. In not many pantomimes can the principal boy, principal girl, two villains, fairy queen, dame and second boy and girl all contribute solos with success. Furthermore, they are assisted by an attractive, energetic and graceful chorus, which is a feature in Itself. Several songs will catch on, including the old-fashioned but likely “How’s Everything?” (sung by Miss Rochelle), “Love Came When I First Met You” (duet). “Running Wild” (sung by Miss Brunton), “Oh, You Son of a Gun” (sung by Miss Mione Stewart), and “Strut Miss Lizzie” (Miss Rochelle again).

Miss Rochelle adds to her laurels with yet another principal boy part (her sixth). Miss Brunton, of course, is our Dorothy. In the ungainly disguise of the goose, Mr. William Hassan is remarkably expressive. The regulation parts of Fairy Queen, Demon Vulture, Squire Hardflint, Trueheart (second boy), Joybell (second girl), and Starts, are most capably filled by Miss Ruth Bucknall, Mr. David Loffman, Mr. Oliver Peacock, Miss Ida Newton, Miss Mione Stewart, and Mr. Compton Coutts respectively.

There are four specialties, which is uncommon, and three of them—the Littlejohns, the Miranos, and the Royal Wonders—are particularly good.—

—N.S.

The Herald (Melbourne), Monday, 24 December 1923, p.10, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article243502699

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“Mother Goose”

Crammed With Good Things

This year Mr. Hugh J. Ward has set out to show how much it is possible to get into a pantomime. Not content with a lot of gorgeousness, some new music and a selection of jokes from “The Puntomisist’s Vade Mecum,” he has gathered together a company of exceptional strength, put them under an energetic young producer, amassed a nearly new selection of songs, a wealth of humor, and quite a record number of funny sketches. Mixing these well together, he has added a chorus and ballet fit to compare with those round the corner at the Princess, a gorgeous production and a fine orchestra. The result is “Mother Goose,” which opened at the Palace on Saturday. The only thing he has excluded is suggestiveness.

This pantomime bids fair to be the most successful production put on in that particular theatre since the advent of the Ward management. The cream of the cast of “Tons of Money” appears in it, along with several pantomime specialists and four picked acts from the Fuller circuit.

Charles Heslop assumes the nondescript part of Fitzrabblt, in which he is much happier than he was in the straight farce. He gets in a number of the sketches which made him famous.  Dorothy Brunton is an exceptionally good principal girl, and Miss Amy Rochelle’s work needs no further praise than that her principal boy is even better than the other five she has played. As the Dame, Joe Brennan is excellent, and special praise must also be given to William Hassan for his incarnation of the goose. The remainder of the cast worthily follows in the steps of these leaders.

As a pantomime. “Mother Goose” combines the best features of old-fashioned productions, such as fidelity to plot and unity, with those modern tendencies, such as fine ensembles, wealth of color, and first-rate special acts. The hand of the master is in it all.

There is no necessity to compare or contrast the two pantomimes. The best advice to playgoers is to see both of them.

The Sporting Globe (Melbourne), Wednesday, 26 December 1923, p.9, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184816056

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N.B. The competing pantomime was the J.C. Williamson Ltd. production of Aladdin staged at Her Majesty’s Theatre starring English comedienne Ada Reeve in the title role.

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PALACE THEATRE.

“Mother Goose.”

Surely “Mother Goose,” the panto which is filling the Palace Theatre, will go down to memory as the singing pantomime. Everybody in the cast seems to be able to sing so well that it is like a comic opera show rather than a pantomime. The choruses are excellent, and the bird chorus, with the wicked vulture at its head, makes such fine effect that it is next door to grand opera.

“Mother Goose” is bright and colorful throughout. From the first moment the curtain goes up to show the pyjama-clad kiddies with their bedtime story book, who are interrupted by the wicked vulture and the good fairy, it goes with a snap.

Mother Goose is a lively old lady, and her goose is a marvel; she does not know it is the goose that lays the golden eggs, but the vulture, who is the demon, tells the wicked Squire, and the Squire resolves to steal it. He wants Fitzrabbit to marry his daughter Silver Bell, and he gets him to help him steal the goose so that they will be rich.

There are many other people in the story. Ruth comes along and bullies Fitzrabbit. There is a lion tamer, and others come and go.

The scenery is good, the village scene in the first act being charming. There are others more gorgeous, but not more attractive.

The ballets will be a big feature, for they are excellent, the children’s ballet being very fine. The youthful ballerina and her partner are wonderful dancers and most graceful. The little girl, Ivy Towe, does some excellent toe work, while Phyllis Small, who takes the part of the boy, is a graceful and beautiful dancer, and the manner in which she catches and holds her partner in the flying movements of the dance would do credit to any one of the expert masculine dancers whom she impersonates. They are exquisite dancers.

The Royal Wonders, a team of child acrobats, will surely create a furore. Their work is astounding. A lip of a child, who looks a mere baby, wheels in somersaults across the stage so fast that arms and legs are blurred, and it seems just a flash of something white and gold—she is flaxen haired—that makes the onlookers blink with surprise.

Amy Rochelle is a dashing principal boy who would sing the heart out of any girl. Her methods have greatly improved and matured since she was last seen in Melbourne. Her work has gained in finish and refinement without losing any of its dash and effectiveness.

Dorothy Brunton is a fascinating principal girl, with real charm, and her acting and singing are charming. Joe Brennan is a splendid Mother Goose, with quick humorous methods, which are admirably free from any touch of vulgarity.

Oliver Peacock’s Squire is something out of the ordinary in pantomime, dignified, commanding, and wicked, while his singing is excellent. Fitzrabbit, who enters into vile plots with him, in Charles Heslop’s hands is a versatile individual with a quiet, dry turn of wit all his own. His episode with the lion tamer (Douglas Calderwood) and Ruth (Maidie Field) is most diverting, with an unexpected ending. Maidie Field’s comedy is always amusing.

The Goose of Wm. Hassan is a wonderful bird with infinite expression and an intelligence that is uncanny. The children just love it.

There is a second boy played by Ida Newton, who is dashing and most effective, and his sweetheart, played by Mione Stewart, is dainty and sings charmingly.

The good fairy, Ruth Bucknell, has a beautiful voice, which is heard to great advantage, and the vulture, Dave Loffman, who is the demon of the story, not only has a splendid voice, but his acting is really dramatic. Their duets together are exceptionally fine, and make a big hit. It is an unusually powerful cast, with an individuality which tells in every scene.

Table Talk (Melbourne), Thursday, 27 December 1923, p.34

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MOTHER GOOSE AGAIN.

THE CHILDREN'S TREAT.

In recent years the Messrs. Fuller have specialised in pantomimes with an appeal to youth. In the “Mother Goose” at the Palace they still make it the children's pantomime, with that extra polish which stands criticism from children of the larger growth. So it comes that Dorothy Brunton brings all the ease and experience of many musical comedy triumphs to such a comparatively simple part, as the pantomime girl has little to do, after all, but give pretty ear-pleasing songs something more than their musical value. But one star will not make a pantomime constellation, and a great many good bright ones have been massed for “Mother Goose,” perhaps the oldest, certainly next to "Cinderella" the most popular, of all pantomime tales. To be just, one should on a first night look only for the colour of a pantomime, leaving its comedy and personal character for later discovery. Though in personnel the ballets and chorus range from age to infancy, so the pony ballets and puny ballets predominate, and here the appeal to the children is definite and irresistible. Youth calls to youth across the footlights, and the entente is complete. The many extra features which have somehow been wedged in make the vaudeville side very prominent, and the Messrs. Fuller have very special facilities for equipping pantomime on this particular side. What could be more dazzling, for example, than the act of the Littlejohns, who while they balance on rolling globes go through clever juggling acts, while a thousand facets project with each movement fresh showers of glittering light. The Royal Wonders are a team of nine little girls and two boys, who, amongst other feats, are dexterous in building living pyramids. The Fredos are musical tumblers who play the violin in all sorts of strange attitudes, though why anybody should make a point of playing a violin under his leg or behind his back when there are so many better ways of doing it, still needs rational explanation. Dazzling and daring of aim is the flying torpedo act of Oscar Mirano, in which some effective properties are used.

“Mother Goose” the spectacle is happily reinforced on the personal side. There is the daintiness and the definite touch of Dorothy Brunton, paired with the breezy dash of Amy Rochelle. Both wear some very beautiful costumes, and wonderful head-dresses, which look like the forbidden plumes, but are only make-believe. As a second boy and girl Ida Newton and Mione Stewart play up judiciously to their principals, chief of whom on the comedy side is Mr. Heslop, much better placed in pantomime than comedy. There is just a suspicion that Mr. Heslop has had to collect his jokes in a hurry, but the new humour would hardly do for pantomime, and Mr. Heslop excels in such extravagances as burlesque tennis and golf. Mr. Joe Brennan is again a quiet, yet effective, dame. There will be more to say of the pantomime when we know more about it.

The Australasian (Melbourne), Saturday, 29 December 1923, p.27, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140831943

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The lone voice of dissent amongst the critics was The Bulletin’s veteran Melbourne-based scribe, Edmund Fisher who was singularly unimpressed with the proceedings.

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SUNDRY SHOWS

The current procession of songs, circus acts and crosstalk turns miscalled “Mother Goose," at Melbourne Palace, is a modest donation to the merriment of Christmas. 

The hand of the managerial economist is visible in the sparsely populated ballets, and, barring a final tableau of strutting nymphs, the eye is rarely invited to loiter on the scenery. Moreover, a good deal of the programme recalls the turns of more or less recent vaudeville artists. Two clowns mournfully scraping fiddles in acrobatic postures, and a pair of average jugglers remarkable for their blinding wealth of rhine-stones, are among the more unexciting intruders. The whirling of a death-defying signor on a merry-go-round of his own devising is accepted as a breathless novelty, though his business on a trapeze over the orchestra chiefly excites speculation as to whether he would fall on the trombonist or the second fiddle if he lost his grip. Of the principals the most momentous in point of physique is the leading lady, Amy Rochelle, who now looks like a fugitive from a weight-lifting act. From this lady's sturdy torso issue various ballads, apparently written to exhibit the untutored lustiness of her upper register. Clemency is extended to Dorothy Brunton, who seems dwarfed by her meagre opportunities. Joe Brennan, as the Dame, is a doss-house for homeless jests. Also his croaky undertone isn’t overburdened with fun. Dressed as a nightmare of wayward girlhood he has some tedious chat with a monocled johnny in a box. Heslop’s whimsicality tends now and then to resemble the corybantics of a cat on hot bricks, but there are moments in his golf sketch and elsewhere which are genuinely diverting. Squire Hardflint is lost in the heavy personality of Oliver Peacock, David Loffman is a substantial Demon Vulture, and William Hassan’s goose is excellent and is almost the only evidence that the absent fairy-tale is hanging about waiting to make itself heard. It is a pity to see Mione Stewart tucked away among the also-rans. She is more appealing than Maidie Field, whose manner is productive of critical unrest. A group of infant tumblers and dancers are conspicuous, Ivy Towe among the latter doing some pretty solo work.

The Bulletin (Sydney), 27 December 1923, pp.34 & 36

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Tom Glover caricature for The Bulletin

Commercial broadcasting in Melbourne officially commenced in January 1924

From Farmers’ Advocate (Melbourne), 25 January 1924, p.4

Part 4: In a 1933 program note, Frank Neil told Tivoli patrons ‘Like so many others, I belong to that happy band of “grown-up” children who build castles in the air and through the medium of showmanship turn these fantastic dreams into realities.’

Caricature of Frank Neil by Sam Wells. From The Herald (Melbourne), 16 November 1929, p.20.Neil dusted off Cinderellato give the Palace in Melbourne an attraction for Christmas 1933. Josie Melville was Cinders, with Miriam Lester as Prince Charming, Syd Beck and Bert Ray as the Ugly Sisters, Ernest Kilroy as Cutie the Cat, the five acrobatic Whirlwind Cleveres, and Cusko’s Dog and Monkey Circus. Cusko (real name: Bill Henderson) toured his carefully trained animals in circus and vaudeville for many years. The production transferred to the Theatre Royal in Adelaide, where it opened on 10 February 1934 under the J.C. Williamson banner.

Nevertheless, it was at the Tivolis in Melbourne and Sydney that Frank Neil presented comedian Fred Miller and Millie Deane, ‘The Lady with the Laughing Legs’. Backing them were Len Rich, Billy Maloney, Keith Connolly, the Weatherly Sisters, Morry Barling, a contortionist called Frogella, and Rahman Bey, ‘The Mystic Man of the East’. For his act, this gentleman permitted knives, daggers and long pins to be thrust into his body while he was in a state of ‘cataleptic anaesthesia’. He claimed that he could totally suspend his breathing and circulation, enabling him to be buried alive for up to six hours. Also on the bill were the Weatherly Sisters. They were descended from a lengthy line of circus performers and one of them, Zilla, a contortionist, frequently performed with her husband, Billy Andros, whose speciality was creating weird and wonderful things from torn newspapers. Their daughter, born in 1929, was often part of their act. Billed as ‘Baby Gloria’ she went on to become stage legend Gloria Dawn.

It was at this point, early 1934, that Mike Connors and Queenie Paul decided to sell what was left of their investment in Connors and Paul Theatres Pty Ltd. A new company was formed: Tivoli Circuit of Australia Pty Ltd. George Dickenson held the majority of shares. Initially he, W.H. Ince and Frank Neil were listed in the programs as directors; soon this was adjusted to a single credit: ‘Frank Neil, Managing Director’. The directors quickly determined a new direction for the Tivoli Circuit. The Tivoli would present lavish, glossy revues, each headed by a big overseas star. No more small-time acts like Stuart and Lash, Jack Russell or Joe Marks. And—unless there were no alternatives—no more companies headed by Australian comedians.

Millie Deane (left), Connors & Paul (centre), and Jim Gerald (right). All author’s collection.

‘Frank Neil will leave for America, England and the Continent on the Monterey on 2 May 1934, in search of attractions for the Tivoli Circuit,’ said a program note. ‘Overseas stars will soon arrive in a constant stream to entertain and amuse you. They will be supported by the pick of Australia’s best talent and the policy at all times will be to foster and encourage the progress of the local stage aspirants. The whole world will be searched for your pleasure, so look forward to the big stars who will be brought to the Tivoli for your approval.’

Clearly, the new policy was dependent on the results of Frank Neil’s overseas foray. In the meantime, the Melbourne Tivoli hosted yet another season of Jim Gerald’s weekly-change programs combining revue and ‘tabloid’ or miniature musical comedies. In Jim’s company were Tom Dale, Edna Ralston, Lily Coburn, Lance Vane, Vilma Kaye, Bobbie Clifton, Max Reddy and Will Perryman (Jill’s father), supported, as ever, by the eight dancing ‘Twinklers’.

Sydney program for May 1934. Author’s collection.

The first shows in the Sydney Tivoli under the new regime were a series of weekly-change revues under the general title of Jimmy Taylor’s Non-Stop Follies. Jimmy Taylor was English, another of the overseas nonentities foisted as headliners on local audiences. There is more interest—and talent—in the locally recruited supporting company: comics Syd Beck, Jay Morris, Keith Connolly and Len Rich, soubrette Stella Lamond and magician Will Alma. Alas, Jimmy Taylor proved so unattractive to Sydney audiences that after two weeks the management gave top billing to Syd Beck, shrank the Non-Stop Folliesto fit one half of the program and showed films to fill up the rest. Apart from the Paramount British Sound News (‘The Eyes and Ears of the World’) and Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, Tivoli audiences were subjected to third-rate Paramount program-fillers: The Last Round-Up with Randolph Scott, Terror Abroad with Charles Ruggles and, in the third and final week, Four Frightened People with Claudette Colbert and Herbert Marshall. It was an inauspicious start.

Syd Beck

Author’s collection

Percy Crawford

Author’s collection

When Non-Stop Follies opened at the Theatre Royal in Brisbane, Jimmy Taylor was still relegated to second billing behind Syd Beck. By the time the company reached Melbourne Beck himself was playing second fiddle to ‘The World’s Greatest Male Impersonator’, Hetty King. For once, the description was accurate. British born, the dapper Miss King’s acclaimed portrayals of soldiers and sailors were legendary, and by around 1930 she was reputed to be the world’s highest-paid music hall star. Her act always concluded with her 1908 hit, ‘All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor’. This was her third Tivoli engagement: she had played the Circuit in 1924 and 1927.

Meanwhile Frank Neil had been scouting for talent in the United States and Europe. What he was looking for were acts that were relatively inexpensive, but that could be promoted in Australia as international stars. Performers who had film credits were typical, also performers who still had a ‘name’ but whose careers were on the wane. And there were some who were attracted by the prospect of a fully paid trip ‘Down Under’ and the chance to experience what was then regarded as a totally foreign land.

Neil also had inherited Percy Crawford from Connors and Paul. Percy Crawford was probably the best theatrical publicity man in Australia. He’d started as a box office boy at the Sydney Tivoli in 1901, and he loved variety and knew the business backwards. If anyone could convince the public that the Tivoli was entering a new era, it was Percy.

Just before he left London Neil caught up with Fred Miller and Millie Deane. They had starred for him in Australia a few months before and were now in a controversial new revue called West End Scandals at the Garrick Theatre. Through them he met the show’s similarly controversial producer, Wallace R. Parnell. It was the start of an association that would have a profound effect on the evolution of Australian theatre.

Francis W. Thring

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Joey Porter

Author’s collection

Back in Australia the Tivoli management anxiously awaited Frank Neil’s return and the arrival of the artistes he was booking overseas. The Sydney Tivoli was their major concern. At first, they announced that film screenings would continue after the departure of the Jimmy Taylor company, but the reaction to them in Melbourne had been so bad that the idea was quickly shelved. Instead, one of this country’s great showmen, Francis W. Thring came to the rescue, transferring four big shows from his home base, the Princess in Melbourne. When they moved on, opera moved in: the Sydney Tivoli provided an unlikely venue for Sir Benjamin Fuller’s Royal Grand Opera Company.

Frank Neil returned to Australia in September 1934. With him to inaugurate the Tivoli Circuit’s new era were ‘twenty-five international stars’. The most notable were an American knockabout dance act, Nice, Florio and Lubow; French adagio dancers Les Diamondes; German comic Alec Halls; and chirpy Joey Porter, ‘England’s Youngest Funster’, whom The Age thought ‘had something of the Chaplin genius’. Appropriately titled New Faces, the show was put together at the Melbourne Tivoli where it opened on 10 October 1934. The settings were ‘sketched and painted by K.V. McGuinness’, the dances ‘invented and arranged by Maurice Diamond’ with ‘the specially augmented orchestra under the baton of Harry Lazarus’. Among the many highlights were ‘To Hell with War’, described as ‘A Song Scena to Make You Think’, and the Act One finale which re-created Bourke Street in 1860, ‘with the entire company in the correct costumes of the period’. When they eventually reached the Sydney Tivoli in March 1935, the Bourke Street scene had miraculously become ‘Circular Quay, 1860’.

With the Sydney Tivoli still occupied by the Fuller Grand Opera Company, the New Faces company played in New Zealand for the Christmas season. The tour was co-produced with J.C. Williamson’s. Surviving documentation shows that the star act, Nice, Florio and Lubow, were drawing £100 a week; Joey Porter was on £50, Alec Halls was on £30, and Maurice Diamond (the stage manager and dance director) was on £10. A musical act called the Three Ambassadors was on £45; Harry Lazarus, a member of this trio, also conducted the orchestra.

Hetty King

Author’s collection

Cast list for Mother Goose, Melbourne, 1934

Theatre Heritage Australia

For Christmas 1934 Frank Neil directed Mother Goose at the King’s in Melbourne. Jim Gerald was Mother Goose and Hetty King was featured as Colin, the Principal Boy. William Hassan played the Golden Goose, as he had for Frank in 1923. This Mother Goose was a co-production with J.C. Williamson’s. After production costs and current expenditure were deducted from the takings, Williamson’s took £80 for rent, and the remaining profits or losses were divided equally between the Tivoli and Williamson’s. Neil persuaded Jennie Brenan to produce the ballets for nothing; in return he was to select sixteen of the ballet and all the twenty-four children from her dancing school. In addition, Miss Brenan would supply the children’s wardrobe. Neil’s rough run-down of the weekly running costs has survived: Jim Gerald was on £105, Hetty King was on £60, Hassan on £17, most of the other principals received around £8, the twenty-four members of the ballet got £3 each, the twenty-four children got £1 each, the ten members of the orchestra, including the conductor, got £85 between them, and the backstage crew got £60. The total weekly running cost was estimated at £786. There is a telling reflection of the times in a memo from Frank Tait to Neil regarding the well-known comedian Alfred Frith, whom Neil wanted to cast as the mayor: ‘Frith would, I think be quite a reasonably good engagement. It is some years since he worked for us. The last time I think his salary was £25, but that was in the prosperous days, and I would suggest that if you engage him, about half that salary would be sufficient.’ In the end the part went to Nick Morton.

Sid Field

Author’s collection

Ad for The Laughter Zone

From The Argus (Melbourne), 21 January 1935, p.16

Before this, though, Neil had opened his second big revue at the Melbourne Tivoli. Paris En Fête was touted as coming from the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. It didn’t. It was one of the revues put together by Geoffrey Hope and Vivian Palmer to tour the English provinces. Neil had seen it and had been particularly impressed by the leading comedian, a young man called Sid Field. Neil contracted with Hope and Palmer to take the whole show to Australia. Field, whose wife was expecting their first child, initially refused to go, putting the tour in jeopardy. Eventually it was agreed that his wife would accompany him—and his daughter was born in Melbourne. A second Geoffrey Hope revue, In Town Tonight, followed Paris En Fête into the Melbourne Tivoli early in the New Year.

Sid Field left the company early in 1935. He had not been the hit Frank Neil expected. Field felt that Australians wanted humour of a broader kind; he also complained that many of his best sketches had already been exploited by local comics. He returned to Britain but did not find stardom until his first West End appearance in 1943. He died a mere seven years later, aged only forty-three, one of the most popular and respected comedians in English variety.

Kenneth Duffield

Author’s collection

Moi-Yo Miller

From Dante: Sim Sala Bim - 50 Tricks for Everybody

Sid Field’s place at the top of the bill at the Tivoli was taken by Jim Gerald. In his honour the show was called London Calling: Jim was about to depart for Britain with his wife, Essie Jennings. Their trip was arranged by Frank Neil to inaugurate an arrangement with English producers Geoffrey Hope and Vivian Palmer to facilitate the interchange of artistes between Australia and England. Jim eventually made it to the West End in a revue called Don’t Spare the Horseswhich opened at the Garrick Theatre on 30 October 1935. It was the creation of Kenneth Duffield, an Australian who had produced Tivoli revues for Hugh D. McIntosh in 1930. Duffield also wrote the music. Don’t Spare the Horses was greeted by generally sympathetic notices—one reviewer thought it had ‘a certain not altogether unattractive air of improvisation’—but sadly it survived for only five performances. Legend has it that one critic cruelly ordered, ‘Home, James!’

After Jim Gerald’s departure for Britain the London Calling company stayed on to provide the first half of a program featuring the Great Dante. One of the world’s master illusionists, Dante—Harry Jansen—had previously visited Australia in 1933. Especially featured was his glamorous stage assistant, a young Geelong-born beauty, Mona Miller, though she had adopted the stage name Moi-Yo Miller, a pseudonym she used for the rest of her long career. She came to be internationally recognised as a master magician in her own right. She died in Melbourne in 2018, aged 104.

Following his Tivoli season, Dante presented his full show at the King’s in Russell Street, then switched to the Sydney Tivoli in June. The Dante show opened with ‘Ten tricks in ten seconds—nod to a friend and you miss a trick!’ Amongst the dozens of wonders that followed was ‘the most daring illusion ever attempted: Mutilation, Decapitation, Annihilation, Restoration.’ The program concluded with ‘Dante’s crowning achievement: passing a lady from the stage to within a nest of trunks hanging from the ceiling—the utmost in modern stagecraft.’

Janice Hart

Author’s collection

Phyllis Dixey

Author’s collection

Neil’s next major Tivoli venture was a series of elaborate French-themed revues ‘adapted, anglicised and produced’ by Dublin-born London-based comedian and dancer Frank O’Brian. O’Brian shared top billing with his wife, Janice Hart, a Black singer, dancer and comedian, born in the London suburb of Camden. Miss Hart had visited Australia before, but then she had been billed as Cassie Walmer. The new stage name was designed to validate her adoption of the exotic persona and repertoire of Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris.

With a company of fifty and 500 costumes the cycle opened at the Melbourne Tivoli in April 1935 with Birds of the Night (Les Oiseaux de Nuit). The Herald praised its ‘rapid humour, rhythm, numerically outsize ballets, quick patter and welcome originality; in fact, three diverting hours of galloping entertainment that has the crowds cheering.’ Birds of the Night was followed by Women of the World (Les Femmes du Monde), Why Go To Paris?, Beauty on Parade and so on.

In April 1935 Frank Neil sailed for the United States in the liner Monterey. He also visited London. Not only did he book dozens of acts, he also contracted a producer. It had become obvious that he simply did not have the time to perform his duties as managing director, travel overseas to book acts, and produce shows in Sydney and Melbourne. What the Circuit needed was a competent resident revue producer, preferably with overseas experience and a good track record. The man Frank chose was Wallace R. Parnell, whom he had met in London the previous year. Though the job fitted him perfectly, Parnell was the very black sheep of one of Britain’s most celebrated theatrical families.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, the Tivoli inaugurated a series of revues starting with Hello America. Top billing was shared by English funny-man Joey Porter and the American comedic song-and-dance act Forsythe, Seamon and Farrell. Also on the bill were Ruth Craven, singing Cole Porter’s sassy ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, and a bright young local soubrette, Cath Esler. An interesting innovation was a compere  ̶  ‘the role is difficult and requires an artiste of rare versatility and quick wit’. The Tivoli’s first compere was Ted Leary, a wisecracking American comedian.

Wallace Parnell sailed for Australia in July 1935. With him was his 'companion', Miss Winifred Hopped, an aspiring 22-year-old actress, whom everyone politely assumed was his wife. Meanwhile Queenie May, the real Mrs Parnell, remained behind in England. Her marriage and her career had faltered, and she was said to have ‘turned to drink’. Another passenger was Phyllis Dixey, who had been romantically linked with Parnell and who had starred in several of his touring revues. Also on board were Tracy and Vinette—actually Jack Tracy and Sophie Levine—whose speciality was an act called ‘The Sap and the Swell Dame’. During the trip, Jack became romantically linked with Phyllis Dixey. They married in 1937. Acclaimed ‘The Queen of Striptease’, Phyllis ran spicy strip shows at London’s Whitehall Theatre for some years, and produced the long-running farce Worm’s Eye View.

Wallace Parnell

Author’s collection

Ad for The Laughter Express

Author’s collection

Parnell’s first production for the Tivoli was The Laughter Express. With typical disregard for the truth, the program called him ‘The Peer of English Producers, from the London Palladium’. The Laughter Expressopened in Melbourne on 11 September 1935. The Star judged it ‘the best variety revue and fun ever put on at the Tivoli.’

Wallace Parnell soon settled into the Tivoli’s routine. Frank Neil made all the important bookings and it was left to Parnell to meld the acts into cohesive shows. Although Neil and Parnell respected each other, their relationship was often stormy. Loud, acrimonious arguments were not uncommon. Parnell had to accept Neil’s policy of spending money on what he called ‘big name’ imports, even they were often fading stars who were relatively cheap. To pay their salaries and fares Neil saved money on production. He often re-vamped sets and costumes, much to Parnell’s frustration, and production staff had to devise cheap ways to make the shows look expensive.

‘The ballet costumes were scanty, nothing elaborate,’ recalled Jim Hutchings. ‘There was plenty of glitter and coloured lights, but everything was done on the cheap. Plenty of tap routines, good gags, Mo and Jim Gerald, Morry Barling, Syd Beck. Cheap local acts as fill-ins. Eight in the orchestra, two on the lines, three in electrics, two in props, a stage manager and an assistant. Eight in the ballet. All staff at an absolute minimum. We were all on small wages. This thrift built the Tivoli.’

Fred Parsons confirms this parsimony: ‘Frank Neil was a terrifically hard worker and could turn his hand to anything in the theatre. He once boasted that the sets for an entire Tivoli production had cost him 4s 6d, and that was for nails. And I have seen him backstage, early in the morning, painting some scenery—not because he thought he could do it better than his scenic artist, but because he enjoyed doing it.’

In those days shows played twice daily, at 2.30 and 8 pm. The productions were mounted in Melbourne, opening on the Monday matinee after an extensive band call in the morning. Seasons ran for five weeks in Melbourne, and five in Sydney. Often changes were incorporated in the seasons’ final two weeks for the benefit of patrons coming to see the show for the second time. After Sydney there were frequently short seasons in Brisbane and Adelaide and sometimes through New Zealand.

As managing director of the Tivoli, Frank Neil always ensured that his name was placed prominently in publicity and in the programs. All the shows were tagged ‘Frank Neil presents...’ Wallace Parnell was named as producer, but always in a style that made it clear that Frank Neil was in charge. And although George Dickenson was by far the largest shareholder in the business, his name was never mentioned.

Ad for The Laughter Express and other shows

From The Sun (Sydney), 6 December 1935, p.5

The stars of Babes in Wood, Maudie Edwardes & Winnie Mervale, as seen by cartoonist Stanley Parker

From Table Talk (Melbourne), 9 January 1936, p.19

There were pantomimes in both Sydney and Melbourne for Christmas 1935. Wallace Parnell produced Cinderellaat the Sydney Tivoli with The Laughter Express company. Phyllis Dixey was Dandini with local star Robert Nicholson as Demon Nightshade, terrifying the tots with his song about ‘The Green-Eyed Dragon with the Thirteen Tails’. In Melbourne, Frank Neil produced The Babes in the Wood at the King’s in a co-production arrangement with J.C. Williamson’s similar to that for Mother Goose the year before. This time, however, Neil was at pains to point out that as the pantomime would include a number of the Tivoli’s overseas stars, it was only fair that part of their fares should be charged against the panto’s production costs. In a letter to Frank Tait, he suggested that £70 a week should be allowed to cover these costs. ‘We are really getting an imported cast of stars for at a cost of just £12 15s more than the cast and specialities cost last year. P.S.: Don’t forget you are getting the use of the services of these people without sharing any of the costs of my world tour to secure them.’ When Frank Tait started to haggle, Neil shot back a terse note: ‘Dear Frank Tait, All right. Don’t let’s argue. We will charge £50 a week for the overseas fares. Kind regards, Frank Neil.’ Again, Neil’s draft budget has survived. The top salary, £100, went to Alfred Latell as Bonzo the Dog; Syd Beck was on £30 as the Dame, Nurse Anastasia, and the other principals’ salaries ranged from £25 down to £4. Juggler Jean Florian was on £35 and Alice Uren’s acrobats got a total of £10.

Garrick Theatre, Melbourne

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Art Centre Melbourne

Animal impersonator Alfred Latell

Travalanche

Frank Neil also worked with entrepreneurs Milton and Adams as producer for Sinbad the Sailor at the Garrick Theatre in what was then Aikman Street, South Melbourne. The 770-seat Garrick, formerly known as the Snowden Picture Theatre and the Playhouse, was the city’s favourite ‘fringe’ theatre, housing a motley assortment of repertory, semi-professional and small-scale touring productions. Rich Milton and Les Adams, both comedians, had presented a revue company for a long season at the Bijou in 1932. They were both in Sinbad, Adams as the earthy Dame Hinbad. The Age reported, ‘Les Adams and Zilla Weatherly are outstanding, and Billy Andros shows ability as a ventriloquist. One of the features is fine ballet work by a band of little girls who, without showing any signs of precociousness, perform their little pieces in a manner that would be creditable to older and more seasoned artists. Gloria Dawn, in particular, seems to possess that captivating personality so essential for a stage career.’ Gloria was six. It was one of her first press ‘notices’.

Maurice Diamond

Author’s collection

Polly Moran. Photo by George Hurrell.

Author’s collection

The first Tivoli production for 1936 opened in Melbourne on 30 January. It was called The Spice of Paris, a name used previously by Parnell for one of his most successful British touring revues. The Tivoli’s Spice of Paris starred the animal impersonator Alfred Latell, reprising his ‘Bonzo the Dog’ act. In the comedy sketches were Angus Watson, Phyllis Dixey, Keith Connolly, Chick Arnold, Keith Johns and Maurice Diamond. Diamond also looked after the dances and was, strangely, billed over producer Wallace Parnell. At the end of February, the company was joined by the droll American vaudeville comedienne Polly Moran for Hot from Hollywood. Miss Moran was a genuinely big star, familiar for her film partnership with Marie Dressler; her most recent screen appearance had been as the Dodo Bird in the celebrated 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland.

Ad for Shout for Joy from The Herald (Melbourne), 5 May 1936. Buster Shaver with Olive and George Brasno (centre) & William O’Neal (right). Author’s collection.

Next into the Melbourne Tivoli was Once in a Blue Moon, a revue built around an extraordinary act, American vaudevillian Buster Shaver with Olive and George. Olive Brasno and her brother, George, were ‘little people’. George was aged twenty-three, and 99 cm tall; Olive, twenty, was 96.5 cm tall. They had portrayed Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren in the 1934 Wallace Beery film The Mighty Barnum.

Jim Gerald was back at the Melbourne Tivoli from 27 April 1936 heading Shout for Joy. The show took its title from the revue in which Jim had toured the British provinces, following the debacle of his London debut. With him were Tommy Dale, Max Reddy and Cath Esler. Among the imported acts was the young British monologue comic, Eric Barker. His cod cockney witticisms later won him a huge following on the BBC. Also in the company was the American tenor William O’Neal, billed as ‘The Famous Red Shadow of The Desert Song in New York’. Almost true! The role was in fact created by a Scot, Robert Halliday, while O’Neal played the Red Shadow’s lieutenant, Sid El Kar. Nevertheless, O’Neal did have a genuine Broadway pedigree. He’d come to this country in 1935 to star in the Australian musical Flame of Desire and worked here until 1939. Back in New York he was the original Colonel Buffalo Bill in the Broadway premiere of Annie Get Your Gun.

To be continued

Frank Neil. State Library of Western Australia, Perth.Part 5: In 1936 Frank Neil explained to an Argus reporter the magic of a Tivoli show: ‘It is a crazy quilt of dance numbers, interspersed with some satire from the comedian, and novelty “turns” by speciality artistes. It is very satisfying as entertainment.’

Frank neilset off on another overseas trip in June 1936. He had good contacts with leading booking agents—Charles H. Allen in New York, Sam Kramer in Los Angeles and Reeves and Lamport in London—and was widely liked and respected in the United States and Britain.

Stop Press and The Radio Paradewere notable not for their overseas headliners, but for the number of talented young Australians who filled out their programs: Among them were Al Mack, Fifi Banvard, William Perryman and Mercia George. And making their Tivoli debut were the Bridges Musical Trio. Siblings Clifford, Babe and Nancye Bridges were clever multi-instrumentalists with a melodic repertoire of light classics and popular songs. After Clifford’s departure, the act continued as the Bridges Sisters. In the late 1970s Nancye produced a popular series of nostalgic ‘Old Fashioned Shows’ at the Sydney Opera House. She also published evocative books on show business and the early days of radio.

The Bridges Sisters

Frank Van Straten collection

Buster Fiddess

Frank Van Straten collection

When Stop Press reached Sydney in September 1936 several new local personalities joined the company: showgirl Dolly Mack (the future Mrs. Bob Dyer); Harry Abdy with Chut, his boxing kangaroo (Harry and Chut had had starring roles in the recently released Cinesound film Orphan of the Wilderness); dancers Carden and Francis (George Carden was destined to be one of musical theatre’s great choreographers and directors); and the Fiddes Brothers, a ‘knockabout comedy dancing duo’. Buster Fiddes, later with an extra ‘s’, would become a favourite Australian television clown. Towards the end of the season in Sydney a special edition called Flying High was mounted ‘in honour of Jean Batten’s historic New Zealand flight’. The show opened with William Perryman, supported by the ballet and showgirls, in a spirited presentation of ‘Flying Down to Rio’.

Roy Rene as Queen Bess

Frank Van Straten collection

Freddie Morgan

Frank Van Straten collection

In September 1936, Roy Rene returned to the Tivoli for two revues, Laugh, Town, Laugh and Carnival Time. Roy was billed as ‘Australia’s Most Original Comedian, a Personality That Stands Supreme in Theatreland Today’ and, significantly, ‘The New Mo—Clean as a New Pin, and Twice as Funny’. With Mo were Sadie Gale, Marie Doran, Grace Emerson, Alec Kellaway and Morry Barling. It was in this season that Roy Rene stopped the show as the Virgin Queen in the sketch ‘In the Days of Good Queen Bess’, written for him by Fred Parsons.

Naturally Mo tended to overshadow the overseas members of the company, particularly notable among whom were the celebrated British harpist Carlos Ames and the banjo-playing funsters Morgan and Hadley. Wally Hadley was a noted musician from Perth, Western Australia. While working in Britain he had formed a riotous double act with American Freddy (sometimes ‘Freddie’) Morgan. Morgan later found his niche as one of Spike Jones’ anarchic City Slickers. He revisited Australia in the early days of television.

When Mo and company switched to Sydney, his place was taken first by Frank O’Brian and then by Jim Gerald, who starred in Cinderella, the Melbourne pantomime for Christmas 1936. In Sydney Frank O’Brian took the title role in Mother Goose. Fifi Banvard was Principal Boy, Al Mack was Squire Skinflint, Chick Arnold was Demon Diehard and Freda Bohning played Fairy Truelove. Dan McLaughlin and Bill Sadler were, respectively, the front and rear portions of the panto horse.

Neil returned to Australia in December 1936 He told reporters he had booked 86 new acts, totalling 200 artists, which would entail an outlay of £75,000 for salaries and more than £8000 in travelling expenses.

Neil thanks the KLM aircrew.

Frank Van Straten collection

Early in 1937 the Melbourne Tivoli welcomed little North Country comedian Joey Porter back for his second tour. In March Roy Rene and Sadie Gale starred in The Song and Dance Show of 1937. With them were Jandy, the French musical clown, Cecil Scott, Gracie Emmerson and Morry Barling. In an outrageous Fred Parsons sketch called ‘The Great Lover’ Morry played Casanova with Roy Rene as his latest female conquest.

In April 1937 Tivoli programs carried the following excited announcement: ‘Frank Neil makes Theatrical History! Flying Direct to London! Sleeps in Eight Different Countries in Eight Days! The popular managing director of the Tivoli Circuit, Mr. Frank Neil, will leave Brisbane and fly by Qantas Empire Airways and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines direct to London in search of talent for the Tivoli. This will be the first occasion on which a theatrical manager has flown out of Australia in search of artistes. The route is via Cloncurry, Darwin, Surabaya (Java), Medan (Sumatra), Rangoon, Jodhpur (India), Baghdad (Iraq) and Athens. Mr Neil will do all his continental travelling by air, and also use the airlines in England on every possible occasion. Mr. Neil also intends to cross from England to America in the airship Hindenburg.’ Fortunately for Frank, Hindenburg made its fiery descent into history on 6 May 1937.

Cover for Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue, Melbourne, 1937

Frank Van Straten collection

Con Colleano, the Toreador of the Wire

Frank Van Straten collection

Frank Neil was in London for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on 24 May 1937. In Melbourne the Tivoli celebrated with a coronation-themed revue, Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue. The first act finished with ‘The Fleet’s in Port Again’, ‘a tableau of Britain’s might at sea’, and the show concluded with ‘A Coronation tableau’ with the Tivoli Ballet in a patriotic ‘Dance of the Flags’.

Top of the bill was the world’s greatest wire walker Con Colleano. He was the first person to accomplish the forward somersault on the tightrope, a feat previously thought to be impossible. For the past fourteen years he had starred in the great circuses and variety theatres of Europe and the United States. Over the years he had considerably refined his act, adopting ballet-like movements and costuming himself in dazzling Spanish finery. This, his name, and his swarthy features, meant he was often presumed to be Spanish. In fact, he was Australian, and could trace his ancestry back to his great-grandparents, Lampet Saunders, a freed convict, and a Black woman apparently known as Julia.

Con Colleano shared top billing with Irene Vermillion and her four lady trumpeters, a glamorous and unusual act from New York. In the 1950s Irene and her husband, Kermit Dart, ran the elegant 85-room Vermillion Hotel, a landmark on Hollywood Boulevard. Another interesting import was Bob Parrish, a young Black singer who had been working as a lift attendant in Los Angeles when Frank Neil heard him humming a song, gave him an audition and booked him immediately. He became a headliner as a result of his Tivoli engagement, returned here several times, and became a favourite at the Latin Quarter nightclub in New York and the Bar of Music in Hollywood.

The featured comic in Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue was Charles Norman, in his Tivoli debut. Charles had worked for years with Fullers’, often in a double act with Chick Arnold. In 1934 he had played Leopold in the Australian premiere of White Horse Inn and two years later he was Billy Crocker in the Australian premiere of Anything Goes. Adding to the fun were Chick Arnold, Tommy Dale, Marie Doran and Sylvia Kellaway.

Charles Norman, 1938. Photograph by Melton Greene Studio, Camberwell.

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Cecil Lyle, the Magical Milliner and Royal Entertainer

Frank Van Straten collection

Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue went on to play in Brisbane and subsequently toured New Zealand. It was the first Tivoli show to carry the credit ‘Ballets and Ensembles by Ronnie Hay’. Ronnie Hay had been one of the hard-working ‘Con-Paul Boys’ in Mike Connors and Queenie Paul’s Haymarket days. He gradually replaced Maurice Diamond as the Tivoli’s resident choreographer. He remained in charge of the Tivoli’s ballets until 1960.

This allowed Maurice Diamond to concentrate his energies on his school of dancing which, at Frank Neil’s suggestion, he transferred to studios on the second floor of the Tivoli building in Sydney. Mercia George was his principal teacher. Diamond’s pupils appeared regularly in Tivoli pantomimes until well into the 1950s.

Another recruit at the Sydney Tivoli was scenic artist James C. Hutchings. Although K.V. McGuinness still designed and painted most of the Tivoli’s settings in the Melbourne workshops, Jim was based in Sydney. He was responsible for refurbishing the ever-more-elaborate sets when they arrived from Melbourne. He also supplied new sets when required: some acts, for instance, opened in Sydney, not Melbourne. Increasingly, too, shows were so big that the production load was spread between the two cities.

The Talk of the Town starred Cecil Lyle, ‘The Magical Milliner’. His act was documented by Charles Waller: ‘From nowhere he produces ladies’ hats and hat boxes. Plumes, miraculously travelling, attach themselves to other hats. I doubt whether Cecil could persuade even Mrs. Lyle to wear these magically made hats; still, it is a pretty and original performance.’ The company also included a great local double act, Dinks and Trixie. They had played featured roles in Neil’s production of Cinderella at Melbourne’s Princess in 1924, and had spent many years as bill-toppers in Britain.

Ronnie Hay

Frank Van Straten collection

Clifford Guest with ‘George’

W.G. Alma conjuring collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

A ten-member Canadian jazz band, the Americanadians, appeared at the Tivoli in Sydney around the middle of the year. They had been brought to Australia by Clarrie Gange, a Melbourne entrepreneur and musician. Their arrival displeased the Musicians’ Union which was anxious to protect its local members, many of whom were still suffering from the effects of the Depression and the introduction of talkies. The Americanadians had little success in Melbourne; they did better at the Sydney Tivoli and extremely well at the Top Hatters’ Club in Kings Cross—until there was a gunfight and murder there and the crowds evaporated. The Americanadians’ legacy to Australia was their percussionist, Sammy Lee, later to manage Australia’s first theatre restaurant, the Roosevelt, then the 47 Club and the Latin Quarter nightclubs in Sydney, the Storkclub in Melbourne and, of course, Les Girls.

Among the interesting Australians were comic Stan Foley; comedienne Neva Carr Glyn, just back from a successful stay in London; internationally acclaimed juggler George Hurd; and ventriloquist Clifford Guest. Born in Melbourne in 1911, Guest had gone to Britain in 1933 with a superb act combining ventriloquism and mimicry. Charles Waller commented: ‘In his imitation of an English fox hunt he is marvellous; and in his impersonation of an Australian sheep drover, complete with dog and sheep, one can almost smell the dust as it rises from the hot country paddock.’ During his 1937 Sydney season Guest married Mavis Kelly, a member of the Four Ks, an Australian musical act who were on the same bill. The couple returned to Australia in 1939 and Guest appeared frequently at the Tivoli during the war years.

Americanadians: Swing is King with Canada’s Famous Band—with Sammy Lee on percussions. Frank Van Straten collection.

Another local act making a bow in 1937 was Morton and Thompson—Tex and Harry—billed quaintly as ‘Australia’s Famous Hill Billys’. In fact, Harry Thompson, who was a singer and harmonica virtuoso, was Scottish, and yodelling singer and guitarist Tex Morton was a New Zealander, Bob Lane, born in Nelson in 1916. He came to Australia in 1932 and became a jack-of-all-trades with travelling shows. As Tex Morton he cut his first Regal Zonophone recordings in 1936; they swiftly established the popularity which continued throughout his lengthy career. Tex also excelled in verse reading, hypnotism, sharp shooting, feats of memory, acting and show promotion, but it was as a pioneer of country music that he made the greatest impact. Ralph Peer, the American country music guru, said, ‘Tex has single-handedly created and pioneered in Australia a country music industry which compared favourably with some of our best areas in America. He achieved in five years what took us in the States more than twenty. The people of Australia should be forever grateful to him. He is the Jimmie Rodgers of Australia.’ Thompson, too, had a long career, though it was not as varied and as unusual as Morton’s.

The next big show for 1937 was Hello Harlem, built around the considerable talents of the Black singer and actress Nina Mae McKinney. Miss McKinney had starred in the films Hallelujah! in 1929 and Sanders of the River in 1935, in the latter opposite Paul Robeson. She had also appeared on Broadway in the revue Ballyhoo of 1932 with an up-and-coming comic called Bob Hope. Her stay here was not a happy one. She suffered from homesickness, audiences failed to warm to her work, severe tonsilitis forced her early departure from the show, and she was sued for rent and damage to her Sydney flat.

Hello Harlem also featured Roy Rene and Sadie Gale. This was one of the few occasions when Roy did not get top billing. When he heard that he was relegated to Number Two dressing room, he raged, ‘I’ve been turned out of me room—for a Black sheila!’ Then, after Nina Mae McMcKinney fainted on stage, Roy was asked by the stage manager, Fred Parsons, to fill in. Dressed only in a striped dressing gown, Roy strode on and delivered a few arch impressions of Australian wildlife. ‘I went well, didn’t I?’ he asked Parsons, adding, ‘It’s a pity that Black sheila can’t faint at every performance. It’d improve the show.’

Parsons relates that shortly after this, Frank Neil told Roy that he did not intend to renew his contract. ‘This led to heated words and Roy told Frank what he could do with his theatre. Neil lost his temper and shouted, “You bloody comics are all the same! And you’ll finish up working in a shithouse!” With impeccable dignity, Roy replied, “When I do, Mr. Neil, you’ll be at the door, taking the tickets”.’ Later in the year Ella Shields was billed above Jim Gerald in Stars Are Here.

Hello Harlem opened and closed with a setting representing New York’s famous Cotton Club. It also included an incongruous, though exciting, Act One finale. The year 1937 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the loss of the Titanic so Frank Neil came up with ‘An Epic of the Sea’, a ‘romantically sensational and thrilling realistic dramatic spectacle’ in which the Titanic sank on the Tivoli stage—twice daily, at 2.30 and 8—thanks to the combined theatrical expertise of scenic artist K.V. McGuinness and mechanist Alex Muir.

The year closed with Cinderella in Sydney, with Jim Gerald as the Dame and Neva Carr Glyn as Dandini.

Tex Morton, the yodelling cowboy

Frank Van Straten collection

Program cover for Hello Harlem, Sydney, 1937

Frank Van Straten collection

The Tivoli Circuit was riding high. It was said 15,000 patrons visited the Melbourne Tivoli every week. In Sydney £30,000 was spent on refurbishing and air conditioning. The work was done under the direction an expert theatre architect, Charles Bohringer; it was he who had designed the Embassy cinema which had replaced Rickards’ original Tivoli at the other end of Castlereagh Street. When Frank Neil flew in from his 1937 trip, The Argus ran the following story:

‘In 1934 Mr Frank Neil, on behalf of Tivoli Theatres of Australia, pioneered a new movement in variety. The old days used to see straight vaudeville shows of from eight to twelve “acts”. Today the physical presentation is a crazy quilt of dance numbers, wheezes about sex and politicians, acrobatics, pageants, and song numbers, interspersed with some satire from the comedian and novelty “turns” by speciality artistes. It is very satisfying as an entertainment.

‘The variety show of 1937 endeavours to give something to everybody and does not rest its appeal on a few specific principles. It aims to relieve the patron of the necessity for intense concentration on the stage, a boon which alone should earn dividends, and operates on the theory that an audience pays its money to be amused and entertained. In terms of accomplishment, modern variety presentation has outdistanced any other theatrical project in offsetting talking pictures; and talking pictures, you will agree, have displayed a remarkable resistance to everything and everybody—including censors.’

The variety stage also challenged the censors. In 1937 the Fullers imported The Marcus Show,a seedy American touring revue. Its chief attraction was its scantily dressed showgirls, several of whom appeared bare breasted. Surprisingly, this innovation seems to have raised few eyebrows. Wallace Parnell urged Neil to follow suit, but Neil was reluctant. ‘Tits aren’t entertainment,’ he said. Nevertheless, he eventually agreed, and statuesque bare breasted beauties became a ubiquitous element of Tivoli shows. To protect the country’s morals, the girls were forbidden to move while on stage, although they were frequently ‘tastefully’ displayed atop slowly revolving pedestals.

The Sydney Tivoli, 1937. Photographer unknown.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Program cover for Wonder Show of World Stars, Melbourne, 1937

Frank Van Straten collection

Frank Neil’s new policy caused little press comment, though Sydney’s satirical Smith’s Weekly magazine couldn’t resist gleefully reporting on the Tiv’s Wonder Show of World Stars in March 1938: ‘No intelligent person objects to sophisticated wit or sophisticated beauty. It is only crudity which is offensive. Up until now, the Tivoli shows have been mostly bright and clever. Mr. Frank Neil would do well to ponder over his present program. Not that the blueness is entirely in bad taste. One of the most daring song-scenes, “Waters of the World”, offers a charming spectacle, and, incidentally, a background considerably nakeder than anything attempted by the Marcus company. A fountain plays mid-stage. Two girls stand in the middle, with water tinkling round their toes. Smith’s Weekly’s critic forgot to bring his field-glasses but, as far as could be observed, these girls are entirely nude. On a pedestal above them, a third show girl poses. She, too, seems to be quite unclothed, except for a transparent brassiere. The two girls under the pedestal each hold up one arm, to support urns overhead. Their other arms are providentially situated. But we couldn’t help thinking that if a fly had lit on one of those girls, and she’d slapped it with her free hand, the audience would have got more than their money’s worth. Prior to this part of the scene, a procession of showgirls marches over the stage in the scantiest costumes we’ve seen for years. Their brassieres, too, are completely transparent. Perhaps Mr. Frank Neil will emulate the publicity achieved for The Marcus Show, and invite some policemen along to the next performance?’

Waters of the World, 1938. Photographer unknown.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Hal Moschetti. Photo by Harry Jay.

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Early in 1938 Frank Neil installed a new, larger orchestra at the Melbourne Tivoli, and welcomed a new musical director. Replacing Martin Kett, who went to try his luck in Britain, was Hal Moschetti. Originally from Perth, Western Australia, where he had conducted the orchestra at the Ambassadors Theatre, he’d become a familiar figure leading the orchestra at the Palais de Danse in St Kilda. He stayed at the Tivoli until 1962. Through most of the 1930s the Sydney Tivoli orchestra was led by Wally Reynolds and Hal Vincer.

The first of Frank Neil’s really big stars for 1938 did not arrive until May. Billy Costello, who provided the screen voice for the cartoon character ‘Popeye the Sailor’ topped an otherwise undistinguished bill in Hello, Popeye. E.C. Segar’s comic strip hero had been brought to the screen by Max Fleischer in 1933. Costello, then better known as ‘Red Pepper Sam’, was chosen as Popeye’s voice largely because of his experience as a talking gorilla on radio. Unfortunately, success went to Costello’s head. He became temperamental and was fired. Costello also missed out on the Popeye radio series, which started in 1935. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of his career trying to cash in on his one claim to fame.

Program cover for Hello Popeye, Melbourne, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Program cover for Adriana Caselotti, ‘The Voice of Snow White’, Melbourne, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Later in the year the Frank Neil contracted another cartoon personality, ‘The Voice of Snow White’, Adriana Caselotti. Adriana was the daughter of a well-known Los Angeles vocal coach. Roy Scott, Disney’s casting director, had telephoned him in the hope that he could suggest a young singer to record the voice for the part of Snow White. Adriana, then nineteen, was eavesdropping. She began singing and talking in a child’s voice—and won herself the role. She was paid US$970 for the forty-eight days it took to record her part. The film quickly became a box office bonanza. She made a few promotional appearances, signed up with Frank Neil to appear in a pantomime production of Snow White, and sued Disney for extra remuneration.

Sheet music cover from the Snow White pantomime

Frank Van Straten collection

Evie Hayes, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Adriana arrived in Australia to find that Disney had warned Neil that he would not allow him to use the original film songs unless Adriana withdrew her claim. Neil was furious. ‘Who do they think they are?’, he asked a Truth reporter. ‘They might run the Australian picture game, but they’re not telling me how to run my stage work, and I’m not doing any dirty work for them either.’ Instead, Neil told Parnell to come up with a short original stage adaptation of the Grimm story, and asked his young musical director Harold Moschetti to supply a swag of suitable new songs.

The Tivoli’s Snow White was a highlight of the show Christmas Extravaganza, which opened at in Melbourne on 5 December 1938. Albert Chappelle played the Prince and seven of the smaller ballet girls were the dwarfs. For Sydney, this presentation was developed into a miniature pantomime, with seven ‘genuine’ dwarfs imported from the United States. Surprisingly, this was Adriana Caselotti’s only stage work. She ‘voiced’ a couple more films—and then retired. Each of her four marriages ended in divorce, and she died in 1997.

Frank Neil’s next headliner was Will Mahoney. One of America’s genuinely great vaudeville stars, Will had perfected a show-stopping act combining clever humour with a unique dance routine in which he tapped out a tune on the keys of a 17-foot-wide xylophone. He had not been an overnight sensation. As a teenager he’d honed his skills on the small-time vaudeville circuits of the United States and Mexico in a knockabout comedy double act with his half-brother, Frank. They even played in Australia for the Fullers in 1914, billed as ‘The Mahoney Brothers and Daisy’—Daisy was their trained dog. Will got his break when he premiered his xylophone routine in George White’s Scandals of 1924. From then on, his rise was meteoric. The prestigious Palace in New York became his second home, and he commanded US$5500 a week—the highest paid variety artist in America. He and his musical director, Bob Geraghty, decided to put together a revue company to tour Britain. One of the supporting acts they recruited was a glamorous young Californian singer called Evie Hayes, ‘The Velvet Voice of the Air’. The British tour went wonderfully. Will appeared in the special Silver Jubilee Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium in 1935. He and Evie were married in 1938. He was forty-three, she twenty-five. They jumped at Frank Neil’s offer of an Australian tour: it was a paid honeymoon!

Will Mahoney features on the cover of Why Be Serious?, Sydney, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Advertisement for Why Be Serious?

Frank Van Straten collection

Will, Evie and Bob Geraghty opened sensationally at the Melbourne Tivoli on 22 August 1938 in a show that took its title from Will’s catchphrase, Why Be Serious? Their success was repeated in Sydney, where they played to 143,207 people in their six-week season. Frank Neil renegotiated their contract, effectively guaranteeing them bookings for as long as they wished to remain in Australia. As well, Will was wooed by Ken Hall, chief of Cinesound Productions. Years later Hall recalled Will as ‘a talented, cheeky, very likeable little man, with a marvellous sense of fun. I was tremendously impressed with his skill in handling an audience, his communication with it, his great dancing and comedy talent. He used to climax his act by dancing on a xylophone—and getting fast tempo and completely understandable music out of the instrument by means of tap-hammers fixed to his dancing shoes. It was a showstopper.’ Will starred for Cinesound in Come Up Smiling, a genial comedy set in a touring carnival. It was later re-released as Ants in His Pants. Evie had a featured role as Kitty Katkin and Chips Rafferty made his movie debut as ‘man in crowd’.

Frank Neil dubbed Mahoney ‘The Imp Eternal’, while Evie became ‘The Velvet Voice of the Air’. They decided to settle in Australia and quickly became a popular part of the local show business scene. For a while Mahoney ran the Cremorne Theatre in Brisbane, and Evie played the ‘Ethel Merman’ roles in the Australian productions of the musicals Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam. She and Will appeared in Funny Girl in 1966. Will died the following year, but Evie continued, coaching young performers and appearing frequently on television. She died in 1988.

Program cover for Swing It, Melbourne, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Emile Boreo, 1938

Frank Van Straten collection

Larry Adler was another star of undoubted international standing. The New Grove Dictionary called him ‘the first harmonica player to achieve recognition and acceptance in classical musical circles and to have elevated the instrument to concert status’. Larry himself preferred the term ‘mouth organ’. Born in Baltimore in 1914, he had risen quickly to musical fame. He had starred in London for Charles Cochran and was already well-known in Australia from his film appearances and his many gramophone recordings. His reputation failed to impress the Sydney Tivoli’s colourfully spoken mechanist, Alex Muir. During a rehearsal Adler asked for complete quiet. Alec threw his hammer onto the stage and shouted, ‘Everybody stop. This c... wants quiet. He must think he’s the bloody show! So we’ll all sit down and listen to Mr Adler play his mouth organ. You’ll get no bloody production ready for tonight.’ According to a possibly apocryphal story, Adler’s art was also lost on Roy Rene. ‘Take away his bloody mouth organ,’ said Roy, ‘and then see what he can do!’

Roy Rene was featured in International Merry-Go-Round, but the headliner was Emile Boreo, a Polish-born star of French revues such as the Chauve-Souris and the Folies-Bergère. He had also acted on stage and screen. His speciality, his stunning Toy Soldier routine, can now be enjoyed on YouTube. Jim Hutchings remembered: ‘On his opening night in Melbourne they put Mo on before him with his drum act, which used to eat them alive. After that Emile Boreo meant nothing. No one knew he was there! Mo said to me, “How much is the mug getting?” I said, “Sixty quid, I think.” “Gawd, strike me lucky! I’m carrying him!” In Sydney they changed the running order, and he went much better with Mo in a spot safely away from him.’

To be continued

Frank Neil: A publicity portrait from the late 1920s. Author’s collection.Part 1: ‘I had the showman’s spirit born in me.’

In 1973 I read an article in The Australian Women’s Weekly profiling a retired scenic artist called Jim Hutchings. Jim was living in Sydney with his son and daughter-in-law. He had suffered a stroke two years before and was regaining his health and confidence by developing his talents as a painter of still lifes and landscapes. I rang and Jim graciously invited me to visit him.

He took a shine to me. Though the stroke impeded his speech, he allowed me to record his reminiscences. He had spent the most rewarding years of his life working as a scenic artist at the Sydney Tivoli. His memories were crystal clear, warm, ribald, rumbustious. We ran out of time and tape. A few days later I received in the mail some painstakingly written sheets of paper headed ‘Tivoli Days’. They were filled with more colourful reminiscences. I wrote to thank him. More followed. Then more. Jim kept up the supply, week after week, until he died in June 1974. For Jim Hutchings the Tivoli was Theatre—and Frank Neil was the Tivoli.

‘It was in 1928 at the Royal in Adelaide that I met Frank Neil,’ reminisced Jim. ‘I told him I remembered seeing him at the Majestic in Newtown in Sydney. I asked him if there was some scenery I could paint. He started me on the Monday morning, fixing up Charley’s Aunt. That’s how I got started. He came down to watch me paint. I was very nervous. I was painting a hedge with roses on it. “That’s the stuff I want, pink roses. And colourful roses around the college door.” I realised Frank had a weakness for roses and for bright emerald greens. I couldn’t do a thing wrong! We were friends for life. He said, “If you come to Sydney, I’ve got some shows coming up, and I’ll give you an introduction to George Marlow at the Grand Opera House”. I painted Babes in the Wood and Mother Goose, then, I think, Getting Gertie’s Garter for Frank.

‘I remember the time he wanted an underwater scene for the ballet. We used to all stand out in the stalls in case he should see something that needed improving or changing. Frank dusted the cigarette ash off his lapels and said, “Bring in the sea legs. Bring on the shell.” Then, suddenly, he said to Teddy Bolt, the props man, “Where are those strings of baby pink roses?” Eddie McDonald said, “Christ, Frank, you can’t have roses under the sea.” “Why can’t you? Have you ever been under the sea?” said Frank. “There’s everything down there! Get the pink roses, Teddy!” So roses we had, under the sea, at the Tivoli!

‘Frank was a force. Eyes on everything. He lived show business, slept show business, loved show business, was show business. No-one but Frank could have got the Tivolis back on the map. It was Frank who organised the best people he could get and inspired their love and loyalty. We worked ourselves to the bone for him. There were rumours that he was a bit homosexual. There was never any proof, but I never saw him with any females or heard of anyone who did. As one stagehand said to me, “After all, it’s his own arse. He can do what he likes with it”.’

Corindhap, Victoria, around 1900

State Library of Victoria

The 7000-seat Alfred Hall, Ballarat, 1862

City of Ballarat collection

Frank Neil’s birth certificate confirms that he was born in the Victorian town of Corindhap on 21 December 1886—not in 1890 as several sources state. Today Corindhap is a quiet, scattered hamlet on the highway between Ballarat and Colac that has obviously seen better days. Around 100 people still call it home, but in the 1850s it had a population of 5000. Back then it was a bustling gold mining town called Break o’ Day, after a nearby reef. When the gold petered out, the community turned to agriculture. By the 1880s Corindhap was a busy, if not particularly prosperous, country village with about 340 residents—an extremely unlikely starting point for a man who made a career presenting bright, frothy entertainment and who worked with some of the greatest names in world variety.  

Frank Neil’s father, John Isaac Neil, was a Geelong-born miner; his mother, the former Sarah Scott Thompson, had emigrated from Liverpool. Frank was the last of the Neils’ seven children.

In 1890 Frank was enrolled at the local State School. There he met a bright boy, Percy Laidler, two years his senior, who, too, had an interesting future ahead of him: he would become a prominent socialist propagandist, and find himself, depicted as ‘Percy Lambert’ in Frank Hardy’s explosive book Power Without Glory. Percy managed Will Andrade’s bookshop in Bourke Street, a few doors east of the Melbourne Tivoli Theatre. The shop specialised in magic paraphernalia, plays props and theatrical makeup, and in leftist literature.

Frank was an average student, but he was in his element when, occasionally, the family made the four-hour Cobb and Co coach trip to Ballarat where they’d see a show at Her Majesty’s Theatre in View Street or take in a circus or perhaps a concert at the 7000-seat wooden Alfred Hall or in the more intimate Mechanics’ Institute Hall. He revelled in the colour, the excitement, the music and the exotic costumes. Family members recalled his early love of ‘dress ups’ and Frank himself admitted, ‘I had the showman’s spirit born in me.’

Frank claimed to have toured South Africa ‘as a boy’ with a juvenile comic opera company, though there is no documentation of this. We do know that he was still in his teens when the family moved to Melbourne, where he luxuriated in the city’s theatrical riches. At the turn of the century, half a million people lived in Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs. They patronised the city’s five great theatres, the Royal, the New Opera House (later the Tivoli) and the Bijou in Bourke Street, the Princess in Spring Street and Her Majesty’s (formerly the Alexandra) in Exhibition Street. There were dozens of smaller theatres and halls scattered throughout the city and suburbs, as well as a waxworks, two imposing cyclorama buildings, one in Carlton and the other in Little Collins Street, and even a permanent circus building in St Kilda Road. The first moving pictures had been screened at the Opera House in 1896, but it would be some years before movies would compete with live theatre for audiences.

Personable, fresh-faced and bright, young Frank Neil haunted the city’s theatres, picking up occasional backstage jobs or working as an ‘extra’ in crowd scenes. He was also an aspiring actor, ready to play anything from young hero to comic servant or wicked villain. And he could sing and dance.

In those far off days entertainment was certainly not confined to the cities. Country folk were treated to drama, musical comedy, variety entertainment and even opera, presented by hard-working touring companies often headed by city stars. Mostly they travelled by coach, sometimes by rail. They played in any available venue, though larger provincial towns such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Newcastle had fine playhouses. Some shows carried their own ‘canvas theatres’. It was with one of these adventurous itinerant enterprises that Frank Neil got his real start in show business.

Edward Irham Cole, Australia’s Buffalo Bill

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Poster for the Lilian Meyers Company’s season at the Theatre Royal, Hobart, 1908

In December 1906 travelling showman Edward Irham (‘E.I.’) Cole brought his Bohemian Dramatic Company to Melbourne. He set up shop in the Hippodrome, a rough and ready open-air venue on the south-east corner of Exhibition and Lonsdale streets, where the Comedy Theatre now stands. Apparently, Cole sensed that 20-year-old Frank had potential, and he gave the eager young man a job. ‘I helped build our stage of solid earth,’ reminisced Frank in a piece published in the Melbourne Herald in January 1930.

Not only was Cole a superb showman, he was also a shameless ‘quack’. One of his most successful creations was a pill that could miraculously cure liver complaints and almost anything else. The pills were made by Cole family members from a mixture of Epsom salts and cascara and sold in little cardboard boxes. Before and after each show, and in the interval, Cole would stand on a makeshift platform in front of the tent and regale the crowd with stories of the efficacy of his medication. As soon as someone indicated interest, it was Frank’s duty to conduct the transaction. This was known in the show world as ‘running the planks’. The pills, thankfully, were harmless.

Frank stayed with Cole when the company went on tour, travelling by ‘special train’ and performing in their huge canvas theatre.  He reminisced: ‘I was for three years with old “Bohemian Cole”, who let his hair trail down his back, wore a yard-wide sombrero, and imagined he was an actor. I was his property man and second juvenile [juvenile lead]. He made his actors work. We had to unload the tent from the train, put it up, and build a stage. Then we had to dress and make up, and parade the town. As second “juve” I was usually a more or less dashing cowboy. At night we played, and rode on and off on our fiery steeds. Our favourite drama was Buffalo Bill. I learnt a lot of showmanship from Cole. He was not a great actor, but he was a Barnum of a showman.’

Occasionally Frank took time off to work with other managements, such as Lilian Meyers’ Dramatic Company. Miss Meyers was a stunningly beautiful young Melbourne actress who had been stricken, wrote a reporter, ‘with the fever of bellow-drama’. Financed by her father, who was ‘not without riches’, she assembled her own company and ‘portrayed the terrible heroines with cheerful abandon.’ Her costumes—some from Paris—were said to be ‘almost too extravagant for the dingy little theatres she sometimes appeared in.’ Camillewas her favourite showpiece, and eminent Melbourne medico—and part-time drama critic—Dr James Edward Neild helped her perfect the consumptive cough that the star role called for.

We don’t know exactly when or under what circumstances Frank Neil joined her, but we do know that on 26 October 1907 he took to the stage of the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle in Miss Meyers’ production of a lurid melodrama called The Executioner’s Daughter. Two days later The Newcastle Herald reported that his part was ‘well enacted’. It was his first press notice.

It was after a performance of Camille at the Town Hall in Devonport, Tasmania, on 21 December 1907, that Miss Meyers and her cast and crew helped Frank celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Miss Meyers eventually went to the United States where she married a prosperous theatrical manager, Gerald Bacon, and retired from the stage. Not so Frank. Soon he was back on the road.

The Victoria Theatre, Newcastle

Newcastle Region Library Service

Actor-showman Terence Goodwin

Charters Towers Historical Picture Club

He joined a now forgotten stock company called Terence Goodwin’s Dramatic Players. Goodwin was actually William Thomas Goodwin Glancy, born in Melbourne in 1873. With his wife as his leading lady, he launched his peripatetic company in 1905. Years later he conducted a real estate business in Charters Towers, Queensland. He died there in 1938, aged 65.

Frank recalled: ‘I remember arriving at Pakenham one New Year’s Day as a member of Terence Goodwin’s company. We were a company of twenty metropolitan artists—on the daybills—but actually there were only seven of us. When we got off the goods train Terry had two shillings, and he was the only one of us who could jingle a penny. At the hotel the landlord looked us up and down and then shook his head. “No hope,” said he, “we’re full up.” So we went to the hall where we were to play, and the hall-keeper’s granite heart melted after a bit, and he let us camp inside. While Terry went out and bought two shillings’ worth of bread and butter, and some tea, one of our more adventurous spirits let his poverty but not his will consent and abducted a fowl from a nearby back yard. We had a poultry dinner that day and enjoyed it. There was enough “in” that night to get us on to the next town. A vagabond life, yes, but Terry was a good chap, and we were happy enough playing blood-and-thunder and dreaming dreams. Experiences of that sort are invaluable in the motley make-up of the theatrical manager.’

In March 1909 Neil was back with Bohemian Cole in Bendigo. They pitched their tent at Camp Hill, but eventually moved into the grand Royal Princess’s Theatre in View Street. Their first attraction there was the perennial favourite East Lynne. On 3 May The Bendigo Independent reported that, ‘The acting of Frank Neil as the wrongly accused and outcast Richard Hare appealed greatly to the audience.’ A few weeks later, when they presented Buffalo Bill at Echuca, The Riverine Herald told its readers that the acting was generally ‘splendid’, adding, ‘Mr. Frank Neil as Joe Blake, a bartender, is worthy of mention.’

Press advertisement for The Harry Craig Company’s season in Mildura, 1911

Trove

In 1911 Neil joined Harry Craig’s Australian Players who were on tour in South Australia. The company had been founded by Kate Howarde, a talented actress, entrepreneur and playwright. It included her sister, Billie, and Harry Craig, Billie’s husband. A fine baritone as well as a popular actor, Harry had cut his theatrical teeth in everything from opera to minstrel shows. When Kate ventured overseas, he carried on the enterprise as Harry Craig’s Australian Players, creating a congenial kindergarten for several aspiring performers—Frank Neil included. His first role with Craig was in a patriotic piece called In the Heart of Australia at the Port Pirie Institute Hall. It impressed The Port Pirie Recorder: ‘It sparkles in reproducing the atmosphere of the great Australian bush life, and it has a powerful and beautiful love story that goes straight to the heart, and it throbs with soul-stirring episodes. Special mention should be made of the acting of Mr. Frank Neil as Jack Gordon, a young bushman, and Miss Ethel Chadwick as Merry Dalton, the bush flower. Mr. Neil’s acting was good, but Miss Chadwick’s was exceptionally fine.’ Their second offering was the sensational prison reform drama It’s Never Too Late to Mend. A season in Port Augusta followed.

In December 1911 Frank was at His Majesty’s Theatre in Geelong, Victoria, for a season with the W.H. Ayr Dramatic Company. This appears to have been an offshoot of Cole’s Bohemians. Bill Ayr had acted for Cole, managed the company and had married Cole’s daughter. Their main attraction was a Wild West American crowd-pleaser called The Indians’ Revenge. The Geelong Advertiser made special mention of ‘the reappearance of the popular young actor Frank Neil, who will play Lieutenant Jack Forrest, who has been a captive of hostile Indians for three years and returns just in time to witness the marriage of his betrothed to another man.’

On 23 December Neil was the star attraction at the regular People’s Concert presented at the Geelong Mechanics’ Institute Hall by the Geelong Harbour Trust Band. Supported by Ethel Chadwick and Cyril Iredale, he appeared in ‘a specially written scena, My Daddy, combining comedy, pathos and sensation.’ He also delivered a series of ‘illustrated monologues’. The evening was topped off with a screening of ‘The Great Gaumont Vitascope presentation The Rose of Kentucky, a Romance of the Fields of Tobacco.’ Seventeen minutes long, it was one of D.W. Griffith’s earliest films. Now regarded as something of a classic of silent cinema, it has been meticulously restored and made available on YouTube.

In January 1912 Neil and Chadwick restaged My Daddy at the Temperance Hall in Melbourne. Located at 170 Russell Street, the Hall offered inexpensive Sunday night concerts as an alternative to the boozy, bawdy fare provided by pubs and music halls, and it gave valuable exposure and experience to hundreds of aspiring entertainers. It became the Savoy Theatre in 1934, but was eventually replaced by Total House, which included the Lido nightclub in a basement space which today houses a popular live music venue, 170 Russell.

Next Neil returned to Harry Craig who had considerably expanded his range of plays and was set to visit Echuca, Kerang, Mildura, Narracoorte, Mount Gambier, Hamilton, Camperdown, Geelong and Wyalong. An interesting addition to the repertoire was Brandon Thomas’s warmly familiar farce Charley’s Aunt, with Frank as Lord Fancourt Babberley, the drag role that would become his ‘calling card’, with its memorable line, ‘I’m Charley’s aunt, from Brazil—where the nuts come from.’ Neil debuted in the role on tour in Mildura on 19 March 1912. ‘Mr. Frank Neil was particularly successful,’ said The Mildura Cultivator, ‘and kept the audience in roars of laughter.’

Entrepreneur George Marlow, 1917

Elisabeth Kumm collection

Actress Maudie Chetwynd, 1904

Private collection

In 1911 London-born entrepreneur George Marlow (real name: Joseph Marks) had built the Adelphi Theatre in Sydney, at the Haymarket end of Castlereagh Street. It was the first theatre in Australia to use the cantilever system to support its circle and gallery, thus obviating obstructive columns, and it was huge: 2400 seats over its three levels. Marlow created it as a home for his busy melodrama players.

Neil made his Adelphi debut with Marlow’s company on 19 July 1913 in the tear-jerker No Mother to Guide Her. It was his first significant engagement in a major city theatre. Truth welcomed him as ‘A new comedian working on clean lines’. As he tackled small parts in juicy melodramas like The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning, Married to the Wrong Man, East Lynne and Driving a Girl to Destruction, how could he have imagined that one day he would be running the place as the Tivoli, the focus of Australian variety entertainment?

Neil’s Adelphi season was not without its uncomfortable moments. First, a stage ‘hanging’ went awry, nearly choking him; then a ‘research visit’ to a Sydney opium den turned into a fiasco when the place was raided by the police. Neil narrowly avoided arrest.

In October 1913 actor-manager George Willoughby and two partners bought out Marlow’s holdings. They renamed the company George Willoughby Ltd, but Marlow continued to ‘pull strings’ behind the scenes. George Willoughby’s Dramatic Company debuted at the Princess in Melbourne on 11 October. It was essentially the same ensemble that had been playing in Sydney, with Neil now promoted to principal comedian and character actor. Their first Melbourne offering was The Queen of the White Slaves, a sprawling new American melodrama that roved from San Francisco to China, with a rescue at sea, torture, drug dens, Japanese acrobats and, of course, white slavery. ‘Mr. Frank Neil ably delineated the moods of an opium victim,’ reported Punch, while the theatrical weekly The Hawklet said he was ‘a clever young Australian who has made rapid strides. He is a favourite with audiences at the Princess Theatre.’

The company’s attraction for Christmas 1913 was a familiar favourite, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, optimistically promoted as being ‘as funny as a pantomime, as sensational as a melodrama, and as full of music and dancing as a vaudeville show.’ ‘There is little exaggeration in the claim,’ agreed The Age. Frank portrayed ‘Mr. Augustine St Clare, a Southern Planter’.

In February 1914 the company moved back to the Adelphi in Sydney, introducing The Pride of the Prairie, ‘a powerful and emotional drama of Mexican life’. Next came Brisbane, where they opened at His Majesty’s on 13 July. The season was soured by the announcement on 28 July of the outbreak of war. The ominous title of the piece then in production was Brought to Ruin.

In November 1914 the Willoughby company was back at the Adelphi in Sydney with The Kelly Gang. The Referee commented: ‘We read so much about terrorism in the war news nowadays that from that point of view the play of The Kelly Gang seems almost topical,’ adding that Frank played a comic trooper ‘with much over-exaggeration’. Unrest about the war had started to erode audiences, so Willoughby drastically reduced admission to what he euphemistically called ‘war prices’.

When the company returned to the Princess in Melbourne early in the New Year, Neil’s contribution to Camillewas particularly praised. In its review on 29 March 1915 The Argus purred, ‘Mr. Frank Neil, whose voice is remarkably sonorous, evinced considerable ability in his portrayal of the role of Gaston Rieux, and the cleverness of his work, particularly in the final scenes, indicates that he is well fitted for a more important part.’

Soon after this Frank was reported to be ‘contemplating a trip to the United States to join a well-known stock dramatic company.’ Indeed, many young Australian men—boxer Les Darcy included—were considering re-establishing themselves in the States, which at that point had not entered the war. Frank did not go, but it was later revealed that his application to join the Australian armed forces had been rejected.

In July 1915 The Hawklet announced that Frank was experimenting with vaudeville. He had formed a double act with petite Maudie Chetwynd, warmly remembered for her participation in the hit Williamson production of Florodorain 1900. Frank and Maudie developed some sketch ‘turns’ that they hoped might be suitable for the Tivoli or for Fullers’ theatres, but the expected bookings did not materialise. Instead, Frank teamed up with another member of the George Willoughby company, Herbert Linden, to establish a touring company to reproduce many of the melodramas that William Anderson had recently presented at the King’s Theatre in Melbourne. They debuted on 24 December 1915 with a seven-play seven-night season at the Geelong Mechanics’ Institute Hall. Their first offering was The Face at the Window. Inevitably there were comparisons with the big-city ‘originals’. When they presented The Face at the Window at the Town Hall in Queenscliff in January 1916, The Queenscliff Sentinel carped: ‘There was a good house, but the piece would have been better appreciated if aided with effective scenery, which the management had promised.’

Actor-showman A. Brandon-Cremer, 1900

Wikipedia

Actor Maurice Tuohy

Theatre Heritage Australia.

In April 1916 A. (Albert) Brandon-Cremer recruited Frank for his eighty-strong dramatic company for a season at the recently opened Tivoli Theatre in Grote Street, Adelaide. The two men had met in George Willoughby’s company at the Princess in Melbourne.

Irish-born, Brandon-Cremer was a theatrical all-rounder, a producer of vaudeville, drama, musicals and comedy, a manager of theatres and, eventually, cinemas, and as at home on stage as a melodrama villain as he was as a light comedian. His leading lady was, invariably, his wife, Kathleen Arnold; their daughters, Gertrude (later known as Barbara) and Molly (initially promoted as ‘Baby Cremer’) also had stage careers. Brandon-Cremer’s repertoire included Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Two Orphans, The Coward, The Great Diamond Robbery, The Three Musketeers and A Working Girl’s Wrongs. In the latter Neil played Bates, the servant of Warton, the villain. An impressed reviewer wrote, ‘He appeared in a clever disguise as an old hag, the character of which he fulfils to perfection.’

Also in Brandon-Cremer’s company was a handsome young actor called Maurice Tuohy. A policeman’s son, Maurice Caulfield Tuohy was born in 1892 in Willunga, South Australia, and educated, first, at the little school in nearby Clare, and later at the Christian Brothers’ School in Wakefield Street, Adelaide. Like Neil, he was determined to make a career for himself in the theatre. He was in his teens when he made his stage debut at the Clare Town Hall in August 1911 with ‘The Gay Goblins’, an all-male team of youthful amateur entertainers. The review in The Blythe Agriculturalist mentioned that ‘Mr. M.C. Tuohy, as an illusionist, mystified the audience with several well-carried-out illusions, and his performance elicited merited applause. As a character vocalist he was also fairly successful.’ Tuohy subsequently ‘paid his dues’ playing ‘the smalls’ in tiny touring companies, and ‘pushed his way from a raw, gawky, country youth to a leading actor and a fine advertisement for Young Australia.’ The Weekly Judge in Perth described him as being of splendid physique, and a good all-round athlete, to say nothing of his acting abilities,’ and the Perth Mirror labelled him ‘one of the finest looking men on the Australian stage.’ Tuohy and Neil found an instant rapport. They formed a personal and professional partnership that survived until Tuohy’s death in 1926.

Frank Neil and Maurice Tuohy were still with Brandon-Cremer when he successfully toured New Zealand in 1917. The following year Tuohy was recruited by the Fullers for their New Dramatic Company at the Princess in Melbourne, but Frank was not so lucky. He was reduced to accepting a booking as a ‘descriptive vocalist’ for a couple of weeks of vaudeville at the Theatre Royal in Broken Hill.

To be continued

Part 2: ‘Everyone I knew told me I was all kinds of a variegated fool.’

Frank Neil in Charley’s Aunt, 1925. Author’s collection.

Tthe fuller theatricalempire was vast and powerful. It owned and controlled theatres throughout Australia and New Zealand and presented a wide range of attractions, from grand opera to crowd-pleasing vaudeville, plus drama, melodrama, musicals, farce, comedy and pantomime. Family-owned and operated, it was headed by Benjamin Fuller. Born in squalor in London in 1875, Ben Fuller mastered theatrical management and was knighted in 1921. An astute, wily spotter of talent, he had seen Neil perform with Maurice Tuohy and admired his ability as an actor, but he also recognised his potential a producer.

On 2 June 1917 the Fullers had launched a new Sydney theatre, the 1642-seat Majestic, to cater for the entertainment needs of the bustling working-class inner-city suburb of Newtown. Initially the Majestic presented vaudeville, but in April 1918 the Fuller Dramatic Company wound up their Melbourne season and moved in. This time the personnel included not only Tuohy, who was cheekily promoted as a ‘new leading man from London’ but also Frank Neil, who played assorted character roles and, most importantly, was to be responsible for producing every one of the company’s weekly-change melodramas.

Their initial offering, As Midnight Chimes, on 12 April 1918, elicited the following welcome from The Sydney Sun: ‘The medium that introduced the new Fuller dramatic company at the Majestic could not be said to lack in either weirdness or sensation. A four-act play that provided a violent quarrel, a murder accusation, a smuggled child, an express train, an escape from custody, a lonely wharf, a limping Chinaman, a mysterious Hindoo girl, a drug scene, a vault in a church yard, with an accompanying vision, and a poisoned drunk, had all the elements that appeal to melodramatic fiends. As Midnight Chimes had all these and moreover was played with considerable vigor by a company of players well versed by long experience in the ways of sensational stagecraft. Maurice Tuohy, a leading man from England [!], made his first appearance here as Dave Stannard, a young fisherman, the hero of many adventures and of many persecutions instigated by Luke Dezzard, played in true stage villain style by Jefferson Tait. Frank Neil (the producer) had a comedy role as a railway porter that appealed strongly to the Newtown folk. These and the subsidiary parts were sustained in a way that evidently gave much satisfaction to the crowded audience.’

It also gave much satisfaction to Ben Fuller. His instinct for picking talent had proved right. He became a great friend and supporter of Neil, offering advice and encouragement as the young man’s career developed.

At the Majestic the success of Neil’s parade of weekly-change crowd-pleasers was phenomenal. Somehow he managed to churn out a new drama every seven days for more than two years: What Women Will Do for Love, Camilleand The Luck of Roaring Camp were typical, and there were occasional interesting Australian offerings such as For the Term of His Natural Life and A Girl of the Bush. A turgid religiously tinged drama called The Confession was in residence when peace came on 11 November 1918.

‘Cheer Up Girls, Here Come the Aussies’ sheet music cover, 1918

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Lily Molloy, c.1925

Author’s collection

Shows always opened on a Saturday evening and finished on the following Friday evening. The next week’s show was learnt and rehearsed during the day. The only relief came during the Christmas holidays, when melodrama made way for pantomime: Bluebeard and his Seven Wives, for Christmas 1918, ran twice a day for a record six weeks. Frank produced it and also wrote it. It included, appropriately, a ‘Hall of Peace’ tableau featuring ‘The Homecoming of the Aussies’ complete with a new song he wrote and composed called ‘Cheer Up Girls, Here Come the Aussies’. It was sung by the Principal Boy, Essie Jennings—and also by Lola Hunt, the Principal Boy in Fullers’ Sinbad the Sailor at the Grand Opera House (the former Adelphi in Castlereagh Street). Frank’s patriotic flag-waver was published by W.J. Deane and Son in Sydney.

The Dame in Bluebeardwas Essie Jennings’ husband, popular comedian Jim Gerald, an engagement he’d accepted while still serving with the Australian forces in the Middle East. Regulars from Frank’s melodrama company included Maurice Tuohy as the heroic Jack Blunt, Jefferson Tait as Bluebeard, and Lily Molloy as the adorable Princess. Frank ‘blacked up’ to portray the comic Rastus, who confided to the kiddies, ‘I’m Bluebeard’s valet, and I love what’s right. Though my skin is black, my heart’s all white.’ Collet Dobson played the dastardly Demon Discord, made up to looked remarkably like the hated Kaiser. Bluebeardpacked the Majestic for six merry weeks.

‘Cooing Time in Loveland’ sheet music cover, 1919

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Ivy Moore in Cinderella, Grand Opera House, Sydney, 1919

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Neil also provided the script for Little Red Riding Hood, which he produced at the Majestic for Christmas 1919. Jim Gerald and Essie Jennings were back, this time as Dame Pimples and Fairy Rose Petal. The great male impersonator Nellie Kolle was Boy Blue, with Rita Starr as Red Riding Hood and Frank Neil as Simple Willie. The score included Frank’s latest composition, ‘Cooing Time in Loveland’, which was introduced by Essie Jennings. Simultaneously it was also being sung by Linda Dale in Fullers’ other Sydney pantomime, Cinderella, at the Grand Opera House. Frank’s lyrics were, well, quaint. Here’s the chorus:

When it’s cooing time in Loveland, in Loveland coo-coo,

I’m going to steal a little aeroplane and fly away

To where they never ever see a rainy day.

And we’ll float through life together

Where the skies are always blue,

And I’ll spend my time in Loveland

With my cooing doves and you.

Bluebeard program, Grand Opera House Sydney, 1920

Author’s collection

‘I Know You’ll Be Wanting Me Someday’ sheet music cover, 1920

National Library of Australia, Canberra

For Christmas 1920 Fullers entrusted Neil with producing two pantomimes in Sydney—a revival of Bluebeard at the Grand Opera House and The Babes in the Woodat the Newtown Majestic. In Bluebeard Jim Gerald and Essie Jennings were the Dame and Fairy Queen, with Ray de Vere as Principal Girl and Flora Cromer, from Britain, as Principal Boy. Sydney Truth was impressed: ‘If Bluebeard were just a succession of scenes it would be a big attraction without any actors, but when you add to the magnificent scenery a host of pretty girls, delightful music, the comedy of the acrobatic Dame and others, the new songs, and the wonderful specialties of Ferry the Frog, then it becomes an entertainment of outstanding merit, and one that producer Frank Neil may well be proud of.’

In Babes in the Wood were Doff Dee as Principal Girl, Mattie Jansen as the Fairy Queen and Bert Desmond as the Dame. As Principal Boy, Robin Hood, Nellie Kolle made the most of a brand-new Frank Neil composition, ‘I Know You’ll be Wanting Me Someday’.

American star Marie Ilka, c.1920

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Australian actress Nellie Bramley, c.1923

Author’s collection

Frank’s next assignment was producing a short season of melodrama for Fullers at the Empire Theatre in Albert Street, Brisbane, with a company headed by Austin Milroy and the star American import Marie Ilka.

On 19 February 1921 The Brisbane Daily Mail told its readers: ‘Frank Neil, the producer and comedian of the Fuller Dramatic Company at the Empire Theatre, has had a long and varied theatrical career, playing from one end of Australia to the other. Starting at the bottom rung of the ladder, he graduated to the dizzy eminence from which he played three parts in East Lynne, played the piano between whiles, and was property-master as well. His salary for all this was 50 shillings per week, but he never got it. On one occasion, in Maffra, Victoria, he played the piano in the wings and, lowered the curtain on the death of little Eva, by holding the rope in his teeth till given the cue. But he has progressed, and this year produced two pantomimes simultaneously, both for the Fuller management, one at the Majestic Theatre, Newtown, and the other at the Grand Opera House, this latter being claimed to be the most brilliant and successful 1920 pantomime produced by any management in Australia.’

The Brisbane season opened sensationally on 26 February 1921 with The Unmarried Mother by Florence Edna May. It was promoted as ‘The terrific New York success’—which is odd, because there is no record of it ever being produced there. It was probably an unauthorised stage adaptation of one of May’s scandalous potboilers, which also included The Unwanted Childand The Unloved Wife.To add to its prurient attraction, the press advertisements carried this admonition: ‘The Management do not ask you to listen to a talky sermon, but they do ask you to give serious consideration to a problem that is late in the solving, and to render every assistance to players called upon to interpret the very real characters in this direct and forceful expression of the playwright's views.’ Later came Should a Mother Tell?, A Daughter of Mother Machree, A Flapper’s Married Life and Tommy’s French Wife. The latter depicted the experiences of a young French girl who marries a British soldier. It was one of the last works of noted Australian playwright George Darrell, author of The Sunny South. He had tragically committed suicide in January 1921.

Tommy’s French Wifewas chosen to launch the company’s transfer to the Princess in Melbourne in April 1921. Austin Milroy was still leading man, but Nellie Bramley had taken over the principal female roles from Marie Ilka. In June they moved to the Grand Opera House in Sydney.

‘Cuddle In Your Mammy’s Arms’ sheet music cover, 1921

National Library of Australia, Canberra

‘I had a little drop with Martha’ sheet music cover, 1921

National Library of Australia, Canberra

For Christmas 1921 Neil wrote and produced yet another edition of Bluebeardfor Fullers’ at the Princess in Melbourne. Again, Neil played Rastus. Nellie Kolle was Selim, the Principal Boy, Essie Jennings was Queen Felicity and Jim Gerald was the Dame, Sister Mary (‘I’m a saucy little girl with a giddy little prance. I’m looking for a lover—so come boys, here’s a chance!’).

Much of the music for Bluebeardwas written by Fullers’ senior musical director, Hamilton Webber, with lyrics by Frank Neil. There was, however, one song for which Neil wrote both music and lyrics. Called ‘Cuddle in Your Mammy’s Arms’, it was in the stereotypical ‘mammy’ tradition so popular at the time. Although at first the words seem trite, they have a deeper, wistful charm. The idiosyncratic capitalisation is Neil’s:

(First verse)

I can see my dear old Mammy,

In the Happy Days gone by.

How She used to tease me,

How She’d hug and squeeze me,

When I think of Her I sigh.

As the shades of Night were falling

And the Stars began to peep,

She would fold me in Her arms

And gently croon me off to sleep.

(chorus)

Rock a bye, Hush a bye,

Mammy’s Little Baby,

‘Cause I love but You, yes indeed I do,

I’d reach the Stars from Heaven down

And give them to you.

Rock a bye, Hush a bye,

My little bunch of charms,

For you’ll never find a pal like your Mammy,

So just cuddle in your Mammy’s arms.

(Second verse)

Now that I’m a child no longer,

And I have no Mammy dear,

How I love to treasure

All the priceless pleasure

That I felt when She was near.

For you only get one Mammy,

And I miss her now she’s gone.

How I wish I had Her here

To croon to her this little song.

‘Cuddle in Your Mammy’s Arms’ was published by E.W. Cole of Melbourne’s famous Book Arcade.

Ferry the Frog. This 1901 poster deceptively depicts him as white.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Cover of souvenir of the 100th performance of Bluebeard at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne, 24 February 1922

Theatre Heritage Australia

For the gala 100th performance of Bluebeardon 24 February 1922 Fullers published a handsome souvenir that named not only the twelve principals but, unusually, also the 17-member ballet and the ballet mistress, the 15 juvenile dancers, the eight-member chorus, the three speciality acts (including a Charlie Chaplin imitator and the aforementioned Black American contortionist known as  ‘Ferry the Frog’), the musical director and his nine musicians, the seven in the electrical department, the six mechanists, the three prop men, the five ladies in the wardrobe, the scenic artist, and the 18-strong front-of-house team.

After Bluebeardit was back to melodrama for the Fullers at the Majestic in Newtown and the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle. Neil produced the plays and he and Maurice Tuohy were in virtually all of them. Most of the repertoire was standard fare though there was the occasional locally written effort, most notably Clarence Lee’s A Daughter of Australia. Neil played Spiky McDonald, ‘a roustabout—he causes great amusement’; Tuohy was the hero, Tom Stanton, ‘a young Australian squatter’.

Cover of program for Mother Goose, Palace Theatre, Melbourne, 1923

Theatre Heritage Australia

Page from the program for Mother Goose, Palace Theatre, Melbourne, 1923

Theatre Heritage Australia

In 1922 Hugh J. Ward, the American-born managing director of J.C. Williamson’s, resigned and set up his own entrepreneurial organisation, Hugh J. Ward Theatres Pty Ltd, in partnership with the Fullers.

Frank Neil switched to the Hugh J. Ward management to produce their 1923 Christmas pantomime Mother Goose at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne. The Palace, at the Parliament House end of Bourke Street, had opened in 1912 as Fullers’ National Amphitheatre, but had been renamed the Palace in 1916. The starry cast included Joe Brennan in the title role, Joe’s wife, Ida Newton, as Truehart, ‘a likeable boy’, Amy Rochelle as Sailor Jack, and the great musical comedy star Dorothy Brunton as Silverbell, Squire Hardflint’s beautiful daughter. Renowned ‘animal delineator’ William Hassan played Anastasia, the goose that lays the golden eggs. Minnie Hooper looked after the ballets and Harry Jacobs conducted the orchestra. Also for Ward, Neil stage-managed a season of plays presented by a company headed by the great British actor-playwright Seymour Hicks.

Canadian actress Muriel Starr, c.1920s

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Dinks and Onkus (Jack Paterson and George Wallace), c.1925

Nancye Bridges collection

During this time Maurice Tuohy had leading roles in the dramas Rain and The Wheel opposite British actress Barbara Hoffe and in The Garden of Allah, East of Suez, Madame X and The Pelican with Muriel Starr, a Canadian-born London-based actress who proved immensely popular with Australian audiences.

In June 1924, Neil sailed with Ward in the Sonoma to look for new shows and stars in the United States, London and Paris. Ward was widely travelled, respected, and had valuable theatrical contacts in every major city. He was an astute judge of shows and stars, and a shrewd and skilful negotiator. Neil could not have had a better mentor.

Neil was back in Australia in time to produce Cinderellafor Hugh J. Ward at the Princess in Melbourne, where it opened on 20 December 1924. This was a transplant of a lavish production first staged at the London Hippodrome for Christmas 1922. Ward was reported to have imported 150 tons of scenery, wardrobe, costumes and props, including a fairy coach studded with 20,000 cubes of cut crystal and lit by 500 tiny electric light bulbs. He also brought out two members of the original London cast, Bert Escott (he played Baron Mumm) and Harry Angers (Buttons). The local players included Roma Phillips (Cinderella), Kitty Reidy (Prince Charming), Trixie Ireland (the Fairy Godmother), June Mills and Dinks Paterson (the Ugly Sisters), William Hassan (Cutie the Cat), Freddie Carpenter (Harlequin) and Hal Percy (the Clown). Carpenter went on to an international career as a dancer, choreographer and producer, especially of pantomimes, while Percy was a co-founder of the influential Melbourne Little Theatre. Dinks Paterson and Trixie Ireland were on a brief visit to their homeland. Back in 1919 tall, skinny Jack Paterson had teamed with short, stocky George Wallace to develop a knockabout comedy act. Calling themselves Dinks and Onkus—contemporary Australian slang for ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Their rough and tumble antics were enormously popular at Harry Clay’s Sydney suburban theatres. After Dinks and Onkus split in 1924, Paterson paired with his wife, Trixie Ireland, as Dinks and Trixie. They spent many years working in Britain, where they participated in an early experimental BBC television broadcast. They returned to Australia permanently in 1948 and retired from show business in 1957.

Musical comedy star Dorothy Brunton, 1920s. From cover of Stageland, no. 4, 1924.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Cover of program for Little Jessie James, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, 1925

Theatre Heritage Australia

After Cinderella, Harry Angers and Bert Escott stayed on to co-star with Dorothy Brunton in Ward’s next production, the musical Little Jessie James, which opened at the Princess on 11 April 1925. Frank was co-producer with Harry Hall, who was mainly responsible for the show’s dance elements. Little Jessie James was not a musical ‘western’—it was mainly set in a smart New York apartment. Today it’s all but forgotten, but it was the biggest hit of Broadway’s 1923-1924 season. Much attention focussed on the music: the traditional pit band was replaced by an 11-piece ‘symphonic jazz orchestra’ led by local pianist James (‘Jimmy’) Elkins. His young percussionist, Jim Davidson would become prominent in Australian popular music and would head the Australian armed forces’ entertainment unit during the Second World War.

Neil stayed with Hugh J. Ward to work on two more now little-remembered musicals. He either produced, stage managed or had a role in The Honeymoon Girl and Tangerine, staged by Ward at the Grand Opera House in Sydney and the Princess in Melbourne.

Later in the year came a turning point in Frank Neil’s career. Encouraged by the experience he had gained working with Hugh J. Ward, he decided to venture into management, forming a partnership with Maurice Tuohy to produce a weekly-change repertoire of modern American melodramas.

Neil and Tuohy leased the Fullers’ Palace Theatre in Melbourne and there, on 29 August 1925, they launched Frank Neil’s Dramatic Company with an ‘American mystery play’ called The Revelations of a Wife. Strangely, it does not appear to have graced the Broadway stage. The plot involved ghosts, sliding panels, bizarrely disguised detectives, and a particularly dastardly villain. The reviews were kind, but somewhat tongue-in-cheek. This was followed on 5 September by the ‘rollicking comedy drama’ Queen of My Heart, whose plot took its characters from London to Japan and included a spectacular on-stage sea rescue.

Despite Neil’s claims, neither The Revelations of a Wife nor Queen of My Heart were in fact ‘modern American plays’. Although the author of Revelationswas uncredited, both plays were by Royce Carleton, an English actor and prolific melodrama playwright. They had toured the British provincial circuits in 1915, with Revelations under its original title, The Confessions of a Wife. Both plays had been registered for Australian copyright by the Fullers in 1921. The reason for the name change is not known. The author, Royce Carleton, had an interesting connection with Australia. His father, an actor also known as Royce Carleton, had visited Australia with the Janet Achurch company in 1890, and his daughter, Moira Carleton, enjoyed a long career on Australian stage and radio.

Sadly, both shows were financial flops. Neil later disclosed that The Revelations of a Wifehad lost £700 ($64,000 today), a figure more than doubled by Queen of My Heart. In two weeks they lost £2000 ($184,000). He said, ‘We were only prevented from losing more by the fact there was none left.’ He told a friend that he had only £20 ($1800) to spend on the next production. Charlie Vaude remembered: ‘He gave drama a good try-out, but he found it did not make box office receipts soar.’ Sir Ben Fuller agreed to defer rent payments ‘until the weather broke’. And break it did.

Cover of program for Are You a Mason?, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, 1925

Theatre Heritage Australia

Frank Neil in The Nervous Wreck, 1925

Author’s collection

In desperation Frank Neil’s Dramatic Company was hastily rebadged Frank Neil’s Comedy Company, reappearing on 12 September 1925 with the Brandon Thomas favourite, Charley’s Aunt. Tuohy played Jack Chesney and Neil was Lord Fancourt Babberley, a role he had first tackled in 1912. His appearance in drag all but stopped the show and the season had to be extended. After Charley’s Aunt came a seemingly endless succession of frenzied farces that speedily attracted a new and eager audience. Among them were The Private Secretary, Are You a Mason?, Getting Gertie’s Garter, The Nervous Wreck, What Happened to Jones—and many more. Their triumph was repeated at the Grand Opera House in Sydney, in Perth, and in two return seasons at the Palace in Melbourne in 1926.

In July 1926 Maurice Tuohy became ill while he, Lily Molloy and her mother were driving from Melbourne to Sydney, where they were to board a steamer to take them to Perth, the next stop on the company’s itinerary. Tuohy became ill, and what was initially thought to be a cold worsened rapidly. Lily drove them to the hospital at Orbost, where doctors diagnosed pneumonia. Touhy could not be saved. He died there on 17 July 1926, aged only 34. News of his passing was widely reported and a memorial service in Adelaide was attended by many members of the theatrical community, including Adelaide comedian Roy Rene. Tuohy was interred in the cemetery at Willaston, South Australia. Lily Molloy told a reporter that she was ‘devastated’, as she and Tuohy had become engaged in March 1924—which must have surprised everybody, especially Frank Neil. He posted a heartfelt tribute in several Adelaide newspapers:

‘In loving memory of my dear comrade and associate for many years, Maurice Tuohy, who passed to his last home on the 17 July 1926.

“I long for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still.”

— Inserted by his sorrowing friend, Frank Neil, Sydney, NSW.’

The poignant quote is from Tennyson’s poem Break, Break, Break.

Frank carried on alone. His company continued to draw happy crowds to the Palace through the Christmas season. He added the vintage farce Fun on the Bristol to his repertoire. Older theatregoers could still remember the diminutive American comedian John F. Sheridan as the feisty Widow O’Brien in the original Australian production. Frank Neil now made the drag role his own.

The years 1927, 1928 and the first half of 1929 were much the same, with Neil shunting his company between the Palace in Melbourne and the Grand Opera House in Sydney, a routine broken only by annual pantomimes in Sydney and seasons in Newcastle and at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide in the latter part of 1928.

In 1930 Neil reminisced: ‘With all modesty I would like to mention this: everyone I knew told me I was all kinds of a variegated fool for presuming to run a show of my own in Melbourne or Sydney, and to play “cheap farce”, as they were good enough to describe it, was plain suicide. Yet here is the cold truth. In our four-and-a-half years, playing only in Sydney and Melbourne, with the exception of one season of thirteen weeks in Perth and another of eight weeks in Adelaide, I cleared £47,000 ($4,374,000) net profit.’

In November 1927, buoyed by his healthy bank balance, Neil announced that he had purchased a prime block of real estate in Sydney’s Central Railway Square. The island site had been passed in at £42,000 ($3,820,000) at a recent uction, but Neil was thought to have outlaid £50,000 ($4,549,000) on its purchase. He engaged the architects of Sydney’s palatial Prince Edward Theatre, Robertson and Marks, to design his 1800-seat theatre. It was to be ‘the last word in comfort. Special steam heating apparatus will be installed for the winter months, whilst in the summer season the latest ventilation system will make it the coolest theatre in Sydney. It will also have a sliding roof. As well as the theatre proper there will be five stories of office buildings in the front, and over the tram loop at the back several stories of workrooms will be built.’ Later plans included ‘a hotel on the American plan, containing at least 300 bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.’

Early in 1928 Neil sent his general manager, Eddie McDonald, on an overseas trip ‘in search of world-class attractions for Frank Neil’s Comedians and some of the latest musical comedy successes’, and to ‘secure special furnishings and effects that are unprocurable in Australia for the new theatre that Mr. Neil is building. The venture will represent a huge outlay, but it is Mr. Neil’s intention to stick to his policy of cheap prices.’ Although Neil’s Liberty Theatre was never built, the name was adopted by David N. Martin for the stylish art deco cinema he erected in Pitt Street in 1934.

Frank Neil was riding the crest of a wave. He had hit on a uniquely successful formula: a small, hard-working and devoted company, and a perennially popular repertoire of tried-and-true farces whose initial production costs had been well and truly covered. If he tired of the treadmill, he didn’t show it. It was money for jam.

To be continued

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