Robert Morley

Lloyd Lamble, sometime in the mid-1930s. Athol Shmith photo. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.Between 1984 and 1994, Australian born actor Lloyd Lamble wrote his autobiography. Living in South Hampstead in London and only recently retired, he was aged in his early eighties when it was finally completed. Originally entitled The Strutting and the Fretting, the first draft had been painstakingly typed out and then hand corrected in pencil—in some parts rearranged. The final version, entitled Hi diddle dee dee, An Actor’s Life for Me, had been much polished and was dated 1994.¹ The manuscript is divided into ‘2 Acts’—Act 1 covering his first 36 years in Australia.

In writing his memoirs, Lamble was probably inspired by the many actor contemporaries who had published a biography in the last decades of the twentieth century. (The long list of biographies included Australians he knew; the biography of Peter Finch by Trader Faulkner was published in 1979, Leo McKern’s autobiography came out in 1983, Michael Pate’s in 1986, and Vincent Ball’s in 1995) In style, his memoirs most resembles Leo McKern’s—an eclectic mix of personal history and anecdotes. However, unlike McKern’s, Lloyd Lamble’s memoirs never found a publisher, an unusual outcome for an actor who had worked on stage, radio and screen for almost sixty years. It must have been disappointing. In addition to working on the manuscript for over a decade, Lamble had gone to some effort to assemble his story. There is ample evidence that he checked his understanding of some events with friends. For example. surviving in the papers of Coral Browne is Lamble’s handwritten request to use a brief but typically ‘fruity’ anecdote from their days working together with Gregan McMahon. In this case, Browne declined to let him tell yet another ‘Coral Browne’ story.²

Born in Melbourne on 8 February 1914, Lloyd Nelson Lamble was the youngest of four sons born to William Henry Lamble, a prominent musician and secretary of the Musicians Union, and Alma Frances nee Potter. A proficient gymnast and fine singer, he left Wesley College aged 17 to become a junior announcer at radio station 3DB, later progressing to senior positions at 3KZ and 3AW, broken up by some work as a dance band singer.³ Bob Walker, 3KZ’s biographer, described the young Lloyd Lamble as ‘tall, good looking, with blond hair and rich of voice.’⁴ It was while he was at 3AW that he moved into radio acting with the Lee Murray Radio Players, and not surprisingly, he then found his way to the stage.⁵ His first professional stage role was in Ivor Novello’s Fresh Fields at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in 1934—at very short notice, after the leading player contracted laryngitis.⁶

However, Lamble’s breakthrough role was in 1936, in Emlyn Williams‘exciting throat-gripping thriller’—Night Must Fall, directed by Gregan McMahon. His leading role as Baby-face Dan was a triumph, The Agenewspaper reporting that‘Lamble exhibited once more a talent which should be nurtured with great care. His scene with Elaine Hamill [playing Olivia Grayne] in the second act was wholly brilliant…’.⁷ The play toured east coast Australia and New Zealand, with great success in 1936. ‘It would be a difficult matter to find an actor, even in London or New York, who could handle this remarkable character as masterly as Lloyd Lamble’,reported Dunedin’s Evening Star.⁸ The musical comedy Wild Violets with JC Williamson followed. In the aftermath of these successes, in 1937 Lamble started his own acting and radio school, which included elocution lessons for aspiring radio artists. He married non-theatrical Marjorie Barrett in Melbourne in March 1937. Their honeymoon was in Adelaide, because Lamble was performing in that city at night.⁹

Surviving examples of his radio work showcase an attractive, authoritative voice—a refined Australian accent (or a received accent), exactly what one expected to hear from radio broadcasters at the time. Historian Richard Lane identifies The Last of Mrs Chaney on the Lux Radio Theatre in 1939 as Lamble’s first important radio performance. Lane states that by the late 30s, Lamble had evolved to be one of the most sought-after actors for the medium.¹⁰ In time, Lamble proved capable of operating in almost every radio genre—comedy, (including straight man for comedian Roy Rene) in numerous radio dramas, and in variety—as a compere and straight man for Bob Dyer.¹¹

As Lennie in Of Mice and Men. With Ron Randell, May 1940.

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Lloyd Lamble with US actress Terry Walker in Claudia, 1942. Athol Shmith photo.

Author’s Collection

The early 1940s also saw Lamble under contract to David Martin at Sydney’s new Minerva theatre in a string of productions. These included Gaslight, Quiet Wedding, Room for Two, Rachel Crothers’ Susan and God and Noel Coward’s Design for Living. Lennie, in Of Mice and Menwas a favourite role, Lamble recalled. Fellow performers at this time included a long list of others who were making their name, or had already done so—John Wood, Ron Randell, Fifi Banvard, Claude Flemming, Trilby Clark, Marjorie Gordon and Muriel Steinbeck.A reviewer for The Bulletin in May 1940 reported that ‘Lamble is acting so well these days… it is becoming worthwhile to go to any Minerva production just to watch his development.’¹²

In his manuscript, Lamble described the war years in Sydney as a professionally exciting time. His reputation was at its zenith—an east coast Australian tour of Rose Franken’s new comedy-drama Claudiain 1942 was very successful. In addition to his stage work he made fund raising appearances and even appeared in a few films—including the short propaganda film The Grumblens and the feature Strong is the Seed (An underwhelming film about wheat farming). In 1941 Lamble also found time to author a play entitled The Rabbit Habit—a preoccupation with procreation. Apparently, this was only ever performed as a produced reading sometime in the 1940s, with Lamble, Peter Finch, George Blackshaw, Gwen Plum, Kitty Bluett and Bettina Dixon taking the parts.¹³

The war years also saw dramatic and less happy changes in his personal life. Appearing together in the romantic comedy Dinner at Eightin Sydney in late 1939, Lamble had begun a relationship with actress Barbara Smith. Smith had studied at London’s RADA and was now forging her own career on stage in Australia. News of the affair brought Marjorie to Sydney, where Lamble ‘asked for his freedom,’ in a meeting he admitted was excruciating.¹⁴ A divorce was granted in 1943.

At the same time Lamble was enjoying such success on stage and radio, his political views were becoming more pronounced. With his growing concern about what he believed was the exploitation of actors by management, in 1942 he was elected President of Actor’s Equity, a position he held for much of the 1940s. He said that he understood poverty for actors. ‘I’ve lived on the smell of an oil rag’ he told one Sydney paper in 1940.¹⁵ Even in his 1994 memoirs, and despite a change of political preferences later in life, he still held strong feelings about this: ‘One cannot escape the feeling that to most management, actors are scum,’ he wrote.¹⁶

It was Lamble’s close association with Actor’s Equity and his sympathy towards causes of the political left, combined with the collapse of his relationship with Barbara Smith, that hastened his decision to leave Australia. The Commonwealth Investigation Service, the forerunner of ASIO¹⁷ began to keep a file on his activities in the mid-1940s—such as his membership of the Friends of Republican Spain and association with the New Theatre League. His ASIO file, since declassified, seems innocuous today, but in the emerging cold war environment he was deemed a security concern. His mail was intercepted (or at least a list of who he corresponded with was kept), and a record was even made (somehow) of annotations in his copy of Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory. When he read poetry at a Communist Party of Australia fundraising event in August 1946, this was noted—in fact any mention of him at meetings was recorded.¹⁸ On one occasion, an ASIO operative listened in, when he and a friend chatted outside a pub, after closing time.¹⁹

Lloyd Lamble and Barbara Smith in 1941. Private collection.

In 1942, Lamble fathered a child by Barbara, although—most unusually for the time—the couple had yet to formalise their relationship through marriage—'a defiant act of revolution on both our parts,’ Lamble was to claim.²⁰ However, while acting and directing a highly successful tour of New Zealand in 1944, Lamble met Lesley Jackson, a 29-year-old actress from Wellington, and again, began an intense affair. He returned to Australia in late 1944, Barbara then being pregnant in Sydney with their second child. Lamble however, set up a new home with Lesley.

The end of the relationship with Barbara was another traumatic experience, he records. Not surprisingly, it divided his friends and acquaintances and in time, deeply embarrassed his own family. Both the Smith and Lamble families insisted Lloyd ‘do the right thing’ by Barbara and their two children and marry her.²¹ The estranged couple did marry in Sydney on September 20, 1945, but Lloyd left Barbara immediately after the wedding and returned to Lesley.

Lamble’s ongoing anxiety during the years 1945-1951 sometimes relates to Barbara’s not unreasonable expectation that he should provide financial support to her, to bring up their two very young children on her own. This tension remained for some time, although a divorce was finalised in March 1949.²²

Lamble at home in Sydney, 27 March 1941, photographed by R. Donaldson

Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales & ACP Magazines

Notwithstanding further triumphs—including touring with his own company in 1945; performing the comedy Under the Counter with visiting actor Cicely Courtneidge in 1947–8; and a very successful run of Edward My Son with British actor Robert Morley in 1949—there was soon less work for him.As Stephen Alomes has written, in the new Cold War era, accusations of communist sympathies became the means and the justification for theatre managements to marginalise politically active figures like Lamble. However, there was worse to come.

Lloyd Lamble and visiting British actor Robert Morley in Edward, My Son in 1949. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

On the matter of whether he really was a Communist, Lloyd Lamble’s autobiography is evasive. He explains he was ‘led towards communism by others’.²³ But in a long investigative article written in 1990, David McKnight and Greg Pemberton suggested that it was ‘puritanical, anti-intellectual Australia’ that viewed young actors ‘as radicals because they belonged to the arts world and were strong trade unionists.’ Lamble’s contemporary, Michael Pate, also a member of the New Theatre, recalled; ‘I found it stimulating … [But] we were Australians first. In no way would we have thought to be subversive to Australia. We were radical thinkers in that we didn’t agree with all the opinions of the establishment.’²⁴

However, in June 1950, the Victorian Royal Commission into Communism publicly named Lloyd Lamble as a communist.²⁵ He was increasingly blacklisted. As a consequence of the slump in acting work, at one point he had to resort to door-to-door sales to make ends meet.²⁶

Not surprisingly therefore, in late 1950, Lamble and Lesley Jackson decided to leave Australia. The couple departed Adelaide in early January 1951 on the Norwegian Cargo-Passenger ship, MS Torrens. There was a degree of secrecy—Lamble had hoped to slip out of the country because he did not wish to be caught up in another dispute with Barbara about the child support payments that he was only sometimes making.²⁷

It was an immensely exciting time to travel to Britain and there is a long list of Australian actors who moved there after the war, keen to try their luck. Allan Cuthbertson left for Britain in April 1947. Reflecting the high hopes of many, Cuthbertson told a journalist: ‘There is so much to learn in London now with the great theatrical revival’.²⁸ Gwenda Wilson and Dorothy Alison both left Australia in 1949 and Betty McDowall—who famously found the London acting scene ‘tough as hell’— departed in 1951. Peter Finch had arrived in London in late 1948, but had the advantage of the patronage of Laurence Olivier, who had seen him on stage in Australia.

The second part of Lamble’s memoirs is entitled ‘Act 2’ and deals with his life after the move to the UK. Film historian Brian McFarlane described Lamble as evolving into a ‘sturdy character player’ during this period.²⁹

In his first London play—The Martin’s Nest (April-May 1951) with Yvonne Mitchell at the Westminster Theatre. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

On arrival in London, Lamble was again desperately short of money. However, he had the good fortune to be picked up by the very large Al Parker agency —a stroke of luck that most of his Australian acquaintances missed out on. Within a few weeks he had a part in the comedy-drama The Martin’s Nest. Although indifferently received, it was followed by more work at the Q Theatre—a mix of drawing room comedies, suspense and drama, including Traveller’s Joy, Night Call and Captain Carvallo. Lamble’s first experience of BBC Television also occurred at this time. This was the era of live television, broadcast from the BBC’s studios at Lime Grove or the Alexandra Palace. The experience of working on The Passing Show in April 1951 was ‘pure hell’ he recalled, largely because of the constraints of the technology. Very simply, the cameras often broke down.³⁰

Who is Sylvia at the Q Theatre, Kew, London in 1952. Rattigan’s play of male obsession had already enjoyed a long run in the West End. National Library of Australia Prompt Collection.

Although some of his professional experiences in the UK are recounted in his memoirs, much is not. The various online film databases list over 160 known screen appearances by Lloyd Lamble in the 44 years 1951 to 1995 (See the Internet Movie Database, for example). The BBC Genome provides further information and includes radio performances as well as TV. Interestingly, this confirms that he was sometimes given roles in British-made productions set in Australia. These including several radio plays and TV episodes for the BBC—Lasseter’s Reef (1953), Overland Patrol (1965), a dramatization of the Petrov Affair (1966) and a dramatization of the Faraday school kidnapping in Life at Stake (1978).

Not surprisingly, Lamble always said he preferred the stage. Film he much preferred over TV—and yet his later screen career in the UK became increasingly dominated by supporting roles in TV. ³¹

His first UK feature film performances in the 1950s included some leading roles—such as the stage manager in Curtain Up (1952), a comedy about a theatre company preparing a play, and as Inspector Freddie Frisnay in Terence Fisher’s mystery Mantrap (1953). Watched today, his speaking voice is a feature—reminding us of his extensive experience as a radio actor. Authoritative men in uniform soon became his speciality; especially Police Inspectors. He told one journalist; ‘I suppose that by now directors are so used to seeing me in police roles, that I'm the first person they think of when casting.’³²

His modest successes in the cinema did not go unnoticed back in Australia. In December 1952, a sharp-eyed ASIO agent spotted a magazine carrying a photo of Lamble with Australians Bill Kerr and Don Sharp, all taking roles in the war film Appointment in London (1953). Worried that the Royal Air Force was helping to make the film and may not have known that a ‘security risk’ was in the cast, a report was made by ASIO.³³

Lamble in Appointment in London(1953), a film about Bomber Command. The impressive photo, probably for makeup purposes, suggests a role more prominent than it really was.

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Lamble’s memoir studiously avoids comparing his success with others, but there is an inference throughout that he was conscious of the different fortunes of Australians working in the UK. One of the other Australian actors on Appointment in London, Bill Kerr, had arrived in 1947 with less acting experience than he. Eight years Lamble’s junior, his part as a cheerful flying officer was a leading role opposite Dirk Bogarde. By contrast, Lloyd Lamble’s role as the RAF Weather Officer was uncredited.

In fact, these minor character roles became the norm for him in film and increasingly in television as the 1960s and 1970s progressed.

Lamble does acknowledge how simple luck could make such a difference in a career. He recalled ruefully that he was offered the role of the nasty British Colonel Henniker in the play Carrington VC but declined it, because he felt the money wasn’t good enough. Instead, fellow Australian Allan Cuthbertson took it. The play opened at the Westminster Theatre in 1953 and was a great success, with Cuthbertson being asked to reprise the role for Anthony Asquith’s very successful film version the next year. But far from being a role that helped him break new ground,³⁴ Cuthbertson felt it typecast him as ‘the sneering Englishman’.³⁵ Surprisingly, Lamble has little else to say about Cuthbertson, although he knew him moderately well. They knew each other in Australia and had worked together in several British films—Barnacle Bill (1957), The Boys (1962), Term of Trial (1962), and in the Sci/Fi TV Series Journey to the Unknown (1969).

Lloyd Lamble playing yet another Police officer, with Maurice Denham and Allan Cuthbertson in Barnacle Bill 1957. Lamble described this as his last major film part.³⁶ Source of screengrab—Author’s copy.

In fact, Lamble complained that the national connection with other Australians counted for little in the way of actual employment offers—jobs for mates. In his memoir, he could only recall two occasions where expat Australian directors gave him work in the UK—to help out a fellow Aussie.³⁷ However, he and Lesley were still well known enough to be asked to appear in episodes of a local TV series, during their return to Australia and New Zealand in late 1965. In the children’s show The Adventures of Seaspray, he appeared as the conman Miller, in the episode Stalemate. Lesley appeared in another episode; The Rain of Death.

Lloyd Lamble’s guest appearance in the Australian children’s TV series The Adventures of Seaspray, episode Stalemate (1966). Source of screengrab Daily Motion.

Across his screen career there were some roles Lloyd Lamble was well remembered for. Amongst them was Superintendent Kemp-Bird in the three St Trinian’s comedies—a running sub plot across the films being his tortured relationship with Sergeant Ruby Gates (played by Joyce Grenfell). Lamble was also particularly pleased with his leading part in the 1960 series No Wreath for the General³⁸ and in the well-received, made for TV film The Naked Civil Servant (1975)³⁹  where he played Quentin Crisp’s father.

Superintendent Kemp-Bird (Lamble) coerces Sergeant Ruby Gates (Grenfell) into working undercover at St Trinian’s. The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) Source of screengrab—Internet Archive.

He was a regular character in several British TV series, including Emergency Ward 10 (1966) and The Kids from 47A (1973-1974).

Lamble recounted that he was particularly annoyed to have been tricked twice, (in two years!) into accepting parts in Stanley Long’s soft-core sex films On the Game(1974) and Eskimo Nell (1975). Lamble reported that he and Lesley were sickened by aspects of the latter film when they saw the final product.⁴⁰

One of Lloyd Lamble’s many minor screen roles. In the film No Sex Please, We’re British (1973) Lamble and fellow Australian Mavis Villiers played American tourists in London. Source of screengrab—YouTube.⁴¹

Surprisingly, Lamble’s biography also tells us much less than one might hope about his British stage appearances. It is fortunate that the National Library of Australia collected a representative sample of British theatre programs that showcase his work. Some of these demonstrate Lamble’s interest in promoting Australian theatre. For example, in 1976 Lamble performed with other Australians in John Power’s The Last of the Knucklemen at the Edinburgh Festival. A year later he appeared in Jim McNeil’s The Old Familiar Juice,performed at London’s Roundhouse Theatre. He was still active with an association of Australian performing Artists in Britain until the late 1970s.

The program for Jim McNeil’s Australian prison play, The Old Familiar Juice, April 1977 Roundhouse Theatre London. It carried a helpful Australian glossary. National Library of Australia’s Prompt Collection.

Newspaper reports reveal that at times he also directed for the stage, for example, the 1955 Christmas holiday show at Amersham’s Playhouse was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farmfeaturing his wife, Lesley Jackson.⁴² His memoir also mentions his unhappy experience directing both Sandy Wilson’s The Buccaneer and Ian Douglas’ Lucky Boy, at almost the same time,in August 1953,⁴³ as a result of which he fell out spectacularly with Wilson. Lamble wrote that Wilson ‘told me to take my uncouth person back to Australia where it belonged.’ ⁴⁴

Lamble’s memoir is strengthened by the inclusion of some less positive but very human experiences. He mentions his decision to split with agent Al Parker, which he later came to regret. He had somehow gained the impression that a smaller agent would work harder for him. But the parts continued to get smaller. Parker was enraged that he had left his agency, and he wrote Lamble a ‘vitriolic letter… [which] claimed quite rightly that he had got me established in all aspects of the business, despite the fact that I was a Communist.’ Lamble threatened to sue him if he described him that way again. ⁴⁵

Some of the anecdotes used by Lamble portray the vicissitudes for actors of the era. For example. he was scathing of Douglas Fairbanks Junior’s use of ‘idiot boards’ (cue cards) when they appeared together in several episodes of the early TV series Douglas Fairbanks Presents in 1953-4. Fairbanks apparently didn’t want to learn lines for TV scripts.⁴⁶ More fondly, from his Australian stage days only a few years before, he recalled that Robert Morley became understandably bored while performing Edward, My Son. Morley had written the script with Noel Langley and was now touring it to selected locations in the anglosphere, including Australia and New Zealand in 1949-50. The challenge for Lloyd Lamble was to cope with Morley’s off-script ad-libs, which, he good humouredly explains, he was able to do.⁴⁷ Lamble appeared again with Morley in several British films of the 50s, and they became friends.

While Lamble’s memoir does not state so, newspaper reports suggest that he increasingly turned to the stage in the 1970s and 80s—at the same time his screen appearances were becoming less substantial. These were roles with repertory companies in provincial theatres, which included Osborne’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1975), several seasons of playing Dickens in A Christmas Carol (1976-7)⁴⁸ and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession (1978). In the 1980s he appeared in Alan Bleasdale’s vasectomy comedy Having a Ball (1984), On Golden Pond with Dundee Rep (1985), William Douglas Home’s Marriage Rites (1986) and Gigi (1988)—where he took the Honoré Lachaille role that Maurice Chevalier had made famous. At the 1977 Edinburgh festival he performed two solo performer plays, as a double bill. ‘It was a tremendous feeling—holding an audience, alone [for two and a half hours], he recalled.⁴⁹ Of his career choices at this time, he said; ‘The field is wide and I will do anything that is interesting financially or artistically.’ ⁵⁰

Between 1988 and 1990 he took on the character role of Charles the butler, in a popular revival of Me and My Girl at London’s Adelphi Theatre. But by 1990 and now aged in his mid-70s, he finally chose to retire—with an enormous body of work behind him.

Lamble helping to advertise Chester’s Gateway Theatre production of A Month of Sundays in 1988.⁵¹

A persistent theme of Lamble’s memoir is the financial insecurity he observed in the profession and sometimes suffered himself. The foreword to his manuscript cited a 1970s British Equity survey on actors’ earnings, with its dismal finding that 64% of actors earned no money at all in any given 12-month period. He ended the foreword with these words: ‘This then, is the story so far of one such ‘nearly’ actor, one who had everything going for him—one who still might make it.’ ⁵² At one stage, he even seriously considered calling his autobiography ‘Who the hell is Lloyd Lamble?’⁵³ Even when the final version was complete, he still felt it necessary to dedicate it to ‘all those thousands of actors who never quite made it’—apparently, he felt he was one too.

But Lamble did try to do something about his financial situation. He invested in property, with mixed results. He also took some time off acting to invest in the business of marketing the new, revolutionary, lightweight Sony video recorders. He indicates that he spent two years out of acting, which he felt gave him new skills and broadened his world views.⁵⁴

Lloyd Lamble, c.1990. This is one of a series of A4 sized photos he had made to send out to fans.

Author’s collection

Lamble’s account of friend and fellow Australian actor-writer John Sherman is by far his memoir’s longest and most poignant personal recollection. Melbourne-born Sherman had met Lamble through their shared politics and involvement in worker’s theatre. They crossed paths again in London, where Sherman was struggling to get regular work. Sherman did get a role playing the Australian patient in the 1949 film version of the play The Hasty Heart,with Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan, probably thanks to his slight resemblance to Chips Rafferty. However, ill-health, bad luck and outrageous antisemitism stymied his career and he returned to Australia. Most touching of all is Lamble’s memory of meeting the ailing Sherman again on his first trip home to Australia in September 1965. Sherman, now working as a scriptwriter but very ill, insisted on inviting Lamble to dinner, and whilst cooking him a gourmet meal, told him ‘Oh yeah—I’ve been a bit crook, but she’ll be apples. I’ll be OK again soon.’⁵⁸ Sherman died several months later. It is an interesting anecdote that reveals another side to Lloyd Lamble.

Unfortunately, on the last few pages of the final version of his memoir, Lamble admitted that he had been warned by friends that what he had written appeared to be a ‘whinge.’ His pet dislikes do indeed pop up and distract the reader in the later part of the narrative—amongst them a dislike of jazz, armchair socialists, anger at poor pronunciation on the BBC, the use of Ms instead of Miss or Mrs, suspicion of members of Catholic Action (whom he was convinced tried to wreck his career) and the growing use of coarse language on stage.

Lewis Cowan, an actor friend who read the draft, provided Lamble with an interesting critique. It resonated enough with Lamble that he included it in the last few pages of the final version. Cowan wrote: ‘You have led a life of such variation – done so many things outside the scope or experience of the majority of men—let alone actors—and above all, you are still working… A failed actor? Never!’⁵⁹

Cowan was right, of course, but Lamble felt unable to go back and rework his memoirs again.

In later life, Lamble built a relationship with his two children by Barbara and apologised to her for the pain he had caused.⁶⁰ He also had the pleasure of adopting and raising two children with Lesley.⁶¹

Lamble was assured by friends that he had an impressive body of work to be proud of. His remarkable 60-year career on radio, TV, the stage and film, his political idealism, blacklisting and subsequent journey to Britain as one of the great wave of post-war Australian actors, remains a story worth celebrating. But undoubtedly his own worst critic, even the final version of his autobiography needed a ghost writer and a serious edit before it could be published.

Lloyd Lamble died in Cornwall in March 2008.

Lloyd Lamble media available online

Unnamed. Mo with Lamble. A 5-minute Episode on 3AW from1936 at the Australian Old Time Radio website. Also featuring Sadie Gale. https://www.australianotr.com.au/1936.html

The Shadow, Episode: Return to Life—November 19, 1943, at YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRNVN589fc

The Shadow, Episode: The Juggernaut—December 26, 1943, at YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw7mz2xyaPw

The Shadow, Episode: Murder with Music, Ep. 10, 1946 at NFSA
https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/item/shadow-murder-music-ep-10-1946

Maytime. 3DB program c 1949. At the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/Maytime

The Haunted Hour. Donovan Joyce productions.
2 undated episodes at the Australian Old Time radio website. https://www.australianotr.com.au/blog/archives/10-2014

The Adventures of Seaspray—TV Series at Daily Motion
Episode: Stalemate. (1966)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9ngw9g

Curtain Up (1952) —Feature Film, YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsfRQtNNI-w&t=32s

Mantrap (1953)—Feature Film, YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsfRQtNNI-w&t=32s

The Kids of 47A (1974)—TV Series, YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU50uATJi3xRwF40fveDf2x0Fhkm1PuFI

Crown Court (1975)—TV Series, YouTube
An Evil Influence Parts 1-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RQEkrDz0-U

Endnotes

1. Copies of the final version reside in the Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne, the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney and the Australian National Library in Canberra. The draft is held in private hands.

2. Australian Performing Arts Collection. Coral Browne Collection, correspondence,19 July 1984

3. Lamble, 1994, p.61-82

4. Walker, 1984, p.22

5. Lane,1994, p.185-6. And see for example The Argus (Melbourne), 13 May 1933

6. Lamble, 1994, p83-4

7. The Age (Melbourne), 17 February 1936, p.12

8. Evening Star (NZ), 3 August 1936, p6

9. The Herald (Melbourne), 24 February 1937, p.18

10. Lane, 1994, p.186

11. Lamble, 1994, p.211

12. The Bulletin (Sydney), 8 May 1940

13. Lamble, 1994, p.114. The manuscript for the play is now held by the National Archives of Australia.

14. Lamble, 1994, p.115

15. Daily News (Sydney),12 February 1940, p.2

16. Lamble, 1994, p.114

17. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation—the equivalent of Britain’s MI5 or the FBI in the US.

18. ASIO file—Lloyd Lamble, p23

19. ASIO file—Lloyd Lamble, p22

20. Lamble,1994, p188

21. Lamble, 1994, p189

22. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 12 September 1948

23. Presumably he meant Equity Secretary, Hal Alexander. Lamble, 1994, p.243

24. David McKnight and Greg Pemberton, The Age (Melbourne), 1990

25. The Age (Melb) 21 June 1950, p.6

26. Lamble, 1994, p.248

27. The most comprehensive list of Lamble’s Australian productions is found in Lane, 1994, p.378-9

28. The Australian Women’s Weekly, 19 April 1947, p.17

29. McFarlane, 2003, p.376

30. Lamble, 1994, p.278

31. The Stage (London), 4 July 1991, p.6

32. Leicester Evening Mail (UK), 21 December 1957, p.4

33. ASIO file—Lloyd Lamble, p.13

34. Lamble, 1994, p.151

35. Porter, 1965, p.247

36. Lamble, 1994, p.316

37. Lamble, 1994 p.299

38. Lamble, 1994, p.316

39. Lamble, 1994, p.267

40. Lamble, 1994, p.353

41. This short scene with the American tourists was cut from some releases.

42. Bucks Examiner (UK) 14 January 1955, p.2

43. The Stage (London) 27 August 1953, p.8

44. Lamble, 1994, p.291

45. Lamble, 1994, p.304-305

46. Lamble, 1994, p.278

47. Lamble, 1994, p.235-236

48. Lamble writes of three tours of this play. Lamble, 1994, p.361-366

49. Lamble, 1994, p.366

50. The Stage (London), 4 July 1991, p.6

51. Cheshire Observer (UK) 17 February 1988, p.39

52. Lamble, 1994, p.5

53. Lloyd Lamble written summary of career, 13 March 1985. Private Collection.

54. Lamble, 1994, p.337

55. National Archives of Australia

56. The Daily News (Perth), 13 September 1947, p.18

57. The Australian Women’s Weekly, 21 October 1953

58. Lamble, 1994, p.311-316

59. Lamble, 1994, p.396

60. Lamble, 1994, p.189

61. Lamble, 1994, p.371

References

Stephen Alomes, When London Calls: The expatriation of Australian creative artists to Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1999

Trader Faulkner, Peter Finch, a biography, Angus & Robertson,1979

Lloyd Lamble, The Strutting and the Fretting, Unpublished first draft of autobiography, c.1988.

Lloyd Lamble, Hi diddle dee dee, An Actor’s Life for Me, Unpublished final version of autobiography, c.1994

Richard Lane, The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama, Melbourne University Press, 1994

Brian McFarlane (ed.), The Encyclopedia of British Film, BFI-Methuen, 2003

David McKnight & Greg Pemberton, ‘Seeing Reds’, The Age (Melbourne), Good Weekend Magazine (insert), 21 July 1990, p.35

Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900-1977, Oxford University Press, 1980

Hal Porter, Stars of Australian Stage and Screen, Rigby Ltd, 1965

R.R. Walker Dial 1179, The 3KZ Story. Lloyd O’Neil,1984, Online at the World Radio History Website

J.P. Wearing, The London Stage 1950-1959: a calendar of productions, performers, and personnel, Rowman and Littlefield, 2014

Celebrated French entertainer, Maurice Chevalier, interrupting a revival of his American film career, starred in a one man show for a month from 24 February 1960. The Phillip Street Revue, from Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre, ran just over a month from 21 May, preceding Cyril Ritchard and Cornelia Otis Skinner in The Pleasure of His Company, a comedy by Samuel Taylor and Ms Skinner, which began its nine-week run on 2 July. The year ended with two serious plays: an AETT production of Brendan Behan’s The Hostage and Clifford Odets’ Winter Journey, which starred Googie Withers and ran two months to 25 January 1961. Then came Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife, also with Withers, until 29 March.

Program cover for Irma La Douce, 1961

Theatre Heritage Australia

Flyer for The Sentimental Bloke, 1961

National Library of Australia, Canberra

17 June 1961 brought that uncommon Comedy attraction—a musical—Irma La Douce, which had flopped in Sydney but ran here for over four months. This was followed by an even rarer bird—a successful Australian musical: The Sentimental Bloke, with book and score based on C.J. Dennis’s poems by Albert Arlen and his wife, Nancy Brown with Lloyd Thomas, which also ran for over four months from 4 November.

Program cover for The Miracle Worker, 1962

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Woman in a Dressing Gown, 1962

Theatre Heritage Australia

Highlights of 1962 included an AETT production of The Miracle Worker, British actor Robert Speaight in A Man for All Seasons and—much lighter and more successful—Under the Yum Yum Tree, a comedy which played for over two months from 8 August. 9 November brought back Googie Withers in Ted Willis’s Woman in a Dressing Gown, which ran until 19 December. This was revived for a few weeks from 30 April 1963, following famed French mime, Marcel Marceau, who had been appearing for most of that month.

Program cover for Goodnight Mrs. Puffin, starring Irene Handl, 1963

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Mary, Mary, starring Derek Farr and Muriel Pavlow, 1963

Theatre Heritage Australia

Who’ll Come A-Waltzing, a local comedy by Peggy Caine, ran six weeks from 22 May 1963, followed by another six weeks for British comic actress Irene Handl in Goodnight Mrs. Puffin, which was also revived late in November. Another fondly remembered English comedienne was Joyce Grenfell who brought her own show here for a few weeks from 29 August, followed by Muriel Pavlow, Derek Farr and Dermot Walsh in the comedy Mary, Maryfor eight weeks from 18 September.

Program cover for John Gielgud in Ages of Man, 1963

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for The First Four Hundred Years, 1963

Theatre Heritage Australia

1963’s most distinguished visitor was Sir John Gielgud, who performed his Shakespearian compendium, Ages of Man, between 9 and 28 December. A completely different but equally celebrated performer was American comedian Jack Benny, who played the Comedy between 16 and 26 March 1964. That year was also the quatro-centenary of Shakespeare’s birth, celebrated here by The First 400 Years—excerpts from the most famous plays starring Googie Withers and Keith Michell for three weeks from 23 April.

Program cover for Flanders and Swann in At the Drop of a Hat, 1964

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Go Tell It On the Mountain, 1964

Theatre Heritage Australia

A couple of comedies—Never Too Late and Rattle of a Simple Man—the latter with local husband and wife John Meillon and June Salter—then preceded Britain’s Michael Flanders and Donald Swann in their famous revue, At the Drop of a Hat, for a month from 29 August. Go Tell It On the Mountain, an all negro folk-song entertainment, saw out the year and made way for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre from 16 February 1965.

Program cover for Difference of Opinion, starring Robert Flemyng, 1965

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Barry Humphries’ Excuse I: Another Nice Night’s Entertainment, 1965

Theatre Heritage Australia

British actor Robert Flemyng starred in Difference of Opinion for two months from 25 March 1965, then came Googie Withers and Richard Wordsworth in Beekman Place, followed by the bare breasted Guinean dancers of Les Ballets Africains, and then another Britisher, Robin Bailey, in another drama, A Severed Head. That most original of all Australian entertainers, Barry Humphries, was given his first hometown season at a major theatre in Excuse I, which began a three-week run on 20 September and proved popular enough for a three week revival from 5 February 1966.

Googie Withers in Desire of the Moth, 1966

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Terry McDermott & Darlene Johnson in Cactus Flower, 1966

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Other familiar faces in 1966 included Googie Withers, now partnered by Ed Devereaux, in a new local play, Desire of the Moth, from 5 March, and Irene Handl in a comedy-thriller, Busybody, from 16 April. The Melbourne premiere of the musical The Boys from Syracuse began on 8 June, followed by returns of Les Ballets Africains on 3 August and Joyce Grenfell on 31 August. Fresh attractions included the Phillip Street revue, A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down, doing seven weeks from 20 September and Cactus Flower, an American comedy with a local cast, which closed just over a month after its 19 November opening.

Keith Petersen as Oscar in The Odd Couple, 1966

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Suzanne Steele as Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, 1967

National Library of Australia, Canberra

More successful was Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, with Keith Petersen and Frederick Parslow, beginning a two-month run on New Year’s Eve. 11 March 1967 brought a much bigger hit with the British musical, Half a Sixpence, starring Scottish actor Mark McManus. This ran four months and was followed by a British comedy, There’s a Girl in My Soup, with expatriate Ron Randell (ten weeks from 14 July) and another musical, Man of La Mancha, with Charles West and Suzanne Steele, whose first four-month run here was later topped in the show’s numerous revivals.

Program cover for Black Comedy, 1968

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Oh, What a Lovely War, 1968

Theatre Heritage Australia

British comic actor Alfred Marks starred in his London success, Spring and Port Wine, for two months from 10 February 1968. Black Comedy and White Liars, two Peter Shaffer one-acters, made an unexpectedly modernist Comedy attraction for three weeks from 23 May, and from 15 July Barry Humphries was back for a month in Just a Show. Also of note that year was a South African musical, Wait a Minim, which ran seven weeks from 26 September and the British musical satire, Oh, What a Lovely War, in a St Martin’s production that ran 25 nights from 23 November.

Program cover for The Boy Friend, 1969

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Plaza Suite, 1970

Theatre Heritage Australia

Musicals again predominated in 1969: a revival of The Boy Friend, directed by its author, Sandy Wilson, ran for three months from 15 February, but Your Own Thing, a ‘mod’ musicalisation of Twelfth Night, flopped badly after four weeks from 7 June. More successful was the bawdy British Canterbury Tales, which did ten weeks from 16 August and was revived for a couple of months from 31 December. Prior to this Googie Withers and Alfred Sandor co-starred in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, which did seven weeks from 5 November and was also revived for a month from 9 May 1970. Another month-long revival from 1 July 1970 was The Secretary Bird, a comedy with Patrick McNee, which had originally played at the Princess.

Program cover for Sleuth, 1971

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Jesus Christ Revolution, 1972

Theatre Heritage Australia

22 October 1970 was the advertised opening for Anthony Shaffer’s comic thriller Sleuth, starring Patrick Wymark, a formidable presence in several British TV series. Just 48 hours before this, however, the 44-year-old Wymark died suddenly in his Melbourne hotel suite and the season was cancelled. Entrepreneur Harry M. Miller rushed in a revival of The Boys in the Band to salvage the booking, but it was not until 30 June 1971 that Sleuth had its Melbourne premiere with Stratford Johns, also from British TV, now the star.

Sleuth ran for two months and was followed by another Miller attraction, a British Army drama called Conduct Unbecoming, with English pop singer Mark Wynter, which closed exactly a month after its 9 September opening. Another flop which opened on 8 January 1972 was The Jesus Christ Revolution, a locally-penned religious rock opera. Backed by erratic Sydney entrepreneur Harry Wren, this closed after three weeks, leaving its cast stranded and unpaid.

Program cover for Last of the Red Hot Lovers, starring Harry H. Corbett, 1972

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for The Mating Season, starring Sidney James, 1972

Theatre Heritage Australia

In September 1971 J.C. Williamson had amalgamated with Perth entrepreneur Michael Edgley to form a subsidiary company, Williamson–Edgley Theatres. Their first show at the Comedy was the farce Move Over Mrs Markham, with British stars Honor Blackman and Michael Craig, from 3 March 1972. Harry H. Corbett, another popular British TV, performer, followed them on 6 May in Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers, which also played two months. Googie Withers returned on 12 July in an MTC company with Dennis Olsen, Dinah Shearing and Frank Thring in The Cherry Orchard and An Ideal Husband. But the most popular performer that year was British film and TV comic Sidney James, who had a ten-week run in the farce The Mating Season from 30 September. The new management also installed bars and additional toilets in the theatre during the year.

Program cover for How the Other Half Loves, starring Robert Morley, 1973

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Suddenly at Home, starring Michael Craig, 1973

Theatre Heritage Australia

Robert Morley, back for just 28 days in Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves, from 15 January, reopened the Comedy in 1973. Other highlights included Sir Michael Redgrave in John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father (six weeks from 14 March) and another ten-week MTC season from 12 September, beginning with Alex Buzo’s Batman’s  Beach Head and ending with Lewis Esson’s 1912 comedy The Time Is Not Yet Ripe. In between came more familiar Comedy fare: The Love Game, a British farce with Bernard Cribbins, and Suddenly At Home, a thriller with Michael Craig.

Program cover for the English National Theatre production of The Front Page, 1974

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover As It’s Played Today, 1974

Theatre Heritage Australia

26 February 1974 brought more of the same with Eric Sykes and Jimmy Edwards in Big, Bad Mouse but an Old Tote Theatre Company production of David Williamson’s What If You Died Tomorrow?was followed by an immaculate English National Theatre production of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 comedy The Front Page on 14 May. Leslie Phillips in The Man Most Likely To... and a fortnight by Marcel Marceau preceded Barry Humphries in At Least You Can Say You’ve Seen It. This did well during its eight weeks from 21 August and was followed by As It’s Played Today, a contemporary satire written and acted by John McCallum, which did not.

Program cover for The Male of the Species, starring Edward Woodward, 1975

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Why Not Stay for Breakfast?, starring Derek Nimmo, 1975

Theatre Heritage Australia

Patrick Cargill in the self-explanatory Two and Two Make Sex played eight weeks from 14 February 1975 and on 23 April came Edward Woodward and Michele Dotrice in Alan Owen’s The Male of the Species. Scapino, a farce adapted from Moliere, with Barry Crocker, arrived on 19 June then, after a month’s darkness, came Derek Nimmo on 5 September in Why Not Stay for Breakfast?, another farce which stayed for ten weeks.

Very funny British drag duo Patrick Fyffe and George Logan as Hinge and Bracket became the first night-time attraction of 1976 from 28 April. Hard on their high heels came a fortnight by Luisillo and his Spanish Dancers—their first season here since the early 1960s and their last ever at the Comedy. Eric Dare presented Lindsay Kemp and friends in Flowers, their striking paean to Jean Genet for a month from 18 June. Neil Simon’s Same Time Next Year brought back more conservative audiences for six weeks from 30 July; ditto Susannah York and Barrie Ingham in Private Lives for a month from 15 October. This was to be the last of the old style in-house productions by J.C. Williamson’s at the Comedy, for The Firm, which had been plagued by continual losses throughout the 1970s, now faced drastic reorganisation and reductions.

Program cover for The Two of Us, starring John Thaw and Sheila Hancock, 1977

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for The Pleasure of His Company, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, 1977

Theatre Heritage Australia

Apart from a daytime panto in January, the theatre was left dark until 16 March 1977 when English husband and wife, John Thaw and Sheila Hancock, starred in four Michael Frayn two-handers under the title The Two of Us. ‘J.C. Williamson’s may be dead but the malady that afflicted it apparently lingers on,’ The Age commented, although it was a little kinder to the equally conventional The Pleasure of His Company, whose starry cast included Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, David Langton, Stanley Holloway and Carol Raye. Originally scheduled for two weeks from 25 April, it was extended an extra week when the cast was stranded by an air traffic controllers’ strike, and also returned for a couple of weeks late in November.

Program cover for Side By Side Sondheim, 1977

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for the Chichester Festival Theatre’s productions of Othello / The Apple Cart, 1978

Theatre Heritage Australia

The next attraction, a stage spin-off from British TV, was Doctor in Love, which ran six weeks from 14 June and was most notable as marking English entrepreneur and future owner of the theatre, Paul Dainty’s first association with the Comedy. Mike Stott’s comedy, Funny Peculiar, followed this for seven weeks then, on 1 October, came an Old Tote production of Patrick White’s Big Toys for five weeks. Year’s end brought the musical compilation Side By Side Sondheim, which ran eight weeks from 24 November.

An early highlight of 1978 was the 28 February opening of a company from England’s Chichester Festival Theatre. Headed by Keith Michell and including Roy Dotrice, Nyree Dawn Porter, Nigel Stock and June Jago, they appeared in Othello and The Apple Cart. But the most important event for the Comedy itself was its auction by J.C. Williamson’s on 2 May. An Age report of 22 April noted that the theatre now seated 1008, was valued for rating purposes at over $1 million and that ‘Land tax on the site for a single owner would be about $30 000 a year, but it might be possible for an owner to make $100 000 a year in rent from it if it could be booked almost continually.’ The Comedy was passed in for $800 000 and sold for this sum in June to the Paul Dainty Corporation while Love Thy Neighbour, another Dainty attraction from British TV, was playing.

Program cover for Barry Humphries’ Isn’t He Pathetic At His Age, 1978

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for The Kingfisher, 1978

Theatre Heritage Australia

Barry Humphries’ Isn’t It Pathetic At His Age? proved his most popular yet here with a nine week extended run from 24 July 1978, and from 1 to 25 November Norwegian film actress Liv Ulmann starred in Chekhov’s The Bear and Cocteau’s The Human Voice. Googie Withers and John McCallum returned as a duo for the first time in nearly twenty years in William Douglas Home’s The Kingfisher on 29 November. They enjoyed a run extended to 3 February 1979 but the series of other recent overseas successes with local casts that followed—Dracula, Bedroom Farce, Deathtrap, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead—all failed to equal this.

Program cover for The Day After the Fair starring Deborah Kerr, 1979

Theatre Heritage Australia

Terry McDermott and Sydney Conabere in Flexitime, 1979

Raymond Stanley collection, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The acclaimed Philippe Genty puppet company from France stayed for three weeks from 7 August 1979, then came Deborah Kerr in The Day After the Fair for six weeks from 11 September, and three weeks of Roger Hall’s Flexitime from 30 November—a few months after its first success at the Alexander Theatre at Monash University.

Program cover for The Old Country starring Robert Morley, 1980

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Shut Your Eyes and Think of England starring Derek Nimmo, 1980

Theatre Heritage Australia

Robert Morley, making his final Comedy appearance, failed to draw in Alan Bennett’s cerebral drama The Old Country, in February 1980, and the rest of that year showed something of the same patchiness that had afflicted the theatre in its last years under Williamson’s control. There was variety aplenty however: Spike Milligan was here late in April, and Derek Nimmo in the farce Shut Your Eyes and Think of England ran for seven weeks from 10 May. Vincent Price impersonated Oscar Wilde in the compilation Diversions and Delights for a fortnight from 28 July; Robyn Archer revived A Star is Torn for three weeks from 13 August; Jeannie Lewis starred in Pam Gems’ Piaf for seven weeks from 20 September and 10 November brought An Evening with Dave Allen.

Program cover for They’re Playing Our Song starring John Waters and Jacki Weaver, 1981

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Chicago, 1981

Theatre Heritage Australia

Neil Simon’s musical two-hander They’re Playing Our Song, with John Waters and Jacki Weaver, opened on 9 January 1981 and played until 9 May, giving the Comedy its longest run in years. After this came Robert Coleby in the comedy of quadriplegia. Whose Life Is It Anyway? for six weeks from 13 May, then Warren Mitchell and Gordon Chater in The Dresser for five weeks from 8 July. A Sydney Theatre Company production of the musical Chicago, with Nancye Hayes and Geraldine Turner, scored the second longest run of the year with ten weeks from 5 September, and 23 November brought three weeks of Danny La Rue in Revue.

Program cover for Candide, 1982

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Steaming, 1982

Theatre Heritage Australia

The Rocky Horror Show, with Daniel Abineri as Rocky and Stuart Wagstaff as Narrator, returned for fifteen weeks from 7 January 1982 and became one of the Comedy’s staple revival attractions over the next few years. Two flops followed, however—One Mo’ Time (‘the great New Orleans musical’) and a musicalised version of Candide. From 9 September the Comedy was screening films for the first time in over forty years, beginning with a revival double bill of The Life of Brian and The Elephant Man. Live theatre returned on 22 November when Nell Dunn’s Steaming was first produced here; although it initially ran only a month it enjoyed three revivals over the next eight years.

Program cover for The Circle, 1983

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Born Yesterday, starring Jacki Weaver, 1983

Theatre Heritage Australia

Googie Withers and John McCallum in Maugham’s The Circle got 1983 off to a good start with an eight-week run from 18 January but the rest of the year provided very few highlights: Michael Frayn’s comedy Noises Off with Carol Raye, Stuart Wagstaff and Barry Creyton in the cast, began a five-week run on 20 April—and a revival of Born Yesterday with Jacki Weaver also did five weeks from 12 October.

Program cover for The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, starring Gordon Chater, 1984

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Children of a Lesser God, starring Elizabeth Quinn and John Waters, 1984

Theatre Heritage Australia

New Year’s Eve brought the Rice–Webber musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which drew until 10 March 1984. Gordon Chater’s brilliant solo performance of The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin was revived for a month from 16 March and two new plays—Mark Medoff’s drama of deafness, Children of a Lesser God, and Donald McDonald’s local comedy, Caravan, were both AETT subsidised attractions in the second half of the year.

Program cover for Stardust, starring Googie Wither and John McCallum, 1985

Theatre Heritage Australia

Program cover for Stepping Out, 1985

Theatre Heritage Australia

A Withers–McCallum vehicle which did less well than usual, although it was specially written for them, was Ted Willis’s Stardust, which managed only five weeks from 3 January 1985. A ‘monster musical’, The Little Shop of Horrors, followed for six weeks from 26 February and on 10 August came another musical, Stepping Out, with Rowena Wallace, Carol Raye, Collette Mann and Nancye Hayes, which did business for eight weeks. British TV comics Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones arrived for a week in Alas the World on 15 November and last up for the year was a short series of concerts by Renee Geyer—another attempt to fill the increasing gaps between more orthodox attractions.

Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs was the first show of 1986, doing six weeks from 1 February. Later came Alan Bleasdale’s vasectomy comedy, Having a Ball…!, also for six weeks from 11 June, and A Coupla White Chicks, with Rowena Wallace and Collette Mann, which ran a month from 13 August.

To be continued

Tempers and Temperaments

When david N. Martin opened the Minerva Theatre in Sydney, I was with him as designer and scenic artist. I designed and painted Room for Two (1940)—described in one paper as ‘one of those gaily furnished bedrooms—so seductive in tone as to seem almost wicked. One cannot imagine anyone of aggressive respectability being comfortable in it for a moment, but the people in the play are not exactly that’. (H.A. Standish) Some other shows were Reunion in Vienna (1941), By Candlelight and Design for Living (1941), and for this last named the script took us from a garret studio to the respectability of a Bloomsbury boarding house. The last scene was a modern interior and David Martin and I did not see quite eye to eye over this—he said it was not sufficiently modern. Very portentously he said ‘In that box on Saturday night will be sitting a man whose ideas are extremely modern. In fact they are “avant garde” as far as any other playwright is concerned.’ He was talking about Noel Coward—it was, of course, his own play.

It was my argument that if I did modernize the scene in the boarding house, it would not contrast enough with the last scene in the way it should. I added that I very much doubted whether Noel Coward would appreciate it if I did modernize a run-down London Adams interior which, left as it was, was easily recognised as such. Anyhow, I won the argument and later Mr. Coward expressed himself as perfectly happy with the sets.

We had another disagreement over a particular colour in the set of Reunion in Vienna. This scene had necessarily to be a very elaborate salon with panels of figures and lots of Baroque ornamentation. A certain lady who ran an interior decoration shop supplied all the furniture for the show, which we hired. It was David’s expressed opinion that one colour was not in harmony with the tapestry of her settee. I refused to paint the colour out and told her it would be much easier to change the settee, even if it meant reupholstering it in different fabric. So the battle raged back and forth, each of us refusing to budge from our entrenched positions. Then David entered the lists—he told me I was acting like a temperamental actress. This was too much—so I grinned and surrendered.

David N. Martin, 1940s

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Various Minerva Theatre programmes

From The Minerva by John Stephen Clark, Australian Theatre Historical Society, 1993

At this time I had a very young girl assistant in the paint room. I gave her the job of drawing the figures in the panels. and how rapidly and beautifully they were drawn. Today, Lesbia Thorpe is best known for her printmaking. She has exhibited her work at the Royal Academy.

One of David Martin’s chief attributes was his wide knowledge of advertising. He was extremely able in ‘putting it over’ effectively. During the time I was with him, I came in for my share of the publicity and in fact, was given as much as the producer. The first time I was made aware of this I was so startled I nearly lost control of my car. I was driving past the stadium in Rushcutter's Bay at the time and my eye was irresistibly attracted to not one, but two, 24-sheeters over the entrance to the stadium. In the traffic I only had a split second to concentrate on what I saw—my own name in huge letters. On my return journey I pulled into the opposite side and allowed this startling sight to sink in. I was extremely bewildered, but very happy and most amused—I could only think that someone had goofed, and I profoundly hoped that the mistake would not be rectified (or at least, not too quickly). I wanted to have a little time to wallow in my glory. On these 24-sheeters, which are the largest of the posters, was the title of the show Room for Two and underneath, in twelve inch letters, was proclaimed ‘Produced by Gerald Kirby and Directed by J. Alan Kenyon’. I supposed the writer had misread 'Decor' for an abbreviation of ‘Director’. Anyhow, there it was, and there it remained, not only for Room for Two but for all the other shows I did at Minerva. The denouement came many months later.

David Martin gave me the script of a show called French for Love. After carefully going over it I designed the set. It was an outdoor scene in the courtyard of a French chateau. The set was constructed and painted; but there was no word of rehearsals, and no production date was named. Then, one day, intrigued by this odd situation, I asked David what was happening to the show. It was an extremely entertaining comedy, with a very exciting plot and would, I firmly believed, have packed them in for a long season. His answer was evasive—'I'm not sure,’ he said, ‘It must be superlatively done and I don’t know if (mentioning an actress by name) she is strong enough. I doubt very much if she could play the part successfully and also, I’m afraid it is rather out of Gerry’s field.’ He continued with very heavy sarcasm, ‘Of course you have been directing the shows for so long, perhaps you could take over the production.’

Programme for The Dancing Years, 1946

Elisabeth Kumm collection

One of the opulent sets for The Dancing Years, 1946

Miles Kenyon collection

I first made Borovansky’s acquaintance in 1946 when he directed his company in the dance sequences for Ivor Novello’s musical play The Dancing Years. This was some time before I became more involved with the Borovansky Ballet Company in the early 1950s. He undoubtedly put Australian ballet in a top class and even his enemies, of whom I possibly was one, could not deny him an accolade for that. It was unfortunate that his personality was so unattractive—he had the disposition of being always ready and willing to pick a fight with anyone over anything at any time. Like most people who came in contact with him, I had my share of trouble. It arose from a perfectly simple situation which anyone but Boro could have resolved quite easily.

London’s Joseph Carl was the original designer for The Dancing Years, but George Upward, along with myself, Cecil Newman and assistants, and one of my sons during his school holidays, were all working on the very elaborate sets. Boro yelled at my son, bawling ‘Hey you painter—get off the stage!’ ‘Are you talking to me?’ asked John. He was ordered again very summarily to get off the stage. But John answered ‘I'm sorry, but I have been told to paint this balustrade (which was at the very back of the stage in any case) and I’m going to finish the job.’ And finish it he did! Boro of course marked him down for further trouble. One of his less charming traits was his vindictiveness—he never forgot or forgave even a fancied slight. He could not endure any brooking of his imperious will. So he accused John of whistling in the paint room during a performance—at the Theatre Royal in Sydney the paint room is at the back of the stage. John was assisting Bill Constable who did much of the painting for Boro. When taking up the frame with a winch, one of the pulleys squeaked. ‘What do you mean by whistling during a performance?’ he snarled at the boy. ‘I was not whistling,’ said John. ‘I tell you, you were!’ Boro insisted, with some added abuse. John then threatened him with a punch on the nose. The result was Boro complained to the management—they refused to take the matter seriously but told me to keep John out of Boro’s road in future. The boy’s defiant attitude had actually been provoked by Boro’s very shabby treatment of one of the girls.

From that time on, I was in his black books with a vengeance. Boro knew every spiteful trick in the book—he was probably responsible for the inclusion of many of them. No matter how trifling the matter, he blew it up if it could possibly cause me trouble. When I designed and painted a new Swan Lake (Act Two) in 1954, he at once expressed himself as dissatisfied with the sky of the backcloth. He asserted that it was slightly too dark and he wished it to be altered. On the next inspection he considered it to be too light, and he was only satisfied when he had had the sky changed three times, when he reluctantly gave his approval.

Swan Lake programme credits, 1954

Judy Leech collection

Edouard Borovansky as Pierrot in Carnaval, 1946. Photo by Jean Stewart.

Judy Leech collection

Then one day when I was in the Director’s office and had just remarked that ‘although no one wanted any trouble, if Boro looked sideways at me I was going to let him have it’, he came mincing in, making some derogatory remark about me not being on hand when he telephoned. Enough is enough, and I took a deep breath. When I had finished my oratory, M. Borovansky was literally shaking with rage. I was sufficiently detached from my outburst to become quite objective and to note that he was quivering like a jelly. I reminded him of his infantile persecution over the Swan Lake backcloth, which I told him had never actually been changed, knowing that his objection to the colour had no real basis but was the result of purely personal spite. I had never repainted that cloth at any time. I was sorry that the altercation had to take place in the Director’s office but Boro’s spiteful habit of pin-pricking and of bringing personalities into the business made working with him too much of a liability. I detest scrapping with anyone and have to consider myself in the last ditch before I decide to take up arms.

There is no doubt there is a great variation in people's temperaments. There was the case of technician Jack Kingsford Smith—a scrap of any kind was meat and drink to him.  One time I passed the office of the General Manager of a film unit and issuing from it were the unmistakable sounds of combat. Abuse was being shuttled back and forth between the belligerents. In a few minutes the identity of the combatants was made plain by the emergence of Jack Kingsford Smith, wearing all the outward signs of victory.  Rubbing his hands, he said, with a triumphant beaming smile, ‘Cripes, I enjoyed that!’ As the philosophers truly remark, ‘It takes all sorts’, or if one recalls the Latin tag ‘De gustibus non est disputandum’!

Before the restaurant became known as Mario’s, Poppa Becker had established himself at the tavern opposite Her Majesty’s in Melbourne. As Mine Host, Poppa was a well-known character in Melbourne’s cafe society. His home had been in Vienna and he always wore what a well-dressed Viennese gentleman would wear, he was sartorial perfection. He sported a trilby and spats, and had a beard which resembled the tail of a partridge, divided in the centre and then carefully brushed to the sides. We had a brush in the paint room which was divided exactly like Poppa’s beard and someone stuck a paper trilby on the handle to further the resemblance to the genial maître d’hotel. Poppa Becker lived to the ripe old age of eighty plus. He was often heard attributing his long life and good health to good wine, and his many theatrical friends.

Then there was Fasoli’s cafe in Lonsdale Street, founded in 1897, and a mecca for artists, journalists and writers during the early years of the century. The walls were lavishly decorated with signed samples of the artists who frequented the establishment. Rather than washing up, some poverty-stricken artists painted for their suppers - no one was ever denied this privilege. At least that is how the story ran.

Drawing of Fasoli’s Restaurant by Herbert Moore

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Stirring the pots in the paint room, c.1950

National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra

There was once a Lord Mayor of Melbourne who ventured as far as the paint room. He was a sufferer of gallstones and having no mind for surgery, he drank gallons of olive oil which he thought would keep his condition under control. During one visit he expounded what he considered to be a brand new theory to do with making money. It was to go into business and supply gravel for road making. We considered that, with such an off-beat sense of humour, he might have a future as a comic and make some money that way. Another character who had apparently frequented the paint room was John Ford Paterson, the artist. He used to say about scene painting ‘It's not art. It’s mechanical contrivance.’

The following is a story of a well-rehearsed reply to a demand for an explanation—something which I had fully expected. The play was Edward My Son (1949). Some of the sets were painted in Melbourne by me, and some in Sydney by Bill Constable. The show opened in Sydney and was then to open here in Melbourne. By some mismanagement, the railway truck from Albury—with the scenes on board—got shunted to a siding at Montague. To make matters worse, the tarpaulin came adrift, it rained for days, and when we at last got the scenes to the theatre, we were aghast at the mess we were presented with.  Everything was completely saturated, flats which had been packed face to face had become glued together and when we separated them found that the image on one had been transferred to the other. It was a frightful job to get them into some sort of presentable shape—by the fast approaching opening night.

There was one particular scene which had been painted in Sydney by Constable, and much beloved by the producer. When the stage manager arrived and was shown the extent of the disaster, he expressed his amazement at the result of my efforts to reproduce this particular interior. I did not know whether he meant what he said, or whether he was simply deriving some enjoyment by watching my discomfiture. However, I accepted his assumption that ‘His Lordship, the Producer’ would really hit the roof when he saw the transformation of his favourite set into what I had done my best to restore.

Bill Constable working on a piece of the Edward, My Son set, 1949. Photo by B. Rice.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Robert Morley discussing Edward, My Son with director Daphne Rye and J.C. Williamson’s business manager Eric Wahlquist, 1949. Photo by B. Rice.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Because the flats and wings had been stuck together most of the paintwork on them had been lost. The ornament of this French bedroom set was absolutely non-existent. I had to scrape off one side, put thick colour on the other, stipple and repaint. In my mind at least the result was satisfactory, I had quite honestly considered we had done an excellent job. The set had appeared damp and water-stained and altogether dilapidated when we saw it first, but when the mouldings were repainted the whole scene looked to be what it was supposed to represent. But the stage manager continued to needle me, assuring me that ‘His Lordship’ would never in this world accept it as a substitute for the glory it had been. By this time, I was completely fed up because of all the trouble and worry—and the many late hours—this extra work had given me. I was prepared to do battle—I was quite determined that I would have my say and that if there was any unpleasantness, it would not be altogether one-sided. So I awaited the arrival of 'His Lordship' with a large-sized chip on my shoulder, going over my lines like an actor, what I was going to say—I was word perfect. By the way, the gentleman happened to be Robert Morley.

When at last he actually did arrive, we began the customary procedure of going through each scene, the props and the lighting. The curtain was lowered on each scene until it was set and then raised so that the producer could see the scene from the stalls. I had my speech fully rehearsed and when the fatal moment arrived and the bedroom set was about to be revealed, vowed to myself that I would not retract a word. Everyone was in front and when the curtain went up, there was complete silence. Then Robert Morley, in his most peremptory voice, asked ‘And who painted the set out?’ No one answered, but every face turned to me. Then Frank Tait stepped into the breach and explained ‘George Kenyon did his best with the mess it was in when it arrived from Sydney.’ I opened my mouth to say my piece but failed to get started because Mr. Morley was speaking. ‘It is much better than it was originally.’ For a few minutes I did not know whether I felt deflated or inflated!

Brigadoon (1951) and South Pacific (1952) were two shows I completely re-designed. The producer of the former (James McGregor Jamieson) was quite definitely not afflicted with false egoism. He informed us that he had danced as one of the ballet in the American production. He was an excellent producer and played a leading part in the show. Actually the show stayed on an even keel from the opening night until the last performance.

When he arrived from America he wished to see, quite understandably, what we had done. We lowered the cloths and other scenery for him to inspect, and I heaved a sigh of relief when he gave his unqualified approval by saying ‘Now you have really given us something—we can really be seen.’ He went on to say that the American production had mauve and yellow skies, also a lot of bright reds and greens, and on the stage the kilts of the performers just faded into the scenery. I was of course gratified to hear him say that he liked my treatment much more.

Scene from the original Broadway production of Brigadoon featuring Oliver Smith’s sets, 1947

 

Kenyon’s forest in the Scottish highlands, Brigadoon, 1951

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The producer of South Pacific, Charles Atkin, had a completely different personality. When he arrived the models were all made and set out in the paint room. This is the moment of truth for the set designer and painter! Frank Tait brought him up to the room and made the introductions and he and the producer walked slowly along inspecting the models I had constructed. Nobody uttered a word and in spite of my efforts to appear detached and give a convincing display of sang-froid, I began to sweat. Then the producer broke the silence by announcing ‘Well, when I get back to America, I shall tell ‘so-and-so’ he hasn't a clue how to design scenery.’ This speech had the effect of increasing my confusion, because for the life of me I could not decide whether he meant it as a compliment or it was just his way of being sarcastic.

Anyway, the scenery was made from my models and it was duly painted. At regular intervals the producer, who turned out to be a very nice person, came up into the paint room. He generally had some comment to pass—‘You must love palm trees,’ he remarked one day. ‘As a matter of fact, I loathe the things. I must have painted thousands of fronds!’ I answered. The house I had designed was, to my way of thinking, quite suitable for the Frenchman who was one of the leading characters in the play. I had decided on a style of architecture which I felt would follow the lines of this particular character’s taste—Emile, a cultured Frenchman—I gave it a suggestion of French as well as jungle construction. I considered it had to appear sufficiently solid to enable it to weather monsoons and tropical storms. When speaking, Mr. Atkin never lost a certain bantering way he had. ‘What a truly magnificent house,’ he exclaimed, gazing in mock admiration at my structure. He continued with this kind of badinage right through the entire period of production.

Kenyon’s Act 1, Scene 2 scene from South Pacific, 1952

Miles Kenyon collection

Double page spread from the souvenir programme for the JCW production of South Pacific, 1952

Theatre Program Collection, Theatre Heritage Australia

On the final rehearsal night, he informed me in a frightfully condescending manner that he thought the scenery was ‘very good’. Somewhat piqued, I made a reply both adequate and dignified—I told him that if the scenery was really atmospheric to the needs of the play and did not intrude, but was subservient to the actors, then I was happy and satisfied, had simply done my job and did not look for any applause. Maybe that was the reason why, on opening night, I never received any. After the curtain calls the producer thanked everyone, but failed to mention the scenery. Next day I went on holidays, as I had some leave owing. When I returned and duly reported to Frank Tait, he let me know about the thanks and best wishes for a successful season left behind by the producer of South Pacific. After making his farewells, he left the office, but as he went through the door turned around and said ‘Oh, and by the way, he said to tell George Kenyon that his production makes the New York show simply look shoddy.’ He was a funny man.

In Brigadoon there was a tree cut-cloth. This is a cloth that is painted with foliage, branches and trunks. When the painting is finished, the portions between the foliage etc. are marked for cutting out. At that time, I had a most efficient pupil and I showed him what to do with the cloth and left him to it. He really was efficient—he marked that cloth for cutting until it looked for all the world like lace. Then it was removed from the frame and carried to the workshop beneath. When it was opened up on the floor, the boys gazed at it in astonishment.

I was in the paint room, very busy painting, when one of the lovable characters from the workshop came up into my work space. Walking straight up to me, and towering over me by about twelve inches, he said quite simply, ‘Kenyon, you bastard!’ Then he walked out.

They did cut every small marked piece of that cloth, and the result was really something. Personally, I would hate to have been responsible for such a job, lacking the time, the patience and the audacity. My pupil possessed an ample supply of all three. Eventually, he decided to leave me, and I considered I had wasted four years of my time. He finished up teaching art at a secondary school.

Example of a tree cut-cloth

Miles Kenyon collection

Kenyon’s design for ‘Outside the Kirk’, Brigadoon, 1951

National Library of Australia, Canberra