Clips From A Life. Denis Norden

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Clips From A Life - Denis Norden

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was a unique one in many ways. The first problem was finding suitable accommodation for all the performers and animals in wartime South-East London. This our never-fazed Stage Manager, Jim Pitman, accomplished successfully until it came to the question of housing the three ‘forest-bred lions’.

      It was wintertime and their trainer refused point-blank to even consider housing them anywhere outdoors. After being turned down by every warehouse and factory in the neighbourhood, Jim was driven to keeping their cages in the back-stage area, flush up against the rear wall.

      When a boilerman experienced the heart-stopping sensation of a large, furry paw silently reaching out to him while he was going from one side of this darkened area of the stage to another, I had notices hastily printed warning staff and visitors to exercise caution when crossing the stage.

      What made this makeshift arrangement really memorable, however, was that we were showing an MGM movie that week. Every time the film’s opening came on screen and MGM’s Leo emitted his trademark roars, from somewhere behind him came a trio of answering roars.

      It impressed audiences no end, while Jim and I enjoyed some time-wasting sessions trying to guess what the visitors were saying to Leo.

      Among the acts we played in Variety or Cine Variety, one that has lodged himself securely in my memory is Olgo, the Mathematical Genius. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany, a charming little man who could square any three-figure number instantaneously in his head.

      Unfortunately, first house Monday, when he explained his special powers and asked for volunteers to call out three-figure numbers for him to square, nobody in the audience had the faintest idea what he was talking about. His request was met by a silence, which grew and grew. As manager, I had to be out front during the first performance of every programme, so I hastily shouted, ‘Three hundred and forty-six’, to which he snapped out the answer while I hurried over to the other side of the auditorium and shouted, ‘Seven hundred and nineteen.’ I kept this up until someone in the stalls grasped the idea and called out, ‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine.’ Other members of the audience caught on and shouted their own numbers out and soon the act took on a brisk pace and the Mathematical Genius was beaming.

      As the week went on, I had to break the ice in this fashion for him at the start of every performance, with the organist taking over my role on my day off. Audiences never failed to pick up on it and, as far as I could verify, his answers were always correct. It was a rare talent, though I sometimes wonder how he adjusted to the introduction of the pocket calculator.

      Another sharply etched memory is the unusually amusing conjuror who turned up for one of our Sunday Night Amateur Talent competitions at the Gaumont, Watford. While I was watching him from the back of the stalls, two uniformed military policemen appeared at my side. They told me that he was an Army deserter and would I give them permission to go backstage, in order to arrest him? As we made our way together down the side-aisle to the pass door, I could see him watching us from the stage, although his patter did not falter. Arrived in the prompt corner, the redcaps agreed to let him finish his act and, while we waited, told me that he had been on the run for more than six months, picking up money to live on by going from one talent show to another across the home counties.

      Well aware we were waiting there for him, he brought his performance to a smooth finish and as he came off-stage held his hands out good-naturedly. Snapping handcuffs on them, one of the redcaps said, ‘Okay, Houdini, let’s see you get out of these.’

      I had been secretly hoping he would make his exit on the other side of the stage, where a panic-bolt door would have taken him straight out into the High Street and on to a passing bus.

      Another memory that has remained undimmed is the act performed by Edna Squire Brown. She was a dignified lady who did a genteel striptease, employing trained white doves. They would flutter above her, only alighting on her whenever and wherever concealment was required.

      Although it didn’t happen on my watch, I was warned about certain occupants of the sixpenny seats who used to turn up for her Saturday night performances carrying packets of birdseed.

      If there was such a thing as a ‘resident’ band on the Hyams Brothers circuit during the time I served there, it was the one conducted byTeddy Joyce. An almost forgotten name now, he was a Hyams Brothers’ favourite and hugely popular with South London audiences.

      For my money, he led the best stage band I ever saw, with the possible exception of Jack Hylton’s. But while Hylton himself did little more than stand in front of the band looking benevolent, Joyce was at all times the centre of attention, using the band as background to his own antics, very much as Cab Calloway did in America.

      A Canadian, tall, slim, narrow-faced, slicked-back black hair, Joyce’s customary costume of high-waisted, tight-fitting black dress trousers and equally tight-fitting black bolero jacket made his legs seem endless. He would put this to good effect in his snake-hips style of dancing, particularly when, as he often did, he performed alone on a darkened stage in front of a white screen, dropped in to mask off the band. Lit only by a small spotlight shining up from the centre of the footlights, the silhouette of his undulating figure would be projected on the screen behind him, elongating to giant size as he advanced, diminishing to human proportions as he retreated.

      It was as skilful as it was effective. For another of his showpieces, the band left their instruments on the rostrum, came downstage and formed a tight semicircle around Joyce, who was seated on a low stool, his back to the audience. The band thrust out their hands towards him, revealing that they were all wearing white gloves, each finger of which had a thick, black line along the top. The picture it presented was that he was seated at the keyboard of a three-rank organ. Joyce would then complete the picture by ‘playing’ their outstretched hands, each touch producing a sonorous hummed response. It was an illusion I have never seen duplicated, its music so carefully orchestrated and rehearsed, the effect was irresistible.

      He was full of novel presentation ideas, though not all of them worked out as planned. I’m thinking of a surprise opening he devised for one of his early visits to the State, Kilburn. The audience heard the Teddy Joyce signature tune, ‘The World is Waiting for the Sunrise’, coming from behind the closed front curtains. But when the curtains rose, the stage was empty. Then, from somewhere above the top of the proscenium arch, the band slowly descended into view, seated on a platform hung on wires, its leading edge decorated by a bank of plywood clouds.

      Slowly, if a little fitfully, they came down, their unusually spectacular entrance winning an appreciative round of applause. Then, about four feet from the floor, the platform began to tilt sideways …

      A firm favourite with the Trocadero’s patrons was Jack Doyle billed as ‘The Singing Boxer’. Less than highly successful in the ring, he toured in Variety, singing sentimental Irish ballads, thus inspiring Tommy Trinder’s observation that ‘Instead of singing Mother Machree, Jack Doyle’d do better fighting her.’

      On the Trocadero stage Jack usually appeared with his wife, the sexy Mexican film star Movita. They would perform romantic duets, always ending with ‘by popular request’, the ‘Come, Come, I Love You Only’ ballad from The Chocolate Soldier. This they would sing standing face to face, gazing into each other’s eyes, and, on the final fervent ‘Come, Come!’, clutch each other convulsively, groin to groin. It was a finish that never failed to stir the Troc audience.

      I had never heard of the

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