champion of whomever he found worthwhile. If a performer needed someone to transport a cumbersome trunk, set up a prop or simply flick a particular switch, Scruffy, invariably, would agree to do it. If a friend fell into financial trouble, Scruffy would often be the first to volunteer to fix it. If a client required a change of style, Scruffy would go straight ahead and dream another one up. Nothing, it seemed, was too much trouble for Scruffy Dale â just as long, of course, as it did not need doing before noon.
What tended to dazzle people most of all about Dale was his claim to possess a special range of entrepreneurial powers. At a time when many of Londonâs theatrical agents still seemed mired in the methods and manners of the pre-war Edwardian era, Stanley Dale appeared strikingly and excitingly progressive, buying and selling stocks and shares at both a speed and a level of complexity that rendered the average Variety artiste breathless and dizzy but also deeply impressed. He was regarded, recalled his former colleague Bill Lyon-Shaw, as âa whizz-kid of his timeâ. Any up-and-coming performer would obviously have craved such lucrative expertise, but with Stanley Dale, Lyon-Shaw noted, there was a catch to the whizz-kidâs promise of a boundless supply of cash: âHe whizzed quite a lot of it into his own pocket.â4
The full extent of Daleâs many deceptions would only be discovered a decade or so later. Back in 1946, he struck most people as merely an eccentric but slyly effective wheeler-dealer, and there was one thing about this unconventional man of which no one was in any doubt: he had a genuinely sharp eye for new talent. It was this sharp eye that would soon spot Frankie Howard.
Howard first encountered Stanley Dale at the Stage Door Canteen in Piccadilly â a bustling little venue (based on the site occupied nowadays by Boots the Chemist) where Service men and women with a passion for performing could âmeet and seeâ. Howard, having recently been demobbed, should not, by rights, have been there, but he was already feeling desperate. During the brief time he had been out of uniform, Howard had failed yet another audition â this time at Butlinâs holiday camp at Filey in Yorkshire â and then tramped his lonely way around most of Sohoâs well-known (and quite a few of the more obscure) agentsâ offices without eliciting more than the faintest hint of sincere encouragement. The problem was always the same: âWhere can I see you perform?â each cigar-chomping agent would ask. âYou canât,â came Howardâs stock reply. âIâm not working.â5â
It was every young performerâs Catch-22: in order to work, one needed an agent, but in order to get an agent, one needed to work. There was no hope to be found in logic; the only hope to be had was in luck.
Just before Howard met Dale, he sat up in his old bedroom in Eltham and hatched an audacious plan to actively make his own luck instead of continuing to wait passively for its possible arrival. Remembering that one of the most sympathetic (or least unsympathetic) agents he had so far encountered â Harry Lowe â was known to be a regular in the audience at the Stage Door Canteen, he resolved to try to sneak his way in.
Late one morning in the middle of the week, he put his old Army uniform back on, retrieved Richard Stoneâs short letter of recommendation, passed politely on his motherâs kind offer of another brown paper bag full of cheese sandwiches, and set off âwith nervous impatienceâ to catch the bus bound for Piccadilly.6 Marching into the secretaryâs office in what he hoped resembled a suitably soldier-like manner, he introduced himself as Sergeant Frank Howard and handed over the positive reference from Major Stone. The ruse worked: he was told that he would be on stage next Friday night at seven oâclock sharp. Racing off to the nearest public telephone, he notified Lowe of the news, and Lowe assured him that he would make every effort to attend.
When Friday arrived, Howard â buoyed by the familiar sight of a boisterous military audience â gave what he felt at the time to be the performance of his life.7 Immediately afterwards, however, he was crushed to discover that Harry Lowe had not been present to see it. Fearing that he would probably fail in the future to be as good as that again, he felt that his big chance had already come and gone.
Slumped in a chair back at his home in Eltham, Howard spent the next few days in a âstate of indescribable melancholyâ.8 Then, out of the blue, came a request from the Stage Door Canteen: as there was a shortage of performers for the following Friday night, the message said, would Sergeant Howard mind filling in? At first, he was disinclined to take up the offer, feeling that there would no longer be any real point to further exposure, but eventually, after being encouraged and cajoled by his mother, he relented: he would go, he mumbled miserably, but only in order to give âa valedictory performance before abandoning all hopes of a show-business careerâ.9
Harry Lowe, once again, was not there, but this time Howard could hardly have cared any less. Expecting nothing of any consequence to come from the performance, he went on stage at his most relaxed, and he proceeded to have some fun. The act went even better than it had the last time: every gag, every routine and every semi-improvised comic exchange with certain individuals among the audience seemed to trigger another crescendo of laughter. Howard could do no wrong, and he knew it â and he loved it.
In an office elsewhere in the building, a visiting booker â there doing business on behalf of a major London agency â grew curious as to what, and more importantly who, was causing so much noise in the auditorium. Setting off along the corridor and down the stairs, he managed to slip inside the door at the back of the theatre and stood there to watch the remainder of Howardâs act.
When it ended, the booker, who had been greatly impressed, raced backstage. âWho represents you?â he panted. âNobody,â replied Howard, trying hard not to sound bitter. âIâm with the Jack Payne office,â the man announced. âWould you like us to represent you?â
Howard, who could still recall with a shudder that awful night at the Lewisham Hippodrome when he had shared the stage but none of the applause with the hugely popular Jack Payne and his band, was incredulous. Looking this stranger up and down for a few seconds â taking in the scuffs on the toes of the old shoes, the deep creases all over the trousers, the stains on the front of the open-necked shirt and the beads of sweat that were now sliding down the brow â he came perilously close to concluding out loud that the whole thing must be some sort of sick joke.
It soon became apparent, however, that the stranger was being serious. âYouâll have to see Frank Barnard,â he added matter-of-factly. âHeâll want to see your act.â Howard, now blushing beetroot-red and starting to lose control over his stutter, managed to reply: âOf course ⦠Yes ⦠Um ⦠Yes ⦠Whoâs he?â
Informed that Frank Barnard was Jack Payneâs general manager, Howard then asked where he could expect the great man to go to see him perform. âIn his office,â he was told. âHis office!â a patently horrified Howard shrieked. âI c-canât perform in an office! I need an audience.â After being told, somewhat tetchily (âLook, sonny â¦â), that Mr Barnard â a hugely experienced and no-nonsense old Geordie â already had more than enough people to see, he was handed his final chance: âAre you interested, or arenât you?â This time there was no hesitation: âYou bet I am!â The stranger shook his hand and smiled: âThen you will perform in his office.â
Howard was left in a daze. Even the daunting prospect of another audience-free
