himself turning slowly but surely into Frank Snr â another career clerk, another man without any discernible drive or dreams or pride, just going through the motions, just getting on with getting through life. It was demoralising â and it was made even worse by the man who was Frankâs boss.
As far as Frank Howard was concerned, the bluebird of happiness had never even come close to perching on one of Henry A. Laneâs sloping shoulders. With wounds from the Great War that had left him with a tin plate secreted in his head, a patch wrapped over an eye and a limp in one leg, he was no stranger, Howerd would say, to moods of âbitter malevolenceâ.25 The one in-house factor guaranteed to trigger the eruption of such moods, it soon became clear, was the blatantly bored and permanently distracted Frank Howard: âIf a cup of tea stood ready to be spilled in his lap then I, in my clumsiness, spilled it. If a bottle of ink waited to be knocked over, I knocked it. He truly despised me and terrorised me, and the more sadistic his behaviour, the more of a gibbering idiot I became.â26
Lane was not the only one who found young Frank to be more than a fraction less than adequate. Most of his colleagues â noting his peculiar habit of suddenly making wild facial expressions in the direction of no one in particular, and his equally odd tendency to mutter, shriek and sometimes even squeak to himself behind the covers of a file â considered him slightly mad. The underlying reason for such eccentric behaviour was that Frank was actually spending the vast majority of each dayâs office hours furtively studying his scripts (âI simply had to,â he later explained; âmy nights and weekends were almost completely occupied with rehearsals and performancesâ27).
After ten weeks of trying to combine the day job with his multiple play jobs, Howard was tired, run-down and covered in a rash of unsightly boils. Something had to give, and it was no surprise what did. Thanks to the chronically distracted Frank, a large consignment intended for the United States of America ended up in the Republic of China, and a folder dispatched to Leningrad was found to contain, among other things, a programme for Frank Howardâs Gertchers Concert Party. Henry Lane snapped, and Howard was sacked.
After he had endured the humiliation of a fortnight on the dole, his anxious mother intervened. Knowing that one of the wealthy people for whom she now cleaned was a part-owner of the United Friendly Insurance Company, she asked for â and duly received â a favour, and a suitable position as a clerk was found for her son at the firmâs head office in Southwark Bridge Road. Frank had landed on his feet: not only was the pay (thirty shillings per week) a little better, but the hours were better, too: ten to six from Monday to Friday, with half-day shifts on alternate Saturdays. He was also greatly relieved to find that his new boss â a single woman aged about forty â was as kind as his old boss had been cruel (âI think she fancied me,â he would later claim28).
There was still not the slightest danger, however, of him ever wavering in his show-business ambitions and warming to his work as a clerk. He continued to pour all of his creative energies into his countless amateur performances, and even found the time, and the vanity, to form his very own tiny troupe â consisting of himself, his sister Betty, and one or two of their mutual friends â called Frank Howardâs Knockout Concert Party (âthe ego was in full flight againâ29). This troupe went on to stage innumerable 21-sketch-long revues â all of them strictly for charity (Edith was still watching) â based on whatever Howard had time to write in the office and whatever he and the others found the wit and the will to improvise in front of the audience. They toured all of the scout huts, church halls and retirement homes in the Eltham area, carrying their homemade scenery, costumes and props along with them on the tram, and did far more good than harm.
Even when he was part of a group, however, Howard always remained, in spirit, an incorrigible solo artiste. His instructions to his fellow-performers tended to take the following self-serving form: âNow you, Betty, will go on the stage and say something. Anything. Then Iâll say something. Then Charlie here will say something. Weâll make it up as we go along â always remembering that weâre aiming for the tag-line ⦠Which I will deliver!â30
Few talent contests in South London went ahead without the participation of Frank Howard. It was easy enough to execute: most of the old music-halls used to accommodate some sort of cheap and cheerful âTalent Nightâ spot once a week on one of their bills, and all any amateur performer needed to do was to turn up, sign on and then try their luck. Such occasions were not for the faint-hearted â a bad act, or a good act that just happened to be having a bad day, would soon be loudly booed and crudely abused â but, for those with thicker skins or stronger dreams, these events were the places where hope would spring eternal, because, regardless of how awful it might have been on any one particular night, there would always be the promise of another week, another audience and another chance.
Howard, in spite of his notoriously pronounced susceptibility to stage fright, was one of those determined characters who kept going back for more. The first time, he walked on, delivered a comic monologue, and then walked back off again to the lonely sound of his own footsteps. The following week, he returned to try out a few impressions (the list included Noël Coward, Charles Laughton, Maurice Chevalier, James Cagney and Gary Cooper), but, once again, the act fell horribly flat. The week after that, he reappeared dressed like an overgrown schoolboy and proceeded to sing a novelty comedy song: that, too, sank like the proverbial stone.
One week, he even tried changing his name to âRonnie Ordexâ, but when that failed to change his fortunes, he promptly changed it back again, and then proceeded to try something else. He went on, and on, and on, into his early twenties, trying anything and everything that did not demand any great degree of physical dexterity. âI kept trying,â he later explained, âbecause the utter conviction that I did have talent was stronger than the flaws of personality that crucified me when it came to an actual performance.â31
Not even an exceptionally humiliating on-stage experience at the Lewisham Hippodrome would shake this underlying faith in his own potential. It was during a talent night here â on a bill that boasted some of the biggest names (including the band leader Jack Payne and the crooner and stand-up comic Derek Roy) on the current Variety circuit â that Frank Howard discovered just what it really meant, in the cutthroat world of show business, to âdie a deathâ in front of a large live audience.
The root of the problem was the fact that, as the slot for new talent came straight after the interval, Howard was obliged to follow the comedian who closed the first half â and the comedian who closed the first half was Jimmy James. Soon to be dubbed âthe comediansâ comedianâ,32 Jimmy James was already widely admired as an inimitable performer, an inspired ad-libber and an exquisite timer of a line. With his woozily lugubrious looks (suggestive of a bulldog whose water has recently been laced with Scotch) and downbeat demeanour, he was a masterful droll, and Howard, who watched him fascinated from the wings, was left, quite understandably, feeling utterly awestruck.
Then, after the short interval, it was his turn. The curtain rose back up, he strode on to the stage, and was immediately blinded by the most powerful spotlight he had ever encountered. He winced, blinked, shifted from side to side in search of a shadow, winced and blinked again, and then gave up and began his act. It was no good: whatever he tried to remember, whatever he tried to say, he could not get that blinding light from out of his eyes or out of his mind. His mouth dried up, the beads
