[This is
the third in an occasional series describing British actors and performers who
achieved fame in the theatre or in the movies.]
The two
artistes I here describe have little in common professionally, but they were
both highly eccentric in manner and appearance. Once seen, they were never
forgotten.
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| Alastair Sim |
Alastair Sim
(1900-76) was born in Edinburgh, the fourth son of a prosperous tailor, who
designed and sponsored the Earl Haig Gardens in the city and later refused a
knighthood. His fellow-native of Edinburgh, Ronnie Corbett, once memorably
described Sim as "a sad-faced actor, with the voice of a fastidious
ghoul". Sim was educated at the prestigious Heriot’s School and studied at
Edinburgh University, becoming from 1925-30 a Fulton lecturer in elocution and
drama at the university.
His own acting career started in 1930 and he made his film
debut in 1935. He played a succession of bit-parts and so developed his
distinctive manner that he was a regular “scene-stealer”. His acting manner involved a mixture of
eye-rollings, mutterings, giggles, deep rumblings and sudden gestures, hard to
describe and much perfected to look spontaneous. He had a season at the Old Vic
and began to win leading roles, including Captain Hook in several stage versions
of Peter Pan.
Odd on the stage, for sure his personal life was odder
still. When he was 26 he met a 12-year old girl Naomi Plaskitt; he wooed her,
apparently innocently, and when she was 18 in 1932 they married. They stayed
married, producing one daughter, until he died in 1976 and lived happily
together, even if for some time in a cottage outside Edinburgh with no running
water. Later on this couple brought to live in their house a succession of
talented young men and girls needing acting help, among them the young cockney
George Cole aged 15, now a renowned actor, who stayed with them on and off for
14 years from 1940. Cole and others always spoke well of Sim’s generous
kindness – but it was not surprising that his close involvement with those much
younger than himself raised an eyebrow or two in middle-class 1930s and 1940s
Edinburgh.
Sim’s reputation grew and his film breakthrough came in 1950
when he played a headmaster whose school was mistakenly billeted during the war
on a girls’ school, headed by splendid Margaret Rutherford, in The Happiest Days of your Lives. This
was soon followed by Scrooge, a
version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,
which has become a much-loved classic, Sim injecting the character with a rich
compound of humour, pathos and terror leading to the miser’s heart-warming
redemption. Sim’s interpretation of Scrooge has never been surpassed; he was
voted Britain’s favourite film actor in 1950.
 |
| Sim as Scrooge |
 |
| Sim as Scrooge after the original print was coloured |
Sim went on to take the lead in An Inspector Calls (1954) as
the mysterious policeman questioning a dinner party about a young woman’s death
from J B Priestley’s drama. But it was in comedy where Sim most shone as a reluctant
legatee in Laughter in Paradise
(1951), as the bungling assassin in The
Green Man (1956) but his most popular role was as Miss Millicent Fritton in
The Belles of St Trinians (1954).
 |
| Sim, Headmistress of St Trinians |
Sim played the genteel but hard-up Miss Fritton and also her
gambling brother Clarence, with Joyce Grenfell an infiltrating police sergeant,
George Cole the spiv Flash Harry, Irene Handl, Beryl Reid and Joan Sims add to
the fun in the common-room, but most of all Miss Fritton presides over a
monstrous regiment of felonious, lacrosse and hockey stick-wielding schoolgirls
terrorising the populace to the despair of the ministry of education official
(Richard Wattis in fine form), as first memorably illustrated by the cartoonist
Ronald Searle. A good time was had by all.
Sim gradually faded from the film world – his style became
unfashionable and, seldom giving interviews and never signing autographs, he
only asked to be judged on his performances. He was personally rather distant,
loving the theatre (he had corresponded with his friend James Bridie, the
Scottish dramatist) and was not one of the “luvvie” acting crowd. He had a late
triumph in 1969 in Chichester and the West End as Mr Posket in the brilliant
farce, The Magistrate by Arthur Wing
Pinero.
Sim emulated his father in refusing an offered knighthood
dying in London in 1976 and his wife Naomi died in 1999. For all his oddity,
all the evidence is that Sim was a decent and kind man. He was certainly a
consummate actor and he gave great pleasure to many.
----------------------------------------------
Max Wall (1908 –
1990) was a decidedly acquired taste. He was a throwback to the halcyon days of
the Music Hall and he was perhaps one of the last of the old troupers.
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| Max Wall contemplates |
 |
| Max Wall grimaces |
Both his mother and father played the halls round London and
in the South of England. Max had his showbiz education watching from the wings.
His father was, surprisingly, a Scots comedian from Forfar called “Jock”
Lorimer and his mother was a singer. His mother ran off with an artiste called
Wallace in 1916 whom she married when Jock died in 1920. The family moved to
live in a pub in Essex. Max (born Maxwell Lorimer) abbreviated his given name
and borrowed from his stepfather to become Max Wall.
He appeared in many shows and musicals in London and around
during the inter-war years but his career was going nowhere. He re-emerged in
1946 and became well-known as “Professor Wallofski”, a bizarre creation famous
for his funny walks with Max in a lank wig, black tights and ungainly boots. John
Cleese acknowledged his debt to Max for his “funny walks”. He would also sing,
tap-dance and play the piano in his multi-talented way. He was becoming
well-regarded.
In Christmas 1960 Max was booked for 3 weeks as the lead
comedian and Baron Hard-up in the panto Cinderella
at His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, then in our family’s ownership. My
father, Herbert, and his 2 brothers ran the business but the eldest brother,
James, who normally ran the theatre with his son Jimmy, was down with
appendicitis, so father, who normally ran the main cinemas, was the senior
director in charge.
Max was not well received on the first night. The audience
of Aberdeen burghers and farming folk from the North East were mystified by
him; they did not understand his cockney accent and the bairns were frightened
by his sinister face-pulling. Fatally he sharply answered back some catcalls.
When he embarked upon a comic monologue there was a slow-handclap. When Max
smiled, he tended rather to leer and the indignant audience reckoned they were
being laughed at by a Dirty Old Man from England. Max’s final curtain-call was
equally fraught – he was greeted by a wall of noisy booing. In short he was
given the bird, common enough at that famous graveyard of comedians, the
Glasgow Empire, but unheard of at His Majesty’s, Aberdeen.
My father was much agitated, as a successful panto saw the
business through the thin winter months. With his nephew Jimmy’s staunch
support, they both saw Max at once and told him he would not do and paid him
off handsomely. A “resting” Scots comic called Ally Wilson was signed up as a
substitute at short notice; he performed well and the panto season was saved,
to great family relief.
Max did the rounds of the radio and TV chat-shows but he was
philosophic as he received their condolences. Yet the Aberdeen Disaster must
have hurt his pride: he had to resort for a few years to tours of the raucous
Northern working-men’s clubs as some theatrical managements no doubt looked
upon him as box-office poison.
Max worked his way back, as he had real talent. He was to be
seen in the serious theatre in Osborne’s The
Entertainer and Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot and other avant-garde
roles. He also appeared in cameo roles in TV shows. Latterly he gave much
pleasure with his one-man show Aspects of
Max Wall, a nostalgic reprise of the Music Hall world.
In 1990 he fell and hit his head dining at London’s Simpsons
in the Strand. He never recovered; he was 82. He had outlived his time.
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| Max pondering |
SMD
19.02.14
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014
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