TERENCE RATTIGAN: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (25)

My favourite English humourist, Arthur Marshall, used to refer to gays as “wonky gentlemen” (he was a delightful one himself) and the man I here remember, Terence Rattigan, was certainly wonky too. Yet Rattigan’s well-crafted and engrossing plays were the civilised work of a true gentleman and he found an appreciative audience in the UK and USA for a generation.

Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan (1911-77) was the son of a senior diplomat and was educated at Harrow (he was opening batsman in the XI against Eton in 1929) before progressing to Trinity College, Oxford, producing a promising undergraduate play First Episode aged 22, replete with tangled passions, a Rattigan trademark. He took to professional writing and had an early triumph with the comedy French without Tears (1936), about 4 businessmen at a French language crammer invaded by a predatory woman.

During WW2 he served as a tail-gunner in the RAF and wrote the morale-boosting drama The Flare Path (1942) which, like many Rattigan plays, converted into a popular film The Way to the Stars featuring Michael Redgrave and John Mills.

His most fruitful period was unfolding with The Winslow Boy (1946), based on fact, the drama of the expelled naval cadet wrongly accused of stealing a postal order and being brilliantly defended by Sir Robert Morton KC and stubbornly supported by his father. The electrifying scene when the weeping Ronnie is first brutally cross-examined by Sir Robert, accused of being “a liar and a cheat” then described as being “obviously innocent” as Sir Robert takes on the case, is a classic stage passage.

He followed this with The Browning Version (1948) about the despised classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris, with the unfaithful wife, unexpectedly moved by his leaving gift from a pupil of Browning’s translation of Agamemnon. This tale made great theatre.

Rattigan wrote 26 plays and they appealed to the middle class theatre-goer he targeted. Rattigan is often depicted as a tortured soul, but the evidence for this is slight. Sleek and dapper, he was gregarious, preferring the company of women, except in bed.  He had a number of gay liaisons but he was very discreet. He was generous in his hospitality and as his wealth increased, Arthur Marshall tells us, he indulged his passion for owning houses - in Sonning, Sunningdale, Wentworth, Brighton and Eaton Square, in Scotland, Ischia and Bermuda. He liked to laugh and recounted how, on rather tipsily signing a French hotel register, he later appeared in the Continental Daily Mail as “Recently arrived at the Hotel Crillon: Mrs T Rothbun.” On entering a swimming-pool he invariably used a fairground barker’s phrase from his youth advertising a female Houdini escapologist “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Aqua will now lower herself into the tank”. He was a fun person.

Those looking for a Rattigan coded plot often cite The Deep Blue Sea (1952) a fine drama about an abandoned woman who ultimately commits suicide – it was the making of actor Kenneth More who played the faithless RAF pilot. Rattigan did have a 10-year affair at this time with one Kenny Morgan, who left him for another man, was mistreated and gassed himself, but while there are parallels they should not be taken too far. All artists use their own experiences to mould and energise their work.

Separate Tables (1954) is the amalgamation of two one-act plays, both set in a Bournemouth private hotel, exploring the loneliness of four residents, notably in the second play a frustrated spinster and a bogus Major. The original starred Margaret Leighton and Eric Portman, playing all four parts. The 1958 Hollywood movie earned 7 Oscar nominations and Oscar wins for David Niven as Major Pollock and Wendy Hiller as the manageress.

Deborah Kerr and David Niven in the film Separate Tables

Rattigan’s type of play slid into the deepest unfashionability as the kitchen-sink school of drama came to prominence in the later 1950s. He was derided for his unwise confession that his ideal playgoer was middle-brow “Aunt Edna”, rather patronising his audience. His powers did not fail as he produced, among others, the excellent Ross (1960) depicting T E Lawrence, A Bequest to the Nation (1970), about Nelson’s last days, or In Praise of Love (1973). He turned to writing film screenplays, most lucratively, notably the star-studded The VIPs (1963) with the action principally at London Airport and the less successful The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964).

Rattigan was knighted in 1971 and had long fled to Bermuda. Afflicted with leukaemia, ill-health dogged him and he died in Bermuda of bone cancer in 1977. He was only 66. His plays are regularly revived and still give great pleasure. His dramatic mastery of the unpicking of emotions tantalised and impressed his audiences. Rattigan’s solid merits are much missed.

SMD

30.08.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

NOEL COWARD: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (24)

The artiste whose profile I here sketch was a man of amazing versatility. A playwright, a lyricist, a composer, an actor, a singer, a cabaret performer, in short an all-round entertainer   He was gay in an era when male homosexual acts were officially criminalised in the UK and hence his private life was to some extent hidden. He enjoyed great public fame while alive and almost as much posthumously, his works being constantly revived. He doughtily and wittily represented middle-class taste when that was the predominant flavour of the British theatre.

Noel Coward

                                               

Noël Coward, (he was a stickler for including the diaresis) (1899-1973) was rather a child prodigy. Born in the London suburb of Teddington, he was the son of an unsuccessful piano salesman but his mother Violet, daughter of a naval officer, was ambitious for her son’s success. Noël swanked about in amateur dramatics as an actor and singer but made his professional debut as a child performer aged 12. He appeared in various WW1 shows and was called-up in 1918, joining, but soon being invalided out from, the Artist’s Rifles.

Through the good offices of an early lover Philip Streatfield, he was introduced to the country estates and gilded life of his protector Mrs Astley Cooper. Noël, though barely educated but well-read, took easily to this milieu and affected an upper-class accent with his famously clipped diction. He wrote his first West End play in 1920 but had a great success, writing and starring, with The Vortex a sex-and-drugs drama which scandalised London in 1924. In a period of extraordinary activity, he wrote songs and sketches for the popular revues of C B Cochran and André Charlot, wrote the comedy Hay Fever (1925) featuring Marie Tempest (about the feuding Bliss family and their 4 house-guests who finally flee the Bliss manor to end the play).  Not all was sweetness and light as Coward had the biggest flop of his career with the lurid drama Sirocco in 1927, about free love among the upper classes: the first night ended in uproar and Noël was spat upon at the stage door. This was followed by the Viennese-style operetta Bitter Sweet which enjoyed a long West End run from 1929 giving us the lovely romantic song I’ll see you again – Coward claimed there were casting difficulties when the management decided the lead could not go to a German contender George Unterfucker! Around this time Coward acquired a serious lover in American Jack Wilson, who also became his manager.

Noël was then to launch perhaps his greatest hit, Private Lives, written in 1930 and first staged with Noël and the scintillating actress Gertrude Lawrence in the lead roles. Its premiere was at The King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, and it is a witty if brittle comedy about a divorced couple meeting up again on their honeymoons with their new spouses. It became a mainstay of British stage repertory and was the making of the famous duo “Noël and Gertie”. The delightful song Someday I’ll find You also featured.

Noel and Gertie in Private Lives

Coward always had a strong patriotic streak first displayed in his Cavalcade (1931) a panorama of British life 1899-1930, enlivened by the famous coup de théâtre when it is revealed that the young canoodling lovers are passengers on the Titanic. This Happy Breed (1942) was a sentimental saga of a London working-class family, while the film In which we Serve (1942) admired the Royal Navy with Noël as a destroyer Captain modelled on flamboyant Lord Louis Mountbatten. During WW2 Coward left acting and concentrated his considerable energies on entertaining the troops both in the UK and in the far-flung theatres of war. His songs and wit became even better known nationally.

Coward entertains the Navy, Ceylon  1944

On more conventional lines, Coward had a busy pre-war period. His revue Words and Music (1932) introduced his ambiguous song Mad about the Boy and the much-loved comic satire Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Design for Living (1933), a comedy about a ménage à trois with bi-sexual overtones was a vehicle for Noël and his old friends, Americans Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, then at the height of their fame. Too risqué for London it was premiered on Broadway. During WW2 Coward had another hit with his ghostly comedy Blithe Spirit (1941), which ran for over 600 performances and introduced eccentric Margaret Rutherford to the world as the dotty spiritualist Madame Arcati. Another comedy, often played alongside This Happy Breed was the gossamer-thin Present Laughter (1943). Just after the war a romantic short story by Coward was adapted by David Lean to make the iconic film Brief Encounter with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.

Sadly Coward was unable to enchant his audiences in post-war Britain or in the US. His pen was still productive and he had a mild success with Nude with Violin (1956) starring John Gielgud, a satire on modern art, but generally he encountered critical disdain. His style was thought dated and he was condemned as “old hat” and clearly he had little in common with the brash generation of UK kitchen-sink dramatists. His musical Sail Away, featuring dynamic Elaine Stritch as the brash American director of a Mediterranean cruise did well on Broadway but even better commercially at the Savoy Theatre in London (1962); it was to be his musical swansong. Various adaptations of his earlier works kept the pot boiling and he often appeared in US cabaret spots, honing his act with some brilliance.

To much criticism he had become one of the earlier tax exiles, moving first to Bermuda then to Jamaica. This was long before tax-planning became a common and essential defence for rich men beset by rapacious governments. Noël, with his partner from 1945, Graham Payn, built his cherished Firefly Estate in Jamaica but visited Britain and America regularly. He appeared in a number of cinema cameo roles becoming familiar to a younger generation as Bridger in The Italian Job (1969).

But his health was failing and his memory too. He was rather belatedly knighted in 1969 and his artistic reputation has enjoyed a revival. He died in Jamaica of heart failure in 1973. His partner Graham Payn edited his candid diaries, the Queen Mother, an old friend, unveiled a plaque at Poet’s Corner in 1998 and his sculpture commanded a hill in Jamaica. A most original and influential talent, Noël well deserved his epithet “The Master”.

Noel's statue in Jamaica

SMD

26.08.16.

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2016

HEROES ALL

I have gone blithely through life wholly unaware that I was carrying a heavy handicap. The rather modest success of my career should not after all be ascribed to my lack of ambition or congenital idleness, though both perhaps played a part, but overwhelmingly to my name - “Sidney” often abbreviated to “Sid”.

Sid(ney) - 2016 version

I have got used to my name, which I always felt was friendly and cheerful, qualities I admire. Quite why I was called Sidney is slightly mysterious. Apparently the plan was to call me, regally those days, George; alas some relations told my dear parents that the last George in the family had taken to drink. All a-fluster by this dire omen, they hastily settled on Sidney, the name of an agreeable commercial traveller of their acquaintance. Otherwise there was no family connection to the name and the fierce Scots Clan Sidney is unknown to history.

Much more recently the penny has dropped. Sidney, and especially Sid, is an irredeemably lower crust moniker. I have searched in vain for great leaders, poets and men of consequence but there is no Sid Nelson, Sid Wordsworth or Sid Bonaparte. There was an excellent comedian called Sid Field who died at 45 in 1950 and whom I remember from the radio (top-of-the-bill on Henry Hall’s Guest Night). There was also clarinettist Sid Phillips and his jazz band and of course Sid James of the lecherous cackle, but I am really scraping the barrel and have to resort to Hissing Sid, the serpentine antagonist of Captain Beaky and his Band in the 1980s. I entirely ignore the pansy Sydney version favoured in Australia. In my banking days I had a very able lieutenant called Bert, of Dutch origin, and we made a formidable team as Sid and Bert. While we probably sounded like a couple of house-painters, I recall our triumphant deal-winning mandate over our rivals Rodney and Rupert! But to hit the top echelons, I should have been christened a boastful Maximus, or at least Hugo, Adonis or Peregrine. I fear my Sid was subconsciously a promotion block to my elders and betters. Friends, please still call me Sid or Sidney nevertheless as the spirit moves you!

A grand name does bring dividends. You will all recall Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell whose faulty navigation caused 4 of his capital ships to hit the rocks at the Scilly Islands in 1707 with the loss of 2,000 sailors including Sir Cloudsley himself. In the modern Navy he would have been court-martialled and dismissed, but instead he was hailed as a hero and lavishly entombed in a Grinling Gibbons-carved sepulchre in Westminster Abbey, no less. As Sid Shovell he would have fared much less well.

All this naval talk makes me think of tattoos, once the preserve of old sea-salts and rough soldiers. Europe is in the grip of a tattoo epidemic. The hotel pool I patronise here in Karlovasi, Samos is overrun by Slovaks, Swedes, Serbs and Poles, male and female, many tattooed from head to foot. I do not admire this adornment, ruining the skin of our young and the artwork irremovable I believe without substantial pain. I admit I am not up to speed in street cred and coming as I do from the North East of Scotland, the ancestral home of the Picts, I must watch my words. The early medieval Picts were famously The Painted Ones but whether this was actually accomplished by way of tattoos or by the smearing on of the blue dye known as woad (or both) is a matter of scholarly dispute. I am very glad this particular fashion is no longer de rigeur in the sitting-rooms of Aberdeen.

Many British young people sport tattoos which brings me finally round to the Rio Olympics. Didn’t we do well? We have won medal after medal and I love the excuse for patriotic flag-waving and singing the national anthem. We have John Major to thank (well done, old boy!) for directing National Lottery profits into sport allowing a generation of professional athletes to thrive mightily. It has done wonders for national morale!

Rose, Whitlock, Murray and Farah lead the medal charge at Rio

SMD

21.08.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

WRITTEN FOR CHILDREN

I am currently reading The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame first published in 1908 and my 1983 version is adorned by excellent line drawings by the artist Hargreaves. You will say that surely I mean “re-reading” but no, this is my very first time. You may think I have left it a bit late at age 74 and perhaps I am entering my second childhood, but there are other classic children’s books I have yet to read, notably Alice in Wonderland, which I plan to get round to, d.v., before I turn up my toes.

Ratty and Mole go messing about in boats

Children’s books are often very good value, with vivid characters, quick-fire plots, elements of fantasy and the ultimate triumph of Virtue, so reassuring to the young. The adventures of Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger also evoke nostalgia for a long-past River Thames and the animals do not stumble too far into Disneyesque cuteness. Anyhow, I think the book is great.

My first memory of books is my mother reading to me the Beatrix Potter tales of Peter Rabbit (“and don’t go into Mr McGregor’s garden”) and Jemima Puddle-duck (“what fine whiskers you have!”) and of course in turn we read them to our children.

                          

What joy these tales brought to generations of youngsters! Readers will have their own favourites. My childhood was in the 1940s-50s era and it was the heyday of Enid Blyton. We voraciously read the Five Stories (later dubbed the Famous Five) chronicling the activities of Julian, Dick, George(ina), Anne and Timmy the dog. We were equally taken by the Adventure series – the Island of Adventure etc – starring Philip, Jack, Dinah, Lucy-Ann and Kiki the Parrot. Enid Blyton was safe and cosy, with descriptions of picnics and beds as well as occasional dramas. Blyton was not much admired by teachers and has been criticised for her middle-class values but we lapped her up, reading our first real books and I only feel gratitude towards her.

The Five Series

The Adventure Series

   

My knowledge of poetry was pretty shaky, depending on classics like When we were very Young and Now we are Six by A.A. Milne, illustrated by E.H. Shepard introducing Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. As for the classics, a process of osmosis made them familiar, children’s versions, “told in pictures” and some were memorable films. So R. L. Stevenson’s Kidnapped thrilled us with David Balfour battling against wicked Uncle Ebenezer, betrayed by Captain Hoseason and rescued by mysterious and brave Alan Breck, pursued relentlessly across the Highlands by the Redcoats and finally coming into his birthright. The same treatment was given to Oliver Twist (not really a children’s book) in an abbreviated version, both lavishly illustrated by the great Dundee-based artist Dudley D. Watkins. Yet that book was packed with memorable characters appealing to children, Mr Bumble the Beadle, The Artful Dodger and the villainous Fagin.

Children’s versions gave me the hang of Treasure Island, Gulliver’s Travels and Pilgrim’s Progress and soon enough I was able to fly solo and read adult books with ease and pleasure.

In many ways, our children have had an even better selection than we had. Paddington Bear made his first appearance in 1958, the creation of Michael Bond, now 90. The splendid Paddington Bear stories mainly date from 1960-80 and a charming statue to this Peruvian animal now graces the railway station. 1968 saw the advent of The Wombles of Wimbledon, who flourished until 1976. I recall taking my two eldest, teeny-weenies then, to a Wombles show at a West End theatre and I have never heard such an ear-splitting racket, my curiosity about Uncle Bulgaria and Orinoco quickly faded!

A really remarkable talent, Roald Dahl, published his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964, featuring Willy Wonka which became a global phenomenon, followed by favourites BFG in 1983 and Matilda in 1986. He enchanted with his combination of fantasy and thrills. The most successful author of them all is J.K. Rowling whose Harry Potter adventures have broken all records. I have only read two myself but I found them inventive, page-turning and literate – their success is wholly deserved – and I love Quidditch!

Dahl's Matilda by Quentin Blake

Harry Potter's first game of Quidditch

While the British contribution to children’s literature is massive, America has a wonderful tradition too. A procession of classics from the ladies starts with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868), What Katy Did (1872) by Susan Coolidge, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911) both by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Pollyanna (1913) by Eleanor Porter. The books have spawned films, plays and all manner of media spin-off. I believe the finest American contribution of all is the dazzling Dr Seuss series, clever, witty and original. I used to love reading to my children I had Trouble in getting to Solla Sellew (1965) – I think they loved it too, that mutual reciprocation being one of the many joys of children’s literature.

Dr Seuss' Solla Sellew

   

SMD

10.08.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

CITY SNAPSHOTS (6): NEW YORK 1929

                [This is one of a series describing great Cities at a moment of apogee in their histories]

More than almost any other great City, New York has had her moments of triumph and her moments of disaster. The year 1929 saw her experience both extremes – unprecedented prosperity followed by a gargantuan financial explosion which ushered in 10 years of severe Depression. Times have greatly changed but human nature much less so. There are some uneasy parallels between 1929 and 2016, which bear at least a little sober consideration.

President Calvin Coolidge 1923-29

President Herbert Hoover 1929-33

 

Both 1928 and most of 1929 were times when many Americans could enjoy the “feel-good factor”. Wages were rising, unemployment was historically low and glossy consumer goods, cars and radios were becoming more affordable. Only the farmers were long- suffering, from years of low world prices, and many of them were heading for the gaudy pleasures and new opportunities in the bustling industrial cities.

Calvin Coolidge, the Republican president, a laconic and frugal lawyer, exuded sunshine and was laissez faire incarnate, earning himself an honoured place in the conservative Valhalla. Cal’s only memorable phrase was; The business of America is business and the pursuit of this occupation did not require any Federal interference.  His successor in March 1929 was Republican Herbert Hoover, a much more pro-active and energetic type with a record of achievement but who too was shackled by an ideological horror of using taxpayers’ money to move markets, introduce welfare or bail out failing enterprises.

The 1929 party was swinging at the Prohibition-era speakeasies like the 21 Club and the Landmark Tavern while Babe Ruth hit 46 home runs for the Yankees that season; asked why he was paid $80k to Hoover’s $75k he replied; I know, but I had a better year than Hoover! For popular entertainment the highest-grossing talkie was the musical Gold Diggers of Broadway (its hit-song was Tiptoe through the Tulips), while topping the pop song charts was Eddie Cantor’s Makin’ Whoopee followed by Ain’t Misbehavin’, memorably croaked by “Fats” Waller. Higher up the sophistication scale, newly-opened MOMA was proudly exhibiting Salvador Dali’s wilfully odd Illumined Pleasures.

Eddie Cantor

Fats Waller

                   

                           

Illumined Pleasures by Salvador Dali

Around 6-7% of the population, the richer or at least the well-to-do, found an immensely engrossing new entertainment investing in the New York Stock Exchange. Stock prices were consistently strong from 1927 onwards, no doubt in part as prices caught up with increasing earnings, but the speculative orgy proper did not start until March 1928. Big-name financiers like John J. Raskob and William Crapo Durant sang the praises of the bull market and despite a setback in June and a quiet July, August saw another surge forward helped by optimistic incantations from the normally silent Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon. Herbert Hoover won the November 1928 presidential election by a landslide over Democrat Al Smith, the hero of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, stimulating share values further.

Investors swarmed Into this bull market; many bought on margin – putting up 50% or so of the value of the share and borrowing the balance from their broker on the security of the stock. This leverage allowed the investor to buy more stock, risk-free while values were rapidly rising, but it constituted a deadly prior charge in a falling market. There were other forms too of dangerous leverage. The NYSE was slow to copy the long-established investment trusts, many of Scottish origin, traded soberly in London.  The US public avidly bought the common stock of new investment trust issues, often on margin, but this ranked behind preference shares and various types of loan stock. The underlying portfolio was enough to cover these preferred classes but the common stock was often sold at a substantial premium to the net assets. This premium was justified by the alleged “investment expertise” of the promoters, sadly invisible when the Crash came.

 New boys on the block, pushing shares with voracious abandon, were Goldman Sachs who in 1929 launched Shenandoah Corporation, a multi-layered investment trust, and its shares went to $100. By 1932 their value was 50c. The structure of inter-locking holding companies magnified losses with a domino effect when the Crash came. Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation sold its stock to the public at $104 and by 1932 this stock was worth $1.75. It took Goldmans more than 20 years to rebuild their damaged reputation.

Everyone knew the market could not rise indefinitely but the Federal Reserve Board was staffed by incompetents and it did not play the proper role of a central bank by cracking down on speculation. It confined itself to a feeble communiqué. The first crack in the market came in March 1929. A wave of selling hit the Exchange and margin calls went out. Then Charles Mitchell, chairman of the major NY bank First City, reassured investors that his bank was ready to lend them more; the boom was saved and the market surged on. Nobody in authority wanted to get blamed for spoiling the party.

The ride was bumpier but still upwards through the summer but in late October another round of sell orders hit the market and it fell sharply. The banking panjandrums met in camera and delegated the acting President of the NYSE, Richard Whitney, to restore confidence. He ostentatiously walked through the throng to the stand selling US Steel and placed an order for 10,000 shares at 220, a higher price than had been seen that day. The stratagem worked; investors believed a rescue was being organised and the market bounced back. Alas, the respite only lasted days. On Monday 28 October stocks fell like a stone, margin calls went unheeded, brokers liquidated borrowers’ portfolios at whatever price and thousands were ruined completely, as they had pledged homes and chattels too. While a rash of suicides from atop skyscrapers is happily an urban myth, a million dreams lay shattered.

October 1929 Headlines

Mankind is prone to mass hysteria and to irrational behaviour. Speculative bubbles are well-remembered, starting with the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the 1907 US stock Panic, the Florida land boom of 1925 and the Great Crash of 1929. More recently remember the Dot-Com bubble of 2000 and surely the ongoing London Property Bonanza, when Brits, Americans, Arabs and Chinese make a bee-line for pretty average London pads and pay out absurd prices is another bubble waiting to go Pop! Pricked bubbles can leave quite a mess behind.

The 1929 crash was soon followed by the 10-year great Depression and fragile US confidence did not survive the failure of banks (346 local banks failed in 1929). A particular blow was the collapse of Credit Anstalt in Austria in 1931. How will the West fare if there is another major bank failure in say, Germany or in Italy? Some are known to be vulnerable. Again, the domino effect can be horrendous. Like 1929 America, the gap in Europe between the few very rich and the ordinary people is widening and resentments fester, yet nothing much is being done. This is perilous.

In the Depression one song caught the mood: Brother, can you spare a Dime? I like the emotional rendering given by Al Jolson, reproduced below. Do we have to learn his words again?

 www.youtube.com

/watch?v=4F4yT0KAMyo

SMD

5.08.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016