ON Wednesday Granada brings the spectacular modem Belgian stage show Four Brothers to British television.

I came to Brussels to see the show recorded, travelling with the 40 technicians — and three big vanloads of equipment — whose job it was to get the show for Britain.

And as the crews worked all out to convert the gigantic circular stage of the Cirque Royale in Brussels into a temporary television studio I discussed this remarkable show with some of the men responsible for it.

The story of Four Brothers? Let Herman Closson, the author, tell you.

He wrote the original play during the war, when Belgium was still under German occupation. The play went on tour but it came to an abrupt end — when some of the actors were thrown into gaol.

“It is a patriotic play, you see,” said M. Closson. ‘It tells the story of the four sons of Aymon — heroes of Belgian legend — who ride to the court of the Emperor Charlemagne to be knighted.

“The eldest of the brothers, Renaud, falls in love with a lady of the court — but has to fight a duel with a courtier.

“When he kills the courtier the soldiers of the Emperor turn on him and his brothers — but the magician Maugis sends Bayard, the flying steed, to their rescue.

“They flee to their father’s castle, pursued by the Emperor, and eventually are besieged there.

“Maugis helps them to kidnap Charlemagne as he sleeps, but they later repent and return him unharmed, and the Emperor forgives them their crimes. But Renaud has to go on a nightmare pilgrimage before he is allowed to return to his beloved.”

M. Closson spread his hands expressively.

“The German authorities did not like the play — they recognised it as a gesture of defiance.” he said. “Do you think the British will like it?”

I think they will, but having said that, my difficulty is in describing this show that really does defy adequate description. It fits into no theatrical category in my previous experience.

You like ballet? This is a ballet, then — dynamic and amusing — performed by the Twentieth Century Ballet of Brussels, one of Europe’s leading ballet companies.

“The ballet has no stars. We work as a team,” said Pierre Dobrievech, who plays Renaud. Teamwork, and no stars … but the dancers include some of the best in Belgium.

Vittoria Biaggi, Franco Romano and Jacques Saussin play the other three brothers. And Duska Sifnios and Tania Bari play the two principal female parts.

You don’t like ballet? Then don’t be put off.

Because you might like Westerns, or medieval horse-opera, or verse-speaking, or Japanese classical drama, or Edgar Rice-Burroughs, or theatre in the round … and it is all of these things as well.

Maurice Bejart, producer and choreographer, who has been a principal dancer with ballet companies all over the world, describes it this way:

“Four Brothers is not just a ballet. It is so many kinds of theatre rolled into one. With this production we have tried to do something entirely new.

“It is a fairy tale for people of all ages. We dip in and out of fantasy when the occasion demands. Our dancers dance to music — but not always to recognised music. They might be moving to 14th-century music. Or percussion. Or everyday sounds electronically distorted on a tape-recorder.”

Spectacle and surprise are the keynotes of M. Bejart’s production.

No effect is too technically difficult to achieve. Ten-foot giants stride the stage. A 40ft tower rises magically out of nowhere. A flying steed thunders into the centre of a courtyard. And, as a fitting climax to one of the court scenes, the hero and his rival, the courtier, play a game of chess with real people as pieces!

The man with one of the biggest problems in the show was Fernand Schirren, who was responsible for translating all of this into modem musical terms.

M. Schirren provides the percussion for each performance himself.

“The music has never been written down.” he said. “It is planned — but it comes out differently every performance. It is like jazz perhaps?

“I try to do with classical music what jazz musicians do with popular music. This way, it comes out fresh and exciting every night. The audience responds to the music, we respond to the audience, and everyone is satisfied.”

The post A fairy tale for all ages appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

HENRI SALVADOR’S formula for show business success is lots of sleep. “I like nine hours sleep a night plus another three hours in which to wake up properly,” he said.

Stocky, dynamic Henri is one of two French acts giving a Continental flavour to Granada’s Chelsea at Nine on Thursday. He has been a top-liner on the continent for more than 10 years, and a star in South America before that.

It is only in the last couple of years that he has become known in this country but the Queen saw him in Paris a long time ago.

“When she was Princess Elizabeth,” said Henri, “she came to the Carrere club. I ran the band and was the cabaret. She must have enjoyed herself. She was to stay half an hour. She left after five hours.”

Everything Henri does is polished. He sings romantically or skittishly, dances expertly, and has few equals as a mime comedian (usually with a background of noises he has made and recorded beforehand).

Henri, aged 42, is a native of the French West Indies [French Guiana – Ed]. When he was three, his parents moved to Paris. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood. Often the family moved — suddenly. He made money at an early age, shining shoes or selling newspapers (“usually second hand ones”).

At school he could not concentrate. He decided to learn to play an instrument and become an entertainer.

“I liked drums, but they were too bulky to carry round. Clarinet tickled my lips. Trumpet bruised them. Guitar. I fell in love with the shape — like a woman! Light to carry, too.

“Soon I found I could play the guitar well, and got a job with Ray Ventura, a leading French orchestra leader.

“I used to fool around at rehearsals and make everyone laugh. Some of the boys suggested I become a comedian. I worked up some “business” and Ray Ventura let me do it when we went to South America on tour.

“I became a star there. I left the band,” he told me in his breathless, enthusiastic way, using good English, which he says he learnt phonetically.

“When I got back to Paris, I went to a music hall owner and told him I was a star in South America. He said so what. I said I could become a star in Paris. He shrugged. I asked him for a chance — only 30 minutes to close the first half. He laughed. But in the end he gave me my chance.

“I kept my promise. I became a star overnight. That was in 1946. Since then, my job is to stay a star. That is why I work 12 hours a day, rehearsing and thinking up new material.” Unusual sounds inspire his songs and comedy. He memorises them easily (“That’s how I learn languages”).

His noisy diner sketch was a product of keeping his ears open in a restaurant, and imitating what he heard on a sound recorder.

English audiences have thrilled him. “So quick, so complimentary. They feel like flying over London without an aeroplane.”

When he can sneak away from business for an hour or two, he likes fly fishing. “I am a natural lazy man, coming from the Indies,” he admits. “Sitting by a river is fine with me. If I catch a trout, I’ll be so happy. If not, maybe I catch a tan.”

Actually, Henri is not lazy as he tries to make out. He burns up a great deal of energy when he is entertaining and replaces it with plenty of sleep and by sucking glucose and sugar.

“I wouldn’t be able to get on a stage without a sugar lump,” he told me.

Also from France come Les Ballets Modernes de Paris with one of their hits, Dans la Rue. It is the tale of a night in a big city, complete with a street-corner fight applauded by “shady ladies” and high-spirited night clubgoers returning home.

The ballet is run by a married French couple, Francoise and Dominique Dupuy. Last year they triumphed at the Edinburgh Festival with the ballet The Seventh Sacrament.

Francoise says: “That was a serious ballet but this time we will give a lighter show.” She adds: “I am very happy to go to London, since I like the town and I know the people appreciate good dancing. Also, I want to buy a lot of cardigans and cashmeres. And have a good time.”

The seven dancers in the troupe come from all over the world. A new recruit is an 18-year-old Swiss, small and shapely Marie Aubert. From Germany there is Karin Waehner; from Uruguay, Paul Darnot, and from France, Michele Andren and Roger Ribes.

Their choreographer is British — Deryk Mendel who worked in English ballet before the war and afterwards settled in Paris with the Champs Elysées Ballet before joining them.

Says Mendel: “Our technique will be new to British audiences, it may shake a few old people who are not used to modern dancing.”

Music for Dans la Rue comes from America composed by jazz genius Duke Ellington. It is part of his A Drum is a Woman which he recorded, and presented on US television, in 1957. One singer was Margaret Tynes, and she is coming to Chelsea at Nine next week to recreate her part.

Margaret Tynes has had a distinguished career both as Broadway show singer and serious operatic soprano. She was in more than 200 Broadway performances of Finian’s Rainbow and was leading lady to Harry Belafonte in another show, Sing, Man, Sing. She has sung in Moscow in a show presented by Ed Sullivan, played Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth with the Montreal Opera Company in Canada, worked for the NBC TV Opera Company, and had five and a half years with the New York City Centre Opera Company.

Two other Americans, both comedians, also appear in Chelsea at Nine: Orson Bean (a return engagement) and Jack Wakefield who was born in Brooklyn, New York, but who made his name in Canada before returning to triumph in New York

Talking of Canada, the show will be compered by Canada’s Bernard Braden.

The post The Continent comes to Chelsea appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

SONG-WRITERS have been making music and romance synonymous for thousands of years. And three people in Granada’s Chelsea at Nine week provide excellent evidence that the two really go together.

Xavier Cugat and Abbe Lane have happily married for seven years. Tony Martin — here on his own while his wife, Cyd Charisse, rehearses for a new spectacular in America — is heading for his 12th wedding anniversary.

“You can say,” Xavier Cugat agreed, “that rhythm was responsible for our romance. I was looking for a vocalist and I saw Abbe in a Broadway show. She was everything I had in mind. That was nine ago and we have been together ever since”

Abbe was not quite 17 at the time, and they were married two years later. More than 30 years difference in their ages has not mattered in the least.

“The trouble with so many married couples,” said Abbe, “is that they go dancing before marriage, but they don’t dance together after marriage. I believe they ought to go on the dance floor as much as they can. Cugie and I are always seeking out places where we can dance together and forget about everything else.

“You can’t quarrel when you’re dancing. And if you have been out of tune, you soon find yourself in harmony again.”

Cugie chuckled. “When I was at the Waldorf in New York recently,” he said, “someone said my music must have been responsible for a lot of marriages — but one fellow added that it was also responsible for a lot of alimony!”

Barcelona-born Cugat and American-Spanish Abbe Lane might not quite add up to A to Z of show business, but at any rate they represent from A (for Abbe) to X (for Xavier), and that’s quite a lot. Theirs is an ideal combination, with Cugat providing the music and his wife providing the visual and vocal appeal.

The last time Cugie worked in this country was as a violinist with the Vincent Lopez orchestra at the old Kit-Kat Club in London, in the early 1930’s.

“I was learning rhythm with one or two bands before setting up on my own,” he explained. “Up to then, I was a classical musician.”

When he did strike out, he set a new pattern in dancing by forming the first big-time dancing orchestra in America and popularising Latin-American music.

He would have been back to London more often — but for our quarantine laws. His love of chihuahua dogs is well-known.

When I saw them, both he and Abbe were anxious to get back to Paris, where they left their chihuahua, Pasquilina, and their French poodle, Susie. “We hate to go anywhere without them,” Abbe said.

The association of Cugat and chihuahuas began when he made his first film, Holiday in Mexico, and carried one around with him.

“The chihuahua received far more fan mail than I did,” he said. “Since then, I have had one with me in all my 14 films, and the same thing has happened every time.”

Tony Martin, the singer who married the dancer, is always more willing to talk about his wife and two sons than about anything else.

He and Cyd Charisse, of course, work independently, “but TV is bringing us together,” he told me. “We are going to co-star for the first time in a spectacular.”

Tony has been a singing star for nearly 25 years — with the accent on the word “singing,” using a good, straight, no-gimmick voice.

“A fellow asked me for my advice on how to keep going as long as I have,” he said. “I told him: ‘Sing good, make a series of come-backs, and don’t let people down.’

“Those of us who have managed to stay at the top for a long time — Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Frankie Laine — have two things in common. We’re singers, and we always try to give a good show.

“Good singing will always outlast freak performances. When I think back on the equivalents of today’s rock n’ rollers 20 years ago, I can’t even remember their names. They’ve disappeared completely.

“I might never have caused quite such delirious fan-worship, but I am earning more today than at any time in my life.”

The post Keep dancing for a happy marriage appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

IT’S a full-time job keeping pace with the Sixties — but it’s made easier with Granada’s Comedy Four, the Thursday replacement for Bootsie and Snudge.

Many people are always a step behind … and can never understand why. Still, they cling to their own ideas. Old fashioned … certainly. Square … very possibly.

But their cheerful determination not to get with it is often very amusing.

Comedy Four didn’t set out to cash in on this situation.

The idea was simply to keep us chuckling. Four half-hourly, completely different, situation comedy stories were planned.

Every story has a different script team and cast.

Yet one theme has been unintentionally stitched through the four stories – the struggle of some people to keep up with the Sixties.

Tonight’s first episode — “Tea at the Ritz” — is a fair example.

A dithery couple run a dowdy cinema called the Ritz that was probably all the rage in Valentino’s day and which still serves tea to patrons during the interval.

Into this happy, but none-too-profitable set-up, steps a slick young salesman, with a get-rich-quick scheme to scrap the tea and show sexy films.

“Tea at the Ritz” has a definite hint of Bootsie and Snudge about it.

Producer Peter Eton and writers Peter Miller and James Kelly were members of the B & S team.

The dotty couple who run the Ritz both appeared — as dance-hall owners — in a B & S episode on December 20 last year.

Their names: Ann Lancaster and Ronnie Stevens.

Off-stage, they are old friends. Ann is god-mother to Ronnie’s three-year-old son, Paul.

On-stage, they are two of television’s most versatile characters, each with a rich repertoire of dialects.

You have heard both many times in ITV comic commercials. Ann Lancaster has been the ’voice’ of pigs, glasses, oranges — and she was the mystery caller of “Albert!” in the popular man-in-the-bath TV Times advertisement.

Ronnie has appeared recently in a toffee commercial with Arthur Haynes.

He was also in ITV’s New Look and The Peggy Mount Show.

Ronnie — quavering impressively — told me: “For ‘Tea at the Ritz’, Ann and I concentrate on our crackly, wavering elderly people-type voice.”

The salesman is played by Norman Rossington, one of the bright young men of British comedy.

He has appeared in many successful films, including Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, and many television laughter programmes … The Army Game, Our House, and ITV’s Tune On The Old Tax Fiddle.

“Tea at the Ritz”, then, has three talented and experienced mirth-makers.

But the entire series is encrusted with top-line comedy character actors and actresses.

Second show in the series is Tin Pan Alice, with Athlene Seyler, Warren Mitchell and Carole Carr.

It’s about an old dearie who runs an out-of-date music shop who suddenly has the alarming experience of having a hit record on her hands. Third of the quartet brings two great comedians together — Kenneth Connor and Deryck Guyler.

They star in Fit For Heroes, the story of a retired Army major and his faithful batman who plan revenge in the Post Office when their pensions are stopped.

Finally, Dudley Foster and Bernard Bresslaw come together in Home From Home — the story of two bewildered old lags caught up in changing conditions in one of Her Majesty’s prisons.

Comedy Four intends to be uncomplicated and amusing But watch for ironic twists in all four plots.

The post Chuckling through the Sixties appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THERE are no down-the-bill acts in West End, a Granada series of smooth, slick, swinging variety shows which begins on Wednesday.

No introductory acts pave the way for the star performers. Instead, the show is top-of-the-bill from start to finish.

It takes big names, big performers, to do this kind of show. And West End has them.

The first show is built round Della Reese, the great coloured jazz and Gospel singer. Another has George Sanders — and no women in it — while a third spotlights Alan King, the American comedian who, on his first visit to Britain, shared a bill with Judy Garland and even managed to steal some of her sweet thunder.

Della Reese has appeared only once on British television – three years ago in a Val Parnell’s Sunday Night at the Palladium.

Della has been singing since she was six. Now she is 31 and has a contract to appear 16 weeks a year at the Flamingo, Las Vegas.

It may not be the kind of place approved of by the elders of the New Liberty Baptist Church, Detroit, where she started her career, nor the ideal spot for a girl who prefers to sing Gospel songs.

But Della loves working there.

And it might be suggested that Las Vegas gamblers are more in need of spiritual uplift from the Gospels.

Della was only six when Mahalia Jackson, perhaps the greatest Gospel singer of all, went to Detroit, heard her, and invited her to join her troupe.

Della stayed with them for five years and then left to go to college, as she wanted to be a psychiatrist.

But she took time off from her studies to form a Gospel group there.

When her mother, who had been a domestic servant, died and her father, a factory hand, became ill, Della left college to earn a living, first as a taxi-driver, then as a switchboard operator, and finally as a lift attendant.

But she still sang whenever she could, and at 21 chopped off her last name — Taliaferro — which most night-club managers and patrons would have found unpronounceable.

Then she cut her first name, Dellareese, in half, and she became a full-time singer.

Quickly she became known, first in the clubs of her home town of Detroit, then throughout America, and finally wherever good jazz singing is welcomed.

Della still says that Gospel, which she describes as “dramatic pop singing,” is the closest thing to her heart. Exactly how close it is and how dramatic she can make it sound, will be heard as soon as the show opens with her version of Lonesome Road.

A girl who also had a dramatic start is Barrie Chase.

One moment she was one of the girls in a Hollywood chorus line. The next she was Fred Astaire’s dancing partner in his first TV spectacular.

After the Astaire show, the slim, elfin-faced red-head, now 26, became one of the most sought-after girls in American show-business and was put under long-term contract by 20th Century-Fox.

She is, says Astaire, “the most beautiful mover I have ever seen.”

West End gives viewers the chance to test Astaire’s judgment.

Comedian Johnny Carson does a roving reporter-type interview with Barrie as she dances.

In America he has his own television show, called Who Do You Trust? which has been running for half an hour a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, for five years.

He was able to get to Britain for West End only by taping several shows in advance.

Another comedian in the show is George Kirby, making his first British television appearance.

He was a barman in a Chicago club and, watching rehearsals one day, he asked the producer to let him go on.

He gave some of his impressions and so started on the road that led him to the Copacabana club in New York, the first negro comedian to play there.

Completing the bill for the first show are The Oranim Zabar Trio, in which — in the words of the Irving Berlin song — Geula Gill has her sergeant working for her now, or at least, working with her.

When Geula went into the Israeli army, Dov Seltzer was her sergeant, and Michael Kagan was in the same unit. They teamed up.

Since then they have taken their folk music all round the world.

The post West End! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

NOW it can be told — the best kept secret of War and Peace in our time — from the unpublished (and unlikely ever to be published) biography of the fabulous Colonel Trumper.

Brought to your screens through the fearless enterprise of Granada TV, you can see the first of a new, half-hour series entitled Colonel Trumper’s Private War next Friday.

Based very loosely on the fantastic activities of this hitherto unknown British undercover agent, the screen stories will star Dennis Price as Trumper.

Who is Trumper? Remember the Lubenski Affair? Operations Sea-Biscuit and Barbarhubarb? The Crisis of ’47, the Berlitz Blockade — yes, and even Suarez?

At last it can be revealed — Trumper was the man behind them all. Indeed they might never have happened but for him. He is one of the “faceless” ones of Counter Intelligence.

The man “with the mind of a criminal and the morals of a Borgia”: the man who by himself made the spearhead of a conquering host — Colonel Basil Trumper.

Here now, as a curtain-raiser to the “jolly good show” all the world will soon he talking about, is part of his biography:

Extract from:

“A DAY WITH THE COLONEL”
by Brigadier ‘X’

Admittedly the war has been over for some time now. The ’39 War, that is. But it seems as if it were only yesterday that I first met fabulous Colonel Trumper.

As I recall, it was early in 1940 in the basement of a big steel and concrete building near Chalk Farm Tube Station. I was something in Intelligence in those days.

I particularly remember the light over my door changing from red to green just before Trumper made his entrance into my sector. I knew at once he was not only “safe,” but very well-connected upstairs.

He came into the room as grey as January. But cares couldn’t spoil his good looks. He wore a ‘tache in those days and all of us in the Mess were agreed, he looked remarkably like actor Dennis Price.

I promptly gave him my fullest attention and was rewarded with one or two historic confidences that I will always treasure.

It was just before he formed his now famous Private Army. Indeed he must have had the thing in train that afternoon because I can still feel that peculiar frozen calmness about him which only the biggest minds seem able to summon up for the really big issues.

Trumper threw himself on to a chair with an expression I read as meaning we would fight them on the beaches.

“You’ve heard the news?” he said squinting balefully.

Before I could say “No” or “What news?” Trumper the veteran said, in a tone suitable to one who had just left the side of The Old Man:

“It’s seconds out of the ring, old boy. John Bull’s at bay. They’re looking for leadership in this darkest hour — and, by God, I’m going to go for ’em.”

I will confess now that I shivered slightly as he said this. He was resolution personified. Then he spoke again.

“You know, of course, about Hitler’s astrologer?” he asked me suddenly. I didn’t, but kept quiet. This was big stuff

“Well,” he went on quietly, “I think I’ve found one for Britain I want you to get on to MI 14 at once. Tell them I must have the birth dates of all German officers above the rank of Colonel before 0600 tomorrow. No holds barred. That’s the only way to fight,” he muttered as he left me to begin work on his now famous defeat of Hitler’s Invasion Plans for Britain.

“When a TV series based on my biography was first mooted,” Brigadier X told me, “we all thought Trumper himself would play the lead. Security, however, said ‘No.’ muttering darkly, England may need him again before too long.

“Fortunately, we were able to persuade his near-double, actor Dennis Price, to play the part. And I must say the likeness he portrays is devilish good.

“Price only used a mirror in the early stages of capturing his mannerisms. He now actually thinks like Trumper. A brilliant show!

“For example, when the gentlemen from ITV asked me to put Mr. Price through his paces before he was passed as Trumper. I asked him out of the blue about his chequered career as far back as the affair in Karachi in ’37.

“He replied, quick as a flash:

‘She was blonde. Only a quick posting saved me there.’

“And Catterick in ’39?”

‘Ah yes—a lovely brunette. The only thing mat saved me then was the war.*

“And what did your CO say to you before you went into action in 1940?”

‘If you can do to the German Army what you’ve done to ours — heaven help them?

“Yes, he was devilish goodin fact, he is good, as you can see for yourselves on Friday.”

The post The Colonel: he’s Britain’s secret weapon! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE “shower” of Hut 29 will fall in on parade again on Tuesday, when Granada’s The Army Game returns. But with a difference that is not really a difference. It comes back with two of the favourites from the early days — William Hartnell as Company-Sgt-Major Bullimore, and Geoffrey Sumner as Major Upshot-Bagley.

Geoffrey Sumner’s return also means the return of Major Upshot-Bagley’s pigs. Harry Fowler continues as “Flogger” Hoskins, Ted Lune soldiers on as Pte Bone, and Mario Fabrizi as Merryweather. But Alfie Bass has left the Army and Dick Emery replaces him.

“Wait until I get my hands on that ‘shower’!” exclaimed Bill Hartnell, who takes over from Bill Fraser. Fraser, with Alfie Bass, begins a civvy street series. “They’ve been getting off too lightly. More discipline, that’s what they need. Things are going to change when I get back!” He was obviously pleased to be returning to the show. “But when it was suggested, my first reaction was that it wouldn’t be a good idea,” he admitted. “It just wouldn’t be the same unless I was teamed with Geoffrey Sumner again.

“But Peter Eton, the producer, told me that he was negotiating with Geoffrey Sumner, which sounded too good to be true. The only reason for Sumner leaving the cast was that he couldn’t cope with a weekly programme.

“So I didn’t really expect he would be able to do it this time. But he said he could fit it in as the programme was on Tuesdays. I was delighted, and that’s why I am back. There’d have been no sense in trying to do it with anyone else. Geoffrey and I originated the roles, built them up and understood one another.

“We can work together. Our timing fits. I can’t stand changes, anyway. I suppose it’s because I have an organised brain. I’m a disciplinarian to myself.”

Geoffrey Sumner explained: “There will be no change in our characters, but we are not going to attempt to carry on exactly where we left off. We are allowing for the fact that there has been a gap of three years. The impression we hope to give is that Bullimore and I have been together somewhere else, and now we’ve come across a new ‘shower,’ heaven help ’em!

“The pigs? Of course. Upshot-Bagley wouldn’t go anywhere without his pigs.”

In fact, Geoffrey Sumner, who lives on a 15-acre farm in Surrey, is a pig-keeper and pig-lover. At various periods he has had herds of 150 or more, and there is never a time when his farm is without them.

“So it isn’t a gag in The Army Game,” he assured me. “I like pigs. People make fun of them, but they are the most intelligent of all farm animals. They are also the cleanest.

“But the trouble with pigs is that they regard themselves as your equal and won’t be bossed. That’s why you never see them in The Army Game.

“We tried it at the beginning of the series when we had a real Rosie in the studios. It was disastrous. She took complete charge of the proceedings, refused to stand still, ignored the camera — except to try to eat the pedestal — and generally ran riot.

“Fortunately, we introduced Rosie when we were doing a ‘dry run,’ so, by the time we got to transmission. Rosie was heard but not seen ”

Alas, the pig on which Rosie was based — she was one of Geoffrey Sumner’s herd, of course — is dead. But one of her progeny won first prize last year in the National Farmers’ Union field contest.

Geoffrey Sumner was in the Army during the war years and reached the rank of colonel. Did he have a Sergeant-Major like Bullimore?

“Fortunately not,” he said with a chuckle, and introduced me to his personal assistant, a tall, brown-haired, green-eyed girl named Peggy Warrington. “She was my real Army admin sergeant,” he said.

“I chose her because I was fascinated by the way she wore her cap. It was perched right on the top of her head. Made her look positively Edwardian. An excellent admin sergeant she turned out to be, too.”

Soon after the war, when he was looking for a personal assistant, Geoffrey Sumner sought out Peggy Warrington. She has been with him since.

The most important newcomer to the cast, Dick Emery, is not exactly a stranger to the “shower ” He has been in previous Army Game productions, playing various parts.

Bill Hartnell summed up: “I think we’re going to be a happy family. We’ll certainly have a jolly good go at it.”

The post Storms ahead for the ‘shower’ of Hut 29 appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

When Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser, stars of Bootsie and Snudge, are invited out for the evening, there is always the question — do they go as Bass and Fraser or Bootsie and Snudge? But when an invitation to the principal inhabitants of television’s Imperial Club came from a real-life Imperial Club, there was no doubt about it — the night out was for Bootsie and Snudge. And it went something like this …

THE major-domo of the Imperial Club, resplendent in his uniform, was looking through the post piled on the reception desk. “‘Ullo, ‘ullo, what’s this then?” exclaimed Snudge. “A letter addressed to not nobody else but me.” Then he added, with a look of deep disgust at his assistant in the corner: “And that one over there.”

As Bootsie came up, Snudge tore the envelope open. Inside was a piece of notepaper headed “The Imperial Club.”

“And what for would the Imperial Club be of writing to us ‘ere in this Imperial Club?” he asked, aggressively.

“Look,” said Bootsie, peering under his shoulder “It’s got a different address. It’s another Imperial Club, in South London.”

And, taking the piece of paper from Snudge’s hands, he read slowly: “As your club has the same name as our club, we are inviting you both to be our guests.”

Snudge fixed his beady eye on Bootsie and inquired in his most indignant tones: “And ‘ow do you think your name ‘appened to get writ on to this smart piece of hembossed stationery?”

Cried Bootsie: “I’m as good as you.”

“Not,” declared the major-domo firmly, “when it’s an hinvitation to a swurry.”

On the journey, there was a mood of ill-suppressed excitement about the pair. “I’ve got no doubt,” confided Snudge in a hoarse whisper, “but what there’ll be a lot of financiers and company directors at this ’ere club we’re going to.”

“Yes,” burst in Bootsie, “and famous surgeons with lovely hands and all that.”

Walking down Kennington-lane, however. the mood began to change. “You know,” remarked Snudge. “this is a strange district for the hoi polloi.”

However, they reached the club building. and were quickly greeted by Jim Pringle, the steward. “Tell me,” said Snudge, looking round the clubroom with an air of gracious authority, “which one is Charles Clore? I know ’im. of course, but is face ’as slipped me memory.” Jim looked puzzled. Meanwhile Bootsie was glancing round anxiously. “I bet that one’s a surgeon,” he announced, pointing to a man in the corner. “Look at the way he’s holding his beer in his lovely long fingers.”

“I think,” the steward interposed, “you must be under some misapprehension. Do you know what this club is?”

“Why,” cried Snudge, an anxious tone creeping in, “it’s one of the famous abodes of the hupper crust, isn’t it not?” “No,” Jim replied, roaring with laughter. ‘This is the club for the NAAFI workers in London.”

Snudge was a sight to be seen. Drawing himself up to his full height he exploded: “Even when I was in the Army I didn’t not go near the NAAFI.”

Bootsie took the blow more calmly “Well, never mind, eh?” he remarked. And moving over to the bar he added: “If you don’t have any surgeons, have you got any winkles or shrimps? Or…” and here his eyes lit up, “any jelly babies?”

“I’m afraid not,” chuckled Jim. “Would girls do instead? This is a mixed club.”

Snudge began to mellow. “Now you come to mention it,” he recalled, “I do remember a NAAFI girl what used to be at No 3 Disposal Camp…”

Someone put a disc on the record player and a tall blonde approached Bootsie. “Well, all right,” he said, “but if I have a dance wiv you, mind me feet.” And he limped on to the floor.

Snudge twirled his moustache. “Yes, my dear.” he said in reply to a question from a tiny brunette. “I was the pride of the sergeants’ mess at Poona. When it came to glide round the old floor there wasn’t no one who couldn’t touch me, not nohow.”

As his partner rocked her way through the number, however, doubt began to flit through his mind. “Are you quite sure,” he demanded, “that this is the Lancers?”

In search of a little rest after the strain of the dance, Bootsie and Snudge joined a whist party in an adjoining room.

But the peace and quiet was short-lived. Snudge’s beady eyes swivelled too firmly in the direction of Bootsie’s cards. “’Ere,” exclaimed Bootsie indignantly. “No lookin’ – and no splashin’.”

Snudge refused to be put out. “Haven’t you got the double six?” he asked blandly.

As he played his next card a cry came from Bootsie: “You’ve revoked!”

Flashing a look of reproach. Snudge rejoined: “If you hadn’t spoken, nobody wouldn’t never not know I’d revoked.”

They were at the snooker table when Steward Pringle approached them once “We were wondering,” he asked diffidently, “if you would both be so good as to give us the benefit of your professional experience?”

Snudge smirked. “Well,” he said con condescendingly, “when it comes to knowing about serving delicacies to the hot polloi, I’m your man. Camel curry, with goat’s brains on the side-plate, Mafeking pudding… no, not that,” he added hurriedly.

“And,” put in Bootsie, “I know all about the delicate jobs. All the ones that need fine handling and cartful fingers. Beds, for example … sleeping on ‘em and that.”

“Actually,” replied Jim, “we were thinking more of such things as washing up and cleaning the place out.”

As the last member of the NAAFI Imperial Club slipped away, Bootsie was busy on a sink-full of dirty crocks.

Snudge, who had confined himself to expert advice on how much washing-up liquid to put in the water, looked at his watch.

“Well,” he said to Bootsie, “I’ll be leavin’ you now.”

Pulling his NAAFI overall closer around him, Bootsie plunged his hands into the suds with an air of hatred. “You rotten droopy drawers,” he hissed at the spruce figure rapidly vanishing through the doorway.

The post Night out for Bootsie and Snudge appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

A new Granada comedy series Bootsie and Snudge begins next Friday. It features those two characters from The Army Game — Sergeant-Major Claude Snudge, played by Bill Fraser, and Bootsie, played by Alfie Bass. But they have left the Army. TV TIMES writers Frank Duesbury and Charles Bayne met them in Civvy-street

WE were strolling down King’s-road in London’s Chelsea when we noted something odd. Not the sort of normal odd thing you would expect to see about Chelsea, which is famous for its oddities.

It was the sight of Sergeant-Major Claude Snudge and his old enemy Bootsie in civvies.

Snudge was leading by about 20 yards, his beady eyes squinting in one of those rare bursts of late summer sunshine. He was immaculate in a business suit, white shirt, nattily knotted tie, and a well-brushed Homburg.

Bootsie was trailing behind, scowling. He was clad in a sweater, trousers and his best plimsolls, which have fewer holes in them than his second-best pair.

“Mr Snudge,” we ventured, “why are you not in uniform?”

“Are you addressing me, sirs?” he snapped, his thumbs, we noted, stiffly pointing down the seams of his immaculate pin-stripe trousers.

We said we were, and perhaps he would like to come and have a drink. And Bootsie, too. “Not wiv him, never,” said Bootsie, who had drawn up beside us.

“I will have a drink with you gentlemen in the saloon bar of this ’ere public house,” said Snudge.

“And I’ll be in the private bar,” said Bootsie testily, hobbling away.

We asked Snudge what he would like to drink. “Bearing in mind me new life I think I’d like a gin and mixed,” he said with an evil smile, “because I’m going to be mixing it.”

He smoothed his waistcoat, deftly snapped a cherry stick between his thumb and forefinger and said: “I am going to be a company director, but I have not decided which company shall have the benefit of my experience. I am in considerable demand.”

We said his experience with the men of Hut 29 in The Army Game should help.

“Help,” spluttered Snudge. “It is invaluable. If there was any of them takeover bids knocking around, Snudge would know. Anything dodgy going off and Snudge would sort that little lot out. Not no how they won’t make a ‘nana’ out of me.

“Then there’s me upbringing, me stature. There’s them that’s got it and them that ain’t. Like speaking proper.” Snudge paused to sip his drink. “I shall have a car, chauffeur-driven of course, two secretaries, and occasional trips abroad,” he said. “No more of that Bootsie and his pals for Snudge. I am now going to live the life of a gentleman, manipulatin’ millions of pounds, thousands of men, machines, exports, imports.

“Power is what I’m trained to, and power is what I am going to be. If I can handle Hut 29 I can handle anything.”

We left Snudge planning his company reports to join Bootsie in the private bar. He was sitting on one stool with his aching feet resting on the rung of another.

“Am I glad to see the back of him,” said Bootsie, nodding towards Snudge several yards away. “It’s worth being in the Army just to be able to say goodbye – to horrors like Snudge.”

Well, we said, what are you going to do, Bootsie? “Me,” he cried, his face lighting up. “I’m just going to do good for everyone. I’m going to be a politician.”

We said we would have a drink while he explained. “Yes,” said Bootsie. “I’ve seen so much unhappiness in the world brought about by that rotten old Snudge that all I want to do is make people happy. Especially them with bad feet.”

He looked serious and went on: “When you have suffered as much as I have, with feet and Snudge, and all the time spent in the medical room of any Army camp, you get to understand the needs of people.

“That is why I have such compassion. I feel for the underdog. I’ll fight his case, because there are Snudges throughout the land.

“I can see myself now, making my maiden speech in the Commons. The deathly hush as the Members listen to my argument, one that would make Flogger Hoskins proud to call me his mate.

“‘Oh, Bootsie, Bootsie!’ they’ll shout when I sit down. I can see it all now … the newspaper headlines … the interviews … my Private Member’s Bill for free plimsolls for bad feet sufferers … Can’t you see it all, eh?”

We said we could. More or less.

Bootsie wriggled on his stool and muttered: “But I never want to do anything for Snudge. Except to make him unhappy. If I ever meet him again in Civvy-street, I’ll have him. I’ll have him.”

How, we ventured, was Bootsie going to get elected to Parliament? He gave us a conspiratorial wink. “It’s being fixed,” he said. “I’m already at the top of the top ten at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park. The crowds love me. I just can’t help being popular.”

With that, he finished his drink, slipped from his seat and limped through the door into the bustling street. Ahead of him was Snudge, still 20 yards away …

They were heading for the Labour Exchange. A company director, a Member of Parliament? That is what they said. We shall have to wait and see.

The post Bootsie and Snudge in Civvy-street appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE moment Harry Fowler takes off the uniform he wears as Cpl “Flogger” Hoskins, The Army Game‘s organising genius, he becomes a real-life organiser of practical jokes.

Says Harry: “I find people I meet go through life so seriously — except for the boys in the show. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner (he is a Cockney from Lambeth), but I can’t resist playing jokes.”

Tommy Steele has helped in some of Harry’s jokes. Last year they shared a flat for three months. “We borrowed a car without an engine from a car-dealer friend,” said Harry. “We got a push down hill, steered it into a garage and ordered two gallons of petrol. When I pulled the starter nothing happened, of course, so asked the man to look under the bonnet, while Tommy and I went to the office to pay.

“When we returned, the mechanic was gaping under the empty bonnet. ‘What have you done with our engine?’ I asked. ‘He’s stolen it,’ said Tommy. We spent several minutes insisting it was there when we drove in, and threatened to send for the police if it wasn’t put back!

“Finally we admitted it was a joke, but chap never fathomed how we got the car into the garage.”

American film actor Keefe Brasselle, who starred in The Eddie Cantor Story, was another butt for Fowler’s fun.

Said Harry: “We were filming at Walton Studios, where The Adventures of Robin Hood series was made. Our dressing-room accommodation wasn’t so hot, and Keefe compared his room to the one he had in Hollywood.

“That gave me an idea. The Robin Hood unit was on holiday. I got one of the boys to take Richard Greene’s name off his dressing-room door and replace it with Harry Fowler.

“I went to Keefe’s room — we had to learn some lines together — looked amazed and said: ‘Is this your room? Well, I can’t believe it. It’s not a patch on mine … but then I suppose your status over here is a little different. Why don’t you come along to my room?’ It was three days before he caught on. I reckon they were the unhappiest he spent in England.”

Harry still doesn’t know what significance the US Navy placed on his top secret “code” message. “One of their crack submarines was visiting Britain, and I rang London HQ saying ‘I’m Lew-tenant Eagle’ and gave the sub’s name.

“I was put through to a lieutenant commander and gave him precise instructs to memorise this message for his chief. ‘Will have Big Ben blown-up by Two – Eagle.’ He said he would make sure it was passed on!”

Harry insists he doesn’t set out to harm anyone, though one of his jokes misfired with embarrassing results — for him.

“Gerald Campion and I were filming in Top of the Form at Pinewood. Gerry became sleepy and, of all places, chose the studio floor for a nap. While he slept, I got a small hammer and, as quietly as possible, nailed the edges of his coat to the floor.

“That was the day Rank’s managing director John Davis chose to visit the set. The first thing he saw was Gerry asleep — and when someone woke him up poor Gerry was stuck to the floor! I got a dressing-down after that one.”

Bill Fraser (CSM Snudge) comes in for some of “Floggers” Fowlerisms.

“Alfie Bass and I phoned him from a party at 3am, using Eastern accents, said we were calling from India, and would the CSM like a commission in the Indian Army?

“We’re all practical jokers at rehearsals. We bought Frank Williams, our OC, a trick telescope. He wondered why people kept staring at him, until he found he’d been walking round with a black eye.”

Harry even jokes with his fans.

“They stop me and say, ‘You’re “Flogger” Hoskins,’ so I switch from my usual accent and say in a lah-di-da voice: ‘About 14 people tell me that every day. Who is he?’

“Some of them aren’t convinced, but I hear a lot go away saying, ‘No, he can’t be: he speaks so differently.’”

It was Diana Dors’ first husband, Dennis Hamilton, who got further than anyone in giving Harry a dose of his own medicine.

“He phoned saying he was an agent and would I sing a new song over the phone for him. I was half-way through the chorus before I realised it was a gag.”

The post ‘Flogger’ Hoskins – what a card! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

On Friday Granada’s The Army Game returns. Two regulars, Cpl Springer (Michael Medwin) and Pte (Cupcake) Cook (Norman Rossington) will be missing, but never fear, Snudge will be there. Here, the worthy CSM fills in a few details of the delights of his summer rest and the delights he would have if he could clean up Hut 29

THE garden gate was blancoed a gleaming white. On it, the name of the house — The Last Post — was neatly picked out in khaki paint… I glanced over the hedge. In every flowerbed the plants were drawn up in three ranks, tallest on the right, shortest on the left, and down the far end an elderly willow tree seemed to be trying valiantly to stand to attention.

My search was over. I had found the home of Sergeant-Major Claud Snudge. My knock was answered by the great man himself. “Well?” he barked. Almost without thinking, I snapped my feet together, my shoulders went back, my chest out and my chin in, and I stammered the purpose of my visit.

Slowly the corners of his mouth moved wide apart and he bared his teeth. For a dreadful moment I thought he was going to bite me — until I realised he was only smiling.

“So you’re the bloke what’s come about the interview. Come in, come in.”

He led me through to the lounge, where a pile of suitcases and trunks stood against the wall. “I hope you will excuse the place not being quite tickety-boo,” he said, “but we’ve just come back from holiday.”

Somehow it had never occurred to me that sergeant-majors went on holiday. I told him so. “Ho, yes, indeed, yes,” he said. “Us sergeant-majors probably need it more than anyone else. We don’t get no privacy in our job. All the time we’re being surrounded and clamoured at, not just by soldiers but just as often by people, real people.

“Believe me, it’s nice to get away from the human race once in a while.”

“Where did you go this year?” I asked.

“Blackpool. Marvellous place. A proper haven of peace and tranquillitude. For two whole weeks I did nothing but lie on the sand, soaking in the sunshine and thinking beautiful thoughts.”

“What kind of beautiful thoughts?” I asked.

A dreamy glow came into his eyes. “Lovely, beautiful thoughts, like what I would do to that shower in Hut 29 if I had my way. Jankers and fatigues ain’t good enough for that lot. I’d like to see ’em doing some real fatigues, real fatiguing fatigues that would keep ’em out of mischief for good.

“For instance, imagine Private Bisley being told to sweep down the Great North-road with a toothbrush. Or Bone being ordered to bale out the English Channel with a child’s bucket. Now that’s the kind of threat that’d soon clean up Hut 29. What you might call the Ultimate Detergent.

“But what’s the use of torturing myself?”

He lapsed into a sad, troubled silence. It seemed a shame to disturb him, but I was after the facts.

“I noticed you mentioned only Bone and Bisley. Didn’t you consider methods of correction for the others?”

His face grew sadder. “Cook and Springer? The ones wot got away? Yes, they’re gone, and I’ll never have the pleasure of putting them on the hooks no more. Cook’s uncle died and left him a cake shop, so he bought himself out of the Army. And Corporal Springer wangled himself a posting as military bodyguard to the clerk of the course at Newmarket.” “But surely life will be a lot easier now that Hut 29 is without a leader?”

“They’ve got a leader all right. Captain Pocket has moved Corporal Hoskins into Hut 29.”

Corporal (Flogger) Hoskins is played by Harry Fowler.

Snudge looked so upset I thought I would try to cheer him up. “Well, that should make a nice change,” I said brightly.

Snudge gazed at me in silent pity. When he finally spoke, his voice shook with emotion. “It’s a nice change, all right. Like a plague of Colorado beetles is a nice change from a swarm of locusts. It’s just my luck to get rid of the Army’s Conniving Champion and find myself stuck with the No 1 Contender.”

I clucked sympathetically. “It looks as if you are in for a pretty rough time, then.”

Snudge’s drooping figure snapped erect and his eyes flashed indignantly. “Nonsense! I’ll soon show them who’s the master. It’s all a matter of attitude.”

“Attitude?”

“Yes, if I catch ’em at it they’re going to get chewed.”

“At least you have only three of them to worry about now.” I pointed out.

Evil cunning gleamed from the corners of his eyes. “Yes, and they’re used to working in fours. I can use that. All I need is a real soldier. A proper, heels-togethering, shoulders backing, chest out-ing, chin-inning, neat and tidy, no-idle soldiering soldier. With someone like that in Hut 29, we’d really get somewhere.”

“And where are you going to get such a paragon?”

The dream of hope faded. “T don’t know. I just don’t know. Oh, we’ve got some, you know. I remember seeing one at Aidershot only last year…” His voice trailed off as the treasured memory warmed his mind.

“Lovely sight he was. All knife-edge creases and blanco.” I turned my head tactfully to allow him to wipe away a nostalgic tear that threatened the left wing of his moustache.

“Perhaps they’ll send you one,” I said. I felt I had to say something. “They do send you soldiers from time to time, don’t they?”

He shook his head. “No, not soldiers. Sleeping, talking, eating, walking, living uniforms, yes. Soldiers, no. In fact, we get a new intake arriving the day camp opens.”

“They might send you a good one by mistake.”

“That would not be a mistake, it would be a blooming miracle. And miracles,” said Snudge sadly, as I left him, “don’t happen, not never no more.”

The post The beady eye is back appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

LOVE of animals occupies a big part in the life of C. B. Poultney — alias Major Geoffrey Gervaise Duckworth, the fiercely-monocled CO of The Army Game.

But whereas, at Nether Hopping, the Major, as befits an old cavalry officer, is only happy when he is talking about horses, in private life Poultney excludes them from his affections. “I think they are silly creatures,” he told me. “They’ve got flat heads.”

I found “C.B.” in his London bachelor flat — a 67-year-old military-looking man whose constant companion is a four year old, irrepressible, floppy-looking spaniel called Buffin.

But before I could get one word out of Poultney about himself, I had to hear how Bulfin came to be there.

For years his master wrote animal stories in a national newspaper. Many of them were about his Scottie, Rhoderick Dhu, and, when “Roddy” died, the readers of the paper subscribed £200 [£4,000 in today’s money, allowing for inflation – Ed] to buy another dog. He chose Buffin — and also bought a guide dog for a blind person.

C.B.’s love of cats and dogs is shown by the photographs of them covering one wall of his sitting – room and the books and short stories he has written about them, many of which he has illustrated himself with pen and ink sketches. For C.B. is an artist as well as an actor and an author, and, in fact, started his career as a commercial artist in Birmingham, where his father was a newspaper editor. He is also a member of the governing committee of the People s Dispensary for Sick Animals.

Another difference is that “Major Duckworth” is married with a daughter, while C.B. is a bachelor. C.B. Poultney has some Army background to call on in building up the character of the Major. “I joined the Army as a private in 1914,” he says, “and, by the time the war ended, I was a captain in the Fusiliers, so I knew quite a lot of officers like the Major.”

C.B. never uses his Christian names, which are Clifford Blake. “I don’t like ’em,” he said. “Most people call me C B. or ‘Tibby.’”

I thought the latter might be a reference to his affection for cats, but I was wrong. “It’s because I once played the part of Captain Tibenham, VC, in a play with Marie Lohr. That was many years ago, but the name has stuck,” he said.

He has appeared in a wide variety of plays in his long career — everything from Shakespeare to comedy, but since playing in Charley’s Aunt at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1948, C.B. has devoted most of his time to writing and television.

C.B. likes his new role. “Major Duckworth is a character I can get my teeth into,” he said. “And as for keeping the ‘shower’ under control, well, my neighbour gave me a few tips on that.”

His neighbour? Jack Allen, the last CO at Nether Hopping.

The post The cavalry major doesn’t like horses appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

I HAVE kept silent long enough. But now I must speak. Now I must tell all. By telling what I know, I shall walk in terror of my life, but still it is my duty to tell the world of the graft and corruption that exists behind the scenes of Bootsie and Snudge.

First, let me tell you something of myself. I am a tabby cat employed in the offices of Feldman and Took, who purport to be the writers of Bootsie and Snudge; I say “purport” but more of that in due course.

I was christened Calthrop Mingus. (How I came by this name is a long and uninteresting story. It is best told by my employers, who are adept at writing long and uninteresting stories.)

I first came into their employ in the summer of 1960 (I secured the post through an agency), and at first it seemed a comfortable situation. Soon, they were to be revealed to me in their true light.

Not that they have ever physically maltreated me, but there is such a thing as mental cruelty.

It started with cheap gibes at my cathood. “If you’re a cat,” they would sneer, “where’s your tail?” (I am a Manx cat, but what do those ignorant dopes know?)

“Why don’t you catch mice?” they would taunt. There was none; what was I supposed to do, import one to satisfy their blood lust?

You have no conception of the lengths they go to degrade me.

They would exercise their warped minds by devising fresh soubriquets for me. “Fatty.” they would hoot; “Old Pajama Case” … “Boss eyes” (A veiled reference to the cast in my left eye and typical of their loutish, heavy-handed sense of humour)

At other times they would sing, brawl, whine, giggle, throw the furniture about and do impressions of Alma Cogan. (Needless to say — very bad impressions. Neither of them has any talent.)

Generally they would end up squabbling over who should sleep in my basket. But let us consider them separately.

Barry Took (as he now calls himself) can be most charitably described as a gawky, shambling, credulous fool. He is intensely vain and affects an opera cloak, a duelling scar and an eyepatch.

He likes to be called “the Baron” and tries to assume the manner of a Middle-European nobleman.

All in all, the effect he achieves is not so much that of a scion of a noble house as much as that of a barker at a flea circus, which, in point of fact, he was.

Not the sort of man you would wish to meet in a dark alleyway — or anywhere.

But it is when I consider Marty Feldman that my blood runs cold. Below middle height (in fact, he stands 3ft. 6in.) with the appearance of a depraved jockey and the savoir faire of a hermit crab, he is without doubt the better looking of the pair.

He likes to think of himself as a dandy, and his green frock coat, moleskin trousers and stove pipe hat have caused many gasps of surprise and grudging admiration when he rides in Rotten Row of a Sunday morning, on a large St. Bernard dog.

At his best — a truculent, bibulous clod, he is nonetheless an enigmatic and puzzling personality. You leave his company with one question uppermost in your mind, “Why isn’t he behind bars?”

These, then, are my employers. You are saying to yourselves, how can these moonstruck simpletons produce the scripts they claim to?

Come with me to their seedy office in a condemned building in Chelsea, and let us observe them at work.

It is a simple room. The desk is a homely muddle of bottles, dust and begging letters awaiting their signature.

The floor is covered by what in happier times would, have been described as a carpet. It is here we find them — on the floor.

Some deep, primeval instinct makes them stir. They lumber to their feet, mouthing curses at each other and slump at the typewriter.

They concentrate. Hours pass. No inspiration. They just sit there staring into space, waiting for something to come. Then suddenly — just when it looks as if it’s going to be a blank day, Took speaks.

“If I look out of the corner of my eye,” he says, “I can see my ear reflected in my glasses.” Hours pass. Then Feldman leaps to his feet … “I can touch the end of my nose with my tongue.”

Soon, exhausted by concentration, they shamble off to a nearby tea parlour and that is the last I see of them until night when, crazed with tea and biscuits, they return with their disreputable acquaintances to make the night hideous with their pathetic carousing.

How then does the script come to be written?

At last it can be told. The jig’s up and the cat’s out of the bag. I, Calthrop Mingus, a mere pussy cat, am the real author of Bootsie and Snudge. Calthrop Mingus — the name you never see.

But I’ve reached the end of my tether — from now on boys, you’re on your own!

The post The cat’s whispers appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

The Army Game troops report back for duty this week.

Most of the regulars will be on parade: Sergeant-Major Snudge (Bill Fraser), Corporal Springer (Michael Medwin), “Cupcake” Cook (Norman Rossington) and “Excused Boots” (Alfie Bass).

But two newcomers are on the postings-in list on the guardroom notice board: A new CO, Major Geoffrey Gervaise Duckworth (C. B. Poultney), still living out his Army life as a cavalry subaltern, and Private BONE (Ted Lune) …

A TOP-SECRET signal was flashed from Whitehall to the Commanding Officer, Nether Hopping: “Am posting Private Bone to you forthwith. Documents revealing him to be a psychopathic scrounger and pathological liar to follow.”

I intercepted that short-wave message … and immediately chartered a helicopter to fly me to Nether Hopping to get Bone’s story.

Lancashire-born Bone is a brilliant old campaigner and strategist who has fought his way — single-handed — out of NAAFI queues all over the world. He is also an internationally-known authority on the game — he would call it The Art — of football.

Bone revealed to me a shattering now-it-can-be-told story that will shake Britain — the true story of how Bolton Wanderers really won the FA Cup last season.

Over to Private Bone, alias comedian Ted Lune …

“Ask any football fan who led t’Wanderers to victory in t’Cup game last season, and he’ll tell you: ‘Nat Lofthouse.’

“And he’ll be wrong. It wasn’t Nat at all.

“IT WAS ME — BONE.

“Only the 11 men of Bolton Wanderers knew the truth until today. Now I can reveal it.

“It was me that led t’Wanderers on to the Wembley turf that historic Saturday in May, 1958.

“And this is how it happened … The Friday night before t’Final. I got a telegram from me Mam in Bolton.

“My hand shook as I tore it open. Perhaps she’d wangled me a Cup Final ticket after all. But, no. It was this message:

“‘Coome ome, lad, T’Wanderers need thee.’

“I knew what was expected of me. It had happened just this way before. Somebody had dropped out of the team at the last minute.

“A panic-stations conference in the plush Bolton board-room and the decision was made. Send for Bone.

“I talked it over with the lads in the billet. Should I go? I’d nothing else on that day. And it was a great chance.

“I’d played plenty of League games when they’d been short of first-team payers. But this — The Football Match of The Year.

“‘Take it, Bone,’ said the lads. ‘We’ll be cheering for you.’

“So I went home and collected my things. No 9 shirt … size 10 boots.

“Thousands of folk in that packed Wembley Stadium never guessed, millions of viewers watching on TV couldn’t have known—that the chap who went to Bolton Wanderers’ rescue in their Hour of Need was ME.

“For the first time, pictures tell the true story …”

Before I wrote this amazing story, I sought the approval of the highest-up brass-hats I could find in Whitehall.

This is their report: “Our records show that on May 3, 1958, the day of the FA Cup Final at Wembley, Private Bone was under close arrest in his unit’s guardroom.

“He was awaiting court martial, accused of being absent without leave the weekend before.

“Military Police picked him up in Bolton — trying to sell five-shilling Cup Final tickets at black market prices.”

Footnote: The Bolton Wanderers players who co-operated in this TV TIMES reconstruction of Bone’s story were: Nat Lofthouse, Roy Hartle, Ray Parry, Dennis Stevens, Brian Edwards, Tommy Banks, John Higgins and Eddie Hopkinson.

The post Private Bone (alias Ted Lune) reveals: how I won t’cup for Bolton appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

NO, Bernard Bresslaw — Popeye of The Army Game — isn’t as goofy as all that. It’s just that he’s 6ft 5in tall, has an adenoidal voice, big eyes, and tends to leave his mouth open…

But one can’t kelp making good-humoured fun of Bernard — his looks and personality naturally invite it.

The other day, for example, a man introduced his young daughter to Popeye. She had insisted to her father that Popeye couldn’t really be so silly. “Say something,” ordered the girl. Bernard said something. The poor girl went away with an even more puzzled air. To be proved wrong at that age can be shattering…

Of course, being so tall isn’t all fun. People tend to pick on you. Till last season, Bernard used to play rugby. He was a wing forward, one of the most vulnerable men. Opponents used to look his team over, then the whisper would go round: “Better get that big feller down hard to start with or he might be a trouble.” First time he touched the ball, down he would go under a pile of writhing bodies.

It was the same in the Army. Bernard didn’t find it half such fun as the television one. People always used to pick on the tall RASC driver clerk.

But Bernard showed them. He turned to good account his natural ability to play the part of an “oaf.” His first big part was that of a simple country boy in the Irish farce The McRoary Whirl. This was one of the few occasions he has worn a suit on stage — a sky-blue suit to go with his off-white camel-hair coat and white cap.

The play lasted only three days in London’s West End. But it was a good blooding for Bernard.

Previously he had been cast in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art students’ annual public show. It was Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, and was put on at the Phoenix Theatre. He didn’t play an oaf then. In the audience was the director of Windsor Repertory, who heard complimentary remarks about Bernard made by Fry, who was sitting next to him.

When Bernard wrote to Windsor Repertory for a job the director gave him a part in The McRoary Whirl.

Bernard left the Academy with the Emile Littler Prize.

He did a couple of tours before The McRoary Whirl, but then began to find doors closed to him with “You’re too tall.” They couldn’t say that, though, when he was auditioned for the part of a guardsman in the television play Who Goes There? In this part, people really began to appreciate what a perfect oaf he made.

But oafishness is not the only weapon in Bresslaw’s armoury. He recently played a brute in a Mark Saber thriller film on ITV.

Bernard’s friends say he makes a lovable goof; others say he’s a “natura” as a psychopathic case. And it was as the latter that he appeared in the Mark Saber production, going so far as to shoot a poor old lady’s dog.

He believes his public will accept him in this sort of role. One admirer wrote him saying she didn’t like Popeye nearly so much since he had shot that dog. I don’t know whether that means she accepts his other guises or not, but at least she really lives them all with him. I wonder what she’ll think if she sees Bernard in his current film role as a bearded sneak-thief in Blood of the Vampire?

Though 23-year-old Bernard doesn’t mind playing the fool, he would like to develop his other capabilities. He doesn’t yearn to play Hamlet, but he does want to play Shakespeare.

Another ambition is to play in pantomime. Any combination of Idle Jack and Buttons would do.

Who knows? Under that amiable and “vacant” exterior may beat the heart of a great Shakespearean actor. What would Cupcake think of that?

The post He’s Popeye the soldier man appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

IT started as a polite excuse for “taking the mickey” out of Army life. It has become one of television’s most rib-tickling comedies. The Army Game, originally intended to last only for the summer, has now been given an indefinite run. And with every fortnightly instalment it is building up new battalions of viewers.

What is the secret of its success? One very important reason could well be the judicious way in which each programme contains a carefully balanced mixture of the real and the imaginary.

The characters are the kind of men you would rarely meet in real life. The situations are all highly improbable. But although these are entirely fictional goings-on, every possible effort is made to see that they happen in surroundings that are true to life.

The man responsible for what we see of Nether Hopping is Granada designer Stanley Mills. The lifelike transit and surplus ordnance depot, with its huts and offices and parade ground, grows up from sketches on his drawing board.

Nether Hopping did not, however, start as just a figment of his imagination. It is made up of hundreds of different features which he has borrowed during visits to several Army camps, big and small, in various parts of the country.

I joined Stanley Mills and his sketchbook for a visit to a hutted camp “somewhere in Cheshire.” Never have I seen an artist with such an eye for detail.

He walked around the grounds noting the positions of stirrup pumps. In one of the huts he got out his steel measure and noted the dimensions of beds, lockers and wall brackets.

He was about to leave the hut when he noticed the door. He stopped and stared. But it was the turn of the off-duty troops in the hut to stop and stare when they heard him enthusing about that simple door.

“Just what I have been looking for,” he murmured, as out came the sketchbook and down went every little feature of the door, from type of knob to the size of the padlock and the shape of the panels.

Said Mills later: “Most of the ideas for the sets used in The Army Game have come from visits I have made to five camps, all of them different.

“One was a Guards training and transit camp, a permanent place that must be one of the biggest in the country. It had polished floors and central heating in each hut. It was very pleasant, and laid out in a most efficient way. But it was more like a garden city, and was much too nice for our purpose.

“Then, completely different, was a munitions dump. It was hidden away in a forest, and there was only a handful of men on the site. When I arrived — even though I had a War Office permit — they rushed around covering up all their maps and plans. A funny thing about that place is that the OC actually keeps pigs — just like our Major Upshot-Bagley.

“What we wanted was something between the Guards camp and the munitions dump. I think that in Nether Hopping we have succeeded.”

The huts used in The Army Game have been built by Granada carpenters from Stanley Mills’ designs. But the equipment that goes into them is all genuine Army issue — on loan.

From Ladysmith Barracks, headquarters of the Manchester Regiment at Ashton under-Lyne, have come beds, lockers and other barrack-room furniture — and a welfare radio set. Certain items of military equipment have been borrowed, too.

“Spud” Taylor, head of Granada’s property department, told me that only two things had to be specially made for the programme. One was a mock bomb which had a little charge in the tail. When a button was pressed it released a sheet of flame. The other was an illicit gin still which, as “Spud” rightly remarked, was not likely to be found in any ordinary Army camp.

In the early days of The Army Game, dummy rifles were used. But now, thanks to Ladysmith Barracks, they have the real things, even if they are unserviceable. Whether they work or not, however, Granada has to have licences for them. And when they occasionally borrow light machine-guns and other small arms, they have to take out separate licences and War Office permits.

The property department once failed to satisfy the programme’s requirements. That was when the script called for a pig. Two were tried. The smaller one was too noisy, and the bigger one turned out to be not much of an actor; he refused to go on when he was cued. Result: no more pigs.

I was in the studio just before this pig episode was rehearsed, and I remember the outburst of Geoffrey Sumner (who besides playing the pig-loving OC is a pig-keeper himself) when he caught sight of one of the porkers.

“I am quite devastated,” he told me. “I asked them to provide me with the kind pf pig I’ve been used to myself — a lop-eared Welsh. But this is a prick-eared Blue pig, which is a cross between a Wessex saddleback and a Large White.

“I made a special point of telling them what I wanted, because a lop-eared pig is much easier to handle than a prick-eared pig. It will be a feat of acting for me to fall in love with this mongrel.”

Fortunately, as it turned out, Geoffrey didn’t have to.

Only once have the people behind The Army Game had to search for something that was not authentic — and that was to work out unidentifiable regimental names.

After a lot of research it was decided that the commanding officer and the company sergeant-major should belong to the “Loamshires,” while the men were all to be in the “QRSBs.”

What does that stand for? Well, “QR” obviously means “Queen’s Royal,” but the rest is anybody’s guess.

The post Here’s why those ‘Army’ sets are so realistic appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

GEOFFREY SUMNER speaking: “In various ways, these TV soldiers that I command once a fortnight remind me of some of the real soldiers I had under my command during the war.”

Geoffrey is, of course, the light comedy actor whom viewers know as Major Upshot Bagley, dithering commanding officer of The Army Game depot, Nether Hopping, on ITV screens again next Wednesday.

What most viewers do not know, is that Sumner ended World War II as a full-blown Colonel.

I had arranged to meet him to hear about his two Army careers, wartime and TV, and the three Sumners — Mr., Major and Colonel — paraded in the cocktail bar prompt on time.

“One of the TV privates keeps on asking questions,” he said.

“It reminds me of a gunner who gave me a lot of trouble.

“He was taking part in gun drill and wanted to know why No. 2 man had to stand in the way of No. 3 man and raise his hand to shoulder level.

“I didn’t know the answer, and eventually this problem got back to the War Office, with the result that some time and motion study fellows arrived.

“They found that the gun drill had not been revised since the days of Napoleon, and the reason No. 2 had his arm raised was to hold the reins of the leading horse.

“Then we have in the TV Army one of the brainless types. I met some of those, too, and, being quite frank, I didn’t take too kindly to them during the war.

“Our wartime circumstances were far from funny, and a foolish mistake might have cost all our lives. I’m afraid I was rather severe — used to frighten the daylights out of them.

“The brainless ones came in two categories: intentional and unintentional. The former got jumped on, and the chaps who couldn’t help it were sent to the cookhouse and elsewhere.

“At the other extreme we had the ‘fly boys’ — very similar to our TV Corporal Springer. We had a bombardier who was the image of Springer and was wonderfully useful. He made our dump nice and comfortable. I would far rather have a ‘fly boy’ to command than a nit wit.

“For one thing, they know how to make the best of what there is available, and as long as the benefits are coming in they are an asset. You need to watch them, though.”

While Geoffrey was telling me this I was wondering what his great-grandfather would have thought of him becoming an actor. Probably, he would have been horrified, because great-grandfather was an Archbishop of Canterbury. At the same time, another relative was Bishop of Winchester.

“Ours is an old Devonian family,” Geoffrey said. “On one side we are strong Church people. On the other we are Army. I have a cousin who is a brigadier and I don’t think there is much doubt that he is destined to become a general. I envy him quite often.

“And — forgive me if I’m boring you — Sir Francis Drake was an ancestor.”

About his career Geoffrey Sumner said: “As a boy, the RAF turned me down on medical grounds, so I went to study farming in South Africa. I became a farm manager, and eventually had my own farm of 800 acres.

“That was fine — until one night a tropical hail-storm smashed my crops and future. So I came back to England and, in a roundabout way and without any training, started in the theatre.

“Today, I live with my wife, Mary, and our three girls — Victoria, 17, who is a fine horse-woman and pianist, Alexandra, eight, and ‘Charlie,’ four.

“Notice something about the girls? All named after queens. To complete the family we have a Boxer dog, 12 cats and appropriate number of kittens, two horses, budgerigars, chickens and pigs. Home is a 10 acre small holding near Upper Warlingham, and the house dates from Charles I.’

Geoffrey Sumner takes his farming seriously. Recently he had 350 pigs, including some prize winners, but has sold most of them. He is starting again in earnest later this year. Throw in membership of the local branch committee of the National Farmers’ Union, and that would seem enough to keep any man busy.

But not Geoffrey. He also finds time to work as managing director of a cartoon film studio employing 75 artists and technicians.

His toothbrush moustache reminded me that it was the military Sumner I had wanted to interview, not the businessman or farmer.

“I always had a yen for the Army and I never really lose it,” he admitted. “I still have the Army in my blood. You hear criticisms of Army life, but there is a lot to it. There is the ‘bull’ and the red tape and other nonsense, I agree. But my view is that any profession which enables you to make life-long friends is worthwhile.

“On the lighter side, I remember my first command on the south coast, near Dymchurch. We had two naval guns and nobody knew how to fire them accurately. When we practised, we nearly blew the target towing ship out of the water.”

One of his many jobs called Geoffrey Sumner away — but not before I asked him what rank he considered the best in the Army.

“If you want a quiet life with most of the advantages, there is nothing to rival a corporal,” he said.

Now, I wonder what Corporal Springer would say to that?

The post If you want a quiet life, be a corporal appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THERE are right ways and wrong ways of obeying commands. Which comes as a surprise to the awkward squad in The Army Game —they never knew they had a choice. However, on realising the situation, they immediately applied for permission to publish “The Army Game Guide to Good Soldiering”.

(Note : The Guide to Good Soldiering, as here illustrated, is not recommended to serving soldiers).

(Note again : The Army Game will serve up more laughs this Wednesday and every alternate Wednesday).

(Last Note: Cast of our Guide is… The O.C. (Geoffrey Sumner), Sergeant-Major (William Hartnell) … Corporal (Michael Medwin) … Popeye (Bernard Bresslaw) … The Professor (Charles Hawtrey) … Cup-Cake (Norman Rossington).

Words by Eric Linden, following a technical chat with ex-RSM Brittain

The post The Army Game guide to good soldiering appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

VIVACIOUS, red-haired Carol Burnett, who makes her British TV debut in Granada’s The Variety Show on Wednesday, was telling me about her philosophy of life.

“I have one golden rule,” she said. “It’s simple. Do unto others as others do unto you.”

Carol, 26, has been exercising her exuberant comedy talent to advantage on American television. She said: “I guess I’m the luckiest girl in New York, where my career started in earnest. Everybody has been nice to me. So my aim is to be just as pleasant to others.”

She went on: “Like most comediennes I’m inclined to treat life seriously. You know, being a comedienne is a serious business.

“I studied at theatre art school in California. That’s where I did my first public performance. It was a musical comedy act. I remember it well … because I fell off the stage.” Later, said Carol, she went to New York.

In New York Carol got a job straight away — checking hats in a restaurant. But she moved to New York’s Rehearsal Club. “The problem,” she said, “ was getting good stage experience. So I hit on an idea. I suggested to the other girls at the club that we should all pitch in and put on a show of our own.

“We each contributed 25 cents a night to pay for the cost of a rehearsal hall. Then a number of New York socialites, who’d seen the preview of our show, decided to finance the production. It ran for three nights.”

Carol’s act was a take-off of Eartha Kitt, but with a difference. No shimmering Jacques Fath gown. “For laughs I wore a beat-up old house dress,” she said.

At this point an agent stepped in and signed her up. She got her first job on TV, as the girl friend of a ventriloquist’s dummy in a children’s series.

“Other TV dates followed,” said Carol. “My biggest hit was in Jack Paar’s show. I sang a satirical comedy song called I Made a Fool of Myself over John Foster Dulles. It amused the then Secretary of State so much that he ordered my recording for himself.”

A friend of Carol’s told me: “She’s a real live girl. Oh, she’s funny, but you have to see her in action to appreciate her brand of humour.”

The post She’s ‘a real live girl’ appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

TWO skips and half a chorus away from Leicester-square Stubby Kaye starts singing and dancing down a street. “Every street’s a boulevard in London Town,” he warbles, and nobody takes any notice.

Now Stubby is not the kind of a man you ignore. To start with, not to put too fine a point on it, Stubby is tubby. There is 17½st of him packed into a 5ft 7½in frame … “That’s measuring from the ground up,” he says, and adds: “but it doesn’t look much different going straight across.”

Then again the American entertainer, who breaks into a month’s holiday here to make his ITV debut in The Variety Show on Wednesday, is not exactly the whispering type of warbler. When he sings, because he is happy in London, he reckons to carry to Birmingham whether the wind is in the right direction or not.

But he is the friendly type of personality who can get away with the unusual, even singing in the street, while the rest of us would be accused of being drunk and disorderly.

Two fast choruses and he stops short.

“Gotta watch the exercise,” he says, “can’t afford to lose too much weight. I gotta stay fat. Maybe I could lose 5lb, 7lb, 10lb, say a stone. Thats ridiculous,” and he pats a well-rounded girth. “A stone! More like a pebble. I’m on a diet — eating nothing but meals.

“You know why people like to watch fat people? Because we’re built for comfort—and, boy, when we bounce about does that comfort wobble around. There’s something about a fat man having a good time that’s infectious. Kinda like a yawn, only more eye-catching. So don’t call me plump — I’m fat.”

Stubby is but a shadow of the jolly fat man who returned to America in 1953 after scoring such a hit as Nicely Nicely in the musical Guys and Dolls. The one who sang Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat with such verve.

“Slimmed right down,” claims Stubby. “Used to be 52in round the waist, if you knew where to look for the waist. Now … a mere 48in.”

He throws back his head and laughs. Gleaming gold teeth do not shine half as brightly as his kindly brown eyes. Eyes topped by sandy brows. Eyes that set the man’s character — essentially friendly.

That is what comes over most about Stubby — the friendliness. He is the butt of every joke he tells. The boot never goes on the other foot.

Feet — that is another thing. Like most fat men, he has relatively small feet.

“How do I balance all this?” He places plump hands on his tummy and shakes it. “I put one foot in front of the other — carefully — and pray some joker doesn’t tilt me.”

On Wednesday he will sing, but naturally, Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat … for about the 2,000th time, he estimates. Is he not tired of the number yet?

“Nope. Every time I sing it, it’s the first time all over again. I’m the biggest ham in this business. I want people to like me. And if I don’t look like I’m having a ball, how can I expect anyone else to enjoy it?”

For Stubby there never has been anything else but show business in his working life.

He was born in New York City on Armistice Day — November 11, 1918. A big baby. “Don’t ask me what I weighed. I was too excited to get here to look at the scales.”

Just as soon as earning a living came around Stubby headed for show business. Summer shows in the Catskill Mountains entertaining visitors. A tour with a discovery show. Camp shows. Cabaret. Stage. Television. Films.

He has other ambitions. One day… “I’ll get married. Some idiot will look the wrong way and say ‘Yes’ without thinking. All I’m waiting for is a better offer than staying happy…”

There’s one question left. What is his real name.

He stiffens — well, as much as it’s possible. Almost a hurt look. Then a slow, sweeping, golden gleam of a smile.

“Stubby,” he insists. “Stubby Kaye. That’s what they call me in the business. That’s what I call me out of it.

“Every time I give somebody my real name something nasty happens, you know. First time I told, they sent me to school. Another time I was asked, it was the conscription people. What you got lined up?”

The post Tubby Stubby appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

FRAN WARREN, vivacious singer and musical comedy actress who appears in Granada’s The Variety Show on Thursday, was told by Danny Kaye: “Musical comedy needs you. I’m sure you’ll make it to the top. The best of luck, and I’ll be watching and keeping my fingers crossed.”

Danny’s faith was fully justified. Fran Warren later starred successfully on Broadway in Finian’s Rainbow, As The Girls Go and The Pajama Game.

Her sense of humour frequently causes amusement in the entertainment business. A magazine once offered her 20 cents (1s 6d) a word to write a 1,000-word article on what made her decide to be a singer.

Her answer consisted of nine words: “I like the hours. You owe me 80 cents.” (5s 6d).

This trim 32-year-old insists that she went into show business because she hates to get up in the morning. “Working at night appeals to me,” she says. “I don’t have to get out of bed until the afternoon.”

Now at the peak of her career, Fran came up the hard way, using a combination of talent, brains and hard work.

She decided to try and make a career as a singer when still at high school. “I was much more interested in Duke Ellington and Sidney Bechet than in geometry and medieval history, so I left before completing my second year,” she says.

It was the heyday of swing music, with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Woodie Herman and every small band in the land playing swing.

Although untrained, Fran found she had a natural sense of timing which suited this type of music, and she was soon working her way around with one-night stands in dance-halls and small clubs.

In 1945, she decided she had accumulated enough experience to try for a job with a big band.

She auditioned for Art Mooney in New York and remembers being terrified — “I had a lump in my throat the size of a corn-cob.” But she got the job.

For the first time, Fran was singing regularly on radio. She gained confidence. Her singing improved, and the fan-mail poured in.

When jazzman Charlie Barnet offered her a job some months later, one of her greatest ambitions was realised. She would be singing with one of the best jazzbands in the country.

“I felt as though I was walking on air,” she says. “I knew then that I had a good chance of making it to the top.”

The years that followed were exciting. She loved the pace, the travelling. “There was hardly a town in the whole of the United States we didn’t visit,” she says.

She left the Barnet band to join the famed Claude Thornhill orchestra. The recordings she made with Claude — including Sunday Kind Of Love — have now become collector’s items.

It was while she was with the Thornhill orchestra that Fran developed the “controlled, searing voice” for which she is famed.

“I owe a lot to Claude,” she says. “His patience and understanding gave me a new kind of confidence.”

Having emerged as a popular band singer, Fran thought it was time to take the plunge and “go it alone.”

“I’ve never regretted that decision,” she says. ”I think I’ve proved that show business isn’t the monster it’s made out to be.”

The post Fran Warren – singer with a sense of fun appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

THE sleepy voice on the end of the telephone line in New York said: “Good morning; this is Dorothy Loudon. This is quite a surprise. I didn’t think anyone in England had heard of me.”

As I had the advantage of five hours over the 26-year-old singer comedienne, I said “Good afternoon,” and apologised for bringing her out of bed at 8am (her time) to answer the telephone — and questions about her appearance in Granada’s The Variety Show, next Thursday.

The Loudon voice came over loud ‘n’ clear: “Well, it’s my biggest opportunity yet. I can’t tell you how excited I am about appearing in London for the first time.

“I have been doing a special cabaret act here in America, and I am wondering how it will go down in England. Tell me, are the British public very critical?”

I told her the British are a pretty amiable bunch.

“You see,” cooed the Loudon voice above a menacing transatlantic splutter, “I don’t tell jokes. I hate women who tell jokes. I mean, what’s so clever about telling jokes?”

I said that it depended largely on the joke and on who tells the joke.

“Yes, but there are not so many people around who can really tell a joke. Certainly very few women, anyway, and I’ve tried to be a different comedienne.

“How do I describe my brand of humour? Well, it’s off-beat. The humour comes out in the treatment of my songs. Singing a song in a certain style can be a whole lot funnier than telling a joke.

“Michael Brown, the fellow who wrote the Lizzie Borden song, has written a new song especially for me. It is based on a famous murder case. But don’t let that frighten you. It is really very funny.”

I gathered that Dorothy Loudon had good cause to talk so enthusiastically about humour … before breakfast. Even in this instance, when she had retired to bed late and was nursing a cold. “It’s true I’m pretty excited,” she said. “All of a sudden everything is happening to me. I have just finished playing in Las Vegas and, honestly, I had standing ovations there every night.

“Considering they see everybody in Las Vegas, I was particularly pleased to come out tops. The result is I am being flooded with TV offers and I am now signing a recording contract.”

Glamorous Dorothy Loudon — a Boston-born girl — has been fortunate in having the benefit of show business experience passed down to her by her musical family. Her grandmother was an actress and dramatic coach. Her father was a saxophonist. And her mother was a pianist.

“The family background helped me a lot when I left school to begin my career in New York,” she told me. “But during the past six years, particularly, it has taken a lot of hard work to develop this humorous style of mine. The family experience helped in as much as I was able to develop my natural feeling for show business by studying dancing and acting at school.

“But once I came to New York, I was on my own. Work didn’t come easily in the big city. But I was engaged as a pianist and vocalist in a cocktail lounge and, all at once, my career began to take shape.

“Producers were interested enough to give me a spot on television, and I began adding the comedy to my act. My fortunes had changed, and I was getting more jobs than I could cope with. Now, I think I’m really going places.”

Was it too much to ask her to talk on the subject of romance at the unromantic hour of eight in the morning?

A pause on the New York end of the line indicated that it might well be.

But then the Loudon voice insisted to the contrary, thus:

“A girl should be able to talk about romance at any time of the day. I’ve been talking romance seriously to Norman Paris, a New York piano player, for the past four years.

“At last we have got engaged. We plan to marry in the summer. Yes, it is true that I am planning to settle down, even though my career has taken this sudden upsurge. Marriage is a wonderful institution. I would give up my career for it if necessary.”

The post Date with Dorothy appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

ROSE MARIE, a vigorous entertainer whom viewers will see in Granada’s The Variety Show, on Thursday, is moving toward the apex of her second business career. A performer from the age of three, she first became a major personality as the zestful Baby Rose Marie.

For years the child star enjoyed consistent success in films, radio, and on recordings. But the inevitable awkward age arrived, and it seemed as if Rose Marie would reach the show business dead-end that has concerned many child artists.

A public image, once established, is difficult to change. It is often hard for a former child wonder to convince the public she has grown up.

Rose Marie was born and raised in New York’s crowded lower East Side, where poverty often breeds fierce competition. She is of Italian and Polish descent, which may help explain her intense personality.

At three, Rose Marie won an amateur contest which led to a radio appearance. The latter resulted in a contract with the National Broadcasting Company.

For the next few years, Rose Marie co-starred with such stars as Dick Powell, Rudy Vallee and Milton Berle. In addition to her capacity to reach and hold an audience, she had an excellent memory and could sing more than 500 songs.

The child’s voice was so strong and her projection so self-contained that audiences doubted that she was so young. To convince them, she went on extended personal appearance tours. That more than convinced local police that she was below voting age, and there were problems in many cities. In some she was not allowed to perform; in others she had to pantomime her act; and in some cases she was fined.

When not touring, Rose Marie attended the Professional Children’s School in New York, where, in addition to regular subjects, training for future professionals in music and other arts was given.

“I had to retire at 12,” said Rose Marie. “I was too gawky to performer and not mature enough to compete with the adults. And so I went to a parochial school in New Jersey, dreamed of continuing in show business, but waited until I was ready.”

Rose Marie returned in a short-lived musical, Springtime in Brazil but it was evident that she had grown more in voice than in size. She is only 5ft 2in tall, but has a voice that does not need amplification and a feeling for comedy that has made her appearances doubly impressive.

By the time she co-starred with Phil Silvers in Top Banana on Broadway she was accepted as an adult personality and began a substantial new career.

Since then, she has appeared in many major American night clubs. Her television appearances have included the shows of Ed Sullivan, Ray Anthony, Steve Allen, and other major variety programmes. She has also demonstrated a distinctive acting talent and has appeared in stage plays.

“I have never been in Britain before and I’m thrilled at this chance,” she says.

She names Bob Cummings and Jimmy Durante as the major influences in a her career.

Rose Marie, now 31, is married thrumpet player Bobby Guy. They have a five-year-old daughter.

The post Rose Marie – on stage from childhood appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

IT is enough to make Stark raving mad! “It’s terrible,” groaned Graham. “Everybody I’m introduced to cracks the same old joke. They grin and say ‘Mr Stark, eh? Which branch of the family? Raving or staring?’

“I smile sweetly and mutter to myself, ‘5,924.’ ‘What do you mean?’ they ask.

“‘Oh, just keeping count,’ say I. After all, I’m the comedian.

“That’s another thing. Everybody expects me to behave like a comic all the time, but I’m not just a comic you know. Far from it. I’m a straight actor.

“The old yarn about the comic who wants to play Hamlet was never more true-to-life than it is today with TV. There’s no future for the chap who walks on to a stage in front of a camera to do four minutes of red-nosed comedy. Television humour is all sketches and situation comedy.”

Graham Stark — one of the stars of On the Air, goonster of ITV’s A Show Called Fred and Son of Fred — has been 24 years in show business. “And the goons didn’t come into my life until the last four years,” said Graham.

Before that he played Cinderella, with amateur operatic societies. Molière at the Edinburgh Festival, and Macbeth with repertory companies.

Stark — a lean-faced, boyish-looking 37 — was born near Liverpool, the son of a Scots marine engineer.

“I was 12 when I first went on the stage, as Buttons in an amateur pantomime.

“A theatrical-producer friend of my headmaster was in the audience one evening. He told my teacher ‘That boy’s a natural for the theatre.’

“My mother fixed me up with dancing lessons right away. A year later I was in pantomime at the Lyceum Theatre in London.

“At 16 I won the national youth dancing championship. I had an audition for Sadler’s Wells. They offered me a two-year scholarship, but I turned it down.

“I didn’t really want to be a dancer. I wanted to act. So I worked in a couple of plays in London and Glasgow.

“When I was 19 I went into the RAF. After two years as an ordinary airman, I had a stroke of luck. Ralph Reader was auditioning for a Services Gang Show. I joined it, and for three years we toured all over the world. What a bill! Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers, Reg Dixon, Cardew Robinson and Dick Emery.

“Things were sticky after the war. I tramped London’s West End in my demob suit looking for work, and living on sausage rolls. Then I went to the Coventry Arts Council company, to do one play … and stayed four years!

“I did a lot of radio after that, between variety dates and summer seaside seasons.

“After ITV’s goon series I had a spot in Granada’s Melody Ranch show, and now On the Air. Which just about brings us up to date…

One thing. That name Stark. “It’s my real name. It’s Scots. Should have a Mac in front of it, I suppose. Would sound odd, though, wouldn’t it — MacGraham Stark?”

The post The Stark truth! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

BACK on television on Thursday comes Granada’s Chelsea at nine. And with the first two shows Britain is introduced to two Canadian comedians who have rocketed to the top in North American TV.

Their names: Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster. Their hometown: Toronto. Their ages: “incredibly old.”

They look, in fact, incredibly young. Wayne, the shorter, stockier of the two, reminds me — in appearance — of Mike Todd. Shuster looks like John Wayne (the film star, that is).

They have been working together ever since they joined the Boy Scouts 25 years ago. Their first show was a play produced for a Scout jamboree — “it wasn’t the best script we’ve ever written,” said Wayne. “But then, it probably wasn’t the worst, either.” Their first professional break came years later at university in Toronto. It is said an advertising man saw one of their college shows and offered them a radio programme.

Neither Wayne nor Shuster knew anything about radio. But they bought a handbook and got down to finding out. “That book certainly taught us something,” said Shuster. “I must try and remember some day what it was.”

Individualists they have always been. With energy and ingenuity they work out satirical sketches which, frequently, require elaborate sets.

“We believe sets are important, especially in our kind of work,” said Shuster.

Unlike many comics who have an assembly line of gag writers, Wayne and Shuster work on their own scripts and produce their own shows.

“We go 50-50 in the writing and ideas for our shows. Sometimes we sit down and feel we’re absolutely dry of new ideas, but then something turns up,” said Wayne.

The first Chelsea at nine has a musical opener — words and music by, of course, Wayne and Shuster. Three sketches, interspersed by appearances by the Ray Ellington Quartet and Valerie Masters, will include a skit on boxing movies, entitled “Bell, Book and Canvas.”

“It’s a father-son tussle, but please ask don’t who plays father,” says Shuster.

Another sketch introduces The Professor (Wayne) who is the original expert. “He knows about everything and is a regular character of ours ” explained Frank.

“In this particular sketch he’s a submarine know-all.”

Third sketch, entirely mimed, concerns the leaning Tower of Pisa — any further description would be impossible.

Compering the first two Chelsea at nine shows is another Canadian, Bernard Braden, who used to work for Wayne and Muster in radio many years ago.

“We always thought that boy would go far,” they say, nodding wisely. “And he did, too … 3,000 miles.”

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THREE top international stars head Granada’s new Chelsea at nine series, which comes back with a bang this week in a new spot on Thursday every three weeks.

And supporting them will be many old favourites among the team that has proved since the first programme in September, 1957, that top artistic talent of all kinds can be mixed — without frightening away the customers.

Headliners this week include American comedian Dave Barry, Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues, and San Francisco jazz and ballad singer Ruth Olay.

Dave, who after his appearance at the London Palladium some time ago was described as a “brilliant humorist,” bases his routines on the everyday happenings of “Mr Average.” The things that happen at home, the problem of money, and the usual trials and tribulations with the wife and children.

He does a great deal of his own writing. He is, too, an amateur cartoonist and his sense of satire can be detected in his drawings as well as his performances.

The strong, passionate, untamed voice of Fado singer Amalia Rodrigues has taken her from the market places and cafes of Lisbon to concert programmes as a star solo artist in most of the European capitals. She explains: “Fados are Portuguese folk songs that have been handed down from generation to generation. In Portugal, if we are bored, we sing; if we are lonely, we sing. Fados tell of hopeless hearts, sadness, loneliness, passion, jealousy, love, pain and longing. Fado is all that exists.”

Ruth Olay makes her first British TV appearance in Chelsea at nine. She was born in San Francisco, the daughter of a rabbi. At one time she was secretary to a Hollywood scriptwriter.

Bandleader Benny Carter “discovered” her singing in a “jam” session and her first job was with his band. Soon after came her first recording. That was in 1953. Some years later she reached the bestseller class with Singin’ in the Rain. “I have been interested in show business ever since I can remember,” she says.

Her other interests include reading science fiction, record collecting, swimming and volley-ball.

As well as Transatlantic stars, more and more Continental entertainers are being brought over to appear in the show. Many have to be booked six or eight months in advance.

Those who decide on the balance of the programme and the selection of artists are Ann Suudi, Granada’s casting director, and producer of the show, Eric Fawcett. They have recently returned from a tour of Sweden, France and Denmark in a search for talent.

Chelsea at nine is rehearsed and staged in what was the Chelsea Palace Theatre in King’s-road, London.

After the Palace opened in 1902, patrons enjoyed in the “luxuriously appointed and handsomely decorated theatre” (to quote a 1904 bill) everything from all-in wrestling to a season of Shaw plays.

The late Yvonne Arnaud (billed as “a new French artiste”), Mrs Patrick Campbell, Gerald du Maurier and G. H. Elliott, the Original Chocolate-Coloured Coon, have all played at the Palace.

George Robey, Harry Tate, Charlie Chaplin (playing in Fred Karno’s show: Twice Nightly), Sir Harry Lauder, Gracie Fields and Nellie Wallace are some more famous Chelsea Palace names.

The Palace closed as a variety theatre in March 1957. Five months later it became officially known as the Granada.

The exclusion of the more “obvious” variety acts from the show has not narrowed the programme’s scope. In fact, the aim of the producers has always been to increase the show’s individuality by featuring artists not normally associated with variety.

Since its inception, Chelsea at nine has presented internationally famous artists from every field of entertainment. For many of them, it meant a first British TV appearance.

Douglas Fairbanks compered the first and many of the early shows, introducing such big names as Pouishnoff, the Rumanian Folk Dancers, and Richard Tucker, “Brooklyn’s Caruso.” Other comperes have been Bernard Braden, Jack Hawkins and the current host, Lionel Murton.

More scoops over the past 16 months have been comedienne Anna Russell, who came over from the US for a one-night appearance, Ram Gopal, the Indian dancer, Yehudi Menuhin, and Maria Callas.

Yehudi Menuhin was booked at two days’ notice. His appearance was scheduled at a time when there was a ’flu epidemic in England. Most of the cast, except for Charles Laughton, were affected. Menuhin, then appearing at the Festival Hall, was asked to take part. He agreed and was delighted to find that Laughton, an old friend, was sharing the bill with him.

Other famous personalities who have taken a bow in Chelsea at nine are Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sari Barabas, the Hungarian opera star, violinist Isaac Stern and Dame Edith Evans. Excerpts from successful London plays have frequently been presented and viewers have been treated to a wide variety of current comedy and dramatic productions.

“Regulars” in Chelsea at nine since it began have been The Granadiers, the song and dance group (seven boys and six girls) who work under the direction of 33-year-old Cliff Adams. The girls and boys who make up the group have achieved a reputation for clever timing and excellent singing.

Cliff Adams formed the group especially for Chelsea at nine. He decides on a song, arranges it, has a discussion with choreographer Mark Stuart and producer Eric Fawcett. When all three agree, a routine is worked out.

“There have been few changes in the group since it started,” said Cliff, “But I always audition everyone who writes to me and wants to be in the show.” Chief assets for a would-be Granadier: Good appearance and adaptability. Their dance style is a blend of movement and music aided by spirited teamwork.

By November 18 last year The Granadiers had sung and danced their 100th Chelsea at nine number.

Peter Knight and his orchestra have also appeared in every show. Peter is the tubby, ex-Inland Revenue clerk whose parents wanted him to be a concert pianist. He says: “This is one of the most interesting jobs I’ve done. Musically it has immense range, from opera to ‘pop.’ We are kept on our toes, too, because we have to cope with slick American arrangements.”

The post Chelsea top-line appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

I BOARDED a plane for Paris, bound for the French premiere of Françoise Sagan’s “sex and poison” shocker, Le Rendez-Vous Manque — The Broken Date.

What the Ballet-Theatre Francais showed me — and what they’ll show similarly thinking viewers in Granada’s 35-minute Chelsea at Nine excerpt on Tuesday — was that ballet-wise, I’ve been bemused for years by milk-and-water stuff. Their production is fantastic and shocking and daring and as virile as it comes.

From London to Paris I am given the whole story by an American woman who had seen the first night in Monte Carlo a few weeks earlier.

“It’s this way, honey” — and I’ll shorten the story to necessities. “The man falls for a married woman. They have an affaire. She promises that if she meets him in his room later, it will mean she’s left her husband.

“While he’s hanging around waiting, his friends, high-spirited kids, stage a surprise party — real rock n’ roll stuff. And he gets vamped in a bathroom by a sexy bit of goods. Dunno how it got past the censor.

“His lady is late getting to him, and … Gee, I’d better not tell you the end where he takes the poison. That would spoil it for you.”

Backstage I meet the fabulous 22-year-old Sagan. Holding a big bouquet she’s so quiet, almost mousey, I mistake her for a flower delivery girl! She is tiny. Stilt heels push her up to 5ft 6in. Careless-cut blonde hair. Two deep dimples whenever, as often happens, she smiles. And the minute she speaks there is a supreme confidence about her.

“I write the ballet very quick. The changes take a long time. In Monte Carlo it is seen by very old people. They do not understand the young ones … pfui! Look for scandal, and one will always find it.”

I ask why romance, often illicit, plays a big part in her writings. “Perhaps I am a romantic person,” she murmurs, thinks again, dimples, and adds: “perhaps it is life. I write of real people.”

I speak to Noëlle Adam, who is involved with Vladimir Skouratoff in the bathroom scene. She’s so curvy that even the shapeless raincoat she is wearing looks interesting. Provocatively pretty, the blonde is starring in French movies — and turning down Hollywood ones because she will not sign a seven-year contract.

“Eet is not shocking. Zose nudes in movies — zey are shocking,” she counter attacks, her dancing brown eyes flashing a challenge.

Skouratoff wanders in, and her challenge is not accepted. “Not a shocking ballet,” he insists. “Carmen is shocking. Zis is nozzing. Good publicity, zat is all.”

Skouratoff. dark haired, intense and very masculine, was born in Paris of Russian parents. This is his first modern ballet, and part of it gave him a tough time. “Ze rock ‘n’ roll, it is ver’ difficult. Ze body movements are all different.” He leaves, shoulders squared back, every pace a ballet move rather than just a step forward.

The other principal, Toni Lander, is a slender blonde from Denmark. She does not think the ballet shocking, and she does not think the jazz scene is really ballet. In which she agrees with Skouratoff but is at variance with Noëlle Adam.

The bathroom scene was the one that had to be changed after the Monte Carlo opening.

Changed? Says Sagan: “It is longer. The ending is different since he now rejects the vamp.”

Shocking? Admitted choreographer John Taras: “We went as far as possible — without breaking the law.”

The post The Sagan Ballet Sizzles at Nine! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

STEAMING into port next Tuesday is a small cargo boat, SS Guernsey, known to her rather odd crew as “The Old Cow.” She puts into harbour for Granada’s new weekly situation comedy series, Mess Mates, involving her captain and crew.

For Captain Biskett (Archie Duncan), who once dreamed of commanding an ocean liner, this little coastal vessel is a last ditch, and he wants to stay in it. He relies on Tug Nelson, the Mate, without whom he would not have a crew.

Victor Maddern as the Mate, ringleader of the men in trying to outwit the Captain (for whom he has a great affection), is full of wonderful schemes for making money and dealing with situations. But they nearly always go wrong. However, he can talk his way out.

Each of the half-hour episodes starts in port, for the main plot is about things ashore. Three other members of the crew have their own frustrations and entanglements. For instance, Croaker Jones the Bosun (Sam Kydd) is a worrier for whom life is one long battle. He has a large, comfortable wife and seven children.

Young Willie McGinniss (Fulton MacKay) is a happy Jonah, a great romantic who puts every woman on a pedestal. Blarney Finnigan (Dermot Kelly) is a bit of an “old sweat” with a big line in outlandish stories.

Glasgow-born Archie Duncan, who is 46, is unmarried, like the Captain he plays. His knowledge of the sea comes from building ships. He had 10 years in the Clyde shipyards as an electric welder. He turned actor at 30.

Stocky Victor Maddern, unlike the mate he plays, is married and has four daughters. At 32, he has made 60 films.

“I went to sea at 15,” said Maddern. “I had three years in the Merchant Service, but I didn’t like it a bit. I served my time as a cadet, trained to be an officer, but didn’t sit for my Second Mate’s ticket.”

Sam Kydd beams if you mention the sea. But his experience of it is limited to filming — one happy month on a pleasure steamer and another six weeks on a Thames barge. He is married and has a six year old son.

Fulton MacKay swops one Scottish name for another as engineer Willie McGinniss. A bachelor aged 37, he was born at Clydebank, but he did not build ships there. His main voyaging has been “doon” the Clyde.

Probably the neatest type-casting is Dubliner Dermot Kelly as Blarney Finnigan. Dark-haired little Dermot, only 5ft 4in, with the looks of a leprechaun, might have stepped out of Sean O’Casey.

A bachelor in his early 40’s, Dermot played the lead in ITV’s production of The Quare Fellow.

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SAID William Hartnell: “You’d never believe it, judging by some of the parts I’ve played, but I used to be known as a comedian. I called myself Billy Hartnell in those days.”

Certainly, the hard-bitten petty officer of Seagulls over Sorrento, the sergeant of The Way Ahead and the Scotland Yard detective in several films had never struck me as being comedy roles.

“That’s why I like The Army Game,” he continued. “Even though I’m not supposed to be the comic.” Hartnell has only one protest: “I seem to be doomed to playing sergeants and petty officers.”

I took a careful look at Hartnell, the amateur company-sergeant-major. He was off duty at home. And I have to report he looked extremely like a professional company-sergeant-major off duty at home. Or maybe I’m like the rest – I can’t think of him in any other role.

He was wearing a check sports jacket, a brown shirt open at the neck, grey flannels held up by a leather belt, brown slippers. He smoked his cigarette jerkily and kept throwing his chin out and half closing his eyes to look into the distance.

He might have been picking out that ‘orrible little man at the other end of the parade ground. In fact, he was watching a bird which is the part of Hartnell he would like you to know.

“Most people think of me as a tough, snarling character with not very much grey matter,” he said. “Those are the parts I always play. But nobody ever inquires whether I’m really like that.”

I report with pleasure that Mr. Hartnell is not like that. His wife, playwright Heather McIntyre, showed me round their Sussex garden and confided a few secrets about her husband. “He loves birds and animals. See that little wooden house up in that tree? Bill built that for two field mice. We call them Mr. and Mrs. Ashley and every evening about eight we take a meal out to them… Mind where you put your feet – a shrew lives under those two small holes in the lawn. We call it Baby…”

This didn’t sound like a sergeant-major’s life. Inside once more, Bill took me on a tour of the house.

I commented on his pictures, several by Augustus John. “Any money I have to spare in the future will go on buying up originals,” he told me.

Hartnell’s other major interest is fishing. He’s a member of the Hove Deep Sea Fishing Club. “Nearly all my best friends are outside the theatre business,” he said. “You’ve got to escape from the insanity of that world. That’s why we live here. We love the country and a quiet life.”

“Here” is a half-tiled cottage, non-vintage, in a remote lane in a remote part of Sussex 12 miles from Brighton. It’s not a sumptuous house, but it’s friendly. “People have got to accept us as we are,” said Heather Hartnell. “We’re no good at putting on a show.”

I remembered reading somewhere that Norman Hartnell, the Queen’s dressmaker, is Bill’s cousin. Correct? “Second cousin, actually. But we don’t I see each other often. We live in different worlds.”

Heather smiled. “Somehow I can’t see him sitting on our kitchen table having a good old chat.” Then she said: “Let’s have some tea.” We sat down to, fruit cake, scones and strawberries, Hartnell ate three scones and declined the strawberries.

“I was born in Seaton, Devon,” he told me. “My parents separated when I was a child and I was brought up by a guardian. My ambition was to become an actor and a jockey. Somehow, I thought I could do both together. I hated school, ran away three times and finally, at fifteen, was allowed to go to work in a racing stable. But my weight was against me. One day the trainer called me into his office and told me I’d better try something else.”

Sir Frank Benson, the famous Shakespearean actor-manager, took him on. “I did almost every job in the theatre before I began to make a name for myself.”

Hartnell – “Billy” Hartnell that is – understudied Bud Flanagan and Ralph Lynn and attracted a certain amount of attention in comedy roles in films. Then Carol Reed saw him in Brighton Rock and gave him the part of the sergeant in The Way Ahead.

For Hartnell the way ahead ever since has been through the doors of the costumiers who fit him out with sergeant-majors’ and petty officers’ uniforms and raincoats as worn – in films at any rate – by Scotland Yard detectives.

Bill put his foot up on a kitchen chair and brushed a parade ground shine into his shoes. “I wish they’d let me show that I can play other parts besides sergeants.” He moved to the hall and put on a beltless raincoat. “I’d like to play Polonius instead of policemen.”

Then we set off for Brighton, where Bill had an appointment to pick up a script. The role? A tough, tight-lipped gangster. Obviously someone had said “Just the part for Hartnell.”

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THERE is nothing very special about the Nether Hopping transit camp and surplus ordnance depot. Motorists passing by as they speed along the arterial road never give it a second glance.

It is a ramshackle, miserable-looking hutment camp, three miles from the nearest village and 10 from the nearest town. A camp forgotten by the War Office, where life follows the same lazy routine.

This is the scene of Granada’s new fortnightly comedy, The Army Game.

The peace of Nether Hopping is, however, rudely shattered by the arrival of five newcomers.

“Fly” boy of the outfit is Cockney Cpl. Springer, played by Michael Medwin. He’s the type who sizes up the situation in his first three days in the Army and decides that the rest of the two years will be one long scrounge.

Only regular among them is Pte. Brisley (Alfie Bass) who is called “Bootsie” because he’s been excused boots for most of his Service life. He’s the pessimist of the group.

Then there’s Pte. Hatchett (Charles Hawtrey), who for obvious reasons is nicknamed “Professor.” He’s the barrack-room lawyer.

Pte. Popplewell (Bernard Bresslaw), better known as “Popeye,” is a giant who represents the brute strength of the quintet.

Finally there is Pte. Cook who, on the strength of all the parcels he receives from his fond mother, has the nickname “Cup Cake.”

Collectively, the five are a major threat to the smooth running of any camp – a quality which has kept them on the move. They are determined that their travels must end. But they haven’t counted on Company Sergeant-Major Bullimore (William Hartnell). He does his best to run Nether Hopping on service lines, but he is getting rather tired of the effort.

It is inevitable that a meeting between such a group and a man like Bullimore should be the start of a private war in which no quarter is given and none asked.

Quite happy to let the sergeant-major run the camp his own way is the O.C. Major Upshott-Bagley (Geoffrey Sumner) realised that when he was given the least responsible job the War Office could find for him he had reached the pinnacle of his career. He is content to vegetate until he is pensioned off.

The Army Game has been devised as a riotous comedy – but it is not a farce. The situations may be a little larger than life, but they are based on incidents that could happen in any Army camp.

In this all-male cast, Granada have found people who look the part and who can act the part from personal experience.

Geoffrey Sumner, for instance, joined the Army in 1939 as a second-lieutenant and finished up in New Delhi as a colonel.

Bernard Bresslaw feels quite in character as one of the inmates of Hut 29. He was a private in the RASC. And William Hartnell had a private’s-eye view of the war in the Tank Corps. His promotion didn’t come until he left the Army in 1943 and Carol Reed made him a sergeant for his part in The Way Ahead.

Alfie Bass was a dispatch rider. About the characters in The Army Game he says: They could be real people.”

Scriptwriter Sid Colin was in the RAF. To make sure he gets his technical facts right, Granada have appointed a military adviser, Major John Foley. And the War Office have provided a liaison officer and given him permission to visit any Army camp he likes in search of authentic material.

The post ITV joins the army appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

IN those wilderness days without television just after the war – that would be about the year 10 B.C. (Before Commercial TV) – I used to listen each week to The Alan Young Show, crackling happily over the short waves direct from New York or relayed by the American Forces Network in Germany.

A lot of other people in Britain did the same, including, as one afterwards realised on hearing their acts, some of our own comics!

Curiously, I can still recall odd fragments of dialogue from the show. One remembered sketch concerned a storm at sea. Ship’s captain’s orders concerning the mizzen mast could not be carried out.

Why not?

“It’s mizzen!” came a shout. Next a command: “Get the helm over will you,” and a swift reply: “Watch your language!” The second voice in that sketch, by the way, belonged to Bernard Braden who was then taking part in Alan Young’s programmes.

I recollect too, a fabulous character called Hubert Updyke who was “the richest man in the world.” So rich that he threw away his Cadillacs whenever the ashtrays were full!

The actor who played that part is now the voice of Mr. Magoo in the famous cartoon films.

With such memories, it was pleasant to find myself sharing a dish of kebab with British-born Alan Young, now, at the age of 36, one of America’s most popular comedians, in a Soho restaurant the other day.

On Monday he starts a 13-week series for Granada TV under the title Personal Appearance, which will be seen on all channels. He has written all his own sketches and will also introduce a glamorous guest singing star each week-among them Eve Boswell, Shirley Bassey, Petula Clark and Guylaine Guy from France.

Alan Young was born in North Shields. His family emigrated to Canada when he was five. At 13, he was already in show business, reciting monologues like “Albert and the Lion” while impersonating Stanley Holloway.

His father wanted Alan to be articled as a bookkeeper, and was opposed to his becoming an entertainer.

“He never told me that he had himself ran away from his home in Scotland to join a children’s show run by a man named Jefferson, who was the father of Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame,” Alan told me. “I only discovered that from an aunt in Surrey I met on my first brief visit home to England three years ago.”

Alan took a secretarial job at a Vancouver radio station. It was a step in the right direction. By the time he was 18, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered him his own show and father dropped his objections.

Soon a top favourite, he was invited to New York to replace Eddie Cantor for a three-week season.

An invitation to Hollywood soon followed. Then, in 1949, The Alan Young Show opened there on TV. It ran for three years and won three Academy awards – the television equivalent of the cinema world’s “Oscars.”

Young left the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1952 to freelance and has since appeared in such successful films as Androcles and the Lion with Jean Simmons and Victor Mature, Margie with Jeanne Crain, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College and Gentlemen Marry Brunettes with Jane Russell.

Youthful-looking and happily married with four children – his wife and two of the kids Cammy (7) and Wendy (4½) have come to Britain with him – Alan Young has a home with a swimming-pool in California’s San Fernando Valley.

He is modest and likeable; quiet-mannered for a comic. But that is in keeping with his style of humour, mostly the characterisation of a shy, slightly baffled type who is always being put upon by others, and to whom the most surprising things happen. But he can be put upon so much – and then suddenly… wham!

On his arrival in London, Alan lost no time in contacting Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly “I went to their wedding. Barbara was a shy little thing then” – conductor Robert Farnon, who used to play for The Alan Young Show in Canada, and film actor Guy Middleton – “a wonderful guy.” Middleton was one of the cast of Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.

What does Bernard Braden say of Alan Young? “He is not only a fine comedian and actor but also an outstanding writer of comedy. He was the first comedian in Canada to have any real effect upon the public despite his youthfulness. He is at his best as the little man who suddenly turns angry.”

How did Alan’s ITV assignment come about?

Eddie Pola, now Granada’s Director of Light Entertainment, was producer, both in New York and Hollywood, of Alan Young’s first radio show for several years and also produced some of his TV shows. He says: “Alan puts on a disciplined and not a helter-skelter show.”

Despite his pleasant looks, the really romantic roles are not for Alan Young. He explains: “In films I always seem to be the asthmatical lover. In Gentlemen Marry Brunettes I never got to kissing the heroine because I was supposed to have asthma. I always sneezed at the wrong moment.”

Alan’s hobbies include judo (he is a brown belt), “switching some of the jokes of that greatest of gag writers – William Shakespeare,” and reading Sir Winston Churchill, “who strings words together like a woman bakes a cake – with lovely ingredients.”

He is a soccer enthusiast and acts as “trainer, manager and lemon carrier” for the Los Angeles Scots.

While in Britain for his ITV series, he plans to visit the house where he was born in North Shields, to look up relatives on Tyneside and in Scotland and to play golf at Gleneagles.

I know you will like Alan Young.

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