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.”

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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?”

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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.”

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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.

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