Touring Shows

Touring shows The Lynch Family Bellringers The Quintrell Family E.I. Cole’s Bohemians Kate Howarde’s Dramatic Players Edward Branscombe’s Dandies Westminster Glee Singers Barton’s Follies Mack’s Players Pat Hanna’s Diggers Jack Waller’s Butterflies The Humphrey Bishop Company Maurice Diamond’s Marquee Theatre Stanley McKay’s Varieties Coleman’s Pantomime Company Lionel Walsh’s Musical Comedy Company Philip Lytton’s Dramatic Players Philip Lytton’s His Majesty’s Moving Theatre Lester’s Follies Tibby Roberts’ Follies J. Beresford Fowler George Sorlie Wild Australia Everyman Theatres Midnight Frolics Edgley Allan Wilkie Filippini Opera Company CAE Arts Council of NSW Les Levante

1919 Possum Paddock, a romantic bush drama by Kate Howarde (d. ►1939) premieres at the Theatre Royal in Sydney on 6 September 1919. With its gentle contemporary comedy, real kookaburras and vistas of an idealised bush setting, Possum Paddock proves an immediate winner – even though the Sydney Morning Herald derides it as ‘a strange, weird spectacle.’ After its initial six-week season returns a profit of £5000, Miss Howarde takes Possum Paddock on an extensive tour of Australia and New Zealand. She will direct a film version in 1920. A 1924 follow-up, Gum Tree Gully, will prove less successful. Miss Howarde will mount countless revivals of Possum Paddock, which will remain popular for many years with loyal audiences outside the capital cities. The 1930s to the 1960s, before the full impact of television took effect, was a totally different era of live performances. It was a time of touring tent shows and popular pantomimes with comics, magicians, ventriloquists and contortionists regularly seen under canvas in places like Birdwood Park.

It was the era of vaudevillians like the incredibly popular Bobby Le Brun, who died in 1985. He spent more than 50 years making people laugh, first with the Sorlie's revue company and later with Barton's Follies. As a youngster in the late 1950s, stage and screen actor Geoffrey Rush felt lucky catching the tail end of the era, once remarking the Sorlie's tent shows were like a poor man's Tivoli. Instead of doing the prestige Sydney and Melbourne theatre scene, the tent shows did the northern NSW and southern Queensland circuit. One behind-the-scenes tale showman Le Brun remembered was in the 1940s when he performed in a rotten canvas tent in Newcastle for more than two years until it rained on the last night. "We [then] had a full house with hundreds of umbrellas up in the tent," he had recalled. "It was quite a sight." Another Newcastle showbiz veteran is Waratah's Glen Barker, who recently featured in these pages and who also has a rare, firsthand insight into the era. Now retired, his versatile career spanned more than 60 years including a stint as a booth announcer at the old Newcastle Stadium in the 1950s. "It was managed by former boxer Harry 'Tootie' Mack," Barker said. "He'd been a titleholder and was a smart cookie, introducing overseas acts to keep the stadium going as an entertainment venue." Using an innovative sliding stage, Mack mixed boxing with wrestling bouts and occasional overseas artists. "On the nights the stadium was open he'd have three fights and three variety acts," Barker said. "The boxing matches were three- and four-rounders with variety acts in between the boxing or wrestling. "I then became quite good friends with some of the visiting foreign wrestlers. Being interested in magic tricks myself, they used to get me magic catalogues from America when no one else could. "Anyway, one of the wrestlers was called Dirty Dick Raines. He'd beat up referees and tear off their shirts but he had a secret behind the scenes as I soon discovered. "Out in the dressing room before bouts you'd find this big wrestler doing his delicate petit point, his embroidery. Back in the USA, he used to enter his needlework in the county fairs. I was quite surprised." Barker said his real interest in show business and local theatre started after he gained an apprenticeship as a glassblower at the now defunct ELMA factory in Clyde Street, Hamilton North. In 1950, he organised the popular ELMA revues. "Industrial revues were the thing in those days," he said. "Everyone had a show of some sort. Lysaghts and Rylands and Marcus Clark did. The revues raised money to help build the Laman Street Cultural Centre, now housing the Newcastle Region Library. "This went on for three or four years," Barker said. "It was a big deal. I even had a wardrobe mistress for the pantomimes. Not bad for a lamp manufacturing business. "The Lustre Hosiery factory management at Adamstown [now St Pius X College] was keen on trying to do the same thing, so I switched over and started to do shows for them. "These shows would then be offered to other charities as fund-raising. "From memory we did 23 shows. There was a lot of community interest back then." Soon after he was doing promotions for Dulux paints, which led to odd acts to get public attention at Hunter Street hardware shops. There were gimmicks like chimpanzees painting house panels. But it was when staging lavish amateur stage productions at the Civic Theatre that Barker had one of his most memorable experiences with one of Britain's best known entertainers, Frankie Howerd. An entertainer for 40 years until his death in 1992, the cheeky Howerd was best known for his role as Lurcio in his bawdy TV series Up Pompeii. But for once, in Newcastle, the gregarious Howerd was lost for words, Barker remembered. "I was in the yard at my then Charlestown home when my son said the British comic Francis Howerd was wanting me on the phone," Barker said. "I thought it was a joke but it was him and he was in a terrible state of panic. "He had a one-man show at the Civic that night but said the stage looked like a fowl house. And he was right. "Someone had given him my name as a 'fixer' from my strong past associations there, even though I wasn't an employee. "We went there and got him calmed down with a cuppa and rearranged the stage for him from hiring plants, to getting more blacks [curtains] and sending for a piano tuner. He was very thankful." Barker said the Civic held many memories including those of the late comic Spike Milligan, whom everyone had difficulty understanding because of his "rambling, mumbling" speech, and the pranks of Dame Edna, Barry Humphries's alter ego. Earlier, through the Dulux radio show, Barker met American Singer Robert Goulet (1933-2007).A highlight of the interview was when Barker asked the star of the 1960 Broadway musical smash Camelot about his initial "interesting experience" with rugged Welsh actor Richard Burton. Megastar Burton, a man's man with a commanding stage presence and at the peak of his powers, was playing King Arthur. Virtual newcomer Goulet, in his Broadway debut, was Sir Lancelot, his champion knight of the Round Table and later rival for the affections of Queen Guenevere (a very young Julie Andrews). Barker still owns a tape excerpt of his Sydney interview decades ago with Goulet and played it for H2 to illustrate what can happen behind the scenes. On the tape, Goulet explains in a warm velvety voice that it was his first rehearsal of the play which shot him to overnight fame and he was "scared to death". Director Moss Hart was there, as was actor Roddy McDowall and eventually the legendary creators of the star-studded musical, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The scene was a theatre stage on New York's 42nd Street. "It was the rehearsal for my opening scenes in the show and Burton was to sing 'Who are you?' and I was to reply 'I am Lancelot' but Moss Hart then said to me, 'Bobby, I think we can get a laugh here by you going nose-to-nose with Richard.' "

A nervous Goulet thought he'd try something else to ease the tension. Walking alongside the imposing Burton across the stage he hesitantly suggested that he and Burton should kiss. "There was a three-second pause and without looking up Burton said 'all right'. "Never before in my life had I kissed a man on the lips and so I gulped and said 'OK'." The two manly actors then locked lips and shocked all present.

Newcastle Hearald 5 July 2008

Monday, November 23, 19311[541] DEATH OF FAMOUS GLEE SINGER ______ TRAGIC END TO TOUR AT DURBAN ______ FATAL HEART ATTACK IN HOTEL ______ MR. E. BRANSCOMBE'S WORLD TRAVELS Within a few hours of completion of the South African tour, Mr. Edward Branscombe, of the Westminster Glee Singers, died in his hotel in Durban yesterday morning. The last performance was at the Theatre Royal on Saturday night, and Mr. Branscombe was then in perfect health. When he wakened yesterday morning he was not well. He did not go down to breakfast, and when at 10.30 Mrs. Branscombe went back to the room he complained that he was ill. He died from a heart attack before a doctor could be summoned. The Glee Singers have given more than 200 performances in South Africa on this tour, and leave shortly for Egypt. Mr. C. Dearden, Mr. Branscombe's manager, will take charge of the party. Mr. Branscombe was one of the best known impresarios in England, and his death will be a loss to British music, as he had throughout his lengthy career always stood for the best type of English music, especially the old folk song melodies on which many of the national airs have been based. He was for ten years tenor soloist at Westminster Abbey, and it was his ardent enthusiasm for the traditional music, of which cathedral music is representative, which led him to form the original Westminster Glee Party with which he toured several countries, including South Africa, about 27 years ago. Subsequently he introduced, under his management, several of the best platform singers of that day to South Africa, including such artists as Lloyd Chandos and Perceval Allen. Mr. Branscombe spent the last years of his career in Australia. At one time, he had six 1

parties of singers running at once. He arrived in South Africa with the present party in July last, and made a double circuit of the Union. He introduced two Durban singers into the party quite recently. They are Cyril Evans, son of the well known conductor and singer and young Stanley McCullough, who has already fulfilled Mr. Branscombe's expectations by becoming a soloist in the party. The body will be cremated today after a strictly private service.

THE NATAL MERCURY Monday, November 23, 19312[542] FUNERAL NOTICES _____ The FUNERAL of the late EDWARD BRANSCOMBE (Musical Director, Westminster Glee Singers) will leave our Funeral Chapel, 589 West Street, THIS (MONDAY) AFTERNOON at 2.30 o'clock, proceeding to the Crematorium, Stellawood Cemetery. By request no flowers Umbilo tram leaves P.O. at 2.19 o'clock. Friends are invited kindly to attend. ADLAM, REID & CO. (Late Thos. Drew & Son), Undertakers & Embalmers. 556 West Street. November 23, 1931.

THE NATAL MERCURY

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Tuesday, November 24, 19313[543] IMPRESSIVE CREMATION CEREMONY ______ TRIBUTE TO MR. EDWARD BRANSCOMBE With fitting solemnity, the remains of Edward Branscombe, musical director of the Westminster Glee Singers, who died suddenly in Durban on Sunday, were cremated at Stellawood yesterday. Beneath a dull, threatening sky and to the accompaniment of the rustling of leaves, the simple ceremony was carried out. Three red roses on the coffin were the only flowers. Silently age and youth stood by bareheaded. Then, in the middle of the burial service the purple velvet curtains of the Crematorium parted slowly, and inch by inch the coffin moved into the blackness beyond. Then the curtains closed again slowly, and the service ended. The ashes are to be "scattered to the four winds of heaven." The service was conducted by the Rev. H.B. Fairbourn, of St. John's Church. At the conclusion Mr. Fairburn [sic] spoke of the great loss to the musical world by the death of Mr. Branscombe. They had experienced a unique pleasure in hearing him and many of them would probably never have the opportunity of enjoying such a musical treat again in this world. In the words of the national poet he was so fond of quoting: "There's a great soul gone." Among those present at the cremation were: Mr. Karl Gundelfinger, Mr. Harry Evans, Mrs. A. de Graaf, Madame T.E. Edwards, Mrs. M. Walker, Mr. Dan Godfrey, Mrs. J.I. Havik, Mrs. Llewelyn, Miss A. Scheffer, Mrs. O.F. Evans, Mr. E. Anderson, Mr. Franklin, Mrs. Wilson and Mr. & Mrs. Curnow.

High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in Durban at the time is Sir Herbert Stanley.

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