CATS

 

After several days poring over 1910s and 1920s Sütterlin cursive script, where things are seldom what they seem, and over the German language, my eyes and head were not even responding to the stimuli of whisky and gin, my three magnifying glasses were taking it in turn not to giving up readable images, and my seven pairs of glasses were struggling ...

I needed a break from delving into my forbears scribblings ...  something brief, fun and historico-theatrical. Here's what e-bay came up with.

Oh yes. Gillian Lynne and associates didn't get there first!

In the year of 1970 whatever it was, while we were getting Barnum ready to open at the London Palladium, a musical based on T S Eliot's cat poems went into production at the forlorn New London Theatre. We didn't pay much attention. I didn't have single agency artist in the cast ('but darling your people are singers, I want dancers'). I concentrated on finding the unusal performers for Barnum, writing the brochure, the publicity ..  

Now, the climax and first-act curtain of Barnum has the name character (genuinely) walking a tightrope across the stage, to the temptations of Jenny Lind in the stage box opposite. Very clever, very effective, and with both meaning  and significance. Michael Crawford did it superbly.

Then, one day, the beloved (and large) Maisie Fielding sailed, all-guns-readied, into my office. 'Gillian Lynne has pinched our tightrope for Cats'. And she had. But, sorry, dear Maisie, although the propinquity was a bit mean, it wasn't 'ours' to be pinched. Tightropes had been around for centuries. And so had human cats. The photos above are from the 1910s.

But the great catman of the Victorian era was Charles Lauri -- cats were always needed for Dick Whittington come Christmas! W G Hurst, Fred Farren, Eddie Foy. However, unless I'm mistaken (and I may be, with only a few hours research) Mr Johnny Fuller was special, and devanced Miss Sarah Brightman by more than half a century. He was 'the great little Cat on the Wire'. He performed on the slack wire in cat costume. I see him as early as 1901 in the Sheffield panto, and in 1902 already he is the Cat. He soon developed his tightrope-cat act, and had a long career as an Animal Impersonator. I see him as Ermyntrude the Goose in Mother Goose (1928), but mostly it was cats.

W A HARVIE was a lesser performer in the animal line. But he, too, could walk the wire. I see him doind Tommy the Cat at Hull in 1912, then Mauntz, 'a cat', in Shock Headed Peter at the Vaudeville, I see him doing a wire act in Wales, in Nottingham, in Yorkshire, and, for the last time, in 1927 (borrowing Fuller's sobriquet 'the Cat on the Wire') at Exeter. He spells his name all sorts of ways, any or none of which may be real), and was pretty surely a demi-semi-pro who brought out his turn when Dick Whittington drew nigh.

Rather more interesting is the dedicatee of the photo. Bert. Herbert Arthur Mayers (b Islington 1877; d Lambeth Hospital 21 August 1937). Bert started as a theatrical hosier at 333 Kennington Rd. But he moved into making pantomime animal costumes, with the greatest of success. I'm sure someone will have written about him ..