Darewski, or two bits that fit together

 

In the 1970s, when I was writing my first Big Book, The British Musical Theatre, I haunted the little junk-ephemera shops of Seven Dials and other unlikely areas in search of anything relevant to my cause. As you doubtless know, the result was two vast volumes of text and four rooms of programmes, playbills, scores, photographs, vital certificates (now largely enshrined in the Harvard Theatre Collection).

The shelves and drawers filled, and spilled out into the hall ...

The very first letter I bought was this one, written by child musician Max DAREWSKI (aged 11). I think it was 10p. No-one knew who Max was, nor even his more well-known brother, Hermann who actually wrote an autobiography ...

Here's a piece I wrote before:

DAREWSKI, Herman [Edouard] (b Minsk, Russia, 17 April 1883; d Kennington, London, 2 June 1947). Songwriter and music publisher whose song successes were contrasted with some flamboyant business failures.

 Born in Russia, brought up in England, Darewski studied music in Vienna and then returned to Britain where he became a conductor at the spa town of Bridlington, then at Blackpool, a member of the staff of Francis, Day & Hunter music publishers, and an adept writer of popular songs and interpolated numbers for musical comedy. His first song success came with `My Little Hyacinth', interpolated into The Beauty of Bath (1906) by Ellaline Terriss, and he had further success with ‘In the Twi-twi-twilight’ (w Charles Wilmot) sung in the American edition of The Dairymaids (1907) and `I Used to Sigh for the Silvery Moon' as interpolated into Charles Dillingham's Broadway production of The Candy Shop (1909). He also provided the tune to Elsie Janis's lyrics for `For I Love Only You' (The Slim Princess, 1911). He subsequently established his own Herman Darewski Music Publishing Company Ltd which, apart from publishing his own works, also put out such popular numbers as `Any Old Iron', `Sussex by the Sea', `Arizona', `I Know Where the Flies Go in Wintertime', `Ours is a Nice House Ours Is' and ensured the British distribution of many American hits.

 His first musical theatre scores, mostly put together in collaboration with other writers, were written for revue, beginning with such shows as Mind Your Backs (Hackney Empire, 1913), and Austen Hurgon's 1914 Coliseum piece Happy Days (1914) and including de Courville's Hippodrome shows Business As Usual (`When We've Wound Up the Watch on the Rhine'), Push and Go (1915, w Jean Schwartz et al) and Joyland (1915), and the Comedy Theatre Shell Out (1915). Alongside the revue songs, and such singles as Jack Norworth’s ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers’ (1915), he found time to contribute more or less music to a number of musical plays, of which the first was J M Barrie's vehicle for Gaby Deslys, Rosy Rapture (1915), a revusical affair in which his songs (including `Which Switch is the Switch, Miss, for Ipswich?') supplemented half a score by Jerome Kern.

 Darewski contributed numbers to such pieces as Émile Lassailly's Carminettaand revivals of Bluebell in Fairyland and The Catch of the Season, but he scored his biggest success when he supplied the bulk of the songs for the enormously successful C B Cochran wartime musical The Better 'Ole (1917). The unfortunate Gertie Millar vehicle Flora (1918) gave him only a brief exposure, but his re-musicked version of the Rip revue Plus ça change for Cochran and Alice Delysia as As You Were (`If You Could Care For Me') was another hit, whilst his `The Shimmy Shake' and `Le Petit Nid' (`In That Little Home That's Built For Two') gave him a wider audience when they were heard in the Parisian version of Ivan Caryll's The Earl and the Girl, Hello!! Charley(1919).

 At this time, often three or four West End revues and/or musicals at one time bore Darewski's name, in a larger or smaller capacity, on their bill. However, with the exception of a Gaiety Theatre revival of The Shop Girl (1920) for which the original Ivan Caryll score was topped up with eight new Darewski songs (`The Guards' Brigade'), none of the musical comedies for which he provided the major part of the score (Jolly Jack Tar, The Eclipse, Oh! Julie) proved particularly successful and, by the early 1920s, his name was much less frequently seen.

 In 1920 Darewski (who had bought up the old music publishers Charles Sheard in 1918) purchased the famous publishing house of Metzler, but in 1922 he encountered financial problems and was obliged to sell his publishing interests in bankruptcy. From the 1920s he operated once more as a musical director at various seaside resorts and at the head of his own band, whilst still providing the odd song to such musicals as The Blue Mazurka and Up with the Lark, but without ever regaining the profile he had had in the 1910s.

1908 Teashop Girls (The Tea-Shop Strike) (w Charles Willmott/H Maurice Vernon) sketch Empire, Nottingham 27 April, Hackney Empire 1 June

1914 The Chorus Girl (Harry Grattan) 1 act London Palladium 20 July

1914 Going, Going, Gone 1 act Chelsea Palace ****

1915 Rosy Rapture, the Pride of the Beauty Chorus (w Jerome Kern/F W Mark/J M Barrie) Duke of York's Theatre 22 March

1917 The Better 'Ole (James Hurd/Bruce Bairnsfather, Arthur Eliot) Oxford Theatre 4 August

1918 Flora (w Melville Gideon/Harry Grattan, Heard) Prince of Wales Theatre 12 March

1918 Jolly Jack Tar (Heard, Davy Burnaby, J P Harrington/Seymour Hicks, Arthur Shirley) Prince's Theatre 29 November

1919 A Good-Looking Lass (Leon Pollack, Lauri Wylie) 1 act Chelsea Palace 11 August

1919 The Eclipse (w Gideon, Cole Porter/Adrian Ross/Fred Thompson, E Phillips Oppenheim) Garrick Theatre 12 November

1920 Oh! Julie (w H Sullivan Brooke/Harold Simpson/Firth Shephard, Lee Banson) Shaftesbury Theatre 22 June

1922 Listening In (Worton David, Will Hay) Apollo Theatre 31 July

Autobiography: Musical Memories (Jarrold, London, 1937)

 

Darewski's brother, Julius Darewski, was a very prominent London theatrical and musical agent and occasional producer, whilst another (disowned) brother, operating under the name Ernest C ROLLS [Josef Adolf DAREWSKI] (b 6 June ?1890; d London, 20 January 1964), produced musical comedy and revue in both Britain and in Australia with more side than skill. He was sued for theatrical dishonesty before he was 21, bankrupted in 1921 after losing £16,000 on the musical Oh! Julie and £12,000 on the revue Laughing Eyes, and his mismanagement of Australia's J C Williamson Ltd almost led that famous firm to disaster. After directing some extravagant productions of a series of mostly American musicals on the Australian stage (Sunny, Good News etc) he went into management there on his own behalf, mounting Australia's Whoopee(1929) and the flop local Funny Face (1931), and, in the wake of Frank Thring's promotion of home-written Australian musical productions, even producing an original piece, Flame of Desire (Apollo Theatre, Melbourne 19 October 1935), for which he took a half book-credit with J L Gray (mus: Jack O'Hagan) and imported Ethelind Terry to star. He sacked her, and the show went down the drain anyway. It was then, through engineering a financial takeover of the firm by New Zealand department store magnate John McKenzie who then put him in charge, that he won the job at Williamson's,. His production of I Married an Angel was Williamson's all-time top money-loser and he was quickly given the boot when his second year's contract expired. Rolls' family did not disown him for his failures, nor for his flash manners and flashy productions (all well-established family failings). They disowned him first, in print (well, father and two brothers did, mother stuck by him a little longer) over his arrests for dishonesty, and then all over again when he was convicted of exposing himself in a rather different kind of `flash'.

 A further brother, Max DAREWSKI [Marks Maximilian A DAREWSKI] (b Manchester, 3 November 1894; d London, 25 September 1929), also composed for the musical theatre. In his earliest years, Max was celebrated as an infant prodigy at the piano, touring through Europe (under the not always appreciated `management' of brother Herman) and appearing before crowned heads in the best prodigy fashion. He also conducted his own and other music, in novelty circumstances, before the age of ten (Albert Hall, 1904 etc). Amongst a proliferation of piano compositions, he composed music for a number of revues, including Oh! Molly (1912) and the Venus Limited produced by brother Rolls, at the Pavilion and the Finsbury Park Empire respectively, but without being connected with anything very successful. He also got a tiny Broadway showing when he shared a credit on the title song for the 1916 musical Go to It.

 He provided the score for Alfred Butt's musical comedy vehicle for Gaby Deslys, Suzette (1917), which, with a London run of 255 performances -- not really due to its songs -- proved his longest-lived piece. His only other full score was for the touring musical Mam’zelle Kiki (1924), but he shared credit for the composition of the Gaiety musical His Girl (1922) and the Jack Buchanan musical Boodle (1925) and had songs interpolated into various other musicals including the London versions of Der Orlow (Hearts and Diamonds), for which he was also musical director, Lehár's Cloclo, and revivals of Tonight's the Night and The Maid of the Mountains. He also provided a handful of songs for Broadway’s Hammerstein’s 9 o’Clock Revue (1923). Maurice Chevalier made a success of his `One Hour of Flirt with You' (1917) under the less curious title of `J'aime les fleurs' in the Casino de Paris revue Pa-ri-ki-ri. In what seemed to be the family tradition, he was glaringly bankrupted in 1924.

Max Darewski was married to showgirl Ruby Miller, who recounted their lives in the book Believe Me or Not (1933)

1917 Seeing Life (Arthurs) 1 act Oxford Music Hall 15 January

1917 Suzette (Austen Hurgon, George Arthurs) Globe Theatre 29 March

1922 His Girl (w Ernest Longstaffe/Austen Hurgon, F W Thomas, Claude E Burton, Arthur Anderson) Gaiety Theatre 1 April

1924 Mam’zelle Kiki (Douglas Hoare, Graham John, Sydney Blow) Portsmouth 25 August

1924 Boodle (w Phil Braham/Hoare, Blow, Douglas Furber) Prince of Wales Theatre, Birmingham 26 December; Empire Theatre 10 March 1925

And here is today's photo ...

The Darewski story is told, with multiple photographs, in the late Frank van Straten's book Hanky Panky (Australian Scholarly Publishers, 2020) which is principally focused on the career of 'Ernest C Rolls'. 

Anyway, now I have the letter and the photos together, in the same article. Which is as it should be!

Flying so high with a Gay in the sky ....

I'm out of my period, out of my genre, out of practically everything ... but I saw this photo today and wanted to know (of course) more ...

So pretty, such a winning smile, and a pretty fair aerialist ...

Her name was Ruth Lucille BUDD (b Sandwich, Illinois 7 March 1895; d Fort Wayne 11 December 1968) ... when it wasn't Ruth Lucille SAUNDERS, for reasons I don't yet fully understand. Her father, Wallace Fay BUDD was a grocer, her mother Eva RUTH (b Mason City, Ill 19 January 1874; d Fort Wayne 28 January 1943) had been an actress. 

Little Ruth had all the qualifications for the theatre and there she went ...

And, on the way, she met a pretty young man who worked in travesty as 'the Creole Fashion Plate'. He was actually George Francis Pedruzzi (b Baltimore 13 June 1897; d 25 August 1947), and he soon took on the knowingly asexual name of Karyl Norman. Now, I don't know if Ruth was dumb, or like ladies I have known, merely had a taste for the féerique male; I don't know if Karyl was not yet wholly aware of his propensities or just thought ...  anyway, they became boy and girlfriend and 'engaged'. La Signora Pedruzzi was, I gather, not pleased. It was she who sewed her son's frocks and ..

Anyway, little Georgie apparently saw that his youthful enthusiasm had (after five, according to some sources, one, to others) had perhaps led him too far  ... and he called the 'engagement' off. Allegedly, in modern retellings, because Ruth and Her Mamma didn't want His Mamma to come on the honeymoon.

(Ah, perhaps the first husband was 'Carpenter'?)

Fast forward. Ruth had a very modest career in vaudeville, and eventually married (1927) a theatre electrician by the name of Ray Hanna, a little older than herself. Hanna made the transition from lighting man to movie house manager ...

George-Karyl had a much better career. Aparently deservedly. He, like the minstrel greats, Leon or Eugene, apparently encompassed the falsetto register in fine fashion. But, unlike in their cases, it was the frocks that really did it.  Anyway, in the 21st century, as a blackish, gay, cross-dressing performer he has won the devotion of Universitarians and Wikiplegia, and is compared to Ray Bourbon ...

I think little Ruthie had a happy escape!

I wonder what the verdict was re the $50,000!

Worcester Theatre Royal and all its circuit

A fascinating little group of old playbills from the Theatre Royal in Worcester.   

 There had been theatrical performances at Mr James Augustus Whitley's (d Wolverhampton 14 September 1781) playhouse in Angel Street in Worcester since the 18th century, but it was only in the nineteenth that the building was granted the right to call itself the 'Theatre Royal'. I see a Mr Powell credited at some stage as 'manager'

In the period covered by these bills, the little (900 plus seater) house was run by only two managers: John Crisp (b 1776; d Lozells Rd, Aston 25 November 1841) and, for many years, Henry Bennett (b Bath 1792; d College Street, Worcester 5 September 1868). 

Theatres, at this time, did not run the year long. In fact, they were closed more often. The manager would open for Occasions, such as Race Week, which brought the Quality to town, or the local Assizes, which brought different Quality, but otherwise for 'a season' or, if he were on a good thing 'seasons' with a resident stock company. And a supply of 'guest stars', usually for the odd night or three . When local support and/or the performers repertoire looked as if they had had enough, a good manager went on a Circuit. 

John Crisp also had, at various times, the management of theatres at Shrewsbury, Hereford, Coventry, Chester, Cheltenham .. and his actors hied thither, sometimes for a number of years in a row, while Worcester's dressing rooms were closed or, in some cases, rented out to amdrams or concerts, or even to another manager (Elliston took the house for a season in 1815). Bennett continued, in the same style, for nigh on thirty years. By the time that he retired, in 1851, the old system was well on its way out, and the era of touring comanies was beginning.

So, we have two bills here from the Crisp era. Easter Tuesday, 24 March 1818. Some of the names mean nothing to me, but some others than Crisp do -- Mr and Mrs Gallott, Henry Kemble, Mrs Chambers .. 

John GALLOTT (b 1790; d Brompton, 12 December 1860) had a career of some thirty years, partly in the company of his wife Ann Eliza née WOODS. I see him first in Oxford from 1807, (where Tom Wrench was sometime of the company) and them in 1815, before they moved into Crisp's orbit at Chester and Worcester. 

In late 1818 they were engaged, from Wolverhampton, for London's Coburg Theatre, where Gallott took good roles, then to Sadler's Wells where he assumed the post of stage manager, then to the Haymarket (with a trip to Dublin the direct the pantomime). In 1828, he moved to the Adelphi where he played in such pieces as Nelson, or the Life of a Sailor, Paris in London, A New Don Juan, the title-role in The Pilot, The Earthquake, or the Spectre of the Nile and as Korassan, the usurper, in The Elephant of Siam, or the Fire Fiend, allegedly penned by at least partly himself. Mrs G played a Siamese lady. He obviously got on well with the elephant, for in 1831 he accompanied it and the show to America. He is still to be seen in the London theatres in the 1830s and 1840s 'the evergreen Mr Gallott'. 

The other standout name, for me, is Mrs [Harriet] CHAMBERS née DYER, formerly TAPLIN. She played for half a century on the stages of England, and was regarded as a close follower to Mrs Glover as a player of 'old women'. 

I researched Harriet deeply, and then discovered that someone else had gone there before me. The amazing Mr PV Highfill. Alas, his multi-volumed biographical dictionary is beyond a pensioner's means, so I shall have to write to my rich friend Betsy in  California and get her to scan me the relevant bit. Meanwhile, the bones of his article have been shared on the www along with a wonderful piece of ephemera: a playscript annotated by the ladt

The inscription dates from rather later than the publication, for Harriet was not 'Chambers' for another fifteen years.

So, Harriet DYER born to Michael Dyer and Harriet Bullock, both performers, around 1750?  Must have gone on the stage early, for she married an actor named William Taplin 27 February 1771. I see them together in 1776 at Manchester where a prominent colleague was one James Kennedy. And Mrs Taplin 'ran off' with Mr Kennedy. He didn't last long, as Harriet moved on to Dublin and Leeds, to Stamford and to Barnsley, where she met and married (October 1779) John Chapman. Another actor. But the third time paid all. The couple stayed together until they vanished into the starlight somewhere thirty years later.

Through the 1790s and 1800s, I see them -- mostly together -- Sheffield, Newcastle, Ipswich, Hereford, Canterbury, Birmingham, Manchester, Chester, Omagh (!), more Hereford, Cheltenham and Chester, where Harriet is now dubbed 'of Drury Lane', through the 1810s and into the 1820s ... where I lose them.

Edward SHUTER (b c 1788; d Manchester 5 November 1836) was another longtime habitué of the provincial circuits. I wonder if he is the Master Shuter who appeared with his parents at Hereford as early as 1791? Bit young. I think it must be his brother George jr. George Shuter (sr) married Susannah Powell, Cheltenham 1783?  In 1800, Mrs Shuter 'and her children' are at Wolverhampton. Miss E Shuter and Miss F Shuter and Mr E Shuter appear at Hereford together in 1812. So I guess that's them.

I spot what I assume is him at Hereford (1807, 1815, 1819), Shrewsbury (1809), Cheltenham (1811, 1812, 1813) and for three seasons at Liverpool in comic roles, then in Chester in 1817 with ?mother,  Crisp, Gallott, Mrs Chambers et al .. Occasionally it is tricky to identify which Mr and Mrs Shuter is referred to .. 

Cassup, Shuter, Aylmer, Masterman ...

Shuter, Crisp, James Thorne, np nd!

'Died Birmingham, Mrs Shuter, mother of Mr George Shuter, late of our (Hereford) Theatre' 1823.  OK, father is George  Elizabeth Shuter born to George and Susannah at Cheltenham 1793? George 1783? Richard at Worcester in 1800 .... ah died George Shuter, comedian, aged 54 in the Tottenham Court Rd 5 November 1837. 54? That's surely a brother. Oh, these theatrical dynasties! 

Edward Shuter married Charlotte Pitt 1825. Could be he. The Pitt family worked alongside the Shuters ...  sigh. I'm stabbing running water ...

I reckon I've mucked this one up. 

The Mr VINING here, is Henry [Phillip Tayleure] VINING (1794-1855) who married Amelia QUANTRILL also of the theatre, daughter of William QUANTRILL of the cricuit (d Cheltenham 31 March 1825). He can be seen in the 1841 census 'comedian' with wife, mother-in-law, and daughters Amelia and Matilda ... oh lawks!  Matilda grew up to be the celebrated Mrs John Wood!  Talk about dynasties!

Several of the actors had short lives ...

Thomas AYLMER (b 1799; d Atherstone 17 May 1828)

and John Reynolds CASSUP (b Bristol 25 June 1804; d Loughborough 6 September 1832

did not reach their thirtieth birthday ... I see Cassup at Shrewsbury in 1828 .. Aylmer at Retford in 1822 

The Mr H Kemble on the Bennett bills is Henry Stephen KEMBLE (b 15 September 1789; d 22 June 1836) son of Stephen Kemble and nephew to the celebrated John Philip Kemble, who acted in tandem with Mrs Siddons in 1767. His wife was Mary née FREESE.  While his father had the reins 1818-9 at Drury Lane he was given good roles there, but thereafter he was largely employed at the Coburg, the Surrey or in the provinces.

The multiplication of names make deciphering these C19th bills very difficult. But I thought I'd try an easy one today. Mr Spray. The leader of the Worcester Theatre orchestra. And he's followed by a Mr Spray jr. Obviously a son. It seems not. After a day of delving, I've discovered that this Mr Spray was a Scot, by name William Henry SPRAY. Born, it seems, somewhere near Dumfries in 1789. I think the Sprays might have crossed the border quite early, for I see what I presume is he leading the band at Hereford in 1816. I presume, because, guess what, he had a brother (?), Frederick (b c 1786; d Leicester 14 March 1864) who also professed music ... 

Mr Spray 'of the Theatres Royal Chester, Cheltenham etc' is md at Bristol in 1820. And, oh! Mr Spray 'musician' is at Market Dryton in 1809 ..

Anyway, Fred's children claim birth in Boston, Lincs, but the whole lot seem to have ended up in 11 the Tything, Claines, Worcestershire. Alas, the censi only begin in 1841, but there are bits of Spray there then .. and then WH (d 27 September 1850) and his wife Jane née Macfarlane (d 1853) died ... and we have Fred jr, Sarah and  Rachel ..

Fred jr (b 1823) would even outdo his ?uncle. He was the big man in Worcester musical circles for two decades. Conductor of the Harmonic Society, the Festival Choral Society, the Philharmonic Society ... 

Sister Rachel became Mrs John Stanyon and died at 28, sister Sarah became, tardily, Mrs George Goodwin .. and I think the family historians (and newspapers) have done their usual muddling.

So, the Miss Spray playing children's roles at Wolverhampton in 1819, dancing at the Worcester Theatre in 1827 (and at Stamford and Spalding in 1834) is ...?

Tiens! there's Mr Cassup!

My biggest disappointment in researching these bills is my failure to identify, firmly, Mr and Mrs Denning. Not with proof, anyway. The first bit of data I discovered was a tiny squib in a provincial paper saying that he had died in Birmingham in 1821. 'Mr Denning'. Always just 'Mr Denning'. He'd only been on the stage for about eight years. But in those eight years he had won splendid plaudits and been seen -- in between engagements at Crisp's theatres (Cheltenham, Chester, Hereford, Worcester) -- at both the Haymarket (as Anthony Absolute to his wife's Julia)  and, more significantly, at Covent Garden in 1817-8. 

While at Covent Garden, he played a role à tiroirs in a piece named Three Miles from Paris, and, such was his success, that he won comparisons with Charles Mathews and had his likeness, in the role, engraved for the Theatrical Inquisitor. 'Mr Denning'. 

Now, this engraving has found its way into several libraries, where it is catalogued as 'Thomas Denning'. I wonder how they knew that. So I looked for a Thomas Denning dying in Birmingham on 9 September 1821. There wasn't one. Yes, he and his wife were playing a season at Birmingham when he was taken ill in November 1820 .. but ...  Well, I suspect that he went home to die. A Thomas Denning died back in Newington (where he was born) aged just 31 ...    

Which means he was just 22 when he stepped on to the stage at Cheltenham in July 1812 with a comic song and dancing a pas de deux with one of the Mr Chuters. The programme also included Mrs Denning. Who was she ...? She, too, turns up at Cheltenham in 1812, playing Young Douglas to the Alice of ... Miss Feron!  She is there until that last season in Birmingham ..  and, whoever she was, then disappears from my ken. 

It's getting thin. Mr Mason apparently was a Cheltonian. A Mrs Cuffley née Sternberg turns up in Northampton 20 years later ... I see Mr (and Mrs) Thornhill at Chester in 1806 labelled 'of Liverpool' ... most of the minor performers limited their careers, such as they were, to the circuits. Ah! here's one that made the news!  Miss Hart.

There were clearly several Miss Harts around in these years. There was one dancing in London c1815-9. Then there was one who arrived at Chester under Crisp in 1819. Is this she? There is one getting ghastly reviews at Norwich and Cambridge, and one at Stamford 'from the TR Birmingham' ... which one? Fast forward to 1838. Miss Caroline Mary Ann Hart, only daughter of George Hart, and living in College Yard (hang on, that's Henry Bennett land) married Henry Nash, a Cheapside merchant, and made the news by refusing to go on the next night in a play apparently called The Day After the Marriage. She is said to have attempted London under name of 'Miss Harrington'. I'm not sure if she ever acted again, and she seems to have died in 1868 'aged 50'.

Here's another Crisp playbill culled from the web. This one is 1815.

Mr Gallott, Mr Shuter, Mr and Mrs Chambers are already on the bills. Mr Marratt. I guess the one such who performed 'wonderful evolutions on the slack rope' at Hereford in 1819. And Mr Cuffley!  Is this the George Carver Cuffley of Northampton, music seller, who married Frances Mary Sternberg, vocalist in 1825? Can't be, he'd be 13 years old. A good few Cuffleys in Northants .. bah! it's no use.

Mr Blanchard OK, Mr Norman yes. Ah, Mrs Mardyn. Poor Mrs Mardyn.

Mrs MARDYN (née Charlotte INGRAM) (c Chichester c1791; d unknown) had a brief but sunny career. You can read her story in The Era for 10 April 1853. Way after her period in the limelight, but Charlotte made a mark in her time ... To sum up, she was a sexy servant lass who courted and married a pretty but dissolute actor named Mardyn, took to the stage, was a great success, quickly rose to Drury Lane heights ... and then someone started a rumor. At the time the lurky Lord Byron was estranged from wife, and had been putting himself around -- seemingly, without regard to age or sex -- whilst sheltering behind his aristocratic and popular persona. It doesn't seem to have done much harm to his various paramours, with one exception. Charlotte Mardyn. The public -- or an interested/influential portion of it hissed her from the Drury Lane stage -- quite how often or consistently this happened is related with various of degrees of vehemence, but suffice it that Charlotte was not retained either at Drury Lane or the Haymarket, left England for the Continent and there married a titled person (some say German, some French) and disappeared ...

This playbill comes from the period before Byron ...   there weren't too many post. So, did she or didn't she? And does it matter?

William BLANCHARD (b Newgate, Yorks 2 January 1769; d London 9 May 1835) needs no introduction. His life and splendid and appreciated career are detailed in the Dictionary of National Biography. He died from a fractured skull after being thrown from his chaise. His son was E L Blanchard of pantomime fame and the author of a memoir.

Mr NORMAN [MOWATT, Richard Henry (Norman)] (b London 15 March 1787; d Newington Workhouse 15 September 1858). Often provincial theatres billed their artists with exaggerated or even false credits. 'Of La Scala' etc. But I feel that Mr Norman deserved rather better than his billing here. He was quite simply one of the foremost players of golden heyday of pantomime in early C19th Britain, right up there with Grimaldi and Bologna, both of whom he regularly partnered.

He was inevitably billed as 'Mr Norman', but I winkled out a tiny death notice which referred to him as Richard Norman. Then, chasing his official death record, I discovered that he was alias Richard Henry dit Norman Mowatt (1788-1858). From about 1789 there were a Mr (Henry?) and Mrs (Ann?) Norman playing Chester ('his first appearance on this stage'), Manchester and the associated circuits. 1794, Manchester produced a pantomime The Chace, or Harlequin Skeleton and a Mr Norman was the Pantaloon. Clearly not our 5 year-old Richard. Mr and Mrs are seen through the 1790s and .. well, is he the Mr Norman singing a comic song at Lancaster and acting with Miss Mellon at Manchester in assizes week, August 1804? Is it he at Manchester in December? At Lincoln in November 1805 ('his song was excellent'), then Grantham, Boston ... I think it must be Mr N senior. Because in May 1806, at the Aquatic Theatre, Sadler's Wells, a Mr Norman -- or Mr Norman -- appears as a dancer in something called Love in a Tub. In July he is featured alongside Grimaldi in a dance routine Fun and Physic, a comic pantomime, Anthony Cleopatra and Harlequin and The Invisible Ring. 

The pantomimes and comic dances followed one after the other .. Harlequin Highflier, The Magic Urn, The Plagiarist, Quixote and Sancho, The Prophecy, Take Warning, Harlequin Pygmalion .. he had clown roles at the Olympic Pavilion, the Sans Pareil (The Fiery Cauldron), Covent Garden (Harlequin and Asmodeus opposite Grimaldi), the Lyceum, he was Pantaloon to the Clown of Grimaldi, played Crusoe to his Friday at Covent Garden, and at one stage doubled the Garden with the Coburg nightly. It didn't workout well. London traffic let him down and he was late at the Coburg. He was sacked ... and won £200 for breach of contract!

In 1820 he doubled Pantaloon with directing the Dublin panto. Grimaldi was Clown and when he was off, Norman stepped in to the part. He was seen in Dublin through till 1827 ...  when Der Freischütz was staged, he was Zaniel ... then at Edinburgh ... which is my last sighting of him.

He lived thirty years longer. Where? Married? Children? When did he go to the Newington workhouse ...? He lies in Norwood Cemetery. Anyone like to pop in and see if this famous man's gravestone is still there ..?

My time in Worcester has come to an end. I'll pop back up there from time to time to see if I can find another one or two of Crisp and Bennett's players ... but for now ... Au revoir.

 

Theatre merchandising 1884: "Four Little Dudes"

 

Today's nice bit of theatrical ephemera.  All the way from San Francisco. And I can date it precisely .. to the day!

12 May 1884.

What I can't do, and I've tried, is name the girls -- I don't have a programme of the musical comedy Pop! from which this photo comes ...

These photos were given out, in the fashion of the time, as 'free gifts' on 'special' nights. I see there were others, less attractive ..

Pop, by the way, was the name of the leading character, Adolphus Pop, played by James A Mackay. And the story was a regular farce comedy decorated with musical numbers, burlesques (Romeo and Juliet, Pygmalion and Galatea, Tirolean singers), impersonations, specialities and a pot pourri of songs from the shows. It called itself -- or its concocter, Edward Rice, called it -- 'A Highly Sensational, Melo-Dramatic, Operatic Comedy Melange'. It began in London, then moved in typical fashion, to 'the salon of the steamship Scythia' where an entertainment was given, tying up its ends in Union Square and the New York Police Courts. 

As was the usual case with this type of show, the musical portions and burlesques could be slipped in and out around Mackay's stand-up imitations and (English) Kate Castleton's twenty-second-hand musical hall song, introduced at London's  Oxford and Pavilion Music Halls in 1877 ('a smart satirical topical effusion') and thereafter 'sung in the Principal Theatres throughout the Kingdom' as well as in the year's Covent Garden pantomime of Puss in Boots .

Kate sang it in the garb of a Quakeress. 

The Four Little Dudes were introduced into the show during its New York run, in a Rice-made scena entitled plainly 'The Dudes'. 'Dudes' had become a fashionable term a year of two earlier, to describe the 'men-about-town', the crutch-n-toothpick, monocle-eyed creatures who lurked around stage-doors ... well, the type parodied later by Noel Coward in 'The Green Carnation'. Rice was never a man to miss putting a saddle on the latest topical trends ...

His routine (surely there was a song?) was greatly successful .. 'the little dudes have become great favourites. Kate Castleton has introduced a couple of new songs'.  A later review from Canada speaks of 'a chorus of dudes' but maybe four was considered a chorus?

Well, some day I will hap upon a Californian programme which tells us who the little dudes were. Number three looks as if she had promise ...!