THE ALL-SINGING, ALL DANCING SHOW (I)
For too many years the British stage and screen musical remained in the shadows of American skill and innovation. As a result, its early successes tended to be overlooked, and the fact that the foundations of the medium were born in Britain often forgotten.
The roots are firmly planted in the tradition of seventeenth-century productions such as The Beggar’s Opera. But the musicals owed more than anything to the works of legendary Victorian establishment figures, William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. They were the first real words-and-music men in the modern sense and their contribution to the twentieth-century musical has been recognized such great American popular music composers as Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein, all of whom have at some time or other in their brilliant careers acknowledged the debt.
It was only in the late 1930s that Britain began to develop a deep inferiority complex about the ability to match the Americans, believing the song writers were not good enough, that the dancers just didn’t have the athleticism, and choreographers were too schooled in the ways of classical ballet to invent eye-catching, daring, and exciting dance routines. Fortunately, some screen musicals in the 1930s provide preserved evidence of British skill and imagination.
JESSIE MATTHEWS
One of the legends of British musicals is a star who shone so brightly that Hollywood constantly beckoned, though she refused the call all her life. Her name was Jessie Matthews.
Yet this glittering, gamine star, who became the darling of three continents, could not have started in show business in a more humble way. She was born in a tiny Soho flat, No. 94, Berwick Street, on Monday 11 March, 1907. One of ten surviving children out of a total of sixteen, her running order at the time of her birth was number seven. Her father owned a greengrocery stall opposite their flat, in the famous Berwick Street Market, and Jessie, like all her family, had a strong Cockney accent. Later, this vanished entirely as Jessie became known, not only for her breathtaking dancing and her charming singing, but also for her precise, ultra-posh elocution. Her climb to fame – and it was fame that few female British musical stars have ever equalled; Gertrude Lawrence, Evelyn Laye, Anna Neagle and, much later Julie Andrews, probably the only contenders – began at a very slow pace.
Coming from such poverty gave Jessie a determination to succeed, despite a background that made it far from easy. She was, however, born with wonderful physical assets, an elfin beauty, large sparkling eyes and a body that appeared to be boneless. Jessie could make dancing seem effortless. She could kick higher and more attractively than any dancer before or since. Only a Pavlova had her kind of natural ability in this exacting physical art. She began ballet dancing at the age of ten, and startled her teachers with her stunning gifts, performing exercises in her first lesson that it took fellow pupils more than a year to achieve. A professional debut came two years later in a children’s play called Bluebell In Fairyland, a Seymour-Hicks production at the famous old music hall, the Metropolitan Theatre in Edgware Road. She was following literally in the footsteps of Marie Lloyd, who had trodden those same boards only a few weeks earlier.
At the age of sixteen, Jessie was a ‘standby chorus girl’ in the show London Calling. Its star, Gertrude Lawrence, and the best high kickers in the line were chosen by the impresario André Charlot to open a new revue on Broadway. Jessie this time was promoted to full chorus lady. The revue was a smash hit and established the careers of Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan in America. But Jessie herself had to patiently wait almost five years for the vehicle that was to propel her to stardom. That opportunity came in the Noel Coward revue This Year of Grace, which opened in London at the Pavilion on 22 March, 1928. Her co-star was Sonny Hale, who was later to be her husband. But enormous scandal was created before that happy event, because at the time of their ‘engagement’, Sonny Hale was already married to another big musical star, Evelyn Laye. The divorce action captured worldwide headlines when the judge insisted that Jessie’s love letters be read aloud in open court and then made cutting remarks about her character.
Painful as this kind of exposure was – she was to claim that ‘the scars would remain with her forever’ – it did nothing to detract public interest from her talent, and after a series of small film parts, she was taken under the wing of Victor Saville. It was Saville who saw the enormous movie potential of Jessie when he was looking for a girl to play Susie Dean in the film version of J.B. Priestley’s Good Companions. Saville himself was without doubt Britain’s leading musical film director, and at the time of his search was working for Gaumont British. In the company of producer Michael Balcon, often regarded as the British film industry’s first ‘tsar’, he watched some of Jessie’s rushes and knew this girl was not only right for the part, but that she would be a major film box-office attraction. They were proved right, and one film success followed another with amazing regularity – films such as Gangway, Head Over Heels, It’s Love Again.
In the film Sailing Along which, owing to the impending threat of the Second World War and her failing health, was her last screen musical for twenty years, there was a brilliantly staged routine choreographed by Buddy Bradley. It started with a tap dance, switched to mime, and then to ballet. Its ‘on-screen time’ was seven minutes, and Jessie and her American partner, Jack Whiting, danced for nearly a mile with the camera tracking them across a set so large that it had to be built over two vast sound stages. To this day, it’s regarded as one of the finest dance routines ever to be captured on celluloid – on either side of the Atlantic.
But it was, perhaps, in the film Evergreen, based on her stage role, that she really reached her pinnacle. The film, which was directed by Victor Saville and choreographed by Buddy Bradley, with numbers such as ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and ‘Over My Shoulder’ by Harold Woods – a song that was evermore to be associated solely with her – had them queueing at all prices. It could have marked an even greater turning-point in her career, and one on which we can now only conjecture. For when Fred Astaire and sister Adele, his dancing partner at the time, went to see Jessie in the show One Damn Thing After Another, Adele, who was thinking of getting married and retiring, said to Jessie, ‘If I do leave, promise you'll take my place. You'll make a perfect partner for Fred!’ When Evergreen was being planned, Victor Saville went to see Astaire to offer him the costarring role with Jessie. Fred leaped at the idea, but RKO had signed him to a long-term contract and refused a release. Had they done so, it would have been Fred Astaire and Jessie Matthews who danced those wonderful routines in Evergreen, instead of the very able, but far from spectacular, Barry Mackay.
It is intriguing to imagine that, had Saville’s idea of teaming Astaire and Matthews materialized, there would have been no need for Fred to hunt for a new partner (who, as it happened, turned out to be Ginger Rogers), and filmgoers the world over might have spoken in awe of the magic of Fred and Jessie. But that, as they say – and Jessie would have been the first wistfully to agree – is show business!
JACK BUCHANAN, GEORGE ROBEY, THE RED SHOES