Some Experiences in Showmanship

MR. COLEBROOK

We are fortunate in having for our first meeting of the New Year, a jovial soul who is Christmas all through the year. He is going to talk to us about--SHOWMANSHIP--and that is good because we may need quite a bit of that before we get through this year.

Our Guest Speaker was born in London, England, and has been in the entertainment world all his life--on the regular stage, music halls, radio and television.

In 1948, he and his wife and two small children came to Canada and since that time, has been very busy in his own chosen field of entertainment.

At the present time, as most of you know, he is directing and starring in the English Pantomime--Mother Goose at the Royal Alexandra--a production of the New Play Society--sponsored by the Riverdale Kiwanis Club.

The entire cast of about 70 people, excepting only Miss Oliphant, is composed of Canadians, who have been trained for this production by our versatile Guest Speaker,

MR. CHRISTMAS

I would like to first of all explode a theory some of you may hold, that professional comedians are extremely funny people, off stage. That is not necessarily so. I have spent a great proportion of my life in the theatre and I have come to the conclusion, that to amuse people professionally is an extremely exacting job, and by no means a question of being a light-hearted, amusing, witty and easy-going person in real life. Most of the comedians of my acquaintance are men who look as if they should be more closely associated with MacDougall and Brown than with the theatrical profession.

Another fallacy concerning comedians is that the man like Uncle Charlie, who will keep you in fits in the front parlor by the hour, is going to be an enormous success on the stage. That is not so, I can assure you.

Now, I am very happy to tell that in putting on this pantomime f or the last two weeks I have been as surprised as anybody at the response to the show. I was most anxious to make the show as clean (without being puritannical), as I possibly could. I feel the only good laugh is a clean laugh--and I am amazed and pleased at the response. But that is definitely a question of a reward for a job of work. We are not, as Uncle Charley is, in a room about 10 x 16. We are in a vast theatre. It is a question of giving the old lady, at the top of the top balcony who has possibly struggled in from Mimico and paid her dollar, as jolly fine an afternoon or evening as anyone else, and that is quite a job. It is a question of projection, and applying your talents to your particular medium. It is certainly not a trivial, or lighthearted matter.

So I want to let you know that I am not necessarily going to be extremely funny for the next fifteen minutes. I am very honoured to be here. I am also very happy, and very deeply appreciative of my first two years here in Canada. I have had a certain amount of criticism levelled at me: I have been told that I am publicity-seeking. Now it is impossible for any person in show business who is running shows or appearing in shows not to be publicity--seeking, because the publicity comes up you; often unsought. I want everybody here to know that my complete and whole-hearted intention is to stay in this country, and to work with, and for this country, and to bring my children up as citizens of this country. I do believe most sincerely that Canada has the greatest potential on this earth. That is my sound belief. That was in my heart before I came here.

I was quite successful in England, travelling around with shows and making a good living. I gave up quite a lot momentarily, but I did have immense faith in the future, and I was most anxious to come here. I had met so many Canadians during the war. I was doing shows for the Royal Air Force for five years during the war. And in the R.A.F. I came across many Canadian airmen and I found that the compromise of tradition and progress of the Canadians really sold me on this country, and that is I think the main reason I came here. I have been here just two years, and I am darned glad I came. I intend to stay until I die. I may go home once or twice on vacation but my heart and my home is here: that is my future, and I am therefore very anxious to do what I can in my own field, and I do think, that live entertainment is rather lacking here. To reach your public and to make them conscious of the theatre, and to raise their standards artistically, you must offer them something that is entertaining, and you must, over a long period of time, educate to something that is really worthwhile. You can not force Ibsen and Chekhov down their throats. You can slowly and with infinite patience and courage, make them realize that great plays are also great entertainment, even in our pantomime we have a Mozart flute concerto. So many people have come to me and said, "The ballet music is wonderful, who did it?" and I say "Mozart." As I say great works can be great entertainment. And that is the way the standards should be raised in the theatre, not by forcing people into it.

This summer I am going to present a musical show. I am determined to make the tone of it as clean as I have the pantomime, and I am going to travel up north, and I am going to give the holiday public holiday-entertainment, and in that I am also going to see that we have something worthwhile, and slowly, over a period of years, the public can be educated to those standards.

I have a reasonably good background in the theatre. I trained for two years in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. My mother went to see the Head Master. My mother said, "What can we do?" And the Head Master said, "We can do nothing, put it on the stage." I then went to the Academy of Dramatic Art for two years. I naturally speak the Cockney. I slip into it occasionally. I have learned to speak The King's English. I was born and bred in London for many years, and for many years 1 lived completely in the heart of London, and when I first went to this academy I was really quite thick in Cockney. I was a Cockney office boy, and in playing this part, I came on just as myself, and won a scholarship on this brilliant performance just by me being me.

After that I had a wonderful period for seven months doing absolutely nothing. That is the time you work in the theatre when you are not working. That is when you have to look your best, behave as though you owned the world, and turn your nose up at a job you would give your life to have. I had seven months of that, and then I got a wonderful job on the Program. I was Assistant Stage Manager in the theatre, I was chore boy, furniture mover, everything as menial as it could be. It was a wonderful show, and I would sit in the corner every night, and they were all absolutely bored to tears, they had done it fifty years. The only thing they were concerned with was where are we going next week? But nevertheless I enjoyed the show immensely. I did all the odd jobs around. I made 15s. a week, and made on the side 25s. selling chocolate bars in the trains on Sunday.

Then I went into vaudeville, then pantomime in the war, and for a couple of years after the war, pantomime. So I have a pretty good background. I feel honestly I come of professional background.

Miss Oliphant has been for fifteen years with the finest pantomime management in England. We do feel we have something to offer. I know, working together, a lot of publicity will come our way. But we are always helping raise standards and helping to educate the people to live entertainment. The response has been staggering. I am amazed to think people are in such need of good clean live fun, absolutely amazed. The show is good, it could be much better. We fought many battles; some we won, some we did not, but I do feel we have achieved a professional show.

I was anxious to do two things: I was anxious to have a good show. I was also anxious to bring something on the right side of the ledger for the Kiwanis Club because I am very, very keen, as I say, always to make ventures solvent, and that is the only way anything will grow in the future, if anything can be good and successful.

At the same time we have many plans for the future. I don't know whether I shall be in Toronto next year or not, that is a question that is in the lap of the gods for the moment. I should like to do another show. I am definitely going to spread around the rest of Ontario, and as I say, do the show up north in the coming summer time.

I am talking completely about my own business, because it is something--I don't know how many have been associated with show business, but it is in your blood. There is nothing you can do about it, and neither would one want to do anything about it. You hear all about these people moaning, groaning, beefing, but they stay in, and we have found some wonderful material in our work here. There is one little kid in our show. She has been to every rehearsal on time, and we really worked hard for two months. It was the only way to make the thing go, you have to do a thing properly and you have to work, and she worked for two months, and she is too small to put in anything except to stand at the back of the stage in the Finale, with a wooden trumpet in her hand, and that kid has been wonderful. We found about ten or twelve others like that, and it is in her blood and it is also in the blood of the others I know. And we feel we can slowly but surely build up a tradition and a real live theatrical following here in Canada, and that, as it is my business, that is something I know, that is my intention, for the future.

We insisted on every person in our show being paid this year. I am a professional, and that is the way the show should work. Everybody has been paid, we have brought employment to over 100 people. I am hoping in the future we shall bring employment to several thousand. I want to say in this immense talent, there is one big lack, there is a lack of showmanship. There is a lack of standing up on the table and saving, "Look at us, we are pretty good." Not to be oppressive but to use tact and discretion. You should know exactly how long a movement will hold, when it is due to be finished. In other words, timing is an essential part of showmanship. There should be proper timing. But there should definitely be more showmanship, more presentation of Canadian talent.

I do a lot of work on the radio. The radio here is, so far as I am concerned, on as high a scale as anywhere in the world. I have learned a great deal from the standards of radio. I am speaking now of the live theatre. Canada should be represented, there should be the feeling that it is a Canadian show. I am relying in the initial stages on people with an Old Country background as well, because the theatre there is as virile as ever. Even in the short space of time I have been here today I have spoken to many people who know what it is all about, they have spoken of theatres out home, two people have spoken about theatres I know very well. It is that familiarity with the live theatre which I know can be made in Canada.

It is fantastic to me to see a CANADIAN NATIONAL EXHIBITION with such a great percentage of foreign talent in it. That staggers me. I was amazed to see that when I came here. I don't think it should be so. And I don't mean that nobody but Canadians should be there. The general training of performance should be Canadian but the basis of the Canadian National Exhibition and the bulk of the talent and influence and the parades should of course be Canadian, and a national show if it is Canadian-and I know it can be done.

I also want to, and intend to encourage, a love of Empire, and I want you to know we play in our Finale "Land of Hope and Glory". We wanted to play something else. Suddenly someone played "Land of Hope and Glory". I said, "That seems funny." I noticed the moment that tune was played the girls perked up, and quite spontaneously, and you know there is the greatest thrill to me in our show to that tune, and I believe a little patriotism would not do any harm. It is there, it is through the medium of my business that it can be done, because if a thing is made attractive and entertaining it will sell its point, and I think that the Empire and the spirit of Empire--after all that is the reason we are all here today, because of the great Empire we have, is it not? And that tune has always been one of the great thrilling, heart-throbbing tunes for me. Every night the band plays it better than any other tune in the show, everybody lights up immediately to it.

I have in the back of my mind a complete synopsis for a pageant of Empire, not the usual historical text book presentation, not the usual page after page of events represented as truly as a nation could be, with every detail absolutely correct--I think you have to be a little more clever in approaching your public. My intention is to present the pageant through the eyes of a little boy, to start the show with a rural school in Canada, and a little boy of nine who is having trouble with history, and who says to the teacher, "If only it was in front of him instead of in his book, he would understand much more the background of his country and his empire." And with the boy's imagination, with the whole show presented through the mind of the boy, you can immediately do things in a much more showmanlike and showy way, and at the same time most sincerely, because, after all, there is no more sincere mind than the mind of a child, and not a more fervent imagination than the imagination of a child. Instead of giving just the effect, my Indians would be live, war-whooping Indians, we would have a big war dance, a waving of tomahawks. In other words the whole show would be through the mind, and at the same time we could, I know, instil in our audience a deep and completely solemn and sincere realization and glory in our country and in our Empire. And that would be the way to do it, and that is the way I intend to do it.

I have the whole show completely mapped out from beginning to end. I could have the whole show set up in two weeks' time.

First of all, it would be a good show. I know that it would be something really worthwhile for Canadians, and I feel quite sure it would be financially successful. If you offer something worthwhile people will come in to see it. That is one of the things I intend to do, because I was for two years in the Boy Scout Movement and we were responsible for a great increase in the membership and in the public appreciation of the Boy Scout movement. I have done it before and I can do it again-to present a pageant of Empire about which people will say, "Wasn't that a wonderful show?" And then will say, "Don't we live in, a wonderful country!" That is one of my biggest aims and intentions.

I am not going to leave you without anything humorous. I felt the only way to instil humor would be to tell you a couple of jokes. My first joke is concerning a Scotsman and an Irishman and an Englishman, and the second joke is concerning London.

The first joke is about three unfortunate men who were in prison and they were all sentenced to be flogged. Whether that agrees with our principles or not. And the Englishman bares his back, and is just about to be flogged, when the guard said, "Is there anything you would like on your back to ease the pain ?" He said, "Yes, put a little oil on it." He was flogged, and took it like a real man.

The Irishman, a big fellow, 6'3", told the guard, "Nothing on my back, nothing."

And the Scotsman came along, and the guard asked him, "Is there anything you would like on your back?"

He said, "If you don't mind I will have that Irish fellow."

The other joke is a Cockney joke. I don't know how many of you come from London. It is about a Cockney family who were evacuated to the country during the war, and the father thought he would take advantage of it to have his son learn to speak a clear English. He went to the Vicarage, and told the Vicar, "I am going to take advantage to get my boy to speak properly. Would you get after him and see what you can do with him."

The Vicar said, "If he is with me during a period of six months, during which time he will see neither his father, nor his mother, and if you will come back in six months' time you will hear your son speak as you wish."

The father went away for the six months. He then came back to the Vicarage, and told the Vicar when he came to the door, "I am calling for my son George."

The Vicar said, "All right, wait, I will get him." (The Vicar spoke in pure Cockney).

I feel sincerely honoured in being here today. I feel that Canada, as I say, should stand up as far as showmanship is concerned. The talent here is great, and you have a great potential.

Another thought just occurred to me. I think, if through our country and through the wonderful deep powerful unity of Our Empire we do show the world how great and how simple and how beautiful peace and unity can be, then we shall achieve something everlasting.