Morecambe and Wise (Text Only). Graham McCann

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      The lightning pace of such routines did not just provide Morecambe and Wise with a fashionably dynamic act; it also prevented potential hecklers in the audience from ever getting a word in edgeways. Later on, as their confidence grew, they would look more to the character-based humour of Laurel and Hardy, a far warmer and more nuanced style of comedy, with the cheerfully diffident Laurel’s dazed-looking double-takes, the courteously pompous Hardy’s quietly despairing stares at the camera, and a shared attitude to bachelorhood that was coexistent with their nature as perpetual schoolboys. It would be an important change of direction for Morecambe and Wise, because at the heart of Laurel and Hardy was an immutable friendship, whereas at the heart of Abbott and Costello was a simmering hatred, and Morecambe and Wise, like Laurel and Hardy, were able to make people care about them rather than – as was the case with Abbott and Costello – merely respect them.

      Morecambe, according to Wise’s account, was somewhat reluctant initially to play the dopey comic to Ernie’s sophisticated straight-man: ‘There was a part of Eric that longed to be a sort of Cary Grant figure, and part of him that resented being the comic while the straight man had the style.’³² If Morecambe did have any reservations about his role then they soon faded away – perhaps because of the laughs that he was getting – and the act settled down along the conventional lines of comic and feed. Sometimes, as the tour started to wind down and several members of the cast drifted away, they teamed up with Jean Bamforth as ‘Morecambe, Bamforth and Wise’, and sometimes they reverted to the double-act. Whatever the situation warranted, they worked and they reflected and they learned. By the end of 1941 they had built up the act to last seven minutes – or ten if they chose to work slowly. Their confidence was high, which was just as well, because early in 1942, as a result of a precipitous decline in fortune at the box-office, Jack Hylton decided to close the show: in future, they would have to fend for themselves.

      Although Morecambe and Wise, full of youthful optimism, expected London agents to be queuing up for their signature, Sadie Bartholomew knew better. They were still known as ‘child discoveries’, and there were currently no shows that were in need of such performers. They would have to learn to be patient. Eric returned very reluctantly to Morecambe, where he found a job working a ten-hour day in the local razor-blade factory. Ernie, unwilling to go home to Leeds and convinced, in spite of the redoubtable Sadie’s judgement to the contrary, that someone just must be ready to find him a slot in another show, tried his luck in London. He lodged with a Japanese family of acrobats while he searched through the showbusiness papers in the hope of spotting an opening. Variety in the capital, however, was now virtually at a standstill on account of all the bombings, and eventually Ernie was left with no alternative but to return to Yorkshire and find work on a local coal round.

      Throughout the three months during which they were apart, however, Morecambe and Wise kept in touch with each other, and, at the end of that period, Ernie, unable to stand the situation any longer, went to stay with Eric in Morecambe. Reunited, they tried seaside concert parties, working men’s clubs and all the agents in the area, but there were no engagements to be had. They were saved, yet again, by Sadie. Seeing how no adversity seemed to shake their resolve to resume a career in showbusiness, she decided to accompany them to London and get them their chance. It was an extraordinary act of faith on her part, not to mention a serious financial sacrifice at an uncertain time, but it was certainly appreciated by both Eric and Ernie.

      With Sadie at their side they felt that something positive was always likely to happen. She was disciplined, imaginative and, when she needed to be, cunning, and she was certainly tireless in the pursuit of her goals. After finding the three of them a flat – in Momington Crescent – she took them to see an agent³³ she had heard of in Charing Cross Road. The agent did not offer to sign them up, but he did make the suggestion that they might go round to the Hippodrome³⁴ in Cranbourne Street on the following Monday and attend the auditions that were being held for a new show, Strike a New Note.

      George Black, the show’s producer, knew Ernie Wise from the days when they used to meet at Angmering-on-Sea. He had heard a few favourable reports about Morecambe and Wise in recent months, but, when they auditioned before him, he seemed less than enthusiastic. ‘How much are you earning these days, boys?’ he asked. Wise, belying his growing reputation as a shrewd negotiator, answered honestly, ‘Oh, about £20 between the two of us.’ Black smiled and said, ‘Right. I’ll give you that!’³⁵ The failure to follow the bargaining ritual of naming an exaggerated sum before accepting, with mock reluctance, a lower but still very satisfactory offer was, at such an early stage in their careers, understandable. This was not, however, the last of their disappointments: Black did not want the double-act at all, he revealed, but just the two of them as individuals ‘doing bits and pieces’.³⁶

      They were crestfallen. Ernie, with the daring stubbornness for which he would later become famous, responded: ‘Mr Black, if you don’t want our act, I don’t think we are really interested.’³⁷ Black – not to mention Morecambe – was somewhat taken aback by the sheer impudence of this, but, quickly regaining his composure, he made a minor concession: if the second comic in the show, Alec ‘Mr Funny Face’ Pleon, was ever indisposed, the double-act could take his place. At that, they shook hands with Black and went off with Sadie to celebrate their first engagement in over three months.

      Strike a New Note opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 18 March 1943. The programme heralded ‘George Black and the Rising Generation’, and, inside, an insert read: ‘HERE IS YOUTH. These boys and girls have been gathered from every part of the country. All are players of experience, needing but the opportunity to make themselves known. They have worked, they have learned; this then is their chance to show what they are worth.’³⁸ The cast included the comedian and singer Derek Roy, the South African musical comedy performer Zoe Gail, Bernard Hunter, Betty and Billy Dainty and the dancer Johnny Brandon, but, without any doubt, the stars of the show very quickly became the brilliant comedian from Birmingham Sid Field and his excellent straight-man Jerry Desmonde.

      Field was hardly a representative of ‘Youth’. He had been touring the provinces for years, largely unknown to Southern audiences and critics, and now, suddenly, at the age of thirty-nine, he found himself being hailed as the proverbial ‘overnight success’. He was a comic with a gift for dialects (‘I’m not drinking that sterf!’) and his own personal repertory of characters: the spiv ‘Slasher Green’, the camp photographer, the would-be snooker player, the unteachable golfer, the music professor and the quick-change artiste. ‘No more naturalistic clown walked the land,’ wrote Kenneth Tynan of him, adding that now, with the assistance of the admirably disciplined and unselfish Jerry Desmonde, he appeared beyond comparison: ‘Nobody has done such things before on our stages’.³⁹ Another, very experienced, critic said of that first night:

      Never before have I heard such gales of laughter and applause whirling through a theatre … The man in front of me laughed so helplessly that he had to be carried out, and given first aid. I, myself, felt weak with mirth. I was sure that every man and woman was longing to shout to the comedian on that stage: ‘For mercy’s sake, stop! You’ll kill us with laughter.’⁴⁰

      It was a good show to be a part of. Although neither Morecambe nor Wise had much to do, and Alec Pleon’s health – in spite of daily prayers to the contrary from Eric and Ernie – remained depressingly hardy, both of them realised that there was a priceless education to be had from watching two inspired performers like Field and Desmonde, and they also appreciated the fact that the sight of such a successful show on any performer’s curriculum vitae – regardless of how minor a role they may actually have played in its popularity – was guaranteed to impress prospective employers. They relished the opportunity to bask vicariously in Fields’ newly won celebrity: any star who happened to be visiting London at the time seemed to make a point of seeing the show, and among the visitors backstage whom Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise encountered were Clark Gable, СКАЧАТЬ