Fortunately, I have always
been able to remember my lines well. It was loke being back
at school, no difficulty learning things parrot fashion.
So I knew the words, but I wasn't sure of the moves. Robert
Morley, also in the play, was marvellous. He signalled all
the time with his eyes so I knew where I was supposed to
position myself. At the end of the first act Morley came
to me in the wings and slapped me on the back. "Doing
that reminds me", he said "of a story of Lilian
Baylis when she was running the Old Vic. An understudy went
on and she slapped him on the back just like I have to you,
and she said: 'well, young man, you've had your chance.
And you've lost it.'" With those few kind words he
roared with laughter and walked away. And I had another
two acts to do! I have worked a lot with Geoffrey Toone
since then. He was in one of The Persuaders! which
I directed. We still have a good laugh over "The Little
Hut", which takes place on a desert island. Geoffrey
had to be covered with brown greasepaint for the part and
apart from acting as his understudy I got the extra perk
of 7s. 6d. at matinees to be his and David Tomlinson's dresser.
This entailed painting Geoffrey
all over and I was saying to him during this particular
Persuaders!: "the days of painting your bum
brown are long gone". During "The Little Hut"
they said take off your shirt again and run over to the
Coliseum where "Mr. Roberts" was being cast. I
could do two shows at once I wanted. I also understudied
the stars Tyrone Power and Jackie Cooper. So I took off
my shirt again and they said fne, you're in, and I became
one of the 35 backing cast to the show. Five of us were
actors and the other 30 were stunt men - all of whom I've
worked with since. One of them was Leslie Crawford, who
is now my stunt director and teaches me how to simulate
fights and take falls. He was 16 then. Part of my job in
"Mr. Roberts" was to make various off-stage announcements;
for instance, the ship was about to sail and so on. All
30 of those stuntmen were mad. They couldn't resist a live
microphone backstage. They'd push me out of the way and
make rude remarks into it, which was frequently quite startling
to the audience. So they built a pen around me and I was
in it like a pig for all my announcements.
Another trick they enjoyed
was in one scene where they were all stripped to the waist
and their bodies covered in oil. I had to wait in the wings
in a clean white uniform ready for an entrance and as they
trooped off-stage after their scene they'd rub their oily
bodies all over me. I don't think I ever once went on-stage
looking respectable. On Guy Fawkes night, they nearly frightened
a wardrobe lady to death. She was tucked away in a little
room at the top of the Coliseum washing jockstraps or something
and the stuntmen hurled in 45 thunderflashes. The roof practically
came off the Coliseum. The audience thought the Russians
were coming and smoke was everywhere: backstage, on-stage,
in the auditorium and even out in the foyer. They fired
about half a dozen of them for that. And others were fired
for different evildoing. Trouble was, they never replaced
them and by the time the show finished the cast was only
the officers and a handful of crew. In one scene Tyrone
Power has to make an announcement to the ship's crew tat
shore leave would be granted. The crew is supposed to respond
by enthusiastically singing "Roll Me Over In The Clover".
To do this we gathered behind the set and when the cue came
we'd break into this song. It was sung lustily - yes, that's
teh word - enough, but the audience could hardly hear for
teh noise of all these huge fellow's hobnail boots. So Tyrone
Power ordered everyone to do the number in stockinged feet.
The first night some joker had gone out and bought a couple
of boxes of thumb tacks, which he spread around the floor
of the darkened backstage...Ty was unhappy about that...For
all the activity of leaping about from one theatre to another
I must have been one of the most underpaid employees of
H. M. Tennant (the management) of the time. Even with all
the work I was doing, including 7s. 6d. on matinee days
for painting Geoffrey Toone brown, the lot only added up
to about £15 a week. Thank God for the modelling work.
The situation between Doorn
and myself was getting ridiculous. She went off, once again,
to Spain to Portugal or somewhere. The separations were
bad enough and her confirmed belief that I was a useless
bet as an actor was disheartening. I went to see a lawyer
about a divorce. One of the worst things about broken marriages
is that they don't always disintegrate completely; too often
they fall apart slowly in painful chunks. In this case Doorn
seemed to have second thoughts. She wanted to get back at
me. Either way, the fact was I emerged one evening from
the stage door at the Lyric and there was Doorn and she
bit me. She bit me on the hand. Mind you, my hand may have
been raised to strike her but I let out one almighty yell
which added to the mirth of David Tomlinson and Robert Morley
who seemed to react to this back domestic comedy with schoolboy
glee. In spite of this comic diversion it was eventually
agreed that she would divorce me. This was still, of course,
at the time when our divorce laws were in a state of cobwedded
confusion. Half the hotel rooms in London seemed to be full
of eager spouses encamping for the night with men and/or
women they had never met before in order to establish that
the potential divorcee had committed adultery.
