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.
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 green grocery 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!
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