CURTAIN MUST RISE

Evening Star, Issue 21316, 21 January 1933, Page 6

CURTAIN MUST RISE

PBODWS TRIUMPHS OVER DISASTER NEVER A POSTPONEMENT 1 do not claim to be a maker of stars. The reason is that nobody makes stars—they make themselves. But I can safely say that several stars have developed from lesser to greater magnitude while under my banner. I hold my own views on stars. 1 think sometimes that 1 am a star myself, and I will tell you why, because although I have produced over 200 large musical shows I have never once postponed a production even for a day, (writes Julian Wylie, the theatrical entrepreneur, in Ae ‘ Sunday Graphic ’). Perhaps 1 am a star producer—because I do not suffer from temperament—who knows? Anyway, 1 have carried on in the face of real disasters —and have opened to time. My motto is “ The curtain must go up.” And it does.

Let me give you an instance or two. 1 was producing a show at Blackpool. 1 had invented a new scenic device of which 1 was very proud. The basis of it was a huge girder on which stood nine girls, who ascended in full view of the audience right up to the top of the stage and vanished from sight. It had nil been worked out carefully. The mechanism was delivered, and worked perfectly. We had tried it over and over again, The dress rehearsal came along, and tho girls stepped on the girder. They were in no danger. They were each securely strapped to brackets fastened on the girder so that they could not fall, although they ascended right up to the very roof of the stage beyond the top of the proscenium. The cue came. Up they went; the effect was fine—we blacked out for the next scene, and were actually setting it, when the most appalling screams rang out from above our heads.

PANDEMONIUM. Piercing shrieks and yells for help and mercy rent the air. We could not see what had happened. It was out of sight, among all the other backcloths and things hanging in the flies—and it was dark up there, too. We shouted, but our voices were drowned in the cries from above. M e dashed up the ladders to the flies, and then discovered the cause. The girder had gone up all right and reached the top. Then it had gently turned over, and all the girls were hanging head downward sixty odd feet above the stage. , , ' , . We hurriedly lowered them—taking great care--—and got them down to the stage. Tho brackets and straps had held thank heaven, and nobody was hurt save for shock—and tho very nasty experience of being hung head downwards over space for what must have seemed to them hours, hut was only in fact a very few minutes. We got them off, and they were naturally in a state of collapse and almost hysteria. I bullied them. It was the only thing to do. Softer measures would have led to further collapse. The rehearsal went on. The fault in the mechanism was remedied, lire curtain went up at the usual time that very evening on the first performance—and the girder wont up, too, with all the girls on it. And this time it did not upset. THROUGH THE STAGE. On another occasion, on a great stage in the North of England, 1 was producing a pantomime.; SVo Ixad fin-

ished the dress rehearsal and gone home. We were to open the next afternoon. I had an effect of a huge piece of tapestry in which living girls took the place of the embroidered figures. This again ascended to the “ grid ” (as tho part of the roof which supports this type of scenery is called) and it was in the form of a huge frame of iron, which weighed three tons —and it had three tons of counter-weights, too. In the small hours of the morning, when the fireman—the only person left in the theatre—was walking across the stage, a steel pin broke and the whole thing crashed down, missing him narrowly, and went completely through the stage. 1 was fetched out of bed. It seemed almost impossible to do anything. But we rallied our forces. We sent out for workmen, engineers, carpenters, and we got them. We worked all that night and all the next day. And tho curtain went up at the usual time on a mended stage and a repaired effect; and we did not postpone. White on this subject 1 would tell of some other stage accidents which did not happen at a time to endanger the production of a play. You may remember that I introduced the Hoffman Girls —at the London Hippodrome —and they caused, a sensation. Nothing like their act had ever been seen.

It was a sensation—it looked dangerous—and it was. They used to do some marvellous acrobatics on a gigantic piece of webbing. One day one of the girls slipped from the loop which held her and fell with a crash to the stage. George Robey and I rushed to her. We thought she must be dead. Wo picked her up and sent for a doctor. She was in hospital for some months, but she recovered. She recovered; but she left the troupe and she become a great Continental star in revue. Her name is, on the Continent, Mademoiselle Florence. But for that accident she might have gone on being one of the Hoffman Girls —and never found the actual talent which was in her —so out of evil came good. DUE TO CAUTION. I was in an accident myself once, too. It came about by being cautious and seeing for myself—a habit of mine. But although it was serious for me, if I had not met with it it might have injured the show; and the show comes first.

It was in my pantomime of ‘ Aladdin.’ We have a wonderful star-trap act in that, as most people know, in which the comedian dives through numerous traps and ascends through star traps, etc. It had all been tested, and 1 asked the carpenter, as T always do, if everything was all right, for a loose trap may mean an artist falling through one during the show, a terrible thing to happen. I was assured that everything was in order. But I am never satisfied unless T have tried for myself. So I walked about the stage stamping on the various traps, and when I came to the last one and stamped it opened and 1 went through. I injured my knee and leg, and was ill for some weeks. But 1 was satisfied. It didn’t matter about me, the artists were all right and the show would go on without me. Once, before I actually joined the theatre business—in my accountancy days—l was doing an audit at Walthamstow. Lockhart’s elephants were to play at the hall there, and arrived at the station. He led them out, as he always did, and they had to go through a somewhat narrow tunnel. He led them in and stood on one side for them to pass. . r . As they went by, one (his favourite) rubbed itself against poor Lockhart in pure affection, and just rubbed him out of existence. I believe that elephant is still alive and performing in circuses,'

COINCIDENCE,

Just one more gloomy tale, because it carries with it a strange coincidence. I had produced a musical play called ‘ Here Comes the Bride.’ A film company approached us and asked for permission to shoot a scene of it for a picture they were making. It was granted, and the artists and chorus girls concerned in it went to the studio after the theatre show at night to have the shot taken. While there one of the girls caught her dress alight and was burnt to death. Shortly afterwards the composer of the show—Arthur Schwarz, a discovery of mine and now one of the foremost light composers of America—arrived here. He was told about the_ tragedy, and he fainted right away. We revived him, and he told us the reason for hia collapse. He had just finished the musio for another show which was in rehearsal in New York, and a chorus girl in that had been burnt to death the same way, on the same day as our girl had lost her life. I wonder if the tradition of putting the show first will always survive. It should do so, for it is the essence of the theatre. It does not apply so much to the films, for there the technique is different. Ileal people of the theatre do not think of themselves—they think of the show; there is the same desire for the show to succeed among the supers as among the stars, and it is not because of their salaries: it is because they are real troupers—the show is the thing. Once at dress rehearsal at the Pallas dium for a pantomime we had got a! scene with which we were not quite pleased. It was Christmas Eve. I dismissed the company just before midnight and sat alone on the stage fa worry out some new scene. Then Harry Weldon, who had worked like a slave all day at the rehearsal, came to me and sat with me. We discussed it by ourselves—in the cold, dark, vast spaces of the Palladium' stage, and then one of us had an We worked on it all through the night.I went home, had some breakfast and a bath, and came down to the theatre to work out the mechanics. Weldon was there, too. We wrote it out together. The artists rehearsed-it next day, and it went with a bang at night. It was acclaimed as the most beautiful serio-comic scene ever seen in pantomime. Wo had sacrificed our few eagerly longed-for hours of rest at Christmas, but the show was a suoc^ss^