NOTED COMEDIANS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21540, 12 January 1932, Page 11

NOTED COMEDIANS

THEIR EARLY STRUGGLES LAUDER AND GRAVES A remarkable pair of books—both by famous comedians —were published in London recently. One is “ Gaieties aud Gravities, the Reminiscences of George Graves.” The other is “Wee Drappies, by Sir Harry Lauder. As books they are in different classes. Mr Graves's is his autobiography. _ Sir Harry Lauder has already given his in “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.’ The present “offering” is just a little collection of Lauder stories, some of them familiar enough, and cheery homilies on thrift and other matters, told for the most part in Sir Harry’s own Scots. It should make a particularly fitting Christmas present from one Scot to another. The characteristic of both books, however, is the underlying spirit of earnestness. With Sir Harry Lauder this has always been apparent —indomitable grit and a good voice and the rest had to be. But the real Graves is quite a surprise. He emerges as an eager pilgrim of life, who took to mirth-making out of desperate necessity, and has made good by sheer hard fighting and the possession of the quickest wit and one of the keenest intelligences on our stage. MR GRAVES’S EARLY DAYS.

Though born in London, Mr Graves is an Irishman. His father’s family are of Galway; his mother’s (the Mulveys) of Dublin. After some brighter experiences at Margate College and elsewhere, financial adversity compelled him to start his career addressing envelopes in a cellar in Chancery Lane at 7s 6d a thousand. He was a law clerk for IS months. Among other early adventures was an engagement as check-taker at the Great Wheel at Earl’s Court. It was while he was with a firm of tinned goods merchants in Eastcheap that he made his first effort as an entertainer. He ran off to the Isle of Wight with three other enthusiasts, a piano, and a barrow. After “busking” through the streets of Ryde they had to return with the help of a borrowed sovereign, leaving an unpaid landlady. His “ first real chance ” was in Mr Robert Nainby’s part in the No. 2 Company of “The Shop Girl,” with Mr Wallace Erskine and Mr Charles Macdona. Then the future Sir George Dance engaged him at £2 a week “to perform any part he may be cast for in any piece.” But there had been already so much trouble over the now-admired impromptus that a clause was added: “It is a vital condition of the contract that George Graves shall not introduce any ‘ gags ’ into his performance.” THE RED HERRING. This may be understood when it is told that as butler in “Trelawny of the ‘ Wells/ ” he had presented Mr Vibart, the leading man, at a solemn moment, with a red herring on the card tray. Hie inventive abilities proved more valuable once at High Wycombe, when he had to play Sir Francis Leveson, the bad man of “ East Lynne," at a moment’s notice without knowing a word of the part. His provincial struggles, in the course of which he worked as a commercial traveller (and at one time medical student) by day and actor by night, have evidently left an indelible impression on Mr Graves. Though bogus managements have been to some extent cleared away, he deplores “ the sort of people into whose hands the provincial theatres have fallen.” He excepts, of course, the repertory theatres, which are “ pointing the way to reform and leading to a rebirth of the drama in England, of which we are sadly in need.” He inveighs elsewhere vehemently against “accountants aud realtors posing as showmen.”' Of mere funny stories there are strangely few, though the late Mr James White’s remarks that the taste of the musical-comedy public was “ more choral than alto ” is too neat to be lost.

A FIRST VISION. But as an appropriately “gay and grave i} record the book ia crammed with interest. One might instance Mr Graves’s first visions of two “ Merry Widow ” colleagues:— „ “It was in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, that 1 noticed a pimply-faced girl who was put on in a front-cloth while the scene was being changed behind to sing ‘ Silver Threads Among the Gold.’ She was billed as “Little Elsie’; they told me that this child had formerly been engaged as a singer in a public house concert room.” This was the future Lily “ While I was playing in a vaudeville sketch at Portsmouth Hippodrome I went across the way between my turns one night to the Theatre Royal, where a pantomime, ‘Goody Two Shoes,’ was running. I was struck by the charm and talent of one of the girls in the show, who was playing a small part, and got into touch with the powers that be._ A London engagement resulted.’ Hence Miss Evelyn Laye.” . SIR HARRY’S ADVICE. In Sir Harry Lauder’s book the best things are his little bite of advice to young men. Ho bids them beware of being too cautious. “I remember a Scottish miner lad,” he writes, “ whom I knew nearly 50 years ago. He fell in love with a blue-eyed Hamilton lassie. Did he take ‘bide a wee’ for his watchword? Not very likely! He just risked the whole spinning world on putting his fate to the touch. He gained the inspiration and helpmeet of a lifetime, and his name is on the cover of this book.” Sir Harry thinks there is less humour about now than there was, and tells ns that he sets his success down partly to courage, partly to never putting over a joke that was not clean, and partly to care in every detail of his work, from the curl of his stick to the angle of his cap.