An amused world of his own
Jonathan Cecil
CHARLES HAWTREY: THE MAN WHO WAS PRIVATE WIDDLE by Roger Lewis Faber, £9.99, pp. 115, ISBN 0571210643 One of the minor anomalies of British show business is that Charles Hawtrey's unique comic artistry — not too extravagant a word — should have flourished in the mostly shoddy ambience of the Carry On films. Initially these were enjoyed as a sudden healthy shot of vulgarity administered to an anaemic film industry. But they soon ran out of originality and invention except when guying well-known genres such as epics or westerns — the more fantastically the better. Seen in almost unavoidable repeats on television today, devoid of a raucous cinema audience, they appear increasingly leaden.
Most of the regular troupe — filmed in a rush — are seen at less than their best: Kenneth Williams. that brilliant radio and revue artist, contorts himself in a near agony of camp; witty Hattie Jacques seems just a shrill, overweight virago, and Sid James — a good supporting 'hood', and foil to Hancock — is a dismal comedian. The only players with charm, humour and, within a grotesque convention, truth are Joan Sims and Charles Hawtrey. Hawtrey, for those unfamiliar with the series, is an ultra-skinny, epicene little figure with round spectacles, a thick, dark toupee and immaculate diction: an ageless and hilarious mélange of fop, school swot and mischievous maiden aunt.
Roger Lewis rightly points out that Hawtrey is funny doing nothing, quietly contained in an amused world of his own. He is equally diverting when busy: frantic, yet absurdly graceful. As Lewis says, he would have been a superb Aguecheek or Restoration gull, at ease in any period costume.
He started as a child actor cheekily changing his name, George Hartree, to that of the famous Victorian-Edwardian actormanager Sir Charles Hawtrey, a masterly light comedian who created Oscar Wilde's Lord Goring despite being a rabid homophobe — one of the few ironies to escape Roger Lewis. What would Sir Charles have made of his effeminate bogus descendant? Young Charlie was a pert foil to the schoolmaster comedian Will Hay and then a West End revue performer specialising in female impersonation and songs at the piano. What a Max Pilgrim he would have made in Anthony Powell's Music of Time ('Must I tickle the dominoes?'). After numerous films and broadcasts Charlie's droll old-maidishriess was established in television's The Army Game.
Lewis evokes Hawtrey's weird by wholly joyful persona in a monograph worthy of Ken Tynan. Why then does he spoil it by a pointlessly detailed, downright ghoulish account of Hawtrey's personal decline? Dropped from the Carty On films after a billing dispute, Hawtrey eked out his 16 final years in obscurity; a bitter, lonely alcoholic, squalidly pursuing rough trade in Deal. Lewis's attitude is perplexing, half pitying, half morbidly amused.
Sometimes he behaves as if Hawtrey were still alive. After a recent re-viewing of Up Pompeii he writes to its producer Ned Sherrin asking why Charlie wasn't in it. And he gives us Hawtrey's Deal telephone number. But who's to answer?' as the song goes.
Elsewhere his attitude to factual research can be quite cavalier. He could easily have found out that Edith Evans wasn't in After the Ball, and even for the sake of a coarse joke Nod Coward would hardly have criticised her timing. Among a plethora of footnotes Lewis lists many radio and television producers from the 1940s and 50s who wrote polite 'we'll bear you in mind' rejection letters to Charles Hawtrey — not, to be fair, the easiest actor to cast. Lewis writes scornfully that not one name rings a bell with him.
This is surprising as they include some of the most celebrated figures of their time — Douglas Cleverdon, for example, the supreme Third Programme producer who commissioned and directed Under Milk Wood. Come to think of it, literary history might have changed quite radically had he cast as its narrator not Richard Burton but Charles Hawtrey,
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