After the lights go down

Jonathan Cecil

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH THIRD BOOK OF OBITUARIES: ENTERTAINERS edited by Hugh Massingberd Macmillan, £15.99, pp. 340 In 1921 a comedian called Alfred Lester — 'Always Merry and Bright' — famous for gloom on- and off-stage, though only briefly mentioned in the obituary pages seven years later, sang the ultimate hypochondriac's song, 'Germs'.

After observing:

Drinking water's just as risky As the so-called dangerous whisky And it's often a mistake to breathe the air

he went on to list fatal foods, ending: Fried liver's nice but, mind you, Friends will soon drive slow behind you And the papers then will have nice things to say.

That is how obituaries were viewed in Lester's time and until quite recently as dull, formal eulogies, with only coded hints of more interesting characteristics, 'he never married' being the best known. There was also, 'he didn't suffer fools gladly,' i.e. had a foul temper, 'he always spoke his mind,' i.e. was excessively rude and 'he became unreliable,' i.e. drunk.

All this has changed in the past decade or so, thanks to the Independent and above all to the wondrous Hugh Massingberd. As obituaries' editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1994 he did two important things: he encouraged vivid, sometimes outrageous, pen-portraits rather than pious lists of achievements, and included delightful oddities who would never have found a place in the stuffy columns of former years.

Massingberd has collected the best pieces in three anthologies: Eccentrics — of whom he himself is a living, lively example, Heroes and Adventurers, and now Entertain- ers. The first two were best-sellers, the third definitely deserves to be.

In it he includes not just actors, variety stars and musicians but television personal- ities, circus performers, chefs, popular writers, drag artistes, soft pornographers, dubious gurus, one 'pioneering trans- sexual' and the world's fattest man.

The result is a marvellous 'browserie', almost every article containing at least one priceless anecdote. Hermione Gingold and the beloved actress Coral Browne — that amazing combination of chic and coarse- ness — provide perhaps the highest camp material, Charles Hawtrey, of Carry On fame, the lowest.

For sheer unconscious banality I applauded the quotations from the histori- cal novelist Jean Plaidy: 'Mary was dis- turbed when Henry told her that he was going to attack the Barbary pirates', for uproarious farce the story of Victor Mad- dern, twisted-mouthed NCO of countless British films, fluffing his lines while filming Dixon of Dock Green. Given the words, 'It's down at Dock Green nick,' he came out with, 'It's down at Dick Green Dock.' Try- ing to correct himself, he then said, 'It's down at Dock Green Dick'. Finally he exclaimed, 'Who writes these bloody scripts? Can't I just say down at the nick'? F— Dock Green!'

Interestingly the new, relaxed style of obituary leads to a more kindly, tolerant approach to its subjects than the old purse- lipped Times genre. Only the bogus likes of that dreadful priapic prophet, Baghran Shree Rajnesh — who, as we are cruelly reminded, even duped Bernard Levin — come in for real, if dead-pan censure; though I would not much have liked the egomaniac silent-screen star Pola Negri, and some of the jazz musicians appear as cantankerously competitive as opera divas.

Yet we are not told the undeniable fact that that splendid rotund actor Bill Fraser `did not suffer fools gladly' in any sense. But, come to think of it, should he have? `Patiently' perhaps, but 'gladly' suggests feeble-mindedness in the sufferer.

Likewise Raymond Huntley, the superbly sarcastic player of intransigent bank managers and punitive judges, certainly `spoke his mind' in real life. In fact when I worked with him on a St Trinian's film he appeared as gruff and acerbic as his screen portrayals, but how disillusioning it would have been to find him jovial and chummy.

No secret is made of the late Trevor Howard's 'unreliability'. Yet the man of whom Robert Mitchum said admiringly, `You'll never catch him acting,' was the finest British screen player of his day: his performance in The Third Man was the best, because the least showy.

How many irreplaceable comedians have gone: Terry-Thomas, At Read, Les Dawson. I found here two of my favourite funny women, polar opposites: the internationally acclaimed mistress of subtle surrealism, Beatrice Lillie, and the almost forgotten, diminutive northern slapstick queen, Betty Jumel. Both had an admirably poker-faced approach to clown- ing, both made an art-form of colliding with the proscenium arch.

As someone who has known and admired many comics, I found some flaws in their portrayals. The brilliant eccentric dancer Billy Dainty was particularly modest, never 'bumptious'. Max Wall after his big comeback did not 'continue to regard himself as a has-been'. The wry self- deprecation — 'How desperate can a comedian get?' — was ,in the act, not the man. That most charming of broad- casters, Richard Murdoch, is neatly celebrated but without mention of his extraordinary high-speed nonsense ditties sung to popular classical tunes like 'Ballet Egyptienne':

My aunt's name is Ella Wheeler-Waterbutt And she lives down in Burton-on-Trent.

The obituarists of Frankie Howerd and Harry Worth just fail to capture their essences. Franke was a dab-hand at innuendo but his true originality was in his inarticulacy. His nervous stuttering monologues, devoid of jokes, were a real innovation at a time when most comedians aspired to be confident gag- spinners. It was as though a shambling, uncouth, indignant member of the public had been pushed on to the stage unwilling- ly.

Harry Worth, whose off-stage gentleness and humour belied the 'morose comic' cliché, is bafflingly described as standing firmly for law and order and as much of what you fancied on the side if you could get it.

This is exactly wrong. His television character was innocently anarchic, the despair of bureaucrats and policemen, and there was not the remotest slyness in this bumbling auntie's boy. There seem few other misconceptions in Massingberd's splendid anthology, both hilarious and — for those of us who have passed life's half-way mark — melancholy. Not only was I reminded of my own mortality; time and again I found myself echoing Max Miller: 'There'll never be another!'

`0 dark dark dark. They all go into the dark', as T. S. Eliot wrote. But I prefer to close with the words of a less spiritual poet, Douglas Byng, the female imperson- ator who composed his own epitaph:

So here you are, old Douglas, a derelict at last.

Before your eyes what visions rise of your vermilion past, Mad revelry beneath the stars, hot clasping by the lake.

You need not sigh, you can't deny, you've had your bit of cake.