Raymond Stanley's Show Buzz

Joyce Grenfell

When I first heard of Joyce Grenfell it was during World War II and, as I recall it now, no one was really taking her very seriously and she was being referred to as ‘a gifted amateur’.  This opinion was quite understandable to me after seeing her in Noel Coward’s revue Sigh No More in 1945; but she was amusing and entertaining.

The ‘amateur’ air never quite disappeared in Joyce Grenfell’s many film appearances, excursions into intimate revues and finally her one-woman shows.  In a way though it was deceiving and behind it all was a great dedication and discipline, as I discovered when I interviewed her in a smallish, dowdyish hotel room in Melbourne.

In 1963 she was in the Victorian capital with her one-woman show, on her first visit to the city, but not her first to Australia.  Previously she had played in Sydney at the Phillip Street Theatre in 1959 to enthusiastic audiences.

Normally Grenfell did not grant interviews once her season had opened, but made an exception in my case since a great friend of her’s also happened to be a great friend of mine.

Having heard that Joyce Grenfell originally went to RADA, I began by asking what had made her switch to journalism instead of going on the stage.

“Well, I must just change a tiny bit that information.  I did go to RADA, but only for one term.  So I can hardly really claim that I was at RADA.  I went for a term and I only did the French class.  It was in the days when Madame Gachet was there.  So really to claim that I was at RADA hardly seems to be quite fair to RADA.”

“No, really what happened was I got married.  And then I did some free-lance journalism and had some poems published in Punch .  I gave up the idea of the stage because.... well, really there is a difference between wanting to go on the stage and being stage-struck and I think I was stage-struck.”

It was through Herbert Farjeon, a notable dramatic critic, playwright and revue writer, that Grenfell went on the stage.

“By accident I met Herbert Farjeon at a party and then he asked me to go into his revue with the material I’d written, after several months talking about it, because he wanted the material first, and then he said he wanted me.  I didn’t a bit want to go really.  I had to be persuaded, because I really wasn’t very interested in it then.”

“I was quite amused to do what I did, which were guests spots, and all the time I was doing it I was still a journalist.  I was really a radio critic on The Observer for about three and a half years, and I used to combine the two until the war came.  I always arranged that my part in the theatre was as a guest artiste, and always somehow I was able to keep a radio in the theatre.  I had a room where I could go and work and then I used to be called and did my bit, and then would go back and listen to the programme and write about it.  If it so happened that some programme I should be writing about was on during the time I was on the stage, I always was allowed to go to the BBC to hear either the final rehearsal or, if it was recorded, hear it back.”

Joyce Grenfell of course wrote all the numbers she performed on stage and I asked if she got her ideas for these easily.

“I wish I knew.  No, I don’t get ideas.  They’re nearly always accidental.  Something sparks something off, or you may start writing about some subject and suddenly you digress and find you’ve written about something quite quite else.”

“I have no subject and I don’t suddenly think: ‘I’m going to do a number about lady gardeners’, or something like that.  I probably get the character first and then think of something for her to do, put her in the position.  I never do it the other way round, I don’t think”.

Did she do very much re-writing of her material?

“I don’t actually write it down at all, hardly for days and days and days.  I use a tape recorder a bit now sometimes, but not very much, because I find when I’m actually improvising I’m self-conscious with a tape recorder.  But I walk round and round the room, talking to myself in the character - making notes.”

“But when I look back at a script of something that I thought I had finished and then compare it with what I am in fact doing on the stage, although the main points are there the details are entirely different.  Even now, since I’ve been in Australia the last six weeks, I’ve added little bits to sketches.”

Did she find she was that character at the time of performing, that she was feeling it?

“I suppose so.  It’s always rather unnerving to find that while you’re doing a character you can in fact be thinking about something else.  I can’t, oddly enough, in my monologues.  In my monologues I do have to concentrate and re-think everything absolutely fresh each time.  I can’t say I re-create it, because of course that process was done in the early stages.  But I do find that I have to re-think all the monologues as I do them.  Even the gestures and the movements of the hand or head or something are not automatic; they are re-done unconsciously in a sense.”

“But when I’m singing a song I always am rather unnerved by the way I can be thinking about two things at the same time.  I always hope I’m not going to be, but I do.  I’m conscious of what I’m going to have for supper or something.  I try not to - I find it’s an undisciplined way - but sometimes it does happen.”

With her songs, did she write the lyrics first or did Richard Addinsell write the music first?

“Almost all the stuff that I’m using in the theatre I have written first, then he has set it and we have re-written it together, because very often I will write a lyric and he will say:  ‘You know, I think this tune will be better this shape’, and then I will re-write it to match the tune.  It’s really a real collaboration I think he’d say.”

“In those days when I wrote things like ‘I’m Going To See You Today’, and the song called ‘Turn Back the Clock’, and a letter song we did ‘Nothing To Tell You’, he wrote the tune first and it always gave me an idea for the lyrics when I heard it.  And then I would make my words fit his tune.”

“Some of these items you sort of get to the point of pathos”, I observed, “and I feel that a lot of members of the audiences are probably just on the verge of tears.”

“I think they are now.”

“Do you find it more difficult to do that than to make people laugh?”

“No, I never set out deliberately to make people cry, but something that has touched me I can perhaps re-tell and find that it touches other people.  But in the characters that I’ve done that have touched people - both in a song or in a monologue - it is the total unawareness of the character that is the touching part.  There’s no self pity in any of these characters.  In fact I’ve found, in trying to analyse it - my non-comic material - the common denominator that I seem to admire is courage.”

“I’m thinking specifically of ‘Three Brothers’, a song about the older unmarried sister whose entire life has been devoted to these brothers who really, because they’re so pedantic......  But she is not in the least bit self-pitying, and she felt she’s been used and was fulfilled and that it’s been a complete life for her.”

“And then the sketch ‘Boat Train’, and a mother whose son and his family are emigrating.  The point is she knows that they are very upset at leaving her, so to make it easier for them to go she pretends she doesn’t mind, and that it’s a jolly good thing they’re going, you see?  The touching part to me is her courage.”

Grenfell mentioned a number called ‘Life Story’ which she was performing in her programme on that tour.

“There was an issue of a gramophone record that I made about two years ago, which has just come out over here.  It’s got quite a lot of things on it, and in it is a very very early version of ‘Life Story’, and it isn’t in the least like the one I’m doing now.  It’s rather interesting, because I did it in a stylized form then, half almost rhyming.  I wasn’t happy with it and before I came out here this time I took the whole thing to pieces, re-thought it, expanded it, and made it as you now hear it.  I think it’s much better.”

“You get compared a lot with Ruth Draper, how do you feel about that?”

“It’s very flattering of course.  It’s the most wonderful thing.”

“Actually your scope is larger than her’s, because she didn’t sing.”

“No, I think my scope is larger, but my canvas is smaller.  She made absolute full length portraits of people, full of muscle.  I knew her very very well.  She and my father were not related - but people always said they were - they weren’t, they had mutual first cousins.  You know how that can be: the aunt was her relation and the uncle was his.  And we knew her - well she was really like an aunt to me - and I don’t suppose I’d ever have thought of doing monologues if she hadn’t done them for us when we were children, in our nursery.”

“I was talking to her once, just before she died, about things.  She was making some recordings - she hated recording - it was a misery to her because she said she simply could not work without an audience.  I went to the BBC and sat opposite her while she did the things, to give her a feeling of an audience there, a reaction.”

“She said to me: ‘They want everything so short.  What is the length of your monologues?’  I said: ‘Well, usually somewhere between five and eight minutes - never longer than eight’.  She was in despair.  She hadn’t got one shorter than 18 minutes!”

“Did she ever see you perform?”

“Oh yes, she did.  She was very generous about it.”

“Another two who you get coupled with - I think actually they’re entirely different - but your name is associated with them, are Beatrice Lillie and Hermione Gingold.”

“I never see that, do you?  I think they’re both terrific personalities.  Perhaps it’s just the fact that we’re all personalities maybe, or so-called, or whatever you like.  But to start with, neither of them ever attempts to do anything at all realistically,  as I do.  I would say that Gingold is really quite a broad caricaturist - you know, with that amusing voice...”

“The thing about Bea Lilllie, which is so marvellous - was once described I think by Kenneth Tynan - as if she was doing it really to amuse herself in this enchanting way, so self-contained, she is unaware that you’re there.  This is real clowning.  I think she has made me laugh more than any other living woman in the world.  Oh, easily!  And the movement and precision of it.  But I can’t really see how you could talk about any of us except that we’re solo women entertainers.”

“How do you view other comedians?  Who interest you and who do you find unfunny?”

“I wouldn’t like to name the ones I find unfunny.  I find Shelley Berman funny.  I’ve only heard records and I think that the short things he does are very good.  But I tell you who I admire, absolutely, uncritically almost, because they’ve given me so much pleasure, are Nichols and May.  I only know their records, I’ve never seen them.  I think they are absolutely brilliant, and I think certain Peter Sellers material.  As an imitator of voices I don’t think there’s anyone to touch Peter Ustinov.”

I wondered if she perhaps re-wrote her film roles.

“I sometimes get permission to tinker with the dialogue, because sometimes, to my ear, it doesn’t seem speakable, what they give you.  And if it’s meant to be funny and if I can help it towards that end, I’ve mostly been fortunate, and they say: ‘You do go ahead’.  It’s not usually a question of adding, it’s usually a question of taking from and possibly adding some nonsense.”

“What’s your own reaction when you see yourself in a film?”

“Sometimes I’ve been amused.  I did an hour’s television in New York in March.  Anyway I saw it afterwards and I sat there like a fool - laughing at myself - and I felt so surprised.  And you know, the thing that made me laugh is the thing that I feel most strongly about in comedy, that I conveyed the impression that I didn’t know I was being funny.  Deadly serious, you see, which to me is the funny part.  I always think that a comedian who shows that he knows he’s being funny defeats his ends at once.”

“Which medium do you prefer working in?”

“Oh - now -guess!!!”, said Grenfell, with a twinkle in her eye and, when I suggested the stage, she went on:  “Well, of course!  I mean, there it is, really created that second - for you!  And between us something happens, you know, we make an occasion.  I like working in all mediums.  I love writing for radio because radio is so intimate and you can suggest so much with it.  Well, a word is the scenery isn’t it, and the colour.”

Grenfell said she could never write when she was performing her show.  I asked if she had ever thought beyond the one-woman show.

“I think I’ll probably do less and less as time goes on.”

“Never thought of trying to link your characters together into play form?”

“No.  I’ve written a television play.  I’ve finished it, but I haven’t revised it and I’ve never submitted it to anybody.  I suppose I will some day.  It’s quite a good idea.  It’s not dated, which is the great thing.  I never find that I write things that are very current.  I don’t know if it’s just an economic policy or not on my part, or whether I don't on those terms.  I think that the eternal subjects are the things that last you know and are more interesting, don’t you?”

“Yes.  Well, of course all your characters are really dateless, aren’t they?”

“Well, I hope they are.  Of course the girl talking to the author in ‘Life and Literature’, she isn’t.  There aren’t young women like that any more, so I introduce it as a period piece.  I think it’s a very real period piece, of a period.”

Coinciding with Joyce Grenfell’s season in Melbourne, Eartha Kitt and Shelley Berman had both performed, and the interview ended with us talking about those entertainers and her quizzing me on their performances.

Apparently Grenfell always went to the theatre more than an hour before curtain up, to do voice exercises on the stage.  As it was now almost time for her to leave for the theatre, I walked from the hotel to the Comedy Theatre with her chatting amiably all the way.