Raymond Stanley's Show Buzz Cleo Laine It was backstage at one of the attractions of an Adelaide Festival of Arts and I was talking to the late Clifford Hocking, a discriminating Australian Impressario, noted for his ‘caviar’ attractions. “I’m surprised somebody doesn’t bring Cleo Laine to Australia,” I said. “Do you think people would know her here?” asked Hocking. “They soon would.” My motives were completely selfish. I wanted to see Cleo Laine in person. Her recordings were almost unobtainable Down Under, but I possessed some imported from England and everyone I played them to raved about her voice. A long time afterwards Hocking confessed to me that at the time of our conversation he was contemplating signing Laine, together with husband John Dankworth and his group for an Australian tour. I like to think that my reaction firmed his resolutions. Cautiously Hocking presented the Dankworths in 1972, first at the Perth Festival and then the Adelaide Festival, where it was almost certain there would be audiences for them. The next leg of the tour – Melbourne – proved more difficult. Hocking must have thought he had laid an egg. Bookings for the first Melbourne concert were not good and the entrepreneur offered free tickets to friends. Many turned them down! I attended that first concert and, great admirer as I was of the Cleo Laine on record, I was stunned at seeing and hearing her in person, noting her ease, her versatility, her humour and above all the voice which sometimes soared high to the ceiling, something utterly unimaginable on the discs. That first audience was overwhelmed and shouted and stamped its approval. There was no trouble in selling tickets for the second concert, and Hocking’s friends now were pleading with him for tickets. A third had to be arranged, and this was held in a much larger venue – the Melbourne Town Hall – and was recorded. Some time later a double album was issued of this concert. I was introduced to Laine at a press reception held for this tour, later met her backstage, and paid a second visit to her dressing room after the Town Hall concert. She had left the cast of the London production of Show Boat, in which she played Julie, and would be returning to the musical after the tour. For the Dankworths it was their first overseas tour and obviously in their wildest dreams they could not have conceived it would be so successful. As a result, later that year they ventured to America where from all accounts the Americans were bowled over. Because it all began in Australia, the Dankworths, I believe, have always had a soft spot for the country and over the years have returned at regular intervals, for Hocking and his associates. Indeed Hocking was involved in their American presentations. On each tour I managed to have at least a few words with the Dankworths, and on one occasion they took me to lunch. I also once did an interview with Dankworth on his composing for films, which was published in an Australian film magazine. I sent him a clipping and he was so delighted with it, he had copies printed for use as promotion material. Ever since their first tour I have received Christmas cards from the Dankworths, each time with a different coloured photograph of the two of them – and in earlier years with their children, Alec and Jackie, as well. It was on their tenth tour of Australia, in 1990, that I interviewed Laine. I had attended her latest concert, which coincided with her birthday, and at the end a huge birthday cake was brought on stage and the audience sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. Clearly delighted and moved, Laine sang encores and then, at a loss for words, looked into the audience. “I can see faces of friends down there,” she said, “So if you pick your nose I can see you.” “Cleo – what a thing to say,” remonstrated Dankworth on stage, but she only laughed. Later I went back to pay my respects to the Dankworths and found some 40 people present. The birthday cake was cut and slices handed around, along with glasses of champagne. Everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’ again, followed by ‘She’s a jolly good fellow.’ “Thank you,” said Laine, “but I don’t know why you’re singing that. I’m not a fellow – or hadn’t you noticed?” Then her husband chided here on her remark about ‘picking your nose’ from the stage, and she looked quite bashful. “Tell them the story about picking you nose, Cleo,” urged Dankworth. It was when she appeared on Broadway in the musical The Mystey of Edwin Drood, and for some reason one day she decided she was going to travel on the subway. “You can’t do that, Cleo,” cried one of the girls in the show in horror. “Anything could happen to you!” “Yes, I can,” said Laine defiantly. “Well, if you see any strange men looking at you in a strange way, pretend to be picking your nose, and that’ll put them off,” advised the fellow artiste. Sure enough on the train, Laine did notice a strange man observing her and so proceeded to pick her nose as instructed. Her story was greeted with laughter and Dankworth observed: “He probably recognized you as being Cleo Laine!” A few days later I interviewed Cleo Laine in her hotel suite. Dankworth apparently was in the next room ‘sleeping off a rough night.’ I began by suggesting that compiling the programmes she appeared in probably meant a lot of work, selecting and perhaps discarding songs. “Yes, we do,” she admitted, “and, because I’m married to a musician, it’s probably more important than to a lot of other artistes. I will pick something that might not be musically interesting, but lyrically interesting, and John will say: ‘Well, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to orchestrate that, because it’s rubbish.’ “That’s where the two personalities start interlocking in fight, because the one who feels strongest …. I don’t reject songs just because the music isn’t up to standard, if the lyric is excellent; but John would.” “So you go for the lyrics?” “It does take a lot of sorting out - not work so much as of ‘head balancing.’ You look at the programme and think: ‘Oh there’s two songs in the same key there’ or ‘There’s two ballads together or two whatever’, and that could become boring. Even though the audience doesn’t know it’s in the same key, it’s aware that there’s something flat going on there. So these are the kind of things that one has to be aware of all the time and sort out.” In her most recent concert there had been no poems, and I wondered if there was any reason for this. “There isn’t any reason. Sometimes we do them and sometimes we don’t, and we haven’t done any new ones for quite a long time. I guess we should really update the poetry side of our programme for our own interest really. But once again it’s reading time – you have to sit down and read a lot of poetry and see which ones grab you to do. Did she find younger audiences were going to see her more than they used to, or had they always? “It’s always been a mixed audience for me from upwards to 80; young people bring their grannies and quite often the parents bring their children – drag them along at first and they either become fans or not, as the case may be.” “You haven’t been in any plays for a long long time ….” “Not straight plays, no.” “Would you still like to, or is it a case of not finding the time?” “I think really it’s not being asked to be in straight plays!” “They probably don’t think of you.” “No, they don’t. They think of me for musicals rather than straight plays. The last one of course I was in was Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, which is a musical, but quite a lot of acting in it. And quite difficult acting from time to time.” “Did you have acting lessons?” “No, I didn’t. When I joined John in 1952 I was very happy about that. That was the start of my professional career. But as the years went on I realized that I didn’t want to be a band singer all my life, but didn’t know what …. It was a moment in my life of ambition …. I don’t have a great deal of ambition, I don’t strive to be at the next point of my career or anything like that. But for some reason or other I was discontented with just being a band singer and round about 1958 I said: ‘I’m leaving the band – I want to leave. I don’t know what I want to do, but I don’t want to be a band singer any more.’ “It was round about that time that John asked me to marry him – 1958 – when I said I was leaving, and I think he probably thought that that would keep me in the band, but it didn’t, I left anyway. I didn’t know what I was going to do. “When I left there was a trombone player, married to an actress. I can’t remember his name now, but he’d stopped playing the trombone and become a newspaper writer. She was in a play at the Royal Court Theatre and her husband was hanging around and the news came out that they were looking for an actress to take part in a West Indian play, and they couldn’t find anybody at all. So she suggested me. Because I had my hair like this at the time and my father comes from the West Indies, it was obvious that it would be something that he would think of. “They got in touch with me and I went along and auditioned for the part. It was a straight acting part, no singing. And that was the start of my acting career.” “You’d never thought about being an actress?” “Hadn’t thought about it! So that was my ‘veer off’.” “I find it incredible that, without any acting lessons, you should have gone on and played Hedda Gabler and got good notices!” “I don’t know what it is. It’s possible that, being with a jazz band rather than a pop group, you have to sing songs that you have to get your teeth into and act, you can’t just stand there and sing them. You have to be aware of the lyrics of most of the songs that you’re singing and interpret them. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had those years with the band. I probably would have been useless as an actress if I hadn’t done from 1952 to 58 singing with the band and having to project. “They were amazed by the fact that audiences didn’t bother me very much, because when you sit on the bandstand you’re looking at the audiences right back in the eye, there’s no lights that blind you and you have to communicate with that audience. Therefore when I got on the stage there I wasn’t frightened of the audience. So that’s kind of impressive a bit!” “Were you happy, being in a play where you didn’t sing at all?” “Oh, I loved it. I thought it was wonderful, not having to sing. If I go into a straight play I don’t really want to sing very much. I suppose really that if I’d been offered other jobs after that I could have given up singing altogether. But I wasn’t offered any other jobs, so I had to go back to singing.” “Thank goodness for that!” “But it would have been nice, and a lot of singers do have to give up singing completely to make their acting career valid. Even not go into musicals!” “People like Evelyn Laye; she lost her voice.” “I don’t think it’s losing the voice or anything. People want to hear you sing rather than act. So you have to cut it out of your life altogether and say: ‘I’m not singing any more, I’m acting. This is what you’ve got to come and see me do.’ Denis Quilley had to do that. He had to stop singing to become a straight actor – a serious straight actor – for people to take him seriously. Then he crossed over into the National Theatre as an actor.” Unfortunately there has been no film career for Laine, although at one time there were rumours she was to portray Bessie Smith in a movie on the singer’s life. “There was talk about the film being done and I did send a video, but the film hasn’t been done anyway, by anybody. There is so much competition in those sort of markets. Certainly in America there is; but it’s always very hard to break. “I was reading an interview with Cher and she had to sit and wait in Hollywood for five years and stop singing to get a decent role. So, if you’re prepared to do that …. I guess that’s where the ambition part comes in. I don’t think I could sit in Hollywood for five years just to start an acting career. The time has passed now for that, anyway. Maybe though someone will say: ‘Cleo you’re just right for this part!’ You never can tell what’s around the corner” I suggested that one stage role she would be highly suitable for would be Vera Simpson in the Rogers and Hart musical Pal Joey. “I was asked to do that in Houston, but for some reason wasn’t able to. I considered it, but something came up.” Then there was The Merry Widow, which Dankworth was going to revamp for his wife. “That fell through for various reasons and finances. We were going to do a special version of The Merry Widow, which we had done one season of, but that was the North. Then we decided that it would be nice to do it, instead of coming from Paris, to come out of New Orleans. The project went on and it was going to be done and then in the end the finances got to such an overwhelming position for the manager that he backed out of it. So that was it. We didn’t ever do it, but you never know, it might be possible. There was also talk about it coming to Australia, and we were going to do it here.” Laine said she had played in A Little Night Music in Detroit, for an opera company that put on one lighter musical in their season. She also did The Merry Widow and Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins for them. It was on the cards that she would record the latter sometime. “I’ll probably get down to doing it before I retire.” she murmured. “I can’t see you ever retiring – maybe taking it a bit easier – but not retiring!” “Well, one doesn’t know. It would depend on health more than anything else with me. If something physically stopped me from roaring about the world, then obviously I would have to consider just staying in one place somewhere. If I stayed in New York I could have a nice little supper club engagement, which would be much like retiring.” “Like Bobby Short?” “Yes, Bobby Short, or as Mabel Mercer did for many many years and lots of others.” “Could you only do that in New York – not in London?” “I don’t think in London. There’s not much night club life in London really of that “I’ve done the Blue Notes for three weeks, I’ve done the Rainbow Room, the Rainbow Grille at the top of the RCA Building. Then I did a period of cabaret in the same hotel that Mabel Mercer was up in the Piano Room. So I do short seasons, I’ve never done years round.” “Is John with you then?” “Oh yes, yes. I never do year-round seasons. That is when you really want to stay put, when you do find a job like that. But so far I really haven’t wanted to stay put. Even in musicals I find after a while I get itchy and like one-night stands rather than being in the one place all the time.” “It must be strange, being with other actors on the stage and having to stick to a script.” “Well, it’s nice to have that discipline, and you make very good friends, over the years, being in productions. Actors I guess are very insecure and they like once they make a friend, to hold on to them. I’m not of that ilk, I move on. But because I do go into productions I make friends who make the effort to keep in touch much more than I would do. So it’s made me make an effort to keep in touch.” I brought up the subject of the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, the 200-seater theatre converted from stables in the grounds of their home, where programmes feature known and unknown artistes of quality. “It’s our baby,” said Laine proudly. “After our children grew up and left us we created another baby, and sometimes it’s a headache, and has been a headache and a responsibility. We were in great financial straits, because it’s not a profit-making concern, it’s a charitable trust. Earlier on in its life we guaranteed all the loses, so it got to proportions that we were a bit sort of ‘Oh, my God!’, and each time we were on the road we would get a message saying: ‘In trouble financially. Could you do so many concerts and could you help us out?’ ”So when we got back to England we were doing all the concerts and the finances that we earnt at the concerts would subsidize the Stables. This was happening to such a great extent that it was getting stupid and it was still not in the black. So we announced that we were going to pack the whole thing up, because we needed a sponsor who would guarantee that it would be solvent each year : at least could keep head above water without the brunt of it being on our shoulders, as the debt was getting higher and higher and higher. It could have gone into stratospheres and we wouldn’t have been able to pay it if it had done that. “When we announced this, for some reason or other everybody started rallying round and saying: ‘No, no, no. You can’t stop. It’s the only sort of oasis in our district of culture, of music or whatever, you can’t close it down.’ And that’s how it was saved. “Sponsors came forward in the shape of a supermarket and a big department store. The members threw money into it to keep it going, and since then the two artistic directors that we hired have just been amazing in finding sponsors to sponsor each programme that happens, especially of a programme that they think might be chancy. Most of the classical concerts need to be sponsored; unless it’s a James Galway or a John Williams or a Janet Baker, the public doesn’t come in droves. There are great artistes who need to be heard and they wouldn’t be heard if they weren’t sponsored. “Joyce Grenfell was an avid fan of the Stables – and a friend of course – who worked there. Whenever she had a show that she wanted to get ready for the road or for touring, she would always come to the Stables first to see how it would work on our audiences. “We sold our house in the same area, in a village not far from Wavendon. We sold that house – it was a Georgian house – to go into this old rectory. We didn’t really like the house at all, only bought it for the Stables. Then when we got there, we realized we’d got this house as well, so we’d better make it work to our liking. We knocked down walls inside – didn’t do anything outside, that had to be retained, all the beauty of the stone and so on outside – it’s a Victorian Gothic rectory. We knocked rooms into one, so we had bigger rooms. As soon as it was done we knew that it was right, and going to be a wonderful family home. We struck lucky really, because it could have been a disaster.” There were two television series made from the Wavendon home. “ ‘Cleo & John at Home’ or something. Then we did another series with Edward Woodward in which he was Henry VIII and he was in the house. They kind of made it up that Henry VIII stayed there, because in fact there was an old house on the site before the Victorian one, so it could have happened. But it didn’t! I did my Shakespeare poems and dressed up in that kind of costume, and it went right through the ages to the present day.” After I had put away my recorder Laine modestly mentioned some of her entertainment idols who, it turned out, were fans of hers. There was for instance Mel Torme, who recently had toured America with her. On one occasion she had attended a party at which Claudette Colbert was present. She remembered as a youngster sitting in the cinemas and admiring the film star. Someone introduced the two and Laine was about to say: “Miss Colbert I’ve been a great fan of your’s from way back”, but the star got in first with: “Cleo Laine, I’m such a fan of your’s, and have all your records!” Then there was Bing Crosby. Once asked on a television show to name his favourite singers he responded with: “Ella Fitzgerald and Cleo Laine.” So far as Laine was concerned the admiration was mutual and it was arranged for her to make an album with Crosby, but he died as it was being organized. |