Raymond Stanley's Show Buzz

Afternoon tea with Dame Anna

Dame Anna Neagle was always something of an enigma to me.  Did she possess a great acting talent - or was it the result of clever direction and promotion on the part of her husband, Herbert Wilcox?

From a chorus girl she had graduated to becoming a big film star; perhaps at one point in the 1930s Britain’s biggest.  Both on and off stage she exuded an air of perfect innocence; yet obviously, before their marriage, she and Wilcox had lived in sin.  Then there was that daring ‘see-through’ costume she wore in the 1933 film The Little Damozel, and again the low cut of her costumes for Nell Gwyn, which ran into trouble in the United States.

There were times when she seemed almost to be a great actress, impersonating real-life people.  Sometimes I felt she might have been ‘held back’ by Wilcox and without him could have achieved greater heights.  But upon reflection I think that was not so.

Then there were those light-weight post-war films she made, often partnered by Michael Wilding; so popular with the public, yet derided by serious critics.   As her film career seemed to be taking a dip, Neagle transferred her energies to the stage, and was not helped by the merciless criticism of Kenneth Tynan and others.

In the 1953 musical The Glorious Days, Tynan wrote: “First, she acts, in a fashion so devoid of personality as to be practically incognito;  second, she sings, shaking her voice at the audience like a tiny fist; and, third, she dances, in that non-committal, twirling style, once known as ‘skirt dancing,’ which was originally invented (or so Shaw tells us) to explain the presence on the stage of genteel young women who could neither sing nor act.”

I recall Desmond Walter-Ellis, when in Australia playing King Pellinore in Camelot, telling me about when she was in The Glorious Days, and how liked she was by cast and stage crew, and what a nice person she was.  A really nice lady.

He related how one night something went wrong on stage - what it was exactly I do not recollect - but it was enough to have caused any other leading lady to let forth a whole torrent of four-letter words.  Instead Dame Anna, with her back to the audience, obviously put out, said:  “Oh - blow it!”.

Then came the musical Charlie Girl, damned by all the critics (for some odd reason The Stage was not invited to review it), yet it ran and ran, chalking up in all over 2,000 performances.  Most of its appeal obviously was centred on Anna Neagle in the lead.

When it was announced for production in Australia, I expressed doubts as to the wisdom of it.  But, with clever publicity, it opened on a wave of nostalgia for Dame Anna, much praise for the antics of Derek Nimmo repeating his London role, and the inspired casting of local pop singer John Farnham.  With kindly notices that played down the show’s inadequacies (of which the weak and corny script was paramount) the musical was an enormous hit.

From all accounts the show, which opened in Melbourne in September 1971, probably much stronger than when it had begun in London.  Dresses and choreography had been updated, Derek Nimmo’s part built up, and possibly the musical was stronger in other directions.

Dame Anna looked remarkably youthful (she was 67 at the time) and although her singing voice showed signs of faltering, she obviously satisfied her many fans.  Nimmo had audiences in the palms of his hands and for Farnham the part of the cockney youth Joe seemed tailor-made.  If at that time all the ingredients for an entertainment most likely to appeal to the Australian general public had been fed into a computer, the end result almost certainly would have been that production of Charlie Girl.

During its eight month run in Melbourne, Dame Anna was constantly in the public eye; it was almost as if the Queen herself was in residence in the city.

Early on during the run I had a telephone call from Herbert Wilcox, obviously with an eye on the value of a mention in Variety (for which I was then writing) suggesting that perhaps I would like to do an interview with his wife.   Like so many people wanting favours and trying to impress, he asked me to send his regards to Variety’s editor, Abel Green, whom he knew very well!

An interview with Neagle did not particularly interest me.  I had nothing against her, but frankly there were few questions I wanted to ask, and really writing a piece on her held little attraction.  Thus I tried to be evasive and to have other commitments, but after several more telephone calls from Wilcox it became obvious an interview could be stalled no longer.  So one afternoon I presented myself at their suite in the Windsor Hotel for tea.

To my surprise Wilcox himself was absent.  I seem to recall he was in the next room, asleep, but at this date cannot be sure.

As anticipated, Dame Anna was perfectly sweet and charming, a very genuine person, and I defy anyone not to have taken a liking to her.  There also was a certain regal air about her, yet she was extremely friendly.  Tea was brought in and she poured it to the manner born of any good matinee play; then produced a tin of shortbread biscuits, her favourite brand apparently, and imported from Scotland.

She had not made a film since 1951, admitted she still would like to make more, but conceded that roles in her age group were hard to come by.

Whilst in Melbourne some of her vintage films had cropped up on television and she was horrified how edited the prints were.

“I’m sure nobody would have been able to follow the version shown on television here of Piccadilly Incident “, she observed.

Odette apparently was her favourite picture.  As to leading men, she mentioned having enjoyed working most with Rex Harrison, Ray Milland and Jack Buchanan.   Strangely Michael Wilding was not included; no doubt it was an oversight.

Aware that Gertrude Lawrence had been Beatrice Lillie’s understudy, Jessie Matthews Lawrence’s, and Matthews’ understudy Neagle, I wondered who had been Dame Anna’s, and thus carrying on the tradition.

She shook her head.  The only one likely to qualify apparently had been Roma Beaumont, who had made such a hit in Novello’s The Dancing Years, but had retired early from the stage to marry producer Alfred Black.

“You’ve always played nice women - haven’t you ever yearned to play a really wicked type?”, I daringly asked.

Neagle smiled.  “I know it sounds awfully dreary, but really I never have.”

I managed to get a smallish piece published in Variety about my interview with Dame Anna, and thought that now Wilcox would be off my back.  But it was not to be.

Wilcox had arranged that a revival of their film Sixty Glorious Years, made in 1938, should receive its first ever Australian screening in Melbourne, to raise money for the local Lord Mayor’s Fund.   He was donating the print for the premiere to thank the people of Melbourne for their hospitality.

For years Wilcox apparently had been under the impression all prints of the picture had been destroyed, then discovered the existence of one in the British Museum, and had that copied.

For the making of the picture, he told me, permission had to be obtained from King George VI to use the royal palaces and, in granting the request, the King had replied to him in his own hand, saying: “If you propose showing Queen Victoria leaving Buckingham Palace for St. Paul’s on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, would you mind using the Windsor Greys?  Any other horses would tend to destroy the integrity of  the scene.”

At the charity performance, which was the prelude to a season of the movie in Melbourne, Dame Anna spoke from the stage saying it was appropriate the world premiere of the new release should take place in the capital of the State of Victoria, which was named after the long-reigning Queen.

Whilst in Melbourne, the Wilcoxers took the opportunity to view the film Nicholas and Alexandra, which was about the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia who were executed in 1918.  Wilcox told me he had always wanted to make his own film about the Royal couple, and it had been an ambition of his wife’s to portray the Tsarina.  

There was a possibility that Dame Anna would return to Australia in 1978 to co-star with John Mills in the William Douglas Home play The Kingfisher.   In it she would have played Lady Evelyn who, returning from her husband’s funeral, calls upon an old beau, Sir Cecil, whom she has not seen for 30 years, and the two try to rekindle the flames of the past.

Dame Anna, widowed in May 1977 and still mourning Wilcox, after reading the script, felt she could never play a role in such a situation, and declined.