Название | Frankie Howerd: Stand-Up Comic |
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Автор произведения | Graham McCann |
Жанр | Биографии и Мемуары |
Серия | |
Издательство | Биографии и Мемуары |
Год выпуска | 0 |
isbn | 9780007369249 |
He also worked hard at improving his own act. Always a perceptive student of other performers, he was now able to stand back and think remarkably dispassionately about how best to shape and display his own peculiar talents. His stammer, for example â which had for so long been considered nothing other than a troublesome impediment â was now quite consciously transformed into a positive technique. Instead of struggling vainly against it, as he had done to such distressing effect in front of those grim-faced RADA examiners, he started using it, and sometimes even exaggerating it, along with all of the other obvious aspects of his general nervousness, to help accentuate his originality.
First, he thought of how much more distinctive and real and funny it would sound if, instead of just parroting the polished patter of a well-known professional, he actually appeared to relate the story to his audience as if it had really happened to him. Second, he realised how much easier it would be to fill up his allotted time on stage, and disguise the paucity of his original material, if he mastered the art of, as he put it, âspinning it outâ.15 Max Miller, for example, would deliver the following joke, word perfect, at his normal rat-a-tat-tat pace:
âEreâs a funny thing happened to me this afternoon. A girl said to me: âHello, Max!â I said: âI donât know you.â She said: âItâs my birthday. Iâm twenty-one today.â She said: âWill you come up to my fiat for coffee and games?â I said: âDonât bother with the coffee â but I will come up.â Well, it was raining outside, and there are only two things to do when itâs raining. And I donât play cards. âEre!16
Howard, however, would take this basic joke and, through hesitation, deviation and repetition, make it seem entirely his own:
Oh, no, donât, n-n-no, please, donât. No. liss-en! Um. Ah! Youâd have screamed! Oh, you would! Yes. I have to laugh meself when I think about it! Yes. I do. No, er, the thing was, th-th-there was this girl, you see. Yes. This girl. And, oh, she was pretty! What? Pretty? Oh! I should say so! Pret-tee! Yes. This girl. Oh! Ever so pretty. And, er â where was I?17
On and on he would go, moving forward, pulling back, stepping sideways, moving forward again, drawing his audience deeper and deeper into his distinctive comic world, until, when he sensed that they were ready, he finally hit them with the punchline.
He was no longer trying to hide his own inadequacies. He was no longer trying â and failing â to be like the other stand-up comics. He was now trying â and, increasingly, succeeding â to be more like himself. He started using everything â his arching eyebrows, his skewer-shaped mouth, his swooping vocal inflexions, his risible sartorial awkwardness, his occasional lapses of memory â to make a strength of his imperfection.
Most important of all, he began performing with, rather than to, his audience. They now became âa vital part of the actâ:
I told these stories of misadventure in the form of a cosy âjust between you and meâ gossip, as though leaning over an invisible garden fence or chatting to cronies in the local pub. And just as Mrs Jones can evoke laughter and sympathy by telling her neighbours about her troubles, so I found I could create laughter and sympathy by making the audience share the preposterousness of the improbable (but not impossible) situations in which I put myself as the innocent and misunderstood victim of Them (i.e. authority).18
It worked. It made âFrankie Howardâ work.
From now on, he would appear irrepressible. The Sunday concert parties grew to seem far more like âThe Frankie Howard Showâ than any orthodox form of ensemble entertainment event. He appeared four or five times during each evening before, inevitably, returning yet again as top of the bill. Not content with his multiple solo spots, he also persuaded his sister, Betty, to take the train from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness every Sunday morning in order to join him on stage in an all-singing, dancing, joking double-act (she âcould have been a proâ, he later reflected, âbut her energies were always to be channelled towards furthering my careerâ19). He was everywhere, he was always involved, and it was only a matter of time before he was completely, and officially, in charge.
It was the padre who did it. Howard was still a sincerely religious, churchgoing individual, and, from the moment he arrived at Shoeburyness, he had instinctively gravitated towards, and confided in, the garrisonâs resident chaplain, the Reverend Mackenzie. Mackenzie, in turn, followed Howardâs progress with interest, and, after watching him blossom as an entertainer, helped facilitate a transfer to the Quartermasterâs Office â a move that promised not only a promotion to the rank of Bombardier, but also, more importantly, the prospect of slightly more time for planning performances.
That was by no means the end, however, of the padreâs well-meaning interventions. Keen (for the sake of camp morale in general as well as that of his protégé in particular) to encourage Howardâs countless passionate plans to improve the standard of the garrisonâs in-house entertainment, Mackenzie arranged for him to write a letter to the Commander-in-Chief at Shoeburyness, setting out precisely what was wrong, what needed to be changed, and who should be charged with the power and responsibility to change it. It proved, recalled Howerd, to be âan absolute stinker of a letterâ:20
In no uncertain terms I said that it was outrageous that officers should dictate to the men the way they should entertain and be entertained ⦠That there was too much censorship ⦠Too much patronising paternalism by the Entertainments Officer ⦠That an entertainments committee should be set up on which the men should be represented â instead of this vital matter being left in the hands of an Entertainments Officer completely lacking in any semblance of qualifications for the job.21
The note went on, he would recall, âflorid with such adjectives as disgraceful, stupid, appalling [and] ridiculousâ.22 Naivety, rather than any conscious desire to cause offence, had prompted such a diatribe: âHad I been more discreet in my wording, and wrapped the modified result in such phrases as âIt seems to me, sirâ and âMay I respectfully suggest, sirâ it might have been all right â but I was far too ignorant for such circumspect subtleties.â23
The result, unsurprisingly, was that Bombardier Howard was dispatched to the guardhouse and charged with gross insubordination. Luckily for him, the Reverend Mackenzie stepped in and saved the day: he sought out the furious Commander-in-Chief and sowed a few seeds of dubiety into his fevered mind, assuring him that the offending letter had, after all, been solicited by his good self, and, though its style and tone had obviously fallen far short of Sandhurst standards, its author had clearly only been trying to be honest. The General relented, and Howard was reprieved.
In fact, he was more than merely reprieved. He was actually given his head. As his letter