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Eric Morecambe Unseen. Группа авторов
Читать онлайн.Название Eric Morecambe Unseen
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008363451
Автор произведения Группа авторов
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство HarperCollins
In 1941, Eric and Ernie finally persuaded Hylton to let them try out together in front of a paying public. They made their debut as a double act at the Liverpool Empire, and when the company travelled on to Scotland, Hylton was sufficiently impressed to retain this new turn in the show. There was only one problem. Michie thought Bartholomew & Wise was too much of a mouthful. Hylton had already persuaded Ernie to change his surname. Now it was Eric’s turn to find another name. Michie suggested Barlow or Bartlett (the maiden name, as it turned out, of Eric’s future wife) but Eric didn’t like the sound of either. Thankfully, one of the show’s adult entertainers came to the rescue, an American called Bert Hicks. Hicks recalled a showbiz friend back home who’d used his home town as a stage name, and so Bartholomew & Wiseman were reborn as Morecambe & Wise.
Eric with harmonica player Arthur Tolcher. Years later, Tolcher would become one of Eric and Ernie’s most celebrated sidekicks, as ‘Not Now Arthur’ in the Morecambe & Wise Show.
Eric stepping out with mystery companion. Where is she now?
Eric’s first music hall routine.
Ernie: You’re making us look like a cheap music hall act.
Eric: Well, we are a cheap music hall act.
IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Eric and Ernie’s successful debut might have been enough to set them up as a promising new double act, but the war that had brought them together now pulled them apart. By 1942, the travails of staging a touring show in wartime finally proved impossible, and less than a year after their first turn together, Youth Takes A Bow took its final bow. Eric and Ernie were both keen to carry on, but they were still only sixteen, and even without a war on, the transition from child stars to grown up pros was always going to be tough. Such an arduous proposition was too much even for the ever resourceful Sadie. She returned to Morecambe, and her eternally patient husband. Eric went with her. He clocked on at the local razor blade factory, where he proved to be every bit as useless as he had been back at school. His weekly wage was just seventeen and six – barely more than he used to earn for a couple of spots at a local working men’s club when he was a kid. For a lad who’d been on a fiver a week, it was a pretty steep comedown, but he wouldn’t have been the first child star (or the last) who failed to make the grade. As he toiled ten hours a day, for a few pennies an hour, Eric could have been forgiven for thinking that was that.
Ernie, meanwhile, had travelled down to London, where he found the sort of digs aspiring showmen usually only find in Hollywood movies – lodging with a family of Japanese acrobats. However he had less luck finding work. The Blitz had taken its toll on London’s variety theatres, and having obtained no bookings whatsoever, he was forced to return home to Yorkshire, where the only opening he could find was a supporting role on the local coal round. After three months, he could bear no more. Desperate for a change of scene, and a change of occupation, he went to stay with Eric, to try and get some gigs together in Morecambe. With no local bookings to speak of, Sadie finally relented and accompanied Eric and Ernie to London. There, in 1943, thanks to her tireless hustling, they secured a position in a show called Strike A New Note at ten quid each a week. They probably could have held out for more, but it was still a lot better than delivering coal or making razor blades. Yet there was one creative hitch. The producer, George Black, didn’t want them to do a double act. In that case, said Ernie, they weren’t interested. In that case, replied Black, they could understudy his second string comic, Alec Pleon. Eric and Ernie could still be bossed around when it came to money, but when it came to the act itself, they already had exceptional self belief.
As it happened, Ernie’s negotiating triumph was a pretty hollow victory. Pleon, recollected Ernie ruefully, turned out to be the fittest man in show business, and Eric and Ernie were reduced to the role of ‘glorified chorus boys.’1 Yet a walk on part in a successful show is a lot better than a leading role in a flop, and Strike A New Note was such a big hit that even these chorus boys could bask in its reflected glory. The star of the show was Sid Field, a superb Brummie comic who was still relatively unknown down south. Strike A New Note made Field’s name in London. Visiting Americans like Clark Gable and James Stewart came along to see him, and even dropped in backstage. Eric and Ernie were still a long way from Hollywood, but now a little bit of Hollywood had come to them. The experience did wonders for their self esteem, whetting their appetite for stardom and bolstered their belief that they might really make it after all. The BBC broadcast a version of the show, followed by a series, Youth Must Have Its Swing. After a couple of false starts, it seemed Eric and Ernie were on their way.
Yet just as they were getting going again, Hitler intervened once more. Ernie was called up, and chose to enlist in the Merchant Navy. It was either that or the Army, or going down the mines. Ernie had hoped to see the world. Instead he was lumbered with the mundane task of ferrying coal from Newcastle to Battersea Power Station. As Eric said, ‘the nearest he got to action was seeing a knife fight in Gateshead.’2 However anything more glamorous would have taken him overseas for months at a time, and might quite conceivably have got him killed. Instead, during his frequent spells of shore leave between these dreary but relatively brief voyages, Ernie was able to keep his hand in as a solo entertainer in the halls. Fate, in its roundabout way, had smiled on Eric and Ernie, but it would still be a while before they worked together again.
Since Eric was six months younger than Ernie, it was another six months before he was called up. He stayed on in Strike A New Note until it closed, then joined ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association (or Every Night Something Awful, as it was affectionately known) but in the summer of 1944,