Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

I thought about our encounter a lot that night, and decided that at our next meeting (for I was determined there should be one), I would talk to her properly. Ask her some pertinent and original questions such as ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a profession like this?’ or ‘What made you take up this kind of work?’

  Unfortunately, in spite of all my careful preparation, at our next encounter the dialogue had not progressed very much.

  ‘Hello again, what about coming back to my place for a little fun?’

  ‘Er n-n-no thanks, I’ve g-g-got to g-get home.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Er, J-J-Jon Pertwee,’ I answered, a touch formally.

  ‘Mine’s Touma, are you sure you don’t want to come back home with me?’

  ‘Q-q-quite sure,’ I said, ‘thank you just the same,’ and once more I was off through the market like a dose of salts.

  In the confines of my bedroom I thought the matter out and decided that the ‘affair’ had gone on long enough and that I would never speak to her again. After all, I reasoned, if I allowed it to progress any further I might finish up in bed with her and catch some dreadful social disease. Then there was the not unimportant question of money. If I was so skint as to find it necessary to walk home to save fourpence, I could hardly afford the undoubtedly exorbitant prices of Touma’s loving favours.

  So next day it was:–

  ‘Hello Jon!’

  ‘Hello Touma.’

  ‘Coming?’

  ‘I can’t, I haven’t any money.’ So much for my moral intentions!

  ‘Then how about a cup of tea?’

  ‘Oh all right! T-t-thanks.’

  My first get-together with a prostitute and I finished up having a cup of tea, not her!

  She was a most companionable girl, of mixed Polynesian and Welsh birth and lived in a small flat in the market over a café, which was most convenient for sending things up. Two or three times a week, slipped in between her ‘engagements’, I would have tea with Touma in her tiny Hat and be expected to admire all her touchingly ‘kitsch’ things. China figurines, colourfully embroidered pictures, satin cushions, Spanish dolls and shawls, and a vast collection of unsuitably named stuffed animals that covered her bed and presumably had to be removed to make room for each new client.

  I should tell you here and now that my visits to Touma were social and not professional, although on quite a few occasions when business was slack, I was generously offered a ‘freebie’. To my complete discredit I spurned this golden-skinned opportunity and tried to convince myself that I preferred to keep our relationship platonic.

  I took a lot of convincing, that’s for sure, but in truth, I think fear of the unknown had a lot to do with it. Oh! the agonies of adolescence when you’re spotty, nervous and dying to be thirty.

  *

  Like most students, I defied convention in my mode of dress. But unlike today where it seems imperative to look as scruffy as possible, with torn jeans, ripped sleeves and Army boots, in the 30s the accent was on elegance. Hair was poetically long, corduroy trousers in bright hues were of the essence, and black elastic-sided boots from Anello and Davide, a must. I wore white shirts with Byronesque collars, my grandfather’s Inverness cape with scarlet lining (later to be worn in Doctor Who), and to set the seal on my sartorial splendour, I carried an ivory-knobbed malacca cane, borrowed from my foppish father, who once said in my hearing to an insolent commissionaire, ‘Steady, fellow, watch your tongue. I’d as lief lay my cane around your shoulders!’

  No wonder I coveted that stick, after such a verbal association.

  The girls mostly wore clothes of the flowing ethnic variety, in sinful black or virginal white; with hair hanging long and free, they looked utterly feminine and the complete opposite of today’s slammerkin, with her spiky or shorn hair-style and accompanying draggle-tail look. What red-blooded male wants such a white-faced, unfeminine, boy-like girl for a bedfellow!

  Unlike most students, however, I occasionally carried my mode of dress even further than the ‘defying convention’ stage, and lost no opportunity of playing character parts in ‘real’ life.

  My brother Michael reports in Name Dropping that I ‘was seen getting off a London tube train, on two crutches and wearing dark glasses, helped by an old lady. Moreover, he says that if I gave an explanation he cannot remember it. The explanation is simplicity itself. I was ‘in character’, and it would seem to have been a reasonably good performance, or the old lady wouldn’t have been helping me.

  I also remember donning, from time to time, full Highland dress, consisting of kilt, plaid, sporran and skean dhu, plus frilly shirt and jacket with ruffles at my cuffs.

  I suspect Goldsmith would have said of me what he once said of the actor David Garrick: ‘On stage, he was naturally simple, affecting. ’Twas only that when he was off he was acting.’

  During my time at RADA my father was a Governor there, but let no-one ever accuse him of nepotism. That was something he was almost paranoid about. He would ‘open doors’ for me, but it was I who had to go in and get the job. For those of you inclined to disbelieve this, let me quickly inform you that my sojourn at RADA was predictably short. There were several reasons for this, not the least of which was that the Principal, Sir Kenneth Barnes, had given his considered opinion that I had no talent whatsoever.

  The real trouble all stemmed from my refusing to be a wind. A Greek wind. The director, Mrs Wheeler, had cast me as a member of the chorus in Euripides’ Iphigenia, and I can assure you there is nothing more unutterably boring than being a wind in a Greek play. Whilst everyone else is whooping it up and having a wonderful time, winds have to stay downstage left and go ‘Woooooo!!’ throughout the play with monotonous regularity.

  I begged Mrs Wheeler to remove me from my duties as a zephyr and let me take a more active part in the piece, such as one of the soldiers who, in every Greek play, rushes on stage and informs the riveted audience that the most dreadful thing has happened ‘right over there,’ pointing (conveniently for the budget) just off-stage. But she would have none of it. It was a wind or nothing! I, anxious to become an actor, and not a flatulent noise-effects man, chose the latter. Sir Kenneth was not best pleased and sent for me to issue a severe reprimand. ‘On top of all this,’ he said, ‘I understand that you have been writing rude things about myself and members of my staff on the lavatory walls.’ Evidently it seemed that some light-weight author had written in red ink, in a handwriting remarkably similar to my own, ‘Mrs Wheeler without Kenneth Barnes is like a fish without a bicycle,’ an obscure observation, and mildly humorous, but nothing I would have thought to get one’s knickers in a twist over. Sir Kenneth thought otherwise and decided he would pursue the matter further, so later that day I was summoned to his office again, to face my peers and let them decide my fate. On entering, I found the room to be filled with grave-faced students of both sexes sitting as if waiting for death. I certainly wasn’t, and as I had no intention of doing so, I walked back out of the room and left them sitting there feeling frightfully silly. My father, having heard my side of the story and believing it, supported me to the hilt and informed Sir Kenneth via a letter delivered by my own hand (a nice touch that) that he intended suing for defamation of character and was engaging for my defence the services of one of the world’s greatest barristers and KCs, Sir Patrick Hastings, and England’s premier graphologist, Mr Charles Hoskins. As could be expected that was the end of it, and within a week the real lavatory chronicler had been caught red-handed.

  But Sir Kenneth’s opinion of my future as an actor remained unchanged, and I was expected to leave at the end of that term, although, as Sir Kenneth soon found to his chagrin, his opinion was not shared by one of the greatest talents this country has ever produced. We had been rehearsing a J. B. Priestley play and, as always due to the large number of students, each role was divided up into sections and played by as many as six different people. In my case however, I was to play two very small r
oles instead – a man who was murdered in the first act and the detective who found out who murdered him in the third. For the former part I sported a monocle, black moustache, hair parted in the middle, and an upper-class accent, and for the latter, a red wig, red moustache, raincoat, old trilby hat and a Cockney accent. The play was performed at the Academy’s own theatre, the Vanbrugh, before a packed audience of students, friends and a celebrated adjudicator in the person of Mr Noel Coward. After the show Sir Kenneth brought Mr Coward backstage to talk to the cast, and while there, asked him if he had been entertained and if there were any students amongst us worthy of mention.

  ‘Oh yes indeed there was a very good, very very young, young lady I thought to be absolutely excellent.’ (If my memory serves me right this was Joan Greenwood.) ‘The boy playing the man murdered in the first act shows definite promise – and the detective who found out who murdered him in the third is certainly not untalented. You have two actors with a future there, two young men definitely to be watched.’

  I curled up with joy, not only at the great man’s prognostication, but particularly at Sir Kenneth’s discomfiture.

  ‘What were their names?’ asked Noel Coward.

  ‘Er, Greenwood – Joan Greenwood,’ replied Sir Kenneth.

  ‘No, the two young actors’ names?’

  ‘Er, well it was the same actor actually,’ mumbled Sir Kenneth, ‘a Jon Pertwee.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jon Pertwee.’ This time louder.

  ‘Any relation to Roland?

  ‘Yes. Son.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I played in Where the Rainbow Ends with him when I first started. A talented man, with a talented son, certain to do well.’

  I could have hugged him, because within hours I was to leave the Academy as a student who, according to the Principal, was incompetent, untalented, and with nothing to offer an honourable profession!

  Some years later I had the pleasure of meeting the great character actor, Charles Laughton. ‘I understand,’ he said, lower lip curled almost to his chin, ‘that you were thrown out of RADA?’

  I flushed with embarrassment, for I was more than a little ashamed of that rebellious era and bitterly regretted the time that I had, wasted.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I was, Mr Laughton,’ I replied.

  ‘Good! Splendid fellow, then you’re bound to do well! So was I! All the best people get chucked out of RADA,’ he added as a codicil. Not strictly true, of course, but it certainly made me feel less guilty about a period in my life of which I was not particularly proud.

  *

  Due to my friendship with their two sons at Frensham Heights, on ‘leaving’ RADA, I was able to meet, audition for, and obtain a place in, Hugh McKay and Eleanor Elder’s ‘Arts League of Service Travelling Theatre’. This was a company of considerable prestige brought to it by the past presence in its ranks of so many well known actors – amongst them, Sara Algood, Sir Donald Wolfit, and both Baddeley sisters Hermione and Angela.

  Its motto was to ‘Bring the arts into everyday life’ – something it did only too successfully! So many provincial Amateur Dramatic Societies copied the artistic principle and design of its portable stage, pro-scenium arch and lighting, and formed their own Companies, that, towards the end of the 30s, the ALS, as it was popularly known, was sadly forced out of business.

  The ALS followed in the tracks of the old-time itinerant actors, known as barn-stormers, who barn-stormed their way across England. We travelled in a converted double-decker bus, the top half carrying the Company and the bottom half the stage, lighting, props and costume skips. The Company was small; a driver-cum-master-of-all-trades, a pianist, two character actresses, two character actors, a juvenile character actor (me), two young lady dancer-actresses, classical and folk, a mime (female), and from time to time, now an old man, Hugh McKay himself – dressed in a long black robe, he sang unaccompanied Hebridean folk songs quite hauntingly. There was a standard printed programme of some 150 items, and each village or town could choose its own programme, as long as it contained at least two extracts from the classics, ancient or modern. The Bard of course being the foremost choice.

  For the rest, there were song solos, dances (folk and ballet), sea-shanties, mime, monologues, marionettes and dramatic poems, ten of these latter items making up the remainder of the programme. A ‘fit-up’ Company, for that is what we were, played a different venue every night, hence the term ‘a one night stand’. On arrival, the chosen programme would be carefully perused by the Touring Manager, the stage rigged by the men and the necessary costumes put out by the women. Sometimes, when there was no electricity available, our own carbide-gas lighting system had to be installed. The proscenium arch carrying the front tabs and wings was adjustable, and could be made to fit a large stage or a small platform. Scenery consisted of drapes or ingeniously designed cut-outs. Dimmers were the clay drainpipe and water variety. It was a fast, slick, well-produced show and quite deserving of its reputation.

  For bed and board each member of the Company stayed the night with a different local family, something that was, in the main, enjoyed by both parties. It really was the rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief situation, for one never knew which it was going to be from one day to the next. If you wanted to know how the other half lived, this was the way to find out. On one occasion, I was staying in the house of a very rich mill owner who was also a collector of fine porcelain. Expressing an interest in his collection I was handed an egg-shell china plate to look at, and told that to appreciate its beauty to the full I should hold it up to the light between my palms. This I did, but due to the nerve-wracking quality of the situation, they were unusually moist, causing the priceless article to slip from my grasp and fall to the parquet flooring. just prior to it shattering into a thousand pieces, I swung my foot forward as if in slow-motion and gently kicked it into the air under the horrified gaze of my host and hostess. It flew through the room in a parabolic arc to land quite undamaged thirty feet away on to a well-upholstered ‘Chesterfield’ settee. ‘Hecky thump,’ said my host, open-mouthed, ‘do you often do things like that?’

  ‘Every day’ was the only reply that seemed appropriate at the time.

  On the other side of the coin, I once stayed with a family in a tenement building. There were eight of them altogether and they lived in only two rooms, but that didn’t stop them wanting to do their bit for the ALS, which they patronised annually. My host was impoverished, uneducated and illiterate, but managed in spite of all the cards stacked against him to be the most charming and generous of hosts. After the show his two small sons were sent out for supper – one to collect the fish and chips suitably vinegared, salted and wrapped in the Daily Mirror for ‘starters’, and the other to get pie, chips and green ‘likker’ sauce for the ‘main’. I’d never tasted ‘likker’ before and found it to be delicious. There are only a few places left that serve it, but one in the East End of London is still patronised by the ‘cognoscenti’, Tommy Steele among others.

  For ‘finishers’ my hostess had made a real bread and butter pudding, all crispy on the top with burned currants, just the way I liked it. Washed down with a half pint of old and mild and innumerable cups of hot sweet tea, it was a meal fit for a king.

  The sleeping arrangements were not of the highest order however, but at least I was warm, for I had to share a bed with two of the small boys, who after a quick drag on a ‘Players-weight’ went speedily off to sleep. There’s nothing better than two human hot water bottles.

  Much art and entertainment had been brought into village and small town life by the ALS since they started in 1919 when facilities for village entertainment were practically nil, and although the need for travelling theatres does not exist to the same extent today, it would be a tremendous pity if they should be allowed to go out of existence altogether, for while they exist, they cater for all tastes, and give the grounding that every young actor and actress needs.

  Certainly the time I spent on that fina
l tour was invaluable, for not only did it give me practical experience as an actor, singer, dancer and mime but also a better understanding of the general workings of a stage, its lighting, scene building, set painting, and most important of all, how to start a cold internal combustion engine at six o’clock in the morning!

  *

  After the sad demise of the ‘Arts League’ I was determined to find employment in a good repertory company, a task even in the 30s far harder than one might imagine. But for the determined there was a procedure to be adhered to rigidly.

  First, there were the compulsory morning visits to the offices of the principal Repertory Agents in England, Miriam Warner above ‘Alkits’, in Cambridge Circus and Nora Nelson-King (later to become Ralph Richardson’s mother-in-law) in St Martins Lane. These were two of the scruffiest and most dilapidated places of business and singularly depressing to sit in for any length of time, so by the time it took the fifty or so out-of-work actors to get in and see either of these two self-important ladies, one’s confidence was at a very low ebb. We sat on long wooden benches reading The Stage, The Performer and Theatre World, avidly scanning the ads and awaiting the imperious call of ‘Next.’ This command was followed by a quick splintering slide up the bench, until one was eventually positioned right before the appropriate Gorgon’s door.

  At the next ‘Next’, in one went. At your tentative ‘Good morning Mrs Nelson-King’ she would look up, wracking her brain for your name.

  ‘Nothing today, dear, too tall.’

  The following day the dialogue might vary, however.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Nelson-King.’

  ‘Nothing today, dear, too short.’

  The same reasoning was often applied when observing your age.

  ‘Nothing today dear, too old,’ or conversely, ‘Too young!’

  It was a soul-destroying experience, but at least we had the resilience of youth.