by John Fisher
For an encore he came back to produce the bunch of flowers from the empty ‘vase or vayse’, flicking the switch on the plinth to produce the bouquet when everyone least expected it. The band played a chord and jubilantly Tommy declared, ‘I wrote that music myself!’ In his own typed version of the above the words I have put in italics have been crossed out. One presumes that he would sneak them in for a nightclub show or in provincial variety when the man with the blue pencil was not around. The camp reference is, of course, a straight steal from Max Miller’s act, where it never worried a soul. But innuendo was never Tommy’s forte and it is significant to see him – or the Lord Chamberlain on his behalf – refining his style at this early stage. There were also variations during the run. At a later date he would produce a large skeleton of a fish in lieu of the goldfish bowl that never came: ‘I’ll kill that cat!’
The bottle and glass subjected itself to much business, not obvious from the basic outline. For one of the transpositions he gained considerable mileage from the old spotlight gag, walking to the other side of the stage with the beam following him, running back in the dark to switch bottle and glass around, then returning to the spotlight which was now frantically looking for him. At a later date for the third stage he would shriek, ‘The bottle has now changed places with the glass’ without lifting the tubes, then continue, ‘The most difficult part of the trick is to make them go back again.’ He’d then go into lightning reveals beneath the tubes of bottle and glass, glass and bottle, bottle and glass, glass and bottle again, before disastrously showing two glasses at one time, then two bottles, then in quick succession leaving all four objects in view on the table and flinging the tubes aside. The speed for the finish was incredible, while the words on the page can give no impression of the overpowering presence and nervous energy that drove the act along. As The Magic Circular, the magazine of The Magic Circle, reported, ‘The skill with which he ruined his act was amazing.’ Val Andrews also makes the observation that at this early stage in his career when he was relatively unknown to audiences it was something of a surprise when his tricks began to misfire. When he became famous the comedy had to come from another direction: no sooner had he picked up a prop than he would then laugh in anticipation of the disaster that was almost inevitable.
The Hippodrome season signified that he was on his way to the big time and Miff was determined Tommy should not spoil things for himself. He wrote to Val Parnell, the Managing Director of Moss Empires which owned the venue, asking for permission to pop into the theatre from time to time to view his client’s act, since ‘it is necessary, in the interests of his career, that I view his stage performance from time to time.’ He made it clear he was not asking for complimentary tickets. Parnell replied stating that it was not customary for agents to make frequent visits to view their clients, but that in the circumstances he would have no objection to Miff looking into the theatre occasionally. For the eight minute spot, which with laughs could never have played for less than ten, Tommy was billed as ‘Almost a Magician!’ his most familiar billing from the early part of his career. His first ventures into variety had been tagged ‘Six Feet of Fun’, followed, when Miff came on board, by ‘Television’s Mad Magician’. The new label paid homage to that surreal ragamuffin of the halls, Billy Bennett, whose ‘Almost a Gentleman’ had gone out of service upon his death in 1942. One wonders if Tommy was also aware of the early bill matter of the suavely sarcastic American radio comedian, Fred Allen at an earlier career phase when he was known as ‘Freddy James – Almost a Juggler’.
He was not receiving a lavish wage. Bentine in the previous edition of the Folies had worked his way up to seventy-five pounds a week, but Tommy’s forty pounds was enhanced by frequent cabaret work at venues that now included the Savoy, the Dorchester, and the Berkeley, for which he regularly received an additional salary of seventy-five pounds. More importantly the press began to take notice. The most important young critic in the country, Kenneth Tynan went out of his way to eulogize him in the Evening Standard, describing him as our best new clown: ‘Cooper is the hulking, preposterous conjuror, who is always in a jelly of hysterics at the collapse of his own tricks. Convulsed by his own incompetence, holding his sides, he staggers helplessly from trick to trick; no man was ever less surprised by failure. Cooper, you see, has a distinct attitude towards life; a stoic attitude, a gurgling awareness of the futility of human effort. And this is what raises him above the crowd.’ No wonder Ronnie Waldman had pulled his enthusiasm up a notch or two. Even if Tynan failed to register fully Tommy’s inherent panic, acknowledge the look that cried ‘Help, what am I going to do next?’, a perceptive person reading between the lines of his appraisal would have spotted something of crucial importance, namely that Cooper was capable of being more than a just a novelty act guaranteed to enliven an otherwise dull bill. Like Howerd, like Wisdom, like Terry-Thomas he need not be shackled within the confines of being a turn.
At the end of the run in February 1952 Miff punctiliously wrote to Parnell thanking him for his courtesy and cooperation during the run of Encore des Folies. The letter gave him an opportunity to tell Parnell that Tommy would be starring in his own television series commencing 12 March. On 21 December 1951 Waldman had written to the BBC Television Booking Manager, expressing his desire to build a new show around Tommy, in which he would not only give his usual performance of lunatic conjuring, but also act as compère and provide the central core of the production by reappearing all the way through. The water needed testing with Miff from a money standpoint, but Waldman admitted to his colleagues within the Corporation that he was prepared to go up to a weekly fee of eighty guineas for eight shows. Eventually Miff settled for sixty. Tommy and Gwen could feel pleased with themselves. Immediately after the Folies they flew off to Barcelona for two weeks’ holiday. Around this time they moved to their most desirable residence yet, a two-guineas a week basement flat in a stately red-brick mansion block, Waverley Mansions, in Kenton Street, not far from Russell Square. Tommy could also boast his first car, a new Vanguard Estate, which he later claimed was the best vehicle he ever owned, dismissing in turn the Triumph Renown, the Ford Estate and the Mercedes that saw him through to the end of his days. Most importantly the combination of a long theatre run and a television series enabled him to be back in town with his mates, not only the comics whose trials and tribulations he shared, but also the magicians with whom he felt most at home.
The most vivid picture of Tommy the person at this point in his life can be gained from his magical cronies. Living near Russell Square he was only a short walk from the premises of L. Davenport and Company at 25 New Oxford Street. Every Saturday morning this mystical emporium – advertised as ‘Where the Tricks Come From’ – became the unofficial rallying point for a small group of young aficionados. Regular attendees included Bobby Bernard, Val Andrews, Billy McComb, Alex Elmsley, Cy Endfield and Harry Devano. It was not unknown for Orson Welles to add his weight to the gathering if he was in town. Between them they represented a motley bunch of professionals and amateurs bound together by a common enthusiasm. When they had outstayed their welcome at the magic store, the caravan would repair to a nearby Lyons’ Corner House for the rest of the afternoon.
According to Val, Tommy was always on the look out for the latest novelty in the pocket trick line and was quite unable to contain himself from the headstrong demonstration of his latest acquisition as soon as they were in the café. He often had no idea how the trick worked and the Nippies, the Lyons waitresses in their short trademark aprons, would gather around in hysterics as he tried to master the intricacies of this newly purchased miracle. He once took great pride in genuinely fooling Bobby with a new version of the trick in which a coin was secretly concealed beneath one of three small red cups. In the old version you had only to look for the secret hair attached to the penny to announce where it was. Bobby had no idea what Tommy was up to as time and again he discovered the hidden coin. Cooper would register his excitement
with what became a characteristic gesture, clapping his hands together like flippers and saying, ‘Dear, oh dear! Dear, oh dear!’ Except that in those early days the words were expletive based, a trait he had to purge from his behaviour when he started to mix with the Delfonts and the Grades. But as Bobby says, ‘We all knew what he was really saying!’
For all his success he never bought a tea or a coffee for anyone. He used to say, ‘You get the teas, boy’– a clue to his Welsh ancestry – ‘and I’ll get the chairs.’ If the place was crowded he gave you the impression he was doing you a favour. It was a ploy he had developed in crowded NAAFI canteens. Then once you had brought over the teas that you had bought, he would launch into a lecture on how scandalous the charges were, working out the number of cups of tea that you should be able to extract from a packet for less than a farthing a cup. When he really had been broke, word got around that he had been unable to pay his Magic Circle subscription. According to Gwen he walked out on stage at one Magic Circle show and said, ‘You can all stop talking about me – it makes no difference.’ He turned around and there was a rubber dagger sticking out of his back. The audience was in uproar. When he became better off than most of his colleagues, it suited him to keep his hands in his pockets. Jack Benny kept up the pretence of meanness as a key trait within his comic persona; Max Miller, who supposedly never bought a drink for anyone, was a humanitarian by contrast when it came to secret good deeds. Alas, Tommy’s behaviour was a psychological kink in his make-up that had no bearing on his comic perspective whatsoever.
Bobby can become quite agitated about his old chum. Put bluntly the Cooper of those early years was ‘a ruthless opportunist – he’d never pay for anything if he could find a way of getting you to give it to him.’ Or pay you what you wanted if he could find a way of getting it for less. He became the acknowledged expert at discovering he had left his wallet or chequebook at home. In this context the Bill Hall story is legendary. Hall was an eccentric double-bass player on the variety circuit in the act known as ‘Hall, Norman and Ladd’. In his spare time he was quite a deft caricaturist and had developed a sideline of reproducing sketches of his fellow pros as postcards for publicity purposes. One day Val spotted him in Lyons’ clutching a packet of postcards for Tommy. Bill told Andrews he was charging him three pounds for the service. Val was sceptical, but Hall assured him he knew how to go about things. Tommy arrived and quickly got to the point, ‘Bill, I’ve been thinking about the three quid …’ ‘That’s right,’ interrupted Hall, ‘unfortunately I gave you the wrong quote. I forgot to include the price of the special bromide paper they were printed on.’ Tommy took out his wallet and three pounds were extracted with the speed of jet propulsion: ‘No, a price is a price. You said three pounds. There it is!’
For Val the vagaries of such behaviour were offset by the sheer dedication he put into his work, the midnight oil he would spend practising: ‘He worked harder at perfecting his act than any other performer I ever knew.’ The latest pocket tricks aside, he was a shrewd judge of the material that best suited him. And he was always fun. As Val says, ‘He had many good qualities and could be great company and was fun to be with. But I always felt that his obsession about the cost of things spoiled things for himself and others. I was sorry for anyone who had a business arrangement with him.’ Tommy used to get through three ‘Electric Decks’ a week, specially gimmicked packs of cards that create a convincing illusion of the cards flowing from hand to hand like a waterfall, until you take the lower hand away and they are seen to be strung together on a length of elastic. Val made these for the magic shops where they sold for seven shillings and sixpence. One day he told Tommy he was prepared to give him a special deal, bypassing the retailer on the way: ‘I’ll give you three at a time, twelve and six for three, or better still six for a pound.’ He wouldn’t play: ‘It seemed like more, it sounded more, and he couldn’t make the mental leap to see the bargain. So he missed out. Or thought I had some devious plan to cheat him which he could not fathom. There were times when he was not too bright.’ To an extent his caution with money reflected the hard times of his past, but was carried through to an extreme that bordered on the paranoid. Such may be the psychological fallout of having money sewn into your clothes as a child. It is a character trait that we shall need to return to before this story is over, but first there are further triumphs on stage and on television to chart, as well as the whole question of where he acquired his professional material.
FIVE
Mad About Magic
With typical self-deprecating charm, the American magician and humorist, Jay Marshall once told of the time a small child came up to him and said, ‘When I grow up, Mr Marshall, I want to be a magician too.’ In his quiet, kindly way he looked at the child and explained, ‘Well, you can’t be both.’ In that sense Tommy, like Jay, never grew up. There was a sense that his act was a constant attempt to recreate the world of his childhood. Certainly without the magic Tommy would have been a dull man. To enter the consciousness of Cooper one needs to understand implicitly the world of the magician to which he gained admittance the moment he received his first box of tricks and where he remained happy, content and intrigued for the rest of his days. Patrick Page, who served for a spell behind the counter of Davenport’s magic shop, recalls how he was like a child transformed, glowing with joy as he surveyed shelf after shelf of the glittering prizes that were the traditional magician’s tools of his trade. Equally diverting was the vast array of practical jokes that would have taken him back to those comic paper advertisements of his youth: pencils that won’t write, cigarettes that won’t light, matches that won’t strike, cigars that explode, teaspoons that leap into the air, and sugar cubes that won’t dissolve. Most important of all was something not obviously visible, the promise – conveyed so brilliantly by H. G. Wells in his short story, ‘The Magic Shop’ – that somewhere within these dusty walls must be the latest miracle, the ultimate marvel that will stamp your reputation as the ‘wizardest’ wonder worker in the whole wide world.
Tommy’s innocence was witnessed on one occasion by the actor Richard Briers. Cooper blew a stream of bubbles towards the audience and reached out to catch one in his hand. It did not burst. He had secretly palmed an imitation glass bubble in the hand and created the illusion of picking one out of the air: ‘The look on his face that he had done something that every child would like to do but never could, was exactly the look of my daughter, who was then three years of age, when she was blowing bubbles all about the place.’ It never occurred to Richard that Tommy might have been acting, but, if this had been the case, he could only have achieved the effect through his own inner reserve of childlike naivety. Leslie Press, the Punch and Judy man was once booked by Tommy to entertain at the birthday party of one of his children. Cocooned within his booth he was puzzled why the audience laughter was dwindling away as the show progressed. When he emerged he discovered why. All the kids had given up on Punch’s shenanigans, with the exception of Tommy, beaming like a lighthouse, and – it should be added in fairness – fellow comedian, Dickie Henderson.
I shall never forget an afternoon spent in his company at Ken Brooke’s Magic Place. In the Seventies this informal studio, on the second floor at 145 Wardour Street, was the Mecca for the elite of the magic world. With its cocktail bar, capacious sofas and plush carpeting, it was, for Cooper, home from home. Ken Brooke was a brash but endearing purveyor of material to professionals, highly respected as probably the best demonstrator of magic there has ever been. At the time one of his best sellers was a streamlined method for tearing up and then restoring a complete newspaper, devised by the American magician, Gene Anderson and popularized on Broadway by the top magic star of the day, Doug Henning. There was no way Tommy was going to pass by the opportunity of learning how to perform this latest sensation. The preparations for the trick embraced something akin to an advanced course in origami and Boy Scout proficiency with scissors, paste and brush. That is before you even came
to apply the dexterity necessary to put the effect into practice. On this occasion I entered the studio to discover a floor that resembled a cross between an explosion in a newsagent’s and one in a glue factory. It was difficult to know who was teaching who, Ken’s high-pitched Yorkshire tones vying with Tommy’s agitated West Country burr, as the latter made this point, queried that. Even allowing for the fact that they were notorious sparring partners, my most important memory is that Tommy was quite simply having the time of his life, matched only by the pleasure with which he would go home to perform the trick for Gwen at their dining room table that evening.
When Mary Kay first asked him what his hobbies were, she never expected him to reply, ‘Magic’. Golf, photography, or fast cars maybe, but not magic. ‘It was like watching a child play with a toy,’ adds Mary, qualifying her statement immediately with ‘but a very clever child.’ Her idea of relaxation was to head off into the country with a well-stocked hamper for a picnic in some secluded rural backwater, but Tommy had no such idea of bliss: ‘For him, the perfect picnic would be a small table in the corner of a magic shop, heaped up with an hors d’oeuvre of new tricks and washed down with a magic potion of unheard-of-power.’ Magic was with him at every waking moment. According to his wife he even practised card tricks on the lavatory. He probably had a pack of cards under his pillow as well. He used to say that he carried so many tricks and props around with him – far in excess of what he really needed for his standard act – that it resembled ‘a bloody circus’. At one count there were seventeen bags and cases full of magic and tricks on tour with him. He made no excuses: ‘That’s why I always have two rooms in a hotel. I use the sitting room as the practice room. I love what I’m doing, so when I try something new and it goes well, that’s a great tonic for me. It’s what I’m most concerned about.’
