Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  In an earlier volume, Funny Way to be a Hero I catalogued his legacy (and in part that of his occasional straight man, Jerry Desmonde) in this regard: Frankie Howerd’s wheeze and surrender to amazement; the give and take between Morecambe and Wise; Max Bygraves’s warm directness; Tony Hancock’s despair; Terry-Thomas’s genteelism; the spiv-like quality of Arthur English; Jimmy Edwards’s musical mayhem; Norman Wisdom’s frenetic incoherence; Dick Emery’s coy effeminacy; Harry Secombe’s genial daftness; Benny Hill’s moon-faced innocence; even Olivier’s archness as Archie Rice. Moreover, the impact he had is not to say that Sid himself had not been influenced in turn by those guiding lights of comedy that inspired him as a malleable young performer. It has always surprised me that virtually alone among his generation Cooper appears to have remained impervious to this chameleon among clowns. In that respect he stands tall as the most original of his colleagues. At one level his own comic persona was entirely its own invention, and yet nothing develops in a vacuum; it would have been impossible for him to have functioned as a comedian without many outside influences, among which the love of magic and the decision to burlesque it were only part of the story. There was very little original in what he actually did. His special talent was always in the presentation. Along the way he showed good taste in those he cultivated along the path of comic apprenticeship, most notably Max Miller, Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy, and a few more.

  Superficially his comedic roots can be traced back to the Commedia dell’Arte, the stylized comic form that emerged in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, many of whose stereotypes – Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pulcinella – linger in the popular imagination. The analogy would appear less pretentious if in translation the dell’Arte readily conjured up its proper meaning, not ‘of art’, but ‘of craft or skill’. With its emphasis on broad anarchy, apparent spontaneity and dependence on the mask as a short cut to characterization the form appears tailor-made for Cooper, the fez its own shorthand reference in the identity department, like Charlie’s hat and cane and Groucho’s strip moustache. The bedrock of the genre was provided by the ‘lazzi’ or comic set pieces – anything from an isolated visual gag to an extended comic routine. Here more than any of his contemporaries Tommy would have had a superabundance of material to qualify for acceptance. But even contemporary Commedia expert, Barry Grantham concedes that it is difficult to assign one of the traditional masks to him: ‘He has not the bragging, cowardly traits of the Captain, the pompous word-play of the Doctor, or the foibles of Pantaloon. Punchinello is celebrated for his total contempt for all accepted standards of moral and social behaviour. The choice of a Zanni – one of the lowlier comic roles – is not that obvious either. Most of them betray a fundamental baseness of character that seems to be totally absent in Cooper.’ Not even the magic link with Harlequin is of help, since his tricks never went wrong. Grantham has to conclude: ‘If he had been around at any point during the seventeenth century, we would today be richer by one more major Mask of the Commedia dell’Arte.’ The readiness with which he was impersonated in his lifetime and the eagerness of so many to carry on doing so more than twenty years after his death, suggests that the Cooper Mask is established regardless and will endure for years to come.

  Cooper’s most obvious beginnings are in the world of the British music hall, an institution that shared one abiding quality with the Commedia, namely the inclusion of the audience as part of the performance, acknowledging its presence both directly and by means of the comic aside, the so-called fourth wall that exists between straight actor and clientele reduced to invisible rubble. The process fed the affection that existed between audiences and the stars of the day, principally the comedians. That the institution endured as long as it did after the heyday of Dan Leno, George Robey, and Little Tich is perhaps surprising, but Cooper and one or two others managed to ride the waves of such popularity into the radio and television era. Among these was the first enduring comedy star of the wireless medium, Arthur Askey.

  There could be no greater contrast between the two comedians, the one gargantuan and gauche, the other impish and neat. It was put to effective comic use by Val Parnell in the 1957 London Palladium pantomime, Robinson Crusoe, in which Arthur played the dame and Tommy her sidekick, Abu (‘a kind of magician’), and on one memorable television appearance for Thames during 1976 in which they partnered each other in a ‘Me and My Shadow’ song and dance routine, Tommy behind a screen providing the ludicrous silhouette of his guest star, whose nifty little skips were in hilarious counterpoint to the other’s lumbering steps. The show was recorded at a time when Tommy’s ill health was hard to conceal and age-wise they appeared to meet in the middle of the twenty-one years that separated them, but the affection of the younger performer for the elder statesman was palpable. That Tommy should literally shadow the veteran star on this occasion carried its own irony. He once professed his love for Askey to Arthur’s Fifties scriptwriter, Bob Monkhouse: ‘He never stops moving. I love that. All that energy. He goes this way. He goes that way. He’s walking towards you. He’s walking away. And the hands are always moving.’ It was quite obvious to Monkhouse that Cooper had himself assimilated these essential traits of the tiny Liverpudlian. There was seldom a time when Cooper was not in motion himself, stepping from this table to that, picking up this prop, putting down that, feeding his audience an energy that kept it as alert as himself. I am also convinced that the influence was more than physical. Arthur was not a natural stand up comedian, unable to tell a joke without following through with a trademark chuckle that seemed to express apology, explanation and personal enjoyment at the same time. It bore little vocal resemblance to the throaty Cooper guffaw, but served a similar purpose nevertheless.

  Cooper’s admiration for Laurel and Hardy extended in a pre-video age to taking a projector on the road with him so that he could play their films. Tommy often reminisced about being part of the general hysteria in the West End on the occasion of their visit to Great Britain in the late Forties, the only time, he claimed, that he had ever queued for an autograph. It is not difficult to see why their work appealed to him with its brilliant use of anticipation in the cause of comedy. As Tommy explained: ‘I always treasure a picture of the thin one standing there minding his own business and the fat one lecturing him. “Stanley,” he says, “If you want a job done right, then you have to do it yourself.” Then the fat one goes off to do it and comes crashing through a wall.’ Just as we always knew he would. Tommy only had to touch a magical prop and let out his throaty laugh to trigger in all of us the same comic mechanism. He came to absorb aspects of both performers to the extent that he embodied both Stan and Ollie in one human frame, the figurative equivalent of one of his absurd half-and-half portrayals. One moment he could be exultant on tiptoe with all the misguided self-assurance of the fat man, the next awash with tears like the thin one. The combination was never better displayed than in a sequence where he attempted without much success to restore a bundle of tissue papers he has just torn to shreds. When, triumphantly, the tissues eventually transform into a posy of flowers, the sense of comic surprise in his accomplishment is worthy of them both.

  John McCabe, the first biographer of Laurel and Hardy, whose work played a large part in restoring them to public recognition, summarized the three essential elements of their comic philosophy. In so doing he also acknowledged that Stan, as the creative half of the partnership, would have had no truck with any such thinking. The qualities were ‘a strain of high nonsense; positiveness; innocence.’ What was daft was there to be celebrated and guile had no place in their optimistic view of the world, that of ‘the English pantomime where everyone did live happily ever after.’ Tommy was no philosopher either, but it is hard not to read this essential three point pattern between the lines of his comic persona. He represented that contradiction in terms, a magician without guile, blithely assuming that the trick would work somehow and often oblivious that the method of its accomplishment might be in danger of expos
ure in the process. With Ollie he shared a sense of overwhelming satisfaction when things went right, with Stan a helplessness underlined by his almost infantile delight in those distractions from reality that the magician’s art presented: anyone who like Stanley can ignite his thumb like a match, smoke a fistful of tobacco through his thumb and pull down the shadow of a window blind has to be accounted a magician too.

  Stan’s actual magical skills were less in evidence when they attempted the formal presentation of a magic act in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of those vaudeville-inspired attempts beloved by Hollywood studios to package as many of their leading players as possible in a single vehicle. In a gambit that resonates with the quintessential Cooper the curtain rises on the famous pair with their backs to the audience, still hurriedly arranging their props on the table. Ollie as the magician is alert to the situation and acknowledges the master of ceremonies by tipping his hat; when assistant Stan repeats the gesture, a dove flies out. Recrimination escalates into Stan being shoved into a bowl of eggs, thus ruling out a second miracle. The act proceeds. Ollie’s genteel smugness as he presents an unimpressive parade of anaemic mysteries is brought back to earth when he slips on a stray banana skin, the residue from another ruined trick, and half-somersaults into a giant cake just placed on the table by Stan. Although he was only eight when the film was released, there has to be a possibility that it was seen by the young Cooper.

  Rarely did Tommy pay outward homage to his heroes in his act, although in one of his television series from the Seventies an Oliver Hardy look-alike kept wandering disconcertingly into shot. Hero-worship was paid more effectively when it was paid more subtly, as when Tommy asked the musical director for some music. No sooner had a few notes been played, than he would abruptly cut it short: ‘That’s enough.’ The significance is not the hoariness of the device, but the fact that the music was ‘Love in Bloom’, the signature tune of another comedy great, Jack Benny, who played the master of ceremonies on the occasion Laurel and Hardy essayed their magic act. A few years before he died, Benny’s legendary comedic skills went on show for the last time at the London Palladium. Watching him enter to that music with his distinctive spring-heeled, arm-swinging stride was worth the price of admission. He concluded his act by announcing, ‘And now – for a real treat – I am going to play for you.’ He looked into the wings and called for his violin. A model with million dollar looks brought the instrument to him. He tucked it under his chin and asked, ‘Are you a fan of mine?’ She replied, ‘No, but my mother is.’ She then turned and walked off stage. Benny just stood there, staring in silence for what must have been four or five minutes. We’ll call it the Jack Benny effect. Only one time since have I seen a performer milk silence for a laugh as big and that was Cooper himself, playing a member of the public deserted on stage by a make-believe magician who has left Tommy in the lurch, the latter’s hat the receptacle for the broken eggs – that ever-recurring motif of comedy magic – that he has no intention of magicking back into their shells.

  In interviews Tommy was more vocal about his admiration for Bob Hope than for Benny. In later years he would stand on the same stage as Hope during the finale of a Royal Variety Performance and had difficulty reminding himself that it wasn’t a dream. His radio broadcasts on the American Forces Network had been an essential part of morale boosting during the war and for no one more so than Cooper: ‘I used to sneak away from duty to listen and was always getting caught by this sergeant major called Thompson. Great fellow. He usually let me off.’ As a young man back in Civvy Street he paid homage in the crowd to Hope too, waiting among the thousands anxious to see him step out of his car in Leicester Square. On the surface there was little in common stylistically between the two performers on stage. However, aside from a shared penchant for snappy one-liners, albeit of vastly differing timbre and subject matter, one does thinks of Tommy’s furtive beckoning of the fingers with his arm hung loosely by his side, a last desperate attempt to chivvy the audience when a joke falls on stony ground. ‘Ripple, ripple, ripple,’ he semi-pleads as he identifies where the laugh should be. Accompanied by a sneaky peek into the wings, it is a decidedly Hope ploy, signifying Bob’s often dismissive attitude to much of his own material: ‘I found that joke in my stocking. If it happens again, I’ll change laundries.’ For all Hope’s outward display of self-assurance as joke after joke was fired across the footlights, there were moments when material, delivery and persona combined to make their own comment upon the guts and determination needed to become a stand-up comedian in the first place. One recalls the way he would hit the front cloth as if to find the quick exit for escape if needed and the subconscious nervous tic of constantly adjusting the handkerchief in his top pocket. Both can be discerned in Cooper. It is unlikely that Tommy ever rationalized these similarities on his own account, but, as we shall discover, he succeeded in bringing off the same effect in even more spectacular fashion. He may have begun his career guying the conventions of the magician’s act. What few have noticed is that before long he was guying those of the comedian’s trade as well.

  If there was one comic for whom Tommy reserved the lion’s share of his adulation it was the doyen of British stand-up performers from the middle years of the twentieth century, Max Miller. More than anyone in Cooper’s youthful experience he set the standard for which to aim. No one has since surpassed the self-styled ‘Cheeky Chappie’ for the sheer brilliance of his technique, matched as it was by a personality that sparkled like the crown jewels. His mastery of stage craft was unerring. Max Bygraves, whose early impersonation provided him with his stage name, described to me how before he made his entrance Miller would have the electrician black out the stage for ten seconds. The music would cut out and quietness fell over the auditorium. People would be wondering why the show had stopped – ten seconds is a long time in such a context – but then all of a sudden the band would launch into his signature tune, ‘Mary from the Dairy’, the lights would go full up, the spotlight would hit the prompt corner and then at the precise moment for maximum applause Max would saunter on grinning from ear to ear in all his peacock splendour. The music would keep playing as he took off his coat to reveal one of his dazzling suits of floral chintz. Let’s imagine it depicted buttercups or daffodils. He directed his gaze at a woman in the front row, ‘D’you like it, lady? I’ve just had a mustard bath!’ Only on the end of the gag did the music stop, at which point the audience suddenly heard the volume of its own laughter. To use Tommy’s word, he was ‘electrifying’. As Max used to vaunt of himself, ‘There’ll never be another, lady. No, there’ll never be another!’ There was scant conceit to the remark, because it was true.

  Max remains acknowledged as the master of direct communication with an audience. He possessed the most expressive pair of eyes in show business: as he leaned across the footlights they cast their beam around the theatre like a lighthouse. His skill enabled him to reduce the most cavernous auditorium to the intimate surroundings of your own front room. He used to say, ‘You need to be close enough to them so that you can nick a shilling from an old girl’s handbag without her knowing.’ Tommy certainly learned from Miller the technique of addressing the one lady in the house with an irrepressible titter, wherever she might be. Laughter is contagious and people with Miller’s skill knew how to maximize this to their best advantage, working on the single outlet until the whole house echoed in the same way. There are times when one listens to some of Cooper’s television appearances and wonders whether just such a titter had been planted or fed in on audio-tape. If this was the case, it was – as homage to the man who epitomized the variety profession – excusable. Miller had as shrewd an insight into his profession as anyone, as he showed when he described comedy to a young Bob Monkhouse: ‘Comedy, son, comedy is the one job you can do badly and people won’t laugh at you, but it’s the one job you can do well and they will.’

  Tommy would go to watch Max time after time and admitted to learning wide swathes of his patte
r off by heart, even though ostensibly their styles were far apart, Miller majoring on a self-conscious innuendo that never intruded into Cooper’s more innocent routine. He was, after all, the man once described by John Osborne as ‘a saloon bar Priapus’. Only when I came to survey Cooper’s own material in transcript form did the echoes leap off the page. It is surprising that one had missed the obvious given the skill with which Miller stamped his verbal copyright on any joke he told. Jokes I had heard both comics tell on frequent occasions had not previously connected on the same wavelength. The misdirection had been in the delivery. Max’s fluent cadencies linked to his knowing persona were in total contrast to Tommy’s more matter of fact intonation. If Miller could be perceived as the Gielgud of spoken patter, Cooper had aligned with Richardson. It was through listening to the speech patterns of Miller and Groucho Marx that T. S. Eliot drew his parallel between the worlds of the music hall comedian and the poet. Among British performers there was no one to touch Max in this area because he was so easy to listen to, adroitly using emphasis and repetition within a line to communicate with maximum effect. Not a word was wasted, not a phrase longer than it needed to be. His speech took wing. The subtleties of his delivery would have been lost on the young Cooper when he was learning those lines, material that usefully stayed lodged in his subconscious to the end of his days. To my knowledge he never tried openly to imitate Max, unlike so many others – both Tony Hancock and Sid James included – who first trod the boards as Miller impersonators. He merely told the jokes as if straight off the page, in time making them his own through the curious expedient of being unable or uninterested in replicating the distinctive rhythms of his hero.

  Today audiences hearing lines like the following will automatically think of Tommy first: ‘I was talking to this girl the other day and I said to her, “Are you familiar with Shakespeare?” She said, “As a matter of fact I am. I had dinner with him last night.” I said, “What are you talking about? He’s been dead for years.” She said, “I thought he was quiet!”’ Then there were the wife jokes. It possibly excused them in Gwen’s eyes that Miller had delivered them first: ‘I’ve got the best wife in England. The other one’s in Africa!’ and ‘The other day I came home and the wife was crying her eyes out. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “I feel homesick.” I said, “This is your home.” She said, “I know. I’m sick of it.”’ Miller – and Cooper by default – had millions of them: ‘My wife came in the other day and she said, “What’s different about me?” And I said, “I don’t know. What is different about you? Have you had your hair done?” She said, “No.” I said, “Have you got a new dress on?” She said, “No.” “Have you got a new pair of shoes?” She said, “No.” I said, “Well, I don’t know. What is different about you?” She said “I’m wearing a gas mask.”’ Cooper was still making audiences cry at the latter almost forty years after the gas masks had been stored away.