Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing

by John Fisher

  SEVEN

  The Steady Climb

  Encore des Folies brought Tommy more than recognition. It revealed the patronage, in association with Moss Empires, of one of the more important new impresarios on the West End scene. As a speciality dancer Bernard Delfont had once been part of an act himself and had an affinity for backing distinctive variety talent, as well as a love of all that was spectacular in show business. At this time, Norman Wisdom was on the verge of a major career breakthrough as a result of Bernie’s ability to spot a rising star, while thanks to his affectionate promotion Laurel and Hardy and the legendary Danish– American illusionist, Dante, had been enjoying great success in Britain during the swansong stage of their careers. The combination of comedy and magic, in a more vigorous mix than ever before, made Cooper a natural in his eyes. With the exposure from the television series, It’s Magic in the spring and early summer of 1952, it was inevitable that before long Tommy would progress to a better class of provincial booking. Following a two week debut appearance at the London Palladium in July, low down on a bill topped by forgotten American comedy team, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, he embarked in the autumn on his first tour of the prestigious Moss Empires circuit. He received a weekly salary of eighty pounds for the Palladium booking; with an assist from Delfont, Miff was able to command £125.00 a week in the country, as his client zigzagged his way from Liverpool to Glasgow, Birmingham to Brighton, Newcastle to Finsbury Park and all points beyond, with a few weeks in town for Christmas to take advantage of the lucrative cabaret season.

  He would formally arrive back in the West End for the week commencing 25 May 1953, compromising at ninety pounds a week to take part in the two week bill at the Palladium that coincided with the Coronation of Her Majesty the Queen. American comic, Danny Thomas, who was in some ways the poor man’s Milton Berle, was top of an otherwise lack-lustre bill. Where was Bob Hope when birthright, if not citizenship, called? It was then back to the provincial grindstone, until the beginning of December when Tommy found himself deputizing at the Adelphi Theatre for Tony Hancock, previously – and incongruously – committed to pantomime duty, during the last two months of the revue, London Laughs, in which he appeared alongside Jimmy Edwards and Vera Lynn. The weekly salary of £150.00 was more in line with Tommy’s new co-star status. Delfont could not have been happy to look on as Cooper made an impact in a revue presented by three of his main rivals, Jack Hylton and George and Alfred Black. He became determined that in little more than a year he would have the mad magician back in the West End working under his banner. However, before Tommy opened in his new Folies production, Paris by Night at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 9 April 1955, for a run that would extend for seventy-four weeks through to September 1956, Delfont kept him under his wing with summer season at Southport and pantomime at Dudley. In both shows he co-starred with radio comic, Derek Roy and ‘Sugar Bush’ vocalist, Eve Boswell. In the latter, Humpty Dumpty, he played King Yoke of Eggville, presumably finding renewed opportunity for egg tricks and poultry jokes.

  Any gaps were mostly taken up by single weeks in variety under the herald, Bernard Delfont Presents, although a more significant opportunity presented itself in the immediate wake of the Adelphi engagement in the form of a further opportunity to appear with Vera Lynn. In a press statement issued during the previous year, Ferrie had stated that ‘So far no fewer than eight offers to appear in the United States have been refused.’ It was now time to accept. Miff zealously collected the eight affidavits required by the authorities, rallying among others Ronnie Waldman, Val Parnell, and Delfont to the cause. On 31 March 1954 they set sail on the Queen Elizabeth en route to Las Vegas, where Tommy was booked to appear with the singing star and a predominantly British company in the revue, Piccadilly Revels at the Flamingo Hotel. In the desert resort show business was fast asserting itself as something more substantial than the fly-by-night accompaniment to so many jangling slot machines, the Flamingo – built by mobster ‘Bugsy’ Siegel – regarded as one of the classiest venues in town. The trip would provide a major challenge for all concerned, even if Tommy seemed a natural for a nation described by James Thurber as one ‘that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the belly laugh and the dozen other labels for the roll-’em-in-the-aisles of gagerissimo.’

  In its review Variety asked of the show, ‘Whether it can sustain itself at the turnstiles satisfactorily for the five weeks booked may be open to question. Although fairly diverting, opus moves somewhat heavily. Tightening should improve it.’ Of one thing the newspaper was certain, ‘Tommy Cooper proves high spot of the revue,’ to which Tommy joked, ‘No wonder. I’m six feet four, the rest of the cast are three feet six!’ Variety added, ‘The unexpected climaxes to his tricks are smooth prestidigitations tailored for laughs.’ Miff wrote home to his wife, ‘Jack Benny was in last night, and it was not until Cooper came on that he applauded.’ The show folded after two weeks and a night. According to Gwen, who did not accompany her husband, the Americans couldn’t fathom the appeal of our so called ‘Forces Sweetheart’: ‘They thought she looked like a horse eating an apple through barbed wire and, besides, the war had been over for almost a decade.’ Kay Starr, a singer they could understand, was rushed in to replace the package show. In the Daily Express an aggrieved Miss Lynn was reported as saying a little ungraciously, ‘I just felt my colleagues weren’t up to my standard.’

  Tommy never lost his love of America, the vitality of this Land of Hope, Milt and Benny. Not a gambling man himself, he could not stop laughing at the garage that advertised ‘Petrol, free aspirin and sympathy!’ for those that were. However, the debacle of the show left him a wiser man. He told Val Andrews how before the opening night everyone was ‘all over’ the company, nothing too much trouble for the crew backstage. However, when the singing star failed to register, attitudes changed. When he came off on the closing night he discovered the whole stage plunged into darkness: ‘As far as they were concerned we were over and done. They didn’t even say “goodbye”.’

  On his return via New York Tommy was offered a season at Radio City Music Hall. Miff has always been made the scapegoat for the fact that he did not accept, but in simple language to have done so would have been to have fallen out with Delfont. Prior to their departure The Performer had announced, ‘He goes with the happy knowledge that on his return he will be solidly booked for the next two years. This, of course, is part of a carefully thought-out plan of campaign by Miff Ferrie who has so successfully helped to steer the lanky comedian to his present enviable position.’ That Tommy was in such a strong situation is actually because of Delfont’s commitment to them both. The two solid years of bookings constituted a contract between them by which the impresario guaranteed the performer £150.00 a week (for a two year period) for a minimum of forty weeks in any one year. It is conceivable that the myth of Tommy being shackled to a set weekly salary hatched out of the shell of this agreement, even if he was now guaranteed £150.00 a week – according to the retail price index the equivalent in today’s terms of almost £3,000.00 – far removed from the pittance that he claimed was his dole from Miff in the early years. For the record the Vegas deal had guaranteed him $1,250.00 a week in a contract that also carried the clause, ‘It is a condition of this Agreement that the Artiste is to be accompanied by his personal manger, Mr Miff Ferrie.’ It added that all transportation and living expenses for the two were the responsibility of the performer. It may read like a ‘freebie’ for Miff, but was an arrangement that was totally justifiable in light of the relative inexperience of the performer. On the collapse of the show, Miff, on behalf of his client, settled for a total of $5,000.00 as joint payment for work done and compensation, the equivalent of £1,750.00 in sterling. The process, although disappointing, was relatively straightforward, unlike the situation that had been brewing between artist and agent.

  On 4 January 1954 Tommy had instructed his solicitor to question Miff’s right to a fifteen per cent commission. Miff wrote
up the situation, thus giving us an insight into his client’s somewhat roundabout way of confronting a problem: ‘At midday Tommy Cooper telephoned me and said he was going to see his solicitor that afternoon as he was having trouble with his income tax. I asked him why on earth he was going to a solicitor about his income tax, as this was surely a matter for his accountant. He then said his accountant was in Malta, but that his solicitor wanted to know why he was paying fifteen per cent commission. I asked him what his commission had to do with income tax and he said that his solicitor wanted to see his agreement with me. I said I still did not get the reason for this and asked him if he was unhappy about anything. He said he was perfectly happy about paying fifteen per cent and then asked me what I thought he should do. I said that as he was perfectly happy paying fifteen per cent the obvious thing was to tell his solicitor so and once again told him that I could see no reason why his commission had anything to do with his income tax. He then asked me once more what I thought he should do, as he was going to see his solicitor that afternoon. I told him to do whatever he wanted to do, but that I could see no useful purpose being served, as the Agreement was perfectly in order as he well knew, having taken it to Equity and another party, namely, his accountant in the past.’

  After a terse telephone conversation between Miff and Cooper’s solicitor, Tommy later in the day summoned up the courage to tell Miff that he did regard the fifteen per cent as too high and that whilst he had not objected to paying this in the early days, when he was earning only twenty pounds a week, he thought that now he was earning hundreds, Miff was getting too much. The situation unleashed a profitable series of exchanges for the legal profession with demands to survey the Agreement and Miff’s letter of extension exercising his right to continue handling Cooper’s affairs from the first date of renewal, 28 November 1953. Miff was only too happy to provide not only these, but the correspondence from more than five years earlier in which Cooper had expressly stated his wish that Ferrie look after his interests as Personal Manager for the agreed commission.

  When Miff’s solicitor got to the root of the immediate problem, it hinged on Tommy’s unhappiness with a situation whereby he found himself responsible for paying his manager’s expenses on the American trip. In his naive eyes, dragging up the old commission ploy provided a possible route to discrediting Ferrie and cutting him out of the trip altogether. At the same time there was an opportunity to rake over old ground and Cooper’s growing dissatisfaction with the 1948 agreement. Tommy went behind Miff’s back and took the issue to Leslie MacDonnell, a director of Foster’s Agency, which was packaging the Vegas show. MacDonnell subsequently confided in Miff that he told Tommy’s solicitor ‘that he thought Cooper’s case rather dubious, and that Mr Ferrie had done very well for Tommy Cooper.’ On 23 February, Cooper’s solicitors wrote to Miff’s representatives, giving notice ‘terminating your client’s agency six months from the date hereof. Our client, of course, cannot restrain your client from going to America, but we are instructed to inform you that if your client does go it will certainly be at his own expense.’ As cold comfort the letter ended with the information that Cooper was prepared to enter into a sole agency agreement on a ten per cent basis, ‘which is the usual commission payable on this type of contract and determinable thereafter by either side giving to the other three months notice in writing.’ There was no case against Miff whatsoever. Eventually his solicitors advised Ferrie to adopt a policy of no further comment and for the time being life went on as usual.

  Having put his signature to the original Las Vegas contract with Foster’s Agency dated 4 December 1953, Cooper subsequently signed again what in essence was the same agreement with Foster’s American partners, the William Morris Agency on 10 March 1954. On 30 March, the day before they sailed, a letter from Ferrie’s solicitor to Cooper’s suggests that Cooper was threatening to take the matter to arbitration. The response was that if Cooper persisted in his claim that there was no binding contract, it could only be decided in a Court of Law. There the matter was allowed to rest for the time being. The conjuror did not have a leg to stand on, but he was an optimist. The following day they set sail together. The episode had not provided the best of climates for such an odd couple to contemplate a trip together of such high professional significance, whoever was paying. Tommy, of course, had one trick up his sleeve. He could always withhold his commission, something he did callously from February 1954, until Miff was forced to initiate legal proceedings against him on 21 July 1954. Cooper was forced into a corner. Instructions were written up for Council, but forestalled by payment from Cooper for all amounts outstanding by the end of the Southport summer season. The title of the show, Happy and Glorious, must have sounded a hollow note to them both.

  Meanwhile it was back to work for Delfont. In Paris by Night he was given second billing to a rising television comic named Benny Hill. There was no doubt who stole the show. For all his ingenuity and charm Hill was not a natural stage performer. Every night he would walk down in the finale to less applause than the performer who preceded him, an experience that would have done nothing to boost his theatrical morale. To make matters worse, The Times declared Tommy’s contribution to be ‘the evening’s one first-rate thing.’ In The Observer, Tynan wrote that Hill’s comic technique was not yet assured enough for the theatre, before adding that the revue was saved by Cooper, adding this telling description of him, ‘picking his way through the debris of fumbled conjuring tricks like a giant stork pecking for sustenance in a morass.’ More down to earth was David Marsden, a business associate of Miff, who phoned during the run with his assessment: ‘Tommy stole it, but Benny was bad and blue, looked effeminate and clothes bad!’

  Benny was a gracious man and would reminisce affectionately about his co-star in later years. They had adjoining dressing rooms. Hill’s habit was to arrive early before the show, enjoy his cup of tea and a Marie biscuit and attempt to get some rest on the chaise longue. Cooper would arrive at the last minute, usually with a group of mates in tow, cracking gags as if the show had already started. According to Benny, the one person who did get a bit agitated was his dresser: ‘He’d knock on the door and say, “Mr Cooper, it’s nearly time.” Tommy would say, “No. It’s alright. Huh huh huh. Relax. Relax.” And Joe would say, “But, Mr Cooper, you’re on.” This sort of exchange would go on for several minutes until the dresser had no choice but to hammer on the door and shout, “Mr Cooper, they’re playing your music.” Tommy screamed, “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ll be late. I’ll be late.” He was just as funny off as on.’

  The careers of Hill and Cooper would crisscross with amazing irony over the years. Hill had been born and brought up in Southampton less than a mile from where Tommy’s parents moved to open their fish shop after the war. Both had idolized Max Miller, and while Cooper acquired his stage attack, it was Benny who translated his lecherous flair for the risqué into something that would appeal to audiences for another generation or two. During the Seventies they were the two undisputed laughter stalwarts for Thames Television. When American distributor, Don Taffner was looking for material on the Thames shelves to package for American exploitation the sheer bulk of the Hill catalogue chose itself for the eventual process of editing into the faster paced versions of The Benny Hill Show that justifiably won the cherubic clown international recognition on a scale for a British performer not experienced since Chaplin. With his wicked flair for mimicry, he was almost certainly the first star comedian in the country to be made entirely through television. Had he been a more successful theatrical performer he may have dedicated less time to the medium and missed the international opportunity.

  In the late Sixties, long before Taffner appeared on the scene, Miff, with the blessing of Thames, had taken a couple of tapes of Tommy’s television programmes to show to the powers that be at the Desilu studios in Hollywood. In the viewing theatre the executives could not restrain their laughter. According to Miff, ‘When the lights went up everybody wa
s wiping the tears out of their eyes and getting their breath back and the head writer, a guy called Lou, said, “Gee, that was terrific. But who we gonna get to play the parts?”’ Not that Tommy was without success on American screens. In 1963 and 1967 he made two trips to America to make a total of five appearances for The Ed Sullivan Show. When in 1962 Mark Leddy, respected agent and booker for Sullivan, first tracked Tommy down in Blackpool on the recommendation of American magician Jay Marshall, he wrote back to Jay in Chicago, ‘This is a very funny man. In his next to closing spot, he had enough funny stuff to do three Sullivan Shows. In my humble opinion he is much superior to Ballantine because Ballantine does the same damn act all the time.’ When he got to New York, Sullivan described him to his audience of millions as quite simply ‘the funniest man ever to appear on this stage.’ Afterwards Leddy wrote to Miff that he was ‘as happy as hell with the results.’ Sadly, Cooper’s international potential was never fully realized. As Barry Took pointed out, a large proportion of the Paris by Night audience consisted of foreign tourists, to whom much of Hill’s material in those days remained a mystery; with Cooper, instant impact was guaranteed.

  As submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, his comedy magic spot had by now been almost entirely revised, the bottle and glass appearing only fleetingly, and a similar device, known as ‘Elusive Rabbits’– once a major part of Arthur Dowler’s routine – promoted to central position. This involved two wooden cut-out rabbits of different colours within two tubes, referred to as boxes. At the end of the sequence, the rabbits were turned around to reveal two entirely different colours from those that commenced the trick, proving the lie to any audience theory that all Tommy had to do to make them change places was to turn the tubes back to front: