In all the stories I can tell you about my life and my career, the one about how my big break in theatre came about is still one of the coolest, because it has so many of the characteristics of a musical. Here’s the rough plot. A successful West End show needs to find a replacement for its American leading man – and quickly. A handsome young boy walks off a street in Glasgow, auditions for the role in said successful West End show, and is flown to London for a callback audition, where he meets and has an instant connection with the already famous leading lady. Cue orchestra. Sing.
In the summer of 1989, before beginning our course on Shakespeare, Marilyn and I went to Scotland to visit my relatives in Glasgow. One afternoon, my dad’s eldest brother Neil heard an announcement about an open casting call for Anything Goes, which was running at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End. The auditions were being held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music in Glasgow. According to the announcement, the producers were looking for a young man with an American accent who could sing and dance. I knew the perfect person.
As it had before and many times since, my Barrowman risk gene burst into life. I figured I had nothing to lose and a hell of a lot to gain. Thanks to Bev’s advice about doing community theatre, I’d already played Billy Crocker, the role they were looking to cast, once before in 1984, so despite not having any sheet music with me on the trip, I knew Billy’s character and I knew I could sing Cole Porter.
Before the audition, I went to a restaurant near the Academy to prepare in private. I started warming up my voice in the restaurant’s bathroom, but I was forced to vacate the space in the middle of practising my scales, when an old man banged on the door and yelled, ‘I dinna ken what yer on, Jimmy, but if it’s good for piles, I’ll huv some a’ it!’6
By the time I’d finished my song in the audition, Larry Oaks, the resident director, was no longer slouching in his chair and I knew I’d hit all the right notes. Larry went on to become a friend and a significant mentor during those early days. He’d show up in my dressing room after every performance with a page of notes, advising me on everything from how to hold my hands in certain scenes to which way to tilt my head in others. No detail ever escaped him. I’m a better performer today because of his keen eye and generous spirit. Larry even let me stay at his house until I found a place of my own in London. Years later, while I was judging Any Dream Will Do, there were many times when I felt as if I was channelling Larry, especially when one of the Josephs would call me at home for advice and encouragement. I always gave them plenty of both.
I sang a second song from Anything Goes in the audition, and when I’d finished, Larry asked, ‘Can you do an American accent for us, John?’
Now, keep in mind what I’ve already told you about me being bidialectical. As I’d been travelling for the past couple of weeks with my parents, visiting relatives in Glasgow and revisiting my roots, I’d come into the audition speaking with my Scottish accent.
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
I went off to read the script alone for a few minutes, came back into the room, and then read a few lines as an American.
‘Thank you very much, John,’ said Larry. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
I learned later that the casting team immediately called Elaine Paige, exclaiming, ‘We’ve found him!’ Elaine, who was playing Reno Sweeney in the production, was also one of the show’s producers, so she was involved in the audition process. Elaine’s own West End debut had been in Hair in 1969. By the time she starred as Eva Perón in Sir Tim Rice and Lord Lloyd-Webber’s Evita in 1978, she’d become the First Lady of the West End.
When I got back to my cousin’s house after the audition, Larry had already left a message, asking if I could fly to London immediately for a callback audition and a meeting with Elaine. Her opening line when I walked on to the stage at the Prince Edward Theatre the following day was, ‘He’s pretty, but let’s see if he can sing.’
Once I’d convinced her that I could, she asked to see me dance. Anything Goes is a dancer’s delight, with lots of show-stopping numbers and tons of tap, so it requires strong all-rounders in the lead roles. The whole musical is a fast-paced romantic comedy set aboard an ocean liner sailing to America. Reno Sweeney is the ship’s nightclub star and Billy Crocker is a young lovesick businessman (and Reno’s ex) who stows away on the ship so that he can be with Hope Harcourt, a beautiful young woman with whom he’s fallen in love. The rest of the ship’s passengers are a bunch of wonderful eccentrics, including Public Enemy Number Thirteen Moonface Martin and his girlfriend, who are posing as a minister and a missionary. The show is full of mistaken identities and misunderstood motives. All those high-energy dance numbers make it demanding for the principal performers, though. It was not surprising that as Elaine climbed up on to the stage during the audition to dance with me, she admitted her legs were a bit tired.
Now, one of the things I hope this book has already demonstrated is that my mother did not raise an impolite lout. My only excuse for the following speech is that I was nervous.
‘Don’t worry, honey,’ I said aloud to Elaine Paige, leading lady extraordinaire and the woman who quite literally held my fate in her hands, ‘I’ll keep you up. I’ll keep you in time!’
Elaine stared at me for a moment, and then she laughed, a big, throaty, ‘you’ve got something’ kind of laugh, and that was the start of my professional career and the beginning of a beautiful friendship with Elaine. I landed the role and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
During the next few months of my professional debut in the West End, my class from USIU remained in London studying Shakespeare and going to the theatre, while I was learning on the job from Elaine and Bernard Cribbins, who was playing Moonface Martin. I couldn’t have had a better pair of mentors. Bernard has been in television and film since the 1960s, with credits in a number of the Carry On comedies. Bernard was also the narrator for one of my favourite animated children’s shows, The Wombles. My absolute favourite role of his, though, was as the spoon salesman in Fawlty Towers, whom Basil Fawlty mistakes for a hotel inspector. Bernard is a terrific musical comedian and his recording of the song ‘Right Said Fred’ is one I remember singing along to on the counter of the record shop in Scotland.
Most of my peers from USIU were thrilled for me on the day I announced to all of them that not only would I be missing class during the ‘Shakespeare’ semester, but I would not be returning to San Diego with them when their time in England came to an end, because I’d gotten a job as the leading man in a West End show. At first, Peter Prick appeared to be pleased for me too, but after a few weeks, our rivalry raised its head again, with him saying he believed me to be ‘a one-hit wonder’. Incidentally, that damning phrase was not only apparently employed by Peter, but also Peter’s father, who used it to describe me to my own dad, when they happened to run into each other the following year at a show in Chicago. Despite Peter’s seeming sour grapes, however, whenever he could, he’d show up at the Prince Edward Theatre and want to schmooze with all the stars.
By the time my class was ready to return to USIU without me, friends like Marilyn were still important in my life, but I’d taken Elaine Paige’s advice and flushed out ‘the Negative Nellies’. Peter and some of the others had long since been stopped at the stage door.
That wasn’t the only tip I took from Elaine. Over those few months, Elaine and Bernard became my surrogate parents, and I’ve never forgotten the gist of their professional advice. ‘Don’t do things just because other people want you to do them, John. Do them because you want to, because even if you fail, you’ll still be satisfied, because when you look back on it, it was your choice to take part.’
When I think about that time in the West End, I’m surprised I remembered to eat. Everything was new and exciting and incredibly hectic. Along with Elaine and Bernard, a fellow actor Ian Burford, whom I met when we were both performing at a Jerry Herman concert at the Royal Palladium, and his partner Alex Cannell, were a seco
nd set of surrogate parents to me. After a long day at the theatre, Ian and Alex always made sure I had company when I wanted it and a bowl of the best chilli whenever I needed it.7
So, Peter and my peers returned to California, time moved on, and so did I. Then one afternoon, almost ten years later, while I was in New York performing in Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together with Carol Burnett and Ruthie Henshall, I came out of the stage door at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and literally crossed paths with Peter. We were surprised to see each other, but we were older and more mature and so we shook hands and went to dinner at Joe Allen’s restaurant.
Peter was working in New York choreographing a Broadway show and we chatted about the things we’d done since we’d parted ways in London. Our dinner was perfectly amicable, but – as always – I felt that Peter’s jealousy was so present that we might as well have been at a table for three. We weren’t boys anymore. I decided I would rise above the sourness I suspected. We finished our meal, he offered to pay, I refused to let him, and we went our separate ways once again.
That is, until the summer of 2004, when I found myself once again in New York and walking toward Peter on Ninth Avenue. This time, I was blond8 and – even if I do say so myself – looking pretty hot. The dye job wasn’t done on a personal whim; it was related to an exciting film role. A few months earlier, Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman had come to see me in Trevor Nunn’s revival of Anything Goes at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. In my dressing room after the performance, they’d asked if I’d be interested in taking the lead tenor role in the song ‘Springtime for Hitler’ in the upcoming film of the hit Broadway show The Producers, which Stroman was directing. I agreed immediately – partly because I’d been a fan of Brooks for years, especially Young Frankenstein. Once, during a long plane trip back to Scotland from America, Carole and I had recited entire scenes from that movie, much to the annoyance of most of the passengers around us, except Murn, who every time we said ‘lovely knockers’ would laugh and heave up her ample bosom.
‘Oh my God, John, look at you,’ exclaimed Peter.
‘I’m in town for The Producers,‘ I informed him.
‘I am too,’ he said. ‘I’m here all week.’
At that instant, my own personal Jiminy Cricket jumped on to my shoulder, his soft little voice saying, ‘Tell him the truth, John. Tell him you’ve already been here a week working on the big finale. Tell him you have your own dressing room right next to Uma Thurman’s. Tell him you’ve been chatting with Will Ferrell. Tell him, John. Be a real boy.’
Ah, hell. I flicked the cricket to the ground.
‘I’m here all week too,’ I said.
A couple of days later, I was up in my dressing room having my hair tinted, which they had to do every day so my dark roots would not show on camera. Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane and Mel Brooks were with me, when Mel suddenly let out an almighty howl and sprinted from the room.
Through the window, we could see over a hundred supporting actors in Nazi uniforms gathering in the parking lot of the warehouse where we were filming – and may I just interject here and note how fabulous all those gorgeous men looked in their costumes; did you know that the designer Hugo Boss was the original creator of the Nazi’s SS uniforms? The supporting cast of ‘Nazis’ were rehearsing these big, stomping, Busby Berkeley-like routines, ‘heiling’ this way and ‘sig heiling’ that way, when all of a sudden Mel darted out into the parking lot, screaming at an assistant, ‘Get them fucking in here now or we’re all gonna get shot!’
The warehouse was in the heart of an Hasidic community in Brooklyn, and from the vantage point of my dressing room, Mel had seen small groups of bearded dark-clothed men gathering around the fences.
After some subtlety was returned to the parking lot and I’d rehearsed the first part of the ‘Springtime’ number, I decided to go outside to do a bit of flirting, to see a few folks I recognized from other shows and, of course, to check in with Peter, who I knew was out there.
I spotted him and made my way through the crowd of gay Nazis to where he was sitting. Peter looked at me, shocked. ‘Where the hell have you been, John? You’re really late. We’ve been rehearsing all morning.’
I couldn’t resist. This ‘one-hit wonder’ took out his knife. It may have been a butter knife, but I really wanted to savour the moment.
‘Oh,’ I said, prolonging my explanation, ‘I’ve been inside rehearsing with Uma. I’m fronting the “Springtime for Hitler” number.’
He looked as if I’d whacked him with my nightstick. He recovered quickly and we said our goodbyes. I went back inside, humming to the tune of ‘Springtime’: ‘Payback for John in the parking lot / Barrowman is happy and gay!’
‘No One is Alone’
My friend Midge was twenty-nine when she died. There was no public funeral, no memorial service, no flowers, no obituary – in fact, no overt acknowledgement of her death of any kind. Even today, ten years later, I’m angry and incredibly sad about what happened to her. Midge was a friend during my high-school days – not an especially close one at that time, but still a friend – and later, at the United States International University in San Diego, we were flatmates. Midge’s life mattered to me and, despite her problems, I think it should have been far more important to those closer to her. I’ve thought about Midge a lot over the intervening years and given what happened to her, Midge’s story deserves to be told.
In my opinion, Midge was not so much her family’s black sheep as she was its wild mare. To her family, she seemed hard to contain, difficult to control, and she jumped their fences whenever she could. To her friends, Midge partied with gusto, played with heart, and had a passion for animals that was boundless. And did I mention she was gorgeous?1
Midge’s family was part of the professional aristocracy in Joliet, and since my dad at that time was the plant manager of one of the biggest employers in the area, I guess the Barrowmans had moved into those heady ranks too. Of course, none of us ‘shites scented soap’, as Murn used to say, and my family never forgot that. After all, it wasn’t too many decades ago that my dad was filling cream cakes at a bakery in Tollcross, and my mum was making ends meet at the end of the month by serving tripe and mashed potatoes for dinner.
In case you don’t know, tripe is a Scottish delicacy made from a sheep’s stomach – mmm, yummy! – and onions, all of it served – get ready for this – in a warm milky base. The only joy to be found whenever tripe was on my mum’s menu was that Carole, Andrew and I were allowed to eat with trays in front of the television, and we were not required to sit at the table with my parents. Frankly, I think my mum did this not as a reward for eating the tripe, but so that she didn’t have to see the pain she was inflicting on us as we tried to swallow the chewy, tasteless concoction. If William Wallace had served tripe to the English, they’d have turned and fled, and we’d be singing ‘Scotland the Brave’ at coronations.
Midge’s parents, on the other hand, seemed convinced their farts were fragrant. They were neighbours of my mum and dad in Joliet and they quickly became friends. Although my mum and dad were significantly more liberal than Midge’s parents, the four of them shared similar passions for music, theatre, travel, good food, a wee drink, and throwing a hell of a party, which they did regularly.
I must admit that after our move to America, it wasn’t just my family’s social status that improved. My parents’ soirees took a step up from Saturday nights in The Extension. Their parties were now held in a fully kitted-out basement, which included an area for dancing and a full bar that would have made Dean Martin drool (not that he needed any help).
Although the time and place had changed significantly, some essential things had not. Whether the parties included my dad’s business associates or just friends from the neighbourhood, whenever possible I was the nightly entertainment, and although I wasn’t singing ‘Milly, Molly, Mandy’ anymore, I was still the main event. Thanks to the many high-school performances and Foren
sic Competitions I was getting under my belt in Joliet, I was a more polished performer. I was even a bit more confident in my dancing ability, which was the part of my repertoire that, back then, I felt was my weakest.
The other big difference was that instead of getting my cheeks pinched by adoring aunties and family friends, I was now getting my bum pinched by someone’s wife or girlfriend who’d occasionally hit on me. Naturally, I’d share these incidents with my mum and Murn, when she was still alive, over toast and tea the next morning, and we’d cat about them for days. I mean, what good’s a grope if you can’t get some decent gossip from it?
Although Midge and I went to different high schools in Joliet, when our parents were socializing together, we would hang out. As was the case with most females when I was growing up, Midge felt as if she could talk to me and I to her, so we, like our parents, became friends.
After high-school graduation, though, Midge and I went our separate ways. I headed off to the University of Iowa for fun and games with the Old Gold Singers and Midge attended college in Florida, but we stayed in touch. She visited me in Nashville a couple of times during those intervening summers, and she continued to call me when she needed someone to talk to.
After two full summers working at Opryland USA, I transferred to USIU in San Diego. When I made my decision to move to California, Midge, who had dropped out of Florida for reasons I didn’t learn until later, insisted that her parents let her move too.
My mum and dad always instilled in Carole, Andrew and me the value of higher education – and they put their money where their mouths were, funding room, board and tuition for each of us. Even in the late eighties, it was expensive to live in California, and to make it possible for me to study, audition when I wanted to and perform when I needed to, my parents came up with a pragmatic financial solution. They bought a condo in LaJolla, California with Midge’s parents, and while we attended university, Midge and I lived in the apartment. When I left USIU to play Billy Crocker in Anything Goes in 1989, Midge’s mum and dad bought my parents out.
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