Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6
KH: Can we just start with how you first became involved with Theatre Workshop?
PG: Well I’d been in the Land Army for about three years when I was asked if I would do a song at the end of a programme going out from Chichester to the servicemen. And as I was a local singer, and known very well, and I had sung In Town Tonight when I was 17, I was obviously the choice for this. So I said I would. And I was working one day with the cows and a van came up and some… no photographers then of course – but I was aware of this lady with… I’ve never seen anyone who looks just like Joan Littlewood. Her eyes sort of went from left to right, left to right and she said ‘Now Pearly bird, last night I went to the Assembly Rooms and I heard you sing Schubert’s Ave Maria, and think I would like you to sing two songs after my programme’. She was then employed by Northern Regional and she did a lot of this. And I think that probably gave her the first ideas of how many people that she met who could sing and who could talk and who could act… of starting her theatre.
KH: And what were your first impressions when you met Joan?
PG: Well as I said I had… her face was quite unique. There was this bulging forehead, and lovely fine eyebrows with heavy lids, and she seemed to look from under and weight you up entirely as though she knew you at one glance. She also had a very beguiling voice, very low in register. And I always remember she held a cigarette between very taut fingers all the time. And when one was finished, one of her - the people who she brought down with her – hastily brought out another one and lit it. And I knew, I mean this woman could really sort of beguile you into joining the Foreign Legion, I felt! And I said ‘Well thank you very much. And yes, I would be only too pleased to do that’.
So a date was arranged at the YMCA… YWCA sorry. And there was Addy Street, there was the Shipham’s paste factory managers, The Tannery, all the big firms in Chichester then, where all the local boys who were in any of the services would have known – existed in Chichester remembered it very well. And most of them probably would have remembered me. And so we did all this. And finally I had to sing Ave Maria and Sussex by the Sea. I thought I was temporarily engaged at the time. I must say ‘temporarily’ because I had three engagements, they were all pretty temporary. And the… he was pilot but he’d sent his friend. And Joan thought I was… she said ‘Don’t you ask her to marry you because she’s going to join my theatre’. So she said ‘No look darling I’m going to start a Theatre Workshop’ which actually meant very little to me, as I was about 21. ‘You will join me won’t you?’, because she said ‘I have found seven talented people in my journeys and I consider you one’. And Ewan MacColl – who was then her husband but they didn’t… I think they were more or less separated in a way. You know they didn’t call themselves ‘Mr and Mrs’. Ewan MacColl – who was a great folk singer – is not going to sing unless I find a good singer to sing with him. And I think he’ll be very happy with you’. And I would say ‘Yes Joan, of course. Yes, yes, yes, I’ll join your theatre’. All the time trying to keep this chap’s hand from playing with my bangle on my… you know. And so I said goodbye to home and the Mayor, and everybody said goodbye and off we went. And then we heard it and… the Sussex by the Sea and the Ave Maria, which seemed rather strange to do the two. And I heard no more from Joan.
And then, when I was in my… I’d been married then. I’d been five years in the Land Army and my husband then got shipped abroad, and I thought that ‘Well, what was I to do now?’. Because the war had ended and strangely enough I then worked for a Colonel Rex Spence, and he was a diplomat in Singleton – which is just outside of Chichester. And I had… instead of 72 cows to milk with an old man I had two cows to make milk and butter for the family. I had a beautiful flat. I was told I could use the Bechstein piano, and of all things the Welsh Guards in the stables. So I had very little work to do because most of them were farmer’s sons and they would take the cows, they would milk the cows and I would just make the butter and take it in.
But I was there with another girl. But when Colonel Benson was in London, then he left it to his housekeeper. And I always remember when we were voting for… to get the Labour party in. He came out and he said to Brenda and myself ‘If you’re going down to vote, I’ll give you a lift if you like’. ‘Oh thank you very much, thank you’. And he said ‘You’re voting Conservative I suppose?’ so Brenda Northend said ‘Oh yes, yes, I’m voting Conservative’. So I said, ‘Well I’m not!’ I said, ‘I’m voting Labour’. He said ‘Well then, you can walk’. And I did. And anyway I was treated… everything was alright but I really had a little bit of sidelining after that. And then one day the housekeeper came out to me – I was gathering eggs – and she always worried me to death because she was also a friend of the family so you couldn’t have any sort of ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ with her on anything. And she gave me this telegram, which was always a very worrying thing to get then because though the war was over, lots of young men had been killed in accidents you know – their vehicles or whatever. And it said on there ‘Rehearsals for Johnny Noble and Molière, The Flying Doctor. Meet Gerry Raffles 5.15 at Manchester Station on May 5th’. And I thought, ‘And I will, too!’. By that time most of the eggs had dropped down onto the ground which… oh my goodness that woman’s face! So I just thought ‘There’s no point, you know, in apologising, I’ll go’. So I went upstairs and I packed my bags, I said goodbye to Brenda. I went down to my mother’s and [she] said ‘But you can’t, you can’t go’. And she said to my father ‘Fred she’s… she’s going… she’s going up to Manchester’.
So I had before that – I’d done In Town Tonight and met Ray Milan, and he introduced me to an agent – I was then 18 ½. And I was then singing around London and living in Theatre Girls Club in Greek Street. So I had been about and I had been made Miss Gaumont British – no fault of my own I might tell you. I don’t suppose you want to know all this, but anyway inadvertently I became Miss Gaumont British – because I didn’t know what I was going in for. And I had… since I’d… I’d left school at 14 and gone into domestic service. And then daily jobs and… but done a lot of singing and also quite a bit of travelling after that. So going up to Manchester didn’t hold any, you know, fears for me. But I heard my mother say to the neighbour next door ‘Well she’s been to London, I suppose she just gets off at Manchester’. [Laughs] So I thought ‘Now what am I in for?’. And I just thought ‘No, no getting up, milking cows at half past four in the morning. I am going to be an actress and a singer’. And coming from a working class home, at 14 you have to work. And whatever singing I did after that was all done in my spare time, after I finished work or whatever. So I couldn’t really anticipate the thought that I would be able to do it all the time. This was going to be… this was hard and delightful at the same time.
So I get out at Manchester and I see great big hoardings of Tate [inaudible] to make you regular, gentleman’s trusses and a fairly grey afternoon. And I went into the ladies room and I looked absolutely burnt brown compared to the pale faces all dabbing their faces with pancake makeup. And I thought ‘Now I’ve got to meet this…’ and I was such a romantic person, I think ‘I’ve got to meet Gerry Raffles, what a name’. And so I hung about and hung about. And it was getting greyer and chillier. And suddenly a rather large young man sort of exploded onto the platform. And he was looking around. And he really was… he looked like the head of a Greek sculpture. He had flat black curls and he had a classic… you know he really was the most handsome chap. But just at that moment his briefcase came undone and all the papers went bowling all… and I was trying to catch some and he was you know. And I said ‘Gerry?’ and he said ‘Pearl?’. And so we then went to have a cup of tea and he said ‘Well you know, you know you’re married, how long are you thinking of staying with us?’ ‘Well’ I said ‘I don’t really know. I don’t know anything at the moment’. So he said ‘Well, we’d better come and meet the others’.
So we then went to what was rather like a Mancunian assembly rooms, and I met about 11 people. And Joan always had this way of coming very slowly towards you – always with the cigarette in the hand, very expressive hands, but very thin, straight fingers. And looking at you almost – not a very nice thing to say but if I was looking at a snake’s eyes I would be coming nearer and nearer because I couldn’t get away – and that’s how I felt, you don’t get away from this lady. And she said ‘Pearl, I didn’t think you were going to come. I can’t believe it’. And then after that I spoke to everybody… Ewan who was a very sort of shy, sensitive sort of man, and I thought you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of. He had auburn hair and he was extremely, I thought, on the defensive. And he said ‘Oh well we’ve heard of some of… we’ve heard some of Joan’s discoveries, we’ll find out what you’re like’. Then Rosie Williams shouted out… oh he said ‘I’d better go and show you where you’re having your digs. He’s a Professor at the Manchester University and he teaches Spanish’. So he said ‘I’ll show you the way’. So Rosie Williams shouted out ‘Pearl be careful, no girl’s the same girl after meeting Ewan’.
So we walked and we went to Sale. And he said, ‘Take your shoes off’. I was a well-brought-up Chichester girl and I said, ‘No I’m not going to take my shoes off’. I thought ‘I’m not going to be stripped in the street am I?’! So he said, ‘Take your shoes off’. So I took my shoes off. He said ‘Now sing’. And I won’t be able to do it. I can’t sing in a street like this. Well he said ‘I will’. So he had this habit of cupping a hand over… I can’t remember whether it was his left or his right ear. I think it was because he heard his own voice better, the resonance of it. And this mighty voice, and it was such a musical voice. I’ve heard very many types of singers – men singers – in my life, but I’ve never heard quite one the same as Ewan’s, a very individual voice. And so had I been told about mine because I had a very low register, a very high, so it meant that I could sing in oratorio and in opera as well. And as he started to sing, then window went up and doors came undone, and ladies with their turbaned head you know with their curlers underneath, and their brooms, and they were all standing you know. And then in the end everybody collapsing, he was very much aware of this. And he took me to a very nice house outside of Manchester and that’s where I would be staying for at least a week. And I couldn’t bear the thought of not going back to them. I just felt I have an evening here, I’ve met a group of… oh they were all sort of dressed any old how you know – as I’d been used to land army uniform and seeing every man I knew in uniform also – that these rather sort of dishevelled people who’d all got together. But I think that Howard – who reminded me of a nice grasshopper really because he seemed to be all elbows and knees – and Rosalie Williams, David Scase had been a member of the BBC and had come with Joan. There was Ruth Brant who was a costume maker in the BBC and… but she was the only Southern woman.
Interview continued...
Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6
