Up West (35 page)

‘The London Pavilion you could go in through the cleaners' entrance, if you knew it. It was like offices, but you knew the doors to go in, and you'd bunk in there. I remember there was at least a dozen of us. When the film was on, and it was dark, we all used to crawl in on our hands and knees. If anybody come, you'd be like frozen statues. And I can recall a guy coming up, a workman obviously coming up to get something walking up the side [of the auditorium], and of course he's hit something, and he's said “What the bleeding hell's that?” and he's struck a match or something to see what
he's hit, and he probably wouldn't have done nothing, but we all run. And of course the poor sods in the pictures must have wondered what was happening, with a dozen kids running backwards and forwards, everybody screaming, usherettes chasing us.'

Pat and Barbara Jones enjoyed free cinema, too, although they did not have to sneak in. ‘In two of our bedrooms,' Barbara explained, ‘if you put your ear to the wall, you could actually hear the dialogue, let alone the music, from the Tivoli, and the organ. So, for that reason, we had two free tickets to every new film that came on.'

They had similar access to the Adelphi Theatre. ‘We met Tommy Handley and the
ITMA
crew because they were right next to the Adelphi,' Barbara remembers, ‘and people such as Dick Bentley and Jimmy Edwards – who later became one of my father's drinking friends, along with Tony Hancock, in the Coal Hole pub near the Savoy. We practically lived in the Adelphi Theatre.' Both sisters had fond memories of the ‘Green Room Rag' at the Adelphi, a regular Sunday afternoon fund-raising event where they met the stars, who played a revue featuring excerpts from the main shows in town.

Even if you didn't get a complimentary ticket, going to the theatre could be cheaper than the cinema. ‘If you wanted to see a show,' Barbara Jones remembers, ‘you would go in the morning and pay sixpence for a sort of raffle ticket that would be put on these little wooden folding stools lined up outside the theatre, and that would be your place in the queue to come and get up in the gods.'

Ronnie Mann was another regular theatre-goer as a boy. ‘My mum's brother, Uncle Alf, was assistant stage manager at the Hippodrome. We used to get lots of complimentary tickets, so as a kid I went to see things at nearly every theatre in the West End. I remember seeing
The Blue Lamp
at the Hippodrome. We were sitting there watching it, when they were supposed to be searching for the bloke who killed Dixon of Dock Green and that, and they had actors, dressed up in modern copper's uniforms walking up and down the aisles looking for this guy, so he jumps up out of the audience and runs up, a gun comes out, Bang, and it was terrific at the time. Today you'd think it was corny, but I loved it.'

Ronnie's social life also included dancing at the Lyceum. ‘It was a ballroom. Proper ballroom dancing, no jiving. It was big bands. In the late fifties, there was a crucial change, with the different music coming in. First you had jazz, then you had rock 'n' roll, and the Lyceum gradually changed, because of the demand. They started doing rock 'n' roll music with a DJ on a Monday, and then they did it every lunchtime, from twelve to two, and I used to go there after work in the market, from twelve to two, to have a dance.

‘By the time I finished, the Lyceum had maybe two nights of ballroom dancing a week and the rest was just jiving – and it was absolutely packed, jammed solid. Girls came from everywhere because it was the West End, they used to come from miles around to go to the Lyceum, it was incredible. It was central, it was inexpensive to get in, and it was the
place to be. Every era has its place to be, right for the time, then gone. I had my teeth knocked out down there with a knuckleduster when I was nineteen: I was dancing with the wrong girl.'

Anne Payne also liked to dance. After she met her future husband, ‘We used to go to jazz clubs at 100 Oxford Street and went to the Cy Laurie club in Ham Yard. We enjoyed Trad jazz. We went to the Lyceum, sometimes, for the dancing, and there was a youth club down Pavilion Road, a side road opposite the side of Peter Jones, that was connected to Holy Trinity Church at Sloane Square. We had dances there. It wasn't particularly cool, but it was good just to get out.'

Ronnie Brace never actually lived in the West End, but his father's brother, Bruce Brace, owned a couple of nightclubs, Winston's and Churchill's, in Bond Street. ‘When I was sixteen, we used to go down to my uncle's club quite regularly. Of course it was amazing for me, being down there, listening to what was going on in that club, seeing the women. We used to take friends down there. Not my mates, my parents' mates. The club was incredible, who they had in the cabaret: Marty Wilde, when he first started; Eartha Kitt – she'd just won over Paris, apparently, and came over here, they gave her her first job [in Britain] and she was a sensation; Barbara Windsor – she was only seventeen or eighteen then, in the cabaret; Danny La Rue; Carl Barriteau – a Jamaican clarinettist, and a great character. He led the combo, the orchestra in the club, or was part of it, you know. All the starlets used to come in, and top people.

‘As my dad was the owner's brother, whenever we went in there a bottle of champagne went on the counter. I'd most probably get a light drink of some sort, you know – I was too young to drink – and then everyone would have a free breakfast about one in the morning, which is like a huge mixed grill, sausages, eggs – all on the house. There was money in the club. Champagne was expensive, you know, and specialist foods – steaks obviously and that sort of thing. Whether they had membership or not I don't know, but that would have been another way of getting cash.'

Two of Ann Lee's uncles worked on the nightclub scene. ‘They were a couple of characters,' she remembers. ‘Uncle Tom was a glorified doorman, but Uncle Jim – he had a signed photograph from Frank Sinatra, he wanted him to go over to America to work with him, but my Auntie Else wouldn't go, and he never forgave her for it. They'd finish in the early hours, and if they'd had a drink at the clubs, they'd go to a pub in Covent Garden at like, five in the morning. At half-past seven they'd be rolling drunk, and with a big bunch of flowers for my nan, and she'd open the door and there they were, kaylied, saying “Here you are, Mother.” She hadn't seen them for a fortnight . . . She'd come out and shout up to my mum, “Kitty!” and my mum would hear and come out and Nan would say “Tommy and Jimmy are in there.” So my poor old mum would have to go down there and say, “You two. Cab. Home. You're not sitting there annoying her.”

‘How my Uncle Tom never killed himself or anybody else I'll never know. He used to arrive at our house early in the
morning – I'd be up getting ready for school, or work, or whatever – knock on the door and you'd hear Mum go, “Oh, good God. Get in here.” And he'd be like that [bent virtually double] and she'd scurf him in, sit him down and take his car keys. Because if you drank and drove in those days, nobody said a word unless you had an accident, then you got the book thrown at you. She used to pour coffee down him, and he'd say, “I'm going,”, and she'd say, “You're not driving, Tommy.” “Yes I am!” And he'd get the keys and go. My mum was very family, she worried for all of them, and she'd phone Auntie Doll: “Doll, he's just left me. I've tried to stop him getting in to the car.” Within fifteen minutes he'd phone to say he's home, all the way to Shepherd's Bush. How he got there, we don't know, and he never had one accident.'

In the same way as the great majority of West Enders never ventured in to a nightclub – or if they did, it was to work behind the bar or on the bandstand – they lived among culture, but weren't necessarily fans. My father was a big ballet fan, however, and a trip to the ballet with him was always tarted up as a treat – which it was, in a way, but I was always tense in case he found something to complain about. I was taken to Covent Garden as a birthday gift when I was very young – we had a box and everything – and as Father behaved himself, it was pure joy. I loved the glittering glass and gold of the theatre, the music, the wonderful costumes and, of course, the dancing.

However, my half-sister wasn't as lucky when her turn
came. They had seats in the front stalls to watch the Russian Ballet perform
Swan Lake
. All went swimmingly until the corps embarked on the dance of the cygnets. Father, who was a man of strong views and even stronger language, was underwhelmed by their technique. He remarked in loud tones that the ‘Fucking corps are ragged, look at 'em, all over the fucking place, like a bunch of fucking cart-horses.' Sadly, the dancers heard him, and even if they didn't actually understand what he was saying, they grasped his sentiments and were a little thrown. The corps became more ragged: some stopped dead in their tracks, and Father's comments grew even louder.

At this point, an elderly gentleman, who was beautifully turned out in evening dress, leaned over to remonstrate with Father. Not only was his language ‘deplorable', the gentleman said, but he was also ruining the performance for the less exacting members of the audience, and would he ‘Please be quiet or leave.' Father took exception, and offered to give the old boy a whack. The gentleman became flustered. ‘You can't hit me, I'm dying of cancer,' he said.

‘Good!' roared Father, and got to his feet. He pointed to the exit. ‘Outside, and I'll give you such a smack you won't live long enough to die of fucking cancer.' Luckily, Father was escorted from the premises by several ushers, the corps pulled itself together and the performance continued.

Covent Garden was the centre of British opera, yet few, if any, locals took the opportunity to go, although I heard my fair share of arias as a little girl thanks to the great tenor,
Gigli. He was a little round man in his sixties and when he was shopping in my dad's ‘bookshop', he used to sing as he browsed. He would sit me on his lap sometimes and sing in Parmigiani's, when I was having cassata ice cream. I never really liked cassata, because of the bits, so I used to pick the bits out, because I was – am – a chocolate ice cream kind of gal.

While I could find no interviewees who had actually attended the opera, Graham Jackson revealed that he'd ‘trod the boards at Covent Garden. It was through the school, because they wanted chorus boys, and I was in the school choir at St Martin's. We went there, did all the training for Tchaikovsky's
Queen of Spades
, and
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. We could never go on stage after ten o'clock, so we could never see the end of it . . . there were certain restrictions on us. I quite enjoyed the experience, because we were allowed to go in there early, we went in their canteen. The best place, though, was the engineers' shop. [Laughter] They had some wonderful pictures on the walls in there.'

For most West Enders, a trip to the pub or cinema was all they could afford, especially if they were bringing up children. It was only once their kids had grown up, and could contribute to the family purse, that they could spread their wings a little. ‘They used to have tea dances at the Waldorf,' Ann Lee remembers, ‘and anyone could go to those. The ladies in the flats, the ones that were close and that had stayed friends
for many years, they used to have a day out, or an evening out, and would go somewhere that they couldn't afford when they were younger, and now they could.'

Ann remembers one particular night when her mother and some friends from the estate went for a game of bingo at the Lyceum in the early sixties. ‘There was about six of them. They had a win, so they shared it between them, and they'd all had a couple of drinks, and none of them were real drinkers. My mum had the filthiest laugh ever, and all of a sudden you could hear this laughing, and my dad said, “That sounds like your mum.” Well, I looked out the window, and they were all linked arms walking down Drury Lane, laughing their heads off. They'd all had a few. They weren't really drunk, but for them, they were drunk. You could hear her laughing all the way down to the block – you could hear them all laughing, but her laugh was really, really loud. And she walked in the door and said, “Hello love, I've had a win.” And he said, “Yeah, you was also laughing a bit loud.” She went, “Ah shut up, you miserable sod. You're not spoiling my evening. I've had a lovely time.”

‘My parents never had the money when we were kids to do things like that, and as we were growing up and putting our bit back in to the home, they could afford to go out and do things. And it was nice to see my mum get all dolled up. “Where you going this time?” “Oh, we're going down the Waldorf to a tea dance.” And they'd all get up and have a waltz together. It was nice for them, but it took a while for them to be able to do it. It's like that for all of us, though,
when you've got growing-up kids, you go without for a while, then all of a sudden, it's Whoopee!'

And after all, if the residents of England's premier playground couldn't make a little whoopee after a lifetime of hard work and watching outsiders at their revels, what a dreary old life it would have been. And one thing that all my contributors have in common is the sure knowledge that life in the West End was rarely, if ever, dreary; there was simply too much going on for that.

*
Films were first shown in the West End at the cinema chains' showcase picture houses, many of which were in Leicester Square.

†
Art houses put on films with a limited appeal, such as foreign-language and experimental pictures. These were rarely distributed through the usual networks and were mostly shown at small independent cinemas. Many towns did not have one of these, and film buffs had to come Up West.

Smell evokes memories better than any other sense. Coal smoke always reminds me of steam trains, and of London in the dark, cold days of a fifties winter. If you add to the smoking coal any one or, better still, several of the following – a blast of roasting coffee beans, a whiff of garlic cooking in butter or exotic spices sizzling in oil, perhaps a hint of the distinctive odour of old books, and the heady floral notes of cheap perfumes – I am a toddler again, back in the Soho of my childhood, watching the passing scene with wide-eyed wonder.