Memories of Bradford and Gracie (18 November 1977)

I was pleased to see the inimitable Gracie Fields interviewed by Mike Parkinson on tv the other night.  Her voice had lost its old range and quality, but its strength was still there and so also was much of the old vigour, which was remarkable in a woman now “pushing 80” as she called it.  She still pronounced “aspidistra” as “aspidestra,” and in referring to Capri, which has been her home these past many years, she accented the first syllable and did not call it “Capree” – although in this she might have been correct, for all I know.

I met Gracie in person when I was working in Bradford in the early 1930s.  There was a music hall called the Alhambra and one of my duties for an evening paper was to go there every Monday night, see the week’s show, have a few minutes’ chat with the star and write something for the following evening’s paper.

I have forgotten the gist of the chat with Gracie – who was then already famous – and all I remember of her show is part of a sketch.  In this a posh young man with a plum voice said to Gracie, I would have you know, my good woman, that my father was a baron.”

To which came the crushing retort, “What a pity your mother wasn’t.”  Any joke, however raw, against the “London tom-noddies,” was good for a laugh in Northern music halls at the that time.

Another personality I met while on that stint was Paul Robeson, he of the magnificent natural bass voice.  For one part of his show he sang the songs he made famous, and for the other part he played the emperor in a two-man scene from Eugene O’Neill’s play, “Emperor Jones.”  The audience, however, were also very much taken by his piano accompanist, named Brown.

He was so tiny compared with Paul that his feet seemed barely able to reach the pedals, but besides playing, he took part in some of the snappier songs, switching his dark face to the audience, hair on end, eyes bright as buttons and grinning with brilliant white teeth as he did so.  I thought the show should have been billed as Robeson and Brown.

On one of these occasions I committed a gaffe.  It was a variety bill.  For one of the turns a man dressed like a Cossack did a squat dance and at the same time played a version of the Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 on a trumpet.  It wasn’t musical.  I thought it was super-comic and said so in my write-up.  The paper was hardly out next day when the impressario (sic) – one of the Littlers – rang up to say that the turn wasn’t supposed to be funny; it was supposed to be marvellous!

Bradford at that time was suffering horrifically from a slump in its staple industry – wool textiles.  It was said that at one time the city had 40 millionaires.  Now, there was none.  Nevertheless, it was an interesting place and some of its sons were making names for themselves in other directions.  One was a man named Jowett.  He switched to making motor cars in one old mill.  Many old motorists will remember the Jowett saloon car that ran on a two-stroke engine.

Sir William Rothenstein was already President of the Royal Academy of Art.  Another Bradfordian, J.B. Priestley, had recently published his highly-successful novels, “Good Companions” and “Angel Pavement.”  In my opinion, however, his greatest work was still to come.  This was his series of morale-boosting Sunday evening chats over the wireless during the early part of the war.  They had an effect second only to that of Churchill.

Another was the composer, Frederick Delius.  He was living in France, but was the son of a German-born wool merchant.  Every time I walked past that big warehouse, labelled Delius and Co, in Bradford, I wondered how the composer of “Brigg Fair” and “In a Summer Garden” could have come from such surroundings.  But perhaps I should not have marvelled too much.  After all, his chief interpreter, Sir Thomas Beecham, was the son of a St. Helens pill-maker.

A contemporary of mine in the city was Vic Feather, later Lord Feather, who was the same age as myself.  I have read somewhere that part of his work with the Bradford Cooperative Society was to act as a reporter for a journal they produced.  Alas, I knew neither Vic nor the journal during the time I was in Bradford.

He was not yet going places in the outer world.

Occasionally we contacted the Bishop of Bradford, a nice man named Blunt.  You would not have thought he would ever do or say anything to rock the nation.  However, three or four years later, he happened to remark in an otherwise-ordinary sermon that he wished the king would show more interest in the church, or words to that effect.  He seemed not to have known of Edward’s relationship with Mrs Simpson.  But all the world outside Britain [k[new from their journals, and the British Press, who had so far kept quiet, took the bishop’s remark as their cue to break the story to his astonishment, but with the result we all know.

Acting as usher at the Bradford City Court and dishing-out court-lists to the Press was a rather tubby policeman with a bushy moustache.  After the war, when I saw Gilbert Harding on tv, I thought:  ”Surely that’s the chap I knew at Bradford years ago?”   I was not quite certain until I read in his biography that he had indeed served a period in the Bradford City Police, but hadn’t been very good at it.

Finally, I must mention that awesome character, Pierrepoint, the hangman – the father, not the son who succeeded him in office.  He was an object of intense curiosity for journalists, but he had long made it known that he would “say nowt,” nor did he.