I have just learnt that the 1966 episode of The Blackpool Show featuring Freddie "Parrotface" Davies at the height of his fame can be found on a newly released Blu-ray edition of The Punch and Judy Man; Tony Hancock is hosting the show, hence its inclusion.
As far as I am aware this is the first legitimate release of this programme, the only one which survives of the series; Bob Monkhouse also appears, so possibly the recording originated from his famously extensive collection.
Reasonable-quality pirate DVDs of The Blackpool Show have been available for some years but according to the Tony Hancock podcast Very Nearly an Armful a great deal of work was put into restoring The Rebel for a companion release, so here's hoping The Blackpool Show has received a bit of a boost too. (The above image is not from the new release.)
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I believe that, despite the name, The Blackpool Show was essentially a continuation of Blackpool Night Out (1964-65), only without Mike and Bernie Winters, the earlier hosts. It was recorded at the ABC Theatre, where Freddie, enjoying the early years of his fame after his 1964 breakthrough on Opportunity Knocks, was appearing every night in summer season.
Variety theatres had closed in the 1950s, but major seaside resorts still had what were in effect fixed variety bills with a major star headlining (the form later migrated to cruise ships, where it has stayed). Bob Monkhouse also appears on the show but seems a bit too wordy for the crowd; it's the psittacine one, on home ground, who makes the more audible impact (not only had he been appearing on the same stage every night but he was living in Blackpool at the time).
Compere is not a role Tony Hancock was best suited to, as several biographers have said. Nor was he comfortable with the terrain, as Freddie told me:
One thing Hancock wasn’t was Blackpool; he could never have done a summer season there. They didn’t understand him, even though he was getting sympathetic laughter. I remember him doing it and really hating it: "Bloody people up North!" – they just weren’t him.
It also has to be admitted that he was past his prime by that time anyway, and although he does a few skits (a cod Hamlet and a bit of banter with John Junkin as a hapless assistant called "Evelyn") when he says at the end of the show that this event will be referred to hereafter as "The Blackpool Incident" and that Bruce Forsyth will be taking over emceeing duties next week you don't get the impression he's joking - and indeed he wasn't.
Other acts taking part include dancer Peter Gordeno, the Rockin' Berries (a pop/comedy group) and singer Jeannie Carson (below) presenting songs from the musical Strike a Light.
According to musical-theatre.net this was
A show that ... opened to apathy at the Piccadilly Theatre in July 1966. As the striking matchgirl Sarah Chapman, Carson was vibrant and appealing, but the material was poor. In an effort to salvage it, Carson sang a number from it on Sunday Night at the London Palladium [actually The Blackpool Show, which was transmitted on July 31st], but the show had shut up shop the night before. Although there was no full cast recording, Carson put down two of her numbers in the studio, the over-wrought 'Another Love' and 'I Don't Know The Words'.
I haven't checked but as there is quite a generous sampling of songs from the show in the Blackpool broadcast I'd assume that those are both included. There had been a rival musical about the same subject, The Matchgirls, which closed only a few days before Strike a Light opened in the West End; according to the Theatricalia website "Neither musical had a successful run."
This is, in Freddie's words, "a nice bit of dated television." He didn't get a chance to see it at the time, but when I was working with him on his autobiography Funny Bones I sent him a copy of the dodgy DVD I'd obtained. This is the relevant passage in the book:
I’d forgotten how the audience used to laugh at the character all the time, as opposed to the gag: the gag was a bonus but Samuel Tweet got laughs all the way through; I’d forgotten just how strong it was at the time .... he was a very good television ‘head’: the camera could come up close and I could make full play of the eyes. Quite often I would work with two cameras, in fact, facing one without the hat, then turning to another with it, making it like a double act. But this wasn’t wise for live transmissions: they had to cut very quickly and, if they got the cutting wrong, it was terribly screwed up.
Sadly, Freddie wasn't allowed to do the version of The Sound of Music which had been wowing theatre audiences during that summer season on the TV broadcast as he was parodying the songs and the TV company couldn't get copyright clearance from the publishers. He resurrected it in 2014 for the Yorkshire book launch for Funny Bones but it's a pity that there isn't a record of the audience response in Blackpool that summer, when the film was current; Freddie told me that he'd never heard laughter like that before. In the book, he recalled its first outing before an audience at the ABC Theatre:
As I went nervously into the routine the place went wild, and I knew I was onto a winner. Each line got such a tremendous reaction right up until the end that I actually had difficulty following it with my usual act. By the time I came off stage most of the company had come down to the wings to see what was happening as they had heard the huge reaction from their dressing rooms. I had no option but to close the act with this routine from then on, which gave me a very strong finish.But the TV transmission did at least give Freddie a chance to use some material from his act which had had to be cut to accommodate the Sound of Music spoof in the summer season, and it is a good chance to see him once he was firmly established. The Opportunity Knocks performance survives too, though that was not his first TV appearance ... but to learn more you'll have to buy the book.
Incidentally, if you get the chance to see the TV show, restored or otherwises, you might be struck by the seemingly grudging introduction which Tony Hancock provides for Freddie's act, describing him simply as: "An English comedian - Freddie Davies." (Well, it's factually accurate.)
Evidence of some rivalry or bitterness? Hardly. Freddie asked him not to use the usual corny parrot-related references which others had resorted to, and there is no denying that The Lad was as good as his word ... birds of a feather and all that.
Links:
The blog post which led to my collaborating with Freddie on his book is here.
A blog dedicated to the book can be found here.
A review of the radio play Hancock's Ashes is here.
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