If you saw the recent documentary about Freddie Davies on Talking Pictures TV you will have caught a glimpse of his grandfather, the comedian Jack Herbert, walking past a theatre and standing in the auditorium. When I was working with Freddie on his autobiography it was assumed that the theatre was the Argyle, Birkenhead, then derelict; there had been no reason to question this as the source was Jack's half-brother John, who had filled in a great deal of background for the book. The footage of Jack had come from a 1969 documentary about Sid Field, with whom Jack had worked, but as far as I recall there was nothing in it to confirm that the theatre was indeed the Argyle.
Seeing the recent TPTV broadcast, I was reminded that there had been a street name by the side of the theatre, and a quick search of social media put it beyond doubt that the venue was actually in Barrow in Furness. The Sid Field documentary was shown in 1969 and presumably made around then; I'm not certain, but possibly Her Majesty's had also become derelict by that time, which would explain how the mistake occurred.
There is another minor mystery which I haven't yet been able to solve. The Sid Field documentary was shown in two parts but when I obtained a screener for research purposes the DVD only seemed to contain the second programme - or maybe even just a rough assembly.
Nevertheless, there is a review in The Stage which reviews the first programme and makes the point - which could certainly apply to the second part - that as there is so little film of Field around it was a case of bricks without straw, using shots of railway timetables, etc., to pad it out. (A more recent programme about Field presented by David Suchet, who had played the comedian onstage, suffered from the same, perhaps unavoidable, fault, with a particularly pointless scene with Suchet in the chip shop where Field might have celebrated his marriage with a glass of Tizer.)
So it may well be that there was nothing of any import in the missing Field programme. But the good news is that Freddie's grandad is prominently featured in the follow-up - and having been first transmitted in the days before video records and catch-up, Freddie had never seen it before, so it was an emotional moment for him. It also included testimony from others that Jack had been a major influence on Sid, who had been his feed in one of the 1920s Clara Coverdale revues, long before his belated national fame. It's interesting, however, to see how Jack treats the interviewer's suggestion that Field pinched his mannerisms for his own act: although he seems to brush it off, laughing, he seems to be providing a demonstration of those mannerisms as he does so.
Freddie told me about fifteen years ago that Jack and his partner Ruth had been extras in A Journey for Jeremy, a 1940s film short about a little boy who literally dreams about being a train driver on the Glasgow to London route. I tried at the time to obtain a copy of this film but the one person who seemed to be in possession of a copy, occasionally giving talks with it and other railway-related films to audiences, made it clear that for all my talk about the sentimental associations for Freddie there was no possibility of his making a copy ... maybe he thought I was intending to set up a rival series of train talks.
Anyway, there the matter was left ... until a happy discovery a couple of days ago.
Not expecting anything new, I made yet another of my periodic searches for the film's title online and this time discovered that there was a complete version viewable online on the Huntley Film Archives website, albeit without sound; Jack, and his partner Ruth Beaumont, are glimpsed getting off the train when it finally arrives at a still-arched Euston. The visual quality isn't all that great - it's from a 16mm film - but I was glad that I could let Freddie know about; he'd last seen it many years before in the cinema, as a supporting feature.
You can find out more about Jack Herbert in the book what I cowrote. There is a blog devoted to it here.
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