Carleton Hobbs

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This download is the only extract the B B C has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley. I was born in Farnborough, near Aldershot.

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which is the home of soldiers and everything my whole life was

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Surrounded by soldiers, I read books about soldiers, I played with soldiers, and those were the days of full dress uniforms, when everything, in the words of a colonel of mine later, was all swish and swank and feathers and rigoletto.

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My great ambition was to go into the Royal Artillery. Did you come from a military family? Yes, I did. I was the fourth generation.

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And uh I went into the Royal Artillery in the summer of nineteen eighteen, went straight out to France. Mhm. Hobo, you were a professional soldier. How did the theatre come into your life?

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Well, I think the theatre began to come into my life about the middle of the 1418 war.

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I had not done any acting at all up to that time, but I suddenly discovered the theatre in London.

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I think

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Absolutely the first thing that thrilled me was a review called Bric-A-Brac.

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And the second, very shortly afterwards, was the Bing Boys, with George Roby, who was my absolute hero as a comedian, and Violet Lorraine.

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That was the start, and I think I I discovered how much I was terrifically stage-struck from then on.

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I did do a certain amount of concert party work, starting as a cadet at Woolwich and

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Later in France and indeed um during the short period that I was in the army stationed in England. But it were those two shows. Those two shows in particular, yes. What did you do about this new ambition?

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What else to do that?

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There's two sides of

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Well, nothing immediately. Um just after the war I I did quite a lot of concert party work, but my sights were by that time set very firmly on being an actor and I'd met Edmund Gwen,

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during the war who'd been extremely kind to me and I pested him quite a lot.

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and eventually confessed that I wanted to go on the stage. He did his very utmost to dissuade me, telling me of the

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great pitfalls, the unemployment, but

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Really saw I was determined he

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Said, well, if you must go on the stage, you've got to learn your business, you'd better go to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Which was doubtless a little different from the Royal Military Academy, would it? Just a little. Anyway, I'd rather you collected the coveted Bancroft Medal. What was your first professional appearance? London Life at Drury Lane. A melodrama, wasn't it? Yes, by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knobloch. Did you have a good part?

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Oh, dear me, no, I was one of eighty or more who were walking on.

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Vast company

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In fact, uh for some years afterwards if you met any anybody and you said, Now, where did we meet? Oh, it must have been in London life.

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What happened afterwards? The usual round of reptory companies and tours and so on? Uh not to start with, not uh touring in those days. I was uh lucky enough to be in London most of the time. Hm. From those early years, which engagements do you like to remember particularly?

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Well, I remember one very particularly, and that was

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when I was sent by Charles MacDonough to see Bernard Shaw.

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And I had no idea what I was going to see him about. I was merely told to go and see him.

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And I presented myself.

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And uh

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He began to talk to me, and presently his wife came in, also began to talk.

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And then she left the room, and I still hadn't an idea what the play was, or what the part was, or anything, so I plucked up my courage to ask him

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what the play was that I was going to be in. And he said, Oh, dear me, didn't mister Macdonough tell you they're going to revive that dreadful old play of mine, misses Warren's Profession? I said, Oh, I've seen it. He said, Oh, you have? Well, now tell me, what did you think of it?

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I said, candidly, mister Shaw, he said, yes, I want to know. I said, well

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Honestly, didn't think very much of it. He said, Well, there you are, you see. As Napoleon said when he heard of Trafalgar, I can't be everywhere.

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Nevertheless, it came about.

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Nevertheless it came with that.

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You went on tour with Sybil Thorndyke, too, I remember.

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and played in one musical, or at least one musical.

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Yes, the following year I was with Gracie Fields and the show's The Thing.

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And what else do I remember you in that very long running success of the thirties, Men in White?

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Yes, and before that uh the opening of the Westminster Theatre, The Anatomist, Henri Ende.

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Hubbard, when did you make your first broadcast?

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The first of October 1925. Mm-hmm.

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You were one of the original members of the BBC Repertory Company. Yes, I was.

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This was an emergency measure that had been decided on some time before war broke out. Yes, but a year before.

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So you weren't told where the place was or what was.

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No, it

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and uh it was up to us to get there the best way we could, avoiding the railways which were reserved for the children, and if you didn't have a a car, it was quite a problem.

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I went to war in a taxi with my cat.

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And what did you find when you got to the secret destination? Well, having passed through what was literally known as the Golden Gates and pitch darkness in the drive, we arrived at a a very comic hut. And the night after our arrival,

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We were put to work to act as pickets and the place was festooned with tripwires which rang little bells all over the place. They were very odd days those days and very odd notices appeared on the board like the Immortal One which said in the event of an air raid staff will disperse to the woods in pairs and lie down. What an excellent suggestion.

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The Repertory Company was more or less the whole of broadcasting for some weeks at the beginning of the war. Yes, I think it was.

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And apart from the drama side, of course, very many listeners will remember you in the in the immortal Itmah.

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Yes, that came in

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In nineteen forty-five, I think it was. And Sherlock Holmes would never be the same without you.

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Now which are your own favorites, looking back on this long career in sound radio, which which are your own list of highlights?

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Well I think

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One part that I have always remembered is Jaronimo and the Spanish Tragedy.

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Another one was

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Perhaps that villainous character Stephen Shoen in uh one of uh Henry Reid's series, beginning with a very great man indeed, and

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More recently, Socrates.

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Have you any one particular big ambition in either radio, theatre, or whatever?

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Well in radio

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And theatre and or theatre?

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It will be the next path that comes along, provided it's a good one.