Elisabeth Welch

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a singer. At the age of fourteen, she defied her father and forsook the pleasures of the local church choir in Manhattan for a career on the stage. It's a career that's lasted more than sixty years and made her the toast of Paris, London and New York. She's made famous such songs as Love for Sale, Solomon and Stormy Weather in cabaret musicals and one woman shows. She's acted in film and stage plays too.

Presenter0:55

Exotic in looks, precise and polished in her musical phrasing, she can, at the age of eighty one, look back on a life in which new audiences have always come to love her as the old ones died away. She is Elizabeth Welsh. Elizabeth, that makes you sound something like a survivor, anyway. Is that how you feel? A veteran, as they put it sometimes, which really ages you.

Elisabeth Welch1:13

Is that how you feel?

Presenter1:18

But it's amazing, the people that you've known, uh the list is very impressive, isn't it? From Picasso and Cocteau to to uh Paul Robeson and Noel Coward and

Presenter1:26

Do you do you feel as if they were all of another age, or are they still very much part of the age?

Elisabeth Welch1:30

Oh no, they're part of me, they're part of me. My life is all one sort of thing.

Presenter1:34

Do you sometimes feel you're the only one?

Elisabeth Welch1:36

One of them left, as it were. Well, I d with a laugh. I mean, I don't do it seriously. I like to laugh at everything. I mean, even at my age, everybody says, Well, why do you tell them? I said, Well, everybody knows. You can't lie, unfortunately.

Presenter1:49

So age is kind of irrelevant to you.

Elisabeth Welch1:51

Absolutely.

Presenter1:52

Wh why? Why doesn't it bother you?

Elisabeth Welch1:54

I I don't know, it never has. I was always older from the age of sort of fourteen, fifteen when I was sort of a young girl.

Elisabeth Welch2:01

Coming up I was um already doing social work with the children, you see, and so I and they all s everybody thought I was three and four years older, and I used to pretend I was as well, you see.

Presenter2:12

So what kind of music are you going to take to this desert island with you? What would you like to surround yourself with when you're all alone?

Elisabeth Welch2:18

Oh, mostly with um singers that I know.

Elisabeth Welch2:22

personally, and those that I love and don't know.

Elisabeth Welch2:26

All of which bring back happy memories for me. So what's the first one?

Elisabeth Welch2:31

The first one is going to be Elaine Stritch singing Broadway Baby.

Presenter2:37

And why do you want that?

Elisabeth Welch2:38

Because I love her noise and I'm sure she'll uh

Elisabeth Welch2:42

She'll rouse me and perhaps rouse a passing ship, and maybe I'll be rescued.

Elisabeth Welch2:47

I'm just a broadway baby.

Elisabeth Welch2:55

Walking off my tired feet

Speaker 12:56

My child

Elisabeth Welch3:00

Pound in Forty Second Street

Elisabeth Welch3:05

To be in a show.

Elisabeth Welch3:12

Runway, baby!

Elisabeth Welch3:18

Learning how to sing and dance.

Presenter3:21

Elaine Stritch singing Broadway Baby from Stephen Sondyme's Follies. That'll rouse em up. Have you sung that one, Elizabeth?

Elisabeth Welch3:28

No, I haven't. Who could follow that, for goodness sakes? Not quite your type of song. Well, yeah, I'd love to sing it, but it'd be different. But no, no, no, no. I'm not going to fight that.

Presenter3:32

And it's so

Elisabeth Welch3:38

What what do you look for? What have you always looked for in a song? What's important to you? A lyric you read first and then you read the music. And if the lyric and the music are lovely, then it's a song for me.

Presenter3:46

And the music

Presenter3:49

What would you class then as as the best lyrics ever written? What are your favourite pieces?

Elisabeth Welch3:53

Well, I mean, over the years I've sung too many. But I I like uh I like my composers. I like Colport of course. I like uh Rogers and Hart. I like uh Gershwin and Jerome Kern.

Speaker 14:02

Yeah.

Presenter4:02

Jesus and Hawkins.

Elisabeth Welch4:06

I mean, how can you fail if you've got any of those?

Presenter4:06

I mean how

Elisabeth Welch4:08

You haven't mentioned Irving Berlin, but I think it's a very good thing

Elisabeth Welch4:12

I hope you'll forgive me.

Elisabeth Welch4:14

Of course he's very important in my life. He gave you your big break. He well he did, his his mention.

Presenter4:16

Is game.

Elisabeth Welch4:20

did that for me going into the New Yorkers where I sang Love for Sale.

Presenter4:24

How did that come about? That was, what, nineteen thirty.

Elisabeth Welch4:27

That was nineteen thirty one, actually. I was singing in Cabra in New York. And um, Peggy Hopkins Joyce nobody's old enough to remember her except me, but she was a a great lady of soci uh well, not society, she made her own society, but she married about

Elisabeth Welch4:43

eight or nine millionaires and she was very, very famous for that. And she used to come into our club and uh she brought me a song one n night and said, uh, There's a Broadway show coming in, Elizabeth, uh and this song is in it. I think you should learn it and uh it it sounds like you, you see. So it was love for sale. So I learned it and by the time the show opened I started singing it.

Elisabeth Welch5:03

And then a fortnight after the show opened or so, these three men came in just as we were getting re ready to go home, about half past two in the morning.

Elisabeth Welch5:13

And they called me back uh and said get the boys on the stand, there were only five of us anyhow and I sang Love for Sale for them and they turned out to be raggetts.

Elisabeth Welch5:22

Ray Goetz was the producer of the show of The New Yorkers, in which the song was, and uh and Monty Woolley, who directed it, and and the other guy was Irving Berlin, you see.

Speaker 15:22

Regardless.

Elisabeth Welch5:33

So they c they came to the club, as I said, and heard me singing it. And you sang it as a kind of tragic song, did you? Well, that's what I feel it as, because I'm on their side, you see. Well, not now, perhaps, because everybody but in those days I used to know them all in Paris.

Speaker 15:38

Well, that's what I

Speaker 15:42

Prove or not

Elisabeth Welch5:47

Uh, they had children that they were putting through school and all that sort of thing and one doesn't know about that, you see.

Presenter5:52

But why did they have to change all the sets on that show for you to be able to sing it?

Elisabeth Welch5:58

changed the sets. That was the silly thing about the whole thing, because they were worried about if we bring this girl in who's colored, you see, and and and the other child was blonde and pink, you see, how are we going to present her? And and of course there was a great conference, I believe, for about eight days. How are we going to bring in this colored girl singing Love for Sale?

Elisabeth Welch6:18

And the scene was just a a front cloth curtain in in in a dark sort of set with a lovely moonlight glow to it. And it had a sign uh Madison Avenue, which is the Chic Avenue in New York. And in the center of the stage was a canopy with a commissioner standing outside with his red coat and all his badges and things. And so all they did was they took that out and they changed the name of Madison Avenue to Lennox Avenue, where the Cotton Club was. The canopy had a na French name on it, like Club Marseillaise or something, and they changed that to the Cotton Club.

Presenter6:52

And was that because they didn't think they could have a a black prostitute on Madsen Avenue?

Elisabeth Welch6:55

That's an event. On Madison Avenue, absolutely, yes. And also they were covering me as well'cause'cause she wouldn't have been. But you could have found that a bit offensive. I could have, but I didn't think of it that way,'cause I knew they didn't. But they were worried about an audience, you see.

Elisabeth Welch7:09

And anyway, it cemented your friendship with what

Presenter7:11

Nothing but

Elisabeth Welch7:12

Uh

Presenter7:12

Berlin and Colepaude couldn't have met two better men. Absolutely.

Elisabeth Welch7:12

And you couldn't have met two better men.

Presenter7:16

Absolutely.

Elisabeth Welch7:17

The f

Presenter7:17

Shall we have your second record there?

Elisabeth Welch7:17

Should we have

Elisabeth Welch7:19

Well, now it's uh away from all that and we've come to London'cause I'm going to have Cleo Lane and John Dankworth Cleo singing April in Paris. Why do you want that? Well, because I I've known Cleo and John since nineteen sixty two and I just love her singing.

Elisabeth Welch7:36

But uh not all of her sort of Buddha buddha ba dabba baba baba baba thing. I like her just singing.

Speaker 27:43

April in Paris

Speaker 27:47

Chestnuts in blossom

Speaker 27:51

Holiday tables under the tree

Speaker 27:59

Take ruling barriers.

Speaker 28:03

This is a feeling no one can ever

Speaker 28:14

His eye never knew the charm of spring, never met it face to face.

Speaker 28:23

I never knew my heart could sing, Never missed a warm embrace, Till April in Paris

Speaker 28:34

Whom can I run to?

Presenter8:37

Cliolain with John Dankworth on clarinet and April in Paris.

Speaker 28:37

Okay.

Presenter8:41

Let's go back, Elizabeth, to the very beginning, to the early part of this century, in New York, on West Sixty third Street. Tell me what life was like there.

Elisabeth Welch8:50

Oh, well, I grew up there. I loved it. I I was a very busy little person because I was teaching Sunday school kids when I was about

Elisabeth Welch8:59

Ten or eleven.

Elisabeth Welch9:01

And they were about six and seven.

Elisabeth Welch9:04

and I was feeling very grown up. And then I used to do little shows. I realize now, only in the last two or three years when people are after me about my past,

Elisabeth Welch9:14

that I remember all these things that and I I must have been born with with the the desire to be in show business because I used to I used to do productions in our little settlement next door to the church, you see. I'm a an Episcopalian, as we say in America.

Presenter9:29

And your mother was white and your father was black.

Elisabeth Welch9:30

My mother's yes.

Elisabeth Welch9:33

Well, he was mi he was mixed uh Negro and and American Indian.

Presenter9:37

And and your mother was a speciality.

Elisabeth Welch9:38

What got me?

Presenter9:39

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch9:39

What?

Presenter9:40

Is that quite

Elisabeth Welch9:40

Rare then, that makes sense.

Presenter9:41

Exactly.

Presenter9:47

And it was quite a religious household, as you say, I mean, with this connection with the church and the

Elisabeth Welch9:51

Well, yes, my father was Baptist. I mean, that's why he hated me, because his quote was.

Elisabeth Welch9:58

Girly I was called girly at home. Girlies on the boards.

Elisabeth Welch10:03

She's lost.

Elisabeth Welch10:07

'Cause he was Baptist. I mean, in those days, I mean, nobody went in the States. He he he thought that they were just old women.

Presenter10:13

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch10:14

That's sold in you know, the usual old Victorian type of

Presenter10:17

Well he thought it was akin to prostitution. Well, of course. And and didn't it cause the break up of your parents?

Elisabeth Welch10:22

It did did in the end, yes.

Presenter10:22

It did.

Presenter10:23

Bye.

Elisabeth Welch10:24

Well, because he couldn't take it.

Elisabeth Welch10:26

He didn't you see, my father didn't live home. He he lived

Elisabeth Welch10:30

in Jersey. We were brought up in New York because he was a a head gardener and coachman for an enormous estate, you know. And uh is that as a matter of fact, that was where my mother met where they met because she was a a assistant nanny. That's how she came from from Leith in Edinburgh. But she was all for your career on the stage. Was she encouraging? Well, she wasn't encouraging, but I knew that she I that she liked and she's told me, you know, after we g grew up when she could tell me that uh

Presenter10:49

Currently

Elisabeth Welch10:57

She was quite pleased because she wanted me to sing.

Elisabeth Welch11:01

Let's have your third record.

Elisabeth Welch11:03

Well, now I want to hear

Elisabeth Welch11:04

My old friend Mabel Mercer.

Elisabeth Welch11:07

Singing one of my favorites, I even sing it myself, called Little Girl Blue.

Elisabeth Welch11:12

I'll need that when I get a little

Elisabeth Welch11:14

upset or something for soothing.

Speaker 211:22

Sit there and count your fingers.

Speaker 211:26

What can you do?

Speaker 211:29

All girl, you're through.

Speaker 211:34

Sit there and count your little fingers.

Elisabeth Welch11:34

There

Speaker 211:40

Unlucky little girl

Presenter11:45

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch11:45

Mabel Mercer singing Little Girl Blue. She she was a friend, was she? Oh, a great, great friend of mine. She was one of the first people I met when I went to Paris in nineteen twenty nine.

Presenter11:46

She she

Elisabeth Welch11:53

But she was British, of course. Oh, yes, she was born here, near Manchester. We used to laugh and and say that she became a big thing in New York, you see, and uh well, I didn't say I was a big thing, but I became popular here in in England.

Presenter12:06

Because it was when you were nineteen or twenty, I think, that you went to Paris first of all, didn't you? And you were in cabaret there, yes?

Elisabeth Welch12:13

No, no, I went over with Blackbirds, actually, first. You see, it was called the Blackbirds Lou Leslie's Blackbirds of nineteen twenty eight.

Elisabeth Welch12:21

And I was in the choir, which is the way I got into show business, through the choir, being in the choir and the church, and it didn't shock them so much, you see, when they heard, Oh, Elizabeth's in the choir you see And what did Elizabeth think of Paris when she got there? Oh, I adored it, absolutely adored it. Uh, I lived near the Moulin Rouge, where we were playing, you see. And uh I got to learn how to drink properly, of course. I was drinking port at that time, you see,'cause I didn't dare drink spirits.

Elisabeth Welch12:49

And um and one made friends. That's how I made friends with a lot of the um girls of the street,'cause you meet them in the bars and they were so nice, you know.

Elisabeth Welch12:59

You started singing in a restaurant, didn't you?

Elisabeth Welch13:02

No, it was a night club. It was run by a most marvellous person called Moise, and he used to say, Elizabeth, you said, you must call me your grandmamma.

Elisabeth Welch13:15

And he I adored him and he adored me, and he was the one that gave me my first job from being in the Blackbirds. And I sang at his original place called the Berfseurtoire, which became, of course, a very, very famous boat. It was very chic. Was it?

Presenter13:31

It's very chic.

Elisabeth Welch13:34

Designed by Jean Cocteau.

Presenter13:35

That is

Elisabeth Welch13:38

What did it look like? Well, it was just a little room, but he designed the marble entrance and he had this bull on the roof, you see, and just the berfsilitoire. It was a mad thing, but I mean

Presenter13:39

Not that nerfs and

Elisabeth Welch13:51

Cocktail was mad i in a wonderful way, you see. And you so you used to sing to them while they dined? I started singing there i i at the cocktail hour. And that was very fashionable in then in the tw late twenties and early thirties, you see. And uh everybody sort of went to some place for for for a cocktail, you see, and all the grand people came there.

Presenter14:09

And all the

Elisabeth Welch14:11

Uh

Presenter14:11

Who else? Who came?

Elisabeth Welch14:11

Well, Gertrude Stein, th that that ilk, what we would call here the Bloomsbury set. There were all the writers, the intellectuals, the philosophers, theatre people and all that sort of thing. Picasso.

Elisabeth Welch14:23

Picasso, that's of course where I met him, yes. Did you mix with them as well as singing to them? Well, occasionally you sat at a table with them, because you'd become Elisabette, you know, uh'cause Moore used to say my daughter, my granddaughter.

Elisabeth Welch14:38

to bring me on, you see. It was obviously a wonderful time, isn't it? Absolutely. Except when you're in it, you don't realize how marvellous it is. It's it's it's only afterwards that you realize you've been in a wonderful era.

Presenter14:49

And an awful long way from West Sixty third.

Elisabeth Welch14:51

Amen.

Presenter14:51

Uh

Elisabeth Welch14:51

Yeah.

Presenter14:55

Some more music, I think.

Elisabeth Welch14:57

Well now, uh

Elisabeth Welch14:59

Dear Beatrice Lilly, an old friend of mine, she's like the others, gone.

Elisabeth Welch15:06

We were talking about Mabel, Mabel's gone and now here comes B. Anyhow, B, I want to s I wanted to sing um that wonderful, marvellous party that she went to.

Speaker 115:16

Dear Cecil arrived wearing armor, some shells and a black feathered boa.

Speaker 115:22

Poor Millicent wore the surrealist comb, made of Vince of Mosaic from St. Peter's in Rome. But the weight was so great that she had to go home.

Speaker 115:33

Wouldn't have liked it more.

Presenter15:38

Beatrice Lilly singing Noel Card's A Marvellous Party. Do you know all the words?

Elisabeth Welch15:42

Not not all.

Presenter15:44

But you march around singing it, I should think. Occasionally, yes. So you'd been a what a hit in New York and in Paris by the age of twenty four and and you arrived then in London. I think that was nineteen thirty three. That's right. And you've been here ever since?

Elisabeth Welch15:55

That's right.

Elisabeth Welch15:57

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:57

Uh

Elisabeth Welch15:57

Hmm.

Presenter15:57

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch15:58

I had already signed in Paris to do Nympherent for Cochrane, Charles B. Cochrane, but that wasn't until August rehearsals, you see. And so then they they asked me uh a group were coming over from Paris to do a a review at the Leicester Square Theatre, which then was a musical theatre, dear old Jack Buchanan's theatre it was, and he lived up at the top. And w we did a a review there called Dark Doings and I had to ask Cochrane's permission'cause I'd signed to come later. And he said, Where is it for, Elizabeth? and I said, It's at the Leicester Square Theatre and it's a four shows a day review. Oh, he said that's nothing to do with the West End. Of course you can

Elisabeth Welch16:35

That was the one that was stormy weather was.

Presenter16:36

Stormy weather.

Elisabeth Welch16:37

Right, that's where I

Presenter16:37

I'd introduce Sony Weather. That's right, yes. But there are not many women who could claim that Cole Porter wrote a song for them.

Elisabeth Welch16:47

Oh, well, Goethe well, he wrote the whole show for Goethe, you see, and he'd known about me

Elisabeth Welch16:52

'Cause I didn't know him when I was singing Love for Sale in New York, but I met him when I came to Paris'cause he asked to see me. And so then a year later when he was writing the show for Goethe,

Elisabeth Welch17:03

He had a Harim scene in it, and he called me up and said, Would I come and see him? He had an idea for a song and so he wrote that for me. So the it followed from Love for Sale, really. But that was the one that stopped the show, wasn't it? Well, yeah.

Presenter17:12

But

Elisabeth Welch17:16

I'm not to say that.

Presenter17:16

Well, I can say that. I mean, one one critic wrote, and I've got it written down here, she bawled a number which stopped the show.

Elisabeth Welch17:17

No

Elisabeth Welch17:25

That was James Agerton in the Sunday Times. As a matter of fact, I was livid because he said she bawled. I don't bawl, I sing. Of course I did bawl. But he meant it as a camp. Well, I know it would.

Elisabeth Welch17:37

But you are

Presenter17:37

Yeah.

Presenter17:39

You upstaged Gertrude Lawrence just to wean him in.

Elisabeth Welch17:41

No, not really, no.

Presenter17:42

But then stormy weather, um, which you say came around that time. I mean, you had a hit with that a second time around about ten years ago, didn't you?

Elisabeth Welch17:50

Of course, Ymin and and Derek Jahman's film The Tempest. Oh yes, we had a lot of fun doing that.

Presenter17:55

But but it won you a whole new audience, didn't it?

Elisabeth Welch17:57

Yes, it did, because uh well, a film extends. I mean, you don't just sit in the West End.

Presenter18:03

But uh do you take note of the age range of your audiences? I mean you do actually go on appealing to younger generations, don't you?

Elisabeth Welch18:11

I suppose uh the joy of some of the joys of my life is when I sing s I'm singing some place and people come back to see some of your old friends, but but most of them these youngsters who j didn't know names and didn't know titles and didn't know songs, didn't know even the the composers, and uh it sometimes makes makes me cry because uh it's it's so emotionally overwhelming, you know, that these youngsters sort of sixteen, seventeen, up to twenty, and sort of uh adoring you and you can't but feel it, you know.

Presenter18:41

Record number five.

Elisabeth Welch18:44

Now I must have Mary Ellis and remind me of Ivan Novella in Glamorous Night.

Elisabeth Welch18:51

Singing, waking and sleeping. That'd be lovely.

Speaker 118:57

Sing my

Speaker 119:09

Heaven will be a mile of shallow.

Presenter19:19

Mary Ellis singing Waking and Sleeping from Ivanovello's Glamorous Nights. You knew Paul Robeson, I think, in the thirties, didn't you?

Elisabeth Welch19:26

Oh, yes.

Presenter19:27

How did you two get it?

Elisabeth Welch19:28

Oh, wonderfully. I I had absolutely adored him. I I first met him

Elisabeth Welch19:33

when uh they called me up from the studios in Abbey Road and said would I come out and sing a song with Paul Robeson? And I said, what do you mean? Uh they said well, he's doing a s a record session and there's one that needs a a woman's voice in it and uh and uh could you come out this afternoon?

Elisabeth Welch19:52

And that's how I met Paul. And they said, Elizabeth Welsh, this is Paul Robinson, this is Elizabeth Welsh, she's going to sing Are Still Suits Me, which was one of Jerome Kern's songs that he'd stuck in one of the about two or three different films of Showboat. And Paul said it'll be quite all right. But I must tell you, first of all, as I came into the studio, we had never met. And he said, Oh, my dear, you see, and hugged me and almost killed me because it was like a great big bear, you know, he didn't realize it. And immediately there was rapport, and I adored him, absolutely adored him. Did he ever attempt to politicize you? Oh, indeed. That was when we were doing the film, you see, the Song of Freedom. It was during the summer. And we used to sit out at lunch on the lawn and chat.

Elisabeth Welch20:39

And of course

Speaker 120:40

What's the

Elisabeth Welch20:41

His son was in um Moscow, being schooled there. He was about eight or nine, ten years old.

Elisabeth Welch20:48

And he started talking about the sun and so forth. And then he said to me one day, he said, Elizabeth, why don't you stand up for your people?

Elisabeth Welch20:57

You're a name, and you could do I said, What people, Paul? I got too many people. I've got

Elisabeth Welch21:01

Negro and American Indian, Scots and Irish so which ones you see? It was only a get out, you see. He roared with laughter, and we never mentioned it again.

Presenter21:10

But I wonder why you didn't feel that. I mean, you'd come from a b a poor black community. I mean, didn't you feel that you could

Elisabeth Welch21:15

No, I came from a poor black community, but it was like Soho. I mean, we were mixed. The biggest amount of people there were Irish. The second amount were Italians. And the third amount were the Negroes, you see. And then we mixed up the Swiss and the Germans and everything else. And it was a marvellous neighborhood. I never felt that I was different than anybody else. I refused.

Presenter21:15

No, I can't.

Elisabeth Welch21:37

Maybe.

Elisabeth Welch21:38

Yeah.

Presenter21:38

What you had in those years that we're talking about and indeed still have, Elizabeth, is an ability to communicate very quickly with your audience. I mean, g give you a spotlight and a sympathetic pianist and you can walk on and

Presenter21:51

Communicate very easily. Is is that the magic for you? Is that what you love?

Elisabeth Welch21:51

Communicate vis

Elisabeth Welch21:55

Well, everybody always asks me that. I I don't know, because I stand in the wings absolutely shivering.

Elisabeth Welch22:01

And until I walk into that spot, then I know I belong to the those who are there, and I just give them what I've got, that's all.

Presenter22:08

Do you still today, when you go out on the stage, do you still feel that uh that magic, that that thrill of communica

Elisabeth Welch22:15

I go on nervous. There's no doubt about that. I mean, I know that. But as soon as I start singing, you feel.

Elisabeth Welch22:22

You feel warmth, you feel friendliness, you feel that's what you feel, and that's how you can go on.

Elisabeth Welch22:28

And when you go off and and you you go get a nice applause.

Elisabeth Welch22:32

It's a thing you feel you've done y i i it was your job to do, and you've been accepted and and thanked.

Elisabeth Welch22:41

Some more music.

Elisabeth Welch22:44

Now, let's see. Oh, ha ha I gotta have Peggy Lee.

Elisabeth Welch22:48

'Cause I've adored her for years. I love her singing.

Elisabeth Welch22:52

And this is a rather tricky one. Don't smoke in bed.

Elisabeth Welch22:58

I must say if I had a match I wouldn't bother about smoking in bed, I'd b bother about signalling to get a ship to come get me off this island.

Speaker 223:06

Dawah

Speaker 223:17

Get ahead.

Speaker 223:22

Remember, darling

Speaker 223:28

Don't s

Presenter23:29

Smooth

Presenter23:32

In bed

Presenter23:37

Peggy Lee singing Don't Smoke in Bed

Presenter23:40

What do you sing to yourself, Elizabeth, as you tootle around the house? What sort of music do you find yourself humming?

Elisabeth Welch23:45

Well, I'm al always humming or whistling.

Elisabeth Welch23:47

It could be a hymn.

Elisabeth Welch23:49

I can sing a song from the 20s. I can sing a song from today.

Elisabeth Welch23:54

It's mostly a hum and an occasional phrase. And a whistle. And a whistle, of course, you see, which my father hated, because he used to say.

Elisabeth Welch24:02

A whistling girl and a crowing hen

Elisabeth Welch24:05

Never comes to a good end, but Hen and En didn't r rhyme, but that was his spiel.

Presenter24:11

If how

Elisabeth Welch24:12

Have you

Presenter24:12

Got a

Elisabeth Welch24:12

The rule.

Presenter24:12

Uh

Elisabeth Welch24:12

Uh

Presenter24:12

Mm

Elisabeth Welch24:12

Okay. Well memory for lyrics.

Elisabeth Welch24:15

Amazing. The the the the older they are, the better I remember them. It's the newer ones that I forget.

Presenter24:21

We have this image of you um meandering along the beach on the desert islands singing a bit of Gershwin or a church anthem. But I do want to be risky.

Elisabeth Welch24:30

Dude, and I will hate it.

Presenter24:31

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch24:31

Being on that island. But you live alone, don't you? I mean, you're good at that. You obviously adore company

Presenter24:34

I love being a lady.

Presenter24:40

Do you enjoy a night on the town still? Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch24:43

Oh, sure. Okay. I don't go to cabarets and things like that too for that. I go to friends, you know, for

Elisabeth Welch24:48

Dinner sounds like a knife.

Presenter24:49

You're a nightbird.

Elisabeth Welch24:50

I am indeed. I've had trouble my mother had trouble with me all my life. I mean, I wouldn't wake up in the morning to go to school. She used to have to put a

Presenter24:50

Tie it.

Elisabeth Welch24:58

a cold uh face cloth on me sometimes to get me up. And then of course I wouldn't go to bed at night.

Presenter24:59

Dub

Presenter25:04

And is that still true today?

Elisabeth Welch25:05

Indeed.

Presenter25:08

Number seven. What's that?

Elisabeth Welch25:10

Well, I adore this number. I've had it since he ever produced it. It's only on a 45 record, but it's called.

Elisabeth Welch25:17

Where do you go to, my lovely? And it's Peter Sawstead.

Speaker 225:22

Nowhere you go to my lovely

Speaker 225:26

When you're alone in your bed

Speaker 225:31

I know the thoughts that surround you.

Speaker 225:34

Cause I can look inside your head.

Speaker 225:48

Man

Presenter25:53

Peter Sarsted, and where do you go to, my lovely? I suppose you never stole a painting from Picasso, leaving.

Elisabeth Welch25:57

No.

Presenter25:59

Would that I had right. Cabaret and one woman shows and so on. What what's now in your professional diary?

Elisabeth Welch26:07

And so on.

Elisabeth Welch26:09

Yeah.

Presenter26:10

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch26:10

Uh very little, which I'm I'm I'm not unhappy about because I it keeps my nerves from s flaring up, so I'm calm at this time because I haven't I'm not gonna do anything particularly until

Elisabeth Welch26:24

Next year.

Presenter26:24

Yeah.

Presenter26:25

But you don't run out of steam patiently. Is there is there any one moment i in your long career what, sixty five years or more on the stage or in cabaret is there one moment that you would single out that was most memorable for you?

Elisabeth Welch26:41

I do think that that meeting with the

Elisabeth Welch26:44

Berlin and and Goetz and um

Elisabeth Welch26:48

and uh Monty Monty Monty Woolley.

Elisabeth Welch26:53

was an important time in my life.

Presenter26:56

That was the turning point, really, of it all.

Elisabeth Welch26:59

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Elisabeth Welch27:02

because I was floating at that time and and I've I've never looked ahead and I've never

Elisabeth Welch27:08

People don't believe me, but I swear to goodness it's true. I've never looked ahead or wanted to be or I've admired people, but I've never wanted to be like them.

Elisabeth Welch27:18

Have you ever married, Elizabeth? Yes, I was married when I was on my eighteenth birthday.

Elisabeth Welch27:23

against everybody's will, and it lasted until I was eighteen and five months.

Elisabeth Welch27:32

And my mother and father well, my my father had gone by then, but my mother was very pleased, and so was everybody, including the p priest that married me. Quite pleased that it broke up?

Presenter27:42

And you've never married again? No, thank you.

Elisabeth Welch27:44

Yeah.

Presenter27:44

But you must

Elisabeth Welch27:45

We've had a few offers.

Presenter27:45

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch27:46

Oh, I have, I know, but I mean, uh, we get over that.

Elisabeth Welch27:50

What you just say now?

Elisabeth Welch27:52

in a nicer way than just saying no.

Presenter27:56

Well, now, let's have a look. Before we get to your your last record, I mean, you've you've paid tribute to to Sondheim.

Presenter28:02

in this programme and to to Peter Sarster just now. I mean, i is there anyone else, do you think, writing today who could rival those great songwriters of your time?

Elisabeth Welch28:12

That's a tricky question because I don't think there is.

Presenter28:13

Because

Elisabeth Welch28:16

There are people, uh there must be, but uh I don't want to make enemies.

Presenter28:22

I wonder why they came in such bulk in your time, Louis.

Elisabeth Welch28:25

Wasn't it extraordinary, yes. I often think that I wonder why.

Presenter28:25

Wasn't it extraordinary, yes.

Elisabeth Welch28:29

And I don't know. It must have been part of the times, except this is an exciting time to except it's an it's not so uh

Elisabeth Welch28:39

We're not so

Presenter28:39

We're not so settled now.

Elisabeth Welch28:40

I think

Presenter28:41

Yeah.

Presenter28:42

But what do you think was their inspiration? Why then?

Elisabeth Welch28:45

Hmm.

Presenter28:45

Uh

Elisabeth Welch28:46

I don't know. I've often wondered myself why they they were born at that time, all these people, the Berlins and the

Elisabeth Welch28:54

And Rogers and Hart, I mean

Elisabeth Welch28:58

Rogers is after

Elisabeth Welch29:00

Hart died comes Hammerstein, you know. I mean, it it it was fantastic. And the Gershwins. And the Gershwins and the Cole, uh no uh the noble coward, I mean.

Presenter29:06

And the game

Elisabeth Welch29:10

You know, it's it's it's phenomenal. It's amazing, absolutely amazing. And stuff that's still.

Presenter29:12

Nominal.

Elisabeth Welch29:15

being produced

Elisabeth Welch29:17

day after day after day and unappreciated by audiences. So your favorite of all of them, you said, was Cole Porter? Well, it had to be because he was nearest to me, really. And what about your all-time favorite singer?

Elisabeth Welch29:30

I don't ever dare say who is my favorite except maybe I should say Frank Sinatra, let's face it.

Presenter29:36

Should you?

Presenter29:39

And you couldn't go to your desert island without him?

Elisabeth Welch29:41

Not indeed. That that would be the one I would take for me if I had to take one. It would and particularly the singing.

Elisabeth Welch29:49

But just one of those things, you know.

Presenter29:51

which is cold porter.

Elisabeth Welch29:52

Yes, again, you see, you see, you see. And also I hope that this this saga of the island will be just one of those things.

Elisabeth Welch30:00

That our love affair was too hot not to cool down.

Speaker 130:09

Yeah.

Elisabeth Welch30:09

So goodbye, dear.

Elisabeth Welch30:14

Dumb bird.

Speaker 230:16

Yeah.

Speaker 230:17

Here's hoping we'll meet now and then

Speaker 230:22

It was great fun.

Speaker 230:26

But it was just one of those things.

Presenter30:30

Uh

Presenter30:32

Oh bless them.

Presenter30:34

Frank Sonata, singing cold water is just one of those things. So that's the uh the top of your eight. The that's the one you take with you, isn't it? Now, what about a book?

Elisabeth Welch30:41

Indeed.

Presenter30:44

What sort of book would you like to take with you?

Elisabeth Welch30:46

Yeah, I don't know how long I'm gonna be on this island, so I'd like to take uh

Elisabeth Welch30:49

Who's who in the theatre?

Presenter30:51

But

Elisabeth Welch30:52

What are you going to do with who's who and the? Well, you flip through it and then and you say, Oh, there's so-and-so and you remember them and you read about them and you think of times you've either known them or been with them or not known them and seen them and that sort of thing. It's full of interest. It's a Bible. I'm c well, you already have, of course, and you've got a Bible.

Presenter31:10

Yeah, but the complete works of Shakespeare as well. I'm sure I'm not supposed to let you have some kind of reference book, but I shall.

Elisabeth Welch31:15

So, yeah.

Speaker 131:16

Uh

Presenter31:17

I shall say yes. Thank you.

Elisabeth Welch31:18

Thank you.

Speaker 131:19

I say

Elisabeth Welch31:19

Uh

Presenter31:20

And and a luxury, what should that be?

Elisabeth Welch31:22

I take my m mamma's photograph with me.

Elisabeth Welch31:26

'Cause I talk to her a lot.

Elisabeth Welch31:28

TM? Yes.

Elisabeth Welch31:29

What did you talk to her about? Anything.

Elisabeth Welch31:32

Everything.

Elisabeth Welch31:34

I just look at it and talk.

Elisabeth Welch31:35

What was her name? Elizabeth.

Elisabeth Welch31:39

With an S, that's why we're an S. How long ago did she die? Oh, she's been she died in

Elisabeth Welch31:44

fifty four.

Elisabeth Welch31:46

But you still keep her photograph with you? Oh, right. Al always travel with it. And it's just by my bed. And I talk to her every evening before I go every night every morning rather before

Presenter31:53

Every night

Elisabeth Welch31:56

Before you go to sleep.

Presenter31:57

This leaves

Elisabeth Welch32:00

'Cause I like to feel her around.

Presenter32:03

Elizabeth Welsh, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 232:14

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.