Harry Loman

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley. On our Desert Island this week is someone who's worked in the theatre for eighty years. He began when he was twelve and he's still working. It's Harry Lohman. Now, Hattie, you began when you were twelve, so you're what, ninety-two now?

Harry Loman0:21

I night too last December.

Presenter0:23

Yes.

Harry Loman0:24

In fact, I'm the oldest teenager in the West End.

Presenter0:27

Yeah.

Harry Loman0:29

Harry, are you alive?

Presenter0:30

Yeah.

Harry Loman0:30

Oh, yes.

Harry Loman0:32

They were born in Kennington.

Presenter0:33

Were your parents in the theatre?

Harry Loman0:35

Oh, no, no, no.

Presenter0:36

How did it start?

Harry Loman0:37

Well, my father was a steward of a club, and one of the members was a clog dancer, and he had a young brother about my age, and he taught the two of us, so we started as a double act round in clubs and concerts and all that sort of thing, and one thing led to another.

Presenter0:53

You were twelve when you'd started.

Harry Loman0:55

Oh yes, twelve years.

Presenter0:57

And then from the clubs you went into the music halls.

Harry Loman0:59

Oh, yes, yes. We went into Panama first, with both he and I, at the Elephant Castle, and from there I left there I started with the sort of a

Harry Loman1:10

a little pantomime thing called a plebs picnic. And a gentleman named Fred Carno saw me and he sent for me and booked me.

Presenter1:20

Yeah.

Harry Loman1:20

into his troops.

Presenter1:22

He was a great discoverer of comic talent. He had a lot of troops going round the hall to him.

Harry Loman1:27

Oh, yes, he did eventually, you know. When I first met him he only had two.

Harry Loman1:32

and what we call the London Troop and the Provincial Troop.

Harry Loman1:35

Rifle swed.

Presenter1:37

Charlie Chaplin, who's in one of his troops. Did you work with him?

Harry Loman1:40

Yes, I only once. I worked with Charlie in a in a show called London Suburbia. He didn't do much, he just came along there with a cube sugar box and a r a rag bottle of bone there. But the way he said it was so different to what anybody else would say it that I said to Carn, I said, You're quite quite a good boy that, mister.

Harry Loman2:00

He said, You think so? So sure of it, and I'm not a bad judge of Challenge, I'll tell you.

Presenter2:03

Yeah.

Presenter2:04

They are not.

Presenter2:06

Um was Dan Laurel with you too?

Harry Loman2:08

Oh yes, he was with us in small parts, you know. His name was Stanley Jefferson and his father was the manager of theatres up in the north, Scotland, I think it was.

Presenter2:17

What were you doing in the Carno sketches clowning?

Harry Loman2:20

Oh, yes, everything, you know, whatever's going principal parts and all kinds of parts, you know.

Harry Loman2:25

I mean, you you you had to d do what you what was given to you.

Presenter2:30

Yes. You didn't go to America with Carno?

Harry Loman2:32

No, I was offered to go, but not at the price she offered me. I eat it, you know.

Presenter2:37

Yeah.

Harry Loman2:39

Uh

Presenter2:39

How long were you with him?

Harry Loman2:40

Oh, about eight years. I finished up with him with the

Harry Loman2:43

His Majesty's guests with Fred Kitchen and Dad Rollier and people like that.

Presenter2:48

Yes. What happened when you left Connor?

Harry Loman2:51

Well, I then I took a part and went in and started a double egg.

Harry Loman2:55

We did a an audition at the Sudden Theatre with one man in the front.

Harry Loman2:59

But uh this man happened to be an agent and he g he booked us at the Campbell Empire.

Presenter3:04

Yes.

Harry Loman3:04

And from then onwards we of course win battled through.

Presenter3:07

What did you call the Act?

Harry Loman3:09

Low and lowman.

Presenter3:10

Yes. How long did you stay together?

Harry Loman3:12

Twenty-five years.

Presenter3:14

Yeah.

Harry Loman3:15

Why did it break up? Well, I think he thought he he he had a brother that told him he could do better.

Harry Loman3:21

But it didn't look as if we could do much better after twenty-five years, did it?

Presenter3:25

I wouldn't have thought so. So what happened?

Harry Loman3:27

Well, after that

Harry Loman3:29

I started being a comic instead of a straight man.

Presenter3:33

You took the funny hat.

Harry Loman3:34

I took the funny hat and the dirty hands.

Presenter3:37

Yeah.

Presenter3:39

You had a s quite a long spell with the B B C and Sound Radio, didn't you, Jane?

Harry Loman3:42

Yes, more, yes, that's five or six years easy.

Presenter3:45

Yes. What were you doing?

Harry Loman3:46

Well, I was with Ernest Longstaff, I dodging up scripts and playing in any shows that ever came along that they wanted me for.

Presenter3:54

Palace of Veratis.

Harry Loman3:56

Palace and Maradas, happy drone, uh Harmony Hall.

Harry Loman4:00

and a few more other shows and I then I did all uh Liam uh caught his all these

Harry Loman4:06

Uh all his uh Shakespeare stuff are rolled up for him.

Presenter4:10

Did you?

Harry Loman4:10

Alas, every line of it, not every couldn't he couldn't write his own name, never thought about writing a line.

Presenter4:17

When you were talking to me earlier, you mentioned

Presenter4:20

That should top the bill at Midsummer Norton, which I know is a is a little town near Bath. The whole idea of

Harry Loman4:27

Uh

Harry Loman4:27

Yes, you're right.

Presenter4:28

A town that size having a music hall nowadays seems very strange.

Harry Loman4:32

And the man that owned it was a man with a a tiger scraw on his watch chain.

Harry Loman4:37

He said he won it, he told me, and I said I suppose he if he won a copper kettle, he'd have had that angle on his chain as well.

Presenter4:43

Yeah.

Harry Loman4:45

Uh

Presenter4:45

Uh

Harry Loman4:46

And anyway, he he was very rude to us, you know, although we talked his bill. So a couple about two years after I met him in uh Norwich.

Harry Loman4:55

After we we were sharing the top of the bill with another double Widden and the fellow that wrote T for Two. And I went down into the bar and he he was there and he said, I said, You have the advantage of me. So he said, You work for me I said, Work for you where? He said, Midsummer Norton Then I told him a few home truths. And after finished, I said, Would you care to have a drink with me now I've got it off my chest? He said, Yes. So I said, Why were you so rude to us? We did well for you. He said, You did very well. But he said, You're getting too much money. Seven pound a week, less ten percent for the agent. Too much money.

Presenter5:34

But between you?

Harry Loman5:35

Yeah.

Harry Loman5:36

That's a fake.

Presenter5:36

Three pounds ten each less commission. Top of the bill.

Harry Loman5:38

Mm-hmm.

Harry Loman5:40

Marjorie, we lived at the little hotel across the road of fourteen shillings.

Presenter5:43

Yeah.

Presenter5:45

In London, of course, you could play several houses a night, several theatres the sort of.

Harry Loman5:49

Well in London? Yes. Yes. I was saying my own plate, to my knowledge, about six or seven, rushed round in a car. Of course when they first started, you know, they started with horse and land or you know. See what I mean? So'cause they couldn't get round to so many.

Presenter6:05

Which stars do you remember having worked with the with the greatest pride?

Harry Loman6:09

Well, uh I work with George Roby, uh Marie Lloyd Vesta Tilly.

Harry Loman6:16

Uh T. Dunville?

Harry Loman6:18

Mark Shelevan.

Harry Loman6:20

Charlie Whittle

Harry Loman6:22

Oh m Victoria monks, oh tons of lot more of'em.

Presenter6:26

There's a

Presenter6:27

Traveling about the the country.

Presenter6:30

A different audience every week.

Presenter6:32

Did you find the audiences varied very much the their reaction to your actor?

Harry Loman6:36

Well, they do up in the North, you know, they call the Bradford Empire the comedian's grave.

Presenter6:41

Yes.

Harry Loman6:42

This

Presenter6:43

So

Presenter6:44

They're pretty outspoken.

Harry Loman6:45

Yeah.

Presenter6:47

Did you have many rough times when there wasn't much work about it?

Harry Loman6:49

Well, I could say that I've had r very, very rough times. I've been a bit near the knuckle once or twice, you know, but nothing very serious. I consider myself to at my age to be a very lucky man.

Harry Loman7:02

I mean I said to Symbol Faundy and she said to me, You're a year older than me I said I am. She says, How do people live to be ninety? I said anybody can live to be ninety if they live long enough.

Presenter7:13

No trick to it at all.

Harry Loman7:16

Uh

Presenter7:16

Now, after your years with the BBC, you had a long spell in the United States.

Harry Loman7:20

Yes, I did.

Presenter7:21

You've done quite a lot of travelling. You were in the United States again last year, weren't you? Yes.

Harry Loman7:25

I been to I was in Spain in Spain last year.

Harry Loman7:29

And I I went six or eight months in Paris and Berlin.

Harry Loman7:33

Oh, I better argue it around a bit.

Presenter7:35

Round of busy.

Presenter7:36

When was the peak of the music hall? Before the First World War, wasn't it?

Harry Loman7:40

Oh, before the First World War, oh yes. Then of course came the musical strike which really started the the the you know, the sell out. And after that of course the the songwriters began to realize that uh writing comic songs wasn't commercial. So they started writing chorus songs and drawing royalties.

Presenter7:58

Yes.

Harry Loman7:59

So that's why the the and the comic Bein' the King Pole of Variety

Harry Loman8:03

Of course if he couldn't write his own songs he didn't get any.

Presenter8:06

Before that the comic had bought his own songs which were his property. Nobody else could work them. They were his trademark.

Harry Loman8:12

Uh

Harry Loman8:13

Oh, the comedians in those days were all individualistic, every one of them. They were each had their own different make up, and they i i if you didn't buy a programme or didn't see the number, you could tell them by their make up. That's Garcelian, that's Georg George Roeby, that's so and so.

Presenter8:29

Billy Bennett and Harry Tate and

Harry Loman8:31

Addy Tate, yes, and Addie Weldon, and you can tell em all.

Presenter8:35

And after the last war, Music Hall really took sick and died. Oh, yes, yes.

Harry Loman8:38

Oh.

Harry Loman8:40

It's the evolution of time anyway, apart from anything else. I mean, everything changes. You can't expect it to go on the old way.

Presenter8:46

We're going to the old

Presenter8:48

Now, when you came back from America twenty years or so ago, you wanted to stay in the theatre.

Harry Loman8:53

Yes, so I I walked about for quite a long while, probably six months. Then I met a friend of mine, Victor King, of Mooney and King, and he said, Why don't you take a little job?

Harry Loman9:04

Well, I said, I don't know, I said, I all right. He said, Well, I know where there's a job going to the Criterion Theatre.

Harry Loman9:11

So he introduced me to the lady that was connected then and

Harry Loman9:16

She said to the manager, He took me on, and I've been there ever since, that's eighteen years ago.

Presenter9:20

As stage doorman.

Harry Loman9:22

It is.

Presenter9:23

And you've made a lot of friends there.

Harry Loman9:24

At the theatre

Presenter9:26

Yeah.

Harry Loman9:26

Oh yes, made a quota quite a lot of friends.

Presenter9:29

Now there's talk of property developers pulling down the Criterion Theatre and putting up an office block. You're not going to let em do that, are you, Harry?

Harry Loman9:35

I'm not if I can help it. I won't. I've I've been I'd do it I'm doing all my best to help it.

Presenter9:40

It's a lovely theatre.

Harry Loman9:41

And so with our people spending a lot of money on it, because after all, they have spent a lot of money on it. I mean, they they got their own generator and cooling and heating system.

Harry Loman9:52

And and painted beautifully painted, and it's a very, very intimate theatre.

Harry Loman9:57

And with a good show they packed they packed the place to pieces.

Harry Loman10:01

So I can't see why they want to pull it down. I can I can see, but I mustn't say too much about it. I know why.