Tod Slaughter

Speaker 10:00

This is the BBC.

Speaker 10:05

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desertin and Discs. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen fifty five, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:16

Here is Todd Slaughter, who in his long career in the theatre has earned the title The King of Melodrama.

Presenter0:23

Well, Todd, how many murders do you think you have committed in your career?

Tod Slaughter0:26

Thousands and thousands and thousands. It's a bit certain. There was a glorious time when I once committed fourteen murders every every day, quite for a number of weeks.

Tod Slaughter0:35

It was when I was playing Long John Silver and Treasure Island in the afternoons.

Tod Slaughter0:39

and the crimes of Burke and Herod.

Tod Slaughter0:43

Gorgeous.

Presenter0:44

Corey.

Presenter0:45

You polished them all. I did indeed.

Presenter0:47

How did you start in the theatre? How did it all begin?

Tod Slaughter0:50

Well, very early, when I was at school, when I was nine and a half,

Tod Slaughter0:53

We always did a Shakespearean play every year and I was cost to play Sinner, a conspirator.

Tod Slaughter0:59

Julius Caesar. Just before the production at the Art Gallery Theatre, Newcastle, the boy that was playing Casca was taken ill.

Tod Slaughter1:06

As I happen to know the part

Tod Slaughter1:08

I was shoved in for it. I must have looked very funny, too, with my thin, long shanks and a pair of baggy white tights.

Presenter1:14

But the interesting thing that already at nine and a half you were playing a villain.

Tod Slaughter1:17

Yes, I'm afraid I was pretty labelled.

Tod Slaughter1:20

What was your first professional job? Then I joined the Carn Comedy Company, and believe me, comedy was the real name for it. We did four or five plays every week, and my salary was 15 shillings. How old were you, then? About 16 and a half. I never got the 15 shillings. The most I ever got was seven and ninepence. Eventually, we reached Morpeth, and the ghost didn't walk at all that weekend, so I decided that I'd walk back home to Tynemouth, where my pupil lived.

Tod Slaughter1:44

Wasn't very far, about seventeen odd miles. Quite a tidy step. Oh yes, but I timed my arrival perfectly. I arrived just in time for lunch. And after that I joined a fellow called Watson Mill, and a series of lurid melodramas, Seal of Silence.

Tod Slaughter1:58

Record of men, a warning to women, on the eve of her wedding. Eventually, of course, I got out of work like we all did, and so I joined a fit-up company.

Presenter2:07

Fit up company, that's a company that plays in in town halls and uh

Presenter2:11

school halls and so forth, that it doesn't always play proper theatre.

Tod Slaughter2:14

Oh, no, very seldom in theatres. Mostly as you say in town halls and that sort of thing. One night or two night stands. It was hard work. We had to fit up the stage and

Tod Slaughter2:23

open the doors, sell the programmes and then get on and do our bit. And often happened at the end of the show we'd nowhere to sleep, but

Tod Slaughter2:29

Landladies were very accommodating. We used to get quite a nice bed and a jolly good breakfast before we left in the morning for a shilling. Mm-hmm.

Presenter2:35

Those were the days. What sort of plays did you do in the old fit-up storage?

Tod Slaughter2:40

Of all sorts, you know. Lady Audley's Secret, East Lynn, Jim the Penman.

Tod Slaughter2:45

Bunch of violets.

Tod Slaughter2:47

If we were ever short of a play, we got hold of a bestseller and just took the dialogue out of

Tod Slaughter2:52

Maxed up puffet for ourselves.

Presenter2:54

Mm-hmm.

Tod Slaughter2:54

It was when I was on this fit up toe that I met my first acquaintance with Mariah Martin, who were due to play the Silver King.

Tod Slaughter3:00

Just before the curtain came up, the manager came rushing round and said, We can't do this play tonight. The author's agent's in front.

Tod Slaughter3:06

We'll have to do Mariah Martin.

Presenter3:07

I gather from that that the manager hadn't gone through the formality of uh asking the author's agent if he could perform the plan and arranging a fee. Good Lord, we never paid fees.

Tod Slaughter3:16

That was an unknown quantity. However, I was the only one in the company that didn't know Mariah Mountain, although I knew the story.

Presenter3:17

I don't know if

Tod Slaughter3:22

It's a non-copyright paper. Oh yes, definitely non-copyright. They were on safe ground there.

Presenter3:22

Yeah.

Presenter3:25

Yeah.

Tod Slaughter3:27

And anyway, he said to me, as long as you bring the curtain down with this speech, we'll get you through. And I learnt that speech and brought the curtain down. And that was my first introduction to Mariah Martin. But you went on to play a leading part in it without even knowing really what the play was about. Well, I had the gist of the story, but I didn't know what the others were going to say or do. But we managed all right. When I got stuck, they brought me on a letter and told me what to do.

Presenter3:48

When was it, Todd, that you started on your own in management, playing those old melodramas, Mariah Martin, Sweeney Todd, made them all famous again?

Tod Slaughter3:55

Yeah.

Tod Slaughter3:56

When I came out of the army after the First World War, I went down to the Elephant Castle. Had a wonderful three years and nine months there, doing a different drama every week, culminating, as you know, in the revival of Mariah Martin.

Tod Slaughter4:08

which achieved the distinction of running for twenty-six weeks.

Tod Slaughter4:12

Good capacity business.

Tod Slaughter4:14

It was wonderful.

Tod Slaughter4:16

Everybody wanted to come and see it.

Tod Slaughter4:18

Especially the pros, where we couldn't get them in, so we ran a midnight batony for them. That was great fun.

Tod Slaughter4:24

Especially for Sam, kept the coffee stall outside. He told me the next morning he'd taken seventeen pounds after the Matney, and coffee and sandwiches.

Presenter4:31

Mm-hmm.

Tod Slaughter4:32

Yeah. and naively suggested that I ran a midnight matinee every week for his benefit.

Presenter4:36

Yeah.

Tod Slaughter4:37

Amongst the audience that came down there was Edgar Wallace. He had booked a box but came and asked me before the show if I could get him four seats in the front row of the gallery. Of course the place was packed. I went up and put the proposition to my audience. They were very friendly and

Tod Slaughter4:51

Four people got up immediately.

Tod Slaughter4:53

And he said, Well, you can have my box in exchange and I said

Tod Slaughter4:56

Blamy Governor, would we look funny in a box we would we'll stand at the back.

Tod Slaughter5:00

And after the show, Wallace told me why he'd asked for this. He said

Tod Slaughter5:04

Years before, when he was a newspaper boy, selling papers outside the Elephant Castle,

Tod Slaughter5:08

He always used his first tuppence to go in the front row of the gallery and see each of the current weeks

Presenter5:13

Subtraction.

Tod Slaughter5:13

Yeah.

Presenter5:14

That was investment that paid dividends because he wrote some cracking good melodramas himself. Much of he did, didn't he?

Speaker 15:21

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