Anna Russell

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy.

Anna Russell0:07

Boy Plumley

Presenter0:08

Miss Rossell, although you come to us from the United States, you were born in this country.

Anna Russell0:11

He has.

Presenter0:12

Where?

Anna Russell0:12

As you very well know, having known me in those days.

Presenter0:17

I didn't know where you were born.

Anna Russell0:18

As born and made of fail

Anna Russell0:20

Was there any precedent in your family for music in the theatre? Um well my father's family were were very good musicians. As a matter of fact my father's aunt who brought him up was the great pal of Adelina Patti and father used to be yanked off to some castle she had in Wales in his youth and there was great singings and goings on.

Presenter0:41

And a professional musician.

Anna Russell0:42

No, he was a very good pianist, but he felt all ladies should take to music.

Presenter0:47

Yeah.

Anna Russell0:48

So now

Presenter0:48

Uh Why you began to take an interest in it.

Anna Russell0:51

Yes, I was never very musical or much of a lady, but I had to do it. I used to play the double bass in the school orchestra, and I was I practised that for ages and I was terribly good on the double bass at the water music. Although actually what I really wanted to do was play the clarinet, but father said it wasn't ladylike to blow, I must scrape.

Presenter1:03

Lo a

Presenter1:09

When did you decide that music was to be your career?

Anna Russell1:12

Well, I didn't decide it. Father did. Sent with Royal College of Music to learn to be a teacher.

Anna Russell1:18

What subjects did you take? I took piano and composition.

Anna Russell1:22

What was your first professional engagement?

Anna Russell1:25

As a matter of fact, my first professional engagement was in the bowels of the B B C, where we are at this present, being a folk singer. I did a a recital of Spanish folk songs to start with. I was always folk singing down there in the mid particularly in the middle of the night, those empire jobs, you know.

Presenter1:39

Yeah, it's wrong.

Anna Russell1:44

All the Spanish folk songs? Well, no, not always. Sometimes I did Spanish, sometimes English, and uh

Anna Russell1:50

In fact, I have had very much the same format for that as I do for what I do now. I used to talk a little bit about the background and history and then do them.

Presenter1:58

Yes.

Anna Russell1:59

What other jobs will

Presenter1:59

Yeah.

Anna Russell2:01

Well, that was all. That was all. Yes.

Presenter2:03

Then what was the next step after that?

Anna Russell2:05

What after after folks singing? Well, then I went to Canada.

Anna Russell2:08

Why? Well, because my father died and and my mother's a Canadian and being only daughter, I mother said, Come, dear, and I went and I was mother's little helper.

Presenter2:17

Yes.

Anna Russell2:17

until the war started.

Presenter2:19

So you went to Canada with your mother. Were there more musical opportunities there?

Anna Russell2:24

Um

Anna Russell2:26

Not not really and unt until the the troop show thinks that at the beginning of the war.

Presenter2:32

Yeah.

Anna Russell2:32

What did you do? Well, the local Rotary Club thought it'd be a fearfully good idea if the junior league girls were made into an all-girl troop show.

Anna Russell2:42

And so that was done, and most of them wanted to be gorgeous and glamorous and

Anna Russell2:48

Fan, you know, fascinating. And they said some of you plainer ones have got to be the comics, and I was one of them. What did you do?

Presenter2:54

What

Anna Russell2:55

Well, uh we got the thing organised and then it was a question of getting the material and it isn't so I used to sit down and write comic songs.

Anna Russell3:03

for the troop show and sing them myself, all done up in fright wigs and false moustaches and things like that.

Presenter3:09

Things like that. Change from Spanish folk song, and then what? What did that lead to?

Anna Russell3:14

Well, that led to uh nothing much but

Anna Russell3:18

Because of that I became an interviewer for CBC. In fact, I was doing very much the same thing as you're doing now. And the troop show was just sort of um

Anna Russell3:28

war work, you see. But when the war ended the Rotary Club said, Come and entertain our ladies tonight and I said, I can't because there's no troop show and they said, Well, you come and do your pieces and we'll pay you And I thought, Ooh, lovely money And so I was I turned out to be the the club date queen of Toronto and my club date money was transcending my CBC money to such an extent I thought, Well, I think I'll quit the interview and stick to the comic turn and see where it goes

Presenter3:54

Yes. When did you first start your musical burlesque?

Anna Russell3:58

Um, well, I was on a programme called Round the Marble Art.

Anna Russell4:03

in Toronto was old music hall songs. And when we'd scraped the bottom of the barrel from the old ones, I thought I'm sure I could write one myself as good as those. And I came out with a number called Don Bonzo Alfonso the Torreador. Spanish songs again.

Presenter4:17

Spanish soup songs again.

Anna Russell4:18

Yeah, absolutely.

Presenter4:21

And then

Anna Russell4:21

Uh

Presenter4:21

You worked with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Anna Russell4:23

Yes, uh they used to have this um comic symphony concert every Christmas, and that's when I first did the talk on the ring with um illustrations by the orchestra.

Anna Russell4:35

And as a matter of fact I told the first horn when he played the Sea Creed horn call to split the top note because I had a gag to follow it, and he didn't. He played it perfectly, and I was furious

Presenter4:46

Well gradually you accumulated the material for a full evening. You wrote your own Gilbert and Sullivan opera, your own art songs and leader and folk songs and pop songs and everything.

Anna Russell4:57

Yes.

Presenter4:58

What was your first big success with that kind of entertaining?

Anna Russell5:01

Well, I did quite well in Canada and and then all the Canadian Federation of Music teachers would have me go to their towns to do a show, probably to show their pupils what not to do.

Presenter5:13

Yeah.

Anna Russell5:13

And then from then I went to New York and my first thing I did in New York, I played Lady Bracknell and the importance of being earnest on craft television theatre. Street acting. Yes.

Anna Russell5:23

And, um, since there wasn't a great deal of that in those days, I collected my bits and pieces and did a town hall concert.

Anna Russell5:31

I started to tour.

Presenter5:32

Coast to coast and then where?

Anna Russell5:35

And then I went to Australia and South Africa and uh

Presenter5:38

And you came?

Anna Russell5:38

Back here. And I came back here in nineteen fifty four.

Presenter5:41

And you filled the Albert Hall in the f

Anna Russell5:42

Now I started in the new Watergate Theatre, as a matter of fact.

Presenter5:42

That's not

Anna Russell5:46

Because I thought I'd go back to the theatre, because I might have come out of that, you could get into the theatre.

Presenter5:46

Yeah.

Anna Russell5:51

But you see, the next year I went to the Edinburgh Festival. I was the first comic turn within the festival, and I was right back in the music business again. Yes.

Presenter6:01

Uh

Anna Russell6:01

Uh

Presenter6:01

This must be a very exhausting life, a a full evening on your own, in which you do everything from singing Brunhilde to playing bagpipes and then flying on the next morning to another town.

Anna Russell6:10

Well, it's really no more exhausting than sitting in the wings waiting for your cue,'cause you've got to pay attention anyway, so you might as well be doing something.

Presenter6:18

Miss Russell, although most of your time is devoted to performing such operatic gems as the mad scene from Anemia and the seduction scene from La Gorgonzola, you have still made occasional appearances in real opera. I was thinking of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, for instance.

Anna Russell6:31

Oh yes. Well that's that's my one operatic row.

Presenter6:35

Now it may be in my imagination, but some of your burlesques seem recognisable take offs of artists known to us. Have you had any complaints about this?

Anna Russell6:44

I have, as a matter of fact, had a terrible complaint for years from one artist.

Anna Russell6:49

But uh actually the artist I was taking off was somebody quite different. I actually did have an artist in mind, but not that one. This particular one I've never heard to this day, but she still carries on about it.

Presenter6:56

This particular one, I've never

Presenter7:01

Yeah.

Presenter7:02

You seem to i inspire extreme reactions of of love or hate in your audiences or in the press. I've been looking through some cuttings and I found raves like the funniest woman in the world and real cold water notices like the one calling you a Philistine rabble-rouser. But you never get a non-committal notice.

Anna Russell7:21

Mm-hmm. Oh no.

Presenter7:24

What section of the community would you say is

Presenter7:26

Quote, you're public unquote.

Anna Russell7:29

Well it's rather hard to say because people have remarked a great deal how very peculiar my audiences are. They range from elderly clergymen to beatnecks and teenagers and polite ladies and all sorts of things. Yeah.

Presenter7:43

In the true tradition of the Prima Donna you have announced a number of farewell appearances, but I trust you have no intention of retiring.

Anna Russell7:50

No, as a matter of fact, I did announce the farewell appearance, and I went into a play, which turned out to be a most frightful flop.

Presenter7:56

Mm-hmm.

Anna Russell7:57

So uh inste so the play didn't come into London, so I did.

Presenter8:01

You took the player's place in the theatre.

Anna Russell8:02

It sort of ban evermore came out of that same doorway and I went. I said, this keeps happening.

Presenter8:08

Huh.