Felbridge & District History Group

Theatricals of Felbridge, Pt. 3.  Raymond Duparc aka Ray Parks, Terence O’Brien, Leah Bateman aka Leah Bateman-Hunter and Ruth Spalding

 

The definition of the term ‘theatrical’ is: ‘of, for or relating to acting, actors or the theatre’ and it is with this definition of the word that the following document recants the biographies of some of the theatricals that have made Felbridge their home at some point during their lives. 

One of the most active theatricals that had connections with Felbridge was Harry Herd who was better known as the ‘Handcuff King’ and later performed as Harry Lorraine, the stunt-man, silent film actor and film producer who made over forty films, two of which that were actually filmed in Felbridge.  Born in 1885, Harry was an active theatrical on both stage and in the film industry from the early 1900’s until the early 1940’s [for further information see Handout, Harry Heard, Harry Herd, Harry Lorraine, SJC 11/09]. 

The Handout on Harry Lorraine Handout was followed by a series of Handouts called Theatricals of Felbridge.  The first in this series covered the lives of Hilary Allen, Coralie Harrington, Ivan Kotchinsky and Mademoiselle Du Boisson and the Macdonald Twins [for further information see Handout, Theatricals of Felbridge, SJC 11/12].  The second in the series, Theatricals of Felbridge Pt. 2, covers the lives of Margaret Norcross, Molly O’Day, Melanie Parr and Ronald Shiner [for further information see Handout, Theatricals of Felbridge Pt. 2, SJC 11/16].

This Handout, the third in the series of Theatricals of Felbridge, covers the lives of Raymond Duparc aka Ray Parks, Terence O’Brien, Leah Bateman aka Leah Bateman-Hunter and Ruth Spalding, all people whose chosen careers were ‘of, for or relating to acting, actors or the theatre’.

Raymond Duparc aka Ray Parks

Raymond Duparc was born Raymond Leonard Parks on 19^th April 1925, at Upper Thruxted Farm near Canterbury in Kent; he was the only son of Leonard William Parks and his wife Rose Emily née Gain. 

The Parks family had originated from Knipton in Leicestershire, where grandfather, Ebenezer Thomas Parks (son of Edlin and Eliza Parks) worked as a woodsman.  By 1891, a year after the birth of Leonard William, Ebenezer was working as the Postmaster and corn-monger at Bottesford in Leicestershire; the Parks family living at the Post Office.  By 1901, the Parks family had moved to St Pancras where Ebenezer was working as a railway clerk before moving, by 1911, to Penny Pot Lane, Waltham, Canterbury where he and his two sons, Frank Thomas Edlin and Leonard William farmed Upper Thruxted Farm.  Sometime between 1911 and early 1914, Leonard William Parks made the decision to leave Britain and start a new life in Australia.  He found employment farming for a Mr Wilson in a town called Dalwallinu (154 miles from Perth) Western Australia; the region being known for its wheat production.  In early 1914, whilst in Australia, Leonard had an accident (falling from a horse according to family information) resulting in damage to his spine and with the out-break of World War I shortly after the accident, he decided to return to Britain (not wanting to join the Australian Army according to family information), he arrived at the Port of London on 7^th November 1914, on board the SS Otway. 

From Leonard’s surviving military medical records it is possible to track Leonard’s war service.  Back in Britain, Leonard enlisted as Private, no.1388 with 2/1^st Kent Cyclist Battalion, on 21^st November 1914 and was then transferred to the 1^st Kent Cyclist Battalion.  The 1^st Kent Cyclist Battalion, based in Canterbury, had been mobilised on the out-break of World War I.  During 1915 the Battalion served on coastal defences along the south coast between Swale and Rye, attached to the 57^th (2^nd West Lancashire) Division.  In December 1915, the 1^st Kent Cyclist Battalion left the Division and moved to Chiseldon near Swindon in Wiltshire, being joined by three more cyclist battalions: the 2/6^th (Cyclist) Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, the 1/9^th (Cyclist) Battalion, Hampshire Regiment and the 1/25^th (Cyclist) Battalion, London Regiment.  The four Battalions were then converted to infantry and formed a Brigade, which sailed for India on 8^th February 1916, landing at Bombay on 3^rd March 1916, being assigned to Southern Brigade, 9^th (Secunderabad) Division at Bangalore. 

Leonard was not one of those who sailed in February 1916 but remained in England and on 26^th August 1916, married Rose Emily Gain at St Mary’s, Chilham, Kent, although they quickly found that their married life would be put on hold until May 1919.  Rose had been born on 6^th June 1894, the daughter of Thomas and Emily Gain of Chilham, Kent, and the younger sister of Mabel Annie Gain who had already married Leonard’s brother Frank on 24^th April 1915.    

In December 1916, Leonard embarked for India where he served until June 1918.  However, in June 1917, Leonard caught malaria, with recurring bouts every three months, and began to suffer from the spinal injury he had sustained earlier in civilian life, being treated at four hospitals in India before being transported back to Britain to be treated at the BristolWarHospital.  In June 1918, Leonard was posted as Private no.265606 to the 4^th (Reserve) RW Kent Regiment and on 16^th October 1918 as Private no.665942 to the 572^nd Agricultural Company, Labour Corps, later being transferred to the 437^th Agricultural Company, Labour Corps, the Company Leonard was with at the date of his military medical assessment for disembodiment from service on 2^nd May 1919.  The Military Board decided that Leonard’s service had aggravated his spinal condition and as such he was awarded a pension of 5s 6d for 52 weeks, the length of time they felt it would take for his disability to have lessened.  At the date of his disembodiment, Leonard’s contact address was given as Godmersham Common Farm, Canterbury, although in 1918 his wife Rose had been living at Mill Crossing, Chilham near Canterbury (home of her parents); it is not yet clear whether Rose had moved by 1919 or whether it was just Leonard living and working at Godmersham Common Farm in 1919.  However, with World War I behind him, Leonard could now return to civilian life, albeit with some degree of disability. 

In 1920, Leonard and Rose were living with his parents at Upper Thruxted Farm, Waltham, near Canterbury; Leonard working as a farmer.  On 1^st September 1920, Leonard and Rose had their first child, Gwendolen (known as Gwen), followed five years later by son Raymond Leonard Parks; the Parks family having by then moved to the village of Bridge near Canterbury.  Sometime between 1925 and 1929, Leonard and his family moved to Addlestone in Surrey, where Gwen and Raymond attended St Paul’s School.  In 1929, Leonard’s parents were also living in Addlestone at 160, Station Road, from where his father, Ebenezer Thomas Parks died on 7^th April 1929.  It is not known whether this was the catalyst, but by early 1930 Leonard Parks and his family, along with his brother Frank and his family, had moved to Heather Way on the east side of Woodcock Hill in Felbridge; Leonard to a bungalow called Silver Birches and Frank to a bungalow called Nirvana.  Here the two brothers farmed the land between Heather Way and the lake at Wiremill, which was part arable and part free range chickens, although in later life much of the land was gradually sold off and what was left became all poultry. 

Now settled in Felbridge, Raymond Parks (along with his sister Gwen) entered FelbridgeSchool on 5^th May 1930, where he was educated until 27^th July 1937.  In September 1937, at the age of 12, Raymond went to the EastGrinsteadCountyGrammar School.  However, Raymond admits that he hated school and often played truant but was caught one day by Charles Foort, the son of one of the workers helping out on their farm.  To Raymond’s surprise, his parents were not angry and said that if he was so unhappy at school did he want to leave.  So at the age of 14 Raymond’s school days ended.  Initially he worked with the Lingfield Gas Company but was suddenly ‘whisked off’ to live with his father’s sister - Aunt May, in Harrow, where he went to work at the Kodak processing plant, which was the first in Britain. 

In April 1943, Raymond was eligible for war service so he volunteered to join the Royal Air Force where he served as aircrew on Lancaster bombers during World War II.  A family photograph of Raymond shows him in his dress uniform displaying his RAF Sargeant Slide (3 white ‘V’ shaped stripes on a navy background) on his sleeves and his aircrew brevet (or badge) on the left breast.  The brevet features a white initial ‘S’ flanked by a brown wreath, alongside a single white wing, indicating that Raymond was a qualified Signaller with aircrew.  A Signaller in the RAF was a person trained to communicate between the aircraft, its base and units in the area of operation, usually by radio.  In the photograph Raymond also wears an RAF side cap with a white band indicating that he had been selected to undertake flight/pilot training.  Raymond recants that he was part of a ‘marvellous crew’ and that ‘the day the atomic bomb was dropped [6^th August 1945], was the worst day ever for our crew, we were disbanded, it was like the death of five brothers.  I was transferred to Transport Command, flying everywhere with a VIP squadron in Sunderland aircraft.  My job was looking after paying passengers’, so you could say he was one of the first Air Stewards’.

With the end of World War II on 2^nd September 1945, came mass demobilisation of the.  Those eligible were released by ‘age-and-service number’, which, as the phrase suggests, was calculated from their age and the months they had served in uniform.  Based on the fact that Raymond was not eligible to serve until April 1943, had only served a maximum of two years with the RAF and would have been one of the youngest, he was one of the last to demobilise.  It is known that he was still considered as ‘serving’ in October 1946 when he (and his sister Gwen) appear in the Service Register of the Electoral Roll.  On eventual discharge from the RAF, Raymond returned to work at Kodak.

Raymond takes up the story: ‘After flying everywhere I found myself claustrophobic because my duty [at Kodak] was being shut up in a dark room developing photos all the time.  Then I saw the manager and told him a lie, that my father needed me on the farm!’  The company tried to persuade Raymond to stay telling him that they had ear-marked him to become lecturer in a new colour process, but his mind was made up and he left and returned home to Silver Birches.  On returning home Raymond was a frequent visitor to the Wiremill Country Club, too frequently for his mother’s liking who encouraged him to find a hobby, perhaps one related to the fact that he was ‘always singing about the place’.  Living back at Silver Birches, Raymond, then known as Ray Parks, received a lot of encouragement from two former theatricals then living in Felbridge, Coralie Bardwell (stage name Coralie Harrington) [for further information see Handout, Theatricals of Felbridge, SJC 11/12] and Norah Young (stage name Molly O’Day) [for further information see Handout, Theatricals of Felbridge, Pt. 2, SJC 11/16], who both saw he had potential and suggested that Raymond taking singing lessons from a School Master who had studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.  He agreed to take Raymond on, so once a week Raymond would travel to Haywards Heath to study with him.  Eventually the School Master said ‘Ray I can’t teach you anymore, I think you should take it up professionally.  I would like three people to hear you sing and see what they think’.  They all said ‘You must do it professionally’, so Raymond decided to train as a singer, enrolling at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, which, at the time, was located in John Carpenter Street, London (moving to the Barbican in 1977).

The Guildhall School of Music & Drama offered (and still does) training in music, acting and technical theatre and it’s alumni include such actors as Honor Blackman, Orlando Bloom, Daniel Craig, Peter Cushing, Michelle Dockery, Lily James, Cyril Fletcher, Edward Fox, Damian Lewis, Dudley Moore, Simon Russell Beale and Molly Sugden and such singers as jazz-singer Jacqui Dankworth, singer-song writer Peter Skellern and bass-baritone Bryn Terfel.  Memories of former Felbridge residents that knew or heard Raymond, all state that he had a ‘good singing voice’, being billed as a baritone in later promotional material.

Raymond’s singing master from Haywards Heath recommended that he should have Walter Hyde as his Tutor at the Guildhall.  Unfortunately, Walter Hyde took an instant dislike to Raymond, resulting in Raymond receiving a letter at the end of the term informing him that his grant had been cancelled.  On return to the second term, Raymond went to see Walter Hyde to discuss the situation and was informed by him that he would ‘never make a singer’.  Shocked by the statement it was not long before another Tutor called John [surname not given] heard about the story and asked Raymond to sing just one song to him and he would give a truthful answer as to whether Walter Hyde was correct or not.  Raymond sang a piece by Handel called Where ere you walk.  Raymond takes up the story: ‘When I finished he jumped up, threw the music across the room and said “This is stupid”, I will see him [Walter Hyde] and tell your Tutor I am going to take you on as my pupil from now on”’.  Despite his standing in the world of music, Walter Hyde very nearly ended Raymond’s singing career before it had begun.

An early stage appearance, possibly whilst at the GuildhallSchool of Music & Drama, was in the play The Provoked Wife, in March 1950 at the Arts Theatre Club in Westminster, London, where Raymond played one of the man servants.  However, the first  review so far found (in the Crawley and District Observer, dated 9^th June 1950) makes reference to a performance by Raymond, performing as ‘Ray Parks’, in a Revue alongside Coralie Bardwell and Norah Young:

Sugar and Spice’ was a triumph

I went to a most delightful entertainment on Friday at the Felbridge Institute (writes a contributor). It took the form of a revue, “Sugar and Spice” – an inspired title. It was well conceived and carried out and reflected the greatest credit on everyone both in front of and behind the curtain.

The revue opened with a very effective concerted number by the company, and was followed by 19 items, well contrasted and performed.

The singing was very good, and in fact some of it was of a very high quality. Molly Pentecost and Ray Parks gave us some lovely songs, especially “Ma Curly Headed Babby” and “The Only One for Me” – a particularly charming song.

The little dancer, Pip Tattersfieild, was the very spirit of youth and grace, her fragility of figure and air of pre-occupation with the meaning of her dances being enchanting.

All the comedy sketches were Excellent and most amusing. I liked in particular “The Sow’s Ear”, and I can hardly wait to be told how to turn my geese into swans as Coralie Bardwell promised us!

“Other People’s Babies” I thought quite delightful, with a real touch of pathos coming from the heart of the eternal “nannie” who never sees her little charges grow up, and who suffers a tearing of her heartstrings each time she has to leave her nurslings, and never having the consolation of a baby of her own.

Verve and swing

“Splashington-on-Sea” had a verve and swing to it that was wonderful and made a fine finish to the first half.

“The Three Old Maids of Lee” was really charming and so well performed. The dresses of this were really very pretty and clever. “Dear Eliza” was given a most original and effective performance.

The company were very fortunate in having two such exceptionally good leaders as Coralie Bardwell and Norah Young. The latter has the true dash of the West End musical comedy stage and she carried her audience with her in all she did. I liked her sketch, “Medley”.

Coralie Bardwell has the great gift of endearing herself to her audience, and her versatility is remarkable. The sketch “Matinee” with herself and Norah Young was devastatingly true to life. Her “Mrs Twiceover” was equally devastating in a completely different style.

I should like to mention everyone, but there would not be room. Special thanks are due to all the clever people who devised the dresses, and the décor, the stage managers, and the pianist who performed a noble task. The production was remarkable for its slickness.

 

Another early mention of Raymond Parks, can be found in the The Stage, dated Thursday, 26th July 1951, in an advertisement for ‘The Gaieties’ (billed in a later edition of The Stage as ‘a Concert Party for all occasions’) presented by Walter Barker and George Ellis at the Pier Pavilion, St Annes-on-Sea, Lancashire, in August 1951.  The show featured: George Barker (singer), Ida Willis (soprano singer), Violet Plowman (West End actress, singer and dancer), Patricia Coe (actress), Tony Bowles (no further information), Pat & Rita (dancers, daughters of concert party organiser and musician Bert Cobb), Raymond Parks, George Ellis (actor) and Walter Barker (comic actor and entertainer).

From family information, Raymond won the Principle’s Prize for his performance as Dr. Flake in ‘Die Fledermaus’ whilst at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama; his training nearing completion in 1953 as indicated in a local newspaper article:

FAMOUS COMEDIAN SIGNS

A STAR OF THE FUTURE

AT THE ‘OBSERVER’

 

A contract which may be the beginning of a successful stage career for a local young music student was handed over at the “Observer” office on Saturday.

Presenting it to Mr. Raymond Parks, of Woodcock Hill, Felbridge, was famous comedian Cyril Fletcher, complete with that well-known smile, who lives at Newbridge Mill, Colemans Hatch.

He chose Mr. Parks to play one of the three male singers in his pantomime “Mother Goose”, which opens at the Grand Theatre, Croydon, on Boxing Day.

The fact that the young baritone lives in Felbridge was a complete coincidence.

Mr. Fletcher studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, with the intention of being a straight actor – “East Grinstead people know the result!” he added – and every year, when his pantomimes are being cast, that is where he and his wife, Betty Astell, go to look for talent.

They usually book some of the star pupils, those who have finished or are just finishing their musical training.

“This year”, said Mr. Fletcher, “we were fortunate to book Raymond Parks, who is an excellent baritone”.

When, at the audition, he asked Mr. Parks for details of himself, he found – “to my amazement and delight” – that his home was at Felbridge, where he has been living since the age of five.

Mr. Parks has sung in East Grinstead several times, and been received enthusiastically.  “Observer” reporter once described him as the town’s most promising singer.

The pantomime – last year’s Croydon show broke the theatre’s box office records – has been written and composed, as usual, by Miss Astell.

“Mother Goose” will be played by Mr. Fletcher, and the daughter by his wife.

“So it is another case of ‘husband is wife’s mother’,” said Mr. Fletcher.

 

Having left the Guildhall School Raymond found the transition to professional career daunting, wondering what he should do.  He takes up the story: ‘I was fortunate enough to be auditioned for the romantic baritone lead in Lilac Time (Baron von Shober) and I got the part.  After the tremendous cost of keeping a grown man for four years with nothing coming in, it was gratifying to me that my parents saw the result of their generosity, living long enough to see me in many productions.  After my mum died [1961], my father didn’t give up on following me.  He always hired cars to see me perform.  When I got the Baritone lead as Baron von Schober, I performed in all the major cities, which set me up and I have never looked back, except the time when the producers decided to have actors who couldn’t sing rather than singers who couldn’t act!

When pantomime season came around, a friend said to me “Why don’t you audition and ask them if they can take you also as an actor”.  They said: “We can’t promise that”.  Then I met Hazel Vincent at Leatherhead Repertory Theatre.  When I sang for her she said: “Lovely Darling” and offered me a part.  I repeated the phrase “Now that you say I can do the pantomime, will you also allow me to stay and do acting roles as well?” and she replied, “All I can say Darling, if you don’t do the pantomime for me, you won’t work here will you?!?”  This was one of the most important things that happened to me because when not in a major musical, she allowed me to work there, learning how to do everything from farce to Shakespeare’.

 

In the early 1950’s and up until 1959, Raymond performed under the names of Ray Parks or Raymond Parks, appearing on stage as both a singer and an actor, in musicals and straight plays, in the West End and on Provincial Tours, with some of the leading British Repertory Companies of the time.  From 1957, alongside stage performances, Raymond also began to appear on television, one of his first roles being that of Mr Parsons in episode 1 of the ITV series Emergency Ward 10; this led to appearances as a singer on several BBC musical series and further acting parts in television series such as The Big Pull (a BBC production, 1962) and The Larkins (an ATV production, 1964), and a film called North West Confidential (1968), directed by John Brown.  However, in 1959 Raymond was forced to change his name because under Equity rules there can be only one actor with the same name and they had discovered another actor who had been using the name Ray Parks prior to Raymond.  Raymond was rather annoyed at having to change his name, especially as he liked the name Ray Parks.  Raymond met with his agent to discuss another name, he said ‘we went through many, then I remembered a great uncle of mine had the family ancestry looked up.  We had come from a Huguenot background who after years of persecution by the Catholics, fled to England.  As a sort of joke I said maybe I should call myself Duparc!  She shouted, “That’s it!”  I sent a letter to the local paper so that I didn’t have to keep repeating myself’.  Thus from May 1959, Raymond permanently adopted the stage name Raymond Duparc (occasionally written, early on in this part of his career, as Raymond Du Parc). 

In 1961, Raymond was again making headlines at the start of the pantomime season when he was engaged for the role of Robin Hood in Babes in the Wood at the Grand Opera House, Belfast.  The Belfast Telegraph reported that the role of ‘Principal Boy’, which had traditionally been played by ‘glamorous girls striding across the stage in a variety of beautiful costumes’ was to be played by a ‘young man’ as was ‘the trend in England’.  This ‘young man’ was no other than ‘27-year old Raymond Duparc’.  The article continued: ‘Thank goodness there have as yet been few breaks with the tradition of having a male though perhaps by next year the dame will really be a dame’.  As a point of interest, this newspaper article mis-quoted his age, making Raymond born in 1934, nine years later than the date of his actual birth.

In December 1965, Raymond was one of the performers selected by Joan Littlewood for a European Tour (which included East and West Berlin) of her Theatre Workshop production Oh What a Lovely War, a satirical musical about World War I.  In Oh What a Lovely War, Raymond played a Pierrot and also appearing in the production was esteemed actor Nigel Hawthorne (later to become Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne CBE).  However, locally, Raymond’s name has been most associated with the musical The Desert Song (5^th Revival) at the Palace Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue, London, that ran for 383 performances between May 1967 and February 1968.  In the 5^th Revival production of The Desert Song, Raymond performed the role of Captain Paul Fontaine, alongside John Hanson as Pierre Birabeau, Patricia Michael as Margot Bonvalet and Tony Hughes as Bernie Kidd; Raymond being billed fourth.  At the end of the run at the Palace Theatre, the production moved to the Cambridge Theatre, near Covent Garden until April 1968.  However, this was not the first time that Raymond had performed in The Desert Song as he had completed a Provincial Tour of a production in 1959, at the Nottingham Theatre Royal, the Birmingham Hippodrome, the Bristol Hippodrome, the Cardiff New Theatre and the Hanley Theatre Royal.

Perhaps the last reported theatre credit for Raymond Duparc in Britain was for the play Lock Up Your Daughters at the Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow, running from 18^th December 1968 to 25^th January 1969, Raymond performing as a member of the Citizen’s Theatre Company.  This concluded a British singing and acting career that had lasted for nearly twenty years comprised of at least sixty professional theatre credits including: pantomimes such as Mother Goose, Babes-in-the-Wood and Aladdin; plays such as A Severed Head, Hobson’s Choice, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Saint Joan, No, No Nanette and Lock Up Your Daughters, and musicals like Lilac Time, Kismet and Desert Song; and at least eleven television and film credits including: Emergency Ward 10, Melody Time, The Big Pull and The Larkins.  However, shortly after Raymond’s appearance in Lock Up Your Daughters, he moved to Australia, ‘for the sun’ as he put it in an early interview after arriving in Australia.  Perhaps, like his father, Raymond decided to fulfil the dream that his father had tried to pursue prior to World War I when he moved to Australia hoping for a better life.

On arrival in Australia (sometime in early 1969), Raymond Duparc landed the role of John Davies in the first episode of the Nine Network TV series, Division 4 that launched on 11^th March 1969.  He was then engaged as a Principal at the Doncaster Theatre Restaurant in Sydney; one of his first appearances with the company being in Something to Dance About on 10^th September 1969.  By April 1970, Raymond had landed the role of Governor Macquarie in the Queensland Theatre Company production of A Rum Do!, which opened on 10^th April 1970 at the SGIO Theatre (later known as the Suncrop Theatre) in Brisbane.  The musical was set in Sydney in 1825 and tells the story of how Governor Macquarie realised his achievements as a builder with the help of Francis Greenaway, a convict architect.  In August 1969, excerpts of the musical (then called Everybody Sniff Your Neighbour) had been presented to an invited audience at the Independent Theatre, Sydney, to great success.  The Queensland Theatre Company bought the rights to the musical, renamed it A Rum Do! and cast it with Raymond Duparc as Governor Macquarie.  Three days after the premiere at the SGIO Theatre, the musical was presented as a gala performance in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne, after which Raymond, along with the cast, received a formal introduction.  A review, written for the Courier Mail, reported ‘It’s the finest Australian musical I’ve seen’ and following a four week run of 27 performances, the musical toured regional Queensland.

In 1971, whilst performing Anything Goes at the Richbrook Theatre in Sydney, Raymond was the subject of an article written by David D McNicholl, a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled:

Everything Goes for Mr Duparc

The trend for the carefree times of the 1930s has hit Sydney with a successful season at the Richbrook Theatre of the Cole Porter musical “Anything Goes”.

The cast and production are all Australian except for one actor – Raymond Duparc who plays Sir Evelyn Oakleigh.

Mr Duparc, an Englishman, came to Australia two and a half years ago because he wanted to “live in the sun”.

Unlike many actors, Mr Duparc has had no troubles with unemployment since his arrival.

“I think my advantage is that I can sing and act”, Mr Duparc said this week.

“I was fully trained as an opera singer and was working in opera before I started acting,” he said.

“I had always wanted to act and luckily I was singing at the time in England when producers decided that musicals would be better with singers trying to act rather than actors trying to sing.

“Of course the singers had to be able to act to some extent so I had learnt acting to stay in musicals.”

Mr Duparc said that apart from an eight-week settling-in period when he had arrived in Australia he had been working non-stop.

“The dual role of actor and singer is very helpful,” he said, “I have done straight opera for the ABC and I have also done straight acting parts for television series.”

Mr Duparc said that his preference between singing and acting depended upon what he was doing.

“When I am doing a musical I want to be in straight acting and when I am acting I want to be singing,” he said.

“I generally prefer straight acting because I don’t like the cardboard characters in musicals.

“Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, the character I play in ‘Anything Goes’ is one of those very spiffy, dreary characters.

 “He makes a nice change in some ways because he is a lighter role than I usually play.”

 Mr Duparc said he approached the opening night of ‘Anything Goes’ very gingerly.

“I broke my little toe a few weeks ago and it was still very painful,” he said.

“Luckily I don’t have to do very much dancing in the show.

“It turned out all right but I had visions of Sir Evelyn Oakleigh dragging across the stage with a terrible limp.”

Mr Duparc, who has bought a house at Palm Beach, said he “hoped” he had settled here permanently.

“I must admit I was a little disappointed with the sun I came to find,” he said.

“I expected the weather to be like Spain, where they have sunny days for months at a time, but I find that I enjoy living here and I don’t miss working in London’s West End – so it can be said that the cast of ‘Anything Goes’ is all Australian.”

 

From these early performances in Australia, Raymond went on to also have a successful Australian career on both stage and screen for just short of thirty five years, with at least seventy theatre credits and twenty television and film credits to his name.  Some of the better known theatre productions (to the British public) include: Alice in Wonderland, Richard II (in which he played Richard II), House Guest (the Patrick Macnee [of Avenger’s fame] Tour of Australia in 1982), Jesus Christ Superstar (in 1975 and again in 1983 in which he played Pontius Pilate), The Tempest, Annie, The Elephant Man, Pygmalion (aka My Fair Lady), Me and My Girl, Great Expectations and The Secret Garden, an assortment of Shakespearian plays, straight plays and musicals.  With regards to television and film credits, these include: Spyforce (TV series from 1971-3), McManus (TV film), Who Killed Baby Azaria (TV film), Sons & Daughters (TV series), Mission: Impossible (TV series) and All Saints (TV series 2001-3).  Possibly the last reported theatre credit for Raymond Duparc, then aged 70, was as Ben Weatherstaff, the crusty old gardener in The Secret Garden at the State Theatre, Melbourne in December 1995.  The last reported film appearance that Raymond made was in February 2003 in Lullaby (a short horror film in which a six year old girl learns why it's bad luck to leave your doll at the cemetery) and the last reported TV series appearance was in March 2003, as Dr Henry Phelan in the Last Supper, episode eight of the sixth series of All Saints, when Raymond was fast approaching his 78^th birthday.

Besides a prolific career on stage, TV and film in England between 1950 and 1969 and in Australia between 1969 and 2003, Raymond was also indirectly instrumental in influencing the development of drama education in Australia.  A pioneering and leading name in the promotion of educational drama in Australia is one Peter Lavery, who in 1970 shared the stage with the ‘well-known West End actor Raymond Duparc in a Queensland Theatre Company production playing in Rockhampton’.  It was during their performances together that Peter Lavery made a revelation about his own future career direction.  Peter Lavery stated ‘Ray was such a good actor, he’d played the West End for years and years and there he was slogging it out in Rockhampton.  It’s funny but there was this gnawing feeling in me that there were better things to do with drama than just “be” an actor.  In a backhanded way, I thank the fine artist who I worked with for motivating my development in educational drama’. 

Raymond Duparc never returned to England, so as such fulfilled his hope of settling permanently in Australia, living first at Palm Beach before moving to Forrestville, Northern Province of Sydney, where he is still living at the time of writing.

In a theatrical career that spanned fifty-four years, Raymond Duparc has received tremendous critical acclaim for his work (see Appendix) and made more than 62 reported stage credits, either on the London stage or on Provincial Tours across the whole of Britain, with 11 reported TV and Film credits to his name in Britain.  Raymond also toured Europe with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop production Oh What a Lovely War.  After moving to Australia in 1969, Raymond added at least a further 68 reported stage credits and over 20 Film and TV credits.  Locally Raymond is best know for his appearance in the Revue, Sugar and Spice but nationally in Britain he is best known for appearing on the West End, especially in the musical Desert Song and the television series Emergency Ward 10, Melody time and The Larkins.  In Australia Raymond is probably best known for his stage appearances in such musicals as: A Rum Do!, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tarantara! Tarantara! and House Guest, and the stage plays Richard II and The Devil’s Disciple.  Raymond is also known in Australia for such TV series as Spyforce, Silent Number, Sons and Daughters and All Saints, as well as for the films Who Killed Baby Azaria? and Lullaby.  

 

Terence O’Brien

This actor was brought to our attention through a casual comment passed by a resident of Cuttinglye Road who said that ‘an old actor used to live where the bungalow called Silver Birches now stands’.  After some delving into theatrical records it was discovered that the actor concerned was Terence O’Brien and, during further research into his life and career, it was found that for several years he shared the stage, house and surname with actresses, Leah Bateman aka Leah Bateman-Hunter (see below) and Ruth Spalding (see below).  

Terence O’Brien, according to all the available biographical information, was born in Dublin, on 25^th October 1887, the son of Terence O’Brien and his wife Marion Lorna née Preston.  However, no records were found whilst researching his family background that confirms this.  At some point in his childhood, Terence left Ireland and settled in England, being educated at HighfieldSchool in Chertsey, Surrey, and GodwinCollege, Cliftonville in Margate, Kent.  It has not been established which school he attended first but both were private schools offering preparation for ‘Commercial and Professional life’.  On leaving school around 1906, biographical information reports that Terence was ‘engaged’ in the City for a few years, but what kind of work Terence was employed in has not yet been established.

In 1908, Terence made his stage debut in the role of the Sea Captain in Twelfth Night at the Woking Public Hall (or Grand Theatre as it was also known) in Surrey.  This was followed by a Provincial Tour in July 1908 at the New Theatre Royal, Seaham Harbour, County Durham, performing along side Miss Grace Warner (daughter of the actor Charles Warner) in The Scarlett Clue, The Little Widow and Lady Audley’s Secret.  In January 1909, Terence was again on a Provincial Tour, this time with Messer’s Horace Edwards and Moseley Warden’s Company at the Theatre Royal, Goole, Yorkshire, appearing in Parson Thorne (playing the leading character) and The Betrayer.  Three months later, in April 1909, Terence made his London stage debut at the Lyceum Theatre, in the role of First Player in Hamlet, starring Matheson Lang as Hamlet.  This was followed by The Prisoner of the Bastille, The Proud Prince and East Lynne at the Lyceum before taking Fighting Chance and The Proud Prince on tour between October 1909 and December 1910.

At the beginning of May 1911, Terence was elected a member of the Actor’s Association and on 6^th May 1911, sailed with Matheson Lang and his company of actors on his South African tour, where they performed Shakespearean works such as: Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Hamlet and Taming of the Shrew, as well as The Passing of the Third Floor Back, by Jerome K Jerome; Sweet Nell of Drury Lane, based on the life of Nell Gwynn; and Bardelys the Magnificent, based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini.  The Matheson Lang Company subsequently toured India, China and the Philippines, arriving back in England in February 1913.  Back in England, Terence appeared in The Pretenders by Henrik Ibsen at the Haymarket from 22^nd February 1913.  Unfortunately the play was pulled early because, as it was reported in the London Evening News: ‘it failed to attract the public except to the cheaper portions of the house…  Few plays of a serious nature ever receive any real support from the wealthier classes… People with half a guinea to spend seldom seem to think of selecting a theatre where a “make you think” play is being performed.  They go straight off to a musical comedy or farce.  The poorer playgoer is much more catholic in his tastes and supports all kinds of plays.  If the wealthy playgoer could only have the tastes of the poor enthusiast good drama would soon come into its own again.’

After a couple of appearances in London, including playing the Marquis de Crèsny in an Arts and Dramatic Club’s production of Citizen Morot in April 1913, Terence appeared with the English actor-manger F R (Francis [Frank] Robert) Benson’s Shakespearian Company performing a variety of Shakespeare’s plays including: Richard III, Henry V, Comedy of Errors, Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night, along with other plays such as The School of Scandal, If I Were King and She Stoops to Conquer, at the Royal County Theatre, Bedford, during August 1913.

In January 1914, Terence was again touring in South Africa, this time with Henry Herbert and his Stratford-on-Avon Players.  Their repertory included: Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Henry V, Richard II, Comedy of Errors and Richelieu (also known as The Conspiracy).  Returning to England, biographical notes record that Terence ‘joined the British Army’ and from his list of theatre credits there is a gap between the end of the South African tour and performing in The Eleventh Hour at the Coliseum in London in January 1915.  However, there are no surviving military records to confirm his time with the ‘British Army’ or the capacity in which he served and from January 1915 Terence was performing on stage continually until the end of World War I in September 1918 and beyond.

In 1916, Terence joined the Vic Repertory Company performing at the Royal Victoria Hall [OldVicTheatre] London.  Between 1916 and 1917, the Vic Repertory Company put on a number of plays by Shakespeare including: Othello, Hamlet, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing; Terence playing such roles of Othello, Hamlet, Henry V, Marcus Brutus and MacDuff alongside actors like Matheson Lang, Ellen Terry, Sybil Thorndyke and her brother Russell Thorndyke.  In 1916, Terence also performed as part of Shakespeare’s Birthday Festival at the Old Vic during which he first met Leah Bateman (for further information see below), an actress five years his junior who had made her name as the ‘youngest Juliet’, played at the tender age of sixteen.  Also in 1916, Terence appeared in The Merchant of Venice in the role of Tubal, filmed at Walthamstow Studios and a year later as the thief in the film The House Opposite.  Thus by 1917, Terence had established himself as a serious, classical actor of stage and screen.

Between 1918 and 1921, Terence joined the company of J B (James Bernard) Fagan, an Irish-born actor, theatre manager, producer and playwright who took over the RoyalCourtTheatre in London’s Sloane Square as a Shakespearian Playhouse, making the Court Theatre his company’s base when not on Provincial Tours until December 1920.  One of Terence’s first appearances under J B Fagan was in the role of Orsino in Twelfth Night, which opened in October 1918 and ran for 167 days.  It was during this production that Terence renewed his acquaintance with Leah Bateman who would later share his house and name (for further information see below).  It was also whilst part of the company of J B Fagan that Terence decided to put down some roots outside of London with the purchase of a plot of land on the north side of the newly created road leading off Hophurst Hill in Crawley Down, allowing access into Cuttinglye Wood, part of the Felbridge estate that had been put up for sale in 1918, together with Furnace Wood, by the East Grinstead Estate Company Ltd., advertised as ‘Cuttinglye and It’s Environs’ [for further information see Handout, Furnace Wood, SJC 07/11].  Terence had created a dwelling on the plot by July 1920, advertising the address of Waterside, Crawley Down, in the theatrical publication The Era, for any prospective correspondence.  From map evidence (dated 1937), Waterside was the sixth property in, on the ‘water side’ (Furnace Lake side) of the road, (today the plot is occupied by the dwelling called Silver Birches and Bears Wood managed by the Woodland Trust [for further information see Handout, Cuttinglye, JIC/SJC 09/12]).

In October 1921, Terence joined the Macdona Players (founded by Charles MacDona in 1921) specialising in the production of plays by the Irish play-write George Bernard Shaw (known, at his insistence, as just Bernard Shaw).  Terence O’Brien was engaged with the company as leading man and Leah Bateman as leading lady and they went on to tour the majority of Britain with the Macdona Players in such plays as: Candida, How He Lied to Her Husband, Fanny’s First Play, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Never Can Tell, Pygmalion and The Doctor’s Dilemma, until the end of December 1923.  The last time Terence and Leah performed together was in Pygmalion at the Theatre Royal in Bath, at the end of a Provincial Tour in December 1923.

In February 1924, The Era announced the following:

Mr. Terence O’Brien.

Back at the Court – and Methuselah.

Mr. Terence O’Brien, who played Orsino, Bassanio, Demetrino, Frip, Charles Surface, Prince John in Mr. J. B. Fagan’s Court Theatre productions, and went away on tour for over two years to  play John Tanner Jugins, Undershaft, Dubedat, Higgins, Marchbanks and Valentine, returns now to play Burge-Lubin and Martellus in “Back to Methuselah!”

 

However, by April 1924, Terence was off touring Britain again before taking up semi-permanent residence at the ‘Q’ Theatre at KewBridge, London, where he regularly performed between December 1924 and February 1926 in such plays as: Young Person in Pink, A Message from Mars, Lithuania, The Lifting, Rust and Joy Ride.  In amongst these performances, Terence also appeared as the First Player in the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company production of Hamlet at the Kingsway Theatre in London on 25^th August 1925; the production being costumed in ‘modern dress’.  He also produced his first production – Madame Pepita, at the Faculty of Arts Theatre, Golden Square, London, on 1^st November 1925, in which Leah Bateman played the role of Madame Pepita.  Six months later, on 28^th March 1926, Terence produced another production at the Faculty of Arts Theatre – Autumnal Roses in which Leah Bateman was also performing; this was the last time Terence O’Brien and Leah Bateman were to work together.

In 1924, besides using Waterside, Crawley Down, as his address, Terence also used the London address of 50a, LeinsterGardens, Hyde Park, being joined by Leah Batemen at both addresses in 1925 and 1926.   However, the Electoral Rolls for 1925 and 1926 give Leah’s name as Leah O’Brien (although currently there is no evidence of a marriage) and 1926 is the last year that you find both names listed for either Waterside or LeinsterGardens.  From 1927 it is only Terence who gives his address as Waterside and by 1929 his London address had changed to 12, Upper Street, St Martins Lane, London, W2.

In November 1927, Terence O’Brien applied to be registered under the Theatrical Employers’ Registration Act (1925), which suggests that he was intending on becoming an ‘employer of theatricals’.  Registration under this act was required by anyone taking on three or more theatrical performers, which included: ‘any actor, singer, dancer or performer of any kind employed to act, sing, dance, play or perform in any theatre, music hall, or other place of public entertainment (including kinema theatres)’.  Whilst waiting for his registration to come through, Terence performed with and produced several productions at the Faculty of Arts Theatre, the last being Lithuania on 28^th January 1928. ‘Press Opinions’ of Terence O’Brien, published in The Stage in January 1928, report:

 

“.. Of which the young actor has every reason to be proud…” Oswald, “Ghosts.” – LIVERPOOL COURIER.

“As John Tanner was quite astonishingly good…” – PALL MALL GAZETTE.

“Scored a triumph in the part of Genesius.” – DAILY POST.

“Has never acted better …” – BIRMINGHAM POST.

“… Was so finely acted.” – MANCHESTER GIARDIAN.

“The ideal Louis Dubedat …”– BIRMINGHAM.

“Made of John Tanner an electrical and significant figure …”– ABERDEEN.

“…a FINE INTEELIGENCE IN Terence O’Brien’s performance of Genesius” – TIMES.  

 

Once registered under the Theatrical Employers’ Registration Act (1925), Terence O’Brien again toured, this time as actor/manager of a small company with the play called The Father by August Strindberg, taking in the Everyman Theatre, the Apollo Theatre and the Savoy Theatre in London, the Grand Opera House in Scarborough, the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool and the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton before returning south to perform at the King’s Theatre in Hammersmith and the Wimbledon Theatre.  The Father received rave reviews in the theatrical publications, similar to the following abridged letter to the Patrons of the Grand Opera House in Scarborough that appeared in The Stage on 8^th March 1928:

Last night I sat through a wonderful play, “The Father”, and I hasten to assure you that never have I enjoyed SUCH A STORY, SUCH BRILLIANT STAGING, AND SUCH REMARKABLE ACTING.  The performance given by Mr. TERENCE O’BRIEN as “The Father”, and Miss NELL CARTER as “Laura”, must rank as the finest piece of acting YET SEEN IN SCARBOROUGH.  It gave me great pleasure indeed to note the hearty reception you accorded these artistes at the conclusion of the performance, and it proves that you know a good thing when you see it. 

 

In amongst his performances of The Father, Terence also fitted in appearing in the film Q-Ships, released in August 1928.  The film was set during World War I, when the British navy disguised some of its warships as civilian cargo ships (known as Q-ships) to try and fool German U-boat commanders, and portrays the war of nerves between the commanders of the Q-ship and a U-boat after the Q-ship had been spotted and tracked by the U-boat commander.

At the end of his tour of The Father, it was reported in the theatrical publication The Era that Terence O’Brien had decided to temporarily suspend his actor/manger role after receiving an ‘attractive offer from Mr. Charles Macdona to play again the leading parts in the Bernard Shaw plays in India and the Far East’.  Terence sailed for India on 19^th October 1928 but unfortunately my research did not produce any information on the production performed whilst on the tour.  The tour lasted until July 1929 when it was reported in the theatrical publications that: ‘Mr. Terence O’Brien, after a long and successful tour in the Far East [India and China] with the Macdona Players in which he played the leading part in Mr. Bernard Shaw’s plays, returned to London this week.  His address in London is 12, Upper St. Martins Lane, W.C. 2.’  It was also reported in The Era that ‘Until his London office is re-connected his telephone number is (Toll) Copthorne 48’, Copthorne being the local telephone area exchange for Crawley Down.  On return from the Far East Tour in July 1929, Terence resumed his actor/manager role presenting The Father in Wolverhampton and London.  

In January 1930, Terence was appointed producer at the Players’ Theatre, producing such plays as: The Best of Both Worlds, Dinner is Served, Members of Turvington, Every Mother’s Son and When the Clock Strikes, with Severed Head being his last production in April 1930, at which time he established the Terence O’Brien Agency and Training School.  The objective of his new venture was to provide an agency and training school for ‘Theatrical Variety and Cinema Artistes’, operating from 12, Upper St. Martins Lane.  However, by August 1931, Terence had re-joined the Macdona Players touring with Man and Superman, Mrs Warren’s Profession (originally called Mrs Warren’s Confession), Pygmalion and The Doctor’s Dilemma to places like: Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester.  In 1932, with the Macdona Players’ tour over, Terence spent the next year going back to his Shakespearean roots performing in Othello and the Merchant of Venice at the St James’s Theatre in London and on a Provincial Tour and then in the summer of 1933, performed as Sozanoff in Clear All Wires before taking a break from the stage until 1938.

Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to determine how Terence spent his time in the five years that he was away from the stage, other than in 1937 when he appeared in the film Midnight Menace (also known as Bombs Over London), in which he played the role of secret agent Fearns.  On his return to the stage in 1938, he again performed at the Shakespeare Birthday Festival at the Old Vic in London, alongside Sybil Thorndyke.  This was followed by performing as Cominius in Coriolanus at the Old Vic, the Duchess and the Whitehall theatres in London and as Leman in Glorious Morning at the Duchess and Whitehall theatres.  A production of Glorious Morning was filmed at the Whitehall and released as a film in October 1938.

With the threat of World War II looming, Terence performed as Joce in The Jews of York at the Duchess Theatre, in June 1939, in aid of the military charity Not Forgotten Association and then in To Kill a Cat at the Aldwych Theatre in London.  These were to be his last reported performances until December 1942 when he performed with the Oxford Pilgrim Players (founded by Ruth Spalding (see below)) in The House by the Stable and The Marvellous History of Young Bernard, at the Grand Theatre in Croydon.  Shortly after this, in May 1943, Terence O’Brien, along with Geoffrey Parkes, were directors of the Rock Theatre Company, which by then, had incorporated the Oxford Pilgrim Players that had been founded by Ruth Spalding, who was now chairman of the Rock Theatre Company.  Henceforth, Terence O’Brien and Ruth Spalding would perform together as actors or actor/producer until 1951.

During the remainder of the war years, the Rock Theatre Company continued the ethos of the Oxford Pilgrim Players (see blow) and took its performances to the general public at anywhere you could perform and also, under the ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association), to numerous servicemen and women.  ENSA had been established by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment to the British armed forces, both here and abroad.  There is no evidence that Terence performed abroad for ENSA, although that would account for the lack of reported performances between June 1939 and December 1942, but under the Rock Company both he and Ruth Spalding helped raise moral by performing in Britain.  Terence O’Brien wrote in The Stage in 1944: ‘We wish to have fine actors, fine plays, the best direction and scenery etc’.  Between 1944 and 1945, the Rock Theatre Company was one of twenty-two companies out on tour under the direction of Henry Oscar of ENSA, seventeen in Britain and five abroad.  Some of the plays that the Rock Theatre Company toured with included: Case 27, VC, Man and Superman, The Father and Atonement.  Also, in January 1945, Terence appeared as the General in the film The World Owes me a Living about a pilot who loses his memory in a plane crash and is helped to remember his past by a friend through talking about a plane they had built before the crash.

Outside of performing, Terence also had much happening in his personal life just prior to and during the war years.  A contemporary biography reported that Terence’s interests included: reading, walking, water-colour painting and writing, all four hobbies could be well accommodated at his home in Cuttinglye Road, which incidentally changed its name from Waterside to Oak Ash Thorn sometime between 1927 and 1939.  Of a more personal nature, Leah Bateman (see below), who appears to have been estranged from him since 1927/8, died in 1940 and, by the end of 1942, Terence had met a new partner – Ruth Spalding (see below), twenty-six years his junior, who, in 1944, gave him a daughter – Jeannie, and remained part of his life until the end.

After the war the Rock Theatre Company, along with Terence O’Brien and Ruth Spalding, continued their nomadic life taking their theatrical productions all over the country on Provincial Tours to such places as Bedford, Brighton, Belfast, Kettering, Margate, Birmingham and Glasgow.  Alongside performing, Terence also gave lectures, generally on the theatre in Britain.  Terence O’Brien’s last stage performance was as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations, when he performed, with the Rock Theatre Company, as the messenger in Samson Agonistes at the Church of St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London, in May 1951; the play produced by Ruth Spalding.  Six months later, on 29^th November 1951, Ruth Spalding changed her name by deed-poll to Ruth O’Brien, cementing the remainder of their life together.

Throughout the 1950’s and up to and including 1964, Terence O’Brien is listed in the Telephone Directory as living at Oak Ash Thorn.  During this time and well into his seventies, Terence regularly attended the Shaw Society’s meetings, to present personal reminiscences of Shaw, along with Ruth Spalding, or attended readings given from some of Shaw’s plays and he also attended the Vic Wells Association’s Annual Birthday Party at the Old Vic in London. 

The last time Terence can be found associated with Oak Ash Thorn in Cuttinglye Road was in 1964; he does not appear in the Telephone Directory at that address in 1965.  It is probably around this year that Terence and Ruth O’Brien (formally Spalding) moved to Welwyn in Hertfordshire, where Terence lived out his final years until his death on 13^th October 1970, aged 82.

In a theatrical career that spanned forty-three years, Terence O’Brien made more than 350 reported stage credits, either on the London stage or on Provincial Tours across the whole of Britain.  He made several trips abroad touring to South Africa, India, China and the Philippines and during the years of World War II, was part of ENSA, taking entertainment to the servicemen and women of Britain to help raise moral.  Terence produced more than sixteen plays in Britain and also appeared in six films.  From the theatrical publications, Terence O’Brien is best know for the following roles: Othello, Hamlet and Henry V from the plays of the same name, MacDuff from Macbeth, Orsario from Twelfth Night, Orlando from  As You Like It, Bassanio and Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, Lysander and Demetrius from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Charles Surface from A School for Scandal, John Tanner from Man and Superman, Henry Higgins from Pygmalion, Andrew Undershaft from Major Barbara and Adolf from The Father.  He was a well respected actor, performing in numerous works of Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, alongside such renowned actors and actresses as Matheson Lang, Russell Thorndyke, Sybil Thorndyke and Ellen Terry.  Alongside his performing career, Terence O’Brien also established the Terence O’Brien Agency and Training School to provide training for up-and-coming actors/actresses and sat on the executive committee of the Stage and Allied Arts League dedicated to assist all forms of musical, dramatic and variety entertainment ‘where the human element predominates’.

 

Leah Bateman aka Leah Bateman-Hunter

Leah Bateman (also known as Leah Bateman-Hunter) was born Sidney Kate Leah Hunter in Kensington, London, on 15^th April 1892, the daughter of George Robert Harrison Hunter and his wife Sidney Kate Bateman née Crowe.  George Robert Harrison Hunter (also known Harrison Hunter) had been born in Nashville, Tennessee, whilst his Scottish parents were visiting the area.  The Hunter family returned to Scotland where Harrison was brought up, his chosen career being that of an actor.  Harrison married Sidney Kate Leah Crowe, a British actress, daughter of George Crowe and his actress wife, Kate Josephine Bateman from the talented American theatrical Bateman family.  As a point of interest, George Crowe was the uncle of Eyre Crowe who had the property Felmere built (off the Copthorne Road in Felbridge) and who established the Felbridge Fruit Farm Company, operating from 1912 on land, once part of Hedgecourt Farm, that had been purchased from the Felbridge estate [for further information see Handout Felmere SJC 03/07].

Leah Bateman’s siblings include a brother called George Jarron Savile Hunter, who was born in 1894, and a half sister called Valerie Skardon born in 1913, the daughter of Charles Herbert Skardon whom Leah’s mother, Sidney Kate Bateman Crowe, married after the death of her husband, Harrison Hunter, in 1923.

Leah Bateman spent much of her youth living with her grandmother Kate Josephine Crowe (known variously as Miss Batemen or Mrs Crowe) whilst her parents were touring with their theatrical careers and from the mid 1890’s, Leah attended an acting school that had been established by her grandmother.  The school staged regular performances and Leah’s first stage appearance was in July 1899 when she performed an impersonation of Lady Teazle from the play The School for Scandal, her name billed as Leah Bateman.  1899, was also the year that Leah’s father decided to return to America to continue his acting career and it is where he died from complications after surgery, on 2^nd January 1923, aged 53.

Leah remained at her grandmother’s acting school until 1908.  One of the first credits that Leah received was for her performance in Holly Tree Inn (aged nearly eight), which was reported in The Era on 13^th January 1900, which stated:   ‘…little Miss Leah Hunter, Miss Bateman’s gifted granddaughter, was signalled out for floral honours for her charming performance of Norah, Harry’s sweetheart.  She played the part with all the finish of maturer age, while she was on the stage she was Norah, and Norah only…’  On the 22^nd June 1900, Leah made her London debut as Damon in The Enchanted Fountain at the St James’s Theatre, on the same stage that her grandmother had made her first appearance, at a similar age, back in 1851.  The Era, reported: ‘Miss Leah Bateman-Hunter, the little granddaughter of Miss Bateman (Mrs Crowe), represented Damon, and gave an admirable rendering of the part, speaking her lines in a manner that showed a natural aptitude for the stage.’  Another write-up from The Era for The Pierrot of the Minute, performed in December 1905, reported: ‘Miss Leah Bateman-Hunter, who played Pierrot, possess a most expressive face, and gave a wonderful picture of the Pierrot that won all hearts.  She has a real gift for the histrionic profession, for which her distinguished descent and her excellent training admirably fit her.’  In 1907, after a performance of Glaucea in Medea in Corinth at the Court Theatre, the Era reported ‘Miss Leah Bateman-Hunter made a sweetly sympathetic Glaucea, and evidently only requires further practice to attain an enviable position in the profession to which she seems destined by nature and inheritance.’  For her performance as Ann in Off the Cornish Coast in March 1908, The Era wrote ‘Miss Leah Bateman-Hunter displayed the possession, both in song and speech, of a cultivated voice of exceptional sweetness, and a command of emotion which enabled her to act the self-sacrificing maiden in a manner approaching perfection.’  In June 1908, Leah played the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the Kingsway Theatre in London, being the youngest actress of her era to play the role, aged just sixteen.  This production also saw her grandmother ‘Miss Bateman’ return to the stage in the role of the old nurse, alongside her granddaughter Leah.

Many of the above performances were staged in aid of the Dolling Memorial Rest Home for Working Girls, located at 29, Teville Road, Worthing.  The home had been opened in 1903 in the memory of Rev. Robert William Radclyffe Dolling, offering respite and convalescence for working girls from Poplar in London and Landport near Portsmouth.  The cause was probably close to Kate Josephine Bateman’s heart especially as Josephine Dolling, one of Robert William Radclyffe Dolling’s sisters, was employed as Miss Bateman’s secretary; the two ladies having known each other for over thirty years, and sharing the same house for over twenty years.

In February 1909, Leah Bateman Hunter appeared in Grandsire at The Playhouse in London in which she played the role of Janik, The Era predicted the launch of her professional career with the following report: ‘Miss Leah Bateman Hunter, who is only sixteen, played the sweet-natured Janik with rare charm, and in the scene where the little girl breaks down at the thought of her lover’s departure, the pathos rang true.  Miss Bateman Hunter, indeed, has gifts that should speedily secure her a position as an actress of ingénue parts.  Her voice, both speaking and singing, is of beautiful quality, and her acting was always vivified not only by high intelligence, but by a complete loss of her identity in the part.’  Shortly after this review, Leah Bateman Hunter was on her way to America where she had been engaged to perform with the New Theater Company at the New Theater in New York, The Era reporting: ‘Miss Leah Bateman-Hunter, Mr. Crowe’s clever young grand-daughter, has been engaged to appear at the New Theatre, New York, this autumn.  Miss Bateman-Hunter has already evinced such decided talent that she will be sure to take full advantage of the excellent opportunities this repertoire company will give her.  We may safely expect to hear that she is following faithfully in the footsteps of her famous grandmother, whose many triumphs in New York are still fresh in the minds of theatrical circles in that city.’   Thus, Leah made her debut, as Leah Bateman-Hunter, on the American stage on the 8^th November 1909, on the opening night of the theatre, playing the role of Iras in Anthony and Cleopatra, and she did not disappoint the American audience or critics.

New Theater Company Review

… Leah Bateman-Hunter is the youngest member of the New Theater Company, being only 17 years of age.  Last year she played Juliet in London and was acclaimed a great artist.  At 7 she played Lady Teazle in the screen scene from "The School for Scandal."  Miss Bateman-Hunter is the great-great-granddaughter of Joe Cowell, the great-granddaughter of H. L. Bateman and the daughter of George Harrison Hunter.  Her grandmother, Miss Kate Bateman, drew all play going New York to Barnum's museum some fifty years ago, although she was then but merely a child.  She later became one of the most famous actresses of the day. Her grandfather was the manager of the famous Lyceum theater in London and also an actor of great repute both here and in England.  Both of Miss Bateman-Hunter's parents are still on the English stage—occupying prominent positions in their profession.  And their daughter promises to be the brightest star in the firmament of the Bateman-Hunter family. (Los Angeles Herald, April 24^th 1910)

During her 2-year season with the New Theater Company, Leah performed several plays including: The Cottage in the Air, Strife, School for Scandal, Don, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Arrow Maker before returning to Britain in 1911.  Once back in Britain, Leah again took to the London stage appearing in such productions as: Much Ado About Nothing, Fanny’s First Play, Twelfth Night, Land of the Free, Sister Helen, Restitution, As the Law Stands and The Belles Stratagem.  She even tried her had as producer of On High Veldt for the Lyceum Club at Piccadilly.

With World War I looming, Leah put on a Matinee performance on 26^th and 27^th January 1914 that included, by request, the Balcony and Potion scenes from Romeo and Juliet (playing Juliet); a scene from As the Law Stands (playing Esther Graham); a scene from A Door Must be Either Open or Shut; and a one act play A Modern Mousme (playing Lady Parsons) at The Arts Centre in Mortimer Street, London.  This was to be one of her last performances before war was declared.  During the first two and a half years of World War I, Leah volunteered for the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), a voluntary unit made up of civilians who provided nursing care for injured military servicemen, both in Britain and abroad.  However, on 23^rd April 1917, Leah returned to the stage to perform as part of the Shakespeare Birthday in the Vic Repertory Company production of Twelfth Night at the Royal Victoria Hall [Old Vic] London.  Using the stage name Leah Bateman she performed alongside Terence O’Brien and the renowned actresses – Ellen Terry and Sybil Thorndyke.  Henceforth, Leah would be known by the stage name Leah Bateman.

After a brief Provincial Tour with Ghosts, in which she played the role of Regina, Leah Bateman joined the company of J B Fagan, playing the role of Viola in Twelfth Night at Royal Court Theatre, which ran in London for 167 performances from October 1918.  It was during this production that Leah renewed her acquaintance with Terence O’Brien that would later lead to her sharing his house and name.  However, on 4^th December 1919, Leah married the geologist Dr. James Ernest Richey, in Edinburgh.  James had been born in Ireland on 24^th April 1886 and after an education at TrinityCollege, Dublin, got a job at OxfordUniversity.  In 1911, he left the University and joined the Scottish Geological Survey, however, with the outbreak of World War I, he left the survey team and served with the Royal Engineers on the Western Front where he was wounded at least once; which may be how Leah met him whilst volunteering as a VAD.  James won the Military Cross and was discharged as the rank of Captain in 1919.  The couple must have entered married life with some misconceived ideas as, according to information from the Crowe Family, the marriage was dissolved in 1920.  This term normally means that the marriage, although legal, has been finished because the couple are not living with each other anymore for various reasons, which in Leah’s case seems to have been her commitments with JB Fagan’s company, performing on Provincial Tours and at its base at the Court Theatre in London.  As for Dr James Richey, he returned to the Geological Survey of Scotland in 1922 as Senior Geologist, becoming District Geologist in 1925.  He went on to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, President of the Glasgow Geological Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.  James did re-marry and had three children including two daughters, born in Edinburgh in 1929 and 1931, and he died in Coleshill, Warwickshire in 1968.

Returning to Leah Bateman, she, like Terence O’Brien, continued performing with JB Fagan’s company until the beginning of 1921; her last reported credit with the company being Doll Tearsheet in King Henry IV (part II) at the RoyalCourtTheatre, with Terence O’Brien playing the roles of Prince John of Lancaster and Lord Bardolph.  Leah then joined the Macdona Players as leading lady, touring with them, along with Terence O’Brien, between October 1921 and December 1923.  The last Provincial Tour of the Macdona Players that Leah Bateman and Terence O’Brien took together was to the Theatre Royal in Bath during the months of November and December 1923, the last production in which they both appeared alongside each other being Pygmalion – Leah Bateman as Eliza Dolittle and Terence O’Brien as Henry Higgins.

By March 1924, Leah and Terence were performing separately with Leah taking an engagement in St Joan at the New Theatre (now the Noel Coward Theatre) in London between 26^th March and 25^th October 1924, alongside Sybil Thorndike as St Joan.  The next year, Leah spent performing with a variety of repertory companies including: Norman Macdermott’s Company, the Three Hundred Club, the Incorporated Stage Company and the Phoenix Company in such playas as: Misalliance, Barton’s Follies, The Letter of the Law, Raleigh, Prisoners of War, Comfort and Doctor Faustus, either at London theatres or on Provincial Tours.

After going their separate performance ways, Leah and Terence only worked together twice more, each time with Leah as actress and Terence as producer; first in Madame Pepita at the Faculty of Arts Theatre in London, on 1^st November 1925 (Leah in the role of Madame Pepita) and lastly in Autumnal Roses, again at the Faculty of Arts Theatre, on 28^th March 1926.  However, throughout the period between 1924 and 1927, Leah gave her address as either 50, Leinster Gardens, Hyde Park, or Waterside, Crawley Down (or both), the same as that of Terence O’Brien and between 1925 and 1926 the London Electoral Roll records her as Leah O’Brien (although to date no marriage documents have been found to verify a marriage between them).

Whilst Terence O’Brien pursued his career as a producer (see above), Leah Bateman appears to have taken a year’s break from performing before she rejoined the Macdona Players in February 1928, touring with them all over Britain until November 1931, in such plays by Bernard Shaw as: Arms and the Man, Candida, Fanny’s First Play, Getting Married, Man of Destiny, Major Barbara, Man and Superman, Misalliance, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Never Can Tell, Pygmalion, The Apple Cart, The Doctor’s Dilemma and The Philanderer.  The last reported appearance of Leah Bateman on stage was in The Doctor’s Dilemma at the PleasureGardens in Folkestone, Kent, on 6^th November 1931.  After this date the name Leah Bateman disappears from the theatrical publications.  There is also no evidence to suggest that Leah and Terence were still together as a couple.

In 1936, Leah Bateman can be found living with George Sewell at Lissan, Avenue Gardens in Horley, Surrey; the Electoral Roll recording her as Sidney Kate Leah Bateman-Hunter.  She is still at the same address in 1937 but the 1939 Register records her living alone at the Six Bells Hotel, Caravan 4, Church Road, Horley.  She is listed as divorced and her occupation is listed as ‘housekeeper’.   The entry records her name as Sidney K Bateman-Hunter and her birth as 15^th April 1894 (should be 1892).  The caravan in which she was living was one of ten listed within the grounds of the Six Bells and many of the other nine caravan occupants were listed as ‘travelling showman’ with the surname Edwards.  Leah Bateman died a year later in February 1940, two months off her 48^th birthday.  Her death was registered as Sidney K L Richey but her burial was recorded in the register of St Bartholomew’s Church, Horley, as Sidney Kate Searle Richey Sherwin Leah Bateman-Hunter, of The Caravan, Six Bells Hotel, Horley, Surrey.

In a theatrical career that spanned thirty-two years, Leah Bateman made more than 270 reported stage credits, either on the London stage or on Provincial Tours across the whole of Britain, which included over a 100 reported appearances in the same production as Terence O’Brien.  Early on in her professional career, Leah also spent two seasons performing in America with the newly formed New Theater Company.  From the theatrical publications, Leah Bateman is best know for the following roles:  Lady Teazle from The School of Scandal, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet (being the youngest of her era aged just sixteen), Viola from Twelfth Night, Hermia from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Margaret Knox from Fanny’s First Play, Ann Whitefield from Man and Superman, Mrs Warren from Mrs Warren’s Profession (formerly Mrs Warren’s Confession) and Eliza Dolittle from Pygmalion, being acknowledged by the Bernard Shaw Society as one of the leading Eliza’s of her era.

gcabdh

Ruth Spalding

Ruth Spalding was born Ruth Jean Lucile Spalding in Pimlico, London, on 30^th November 1913, the daughter of Henry Norman Spalding and his wife Nellie Maud Emma née Cayford.  Henry Spalding was a civil servant in the Admiralty between 1901 and 1909, a trained barrister, although he never practiced, and made two unsuccessful attempts to enter politics as a Liberal candidate for East Grinstead and Reading in 1910 and 1914 respectively.  During World War I he returned to the Admiralty and, after the war, was a generous benefactor of Oxford University, turning his attentions to philanthropy and to the writing several books.  Nellie Maud Emma Cayford was the daughter of Ebenezer Cayford who had been born the son of a coach-smith, began studying medicine, switched to working as a ship broker’s clerk and ended up becoming a ship broker and ship owner.  As a point of interest, in 1907, Ebenezer Cayford purchased Little Gibbshaven (now the site of Coppice Vale, Thicket Rise and the house called Hoadley, off Crawley Down Road) and lived at Huntslands on the Turner Hill Road in Crawley Down until his death in 1908, when his daughter Nellie and her newly married husband Henry Spalding took over the residence [for further information see Handout, Little Gibbshaven, SJC 07/08].

Ruth was Henry and Nellie’s second child, her two other siblings being Anne R H who had been born in 1911 and John Michael Kenneth who was born in 1917.  Ruth, like her siblings, grew up in London, Lyme Regis and Oxford; the family settling at 9, South Parks Road, Oxford.  Ruth was initially taught by governesses, along with her sister Anne, before being sent to HeadingtonSchool in Oxford between 1925 and 1932, where she was Head Girl between 1931 and 1932.  Ruth then moved to SomervilleCollege in Oxford to study Physical Education between 1932 and 1935.  HeadingtonSchool, whose motto is ‘Fight the good fight of Faith’ (Timothy: 6:12), had been founded by a group of evangelical Christians in 1915 to provide ‘a sound education for girls to fit them for the demands and opportunities likely to arise after the war’.  SomervileCollege had been established in 1879 by Mary Somervile, a forward thinking woman in the education of women.  In 1920, OxfordUniversity granted women the right to matriculation and all degrees, women from SomervileCollege were some of the first candidates to take up the offer, thus SomervilleCollege became one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford.

In 1937, Ruth was appearing at the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich, as one of the Guild of Norwich Players, which along with the theatre, had been established in 1911 under the direction of Walter Nugent Bligh Monck, and since 1921, had allowed women to become Players.  The Norwich Players frequently performed Shakespeare and by 1933 Monck had managed to achieve his ambition for the company to perform all the thirty seven plays of Shakespeare under the same roof.  Monck also established a strict set of rules that his Players had to abide by, which included: his actors were to remain anonymous; there would be no curtain calls and the actors’ names would not appear in the programme.  The actors were expected to play minor roles for at least three years during a period of ‘training’, to volunteer to work backstage or front-of-house as well as to act and were prohibited from acting in other amateur theatre company productions.

By 1939, Ruth had joined the Religious Drama Society (now known as Radius) that had been founded in 1929 by Bishop George Bell, which had at its core, a strong commitment for exploring religion through the arts.  A report on the Religious Drama Society, which introduces Ruth Spalding as a leading advocate, can be found in the Middlesbrough Daily Gazette of 20^th April 1939 that writes:

This company must rank as one of the most energetic in the North-East, for, in addition to their regular productions, they recently visited Seaham [CountyDurham], where a lecture was given on two of Shakespeare’s character, Shylock and Macbeth.  The lecture was illustrated by scenes from both plays, and so successful was the venture that a further two lectures have been arranged.

Another innovation was the recent broadcast version of “The Merchant of Venice” which was presented at the CameronHospital in conjunction with Toc H, as a result of which an invitation has been received to produce further plays at the hospital.  A special script was prepared for the broadcast by Charlotte Walker, and B.B.C. lines of productions were followed as closely as possible.

Arrangement are now complete for the visit to Middlesbrough, next Tuesday and Wednesday [25^th and 26^th April], of Miss Ruth Spalding and Miss Annette Welby, of the Religious Drama Society, London, who are to give lectures and demonstrations in the acting, presentation, and production of religious plays to members of the Middlesbrough Church Drama Society.

With the outbreak of World War II, E Martin Browne had been appointed Drama Advisor to the Religious Drama Society and out of this was born two wartime touring companies called The Pilgrim Players.  Browne, along with his actress wife Henzie Raeburn, founded the Canterbury Pilgrim Players and Ruth Spalding founded the Oxford Pilgrim Players, the aim of both companies simply to take live theatre to the populous.  The Oxford Pilgrim Players, with John Gielgud (later Sir John Gielgud) as President, was founded as a co-operative of actors with the director, founder and players sharing alike in the company.  Around this date, Ruth, when not touring, was living at the Spalding family home at 9, South Parks Road, with her sister Anne, by then an accomplished artist. 

World War II saw a surge of interest in the arts, with many civilian and military audiences experiencing drama, opera and ballet for the first time.  Unlike audiences in World War I who needed escapism, the audiences of the 1940’s were looking for something more.  To answer this need, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and Arts CEMA, was set-up to provide meaningful wartime entertainment.  To enable this to happen, money was given to drama, ballet and opera companies to perform in military camps and to the civilian population.   Ruth Spalding’s Oxford Pilgrim Players was just one of the companies to answer the call to provide dramatic productions to anyone anywhere – in schools, church halls, churches and cathedral crypts, village halls, hospitals, a garage, barns, a converted stables and out-doors, even air-raid shelters and prisons, anywhere that a play could be staged.  She and The Oxford Pilgrim Players were also engaged in the ENSA tours of World War II.  Constantly on tour, an article in the Hull Daily Mail from December 1942 highlights just how active The Oxford Pilgrims were:

Founded by Ruth Spalding at the beginning of the war, the Players have given nearly a thousand performances, including an E.N.S.A. tour and “Holidays at Home” during the summer.  One of their most memorable shows was at St. Paul’s Cathedral when it was still blazing from enemy bombs in January 1940.

Some of the plays they staged across Britain between January 1940 and May 1943 include: Case 27, V.C., Samson Agonistes, Terror of Light, The House by the Stable, The House of David, The Marvellous History of Young Bernard, The Prodigal, The Way of the Cross and Tobias and the Angel.

It was whilst staging productions of The House and the Stable and The Marvellous History of Young Bernard and at the Grand Theatre in Croydon on 14^th and 15^th December 1942 that Ruth Spalding first encountered Terence O’Brien, the person with whom she would later share a house, name, stage and (with the incorporation of The Oxford Players with the Rock Theatre Company in May 1943) a theatre company (see above).  For a couple of months after the incorporation, the Rock Theatre Company (billed as ‘formerly The Oxford Pilgrim Players’) continued to stage the repertory that the latter company had been touring with but from July 1943, the Rock Company began a 14-week ENSA tour with Bernard Shaw plays, firstly Man and Superman, with Ruth Spalding taking the role of Ann Whitefield, followed by a 14-week tour with The Father and then another 14-week tour with Man and Superman. 

In the summer of 1944, Ruth Spalding gave Terence O’Brien a daughter, named Jeanie, and after a brief break, Ruth was back touring.  From September 1945, the Rock Company embarked upon a series of Provincial Tours with a mixture of traditional Oxford Pilgrim Player’s plays and Bernard Shaw plays with Ruth working alongside Terence O’Brien until May 1949.  Their last performance together as Ruth Spalding and Terence O’Brien for the Rock Company was in a 2-week season of Man or Superman at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, London, between 17^th and 31^st May 1949.  However, the last performance in which they both collaborated was in a season of Samson Agonistes as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations.  The play was billed as ‘The Religious Drama Society presents the Rock Theatre Company’,  produced by Ruth Spalding with Terence O’Brien in the role of the Messenger, and it was staged in the Church of St-Martin-in-the-Fields in London, on 7^th May 1951.  Another of Ruth Spalding’s contributions to the Festival of Britain’s celebrations was a drama documentary called With This Sword that was based on the women’s movement (written by Ruth under the name Marion Jay, which was performed at the Royal Festival Hall, with a choir and full orchestra.  It was also in 1951, that Ruth Spalding changed her name by deed-poll to Ruth O’Brien.

In the 1950’s, Britain slowly recovered from the war years and austerity and with it came a sense of a bright new, confident future.  With the advent of television, it became more and more difficult for the large number of theatrical touring companies that had existed during the war years to continue.  Added to this, from Ruth and Terence O’Brien’s perspective, he was midway through his sixties by the 1950’s reducing the number of roles available to him.  As a result of the circumstances, Ruth moved into the field of education, lecturing and arranging conferences and exhibitions.  She also advised the National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds on arts, crafts and social studies and wrote several feature radio programmes for the BBC.  Writing for a radio station was not a new venture for Ruth as back in 1941, she had written a talk on The Theatre and the Church that was aired on the Home Service.  However, in 1961, she wrote a radio programme for the BBC called Charles Williams, As I Knew Him. 

Ruth had known Charles Williams since the early years of the war when he had come to live at 9, South Parks Road in Oxford and had found him supportive of her venture in establishing The Oxford Pilgrim Players, writing several plays for the Oxford Pilgrim Players.  The following article, which gives a great deal of background to some of the plays for which the Pilgrim Players were best know, was written in 1977 by Ruth for the Autumn Newsletter of the Charles Williams Society:

In 1939 Dick Milford, then Vicar of the University Church in Oxford, asked me to direct Seed of Adam in St. Mary's.  As I had never heard of Charles Williams, Dick lent me The Place of the Lion and a copy of Christendom, an orange-coloured Journal of Christian Sociology, containing the play.  Being captured - or released - by the novel and mystified by the play, I telephoned the author at Amen House, asking for help.  The voice, with angular vowels of Hertfordshire mixed with something like Cockney, said: "My dear Miss Spalding, come round this afternoon!"

He explained the play by acting parts of it, striding round his office brandishing a paper knife.  In Descent into Hell, Chapter 4, Stanhope says poetry should be spoken with "clarity, speed, humility, courage”.   To these, C.W. added a sense of the macabre, of the comic and of heaven, presented with bravura and astonishing enjoyment.  He only asked that the actors should respect line-endings and his internal rhymes!

He and his wife, Michal, came for two performances.  Afterwards he wrote: "I wish there was something else of mine that you could do!  Take this as a tribute and not as anything else."  This “wish” (in which I shared!) was soon granted.  In the P.S. to a letter dated 8^th August 1939 he wrote that "if by any chance" there was a war he would be moved to Oxford (with O.U.P.); did I know of any house where they could put someone up but did not want evacuated children? My sister Anne and I put the choice before our parents, who cabled from Saratoga Springs the memorable reply: "GREATLY PREFER CHARLES WILLIAMS…" So Charles and Gerard Hopkins, known as "The Lodgers", came for the duration, with visits from Charles's wife and son; Charles remained at 9, South Parks Road until a few days before his death in hospital, in 1945.

When Martin Browne founded the Canterbury Pilgrim Players, he suggested I might start a similar touring company based on Oxford, which I did. On 14^th October, Charles (one of our Vice-Presidents), agreed to write us a play.  Stalking elatedly round the room, thinking aloud, he created the plot for The House by the Stable.  Then he dictated 24 lines in rhyming couplets and asked "Would this style of thing do for our purpose?" With brash courage I said "No."  It must be in his finest style.  On 26^th October he gave me the script on one of his little note-pads, in his minute handwriting.

Dick Milford, who had started all this, asked if Charles would write a second play, making a double bill for St. Mary's.  The MS. of The Death of Good Fortune is dated 10^th November.  Written in what he called "My more advanced style" it was one of his favourites.  "Intellectuals" hinted that these plays would be too obscure for most audiences.  Charles responded: "They are not obscure, he said peevishly'" and nor they were when acted in mining valleys or to evacuees, or in the deep shelters of East India Dock Road during the blitz.

Charles wrote Grab and Grace to complete this trilogy.  Before that, for Whitsun 1940, he wrote Terror of Light, for a premier in the UniversityChurch.  He spoke of rewriting it in verse. I sent him a comment on the play from the Vicar of St. John's, Penzance; Charles wrote back: "… I have never received a nicer compliment than to be told that Clement of Alexandria would have enjoyed it.  I begin to think that among all our ascetics I, and I alone, upheld the great Alexandrian tradition of humanity.  Everyone else has an overwhelming sense of the 'Spiritual' - more proper of course, but there should be a counter-weight.

Charles had helped me compile The House of David for performance in Churches where only Bible-words were allowed.  Even that reflects his genius.  (Entitled The Word, under the pen-name Marion Jay, it was published in another form by O.U.P. Music Department).  He wrote a fine speech to precede Gheon's The Way of the Cross; then a playlet on witchcraft, Frontiers of Hell.  He helped draft "Aims and Objects for a Co-operative Company", and advised me on preparing a production of Samson Agonistes. 

His generosity was unbounded.  Most of us were young and raw.  He would discuss anything.  He had a sharp appreciation for the opposite case to the one being argued.  His agreeable mockery and scorn for silly or slipshod statements was humbling (never humiliating).  His beliefs were balanced by his scepticism; the value he set on this is expressed by Thomas in Terror of Light.  There were lines from the Bible which Charles quoted with sinister hilarity; a favourite was: "with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again" … "good measure, pressed down …. and running over!" and his own version of the Lord questioning Job: "Where wast thou when I made the Hippopotamus?"

Coming out from the Eucharist at St. Cross, he would light a cigarette, muttering "Well. Well. Well!" in evident astonishment at what had taken place.  Leaving the breakfast-table one morning he turned at the door; saying to the two small daughters of Dick Milford, who were staying in the house: "Well, God bless you both.  But look out for yourselves if He does!"  His advice to me as a prospective writer was: "Always remember the rules of melodrama.  Something must happen on every page!" I have tried to obey. 

There were men and women, not many I think, who disliked or were embarrassed by Charles; but from what I saw, most people loved him.  Gerry Hopkins once made a remark, the more notable coming from someone of his character, that Charles was the only saint he had ever met.   

As established above, Terence O’Brien was listed as living at Oak Ash Thorn in Cuttinglye Road between 1958 and 1964, so it is assumed that Ruth was also residing at the address.  However, in 1965 the name O’Brien disappears from Cuttinglye Road, resurfacing in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, on the death of Terence in 1970.  At the time of his death, Ruth would have been aged fifty-seven and we are told by her biographers that ‘For 14 years she was general secretary of the Association of Headmistresses, finally retiring to devote herself to full-time writing…’ and that ‘At time’s Ruth’s unstructured career posed problems of earning her daily bread, but she was always resourceful and optimistic….’  Thus in 1975, Ruth wrote The Improbable Puritan: A Life of Bulstrode Whitelocke, an English lawyer, writer, parliamentarian and the first English Ambassador to Sweden.  A year later she was in demand on BBC Radio 3, first writing and narrating a programme called Bunyan’s Progress in August 1976, followed by presenting a programme called The Improbable Puritan (Bulstrode Whitelocke) that aired in October 1976.  In 1990, Ruth published The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605-1675, which was followed in the same year by Contemporaries of Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605-1675): biographies illustrated by letter and other documents.  Again from one of her biographers, alongside her writing, Ruth ‘retained remarkable energy and youthfulness into her last years, directing plays in her seventies and eighties, relishing travel to far away places’ (in connection with research for the books she wrote on Bulstrode Whitelocke) and that Ruth was ‘a sparkling, lively model of the career opportunities that came to women in the 20^th century.’

Ruth Spalding died from her home at 34, Reynards Road, Welwyn, on 26^th February 2009, aged 95.

In a theatrical career as a producer/director/actress that spanned twelve years, Ruth Spalding had more than 121 reported stage credits (not including the 1,000 untitled performances as reported in the Hull Daily Mail in 1942), either on the London stage or on Provincial Tours across the whole of Britain, which included over 60 reported collaborations in the same productions as Terence O’Brien.  She is best known for her Oxford Pilgrim Players’ roles of Sherah in Tobias and the Angel, Mary the Madonna in the Terror of Light and Mildred in Case 27 VC, and as Ann Whitefield in Man and Superman with the Rock Theatre Company.  With the decline of Provincial Touring companies from the 1950’s Ruth turned her attention towards education and writing, producing and presenting radio programmes for the BBC and for writing three books on Bulstrode Whitelocke. 

 

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 Birmingham Daily Gazette, July 1922

A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage (5^th Ed.), 1925

London Electoral Rolls, www.ancestry.co.uk

Surrey Electoral Rolls, www.ancestry.co.uk

1939 Register, www.ancestry.co.uk

Burial Register, St Bartholomew’s Church, Horley, www.ancestry.co.uk

Death index, www.freebmd.org.uk

 

Ruth Spalding

Ruth Spalding Collection, 1938-1997, MarionE.WadeCenter, by Laura Schmidt

Obituary by Joan Thirsk: The Independent, Tuesday 26^th May 2009, FHA

Obituary: Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2009: Film, Television, Radio, Theatre By Harris M. Lentz III

Cayford family tree, www.ancestry.co.uk

Anne Spalding, by Jeanie Moyo, The Guardian, 20^th June 2013, FHA

Handout, Little Gibbshaven , SJC 07/08, FHWS

Birth, Marriage & Death index, www.freebmd.org.uk

Census records, www.ancestry.co.uk

HeadingtonSchool, www.headington.org

Somervile College Oxford, www.some.ox.ac.uk

Maddermarket Theatre, www.maddermarket.co.uk

Daily Gazette of Middlesbrough, 20^th April 1939

1939 Register, www.ancestry.co.uk

The Adelphi Players: The Theatre of Persons, by Dr Cecil Davies

An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance: Volume Two, by Robert Leach

British Theatre and Performance 1900-1950, by Rebecca D'Monte

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, Friday 21^st April 1939  

The Stage 1940 -1960

CEMA, Wartime Entertainment: www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/w/wartime-entertainment/

Banbury Advertiser, Wednesday 10^th January 1940,

Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser, 10^th Feb 1940

Gloucestershire Echo, Saturday 16^th March 1940

Leamington Spa Courier, Friday 24^th May 1940

Birmingham Daily Post, Wednesday 29^th May 1940

Birmingham Daily Gazette, Tuesday 4^th June 1940

Gloucestershire Echo, Wednesday 18 September 1940

Chester Chronicle, Saturday 5^th October 1940

Chester Chronicle, Saturday 12^th October 1940

Bedfordshire Times and Independent, Friday 1^st Nov. 1940 

Western Morning News, Monday 20^th January 1941

Gloucester Citizen, Wednesday 9^th April 1941

Gloucestershire Echo, Thursday 10^th April 1941

Gloucester Citizen, Friday 9^th May 1941

The Tewkesbury Register & Agricultural Gazette, 17 May 1941

Gloucestershire Echo, Monday 26^th May 1941

Nottingham Journal, Wednesday 18^th June 1941

Leamington Spa Courier, Friday 20^th June 1941

Banbury Advertiser, Wednesday 16^th July 1941

Biggleswade Chronicle, Friday 18^th July 1941

Fulham Chronicle, Friday 5^th September 1941

Taunton Courier, and Western Advertiser, 4^th Oct 1941

Burnley Express, Wednesday 25^th March 1942

Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, Tuesday 31^st Mar 1942

Barnoldswick & Earby Times, Friday 24^th July 1942

Burnley Express, Saturday 25 July 1942

Birmingham Mail, Friday 31^st July 1942

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, Friday 9^th October 1942

Uxbridge & W. Drayton Gazette, Friday 20^th November 1942

Leamington Spa Courier, Friday 4^th December 1942

Hull Daily Mail, Friday 4^th December 1942

Ripley and Heanor News and Ilkeston Division Free Press, Friday 26^th February 1943

Derby Daily Telegraph, Friday 26^th February 1943

Mid Sussex Times, Wednesday 3^rd March 1943

Gloucester Citizen, Saturday 8^th ay 1943

Western Daily Press, Saturday 10^th July 1943

Derby Daily Telegraph, 3^rd March 1948

Birmingham Daily Post, Friday 6^th August 1976

Birmingham Daily Post, Tuesday 26^th October 1976

Charles Williams: As I Knew Him, by Ruth Spalding, Charles Williams Society Newsletter No. 7, Autumn 1977, www.charleswilliamssociety.org.uk