Curtain Up

By David Johnson

In the early 1950s I was a young teenager living with my grandmother in Low Fell but going to school in Newcastle. When the weather was fine I would cycle the six miles to school to save money and to help me get fit. At that time I had three main interests: rugby, popular music and finally, the theatre. Life was different in those days, for instance cinemas were only allowed to open on a Sunday at the discretion of the local Watch Committee. The Watch Committee in Newcastle refused to allow them to open whereas Gateshead’s did. However the Newcastle concert halls were allowed to open for band concerts. Occasionally me and my friends would get the tram, or later the bus, to Gateshead station and then walk over the Tyne Bridge with a group of teenagers to go to a concert by such bands as Joe Loss, Cyril Stapleton or Ted Heath, only to meet a crowd of teenagers walking across the bridge from Newcastle to go to the pictures in Gateshead. Newcastle was fortunate to have three main theatres, the Palace and Empire which were mainly for variety shows and the Royal which was for more serious productions. There was also a repertory theatre near Jesmond Dene. My family regularly went to the theatre and I remember once seeing at the Empire an act called Ted and Barbara Andrews who were musicians and they had with them on stage also performing their daughter called Julie Andrews . . . I wonder what became of her? We would go and see anything at the Royal, in those days the star was a famous actor or actress usually in films not just someone who acted in a soap opera, not that there were soap operas or even TV in those days, but I particularly remember being impressed when I saw two stars of the films at the Royal; Orson Welles in Othello and Tyrone Power in the Devil’s Disciple. I was a great fan of Noel Coward having seen and read some of his plays and films, I also liked his music especially his comedy songs. I was thrilled when I read that the world premier of his play “Relative Values” was to be at the Royal. On that day together with some of my friends I went and queued for ‘the gods’ and enjoyed the performance. The next day I was cycling home through Newcastle when a figure stepped off the kerb in front of me. It was a man wearing a very smart camel haired coat, dark brown trilby hat and he had a red carnation in his buttonhole. It WAS Noel Coward. I stopped him and asked for his autograph. “Delighted dear boy, delighted” he said and then signed his name on my school rugby fixture card, the only piece of paper I had in my pocket.