Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

  If you’ve never tried lifting two interlocked humans across a beach, and up a steep stone staircase, don’t bother, because you haven’t missed much. For apart from the immense physical effort required, there was the added irritation of a diatribe of unwanted advice from the coupled bundle of joy as to the manner and modus operandi, that should be employed to effect their speedy and pain-free transportation.

  After what seemed like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen, Cliff and I eventually rolled the still groaning pair on to the curbside, Cliff covering their state of nature in true gentlemanly fashion by throwing his capacious Burberry raincoat over them. After several minutes, we managed to flag down a taxi. Opening the door, I turned to the raincoat-covered mound and whipping the Burberry off, Cliff and I commenced the well nigh impossible task of getting them into the back of the cab.

  It was then that the cabby noticed for the first time the locked lovers.

  ‘Ere wait a minute! What the fuck’s goin’ on?’ he enquired.

  ‘Well you see . . .’

  ‘I fuckin’ see all right, wot do yer take me for, Emperor fuckin’ Nero?’

  ‘Of course not. You see it’s an accident.’

  ‘Accident? It’ll be a fuckin’ accident if I lose my fuckin’ cab licence won’t it?’

  ‘But they aren’t . . .’

  ‘Aren’t? Wot d’ye mean aren’t? They fuckin’ are! Look at ’em. D’ye think I’m fuckin’ blind or somethin’? Take ’em out of my fuckin’ cab. I’m not ’avin them fu . . . er . . . you know er . . . er . . . here.’ He foundered.

  For having used the sought after word so unsparingly in his previous purple patch he found himself up the Oxford without a dictionary.

  ‘Bleedin’ perverts,’ he muttered as he roared off into the night.

  It took nearly an hour to find a cabby who was Samaritan enough to take the unfortunate couple to the hospital, but by the glazed look in his eyes, I’m convinced that he was sufficiently drunk not to have noticed even if a joyous twelve-up ‘gang-bang’ had been taking place in the back of his taxi.

  *

  After all that, what Cliff and I needed was a stiff drink, so we repaired to Sherry’s, Brighton’s infamous dance hall. There, in the long bar with a long whisky and soda in my hand, I came upon a pretty young lady and proceeded to chat her up. She seemed to be responding favourably, when Cliff; looking quickly over my shoulder, hauled off and hit me on the side of the head knocking me to the floor. As I fell backwards, furious at being assaulted by my own friend, a cloth cap sailed like a ‘frisbee’ over where my head had just been, and imbedded itself in the wooden panelling behind me. Cliff snatched it from the wall and showed me that the peak had had a dozen razor blades sewn into it.

  ‘They can spin these things with great accuracy,’ said Cliff, always a mine of information. ‘If I hadn’t knocked you over, it would’ve opened up your forehead like a zip-fastener.’

  Just the thought of being ‘trepanned’ made me all but fall to the floor again. It seems that I had been flirting with the girl-friend of one of the ‘Sabini Boys,’ the vicious race-track gang later made famous by Richard Attenborough in the film Brighton Rock, and he, not being best pleased, had sent an armed flying saucer on its way to draw my attention to the fact.

  *

  One bright sunny day I was walking around the iron grating of the fishermen’s part of the pier when I noticed a most beautiful young girl leaning over the railings and staring into the water. She was possessed of a remarkable stillness, for I watched her for quite some time and she moved not a muscle. She had long, straight black hair, large black eyes heavily browed, a full mouth and a perfectly proportioned body. I was immediately hopelessly in love, and advanced to plight my troth.

  ‘Hello, a penny for them,’ I said with startling originality.

  ‘I was thinking what it would be like to drown,’ she replied with devastating candour. I was stopped dead in my ‘chatting-up’ tracks. How do you follow a statement like that? Floundering, I still managed to pull something out of the bag.

  ‘Nothing to it,’ I said, ‘I’ve done it dozens of times.’

  She looked up and her beautiful eyes were moist with tears.

  ‘Have you really,’ she said. ‘Did you suffer any pain?’

  This was all together too much. The subject had to be dropped.

  ‘What a morbid conversation for such a beautiful day. Why don’t we share a cup of tea and a toasted tea cake in the Pavilion Cafe, and I can tell you what a wonderful actor I am,’ I suggested, subtly informing her that I was in the profession.

  ‘But I already know that, Mr Pertwee. I’ve seen nearly every show you’ve done this season,’ she replied with the suspicion of a twinkle in her black eyes.

  Over the tea and a chelsea bun, unrolled and fairly shared, I learned that her name was Louise Spitzel, that she was an eighteen-year-old Jewess, that her great-grandfather, once a Midshipman in the US Navy, had been present when the US fleet sailed into Japan, and was welcomed by a reception committee of Japanese Warlords on horse-back and dressed in full armour. I learned also that her father was a successful businessman and that they lived in St John’s Wood, London. (Hooray! Not too far from me!) I was not pleased though, to learn the reason for her presence in Brighton. She had evidently been ill and had come down with her mother to bracing Brighton to recuperate. She also had a sister, but I was not to bother about that as she was far too young for me, and would I like to meet her mother and her for tea the following day? I would, and hardly slept a second that night in anticipation of seeing again this quite beautiful creature.

  Her half-American mother was a typical Jewish ‘glass-a-tea’, a ‘chicken soup’, ‘chopped liver and matzos’ Mama, who plainly adored Louise and was unnecessarily over-attentive. She and I got along famously, and from then on she was in complete cahoots with me over my, and ‘Kippy’s’, as I had now nick-named her, ‘young romance’. Unfortunately due to her recent illness (as yet unspecified to me), Kippy had to be home and in bed by eleven o’clock. This gave us only an hour together after the show to ride up to the Downs above Rottingdean on my motorbike, and there to walk, talk, hold hands and kiss. During the day in between rehearsal times she would meet me on the pier and we would spend most of our precious time just staring at each other. Although I was pushing twenty, I had never been in love before and it hit me pretty hard. What with sleepless nights and not eating properly I started to look terrible, but certainly not as terrible as Kippy began to look.

  ‘I’m taking Louise home at the end of the week to see her specialist,’ said her mother. ‘I hope we will see you in London. If so, whatever you do don’t tell my husband that you’re an actor. He hates actors and would immediately forbid Louise from ever seeing you again. Tell him you met her here while you were on holiday or something.’

  That night after the show we rode up to the Downs and made a love pact which we signed, put into a tobacco tin and buried under a tree.

  At the end of the season I couldn’t wait to get back to London to see the girl I loved. She was pale, with a strange transparent look about her, and she still loved me, she said. Her father Cecil Spitzel and I took to each other at once, and after a few weeks of lies from me about what I did for a living, said, ‘You know, Jon dear, you make me laugh so much you ought to be an actor!’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I replied feigning surprise at his suggestion. ‘Then would you have any objection if I tried?’

  ‘Certainly not my dear,’ he said, and to the complete amazement of his wife and daughters went on with his volte-face by saying, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. I know a lot of the right people.’

  Within a week I had obtained a job in my ‘new found profession’ and all the Spitzels came to see and ‘enjoy’. To the delight of Kippy and her mother it seemed that I had got away with it. But our happiness was to be short lived, as indeed was Kippy. She had been feeling so ill again that her doctor had
ordered her to stay in bed. I had just come out of her room after saying ‘Goodbye’ when I literally bumped into her father, who was standing ashen-faced in the corridor with a letter in his hand.

  ‘My God, oh dear God, it can’t be true! It can’t, it can’t,’ he repeated silently over and over again. I led him into the sitting room where we sat alone, as his wife and younger daughter had gone out, and waited for him to tell me what was causing his terrible distress. It was not long coming, and when it did it was accompanied by a torrent of tears. The letter he held in his trembling hand was from a specialist, coldly informing him that the test had proved positive, and that his daughter Louise had contracted a virulent form of cancer. Her chances of surviving were slim, but he recommended surgery at once.

  I couldn’t take it in. I just couldn’t believe that this beautiful girl could be suffering from anything so ugly!

  Kippy was rushed to hospital where she was promptly operated on. The operation took little time, for as soon as the surgeon had opened up the abdomen, he found that his patient was so riddled with malignancy, that there was nothing he could do, but sew her up again.

  The Spitzels just wouldn’t accept his heart-breaking verdict, and started on a fruitless search for anyone or anything that could delay, however temporarily, their beloved daughter’s inevitable death. They tried faith healers, homeopaths, acupuncture, even ‘quack’ doctors! employing such obscure notions as the intake of sheep’s liver to effect a cure. All this was to no avail and Kippy, like Granny, began to fade from our sight, but she never allowed me to see her unless she was looking of her best, with hair combed, lipstick applied and crisp white lace bed-jacket on. I would sit and read to her until she fell asleep, and then hold her hand while looking at her pallid, ashen face until I was gently led away into the sitting room by her mother. There we sat and inwardly prayed for the miracle that we knew in our hearts would not be forthcoming.

  On an early spring morning, Kippy propped up on her pillows gently sighed her way out of my life. She looked, though colourless, just as beautiful as when I had first seen her looking into the water at the end of the pier. I remembered so clearly the eminently sad way she had turned to me and said, ‘I was wondering what it would be like to drown,’ and recalling the expression on her dear face, and the eyes filled with tears, I have often wondered whether she had had an early premonition of death.

  Her family tried in vain to get in touch with her through spiritualism, but I did not feel the need for such succour. My memory of the love she had had for me, and the love I still had for her, was sufficient.

  Forty years later I was staying with D’Oyly John, an artist friend from the ‘Olde Lanterne Cafe’ days, in his cottage at Rottingdean. Excusing myself after dinner I walked up to the Downs where Kippy and I had gone together, and sitting under a tree in the gathering dusk, indulged myself in nostalgia. Suddenly I realised exactly where I was, and with a pen-knife started frantically to dig for the tobacco tin. Within minutes I had found it precisely where we had buried it all those many years ago. It was rusty and beginning to disintegrate, but not so much as to destroy the folded sheet inside, wrapped in silver paper taken from a packet of Players cigarettes. I held it up to the fast disappearing light and was just able to read in faded blue ink the details of Kippy’s and my love pact. Moved near to tears, I sat silently for a few minutes before putting it back in its tin and re-burying it under the oak tree, where, to the best of my knowledge, it still remains.

  *

  For a short period after this, I was engaged by a Company at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge. Amongst others in the Company was a girl with the deep husky voice of a young Tallulah Bankhead. Judy Campbell was a tremendously talented actress and went on to become, a very big star in the theatrical firmament. She had many fine attributes, and soon acquired a crowd of devoted admirers. Her dressing room was situated at the end of the passage facing the stage door, where, after the final curtain call had been taken, dozens of young blades from the University would gather in the fervent hope of catching a glimpse of this wonder woman. They were not to be disappointed, for Judy was very absent-minded and frequently neglected to close her door. Perfectly capable of taking off her blouse but forgetting to take off her hat, she would sit topless before her mirror while removing her make-up. The phalanx of waiting students could see everything, but Judy nothing. She was as blind as a bat, and it was only after removing her make-up and putting on her glasses that for the first time she could see in the reflection of her looking glass the goggling throng behind her.

  Turning completely around to face her now silent admirers, she presented them with a full top frontal – the like of which few had ever seen before.

  ‘Hello, darlings,’ she cried. ‘Did you want something?’

  A highly unnecessary question as, from the looks on their faces alone, it was not hard to hazard a guess.

  They were lucky to have had two bites of the cherry, however, for on appearing in Shaw’s The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles later in the season I had to play a scene with Judy as Prola in which I started off seated at her feet. The costume provided was so awful that Judy had made her own, and it consisted of little but a pair of briefs covered by a long, flowing dress of diaphanous white muslin, with a cross of wide red ribbon across the bust. At the beginning of the scene we were both seated, but at a given moment Judy was to rise up in anger and harangue me. Unfortunately for Judy, but fortunately for her acolytes, I was sitting on the hem of her dress, so that when she leaped up, the dress was pulled down. Without pause, the priestess Prola, now bared to the waist, went on ranting and raving until the end of the scene.

  In the wings Judy, still unaware, said to me,

  ‘My word, darling, weren’t they a fabulous audience! You could’ve heard a pin drop during that last scene.’ I was somewhat loath to point out the real reason for that hushed reaction, but plainly no-one else had any intention of doing so. It transpired later that the firm fit of the crossed ribbons had given Judy the impression that the top half of her robe was still very properly in place, and that nothing whatsoever was amiss. How wrong she was – or right, depending on your point of view!

  Another girl in the Company was a very attractive, delicate looking redhead called Sarah Churchill, daughter of Winston, and a tremendous giggler. For one scene in The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles we were directed to sit cross-legged for quite a considerable time on a line of wooden boxes, with Brandon Acton Bond on my left and Sarah on his left. Halfway through the scene, I whispered through clenched teeth, ‘I’ve got to stand up, I’ve got cramp in my right leg.’ So saying, I staggered haltingly to my foot. The leading actor, under the mistaken impression that I was going to say something said ‘Yes?’ and, on receiving no reply, dried up completely.

  That was enough for Sarah, who went off into a paroxysm of near silent giggles. Within seconds we’d all caught it, and hardly a word was spoken as we snorted and gasped our way through what remained of the scene. Later, Peter Hoare, our Director gave serious consideration to the idea of my dismissal, but thank God, in Sarah I had not only a friend but a brilliant advocate, who pleaded so skilfully on my behalf that she was able to convince my complainants that I really had had a serious attack of the ‘twingeing screws’.

  Every now and then, Winston Churchill would drive over to take her and selected friends out to tea. I shall remember to my dying day that I was able to sit and talk, albeit nervously, to the greatest Englishman of my lifetime. He could talk to you about anything, and it was he who gave me this excellent advice – ‘Never miss an opportunity to learn, my boy. If you find yourself next to a glass eye-ball maker at dinner, don’t make him feel he’s got to talk to you about something he knows damn all about. Get him to tell you how he makes eye-balls. You’re sure to find it enthralling.’

  If only I had taken written note of all the advice proffered by men and women of mark over the years, how much greater would be my comprehension!

  T
he following one, however, was duly noted.

  It was given during a party at the height of the evening when the drinks were flowing, the air was clouded with cigar and cigarette smoke, and a certain young actor was listening reverently to tales of theatrical bravura, recounted by that eminent actor Sir Seymour Hicks, who, irritated by the nervous tapping of his cigarette on the side of his cigarette case, observed, ‘Don’t tap your cigarette on your cigarette case, young man. It doesn’t make an impression and only leaves a dent.’

  Chapter Six

  Putting Rep behind me, I returned to London late in 1938, determined to crack the West End wide open. To do so, I needed to be independent and fancy free, and therefore looked for a home of my own in the immediate environs of the West End theatres. I found just the place, a two-roomed furnished flat in a small house on the bottom corner of St Martins Street, below Leicester Square. On the first floor, it consisted of a bedroom-cum-sitting-room with an enormous divan bed, another small bedroom, and a bathroom. The decor was extraordinary: a mixture of bright emerald green paint and silver wallpaper. It was so ‘kitsch’ as to be almost attractive. What a find! Convenient to my Agent, Maurice Lambert of Film Rights, whose office was literally round the corner in Whitcomb Street, it had a garage for my motorbike, a wonderful pub opposite owned and run by an old Frensham Heights friend, ‘The Olde Lanterne Cafe’ just up the road, a telephone box in Leicester Square (where if you knew the system you could phone the world for free!); and best of all it was only a few yards from the stage door of the Prince of Wales Theatre, from which came an unending stream of beautiful girls. My personal inamorata, Bunty Darling, one of the principal show girls, had a key to the flat, and whether I was there or not would use it as a refuge from her cacophonous dressing room.

  ‘Bring any of your friends,’ I said, ‘they’re always welcome.’ They were certainly made to feel so by my friends, who just couldn’t believe their luck. My popularity became legion.