Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (16 page)

He never lost his love and respect for the mystique of the magician’s craft, but was savvy enough to accept that his comedy skills shoehorned him into a public approach that needed to be kept separate from his private enthusiasms. Once early in his career he was spending the afternoon with Bobby Bernard in the Archer Street emporium of Max Andrews. His latest magic sensation was, according to Andrews, right up Tommy’s street. Max talked Tommy through the presentation he envisaged for his star customer: ‘You crack some gags and get a few laughs, then have a card chosen, tell a few gags, have the card shuffled back in the pack and tell a few more.’ Gags and magic business continued to alternate until the chosen card was caught amid a shower of cards in the jaws of a large rat trap, about as unlikely an object as one might associate with a card trick. Tommy was unimpressed. With his deadpan stare he turned to Andrews and said, ‘Never mind the fucking trick. Where are these gags that get all the laughs?’

The family tree of comedy has always intrigued me, the way in which the great performerssayed a funny walk is well documented. Possibly the most influential British comedian ofs take aspects of those they have admired from preceding generations and by a process of osmosis intuitively mould them into aspects of their own personalities, as if they belonged there and nowhere else. The impact of Max Linder on Chaplin, Harry Tate on W. C. Fields, and Little Tich on just about everyone who ever e all was the Forties revue star, Sid Field. For seven glorious years between 1943 and 1950 his almost unbroken tenure at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre acted as a honey pot for the new breed of comedians emerging from the services, his multi-faceted persona a revelation to those raised on the more stereotyped approach of the average stand-up of the day.

In an earlier volume,
Funny Way to be a Hero
I catalogued his legacy (and in part that of his occasional straight man, Jerry Desmonde) in this regard: Frankie Howerd’s wheeze and surrender to amazement; the give and take between Morecambe and Wise; Max Bygraves’s warm directness; Tony Hancock’s despair; Terry-Thomas’s genteelism; the spiv-like
quality of Arthur English; Jimmy Edwards’s musical mayhem; Norman Wisdom’s frenetic incoherence; Dick Emery’s coy effeminacy; Harry Secombe’s genial daftness; Benny Hill’s moon-faced innocence; even Olivier’s archness as Archie Rice. Moreover, the impact he had is not to say that Sid himself had not been influenced in turn by those guiding lights of comedy that inspired him as a malleable young performer. It has always surprised me that virtually alone among his generation Cooper appears to have remained impervious to this chameleon among clowns. In that respect he stands tall as the most original of his colleagues. At one level his own comic persona was entirely its own invention, and yet nothing develops in a vacuum; it would have been impossible for him to have functioned as a comedian without many outside influences, among which the love of magic and the decision to burlesque it were only part of the story. There was very little original in what he actually did. His special talent was always in the presentation. Along the way he showed good taste in those he cultivated along the path of comic apprenticeship, most notably Max Miller, Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy, and a few more.

Superficially his comedic roots can be traced back to the
Commedia dell’Arte
, the stylized comic form that emerged in Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, many of whose stereotypes – Harlequin, Pantaloon, Pulcinella – linger in the popular imagination. The analogy would appear less pretentious if in translation the
dell’Arte
readily conjured up its proper meaning, not ‘of art’, but ‘of craft or skill’. With its emphasis on broad anarchy, apparent spontaneity and dependence on the mask as a short cut to characterization the form appears tailor-made for Cooper, the fez its own shorthand reference in the identity department, like Charlie’s hat and cane and Groucho’s strip moustache. The bedrock of the genre was provided by
the ‘lazzi’ or comic set pieces – anything from an isolated visual gag to an extended comic routine. Here more than any of his contemporaries Tommy would have had a superabundance of material to qualify for acceptance. But even contemporary
Commedia
expert, Barry Grantham concedes that it is difficult to assign one of the traditional masks to him: ‘He has not the bragging, cowardly traits of the Captain, the pompous word-play of the Doctor, or the foibles of Pantaloon. Punchinello is celebrated for his total contempt for all accepted standards of moral and social behaviour. The choice of a
Zanni
– one of the lowlier comic roles – is not that obvious either. Most of them betray a fundamental baseness of character that seems to be totally absent in Cooper.’ Not even the magic link with Harlequin is of help, since his tricks never went wrong. Grantham has to conclude: ‘If he had been around at any point during the seventeenth century, we would today be richer by one more major Mask of the
Commedia dell’Arte
.’ The readiness with which he was impersonated in his lifetime and the eagerness of so many to carry on doing so more than twenty years after his death, suggests that the Cooper Mask is established regardless and will endure for years to come.

Cooper’s most obvious beginnings are in the world of the British music hall, an institution that shared one abiding quality with the
Commedia
, namely the inclusion of the audience as part of the performance, acknowledging its presence both directly and by means of the comic aside, the so-called fourth wall that exists between straight actor and clientele reduced to invisible rubble. The process fed the affection that existed between audiences and the stars of the day, principally the comedians. That the institution endured as long as it did after the heyday of Dan Leno, George Robey, and Little Tich is perhaps surprising, but Cooper and one or two others managed to ride the waves of such popularity into the radio and
television era. Among these was the first enduring comedy star of the wireless medium, Arthur Askey.

There could be no greater contrast between the two comedians, the one gargantuan and gauche, the other impish and neat. It was put to effective comic use by Val Parnell in the 1957 London Palladium pantomime,
Robinson Crusoe
, in which Arthur played the dame and Tommy her sidekick, Abu (‘a kind of magician’), and on one memorable television appearance for Thames during 1976 in which they partnered each other in a ‘Me and My Shadow’ song and dance routine, Tommy behind a screen providing the ludicrous silhouette of his guest star, whose nifty little skips were in hilarious counterpoint to the other’s lumbering steps. The show was recorded at a time when Tommy’s ill health was hard to conceal and age-wise they appeared to meet in the middle of the twenty-one years that separated them, but the affection of the younger performer for the elder statesman was palpable. That Tommy should literally shadow the veteran star on this occasion carried its own irony. He once professed his love for Askey to Arthur’s Fifties scriptwriter, Bob Monkhouse: ‘He never stops moving. I love that. All that energy. He goes this way. He goes that way. He’s walking towards you. He’s walking away. And the hands are always moving.’ It was quite obvious to Monkhouse that Cooper had himself assimilated these essential traits of the tiny Liverpudlian. There was seldom a time when Cooper was not in motion himself, stepping from this table to that, picking up this prop, putting down that, feeding his audience an energy that kept it as alert as himself. I am also convinced that the influence was more than physical. Arthur was not a natural stand up comedian, unable to tell a joke without following through with a trademark chuckle that seemed to express apology, explanation and personal enjoyment at the same time. It bore little vocal
resemblance to the throaty Cooper guffaw, but served a similar purpose nevertheless.

Cooper’s admiration for Laurel and Hardy extended in a pre-video age to taking a projector on the road with him so that he could play their films. Tommy often reminisced about being part of the general hysteria in the West End on the occasion of their visit to Great Britain in the late Forties, the only time, he claimed, that he had ever queued for an autograph. It is not difficult to see why their work appealed to him with its brilliant use of anticipation in the cause of comedy. As Tommy explained: ‘I always treasure a picture of the thin one standing there minding his own business and the fat one lecturing him. “Stanley,” he says, “If you want a job done right, then you have to do it yourself.” Then the fat one goes off to do it and comes crashing through a wall.’ Just as we always knew he would. Tommy only had to touch a magical prop and let out his throaty laugh to trigger in all of us the same comic mechanism. He came to absorb aspects of both performers to the extent that he embodied both Stan and Ollie in one human frame, the figurative equivalent of one of his absurd half-and-half portrayals. One moment he could be exultant on tiptoe with all the misguided self-assurance of the fat man, the next awash with tears like the thin one. The combination was never better displayed than in a sequence where he attempted without much success to restore a bundle of tissue papers he has just torn to shreds. When, triumphantly, the tissues eventually transform into a posy of flowers, the sense of comic surprise in his accomplishment is worthy of them both.

John McCabe, the first biographer of Laurel and Hardy, whose work played a large part in restoring them to public recognition, summarized the three essential elements of their comic philosophy. In so doing he also acknowledged that Stan, as the creative half of the partnership, would have had no
truck with any such thinking. The qualities were ‘a strain of high nonsense; positiveness; innocence.’ What was daft was there to be celebrated and guile had no place in their optimistic view of the world, that of ‘the English pantomime where everyone did live happily ever after.’ Tommy was no philosopher either, but it is hard not to read this essential three point pattern between the lines of his comic persona. He represented that contradiction in terms, a magician without guile, blithely assuming that the trick would work somehow and often oblivious that the method of its accomplishment might be in danger of exposure in the process. With Ollie he shared a sense of overwhelming satisfaction when things went right, with Stan a helplessness underlined by his almost infantile delight in those distractions from reality that the magician’s art presented: anyone who like Stanley can ignite his thumb like a match, smoke a fistful of tobacco through his thumb and pull down the
shadow
of a window blind has to be accounted a magician too.

Stan’s actual magical skills were less in evidence when they attempted the formal presentation of a magic act in
The Hollywood
Revue of 1929
, one of those vaudeville-inspired attempts beloved by Hollywood studios to package as many of their leading players as possible in a single vehicle. In a gambit that resonates with the quintessential Cooper the curtain rises on the famous pair with their backs to the audience, still hurriedly arranging their props on the table. Ollie as the magician is alert to the situation and acknowledges the master of ceremonies by tipping his hat; when assistant Stan repeats the gesture, a dove flies out. Recrimination escalates into Stan being shoved into a bowl of eggs, thus ruling out a second miracle. The act proceeds. Ollie’s genteel smugness as he presents an unimpressive parade of anaemic mysteries is brought back to earth when he slips on a stray banana skin, the residue from another ruined trick, and half-somersaults into a giant cake just placed
on the table by Stan. Although he was only eight when the film was released, there has to be a possibility that it was seen by the young Cooper.

Rarely did Tommy pay outward homage to his heroes in his act, although in one of his television series from the Seventies an Oliver Hardy look-alike kept wandering disconcertingly into shot. Hero-worship was paid more effectively when it was paid more subtly, as when Tommy asked the musical director for some music. No sooner had a few notes been played, than he would abruptly cut it short: ‘That’s enough.’ The significance is not the hoariness of the device, but the fact that the music was ‘Love in Bloom’, the signature tune of another comedy great, Jack Benny, who played the master of ceremonies on the occasion Laurel and Hardy essayed their magic act. A few years before he died, Benny’s legendary comedic skills went on show for the last time at the London Palladium. Watching him enter to that music with his distinctive spring-heeled, arm-swinging stride was worth the price of admission. He concluded his act by announcing, ‘And now – for a real treat – I am going to play for you.’ He looked into the wings and called for his violin. A model with million dollar looks brought the instrument to him. He tucked it under his chin and asked, ‘Are you a fan of mine?’ She replied, ‘No, but my mother is.’ She then turned and walked off stage. Benny just stood there, staring in silence for what must have been four or five minutes. We’ll call it the Jack Benny effect. Only one time since have I seen a performer milk silence for a laugh as big and that was Cooper himself, playing a member of the public deserted on stage by a make-believe magician who has left Tommy in the lurch, the latter’s hat the receptacle for the broken eggs – that ever-recurring motif of comedy magic – that he has no intention of magicking back into their shells.

In interviews Tommy was more vocal about his admiration
for Bob Hope than for Benny. In later years he would stand on the same stage as Hope during the finale of a Royal Variety Performance and had difficulty reminding himself that it wasn’t a dream. His radio broadcasts on the American Forces Network had been an essential part of morale boosting during the war and for no one more so than Cooper: ‘I used to sneak away from duty to listen and was always getting caught by this sergeant major called Thompson. Great fellow. He usually let me off.’ As a young man back in Civvy Street he paid homage in the crowd to Hope too, waiting among the thousands anxious to see him step out of his car in Leicester Square. On the surface there was little in common stylistically between the two performers on stage. However, aside from a shared penchant for snappy one-liners, albeit of vastly differing timbre and subject matter, one does thinks of Tommy’s furtive beckoning of the fingers with his arm hung loosely by his side, a last desperate attempt to chivvy the audience when a joke falls on stony ground. ‘Ripple, ripple, ripple,’ he semi-pleads as he identifies where the laugh should be. Accompanied by a sneaky peek into the wings, it is a decidedly Hope ploy, signifying Bob’s often dismissive attitude to much of his own material: ‘I found that joke in my stocking. If it happens again, I’ll change laundries.’ For all Hope’s outward display of self-assurance as joke after joke was fired across the footlights, there were moments when material, delivery and persona combined to make their own comment upon the guts and determination needed to become a stand-up comedian in the first place. One recalls the way he would hit the front cloth as if to find the quick exit for escape if needed and the subconscious nervous tic of constantly adjusting the handkerchief in his top pocket. Both can be discerned in Cooper. It is unlikely that Tommy ever rationalized these similarities on his own account, but, as we shall discover, he succeeded in bringing off the same
effect in even more spectacular fashion. He may have begun his career guying the conventions of the magician’s act. What few have noticed is that before long he was guying those of the comedian’s trade as well.