Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing (24 page)

Benny was a gracious man and would reminisce affectionately about his co-star in later years. They had adjoining dressing rooms. Hill’s habit was to arrive early before the show, enjoy his cup of tea and a Marie biscuit and attempt to get some rest on the
chaise longue
. Cooper would arrive at the last minute, usually with a group of mates in tow, cracking gags as if the show had already started. According to Benny, the one person who did get a bit agitated was his dresser: ‘He’d knock on the door and say, “Mr Cooper, it’s nearly time.” Tommy would say, “No. It’s alright. Huh huh huh. Relax. Relax.” And Joe would say, “But, Mr Cooper, you’re on.” This sort of exchange would go on for several minutes until the dresser had no choice but to hammer on the door and shout, “Mr Cooper, they’re playing your music.” Tommy screamed, “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ll be late. I’ll be late.” He was just as funny off as on.’

The careers of Hill and Cooper would crisscross with amazing irony over the years. Hill had been born and brought up in Southampton less than a mile from where Tommy’s parents moved to open their fish shop after the war. Both had idolized Max Miller, and while Cooper acquired his stage attack, it was Benny who translated his lecherous flair for the risqué into something that would appeal to audiences for another generation or two. During the Seventies they were the two undisputed laughter stalwarts for Thames Television. When American distributor, Don Taffner was looking for material on the Thames shelves to package for American exploitation the sheer bulk of the Hill catalogue chose itself for the eventual process of editing into the faster paced versions of
The Benny
Hill Show
that justifiably won the cherubic clown international recognition on a scale for a British performer not experienced
since Chaplin. With his wicked flair for mimicry, he was almost certainly the first star comedian in the country to be made entirely through television. Had he been a more successful theatrical performer he may have dedicated less time to the medium and missed the international opportunity.

In the late Sixties, long before Taffner appeared on the scene, Miff, with the blessing of Thames, had taken a couple of tapes of Tommy’s television programmes to show to the powers that be at the Desilu studios in Hollywood. In the viewing theatre the executives could not restrain their laughter. According to Miff, ‘When the lights went up everybody was wiping the tears out of their eyes and getting their breath back and the head writer, a guy called Lou, said, “Gee, that was terrific. But who we gonna get to play the parts?”’ Not that Tommy was without success on American screens. In 1963 and 1967 he made two trips to America to make a total of five appearances for
The Ed Sullivan Show
. When in 1962 Mark Leddy, respected agent and booker for Sullivan, first tracked Tommy down in Blackpool on the recommendation of American magician Jay Marshall, he wrote back to Jay in Chicago, ‘This is a very funny man. In his next to closing spot, he had enough funny stuff to do three Sullivan Shows. In my humble opinion he is much superior to Ballantine because Ballantine does the same damn act all the time.’ When he got to New York, Sullivan described him to his audience of millions as quite simply ‘the funniest man ever to appear on this stage.’ Afterwards Leddy wrote to Miff that he was ‘as happy as hell with the results.’ Sadly, Cooper’s international potential was never fully realized. As Barry Took pointed out, a large proportion of the
Paris by Night
audience consisted of foreign tourists, to whom much of Hill’s material in those days remained a mystery; with Cooper, instant impact was guaranteed.

As submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, his comedy magic
spot had by now been almost entirely revised, the bottle and glass appearing only fleetingly, and a similar device, known as ‘Elusive Rabbits’– once a major part of Arthur Dowler’s routine – promoted to central position. This involved two wooden cut-out rabbits of different colours within two tubes, referred to as boxes. At the end of the sequence, the rabbits were turned around to reveal two entirely different colours from those that commenced the trick, proving the lie to any audience theory that all Tommy had to do to make them change places was to turn the tubes back to front: 

 Now Tommy builds to his big finish. After much shifty fumbling that he deigns the audience not to notice, he shows that the black rabbit is really blue and the white one yellow.
‘Howzat?’ Again most of the material would stand him in stead for the duration of his career. Peter Newcombe’s extended generosity is in evidence – perhaps in return for the plug for The Magic Circle – and we see the first mention of a catchphrase in embryo. Appended to this transcript, under the heading ‘additional material for possible use’, was the material he had previously submitted for use in the Hippodrome show. In this way the act was evolving constantly.

However, for the billing he commanded in a show like
Paris
by Night
he had to work harder than within the confines of a mere ten minute solo spot. The brief experience of a single summer show had enabled him to develop as a revue comedian, although in the approach to the London production he was churlish and short-sighted enough to enquire of Miff why he was doing three spots for the price of one! Miff’s response can be left to the imagination. West End audiences were now treated to A
Few Impressions
and the sequence that saw him volunteering out of the audience to assist another ‘conjuror’. The ‘impressions’ spot was prefaced by what may be the first extended story-style joke that he performed at an important professional level, the one about the three bears: after father bear and baby bear have enquired, ‘Where’s my porridge?’ the mother bear comes down and says, ‘I don’t know what you’re making all this fuss about. I haven’t made it yet!’ The parade of hats was tagged by Tommy quickly donning a coat for the finish: ‘Nelson – Half Nelson – It’s me all the time! Do you like the coat? Genuine camel hair. You don’t believe me? Look.’ When he turned, the coat was seen to have a hump on the back.

The third spot was billed in the theatre programmes as
It
Never Fails
. It is inconceivable that in Cooper’s hands this old piece of burlesque business ever did. After the initial surprise of the bowler-hatted Cooper stepping up on stage as one of two spectators conscripted by a magician of the old school,
the routine settled into traditional slapstick fare. In the Prince of Wales show the other volunteer was played by Ronnie Brody, a short, staunch supporting comic of the period who, unlike Ronnie Corbett, who began in a similar mould, never built on the early promise he showed. Both Cooper and Brody were instructed to hold their hats in front of them. From the moment the magician broke an egg into Brody’s hat, it was totally obvious which way the sequence would go. Tommy found it quite hilarious, only to have the smile wiped off his face the instant a second egg was broken into his hat.

The magician admits failure and departs the stage amid histrionics that portend a nervous breakdown. From that moment the routine is played out in silence as both volunteers stand stranded on the stage, looking first into the wings, then with a start at each other, then into their hats, at the audience and back again. The comedy is played out entirely in looks with Cooper milking that Jack Benny effect for all it is worth. Brody is the first to take the initiative, coming over to Tommy to deposit every last drop of the egg in his hat in that of his colleague, before leaving him to his own devices. Tommy continues 
to stare with a stoic submissiveness that belies any initial disgruntlement, a lone figure on the vast stage, unsure of how to resolve his predicament until mischief takes over and he contemplates throwing the contents at the audience, then thinks better of it, puts on the hat, and walks off, the eggs having disappeared. Davenport’s supplied him with a special gimmick to insert in the hat for the purpose. The finish is a small detail in the wider significance of the routine.

When in 2005 I was invited by the National Film Theatre to select thirteen favourite moments of film and television magic for a presentation to mark the Centenary of The Magic Circle, the choice of a Cooper moment presented the widest options, but without hesitation I homed in immediately upon this routine, recreated by Tommy possibly for the last time on an episode of the Thames variety series,
London Night Out
in the late Seventies. By now his son, Thomas was playing the magician, scriptwriter Dick Hills was filling Brody’s shoes, and Betty Grable had been supplanted in the sex appeal stakes by Brigitte Bardot. I chose it because the seven minutes represent the most concise lesson in visual comedy technique I know. At no point does Cooper over-react, his facial and bodily reactions a compendium of how to survive the worst extremes of the comic universe. Throughout the pace remains unhurried in the best Laurel and Hardy tradition, the self-conscious stance of his pear-shaped torso on its jittery legs feeding off the truth of every poor soul coerced into such duty by a mediocre magic act. Only the ending had changed. By now the Davenport’s prop had gone the way of a hundred other rust-coated gimmicks and he simply pulled out a flat cap and walked off in style. Walking back with the hat – quickly switched in the wings – he was now in a situation to bombard the audience with confetti when the right moment came.

At three spots for the price of one Cooper had proved that
he amounted to more than what Miff must have feared he’d become, a solid supporting speciality act incapable of acquiring star billing. It was a dread that haunted Ferrie down the years. When in 1958 he was called by the
TV Mirror
for a comment from Tommy whether he thought there was a future for magicians on television, Miff snapped back, ‘Tommy Cooper is not a magician. He is a comedian.’ Even as late as 1965 he was remonstrating misguidedly with ABC Television for wanting to send out photographs of his client in a fez, pictures that branded him as ‘what I can only describe as a speciality act,’ adding, ‘It is the image of Cooper the Comedian that must be projected and not Cooper the Conjuror.’ By the end of the Fifties Tommy had more than consolidated his reputation as a comic in the broadest sense, having experimented with similar routines for other revue shows, principally in Blackpool and Coventry before returning to the West End under the aegis of Bernard Delfont at the Prince of Wales in
Blue Magic
in February 1959. In the process he built up a repertoire that stood him in good stead in later life when they provided – like the ‘Eggs in the Hat’ – sure-fire, but seldom seen material, with which to refresh his television appearances. Most popular in this supporting repertoire were ‘The Buffalo Routine’ and ‘Hello, Joe’. Sadly the names of the writers of both sketches have been lost to history.