Rave Reviews

Newcastle Herald

Saturday July 5, 2008

Mike Scanlon

WHO now remembers when travelling circuses regularly pitched the big top in Birdwood Park, in Newcastle's West End?

A busy four-lane extension of King Street now bisects the park and at its western edge is a small, concrete panel proclaiming "Remember The Circus".

Nearby, diagonally opposite Marketown, is a similar wall memorial which reads "Remember The Stadium".

An old cold barn of a building known as Newcastle Stadium existed around there from 1938 to 1965. About 9000 bouts were probably staged there over 27 years when it was known as the house of stoush. The Aussie version of WrestleMania was also held there. Later it became the venue for world-class entertainers, like Louis Armstrong, honing their acts in Newcastle for wider Australian audiences. Later the barn was converted into Shoeys supermarket before being demolished.

An earlier Newcastle Stadium site it's now a car yard had been located just opposite Birdwood Park.

The 1930s to the 1960s, before the full impact of television took effect, was a totally different era of live performances.

It was a time of touring tent shows and popular pantomimes with comics, magicians, ventriloquists and contortionists regularly seen under canvas in places like Birdwood Park.

It was the era of vaudevillians like the incredibly popular Bobby Le Brun, who died in 1985. He spent more than 50 years making people laugh, first with the Sorlie's revue company and later with Barton's Follies.

As a youngster in the late 1950s, stage and screen actor Geoffrey Rush felt lucky catching the tail end of the era, once remarking the Sorlie's tent shows were like a poor man's Tivoli. Instead of doing the prestige Sydney and Melbourne theatre scene, the tent shows did the northern NSW and southern Queensland circuit.

One behind-the-scenes tale showman Le Brun remembered was in the 1940s when he performed in a rotten canvas tent in Newcastle for more than two years until it rained on the last night.

"We [then] had a full house with hundreds of umbrellas up in the tent," he had recalled. "It was quite a sight."

Another Newcastle showbiz veteran is Waratah's Glen Barker, who recently featured in these pages and who also has a rare, first-hand insight into the era. Now retired, his versatile career spanned more than 60 years including a stint as a booth announcer at the old Newcastle Stadium in the 1950s.

"It was managed by former boxer Harry 'Tootie' Mack," Barker said. "He'd been a titleholder and was a smart cookie, introducing overseas acts to keep the stadium going as an entertainment venue."

Using an innovative sliding stage, Mack mixed boxing with wrestling bouts and occasional overseas artists.

"On the nights the stadium was open he'd have three fights and three variety acts," Barker said. "The boxing matches were three- and four-rounders with variety acts in between the boxing or wrestling.

"I then became quite good friends with some of the visiting foreign wrestlers. Being interested in magic tricks myself, they used to get me magic catalogues from America when no one else could.

"Anyway, one of the wrestlers was called Dirty Dick Raines. He'd beat up referees and tear off their shirts but he had a secret behind the scenes as I soon discovered.

"Out in the dressing room before bouts you'd find this big wrestler doing his delicate petit point, his embroidery. Back in the USA, he used to enter his needlework in the county fairs. I was quite surprised."

Barker said his real interest in show business and local theatre started after he gained an apprenticeship as a glassblower at the now defunct ELMA factory in Clyde Street, Hamilton North.

In 1950, he organised the popular ELMA revues.

"Industrial revues were the thing in those days," he said.

"Everyone had a show of some sort. Lysaghts and Rylands and Marcus Clark did. The revues raised money to help build the Laman Street Cultural Centre, now housing the Newcastle Region Library.

"This went on for three or four years," Barker said. "It was a big deal. I even had a wardrobe mistress for the pantomimes. Not bad for a lamp manufacturing business.

"The Lustre Hosiery factory management at Adamstown [now St Pius X College] was keen on trying to do the same thing, so I switched over and started to do shows for them.

"These shows would then be offered to other charities as fund-raising.

"From memory we did 23 shows. There was a lot of community interest back then."

Soon after he was doing promotions for Dulux paints, which led to odd acts to get public attention at Hunter Street hardware shops. There were gimmicks like chimpanzees painting house panels.

But it was when staging lavish amateur stage productions at the Civic Theatre that Barker had one of his most memorable experiences with one of Britain's best known entertainers, Frankie Howerd. An entertainer for 40 years until his death in 1992, the cheeky Howerd was best known for his role as Lurcio in his bawdy TV series Up Pompeii.

But for once, in Newcastle, the gregarious Howerd was lost for words, Barker remembered.

"I was in the yard at my then Charlestown home when my son said the British comic Francis Howerd was wanting me on the phone," Barker said. "I thought it was a joke but it was him and he was in a terrible state of panic.

"He had a one-man show at the Civic that night but said the stage looked like a fowl house. And he was right. "Someone had given him my name as a 'fixer' from my strong past associations there, even though I wasn't an employee.

"We went there and got him calmed down with a cuppa and rearranged the stage for him from hiring plants, to getting more blacks [curtains] and sending for a piano tuner. He was very thankful."

Barker said the Civic held many memories including those of the late comic Spike Milligan, whom everyone had difficulty understanding because of his "rambling, mumbling" speech, and the pranks of Dame Edna, Barry Humphries's alter ego.

Earlier, through the Dulux radio show, Barker met American Singer Robert Goulet (1933-2007).A highlight of the interview was when Barker asked the star of the 1960 Broadway musical smash Camelot about his initial "interesting experience" with rugged Welsh actor Richard Burton.

Megastar Burton, a man's man with a commanding stage presence and at the peak of his powers, was playing King Arthur. Virtual newcomer Goulet, in his Broadway debut, was Sir Lancelot, his champion knight of the Round Table and later rival for the affections of Queen Guenevere (a very young Julie Andrews).

Barker still owns a tape excerpt of his Sydney interview decades ago with Goulet and played it for H2 to illustrate what can happen behind the scenes.

On the tape, Goulet explains in a warm velvety voice that it was his first rehearsal of the play which shot him to overnight fame and he was "scared to death".

Director Moss Hart was there, as was actor Roddy McDowall and eventually the legendary creators of the star-studded musical, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.

The scene was a theatre stage on New York's 42nd Street.

"It was the rehearsal for my opening scenes in the show and Burton was to sing 'Who are you?' and I was to reply 'I am Lancelot' but Moss Hart then said to me, 'Bobby, I think we can get a laugh here by you going nose-to-nose with Richard.' "

A nervous Goulet thought he'd try something else to ease the tension.

Walking alongside the imposing Burton across the stage he hesitantly suggested that he and Burton should kiss.

"There was a three-second pause and without looking up Burton said 'all right'.

"Never before in my life had I kissed a man on the lips and so I gulped and said 'OK'."

The two manly actors then locked lips and shocked all present.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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