“Can I do you now Sir?* .............. lost memories of wartime productions at the Palace Theatre

October 30 1944

I doubt that I will ever meet any one who sat in the Palace Theatre during late October and early November 1944.

And that is a shame because I would love to know what they made of “WE’RE COMING OVER” which the programme announced was “A Musical Tour de Forces.” 

In 14 scenes the production took the audience from The E.N.S.A. headquarters at Dury Lane to a street in Lisbon, a hotel in Cairo and by degree a ship in the Mediterranean, the Opera House in Naples and “Somewhere behind the lines,” before finishing at the Camp Show at the Eighth Army Folies.**

There was music, comedy and a lot more and I wish I could find out more about it.

Just a few weeks earlier the Palace had played host to Ivor Novello in “The Dancing Years” “A Musical Play” featuring Ivor Novello, Veronica Brady, and Roma Beaumont.***

From Dury Lane to North Africa

The story was set  in Vienna in pre-1914 and shifted to 1938 following the life of a penniless composer and his love for two women.

And as you would expect from a production of the time the two women come from totally different social classes.

One was an innkeeper's daughter and the other an opera singer and the story unfolds against the backdrop of the growing presence of the Nazi Party in pre war Austria.***

It had opened in March 1939, closed at the start of the war and reopened in 1942 running for 969 performances finishing in July of 1944 when it took to the road and began a three week stint at the Palace from October 10.

It is unlikely I would have across either production had I not been looking at a collection of theatre programmes owned by my friend David Harrop.****

By their very nature theatre programmes have a short life.

Adverts from 1944

At best they are kept safe for a while but eventually succumb to a bout of spring cleaning and most get lost on the bus going home or thrown out the following day.

And like all such material many carried adverts which are themselves a priceless insight into the Britain of the 1940.

So these are a real find and point once again to that simple observation that you find the past pretty much anywhere, and having found it lets you go off looking for more.

Wartime productions like these were not only good entertainment but played their part however small in maintaining morale.

And that brings me back to “WE’RE COMING OVER” which I think will have celebrated and show cased the talents of The Entertainments National Service Association or ENSA which was set up in 1939and provided entertainment for the British Armed forces during the Second World War.

Concert party Normandy, July 1944 just weeks after the D Day landings

Performers included Robert Rietty, Gracie Fields, George Formby, Wilfrid Brambell, Joyce Grenfell, Adelaide Hall, Paul Scofield, Rebecca Cantwell, Dora Bryan and Vera Lynn.as well as Laurence Olivier and Sir Ralph Richardson who  performed Shakespeare's plays for the troops in a six-week tour of Europe.

Often they performed close to the front line and appeared in every theatre of the war.

But that as they say is for another time.

Pictures, theatre programmes 1944 from the collection of David Harrop, and an ENSA concert party entertaining troops from the steps of a chateau in Normandy, 26 July 1944, Midgley (Sgt), No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, from the collections of the Imperial War Museums, This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. 

* Can I do you now Sir? Mrs Mopp, catchphrase from the radio series “ITMA”, “It’s that Man Again” BBC Radio, 1939-1949
** E.N.S.A., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainments_National_Service_Association
***The Dancing Years, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dancing_Years
****David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop