She Was A Very Generous Soul Was Hattie Jacques

Hattie Jacques was obsessively conscious of her size. I know this because sat on a wall with her at the front of Tolly Rothwell’s house she told me not to worry that I was overweight.

Hattie said that people always stared at her. Those around her were kind and said she was so well known as an actress that people were just indulging in a second take.

But Hattie knew better. They were alerted by the weight first and familiarity of her face second. Subsequently, her confidence was low. She didn’t want me to suffer the same anxieties. That was sweet. She was a very generous soul was Hattie Jacques.

As a Carry Oner Hattie’s often remembered as a buxom, fire-breathing matron. See, size first and great comedic acting skills second. Maybe she had a point!

In truth everyone rated Hattie except herself. The image I retain of her sat chatting to me on Tolly's wall, was a woman who would rather have been anywhere else than in that house full of people. And not just any old bunch of everyday folk, but the theatrical kind, Carry On stars a plenty; all competing, all playing a game of social musical chairs. Sadly, Hattie seemed to have fallen at the first round.

 
We sat for at least an hour. She told me how she loved the bright lights, the adrenalin that came with the shout of ‘action’. The nervous giggles from the wings, the ‘showtime’ knock on the dressing room door. Hattie loved showbiz, but thought little of herself.

It seemed, from the remembered fragments of our conversation, that she’d been happiest during her ‘hungry years’, those early lean ones, when work was scarce and praise had to be fought for.

Hattie’s formative years, when she became a regular in music hall revues, made her eyes glaze over and her face break into a broad smile. Those long since passed blissfully innocent and carefree times were but a moment in her adult life when she liked herself.

They were also the days where she fine honed her skills as a comedian. She even returned for a second bite of the cherry, when having already tasted success in radio, television and film, Hattie went back to her first company, the Players', but this time in the elevated capacity of performer, writer and director.

Before joining the Carry Ons, Hattie worked with Norman Wisdom on two of his most famous films, The Square Peg and Follow a Star.

But it was in the company of Kenneth Williams, Sid James (and later Eric Sykes) et al that she is best remembered .. not for her size, but for her exceptional talent. That would have brought a broad smile to Hattie Jacques’ face. 

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available 1st May 2012.


For A Free Sample CLICK HERE

Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk

   

The Other Side Of Carry On Scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell

The flow of the typewriter keys had a rhythm I have never forgotten. The writer’s beat, mixed with the aroma of whiskey and leather, and all played out under the hood of the overlooking South Downs set in me a yearning to live the same way.

Carry On scriptwriter Talbot ‘Tolly’ Rothwell was creating fictional lives for others, while all the time his own was close to the ideal for this quietly observing fifteen year-old.

To hear the man speak was another treat. His warm and perfectly formed vowels came from a deep place. His low tone and baritone belly laughs filled any room. And then there was the smile. Always a smile. Whatever the décor, a room was always a rustic and welcoming haven when Tolly was in residence.

One of the passions Tolly tried to press upon me was that of painting. He loved collecting artworks by local painters who captured on canvass the Downs and Sussex’s many rural delights.

As we stood looking back at his home village of Fulking, Tolly gently infused my imagination with the idea of being able to capture that scene, that moment and that singular memory and hang it on the wall forevermore.

I wasn’t won over. As a teen, the past was gone. It was the future that awaited. Scenery was of the moment, not to be captured and remembered. We were generations apart. And looking back I feel I failed him.

The other side of Tolly was the man who loved being among friends at his local pub. The Shepherd and Dog, in Fulking, had began life as a cottage. It’s beams and inglenook fireplace contributes to much of its current charm, and to Tolly it was very much a home from home.

Long before Tolly’s time local farmers had stood in the ever flowing spring that sat on the pub’s land and used the cool water to wash the sheep during the shearing season.

Nathanial Blaker, a Brighton surgeon who lived in Perching Farm wrote in ‘Sussex in Bygone Days’ in 1906: “To stand for hours up to the waist in a stream of cold water was most trying work for the men who washed the sheep and I have seem them, when the works was over, walk to the Shepherd and Dog stiff and scarcely able to move with cold.”

A Write Carry On (Wholepoint Publications)

available 1st May 2012.


For A Free Sample CLICK HERE

Contact the author at editor@brighton.co.uk