The drama when Blackpool show stars fell ill

In tonight’s performance the part of... will be played by . . .

It’s the announcement theatre managements have to make when a member of the cast is ill.

Gazette reader Clifford Chambers recalled, in Monday’s letter column, that actor Joe Gladwin missed part of the Grand Theatre’s 1970 season of the comedy Nearest and Dearest.

Last week’s Memory Lane looked back on this farce as being the most successful in the Grand Theatre’s series of summer season plays, 1951-72.

(For youngsters, a summer season was at least 15 weeks).

Clifford wondered what had kept Joe Gladwin out of the show for a few weeks.

It may never be known for Joe is but one name on the long list of actors, singers, comics and sundry artists who missed shows due to illness or injury.

But whereas an actor can be replaced the real drama is when the star of a musical show is taken ill.

In Blackpool’s busy years of summer shows it was the vocalists who topped the sick list. Something to do with too much ozone in our bracing seaside atmosphere.

In 1949 star vocalist Donald Peers was silenced by throat trouble and had to leave the Grand Theatre’s show, Buttons and Bows, for an operation.

The following year singer-comedienne Tessie O’Shea had to have an operation for appendicitis and was out of the Opera House show for several weeks.

Chart-topping Frank Ifield was hit by Blackpool’s strong seaside air and lost his voice while ap buypearing in the ABC Theatre’s 1964 summers show. He was out for 10 days with laryngitis.

The same thing happened when Frank was starring in the 1967 show at the ABC.

But the best story of “the show must go on” was told on this page three years ago and concerned a former Blackpool girl.

Wigan-born Elizabeth Larner was brought to the resort during WW2 and grew up here. She was in the Tower Children’s Ballet and a member of the

Tyldesley Girls School choir.

In 1952, at the age of 19, Elizabeth was in the chorus of the American musical, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, at the London Coliseum when the American star Helena Bliss was taken ill just before an afternoon matinee.

For some reason her understudy was not available and producer Jack Hylton was faced with suspending the show.

Should he take a gamble on the talkative chorus girl who said she knew all the dialogue and songs of the leading character, Kate/Lilli Vanessi?

The alternative was to suspend the show and make refunds on the afternoon and evening tickets.

Elizabeth stepped in, had curtain calls, and was an overnight star with an afternoon matinee.

Hylton gave her a five-year contract and Elizabeth headed the show’s provincial tour, which came to the Blackpool Opera House for two weeks in October, 1952.

Drury Lane in 1955 Elizabeth took over the role of Marsina in Kismet and had a fine career on stage and televison.

In 1969 she came to Blackpool to meet old school friends and to support the Blackpool and Fylde Light Opera Company in their production of Kiss Me Kate.