Grand Theatre play was moving tribute to the strength of families as war loomed

By Barry Band
Marie Tempest in 1933. Photo: Getty ImagesMarie Tempest in 1933. Photo: Getty Images
Marie Tempest in 1933. Photo: Getty Images

As we approach Christmas with a degree of uncertainty due to the Covid19 panic, we look back to a festive season that had a darker cloud above it.

At Christmas, 1939, Britain had been at war with Germany for four months. Children were being evacuated from London.

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Families faced separation as the country mobilised. The first effects of rationing were seen.

Diana RossDiana Ross
Diana Ross

Towards the end of December the Grand Theatre had an inspirational play with an unlikely title: Dear Octopus, by Dodie Smith, whose later works included 101 Dalmatians.

But there were no doggies in this family drama, starring Dame Marie Tempest, billed First Lady of the English Stage in this tour after a season at London’s Queen’s Theatre.

Dame Marie was 76 and in a long and illustrious career had become known as a perfectionist. Some may interpret that as “difficult to work with.”

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Her career in producer George Edwardes’ musicals had ended at the turn of the century because of her arguments. They came to a head at the opening of an Oriental musical named San Toy, at Daly’s Theatre in 1899.

Miss Tempest refused to wear Chinese trousers. Edwardes insisted. When the actress made her first entrance on the opening night she was correctly attired in trousers but was wearing an outrageous red wig.

The event was noted by D. Forbes Winslow, publicity man for George Edwardes, in a biography.

It was Miss Tempest’s last run-in with Edwardes and she soon left Daly’s for a career in sophisticated comedy.

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The importance of her 1939 visit to the Grand in Dear Octopus was spelled out by a Gazette reviewer after the opening performance in the evening of Boxing Day.

He began by saying it had been a brilliant autumn season at the Grand, with many fine plays coming to the theatre due to the closure of the West End theatres.

“And now, in the last week, there comes the best play of the year, the latest success of that astonishingly clever playwright Dodie Smith, with Dame Marie Tempest, that grand actress, in the role she created.”

Dear Octopus was the story of a family gathering for the golden wedding of Dora and Charles Randolph (Marie Tempest and Leon Quartermaine) and their four children.

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The Gazette reviewer noted: “Miss Dodie Smith has done more than simply present another family gathering: she has given us a moving tribute to the family itself, an institution which, in spite of changes at home and turmoil abroad, stands strong and firm, linking past, present and future” - a continuity that the playwright referred to as ‘dear octopus.’

The reviewer thought the play, directed by Glen Byam Shaw, was perfect and the grace and talent of a great actress had given them an unforgettable performance.

The full name of the author was Dorothy Gladys Smith (1896-1990) born in Whitefield, now in Greater Manchester.

She wrote several children’s stories and also I Capture the Castle, a vague romantic drama that was premiered at the Grand in 1954.

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It was a whimsical piece about an odd family living in a house attached to a castle. It starred Virginia McKenna and featured a youthful Roger Moore as a local rustic character.

The play had a disappointing West End run and was seldom touched before it became a movie in 2003, with Bill Nighy, Romola Garai, Rose Byrne, Tara Fitzgerald and Henry Cavill.

Dodie Smith’s greatest success was 101 Dalmatians, published as a children’s novel in 1956, made into a Disney animated film in 1961, and a feature film in 1998 with Hugh Laurie and Glenn Close.

Blackpool birthday triumph for Diana Ross...

This week’s news that Diana Ross will headline the first night of next year’s Lytham Festival will remind some readers of her sensational Blackpool Opera House concert on Friday, March 26, 1976.

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Six years after leaving the Supremes and forging a career that outclassed her days with the trio, Diana was touring to coincide with the UK release of her movie Mahogany, remembered for its title song, Do You Know Where You’re Going To?

The Gazette’s Brian Hargreaves exercised editor’s privilege by taking the concert “comps” and doing the write-up under his reviewing by-line of Frank Vernon.

The show was significant for its spectacular setting and Brian noted that lighting and sound technology had leaped ahead.

“For moments after she materialised, rather than appeared, her tiny figure looked like a butterfly enmeshed in the apparatus of a moon rocket launch at Cape Kennedy,” he began.

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Musicians towered above Miss Ross on tiers of scaffolding. Overhead were batteries of lights and she was flanked by towers of speakers.

Brian continued: “Then, blast off! Singer and audience were in orbit.”

And: “This was not so much a Ross anthology as an autobiography, her songs linked by her life story.

“She didn’t miss a hit. And her Lady Sings the Blues excerpt allowed a digression in tribute to other black stars, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker.

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“But it was her Motown Memories in the second half which brought the adoring audience to its feet.

“This was nostalgia not just for the years the Supremes reigned but also for those years when the Opera Horse was inevitably on the itinerary of superstars like this.”

There was a sentimental touch to the show. It was Diana Ross’s 32nd birthday and a suitably “showy” cake was wheeled on at the close.

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