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Article by David Munro
A MONTHLY
assessment of the careers of stars of the musical theatre as represented by
their commercial recordings.
5 - Mary Ellis
She could give you the starlight
On January 30, 2003, at the age of 105 (or 103 depending on which
of her birth dates is to be believed!), died a lady who was the lead in three
of Ivor Novello's musicals, Glamorous Night, The Dancing Years and
Arc de Triomphe, one for Jerome Kern; Music in the Air, one
for Noel Coward; After the Ball and, perhaps most important of all,
for Oscar Hammerstein and Rudolf Friml; Rose Marie.
Trained as an opera singer, she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York
in 1920 where she sang featured roles including, among other works, in the
world premiere of Puccini's Il Trittico.
She left the opera after a year, as she wanted to act and appeared in Shakespeare
and other notable productions in New York for the next two years.
In 1924, Arthur Hammerstein, a Broadway producer and uncle of Oscar, persuaded
her to appear in what he described as a dramatic musical drama set in the
back woods of Canada, entitled Rose Marie.
Both she and the show were an instantaneous hit, but she decided after
a year that she wanted to return to the dramatic stage and left the show.
Hammerstein was not amused and made her sign an undertaking preventing her
from singing for any other management but his, with the result she never appeared
on the American musical stage again.
In 1930, she came to London with her husband, the English actor, Basil Sydney,
to appear in Knave and Queen, with Robert Donat. She then returned
to New York, where she was asked to appear in the English premier of Eugene
O'Neill's Strange Interlude. During the run, she and Basil Sydney decided
to settle in England where she remained off and on for the rest of her life.
In 1933, CB Cochran offered her the lead in Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's
Music in the Air, which marked her return to the musical stage in a
palpable hit. It told the tale of a composer and his soprano girlfriend who
go to the big city, Vienna, to find their fortunes.
He finds an operetta star, played by Mary, who is more interested in him than
his music and the girlfriend gets involved with a similar scenario with the
Impresario, who is to present the composer's opus. Being good Bavarian peasants,
they return to their village, sadder but wiser, but with a few hit songs under
their belt. Not, I would have thought, a good trade for fame, fortune and
Mary Ellis.
Mary recorded three numbers from the show 'I'm Alone', 'I've Told
Ev'ry Little Star', and 'The song Is You' on Col DB1139 (re-recorded
on Jerome Kern in London (World Record Club SH 171), but not on CD so far
as I am aware).
During the run, she filmed Bella Donna, in England, and then signed
a three film contract with Paramount, appearing in All The King's Horses,
Paris Love Song and Fatal Lady.
Ivor Novello was preparing a spectacular musical, Glamorous Night,
for Drury Lane and asked Mary to play the female lead opposite him, just as
she was about to leave for the States to honour her Paramount contract.
Ivor was determined she should appear in the show, mainly as he had written
the part with her in mind, so arranged for the score and lyrics to be sent
to her to study whilst in the States, with the result that she was able to
join the rehearsals two weeks late fully prepared for her part.
The plot was well watered Ruritanian plonk. King's gypsy mistress meets young
inventor on board a ship; there is a shipwreck and they undergo a Gypsy wedding
before the gypsies help the King quell a revolution, after which the inventor
has to give the mistress back to the king and returns to England to watch
their wedding on his new invention - television.
The public loved it and it would have run for well over a year if the Board
of Drury Lane Theatre had not booked in a pantomime, which they insisted had
to take precedence. So despite Ivor's strenuous attempts to save the day,
it closed and has never had a West End revival.
HMV recorded six of the numbers on three 12in 78rpm records. Mary appears
on two of these singing 'Glamorous Night', 'When The Gypsy Played',
'Shine Through My Dreams' and 'Fold Your Wings' (with Trefor
Jones). (HMV C2742/3).
The third disc (HMV C2741) is devoted to two songs by Elisabeth Welch.
Glamorous Night and The Dancing Years were re-recorded on LP.
Ivor Novello - The Great Shows (World Record Club SHB 23) and on CD
(Memoir CDMOIR 546 - 'Shine Through My Dreams'. Other CDs devoted to
Ivor Novello have some or most of the songs by Mary Ellis but this carries
them all on two CDs).
Mary returned to Hollywood, where she appeared in Fatal Lady, the last
film in her Paramount contract. Then it was back to Britain to make the film
of Glamorous Night in1936.
She appeared in two plays before Ivor again came into her life in 1938 waving
the script of The Dancing Years. A basically banal plot, it concerns
a composer and his leading lady soprano, cum lover, who fall out over a misunderstanding,
which results in her marrying a nobleman and him wedded to his piano. It was
given a semi- dramatic twist by a prologue and epilogue with the composer
in the hands of the Nazis, but saved by his soprano whose husband is now a
Nazi (sic - or should it be -sick?).
Mary played the operetta star and the piece ran at Drury Lane from March 1939
until the outbreak of war in September, when it went on tour, but Mary left
to do war work.
HMV produced a wallet of four records to commemorate the show. Mary appears
on five sides 'Wings of Sleep' (with Olive Gilbert), 'My Life Belongs
To You', 'Waltz of My Heart', 'My Dearest Dear' (all with
Ivor Novello at the piano) and 'My Life Belongs To You' (with Dunstan
Hart") (HMV B 8890/2).
In 1943, Ivor, who was still appearing in The Dancing Years, wrote
a patriotic French musical, Arc de Triomphe, in which Mary starred
and appeared in the last act as Joan of Arc in a eponymous opera-within-the-
play and in which she sang 'France Will Rise Again', which it did,
but not in time to stop the curtain falling on Mary after 222 performances.
Mary did not record 'France Will Rise Again', only 'Waking or Sleeping',
'Man of My Heart' and 'Easy to Live With' (with Peter Graves)
on HMV B9356/7, which are re-recorded on LP Ivor Novello World Record Club
SH 216, but not on CD.
Mary returned yet again to the drama and, between1944 and 1954, she appeared,
mainly out of the West End, in fringe and provincial theatres, including Shakespeare
at Stratford.
Her greatest success in these years was when she appeared, in 1948, with Eric
Portman in Playbill, two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan. In the
second of these, The Browning Version, she created the part of Millie
Crocker Harris, the bitter, unhappy yet loving wife of a schoolmaster, to
great critical acclaim.
In 1954, Noel Coward, after a series of unsuccessful shows, decided that Oscar
Wilde's wit and his would fuse into a hit musical and set about adapting Lady
Windermere's Fan for the musical stage.
He then engaged two of Ivor's leading ladies for Lady Windermere and Mrs Erlynne,
Vanessa Lee and Mary Ellis, and launched yet another flop.
Vanessa Lee could sing but couldn't act; Mary Ellis could act but now could
no longer sing. Coward's adaptation sent up everything where Wilde was sentimental;
and was sentimental over things which Wilde sent up. There were frantic revisions
and cuts on tour, Mary's big arias were cut, so what arrived at the Globe
Theatre was not what either Wilde or Coward had intended.
Phillips recorded the cast recording on LP (BBL 7005). Mary has two songs,
('Light is the Heart', and 'All My Life Ago') - all that remained
out of the six pivotal arias written. These were the last records she made.
She continued on the stage until 1970, during which period she appeared in
the English premieres of Mourning Becomes Electra and Look Homeward
Angel in the West End. She also appeared on television and radio.
Why do I bother with a lady who only appeared in seven musicals and made only
nine records? Because the shows she appeared in were important in the canon
of the musical and her performances in them made her a leading lady in the
true sense.
She was an actress with an opera singer's voice and vocal skills, which enabled
her to lift her performances out of the banal into the realms of realism.
She gave her roles character, which was why Coward, Novello and Hammerstein
wanted to create parts for her. Something that can be said of few other operetta
sopranos of the last half of the last century.
She was a comet, which blazed briefly over the West End firmament, leaving
a trail of stardust, that is preserved forever in her records. For a short
while, she gave the musical starlight, and for this, she is worthy of remembrance.
PAST RECORDS: Click here
for Jessie Matthews...
Click here for Evelyn Laye...
Click here for Edith Day...
Click here for Gertrude Lawrence...
