PHS7070 Professional Attachment Research Essay 036645 Island in the Stream: Fred Karno & the Karsino Before, during & after World War One Three minutes of film, silent, grainy, black and white give a glimpse of a June day when numerous convalescent soldiers went on an outing. Like a still photograph, film portrays a present that is already a moment of time past, it too is a certificate of presence.1 Filmed on Saturday 24 June 1916 the title slide states: ‘ECCENTRIC CLUB ENTERTAIN WOUNDED SOLDIERS Over six hundred convalescent soldiers from various hospitals enjoy themselves at the entertainment given to them at the “Karsino,” Hampton Court’. Part of a Topical Budget newsreel2 the film is full of clues about time and place, some of which still carry echoes of life today, while others like the wearing of hats and the amount of smoking3 demonstrate how far away that Summer, just over a hundred years ago has become. Only two, three, four generations away, the early twentieth century has passed into the place where living memory becomes history. As Hilary Mantel said in ‘The Day is For the Living’ the first of her 2017 Reith Lectures ‘As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for ourselves, we are interpreted.'4 Just like two members of a family offering different views of the same person there are at least two versions of this film that shuffle the order of events around.5 Like Raphael Samuel I have observed the comparative lack of attention given by historiography to the visual, ‘those sleeping images which spring to life unbidden, and serve as ghostly sentinels of our thought.’6 The version of the film from the London Screen Archives7 opens with a group of men engaged in some gentle horseplay (Figure 1). It then cuts to a drummer leading four pipers in uniform 1 through a gateway and down a staircase onto a grassed area where there are gazebos and folding wooden chairs. The camera follows the pipers, then pans right to left, showing the assembled crowd. The crowd which is a mixture of soldiers and civilians includes several amputees on crutches wearing pale suits, a dog, and a small boy. The scene cuts to show the pipers leading a long line of people, mostly wounded soldiers walking through a gateway. As the group of pipers go out of shot, a man is seen carrying another man over to some tables and chairs set out by the river. The procession, shot from above is led by five people walking abreast, three ladies and two men, one on crutches, one with a stick (Figure 2). Although the film is black and white and of variable quality I would identify these two men as black.8 As well as numerous men on crutches there are a few with faces swathed in bandages. One small group seem to be giving three cheers for something. The camera then cuts away to a different and closer angle of the line of men, before cutting away to pan left to right across groups of soldiers seated at tables along the riverside. A lot of crutches are parked in the background. One group notice the camera and wave to it. A mixture of ladies, older gentlemen in civilian clothes and boy scouts mill around the men, some of the ladies are involved in helping to serve tea. The final section of film cuts to a male entertainer being watched by the soldiers as the camera pans round right to left across the audience. Taking the film as a starting point this essay will investigate the intertwined subjects of Fred Karno and the Karsino hotel on Tagg’s Island in the Thames and the entertainment of convalescent wounded soldiers in the London area during the First World War. These are all subjects which in different ways have been overlooked. While there are numerous books and articles about the medical treatment of the wounded in World War One, the charitable provision of outings both to aid recovery and to provide entertainment for the convalescent 2 soldier appears to be a peripheral subject awaiting further systematic research.9 However these subjects all featured in newspapers and magazines, local and national. The creation of online databases now allows these stories to be browsed, searched for and discovered beyond the confines of a physically located archive.10 A considerable amount of material, predominantly visual of the type usually classed as ephemera such as pamphlets, postcards and photographs has also been viewed. Perhaps because it encapsulates how an era presented itself stylistically, ephemeral material often has a powerful ability to evoke time and place for the onlooker. With the expansion of archives beyond the ‘official’ and into the personally curated digital spaces of Pinterest and Flickr increasing amounts of this type of ephemeral material is available to the researcher, if they can find it. The two published books about Fred Karno are a pair of unsatisfactory ‘popular’ biographies,11 academic studies appear to only consider him important in relation to the performers he discovered, most notably Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.12 The Karsino hotel, which stood for sixty years, has like many demolished buildings proved to be a fugitive ghostly presence. The history of Fred Karno illustrates how in the course of a century somebody can go from household name to almost forgotten. With that hundred-year passage of time unlikely factual assertions can creep into descriptions. Like Hilary Mantel I found that ‘Facts are strong, but they are not stable. Soon you find your sources are riddled with contradiction, and that even when the facts are agreed, their meaning often isn’t.’13 For example several writers describe Karno as illiterate for reasons that are unclear. This assertion appears to begin with John M East, whose 1971 article, prompted by the demolition of The Karsino, states ‘Although illiterate, Karno was every-ready to learn by observation and experience.’14 Thirty years later Horrall in Popular Culture in London (2001) describes Karno as ‘the illiterate West Country acrobat’ and goes onto describe the Adeler and West 1939 biography as ‘the illiterate Karno’s autobiography.’15 Writing a few years later Steven Inwood in 3 City of Cities: The Birth of Modern London (2005) repeats this assertion describing Karno as ‘an illiterate circus and music hall gymnast who turned a talent for devising silent sketches into a very lucrative career.’16 Fred Karno Fred Karno was the stage name of Frederick Westcott (1866-1941), who starting out as a gymnast in circuses and music halls developed a range of silent slapstick comedy sketches and became a very successful manager and impresario (Figure 3). He converted three houses in Vaughan Road, Camberwell into the ‘Fun Factory’ where he ‘mass-produced comedy and sold it by the lorry load.’17 By the time he built the Karsino his headed note paper listed thirty-one items under ‘Fred Karno’s Companies’ (Figure 4).18 Karno’s sketches which included Jail Birds, The Football Match and the spectacular R.M.S. Wontdetainia relied on immaculate timing combined with increasingly elaborate sets and stage effects. R.M.S Wontdetainia which opened at the Paragon, Mile End on Monday 11 April 1910 was described by The Era as ‘the most ambitious, of any production yet attempted by Mr. Fred Karno.’19 A sketch in three scenes set on a luxury ocean liner, Wontdetainia featured a cast of over sixty appearing on a one hundred and twenty-foot-long stage set divided into three sections that utilized hydraulic rams to mimic the movement of a ship at sea. One cannot do justice to the last scene, in which we get a sectional view of the grand dining-saloon of the ‘Wontdetainia’. The picture is a triumph of stagecraft, and the most realistic scene of the kind undoubtedly ever seen in a theatre. The beautiful dining-room is an art study in cream and gold. Sixty diners—ladies and gentlemen, in evening dress— are seated at the many tables, and the stewards are seen be assiduous in their attentions to the passengers. Above, we get a picture of the officer on the watch and the star lit sky and ocean. The whole scene is a moving one as the ship rolls and plunges through the Atlantic billows, giving most vivid idea of the motion of a liner at sea.20 4 Perhaps his most important and enduring sketch was Mumming Birds, a show within a show, in which the comedic fun arises from the behaviour of the occupants of theatre boxes within a stage set installed on the stage while various performers try to perform.21 First presented at the Star Music Hall, Bermondsey in April 1904 Mumming Birds was the model for Charlie Chaplin’s film A Night in the Show (Keystone 1915). Chaplin like Stan Laurel and many others began his career as one of Karno’s performers.22 Four years later in 1908, Mumming Birds or Twice Nightly was the subject of the first ‘Alleged Infringement of Copyright by Cinematograph’ court case when Karno sued Pathé Frères (London) because he considered their film At the Music-hall ‘to be an exact representation of his piece;’ due the lack of written down dialogue he lost the case.23 As in many of his other sketches Mumming Birds was all about the participants not being very good at what they are meant to be good at.