Interview with Pearl Goodman

THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Pearl Goodman – interview transcript Interviewer: Kate Harris 26 March 2007 Actress and singer. Audiences; digs; domestic service; The Flying Doctor; Joan Littlewood; Ewan MacColl; Johnny Noble; Gerry Raffles; rehearsals; David Scase; Theatre Workshop; touring; training; Uranium 235. KH: Can we just start with how you first became involved with Theatre Workshop? PG: Well I’d been in the Land Army for about three years when I was asked if I would do a song at the end of a programme going out from Chichester to the servicemen. And as I was a local singer, and known very well, and I had sung In Town Tonight when I was 17, I was obviously the choice for this. So I said I would. And I was working one day with the cows and a van came up and some… no photographers then of course – but I was aware of this lady with… I’ve never seen anyone who looks just like Joan Littlewood. Her eyes sort of went from left to right, left to right and she said ‘Now Pearly bird, last night I went to the Assembly Rooms and I heard you sing Schubert’s Ave Maria, and think I would like you to sing two songs after my programme’. She was then employed by Northern Regional and she did a lot of this. And I think that probably gave her the first ideas of how many people that she met who could sing and who could talk and who could act… of starting her theatre. KH: And what were your first impressions when you met Joan? PG: Well as I said I had… her face was quite unique. There was this bulging forehead, and lovely fine eyebrows with heavy lids, and she seemed to look from under and weight you up entirely as though she knew you at one glance. She also had a very beguiling voice, very low in register. And I always remember she held a cigarette between very taut fingers all the time. And when one was finished, one of her - the people who she brought down with her – hastily brought out another one and lit it. And I knew, I mean this woman could really sort of beguile you into joining the Foreign Legion, I felt! And I said ‘Well thank you very much. And yes, I would be only too pleased to do that’. So a date was arranged at the YMCA… YWCA sorry. And there was Addy Street, there was the Shipham’s paste factory managers, The Tannery, all the big firms in Chichester then, where all the local boys who were in any of the services would have known – existed in Chichester remembered it very well. And most of them probably would have remembered me. And so we did all this. And finally I had to sing Ave Maria and Sussex by the Sea. I thought I was temporarily engaged at the time. I must say ‘temporarily’ http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 20 Theatre Archive Project because I had three engagements, they were all pretty temporary. And the… he was pilot but he’d sent his friend. And Joan thought I was… she said ‘Don’t you ask her to marry you because she’s going to join my theatre’. So she said ‘No look darling I’m going to start a Theatre Workshop’ which actually meant very little to me, as I was about 21. ‘You will join me won’t you?’, because she said ‘I have found seven talented people in my journeys and I consider you one’. And Ewan MacColl – who was then her husband but they didn’t… I think they were more or less separated in a way. You know they didn’t call themselves ‘Mr and Mrs’. Ewan MacColl – who was a great folk singer – is not going to sing unless I find a good singer to sing with him. And I think he’ll be very happy with you’. And I would say ‘Yes Joan, of course. Yes, yes, yes, I’ll join your theatre’. All the time trying to keep this chap’s hand from playing with my bangle on my… you know. And so I said goodbye to home and the Mayor, and everybody said goodbye and off we went. And then we heard it and… the Sussex by the Sea and the Ave Maria, which seemed rather strange to do the two. And I heard no more from Joan. And then, when I was in my… I’d been married then. I’d been five years in the Land Army and my husband then got shipped abroad, and I thought that ‘Well, what was I to do now?’. Because the war had ended and strangely enough I then worked for a Colonel Rex Spence, and he was a diplomat in Singleton – which is just outside of Chichester. And I had… instead of 72 cows to milk with an old man I had two cows to make milk and butter for the family. I had a beautiful flat. I was told I could use the Bechstein piano, and of all things the Welsh Guards in the stables. So I had very little work to do because most of them were farmer’s sons and they would take the cows, they would milk the cows and I would just make the butter and take it in. But I was there with another girl. But when Colonel Benson was in London, then he left it to his housekeeper. And I always remember when we were voting for… to get the Labour party in. He came out and he said to Brenda and myself ‘If you’re going down to vote, I’ll give you a lift if you like’. ‘Oh thank you very much, thank you’. And he said ‘You’re voting Conservative I suppose?’ so Brenda Northend said ‘Oh yes, yes, I’m voting Conservative’. So I said, ‘Well I’m not!’ I said, ‘I’m voting Labour’. He said ‘Well then, you can walk’. And I did. And anyway I was treated… everything was alright but I really had a little bit of sidelining after that. And then one day the housekeeper came out to me – I was gathering eggs – and she always worried me to death because she was also a friend of the family so you couldn’t have any sort of ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ with her on anything. And she gave me this telegram, which was always a very worrying thing to get then because though the war was over, lots of young men had been killed in accidents you know – their vehicles or whatever. And it said on there ‘Rehearsals for Johnny Noble and Molière, The Flying Doctor. Meet Gerry Raffles 5.15 at Manchester Station on May 5th’. And I thought, ‘And I will, too!’. By that time most of the eggs had dropped down onto the ground which… oh my goodness that woman’s face! So I just thought ‘There’s no point, you know, in apologising, I’ll go’. So I went upstairs and I packed my bags, I said goodbye to Brenda. I went down to my mother’s and [she] said ‘But you can’t, you can’t go’. And she said to my father ‘Fred she’s… she’s going… she’s going up to Manchester’. So I had before that – I’d done In Town Tonight and met Ray Milan, and he introduced me to an agent – I was then 18 ½. And I was then singing around London and living in Theatre Girls Club in Greek Street. So I had been about and I had been made Miss Gaumont British – no fault of my own I might tell you. I don’t suppose you want to know all this, but anyway inadvertently I became Miss Gaumont British – because I didn’t know what I was going in for. And I had… since I’d… I’d left school at 14 and gone into domestic service. And then daily jobs and… but done a lot of singing and also quite a bit of travelling after that. So going up to Manchester didn’t hold any, you know, http://sounds.bl.uk Page 2 of 20 Theatre Archive Project fears for me. But I heard my mother say to the neighbour next door ‘Well she’s been to London, I suppose she just gets off at Manchester’. [Laughs] So I thought ‘Now what am I in for?’. And I just thought ‘No, no getting up, milking cows at half past four in the morning. I am going to be an actress and a singer’. And coming from a working class home, at 14 you have to work. And whatever singing I did after that was all done in my spare time, after I finished work or whatever. So I couldn’t really anticipate the thought that I would be able to do it all the time. This was going to be… this was hard and delightful at the same time. So I get out at Manchester and I see great big hoardings of Tate [inaudible] to make you regular, gentleman’s trusses and a fairly grey afternoon. And I went into the ladies room and I looked absolutely burnt brown compared to the pale faces all dabbing their faces with pancake makeup. And I thought ‘Now I’ve got to meet this…’ and I was such a romantic person, I think ‘I’ve got to meet Gerry Raffles, what a name’.

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