Harry Gordon was a man of many guises, all of them entertaining. One
hundred years after the birth of the Aberdonian, Gordon Irving pays
tribute to a great talent
I LIKE to remember Harry Gordon as the complete businessman comedian
and entertainer. In a Scottish variety world where too many performers
tossed scripts into hampers and made a mess of their income returns,
Harry would have been a computer buff had today's technology been around
in his mythical Inversnecky world of the twenties, thirties and through
to the fifties.
The wee kilted Aberdonian, Harry Alexander Ross Gordon, born in
Aberdeen a century ago, burned the midnight oil in his flat in the
then-posh Kelvin Court, Glasgow. He was writing yet another of those
sketches for his revues in the variety halls of Scotland, and filing all
with an efficiency that would have done justice to the most devoted of
business company secretariats.
After his Aberdeen days, when he was king of the seafront at the Beach
Pavilion in the late twenties and thirties, Harry tackled the bigger
world of Glasgow and Edinburgh, eventually buying his Glasgow apartment
and striding the streets of Glasgow en route to the theatre, immaculate
in his Gordon kilt. He became part of the Glasgow theatre scene, notably
at the former Alhambra Theatre in a happy pantomime partnership with
that other master of Scots characterisation, Will Fyffe.
I regularly dropped in to their between-shows dressing-room teatime
break, backstage at the Alhambra. Will and Harry were buddies with great
tales to tell of touring concert party days up and down Scotland.
For Harry the creation of a sort of pre-Brigadoon village,
Inversnecky, was just part of his script-writing flair. He was its laird
and the residents were individuals -- the wee shopkeeper, the village
doctor, the daft loon, the country bumpkin, the postie. Even Scottish
TV's Glendarroch was never like this!
I know that Harry built up one of the largest collections of sketches,
quickies and gags in Britain. He had more than 200 original character
studies, more than 100 character doubles with his ''feed'', Jack Holden.
He was also -- and not many people knew this -- a talented
black-and-white artist as well as a keen amateur film maker whose
backstage film scenes are preserved in the Scottish Film Archive at
Glasgow.
But, to older readers, Harry Alex Ross Gordon is remembered for many
happy summer runs at the Aberdeen Beach Pavilion, where he produced
Harry Gordon's Entertainers from 1924 to 1940, a record surely in show
business, and not just of the Scots variety.
He pioneered resident shows in the music halls of Glasgow, Edinburgh
and Dundee, and joined the household names of Lauder, Willis and Gordon
in a famous newspaper cartoon.
For Glaswegians and thousands in the west of Scotland, his triumph was
to star for 11 years in a row in pantomime for Tom Arnold at the Glasgow
Alhambra in Waterloo Street, seven of these co-starring with Will Fyffe.
His summers were spent in city revues for Howard and Wyndham; his
autumns he enjoyed in short bursts of touring to communities in North
America or South Africa. Some of his best audiences were lumberjacks in
the backwoods of British Columbia.
In a world of changing comedy values the Laird o' Inversnecky was one
of the better quality British pantomime dames. His wardrobe was a
delight, and just before he died he was to have repeated his 1954
Edinburgh King's Theatre success in a partnership with Jack Radcliffe in
Dick Whittington at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. (In fact, the man who
took over from Harry was a young Andy Stewart, making a brave stab at
the pantomime dame honours.)
Wherever he went, even into the none-too-sympathetic arms of the
English, Harry, in a smart Gordon tartan kilt, was a good ambassador for
Scotland. His short, bespect-
acled figure was familiar from Sauchiehall Street to Union Street,
Aberdeen, and he maintained the dignity of a Bohemian profession by
always being immaculately dressed.
Harry's wife Jose -- he had dozens of ''wifies'' in his stage sketches
-- kept a low profile, but was a fine Principal Boy in pantomime. Their
daughter Bunty danced in her dad's Five-Past Eight revues, and gave up
her stage work when she married a Canadian, Norman MacLeod, leader of
the singing act, The Maple Leaf Four.
On the old Scottish Home Service, enjoying a strong listenership in
pre-TV days, Harry was a stalwart. He sent his canny couthy jokes and
sketches, many smarter than the average (even today), into Scottish
homes in hundreds of broadcasts from the wee Beach Pavilion.
One of his feats was to star for two solid years in Glasgow, playing
only two theatres -- the King's and the Alhambra. And he once played
three shows 100 miles apart inside three hours. He performed his act at
the Beach Pavilion, Aberdeen, boarded a plane to Inverness, did a second
show, then flew right back to Aberdeen to continue his show there.
London, as with so many Scottish comics, was not his scene. But his
act was known and appreciated by exiled Scots in the south, where he had
a brief stab at UK fame with an appearance at the London Palladium in
October, 1929.
The Inversnecky Laird's well-respected place at the top of the light
entertainment and theatrical ladder in Scotland was hard to fill. A near
perfect family show comedian, he would have been a misfit in today's
world of alleged funnymen whose language is littered with four-letter
words. He never let a ''blueish'' tinge mar his homely Scottish comedy.
When Will Fyffe died, just before a Glasgow pantomime, I called on
Harry Gordon at Kelvin Court, and he instantly wrote out for readers a
tribute in verse to his pantomime companion. These lines apply every bit
as much to merry little Harry Gordon:
The curtain falls -- the music dies away,
And we are left with the memory of a man who, in his day,
Had reached the stellar heights of the profession he adorned,
In life he was applauded, in death he's sadly mourned.
The north-east laddie who made his first breakthrough as an
18-year-old with Monty's Pierrots at Stonehaven did a pretty good job in
his lifetime. One hundred years after his birth he is surely worth
remembering.
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