A member of the Webster Booth-Anne Ziegler Appreciation Group on Facebook suggested that it would be interesting to see various places associated with Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler. Here are places where they stayed during their lifetimes, and photographs of the buildings.
Arbury Road, Nuneaton
Webster Booth’s parents, Edwin Booth and Sarah Webster, were married in 1889. Sarah came from Chilvers Coton, Nuneaton and the address on the wedding certificate was Arbury Road, Nuneaton.
Their first home as a married couple was at 33 Nineveh Road, Handsworth, and it was there that their eldest son, Edgar John Booth was born in 1890.
It is the house with the blue door and is situated round the corner from Soho Road, Handsworth, where Edwin Booth ran a Ladies and Girls hairdressers at 157 Soho Road. The family moved to 157 Soho Road about 1895 and it was there that Webster Booth was born in 1902. It is now the site of a multi-purpose store.
33 Nineveh Road, Handsworth
Webster’s father’s hairdressing shop was originally at 187 Soho Road. It is now the site of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Below: 157 Soho Road, Handsworth. The family moved from Nineveh Road to premises about the hairdressing shop in the mid 1890s.
Anne Ziegler was born Irene Frances Eastwood of 22 June 1910 at Marmion Road, Sefton Park, Liverpool. Marmion Road, Sefton Park
When Webster Booth was 9 years old he was accepted as a chorister at Lincoln Cathedral. Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln (below) Collage and photos: Charles S.P. Jenkins
After Webster’s voice broke, he returned home to Handsworth and attended Aston Commercial School which had opened in 1915, with the idea of becoming an accountant like his older brother, Edwin Norman. Edgar Keey, the father of his first wife, Winifred, was the headmaster there.
Webster Booth married Winifred Keey at the Fulham Registry Office in 1924. They made their home at 43 Prospect Road, Moseley with his older brother and family, where their son Keith was born on 12th June 1925. After Webster returned from a tour to Canada with D’Oyly Carte he decided to leave the company to become a freelance singer. He and his family went to London but in 1930 Winifred deserted Webster and they were divorced in 1931.
43 Prospect Road, Moseley, Birmingham (below)Photo: Michael Collen
43 Prospect Road, Moseley. Photo: Michael Collen.
Webster Booth left the D’Oyly Carte after the tour of Canada, changed his name from Leslie W. Booth, as he had been known in the D’oyly Carte Company, to Webster Booth and went to live in London to try his luck as a freelance singer.
The family lived in Streatham Hill, the old home of Tom Howell, leader of the Opieros Concert Party with whom he sang for several seasons, and – at the time of his divorce from Winifred Keey – he was living in Biggin Hill.
In October 1932 Webster Booth married his second wife, Dorothy Annie Alice Prior, stage name Paddy Prior. Paddy Prior was a soubrette, dancer, mezzo soprano and comedienne who had been on the stage since her late teens. She was born in Chandos Road, Fulham on 4 December 1904. During their marriage – 1932-1938 they lived at 5 Crescent Court, Golders Green Crescent.
In 1934 Irené Frances Eastwood moved to London and changed her name to Anne Ziegler to appear as the top voice in the octet of By Appointment, starring Maggie Teyte. She lived at 72 Lauderdale Mansions, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale.
Lauderdale Mansions, Maida Vale.
Anne and Webster were married on 5 November 1938, first at Paddington Registry Office, then had their wedding blessed in a special service for divorced persons at St Ethelburga’s Church, Bishopsgate.
Photo: Charles S.P Jenkins
Anne and Webster lived at the same address before and after his divorce from Paddy Prior in 1938 and in 1939 they moved into a bigger flat in the same building.
In 1941 they purchased a big house with a big garden from the theatrical couple, Ernest Butcher and Muriel George. This house was called Crowhurst at 98 Torrington Park, Friern Barnet N12.
Crowhurst, 98 Torrington Park, Friern Barnet N12.
Anne and Webster in the garden at Crowhurst, early 1940s.
Photos of Crowhurst today: Pamela Davies
Crowhurst sitting room today.
When they returned from their concert tour to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in 1948, they realised that Crowhurst was too big for them to manage at a time when it was difficult to find suitable domestic staff. They decided to buy a smaller house at Frognal Cottage, 102 Frognal, Hampstead NW3.
Listening to one of their new recordings in the sitting room at Frognal Cottage, with Smokey (1950)
Photos of Frognal Cottage today: Pamela Davies.
They sold Frognal Cottage in 1952 and moved to a house nearby at 9 Ellerdale Road, Hampstead, where they remained until they left to settle in South Africa in 1956.
9 Ellerdale Road, Hampstead.
I have created a similar post of the South African and UK residences where Anne and Webster lived from 1956 to 2003.
Listening to their latest recording at home in Frognal Cottage.
When Webster Booth arrived at the television studios to sing Silent Night with the Luton Girls’ Choir, he discovered to his horror that they had rehearsed it in English, though he had planned to sing the original German version. Hurriedly he learned the English words and, to make sure, had them written on a large piece of paper and hung above the camera. Just as the song was starting the paper blew away, and he was left with only an imperfect memory of the words. His wife, Anne Ziegler, crept up to the camera, stood next to it with the music, and mouthed the words to him.
So perfectly did they work together that viewers never noticed anything amiss. This close partnership has existed for the last twelve years, ever since their marriage and joint debut. Both have continued their separate careers as tenor and soprano, but it is as Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, Singing the Songs you Love, that they are best known.
Some musicians deplore the syrupy sweetness of their repertoire and their flamboyant arrangements, but they are in constant demand at music halls and Sunday concerts, earning from £200 to £400 a week; the 500 gramophone records they have made sell in hundreds of thousands; they keep a Daimler and three servants; and their popularity extends from the working-class housewife who has named her children Anne, Webster, Leslie (Booth’s first name), and Keith (his son’s name) to Queen Mary, who picked out their act as a favourite she wished to hear in her eightieth birthday BBC programme.
Anne and Webster pack for a concert tour. Smokey, their Cairn Terrier, is on the bed!
On the stage they are the handsome, romantic couple who sing duets about love and memories, personifying the timeless happy-ever-after world of the fairy tales. At home, they resume a married life much more like those of their audiences. He is a tall, kindly fifty-year-old, who cheerfully calls his large-sized nose a “conk” and can never make up his mind whether or not to keep a moustache. She is shrewd, gentle and house-proud, likes making her own clothes, and is successfully keeping middle age at bay. She is sensitive about her exact age – forty-one – and it is inked out of articles stuck in her Press-cuttings book.
Sometimes they bicker, like every married couple, “But when we get on the stage we forget all our differences. The best way to make up any husband-and-wife quarrel is to do some work together,” says Booth, in a voice which has never completely lost its Birmingham accent.
Their approach to their work is light-hearted. “We’ve sung most of our songs so many times that it’s practically impossible to make a mistake, and Boo sometimes tries to make me dry up, just for fun.” says Anne, whom “Boo” calls “Lottie.” He whispers awful things under his breath, won’t let go of my hand, makes faces at me, and accidentally-on purpose flips me across the face when he’s gesturing. And I have to keep going as though nothing was wrong.”
The Chappell Grand Piano in the music room at Frognal Cottage, Frognal.
Their “Good Luck” Rings
But to sing sentimental songs successfully, it is necessary to be sentimental oneself, and the Booths, whose home is full of pets, conscientiously wear “good luck” rings they gave each other early in their acquaintance.
They met in 1934, when Booth, a recognised singer, was given the part of Faust in the first British colour film ever made. Two hundred girls applied to play Marguerite; among them was a slim blonde who had come from Liverpool three months before to join a musical comedy. Born Irené Eastwood, she had changed her surname to that of her German grandmother, Ziegler, and put her favourite Anne in front. Her looks and her voice got her the job. She fell in love with the leading man, and into a divorce suit, for he was married already.
Until then, his career had been solid without being spectacular. He had sung at concert parties with Arthur Askey, but was discouraged when an old woman got up after a show and loudly complained to her companion: “Yon singer’s not bad when ‘e croons, but when ‘e sings loud ‘e’s ‘orrible.”
Booth’s father, a hairdresser, was relieved when his nine-year-old son won a place in Lincoln Cathedral choir, for it meant a free education. On of the first rules laid down for him there was against going to football matches, in case he injured his voice shouting. “This was a blow for me, because I was mad on football. I played goalie, and when I was fourteen, the Aston Villa coach saw me and offered me a place in the Villa Colts. I couldn’t decide whether to accept, and played truant from my singing lesson to watch them again and make up my mind. Unfortunately – as I thought then – I was spotted at the game and got such a thrashing I dared not take the offer.”
The choirmaster’s methods were none too gentle. He used to push a broken baton into the children’s mouths to force them wide open and push their tongues down. The psychological scar has remained with Booth, and even today, he is unable to have his throat examined, the touch of anything stiff on his tongue making him violently sick.
This was highly inconvenient when, in the opening scene on the first night of The Vagabond King, an actor duelling with him over-enthusiastically hit him across the throat. He was almost knocked out. By the last curtain he could hardly raise a sound. A specialist was sent for, but because of Booth’s inability to allow his larynx to be examined, nothing could be done.
“He kept trying to look down, but I almost bit his fingers off. In the end he just packed his bag and walked out.” It was a week before Booth could sing again.
Audition Was a Failure
Anne was going to be a dancer, but her instep dropped when she was thirteen, and she studied singing instead. When the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company came to Liverpool, she was granted an audition. But the night before, she caught ‘flu and the audition was a miserable failure. In the chorus was Webster Booth, who had become an accountant, but who had gone back to singing later. They did not meet then, however.
“I suppose my disappointment was Fate’s way of paying me back for the fiendish child I had been,” says Anne. “I had always refused to do any work at school, and at home I played such tricks as pretending to faint and clutching the tablecloth as I fell to the ground, bringing all the tea-things with me. I was such a wicked child that my mother kept a riding whip on the dining table between my equally naughty brother and me, to thrash us when we misbehaved.”
The Booth’s schedule is sometimes crammed to bursting point. Recently, in Glasgow, they finished a concert at nine-twenty on Saturday evening and while Anne caught an express to London, Webster caught the train to Preston, in Lancashire, where he had left his car. He arrived there before dawn, slept for two hours and drove nearly 100 miles across country to Ashby-de-la-Zouch for a concert on Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, in London, Anne packed some bags, and went to Luton to sing in Tom Jones. After his concert, Webster drove to London, and they met in time to sing at the Albert Hall on Sunday evening. After that, they hurried down to Eastbourne, where they started a week’s variety on Monday evening.
Trooped Into Bedroom
“The only way we can carry on is to sleep in the afternoon whenever we can,” explains Anne. This, however, had an awkward consequence when they sang for the British Legion in Motherwell. It was afternoon by the time got there, and they had eaten lunch. But the Legion had arranged a banquet for them, which they attended as briefly as possible before retiring to an adjoining room to rest. “Unfortunately, the people at the luncheon mistook our room for the cloakroom,” says Anne, “and when they finished lunch they all trooped into our bedroom looking for their coats. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
She takes a trunkful of crinolines wherever she goes. They have become her trade mark, and one of them had 100 yards of mauve and pink net in it. She has nine in her wardrobe, including one made ten years ago and worn so often that she dare not appear in it again. “People would say it was the only one I had.” She keeps a diary of every engagement, with a not of each dress, so that she does not repeat herself next time she sings at the same place. The crinolines cost from 85 to 240 guineas each.
Her husband wears out three dress suits a year. “It’s the packing that ruins them.” On the maiden voyage of Imperial Star to Australia, water flooded the hold, and all his dress shirts, ties and waistcoats were soaked and dyed by the colours near them. Booth collected all the disinfectant in the ship and soaked them in it. The captain sent a radio message to Teneriffe, the next port, and a laundry was standing by to wash them. This restored their looks, but six weeks later, as he was dressing for a concert, it disintegrated. The next one did the same right through his stock. He had to borrow a shirt before he could sing.
Although they have received 250 guineas for nine minutes’ work – when they travelled to Perth for an all star broadcast cabaret to launch an hotel – their regular fee is £150 for a concert. Cabaret appearances are usually worth £100, and they get a guaranteed minimum of £300 a week on the halls. On top of this are royalties for their gramophone records, which have been as much as £1,000 a year. “But everything costs a lot,” points out ex-accountant Booth. “Our house and secretary and servants run into £50 every week, and our accompanist gets up to £30 a week, plus expenses. And we still have the agent and the Income Tax man.
With Smokey at Frognal Cottage.
For their fees they have to perform so many songs which, however pleasant for the first few times to hear and to sing, become almost sickening after a thousand airings. “Sometimes I feel I’ll go mad if I have to sing We’ll Gather Lilacs or The Keys of Heaven just once more,” confesses Anne. “But at every concert we are bound to get several requests for them and we are servants of the public.”
Sir Henry’s Question
To escape the monotony they have made several forays into grand opera and both have sung in oratorio. But on the one occasion he sang at a Promenade Concert, Booth felt he was insulted by Sir Henry Wood. He and Parry Jones had been asked to sing the tenor parts in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia. and he arrived before Jones. Sir Henry met him and asked, before the whole BBC Chorus, “Are you the stand-in for Parry Jones?” He was so offended that he has stubbornly refused to sing again at the Proms although Sir Henry has since died. “It’s very naughty of him,” says Anne.
As for the future they talk – wistfully, but without conviction – of retiring and settling down in the country. Television is opening up a new field for them and they give it greater attention than the immediate payment warrants.
“Sometimes when we’re feeling particularly pleased with ourselves, we like to think that everyone in Britain has been made a little happier just for a moment sometime by our singing. After all, there’s no harm in being sentimental, is there?”
I am not sure of the origins of Femina and Women’s Life – it may have been a supplement to a newspaper at the time. It should not be confused with the Women’s magazine, Femina, which appeared in the 1980s. The photographs are taken from a rather over-the-top article, written by Fiona Fraser and Bill Brewer.
Husband-and-wife team Fiona Fraser and Bill Brewer visit the Booths of Parktown North.
Theatre Couples at Home – 8
“We met Princess Alexandra and she signed the photograph for us.”
On a rural corner in Parktown North, there is a discreetly wood-fenced corner, over the top of which can just be glimpsed the roof of a charming home. By the wicker gate on an upturned stone is written the address, in which paint, probably by Leslie – otherwise known all over the world, as Webster Booth. We will call him Leslie so there is no confusion!
Leslie Webster Booth. Lyric tenor, Star of musicals, light opera, variety. In great demand for oratorio. Actor, well-known radio personality, film actor, writer, teacher of singing, film star of “The Laughing Lady”. “Waltz Time”, “The Robber Symphony”. Royal Command performer. Dog lover.Anne Ziegler, lyric soprano, Principal Boy, actress, recording and TV star with her partner-husband. Operettas, musicals, producer. Keen gardener, teacher of singing, Royal Command performer.
“You’d never guess that one of the best-known singing acts in the world lived here,” said Fiona to her daughter, Tandi, as Bill heaved the tape recorder from the back seat.
The Brewer trio walked through the wooden gate into a sunken garden, silky with tenderly-tended lawn and disciplined flower beds. A long, lean Leslie left manuscript, records and stop watch on the patio lounge, and came to greet them.
The slim and elegant Anne put down her seething hosepipe reluctantly, signalled the assistant gardener to turn the water off, stripped off her gardening gloves, and joined her guests.
“Coffee or tea?” she asked with Lancashire forthrightness.
Leslie led the way into the sweet coolness of their home. Tandi and her parents were fascinated by the warm sheen of the old and beautiful wood of various pieces of furniture, especially the bric-a-brac cabinet with the tiny treasures fro all over the world on its shelves.
Leslie moved a rocking-chair gently, disclosing a shaggy small dog. “I think you’ll find a plug for the recorder behind the black cat,” he said.
The Brewers regarded the large, somnolent cat with caution. They’d visited quite a few establishments during these interviews.
The coffee and milk were poured out of a lovely pair of silver antique jugs. The Brewer eyes shone enviously. Anne explained, “A present from Marion Rawicz of Rawicz and Landauer.”
The Brewer eyebrows made into interrogation marks. Anne explained, “During the war, they were aliens, and afterwards, Marion wanted to build a house in Hampstead -”
Bill was enchanted. “We used to have a cottage there,” he butted in. “Holly Hill – last cottage on the right-hand side. The only one with a garage. Did you know it?”
“No,” said Anne evenly. “And Marion couldn’t get permission. You had to have a permit for these things. So I went and was rather charming to the Hampstead Town Clerk – “
“We gave a concert for him,” Leslie entered into the conversation. Anne seemed rather relieved. “So we did!” she said. “So we had him with his back to the wall after the concert, and we exerted all our charms – “
“Did you?” breathed Bill.
“She did!” agreed the amiable Leslie.
Anne carried on. “anyhow, through all this, I got a permit for Marion to build his home, which he’s still living in.
“One day, he called on us with a rather curious parcel under his arm. (She now used such a good mittel-European accent, that the Brewers wondered why she didn’t do more radio plays.) “Undt’ee open it, undt say, ‘Anne, is only a leetle zing to say sank you for all vot you ‘aver done.’
“So, enjoy your coffee, because it comes from a happy memory.”
Eton Collar and All
Fiona started. “Let’s have some background stuff, please, Leslie. You started in opera, I believe?”
Leslie shook his head. “I started as a choirboy,” he said. “I was a choirboy at Lincoln Cathedral when I was seven.”
“Thorough little stinker he was, too!” said Anne.
“Yes, I was a shocking little horror in Eton collar and all that stuff! My voice broke when I was thirteen and I went to a commercial school to be trained as an accountant. I didn’t like that much, so I joined D’Oyly Carte – the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company – in the chorus. I was twenty-one when I joined the company, and after being promoted to various parts, I was with them on their first Canadian tour.
“When I returned, I realized there wasn’t much chance of getting anywhere with the D’Oyly-Cartes, so I left and started on concerts. I met Sargent – “
“Sir Malcolm?” breathed Fiona, impressed, looking at a signed photograph of that carnationed beau of conductors.
Leslie carried on with the background. “Yes. He put me into oratorio, and from that I went into grand opera.”
Bill leaped in. “What lead roles did you sing?”
“I didn’t,” Leslie said, rather obscurely. “I was one of the priests in The Magic Flute in the 1938 season with Richard Tauber. The conductor was Beecham. Then I did the tenor part in Rosenkavelier at Covent Garden and Sadlers Wells. Of course, by then, I was recording – “
“And you’d met me, of course,” Anne said, quite gently.
Leslie’s short period of accountancy must have made its impact, because he remembered. “Nineteen-thirty-four was when I met Anne,” he said with certain satisfaction
“Thirty years this month, I’ve put up with this monster,” Anne stated, without rancour.
Fiona looked at the glamorous Anne, and said, “Of course, you were very, very young at the time, weren’t you?”
Anne wasn’t the slightest bit perturbed. “Not all that young,” she said quite happily.
Opening night of Sextet, 1957.
Leslie decided to confess all. “Well, she was younger than me anyway,” he said. “Now let me see – I was playing Faust in the first colour film of that opera, and who was Marguerite but little Annie Ziegler! So that’s how we met. And then we started singing together – “
“And we got married,” Anne said. Then added, rather inconsequently, “Did you know Leslie was married three times?”
Leslie seemed unimpressed. “So what?” he asked.
Bill asked, “Any family?”
Leslie answered. “Yes, I’ve got one son, who’s a farmer in England.”
Anne added, “And a granddaughter, whom we haven’t seen yet, alas.”
Fiona brought them back to their careers. “When did you start singing together?”
Anne answered, “We were married in 1938, Bonfire night – November the Fifth!”
“Fireworks when you married?” murmured Bill.
“And ever since!” came, involuntarily, from Leslie.
Anne agreed sunnily. “Yes! And we started to get well-known when Julius Darewski put us on the map in variety in 1940. We opened at the Hippodrome, Manchester, and we concentrated on working together, and we did, in things like The Vagabond King.”
Fiona became excited. “I saw you in that, and fell in love with Leslie on the spot,” she said with fervour.
Leslie accepted her homage gracefully. “We did recordings, musicals, films together.”
The factual Fiona, of course, wanted to know, “How many records have you made?”
Leslie considered. “I suppose about a hundred and fifty duets, and two or three hundred solos.”
Fiona continued, “A lot of your records were very big sellers individually, weren’t they?”
Leslie’s accountancy course appeared to have failed him. “Yes. We’ll Gather Lilacs – I don’t know how many that sold, but it’s still selling. And Macushla and English Rose – they sold thousands, but I don’t know how many. Anyway, we still get money trickling in from all over the world.
“It’s not like it was, of course, because they’re not making 78s any more, but they’ve put out some re-issues on 45s, and they’re selling very well.” He considered the financial trickle, and said in heartfelt tones, “Thank heaven!”
‘Pretty Little Voice’
Bill considered it was time to learn something about Anne. He said, “Tell us about yourself before you met Leslie.”
Anne did so. “Actually, I wanted to be a pianist. I was a monster at school, and my parents were told that it wasn’t worthwhile my carrying on because I wasn’t interested in anything except music. Oh, I wasn’t expelled or anything, but I was taken away, and I continued with languages and piano.
“Then the organist at our church discovered that I had a ‘pretty little voice’, so I dropped the piano, because I realized that I’d only be adequate as a piano-player.
“I started training as a singer. I sang in a choir, then I sang in the chorus of operas, and my music teacher took me around for odd concerts, as a sort of star pupil.
“Eventually I had to find something to do, because my father lost all his money in the cotton market, and I wanted to support myself.
“So I went to London, and auditioned for the chorus of a musical with Maggie Teyte. That was a complete flop – lasted three weeks and folded up. I had two alternatives – get work in London, or go home.
“A friend introduced me to the woman who used to book the singers for the Lyons Corner House, the Regent Palace and the Strand Palace (where Leslie worked many years before), and that kept me going for three months.”
Fiona had a thought. “Have you always been Anne Ziegler?” she asked.
“No. My name was Irené Eastwood.” She slipped into an authentic North Country accent. “Reet good Lancashire name, Eastwood! Irené, in Greek, means ‘Peace’.”
Leslie said, “That’ll be the day!”
Anne took that in her stride. “I had to change my name when I went into the chorus, because my name had to go into the programme. I’ve always loved the name ‘Anne’, and I thought, ‘Now what do I do about my surname?’
“So I went through the Liverpool directory, and the last name in the book belonged to my father’s cousin who had emigrated from Germany about fiver hundred years earlier, and had drifted from farming in Scotland to farming in Cheshire. So there it was, A to Z – Anne Ziegler!
“And I was lucky, because during the 1930s, Continental singers with foreign names were very popular, and people thought I was Continental! I didn’t trade on it, but it did help!”
Bill commented, “Once Ziegler and Booth got together they travelled the world?”
Leslie said, “Well the only trip we haven’t made is from New Zealand to Vancouver!”
‘Best Country of All!’
Fiona was impressed, naturally. “Having toured the world, what made you decide to settle in South Africa?” she asked.
There was an astonished pause, as the Booths gazed at the Brewers. Then there was a machine-gun barrage of answers.
“It’s the best country of all.”
“Definitely.”
“The sun…”
“The way of living…”
“The spaciousness…”
Bill was intrigued. “Tell us more.”
Leslie did so. “I certainly will! We came out here on a world tour in 1948, on our way to Australia and New Zealand. Someone told us to contact Gladys Dixon at the SABC. So we cabled from the ship to say we were arriving in Cape Town, and had three weeks before we left Durban.
“She cabled back that she had arranged for us to do two broadcasts from Durban, two from Cape Town and two from Johannesburg. Then we rejoined the ship and did our tour.
“Well, when we got home, we talked things over. We didn’t like America or Australia much. We did like New Zealand, but it’s too remote, and the only decent place was South Africa, which we adored.
“Anyway, we didn’t do anything about it, until 1955, when we had a cable from Cape Town Municipality, asking us to do a tour with the Cape Town Orchestra. So we came out, did the tour, and then Percy Tucker of Show Service, asked us to come out again the following January in ’56 and do another tour. We came out and stayed until May.
“Then, when we went home, we found that the public taste for music had radically changed. So we said, ‘What’s there for us – here?’”
Anne said, “We could see the warning light. We could sense the change in entertainment form that was to come.”
Leslie nodded. “Yes. Rock ‘n Roll and all that twangy stuff was on its way. So I said, ‘To blazes with this! I’m too old to start learning to play a guitar. Let’s go back to South Africa!’ We came back in July ’56, and we haven’t been back to England since.”
Webster asks in his usual vague fashion, “Have you done your piece yet, Jean?” She says, “Of course not!’ and I say, “It’s not till Thursday, Webster.” He looks very knowing as though he knew that all the time.
1 April – Go to Rhodes Park library today. Jennifer Humphreys serves me. Get out autobiographies of Humphrey Lyttleton and Donald Peers – both mention Webster and Anne. Go to town and have lunch with Mum and Dad, then we see Once More with Feeling, starring Yul Brunner and wonderful, whimsical Kay Kendall who died two years ago. See a snippet in the newsreel of Lennie Mills and Glenda doing a routine at the rink – they get a huge ovation from the movie audience and I clap jolly hard too and feel proud of them.
2 April – Sunday school. Not many kids there owing to holiday. I have Neill, Mark, Desmond and a little boy called David in my class. I tell them a story and let them colour in. Eugenie Braun makes me lead singing and I practically sing a solo – can hardly hear the kids! Peter gives me hymns for the guild afterwards – practically all unknown! Go into church with the usual crowd – Leona Rowe is away at camp, and Mr Russell gives a rather dreary sermon.
In the afternoon the Diamonds come and we have pleasant time. I perk up when conversation leads to a discussion about the Booths – they still maintain that Anne’s singing voice is painful but she has a lovely personality and speaking voice. Am persuaded by everyone to sing which I do reasonably.
3 April – Easter Monday In afternoon Dad and I go to eisteddfod and I buy a season ticket. We go to Duncan Hall to hear singing and instrumental items. A little Welshman presides and the adjudicator is from England – very good. After the interval the Welshman tells us to take our seats. I turn round to see what’s what and, out of the corner of my eye, catch sight of Webster. I get a real shock. Whisper to my father who is not at all perturbed, so we sit through the whole competition without further ado.
We get up to go and the first person I come across is Anne looking too gorgeous for words in a flowery dress. Her face lights up as only her face can, and she says, “Why, hello, Jean, how are you?” Webster, who is sitting in front of her, turns round to say hello. I introduce them to Dad and they are really charmed when he says, “I’m privileged to meet you.”
Webster asks in his usual vague fashion, “Have you done your piece yet, Jean?” She says, “Of course not!’ and I say, “It’s not till Thursday, Webster.” He looks very knowing as though he knew that all the time.
Webster and Anne
She says, “It’s a pity you can’t stay for the next item, Jean,” and I say that Mum is expecting us home so I’m afraid we can’t stay. She tells me how sorry she is and we say goodbye to them. We stand at the back of the hall and listen to the last adjudication then depart to the sight of Anne going up to the front, preparing herself to accompany their singer in an art song.
Dad tells me on the way home that he doesn’t think Webster looks very well and that everybody around us was staring at us in admiration for knowing them – I didn’t even notice this as I was too wrapped up in speaking to them! All I know is that I adore them, and other peoples’ opinion don’t count two hoots!
5 April – Listen to Webster’s programme at night, and he was right as usual – it is good tonight! He starts off talking about the difference between opera and oratorio and gives an example from Handel’s Samson – his own recording. He goes on with his story, how he had an interest in Gilbert and Sullivan, how he came to join the D’Oyly Carte Company by barn-storming an audition when the company was in Birmingham and not turning up for an audit when he was asked to go to London to sing for Rupert D’Oyly Carte so that he was sacked. His teacher Dr Wassall was angry that he joined the company and never acknowledged him in future. He toured the UK with the company which included Henry Lytton, Bertha Lewis, Darrell Fancourt, Sydney Granville and Derek Oldham as principals, and Malcolm Sargent as the conductor in 1926. Webster asked Sir Malcolm whether he should sing in Grand Opera, and sang to him from La Bohème. “If you’ve no money, don’t sing in grand opera,” was his advice. He toured Canada with the company where his companion was Martyn Green and he had a wonderful time over there.
He plays a record by Harold Williams whom he obviously feels is the bees’ knees and ends with the overture to Mikado, an anecdote about Gilbert and Sullivan and the promise to play one of the G and S operettas after copyright is surrendered by Bridget D’Oyly Carte at the end of the year. Lovely programme by a wonderful man.
6 April – Eisteddfod at night. Sonnets are all done fairly well mainly by varsity students reciting poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I don’t disgrace myself but I don’t win a gold medal either. The girl who wins is about 25. The adjudicator, Miss Levitas, says on my report that I’m sincere!
7 April – Go to the Booths today feeling rather apprehensive. Webster answers door holding a large bell which, he tells me, is supposed to ring every half an hour to let him know when to put another sixpence into the parking meter. He says he’s forgotten how to wind it up. “I can’t depend on my watch because I forget what time I put the money in, in the first place.” Lemon is there so I play with him until Anne comes in, looking beautiful in a charcoal-grey pleated skirt and sweater and black court shoes, all in the best of style.
She asks me about the Eisteddfod and I tell her that I didn’t get any medal but I didn’t dry up either. She reads the report and says, “Who the hell is C. Levitas? I thought the adjudicator was Mary Webster!”
Webster goes out to put money in the meter and to go to a jeweller to find a real copper bracelet for Anne’s rheumatism. Says, “Goodbye, see you in a little while.” Before Anne starts on the play, she tells me that their bass came second, their girl got a gold medal in Lieder and there were several more seconds. I make fitting remarks about their success. She tells me that the girl who got the gold medal didn’t really deserve it, “God forgive me. She got it on musical knowledge.” This girl had great trouble with her voice – her husband didn’t like it but she persevered so that was a kick in the teeth for him when she did well!
We start on And So to Bed and really give it stick. She asks me whether my parents had any theatrical experience because I have such good control of words and cues. Webster comes back and says that the jeweller had no real copper but someone in a shop in Eloff street would make one for her.
We go on with the play and Anne praises Leslie Henson (who played Pepys) to the heights – did I ever see him? I say no, but my father said he was wonderful. She goes into ecstasies about him and says, “If only they would put this play on here.”
]
Excerpt from Anne’s score of And So To Bed.
Webster says I am good but must be careful not to tear my throat otherwise, if I was doing a show, I would soon not have any voice left. “Get French through the nose!” I must say that Anne becomes rather flustered herself when she does my part to show me what to do. She says I must learn the scene.
Tells me that Mr Salmon, the music adjudicator took far too long over adjudications. “He’s from Lancashire, but still he took too long!” We have tea and Anne naturally says once again that it is like TCP and some discussion ensues. Asks me to come at the same time next Friday and all is lovely. They’re nice.
8 April – Go skating today. Sue, Neill and Menina are there and I spend most of morning talking to Sue. She tells me about building the float for varsity rag. Says that Jennifer Nicks now lives in Canada. Jennifer Nicks wrote to Gwyn and told him she has called her baby Methuselah-Star – I ask you! Sue skates like a honey as usual and I skate as normal and enjoy myself. She says she thinks Christians don’t have much enjoyment in life.
Scotts come at night. Linda cute, Mr S armed with violin – I accompany him at piano to hitherto unseen pieces which, strangely enough, I succeed in playing. We also gallop through Only a Rose. All convivial.
10 April Have lunch with Mum and she promises to phone Anne about doing singing instead of speech from a week on Friday. This point has been mooted in the family circle so I’m going to do that instead of speech – if they’ll have me. Buy an SABC bulletin and there is an interview with Webster in it in which he talks about his career, stage fright and rewarding moments. He says that he wouldn’t change his life if he could live it over again. “I was given a voice, a figure and my marriage with Anne Ziegler – something that has been successful and happy, and I have adopted what I think to be about the finest country in the world.” He was lucky, but his luck certainly hasn’t spoilt him in any way.
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SABC Bulletin April 1961 WB interview
Mum phones Anne in the afternoon and tells her that I’d like to do singing. She is quite happy about this and says that it’ll be a pleasure to teach me. She tells mum that I’m a sweet thing and they’re very fond of me. Mother says, “Jean enjoys going to you and she’d like to do singing as it goes with the piano.” Anne says that it is half the battle learning to sing if one knows music.
Mummy says, “Jean was a bit nervous to ask about singing,” and Anne says, “Oh, why?” Mummy says, “Well, she’s not too sure of her own voice.” Anne is evidently as big a honey as always, and when Mummy says that I love to listen to Webster’s radio programmes, she says, “Oh, no! Not really!” Well that is that and I hope that I can do well at singing because I love to sing so I must do well. This is really their true sphere.
11 April – Start college again today – new typing teacher – all affable.
12 April – College. Typing teacher says my accuracy is best in the class – whew! Must keep up this good standard.
At night I listen to Webster’s programme. After he left D’Oyly Carte he joined Tom Howell’s concert party, the Opieros, singing operatic excerpts in parks and at the seaside. He eventually sang oratorio tenor solos with the Huddersfield Choral Society and Royal Choral Society under the direction of Sir Malcolm and started recording for BBC studio opera programmes.
He plays records by Isobel Baillie, Dennis Noble and himself singing in La Bohème, and bass Oscar Natzke, with a most beautiful bass voice who died at the age of 39, and a duet from Carmen by South American Soprano and a man with an unpronounceable name. There are several recordings by Webster himself singing opera. He has a beautifully restrained voice and gives a more polished performance. He presents the programme beautifully – polished to a ‘t’. Songs of sopranos all gorgeous – dread to think what he’ll have to say about me – still, the programme is terribly nice.
13 April – College – long day today. Jill, Lyn, Audrey and I go to the library and I meet David Cross there who is very sweet and looks nice enough to divert attention!
In the afternoon I listen to Leslie Green, with Charles Berman as his guest. Latter has made a new recording.
At night phone rings and I know, almost instinctively, that it is Anne – am right as usual! Gives usual greeting, “Is that Jean? Jean, this is Anne Ziegler here!”
She asks (talking very loudly tonight), “Jean, could you possibly come at 4.30 instead of 4 tomorrow?”
“Yes, that would be all right.”
“You see, tomorrow night is the music prize-winners’ concert and I’ve had to change all the lessons around because of it.” (Can’t see any connection at all, but still!)
“So, will that be all right, Jean?”
“Yes, fine.”
“Well, goodbye, we’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Goodbye, Anne.”
14 April – College as usual. My deskmate Lorraine Feinblum, who is a year or two older than the rest of us, and is engaged. We are all thrilled for her.
I go to the Booths in the afternoon. Lemon snuffles at the door and Anne answers it. She wears a straight skirt with a jersey and grey shoes with an overdose of eye make-up (probably for tonight’s concert). We have customary greeting and she finishes practising an intricate accompaniment for the concert tonight.
Webster comes in and brings various purchases into the kitchen and says, “Oh, hello, Jean. I didn’t know you were here.” We have customary greetings and Anne finishes practising piece for concert.
Anne calls me in and says, “I hear you want to do singing, Jean. I think that’s splendid.”
I say, “Well, I’d like to, but I’m not sure about my voice.”
Webster says, “Well, judging from what I remember from last hearing you, I don’t think you have to worry much about that.”
He asks me what sort of music I have at home and goes to look out some music while I go through the last scene of And So to Bed with Anne. I have learnt it and do it quite well. She says afterwards, “It’s too wonderful! You really do it beautifully – it’s a miracle how you learnt the part – some people doing singing won’t even learn a song I give them to do – but this – brilliant, and very well done.”
Webster says, “It’s very good. You could know the part in a fortnight!” He asks where I have acted before and I say, “‘School plays etc.”
We go through it again and she tells me I have the makings of a fine actress.
They insist that I should sing. I go through some scales with Anne playing and looking down my throat at the same time, and Webster listening very intently with the ear of a master. Anne says my tongue is in a perfect position – how hard I have practised to get it there! – but I must open my mouth wider on the high notes. Webster says I have a very good voice which will be fine for training and Mrs. B says, “It’s all there – you’ve probably got about four notes to add to it yet.”
She makes me look in the mirror to see how to hold my mouth when singing high – the rule is not to show teeth. I’m afraid I look rather like a horse laughing! Webster takes the music and we debate about what I should sing – a Lieder album with dozens of lieder (all in English including On Wings of Song).
I say that I know Wiegenlied best but it isn’t in that book so what about Hark, Hark the Lark? I say I know Hark, Hark, the Lark but when I’ve tried that at home I couldn’t reach high notes. Anne says it was probably in a higher key, so I agree to try it although this key is actually higher than mine, for the top note is high G but somehow I reach it perfectly. Anne sings with me. She really has a lovely voice. Webster stands at my side listening very intently. Thank heaven he expresses approval. He says I must go through my own Schubert album and bring it next week. I have nothing to worry about with regards to my voice –it’s good. I tell him, “Well, I wasn’t too sure about it because I’d never heard it!”
He says, “Well, we won’t let you hear it just yet. Everybody gets a terrible shock when they hear their own voice.”
Anne comes with me to the door and says, “Well, Jean, I’m glad that at last, you’ve decided to obey the request we made to you so nicely such a long while ago. You can go home and tell your parents you have a lovely voice and we’re both thrilled that you’re going to do singing.”
I say goodbye to Anne and Lemon and come down on the lift floating on air. I’m so thrilled about it because they have such a fine musical understanding and can tell a good voice when they hear one. Also Webster has taken on a more authoritative position because singing is his forte. But he’s quite different from the Webster on the radio – I prefer him as he is in the studio.
For ages – since I heard them sing at the church last year – I’ve wanted to do singing. After I heard them I started to enjoy music and singing far more – I know that what they sang that particular evening was light but their presentation of it was perfect. But it has taken me practically a whole year to start my singing lessons with them. I know I’ll never regret it. Not only are they top-notch singers, but they’re top-notch all round.
On Wednesday evening Webster said of Isobel Baillie, “I understand she’s teaching at the Manchester School of Music – lucky pupils.” Well, that’s the way I feel about them. They’re awe-inspiring and make me feel as though I might do well if I work hard.
15 April – Go into rink today. Menina, Neil Craus, Dawn Vivian are all there – Sue is in the rag – and we have reasonably gay time but have to work. Menina is learning with Mr Perren while Jill Jagger is away getting married, and she says he is a real old tartar!
Skating goes very well and is exhilarating. Come into town and buy On Wings of Song in Kelly’s and then have lunch with Mum and Dad in Capinero and then go to see Bottoms Up with Jimmy Edwards. Good but a bit kiddish in places!
16 April – Sunday School today. Mark, Neill, Desmond and Gary W are there and all of them tell me strangest things – some of Mark’s stories are decidedly exaggerated. Stay to sermon by Mr R – quite good but a bit disjointed towards the end. All the usual crowd there but can’t say they thrill me with their spirit. Gail won the prize for best beatnik on Friday night.
18 April – RDM provides pleasant shock for me in morning. Full page picture of Webster and Anne advertising Skal beer! Doesn’t say it’s them but of course it is! Webster complete with beard (he had it shaved off on Friday!) sitting holding glass of beer and Anne sitting on his lap with telegram in one hand and a look of sheer delight on her face. It’s a really gorgeous advert and large – larger than life – up it goes on my wall – if there’s another I’ll put it in my diary!
College goes well today – Lorraine F is excited about her engagement. Go with Jill Harry to library and meet Mary Theodosiou who says she’s working hard, isn’t living in Kensington, and hears that Atholie is pretty fed up working in the library. I’m not surprised, with those awful hours! In the afternoon I vegetate owing to a cold which I must get rid of before Friday at least.
19 April – College. We have a party for Lorraine F which is fun. Come home on bus with unknown but very affable girl who is doing a speed-writing course.
I listen to On Wings of Song at night. Webster doesn’t continue with his own life story but plays records. First one is a Thomas Beecham recording which he got for Easter, then a song by Gigli and an aria from Messiah.
He says that in 1938 he had the honour of singing the tenor role in Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden. Richard Tauber was also in the production. He says, “When Richard Tauber was appearing in the same concert as us at the Coliseum Anne asked him what songs he intended to sing. Tauber replied, ‘German songs,’ and his little accompanist (Percy Kahn) added, ‘With English words by me!’”
He talks of another opera by Rossini (I think) and says, “Anne and I sang it at the festival opera season in 1953 and thoroughly enjoyed it.”
He mentions that he sang with Kathleen Ferrier and Gladys Ripley, the two tragic contraltos who both died within a year of one another, Kathleen, a switchboard operator, and Gladys, a hairdresser. Plays record by Gladys and another tenor – how I wished it had been a Kathleen Ferrier recording – very nice though. Ends with overture to HMS Pinafore, conductor – Sir Malcolm, and says, “It’s very light-hearted but I love it!”
Very nice programme and well presented. I do approve of the “Anne and I” part!
21 April – College – thank heaven for the weekend! I kill time in the afternoon by having a long drawn-out snack in the Capinero. I go up to studio at a quarter to four and am greeted by Webster. He says, “Anne isn’t back yet, so do come in and sit down. I’m just trying through the examination pieces – please excuse the mess.” He sits down at the piano and labours away at the exam pieces. I feel a bit corny sitting there so stare at the photographs and see one of Lincoln Cathedral where he was a chorister.
There is a peremptory knock at the door which heralds the entrance of Anne. He answers the door and she walks in without greeting him. She wears a grey princess line coat (she had her picture taken in it autographing their new LP record last October) and says something about gardenias and donating something to some society or other – all a bit vague. She looks very tired today.
She says. “Well, let’s start!” Sits at the piano and he sits on a chair opposite and says that he forgot to note my range. We do all the scales once again and she tells me to drop my jaw more on the higher notes. I reach high A fairly comfortably but B natural is a bit much – I end up looking like a horse on the higher notes. Anne says that she bets that within 2 months I’ll sing high C – I doubt it! He says that I’m a mezzo, but she says, “If she’s a mezzo she’ll be a very high one.” I go fairly low too and reach a bottom E. Amazing – I can hardly reach low G at home. They tell me about vowel sounds, all to be sung with the mouth in the same position. Mrs. B says, “He’s an example of perfect vowel sounds. No matter where in his range he sings, or what the vowel sound is, his mouth is always in the same position.”
Anne makes me sing Hedge Roses in English and they say that my vowels are fairly good except “ee” – I must sing that one in the same way as the others. Anne gives me a demonstration. I sing Hedge Roses in German all by myself with no assistance at all. We go through this twice, and Anne says, “You learnt And So to Bed so nicely for me a little while ago – will you learn this for next week?”
German, I find, is a wee bit more difficult to learn than English but nevertheless, I will for her!
A fire engine passes sounding a siren and Anne says, “Fire engines and sirens remind me of the war and make me feel terrible!” She says I have a well-placed voice and thinks that the few months of speech-training did me good. She feels my breathing and both she and Webster are happy about it. She says to me, “You want to sing good songs, don’t you? Not musical comedy or pop songs?”
Before I have a chance to answer Webster hops in with, “There’s nothing wrong with musical comedy!” So be it.
I depart, saying goodbye, see you next week, with the worry of learning three verses in German. Anne says that next week I must bring some Scottish songs (for English words).
Come home on bus with Rosemary, Jennifer Bawden and Gill Colborne. Meet Miss Ward coming home and take great relish in telling her that I’m completely exhausted after my singing lesson.
Go up to guild tonight. Ann is happy to see me and her reaction about singing lessons all that could be desired. We go to the Central Hall to hear panel of men: Dr Roux (a botanist), Mr McEwan (lawyer), Dr Webb – my favourite minister, and Gary Allighan the journalist and author of Verwoerd – the End. Meeting becomes practically political. All denounce government’s apartheid policy and in one particular question, Gary Allighan answers by starting, “First, let’s forget about the government!” Violent clapping. “There is only one race – the human race!” Shot for him – he was a labour MP in Britain and is a Cockney, through and through. Shorty gives us a lift back and we all go to the roadhouse and have something to eat – good fun.
22 April – Play piano and sing in the morning and then go to town. Go into CNA and mooch around. Look in the SABC bulletin for programmes and am disappointed to see that Webster’s programme seems to be cut out – perhaps it’s been changed to another evening, but if it isn’t, to hang with the SABC!
We have lunch at the Capinero and then Mum, Dad and I go to Brooke Theatre to see Roar Like a Dove with Margaret Inglis, Brian Brooke, Norma West, Robert Haver and also Alfred Stretton (the old man who spoke to us after Caesar and Cleopatra – he’s sweet). Play isn’t all it’s cut out to be. Margaret Inglis and Brian Brooke have whisky voices and Margaret I is hard as nails, although she’s probably meant to be in this part.
24 April – College – goes reasonably – dozens absent. Go into Music library and buy the SABC bulletin in afternoon and study it carefully. I am glad to see that Webster has had ten minutes added to his programme – forty minutes now! On Thursday evening at 9.20pm.
26 April – My father’s fifty-ninth birthday. Webster’s programme tonight is really about the best I’ve heard so far. He says that the first time he sang with Thomas Beecham, Joan Hammond was one of the other soloists. At that time she had a light, lyrical soprano which later developed into a heavy dramatic soprano. He plays the duet from Madame Butterfly which he made with her, which is quite fantastic. Webster is a tenor of great restraint which is pleasing. His voice contrasts sharply with her loud, almost harsh soprano.
Then Webster makes me laugh. He discusses the Strauss operetta, Night in Venice and says that during the Jo’burg production Anne wore a crinoline that covered practically the whole stage. “I look on this duet I am about to play with certain misgivings because during the Jo’burg production I tripped and broke my foot and was laid up in plaster for three weeks!” Poor Webster! He talks of his old friend, conductor Mark Lubbock and how many happy hours “Anne and I” spent with him. “He was a specialist in the music of Franz Lehar and arranged some of Lehar’s songs for Anne and I to sing as duets with his own London orchestra.”
A Night in Venice (1956)
These songs are about the finest I have heard. They sing so beautifully they make me cry because they’re so glorious. Her voice is out of this world – like water floating gently over tiny pebbles. He sings the Serenade richly, gloriously, temperately. Webster and Anne were terribly lucky to be blessed with such voices and I’m terribly lucky to be training under them! He ends off the programme by playing the overture to Don Pasquale, the comic opera soon to be seen in Johanesburg.
27 April – College. Go to lunch hour concert conducted by Anton Hartman with soloists Rita Roberts and Bob Borowsky. This series of concerts is a prelude to the forthcoming opera and ballet season. Both sing operatic arias (separately and together). Duet from La Traviata. Anton Hartman conducts overture to Les Pateneurs and the Flower Dance from the Nut Cracker Suite. Hetty and Jill sit with me and Hetty is charmed – so am I.
28 April – I arrive at the studio before the Booths today. I sit on the little ledge outside and vegetate. One of Madge Wallace’s pupils comes out of her studio and grumbles about having to wait for the lift, but just as lift arrives she goes back into the studio to say goodbye once more so I hold the lift for her.
Mrs. B comes up on the other lift armed with the evening dress she wore to our church concert and a fur cape. She is also carrying a little vanity case. She asks, “Was the lift stuck at the eighth floor?” I have to admit my guilt in this matter but she is quite cheery about it and takes me into the studio.
She tells me they were at first night of La Traviata last night and didn’t get in till half past three. She says, “I just can’t take late nights any more! Tonight it’ll probably be just as late too because we’ve got Don Pasquale.”
Anne says that the production of La Traviata didn’t nearly match the standard of an overseas production, but Mimi Coertse was wonderful. She covered her top notes well and used her face at every possible moment. Her song at the end of the first act, however, was breathy and she broke the trills, but this might have been due to first night nerves or not being used to the altitude. She says it’ll be good for me to see it as Mimi’s singing is wonderfully controlled.
We start on My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose after doing oodles of scales to work on the English vowels. Apparently my phrasing is all wrong. Webster arrives at this point, dressed in tails and black bow tie, looking too gorgeous for words, ready for the first night of Don Pasquale and is very affable. Anne says, “Jean is doing My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose,” and he says, “Oh! I know that one!”
I do Heidenroslein by memory. Webster watches me closely the whole time I am singing and I feel a bit silly. He says to me afterwards, “Honestly, Jean, you’ve got a wonderful memory – and of German too! If I had a memory like yours I could really do wonders!” I smile at him. He says, “But Jean – I wish you’d smile like that when you sing. You’ve got such a lovely smile.”
I sing it again, trying to look a little happier this time. The phone rings and Webster answers it and comes out of the office, saying, “Do you remember people called Wilkinson?” Anne looks quite blank and then says she believes she remembers them vaguely. “Well, they’ve asked us over on Saturday, the sixth of May. Are we free?”
“Oh, no, darling. We’ve got that Mimi Coertse presentation cocktail party. We can’t miss that.”
“Well, shall I say we’ll go over later?”
“Well, we can’t go for drinks. Say we might go later if we can make it.”
“These damned socialites,” says Anne to me in hollow tones.
We go on with Roslein and they say I look a bit cheerier about it. To finish she makes me sing Hark, hark… Webster asks, “Do you like Hark, Hark the Lark?” I say, “Yes, it’s very nice.” He says, “Well, I hate it – probably because I was made to sing it so often when I was young.”
They sing it together – beautifully – as though they know exactly what the other one is thinking and exactly what to do. No. Mimi Coertse might be excellent but she’ll never ever beat Anne, and although Gigli was a great tenor he never had that lovely restraint which Webster displays so eloquently and beautifully. OK, so I’m prejudiced but I don’t care – they’re wonderful singers and lovely people.
Anne asks whether I could change from Friday to Tuesday next week because Webster has a recital in Krugersdorp on Friday. She asks whether 4 o’clock would be OK. I agree and Webster says, “Will I get you a pencil and paper to write it down?”
“It’s quite OK. I’ll remember it, thank you.”
“Yes, I know you will. If only I had a memory like you.”
Anne says, “But darling, look how young Jean is compared with you…”
“Yes, but still…”
Anne makes me feel her breathing again and says that as we’re the same height we should have the same rib-expansion. She has such wonderful breath control – it’s unsurpassed, really it is! I say goodbye and Webster sees me to the door, his tails following behind him.
29 April – Go into town and book seats for La Traviata. We’re going on 3 May – a Wednesday. I feel rather the worse for wear after the debate last night. I also go to music library and procure dozens of songs. I go to Capinero and have lunch with Mum and Dad. He has a book from the library with oodles in it about Webster. Author says that he could have been the finest British tenor if… But tomorrow I’ll type out the relevant parts and put them in the diary.
We go to see Song Without End, the story of Franz Liszt – Dirk Bogarde as Franz – good up to a point. Dirk is gorgeous though!
At night I listen to Afrikaans programme and announcer says, “Nou gaan die sang-tweeling, Anne Ziegler en Webster Booth Indian Love Call sing.”
30 April – Anne in paper advertising Stork margarine.
21 Juno Street, the house with the green roof as it is today, where we lived in late fifties until 1964.
MAY 1961
1 May – Picture of Anne in RDM at first night of the opera La Traviata. She looks quite gorgeous and not nearly 51! The two women with her are Mrs Bosman de Kok (husband is SABC musical director) and the pianist Adelaide Newman. They are probably far younger than Anne but she looks by far the best.
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Anne at La Traviata with Mrs Bosman de Kock and Adelaide Newman
Song by Webster on radio If With All Your Hearts from Elijah. Beautiful song, lovely diction and wonderfully restrained.
2 May – College. Marion Levine gives an interesting talk about communism.
Go to studio once more. Webster answers door and takes me into the sacred presence who is very affable, and I pay her. She asks if I can come next Monday because they’re arranging the programme for the ballet and have to be at the theatre at 7 o’clock every night, so can I come at 4 on Monday. She feels so embarrassed having to change me around all the time.
Webster brings me a cup of tea which I really need, and then we start on the lesson. Webster is very authoritative, and after singing scales he says I get down so low I should be a contralto. Anne retaliates and says (once again) that I’m a very high mezzo. “You mustn’t forget that high B!” Webster is stubborn and I don’t have any say in the matter at all. I sing “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose…” and Webster sits facing me and criticises me. I must be more resonant on the low b and we practise this for ages. Webster gets up and gives a beautiful demonstration. Anne sings too – quite nasally – probably owing to the lowness of the note. As she says, it’s miles too low for her.
Webster then makes me sing from Messiah – He Shall Feed His Flock. Asks whether I can sight-read music. I say I can only do that on the piano and Anne says that it is exactly the same with her. She learnt to play the piano when she was six and could never sing at sight, but Webster is wonderful at that because he was trained to do it as a choir boy. However, I sing this to accompaniment without hearing the tune and it is reasonable. Find the jump from high C to low C difficult and Webster is quite hurt because of his belief in my contralto abilities.
He says of one particular note, “If you could get all your notes like that one you would be a singer out of this world, Jean.”
One teeny-weeny compliment opposed to a thousand retributions. At one stage of the proceedings, he gets up from the chair and can hardly walk. He looks really agonised and I feel sorry him. It must be arthritis or some such ailment. Poor old Webster.
Take departure – all very affable. Must look over Ave Maria for next week. Anne says of noise, “God, just shut up for heaven’s sake.” Her nerves are sorely tried – shame. She wears a lovely tweed suit with brown jersey and little furry collar and looks lovely, but she would never do to be anybody’s mother because she doesn’t look half her age and she’d steal her daughter’s boyfriends. But she is a honey all the same.
3 May – College during the day and then we go to the opera at night. What can I say of opera? Mimi Coertse has a voice like a bell. With what seems like little effort she sends out notes that ripple and thrill. She plays her part well with great feeling and her high notes are really excellent.
Bob Borowsky as her baritone father is the only other cast member who sings really well but he lacks expression and tends to be lugubrious. The chorus, in my opinion, is bad. The tenor was sweet at times but his voice grew very throaty towards the end.
4 May – College. We go to lunch hour concert. The soloist is young pianist, Yonti Solomon who is really brilliant. He plays a Schumann concerto with Edgar Cree conducting.
At the moment I’m lying in bed waiting for Webster’s programme. Introduces it with the usual, “Hello everyone,” in honeyed accents. First he plays the Jennifer Vyvyan recording of Rejoice Greatly conducted by Sir Thomas B and says, “Here it is, so hold yer breath!”
Next he talks about the opera and how nice it was and plays an aria from Rigoletto sung by Mimi Coertse and George Fourie. He then plays record by instrumentalists including Maxie Goldberg. “What a name to say with a cold in the nose!” says Webster! Next the Fledermaus with the George Melachrino strings and then he reverts back to oratorio. He talks about Kathleen Ferrier who lived opposite them in their home in Frognal and who used to entertain them with Lancashire stories. During her long illness, they used to visit her often. He plays her recording of Father of Heav’n and I lie in bed and cry during the whole recording. Her voice is beautiful and rich. No wonder she was considered the greatest contralto in the world. From her letters in her biography she seemed a lovely, adorable creature, one I would have loved to have known but never shall. It is so sad that she died at such an early age.
He then plays his own recording of Sound an Alarm also from Judas Maccabeus and it is excellent. He introduces the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore and says that Gilbert made a great parody of this and sings a snatch of it from Pirates of Penzance – Come Friends, Who Plough the Sea… His last recording is the overture to the Pirates and then goodbye for another week.
6 May – We see Elmer Gantry in the afternoon. Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons. Best picture I’ve seen for ages, adapted from the book by Sinclair Lewis – shades of Miss Scott who told us all about Sinclair Lewis.
7 May – Go to Diamonds in the afternoon. They play records – tenors, tenors, tenors – mainly Kenneth McKellar – obviously their favourite!
8 May – College again. Shorthand and typing are blooming dull.
I am transported in the afternoon when I go for singing lesson. Webster answers the door and shows me into the kitchen. Anne is on the phone talking to a girl, Mary about her lessons. Webster goes into the studio and informs her of my arrival. She greets me and then disappears once more, has an argument with Webster about the credit note he got from the bottle store for 8 dozen bottles at 3d each – I ask you! I think Anne realises that I am actually there and innocent to the horrors of the bottle store, so while Webster has a late lunch, Anne makes a second entrance and says, “Well, my little one, and how are you and what are you doing with yourself these days?”
I say I’m still at college which sounds infernally dull. She asks what I thought about the opera. I say that I adored Mimi but wasn’t too fond of the French tenor. Anne says, “He’s only a baby of 23 so the two roles were a bit much for him.” Webster says that the role was far too heavy for him anyway. She says, “Weren’t the scenery and costumes terrible?” I didn’t actually think so, but what do I know?
The letters arrive and Anne is quite excited that they have been asked to do a concert tour to Witbank and various other towns in that area. I hope they don’t go! Anne says she wants to ask me a question and can’t wait to see my face, and insists that he sees it too. Would I like to enter the Afrikaans eisteddfod? I grimace wildly and Webster says, “Her profile was enough!” I don’t commit myself however and Anne says that I could enter the ballad section and sing The Lass with the Delicate Air. She says, “Get it anyway and you can see what you think. It’ll be good for you and get you moving.”
I do scales and Anne says I must look happy about them and takes me over to that damned mirror and makes me sing a scale happily. I can’t! She says, “Do it just for me, Jean, dear. I mean this quite sincerely.” Will try.
Webster makes tea for us and I say, “Thank you, Webster,” and Anne says, “Thank you – waiter!” Webster doesn’t look very happy about this. I sing Roslein and it is pulled to pieces again, mainly by Webster who says I show my teeth too much and that he can’t show his teeth when he’s singing. He tries and succeeds in showing a horrible set of teeth altogether. No matter, we proceed and all goes better. At the end of the lesson my little “friend” Roselle arrives and we smile at one another when I leave. Anne asks if I’m going to the ballet and I say, “No.” Rather blunt but true – I loathe ballet anyway.
11 May – Sunday school picnic – walking, standing and working! Listen to Webster at night. He starts with He Shall Feed His Flock by Norma Procter, a contralto with whom he sang a few years ago and thinks could be a worthy successor to Kathleen Ferrier. He plays a record by Roy Henderson who trained both Kathleen Ferrier and Norma Procter and was chorus master of the Huddersfield Choral Society. He says he has a sweet small voice with perfect diction.
He talks about Mrs Fenney who stood in for Miss Heller at Jeppe for a term. “Anne and I had the pleasure of putting Mabel Fenney through to a scholarship to study lieder in Berlin and she and Anne worked very hard on the set piece by Bach.” He plays this piece sung by Margaret Balfour.
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Mabel Fenney (1959)
He goes on to the opera Samson – the opera, and goes into all the gory details of the plot and says, “Nice people!” Plays an excerpt from the opera by Jan Peerce. Then comes music from Schubert’s Rosamunde and after that his own recording – excerpts from Carmen with himself, Dennis Noble, Nancy Evans and Noel Eadie – lovely.
14 May – Church. Dull and unimaginative with sermon by Mr R and ravings from Peter about Song Without End. Shorty gives Doreen and me a lift to her house where I have tea and we run down the camp concert committee and the Lombard family! Play piano and sing. Dad has a cold and I’m heading in that direction too.
16 May – Cold is still rotten so I am absent from college and any idea of going for singing lesson is curtailed. About midday I phone in bleary-eyed fashion to Booth’s house. Woman answers the phone and I ask, “Is that Anne?”
She answers, “No, this is Anne’s maid.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is Anne there?”
“No, they’re both at the studio. Do you know the number?”
“Yes, thanks. Goodbye.”
I must have spoken to Hilda, their St Helena maid. She is remarkably well-spoken. Phone the studio and Anne answers.
“Is that Anne?”
“Yes!” in startled tones.
“This is Jean speaking.” (Vague affirmation)
“Anne, I’m terribly sorry but I have a horrible cold so I shan’t be able to come today.”
“Oh, Jean, I’m so sorry. Are you in bed?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how I can make the lesson up to you” (Pause) “But there are five Tuesdays in this month.”
“Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
“Then we’ll see you next week? I can hear you talking through a cold. I do hope you feel better soon.”
“Thank you – and I’m sorry, Anne.”
Pause “Yes, so am I! Goodbye, Jean”
“Goodbye.”
Spend a miserable day.
17 May – Retire to bed permanently! Voice practically non-existent. Minister comes in the evening but I remain silent and still.
18 May – Still in bed. Listen to Webster at night which is cheering. The first record (not obtainable here) was lent to him – Requiem by Verdi, written after the death of Rossini. He says that he’ll play an extract from it each week. It contains arias sung by his favourite tenor (Jussi Bjorling?). He also plays a choral piece – Sanctus.
The next record is from Elijah, Oh, Come Everyone That Thirsteth by a quartet – Isobel Baillie, Harold Williams, Gladys Ripley and James Johnston. What a wonderful recording. Next is an aria from the work by Webster with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Warwick Braithwaite – often cut from the oratorio. His voice is just perfect. There can hardly be another tenor in this century – and I do believe this – to touch his voice at its best! Next is the overture to the Magic Flute, written by Mozart in “Viennar” – intrusive r terribly and wrongly distinct. He says that this was considered his best work.
He then plays an aria from the opera by Oscar Natzke… Then some more Mozart sung by “that versatile young singer”, Elisabeth Schwartzkopf. He reverts to operetta – The Chocolate Soldier and says, “Anne and I have sung in The Chocolate Soldier many times. It is an adaptation of Shaw’s Arms and the Man, as My Fair Lady is an adaptation of Pygmalion but I do wonder whether we shall hear My Fair Lady fifty years hence as often as we hear the Chocolate Soldier now. Plays the duet Sympathy with Risé Stevens and someone else. Then, says Webster, “Let’s play out with The Gypsy Baron. Very nice programme indeed. Webster has a slight wheeze tonight.
19 May – Still ill – until 22 May!
23 May – Manage to go to college once more after a cold and go to the studio in the afternoon. Anne ushers me into kitchen while they usher two old women – very old-maidish – out, while they chat brightly about the best radiograms to buy. Webster answers them in very indifferent tones. They depart, having thanked them too, too eloquently for sparing some of their valuable time. They call me in and Anne says, “God – we’ll need another cup of tea after that. Will you have one too, Jean?” “Yes, thank you, Anne.”
She says that the women took an awful lot out of her. She says I still sound very nasal after the cold. Convinces me that I am just about dying of illness! We start on scales and all goes reasonably well. Webster says I shall never need my very high or very low notes.
Anne tells me over tea that the tiny dilapidated cottage they bought two years ago and redecorated themselves needed fresh plaster above the curtain rails in the hall, so she spent the weekend on top of a ladder, scraping old plaster off, and as she was literally breathing plaster, she doesn’t know how she is managing to talk today. Webster says dryly, “It must be all the liquid refreshment you had while you were doing it.” Anne pauses and replies, “Oh, yes, I had plenty of tea, coffee, cocoa and – an occasional gin and tonic to go with it!” Another dramatic pause and then she asks, “Do you like gin, Jean?” I say that it’s not very nice. “Don’t you even like sherry?” “No.” “Do you smoke?” “No.” “Well don’t ever develop any of those bad habits.”
We go on with singing The Lass With the Delicate Air. Webster mimics all my mistakes mercilessly and makes me laugh. He says that my “delicate air” sounds like “delicatessen” – the height of insult!
We go on with the song and Anne says, “Watch the time,” and I think she had said, “What’s the time?” I say “Twenty past four!” She says, “That was well picked up!” I stare in confusion and she tells me what she had said and we have a good laugh. Finish with Roslein and Webster says I open my mouth too wide for low notes – a good fault – but it will take too much out of me to do it.
Anne asks if I can come next Monday instead of Tuesday as an uprising before Republic Day is forecast. They have to go to Durban to give a concert on Wednesday and don’t know what they will do if there should be an uprising. It doesn’t strike me until I leave that Wednesday is Republic Day. I hope that they will be safe. Say goodbye (cheerio) effusively and see Roselle, whom I always feel is a far better singer than me. Play piano, sing and listen to radio – Ivor Dennis and Douggie Laws at night.
25 May – College. Go with Jill and Audrey to the lunch hour concert. The soloist is Laura (someone) – a pianist of insignificant looks but with very significant playing!
At night I decide to go to choir practice at church. All make a pretence of being happy to see me. I sit next to Joan Spargo and make myself as insignificant as possible. Ann’s father, Mr Stratton is the choir leader. He certainly has a resounding voice and mimics everyone’s musical and vocal faults aptly.
Come home and listen to Webster on wireless. He starts off with Dies Irae (from that rare recording of last week with chorus and bass (George Tsotsi) with Vienna Philharmonic. “It’s a bit noisy, so I suggest you close the children’s bedroom door!”
Webster plays his own record – a Recitative from Jephtha which is quite gorgeous – every word as clear as day. He goes into some detail about the finale of Samson and Delilah which, says Webster, is “very awer inspiring!” The singers are Rise Stevens, Robert Merrill and Jan Peerce.
He plays a record by Dawie Couzyn from Magic Flute and says that he thought this production was better than Don Pasquale. DC sings it in Afrikaans with horrible diction and a clicky quality to his voice. Not terribly enjoyable. Webster plays complete selection from The Desert Song which Springs Operatic is doing soon, sung by Gordon McRae and Lucille Norman. He says, “Shades of my old friends, Harry Welchman and Edith Day.”
He ends with the overture to Ruddigore – about a witch who forced a family to commit a crime a day – Nice folk! And then, goodbye and so to bed.
26 May College – we have a party for Terry French who is going overseas soon.
27 May – Go into town in the morning and am stopped by terribly handsome young German student who was selling postcards. I buy one, of course! Go to Kelly’s and buy Where E’er You Walk by Handel, a most gorgeous song!
Have lunch in Capinero with Mum and Dad and then we go to the Empire. In the powder room I meet Pat Eastwood looking terribly smart with bouffant hairdo and also a bit fatter. She is most affable and says, “I haven’t seen you for ages. When are you coming to the rink?”
I say, “Oh, yes, I must come soon…” How lovely to talk so casually to the South African figure skating champion and Springbok.
We see The Great Imposter with Tony Curtis – very good.
28 May – In Gary Allighan’s radio crit this morning, he says, “Praise be to Webster Booth, whose On Wings of Song combines familiar music with personal reminiscences, although he should not be so modestly sparse with his own songs.” Shot for good old GA! He’s a man after my own heart – politically and artistically.
Gary Allighan
Anne phones just afterwards and greets father with, “Mr Campbell, this is Anne Ziegler here. Can I speak to Jean please. I am called to the phone and informed by Anne, after she asks how I am, that she’d like me to come at 4.30 instead of at 4. Would this be convenient? “Certainly.” “Are you sure?”….Sing in choir at church at night. All convivial.
29 May – First day of strike evidently a flop as there are no strikers to be seen. I go to the studio in the afternoon and Webster asks me to have a seat for a while and pour myself some tea. I do this and drink tea feeling terrible blasé, and wash the cup afterwards. He plays over tape recording which is rather funny. I giggle to myself.
Anne comes from nowhere and is charming. She tells me to go in and she’ll be with me in a few moments. I look closely at pictures of the royal family at their performance – King George, Queen Mother and the princesses. Webster talks to me about the strike and says that RCA have no workers but Decca have all their workers. He says the town is nice and quiet with not so many people around. We talk about the success of receiving papers and milk and Webster says direfully, “Tonight will be the crucial deciding time. Just as long as they don’t come out and kill us is all I hope for.” Cheery attitude to life this!
Anne returns and we start with scales and they are thrilled at the new quality of my voice and ask what I’ve been doing to bring about the improvement. I sing Roslein to them and they continue to be quite happy about it all – 2 hours practice a day must help. Feel quite embarrassed.
Webster makes me sing He Shall Feed His Flock for all the low notes and sings this along with me – gorgeous! During Lass With the Delicate Air there are many faults. I crack on middle C on “fill” and Webster makes me do it over and over again and takes me over to the mirror to show me how to produce it correctly. When I sing it again he suddenly doubles up on the piano with a look of agony on his face. Anne looks horrified and says, “What’s the matter?” He doesn’t speak for a moment and then says, “Nothing. I just wanted to listen to Jean sing.” Do not for a moment believe this – poor Webster. He recovers and says I must emphasise “gin” in virgin and sings “virgin” and then “pink gin”! Anne and I nearly die laughing. Anne writes down next to it “pink gin!” She says that my diction is generally good. He sings O, Thou That Tellest from Messiah. She asks whether I’d like to do some oratorio. Tells me about a singer in Don Pasquale and says that she couldn’t hear for about five or ten minutes what language she was singing in, her diction was so bad!
Webster goes down to bring the car nearer to the studio and Anne goes on with the lesson – she gives me a whole hour. She feels my breathing and says that my bust mustn’t move and I must watch it. Gives me a demonstration of her own breathing. If I could even breathe like her, I’d be very happy.
I leave at 5.30 and she tells me that she’s going to Durban for a concert at the weekend and tomorrow they have a show at the Wanderers. During lesson Webster asks, “Where’s that contralto album Mabel left us?” I meet him coming from the car and we say goodbye and “Hope there’ll be no riots!”
Anne says that my diction in the poem is now perfect, but everything must be a hundred percent, “So use yer face and yer eyes!” I endeavour to do this to the best of my ability – impossible! Anne says, “A smile lifts the voice and gives it light and shade.” Webster comes back and she calls to him, “Oh, Boo, this is much better!” and he replies, “Yes, I could hear she was smiling.”
2 February – Work hard at the library – the hours are unbearable so I may be going to business college instead.
3 February – Am definitely going to business college! Have lunch in town with Mum and Dad and then wander around and look in the Belfast – I meet Inge Alexander there and we talk for a while. Practise my piece at night.
4 February – I go for my lesson today. First, I miss the tram and then the lift in Polliacks Corner leaves without me and I have to wait for ages for it to return to the ground floor. I imagine I shall be frightfully late, but when I arrive at the studio Webster answers the door with their little Maltese poodle (Lemon) in his arms and he asks me to have a seat. I pet Lemon, and Webster warns me that he goes for ankles. I sit in the kitchen and play with Lemon and listen to them teaching a girl to sing. They all sing together and this make me giggle with Lemon.
Girls seem elusive and nondescript –this one goes and Anne calls me in and we discuss Lemon. She says that he’s the loveliest pet she’s ever had – she’s crackers over him.
Webster goes out for a while and Anne says to Lemon, “Now come and sit down at my feet and be obedient.” For a moment I forget that Lemon is there and then I realise who she was talking to! I tell her my mistake and we have a good laugh.
Anne says that my diction in the poem is now perfect, but everything must be a hundred percent, “So use yer face and yer eyes!” I endeavour to do this to the best of my ability – impossible! Anne says, “A smile lifts the voice and gives it light and shade.” Webster comes back and she calls to him, “Oh, Boo, this is much better!” and he replies, “Yes, I could hear she was smiling.”
We start on the movement again. 1) Move from waist down. 2) Move knees (flexibility) and, 3) Know every move. She asks, “Did you see Lock Up Your Daughters, Jean?”
Feel grim at this and have to lie, “No, I would have loved to of course but we just didn’t seem to find the time.” What a whopper! How could I have told her, “My father didn’t approve of this risque play and wouldn’t let me see it!” She talks and demonstrates different movements such as the “Cor blimey cockney movement” (as she calls it), the burlesque movement and others. She says, “Come with me towards the mirror, Jean, dear!” Talks about the way Indians and Africans walk. “You must enter a room, stage, anywhere without apologising for living. Even if old Dr Verwoerd comes in, still feel that you are just as good as him!” Yay for Anne’s attitude. Wish I could do all this.
Says I must work out every move beforehand because for two minutes everybody’s attention will be focused on me and the adjudicator will be waiting for me to make a mistake. Says that dozens of people have said to them, “But you and Webster are so natural on stage.” She takes me by the hand and we stand in some corny position in front of it (like foxtrotting at the rink) and she says that they might appear natural but every move is planned and they even know exactly where they will put their feet.
They are going on holiday soon and will be back about the 5 March and she will phone me on the Monday after they get back to make an arrangement for lessons. However, I’m still going to her on Monday afternoon. Shall have to work hard tomorrow.
Anne says she gets rheumatism in her neck – that must be grim. She is wearing exactly the same shoes I bought the other day – I shall never be able to wear them to the studio now. Webster says goodbye to me and Anne comes with me to the door, and Lemon is in the offing. Webster says, “The whole family is here today.” They give me practically a whole hour today. They are honeys. Webster looks rather grim in a light white sports jacket.
Meet Mummy and buy a briefcase for college – Harvard Commercial College in President Street under the direction of Mr Pelkowitz, then we have lunch with Dad and see Make Mine Mink with Terry Thomas and Hattie Jacques which is good!
6 February – I start my commercial course at Harvard Commercial College in President Street, near the library today. I find Jill Harry from school there, so there is a known Jeppe face amongst the other girls who are all mainly from the northern suburbs, putting in time until they find suitable husbands. When we come out of college in the afternoon I moon around for an hour, walking round and round the block between John Orrs and Polliacks. I get tired of doing this so I go up to the Booths – terribly early but desperate.
Webster answers the door and takes me into the waiting room cum kitchenette while he dries the dishes. He asks me about college and the brief job in the library and is hang of a sweet. He tells me that he has been walking around town for hours this afternoon in sweltering heat. I ask whether I can help him dry the dishes, but he says resignedly, “No, I’m used to it.” He offers me a cup of tea but I refuse – I’m too tired to live, far less drink tea. While sitting there I think how sweet they are and how horrible everyone else is to be so nasty about them.
I go in at Anne’s bidding – I feel at times as though she’s the Queen granting an audience to a very lowly subject, and she says, “How are you?” I say, “Tired,” which makes a change from “Fine”.
She gets me to do Shall I Compare Thee? and tells me that it is absolutely perfect and she wouldn’t interfere with it in any way. Praise indeed. She spends ages going through the book to find some new ones for me to do while she is away on holiday. Eventually, after a long search – in which time I realise that the photo on the table is of Leslie Green – she chooses three poems – one Scots one – To a Field Mouse, and she makes me read them, sits next to me and listens, then criticises, reads them over herself and says my Scots accent is so cute.
Gets Webster to put the poems on tape – they sound ghastly and she had said, while tape was still running, “Oh, darling, I’ll read this poem too!” We practically kill ourselves when it is played back. Anne says I pitch my voice too high when I start. She says it’s like some of their early speeches where they sounded quite burlesque because of the high pitch of their voices. Webster calls through asking for something. She looks at me in such a puzzled fashion and asks what he said. I say, “Something about ink.” and she calls, “Oh, Boo, we haven’t any.” Poor old Boo!
Anne makes arrangements for my next lesson. I am in credit and she owes me a lesson – 10 March, a whole month away – boo-hoo (no pun intended) and she makes me write down the times. Webster hands me a pen. He checks my phone number and asks what suburb the number stands for – I say Kensington, and he looks enlightened and says, “Oh, of course, Kensington!”
I wish them a lovely holiday and they are pleased. I hope they do have a lovely holiday. They deserve it.
8 February – Listen to Leslie Green and Marjorie Gordon on the radio and do my homework. Play piano and sing (seriously in both cases) at night. Have worked out three poems starting on Friday thus giving me a week each for two short ones and two weeks for long one. All during this time must keep up Shall I Compare Thee.
9 February – Webster and Anne leave on holiday. Very miserable and rainy but I dare say they would leave anyway.
I spend lunchtime on the college veranda with Jill H, Audrey and Lynnette and we consider whether it would be a good idea to spend our lunchtime in the bar across street – decide against it!
Learn Fair Daffodils We Weep to See on tram in about ten minutes – good, eh?
10 February – Meet Doreen Craig on the bus and we discuss the guild outing to the old age home. I am to play a selection of songs there. Perhaps I can wangle We’ll Gather Lilacs (Webster and Anne’s song!)
At guild at night we go to Rosettenville church guild and have mock Olympics which is quite fun. Doreen and I go and return with Mr Russell, the minister. We talk – or gabble would be a better name for our conversation!
18 February – I go to the rink and I’m delighted to see Kay Tilley there after a long absence. Kay is still at college in her second year. She says she thinks Anne is not as good as Webster – the first approving opinion of him I have heard for a long time.
20 February – College once more. Jill tells me that Colleen O’Donaghue has got into varsity. We sit on library steps at lunch. Listen to Leslie Green in the afternoon. He’s sweet.
22 February – I am absent from college today because I still feel ill. It’s worth it thought because I hear Sweethearts sung in Afrikaans (very well) by Webster and Anne. I feel really proud of them. They have wonderful voices no matter what people say.
I was thinking yesterday that the present generation of performers don’t really have much talent – Elvis Presley, Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard etc. earn much more money than Mr MacMillan (British PM) yet they’re positively amateurish compared with the Booths. Even now, in middle age, they are wonderful. Britain doesn’t know what they’re missing not to have them living there any more. It is sad that they should have had to come to South Africa to make a living – and even here they are constantly criticised by ignorant people.
23 February – I practise for our concert at the Old Folks Home. Doreen phones to talk about this and I feel as though I’m preparing for a first night at the London Palladium.
24 February – College goes well as always. At home I read the autobiography of Noel Coward which doesn’t cheer me up any owing to talk of bad performances of his which took place in London theatres, and don’t really apply to playing at an old folks’ home!
Go up to guild at night feeling vaguely theatrical. I am first, with Doreen a close second. We speak to Peter Casteling and he agrees to lead the singing and is very affable. Doreen organises lifts for us – Peter, me, and Doreen go with Mr Russell. At OPH we hear great hilarity – old people are already singing to the accompaniment of an old lady who plays extremely well. Peter C leads the singing. When singing Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ he says, “Now lets give it big licks for the benefit of our Scottish pianist!” Dave shows slides; Kippy gives a talk, and I play hymns. Then, while we are having tea, the old lady plays again – a bit loudly, but still very well indeed. Peter asks me to play again. I do so because of vague recollections that an artist must never play hard to get, and also because I want to shove all the songs the Booths sing down their ears! Play We’ll Gather Lilacs, Operette, and Only a Rose (Webster and Anne’s signature tune).
Joan and Doreen tell me with great surprise, “You played so well tonight.” Obviously a good piano and a lively imagination contributed to that. Peter says, when he introduces me for a second time, “I don’t think I’ve introduced you properly to our Scottish pianist, born at the bottom of the banks of Loch Lomond – Miss Jean Campbell!” All very nice in a terribly small way I know, but how I’d love to revel in things like that often. I wouldn’t be a pianist of course, but an actress – professional at that! But these are dreams that will probably never come true. In the meantime, I shall have to make do with giving speeches at guild, playing at old folks’ homes, spouting poetry at eisteddfods (if I don’t go dry-mouthed) and doing speech with Anne. Webster and Anne are the luckiest people I know. They have had world-fame and respect, and now they are still great celebrities over here despite the criticism of some people.
25 February – Brian and Mr and Mrs Stratton come at night. Mr S goes back home to fetch music and comes back with it to sing for us while I play. He has a lovely baritone voice. When Ann is in my room she sees picture of Anne and says, “What a lovely picture of Anne Ziegler!” She has never mentioned Anne before – except with derision!
MARCH 1961
3 March – I get Gill McDade home on the tram. We talk theatre. I am put off when she tells me that Lock Up Your Daughters was wonderful except for Anne who gave her the shivers because she yelled far too much. I tell her that I expect the play was terrible and that Anne is sweet and a real darling. I should like to know how they achieved such fame and popularity when everybody I know seems to have terrible vindictive downs against them.
4 March – Go to the ice rink today and Susan comes. I skate for a time and then get the shock of my life when I see Gwyn Jones arriving, complete with Springbok colours blazer – whew! I go in and tell Sue Johnson about his arrival and we both talk to him for ages. He was allowed into the rink again on Tuesday. I’m glad to see him back. Says he had a gorgeous time in Scotland and at the Olympics and didn’t need any oxygen. He shows us various routines – very good, considering how long he’s been away from skating. We talk about the Goon Show and Peter Sellers. I mimic his Scottish accent in recent film – terrific fun. Gwyn carries on madly on ice.
5 March Booths are back from their holiday today!
7 March – George Formby dies.
8 March – Sir Thomas Beecham dies. Wendy phones at night about Cliff Richard and so does Peter (hymns – 4!).
9 March – Cliff Richard arrives today – mobbing outside Carlton in evidence from the morning.
10 March – After college I come home in terrible rain and then – the time I have looked forward to for a month arrives – I go for my lesson with the Booths. When I arrive I bang on the door and nobody answers. I begin to think vile thoughts, thinking they have forgotten me again, and decide to wait until five past five and then leave. A number of prospective models arrive for Madge Wallace’s modelling school next door and they eye me and I eye them with mutual disdain. Madge Wallace comes out and asks whether I’m waiting for her.
I say, “No, actually I’m waiting for the Booths, but as it’s five I doubt whether they’ll come now.”
She says, “Yes, they will, but they’re always late. Why not take a seat in my studio until they arrive and watch the models.” I do this – models are still extremely disdainful, but the seat is very welcome. Eventually I see Anne at the door of her studio and forget all social graces and go out to Anne who was looking a bit worried. Maybe she thought I had changed studios and was going to take up modelling instead!
Anyway, she is a honey as always – quite brown after holiday and wearing sunglasses. She says their holiday was gorgeous. I go into the studio and sit on studio couch and look at these infernal pictures. I say infernal because they all reflect their fame which I shall never achieve! I hear someone clearing their throat at the door – Webster Booth!
Never in all my living experience can I describe what a shock I receive when I see him – he has grown a beard! I ask you – a beard! A horrible bristly beard, very grey which clashes with the colour of his hair, and moustache. I hope I didn’t let my feeling of horror show. I ask him how he enjoyed his holiday and he talks through his teeth with ecstasy, “It was wonderful,” he says.
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1961 Advertising Skol beer – Webster with beard!
Anne and I start on Shall I? and she says it is good but I must have no inhibitions, shyness, or embarrassment of any kind. (Q. Am I showing all those negatives?) We do the other Shakespearean sonnet, Being Your Slave and suddenly she decides that I do that far better than the other. She says, “I’m almost tempted… What do you think Boo, don’t you think Jean could do this better for the eisteddfod?”
He says, “Is it a sonnet?”
“Yes, it’s got fourteen lines.”
“But Anne, are you sure it hasn’t got fourteen lines by accident?”
She asks me what I think – I don’t really mind. She says, “It’s much less hackneyed, but I must smile when I do it. She makes me walk into the room smiling and makes me look at myself in the mirror – I always look vile in their mirrors! She says, “Walk on your toes, head up, shoulders down, and a slight movement of hips wouldn’t go amiss!”
Begins to wax eloquent and continues, “There’s nothing so attractive as seeing a beautiful girl walking on to a stage with a lovely smile. Even if the adjudicator doesn’t smile back, don’t worry – he won’t be in the Profession. A person in the Profession would always smile back at you. In Springs when I was adjudicating I smiled at every contestant just to cheer them up!”
At the end of my lesson she says to me, “You have a lovely face, so smile!” Gives me a big grin which I reciprocate in practised manner and feel quite touched at her good acting. During the whole session Webster chipped in once to say I must clip off “world-without-end-hour”. She says that my diction is good but I can afford to be less pedantic now. Both come with me to the door. A rather nice chap is waiting for his lesson – gives me a grin – sweet! Say bye-bye about a dozen times. (Must remember to say cheerio) and then get lift and come down.
See their car with its GB plate – after five years one would think they might remove it. It’s a green Zephyr – that is, it isn’t a Jag, Rolls or a Mercedes like Daphne Darras’s father’s car, but still, its theirs!
11 March – Go to rink. Sue comes and while she, I and Carol Ann (little American) are sitting in cloakroom Mrs Nicholls (Denise’s mother) comes in and tells us that Lennie and Glenda have won British junior pairs championships. She is nearly crying with excitement and I must say that a lump comes to my throat too. Sue and I are utterly thrilled and say so. Good show!
We go out and talk to Gwyn about it, and I must say, that he takes it all in good heart and says how terrific it is. Go on ice and talk to Neill about it too and we are all thrilled. Menina Klein comes and we talk – I tell her about Webster and Anne and she nearly does her nut over them, telling me how lucky I am and how famous they are.
Gwyn is as mad as usual and carries on on the ice wonderfully. Sue has (at least her dad has) a new car and she wants a name for it. Gwyn says in disgustingly – or should I say – deliciously rude manner – why not a chemical formula: ShoneT! My goodness! Says he saw Cliff last night – he thought him good but too screamy. Sue skates gorgeously as usual and so does Gwyn. We fool about and make spectacles of ourselves – everyone watches us – wonderful fun! Neill buys me a cold drink and is sweet but a terrible bragger. Still, he is cute. Afterwards I walk down the road with him and catch a bus on the other side of the road. Lovely morning and am thrilled about Lennie and Glenda.
14 March – College – fine. Come into town again and wait outside the Carlton for Wendy to go to see Cliff Richard. Girls and boys are waiting for Cliff to come out of the hotel – all in vain. Wendy comes and we have supper in the Capinero and talk to Carol Balfour afterwards.
Go to Coliseum and feel the atmosphere! Show is very good and so are supporting turns, especially young comedian, Norman Vaughan – amusing and can play the guitar, tap and sing. Cliff and Shadows are lovely and we all clap to the beat. I really enjoyed it, although, on reflection, I prefer Tommy Steele but Cliff is good fun.
17 March – College. We are all thankful for the weekend ahead. I come home with Ann and Colleen O’Donaghue. Talk is centred around college and all the projects Ann has to do for Teacher’s Training College. I come back to town in rather a strange frame of mind and feel rather a failure theatrically speaking. Go up on the lift and think they probably won’t be there yet, so I knock. I am shocked when I realise that somebody is singing and I’ve interrupted them.
Webster answers door – still with beard – and is affable. Takes me into the kitchen and asks me if I want a cup of black tea. I decide to accept so he tells me to help myself. I do so and he disappears. I drink tea and then wash and dry spoon, cup and saucer.
Girl – her name is Roselle – sings Someday My Heart will Awake really gloriously and touches high A with great ease – the sort of singing that touches the heart. Anne says, “Very cheap, very common, but lovely.” After lesson, Roselle tells Webster and Anne she loves singing far more than the piano and could give her whole life to it. She is very eloquent about the whole thing – something I could never be. I am very surprised when I see that Roselle is only a girl of about fourteen – very plain and a bit stodgy, but my goodness, her voice will be her fortune.
I go in next – an anti-climax for all – and say that Roselle’s voice is too gorgeous for words. They are both enthusiastic about it too and enlarge on her. She could only sing to the A above middle C when she first came but can now reach high A. Has a great future if she’ll work. She loves singing and is very musical. Webster says, “The day she came, I knew she was going to be good. She has a voice like an adult.” (He places the accent on the ULT)
Webster gives me a long lecture. “When I was young, the famous character actor, Bransby Williams gave me a tip. He said, “When you walk onto the stage, feel proud of yourself as if you’re just as good – if not better – than anybody else. It’s something I have never forgotten.” He gives a demonstration of Bransby Williams walking onto the stage.
Anne says, “He wouldn’t have been so arrogant, Boo.”
“He wasn’t arrogant, but he was self-assured.”
I tell them that I don’t feel nervous on the stage in a play, only when I’m doing something by myself. They say that is understandable, but one must be able to be a soloist as well as an actor. Anne says that she has to accompany some of the singers and she feels nervous. How unusual! On leaving, Webster says I shall have to get onto some plays – very good idea. I’m sick of spouting poetry…
18 March – Copy music, play piano and listen to radio in morning. Go to lunch with Mum and Dad in and then we go to see Midnight Lace with Doris Day and Rex Harrison. It is a really good thriller – Doris Day excels herself in this dramatic role. Rex Harrison is excellent too with beautiful diction.
When we come home I see Jeppe girls coming from the swimming gala. I talk to Dawn Vivian and she tells me that Jeppe came seventh out of nine! Parktown came first – watch out for bragging at college on Monday! Girls are far more demure than usual – Miss Reid and Miss Allen are following them in their car to keep order!
21 March – College. Mr Pelkowitz says it’s OK for tomorrow’s prize-giving at school so shall have a holiday. Wendy phones this evening and we discuss the prize-giving. I am meeting her tomorrow at 9.45. It will be funny going back to school again.
Play the piano and then listen to the radio. I am barely seated at the radio when the phone rings again. I wonder if it is Wendy phoning again and wonder what on earth she wants.
Voice, which isn’t Wendy’s says, “Hello, is that Jean speaking?” I reply “Yes,” and wonder if it is Mrs Watt or Mrs Corrigan. Then mysterious voice says, “Oh, Jean, this is Anne Ziegler speaking.” I nearly die on the spot. My heart jumps into my throat and I say in surprised voice, “Oh, good evening.”
“I just phoned about your lesson, Jean. Do you think you could possibly make it Thursday instead of Friday?”
“Yes, Mrs Booth – that would be fine – what time?”
“Four o’clock – would that suit you?”
“Yes, that’ll be perfect.” I reply in slightly dazed tone.
“Well, goodbye, Jean. We’ll see you then. Don’t forget – Thursday 4 o’clock.”
“Goodbye,” I reply in cheerful yet distraught fashion.
I go through to the lounge feeling a great shock, but it’s rather a nice feeling really. Can I forget, “This is Anne Ziegler,” – To have a name so famous and to use it so carelessly. I don’t know what or why it is, but when I speak to them I forget their fame and their singing, but this incident gives me a gentle reminder of who they are – not Webster and Anne as they have become to me, but Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, the famous singers.
22 March – We have prize-giving today. It is very strange returning to school and seeing the girls again. Winnie, Gay and Hazel J are nurses. Sit next to Claire J and Audrey D. Miss Reid’s report on last year’s events is cold and impartial – take a deep breath at mention of Miss Scott (who taught us English so brilliantly for a term). We get our prizes (matric certificate!) and talk. Gill Clarke is there – gushing and facetious as usual – utterly charming all the same.
Go into town and Mum buys a tangerine jacket for me in the Belfast – lovely.
While dad is twiddling with the radio he comes across a well-known voice on the English programme – Webster presenting a new programme – Webster Booth presents opera, oratorio and operetta. It is lovely to hear his voice on the radio unexpectedly and to know that I know him. He reminisces about his youth – born in Birmingham then advised to go for audition at Lincoln Cathedral school which would give him a free education. He was accepted and became a boy chorister, trained by Piggy (nicknamed because he snorted while he was conducting). Life at Lincoln gave him a rigorous musical training for four years until he was thirteen when his voice broke. He was told, “Don’t sing for two years and then you’ll be a tenor.” He followed the advice, but he hoped to be a bass rather than a tenor. He says in typical Webster manner, “I have made 350 solo recordings and many duets with Anne Ziegler.”
He fills this talk in with record he has made – religious aria, aria from Carmen and several others – oh, yes – How Lovely are Thy Dwellings. He plays some Gilbert and Sullivan overtures too. It is a gorgeous programme – not only because it’s him but because he’s so interesting and presents himself so well, and because his singing is beautiful and cannot be surpassed. Please let me have the courage to tell him that his programme was wonderful when I see him tomorrow. No one who has good taste can deny that!
23 March – Go to college again and work hard and feel dead by the end of it all. I kill time for an hour in Anstey’s and then meander slowly up to the studio, feeling quite strange in the lift as I usually do.
Anne arrives after me and is charming as usual. She admires my tangerine jersey acquired yesterday. We go in and I sit down for a minute and look at the photos. She sits down and I do poem – swallow “per chance” for some reason – perhaps because Webster opens the door at that very moment. Webster stampedes – that’s the word for it – in, and it takes him a few seconds to realise that I’m there! He says, “Oh, hello Jean. I didn’t realise you were there!” I ask you!
He says that six weeks ago he wrote to hire a wig and it didn’t arrive, and now he has had a letter to say would he please return it. He is furious and goes into the office to phone up about it.
Anne tells me that they haven’t had any tickets for the eisteddfod. How can people make arrangements for Easter with this infernal eisteddfod looming? Their maid is going into hospital for a tonsillitis operation so she won’t have any help in the house. She has to come into town for eisteddfod about nine times, so doesn’t know what to do.
She says that if I’m nervous I should take deep breaths as this is very calming. Swears, using hell in one of its forms – can’t remember what exactly she says! She says it’s time I started on plays now. She pores over innumerable scripts and brings out Spring Quartet – they were in it in Cape Town when they first arrived in the country in 1956. She explains the plot to me and I do the part of a Scottish girl in Austria while she reads all the other parts. It is gorgeous acting with her. She says that Scottish comes very naturally to me so she’d like me to try something else. She finds And So to Bed when the phone rings and Webster looks up the part – Mistress Pepys – and hands it to me after much searching. They played Mistress Knight and King Charles II in the touring production in the UK in 1953/54. She comes back from the phone and tells me that I should take the script home and study Mistress Pepys which should be done with a slight French accent.
She’ll phone me if she gets any news of the eisteddfod. I say goodbye and shout goodbye to Webster who is in the office. He is affable in a dazed fashion and shouts, “Oh, goodbye, Jean.”
Armed with the script which they had used at the height of their fame – I walk down Eloff Street feeling spontaneous and happy. I glance through the script on the bus and laugh at some remarks Anne had written in the back of it.
Betty phones at night – Peter, 1 o’clock on Saturday – coming here. And now, as Pepys would say, “Goodnight, sweet dreams and so to bed!”
25 March – Go with rest of teachers to visit Mr and Mrs Jones who have stand at Hartebeespoort Dam. We have a really gorgeous time. I go with Fred Shaw, Joan Spargo, Wendy Price-Williams and Dorothy Shaw – the Jones have a houseboat situated in a wilderness of shrubs adjoining the dam – really beautiful. Ann, Peter, Leona are already there when we arrive. Mr Jones is a local preacher who preached once at our church.
Go home eventually with Fred. Peter comes too and we sing on the way home. Peter has a good voice – should have it trained with Webster! We discuss them. Wendy says how wonderful it was when they sang Wunderbar at church concert, and she loved it when Anne said to Webster, “Just wait till I get you home!”
We all sing this and other songs and Wendy tells me I have a wonderful voice – I should join the choir – says this so sincerely it fairly bucks me up. I adore singing. I put my heart and soul into it – I love it!
29 March – Webster with his gorgeous programme again – it has been renamed On Wings of Song and it is introduced with the Booths’ recording of the song. Webster sounds familiar and yet a complete stranger.
He tells of applying for the post of tenor soloist at a certain cathedral, but turned it down for the salary of £200 a year was too low. He started his singing training with Dr Richard Wassall and started to sing tenor solos in the choir.
While working in an accountant’s office, he gets offers from oratorio agents and began singing all over the country – including in Wales and Scotland – and so became reasonably well-known in oratorio circles.
He is proud that he sang with Harold Williams, whom he considers to be the baritone of his generation. He plays some of his own recordings, all conducted by “my old friend, Sir Malcolm Sargent”. He also plays the overture to Merrie England, in which he took the tenor lead with Dr Wassall.
He makes all this so interesting and his records are beautiful – plays arias from Messiah and Elijah and other songs. What a man, what a voice and how nice he really is. To think I’ll see him tomorrow and he will once more become that rather vague person, dominated by Anne.
30 March Go for lesson. Arrive early and hear snuffles of Lemon at the door. Man who has come up on the lift with me comes into the studio too. I go in and Webster holds Lemon in his arms and asks customary question, “Are you wearing stockings?” I say, “Yes, but please put Lemon down.” I play with him – what a sweetie. Anne comes into kitchen looking too beautiful for words in red and white sheath dress and she tells me she is dead tired because of all the work she had to do at home without the maid who has gone into hospital for her tonsil operation. Between the worry of the eisteddfod and the heat, she’s dead beat. She takes me into the studio and Webster introduces me to the man called André van der Merwe. He says, “We’re sorry we haven’t been able to spend more time with you while you were here,” and A vd M departs – saddened, me thinks.
Anne gives me tickets for the eisteddfod and says she doesn’t know if she’ll manage to be there to hear me. Webster disappears to make tea. She says that she’ll have to accompany a singer in the Duncan Hall, so she isn’t quite sure… I say, “Anne, please don’t come. I shan’t feel so badly if you’re not there.” She laughs and says that she’s sure I shan’t do anything badly. Now I come to think of it, I don’t suppose she has any intention of coming to hear me recite the silly poem at the eisteddfod!
Webster returns and Anne searches for her And So to Bed script. I realise that this is the moment, so I say, “I thought your programme was terrific last night, Webster.” He turns around and says, “Oh, thank you, but I wasn’t too happy with it last night. I could hardly hear it either with the crowd around the radio. I was better pleased with the first one, but next week is a nice one.” I assure him that I enjoyed both of them and he is obviously pleased, but tries to appear nonchalant.
Anne takes me over and shows me pictures of And So to Bed. Mistress Pepys with Charles and Pepys (played by Leslie Henson) with Anne looking as gorgeous as anything. I make appropriate remarks and then we start. Webster promises to do Charles, but we don’t get that far. I really enjoy doing the play with Anne. She’s terribly vulgar in explaining character – be bitchy and wish the other woman to hell. She seems pleased with my acting and French accent. She says that I pick up my cues well and I obviously have been taught to do this. Webster turns around and says that I do it very well and could do the part anywhere – rather a compliment coming from him when he usually tries to criticise me.
In the middle of this there is a knock at the door and a stodgy little girl of about nine enters the room. Anne’s expression changes to ice and she says in a horribly cold voice, “Oh, it’s you Sally. You had better sit in the kitchen for a while.”
Anne tells me that this kid hasn’t turned up for her lesson for six weeks and yesterday her mother phoned up for a lesson for her today. Anne was flaming mad, but said, “OK, 3.30.” She didn’t turn up then and has turned up now and they are expecting someone else after me. Webster comes in and Anne says flatly that Sally can’t have a lesson today. We continue with our play without further disturbance and all is convivial.
During tea a discussion arises about different teas. Anne says that in Britain they used to drink Indian tea and she loathes Ceylon tea. She has discovered an imported blend in Thrupps, and compared to it, this tea tastes like DDT. Webster says, “What nonsense,” and I am inclined to agree with him but more politely. When I leave they both wish me luck. I say goodbye to Webster and Lemon. and Anne comes with me to the door and wishes me luck yet again and see I win a prize! I shan’t! What pets they are. Anne tells me how she loved Daddy’s Scots accent.
I am including this article by Brian Martin which appeared in Evergreen in 1994. There are several errors of fact in it and I have marked these in bold. This article is not intended for public consumption but is protected by a password which will be made available to a select few who are interested in the Booths and wish to read it.
I am including this article by Brian Martin which appeared in Evergreen in 1994. There are several errors of fact in it and I have marked these in bold. Do not copy any part of the article.
Evergreen Melodies – Winter 1994
Shared affection… a fine photographic portrait of Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth at the peak of their career.
They met while filming Faust in 1934.
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth were singers in love… off stage and on. For almost 50 years, wherever they appeared all over the world, they sang to wildly appreciative audiences – their hands entwined in a gentle caress. Anne, who wore delightful gowns (which were often designed by Norman Hartnell, the Queen’s dressmaker) sang like a dream. Webster, tall and handsome, possessed a tenor voice that soared, effortlessly to the heights.
Anne and Webster were married for 45 years, each basking in the warm glow of their shared happiness. Yet there was often sadness behind the smiles. Hard times and personal grief occasionally tarnished those gold years. As Anne Ziegler (now 84 and living in North Wales) admits, the stairway to the stars had many pitfalls.
Webster, hailed as one of the finest lyric tenors of our time, died in June 1984, but Anne’s small house within sight of the sea is still filled with memories of him and the star-studded life they shared. Photographs of Webster show him cloaked dashingly as The Vagabond King or wearing a full Red Indian head-dress for a performance of Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s mighty choral extravaganza Hiawatha. But the photographs that really catch the eye are those of Webster, immaculate in evening dress, with Anne, charming in crinoline— two lives forever intertwined.
Anne remains a spry survivor. Her back is as straight as ever (a tribute to correct posture) and those lively eyes still sparkle. It’s easy to imagine the young Irené Frances Eastwood (as she was born) playing in the garden of the family home in the leafy Liverpool suburb of Sefton Park and dreaming of being a star. “When I was about nine my mother took me to the theatre to see a performance of Faust and I whispered: ‘I’m going to be Marguerite when I’m grown-up!’ And I did sing Marguerite 15 years later – with Webster as Faust!”
Webster was nine years older. His full name was Leslie Webster Booth (he was known by his first name to family and friends), the youngest of three brothers in a family of six. He was born in Handsworth, Birmingham where his father was a hairdresser, and one of his brothers, Norman, who recently celebrated his 95th birthday, recalled how all the Booth youngsters helped out in the barber shop, including taking the money from customers!
Cheery tunes played on a street organ (complete with monkey!) fired Webster’s enthusiasm for music, and at the age of nine he won a scholarship to Lincoln Cathedral choir school where he was taught by the dreaded Dr Bennett who would ram a broken baton into a pupil’s mouth and bellow, “Get that tongue down!” to encourage good singing. Yet Webster never required this shock treatment; his remarkable technique seems to have been innate.
“His tone was coming straight out of the throat,” said Anne. “There was no obstruction. It was a pure flow of air. That was probably why his voice lasted so long.” His only danger was that he might strain it shouting for his favourite team at Aston Villa home matches. Throughout his life he was a keen football supporter..
Webster trained as an accountant but his singing voice had developed into a glorious ringing tenor. He faced a major dilemma; should he continue in accountancy (dull but lucrative) or make singing his profession? Fate took a hand. He was asked to attend an interview in London. (he had already auditioned in Birmingham) with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company – on the same day that he was due to carry out an audit in Merthyr Tydfil. Which should he choose? He opted for London – and soon he was singing with the D’Oyly Carte chorus in The Yeomen of the Guard at Brighton, the first of many touring productions. His career was also on course for a meeting with Anne.
Elocution coaching by renowned Shakespearian actor Robert Atkins helped Webster lose his Birmingham accent and his voice eventually became famous for its tone quality, pitch and diction – “He was rightly in love with his voice and used to tape all his records,” Anne recalls. “It was a light voice with an exceptionally high range, ideal for opera.”
Fred Hartley
Incredibly, he was once told by a technician at Edison Records that his voice “would not record”, yet he was eventually asked to make a test recording for the Columbia Gramophone Company, which was heard at a party by the great Australian bass-baritione Peter Dawson. Dawson was so impressed that he used his influence at HMV to get the young singer a contract and Webster’s first record was that delightful ballad A Brown Bird Singing, made in 1929 with Ray Noble’s orchestra and accompanied by suitable bird effects! There was some confusion because Cavan O’Connor brought out a similar record (also with Ray Noble) at the same time, but soon Webster was making more recordings for HMV than any other singer apart from Bing Crosby!
His first important London engagement was in The Three Musketeers at Drury Lane in March 1930. He also broadcast with Fred Hartley’s Sextet and made a film, called The Invader, with Buster Keaton (the movie was a talkie, but Keaton didn’t say a word!). It was when he was asked to sing in a performance of Handel’s Messiah, conducted by the great Sir Malcolm Sargent (at that time still Doctor Malcolm Sargent), that he knew his talents had been fully recognized. This was musical appreciation of the highest order. He would phone friends excitedly: “I’m on the radio tonight… in a classical concert!”
Throughout his career he mainly chose to sing in English, recording duets with such well-known opera stars as Joan Cross and Joan Hammond. Many admirers were sorry that Webster did not pursue an operatic career, but he always said that he much preferred recording and broadcasting.
Meanwhile Anne was making her own way to the top. The daughter of a cotton merchant, she trained in music and dance and starred in several shows before heading south: “My mother was mad on music, and music was also my life. I had no time for sport or anything else.”
Offered a leading part (the top part in an octet!) in a London show, she was advised by her music teacher to change her name to something more attractive for the bill-boards. One day she was scanning the Liverpool telephone directory in the hope of finding a suitable replacement surname when, on the very last page , she noticed the name of Ziegler. There was a family connection… Mr Ziegler was a distant relative of her father’s who owned Landicane Farm, then an extensive property on the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire. The sound of the name had the required romantic ring and it merely took the addition of a single shorter first name to complete the task. From now on she would be Anne Ziegler; it was a name destined to beam brightly from the finest theatres in the land.
By 1934 she was a rising star, tipped for Hollywood, and the Press had dubbed her The Radio Nightingale. Webster was called The Voice of Romance and the two met during the filming of Faust in December 1934. When Evergreen visited her this autumn, Anne was excited because an admirer in Ireland had recently obtained a copy of the original film, which was made in Spectracolour. “It will be the first time I have seen it since the 1930s,” she added.
When the two met on the set of Faust, Anne admitted she liked Webster straight away. “He had marvellous, compelling brown eyes and a youthful face. But he was married and we weren’t supposed to be showing a lot of interest in each other… though he tried to attract my attention by balancing a small ivory pig on the top of a piano lid. It kept falling over, which gave him the excuse to ask me if I could make the pig stand up. Of course, I couldn’t either, but it started a conversation! I think our affection grew from that. It was only six months later, when he was in a musical comedy at London’s Savoy Theatre that I was watching that I found myself getting rather jealous because he had a French leading lady!”
Anne was an attractive 23-year-old – Webster was 32, a divorcee who was already on his second marriage. His career was blooming but his personal life was in tatters. His first marriage had been to Winifred Key (Keey), daughter of the principal of the college in Birmingham where he had studied accountancy. They had a son, Keith (now a retired farmer (flower grower), living in the North of England) but one day Winifred walked out, leaving Webster to bring up the baby boy (aged six) alone. He combed the country trying to find her, often using the journey to a concert venue as a chance to find out where she was. Yet the two were never reunited.
In their autobiography Duet which he wrote with Anne in 1951, Webster remembered those days as a giggle. Anne recalls: “Much of the money we earned then had to be used to support my parents. My father had failed in business and needed help. Later there was alimony to pay from the break-up of Webster’s second marriage and money was required for Keith’s education.” (Webster stopped paying alimony to Paddy a few years after the divorce in 1938).
By the time Anne met Webster he had divorced Winifred and married again, this time to comedienne Paddy Prior – but that marriage was also crumbling. With Anne he sensed a last chance for happiness. She had already appeared in pantomime with George Formby at Liverpool in 1935 and had also become something of a household word herself through her success in the operetta Love Needs a Waltz.
Anne and Webster recorded their first duet in 1937 (1939!) (fittingly it was If You Were the Only Girl in the World) and sang together in a memorable performance of Messiah with the mighty Huddersfield Choral Society and Liverpool Philharmonic under Sir Malcolm Sargent. (This performance took place in 1944!) In 1938 Anne – described by Radio Pictorial magazine as “The young Liverpool girl who made good in musical comedy” – took a leading role, as played on stage by Anna Neagle, for a BBC broadcast of the musical comedy Princess Charming; Webster (“an excellent actor”) played the romantic Ruritanian sea captain who seeks the princess’s hand in marriage.
Then Anne was invited to America by composer Arthur Schwartz to appear in his new musical, Virginia. This was her big break, and there was talk of her being the new Jeanette MacDonald. Webster also came over but, says Anne, was treated disgracefully” by some Americans who found his voice too refined. “If you got no piano player, buddy, stand in line!” he was told at one audition. He promptly walked out.
Webster returned to Britain, to face the problems of his second marriage and also his health. Anne (now singing as Anne Booth) swiftly cut short a possible Hollywood career to be with him. “When Virginia closed in October 1937 I returned home to be with the man I loved,” she now explains. “I often wonder what might have happened if I had stayed in America but I don’t think I could have stood some of the things that were going on.”
When Webster was taken violently ill with blood-poisoning, she was by his side. In desperation, doctors tried an experimental drug… (M and B) and it saved his life. “I’m convinced he would have died without it,” she says. After Webster’s second divorce was finalised, he married Anne at Harrow Road register office, Paddington, on 5 November, 1938, with the blessing held at the ancient church of St Ethelburga’s (recently wrecked by an IRA bomb) in the City of London. Ahead of them lay scores of personal appearances, studio broadcasts, concert performances, records, films and shows.
Radio Pictorial. September 1938. Two months before their marriage.
During the war, while based in Bristol, they also performed in hangars, warehouses and half-darkened halls, with top musicians like Albert Sandler and Moura Lympany, and there was rapturous applause from adoring wartime audiences. They appeared at the Palladium in 1941 with Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, were selected for the first post-war Royal Command Performance and appeared before the Royal Family at their own chapel in the grounds of the Royal Lodge, Windsor. On stage they starred in a very successful revival of The Vagabond King (1943) and Sweet Yesterday (1945) and their films together included Waltz Time (1945 – not 1942), Demobbed (1944) and a costume favourite, The Laughing Lady (1946). For years they starred in summer season at Blackpool, proving even more popular than the legendary Joseph Locke. As one showbiz writer put it: “They were now as much a double act as Marks and Spencer or Crosse and Blackwell.”
Their life was a whirl: a wild romantic blend of Johann Strauss, Rudolf Friml, Ivor Novello and Sigmund Romberg. They serenaded each other on stage and in recording studios with everlasting classics – Deep in My Heart, Dear, Love’s Old Sweet Song, Only a Rose, We’ll Gather Lilacs, and many others. It was a world of gentle colours, sweet nothings and telling glances.
Their main accompanist was the faithful (and ever polite) Charles Forwood. “If, at the end of a concert, he smiled and said, ‘Well done’, that was praise indeed,” Webster once recalled. “But if he just put the music away quietly, and didn’t say a word, we knew we hadn’t gone too well.” Together they were ideal ambassadors, transporting the flavour and refinement of more graceful, cherished times from the Arctic chill of Canada to the heavy heat of Aden and Egypt. Always they were immaculate.
Anne made her final solo appearance in pantomime at the King’s Theatre Hammersmith in 1954 and two years later she and Webster moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, where they quickly settled, relishing the warmer climate. They continued to sing, recording many of their songs in the Afrikaans language, and Webster played the part of Tommy Handley in an hilarious radio version of ITMA. Together they taught singing and stagecraft, helping many talented pupils on the path to success. It was a two-way process: “It was amazing how much more I learned about singing technique by teaching,” says Anne. “My pupils actually taught me something. Now I can look at an opera or hear a record, and pick out certain faults almost instinctively.”
The Golden Years.
In June 1978 they returned to Britain, setting up home in North Wales. They continued to teach and were still as much in demand as ever for concerts, but Webster had a debilitating illness and was growing more forgetful. The end came slowly and he died the day before Anne’s seventy-fourth birthday.
Webster has his memorial in the form of a bursary for young singers called the Esso Webster Booth/Anne Ziegler Awards which are presented annually at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester “to keep alive the memory of a golden voice of the past while encouraging another generation in the best traditions of English singing”. Each year Anne travels to Manchester to present the prizes with Mrs Jean Buckley who originally started the bursary.
Still remarkably sprightly and attractive – her appearance belies her age – Anne enjoys the company of her wide circle of friends, corresponds regularly with her many admirers, and walks her beloved 11-year-old Yorkshire terrier Bonnie each morning, as well as doing a little gardening “before I stiffen up completely!” She still has her memories, and her regrets. “Of all the songs we sang I have no particular favourites. They were all beautiful, but I would have loved to have sung more Gilbert and Sullivan… and much more Mozart!”
Then she thinks of Webster and smiles. “You know, he really had the most beautiful voice. I was just another soprano, six a penny,” she jokes endearingly, “but his voice was exceptional. To me he will remain one of the finest British singers of this century… and the love of my life.”
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth sang to fellow passengers while flying to South Africa. Their duet was We’ll Gather Lilacs, sung at 18,000 feet as they crossed the Zambezi.
I have compiled the following information from newspapers, personal recollections and programmes. The list is far from complete. Please contact me if you can fill in the gaps.
November heading for Johannesburg.
6 November 1955 – Quick Work. Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, with their accompanist, Arthur Tatler, fly to South Africa on November 6 to fulfill a concert tour in South Africa, Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Kenya. This will indeed be a flying visit for they will fly everywhere in order to fulfill so many engagements in so short a time, as they return to England on December 11, when Webster Booth is due to broadcast for the BBC on December 14, after which he leaves the following day for Huddersfield to sing in the Messiah.
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth sang to fellow passengers while flying to South Africa. Their duet was We’ll Gather Lilacs, sung at 18,000 feet as they crossed the Zambezi.
ANNE ZIEGLER AND WEBSTER BOOTH, 8 November 1955
Webster and Anne arrived at Jan Smuts airport on 8 November. They had been booked to appear in concerts with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, also in Durban and Salisbury, Rhodesia. Webster gave a rather bitter interview about the changing times in music with the growth of music that appealed more to teenagers and the rise of television.
ANNE ZIEGLER AND WEBSTER BOOTH, 23 November 1955, City Hall, East London. Recital presented by East London Association of the Arts.
After their concert tour they returned to the UK where Webster had several Messiah engagements to fulfil. Despite his bitter comments on his arrival in Johannesburg, 1955 had been a very busy year for the Booths.
ANNE ZIEGLER AND WEBSTER BOOTH, with Arthur Tatler (piano), City Hall, Johannesburg Tuesday, 31 January 16th and 21 February 1956
City Hall, Benoni, Saturday, (opening Benoni’s Golden Jubilee celebrations) 4th February 1956
City Hall, Pretoria, Wednesday, 8 February 1956
B tour to Bethal, Bloemfontein, Parys (concert on an island on the Vaal River), Kimberley, Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
Having tea during the interval of a concert in Bethal during their country tour – their accompanist, Arthur Tatler, Webster and Anne.
10 May 1957, Hobbies Exhibition, East London. The Round Table has engaged Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth to sing (Rand Daily Mail)
THE NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS 29 May 1957, Johannesburg. Anne and Webster sang at this concert produced by Cedric Messina and Monte Doyle in aid of the Jimmy Elliott Appeal.
STARLIGHT 13 to 16 November 1957, Prosperity Park, Zoo Lake. All funds in aid of the United Party, Anne, Webster, Maria Pavlou, Eva Tamassy, Gordon Mulholland, Jack Kruger, Charles Castle.
VARIETY UNDER THE STARS 7 March 1958, Joubert Park Open Air Theatre, Anne and Webster and a host of other performers.
1958 snippets
VARIETY PROGRAMME June 1958, Kangalani, home of Eva Harvey (by invitation only!) Anne and Webster, Sini van der Brom, Francois Bouguenon, Eva Harvey.
Variety in the Home – Eva Harvey
GRAND VARIETY SHOW, 27, 28 May 1960, Methodist Church Hall, Roberts Avenue, Kensington, Anne and Webster and other artistes. I (aged 16) attended this show and got their autographs at the interval.
CHRISTMAS CAPERS December 1, 2, 3 1960, Civic Theatre, Bloemfontein, Anne and Webster and local artistes presented by Rotary Club.
CONCERT 30 April 1961, Anne and Webster sang at the Wanderers Club, Johannesburg.
OVER 6OS OLD FOLKS VARIETY SHOW 2 May 1961, City Hall, Durban, Anne and Webster, with Cyril Sugden, Graham Rich.
City Hall, Durban
5 July 1961. Festival Concert, Allen Wilson Beit Hall, Salisbury. Anne and Webster appeared after Webster had adjudicated at Vocal Festival for the Rhodesia Institute of Allied Arts.
SATURDAY NIGHT VARIETY SHOW 1961, Amphitheatre, North Beach, Durban, Anne and Webster and top line variety stars.
GALA BENEFIT SHOW February 1962, Ciros Club, Johannesburg, Anne and Webster appeared in benefit show for the actor, David Beattie, who was suffering from cancer.
CONCERT Mid August 1963, Ficksburg, Anne and Webster, accompanied by Desmond Wright. Webster said that he would have taken me as the accompanist but he didn’t like two women on the stage as it would draw the audience’s attention away from Anne.
1964 Concert tour with SABC Orchestra. Anne and Webster were soloists on this tour.
1965 Concert tour with SABC Orchestra. Anne and Webster were soloists on this tour.
POPULAR CONCERT, 2 October 1966, Johannesburg’s eightieth birthday concert at the City Hall.
GRAND VARIETY CONCERT 15 September 1967, 8.15 pm
POPULAR CONCERTS, December 1967/1968
THE ANNE ZIEGLER AND WEBSTER BOOTH SHOW 26, 27, 28 August 1972, Durban Jewish Club, Anne and Webster accompanied by Jack Dowle, with top supporting artistes.
FAREWELL CONCERT, late 1975, Somerset West
Farewell performance, October 1975.
Anne and Webster had planned to retire from the stage at the end of 1975, but when they returned to England in early 1978 they were in great demand so came out of retirement until Webster’s health broke down in 1983.
Someone asked me recently whether I went to study with Anne and Webster because of their duet singing, but it had nothing to do with that at all. It was entirely due to Mabel Fenney that decided me to study singing with Anne and Webster and to make music my career.
When I was in my
final year at Jeppe High
School for Girls in
1960, the permanent music mistress, Miss Diane Heller, went on long
leave, and Mrs Mabel Fenney took her place for a term. Mabel was born
Mabel Greenwood on Shakespeare’s birthday in Lytham St Anne’s,
Lancashire in 1919. Her mother was a true contralto and had sung in
several professional productions. The Greenwoods moved to East London
in the Eastern Cape when Mabel was quite young.
She showed
singing talent from an early age and did her initial singing diplomas
in East London, trained by a gentleman she referred to as “Pop
Lee”, and sang and acted in many local musicals, plays and
recitals. Her favourite role was as Elsie Maynard in The
Yeomen of the Guard. She
married fellow Lancastrian, Eric Fenney, and instead of pursuing a
singing career, she helped him run his plumbing business in East
London.
When the
Dramatic Society of East London invited Webster Booth and Anne
Ziegler to star in the 1958 production of Merrie
England,
she and Eric stood surety for their salaries. It was
in this production where she first met them, playing their roles of
Bessie Throckmorton and Sir Walter Raleigh. She played the part of
Jill-All-Alone in the production. The following year the society put
on Waltz
Time,
again with Anne and Webster in the leading roles, but, for some
reason, she did not take part in this production. Instead she went to
Johannesburg to have lessons with Anne and Webster in preparation for
several advanced diploma singing examinations. By the time she
arrived at Jeppe High School for Girls she had already won the
University of South Africa’s overseas teaching bursary and was due
to leave for Berlin to study at the Hochschule there
for two years.
We schoolgirls looked
on Mabel as a very glamorous figure in comparison with some of our
staid academic teachers. She was lively and enthusiastic and took us
on various outings to the opera.
Towards the end of her term at Jeppe, Mabel gave a memorable recital in the school hall one afternoon. The event had not been widely publicised, so there were not many people present, but I was there with singing school friends, Margaret Plevin (née Masterton) and Valerie Vogt (née Figgins). We were impressed by her performance. The Booths had decided that she was a mezzo soprano rather than soprano, so she had sung a mezzo repertoire for her diploma exams. I will always remember her singing of the Habanera and Seguidilla from Carmen.
At the end of one of the arias she threw a rose coquettishly to her schoolgirl audience. We were completely captivated. Someone asked me recently whether I went to study with Anne and Webster because of their duet singing, but it had nothing to do with that at all. It was entirely due to Mabel Fenney that decided me to study singing with Anne and Webster and to make music my career.
Mabel Fenney (later Perkin) Photo taken in 1960 before she went to Berlin to study at the Hochschule there. February 1960.2 March 1960. Webster’s reference for Mabel.
27, 28 May 1960 –
Grand
Variety Show,
Methodist
Church Hall, Roberts Avenue, Kensington. Anne and Webster and other
artistes. Anne and Webster sang just before the interval.
I (aged sixteen)
asked them for their autographs before they left, the only one to do
so.
27 May 1960. Kensington Methodist Church as it is today (2019) In 1960 there was no wall surrounding it.Variety Concert at Methodist Church, Roberts Avenue, Kensington 1960.Kensington Methodist Church – as it is today.Anne appears in various adverts!
24 November 1960 – A Country Girl. Springs Civic Theatre. Anne produced this show for the Springs Operatic Society.
24 November 1960
1960 – Mikado,
Bloemfontein.
I am not sure whether Webster sang in it, directed it, or both.
Webster in Bloemfontein to do The Mikado.
1, 2, December 3
1960
– Christmas
Capers,
Civic
Theatre, Bloemfontein. Anne and Webster and local artistes in a
variety show presented by Rotary Club.
December, 1960 –
The
Christmas Oratorio,
Kimberley. Webster sang the tenor solos, although he was not as fond
of Bach as he was of Handel.
8 December 1960 – I had an interview with Anne Ziegler at the studio on the eighth floor of Polliack’s Corner, Pritchard Street and started lessons with Anne and Webster two weeks later. Webster was singing at the Port Elizabeth Oratorio when I had my audition. Anne was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter when I went for my first lesson. Here is the photo taken at that interview.
Lock Up Your Daughters – December 1960. Anne plays Mrs Squeezum!Anne and Valerie Miller in Lock Up Your Daughters. The play was not a success.
March 1961 – advertising Skol Beer.
April 1961 SABC
Bulletin – Wednesday at 8.30 pm. Webster
Booth, who presents a programme of Opera, Operetta and Oratorio at
8.30 on Wednesday nights, began singing at the age of seven. That
makes his career 52 years “and I hope it goes on a little further,
but not too long,” he told announcer Robert Kirby in an interview.
This is how the
conversation continued:
If you started singing when you were seven, how did you manage to fit in your education? – Well, I began in Lincoln Cathedral as a choir boy and was educated at the cathedral school. This was run by the Dean and Chapter. That took me up to the Oxford and Cambridge junior examination which was roughly equivalent to our Junior Certificate. After that I had to stop musical training as my voice was breaking and completed my schooling at a commercial school studying accountancy.
Broaadcasting at the SABC.
I know your fields
of endeavour have been in Opera, Oratorio and Operetta. Do you have
any preferences among these three?
– Oratorio, definitely!
Why?
– I suppose it was my first love and I certainly get much more
satisfaction from singing in Oratorio, musically that is; I am trying
to say that to do it properly and to do it well you have to work at
it so hard that the feeling of achievement is that much greater. With
Opera and Operetta one has stage clothing, and scenery and movement
to register to an audience, whereas in Oratorio one has nothing
except one’s own interpretation as a medium of reaching the
audience.
Do you prefer
working “live” with an audience, recording or broadcasting?
– I certainly prefer working without an audience. In front of one
that is. Usually in a broadcast one has a much larger audience but
because they are unseen one can concentrate much more, also because
of their quantity it makes me want to give much more than I would on
a stage. If it would be possible to sing before an audience of
perhaps fifty thousand people it would be much more awe-inspiring
than singing to them via a microphone. I can always have a broadcast
recorded and that is invaluable to me as I am my own greatest critic.
One can always learn from one’s mistakes.
Do you suffer from
stage fright?
– Yes. The older I get the worse I get. I think the reason being
that one always wants to be that one per cent better than the last
time. The suffering comes from the fear of being one per cent worse.
Stage fright should only happen before a performance. To go on being
frightened during the performance is fatal.
Do you find that
one person alone in an audience can affect you?
– Very much so. Someone who is restive will invariably catch your
eye and distract you. None of us are perfect and if one knows the
position in the audience of a somewhat severe critic one is apt to
wonder what he or she may be thinking and this can be most
disturbing.
How do you react
to severe criticism? –
If you mean destructive criticism I am like anyone else. I react very
unfavourably. But if it is constructive criticism then I try to
swallow my pride and read into the criticism something from which I
should benefit.
What was the worst critique you ever had? – I deliberately forget the bad ones.
The best?
– The finest write up I ever received, from my point of view, was
for a show that only ran for two and a half weeks. “Here is the
answer to a producer’s prayer.’
Which would you
call the most fulfilling moment of your career?
– The first night of the 1938 Covent Garden Festival of Opera. I
sang the tenor role in Rosenkavelier
with Erich Kleiber conducting and Lotte Lehmann as the soprano lead.
To see a pre-war full house at Covent Garden from the stage with
evening dress and tiaras is a sight one could never forget.
Which role was your favourite? – Definitely Francois Villon in The Vagabond King. It has everything an artist could wish for. Comedy, romance, glorious costumes, pathos and good solid music to sing.
Are you satisfied with what you have achieved? – Yes. If I had my life over again I doubt whether I would change much of it. I have been very lucky. I was given a voice, a figure, and my marriage with Anne Ziegler – something which has been successful and happy, and I have adopted what I think to be about the finest country in the world.
Webster’s programme is extended and is now called On Wings of Song, with the duet by Anne and Webster as the introductory music.1 May 1961 Opening night of La Traviata at Empire Theatre.Old Folks’ concert Durban May 1961
June 1961. Webster
adjudicated at the Salisbury eisteddfod.
5 July 1961 – Concert in Salisbury.
5 July 1961 – Concert.8.15 pm Allan Wilson School, Beit Hall, Salisbury, Rhodesia – Anne and Webster appeared in a concert after Webster had adjudicated at the Vocal Festival for the Rhodesia Institute of Allied Arts.
17 July 1961 –
Advert for pupils.
Advert for pupils. 17 July 1961 – Star.
August/September 1961. Mabel Fenney back in SA for holiday.
5 September to
October 30 1961 –The
Amorous Prawn,Alexander
Theatre (previously the Reps Theatre); National Theatre, Pretoria, 31
October to November 12; Alhambra Theatre, Durban, November.
Webster was the
Prawn,
with Simon Swindell, Gabriel Bayman, Diane Wilson, Joe Stewardson,
Ronald Wallace and Joan Blake, directed by Victor Melleney.
Anne and Leslie Green Opening night of The Amorous Prawn 1961A reference for my first job in the bank! 6 October 1961.
November 1961 – The Stage.
Johannesburg Theatre by Evelyn Leveson. The evening attraction at the
Alexander – acclaimed with delight by both critics and public – was
The Amorous Prawn,
directed by Victor Melleney and starring Joan Blake, one of our most
versatile actresses, who, for the past two years, has been touring
the country in Adam Leslie’s witty intimate revue Two’s
Company.
Excellent notices were also received by
Webster Booth who, with his wife Anne Ziegler, has been living here
for the past five years. As the Prawn,
Mr Booth is appearing on the South African stage in his first
non-singing role.
1 November 1961 (from my teenage diary)1 November 1961 (from diary)1 November 1961 (diary)November 1961 Durban.Anne as Mrs Siddons 31 October 1961.1 November 1961 from diary – the story continues in the diary itself (1961)27 November 1961 Dream of Gerontius.
They fell in love, although at the time he was married to his second wife, Paddy Prior and had a son, Keith, by his first marriage. Four years later, after his divorce from Paddy in times when divorce was not as common or acceptable as it is today, Anne and Webster were married on Bonfire Night in 1938.
Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth first met during the filming of TheFaust Fantasy in 1934/35
Anne Ziegler, the widow and singing partner of Webster Booth, died in Llandudno, North Wales, on 13 October 2003, at the age of 93. Her death brought an end to an era in British entertainment before and after the Second World War. Her death brings an end to an era for me also.
I was seventeen when I first met them at the end of 1960. They were already middle-aged, in the same age group as my parents, their top-flight stage career in Britain behind them. I was too young to have seen them at the height of their fame, but even then I thought them a shining couple, as I still do over fifty-nine years later.
Although I was too young to have seen them on stage in the days of their great success in the forties and early fifties, I believe their success was due to the wonderful blend of the voices, creating a special, instantly recognisable sound, and their contrasting good looks, she beautifully gowned, he in full evening dress. Above all, they were instantly likeable with charming personalities, and possessed an elusive ability to make people adore them.
In their day, in the thirties, forties and fifties, Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth were stars of stage, screen, radio, concert halls and variety theatres, and made over a thousand 78 rpms, either as duets or solos. Webster was also in demand as tenor soloist in oratorio: Handel’s Messiah, Jephtha, Samson, Acis and Galatea, Judas Maccabbeus, and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, to mention but a few. Before the Second World War, he had sung Coleridge Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in full Native American costume, and in 1955 on the occasion of Sir Malcolm Sargent’s birthday concert, Sir Malcolm requested particularly that he should be the tenor soloist in the same work.
Webster became a Mason, and was a proud member of the Savage Club, where he often sang at their legendary Saturday night entertainments. These entertainments were arranged by Joe Batten, the eminent sound recordist and producer at Columbia Records. When Webster had something important to do he always wore his distinctive striped Savage Club tie to bring him luck. While still in his early thirties, Webster was made a Life Governor of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
Webster was also in demand as tenor soloist in oratorio: Handel’s Messiah, Jephtha, Samson, Acis and Galatea, Judas Maccabbeus, and Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, to mention but a few. Before the Second World War, he had sung Coleridge Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in full Native American costume, and in 1955 on the occasion of Sir Malcolm Sargent’s birthday concert, Sir Malcolm requested particularly that he should be the tenor soloist in the same work.
By the time he met Anne Ziegler during the filming of the colour film Faust in 1934, he was married to his second wife, Paddy Prior. He had divorced his first wife, Winifred Keey in 1931 after she had deserted him and their small son, and married Paddy Prior, a talented dancer, comedienne and soubrette in October 1932. The couple’s marriage was happy in the beginning and they appeared together in several concert parties, the Piccadilly Revels, Scarboroough in 1933 and Sunshine at Shanklin in 1934.
Shortly after he met Anne Ziegler he took the lead in an ill-fated production of Kurt Weill’s A Kingdom for a Cow at the Savoy Theatre. His leading lady was the well-known French singer Jacqueline Francel. In Anne and Webster’s joint autobiography, Duet, he said that the play was probably ahead of its time in its handling of complex social issues, which made it too heavy for audiences of the day, who expected lighter fare in musicals. Apart from the unusual subject matter, rehearsals were stormy and the direction contradictory, so despite Weill’s pleasing music and a strong cast, the play closed after just three weeks. The London Dramatic Critic from The Scotsman gave the piece a good review, and mentioned that “Mr Webster Booth as the hero also deserves praise for his fine singing”.
Webster and Paddy Prior, his second wife.
Sadly, his marriage did not last after he met Anne. Paddy divorced him, naming Anne as co-respondent. He and Anne were married on Bonfire Night in 1938. Webster Booth soon formed a duet partnership with his wife in addition to his extensive recording, film, oratorio and concert work.
Webster was contracted to HMV for over twenty years and recorded more than a thousand solos, duets, trios and quartets. His lighter recordings include selections from Ivor Novello musicals with Helen Hill, Olive Gilbert and Stuart Robertson; Theatreland at Coronation Time with South African soprano Garda Hall, and Sam Costa; excerpts from Snow White with Nora Savage, conducted by George Scott-Wood, the composer of Shy Serenade. He made many anonymous recordings as a member of the HMV Light Opera Company. He was the “with vocal refrain” on a series of records made with Carlos Santana and his Accordion Band on the Brunswick label, and on a record of Chappell Balladswith Jack Hylton’s band. Carlos Santana was one of the many aliases used by Harry Bidgood. His better known alias was Primo Scala, the leader of another accordion band, but he did many other things like conducting film music and arranging music and while he was still at school he had written the music for his school song.
His recordings of the late nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties encompassed oratorio, opera and ballads, as well as duets with Anne. Webster’s more serious recordings were often under the baton of Malcolm Sargent, Lawrance Collingwood, Basil Cameron or rwick Braithwaite with the Hallé, the Liverpool Philharmonic or the Royal Philharmonic Orchestras. His recordings with piano accompaniment were nearly always with the eminent accompanist Gerald Moore.
Webster enjoyed telling the story of a particular recording session with Gerald Moore. They had one more song to record before the session ended. The song was Phil, the Fluter’s Ball, and Gerald Moore suggested that they should see how fast he could play it and how fast Webster could sing it with clear diction. This was no problem for the finest accompanist in the world and for a singer who had spent four years performing Gilbert and Sullivan with the D’Oyly Carte Company. His oratorio recordings are particularly fine. The solos in Samson from the moving recitative O loss of sight and the following aria,Total Eclipse, to the fiery Why does the God of Israel sleep?, with its unrelenting Handelian runs, demonstrate how easily he moved from one mood to another, always singing with flawless technique and clear diction.
He made recordings with other distinguished singers of the day in operatic ensembles, such as the quartet from Rigoletto, with Noel Edie, Arnold Matters and Edith Coates, to the trio from Faustwith Joan Cross and Norman Walker. He sang duets with soprano Joan Cross and baritone Dennis Noble from La Bohème and the Miserere from Il Trovatore with Joan Cross. He recorded duets with the baritone Dennis Noble from the Victorian and Edwardian Excelsior and Watchman, what of the night? to the brilliant extended scene in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. He recorded the duet in Madame Butterfly with Australian soprano Joan Hammond.
When Joan Hammond first arrived in England from Australia, she had a sweet lyrical soprano voice. She sang her first Messiahin England with Webster as tenor soloist under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham. But by the time they recorded the Madame Butterfly duet, several years later, Joan Hammond had become a dramatic soprano and her voice was very much bigger than it had been when she first arrived in England. Joan had to stand much further away from the microphone than Webster in order for the sound engineer to get the balance for the duet right. Webster also sang excerpts from Carmen with the Sadler’s Wells chorus and orchestra, with Dennis Noble, and with Nancy Evans, Anne’s old friend from Liverpool, as Carmen.
At the beginning of the Second World War, he recorded The Lost Chordat the Kingsway Hall in London, accompanied by the organist Herbert Dawson. As they were reaching the end of the song, the All Clear siren sounded, which meant they had to redo the recording to cut out the sound of the siren. There had been no air raids at that early stage of the war so presumably the sirens were being given a trial run. The blitz was yet to come and would destroy Webster’s beloved Queen’s Hall.
ANNE ZIEGLER (1910 – 2003)
Anne was born Irené Frances Eastwood in Liverpool on 22 June 1910. From over two hundred other hopefuls she was chosen for the part of Marguerite for the film, the Faust Fantasy: no doubt her blonde good looks and charming personality counted for nearly as much as her attractive lyric soprano voice. It was in the making of this film, which commenced shooting in December 1934, that she met Webster Booth, playing opposite her as Faust.
During the making of the film they fell in love , although at the time he was married to his second wife, Paddy Prior, and had a son, Keith, by his first marriage to Winifred Keey. Four years later, after his divorce from Paddy in times when divorce was not as common or acceptable as it is today, Anne and Webster were married on Bonfire Night in 1938.
During those intervening four years, Anne was an overnight success on radio in The Chocolate Soldier, sang in a concert party in 1935 called Summer Smiles during the summer season at Ryde, an engagement she did not really enjoy much. There she acquired her first devoted fan, a girl aged 15, who kept in close touch with her for the rest of her life.
She played principal boy in her first pantomime, Mother Goose, at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool, which starred George Formby. In this pantomime she met Babs Wilson-Hill, the principal dancer in the show, who was to remain her closest friend for most of her life. During the 1936 pantomime season she and Babs appeared in another highly successful pantomime, Cinderella, in Edinburgh, this time with the Scottish comedian Will Fyffe as the star attraction.
Anne and Webster were both extremely popular and prolific broadcasters on the BBC, as well as the various European commercial broadcasting stations geared to the British market, such as Radio Lyons, Radio Luxembourg, Radio Normandy and Radio Eireann. Glancing through copies of The Radio Pictorial, commercial radio’s equivalent of The Radio Times, one sees frequent articles about them. Radio stars in the thirties obviously held the equivalent status of pop stars today.
Despite Anne’s success on stage and radio, recording companies had not shown any interest in putting her voice on record. She made a test recording of the Waltz Songfrom Merrie England in 1935, a recording which Webster managed to obtain from HMV. Eventually she did make a few solo recordings and sang in a Noel Coward medley with Joyce Grenfell and Graham Payn, but the bulk of her recordings were duets with Webster. My favourite solo recording of Anne’s is Raymond Loughborough’s ASong in the Night, which she sang on a Pathé film short in 1936.
Webster went to New York with her, hoping to find some stage work of his own, but, despite his great voice, he did not make any impact on the cut-throat American musical world. He attended various auditions in New York as an unknown, while in England he was already an established performer in oratorio, recording, films, and the West End stage. He returned to England, crestfallen at his lack of success, and resumed his numerous engagements. Anne, in the meantime, was hailed as a Broadway star and offered a film contract in Hollywood, with the idea that she would be the successor to Jeanette McDonald. The offer was tempting, but she turned it down to return to England and marry Webster Booth when his divorce from Paddy Prior was made final.
For most of her life Anne maintained that marriage to Webster meant more to her than any Hollywood contract, although in later years she sometimes reflected on what her life would have been like had she accepted the contract and become a Hollywood star.
Even before Webster’s divorce was made final they formed a duet partnership on stage, in addition to their solo work. From April 1938 they were singing together for Clarkson Rose. This is an advert from September of 1938, the month before Webster’s divorce was finalised.
Their first duet recording was made in the year after their marriage in 1939 – If You were the Only Girl in the World, with A Paradise for Two on the flip side. Before this official recording she had sung with him as an anonymous soprano voice in a radio series in 1937 called The Voice of Romance. In this series he too was anonymous, but by this time, most people would have recognised his distinctive voice.
In 1940 they accepted an offer from agent Julius Darewski to join the variety circuit. The money was good and they were well received on the variety halls, always doing their act without the aid of a microphone. If Webster Booth’s voice filled the Albert Hall when he sang the tenor part in Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha in Native American dress under the baton of Malcolm Sargent, the same voice, in harmony with his wife’s, filled the variety theatres from the London Palladium to all points of the United Kingdom.
They were the epitomé of glamour and romance. He was tall, dark and handsome. He was always in immaculate evening attire, she in a range of crinoline gowns, some designed by Norman Hartnell. Their act was interspersed with what seemed like off-the-cuff banter, but every word and move was meticulously planned, and the lighting plot carefully worked out for the most telling impact.
Apart from the usual operatic arias and musical comedy duets, Anne and Webster sang and recorded a number of ballads, arranged as duets, and an interesting and difficult arrangement of Chopin’s famous Nocturne in C sharp minor, arranged by Maurice Besley. As often as not Webster would arrange the duet part himself if none had been written.
Christening of Leslie Webster Booth at St James’ Church, Handsworth. The date is 15 April 1912, but I wonder if this is a misprint and that it actually took place in April 1902.
Leslie Webster Booth was born on 21 January 1902 in a three storey home above his father’s ladies hairdressing business at 157 Soho Road, Handsworth, Birmingham. He was the youngest son of Edwin Booth and his wife Sarah (née Webster) in a family of three sons and three daughters. Edwin was a hairdresser, who had served in the Royal Staffordshire Regiment as a Barber Surgeon. Sarah was from Chilvers Coton, Nuneaton, where her parents and later she and her sister, Hannah, had been handloom silk weavers. Her brother, William Thomas Webster was a partner in Foster and Webster, a successful gentlemen’s outfitters with branches throughout the Midlands. Sarah’s brother eventually left the firm, but it continues to this day under the name of Foster Brothers.
Leslie was the youngest of six children and his eldest sister, Doris, (known as Nellie), played as big a part in his upbringing as his mother. All three sisters doted on their young brother, who, from an early age, possessed a singing voice of outstanding quality. The family held musical evenings at home and delighted in their father’s robust rendition of The Veteran’s Song, while his mother and sisters were moved to tears when young Leslie sang the mournful ballad, Valé in his beautiful treble voice.
Webster sang in the choir at St James, Handsworth as a young boy.
At nine years of age Leslie’s voice elevated him from St James’ Church choir in Edwardian Handsworth to the choir stalls of Lincoln Cathedral as a chorister under the direction of Dr George Bennett. Dr Bennett was a fine musician, but a stern taskmaster, who insisted that choristers sang with flat tongues: he was not averse to flattening an errant tongue with his ever-ready broken baton. Just as today’s Cathedral choristers are disciplined hard-working musicians of the highest order, so they were in the first decades of the twentieth century also. Christmas holidays for the choristers commenced only after they had completed the Christmas Eve services to Dr Bennett’s satisfaction.
Lincoln Cathedral. Webster was a chorister there from the age of 9 until his voice broke.
Lincoln was a good training ground for young Leslie Booth. Although he did not make great progress on the piano and thus did not advance to learning the organ, an instrument he longed to play. The Willis organ at Lincoln Cathedral had been opened in 1898, eleven years before Leslie went to Lincoln, and is still considered as one of the finest organs in England. Leslie did, however, learn to sight-read vocal lines with ease. This ability stood him in good stead as a professional singer, especially at recording sessions.
When he went to HMV studios for a recording session he would be given six to eight songs to record at a time. These he would sight-read and record in one or two takes. After the session the songs would soon be forgotten: a different approach to recording from today’s pop singers who seem to spend months recording their new “album”! Years later, people often appeared before him clutching one of his old records, assuring him of their great attachment to the particular song, but he often had no recollection of making it in the first place.
After his voice broke at the age of thirteen, he returned to the family home in Birmingham to study accountancy at Aston Commercial School. He was set for the steady job of accountant like Uncle Jim, his father’s brother, but at fifteen, when his voice had settled, he began his vocal studies as a tenor with Dr Richard Wassall, the musical director at the Midland Institute in Birmingham. Leslie was an avid supporter of West Bromwich Albion football team and was goalie in the Aston Commercial School team. He was a promising enough goalie to be offered a place with the Aston Villa Colts, but this idea did not meet with his headmaster’s approval. Despite his accountancy studies, he secretly dreamed of the more glamorous callings of football and singing. Luckily for the world, singing eventually won.
The headmaster was Edgar Keey, father of his first wife, Winifred.
With his great natural vocal gifts, his striking good looks and winning personality, performing came easily to him. He sang duets with Uncle Jim’s daughter, his cousin Lily Booth, a promising mezzo-soprano, and soon he was also singing at concerts and oratorio performances all over the Midlands and Wales. By this time he was a tall, imposing young man, who realised that appearance and stage presence were nearly as important to a professional singer as an exceptional voice. Although he had perfect diction in song, he felt it necessary to take elocution lessons with the Shakespearian actor Sir Robert Atkins, the founder of the Open Air Theatre at Regents Park, to smooth the Brummy intonation from his speech.
His adult voice was a distinctive lyric tenor, with an exceptionally wide range and a baritonal quality on the lower notes. His diction was clear and lacked the idiosyncratic pronunciation and bleating quality of many of his contemporaries, which marked them as refined English singers, not quite able to compete with their more virile Italian and German counterparts. In my opinion, Heddle Nash and David Lloyd were the only two British tenors of Webster Booth’s generation who had comparable voices.
At twenty-one, Leslie auditioned for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and was immediately accepted after a London audition. Although he had been doing well in accountancy, he abandoned his job with little regret to become a professional singer, making his debut with the company in The Yeomen of the Guard at the Theatre Royal, Brighton on 9 September 1923. He stayed with the company for four years, but made no great advancement from the chorus and small parts. In Duet, his joint autobiography, with Anne Ziegler, he complained that the only way one could advance in the company was to wait to fill “dead men’s shoes”. Despite this observation, he was one of the few singers allowed to record individual songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire without the prior approval of the D’Oyly Carte family.
His recordings of Take a pair of sparkling eyes and A Wand’ring Minstrel under the baton of the gifted conductor Leslie Heward, who died tragically young, remain unsurpassed and are now available on CD. He went with the D’Oyly Carte Company on a memorable and successful tour of Canada. Winifred Lawson, the principal soprano, heard him singing Your Tiny Hand is Frozen from La Bohème at the ship’s concert and was deeply impressed with the beauty of his voice. She was not surprised when he left the company soon after its return to England, to eventually become a deserved success in his own right.
In 1924 he had married Winifred Keey, the daughter of Edgar Keey, his headmaster at Aston Commercial School. Winifred borrowed £100 from a relative, with no intention of repaying it, and used the money to follow Leslie to London against her parents’ wishes, or possibly without their knowledge. They might have approved of the match had Leslie remained a respectable accountant like his elder brother, Norman, but they were against her taking up with a chorus boy in the D’Oyly Carte. Her family would have no more to do with her, annoyed at her, partly because of her defiance of their wishes and partly because she had borrowed such a large sum of money under false pretences from a member of the family. Because they disowned her they never knew that she and Leslie had married or that she gave birth to a son and imagined that she and Leslie were living together in sin.
Winifred and Leslie’s son, Keith was born the year after their marriage on 12 June 1925, and his birth was registered in Birmingham North. Leslie was on tour for fifty weeks of the year and Winifred, left alone with her small son, was estranged from her parents although living in the suburb of Moseley in the same city. After several years she suddenly deserted Leslie and his son. He had suspicions that all was not well at home when he came home from a tour with D’Oyly Carte to find Keith sitting by himself on the doorstep. Winifred had left her small son to his own devices while she went dancing.
Leslie searched for Winifred in every town where he was singing, but despite his desperate attempts to trace her, he never found her, and eventually divorced her in 1931, citing Trevor Davey as co-respondent. Leslie was granted custody of Keith, who never saw his mother again after his sixth birthday.
After the stability of a regular – if small – salary from D’Oyly Carte, he was now a freelance performer with a small son to support and no regular money to his name. In the D’Oyly Carte Company he was known as Leslie W. Booth, but now he adopted his middle name, and became Webster Booth on stage, although his family and close friends continued to call him Leslie for the rest of his life. One of his boyhood nicknames was Jammy and he once signed a photograph “Yours sincerely, Kingy“!
During this precarious period of his life before he achieved fame and stability in the profession, Webster joined Tom Howell’s Opieros, a concert party with a difference, as some of its members sang operatic excerpts while others were comedians and light entertainers found in the usual concert party. Tom Howell was a baritone from Swansea and he and Webster often sang duets together in the shows. For several years Webster toured all over the country with the Opieros during the summer season, performing on piers and in municipal parks. H Baynton-Power was the Opieros’ excellent accompanist.
In winter Webster sang in cabaret at various large Lyons’ restaurants and cafés, at many Masonic concerts and staff dinners, often with the pianist Gladys Vernon as his accompanist. Gladys Vernon was to marry another well-known tenor, Walter Midgeley.
During the winter seasons of 1927 and 1928, he and Tom Howell appeared in Fred Melville pantomimes at Brixton. The first pantomime in 1927 was St George and the Dragon. St George was played by principal boy, Vera Wright, while Webster played King Arthur. 1928’s pantomime at the Brixton Theatre was a freely adapted version of Babes in the Wood. Once again Vera Wright played principal boy, this time in the role of Robin Hood.
Webster made his West End debut as the Duke of Buckingham in Rudolph Friml’s The Three Musketeers at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1930. The leading role of D’Artagnan was taken by Dennis King, an actor and singer Webster greatly admired for his great energy. Other distinguished cast members were Lilian Davies, Marie Ney, Adrienne Brune and Raymond Newell. Unfortunately, Webster could only appear in this show for three months as he had already signed a contract for a Blackpool summer show for Ernest Butcher. Despite Sir Alfred Butt’s best efforts to get him released from this contract, Ernest Butcher would not budge. Webster’s part was taken over by the well-known Yorkshire tenor, Robert Naylor. When Webster set off sadly and reluctantly to fulfill his engagement on the Central Pier, Blackpool, his one consolation was that he could continue singing Queen of My Heart, one of the hits from The Three Musketeers with which he had scored such a success on the West End.
With Lilian Davies in “The Three Musketeers”.
Webster met his second wife, Dorothy Annie Alice Prior (stage name Paddy Prior) in the early nineteen-thirties. He was singing One Alone at a Concert Artistes Association concert and happened to notice her sitting in the audience. Paddy Prior was born in Fulham in 1905, the daughter of Hubert Prior, an ironmonger, and his wife, Annie Jane (née Henderson). Paddy went on the professional stage while still in her teens. She was a light comedienne, dancer, and a soubrette with a charming mezzo-soprano voice and appeared on television in its early days in The Ridgeway Revue with Philip Ridgeway and Hermione Gingold. By the time she met Webster she was a veteran of many concert parties, musicals and pantomimes, and always received good reviews for her work. Despite her talent she had periods of unemployment and placed occasional advertisements in The Stage, such as this one in April 1926, which read as follows:
In 1931 Webster divorced Winifred, citing her affair with Trevor Davey and on 10 October 1932, he married Paddy at Fulham Registry Office, where he had married Winifred Keey in 1924. Around the same time, Winifred married James L. Haig at the Lambeth Registry Office. Webster and Paddy went to Newquay for their honeymoon.
Webster sang for several seasons in Papa Pinder’s Sunshine concert party at the Sunshine Theatre, Shanklin on the Isle of Wight.
In 1933 he and Paddy appeared together for the summer season in The Piccadilly Revels Concert Party at Scarborough. The following year, Webster managed to arrange for Paddy to obtain an engagement with him in the Sunshine show. Appearing on the same bill with them was Arthur Askey, and he and Webster became great friends. After hearing Webster sing To Anthea by J L Hatton at one of the shows, the Askeys decided to name their baby daughter Anthea…
WEBSTER BOOTH-ANNE ZIEGLER 