Monty Norman

 

Breaking free of collaborators

Here is a career that has suffered an almost total lack of recognition. Here, heaven help us, is the man (well, one of the men) behind Irma La Douce, Make Me An Offer and Expresso Bongo. He also wrote one of the most overlooked masterpieces of British musical theatre, a musical about an Edwardian dentist murdering his unappreciative wife.

Monty Norman pulled himself up from humble beginnings. Born in the East End of London on 4 April 1928, he had no more than an elementary education and started work as an apprentice barber at £5.10s a week. He graduated to writing for Jewish journals and taught himself music, making a reputation and a good living (£250 a week) as a band singer, writing and performing his own material. It seemed unlikely he would move into musical theatre, but in 1957 he was taken on by the writer Wolf Mankowitz as the musical director of his various projects in musical theatre. His introduction to Mankowitz (a towering figure in British musicals) also began his relationship with the composer-writer David Heneker and the writer Julian More, with whom (in various permutations) Norman would spend much of his career in musical theatre.

The first manifestation of such collaboration could hardly have been more promising: Expresso Bongo, one of the first of the hard-nosed British musicals, about the seedy doings of Tin Pan Alley, was seen at the Saville Theatre in April 1958. It had much to recommend it: a fine cast led by Paul Scofield, Millicent Martin and Hy Hazell, and a splendid score (Norman and Heneker). For a moment, it seemed that British musicals could never again be anything but as gritty and apparently realistic, and Expresso Bongo was a solid success. It deserves revival. For Norman, it was the beginning of a series of remarkable hits. Fast on the heels of Expresso Bongo came Irma La Douce, originally a French musical for which Norman (with Heneker and More) had fashioned new book and lyrics - the writers retained the original music of Margeurite Monnot. Irma, with its much praised central performance from Elizabeth Seal, had great success in London at the Lyric Theatre in 1958 (for 1,512 performances) and ran for a year on Broadway with Seal repeating her role. Its format seemed daring. Within the space of a couple of years Norman had placed himself in the vanguard of the British musical, which was apparently taking on a new, strong identity under his (and his collaborator's) aegis.

The next show, Make Me An Offer, proved another winner. For this intensely personal piece from Mankowitz, Heneker again joined Norman to provide the score, and there was an expert cast to put it over, including Daniel Massey singing the show's most loveable song 'I Want A Lock Up'. It was a show (and score) that dealt in character and feeling, one of the little glories of British 'chamber' musicals. It was also gentle, despite the wheeler-dealing in which it specialised. And by now it seemed obvious that Norman wasn't particularly concerned about writing hit songs that could be extracted from his shows. A sense of political care pervaded whatever he did, and an interest in people that might exist beyond the footlights. In 1960 Norman and Heneker wrote the songs for a Julian More revue, The Art of Living, based on the writings of Art Buchwald, at the Criterion Theatre. One of the most intelligent and flavoursome revues of its period, The Art of Living had a reasonable run, but Norman's next project was the first in which he broke away from his collaborators to provide a complete score of his own.

Belle, the music-hall 'ballad of Dr Crippen', was labelled as one of the most notorious of British musicals when it opened at the Strand Theatre in May 1961. The programme note insists that the show is 'the opportunity to fulfil an ambition which has grown since they [Mankowitz and Norman] began working together - to make a musical using the rich traditions of the great music-hall era in British entertainment.' Belle was well ahead of its time, but it is lamentable that its genius should have gone unrecognised. Norman's score, patently second-rate and derivative in its pastiche of an earlier age, remains one of his most interesting - indeed, it is staggering in its appropriate tone - but Belle marked the start of a marked decline in the success rate he had hitherto enjoyed. By the time his next work came along in the late sixties the British musical was looking distinctly sickly.

Who's Pinkus, Where's Chelm? was never a title that was going to look good on Shaftesbury Avenue, and the show didn't get there, having to make do with ten showings at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre in 1967. Norman wrote the music and shared the lyrics with the show's librettist, C. P. Taylor. A Yiddish piece starring Bernard Bresslaw, the show was never heard of again. Norman wrote the music for Birmingham Repertory's production of Quick Quick Slow in 1969, a show about competitive ballroom dancing with book by David Turner and lyrics by Julian More, but the show - despite its enticing idea and some reasonable songs - was not taken up for London. In 1972 Norman reunited with Mankowitz (book) for Stand and Deliver, billed as 'a bawdy ballad' about the highwayman Jack Sheppard, for which Norman wrote 'story, music and lyrics', but the show lasted only 14 performances at the Roundhouse in October 1972.

Norman's work seemed very much in the shadows. He was the sole author of So Who Needs Marriage?, a completely original musical play written for the Brighton Festival in 1975. The cast couldn't have been smaller or better: Diana Coupland (Norman's wife), Eric Flynn, Jon Pertwee, June Ritchie, Elizabeth Power and John Gower. Business was bad on a short tour and the show closed in Norwich in July 1975. At the final performance, Pertwee made his entrance, looked at the sparse stalls and said 'My God, it's like being on the Titanic'. By the end of the 1970s, it wouldn't have been surprising if Norman's career had gone into hiding, but it was due for a renaissance, and one that showed he had lost none of his qualities.

Twenty years after he had first made his impression on London came Songbook (billed as 'by Monty Norman and Julian More'), one of the most innovative and imaginative British musicals of the twentieth century. A musical biography of an imaginary song-writer, Moony Shapiro, written for six performers, Norman's score was a brilliant string of pastiches of song styles through the century, from Hollywood musicals to pop through war-time jollifications a la Cicely Courtneidge. By any standards, it was a very considerable achievement from a writer still working at the top of his form. Songbook was a six-month runner in London at the Globe Theatre in July 1979. A Broadway production in 1981 lasted one night.

There could have been no finer or more appropriate final show for Norman than Poppy, mounted by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982 and subsequently seen in a different production at the Adelphi Theatre the following year for a three month run. Written by the notable playwright Peter Nichols, Poppy had a political sting that met a natural reaction from the man who had written songs for Expresso Bongo and Make Me An Offer and Belle. If the score (Norman wrote the music) wasn't quite up to the happy days of his earlier works, it was still one of the most fascinating of the 1970s, and there were enough echoes of the old spirit to distinguish it from any other writer's work. The songs had the dark edge and soft kill that have so often marked Norman as extraordinary and individual, in a story of the English exploitation of human misery through the drug trade. Although the lyrics were by Nichols, one might have been forgiven for thinking that they too were from Norman.

If you ask Joe Public if he has ever heard of Monty Norman, he might just remember that he was the man who wrote the James Bond theme.

Selected Discography

Expresso Bongo Original London cast
Irma La Douce Original London cast
Make Me An Offer Original London cast
Belle Original London cast
Songbook Original London cast
Poppy Original London cast

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