RETURN

IAN CARMICHAEL
 
His shoes are still vacant…
 
An actor with more assurance than most, Ian Carmichael inspired confidence. Quality was guaranteed. It didn't matter that he always remained what might be called a 'light' actor; the lightness was deceptive. He seemed to make his name in revue, but found outstanding success, in equal measure, in film, television and on stage.
 
He was born in Hull on 18 June 1920 and after schooling at Scarborough College and Bromsgrove School, Worcestershire, he graduated to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his professional debut in 1939 as a robot in the play RUR at the Mile End People's Palace, and by June 1940 he had joined a ten-week touring production of a Herbert Farjeon revue, Nine Sharp, appearing alongside Hermione Baddeley, George Benson and Joan Sterndale Bennett (he was clearly in for some formidable work experience). After this promising beginning, the war intervened, and Carmichael went into the Forces, resuming his theatrical career in 1947 in a comedy wonderfully titled She Wanted A Cream Front Door.
 
 The days of Farjeon revues were over, but others flourished, and Carmichael was cast in a Players Theatre attempt at one in 1948, What Goes On? The following year he did a tour of The Lilac Domino, playing Norman. In many ways this was a turning point, a production in which Carmichael's comedy skills began to come of age. He has written entertainingly (and gratefully) of his stage partnership in The Lilac Domino with the comic actor Leo Franklyn, who eventually became best known for a string of Whitehall farces. Franklyn was a seasoned pro who on Saturday nights instigated what he called the 'train version' of the show - a much truncated


 Ian Carmichael preserving his decency in 'Bank Holiday'
performance ('No mucking about') to ensure that the company caught the 'puffer' back home at the end of the week. 
 
It already seemed clear that Carmichael would never be short of work in musical theatre. In 1950 he played Otto Bergmann in a splashy tour of the hoary operetta Wild Violets, a show that - despite its sugary Robert Stolz score - had seemed pretty old-fashioned even in 1932. The production eventually moved into the Stoll Theatre where 'we were coolly received by the London critics … we appeared sadly dated'.
Under the raincoat
 
Revue held the key to real success. H. M. Tennent's The Lyric Revue found a perfect excuse for its light-hearted sophistication in the 1951 Festival of Britain, opening to critical and public approval at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in May and transferring to the Globe Theatre in September. At first, Tennent's John Perry refused even to consider Carmichael for the company, because he had seen him desperately mug his way through an ill-attended matinee of Wild Violets. But Perry was eventually convinced, and Carmichael was cast with such revue alumni as Dora Bryan, Joan Heal and George Benson. More revues, all of them splendid examples of the genre, followed. In The Globe Revue (1952) Carmichael distinguished himself in a speechless item ('Bank Holiday') in which he played a timid little man trying to change into a bathing costume on a beach. A critic noted that 'he has set the seal of success upon his career and for years hence the mere mention of his name will be the cue for someone to ask, "Do you remember him undressing under his raincoat in that revue at the Globe?"'
 
High Spirits at the Hippodrome in 1953 had a less successful run (the theatre was all wrong for it, although the cast again was top-drawer) but later that year Carmichael was in an Alan Melville revue At The Lyric (the Lyric, Hammersmith) with another classic revue cast. The show moved up West to the St Martin's Theatre where, sensibly, it was renamed Going To Town, although it only stayed a couple of months. It was his last revue, and Carmichael transformed into a stage comedy leading man. His abilities here, and in the many films in which he appeared, showed a remarkable, resilient and friendly talent. He cornered a market.
 
A return to musical theatre came in 1959 when, somewhat reluctantly, he signed up as the lead in The Love Doctor, an American musical by the creators of Kismet. This one was 'suggested by the medical comedies of Moliere'. The doomed enterprise had previously toured America as The Carefree Heart (the title was commemorated in one of the show's songs), and Carmichael had been 'distinctly reserved' when the authors had first performed the songs for him and his leading lady, Joan Heal, at the Savoy Hotel.
 
After its Manchester premiere Carmichael noted that 'Scenically the show was a hazardous one and the first performance suffered some unfortunate stage waits and a couple of near disasters, but the general consensus of opinion was that the show was tuneful, easy on the eye and, though there was still a lot of work to do, it was full of promise'. The Love Doctor underwent constant surgery before opening at the Piccadilly Theatre in October 1959, to vile notices. Plays and Players considered that it was 'an unspectacular, unpretentious little musical which would have given pleasure to thousands had it not been killed by the hypersensitive critics'. It was one of the most short-lived of 1950s musicals in Britain, and we don't even have a cast recording to help us lament its loss.
 
It was to be a decade before Carmichael chanced another musical, but this too, although longer-lived than The Love Doctor, couldn't be counted a success. I Do! I Do!, a two-hander following the progress of a marriage from its wedding night into old age, had played on Broadway with Robert Preston and Mary Martin. For the London production Carmichael was matched with the dependable Anne Rogers, but their welcome in London was muted. Critics found it all too sweet to the taste, but Carmichael gave a touching and tireless performance (as did Rogers). It was his last dalliance with musical theatre. Fortunately, he wrote a wonderfully intelligent and meaty autobiography, Will The Real Ian Carmichael? (1979). He retired from the stage, unbloodied and still at the peak of his career. His shoes remain vacant.
 
 
Selected Discography:
I Do! I Do! Original London cast
 
 

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