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Edward Woodward
 
One of the most masculine of leading men of the 1950s and 1960s, Edward Woodward's lasting claim to fame is probably lodged in television series, but here and there were musicals that promised much
 
 
Edward Woodward stares out at an empty Palace Theatre
before the guillotine ends his misery in Two Cities
 
You always felt on solid ground with Edward Woodward. Before he messed with musicals he had already proved himself a jolly good actor, as in one of his subsequently most notable stage successes, Rattle Of A Simple Man, in which he shared the honours with Sheila Hancock. Musicals gave him the chance to sing, but it was mostly LPs that had him singing standards that changed hands in the record stores. His musicals - especially the British ones - were built on sandy foundations. Despite it all, he managed to build up a considerable fan following, and established a special place for himself.
 
He was born in Croydon on 1 June 1930 and educated at state schools and at Kingston Commercial College. After working for a firm of sanitary engineers he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in A Kiss For Cinderella with Farnham Repertory Theatre in 1946 at the age of sixteen. Repertory took up the next years, and it was 1954 before he got to London, playing Ralph Stokes in the play Where There's A Will. His first musical was not perhaps the best of beginnings - A Girl Called Jo at the Piccadilly Theatre in December 1955. As John Brooke, Woodward didn't get a lion's share of the score, being confined to a reprise of one of the show's big numbers 'Whither You Go, Love' with leading lady Joan Heal. Dennis Quilley, as the leading man, got the best moments. When A Girl Called Jo closed early the next year, it was back to the sanctuary of straight plays, and in 1958 he gained valuable experience as a member of the Stratford company. He emerged from his roles there to play in the revue The Art Of Living at the Criterion Theatre in August 1960. One of the most interesting and intelligent revues of the period, it had a reasonable run, and he was again in good company (including Graham Stark, Carole Shelley, Barbara Evans and Judith Bruce), but it didn't make him a musical star or do much to advance his popularity.
 
He had one of his greatest successes as Percy in the play Rattle Of A Simple Man, a project that took up much of the next few years, although there was one short-lived musical interruption in the musical Scapa, an adaptation of the old comedy Seagulls Over Sorrento. He was one of the group of leading men (the others were David Hughes and radio DJ Peter Murray) in an all-male show that was mauled by the critics when it put its head above the parapet in March 1962. At least the show served to underline Woodward's masculinity.
 
His New York success with Rattle Of A Simple Man led to his being cast as Charles Condomine in the Broadway production of High Spirits, based on Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. The score may have been only fair to middling, but it had the huge advantage (although Coward didn't always see it that way) of the incomparable Beatrice Lillie as Madame Arcati. Woodward was ripe for his role, and the handful of songs that accompanied it, and High Spirits managed a good run, good enough to hope that he might again be seen in a Broadway musical. He never was. When the show sloped with more hope than sureness over to London in a completely British-cast staging, his part was taken by Dennis Quilley, and Cicely Courtneidge had one of the unhappiest experiences of her career trying not to Beatrice Lillie.
 
It was obvious that Woodward was ready for a starring role in a musical that would finally establish him on the musical stage, although there was perhaps always a heaviness about him that didn't make him a natural romantic lead. The opportunity seemed to present itself with the musical version of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Now reduced to Two Cities, the plans for the show had been in the air for what seemed years, with Keith Michell slated as the leading star, when it finally limped into London at the Palace Theatre in February 1969. Fondly remembered by many who saw it, the show had a score that was tuneful and, in its way, adventurous, with Woodward as Sydney Carton suggesting that he was, indeed, romantic leading man material. It must have been a personal sadness to him that the show received such blank reaction, and it was speedily packed off. He was rewarded for his trouble with a Variety Club award for the Best Performance in a Musical 1969, but the truth is that Michell might just have been equally as good in it.
 
Life was much more commercially successful in television, where he was seen in a number of spectaculars that allowed his singing voice full range, and in roles that elevated him to cult status (among them the Callan series, made between 1967 and 1970). Like so many others, he seems to have suffered from the lack of imagination of writers and producers who might have helped establish him in musical theatre. Some of it may have been the timing. By the time he climbed the scaffold in Two Cities to bring down the curtain with a ringing endorsement of life, British musicals were already sliding into the dark days of the 1970s.
 
Selected discography
High Spirits (original Broadway cast)
Two Cities (original London cast)
 
 

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