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JOHN GOWER
 
this handy basso profundo of the 1960s seems to have been in more British musicals than he had hot dinners. With a set of false molars, he even got to sing Dracula.
John Gower started as a Boy Wonder. I'm not sure that the wondrousness lasted into his adult career, but if you liked a good, clear and patently rather deep voice with excellent diction he was worth seeing. British musicals gave him many opportunities, though not much lasting employment. There was hardly a show that seemed as if it didn't have a part for him and - if he wasn't in it, it was only because he was busy being in something else. His name was always around, on television and on radio and on gramophone recordings, of which he made a good number. He satisfied customers by never being less than competent. He was born in Dars-Es-Salaam in Tanganyika and educated at the Emanuel School. Williamson's Diamond Mines supported his studies. Gower won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and became the Boy Wonder of variety shows on the Granada circuit. He also appeared with the Fol-de-Rols Concert Party, a good breeding ground for musical theatre performers.



John Gower about to quench his thirst in Dearest Dracula
His first professional appearance in a musical proper seems to have been at the Players Theatre in November 1956 when he played the Hon. Percy Bassanio in Peter Greenwell's mini-operetta The Three Caskets (Margaret Burton played Portia). The next two shows he was cast in set the standard for most of what was to follow: quick flops. At the Saville Theatre in April 1957 he was The Macquern in the pleasing Zuleika (which at least hung on for a few months), and was then cast as Doctor Thomas in the lamentably received American effort The Love Doctor at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1959.
 
Probably one of his happiest engagements followed in 1963 when he was part of the company of Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles's concert-party treatment of the First World War, Oh What A Lovely War! It was certainly the most distinguished show with which he was associated, and still stands as one of the great post-war achievements of British theatre. It was also a truly ensemble piece in which no individual performer made his name. That could hardly be expected to happen, either, in The Wayward Way, seen at the Vaudeville Theatre as a seasonal diversion at Christmas 1964. This musical version of a favoured Victorian melodrama from America had Gower as the evil squire, all twirling moustaches and relished denunciations of virginity. It was good fun, but not very good, and it didn't outlive the Christmas festivities when its rough innocence might be charitably overlooked.
 
One of the more interesting of his roles came when he was cast in the title role of a British musical, Dearest Dracula, premiered at the Olympia, Dublin in September 1965, with a tantalising cast that included Mary Millar as the swooning Lucy, David Holliday (who had been the hero of The Wayward Way) as John Seward, and Rita Cameron as Mina Harker. The show was by the writers of Strike A Light!, but, like that show, Dearest Dracula was soon shut up, and didn't get beyond Ireland. His parts didn't get any better, or any luckier. He was Chitterlow in the British premiere of the Broadway version of Half a Sixpence at the New Theatre, Bromley, in 1966, but this didn't move out of being a repertory production in which no-one seemed interested.

The next year he played Leonard Grout in David Wood's musical A Present From The Corporation at the Swan, Worcester and subsequently at the Fortune Theatre for an unhappy three performances. There might have been a future for his next show, The Station Master's Daughter, which premiered at Guildford in April 1968 and was slated to go to the Comedy Theatre (where it would almost certainly have quickly folded), but it didn't ruffle any feathers. Gower played the Chairman of the Board in a colourful company that included Rose Hill and Jenny Wren, but, despite a pretty score by Charles Zwar, The Station Master's Daughter didn't move out of Guildford. Even less people knew about The Man With A Load Of Mischief, an American mini-musical in which Gower played the Innkeeper, seen at the Intimate, Palmers Green in August 1968. That show did eventually get to the Comedy Theatre at the end of that year, but with a completely different cast.
 
1969 started badly with another cast-iron flop, The Stiffkey Scandals of 1932, an amusing but lightweight musicalisation of the misadventures of the Rector of Stiffkey, in which Gower played the Chancellor and the Bishop of Norwich at the Queen's Theatre. It was off after 12 performances. Within a few months he was up and running again in the supporting role of Dominic Flynn in a Harold Fielding Frankenstein of a show, Phil the Fluter, at the Palace Theatre. It had all the bravado and money and spectacle and big stars (Evelyn Laye and Mark Wynter and Stanley Baxter) that the Stiffkey piece had lacked, but never seemed a very satisfactory thing in its own right. It had a moderate run without becoming a hit.
 
Much the same sort of fate awaited Gower's next show, Trelawny, a heartfelt adaptation of Pinero's old theatrical war-horse, originally seen at Bristol and then at Sadlers Wells Theatre and the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Gower was perfectly cast as the old-fashioned actor-manager James Telfer, bringing something like gravitas to his role, but Trelawny was not helped by its post-Bristol history, and didn't find lasting favour.
The remainder of Gower's career in musicals was less happy. In 1975 he was in the supporting cast of So Who Needs Marriage?, a Monty Norman show for five players which was seen by a lucky few during a short tour. The following year he was Mathias in The Showman, a Stratford East musical adaptation of The Bells starring Ron Moody and Judith Bruce. Nothing came of it. During 1977 he toured in a literary revue, Betjemania, based on the words of the poet John Betjeman, and in 1978 he played Charles II in a now forgotten piece called Wren, Pepys and Charlie Too, seen at the Park Lane Hotel. The location suggested perhaps that the high days of the British musical were drawing ignobly to a close. God knows, Gower had done his best.
 
Selected Discography
Original London cast recordings of:
Oh What A Lovely War!
The Wayward Way
Phil the Fluter
Trelawny

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