- JEAN BAYLESS
-
- Is it Jean Bayless? Is it a Jo Ann Bayliss? Few remember
her name today, but my goodness she made a go at being a star
of musicals - going so far as being the first British Maria in
The Sound of Music, trundled nightly on a papier mache rock at
the Palace Theatre…
-
- It can be confusing to change your name in mid-career, but
she did. But being two people probably didn't make much difference
to this highly attractive, personable and
 clarion-voiced
musical actress. She certainly deserves a place in our gallery
of unsung heroines, and not only because she was one of the most
glamorous (with more than a hint of the middle-period Joan Collins)
of our home-grown stars.
- She was born in London (we have been unable to discover a
date), and was almost certainly destined to be an actress. Part
of her childhood was spent at the Italia Conti Stage School from
where she went into a London production of the Christmas staple
Where the Rainbow Ends. She had a stab at revue - two revues
in fact - Sauce Tartare and Sauce Picquante, at the Cambridge
Theatre, and then went into cabaret (in the days when such entertainment
flourished) at the fashionable Ciro's. In 1951, as Jean Bayliss
(confused?), she was in the revue Fancy Free at the Prince of
Wales Theatre with Tommy Trinder and Pat Kirkwood, and that Christmas
she was Princess Miranda at the London Palladium in Humpty Dumpty.
-
- In 1954 she appeared with Norman Wisdom in a Christmas show,
but her big break seemed to have arrived when she was hired to
play Polly Browne in The Boy Friend, taking over from the show's
original Broadway star, Julie Andrews, in October 1955 at New
York's Royale Theatre. Like others, she was to find that such
a prestigious achievement didn't mean a button in homely Britain.
She returned home after a year of The Boy Friend to get the leading
role (well, the other one was taken by Louie Ramsay) in Harmony
Close, a musical with a workmanlike but zestful score. She was
now Jo Ann Bayless, and played Jill Grant opposite the unappealing
male lead Zack Matalon, but the show didn't impress, and Londoners
left it alone to live out its existence at the Lyric Theatre,
Hammersmith, without ever inviting it to Shaftesbury Avenue.
-
- The following year, in March 1958, she was really the star
of School, transferred into the Princes Theatre from Birmingham,
where it had been much loved. Many connected with the West End
edition said that it was hideous when it opened there. Jo Ann
Bayless was now Jean Bayless - her final metamorphosis - and
played Bella, singing 'A prince for Cinderella' and 'Places and
faces I love', but some agreed that it was really Eleanor Drew
in the role of Naomi who got the best song of the night. School
managed a few performances and was closed down without regret.
-
- Things seemed to be looking up when she was given the starring
role as Maria in the first British production of Rodgers and
Hammerstein's The Sound of Music at the Palace Theatre in May
1961. To be honest, the supporting cast wasn't exactly shimmering
with stars (she had Roger Dann, perhaps a little lacking in the
sexual chemistry department, as her Captain von Trapp), and there
was something second-hand about the effort the producers had
made, but it was at least a huge role in a massive hit. The British
Sound of Music was even to outstrip the run of the Broadway production,
but Bayless didn't stay with it for the entire run. Freed from
its rigours, there didn't seem much else around for her to do,
and - as always in such cases - the good old British public hadn't
a clue who she was, although there is no doubt that she deserved
good work.
-
- There was a tour of something called The World of Ivor Novello,
in which she took audiences' minds off her throat-straining co-star
John Hanson, and in 1968 she was back at the London Palladium
for another pantomime, playing the title role in Jack and the
Beanstalk with Arthur Askey and Jimmy Tarbuck. So far as we can
tell, there was to be one more musical, when in March 1972 she
packed her suitcase for a brief tour in an exotic piece called
Samarkand, playing Scheherazade (almost as difficult to spell
as Jo Ann Bayliss) and the Princess Layla of Bengal. It didn't
detain her for very long. There was some television fame when
she played a leading role in the notorious ITV Crossroads, and
there was much other work in television, including The Jubilee
Show.
-
- Discography
- Original London cast recordings of
- Harmony Close
The Sound of Music
RETURN TO UNSUNG HEROINES
|
