- Joan Heal
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- One of the best known names of British musical theatre
of the 1950s, this vibrant performer injected life into many
a flagging show. Where was the reward for this genuine star of
the British musical?
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- We might expect Joan Heal's name to be better remembered
than it is, for she was that rare thing among the unsung heroines
of British musical theatre: a genuine star. Unlike many of her
contemporaries, she had zip and attack, proved herself in the
world of revue and went on to leading roles in musicals. There
was one outstanding success - indeed, there was general agreement
that the show wouldn't have run without her - but all too often
the parts and the productions didn't come up to scratch. Perhaps
her biggest problem was that she was never really able to establish
any personality of her own to take on stage with her. Nobody
knew who the real Joan Heal was; she remained a name, not a personality.
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- She was born in Vobster, Somerset on 17 October 1922. She
was educated at Bath High School, and studied for the theatre
at the Old Vic School, London Mask Theatre School and the Buddy
Bradley School of Dancing. Her first professional appearance
seems to have been at Bideford's Garden Theatre when she appeared,
heavily made up beyond her years, as Mrs Terence in Emlyn Williams'
play Night Must Fall in 1940. She was eighteen.
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- It was six years later that she made it to the West End,
but once there she more or less stayed for the next fifteen years
or so. The show was the revue (the first of a great number of
them) Here Come the Boys, seen at the Saville Theatre in April
1946, and two years later she was cast as a soubrette in Maid
to Measure at the Cambridge Theatre. Opening May 1948, the show
starred Jessie Matthews and Tommy Fields, but refused to set
critics or audiences alight. The show's closure left Heal free
to play Nancy in the American musical High Button Shoes that
Christmas at the Hippodrome, and she began to be noticed.
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- Revues were plentiful, and even came in series, and even
took over theatres. The Cambridge Theatre housed both Sauce Tartare
(1949) and its successor Sauce Picquante (1950), in both of which
Heal proved her skills at the very special qualities needed for
the genre. The casts of these Cecil Landeau shows were interesting.
Tartare's ingredients included Zoe Gail, Claude Hulbert, Ronald
Frankau, Renee Houston and Muriel Smith, while the sharpness
of Picquante was managed with an even more daring mix: Douglas
Byng, Norman Wisdom, Bob Monkhouse, Muriel Smith (again), and
Audrey Hepburn. The public's taste preferred the first sauce
to the second. From 1950 Heal also began appearing in films.
She did a musical number in the first, Happy Go Lovely (1951)
but it wasn't good, and her film roles were mostly insignificant,
often nothing more than walk-ons.
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- In November 1950 Heal appeared as Cecile in Music to Midnight
at His Majesty's Theatre, a musical worked up from old bits of
Offenbach by the veteran librettist Guy Bolton, the composer
Hans May and lyricist Harold Purcell. It was seen off after a
mere 11 performances. There was still plenty of work to be had
out of revue, and good runs too. Heal was part of three of the
great London revues of the 1950s, The Lyric Revue (September
1951 at the Globe Theatre), The Globe Revue (July 1952 at the
Globe Theatre), and Peter Myers' Intimacy at 8.30 (April 1954
at the Criterion Theatre). By the time that last show closed,
revue's days were seriously numbered, but Heal had truly established
herself as a natural.
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- Difficulties of following a success
- She was presumably cast as the plucky adolescent Jo in Peter
Myers' adaptation (with other authors) of the Louisa M. Alcott
novels because of her work in his Intimacy at 8.30. In fact,
what seemed like at last getting a chance of stardom in the leading
role of a new musical was something of a poisoned chalice. A
Girl Called Jo opened at the Piccadilly Theatre for Christmas
1955, a gentle, pretty confection with mild music from John Pritchett,
but the script was too casual for words, and the evening ambled
along desperately in need of some sharp cutting. Anyway, it didn't
matter that the material was often embarrassing; Heal was simply
too old to play the part. Unmourned by the public, A Girl Called
Jo survived Christmas and just beyond.
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- But her greatest success was in view. Two young British writers
had come up with a friendly, noisy spoof on the Venice Film Festival
and the dumb blondes of the Diana Dors type: they called it Grab
Me a Gondola. Never likely to win the Pulitzer for literature
or a Novello award for its music, the show was welcomed into
London in December 1956 and stayed for 673 performances. As Virginia
Jones, she endeared herself explaining the story of her life
in 'That's My Biography' and, wishing to encompass Shakespeare,
admitted to a 'Cravin' for the Avon'. Grab Me a Gondola was hardly
subtle, but it seemed a convincing hit at the time. According
to the LP of the show, Heal's part in it 'brought her rave notices
from the critics and established her firmly as a British musical
star'. All this was true, but from here it was pretty consistently
downhill.
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- Following her success in Grab me a Gondola, she did a couple
of plays at Bristol Old Vic and then was cast as the leading
lady, Toinette, of The Love Doctor, an American musical by the
creators of Kismet. She apparently shared with her leading man
Ian Carmichael a distinct unease about the piece, which opened
in the provinces to decidedly cool reviews, came into the Piccadilly
Theatre in October 1959 and was slaughtered by the critics. The
Love Doctor wrote his prescription for a total of 16 performances
(Heal didn't bother to list it in her Who's Who in the Theatre
entry).
- As if The Love Doctor hadn't been disaster enough, the next
show did even worse. Heal was cast as Chi-Chi in a reworking
of Terence Rattigan's old comedy, French Without Tears, now a
musical and titled Joie de Vivre. There wasn't much joie and
certainly not much vivre about it, for the show was one of the
most noted flops of the post-war musical theatre. It opened at
the Queen's Theatre in July 1960 and staggered through four performances.
Heal's role, completely incidental to the plot and written in
for the musical, gave her two big numbers, 'Le West End' and
'Allo, Beeg Boy' which certainly, if their titles were anything
to go by, sounded pitiful. The Daily Telegraph reported that
she almost broke herself in two trying to put them over. That
Christmas she was at the Adelphi Theatre in Cinderella, and in
June 1961 she returned to the Globe Theatre, the scene of former
triumphs, in the revue On The Avenue. It didn't matter that she
had performers like Beryl Reid and Marion Grimaldi beside her:
On the Avenue was off the avenue in 14 performances.
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- No way to treat a star
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- She went back to the straight theatre, becoming well known
for some good roles at the Nottingham Playhouse, but in February
1965 she was back in another musical, playing Madame Dubonnet
in Sandy Wilson's follow-up to The Boy Friend, Divorce Me, Darling!
The show had mixed notices and closed as a flop. Somehow Heal's
role, again almost incidental and corseted into two set piece
numbers, 'Lights! Music' and 'Blondes for Danger', emphasised
the way she was now perceived. Her Madame Dubbonet was a 'turn'
in the manner of Dietrich. It didn't seem much of a way to treat
a star. That summer she played Mrs Squeezum in a production of
Lock Up Your Daughters at Bristol Old Vic: a part that she could
at least shine in.
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- There were two more revues, but neither ruffled the surface.
She was one of the small cast of The Decline and Fall of the
Entire World as seen through the Eyes of Cole Porter, a title
longer than the show's run, at the Criterion Theatre in August
1966. She directed a tiny Peter Myers' revue, In the Picture,
at the Mayfair Theatre the following spring, but it was obvious
that revue, especially the brand that Myers had made his own,
was now out of focus. In 1972 she joined the Young Vic company,
and played the roles of Leah and Potiphar's wife in Joseph and
the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, in which she played at the
Albery Theatre in February 1973. By now, stardom seemed a long
way off. It was her last time in a West End musical, although
she went on to play the Salvation Army Major in Happy End at
Oxford Playhouse in 1975.
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- Joan Heal died on 12 April 1998. Her daughter, Belinda Lang,
is an actress.
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- Selected discography
Original cast recordings of
Grab Me a Gondola
Divorce Me Darling!
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat
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RETURN TO UNSUNG HEROINES
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