Marion Grimaldi

 

A descendant of the Regency clown Joseph Grimaldi (himself the subject of a British musical, Ron Moody's short-lived Joey, Joey), Marion Grimaldi was born on 20 August 1926 in London. After a private education she trained at RADA and made her professional debut as Manette in Les Cloches de Corneville at Boltons Theatre. Her first West End musical was Noel Coward's 1954 adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, After the Ball, in the supporting role of Mrs Hurst-Green. As part of a trio she sang 'Why is it the Woman who Pays?' and - as the cast recording of After the Ball confirms - even at so early a stage of her career, she already possessed an assured style.

 

Marion Grimaldi as the women's leader, Annie Besant

 

Her firm, clear soprano and no-nonsense attitude to acting marked her as a performer who could always be depended on, but there was only a brief run in The Burning Boat, one of the smallest of the small British musicals, which flickered for a few performances at the Royal Court in1955. Nicholas Phipps's story, set in an Aldeburgh-like seaside town during its music festival, had an abundance of tranquil charm and some clever music by Geoffrey Wright that did not court popularity. Grimaldi played a married woman who finds herself falling in love with a visiting famous violinist, and had some lovely things to sing, among them 'A Quiet Part of the World' and 'Swimming Against the Tide'. The same year there was a disappointingly received musical of Louisa M.Alcott's novels, A Girl Called Jo, at the Piccadilly Theatre, with Grimaldi as Meg, but despite a good cast, a handsome production and attractive songs the show didn't catch on.

 

She made Polly Garter in Under Milk Wood (her favourite role) a better singer than Dylan Thomas ever expected, in the production seen at the New Theatre in 1956, and the following summer was in a Peter Greenwell musical at the Players Theatre, Antarctica, playing the Snow Queen. There was more substantial success and a longer run when she played Donna Lucia in Frank Loesser's Where's Charley? at the Palace Theatre in 1958; her one number with Jerry Desmonde, 'Lovelier Than Ever', remains one of her happiest recordings. No Bed for Bacon followed at the Bristol Old Vic and then, in 1960, her portrayal of Cora Miskin in Follow That Girl. The most interesting of her subsequent musicals were the least successful. A revue, On the Avenue (Shaftesbury, that is) didn't manage to stay on the avenue very long.

 

Marion Grimaldi with Newton Blick as Cora and Walter Miskin in Follow That Girl -
'These fauna and these flora, Are they just for show?'

 

She brought strength to the English edition of the American musical Fiorello! at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1962, but the show didn't stand a chance with English audiences who had never heard of the one-time New York mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia (or his wife, Thea, played by Grimaldi), and didn't want to find out. After a season at the newly opened Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in a musical museum-piece Lionel and Clarissa, she played the Fabian saviour of working girls, Annie Besant, in The Matchgirls. Happily, the first-class original cast recording preserves her ringing hymn to belief, 'I Long To See the Day', but The Matchgirls could not find a secure hold at the Globe Theatre in 1966.

 

She appeared in principal roles in operetta at the Sadlers' Wells Opera, and toured with them, and took the Mary Ellis role in a provincial production of The Dancing Years. In the tread of Joan Sterndale Bennett she played Madame Dubonnet in a souped-up edition of Sandy Wilson's pastiche The Boy Friend at the Comedy Theatre in 1967. It was five years before she again appeared in a London musical, The Canterbury Tales, but by then her best work was behind her. Although many of her musical play performances didn't get into the recording studio, there is a legacy of recordings, which includes a clutch of 'cover' versions of earlier shows. All find her in good voice. For the best recorded evidence of her abilities, there is the original cast recording of Follow That Girl.

 

Selected Discography
Original cast recordings of:
After The Ball
Where's Charley?
The Matchgirls
The Boy Friend (1967 revival)
[Grimaldi also appears on many 'cover' recordings of other shows]

 

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