- Shani Wallis
|
Hers was a career to be celebrated. No matter that her
name fell away in the country where she had worked so consistently
in American musicals - Shani Wallis managed to maintain a successful
career over half a century, and generally she evaded being in
flops. When most unsung heroines would have retired to the comfort
of their own lives, she returned to Britain in a show that -
while it was one of the most laughable of its kind - at least
gave a new generation the opportunity to see a gallant, ageing
performer bringing something irreplaceable from a happier time. |
Shani Wallis sizes up Joe Tiger
Robinson in
Wish You Were Here |
- Of her sort, she was certainly a star, and that is a rarity
in British musical performers.
-
- Shani Wallis was born in 1938 and trained at the Royal Academy
of Dramatic Art. She was the youngest of leading ladies, and
immediately marked herself out as a natural for Broadway musicals.
Her first West End musical was Call Me Madam at the Coliseum
in March 1952, playing the juvenile female lead of Princess Maria.
The show ran for a year. Wallis went straight into a British
vehicle for the gargantuan comedian Fred Emney, Happy As A King,
starring as Juliet opposite Dickie Henderson. Opening at the
Princes Theatre in May 1953, it was her only real British flop
of the 1950s, closing after a mere 26 performances. Her next
show, Wish You Were Here, was an immensely unattractive Broadway
blockbuster from Harold Rome, dumped at the Casino in October
1953. This vulgar farrago about the goings on in American holiday
camps was made only moderately welcome, but Wallis did her best
to make the evening bearable. The following year she was in a
variety revue, You'll Be Lucky, at the Adelphi, with the radio
comic Al Read, Lauri Lupino Lane and opera star George Truzzi.
-
- Much more prestigious was Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town
in which she was cast as Eileen Sherwood opposite an established
British star, Pat Kirkwood, at the Princes Theatre in February
1955. Although it was Kirkwood who attracted most attention,
Wallis showed that she was the best around when it came to attractive
young leading ladies who could sing sweetly. After Wonderful
Town closed (without Pat Kirkwood), in November 1956 Wallis went
into another revue, The Dave King Show, headlining a comic whose
name is all but forgotten today.
-
- In 1958 she was ideally cast as Sharon McLonergan (her singing
of 'How Are Things In Glocca Mora?' must have been lovely) in
a British tour of Finian's Rainbow co-starring Bobby Howes, but
it never seemed likely to be seen in London. Then it was back
to variety when she brought glamour and a dash of West End quality
to Fine Fettle, a vehicle for Benny Hill, at the Palace Theatre
in August 1959. The following year she took over from Elisabeth
Seal in the title role of the French-British musical Irma La
Douce at the Lyric Theatre, and when she left that show it looked
as if her British career was finished.
-
- She moved to America and seems never to have been out of
work, establishing a firm reputation as a cabaret performer,
and joining a bewildering number of top-line stars in concert
appearances. She had played the London Palladium, and polished
off the Greek Theatre with Jerry Lewis, and starred at Disneyland,
the Waldorf and, in London, the Talk of the Town. She was often
found sharing shows with Liberace. Along the way she did musicals
in stock, including South Pacific and The King and I, and played
Ella Peterson in Bells Are Ringing in Australia. On Broadway
in May 1966, she was third-billed below Ivor Emmanuel and Tessie
O'Shea in A Time For Singing, a delightful and adventurous musicalisation
of Richard Llewellyn's novel How Green Was My Valley. As Angharad
Morgan, Wallis shone with a brilliance that suggested she had
matchless qualities, bringing reality and the deepest feeling
to her numbers, 'Oh How I Adore Your Name', the rollicking 'When
He Looks At Me' and 'I'm Always Wrong'. But A Time For Singing
was despatched after only 41 performances.
-
- She had worked in films, having appeared with Charlie Chaplin
in A King In New York, but in 1968 her career had an unexpected
boost when she won the role of Nancy in the film version of Lionel
Bart's Oliver! Thus it was that, having had almost no experience
of British musicals on stage, Wallis came to star in the most
successful British musical of the 1960s. It may be that Georgia
Brown should have played her original part (much as Julie Andrews
should have played Eliza in the filmed My Fair Lady) but the
film brought Wallis's name before a public that might have begun
to forget her. It wasn't her fault that the producers prettied
her Nancy up to an almost ludicrous degree. She also got to play
the part on stage, in Los Angeles.
-
- From 1985-87 she did service in 42nd Street, and for five
years from 1985 went on a world tour with her old mate Liberace.
It was ten years later that she came back to Britain to play
Aunt Bessie in Always at the Victoria Palace (May 1997). She
was third-billed, in rather smaller type, below the show's so-called
stars, Jan Hartley (excellent as the Duchess of Windsor) and
Clive Carter (embarrassingly awful as that lovable tinker Edward
VIII). She endured rehearsals during which her part was trimmed,
and by the time the show opened she gave performances that seemed
to suggest she had a proper contempt for what was going on around
her. She made the most of her one big number, 'The Reason For
Life Is To Love', seizing centre-stage and belting out as if,
seventeen again, she had just taken the Princes Theatre by storm
in a really good American musical. She was an example to anyone
who cared to take notice.
-
- Selected Discography:
Original cast recordings of
Call Me Madam
Wish You Were Here
Wonderful Town
A Time For Singing [Broadway]
Oliver! [Film version]
Always
-
RETURN TO UNSUNG HEROINES
|
