Web Page No 2542

5^th January 2019

James Robertson Justice

1^st Picture. Desert Island Discs

 2nd Picture. Lancelot Spratt

 3^rd Picture. What’s the bleeding time?

4^th Picture. Book. What’s the bleeding time?

He was one of the most readily recognisable faces in the British film world from the 1940s through to the 1970s.

He was born James Norval Harald Justice on15th June 1907 and died on 2^nd July 1975.

He was the son of an Aberdeen-born geologist and named after his father. He was born in Lee, a suburb of Lewisham, educated at Marlborough College , studied science at University College London, but left after a year and became a geology student at the University of Bonn, where he again left after just a year. He spoke many languages, possibly up to 20, including Spanish, French, Greek, Danish, Russian, German, Italian, Dutch and Gaelic.

After university he returned to the UK in 1927, and became a journalist with Reuters in London, alongside Ian Fleming. After a year he emigrated to Canada, where he worked as an insurance salesman, taught English at a boys' school, became a lumberjack and mined for gold. He came back to Britain penniless, working his passage on a Dutch freighter washing dishes in the ship's galley to pay his fare.

On his return to Britain he served as secretary of the British Ice Hockey Association in the early 1930s and managed the national team at the 1932 European Championships in Berlin to a seventh-place finish. He combined his administrative duties in 1931–32 with a season as goaltender with the London Lions.

He entered driving a Wolseley Hornet Special in the JCC Thousand Mile Race at Brooklands on 3rd and 4th May in 1932. The car was unplaced. The following year a "J. Justice (J.A.P. Special)" competed in the Brighton Speed Trials: "Justice's machine "Tallulah" noisily died before the end of the course, and was pushed back to the start by way of the arcade under the terrace.".

He left Britain again to become a policeman for the League of Nations in the Territory of the Saar Basin (a region of Germany occupied and governed by France and Germany under a League of Nations mandate originating in the Treaty of Versailles). After the Nazis came to power, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. It was here that he first grew his signature trademark bushy beard, which he retained throughout his career. On return to Britain, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, but after sustaining an injury in 1943 (thought to be shrapnel from a German shell), he was pensioned off.

He married nurse Dillys Hayden (1914–1984) in Chelsea in 1941, and she gave birth to his son James. On his return from the war, he reinvented himself with stronger Scottish roots, dispensing with his two middle names and acquiring the new middle name Robertson out of his habit of wearing Robertson tartan. Feeling strongly about his Scottish ancestry, he once claimed to have been born in 1905 under a distillery on the Isle of Skye; many sources listed his birthplace as Wigtown, Wigtownshire, now in Dumfries and Galloway. He unsuccessfully contested the North Angus and Mearns constituency for the Labour Party in the 1950 general election. With the earnings he made from the film Doctor in the House (1954), he bought a cottage in the Scottish Highlands village of Spinningdale.

He took up acting after joining the Players' Theatre in London. The club, under the chairmanship of Leonard Sachs who was latterly chairman of BBC's television's The Good Old Days, would stage Victorian music hall nights. Standing in for Sachs one night, he was recommended for the film For Those In Peril (1944).

As an actor, with his domineering personality, bulky physique, (he played rugby for Beckenham RFC First XV in the 1924–25 season alongside Johnnie Cradock who would become the partner of 1950s TV chef Fanny) and rich, booming voice, he was soon established as a major supporting player in British comedy films. His first leading role was as headmaster in the film Vice Versa (1948), written and directed by Peter Ustinov, who cast him partly because he'd been "a collaborator of my father's at Reuters." He was best known as the demanding surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt in the "Doctor" series of films of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Doctor in the House(1954), playing a role for which he is possibly best remembered. In his films he was sometimes credited under different names such as Seumas Mòr na Feusag (Scottish Gaelic, translation: Big James with the Beard), James R. Justice, James Robertson or James Robertson-Justice.

On 31^st August 1957, he helped launch the TV station Scottish Television, hosting the channel's first show, This is Scotland. From 1957 to 1960, and again from 1963 to 1966, he was Rector of the University of Edinburgh. In the war film The Guns of Navarone (1961), Robertson Justice had a co-starring role as well as narrating the story.

He appeared in four films with Navarone star Gregory Peck, including Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951),and Moby Dick (1956), in which he played the one-armed sea captain also attacked by the white whale. In the film, his character tries to befriend Captain Ahab (played by Gregory Peck), but is amazed and repulsed by Ahab's obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick.

After a series of affairs and the drowning of his son in 1949 at his watermill home in Whitchurch, Hampshire, he separated from his wife and she eventually divorced him in 1968. He met actress Irene von Meyendorff in 1960 on the set of The Ambassador, and they remained together, eventually marrying in 1975 three days before he died.

Not long after completing his work for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, he suffered a severe stroke, which signalled the beginning of the end for his career. He suffered a further series of strokes, which left him unable to work. He was declared bankrupt in 1970, and he died penniless in 1975. His ashes were buried in a north Scotland moor near his former residence in the Highland village of Spinningdale.

A biography entitled James Robertson Justice—What's The Bleeding Time? (referring to a joke in the first Doctor film) was published by Tomahawk Press on 3rd March 2008. 

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On this day 4^th January 1960-1965.

On 05/01/1960 the number one single was Starry Eyed - Michael Holliday and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was not listed and the box office smash was North by Northwest. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Burnley were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Boeing 707s to be tested by UK pilots.

On 05/01/1961 the number one single was I Love You - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was The Russ Conway Show (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Millionth Morris Minor produced.

On 05/01/1962 the number one single was Moon River - Danny Williams and the number one album was Another Black & White Minstrell Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the week was Pope ex-communicates Fidel Castro.

On 05/01/1963 the number one single was The Next Time/Bachelor Boy - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 05/01/1964 the number one single was I Want to Hold Your hand - The Beatles and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/01/1965 the number one single was I Feel Fine - The Beatles and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 2540

29^th  December 2018

Happy New Year Everyone.

Petula Clark, CBE

1^st Picture. Young Petula Clark

 2nd Picture. Downtown Cover

 3^rd Picture. Petula at 83

4^th Picture. Petula and Family

This is someone that many of us feel that we grew up with, from a child actress she always seems to have been around. She was born Sally Olwen Clark, in Epsom on 15^th  November 1932 and her career spans seven decades. Both of her parents were nurses there at Long Grove Hospital. Her mother was of Welsh ancestry and her father was English. Young Sally's stage name of Petula was invented by her father, Leslie Clark; he joked it was a combination of the names of two former girlfriends, Pet and Ulla.

During the  War she lived with her sister at the home of their grandparents in Pontlottyn South Wales, in a small stone house with no electricity, no running water and a toilet at the bottom of the garden. Her grandparents spoke little English and she learned to speak Welsh. Her grandfather was a coal miner and her first ever live audience was at the Colliers' Arms in Abercanaid, near Merthyr Tydfil.

As a child she sang in the chapel choir and showed a talent for mimicry, impersonating Vera Lynn, Carmen Miranda and Sophie Tucker for her family and friends.^[Her father took her to see Flora Robson in a 1938 production of Mary Stuart; here she I made up her mind to be an actress. However, her first public performances were as a singer, performing with an orchestra in the entrance hall of Bentall's Department Store in Kingston upon Thames for a tin of toffee and a gold wristwatch, in 1939.

Her professional career began as an entertainer on the Radio through the War. During the 1950s she started recording in French and having international success in both French and English, with such songs as "The Little Shoemaker", "Baby Lover", "With All My Heart" and "Prends Mon Cœur". During the 1960s, she became known globally for her popular hits, including "Downtown", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Colour My World", "This Is My Song" and "Don't Sleep in the Subway. She has sold more than 68 million records. From a chance beginning at 9, she would appear on radio, film, print, television and recordings by the time she turned 17.

In October 1942, at 9 years old she made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father. She was there trying to send a message to an uncle stationed overseas, but the broadcast was delayed by an air raid. During the bombing, the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery theatre audience, and she volunteered to an enthusiastic response. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes designed to entertain the troops. In addition to radio work, she frequently toured with fellow child performer Julie Andrews and they performed for George VI, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery.

While performing at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1944, she was discovered by film director Maurice Elvey, who cast her, at age 12, in his weepy war drama Medal for the General. In quick succession, she performed in  London Town, Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad, films based on the radio series. Although some of the films she made in the UK during the 1940s and 1950s were B-films^] she worked with Anthony Newley and  Alec Guinness  In 1945.

In 1946, she launched her television career with an appearance on a variety show, Cabaret Cartoons, which led to her being signed to host her own afternoon series, ‘Petula Clark’. Pet's Parlour followed in 1949.

In 1947, Clark met Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson at the Maurice Publishing Company. The two collaborated musically and were linked romantically over the coming decade. In 1949 Henderson introduced her to Alan A. Freeman who, together with her father Leslie, formed Polygon Records for which she recorded her earliest hits. She had recorded her first release, "Put Your Shoes On, Lucy", for EMI. Because neither EMI nor Decca, for whom she also had recorded, were keen to sign her father teamed with Alan Freeman to form the Polygon record label This project was financed with Petula’s earnings. She scored a number of major hits during the 1950s, including "The Little Shoemaker" (1954), "Majorca" (1955), "With All My Heart" (1956). "The Little Shoemaker" was an international hit, reaching No. 1 in Australia, the first of many No. 1 records in her career. Although she released singles in the US as early as 1951 it was 13 years before the American record-buying public discovered her.

Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Nixa Records, then part of Pye Records. This turn of events signed her to Pye for the remainder of the 1950s, through the 1960s and early into the 1970s.

In 1957, she was invited to appear at the Paris Olympia where, despite a bad cold, she was received with acclaim. The following day she was invited to the office of Vogue Records to discuss a contract. It was there that she met her longtime publicist, collaborator and future husband, Claude Wolff. In 1960, she embarked on a concert tour of France and Belgium with Sacha Distel, who remained a close friend until his death. She recorded in German, French, Italian and Spanish and established herself as a multi-lingual performer.

During her new career in France, she continued to achieve hit records in the UK into the early 1960s. Her 1961 recording of "Sailor" became her first No.1 hit in the UK, while such follow-up recordings as "Romeo" and "My Friend the Sea" landed her in the British Top Ten later that year. "Romeo" sold over one million copies globally, and was her first gold disc. In France, "Ya Ya Twist" the only successful recording of a twist song by a woman became a smash hit in 1962,

In 1964, she wrote the soundtrack for the French crime film A Couteaux Tirés and made a cameo appearance as herself. Additional film scores included Animato (1969), La bande à Bebel (1966), and Pétain (1989).^]

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in February 1964, and twice more, in April 1975 and March 1996, becoming the only person to receive the television tribute three times.

By 1964, her British recording career was foundering. Tony Hatch, who had been assisting her at Vogue Records in France and Pye Records in the UK, flew to her home in Paris with new material but she liked none of it.  Desperate, he played a few chords of an incomplete song and on hearing the melody she said she wanted to record the tune as her next single and "Downtown" was born.

"Downtown" was the first of 15 consecutive Top 40 hits she had in the US.The American recording industry awarded her a  for "Best Rock & Roll Recording of 1964" for "Downtown" and for "Best Contemporary (R&R) Vocal Performance of 1965 – Female" for "I Know a Place." In 2004, her recording of "Downtown" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Her recording successes led to frequent appearances on American programmes hosted by Ed Sullivan and Dean Martin. In 1968, NBC-TV invited her to host her own special and in doing so she made television history. While singing a duet of her anti-war song "On the Path of Glory," with guest Harry Belafonte, she took hold of his arm, to the dismay of a representative from the show's sponsor, who feared that the moment would incur racial backlash from Southern viewers.  When he insisted that they substitute a different take, with the singers standing well away from each other, she refused, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished original programme to NBC with the touch intact. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the original telecast, she appeared at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan on 22^nd  September 2008, to discuss the broadcast and its impact, following a showing of the programme.

She revived her film career in the late 1960s, in two big musicals, Finian's Rainbow (1968), opposite Fred Astaire.  The following year she was cast with Peter O'Toole in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), a musical adaptation of the classic story.

Throughout the late 1960s, she toured the States and during this period, she continued her interest in encouraging new talent. Richard Carpenter credited her with bringing him and Karen to Alpert's attention when they performed at a premiere party for Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

During the early 1970s, she had chart singles on both sides of the Atlantic and she continued touring performing in clubs in the US and Europe.

In the mid-1970s, Clark scaled back her career in order to devote more time to her family.

On 31^st  December 1976, she performed "Downtown" on BBC1's A Jubilee of Music, celebrating British popular music for the impending Silver Jubilee. Through the 1970s, she made numerous appearances on variety, comedy and game show television programmes and in 1980 she made her last film appearance, in Never Never Land. 

As she moved away from film and television, she returned to the stage but it was not until 1981, at the urging of her children, that she returned to legitimate theatre, starring as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music in London's West End. In 1983, she took on the title role in  Shaw's Candida. Later stage work includes Someone Like You in 1989 and 1990, for which she composed the score, Blood Brothers, in which she made her Broadway debut in 1993 followed by the American tour and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, appearing in both the West End and American touring productions from 1995 to 2000. In 2004, she repeated her performance of Norma Desmond in a production at the Opera House in Cor kwith more than 2,500 performances, she has played the role more often than any other actress.

In 1998, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 2012, she was installed as a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France by the French Minister of Culture.

In November 2006, she was the subject of a BBC Four documentary titled Petula Clark: Blue Lady and appeared with Michael Ball and Tony Hatch in a concert at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane  In 2007, she took part in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home, about her Welsh family history. She was presented with the 2007 Film & TV Music Award for Best Use of a Song in a Television Programme for "Downtown" in the ABC series Lost. 

In 2010, she became president of the Hastings Musical Festival; toured Australia, New Zealand and Quebec and appeared on French television.

In November 2011, at age 78, Clark performed at the Casino de Paris, a Parisian music hall. Clark entertained for more than 90 minutes and introduced five new songs, one of which she had recently written with friend Charles Aznavour. A French album of all new material was to be released on 7 February 2012 on the Sony label, Clark's first in that language since the late 1970s. On 11 December 2011, the Saw Doctors released their version of "Downtown," featuring her. In February 2012, she completed her first New York City show since 1975.  After the end of her season, which had to be extended due to the demand for tickets, she returned to Paris to promote her new album, before flying to Australia for a tour.

On 20 June 2015, she appeared with the Midtown Men at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, performing "Downtown"and Petula makes a cameo appearance in the 2017, London Heathrow Airport Christmas television commercial, accompanied by her song, "I couldn't live without your love"

In October 1957, she was invited to appear at the Paris Olympia for the Europe N°1 live radio show Musicorama. The next day she was invited to the office of Vogue Records' chairman Léon Cabat to discuss recording in French and working in France. It was there that she met her future husband the publicist Claude Wolff, to whom she was attracted immediately; and, when she was told that he would work with her if she recorded in French, she agreed. They have two daughters and a son. Since 2012, Clark has lived for most of the year in Geneva, she also has a holiday chalet in the French Alps, where she likes to ski, and she has a pied-à-terre in  Chelsea.

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On this day 29^th December 1960-1965.

On 29/12/1960 the number one single was I Love You - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was Tottenham Hotspur. The top rated TV show was The Arthur Haynes Show (ATV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68. End of National Service in Britain The big news story of the day was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada)

On 29/12/1961 the number one single was Moon River - Danny Williams and the number one album was Another Black & White Minstrell Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Geologist explains Continental Drift.

On 29/12/1962 the number one single was Return to Sender - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Tax reduced to 25% on TVs and radios.

On 29/12/1963 the number one single was I Want to Hold Your hand - The Beatles and the number one album was With the Beatles - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 29/12/1964 the number one single was I Feel Fine - The Beatles and the number one album was Beatles For Sale - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Donald Campbell sets water speed record.

On 29/12/1965 the number one single was Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out - The Beatles and the number one album was Rubber Soul - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.