Last night the lights dimmed in the West End for the impresario John Gale who died aged 93 after an amazing career as a play producer, president of SOLT, founder of the Olivier Awards, creator of the Half Price Ticket Booth, London Welsh rugby specialist and even artistic director of Chichester Festival Theatre.
I knew him and Lisel, along with their niece Sally, as my first bosses. When I was at school I was alerted by my friend Robert Totterdell that he’d been to see a show in the West End and met Mr Gale. It turned out John went to my old school and so I took the chance to write to him to see whether he might have a summer job for me.
I was invited to interview and was offered the role of tea boy at £15 a week and my travelcard paid for. Then he asked whether I’d like to see the shows he had running in the West End. That night I joined with my school friend Steve to see Herbert Lom as Napoleon in Betzi at the Haymarket Theatre. We were given a box and entertained by the company manager.
[Months later when the show closed John gifted the set to my old school. Steve and I greeted the truck when it arrived and steadily unloaded two acts of a Scott Hutchinson beautiful set. The only thing missing was a ground plan…but we’d seen the show and so very slowly we pieced the set together over many many hours. I remember our managing to get the main back wall of the study set elevated on our hemp lines by around 2am …and deciding to leave it there till the morning. It survived the night but was at a jaunty angle in the morning. Elements of that Betzi set were in use for 5-10 years in every manner of school play. 40 years on there are probably still pieces in the dock]
On the Saturday John arranged tickets for us to see Separate Tables with John Mills and Jill Bennett, a beautifully crafted and deep performance of the Terence Rattigan double bill. Little did I know that a year later I would be involved in Rattigan’s last play, as a runner, Cause Celebre. In the evening we saw No Sex Please We’re British with Doris Hare and Andrew Sachs. Once again for both shows we wefe entertained by the company managers. My thanks to David Fleming, David Grant and Julian Courtneyfor hosting us and later to Tom Redmond who became the fourth company manager running in and out of the office during my time.
My first summer with John was a glorious introduction to arts administration, to the West End, to celebrity life- (as the Rolls Royce went in for repair), or some star would arrive and need tea. I especially enjoyed writing the wages cheques on a Thursday morning – what an array of glitterati getting their Coutts check with my very bad handwriting.
I learned my way around the West End on foot between agents and script binders, from stage doors to co-producing offices. Duncan Weldon and Peter Saunders were his main partners, and a young Cameron Mackintosh was becoming a prolific producer of musicals.
On returning to school for final exams I decided to take a year out before heading to University. I agreed with my mother to do a sensible degree (Maths) although in my heart I knew theatre was my life. My choices of uni were all based around their theatre scene. One evening I was walking over Waterloo Bridge having seen a show at the National with my schoolfriend Alan who lived in the City. At that point a Rolls Royce rolled up beside us and John poked his head out of the passenger window. I had been applying for lots of placements around London for the year, to get different experiences with theatres and producers. But when John offered me another year at the office I happily agreed to return.
Over the next year he produced Out on a Limb with Ian Carmichael, Sextet with Leslie Philips and Carol Hawkins, The Kingfisher with Sir Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson directed by Lindsay Anderson, and Cause Celebre with Glynis Johns directed by Robin Midgley. No Sex Please was still playing at the Strand Theatre and I got moments of it every matinee as I walked to the office at the back of the upper circle.
At times he had 4 shows running or in rehearsal for the West End, and yet his office team was minimal. Sally as office manager, Lisel his wife as co-casting director, two visiting bookkeepers who did the weekly settlements for all shows, and his trusted company managers who worked in the office in the mornings and then the shows in the evening. Like Cameron, he had an attention to detail and a control of every aspect of production from his desk or sofa.
He still had time to be supportive of this small family of folk, It was whilst working at the Strand that I was contacted by my biological father, who I had never met. I was invited next door to the Waldorf bar to meet this stranger. It was a bit overwhelming and after I got back to the office Lisel and John gave me so much emotional support. [I saw my father the following day for lunch and then he never contacted me again, and I had no knowledge of where he lived – strange feeling]
After my year in the office I took away so much knowledge, and so many memories. It was a year of strikes and power cuts. Read the first night reviews for The Kingfisher at the Lyric if you have a moment and put it in context. The theatre lights were in darkness until 8.30. The press were entertained with wine and nibbles for the 90 minutes of darkness. The audience went off to eat or find a bar, or use the theatre bars. And even the cast had a bottle of bubbles whilst waiting. The reviews have a kind of heady fizz about them.
I worked around the premier of Cause Celebre. I was lucky enough to be at the First Night which was attended by the author in a wheelchair with nurse, brought from his hospital bed at the end of his life. When I got to Bristol I proposed Dramsoc got the rights to do a production of this amazing true life play. Caroline Goodall and Helen Dealey (later to be Helen Grady) played the leads. John Gale even came over to Bristol and talked to Dramsoc about the role of producing & careers in the arts, something I am pleased to do every year at the students union nowadays.
So these memories all come to the fore as I see tributes to John Gale. Lisel and he were a glorious double act, and it must be awful for her. My thoughts go to their sons Tim and Matthew both established names in the theatre business. And to Sally for being a very special line-manager.
I am so fortunate to have been in the West End at that time running around with bundles of scripts and making tea for everyone.
