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Morecambe and Wise

 
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Morecambe and Wise

Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, usually referred to as Morecambe and Wise, were a British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984. They have been described as "the most illustrious, and the best-loved, double-act that Britain has ever produced".[1] In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The Morecambe and Wise Show was placed 14th. In September 2006, they were voted by the general public as number 2 in a poll of TV's Greatest Stars.

Contents

History

Morecambe and Wise's partnership began in 1941 when they were each booked separately to appear in Jack Hylton's revue, Youth Takes a Bow. War service broke up the act but they reunited by chance at the Swansea Empire Theatre in 1946 when they joined forces again. Initially appearing in music hall, they made their name in radio, transferring to television in 1954. Their show, Running Wild, was not well received and led to a damning newspaper review: "Definition of the week: TV set - the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise." Eric apparently carried this review around with him ever after and from then on Eric and Ernie kept a tight control over their material. In 1956 they were offered a spot in the Winifred Atwell show with material written by Johnny Speight and this was a success.

They had a series of shows that spanned over twenty years, during which time they developed and honed their act, most notably with the original move to the BBC in 1968, where they were to be teamed with their long-term writer Eddie Braben and it is this period of their careers that is widely regarded as their "glory days". Their shows were:

The pair starred in three unsuccessful feature films during the 1960s-The Intelligence Men (1965), That Riviera Touch (1966), and The Magnificent Two (1967). In 1983 they made their last film, Night Train To Murder.

In 1976, they were both awarded the OBE.

Collaborators

In the later and most successful part of their career, which spanned the 1970s, they were joined behind the scenes by Eddie Braben, a script writer who generated almost all their material (Morecambe and Wise were also sometimes credited as supplying "additional material") and defined what is now thought of as typical Morecambe and Wise humour. Together Morecambe, Wise and Braben were known as "The Golden Triangle". Morecambe and Wise are considered by many to be one of the UK's all-time favourite comedy acts.

John Ammonds was also central to the duo's most successful period in the 1970s. As the producer of the BBC TV shows, it was his idea to involve celebrity guests. He also came up with the duo's familiar dance.

Ernest Maxin started choreographing the musical numbers in 1970, and succeeded John Ammonds as producer of the BBC TV shows in 1974. Maxin, won a BAFTA for the Best Light Entertainment Show for the Morecambe and Wise 1977 Christmas Show,was also responsible for devising and choreographing many of their great musical comedy routines including "The Breakfast Sketch", "Singin' in the Rain", and the homage to South Pacific, "There is nothing like a dame" featuring BBC newsreaders in an acrobatic dance routine.

The show

A typical Morecambe and Wise show was effectively a sketch show crossed with a sitcom, although shows could also include the duo appearing "as themselves" on a mock stage in front of curtains emblazoned with an M and W logo (this was usually to open the show). Morecambe and Wise's comic style varied subtly throughout their career, depending on their writers. Their original writers Dick Hills and Sid Green took a relatively straightforward approach, depicting "Eric" as an aggressive, knockabout comedian and "Ernie" as an essentially conventional and somewhat disapproving straight man. When Eddie Braben took over as writer, he made the relationship considerably deeper and more complex. The critic Kenneth Tynan noted that, with Braben as writer, Morecambe and Wise had a unique dynamic—Ernie was a comedian who wasn’t funny, while Eric was a straight man who was funny.[2] The Ernie persona became simultaneously more egotistical and more naïve. Morecambe pointed out that Braben wrote him as "tougher, less gormless, harder towards Ern."[3] Wise's contribution to the humour is a subject of an ongoing debate. To the end of his life he would always reject interviewers' suggestions that he was 'the straight man', preferring to call himself 'the song-and-dance man'. However, Wise's skill and dedication as the duo's manager was essential to their joint success, and Tynan praised Wise's performance as "unselfish, ebullient and indispensable".[4]

A central concept was that the duo lived together as close, long-term friends (there were many references to a childhood friendship) who shared not merely a flat but also a bed -- although their relationship was purely platonic and merely continued a tradition of comic partners sleeping in the same bed that started with Laurel and Hardy. Morecambe was initially uncomfortable with the bed-sharing sketches, but changed his mind upon being reminded of the Laurel-and-Hardy precedent; however, he still insisted on smoking his pipe in the bed scenes "for the masculinity". The front room of the flat and also the bedroom were used frequently throughout the show episodes, although Braben would also transplant the duo into various external situations, such as a health-food shop or a bank. Many references were made to Ernie's supposed meanness with money and drink.

Another concept of the shows during the 'Braben era' was Ernie's utterly confident presentation of amateurishly inept plays. This allowed for another kind of sketch: the staged 'historical drama', which usually parodied genuine historical television plays or films (such as Stalag 17, Antony and Cleopatra, or Napoleon and Josephine). Wise's character would write a play, complete with cheap props and appallingly clumsy writing ("the play what I wrote" became a catchphrase), which would then be acted out by Morecambe, Wise and the show's guest star. Guests who participated included many big names of the 1970s and 80s, such as Flora Robson, Penelope Keith, Laurence Olivier, John Mills, Vanessa Redgrave, Eric Porter, Peter Cushing and Frank Finlay - as well as Glenda Jackson (as Cleopatra: "All men are fools. And what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got..."). Jackson had not previously been known as a comedienne and this appearance led to her Oscar winning role in A Touch of Class. Morecambe and Wise would often pretend not to have heard of their guest, or would appear to confuse them with someone else (former UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson returned the favour, when appearing as a guest at the duo's 'flat', by referring to Morecambe as 'Mor-e-cam-by'). Also noteworthy was the occasion when the respected BBC newsreader Angela Rippon was induced to show her shapely legs in a dance-number (she had trained as a ballet dancer before she became a journalist and TV presenter). Braben later said that a large amount of the duo's humour was based on irreverence. A running gag in a number of shows was a short sequence showing a well-known artist in closeup saying "I appeared in an Ernie Wise play, and look what happened to me!". The camera would then pull back and show the artist doing some low-status job such as selling newspapers, streetwalking, a bus conductor (in Andre Previn's case), or some other ill-paid employment. However, celebrities felt they had received the highest accolade in showbusiness by being invited to appear in "an Ernest Wide play" as Ernie once mispronounced it during a show's introduction involving 'Vanilla' (Vanessa) Redgrave.

As a carry-over from their music hall days, Eric and Ernie sang and danced at the end of each show, although they were forced to abandon this practice when Morecambe's heart condition prevented him from dancing. The solution was that Eric would walk across the stage with coat and bag, ostensibly to 'wait for his bus', while Ernie danced by himself. Their peculiar skipping dance, devised by their BBC producer John Ammonds, was a modified form of a dance used by Groucho Marx. Their signature tune was Bring Me Sunshine. They either sang this at the end of each show or it was used as a theme tune during the credits (although in some of their earlier shows they used other songs as well, notably "Following You Around", "Positive Thinking" and "Don't You Agree"). A standard gag at the end of each show was for a large lady (Janet Webb) to appear behind the pair, walk to the front of the stage and push them out of her way. She would then recite:

“ I’d like to thank you for watching me and my little show here tonight. If you’ve enjoyed it then it's all been worthwhile. So until we meet again, goodnight, and I love you all! ”

Webb was never announced, and seldom appeared in their shows in any other role. Another running gag involved an old colleague from their music hall days, harmonica player Arthur Tolcher. Arthur would keep appearing on the stage in evening wear and would play a few bars of his mouth organ only to be told "Not now, Arthur!"

In June 2007, the BBC released a DVD of surviving material from their first series in 1968, and the complete second series from 1969.

Christmas Specials

With the exception of 1974, the show had end-of-year Christmas specials, which became such an institution during the 1970s that few British families would dream of missing them.[citation needed] Braben would comment that people judged the quality of their Christmas experience on the quality of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special. From 1969 until 1980, except 1974, the shows were always on Christmas Day.

It is a long-held popular myth that the 1977 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, which attracted 28 million viewers (around half of the total UK population at the time) was a record for a single light entertainment broadcast in Britain. While the size of the audience is not in doubt, in point of fact the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show, which immediately preceded Morecambe and Wise on Christmas Day 1977, actually received a slightly larger audience. This means that Yarwood, not Morecambe and Wise, holds the record for a single light entertainment broadcast in the UK.[5]

Famous sketches

Singin' in the Rain

One of the famous Morecambe and Wise routines was their recreation of the scene from the film Singin' in the Rain, where Gene Kelly dances in the rain, and sings the song "Singin' in the Rain". This recreation featured Ernie exactly copying Gene Kelly's dance routine, on a set which exactly copied the set used in the movie, and Eric performed the role of the policeman. The difference from the original was that in the Morecambe and Wise version, there is no water, except for some downpours onto Eric's head (through a drain, or dumped out of a window, etc.). This lack of water was initially because of practical considerations (the floor of the studio had many electrical cables on it, and such quantities of water would be dangerous) — but Morecambe and Wise found a way to turn the lack of water into a comic asset.

The Breakfast Sketch

As remembered as the above is the stripper routine where Eric and Ernie are seen listening to the radio at breakfast time. David Rose's tune "The Stripper" comes on and the duo perform a dance using various kitchen utensils and food items, including Ernie catching slices of toast as they popped out of the toaster, and finally opening the fridge door to be bathed in light, as if on stage, while they pull out strings of sausages which they whirl around to the music.

In December 2007, viewers of satellite channel G.O.L.D. voted the sketch the best moment of Morecambe and Wise's shows.[6]

In 2008 the sketch was parodied in two UK television commercials, for PG Tips and Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings.

Tribute to Flanagan & Allen

Eric and Ernie often cited the earlier comedy team Flanagan and Allen as influences on their own work; although Morecambe and Wise never imitated or copied Flanagan and Allen, they did sometimes work explicit references to the earlier team into their own cross-talk routines and sketches. In the mid-1970s, Eric and Ernie recorded a tribute album, Morecambe and Wise Sing Flanagan and Allen (Phillips 6382 095), in which they performed some of the earlier team's more popular songs in their own style, without attempting to imitate the originals.

Grieg's Piano Concerto by Grieg

Classic sketches from such shows often revolved around the guest stars. One example is the 1971 appearance of André Previn. Previn's schedule was extremely tight, and Morecambe and Wise were worried that he had very little time to rehearse, but the final result was described by their biographer as "probably their finest moment".[7]

The sketch was a rework of one which appeared in Two of a Kind (Series 3, Episode 7)[8] and written by Green and Hills.

Previn is initially enthusiastic as a guest, but he is perplexed by the news that he will not, after all, be conducting Yehudi Menuhin in Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, but Edvard Grieg's A minor Piano Concerto with Eric as piano soloist:

“ Ernie: I can assure you that Eric is more than capable.
Previn: Well—all right. I'll go and get my baton.
Ernie: Please do that.
Previn: It's in Chicago.[9]		 ”

At this point in the sketch Morecambe punches the air with his fist and ad-libs the line "Pow! He's in! I like him! I like him!".[10] The television executive Michael Grade has observed that it was Previn's expert delivery of his lines that caused Morecambe to visibly relax: "Eric's face lights up as if to say, 'Oh, yes! This is going to be great!"[10]

Eric goes on to treat Previn and the orchestra with his customary directness ("In the Second Movement, not too heavy on the banjos") but consistently fails to enter on the conductor's cue.[11] When he finally manages to enter on time, his rendition of the piano part is so bizarre that Previn becomes exasperated and tells Eric that he is playing "all the wrong notes". Eric stands up, seizes Previn by the lapels and menacingly informs him "I'm playing all the right notes—but not necessarily in the right order."[11] Previn demonstrates how the piece should be played but Eric, after a moment's reflection, delivers a verdict of "Rubbish!" and he and Ernie walk off in disgust. Previn starts playing Eric's version and the duo rush back, declare that Previn has finally "got it" and start dancing ecstatically.[11] The sketch's impact can be assessed by the fact that twenty-five years later, London taxi drivers were still addressing André Previn as "Mr. Preview".[12]

Catchphrases and visual gags

Some of the duo's catchphrases include:

  • "What do you think of it so far?" (said by Eric, who would use a prop—such as a statue or stuffed toy—to answer: "Rubbish!") Morecambe said later that whenever Luton Town were playing away and he happened to be in the director's box, if Luton were behind at half-time the home fans would shout 'What do you think of it so far?'
  • "More tea, Ern?" (a pun on "tea urn", a vessel for serving hot drinks used in workplaces)
  • "[He's got] short, fat, hairy legs" (said by Eric of Ernie)
  • "You can't see the join!" (said by Eric of Ernie's alleged wig)
  • "The play what I wrote" (said by Ernie of his literary works)
  • "Arsenal!" (said by Eric), dating from a sketch in which Eric is an incompetent 'Mr Memory' unable to remember anything without unsubtle prompting from Ernie. It developed into a running gag, so that whenever Ernie coughed, Eric would shout 'Arsenal!'
  • "He's not wrong, you know" (said by Eric)
  • "Wahey!" (said by Eric after what he considers is a particularly good joke)
  • "He's still got it, you know" (said by Eric, referring to himself, after what he considers a particularly good joke)
  • "There's no answer to that!" (said by Eric after anything which could be construed as innuendo; he also said "Pardon?" in a similar way)
  • Making fun of the singer and entertainer Des O'Connor in various disparaging ways, e.g. "If you want me to be a goner, buy me a record by Des O'Connor"
  • "That's easy for you to say!" (Eric) if anyone fluffed their line.
  • Eric deliberately getting guest stars' names wrong
  • "Just watch it, that's all!" (said by Eric when grabbing Ernie by the lapels)
  • "You said that without moving your lips" (said by Eric if someone said a line whilst he was looking at somebody else).
  • Eric to Ernie: "I see your fan's in!"
  • Eric: "Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
  • Eric: "This boy's a fool!" when bamboozling Ernie or the guest star.
  • Eric: "Get out of that!" when holding his open hand underneath Ernie's chin. This was meant to be a karate move that incapacitated the victim. Often followed by "You can't, can you?".
  • Eric: "(It's) nice out isn't it?". A reference to a dirty joke never fully expounded.
  • Eric: "They can't touch you for it" (i.e. it is not illegal). A comment following a slightly obscure word, turning it into a double entendre.

Additionally, there were many repeated visual gags:

  • As Ernie finally sings the duo's theme song, "Bring Me Sunshine", Eric walks across the back of the stage dressed in an overcoat and cloth cap and carrying a shopping bag. (Rather poignantly, this gag originated is Eric's being medically forbidden to dance: unable to participate in the routine, he is seen 'on the way to the bus stop').
  • Eric affectionately slapping the top of Wise's shoulders and then cheeks with both hands
  • Ernie's hair supposedly being a wig (also the catchphase said by Morecambe: "You can't see the join")
  • Eric settling his glasses askew on his nose
  • Eric pretending to bully people, usually the star guest, by grabbing them by the collar and pulling them to his face
  • Ernie appearing on stage and Eric joining him from behind the curtain but being unable to find the opening and then trying to fight his way out
  • The duo's dance at the end of each show, which would see them exiting the stage by skipping and putting alternate hands behind their heads and backs
  • Fake title sequences for Ernie's plays which satirised current events or popular personalities of the time
  • Visual jokes about Luton Town F.C., a football club of which Morecambe was a director.
  • Eric's prop (such as a mop, cuffs, a cane) getting progressively longer during dance sequences
  • Eric would hold a paper bag in one hand, throw an imaginary coin in the air, watch the "coin" during its flight and when it supposedly landed in the bag, flick the bag with his finger giving the impression that the coin had landed in the bag
  • Eric putting a paper cup over his mouth and nose and performing a brief impersonation of Jimmy Durante; 'Sitting at my pianna the udder day ...'
  • Eric noticing the camera and putting on a fixed, cheesy grin. Ernie would frequently notice him doing this, stand behind Eric and grin a similar grin into the camera, over Eric's shoulder
  • Eric standing in front of stage curtains and pretending an arm comes out from behind the curtain and seizes him by the neck
  • Eric grimacing like Humphrey Bogart (he thinks) if Ernie or a guest gets particularly challenging.

Guest stars

Musical guests

Notes

  1. ^ McCann 1999, p. 4
  2. ^ Tynan 2007, p. 231
  3. ^ Tynan 2007, p. 230
  4. ^ Tynan 2007, p. 225
  5. ^ Top-rated British TV programmes for 1977
  6. ^ "UKTV Gold: Entertainment: Morecambe and Wise: The Greatest Moment". Uktv.co.uk. http://uktv.co.uk/gold/stepbystep/aid/596689. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. 
  7. ^ McCann 1999, pp. 235, 246
  8. ^ "Morecambe & Wise Episode Guides - All Series and shows". Ericandern.co.uk. http://www.ericandern.co.uk/pages/episodeguideshow.asp?show=3. Retrieved on 2009-01-03. 
  9. ^ McCann 1999, pp. 233-234
  10. ^ a b McCann 1999, p. 247
  11. ^ a b c McCann 1999, p. 234
  12. ^ McCann 1999, p. 268

References

External links

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Morecambe and Wise
Starring
Associates
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Misc.

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