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NLA News - home November 2004 Volume XV Number 2

An Australian Bloke:
Albert Arlen and His Musicals

John Thomson sketches the career of an extraordinary musician who, with his wife and a great deal of persistence, succeeded in bringing one of Australia’s most loved musicals to the stage for the first time

click to enlarge
L.J. Dwyer
Nancy Brown and Albert Arlen, Canberra  1955
Reproduced courtesy of Roma Heffernan
Papers of Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown; Manuscript Collection,
MS6311/Box 12/Item 62

On 4 November 1961, at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, the curtain rose on the first professional performance of the musical The Sentimental Bloke. It was a personal triumph for the authors, Albert Arlen and his wife Nancy Brown. After 11 years of struggle and disappointment, bankruptcy and disillusionment, they were vindicated at last.

In an interview for the National Library’s Oral History Collection, Albert Arlen tells of the many problems that were encountered with the writing and production of the musical. In 1950 Arlen met writer George Johnston. They agreed to work together on a musical version of C.J. Dennis’ poems, but after two years with little progress, Johnston withdrew. Arlen and Brown, living in Canberra, then met diplomat and actor Lloyd Thomson, who agreed to join the team. The show was finished quite quickly and Arlen recalls ‘we offered it to J.C. Williamson (Australia’s leading theatrical entrepreneurs at the time) and they were not the slightest bit interested’. In May 1955, the Arlens resigned from their jobs in Canberra and, selling a piano to finance their trip, took their manuscript to London. ‘I played it to my publishers, Ascherbergs, and they didn’t understand it. I played it to every firm who would listen to it. The George Black Company wanted to anglicise it ... There was an American firm that wanted it, he wanted to make all sorts of changes. So I said “no it’s got to stay what it is. This is a work that can’t be tampered with.”’

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Act One, Scene 2, ‘Outside the Pickle Factory’, from the first production of The Sentimental Bloke, Canberra, March 1961. Constance Vayne (Doreen), Edwin Ride, (Bill, The Sentimental Bloke), Douglas Skinner, (Ginger Mick), Nancy Brown (Rose)
Papers of Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown; Manuscript Collection,
MS6311/Box 20/Item 91

Back in Australia, Hugh Hunt of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust asked for a tape and a script. ‘He said he didn’t think it was any good at all, that the book was dreadful.’ In 1957 J.C. Williamson showed some interest and arranged an audition performance with the cast of The Pajama Game taking the roles. Williamson took an option, paying the Arlens £1, but nothing eventuated. Back in Canberra, in 1960, the Arlens were convinced that the only way they would ever see their work on the stage was to produce it themselves. With the support of friends, and after borrowing £400, they booked the Albert Hall, Canberra for a week in March 1961. They assembled an amateur cast; Albert was at the piano and Nancy directed and played Rose. The production played for six nights and was a great success. The show received some unexpected national publicity with a cover story in The Australian Women’s Weekly on 8 March 1961. Sir Frank Tait and John McCallum, directors of J.C. Williamson, sat on chairs in the aisle for the last sold-out performance.

Nancy Brown, in an interview in the Oral History Collection, describes the Williamson reaction: ‘They took a long time making up their minds. We had supper after the show and they um-ed and ah-ed and said “yes it’s very good” and “yes we didn’t think we would see anything like this. We’ll think about it.”’ For some months nothing happened, but when a theatre unexpectedly became available, J.C. Williamson decided to produce The Bloke for a six-week season in Melbourne. Arlen was to be musical director. Edwin Ride, who was so perfectly cast as the Bloke in Canberra, was offered the role and took leave from his Public Service job.

The Sentimental Bloke achieved enthusiastic reviews and the six weeks in Melbourne turned into five months. It subsequently toured to Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and New Zealand, running for over a year. In 1964 the Arts Council toured it to regional New South Wales and Queensland. There was a television production on the ABC in 1976. The Australian Ballet presented its version, using Arlen’s music, at the Sydney Opera House in May 1985 and also took it on tour to Russia. There have been several subsequent professional revivals.

Albert Arlen composed an extensive amount of music throughout his career. This included Alamein Concerto (1944) for piano and orchestra and a setting of Clancy of the Overflow (1948). A large number of his works have been published and recorded.

Arlen was born in Sydney in 1905 and studied at the Sydney Conservatorium. After graduating, he travelled to England. In the late 1920’s he played the piano professionally in dance bands and on cruise ships and acted in some small roles in West End productions. In 1932–33, he toured provincial England in Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet. Whilst touring in a farce, High Temperature, the director asked him to turn it into a musical. With a new cast, the musical version continued on its provincial tour. Thus Albert Arlen’s first musical achieved an immediate professional production.

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Flyer for Stardust, Victoria Theatre, Singapore, 1946
Papers of Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown; Manuscripts Collection,
MS6311/Box 7/album

In 1935 he wrote his second musical—Stardust. MGM Studio in Hollywood, which was looking for a vehicle for its big star Grace Moore made him an offer. Aware of the reputation of filmmakers, Arlen knew many changes would be made, over which he would have no control, so he declined. A London stage production went into rehearsal starring one of the biggest names of the day, Marie Burke. Unfortunately, however, King George V died in January 1936, the backers withdrew their money and the production never eventuated.

Despite this set back, Arlen continued to write musical compositions and several plays. A satiric comedy The Son of the Grand Eunuch had a production at the Arts Theatre, London in 1937 and others had productions on BBC Radio. Arlen made it into the West End with a play, Counterfeit! which he wrote with Cyril Butcher. It opened out of town in Richmond in 1939 and later transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre for a successful run that was only brought to a close by the outbreak of World War 2.

After war service in the RAF, Arlen was seconded to Combined Services Entertainment based in Singapore. In 1946–67 he wrote and produced three musical revues which were all seen at the Victoria Theatre in Singapore and toured to service personnel in Ceylon, Hong Kong and Malaya. Amongst the cast was a young Kenneth Williams who was to go on to become one of the great British comedians.

In 1949 Arlen married Australian born Nancy Brown. Nancy had appeared in several musical comedies in the 1930’s in London including Old Chelsea with the great Viennese tenor, Richard Tauber. Over the next two decades, Nancy and Albert were to work together writing and performing their own musicals, but none were to have the success of The Sentimental Bloke.

In March 1960, at its tiny Riverside Theatre, Canberra Repertory Society presented The Girl from the Snowy, a musical romance with book, lyrics and music by Arlen. Arlen was director, musical director and played the piano. Nancy played the leading role of Vicky. The Canberra Times commented, ‘the freshness and spontaneity of “amateur” and the experience and discipline of “professional” theatre combined to make a unique piece of live entertainment’. The musical broke box office records at the Riverside Theatre and, at the invitation of the Snowy Mountains Authority, the cast played a performance in Cooma for the ‘men of the Snowy’.

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Flyer for High and Low, Victoria Theatre, Singapore, 1947
Papers of Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown; Manuscript Collection,
MS6311/Box 7/album

Chances of a professional production faded. In a letter held in the personal papers of Arlen and Brown at the National Library, John McCallum, Assistant Managing Director of J.C. Williamson said ‘while fully agreeing with the praise given by the press to the production and a great deal of merit in the show itself, particularly musically he [i.e. Mr Bowden, General Manager of J.C. Williamson] had reservations about the book’. The music, however, was published by Chappell. The only other recorded production of The Girl from the Snowy was by Nancy’s own amateur company, The Shopwindow Theatre, in Sydney in 1969.

Marriages Are Made in Heaven, by the same team as The Sentimental Bloke—Nancy Brown, Lloyd Thomson and Albert Arlen—had its world premiere at the Childers Street Hall, Canberra in 1968. It was produced by two local companies, The Theatre Players—run by Canberra theatre identity Joyce Goodes—and the Australian National University Theatre Group. Hope Hewitt, writing in The Canberra Times, described it as ‘a highly ingenious, highly diverting mixture of old theatrical material into something new’. After praising the catchiness of the tunes, Hewitt mentions the special quality of the production ‘so special that an audience much wider than Canberra will, I believe, want to see it’. Sadly Hewitt’s prediction was to prove wrong and there seem to have been no further productions of Marriages are Made in Heaven.

The papers of Arlen and Brown contain several manuscripts of unproduced plays by Arlen and typescripts and scores of nine musicals. One of these is Oh! Gosh a musical fantasy suggested by C.J. Dennis’ The Glugs of Gosh. The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust sponsored a studio performance in 1979 with a cast of the trust’s leading opera singers, but it went no further. In 1991, when a production was being considered for Canberra, Nancy Brown wrote to this author ‘it is very different and very topical in today’s climate … it may take some courage to produce this work, however I feel confident that if it is performed it will be successful’. Oh! Gosh remains unperformed.

Throughout their lives, Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown were constantly promoting their musicals in the hope that productions would eventuate. In this they were often disappointed. However, their lasting legacy—the result of their great persistence—is The Sentimental Bloke, which has become one of Australia’s most popular musicals and is still produced somewhere in Australia almost every year.

Details of performances of Arlen musicals and other Australian musicals can be found on AusStage, the gateway to the Australian performing arts: www.AusStage.edu.au

JOHN THOMSON is a former arts librarian. He is currently a consultant on ephemera and performing arts resources.

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