The Earliest Promotional Photo?

Judging by the way Dennis’s hair is combed and by the fact that the photographer* is British, I’d say that this is one of his earliest promotional photographs.

Dennis favoured a wave in his hair when photographed at a later date in the States. This photograph and the one of him in the family group in Birmingham look similar.

So, I’d say that this photograph was taken between 1917 (after he had left the Birmingham Rep) and 1921. As it was given me by my late sister, I’d say it came from my father. Judging by the extent of wear and the pencil scribblings on the back it seems that it was carried by my father in his wallet.

* The identification is “Guttenberg Photo. Manchester”. Evidently Percy Guttenberg was active as a theatrical photographer in the first decade of the 1900s and by 1922 he was the President of the Society of Master Photographers. It is not clear what links Dennis to Manchester. It is possible that he was there on tour in one of the productions that took him to Edinburgh.

Thomas Foden Flint

Thomas Foden Flint, a former Pilgrim Player, became the Rep’s first Stage Manager, a role he voluntarily relinquished after 5 months to make way for someone with more experience. He continued in the role of Assistant Stage Manager until he joined the Army in 1914.

When Dennis appeared in “The Three Musketeers” at Drury Lane in London in 1930 he acknowledged his debt to Thomas Foden Flint:

Yes, I must thank Birmingham for most of my knowledge about fencing. It was Mr. Foden Flint, the stage manager of the Repertory Theatre who taught me, and it was he who used to give me sixpence every time I got past his guard. I, of course, was then a call boy, but we found time in the mornings to do some serious fencing.

It is noted in Bache Matthews book that Thomas “was the only member of the company who persevered with his foils, to become later … runner up in the amateur championship”.

The image above, from my father’s scrapbook, shows Dennis as D’Artagnan (in the centre of the sketch) over the legend “In a Clash By Himself”.  Also, the panel in the bottom right has the following exchange:

Bill - “Mr King don’t ‘alf know how to make love to Miss Brune on the stage!”

Our Call-Boy - “Well, who wouldn’t? If a thing’s worth wooing it’s worth wooing well!”

Call Boy and ASM

As Dennis liked to point out in later life he was the Birmingham Rep’s first call boy. He started there in 1913 when the Rep opened and left in December 1916. When he left he had risen to the post of Assistant Stage Manager.

Although he was not identified as an actor during his time at the Rep, he got plenty of chances to perform. It was in the nature of the organisation of the Rep that those in “back-stage” roles made up the cast along with the regular actors.

His full list of appearances starts in January 1914 at age 16 and ends in November 1916 at age 19.

Dennis always said that his first stage performance was in As You Like It (in February 1914 as Dennis, one of the two servants to Oliver). Perhaps he meant his first real appearance, as the records for the Rep* show that he was in The Christmas Party (from January 10th, 1914, for two weeks) as Dick Whittington’s Cat!

The Christmas Party was written by Barry Jackson, the founder and patron of the Rep and its first Director. It was a children’s play that is described by Bache Matthews in his history as “unequal” and “no good” in its first outing but was later rewritten and revived in 1916 with Dennis as a Footman.

It is by looking at Dennis’s list of stage performances at the Rep (see Supporting Reference Material) that we can see the period he was absent due to him joining up, although underage. There is a gap between May 1914 when he was 16 and October 1915 (aged 17 ). It is during this period that his Medal Index Card (MIC) shows that he joined the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry as a Private on 9th September 1914. For reasons that are so far not clear he was discharged according to King’s Regulations on 10th May 1915 with the only reason being given as “Sickness”. As a result of this he received his Silver War Medal which I have written about in a previous entry.

It is my understanding that the official age for joining up was 18 and that an overseas posting only followed at 19. Joining up whilst underage was not uncommon at the time but it seems unlikely, though not impossible, that Dennis saw any service in the front line during the 8 months he served.

What is clear is that he valued the medal that showed that he had served. He resumed where he left off at the Birmingham Rep presumably as Assistant Stage Manager. His stage performances recommenced in October 1915.

It is surprising to see that his last performance at the Rep was in November 1916 in The Cassilis Engagement and that by December he was in Edinburgh at the Royal Lyceum Theatre appearing in a musical called Oh Caesar (with Evelyn Laye – see a previous entry about this). Having left the Rep as an Assistant Stage Manager he was now an actor in his own right.

Quite how he found the opportunity to leave the Rep is not recorded anywhere but I am hopeful that I may find the missing piece of the jigsaw.

I have left until last the question of why he chose to join the Rep when it opened in 1913. It is a coincidence, I think, that The Pilgrim Players out of which the Rep grew started their performances in Moseley, the area of Birmingham that Dennis lived on the edge of. Barry Jackson lived within walking distance of Dennis’s family home.

It is possible that Dennis saw an advertisement or other press coverage of the need for staff at the newly-built Rep and simply applied. Someone might have guided him to it. What is clear from the documented history of the Rep is that its inception did receive publicity in the local Birmingham papers but whether he found out about it on his own or whether he was told about it perhaps I will never know. As pure speculation - it is possible that his father or even his brother worked on the speedy building of the new Theatre.

* Records for the early days of the Rep, including details of the plays that Dennis appeared in, are held at the Birmingham Central Reference Library in the Barry Jackson Archive. The list that is available here has been assembled from those records and their total accuracy is not to be taken for granted without looking at the original sources.

Once again, Bache Matthews’ book has helped with this account.

In His Spare Time …

This photo, again from my father's scrapbook, has the following accompanying text: “Dennis King, star of the Three Musketeers, on d'Artagnan taking one of the jumps on his estate in Great Neck, L. I.”

As well as being a horse rider, according to various press accounts, Dennis was also a keen fencer, swimmer, tennis player & golfer.

Another dimension to his talents is shown in this extract from the full text of "Gertrude Lawrence As Mrs Q An Intimate Biography Of The Great Star"

In Pygmalion's coast-to-coast tour, Dennis King took over the role of Professor Higgins [in the late 1940s]. Following her usual practice, Gertrude kept a day-by-day journal of her experiences, in which her co-star and the other members of the company figured frequently.

“Just had a cup of tea in the diner with Dennis King” she wrote. “He has taken up painting and is most excited to find that he really can paint. He has found that everybody needs a hobby - no matter who the person or what the hobby. He now sees colors, and shapes and shadows which he can capture on canvas. This enthusiasm is shared by several friends of mine. I am going to watch Dennis and see whether I respond , . .”

In an interview in 1955 Dennis was asked who his favourite actresses were. He named two, Gertrude Lawrence and Katharine Cornell.

The Home of Fine Plays

In order to put together the preceding summary of the history of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre I bought a second-hand copy of Bache Matthew’s book A History of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. I chose the cheapest edition I could find online and eagerly awaited its arrival. To my amazement, when I received and opened the book I saw 4 original photographs stuck onto the blank pages before the title. These show the rear of the Repertory Theatre and must have been taken by a previous owner of the book. From the name of the production in progress at the time (on a visible hoarding) I can date the photos to 1927.

I don’t know how much that rear view has changed, but to be able to see the Stage Door that Uncle Dennis must have used, very little changed from when he would have been using it, was a real boost and a good omen.

You can see the 4 photos in a Picasa Web Album.

One surprising thing I discovered in reading Bache Matthew’s book is the speed with which the theatre was built. The contract was signed in October, 1912, and the opening was in February 1913. The builder worked round the clock during the winter months, using flares to work by at night.

Background: The Birmingham Rep

“… this little playhouse is the most considerable thing that the twentieth century has seen in the English theatre.”

T. C. Kemp*

In many ways it is painful to gloss over the interesting and well-documented history of the origins and early years of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre but I have to keep in mind that I am just setting the scene for the entrance of Dennis Pratt …

The Birmingham Rep opened it doors, in a purpose-built theatre in the centre of the city, on 15th February, 1913, with Twelfth Night. This was the first Repertory Theatre to be built in England (according to T. C. Kemp*). It had its origins in the work of a group of amateurs who first performed publicly in 1907, led by Barry Jackson who lived in the Moseley area of the city. In the early years this was a peripatetic group calling itself the Pilgrim Players and performing at venues around Birmingham.

Barry Jackson recognised the need for a change from amateur to professional status, and he became the Founder of the permanent theatre and its first Director. But he was more than that - he was also an actor, producer, playwright and stage designer. He was later to be knighted.

One more name to take note of from these early days is that of Thomas Foden Flint. One of the original Pilgrim Players, Thomas became the Stage Manager when the Rep opened but recognising his limitations, he relinquished that post to become the Assistant Stage Manager after 5 months. More about him later.

Once it had been decided that a permanent theatre was to be built there was a 10 month gap between the last production of the Pilgrim Players and the opening on 15th February, 1913.

* The Birmingham Repertory Theatre by T. C. Kemp, Cornish Brothers Ltd, 1943

Another book used to assemble this summary was:

A History of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre by Bache Matthews, Chatto & Windus, 1924

Jeanette MacDonald’s View

In his biography of Jeanette MacDonald called Hollywood Diva, Edward Baron Turk says that she despised her work on the film of The Vagabond King and that she had two great annoyances of which the second was:

… her leading man, British-born stage baritone Dennis King. Because he originated the role of Friml’s Villon to great acclaim on Broadway, King had Berger [the film’s director] and the front office eating out of his hand from the day shooting began. … While MacDonald had little choice but to accept his backstairs influence, she refused to put up with King’s shameless scene snatching. Ray Rennahan recounted: “After I’d set the lights on them they were supposed to keep their positions on the set and not move unless we were prepared for it. But King would be constantly moving this way and that to get a camera advantage over Jeanette. He’d block her key light by putting a shadow over her face, and just as soon as that would happen, Jeanette would say, ‘Oh, no! Wait a minute!’”

MacDonald’s guard failed her during the shooting of “Only a Rose”. Set in a luxuriant garden, this pivotal moment has Katherine respond in song to the vagabond’s ardent pledge to win her love by saving France. Berger had planned the scene so that except for one brief reaction shot of the actor, MacDonald would appear on-screen alone and in close shot until the song’s final strains, sung in duet. To make sure King would stay on his mark, Berger placed a hobbyhorse between the singers. Yet the baritone, true to form, spoiled MacDonald’s solo shots by prematurely inserting his fingers, nose, and slick pompadour into her frame. Somehow, the resulting glitch went uncorrected. MacDonald was as much enraged by Berger’s negligence as King’s hogging, and pleaded with B. P. Schulberg to order retakes or else drop her name from the opening credits. Schulberg refused to do either. From then on, MacDonald sarcastically referred to the song as “Only a Nose”.

Decide for yourselves. Here is the YouTube clip from The Vagabond King that resulted in Dennis being accused of “shameless scene snatching”:

Jeanette MacDonald and Dennis King - from The Vagabond King

Reference: “Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald” by Edward Baron Turk (1998, University of California Press).