A LIFE IN THE THEATRE
In March 2006, Johnny Worthy gave a talk to Brighton & Sussex Equity about his life in showbiz.
Herewith reproduced, with a few amendments and updates, is the account originally published
in the branch newsletter...
Herewith reproduced, with a few amendments and updates, is the account originally published
in the branch newsletter...
Johnny is the fourth generation of his family in show business. His father, grandfather and great grandfather were all American variety artistes, and all, at some point, were visitors to England. His mother, Bessie Jackson, appeared in the original West End production of Show Boat (another edition of which, at the Adelphi in 1971, featured young JW). Grandpa, who caused something of a stir by marrying the Mayor of Lambeth’s daughter, for many years played trombone and danced tap in Billy Cotton’s band, before leaving to start his own tap school in Brixton – though he continued to perform, notably in the first West End production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, at the Coliseum in 1951. The Coliseum, in those days a variety house, had also played host to Johnny’s father, who, as part of the Worthy and Jarrett double act, played there in 1945 in Night and the Music, on a bill topped by comedy violinist Vic Oliver.
If Johnny got the showbiz bug from his relations, it must’ve been genetic rather than contagious; being fostered out at the age of three months, he never really knew his blood relations. Nevertheless, from an early age he knew he wanted to go on the stage. In the late ’50s, unencumbered by any formal training, he set about doing just that. In those days before mass theatre closures and satellite TV, there was no shortage of work, and so, despite his lack of experience, he obtained employment as a singer in variety at a theatre in Blackpool. In reference to his mixed-race ethnicity, he was billed as Johnny Worthy – The Sepia Serenader with the Brown Velvet Voice. If that sounds a bit un-PC for our times, it’s nothing compared to the task that was thrust upon him in a later engagement, when he found himself on tour with a bunch of music hall veterans. They’d lately lost their friend and colleague GH Elliot, celebrated for his interpretation of the song Lily of Laguna, and so they asked Johnny to take on his act. A bizarre request, for Elliot was a blackface minstrel who’d performed under the blithely offensive billing ‘the chocolate-coloured coon’. In any case, Johnny accepted the assignment – and thus, with an irony of almost Shakespearean proportions, was a black man employed to go on-stage and impersonate a white man impersonating a black man.
Still and all, JW was learning his craft – though he found that the greatest lessons were to be learnt by watching other performers from the wings; he would observe the methods through which these once-great and still immensely impressive singers, dancers and comedians engaged and held their audiences.  That Friday feeling... with Johnny Tudor in Robinson Crusoe, Grand Theatre, Swansea, Christmas 1969
28-week summer seasons taught him his craft, but work in the theatrical mainstream was not always so easy to find for a “coloured” performer. He was for ever getting cast in panto as Man Friday (“I longed to put clothes on,” he recalls), and though there were engagements in Brendan Behan’s The Hostage and Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, they never seemed to lead on to anything else. Multi-racial casting is commonplace today, but in those days, far more commonplace was the refrain, “Sorry, there aren’t any coloured roles in this”.
One happy exception was the time he spent doing weekly rep at the Pier Theatre in Southport, running the theatre café during the day whilst also learning lines for the parts he played in an assortment of shows – from Agatha Christie mysteries to Salad Days to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It was in the late ’60s, however, that Johnny kicked off his golden age of musical theatre. It wasn’t easy getting started, though. He longed to win a place in the cast of Hair, but it took a total of 11 auditions and/or callbacks to achieve his aim. It seems that his all-singin’ all-dancin’ razzmatazz style was a bit OTT for the children of Aquarius, and it wasn’t till the director, David Toguri, took him aside and urged him to “calm down”, that he finally managed to convince them of his Worthiness.
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The show, with its mixture of political and sexual frankness, was always going to be controversial. At one point it was due to play an extended run at a theatre in Edinburgh, only to have a ban imposed by the burghers of that city – aroused to action, it seems, by reports of on-stage nudity; heading instead to Glasgow, the company played to packed houses for a year – thanks in part to “Hair trains” carrying theatrical adventurers from the capital. Despite his lack of stature, Johnny ended up playing the much-coveted role of he-man Hud – thanks to the original actor going AWOL.
 Amongst many rep engagements was a 1968 production at the Library Theatre, Manchester, of A Taste of Honey, alongside Peter Childs, Warren Clarke, Linda Poland and Elisabeth Sladen
It was a wonderful experience, but it couldn’t go on anon. For Johnny, Hair eventually lost its lustre around the time the producers made the bizarre decision (who knows what they were on...?) to take the show to Blackpool for a summer season. Johnny baled out shortly after the ill-fated Blackpool opening of the crassly re-titled Holiday Hair. From Hair he went to the West End chorus of Show Boat, where the experience of being ripped off by legendary skinflint Harold Fielding (promoted to a more responsible role, he was nevertheless refused a pay rise) caused Johnny to join the Equity Council.  Let My People Come
His involvement with the union down the years remains one of his proudest achievements. He was responsible for re-activating the defunct Equity Coloured Artists’ Committee (subsequently re-named the Afro-Asian Committee), and he has also been heavily involved in such union sub-divisions and off-shoots as the Dancers’ Resettlement Fund, Save London’s Theatres, and the Committee for Artists’ Freedom.
But getting back to the golden age of musicals, Show Boat was followed by Joseph Papp’sTwo Gentlemen of Verona, which, though a huge hit in New York, folded after only six months in the West End. That disappointment was followed, however, by a year in Godspell. His next job was in a musical which, though offending many, was seen by many more. “There’s a nasty smell in Regent Street,” wrote one reviewer, “and it’s called Let My People Come”. Such was the sexual frankness of the project that the aforementioned Harold Fielding, though producing the show, declined to put his name on the publicity. In any case, the show ran for three years and paid off Johnny’s mortgage.  JW with the cast of The Bernstein Gala at the Ballet Academy, Gothenburg
He went on to perform in such celebrated productions as Jesus Christ Superstar (playing Annas the Pharisee as well as serving as ballet master), On The Twentieth Century, Richard Eyre’s NT revival of Guys and Dolls (as Brandy Bottle Bates), Once On This Island, and Trevor Nunn’s Glyndebourne Porgy and Bess (as Robbins). As writer and director he’s also enjoyed success with national tours of Tapping Harlem and Patsy Cline, the latter also completing a three-month run in the West End.
Though relocating from London to Brighton in the ’90s, the seaside town has never held him for long; there continue to be regular directing expeditions to Ireland and Sweden, and he has a seemingly inexhaustible commitment to Equity – which commitment was honoured, a little while back, with his investiture as an Honorary Life Member. |
