Hamlet and Girls

The Odeon Riot

Mark of The Curious Detour expressed dismay at my plan to spend my declining years studying Shakespeare. He asked where a good place would be to start and I said Hamlet. He found that somewhat forbidding and I said I would post something about Hamlet and girls.

Here it is.

I am going to need some help with dates here and I can think of two of my Substack subscribers who might be able to jog my memory.

Sometime in the late 50s or early 60s the pupils of Sir Thomas Rich’s grammar school were taken to see Laurence Olivier’s film version of Hamlet at the Odeon cinema just a few hundred yards from the school premises on Barton Street. This cinema building opened in 1935 under the name of the Plaza Super Cinema. In 1957, it became the Odeon, operating as such until 1975. It was then converted into a Top Rank Bingo Club, followed by Mecca Bingo in the 1990s.

Olivier’s film was made in 1948.

My viewing of Hamlet at the Odeon must have fallen between 1958, when I first became a Tommy’s pupil at the Barton Road site, and 1964 when the school moved to new premises at Longlevens, mere yards from the front door of my home.

When I search online for Tommy’s headmasters there is a mysterious gap for the period I am investigating. WJ 'Peter' Veale is recorded as Headmaster from 1936 to 1957. J Anthony Stocks is recorded as headmaster from 1961 to 1973. He managed the removal from Barton Street to Longlevens in 1964. He was rather eccentric and I recall being mesmerized by his odd socks and spray as he was getting enthusiastic about European history. I remember Jasper fondly and he was a big inspiration to me. By the time he died at 95, all that manic energy had gone and he looked very frail. I noted that the funeral directors requested donations to the Dementia Society. When I was invited to his funeral in 2019, I was sorry that I had not kept in touch. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford and tried to persuade me to apply. I have only just discovered that Sir Thomas Rich, a merchant and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660, also studied at Wadham.

Digging a little deeper, I found a reference to AS Worrall as
Headmaster 1957 to 1961. Mr Worrall was known as “Frankie” after the black cricketer, Sir Frank Mortimer Maglinne Worrell (1 August 1924 – 13 March 1967) who was a Barbadian West Indies cricketer and Jamaican senator. This was an inspired choice of nickname because the headmaster had none of the colour, charisma or flair of the cricketer. The headmaster had a damp moustache and a rather shabby, humorless affect. I think he might have been religious. I do not recall ever seeing him smile.

There were some very rough types at the school in those days, so much so that the authorities deemed it necessary to segregate the worst elements into a special class designated Four X or The Remove. I can only remember one of these ne’er-do-wells: Mick Maidment. He was not very big or muscular but concentrated a good deal of venom and aggression in his small, psychotic frame. Today he would have tattoos, but then he had a greasy duck’s arse hairstyle. He and his gang were very skilled at hanging green phlegm (they were, of course, experienced smokers) from the rafters of the bike sheds. These were called Green Gilberts. He never directed more than verbal abuse at me. I was probably beneath his notice. In 1958, I was not the distinguished handsome fellow I am today. I was so chubby that my inner thighs got sore from rubbing together in my shorts in the cold winter air. I had a fat face and spikey hair. By 1963, I had become mean, moody and magnificent.

When we were told that we were going on a little outing to the cinema we were very excited. I was already a seasoned cineast, attending the ABC Minors at the Regal every Saturday morning. Our excitement flagged a little when we learnt that the film was Hamlet. Spirits rose again when we found out that girls from Denmark Road High School for Girls and Ribston Hall High School for Girls would be attending. We did not have coeducational high schools in those days. Just at the very time your hormones are raging, you are kept away from the opposite sex. The first intake of girls into the Sixth Form came in 1987. I remember a Peter Sellers sketch where a parent asks the headmaster of a coeducational school how they segregate the sexes. “We go around at night and prise them apart with a crowbar.”

The Lords of Misrule from Four X spread their hormonal chaos like a contagion. Not a syllable of the Bard’s immortal words could be heard above the wolf whistles and cat calls. Objects and food were thrown. Mere anarchy was loosed upon the world. As well as the living females in the auditorium, boys got excited by the enlarged image on the screen of the lovely Jean Simmons playing Ophelia.

Gertrude was also enticing. Film scholar Jack Jorgens has commented that "Hamlet's scenes with the Queen in her low-cut gowns are virtually love scenes." Olivier is fascinated by the Oedipal potential in the relationship between Hamlet and his mother. Hamlet kisses Gertrude on the lips several times. At the time of filming, Olivier was 40 and the actress playing Gertrude, Eileen Herlie, (she also played Gertrude in Richard Burton’s 1964 version) was 11 years his junior. Hamlet’s mother was 28. Even makeup cannot hide the fact that she is not old enough to be his mother. Four X would have noticed all this. An attractive 28-year-old in a low-cut dress kissing her son on the lips! Hormone porno rage!

A calmer viewing of the film at a later date reveals some interesting casting. John Laurie, of Dad’s Army fame is there as a weary sentry. Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor Who, is the Player King. Patrick McNee from The Avengers is one of the players. Christopher Lee, a great actor, who graced many Hammer Horrors, has an uncredited role as a guard who speaks no lines. Another Hammer Horror stalwart, Peter Cushing, plays the foppish courtier Osric. Stanley Holloway, of My Fair Lady fame, is The Gravedigger.

When we were back at base, Mad Frankie called a special assembly. His damp moustache went wild. His arms flailed. Never in all the days since Sir Thomas Rich founded his Bluecoat School in 1666 had the school been so disgraced. The humiliation! The shame! Sir Thomas was revolving in his grave! It did not occur to me until I was writing this, but I wonder if the Odeon Hamlet Riot hastened Frankie’s departure and his erasure from school history.

In later years we studied Hamlet with the aid of an educational TV programme, sitting in the basement of the death trap known as School House. Most of the school buildings were prefabs left over from the war, but School House was built in 1889. And was very rickety. When the School was inspected in 1950, the school buildings were described as the worst in the Southwest of England. The Hamlet we watched on TV starred the diminutive Barry Foster whose golden locks adorned the Van der Valk series. He was also the villain in Hitchcock’s Frenzy. I liked him in those days but went off him when the little fellow pushed in front of me in the queue at the NFT cafeteria. As he was buying a samosa for Madhur Jaffrey, I refrained from punching him. Seriously though, I saw him and Tony Doyle give impressive performances in Tom Murphy’s play, The Gigli Concert at the Almeida.

The most memorable Hamlet I have seen was the 24-year-old David Warner at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1965. I saw Kenneth Branagh play Hamlet at the Phoenix Theatre in 1998. I was in the front stalls and saw up close a lot of sweat and spittle. It was not bad but I tend to agree with what Milton Shulman wrote: “On the positive side Branagh has the vitality of Olivier, the passion of Gielgud, the assurance of Guinness, to mention but three famous actors who have essayed the role. On the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness." I have never really got Branagh.

Two of my subscribers on Substack may have some memories of the Odeon Riot. One was a pupil at Denmark Road at the time, the other at Tommy’s. Any memories to add?