Tag Archives: Peter Grant

November 1, 2014 · 12:16 pm

Peter Grant – His Music Brought To Life

Recently, my good friends Jack & Mary were down from Wicklow for their annual mini-break here in Kerry, and as we sat in front of the 1950s Rayburn, drinking pot after pot of tea (loose, PG Tips, naturally!), and eating slice after slice of Harrington’s absolutely delicious traditional Irish Halloween Barm Brack (with lashings of Kerry Gold butter and perhaps a spoon or two of marmalade), we chatted about this and that, and it wasn’t long before my recent preoccupation with Peter Grant came to the fore. Mary was fascinated with Peter’s story, and I showed her the precious little scrap of manuscript paper, upon which he had written for my mother, who he called “Yolanda” (her middle name) a “Sketch – An Air (to be varied)” . A note at the end reads: “Yolanda, this is the sketch, it’s far more like one than a finished work on clean manuscript paper. The little tune is almost like a folk tune. It’s very crude at the moment but in the completed work it should be better. As you know it is for orchestra. The tune calls for the oboe and the rest of it for low sustained strings. It will commemorate a memorable evening with Mozart and other things. Peter” . It must have been written when they were “dating” (for want of a more suitable word), when she first moved to London to pursue a career as a ballet dancer, and before they got married, in 1937.

I was explaining to Mary my life-long fascination with Peter Grant, telling her how, when I was about 12, my sister Claire and I went (very shamefully!) rooting through my mother’s old trunks; full of her old diaries, school work, photos and all sorts: all jumbled up, but having somehow survived countless house-moves. We found, what we first thought were our mother’s school books, as she had always told us her maiden name was Grant. But we realised the dates were wrong and they had to have belonged to our oldest half-sibling, also called Rosemary (but more often known by her nickname “Reddy); who very sadly died a few years ago.

We had already figured out that she had been married before, as two other half-siblings were called Pawle, but it was quite a revelation to learn that their was an earlier husband!

We found, during this outrageous prying into mother’s private things, the manuscript, and jumped to the conclusion that Reddy’s father must have been called Peter Grant.

In the last few years I have been going through box after box of these old papers, photos and documents; brought over to me several at a time by my sister Susan. I have been carefully sorting them and scanning them, so that we can all have a copy of everything.

Simultaneously, I have been doing a lot of research on Ancestry.co.uk and other such websites and gradually, but by bit, I have turned an imagined figure, Peter Grant, into a real human being, with a story: a rather sad one in many ways.

In one of Susan’s boxes, we found photos of Peter (which were later confirmed as him by a man and fellow Folk Music collector, Reg Hall, who contacted me via my blog and since met me in London and told me all he knew of Peter and Peter’s character)

Another contained a photo of mother as a very young bride.

I had failed to find a record of their marriage on Ancestry, but after studying the photo it dawned on me that they might have married in Scotland, so I joined Scotlandspeople.gov.uk and bingo!

So we were right! Our mother’s first husband was indeed called Peter Grant!

I have written extensively about him on earlier blogs, if you wish to learn more about him, but the purpose of THIS blog post is to tell you the most exciting news:

Mary took a copy of the manuscript to her friend Harry who put it onto his Apple Desktop and using his Sibelius software, rewrote it, in its exact form, for oboe and strings (violin, viola, ‘cello and double bass)!

He also printed out the brand new, professional-looking “clean manuscript” version!

Sketch – to be varied

Peter Grant - An Air (1)b

Mary and Harry, as my niece Danu put it, “are my new heroes”

I’m afraid WordPress won’t allow me to share it here as either an M4A, or the converted file, MWA so, here is a long version, because his air does require listening to a few times to fully appreciate it:

And also there are extra photographs, pertinent to Peter’s life story, in order of events, which will help you to fully absorb the spirit of this long-forgotten man, who was once so special to my mother, and because of this has always had a place in my heart.

I am writing my mother’s biography, in the form of a novel, so that I may have the creative freedom to fill in the gaps, where it is impossible to ever find out what actually occurred. I am shamelessly borrowing this style from my gorgeous Trinidadian cousin, Lawrence Scott; my inspiration to (try) and become a writer!

Peter Grant will be given a large chunk of my book!

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Tagged as Apple, Harrington's Bakery, Lawrence Scott, Music, Peter Grant, PG Tips, Rayburn, Reg Hall, Sibelius

October 19, 2014 · 9:05 pm

Peter Grant Remembered

Peter William Grant was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, on 10th May 1916. His father was a travelling clothier or draper from Inchture, near Dundee in Forfarshire called William George Grant (1878–1951) and his mother was Harriet Jones from Doncaster (1877-1945).

His father’s Army records from the First World War, give his address as 30 Beechfield Road, Doncaster, a street lined on either side with terraced houses, opening out onto countryside at the far end. They had moved to 155 Beckett Road,Wheatley, Doncaster by the time he attended College in London. Beckett Street (as it is now called) appears to be a pleasant, leafy suburb, consisting of red-brick terraced houses with small private gardens.

It is likely that he may have known Olive Zorian, who like him, was born in Doncaster in 1916. Although once a very well known violin soloist, her ‘fame’ has been somewhat overshadowed by that of her more famous husband, John Amis, and unfortunately almost all internet searches that mention Olive are as an aside, in a piece actually about him. There are a few references to her in The History of the Royal Manchester College of Music, 1893-1972, By Michael Kennedy, and I believe Polam Hall (boarding school) in Darlington, where she attended school, published her obituary in 1965 – or the following year – in their O.S. Journal. After attending the Royal College of Music, Manchester, Olive Zorian went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Olive was certainly a good friend of Rosemary Clegg’s (who also went to Polam).

Peter Grant attended the Royal College of Music in London. From September 1935, he studied Piano, under the tutelage of John St. Oswald Dykes and Arthur Alexander, and in 1936, continued his studies at RCM, where, under the tutelage of R.A. Ebdon he studied Music Theory and under Gordon Jacob: Music Composition.

It would appear that he and his first love, “Yolanda” (Rosemary Yolanda Clegg) – very likely introduced by mutual friend Olive Zorian – may have eloped to Scotland, where, at 23 Melville Street, in Edinburgh’s Haymarket District they could marry without parental consent, on 18th September 1937. The witnesses whose names appear on the marriage register are one William Sneddon and one Georgina Neal Watt or MacDonald of 7a Northumberland Street, Edinburgh. Interestingly, Peter gives this same address as his own current one (though giving his usual address as 11 Stanley Mansions, Park Walk, Chelsea; a block away from that of his young wife; a Ballet Dancer, living at 86 Beaufort Street, Chelsea. It seems likely that Peter knew the witnesses; in order for him to have been staying with them. Perhaps they were relations: his grandfather, Peter Grant, came from Edinburgh, and he may well have had cousins, aunts or uncles, living there at that time.

She knew him whilst either still at school, or very shortly afterwards and had a childish infatuation for him; drawn to his sweet disposition, above average intellect and enormous musical talent no doubt. She wrote in the back of one of her school exercise books, under the heading “Confessions” – a list of things she liked: Favourite Names: Peter, Michael, Rosemary, Virginia, Ann, Favourite Authors: Peter Grant, Favourite Composers: Beethoven, Bach, Sibelius, Delius, Mozart, Boradin, Stravinsky, Glazunov, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakow, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikowski, Manuel de Falla, Ravell, etc etc!!! Favourite Piece of Music: Pantomime, (El Amor Brujo, de Falla), Favourite Book: Winnie the Pooh, Favourite dance: Rumba, Favourite Rhythms: Bolero, Tango, Favourite Film Stars …and here a long list follows! (She also wrote a list of things she didn’t like, but that is for another time!)

During their courtship he would have taken his young lady out to the cinema, to see the latest movies, to dinner – perhaps to her favourite restaurant: “España” on Waldour Street; “In the heart of London’s Theatreland”, to the theatre to see a play, or to the ballet – perhaps he even saw her dance – and to listen to music.
What inspiration, what energy and drive, what feeling of invincibility must he have felt in the first throes of love? So inspired was he by his sweet, adoring, beautiful, clever, talented, musical girl, that he wrote and devoted a piece of music especially for her …….“Yolanda, this is the sketch, it’s far more like one than a finished work on clean manuscript paper. The little tune is almost like a folk tune. It’s very crude at the moment but in the completed work it should be better. As you know it is for orchestra. The tune calls for the oboe and the rest of it for low sustained strings. It will commemorate a memorable evening with Mozart and other things. Peter”

He went on to further study at the Royal Academy of Music; although it may not have been as a full-time student. The Royal Academy has as yet been unable to find records pertaining to him, but they have stressed this does not mean he didn’t attend there. We do know however, that he was training to be a Concert Pianist, so the RAM seems the most likely of the ‘Conservatoires’.

After they were married, the couple moved to 39, Lower Richmond Road in Putney. From their front doorstep they could see the Thames, with busy boats passing by, and on the bank sits the Duke’s Head public house, directly opposite them. There was a back garden where they planted flowers and played with their Staffordshire bull terrier and a tiny black kitten.

He can be found in 1938, on the Electoral Register, at this address, and in 1939 he is listed in the London Telephone directory: Putney 5332.

On 27th June 1940, he was called up; drafted into the Territorial Army for the “duration of the Emergency” under the provisions of the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939. His unit was posted to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

On 5th June 1941, Peter and his wife had their first baby; Rosemary, born at the Brooklyn Nursing Home, 321 Upper Richmond Road, Putney, under the care of one Margaret E. Read. Peter registered his daughter’s birth, and gives his profession as ‘Author’, (as well as ‘Rifleman’ with the KRR, Serial number 6580801).

On 27th September that same year, he was sent with his battalion (2nd) to the North African/Middle Eastern campaign (M.E.F.)

The summary sheet pinned to the start of his records, shows him “Home” (in the UK where he was undergoing training – which he passed with flying colours his character is described as Very Good – Qualified etc”) from 27th June 1940 to 26th September 1941 (total 1 years 92 days), “M.E.F.” from 27th September 1941 to 23rd September 1942 (362 days) and a further period of 123 days is given from 24th September to 24th January 1943 (the date of his final discharge from the Army), giving a total service record of 2 years and 212 days.

His records state that he was ‘Wounded in Action’ on 30th May 1942. “GSW Spine” (Gun Shot Wound to the Spine)

He embarked on the Hospital Ship on 13th July 1942.

He was declared “Permanently unfit for any kind of Military Service” and Discharged on 24th January 1943.

Further records of Peter disappear for a time here, until he is mentioned in his mother’s Probate records, granted in September 1945, and he and his father inherit, jointly, her estate of £2099 2s 2d. Her address is given as The Nook, 6 St. Mary’s Road, Dunsville, near Doncaster, and her husband is named as “Draper” and her son “Author”. She died at Doncaster’s Royal Infirmary, on 20th April, 1945.

Evidence that his wife was still living at the marital home can be found from her personal letters, from where she was writing off for copies of photographs (for her portfolio), obtaining references from friends, attending auditions and seemingly doing all she could to find work (on the stage).

And we have no reason to think that Peter was not also living at this address at this time.

However, a troubled “Mollie” (her nickname that all her friends called her by) sought help from her friend, Olive:

His wife’s adopted father, Joe Henry Clegg – with whom she enjoyed a loving father/daughter relationship (as can be evidenced by the warmth by which he addresses her in his letters) – gives her address as 39 Lower Richmond Road, Putney, W15 on 17th November 1944, when he signs his Will. (Although we cannot by any means take this as proof of her residency at that date, it seems a natural assumption to make that a man might know where his beloved daughter lives!)

In 1948 Peter married again on 21st December, in Marylebone, one Evelyn Honor Lucille Gilliat-Smith. The registry entry gives his address as Barn Cottage, West Hoathly, West sussex (where we may suppose he and his father probably moved to sometime after his mother’s death in 1945). Evelyn had been a Special Operations Executive (Intelligence) during the war. She was born overseas, on 12th December 1912. Her address at the time of the marriage is given as 17 Highbourne House, Marylebone High Street, W1.

Records of Peter can again be found in the Telephone Directory from 1949 through to 1968, where he can be seen living at Barn Cottage, West Hoathly, West Sussex. (Telephone Sharpthorne 43)

Peter attended the internationally renowned Stoke Mandeville Hospital; pioneers in spinal cord injuries; for many years as an outpatient. Although he was in permanent, often agonising pain, he did manage to get around, albeit in an ungainly, twisted fashion, with the aid of a stick. His crippling disability prevented him from sleeping on a bed (he slept sitting in an armchair in his study, surrounded by his vast collection of books, or from playing the piano, as he could no longer sit at the instrument either comfortably or in the correct and required position.

Though he could no longer play himself, Peter devoted much of his time to the preservation and recording of ‘authentic’ “Folk” (Traditional) music, with such esteemed people as Mervyn Plunkett and Reg Hall, capturing for posterity such great players as Scan Tester. Some recordings were made at the local public house, The Cat Inn whilst others at Peter’s own home, Barn Cottage.

Peter Grant (extreme right-hand side of photo) West Hoathly

He collaborated, again along with Reg Hall and Mervyn Plunkett; on a publication called “Ethnic” (copies of this are held by the Oxford Reference Library). Their website offers the following brief description of this magazine: “A short-lived home-made periodical, subtitled ‘A Quarterly Survey of English Folk Music, Dance and Drama’ compiled and published by Mervyn Plunkett, Reg Hall and Peter Grant. The first issue was dated January 1959 and the fourth and last came in autumn the same year. In an aggressive style, Ethnic championed the collection and study of authentic traditional style and repertoire in contradistinction to what its editors saw as a burgeoning revival movement based on false principles, little knowledge and cosy middle-class fashion. The magazine included several important articles based on first-hand experience (such as one on May Day at Padstow in issue number three, and several on particular singers and musicians) and its criticisms are also useful for evidence of a critical time in the post-war development of folklore studies and the folk-song and dance revival”

Peter pursued a career in writing, or journalism. There are six surviving pieces written by him, mainly film reviews, spanning the period between November 1947 and March 1951 which appeared in the National Federation of Women’s Institute’s quarterly publication “Home & Country” (Home Counties Edition).

These articles are tremendously important to a biographer, as they give a real voice; an insight into the person behind them that we would not otherwise have had from the previously scant records and handful of photographs which remain.

Peter died of a heart attack on 23rd April, 1980 at Cuckfield Hospital in Sussex.

There is a thriving local community in Hoathly as can be seen from this extract taken from a correspondence a few years ago: “I am the Archivist for the local History Archive and also a Jazz collector. The latter is important because when Peter’s second wife Evelyn moved out of Barn Cottage into a residential home, she gave me a stack of reel-to-reel recordings of jazz records which Peter had made in the 1950s. One of these contains Peter and others discussing jazz with some of the other local folk and jazz enthusiasts. I do also have some information about folk recordings made locally.”

It is a tragedy that Peter was denied, through circumstances about which we know nothing, the opportunity to have a relationship; or indeed any contact at all; with his daughter, Rosemary.

It would seem – no doubt in an ill-conceived notion that it was “best for the child”; that he may have been asked; and duly agreed; to keep out of her life. It would not be difficult to persuade a man in his position that a fitter, stronger, younger, more able-bodied man could better provide for the child.

But it remains a great pity that his identity was kept from her and that by extension he never met, nor we may suppose knew of, the existence of his two grandchildren Louise and Scott.

Rest in Peace Peter Grant. You are not forgotten.

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Tagged as Doncaster, Evelyn Honor Lucille Gilliat-Smith, Georgina Neal, Georgina Watt. Georgina MacDonald, Olive Zorian, Peter Grant, Polam Hall, RAM, RCM, Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, William Sneddon

October 18, 2014 · 12:46 pm

Theatre Street – by Peter Grant

Theatre Street

HOLLYWOOD has always excelled in those acid films that eat away at least something of the glamour of institutions which at other times they have asked us to admire – American politics, Big Business, even Hollywood itself. This last was recently taken apart in the Gloria Swanson film, Sunset Boulevard; and now, with All About Eve (script and direction: Joseph Mankiewicz), a similar dismantling takes place among the emotions, ambitions and vanities of that suffocating little alley – Theatre Street. And this film is not, as one might have thought, about a wide-eyed young actress desperately struggling to the top through the hazards of recurring amorous crises and leering producers; but about a brilliant though ageing star of the theatre, Margo Channing, who realizing for the first time what life will be like after the glory has departed, is beginning to lose her self-confidence. Into her life comes Eve, a lovely stage-struck young girl, with, so it seems, a tragic past; and Margo, to help her, employs her as a secretary. But Eve becomes rather more a reflection than a secretary … and to tell you more might spoil the film.
Admittedly it is hard to believe this story, which I must keep from you, but it’s nevertheless interesting and gripping; and the clever dialogue reflects plenty about life in the cut-throat circles of this vain, tight little theatre world. We meet Addison De Witt, an unpleasant but fascinating dramatic critic, clever enough even to scotch the plans of the villain of the piece – an unscrupulous actress whom Margo advises to put her Sarah Siddons awards where her heart should be. George Sanders – always happiest at his most offensive – plays this offensive fellow, who has neither award nor heart, to the life. And there’s Margo herself, witty, jagged, bitter, but as least generous and grown-up. This part is especially convincing because Bette Davis – a compelling and dazzling actress herself – plays it perfectly. Anne Baxter is just right for Eve, and I liked Gary Merrill as Bill, the theatrical producer. The film is considerably more talkie than movie but because the talkie is so good I’ll overlook the lack of movie.

That the part of Eve is as unbelievable as the story detracted little from my enjoyment of All About Eve; though without the character of Margo it would have been altogether too much of an orgy of malice. It is Margo – and Bette Davis, of course – who gives it proportion. And if it doesn’t give us anything like the last word on Theatre Street we certainly have a striking view of the vanity, ambition run to seed, brilliance and even humanity that one often finds in these highly competitive circles. You must leave your children at home and see the film from the beginning, and if anyone tries to tell you the story beforehand, don’t listen.

We know well enough by now that the human characters in Disney’s fairy-story cartoons don’t come to life in the brilliant way of the animals; but I think we should make allowances for them, as an experiment. In his new Cinderella, though the Prince is lifeless, Cinderella herself seems to be an advance on Snow White; though no-one would pretend that the animals haven’t the best of it, especially Cinderella’s friends, the mice, who call her most engagingly, “Cinderelly”. There’s less music than usual in this cartoon; but as it would, undoubtedly have sprung from modern dance music, which doesn’t match Disney’s work, I wasn’t sorry. The prettiest scene, when the colour’s at its best, is Cinderella’s drive in her pumpkin coach to the Ball. The film is obviously ideal for all children and most grown-ups.

There is a superficial resemblance between Crisis (Director: Richard Brooks) and the recent State Secret, for both films show the predicament of a doctor forced to operate on a dictator. But while State Secret was a comedy-thriller, Crisis is serious. The plum of the film is the portrait, by Jose Ferrer, of the dictator – excitable, handsome, cynical, greedy for power. And the direction is good, particularly in the crowd scenes, and in atmosphere. For example, the closeness to death of the dictator – from his political enemies without, from his brain tumour within – was extraordinarily well brought out. The film dwells too long on operating theatre procedure, but one must admit that the point – the dictator’s very natural fear of the knife getting the better of his conception of himself as a superman – is equally well made.
Crisis lasts long enough for us to witness the threatened revolution, and leaves us with the easy message that this will establish a tyranny just as bad as the other. Nevertheless, the power of the central situation is undeniable, and Crisis is well worth seeing. But don’t go if you only want pleasant entertainment.
PETER GRANT

This article was first published in March 1951 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 33, Number 3, and priced threepence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 77.

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Tagged as All About Eve, Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, Cinderlla, Crisis, Disney, Joseph Mankiewicz, Peter Grant, Richard Brooks

October 18, 2014 · 12:39 pm

A Musical Revolution – by Peter Grant

A MUSICAL REVOLUTION

The power of music to stimulate emotion, to excite, and to relate together people, emotions and memories, has been used in cinema since the first battered piano, tinkling in a stuffy hall, put some life into the first jerky love-scene, or imitated galloping horses with hurry music. But even after the talkies came, commercial film producers went on using the same old mood music of the silent days – a wash of emotional tunes from operas, light music and familiar classics, sometimes supporting the film, more often flooding uselessly among the dialogue. For audiences, such music became a bad habit, without which they might have felt lonely. They hardly realized that because it was not original it often bore associations at odds with the film. We have seen murder accompanied by Wagner’s Good Friday music from Parsifal. But nothing so comically unsuitable could happen now; for within the last dozen years a new kind of music has appeared, composed expressly for films as a servant of the story.
The new film composers discovered (the greatest non-commercial directors had known the facts ten years earlier) that film music must suit the film – that Beethoven at the wrong moment is bad, a shoddy tune at the right moment good. Also they found that the picture always comes first, and then the dialogue, which music should never muffle: the old-time music arrangers were only happy when their musical sauce smothered every foot of film! And lastly they found that because music is one unreal element within a mainly realistic art, to use it clumsily is intolerable. There is a good example of the clumsy use of music in Scott of the Antarctic. Here its sudden intrusion, to underline the disappointment of Scott and his friends on seeing Amundsen’s victorious flag, is so theatrical that we, instead of being stunned by the drama, become aware of the orchestra, of men with violins and ‘cellos; and the sense of reality- the hall-mark of everyday cinema- goes.
The emotional power of music, properly used, can heighten an already emotional scene and give wings to feelings which if spoken might be comic or boring. It can also create a contrasting mood to a scene. Thus in Western Approaches, Clifton Parker’s sombre opening music is truer of the general mood of the film than the unjustified cheerfulness of the characters. But too often directors, even to-day, instead of creating atmosphere with music straight off, distract us with some pointless fanfare or march.
The power of music to relate emotions and people is crudely turned to account in the “theme song” and the “signature tune”, an early example of the last being the sprightly “cuckoo” march which always announces the arrival of Laurel and Hardy. Far less simple is the use of distinctive musical figures – wisps of tunes or progressions of chords – which being brief, seldom get out of hand. Such figures, if we really listen to them, often reveal aspects of character we might otherwise miss. An example of a “theme song” which really tells us something is to be found in the French film Un Carnet de Bal (The Dance Programme), in which a romantic waltz is related to a woman’s longing to recapture her youth; and gradually, with her disillusion, the waltz changes, becoming in the most frightful scene, frightful itself. When music and drama are related like this the film gains strength and becomes a unity; but themes are often wasted, a recent misuse being Bax’s Oliver theme from Oliver Twist, which neither increases dramatic tension nor underlines Oliver’s emotions.
Rhythm, the physically exciting aspect of music, is used nowadays with far more discretion and care than formerly. Rhythmic music can imitate the rhythm of the actual photographic shots; indeed, sometimes the music is composed first and the separate shots edited to match it. In cartoons this is fairly common, but it does sometimes happen in ordinary feature films, usually as a cynical comment: we all know how a pompous fool can be made to look silly if some cheeky bassoon imitates the rhythm of his walk. More often, however, we find the music taking over the rhythms of natural sounds – a train or dynamo. Clifton Parker in Western Approaches suggests in this way the mystery of New York harbour at dawn: the orchestral instruments and the hooters and sirens of the ships mingle so closely that you can hardly tell one from the other.
The new film music is more successful than the old business it is usually appropriate, discreet and brief. More has been done with it that I have been able to mention, and much more can be done. However, it is remarkable that within a dozen or so years, from being a prominent member of the cinema awkward squad it has become a reasonably smart recruit
PETER GRANT

OUTSIDE AND INSIDE

Ealing studios’ third comedy of recent weeks, Whisky Galore, is about a wartime whisky drought in a Hebridean island, and the struggle between authority and the islanders when a ship carrying 50,000 cases of the stuff is conveniently wrecked off the shore. And on the Sabbath too – which gives the authorities an unfair start; for the islanders, to a man, respect the Sabbath. The photography is sometimes lovely, the acting fair, the humour boisterous. The main joke, however, is too long, the cutting (the progression from shot to shot) often weak, and the lighting often bad, and the music rowdy. But the film is entertaining and fresh. Now Barabbas is about men in prison. Some of the characters are, perhaps, types, and the flashbacks showing us how they came to be in jail, unavoidably clumsy. But the camera really does create a closed-in atmosphere. Richard Burton, as a political prisoner, and the negro*, Glyn Larson, are both excellent. The best thing about Whisky Galore is that it takes us outside the studio, and about Barabbas, that though it takes place inside a studio, its background, the prison, is convincing. Moreover, it isn’t a depressing film; so if it comes your way, try it.
P.G.

This article was first published in September 1949 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 31, Number 9, and priced threepence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 193 & 197

*I am aware that the word “negro” is considered offensive to some, for which I apologise. It appears here in an historical context – pre 1966 – It is present in the original text, which I have typed out faithfully, from 1949.

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Tagged as Clifton Parker, Ealing Studios, Glyn Larson, Now Barabbas, Peter Grant, Richard Burton, The Dance Programme, Un Carnet de Bal, Western Approaches, Whisky Galore

October 18, 2014 · 12:29 pm

Whitsuntide Cakes and Ale – by Peter Grant

Whitsuntide Cakes and Ale

In Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House, Mr. Blandings (Cary Grant), a business man who buys a country place instead of making do with his New York home, is easy prey for the twisters of the countryside. They turn to their own account his romantic feelings about what he unblushingly calls his dream house; and Mrs. Blandings (Myrna Loy) – full of charm, sympathy and costly ideas – unwittingly helps them. Melvyn Douglas as Bill, their lawyer friend, foretells disaster everywhere, though unluckily, his advice is either given too late or never taken; and for every dollar Blandings intends to spend, ten slip down the drain. His story is futile, but often very funny.
It begins with Melvyn Douglas describing in the style of a news reporter the marvels of city life, the ease of travel there, and New York’s startling varieties of weather – which is all good satire. However, in showing us the Blandings home life in New York, the director (H.C. Potter) becomes heavy-handed and relies on outworn and tiresome slapstick; but once the Blandings fall among the wolves of the countryside, all is well – for us. First, a real estate man, accurately sizing them up, sells them a pup, a ramshackle building of which each of Mr. Blandings’ many surveyors – hired after the deal – says immediately and without further comment: “Tear it down.” Even the workmen see them as gullible cranks. One comic old man drills about two hundred feet down for water, at several dollars a foot; while only a few yards off, another blasts away some rock and floods the whole site. These workmen are never surprised; but the Blandings are shocked, and continue being shocked unto the very end.
Because it is sometimes heavy and slow, and above all has a cosy finish, Mr. Blandings misses being that rare product – a genuine film satire, with a bulldog bite. Satire is a mental purge, whose nature is too offensive for the men who finance films. The wish for big profits prevents their offending anyone. The script-writer of Mr. Blandings, however, and behind him the author of the original novel, have few fears of this kind and tread on a large number of American toes, laying waste most of the popular ideas about country dream houses. Sad that the end hasn’t the courage of the beginning.

Robert Montgomery in June Bride is a reporter on a glossy magazine, edited by Bette Davis, whom years before he had jilted. The story, into which is interwoven their bickering love affair, concerns a trip by the entire magazine staff to report an Indiana wedding. But “report” is perhaps the wrong word; for the Brinker family, whose daughter’s wedding it is, have to fit as nearly as possible the picture the readers of Miss Davis’s magazine have of them; so their home is rebuilt, their knick-knacks hidden, and perhaps a stone or two of weight teased from the waist-line of Mrs. Binker. And then the bride-to-be elopes with a former flame! Even “Home Life” – they really call it that – seems floored; but everything ends well. A good deal of somewhat mean joking arises from the impact of cynical New Yorkers on the Brinkers, and there is unhappily some sickly sentiment. But at its best the film is slick and funny.

In The Window, Tommy, an ordinary small boy, invents such vivid and untruthful stories that when, by chance, on a stifling summer night, he witnesses a murder, no one believes his account of it. His mother even tries to make him apologize to the murderers, a Mr. And Mrs. Kellerson. However, when Tommy has to spend the night alone in the tenement, the Kellersons decide to rid themselves of him; but after an exciting chase across roofs and through a disused rotting warehouse, Tommy outwits them and proves that for once he really has been telling the truth.
Natural is the word for all these characters, especially for Tommy (Bobby Driscoll). His parents (Barbara Hale and Arthur Kennedy) are really like ordinary parents; and the Kellersons are sinister without exaggeration. Especially good is Mr. Kellerson’s mixture of cruelty and interest when, on the night Tommy is alone, he traps him into opening his bedroom door. Ted Tetzlaff’s direction (most of it on the spot, on location as film people day) is sensitive, and there are unusual shots: one of Tommy and a policeman peering at one another across a huge desk; another of the flapping clothes which entice Tommy up to the Kellerson’s balcony to catch the night breeze, and incidentally to see the murder; and lastly to the murder itself, which seen through a slit in a blind becomes a mere flurry of shadows and legs. This excellent little work is Tetzlaff’s second film. I look forward to his third.

Dame Edith Evans

It seems to me that much of Emlyn Williams’ The Last Days of Dolwyn has the real voice of Wales. And this despite an unreal plot, and some studio scenery which looks absurd against genuine shots of the Welsh countryside. However, what really matters here is the impact on a small community of a plan to turn their valley into a reservoir and move them to a suburb, in Liverpool! Community – that’s the subject – and for the most part the villagers ring wholly true. Dame Edith Evans is splendid as the elderly slow-tongued widow, Merri, numbed by the idea of leaving her valley. Emlyn Williams as Rob, the boy who returns to get his own back on the village which scorned him as a child, is excellent – until melodrama spoils the part. Do see this film. The best of it is as fresh as spring water.
PETER GRANT

This article was first published in June 1949 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 31, Number 6, and priced threepence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 120.

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October 18, 2014 · 12:15 pm

The Corporate Art – by Peter Grant

THE CORPORATE ART

In The Passionate Friends, Mary loves Steven, a biologist; but feeling that possessive romantic love will hinder her development she marries banker Howard Justin, who has similar ideas. The action of the film springs from the two opposing needs of Mary’s nature; and in veering between them she almost wrecks marriage and life. The original Wells novel, which probed ideas about “free love”, has shrunk in the censorship into this somewhat trite story. The hair-trigger emotions of these elegant characters argue a leisure which can hardly be imagined today, and to me at least make the film unreal, like some anaemic rose whose petals would scatter at the first breath of fresh air. For this one cannot blame the script writer (Eric Amber), whose work seems excellent; though after congratulating the producer (Ronald Neame) for assembling so brilliant a group, one must censure him, I think, for not finding them a worthy story. But should one criticize something for not being something else?
Yes, I think so, especially when as now the interpretative artists far outclass the work interpreted; since from this dilemma comes a clash between style and content. The director here (David Lean) resembles a pianist denied the important music of the day, and that so great a director should idle in a backwater off the main tide of great cinema is infuriating. Forty years of cinema have taught us that it is the supreme art of the actual, at its best when interpreting the world we live in. Hence I think it wasteful if one of our best cinema teams has to film hothouse stories like this. Yet how brilliantly they have done it! So far as I could see there is only one real flaw – in the early flashbacks. These obviously exist to shape the film and keep the preliminary dramatic situation from straggling; but once at least it was difficult to elucidate the chronology.

The most memorable scene for me was that in which the banker discovers without arousing suspicion, an intrigue between his wife and Steven; and looking astonishingly like Somerset Maugham he plays with them, cat-like, but with appropriate, self-possessed and icy disapproval. The scene is first-rate example of film drama without music. At the beginning Mary had innocently started the gramophone, some dance music wholly opposed to the mood into which the scene was drifting, and more important, to the expectant mood of the audience. But once she realizes the trap, even though the quarrel has begun, Mary walks deliberately to the gramophone and switches it off; and the climax of the quarrel, exploding in the husband’s unexpectedly passionate outburst, makes the full impact without rhetorical stimulus. In fact it dissatisfies us with the obvious musical rhetoric underlining Steven’s distracted and hurried departure. The scene itself, though, is perfect.
The main criticism apart, The Passionate Friends will delight any admirer of exciting film making; and no one should miss it because of the commonplace story. To begin with, though, every shot is to Lean what any individual style is to its author, one is always aware of true cinema, the corporate art; of, for example, Geoffrey Foot’s smooth editing and Guy Green’s expressive lighting and photography. John Bryan’s sets, though limited in scope, are good; and Richard Addinsell produces the necessary romantic evocative score for emotional seasoning, which in general is sensibly applied. But the really discriminate use of music has never been characteristic of Lean’s group. Claude Rains as the banker is superb, and Ann Todd and Trevor Howard could hardly be bettered. To see this movie with dialogue is to wash from your mouth the taste of all the talkies with movement you have ever seen. But David Lean is still awaiting his Beethoven.

Cry of the City (director, Robert Siodmak) is a fast, exciting and presumably authentic near-documentary, in the category of The Naked City and The Kiss of Death, which tells of the escape from jail and the final bringing to justice of a loveless cop-killing crook (Richard Conte). The scene of the man hunt, grey back streets, has desolate nostalgic yet impressive horror – which the characters share. The minor ones are especially good, and in one sense all the characters are minor. Even the principal cop (Victor Mature) isn’t a star. I can still see Marty, the outcast killer, stabbing to death a crooked lawyer, and a sequence concerning a blowsy masseuse with bulging calves, a prodigious appetite and the instincts of a shark. Yet there’s a Dickensian vitality about her, as there is about much of the film, despite its melodrama and clichés. Its roots are certainly where they should be, in humanity, and you couldn’t blow this story away with a breath of fresh air.
PETER GRANT

This article was first published in March 1949 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 31, Number 3, and priced threepence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 49.

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October 18, 2014 · 12:02 pm

The Film Story – by Peter Grant

THE FILM STORY

THOUGH Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are among our best directors, they never make completely fascinating films. For example, both Colonel Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death carried unsound stories – the first at odds with the characters, the second with an otherwise exciting fantasy. Often, of course, we overlook the ready-made stories of ordinary quota films; but that good plots are hard to find shouldn’t excuse two first-rate directors falling back on synthetic substitutes – one of the surest roads to filmic ruin. In their new work The Red Shoes Powell and Pressburger have offended especially badly in this way, and despite much splendid direction we feel delighted and annoyed by turns.

In this film Vicky Page becomes the prima ballerina of the famous Lermontov Company, making her name in a ballet based on a diluted version of Hans Anderson’s story The Red Shoes, wherein, as punishment for going to church in some red shoes, a little girl is bewitched to dance until an executioner cuts off her feet. And even then the shoes, with the feet still inside them, continue dancing: the punishment, one gathers, for vanity before God. For Vicky, however, the red shoes symbolise the life dedicated to ballet, the Lermontov Ballet, whose fanatical impresario intends to make her the greatest dancer alive. But when she rashly marries Julian Craster, the composer of the company, the ruthless Lermontov forces her to choose between husband and art; and here intrude the sinister implications of the fairy story, for incredibly, and I think absurdly, the red shoes dance Vicky to her end.
Within separate categories the directors undoubtedly succeed, often brilliantly, but in trying to combine a sentimental magazine story with near-documentary scenes (the ballet from back-stage), and a photographed stage ballet with one not far removed from a Disney Silly Symphony, they have made a hybrid. But even a hybrid by Powell and Pressburger isn’t dull. They begin, in fact, brilliantly – with eager balletomanes storming the gallery seats. This is a perfect direction – in its way, an opening as good as those of Lean’s two Dickensian films. But they close in bathos with The Red Shoes ballet performed without Vicky – doubtless an echo of that performance, after Pavlova’s death, of The Swan, with the curtain raised on an empty stage. However, to introduce the performance, Anton Walbrook as Lermontov – though good in the earlier scenes – gruesomely overacts a speech, which even if in character should have been suppressed. How anyone who could film this Pagliacci rubbish could also film the Parisian bill-poster demonstrating ballet steps to his mate is something to wonder at! The ballet I thought enchanting, and if it lacked the intimate third dimension of stage performances, it gained all the drama* that close-ups reveal, and also a vastly extended world to dance media*. As the diabolic shoe-maker, Leonide Massine (Ljubov) steals the entire picture; Moira Shearer (Vicky), who dances splendidly, acts in a charming unselfconscious way; and Robert Helpmann (Boleslawky) is excellent as her partner. Marius Goring makes what he can of the pathetic composer, for whom Brian Easendale has written effective music. Nevertheless, the work is disappointing, and even the directors never seem to have been certain just what kind of a film they were shooting; but because of Massaine, the sure-footed direction and the ballet, it is worth seeing.

To make The Naked City authentic the late Mark Hellinger fused it to a partly documentary technique, shot it on location (New York), and if he couldn’t get actual detectives and criminals, at least used actors who looked the parts. Barry Fitzgerald as a Homicide Bureau detective is the only star name, and he of course is excellent.
With no help from the usual clairvoyant detective the film tells a simple murder story, the Lieutenant Muldoon with his men make a routine investigation, tracing a few insignificant clues through the labyrinth of the City. The search is fascinating and convincing, and the documentary method provides the authentic background. Sometimes, however, it gives strange perspectives, the strangest being the domestic life of one of the detectives. This is quite irrelevant, and indeed embarrassing; but it does add depth to the work. The Naked City, in fact, succeeds where, at a much higher level of entertainment, The Red Shoes fails; and it does so because the director, Jules Dassin, knows his subject, gets to grips with it, is economical, and employs a good editor. Not that I am advocating a general return to documentary technique; but I should like to see someone follow the principle, in feature films, that stories grow from characters, and not vice versa. And if Powell and Pressburger ever dare to disregard the box office and do this, then they will make a film worth queueing for.
PETER GRANT

This article was first published in September 1948 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 30, Number 9, and priced threepence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 157.

*the words drama and media , in the third paragraph, have been added in an attempt to guess what Peter may have written so as to keep the piece flowing for the reader. The original magazines have suffered water damage and it has become impossible to determine what was written here. The missing words though, are relatively short.

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October 18, 2014 · 11:53 am

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847) by Peter Grant

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
(1809-1847)

As with Handel, a century earlier, the English expropriated Mendelssohn from Germany. It was perhaps inevitable; for surely no-one whom Prince Albert had played to, who had heard the Queen sing “with charming feeling and expression”, and who had discussed with her the future Edward VII, could possibly remain a foreigner? Goethe, who knew Mendelssohn as a boy and as a young man, is reported to have hailed him as a David to his Saul; his nearer contemporaries thought him at least the equal of Bach and Handel; yet by the turn of the century even his most ignorant critic was speaking of him as an overrated confectioner of drawing-room trifles, and his young lady patrons were swept away by their far from romantic daughters – Ibsen and Shaw abetting. Naturally the opponents of what was smugly conservative and sentimental in Victorian England could hardly admit to enjoying the very source of its shallow stream of music. So, like Tennyson, whose vast success and subsequent eclipse were similar to his, and who incidentally was born in the same year, Mendelssohn paid heavily for his drawing-room fame, his faҫile pen and his almost unclouded life. Now, of course, the position is different; and since we are neither romantics fighting conservative tradition nor oppressed children opposing our fathers, we can afford to enjoy Mendelssohn for what he is, without fighting him for what he never intended to be.
After such early adulation it was small wonder that Mendelssohn’s hostile critics took him for a mediocre prig, and remarkable that they were wrong. Every trap was laid for him. Even a present-day cinema “genius” could hardly have a more imposing and treacherous background. His father, a respectable Jewish banker, associated with most of the artists and intellectuals of his day. The grandfather, Moses, after beginning life at the starvation level, finished as a literary critic and philosopher, the colleague of Lessing, and the man responsible for the 18th century Jewish renaissance. One of his daughters married the brother of Schlegel, the great Shakespearean translator, and they both wrote romantic novels, advocated “free love”, and for a time at least acted on their principles. So behind him Felix had commerce, intellect, art, and even licence; and when his parents became Christians, assuming the name Bartholdy, he was brought up a Lutheran.
Taught first by his mother, an accomplished pianist and linguist, Felix then went to Zelter, the conductor of the Berlin Singakademie, and to Moscheles, the great pianist. A prodigy, he had written 13 symphonies for strings by his fifteenth year. This facility of composition never left him, but in some ways it was a doubtful gift; for often his music came too freely for him to discriminate about it, and had he not been at root a great composer he might easily have degenerated into a brilliant Kapellmeister – a fate that anyhow he did not always escape. At twenty he visited London, conducting his C minor symphony with a bâton, and this was still enough of a novelty to astound the Londoners. Mendelssohn also played Beethoven’s Emperor concerto, heard then for the first time in England. He had already begun his life-long championship of the almost totally neglected Bach, whose present day popularity rests entirely on that initiative. At eighteen Mendelssohn had got from Zelter a manuscript of the St. Matthew Passion, bought cheaply, it is said, from the effects of a dead cheese merchant; and though opposed by his teacher, who evidently lacked the foresight of this twenty-year old genius, early in 1829 he had the work performed, and as a result published; and throughout his life he spread the new gospel of Bach, playing the organ and keyboard works whenever he could.
The first book of Songs Without Words appeared in 1832, but was not immediately successful; though finally it was these pretty pieces that crowned Mendelssohn king of drawing rooms and annoyed him by obscuring his more serious works. In 1843 he founded the Conservatory at Leipzig, soon to become the Mecca of all nineteenth-century music students. Here he wrote most of the Elijah, significantly enough first conceived during a visit to England in 1837. Nine years later Birmingham heard the first performance, with the composer conducting; since then not even the depths of the Mendelssohn slump have dislodged this work from British choral societies.
Through only thirty-eight at his death, in a romantic age Mendelssohn avoided excess in both his art and his music. Later generations thought him too good to be true; and only within the last twenty years or so have we learned to mistrust this verdict. Yet even now we err on the side of conservatism, and many of Mendelssohn’s good and interesting works – the Reformation symphony, for example – are unaccountably neglected.
Adapting Shaw we might say that once there were two composers called Mendelssohn, one who wrote sentimental “salon” music, which excellently served its intended purpose, and another who created the Scotch and Italian symphonies, the Hebrides overture, and many fine separate movements in the choral works, string quartettes and concertos. That this second Mendelssohn was rarely able to resist the influence of the first makes discrimination hard; but unless we are to be foolish and dismiss as unworthy both the seventeen-year-old composer of the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture and the young man of the Italian symphony and the violin concerto, then discrimination there must be. And, of course, discrimination there is; for if we no longer idolize Mendelssohn, at least we have no need to hate him, and it is not by chance that now, a hundred years after his death, many of his finest works are still part of every orchestra’s standard repertory. Perhaps Queen Victoria knew best after all.
PETER GRANT

This article was first published in November 1947 for the Federation of the Women’s Institute magazine “Home & Country”, Home Counties Edition, Volume 29, Number 11, and priced twopence.
Peter’s piece appears on page 192.

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November 5, 2013 · 3:58 pm

Finding Peter Grant

Peter Grant was born in 1916 (possibly on the 10th of May 19161) in Doncaster, Yorkshire to William George Grant2 (Draper/Clothier) and Harriet Grant nee Jones3.

He was married at 23 Melville Street, The Haymarket, Edinburgh on 18th September 1937, aged 21, where he declares that his profession is Musician4. His bride was the 18 year old Ballet Dancer5, Rosemary Yolanda Clegg; the name given to her when she was adopted. Her birth name had been Rose Amy Wolf. They were both living in Chelsea at that time; he, at 11 Stanley Studios (or Mansions)6 Park Walk, and she at 86 Beaufort Street.

In 1941, on 19th June, Peter registered the birth of their daughter, Rosemary, who was born on 5th June 1941 at 321 Upper Richmond Road. He names his profession as Author, also Rifleman,(it was in the middle of WWII) with the Kings Royal Rifles7 giving his serial number as 6850801. Rosemary Grant, formerly Clegg is registered as the mother. His address at that time was given as 39 Lower Richmond Road, Putney.

His mother died on 20th April 19458 at the Royal Infirmary, Doncaster, leaving an estate of £2099 s2 d2 to her husband, William George Grant (Draper) and her son William Peter Grant (Author)

There are two possible dates for his death; there is a Peter Grant who died in Leeds in 1969 (and who was born ‘about 1916’, ref 2c 8799, and a Peter William Grant who died in Cuckfield, Sussex, in 1980, ref 18 188110

I am persuaded into accepting the latter as *our* Peter Grant, because there is a death record11 of a William George Grant in Cuckfield in 1951, whose birth year matches that of his father, and a record12 of his estate, at the time of his death, 8th October, 1951 at Barn Cottage, West Hoathly, near East Grinstead, Sussex, of £2764 s4 d3 which goes to his son William Peter Grant ‘of no occupation’.

Phone records put Peter at Barn Cottage, West Hoathly from 1949 to 1968 (with a few gaps either in the record collection or as books weren’t published every year)

West Hoathly is a very picturesque little hamlet, with a strong community. There is almost certainly information to be found there, perhaps in the local pub, the Cat, or in the parish records.

We have discovered (I must credit my niece Danu @danuiseult entirely for this research), that during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Peter recorded the late traditional musician, Lewis ‘Scan’ Tester13 at his home, Barn Cottage and at The Cat. He collaborated on these collections with Mervyn Plunkett and Reg Hall.
Oxford Reference dot Com has archival evidence of a quarterly periodical called ‘Ethnic’ subtitled ‘A Quarterly Survey of English Folk Music, Dance and Drama’, published by Mervyn Plunkett, Reg Hall and Peter Grant.

The sole piece of evidence I have of him myself is an ancient piece of hand-written music, with a note at the bottom, to Yolanda, signed Peter.

This is the sum total of my knowledge of Peter William Grant.

I should be enormously grateful for any information YOU may have of him. You may leave a comment on this blog or contact me via Twitter @LucyMJG

Notes:
1. Death Register
2,3,4,5,6. Marriage record
7. Birth Record, Rosemary Grant
8. Wills & Probate record
9. Death Register (Leeds)
10. Death Register (Cuckfield)
11. Death Register (Cuckfield)
12. Wills & Probate record
13. Credits on Album sleeve

Since writing this blog I have found out a little more about Peter. He was married for a second time to Lorna Docking in 1944 and they had two children, a girl, Jennifer and a boy Norman. He married for a third time in 1948 to Evelyn Honor Lucille Gilliat-Smith, who was with him in at Barn Cottage, Hoathly, West Sussex, until he died.

I have also come across some photos which I believe MUST be Peter Grant. There is a little wallet of pictures and negatives that are clearly taken at the same address, the building, dustbin etc are the same. It may very well be 39 Lower Richmond Road. some of the photos are of him during WWII in uniform and one is in a civilian suit. There is also a photograph of a child which I think looks as though it may be the same person. I do hope someone out there will one day read this blog and identify him!