by Duncan Gray
One of the great gaps in the Goon Show archives is any film of a show actually being recorded. That would be fascinating. If only the gadget-obsessed Sellers had brought one of his home movie cameras to some recordings.
There is an exception to this. One precious, four minute long clip exists and, improbably, it comes from episode nine of the first, Crazy People, series recorded on 22nd July 1951. How did that come about?
The clip is part of a film called London Entertains, and the story has to start with its producer and director, Edwin J Fancey. One part of E J Fancey’s story is that he successfully navigated a life running two separate families, one with his wife and the other with a mistress. Don’t think of him as a likeable character though, he was basically a gangster. By reputation, he had fraud and murder on his cv, he certainly spent time at His Majesty’s pleasure for GBH after stabbing his accountant. The poor man had to have his leg amputated!
For his business, Fancey had gone into the film industry and set himself up in Soho. He imported and distributed B movies from Europe and America, mostly of the horror or smut exploitation type.
In 1950, to support the British film industry, the government introduced the Eady Levy, a tax on cinema tickets which was paid as subsidies to the makers of (almost) wholly British movies. This proved to be a very successful initiative, and in part it attracted a number of top directors to work in the UK. Richard Lester was one, you could include Sidney Lumet, John Huston and Stanley Kubrick too. Fancey, on the other hand, was a ‘quantity not quality’ man, and he saw he could earn some easy money by making films as cheaply as possible.
At that time, the Grafton Arms was a meeting place for much of the talent in the entertainment industry, and I’m guessing that’s where Fancey went in search of the people he needed. Jimmy Grafton was KOGVOS (King of Goons, Voice of Sanity) then and here was an opportunity to promote the group of Goons he was mentoring. He became the scriptwriter for London Entertains. The script wasn’t Jimmy Grafton’s best writing, it didn’t have to be.
How cheaply could Fancey’s movie be made? London Entertains is only 54 minutes long, and that’s with it padded out with lots of newsreel and stock footage. Instead of actresses, some young ladies from Eastbourne Girls Choir were recruited. The storyline is that the girls are leaving a Swiss finishing school and decide to set up a business escorting foreign visitors around London’s attractions. (Some readers may be imagining a more adult entertainment with this plot.) A recruit from the Grafton’s crowd, Eamonn Andrews, decides to muscle in on the action and become their manager. His performance does nothing to dispel the Seamus Android characterisation which Round the Horne pilloried him with years later.
Much of the action was filmed in or around Fancey’s Soho office, with a few continuity sequences shot around the city. The ‘bought in’ footage includes a look at Festival of Britain, with a glimpse of Gloria Swanson, the Pleasure Gardens of Battersea and a Folies-Bergère style performance. There are musical interludes, including a couple of numbers by the previously mentioned Eastbourne Girls Choir, and a routine by comedians Tony Fayne and David Evans.
But the important thing is the Goons clip. Andrews and five of the girls take a couple of visitors from India to the Aeolian Hall. They meet Jimmy Grafton at reception, and then Dennis Main Wilson. There’s a quick demo of special effects, then it’s onto Milligan, Sellars, Secombe and Bentine on stage for the warm-up, getting the audience going with some visual gags. Dennis Main Wilson then cues the start of the recording. There’s an introduction by Denys Drower, the announcer on the night, and the four Goons are more disciplined as they’re gathered round the microphone. Ray Ellington is with them too, and he’s busy dragging on a cigarette as the performance goes on.
The Goons clip ends with this joke:
| FX | (phone rings) |
| Michael (society lady) | Oh, Splutmuscle. My husband’s been shot. I just came into the front room and found him lying on the carpet there. |
| Peter (Splutmuscle) | Oh. Is he dead? |
| Society lady | I think so. |
| Splutmuscle | Hadn’t you better make sure? |
| Society lady | Alright. Just a minute. |
| FX | (2 pistol shots) |
| Society lady | He’s dead. |
In 2002, Dr Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, ran a research project into jokes. A version of the above gag was declared to be the funniest in the world. Its source was eventually traced back to this Goon Show.
That was London Entertains. Apart from the Goon Show clip (it’s about 15 minutes in) I won’t recommend you watch it. It was an effort for me to sit through it so I could write this. It must have succeeded on some levels though, the following year Fancey, Grafton and the Goons got back together to make a more ambitious movie, Down Among The Z Men.
Here’s a look at the clip in question, as found on YouTube.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 