There’s a famous idiom that, in simple terms, states that comedy is simply tragedy plus time, but is the reverse also true? Recently released on Blu-ray by Studio Canal, Alvin Rakoff’s The Comedy Man (1964), is a satirical take on the kitchen sink dramas that were popular during that period, but does the separation of decades offer us a different way of looking at the film?
From his punning name on downwards, Charles “Chick” Byrd (played by Kenneth More), comes from a Britain that we pretend has vanished, but still clings to life with clenched fists and gritted teeth on the late-night schedules of the BBC and ITV in some provincial regions. It’s the Britain of bitters and milds; of vests and braces; of groping hands-up-the-skirts and choruses of dancing dolly birds; of Paddington boarding-houses and tribute acts in pub backrooms drowned out by the raucous clientele; of celebrities who are “just like us” and “just between the two of us”.
This is the Britain where actors could recite Shakespeare and Cyrano de Bergerac, but nothing new was being written; where constant cynicism and a “know-your-place” mentality only allowed for very Tory forms of ambition; where everything was funny but nothing was; where the workhouse and the poorhouse weren’t memories, but ghosts the mechanism of the modern machine – still howling and making themselves felt. It was a nation of spivs in debtors prison; a country of innuendo and violent gazes, but certainly not sex; a land of spoilt milk and hot honey poured over an approximation of “glamorous” American fast food; an England that Gordon Burn and Dennis Potter would recognise. From Come Dancing to Strictly Come Dancing; Ray Davies jaundiced, to Boris fit for office because of his amusing haircut; Elkie Brooks and all her looks, to Gemma Collins and Smithy as ambassador to Hollywood, and the ultimate dream of a spot on the sofa next to Graham Norton, where you can leer at Margot Robbie like Parkie leered at Helen Mirren.
It’s the Britain where Chick Byrd spent his adult life acting in small repertory theatre companies across the country, many of which would perform antiquated quasi-Noel Coward drawing room farces or yet another adaptation of Agatha Christie, but he isn’t a comedy man – unless you consider his desire to “stay twenty-five forever” to be something funny rather than tragic. He’s the quintessential starving actor who’s over-qualified but under-employed and under-paid, who stares down the barrel of stardom after “selling out” to do a series of commercials. Chick navigates a world of broken dreams and quick jobs that are still the bread-and-butter of most of his profession today, from department store Santa Claus, to cameos in television dramas or crowd work for studio films.
With a chancer as an agent (played by Frank Finlay), and casting directors who are more interested in exploiting starlets than actually finding the right man for the role, Chick drinks, doesn’t eat properly, and has a string of unfulfillingly short relationships. During his bursts of camaraderie with the others who also refuse to give up, he plays both the charmer and the devil – until he threatens to gadabout himself into an early grave. Of the characters in The Comedy Man, only Jack Lavery (Alan Dobie), has any gravitas and solemnity, while Chick’s old flame Judy (Billie Whitelaw), seems to be the only person around him with any sense.
We feel for Chick and his quandary about “selling out”, and the ending asks the question of where exactly he can go, the answer of which should be obvious – he returns to the world of repertory theatre companies. He gives up on the success that curdled his old friend Julian (Edmund Purdom), on his journey to the New World, but what fulfilment will Chick find playing in the same old plays, most of them bad? He’s feels like he’s been caught in what may be a circle of hell, washed up alongside the other flotsam of desiccated art, in a country where it’s only ever allowed to exist at the margins of society, with brief flowerings and grasped rare opportunities offering little support, and almost no opportunities for practitioners to make a living.
Unlike France, art in England, in particular who can practice it and who can enjoy it, was tied up tightly in chains of classism and location, which smothered culture so much that it gave rise to a form of counter-culture. This may be why Chick and his cohorts are shown as almost as “classless” people – sophisticed gentlemen and women with the outlook of the Wildean fop, the interests of a pub-quiz bore, and the living situation of the lumpenproletariat, but still with no place to go.
In some ways The Comedy Man is a dated film, its catalogue of boorish behaviour sitting uneasily alongside its pathos and melancholy, but it’s bracing – like cold kitchen-sink water to the face, with a smell that lingers (go outside and you can still follow the scent). It celebrates and denounces, and it remembers that it’s all showbiz and PR (even in its new forms), and all of that stuff stinks and rots. Yet even though the film was already dismissive of Swinging London before it started swinging, it can’t see further than showbiz to find where the art is hiding. Kenneth More is excellent, and as this was ironically one of his last roles as a leading man before his own fallow period, perhaps he was measuring himself up against Byrd and see where he stood.
The Comedy Man (1964) is out now on Studio Canal Vintage Classics Blu-Ray
