Oh! What a Lovely War: An interview with Murray Melvin

Back to Stratford East. Murray Melvin, who died in 2023, shares his memories of the original Theatre Workshop production of Oh! What a Lovely War and describes Joan Littlewood’s working methods.

Sparrows Can’t Sing Q&A with Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin

Joan Littlewood directed only one film, Sparrows Can't Sing. It was based on the play Sparrers Can't Sing, which was written by Stephen Lewis (better known later as Blakey off of On the Buses) and staged by her at Stratford East.

Here two cast members, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, remember the making of the film and Littlewood's approach in general. Barbara Windsor is in sparkling form.

As I posted this video on Liberal England about 10 years ago, I'm adding another one with Murray Melvin . It's very good, but I'll admit it's here mainly because of the still photo of Joan Littlewood and Stephen Lewis that appears early on.

For another appreciation of Joan Littlweood, try Sheila Hancock.

Shelagh Delaney is interviewed by an alien in 1959

The latest Backlisted podcast is a great edition on Shelagh Delaney and her 1958 play A Taste of Honey. It was her first play, written and produced before she was 20. It was then filmed in 1962 with Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan and Murray Melvin.

As the Backlisted blurb asks:

How did a Salford teenager change the face of British theatre? Nearly 70 years on, why do the play's themes and characters continue to resonate in the 21st century? And what did Shelagh Delaney do for an encore (and why do so few people know about it)? This show will open your eyes.

The show certainly reminds us that the modern world did not start with the Beatles. Take the interview above from 1959, which you can hear in it.

Delaney comes over as a thoroughly contemporary figure, while the interviewer sounds like an alien. Where did he learn to pronounce the world "play" like that? 

It would be comforting to think his assumptions that Delaney must had help to write the play and faint derision for her "native Lancashire" are equally strange to us now, but I'm afraid I often hear echoes of such views.

I can't recommend this edition of Backlisted highly enough. Listen out for an anecdote about an exchange between Dirk Bogarde and Murray Melvin during the filming of HMS Defiant. 

And let's end this post with a piece of A Taste of Honey trivia from 2003:

Earlier in the day Home Office Minister and Salford MP, Hazel Blears, revealed that she appears in kitchen sink classic, A Taste of Honey, shown at the Festival. "They filmed it at the bottom of our road" she recalled "And I was in one scene wearing bunches and a little kilt. My brother sang `The Big Ship Sails On The Ally Ally O'..."

On the Omnibuses: The radical roots of On the Buses

I had dozed off with the TV on a high-numbered channel and woke up a little way into this. You can imagine my confusion. What was I seeing?

If I say it's nothing like a usual episode of On the Buses, many readers will be delighted.

But maybe we shouldn't be so surprised to find the show encompassing a tutorial on Edwardian trade union law. Because there were remarkable links between ITV situation comedy and Joan Littlewood's radical and experimental Theatre Royal at Stratford East.

Earlier today I watched Sparrows Can't Sing, a 1963 film about social change in the East End adapted from a play that emerged from Littlewood's theatre.

The cast was extraordinary: James Booth, Barbara Windsor, Roy Kinnear, George Sewell, Murray Melvin and Harry H. Corbett.

And among it too were many future stalwarts of ITV situation comedy among the cast: Brian Murphy, Yootha Joyce, Arthur Mullard, Bob Grant, Stephen Lewis and Queenie Watts. Yet ITV sit coms have always been ranked below the BBC's output.

The original play, titled Sparrers Can't Sing, owed much to Frank Norman and Lionel Bart's musical Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, and was developed by the cast in rehearsal. But for the film, a single writer was credited.

It was Stephen Lewis, later famous as Blakey from On the Buses. And On the Omnibuses was written by him and Bob Grant, who played Jack the conductor.

But enough from me: it's time for On the Omnibuses.

Remembering Dudley Sutton

Dudley Sutton should be remembered for so much more than Lovejoy.

The British Film Institute - click on the still above to view the video - has footage of a Q&A session about Ken Russell’s The Devils.

Taking part with Sutton are actors Georgina Hale, Gemma Jones and Murray Melvin, and editor Mike Bradsell.

Melvin describes the experience of visiting Loudun, where the events of The Devils took place, while Sutton recalls working with Derek Jarman, the designer of the film’s sets.

Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin talk about Sparrows Can't Sing

Joan Littlewood was a renowned theatre director but made only one feature film. Sparrows Can’t Sing was released in 1962.

Here two of the film's stars, Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin, talk about the experience of making it.

Among the subjects they touch on are working with Littlewood, the Kray twins, Stephen Lewis (Blakey from On the Buses, who wrote the play on which the film was based) and Queenie Watts.

Happy Shelagh Delaney Day

Today is the first ever Shelagh Delaney Day,

That BBC report reveals that Morrisey's lyrics owe more to her play A Taste of Honey than I had realised.

The lines "I dreamt about you last night/and I fell out of bed twice" in Reel Around the Fountain come from it, but the report lists several other borrowings.

I posted a terrific profile of the writer from 1960  - Shelagh Delaney's Salford - back in July, so here is a clip from the film of A Taste of Honey with Dora Bryan, Rita Tushingham and Murray Melvin.

Six of the Best 200

On Radio Five this afternoon the solicitor of Milly Dowler’s family, Mark Lewis, accused Rupert Murdoch’s News International of behaving “like the former Soviet Union”. He also saidthat being snooped on by the Murdoch empire left him feeling like “the KGB are somehow following you”. Read more on Left Foot Forward.

 "Think about it. You are going to the House of Commons for one of the most important Q&As of your career. Would you check the basic facts before setting out? It seems that May didn’t." Liberal Burblings is surprised at the incompetence of Theresa May.

The Potter Blogger tells it like it is: "As far as I'm concerned, 38Degrees has lost its way. And I'm not going to have any part in it any more."

In a video, Pieces of Light shows us how the world appears to a seven-year-old.

Downton Abbey was neatly skewered by one critic as "Howards' Way masquerading as Howard End". Here Shiny Shelf is bemused at the rushed time scheme and perfunctory set-ups of its second series.

"I dreamt of you last night and I fell out of bed twice." On Night and Day, the Spectator arts blog, Samira Ahmed interviews Rita Tussingham and Murray Melvin to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of A Taste of Honey.