The Stage

On a Parr - Harry Parr Davies

Published Thursday 29 September 2005 at 16:05 by Guy Thomas

Guy Thomas says it is time Harry Parr Davies was reinstated alongside Novello and Coward

On a television quiz show the other night a question came up. ‘Who wrote the music for the song Pedro the Fisherman?’ Blank face. Long pause. No answer. Harry Parr Davies, whose song it was, has been called ‘the forgotten composer’.

It is 50 years since he died on October 14, 1955 - a tragic early death at the age of 41, with a reputation as a top West End musical writer, as well as a composer, alongside his contemporaries Ivor Novello, Noel Coward and Vivian Ellis.

The Lisbon Story, staged by George Black at the London Hippodrome in 1943, when Pedro the Fisherman was heard for the first time, became one of the best-loved shows during the Second World War. Cicely Courtneidge’s big hit Her Excellency - another Hippodrome production in 1949 written in partnership with Manning Sherwin - and Dear Miss Phoebe at the Phoenix one year later sealed Parr Davies’ success.

Pedro the Fisherman was said to have sold 50,000 sheet music copies per week. An astonishing figure by any mark but during wartime, a phenomenon. A recording by the Vincent Tildsley Mastersingers, who sang it at the Hippodrome, was never off the radio and when The Lisbon Story was filmed in 1946 the song was given to Richard Tauber.

Parr Davies was born in Briton Ferry, South Wales in 1911. A prodigious musical talent showed early on. His sister Billie David, now 94, remembers clearly: “At the age of 12 my brother was at Neath Grammar School and Harry’s songs were the outstanding success of a school play. Sir Walford Davies, soon to be Master of the King’s Musick, heard them and wanted Harry to follow a classical career as an organist and composer.”

Parr Davies, though, wanted to write popular songs. Even then he pestered publishers with his music and, frustrated, travelled to London arguing with a stage door keeper to let him meet Gracie Fields, who was appearing on a variety bill. Gracie intervened, heard his songs and not only bought one, I Hate You, but sang it that night to wild applause.

Within weeks the boy Harry was Gracie’s indispensable pianist, writing new songs for her nationwide tours. Before he was 20 years old, one brought the recognition he had yearned for. It was 1934. Gracie, then British cinema’s No 1 box office star, was filming Sing As We Go, a story of mill workers thrown out of jobs by the Depression. A rousing march was needed for a flag-waving finale as the mill hands triumphantly returned through the factory gates. Parr Davies recalled a song he had written for the school play in Neath and, changing the title, writing fresh lyrics and quickening the pace, Sing As We Go became a workers’ anthem. Everyone still knows it and its military band swagger is frequently heard on big ceremonial occasions.

More successes followed as Gracie took Parr Davies’ songs around the world, including Smile When You Say Goodbye, The Sweetest Song in the World and the great marching songs of the Second World War such as Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye, written with lyricist Phil Park. Yet what Parr Davies wanted was to work in the theatre and to write a musical.

George Black, the West End impresario, was presenting a string of spectacular revues at the London Palladium and the Hippodrome. Vic Oliver, Pat Kirkwood and Frances Day appeared in Black Velvet and Black Vanities, while Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon were in Gangway at the Palladium. Harry had songs in all of them. One, in Black Velvet, was called Crash, Bang, I Want to Go Home, about the blackout. Billie David remembers: “Everyone loved that song. After the first night George Black introduced Harry to the audience and said, ‘This lad is going to be my composer. You’ll hear a lot more of him’.”

Parr Davies was called up for war service in the Life Guards and it took till 1943 to write the show Black wanted. With book and lyrics by Harold Purcell, The Lisbon Story starred Patricia Burke as a Parisienne actress feigning collusion with the Nazis, who, when her deception is uncovered, is executed. As the curtain fell, the fatal shot was a coup de theatre. Audiences loved it, especially Parr Davies’ songs Never Say Goodbye, Someday We Shall Meet Again and of course Pedro the Fisherman.

Jenny Jones was next in 1944, again at the Hippodrome and starring Carole Lynne. It got the thumbs down, one critic writing: “The Welsh setting had about as much relevance to the real thing as Leicester Square has to the Rhondda.” The musical is remembered now chiefly for the song My Wish, sung by a Welsh boy soprano Malcolm Thomas - never heard of again, so where is he? The leading man Ronald Millar would become speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher, coining her rallying cry, “The lady’s not for turning”.

Dear Miss Phoebe at the Phoenix in 1949, a period piece based on the JM Barrie play Quality Street, and which had in the score I Leave My Heart in an English Garden, restored Parr Davies’ fortunes. His collaborator was Christopher Hassall, who had worked with Novello on many of the famous Drury Lane musicals. It ran for 283 performances.

And then he died - a loss to the theatre, films and popular music. Fashions change and interest has waned, not only in Parr Davies’ songs but those of Novello and the others. Gradually, though, his music is regaining a place in the public’s affections.

The BBC is paying a radio tribute, while a recent exhibition organised by Edward Beckerleg and Bill Hanks, two enthusiasts living in Chester, who have formed a collection of the composer’s memorabilia, drew a large audience. Parr Davies might be the forgotten composer but 50 years after he died, the music lives on.