Ivor Emmanuel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivor Emmanuel (7 November 1927 – 20 July 2007)[1] was a Welsh musical theatre and television actor. He led the rendition of 'Men of Harlech' in the 1964 film Zulu.

Contents

[edit] Life and career

Ivor Emmanuel was born in Margam, near Port Talbot, Wales and moved to Pontrhydyfen as a young child. He was 14 years old when his father, mother, sister and grandfather were killed by a stray bomb that hit their village during World War II. A 2001 documentary programme about the incident was made by S4C (Channel Four Wales).[2] His aunt took him in and he began working in the coal mine like his father and grandfather before him.

He developed a keen interest in music and was a member of Pontrhydyfen Operatic Society. Emmanuel used to carry a wind-up gramophone up nearby mountains to listen to recordings of Enrico Caruso.[3]

[edit] Stage career

At the age of 20, Emmanuel unsuccessfully auditioned for The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. He took solace by drinking with an old friend Richard Burton[4] - who was performing in The Lady's Not for Burning at the time in London - and telling him how desperate he was to break into show business. Two weeks later a telegram arrived from Burton telling him to be at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane the following day for an audition. He was cast in the musical Oklahoma!.

Emmanuel was eventually hired by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company as a chorister in March 1950, staying until August 1951 when he married fellow D'Oyly Carte chorister Jean Beazleigh. He was assigned the small role of Associate in Trial by Jury and shared the larger one of Luiz in The Gondoliers. He later had two children with Beazleigh.[5]

Emmanuel's masculine looks and ringing voice suited him for musicals, and he soon took starring roles on the West End. At the Drury Lane, he played Sgt. Kenneth Johnson in the hit production of South Pacific (1951-53), then in The King and I and Plain and Fancy. At the London Coliseum, he played Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees (1957) and Finian's Rainbow.[6] In the 1960s, Emmanuel returned to stage performing, pantomime and cabaret. In 1966, he appeared on Broadway as Mr. Gruffydd, the minister, in A Time for Singing, a musical version of Richard Llewellyn's novel How Green Was My Valley, but the show ran for only 40 performances.[2]

[edit] Concerts, recordings, broadcast and film

Emmanuel also had a successful career as a popular concert and recording artist and television personality. During the late 1950s, he made his breakthrough into television. He took part in a Welsh language singing programme called Dewch i Mewn and from 1958 to 1964 was lead singer on the TWW show, Gwlad y Gan ('Land of Song'), together with the Pontcanna Children's Choir. The show was broadcast across the UK once a month and regularly attracted an audience of some ten million people, helping to popularize the Welsh language. Emmanuel later performed on, and was an interviewer for, other TWW shows.[2]

In May 1960, Emmanuel performed in the first televised edition of the Royal Variety Performance. Other performers at that performance included The Crazy Gang, Benny Hill, Americans Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole and Liberace.[7]

Emmanuel's record output included the 1959 studio cast recordings of Show Boat, Kiss Me Kate, and The King and I, and the 1966 Broadway original cast recording of A Time for Singing as David Griffith (Gruffydd). He is also featured on the five-disc box set, The Greatest Musicals of the 20th Century, where it says of him, "one singer who really stands out on this volume is the Welsh baritone Ivor Emmanuel .... [h]e was of the same era and very much in the fine tradition of the great American musical theatre baritones: Howard Keel, John Raitt and Gordon Macrae[8] He also was featured as "Frederic" on the poorly-received 1966 RCA Victrola recording of The Pirates of Penzance, which starred Martyn Green. [9]

In 1964 Emmanuel appeared as "Private Owen" in the epic film Zulu, which launched the career of Michael Caine. Emmanuel's character rallies the soldiers on the barricade at Rorke's Drift by leading the men in the stirring Welsh battle hymn Men of Harlech. The same year, he married Patricia Bredin, but they had no children, and the marriage was short-lived. In 1978 he married Malinee Oppenborn, and the couple had one daughter.

[edit] Retirement and death

Emmanuel retired to Benalmadena, a village near Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol, in 1984 with his wife. In 1991, Emmanuel lost his life's savings of £220,000 in the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.[2] In 2006, he appeared in a TV documentary with fellow Welshman Bryn Terfel. Emmanuel died in Malaga, aged 79. He was survived by his wife, Malinee, and three children from his different marriages.[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Some sources say that Emmanuel died on 19 July.
  2. ^ a b c d Obituary in The Independent
  3. ^ Obituary dated 21 July 2007
  4. ^ Port Talbot background
  5. ^ Ivor Emmanuel at the Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte website
  6. ^ Information from Musical-theatre.net
  7. ^ Description of the Royal Variety Command Performances
  8. ^ History of the Musical Theatre
  9. ^ Information from the G&S discography
  10. ^ Zulu actor Ivor Emmanuel dies. BBC News website (20 July 2007). Retrieved on 2007-07-20.

[edit] External links

Languages