However, we fixed it up all right, and got married while the piece was still running. The wedding was celebrated at the Oxford Chapel, in the City Square, which was packed with people, the happy event having been well boomed beforehand. A cinematograph operator was there ready to film us, but the press was so great that he and his machine were both overturned, and we were not “featured” after all.
As soon as the ceremony was over we were whisked back in a motor-car to the theatre for a matinée performance, and the same evening the “book” of the pantomime was considerably altered, though unofficially, owing to practically every performer with a speaking part introducing a “gag” having some reference or other to the “happy event.”
The orchestra, too, took it upon themselves to strike up the “Wedding March,” on my first appearance on the stage; and news of the marriage having got bruited about, the theatre was packed from floor to gallery, amongst the audience being the Lord Mayor of Leeds.
Shortly before the termination of my pantomime engagement I asked the manager of the —— Theatre if he would give me a week’s engagement to follow on, seeing I had done so well there; but I was told, none too politely, that my terms of £40 a week that I was then asking were ridiculous.
I rather got my back up at this, and so as not to be done I took the Coliseum, Leeds, a huge place, capable of seating between four and five thousand people. It was in fact so big that nobody had ventured to open it as a music-hall before, it having been used mostly for musical festivals, and things of that sort.
I paid £80 for the use of the hall for a week, and about as much again for advertising my forthcoming show. All this, of course, as a preliminary! Managers and artists alike said that I would never make it pay; that I was mad.
Maybe! But anyway there was method in my madness. I reflected that, as usually happens at the termination of a provincial pantomime engagement, practically all the artistes at the two pantomimes running in Leeds would be “resting,” which means, of course, being temporarily out of a job, and that they would probably be willing to engage with me at a very reasonable salary. And this, as a matter of fact, the majority of them were only too glad to do.
Then I hired a coach and four, and drove myself round, made up as on the stage, to all the schools. There are about forty schools in Leeds, and my method of procedure was the same in each one of them.
“Good morning, sir,” I would remark, addressing the head master. “May I have permission to entertain your little scholars gratis for a few minutes?”
In every case permission was readily given, whereupon I would give a short conjuring show, bringing in the usual “bunny rabbit” trick, always a prime favourite with children, and a few others.