Frankie Howerd OBE

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Birth: 6th March 1917
Place of Birth: York, UK
Nationality: British
Job Title: Comedian, Actor
Partners: Dennis Heymer
Died: 14th April 1992, Somerset

We are constantly told that to succeed, we should play to our strengths. Often we are given the impression that life’s achievers have more strengths than most. In truth, everybody has their fair share of weaknesses; it’s how you deal with them that counts. This month’s Gay Great was not only aware of his weaknesses, but went one step further and actually used them to his advantage.

Francis Alick Howard was born in York during the Great War and was the eldest of three children born to Edith and Frank Howard. Howard senior was a soldier by profession and moved the family to Eltham in Kent a few years after his first child was born. Howerd went on to spend all of his formative years in Eltham and was brought up surrounded by the local armed forces community and the church. His earliest experience of his future career came when his mother took him to see a local pantomime. The young boy was inspired by the spectacle. In the next few weeks he worked on cardboard sets out of old rubbish and began directing his siblings in all sorts of plays and variety shows. He also invited the girl next door to join in and between them they cooked up a cunning business plan to charge a ticket price to local children. Their business talents were lost on Howerd’s mother, who failed to see taking money from children as ethical. She told the two performers to give back every penny right away. Performances continued, but this time free of charge!

Academically, Howerd proved to be a little above average and was offered a London County Council scholarship for Shooter’s Hill Grammar School. He also became a Sunday school teacher at the age of 13 and was a firm favourite among the pupils. His popularity came primarily from his habit of forgetting the brief given to him by the vicar before the lesson. Suddenly finding himself in front of a captured audience with no idea what he should be talking about, the young Howerd would make up his own subject and talk freely. Rarely was his chosen topic anything to do with religion, but he always had the children’s full attention.

Howerd also joined the church dramatic society and began learning the art of performance. On this small stage he learnt to control his voice and curtail his naturally mumbling and clumsy ways. When a fellow cast member commented that he should be an actor, Howerd was encouraged and decided to try his hand at bigger things. He joined some acting classes run by London County Council in the evenings. Soon after, he was invited to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Howerd prepared well and learnt a complex soliloquy. But when the audition day came, he was crippled by stage fright. As he stood in front of the panel, his leg began to shake uncontrollably, dislodging his lunch of grated cheese sandwiches from his pocket and spraying crumbs all over the floor. A flustered Howerd carried on, forgetting his lines and tripping over difficult words. He left the academy knowing he had failed the audition and instead of going home, he chose to sit in a field and contemplate his future. With acting off the agenda, what other talents were there left to capitalise on? Howerd came to the conclusion that his bumbling and clumsiness could only be used for one thing - comedy! With the decision made, he got up and dashed home to tell his mother the news.

Howerd’s mother was instantly supportive. Her husband had been forced to retire from the army through injury, leaving it to the three children to earn money, but nevertheless she encouraged Howerd to follow his dreams. Firstly, he changed the spelling of his surname from ‘Howard’ to ‘Howerd’ in order to draw attention on flyers and posters. To fund himself, he took a job as a filing clerk whilst putting together some showcases for his comedy talent in the evenings. Sadly, he lost his day-job when a flyer for ‘Frankie Howerd’s Gertchers Concert Party’ found its way into a file headed for Vladivostok! He had no option than to join the dole queue.

But however grim things seemed, Howerd continued performing comedy in local working men’s clubs. He tried his hand at monologues, impressions and comic songs but by far the biggest crowd pleaser was his jokes. He began to change his act to include more stand-up routines and he was fast becoming a favourite on the local entertainment scene. But the nerves were still there. He was always worried about forgetting his lines or not receiving a laugh for his jokes. His act soon began to include a few words and phrases designed to look like ‘off the cuff’ remarks. These gave his performance the look of being free flowing and relaxed. In reality, every word was planned, learnt and rehearsed. Another essential part of Howerd’s humour was beginning to come to the fore. Although his act had reassuringly heterosexual gags in it, Howerd experimented with a very camp style and a barrage of outrageous double entendres.

His outward image was clearly heterosexual, if a little ambiguous in places, but behind the scenes Howerd was struggling with his sexual identity. He both feared and resented his increasing attraction to men and began what would be a lifelong battle with his own sexuality.

The advent of the Second World War brought with it new opportunities for the young comic, but not immediately. He was called up five months after the war began and was posted to Essex where for two years he did nothing much at all. After Dunkirk, any soldier with a theatrical bent was called on to ‘cheer up’ the troops. Howerd was taken on by the Entertainments Officer and spent the rest of the war performing as ‘Gunner Frankie Howerd’, ably assisted by his pianist Vera Roper.

He was demobilised three months after the end of the war and headed for the West End to continue his comic career. But breaking into the big time was almost impossible without an agent and Howerd continued to work small venues. An industry insider advised the young comic to dig out his uniform and perform at the Stage Door ex-servicemen’s club in Piccadilly. Word of his hilarious act at the club reached variety agent Jack Payne who was busy putting together a cast for his new touring variety show For the Fun of It. He asked Howerd to join the show and for the summer of 1946, he enjoyed his first professional role.

When the show was over, a call came from the BBC asking Howerd to audition for the hit Sunday night radio show Variety Bandbox. His well rehearsed blundering style went down well with the listening public and he stayed with the show for 2 ½ years, during which time his fee and popularity went up and up. His time on the show ended when he asked if he could make drastic changes to his act. The reply came back ‘no’ and he quit the show immediately. Instead, he was given his own radio show in 1951. The work he did on his own show was innovative and refreshingly new. However, his reputation behind BBC doors was suffering. As a man who was punctilious in his preparation before stepping in front of a microphone, he was getting a reputation for being difficult to work with. His innuendos were also getting saucier and beginning to worry BBC bosses. However, they continued to give him air time as the public seemed to love him more with each show.

The early 50s were a prolific time for Howerd with several appearances in the Royal Variety Show, guest appearances on other radio shows and even a staring role in a modestly successful film. True to his military roots, he also spent a lot of time entertaining troops and also appeared on the forces own radio station. His hard work paid off when in 1952 he was given his own TV show The Howerd Crowd. Although it was successful with the still relatively small television audience, he chose to continue concentrating on programmes for the forces.

Everything changed for Howerd in 1955 when he met a waiter called Dennis Heymer. Howerd was smitten and invited the younger man to his 30th birthday party. In private, the two became partners and began to live together. But in a time when homosexuality was still illegal, Heymer needed to be firmly in the shadows. As their relationship developed, Heymer took the role of Howerd’s manager, which at least made it easier for the couple to be seen together.

But Howerd’s mental state was in decline. He had begun to lose self esteem and had some bouts of deep depression, which culminated in a full blown nervous breakdown. For a while, he cut down his appearances and drastically lightened his work schedule while he recovered at home with Heymer. His show business comeback didn’t come until 1962 when he agreed to present the 1962 Evening Standard Awards. In the audience was Peter Cook, well known satirist and joint owner of the trendy Establishment club in Soho. He was offered a gig there. Howerd impressed the politically aware audience, which included industry greats such as Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett.

Word of Howerd’s comeback spread and he was offered the lead role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a musical set in Roman times that had previously gone down a storm in the USA. He still suffered with crippling stage fright, but his old trick of meticulously learning lines helped him to take the show to the West End stage. His comeback was cemented when he was commissioned to do another television show. His brand of humour was also used in the ideal setting of two Carry On films, several other low budget movies as well as a short stint on stage in the USA.

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His greatest achievement was just around the corner. Whilst on holiday in Italy, the Head of Comedy for the BBC was wandering around the ruins of Pompeii had the brainwave of setting a historical situation comedy there. He passed the idea to Carry On writer Talbot Rothwell who instantly thought of Howerd for the lead role. The pilot was broadcast in September 1969 and was officially commissioned in 1970. Howerd played the lead role of Lurcio, a slave struggling with the trials of every day life in pre-eruption Pompeii. Howerd continued to add his characteristic well planned asides to the role (“Titter ye not”, “Oooh, no missus”) and well crafted double entendres. The series ran for two series in the 70s with spin off films and TV specials aplenty. Such was the reverence for Howerd and his work that in 1977 he was awarded an OBE, in no small part due to his free performances to troops. The 80’s brought with it a distinct change in fashion and although he was still revered, Howerd worked far less, spending more time at home with Heymer.

In 1983, they met a teenager called Chris Byrne in one of their local pubs. Byrne was a troubled teenager with an obvious drink problem. The couple took him under their wing, became father figures to him and Byrne would spend a lot of time at the couple’s home in Somerset.

As the work began to dry up, Howerd turned to after dinner speaking, his opening line often being ‘what do you mean, you thought I was dead!’ Students began to appreciate his comic genius and in his latter years he graced the stage of many student unions, including a memorable gig at Oxford University.

In April 1992, Howerd was taken into hospital with breathing difficulties. Now in his seventies, he had started to become frail and often walked with a stick (although Byrne would later point out it was hollow and often contained a sizable amount of gin!) He spent two weeks in hospital before being sent home. Not long after, he died at home with Heymer by his side.

It wasn’t until after Howerd’s death that his homosexuality became public. In 2004, the Howerd family were outraged by a documentary detailing his private life and revealing his many sexual liaisons outside of his relationship with Heymer. The documentary revealed how Howerd’s cultivated ‘asexual uncle’ image was far from reality.

More recently his memory has been treated more kindly. Heymer agreed to a rare interview about his relationship with the comic great and opened the family home to the public, which was preserved as if Howerd was still in residence. Heymer spoke of how homosexuality did not sit well on Howerd’s shoulders and that deep down he would have liked to have lived a happy family life with a wife and children. Despite this desire, Howerd and Heymer still represented the ‘old guard’ of gay men, living a blissful life behind the doors of their home, yet constantly hiding their status as partners to the outside world.

From his very earliest stage experiences, Howerd knew he suffered from stage fright. Born of that was a stuttering, clumsy and insecure performance. But fortunately he had the talent to bend the material to not only compensate for, but to include these foibles. The result was a highly original, thoroughly entertaining performance. Frankie Howerd was a man who certainly knew how to transform his weaknesses into strengths.