Book Review - Evening All by Jack Warner

Jack Warner was a familiar and comforting figure to most people born before the 1960s, but he is probably unknown to anyone younger. 

In his role as PC GeorgeDixon in Dixon of Dock Green he was the epitome of avuncularism. He was kindly, helpful and wise. 

My earliest TV memory is watching opening credits of Dixon of Dock Green. The show was still going nearly twenty years later, but by that time TV and Dixon of Dock Green were of little interest to younger people like me. When Jack Warner's autobiography was published in 1975 I didn't even bother having a TV. However, he still had many loyal followers among the older generations. This book was written for them. They could relate to anecdotes about the Great War and about Music Hall in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Jack Warner died in 1981, aged 85, and his most of his admirers have now also passed away. I suppose my second hand copy of this book came from one of those fans. Many of the other copies were thrown in bins with the other effects and rubbish accumulated over a lifetime.

Why would anyone read this book today? Well, I certainly enjoyed it and I think it would especially appeal to TV nostalgia fans, social historians and early car enthusiasts. I was surprised to discover that Julie Andrews and Tony Hancock owed their start in show business to Jack Warner. He was also very helpful to people like Reg Varney and Michael Bentine at the start of their careers.

Jack Warner was involved in the motor business as a mechanic, racing driver and as a car salesman. He moved to Paris in 1913 as a youngster and became mechanic for Sizaire-Berwick. One of the owners of that company, Maurice Sizaire (1877-1970), became a lifelong friend. A comment from Maurice's brother George encouraged Jack Warner to become a racing driver at Brooklands. The acme of his racing career was to come third in the Monte Carlo rally. His work with motor cars ended when his garage business in St John's Wood failed in 1935.

I was a bit surprised to hear PC George Dixon speaking French in an episode of Dixon of Dock Green set in Paris, but I now know that Jack Warner was a French speaking Francophile. At the start of the First World War he was as an interpreter in the French army, but he later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. Maurice Chevalier impersonations were a part of his variety act. In fact, I think his 1975 version of Louise is better than Chevalier's.

The clips on Youtube of his variety act – particularly those from near the end of his career - give the impression that Jack Warner was an extremely confident and competent performer yet it is clear from the book that he was still unhappy about a Royal Command Performance in the early 1950s. Despite all his screen and stage success he still felt the need to explain why he thought his performance could have been better. Writing about it more than twenty years later he was probably the only one who remembered or even cared. It just goes to show how we magnify our petty concerns and faults.

I think Jack Warner saw himself mainly as a variety entertainer. On Desert Island Discs in 1962 he said stage variety, which was in a slump at that time, would come back and that is where he saw himself finishing his career. He did finish his career on the stage with his one man show but there is no sign of variety coming back. 

He thought young people would turn away from pop music, which he regarded as “rubbish”, and return to the 1930 to 1950 era songs and light music he preferred. He also thought that the standard of TV comedy would go downhill “as the available material is gobbled up.” He seemed to thing this would lead to a revival of vaudeville. In 1975 when he wrote this he seems to have been a man out of his time.

The monologues and songs of his variety act now seem passé, but that could be said of nearly all comedy from that era. Of the British acts only Will Hay makes us laugh today. It is Jack Warner's films and TV work that endure. Films and programmes like The Huggetts and Dixon of Dock Green are a gold mine for those like me who are interested in how Britain has changed since the war.

Watching the films of The Huggetts I was struck by how deferential Jack Warner's character – a factory foreman - was towards his boss. When I started work about twenty years after the films my bosses would never have got the “Yes, Sir” treatment. That was only still going in the services. I thought I was being extremely polite by addressing him as “Mr”. Some of my contemporaries wouldn't even have bothered with that.

Huggetts Holiday camp was filmed in 1947 at Butlins Holiday Camp at Filey. I worked for a short while at Butlins in Skegness 25 years later and the rooms looked just like the ones in the film. The only difference was that we had bunk beds. There film is open about some campers going there in search of romance. That was probably a bit risqué in 1947, but by 1973 sexual mores had changed completely. Early one morning the drunken lout who bunked above me staggered into the room with some woman he had just picked up. If I hadn't been woken by their giggling I couldn't help have been woken by their subsequent antics. They weren't in any way inhibited by my presence in the bed below.

Esma Cannon played one of the characters in Holiday Camp who was looking for romance. I had noticed this strange looking actress in a few films but I didn't know anything about her. When I watch an old film I'm more interested in the locations and the actors then the story. I like to find out what became of the actors. Checking Esma Cannon on the net I could see that she retired early to live in a St Benoit-la-Forêt, which is just a little village. That surprised me. I only know a handful of places in France but I'd spent half a day wandering around that village a few years ago. Jack Warner doesn't mention her in his autobiography. In fact, he says he only worked with four actresses who “know their job backwards and yet are entirely free of conceit” : Gwen Watford, Celia Johnson, Edith Evans and Kathleen Harrison.

There's a Pathé News clip on the net showing Jack Warner prompting Kathleen Harrison when she forget her lines so even she wasn't perfect. In his book Jack Warner said even on radio shows he preferred to learn his lines off by heart rather than reading a script. That preparation and his professional attitude allowed him to continue his career long after most of his peers had retired. After reading this book I searched for more information about his private life. Many celebrities often show an unpleasant side when they are off camera but according to people like waiters and bar staff Jack Warner was pleasant and good natured in real life as he seemed on TV.

It's a bit sad that such a nice man didn't have children. His famous sisters Elsie and Doris Waters were also childless. Jack Warner brought out a record in 1971 called “You've got the gear” in which he gives advice to his “son”. It has been ridiculed by some because Jack obviously didn't know what the phrase meant, but I find the backing track and Jack's tone rather charming.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=senj16ziSRk