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callmemadamThe Swish of the Curtain 1941
Maddy Alone 1945
Golden Pavements 1947
Blue Door Venture 1949
Maddy Again 1956
These books follow the lives of three middle class families living in the same road in Fenchester (based on Colchester). Lynette Darwin is striking-looking and dreams of being an actress. Her brother Jeremy plays the violin and piano very well and would like to be a musician. The Fane sisters are very different from each other. Sandra has a lovely singing voice, is calm, sensible and good at domestic arts like sewing and cooking. Maddy, who at nine is by far the youngest of the Blue Doors is bumptious, unsquashable and a glib liar when the need arises. There is great excitement when a new family arrives at the corner house and the four friends spot ‘two red heads and a black one’. These are the Halfords. Vicky is good at dancing and acrobatics, Bulldog appears at first to have no particular talents but comes into his own later. Brother Nigel is good at art and plans to be a commercial artist.
Soon, the seven of them are spending almost all their spare time together. One day, walking down a dreary little street, they spot an unusual building with a faded blue door. After accidentally breaking a window, they snoop around and find that it’s a little hall which, they learn later, was once a chapel. They mend the window themselves, then start to imagine the hall turned into a theatre. After finding out who it belongs to and getting permission to use it, they clean the whole place up themselves while their parents wonder what on earth they’re up to all the time. Their dream comes true and they put on a show, writing the script themselves (mostly Lynette), making all the costumes (Sandra), painting backcloths (Nigel), writing the music (Jeremy). The little show is a great success (although not with their bitter enemy, Mrs Potter-Smith) and they start to think seriously about drama as a career. Their aim is to go to the British Actors’ Guild Academy. Their parents want them to get good, safe jobs and will only think of the Academy if the teenagers win the Roma Seymore trophy in a competition for local drama groups. They do, of course and are overjoyed, apart from poor Maddy who will be left behind. There’s a Christmas pantomime in the Blue Door Theatre and then an exhilarating, secret toboggan ride at night, which ends the book on a very happy note.
Pamela Brown was only fourteen when she started writing The Swish of the Curtain and it shows. She puts in all their scripts and songs word for word, which is tedious, if impressive for such a young writer. Yet generations of girls have loved this book and it was broadcast as a play on the BBC Children’s Hour. I think its popularity is because, in spite of moments of gloom when the Blue Doors think they will be forced into dreary jobs, it conveys brilliantly what fun it is to be young when you come from a comfortable, loving home and are old enough to be allowed out to enjoy yourself with friends. It’s also a wonderful fantasy about a dream which was unlikely to be achieved in real life.
There’s a rather patronising account of a 1980 BBC TV version of TSOTC here.
In Maddy Alone, Maddy is lonely and behaves badly at home and at school, occasionally playing truant. A chance meeting leads to her being shown round the set of a film being made just outside Fenchester. Discussing the film with their friend the bishop, she had learned that the heroine of the local legend was a child, rather than a glamorous woman. When she announces this to the director (she certainly has a nerve), the leading lady refuses to continue with her part and after some tests, Maddy is given the role. She learns that the castle in the set is supposed to represent the real one, which the owner, Lord Moulcester, won’t allow the use of. In typical blundering manner, Maddy confides all this to a man she takes for an estate worker. It is of course Lord M himself, who is rather taken with Maddy and agrees to the use of the castle as a backdrop. The rest of the book is full of detail about film making until the first night, when Maddy has would could have been a dangerous adventure if she weren’t such a lucky girl. It’s a good thing there are so many kindly people in these books.
Golden Pavements is probably my favourite book in the series, all about the joys of being young, free and in London. Nigel, the eldest, has already been at the Academy for a year when the others arrive. They board with Mrs Bosham, who is kindly but a terrible cook. Living on allowances from their parents, grotty digs are all the Blue Doors can afford. Eventually they all take part-time jobs, which is strictly forbidden. Bulldog turns out to have a talent for stand-up comedy and lands a job in a night club. There’s a lot of hard work: scripts to be learned, dancing for everyone whether or not they’re any good at it. Their parents would be pleased to know that they all attend morning prayers every morning. Even in the holidays there’s work. One Easter break the boys join a tour taking a play to schools in remote country districts and one summer, Lynette and Vicky get a job in rep. and discover just what hard work it is being an assistant stage manager in a repertory company. Great news for Maddy, when the Academy opens a junior department with theatrical training in the morning and school lessons in the afternoon, so at last she can join the others. I think her parents are mad to allow it, as she’s quite out of hand.
As the end of their time at the Academy looms, all thoughts are on the end of term productions (open to the public and agents) and the prizes available. The understanding has always been that when they graduate, the Blue Doors will return to Fenchester to open a professional rep. When they talk about it, Lynette seems strangely detached. Although she’s only given a small part in an end of term show, Lyn is spotted and offered a part in a West End play, acting with a famous actress. Straight out of the Academy and into a West End show? It seems like a no-brainer yet it’s hard for the other Blue Doors, who are polite about it apart from Maddy, who is furious with Lyn and thinks she’s letting them all down. Lyn is very good in the play but then, through no fault of hers, it turns out to be a disaster. It’s a hard lesson about how tough the theatrical life is and poor Lyn returns, sadder and wiser, to Fenchester. At the end of the next book, someone from the BBC remarks to Nigel how good Lyn is and asks if he thinks they’ll be able to keep her. Nigel says, ‘Yes’, but I wonder.
Blue Door Venture is more of an adventure story than a theatre book. It’s the time of the Christmas pantomime but things aren’t going well. The boiler breaks down and the hall is cold. Mrs Potter-Smith quickly spreads this news around. Then snow keeps people away from the theatre and the elderly man they’ve hired to run the box office and do the accounts becomes ill. While Maddy is on ticket office duty, a young man insinuates himself into the box and starts selling tickets. Typical Maddy, to be so friendly and trusting. Lucky turns out to be a whizz at publicity and sales and the run is extended. When the Panto season is over, they’re all gathered to celebrate when someone says, ‘Where’s Lucky?’ Of course, he’s absconded with all the takings, which he’d never banked as Nigel kept asking him to. Really, the Blue Doors are incredibly naïve. They now face ruin as they owe money all round and decide to close the theatre.
Gloom descends. Maddy goes back to the Academy and the others hatch a ridiculous plan. Without telling their long-suffering parents, the boys set off to trace Lucky (who has a police record, surprise) while the girls will look for work and send any money they make to support the boys. The girls start hitchhiking towards the West Country and the boys head for London. Luckily for the girls, they first get a job coaching amateur dramatic groups, then get taken on at a rep in Cornwall. In walks Lucky, up to his old tricks but he gets away again. After a showdown in London, much aided by Maddy and her little chums, all is well. Rather a depressing book, especially when the boys are just hanging around London, staying at the YMCA and often hungry.
What to make of Maddy Again? First, you have to remember that in 1956, television was still a novelty in the UK. The coronation had boosted sales but sets were expensive and not every family had one. The bigwigs at the Academy decide that as television is the coming thing, students should have some training in how to act for it and a very lively young lecturer arrives to instruct them. One day, he announces to the Babies (Maddy’s lot) that there is to be a new TV series, sponsored by what sounds a very worthy magazine aimed at teenagers. They want a boy or girl of the right age to act as compère and interview children from all over the world. Maddy misses out at first but then the chosen girl falls ill and the job is hers, although the TV people realise they are taking on a handful.
Anyone who’s read Ballet Shoes knows all about licences and chaperones. A licence is not a problem but who will chaperone Maddy, with her mother miles away? Roma Seymore advertises the post and interviews two candidates, with Maddy present. This is where things get difficult for the modern reader. The first interviewee is obviously unsuitable and then Miss Mackenzie is shown in. Maddy is surprised because she’s ‘a coal-black Negress!’ Not a word anyone would use now and surely even then, Londoners would have seen a black person before. Sunny’ as she’s known, is ‘a Southern girl’ who’s worked for the same wealthy American family for years, looking after the children. Now they’re at school, ‘my folks’, as she calls them, can’t bear to be parted from her so she still lives with them but wants a job. She asks if they think people will mind working with ‘a lady of colour’, as she calls herself and they of course say no. Maddy has fallen in love with her at once and she’s employed. The TV people are surprised when Sunny turns up with Maddy but she’s such a hit with everyone that they decide to rewrite the script and give her a speaking part in the show.
The rest of the book is very instructional, explaining in great detail how a TV show is put together, how the cameras work and so on. So now, it’s Maddy the TV star and the Fanes buy a television set ready to watch. Sunny is a perfect chaperone, although those ole’ Southern habits mean that she refers always to Miss Maddy, in spite of Maddy’s pleadings. It’s all very hard work and requires a lot of quick thinking and spontaneity as well as long scripts to learn. After an exciting and exhausting trip to film in Paris, it’s all over.
After starring in Forsaken Crown, Maddy could have expected a future career in films but in spite of the money (safely put away for her by her father), she’s sniffy about films compared with the stage. Now, she could be a budding TV presenter. Will she and Lyn always stay loyal to the Blue Door Theatre of Fenchester? Impossible to know but I think the fun stops when they grow up and the The Swish of the Curtain and Golden Pavements will always be the most popular of the books.
Some pics of the books on LJ.
Maddy Alone 1945
Golden Pavements 1947
Blue Door Venture 1949
Maddy Again 1956
These books follow the lives of three middle class families living in the same road in Fenchester (based on Colchester). Lynette Darwin is striking-looking and dreams of being an actress. Her brother Jeremy plays the violin and piano very well and would like to be a musician. The Fane sisters are very different from each other. Sandra has a lovely singing voice, is calm, sensible and good at domestic arts like sewing and cooking. Maddy, who at nine is by far the youngest of the Blue Doors is bumptious, unsquashable and a glib liar when the need arises. There is great excitement when a new family arrives at the corner house and the four friends spot ‘two red heads and a black one’. These are the Halfords. Vicky is good at dancing and acrobatics, Bulldog appears at first to have no particular talents but comes into his own later. Brother Nigel is good at art and plans to be a commercial artist.
Soon, the seven of them are spending almost all their spare time together. One day, walking down a dreary little street, they spot an unusual building with a faded blue door. After accidentally breaking a window, they snoop around and find that it’s a little hall which, they learn later, was once a chapel. They mend the window themselves, then start to imagine the hall turned into a theatre. After finding out who it belongs to and getting permission to use it, they clean the whole place up themselves while their parents wonder what on earth they’re up to all the time. Their dream comes true and they put on a show, writing the script themselves (mostly Lynette), making all the costumes (Sandra), painting backcloths (Nigel), writing the music (Jeremy). The little show is a great success (although not with their bitter enemy, Mrs Potter-Smith) and they start to think seriously about drama as a career. Their aim is to go to the British Actors’ Guild Academy. Their parents want them to get good, safe jobs and will only think of the Academy if the teenagers win the Roma Seymore trophy in a competition for local drama groups. They do, of course and are overjoyed, apart from poor Maddy who will be left behind. There’s a Christmas pantomime in the Blue Door Theatre and then an exhilarating, secret toboggan ride at night, which ends the book on a very happy note.
Pamela Brown was only fourteen when she started writing The Swish of the Curtain and it shows. She puts in all their scripts and songs word for word, which is tedious, if impressive for such a young writer. Yet generations of girls have loved this book and it was broadcast as a play on the BBC Children’s Hour. I think its popularity is because, in spite of moments of gloom when the Blue Doors think they will be forced into dreary jobs, it conveys brilliantly what fun it is to be young when you come from a comfortable, loving home and are old enough to be allowed out to enjoy yourself with friends. It’s also a wonderful fantasy about a dream which was unlikely to be achieved in real life.
There’s a rather patronising account of a 1980 BBC TV version of TSOTC here.
In Maddy Alone, Maddy is lonely and behaves badly at home and at school, occasionally playing truant. A chance meeting leads to her being shown round the set of a film being made just outside Fenchester. Discussing the film with their friend the bishop, she had learned that the heroine of the local legend was a child, rather than a glamorous woman. When she announces this to the director (she certainly has a nerve), the leading lady refuses to continue with her part and after some tests, Maddy is given the role. She learns that the castle in the set is supposed to represent the real one, which the owner, Lord Moulcester, won’t allow the use of. In typical blundering manner, Maddy confides all this to a man she takes for an estate worker. It is of course Lord M himself, who is rather taken with Maddy and agrees to the use of the castle as a backdrop. The rest of the book is full of detail about film making until the first night, when Maddy has would could have been a dangerous adventure if she weren’t such a lucky girl. It’s a good thing there are so many kindly people in these books.
Golden Pavements is probably my favourite book in the series, all about the joys of being young, free and in London. Nigel, the eldest, has already been at the Academy for a year when the others arrive. They board with Mrs Bosham, who is kindly but a terrible cook. Living on allowances from their parents, grotty digs are all the Blue Doors can afford. Eventually they all take part-time jobs, which is strictly forbidden. Bulldog turns out to have a talent for stand-up comedy and lands a job in a night club. There’s a lot of hard work: scripts to be learned, dancing for everyone whether or not they’re any good at it. Their parents would be pleased to know that they all attend morning prayers every morning. Even in the holidays there’s work. One Easter break the boys join a tour taking a play to schools in remote country districts and one summer, Lynette and Vicky get a job in rep. and discover just what hard work it is being an assistant stage manager in a repertory company. Great news for Maddy, when the Academy opens a junior department with theatrical training in the morning and school lessons in the afternoon, so at last she can join the others. I think her parents are mad to allow it, as she’s quite out of hand.
As the end of their time at the Academy looms, all thoughts are on the end of term productions (open to the public and agents) and the prizes available. The understanding has always been that when they graduate, the Blue Doors will return to Fenchester to open a professional rep. When they talk about it, Lynette seems strangely detached. Although she’s only given a small part in an end of term show, Lyn is spotted and offered a part in a West End play, acting with a famous actress. Straight out of the Academy and into a West End show? It seems like a no-brainer yet it’s hard for the other Blue Doors, who are polite about it apart from Maddy, who is furious with Lyn and thinks she’s letting them all down. Lyn is very good in the play but then, through no fault of hers, it turns out to be a disaster. It’s a hard lesson about how tough the theatrical life is and poor Lyn returns, sadder and wiser, to Fenchester. At the end of the next book, someone from the BBC remarks to Nigel how good Lyn is and asks if he thinks they’ll be able to keep her. Nigel says, ‘Yes’, but I wonder.
Blue Door Venture is more of an adventure story than a theatre book. It’s the time of the Christmas pantomime but things aren’t going well. The boiler breaks down and the hall is cold. Mrs Potter-Smith quickly spreads this news around. Then snow keeps people away from the theatre and the elderly man they’ve hired to run the box office and do the accounts becomes ill. While Maddy is on ticket office duty, a young man insinuates himself into the box and starts selling tickets. Typical Maddy, to be so friendly and trusting. Lucky turns out to be a whizz at publicity and sales and the run is extended. When the Panto season is over, they’re all gathered to celebrate when someone says, ‘Where’s Lucky?’ Of course, he’s absconded with all the takings, which he’d never banked as Nigel kept asking him to. Really, the Blue Doors are incredibly naïve. They now face ruin as they owe money all round and decide to close the theatre.
Gloom descends. Maddy goes back to the Academy and the others hatch a ridiculous plan. Without telling their long-suffering parents, the boys set off to trace Lucky (who has a police record, surprise) while the girls will look for work and send any money they make to support the boys. The girls start hitchhiking towards the West Country and the boys head for London. Luckily for the girls, they first get a job coaching amateur dramatic groups, then get taken on at a rep in Cornwall. In walks Lucky, up to his old tricks but he gets away again. After a showdown in London, much aided by Maddy and her little chums, all is well. Rather a depressing book, especially when the boys are just hanging around London, staying at the YMCA and often hungry.
What to make of Maddy Again? First, you have to remember that in 1956, television was still a novelty in the UK. The coronation had boosted sales but sets were expensive and not every family had one. The bigwigs at the Academy decide that as television is the coming thing, students should have some training in how to act for it and a very lively young lecturer arrives to instruct them. One day, he announces to the Babies (Maddy’s lot) that there is to be a new TV series, sponsored by what sounds a very worthy magazine aimed at teenagers. They want a boy or girl of the right age to act as compère and interview children from all over the world. Maddy misses out at first but then the chosen girl falls ill and the job is hers, although the TV people realise they are taking on a handful.
Anyone who’s read Ballet Shoes knows all about licences and chaperones. A licence is not a problem but who will chaperone Maddy, with her mother miles away? Roma Seymore advertises the post and interviews two candidates, with Maddy present. This is where things get difficult for the modern reader. The first interviewee is obviously unsuitable and then Miss Mackenzie is shown in. Maddy is surprised because she’s ‘a coal-black Negress!’ Not a word anyone would use now and surely even then, Londoners would have seen a black person before. Sunny’ as she’s known, is ‘a Southern girl’ who’s worked for the same wealthy American family for years, looking after the children. Now they’re at school, ‘my folks’, as she calls them, can’t bear to be parted from her so she still lives with them but wants a job. She asks if they think people will mind working with ‘a lady of colour’, as she calls herself and they of course say no. Maddy has fallen in love with her at once and she’s employed. The TV people are surprised when Sunny turns up with Maddy but she’s such a hit with everyone that they decide to rewrite the script and give her a speaking part in the show.
The rest of the book is very instructional, explaining in great detail how a TV show is put together, how the cameras work and so on. So now, it’s Maddy the TV star and the Fanes buy a television set ready to watch. Sunny is a perfect chaperone, although those ole’ Southern habits mean that she refers always to Miss Maddy, in spite of Maddy’s pleadings. It’s all very hard work and requires a lot of quick thinking and spontaneity as well as long scripts to learn. After an exciting and exhausting trip to film in Paris, it’s all over.
After starring in Forsaken Crown, Maddy could have expected a future career in films but in spite of the money (safely put away for her by her father), she’s sniffy about films compared with the stage. Now, she could be a budding TV presenter. Will she and Lyn always stay loyal to the Blue Door Theatre of Fenchester? Impossible to know but I think the fun stops when they grow up and the The Swish of the Curtain and Golden Pavements will always be the most popular of the books.
Some pics of the books on LJ.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-06 12:16 pm (UTC)I have just cleared out my kindle of books I never finished (some awful free books) and books I am unlikely to ever read. It had become unmanageble and even though I generally keep collections it was getting harder to keep track of what I had read and what I hadn't. I can start adding some new books now and make a better system of tracking!
no subject
Date: 2023-02-06 01:36 pm (UTC)I really need to tidy up my Kindle!
no subject
Date: 2023-02-12 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-12 06:34 pm (UTC)Of course a bunch of teenagers couldn't run a theatre but at say, eleven, you can half believe it, the same way you could half believe a girl could be given a pony and then win rosettes at the gymkhana. I must have been younger than that when I read Ballet Shoes for the first of many times and it never occurred to me that such things didn't happen in real life. It was a story.