REMEMBERING MERVYN GOULD by Prof. John Lucas

My relationship with Mervyn, which stretches back thirty years, began in 1979 when he was appointed Theatre Manager to Loughborough University’s Department of English and Drama — or, as he was soon calling it, Department of Anguish and trauma. Not long after our first meeting I went into the Senior Common Room one morning and found him turning out his pockets in a search for money for which to pay for a cup of Coffee. “Do you lack the visible means of support necessary for your sustenance, my good man?”, I asked, and to my delight, Mervyn replied grandly , “Officer, I never leave home without four pence in my pocket.” He knew, you see, as I suspect few others did, that four pence was what in the interwar years a possible vagrant  needed in order to satisfy a policeman that he had the wherewithal for a night’s lodging.

Mervyn knew many things, and over the years, as our friendship deepened, I came to rely on him as a possible source of information on, among other matters, church and vernacular architecture, canal and railway history, Anglican Hymns, Edwardian, or as he pronounced it “Edvardian” society, the poetry of Jean Ingelow, music-hall artistes, and the early days of Cinema. In recent years I was also grateful to him for the annual gift of a Christmas Pudding prepared according to a recipe of his mother’s, whom he plainly revered, and which he labelled “Old Gould’s Ingoldsby Pudding.”

But it was his knowledge of the history of theatre lighting, of sound and of special effects, in all of which he was prodigiously learned, from which I most profited. So, I should add did the University at large. He not only gave some wondrous public lectures on the history and various techniques of lighting, he taught by example.  So greatly admired were his skills that he was asked to provide the lighting arrangements for the obsequies of a vice-chancellor who had died in office and whose inter-denominational funeral was to be held on campus. Mervyn agreed, but insisted on a dress-rehearsal. “Thank you, darlings,” he said, after the various dignitaries had gone through their paces. “Can we take it again please. And next time” — and the implied rebuke was magisterial — “a little slower.”

On another occasion, I came across a reference to an 1878 production of Antony and Cleopatra at Drury Lane which ended with the battle on the plains at Philippi, at which point, so I read, no fewer than a thousand arrows criss-crossed the smoke-shrouded stage. “How on earth was that managed” I asked Mervyn. And Mervyn said, “Well, petal, if you have half-an-hour I will explain all”. And he did.

He could and would explain such matters to enthralled listeners in public bars and other watering holes. He was also an invaluable guide to students, more than one of whom was helped by his knowledge and of course contacts into gaining work in the professional theatre. This made him enemies among a few academic colleagues less gifted, less knowledgeable, and far more egotistical than he ever was, and who were warped by sour envy of the unpractised ease with which he acquired friends and admirers. Because what made Mervyn so cherishable was that he had nothing of guile or calculation about him. Quite without self-interest, he was, I think, a deeply innocent man, someone whose storehouse of knowledge was filled for its own sake and never for the sake of reputation or advancement. The MA that he gained at the City University in the early ’90s was achieved for its own sake rather than for “career enhancement”, that dread phrase of the worldly-wise, of management consultants, professional advisers and be-suited administrators, those types of whom Mervyn went not so much in dread as in genial contempt.

Even his histrionics were self-deprecatingly and hugely comical. Dickens, who created the sweet, wide-eyed goodness of Mr. Toots and Herbert Pocket, would have loved him, and would have delighted in Mervyn’s ability to act out a role as blessed compendium of Dick Swiveller, Wilkins Micawber and Vincent Crummles. In fact, Dickens’s description of Mr Crummles receiving Nicholas Nickleby “with an inclination of the head, something between the courtesy of a Roman emperor and the nod of a pot companion” strikes me as bearing more than a passing resemblance to Mervyn’s way of greeting a friend. There were, as I say, many of these friends, some of whom are here today, others who can’t be. But all, I’m sure, would agree that Mervyn was a uniquely loveable person, I mourn his death but rejoice that I knew him.

John Lucas

Footnote- In the letter accompanying the above Eulogy that he read out at the Funeral,  he pointed out that he arrived as Professor and Head of English and Drama at Loughborough University in 1977 and was therefore one of the committee that appointed Mervyn to his post (which he notes was one of the best appointments he ever made). He left the University a year after Mervyn retired as Emeritus Professor and became Research Professor at Nottingham Trent University, where he invited Mervyn to talk to his Students who were as enthralled by him as their earlier counterparts at Loughborough had been.

MERVYN, THE MAN.    Contributed by Llewellyn Williams  (husband of Gerrie/Leonie)

I fully expect that the tributes to our friend posted on this site, plus a really adequate version of his C.V., would more than fill an edition of the Bioscope – and then some!  So, what can I add?

I once told Mervyn that he was ‘just a crazy mixed-up kid.’  He replied that he had no problem with the accusation, but resented it being couched in American terms.  As he often felt the need to not only ‘wave his own C.V. like a banner’ but also that of his friends, and would likely grumble that in order to evaluate anything I had to say about him folk would need to know a bit about me, he would abhor the use of ‘this is where I’m coming from’ -  but here goes……. Born of  theatrical parents. Child performer. Earned living in most types of UK and Europe Theatre/Cabaret/TV performance branches and productions, as Actor,Singer or Musical Act (Xylophone & other instruments, etc). Then, a decade ago, although agreeing with my increasing disgust at the way ‘the business’ was now being run, both Mervyn and our agent were astonished when I retired before my 60th birthday. (Okay, Merv?)

I sometimes think that we appreciate our friends as much for their faults as their virtues, as we may aspire to emulate the latter whilst accepting, but feeling comfortable in criticising, the former – hopefully, not being hypocritical in the process. In describing such a ‘cavalier’ character as our dear friend of nearly forty years , I think that one might well say that ‘they first broke the mould,  and THEN made Mervyn!”

He heartily agreed when I  once said that it might have been he instead of John Buchan who said, “There is nothing to be said against the retention of prejudices. I believe in every man having a good stock of them, for otherwise we should be flimsy ineffective creatures, and deadly dull at that.”  I’m sure that anyone who was more than a passing acquaintance would be likely to offer him as a perfect example of ‘A study in Contrasts.’  Boastful/self-denigrating. Clumsy/painstaking. Dismissive/caring. High-handed/self-effacing. Lazy/driven . Facetiously critical/Fiercely loyal.  Knowing him, which of us could not add to this description of someone who often faced the world at large looking like a slob but, devoted to the demands of ‘polite society’, would immediately ‘scrub-up well’ when the situation demanded. Or deny that he would cheerfully own up to the most negative of these descriptions, whilst attracting friends who would rush to his defence if the need arose.

A chance remark could result in one being on the receiving end of a serious, erudite mini lecture on the subject or, conversely, a flippant, dismissive and sometimes quite bigoted rejoinder. If the latter resulted in a furious challenge, he could gleefully defuse the situation by quoting his highly-esteemed mentor at Loughborough University, who once remarked, “Mervyn, you are pontificating from your usual standpoint of complete ignorance of the subject!”

On one occasion, in a conversation about changing our destinies, I quoted a verse from one of Fitzgerald’s translations of the

Rubaiyat of Omar khayyam. Mervyn muttered something denigrating about ‘foreign poetry’, and I reminded him that it was only ‘half foreign’, as there was as much of Fitzgerald in this translation as there was of Omar.  And, as he shared the Persian poet’s devotion to the consumption of alcoholic beverage, he might approve the final stanzas being included in his epitaph.

After I had quoted the following lines he grinned broadly and chuckled, “Yes – Yes, I quite like that!”

BUT SEE, THE RISING MOON OF HEAV’N AGAIN LOOKS FOR US THROUGH THE QUIVERING PLANE.

HOW OFT, HEREAFTER RISING WILL SHE LOOK AMONG THOSE LEAVES -  FOR ONE OF US, IN VAIN?

AND, WHEN LIKE HER, YOU SHALL PASS AMONG THE GUESTS, STAR-SCATTERED ON THE GRASS

AND IN YOUR JOYOUS ERRAND REACH THE SPOT WHERE I MADE ONE  -  TURN DOWN AN EMPTY GLASS.

Merv, if there is an ‘afterlife’ I imagine that you’ll have your Booze and Fags removed, but should still be allowed your daily crossword. Similarly, your going has removed some of the sunshine from our lives, but they will still be enriched by memories of your ‘carryings on’, and we’ll always remember you ‘with a smile and a kind word.’

(The following mailing from our Chairman was included in the November Bioscope)

MERCIA CINEMA SOCIETY

Registered charity no 1001524

From the Chairman

19 Pinder’s Grove

Wakefield WF1 4AH

kate@airtime.co.uk

9 November 2009

Dear Member,

Mervyn Gould

It is with very great sadness that I have to report the death of our Administrator, Mervyn Gould, on 28 October.  The funeral is at Loughborough Crematorium on Friday 13 November at 3.30pm.

Overleaf you will find details of our Annual Meeting on 12 December. Mervyn’s death is a massive blow to the Society. He was wonderfully dedicated to it, giving a great part of his time and all his talents, in design and writing, as well as in ‘networking’, to its success.With the death of Mervyn, cinema and theatre history have lost a major player.

I do not myself believe that we can carry on without him although I know he would have wished us to do so.

I shall propose from the Chair at the Annual Meeting that the Society, which was founded in 1980,  be wound up in accordance with the details set out in our Constitution.  Members will, of course, have the opportunity to debate this motion fully.

Yours sincerely,

Kate Taylor

MERCIA CINEMA SOCIETY

Registered Charity no 1001524

Notice of Annual Meeting 2009

The Annual Meeting of the Society will be held on Saturday 12 December at the Odeon, Putney, at 11.15am (Committee meeting at 11.00am)

Agenda:  1) Apologies for absence

2) The Minutes of the Annual Meeting held on 13 December 2008

3) Matters arising from the Minutes

4) Reports from officers: Chairman’s review of the year,

Treasurer’s report

Membership officer’s report

Sales officer’s report

Editor’s report

5) Motion from the Chair that the Society be wound up in accordance with the

details set out in the Constitution

If the motion fails:

6) Election of officers for 2009-2010

The refreshment facilities in the Cinema Foyer will be available and we are promised an opportunity to see the projection facilities.

This is, obviously, a critical meeting and members are urged to attend or, if unable to do so, to send the completed proxy form to the Chair, Kate Taylor, 19 Pinder’s Grove, Wakefield.  WF1 4AH

The motion that the Society be wound up follows the death of the Administrator, Mervyn Gould, but is presented also in the light of the Society’s deteriorating financial position and the need for new officers at least in terms of a Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, and Membership Secretary,  We have 210 members and, although the committee meets only once a year, overall expenses, including the costs of room-hire and the production and mailing of the Bioscopes, outweigh subscription income.

But we must bear in mind that the Society is the principal publisher of research into the history of picture houses.

If you feel strongly that the Society must continue, it is important that you indicate what you can do yourself to sustain it. It would need, at the least, an able new Chair and Secretary, and someone with design and typesetting skills and the time to use them in a voluntary capacity for the benefit of the Society.

Kate Taylor

TRIBUTE TO MERVYN STOCKBRIDGE GOULD from Gerrie Williams. (stage name Gerrie Raymond in younger days and Leonie Wilde in later ones)

There are very few truly Renaissance Men left in the world, and even fewer genuinely ‘larger than life’ characters. Mervyn was both of these, in spades.

He worked of course in many branches of the theatrical profession….as electrician at The West End’s Palace Theatre; Stage Manager and Lighting Designer at major provincial theatres such as Sunderland Empire…..and at virtually all of the minor theatres too. He was Road Manager for Mike and Bernie Winters, and he even once essayed the role of actor in summer repertory. As Llewellyn and myself were working in some theatre somewhere else at the time, we never saw him play Winston Churchill. However, in his inimitable fashion, he assured us that, “worthy sources” had considered him “not f…ing bad!”

I met him in 1970, (and Llewellyn sort of acquired him as a fixture in our lives when Llew and I married a year later…..the duo of friendship moving seamlessly into a trio). In 1970 I was leading lady in the big Revue Show at the Butlins Theatre in Skegness, where Mervyn happened to be theatre ‘sparks’…..quite literally in that theatre, as the lighting board was a deathtrap and should have been condemned long since. I do not think that Health and Safety would permit the flying sparks these days, particularly since the poor electrician stood habitually in a half inch of water due to a leak in the roof! Mervyn took it all in his stride as he struggled with the antique board, and the 30 ish people onstage grew used to hearing the colourful epithets emanating from the box set high above the O.P wings as the hapless Mervyn thought he was about to turn into a catherine wheel.

The 40 year friendship spiced with shared black Scorpio humour, the same academic interests, and the same intense theatricality of the 3 of us afford a million memories of Merve. It would take an entire book to catalogue even the most magical moments. I remember him once turning up to visit us at some stage door or other, and imperiously demanding entrance , as he was, “Miss Raymond’s personal lighting designer”. This caused some puzzlement for the staff as the lighting choices at this particular gaffe were twofold…..ON or OFF……and oh, that I could have afforded a personal lighting designer!

Having said that, I did actually employ him once in that capacity for a pantomime which I was Directing at the time, (not to mention Choreographing and playing Principal Boy…..smaller Managements liked to get their monies worth in the 1970′s). The Management were stunned by the brilliance of his work, pronouncing him “uniquely gifted”, and then adding, “if a trifle high-handed dear”.

Well, we know that the old lad could be irascible, bombastic and mercurial at times, but he was generous to a fault, consumed by guilt if he had offended, immensely proud of the achievements of his friends and supportive of them at times of crisis in their lives. In short, he was the loyalest of loyal friends, gaining a raft of friends from the theatrical profession, and indeed from all other areas of his life as witness the large number of people who attended his funeral and bombarded websites various with messages and tributes to his memory. In fact, had he been in the congregation at his funeral, he would have said, “not a bad house for a Friday matinee”.

At the funerals of each of my parents, one of my Drama pupils from my sideline teaching practice spoke a poem by Thomas Hardy. After the second of these occasions, Merve……who was loyally in attendance, even though he was suffering from a vicious attack of gout, which he described in torrents of colourful language……said, “the girl who did it at your father’s funeral did it better….nice unadorned speech and splendid sensitivity”. He was right of course. He had an excellent knowledge of, and a fine ear for poetry. One of his running jokes over all those years was to convince me that he was years younger than myself. I totally believed it for a lot of years until he betrayed himself and then screamed with gleeful laughter about the amount of time that he had managed to foster the deception We kept up the joke then, just to amuse him. We would be watching some programme about the Second World War on television and he would opine that the shortage of potatoes must have been difficult for me when arranging meals. I would counter with something like the fact that it didn’t matter too much anyway since it was quite difficult for my mother to force potatoes into my feeding bottle. He would shake and chortle with delight. So even after he had made the observation about the speaking of the poem at my mother’s funeral, and had then said in that wonderfully mocking way of his, “I like that poem, you can do it at mine”…..he still had to add, “if you havn’t long since snuffed it yourself, aged old bat that you are!”

Well, I was quite certain that he would find SOME way to send me notes if he disapproved of my rendition of it at his funeral, but I took a deep breath and said, “darling Merve, this is for you”.

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here and be gone

Where we could not follow, with wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon.

Never to bid goodbye or lip the softest call

Or utter a wish for a word, while we

Saw morning harden upon the wall,

Unmoved, unknowing, that your great going

Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why then latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,

And ‘ere your vanishing strive to seek

That time’s renewal?

Well! All’s past amend,

Unchangeable. It must go.

And you could not know

That such swift fleeing, no soul forseeing

Would undo us so.

Addendum:   It was our tradition that Merve came to stay for a week with us at my birthday or his birthday, at Llew’s birthday, and for Xmas/New Year, (as well as once or twice in other parts of the year )once we had semi and then fully retired.

He had apologised for not feeling well enough to come for my birthday this year but would come for his own. In the event, he passed away on my birthday, but not before he had posted off a card and one of his justly famous fruit cakes The fact that he had managed to do that when he was so obviously terribly ill speaks volumes about the worth of the man, and his love of his friends. That gesture more than anything else made me weep inconsolably. Our festive occasions will be unbelievably poorer without the presence of this unique and glorious aforementioned ‘Renaissance Man’.

FROM SIMON BLACK

For those who know me, my profound apologies for not being here in person, since family commitments make it impossible for me to get away from Cardiff for this sad day.

It was with great regret that I heard about the passing away of Mervyn Stockbridge Gould.  A great leading light of the theatrical scene has gone out for good and remains forever dark.  Of course, if he were here, he would be telling me off for using the word ‘light’.  “It’s a lamp or a lantern you stupid boy”  would be the cry, for which misdemeanour I will almost certainly have to pay the price of the next round.

I had the delightful experience of learning the technical workings of the stage under Mervyn’s tutelage at the Department of Anguish and Trauma at Loughborough University in the late 1080s and early 1990s.  I also have it on good authority that it was Mervyn himself who coined the very term, which is still in use today.  I also believe he was responsible for the term ‘shabby-gentile’.

There are a couple of us who steered clear of the bitchiness and backstabbing that came with the actual performance of drama and tended to take on all the technical and backstage work on a regular basis.  Mervyn was always delighted when a student came forward in this way, since it freed his time up and gave him an opportunity to check on the flow levels of the hand pumps in the EHB bar.  Incidentally the EHB at the university did have a small technical and lighting capability, which fell under Mervyn’s due care and diligence.  It was on just such a mercy errand for a ‘special bulb’ with Mervyn that I discovered that the EHB was the only bar on campus which still served beer from old fashioned jug handled glasses.  These special bulbs required much diligent care and attention.

After university, I spent several years working as a stage lighting technician

for a number of theatres, including Nottingham Playhouse, which Mervyn lauded, and for a number of touring rock bands, which Mervyn derided as “new-fangled skiffle”.  I would not have done this were it not for his support and guidance, and the all important three-fold rule of theatrical timing:

“Never forger, Black, that there are three vitally important times in this business:  Opening Time; Closing Time and with appropriate brevity in-between ‘Show Time’”.

Mervyn remains forever in our memory – a lighthouse in a sea of mediocrities,

and one who sadly must remain bright only in our memories.  Please raise your special bulbs to the last and finest example of the old school.

Kind regards

Simon Black.