Comme Secombe Ça
In the article I posted last week with the full-episode video here of The Harry Secombe Show -- on which he sang a duet from La Boheme with an opera singer -- I mentioned that it wasn’t all that much of a stretch for him, since he had starred in a 1957 British movie, Davy, about the member of a low-level vaudeville, family comedy team who wants to go out on his own and be an opera singer.
(No, it’s not semi-autobiographical, although Secombe did get his start in vaudeville/burlesque music hall. In fact, if you ever saw the movie, Mrs. Henderson Presents with Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins – a fairly enjoyable film, for which she got an Oscar nomination – it’s loosely based on a true story where a woman buys on old theater house and puts on variety shows that include an all-nude women’s revue. And that theater, the Windmill, is one of the places where Harry Secombe began his career. In fact, he wrote what was a semi-autobiographical story, the comic novel, Twice Brightly, about that part of his very early career.)
Anyway, back to the point at hand, I thought that after bringing that up about the movie Davy, it was only proper to post a scene from the film and show I was not a-lying. This scene is where ‘Davy’ sort of sneaks off to the Royal Opera to audition, to a skeptical music director, and sings “Nessun Dorma.”
What I've always found remarkable, and which this video is a perfect example of, is that as magnificent as Harry Secombe's voice was, he wasn't "a singer." He did release many albums and would sing an occasional song when he'd do a solo act and starred in a few stage musicals, but that was never the core of his career. At heart, he was a music hall clown, who came to fame on the BBC in the late 1950s with the radio show, The Goon Show, for 10 years, with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. And he didn't even sing on that, but instead they had another singer who would perform each week, Ray Ellington. Yet for all his clowning and comic acting and TV hosting, singing was one of his talents. Generally singing popular songs or comic numbers, but also...this, on occasion, as well.
So, no, he wasn't an opera singer. He was basically a vaudeville music hall clown.
By the way, just a heads-up, but it will shock no regular readers here to know that I have a bunch of Harry Secombe video upcoming over the next week or two. Here's the latest --
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