London History

Stephen Lewis’s acting career is defined in the popular memory by two long-running parts. To lovers of gentle, Sunday evening comedy he is Smiler in Last of the Summer Wine (the clue in the name is that, no, he doesn’t smile very much). And to watchers of a certain age (come to think of it it’s probably the same lot now being comedically unchallenged by LOTSW, just 30 years younger) he’ll always be Inspector Blake from On The Buses (catchphrase ‘I ‘ate you Butler’) delivered at least once per episode to hapless, bus-driving cockney midget Reg Varney.

We have to admit to a huge affection for On The Buses, though revisiting it recently on video we’ll admit that its sexual politics haven’t worn terribly well. The casting of Stan and Jack as love interest was always a bit challenging for the viewer, but this was an age when Sid James was playing romantic leads in the Carry On films - Britain was a strange place in those days.

Stephen Lewis has a prouder and considerably stranger theatrical pedigree though. In the late fifties and early sixties he was a merchant seaman from London, working of course out of the Thames. His shore leave took him to the Theatre Royal Stratford, home to the explosively creative (and often very difficult) Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop. Littlewood famously encouraged improvisation, loathing the actorly sheen which performers would apply to their performances. Work by the group included the British première of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1955), which she directed and in which she also played the lead. Lionel Bart came in with Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be; there was Oh! What a Lovely War (1963),and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (1958). Much of the work ended up on TV and many actors followed, becoming household faces (and occasionally names): Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy (the pair better known as George and Mildred), Barbara Windsor, Glynn Edwards and Harry H. Corbett.

Part of the deal was that the audience were invited to discuss the play with the actors afterwards - no room for fragile thespian egos here. On one occasion, at the bar, Littlewood heard Lewis criticising the play. ‘If you’re so clever, why not do it yourself,’ she replied, a typical Littlewood ploy. Lewis took the bait, but infuriated her by returning to sea afterwards. ‘I had no intention of being an actor’ he explains. But he returned to Stratford with a friend a year or two later and the bug bit. His real claim to fame comes in 1960 when he wrote Sparrows Can’t Sing (though an important coda here is that all the Workshop’s pieces were improvised, so the concept of playwright is somewhat fluid). But Lewis played a major role, and it’s him we have to thank for one of the best slices of London cinema, filmed on location in Bethnal Green, and with those loveable cuddly local heroes the Krays visiting the set.

Some interesting links

• There’s an excellent interview with Stephen Lewis here, in which he discusses all the above. He does rather give the impression of only ever having acted in three things, and he does use the word ‘dangerous’ a lot. Slightly curious but very good.
• General piece about movies filmed in east London including stuff on Sparrows Can’t Sing.
• A piece about Dan Farson, a major documentary maker and photographer in the sixties. He ran a pub in the East End (patrons including Frank Sinatra and Princess Margaret) and took still shots on the set of Sparrows Can’t Sing.