Gervase Laurence Farjeon (23 October 1920 - 6 August 2001) was an English theatre producer, director, manager and designer. Born into a theatrical and artistic family he became director of productions at the Players' Theatre in London and co-commissioned and produced The Boy Friend, a British musical of the 1950s. He nursed it through its record-breaking five-year run in London's West End and in the 1960s produced further shows in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Later he was in demand as a producer and set designer for pioneering companies who used theatrical techniques for corporate conferences, product launches, and cabarets. An animal lover, in later life he worked voluntarily with the Born Free Foundation inspecting zoos around Europe for the European Community. From 1965 he was the literary executor of his aunt, the English author and poet Eleanor Farjeon and allowed her hymn Morning Has Broken to be recorded by the pop singer Cat Stevens. It became an international hit.
Early life Farjeon was born in Bucklebury, Berkshire, England on 23 October 1920. England and Wales Civil Registration, 1920 Births He was the third child and only son of Herbert Farjeon"Obituary: Gervase Farjeon", The Independent, London, 17 August 2001 (1887-1945), a presenter of revues, lyricist, playwright and theatre manager, whose father had been a novelist and playwright and a friend of Charles DickensLewis Melville, "Farjeon, Benjamin Leopold", Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement), Smith, Elder & Co, London, 1912 and whose mother was descended from the Jefferson acting dynasty of the United States.
Farjeon's mother was Joan Farjeon (1888–1989), née Thornycroft, the daughter of the sculptor Sir Hamo Thornycroft RA. She was a first cousin of the poet Siegfried Sassoon.Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: a biography, Picador, London, 2005Record Ref No HF/JF, "Joan Farjeon", Theatre Collection, University of Bristol, Bristol, England
Farjeon's wider family was almost exclusively artistic: an uncle, Harry Farjeon, was a composer, another uncle, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, was a novelist and playwright,"Obituary: Joan Jefferson Farjeon", The Independent, London, 22 September 2011 and his aunt, Eleanor Farjeon, was an author of children's stories and plays, poetry, biography, history and satire.Annabel Farjeon, Morning Has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon, Julia MacRae, London, 1986
Farjeon grew up surrounded by musicians, actors, artists and writers and listened to stories and gossip about many of the artistic figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was entranced by the theatre. His father often took him to first nights and encouraged him from an early age to criticise shows and their performances and staging. Farjeon longed to be an actor. Outside the artistic milieu of his family, in early childhood he also developed a love of animals.
After unhappy experiences at an English preparatory school, he was educated at the small and progressively liberal Bedales School at Petersfield in Hampshire, England where he was put in charge of the school's theatre. From Bedales, even though he still harboured ambitions to be an actor and had an intensifying interest in the theatre, he started training as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square, London.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 brought Farjeon's studies to an abrupt end. Like his father, he had been a pacifist from childhood,Joyce Grenfell, Darling Ma, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1988 and when called up under the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939 he declared himself to be a conscientious objector. Expecting a prison sentence, he faced a tribunal chaired by a judge, but being able to prove a lifelong pacifism he was granted exemption and began work on the home front with evacuees.
Farjeon's father, being the son of a Jew and a prominent figure in Britain, was at risk of detention and possible deportation should Nazi forces invade the United Kingdom. When invasion seemed likely in June 1940 his father sought reassurance from his cousin Harry, who lived in the United States, that the family, including his children, would be able to find safety with him in New York. In the event, the Farjeons did not need to leave Britain.
Released from his architectural studies and exempted from service, Farjeon was able to pursue his passion for the theatre, starting as a stage manager, and playing small parts in the many shows touring wartime Britain. Several productions in which he appeared were produced under the auspices of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, the forerunner of the Arts Council of Great Britain, where Farjeon was noticed by Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson and invited to work for the Council in the theatrical field as part of its duties to promote and maintain British culture.
The Players' Theatre and The Boy Friend In 1946, Farjeon was invited by Leonard Sachs, its director, to become stage director at the Players' Theatre in London's West End. In this role he took over the control of the nightly Victorian-type music hall productions staged by the company, with the programme changing every two weeks. Under his direction were many performers who in the post-war years were to achieve fame. Among them were Ian Carmichael, Maria Charles, Clive Dunn, Patricia Hayes, Robin Hunter, Hattie Jacques, James Robertson Justice, John Le Mesurier, Bernard Miles, Maggie Smith, Eleanor Summerfield, and Peter Ustinov."Late Joys" programme, Players' Theatre, London
Sachs left the Players' in 1947 and Farjeon, now Director of Productions, was joined by the stage designer Reginald Woolley and his partner, actor-producer Don Gemmell, to form the new board of directors.Deborah Philips, And This Is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture, Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London 2021 By the early 1950s the Players' Theatre Club had over 3000 members Paul Sheridan, Late and Early Joys at the Players' Theatre, TV Boardman and Company, London, 1952 and had achieved "world-wide fame".Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, Musical Comedy: A Story in Pictures, Peter Davies, London, 1969
In 1952 Farjeon and his colleagues decided to commission their own musical to take the stage at the Players' as a filler for part of the variety programme and it was Farjeon who telephoned an actor and writer of revues, Sandy Wilson, to invite him to discuss writing a musical.Sandy Wilson, I Could Be Happy: An Autobiography, Michael Joseph, London, 1975
In his autobiography, I Could Be Happy, Wilson recalls that at the first meeting with Farjeon and Woolley, when he suggested doing a musical in the period of the 1920s, Farjeon quickly replied: "That would be fine". Wilson was commissioned to write a one-hour show, called The Boy Friend, to be staged in a three-week run at the Players'. It opened to good reviews in the spring of 1953. In the autumn of that year it was lengthened and opened for a season at the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, London. Following that success, as Director of Productions Farjeon was instrumental through family theatrical connections in opening The Boy Friend at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End on 14 January 1954.Programme, The Boy Friend, Wyndham Theatres Ltd, London, 1954.
With Farjeon remaining at the production helm it ran for a then record-breaking five years and 2,048 performances, taking £650,000 at the box office and playing to 1,250,000 people.JP Wearing, The London Stage 1950-1959: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, Rowman & Littlefield, Plymouth UK, 2014
With the money-spinning"Johnny the Priest loses £25,000", The Daily Telegraph, London 26 April 1960 success of The Boy Friend, Farjeon and his fellow directors of the Players' Theatre nursed ambitions to produce more shows that might succeed in the West End. They set up a production company, Players' Ventures Limited, with Farjeon as Managing Director. Their first attempt, Twenty Minutes South, a musical by Maurice Browning and Peter Greenwell, opened at the Players' Theatre in May 1955 and after restaging in Birmingham and a week in Nottingham it opened at St Martin's Theatre in the West End in July 1955 and ran for 101 performances, closing in October 1955.
A considerably less successful venture followed: an "implausible Oxonian farce","The Sun Sometimes Sets", The Observer, London, 29 April 1956 Commemoration Ball by Stanley Parker. After a try-out in Worthing in September 1955 it opened at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End in April 1956 where it ran for only six performances, the gallery booing the opening night.
After a couple of years Farjeon and his fellow directors staged another musical. This was The Crooked Mile by Peter Greenwell and Peter Wildeblood. After two weeks in Manchester and two in Liverpool, it opened at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End in September 1959. This show was welcomed enthusiastically by the first night audience and brought stardom for the performer Millicent Martin but it ran for only 164 performances and closed in January 1960, having lost £15,000.
Another musical, Johnny the Priest by Antony Hopkins and Peter Powell was in production at this point (it was destined to run in the West End for only eleven performances and lost the Players' Theatre £25,000) but Farjeon, by now setting up as a producer, had decided to break away from the Players' Theatre and Players' Ventures, resigning his directorships in March 1960.The Times, London, 25 March 1960
Producer While at Wyndham's with The Boy Friend Farjeon had met Richard O'Donoghue, a former actor working as Wyndham's manager, and together in 1959, they set up a theatrical production partnership. They produced a number of shows during the following six years.
The first was The Doctor and the Devils, an adaptation of a screenplay by the Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas. It was based on the true story of William Burke and William Hare, who in 1828 in Edinburgh, Scotland, murdered at least 16 people and sold their bodies for anatomical dissection. After being first seen in Glasgow in 1961 it took to the stage at the Edinburgh Festival to some "considerable controversy" in 1962."Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 30 August 1962
A children's play, New Clothes for the Emperor by Nicholas Stuart Gray, followed in 1963,"Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 28 November 1963 and then a comedy, Domino by Marcel Achard with Denholm Elliott and Judy Campbell in the cast."Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 10 January 1963 There was a run of this show in Brighton and it was booked to open in the West End at the Savoy Theatre but Farjeon and O'Donoghue decided at the last minute not to bring it in to London at that stage, "because they were not satisfied that they had achieved its true potential"."Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 02 May 1963 It toured provincial theatres while work continued on it, but its final appearance was at the Lyric Hammersmith in the summer of 1963.
Subsequently, another comedy, Every Other Evening, an adaptation of a French play with mother and daughter leads, Margaret and Julia Lockwood, toured the UK for eight weeks in 1964 before having a respectable run at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End."Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 23 July 1964George W Bishop, "Plays and Players", The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 September 1964
April 1965 saw the opening at the New Arts Theatre in London of a first play, Kindly Monkeys, by Milton Hood Ward, to generally poor reviews."Chit Chat", The Stage, London, 01 April 1965
In the six years of their producing partnership Farjeon and O'Donoghue also produced a variety of concerts and cabarets in the West End of London, in Dublin and in the English provinces.The Stage, London, passim