#variety feature

[thewidowstanton]

Archive feature: Jake Messham, Messham’s Wall of Death – 2012

Following our recent interview with child motorbike stunt rider Dangerous Steve, in which I pointed out, ahem… that I had ridden a Wall of Death and he hadn’t, we decided to post my archive feature with Jake Messham, star rider with Messham’s Wall of Death.

By Liz Arratoon

Any performance with ‘death’ in the title is bound to cause a stir. The Wall of Death, the Wheel of Death and the Globe of Death mix thrills with terror, but what gives the wall an extra frisson is the close proximity of the riders to the audience. James Messham presents and operates Europe’s oldest motorcycle show on the “smallest and steepest track” in the world. But it’s more than steep, it’s vertical! Just 21, his son Jake Messham is a fourth-generation Wall of Death trick rider and the show’s star. His brothers Nathan and Junior also ride. It was their granddad’s brother, Jake Messham Snr, who was the first in the family to ride the wall.

Jake says: “He worked on the fair with [showman] Pat Collins and when the Americans brought it over to English funfairs in 1929, the riders taught him to ride. In the mid-30s he bought his own Wall of Death.” Back then it was the biggest thing on fairgrounds and Jake Snr wanted a part of the high money-earner. But Jake is keen to point out: “You’re not there just to go round. People stand out at the front and think, ‘Oh, it’s just riding motorbikes around’, but you’re there to put a show on and entertain people. You want to make them laugh and clap and make sure they enjoy it. If I drove round not looking at people or smiling, it wouldn’t be the same.”

The audience climbs a flight of open wooden steps to the viewing gallery. Separated from the riders by a simple steel cable and asked to keep their hands away from the edge, they find out why when the riders circle the 20ft-high wall within touching distance, sometimes not holding on. It’s an astounding sight.

There are four elements to Messham’s show. Mick O’Malley might start with high-speed riding before front man Charles Winter demonstrates the ‘dips and dives of death’. Jake performs ‘trick and fancy’ riding – similar to bareback skills – before he is joined by Winter for the Australian Pursuit, during which they chase and undertake each other, and finish circling the wall one above the other. They look as if they’re having the time of their lives, smiling and saluting the crowd. But it is Jake’s sequence of stunts that brings gasps of disbelief and cheers of appreciation for the man’s sheer nerve.

Impressively, the Brighton-based daredevil was just 11 when he started learning to ride. Winter, who has been riding with Messham’s for 30 years, played a vital part in passing the knowledge on. The tricks are first learnt on a rolling road, where the bike is positioned on rollers. It’s stationery but has the feeling of movement, and Jake “doesn’t exactly know” how they graduate to doing them on the wall. “It’s just of those things,” he says. “You get in there and do it. The first trick you learn is to let you hands away from the handlebars and at first it does feel really weird. The force pushes against your body. Once you can move across the bike you can do anything you want, really. When I’m going round I’ve got total control. Before I start, I look up. I can see the people and spot exactly where I’m going to put the bike.”

The straight riding is done on Hondas but the fancy tricks are performed on a 1923 Indian Scout – a machine with wide handlebars and generous leather seat – which has always possessed an international reputation for power and reliability. “It’s all about speed,” Jake explains. “If you go too fast when you’re on the Indian doing tricks, you won’t be able to move across the bike. The blood will rush from your head to your feet and you’ll pass out. The slower you go, the better the tricks look and it’s easier to move across the bike. But if you go too slow, you’ll just fall off.”

The centrifugal force pulls the human flies to the wall, but Jake reveals: “What actually keeps you on the wall is the friction on the tyres. They are standard road tyres. We go between 15 and 20mph. You see a lot of riders go too fast but then they can’t move across the bike.”

It’s said that trick riders have to be as fit as fighter pilots to withstand the increased G-force. “Riding does keep you fit. You’re pulling about six or seven Gs going round. It’s about three times your body weight.” But that’s not all that keeps Jake fit. It takes him and four others roughly seven hours to set up the drum and maybe four to take it down. With more than 780 parts, it’s no picnic. The wall – constructed from 15 tons of Oregon pine – forms a circular wooden drum, 30ft in diameter. It is a faithful reconstruction of a traditional American design, built to specifications passed on by the famous rider Speedy Babbs. A red boundary line runs round high up the wall, but tyre marks show that the riders do stray beyond it.

So just how dangerous is it? Jake acknowledges the risks: “You can always have accidents. I had a couple last year. The tyre can blow up, you can have a puncture or the engine can seize up; you never know. It’s just one of those things. The first time I ever fell off I broke my ankle in three places and had a metal plate and nine pins put in. I was in a cast for seven months, so when I got out of that I was a bit wary. I was only 12, so it took a little while to get back on the wall. It is dangerous but more people have been killed setting it up or taking it down than riding it.”

Messham’s worldwide reputation still doesn’t make it an easy ride. “Years ago, you’d walk on to fairgrounds and there’d be two Walls of Death. You’d start the bike up on the front and people would just come at you. Now it’s hard to get people in. The older generation recognise it but my generation doesn’t know what it is. They think it’s a wall that people stick to. In the old days on fairs, there’d be a show row with loads of different shows, but people are not educated about what shows are these days. It’s all fair rides.”

Anna Carter, who owns and runs Carter’s Steam Fair, where Jake performs, is trying to address that. Recently at Pinkney’s Green, Maidenhead, she recreated an old-style show line with Voltini’s authentic Victorian sideshow, Jon Marshall’s Headless Lady illusion, Colin Thorpe’s Siamese Twins exhibit and his Mirror Show. She says: “With so few shows on fairs now, it’s very exciting to have Messham’s with us. People absolutely love it. If you go to modern fairs, all the shows have just disappeared but everything about Carter’s is about the past.”

The past resonates with Jake, too. He regards the wall as his life’s work; a vocation even. “I love the history and keeping the family tradition going. It is hard work and sometimes the weather is bad and we take no money, but if there are two or three people waiting you still have to put on a show. You can’t be in it for the money. We’re never going to be millionaires, but when you’ve had a really good day, it’s worth it. I love doing it. It’s in my blood.”

Messham’s website

Picture credit: Messham’s Archive

1. Jake Messham – trick and fancy riding (The Crucifix)

2. Margy Dare (top) and Jake Messham Snr present The Hell Drivers Race, Morecambe 1940s

3. Old continental Wall of Death front from 1930s – Jake Messham Snr on left

4. Jake Messham Snr – trick and fancy riding 1930s.

Liz adds: After doing the interview at Carter’s Steam Fair, Jake took me for a ride and, ha ha, everyone at Carter’s was incredulous that I’d done it!

When this feature first appeared in The Stage in 2012, a rather over-zealous sub-editor decided that he knew more about it than I did and changed a lot of things and made them wrong. I was especially furious that he’d added the word ‘pleaded’ to my sidebar about riding the wall and said I’d pleaded with Jake to “stay down low”. For the record, I did not plead. I might have been stupid to do it without a helmet, and wearing my glasses, but I wasn’t at all scared!

The Unsuspecting Volunteer

“You’re not going to have a go, then?” Mick said, when I went inside the drum after interviewing Jake. I’m no daredevil but, for some unknown reason, I said: “Can I?” Sitting over the handlebars of his Indian, Jake told me: “No leaning. Keep your hands on your thighs.” No holding on, no helmet, either. “Just stay down low,” I said. A couple of circuits flashed by with no real sensation of being on a vertical wall until… we started to climb. “Oh, you’re taking me up,” I said. Yikes! No leaning, no holding on. Better not freak out. Round once, twice, three times, in a blur. Coming down was fine until we slowed and then I really felt I’d fall off. But I didn’t. I was OK. I’d ridden the Wall of Death and survived!

[thewidowstanton]

Archive feature 2012: Pulling Strings, Frank Mumford, marionettist

To mark the unveiling of our friend Frank Mumford’s most famous puppet – Mademoiselle Zizi, with her accompanist Fyodor – as part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s permanent collection in London, we are posting this archive feature about him and his wife Maisie, and their amazing showbusiness lives.

By Liz Arratoon

Flicking through my aunt’s Contact the Elderly newsletter, I noticed an old photo of an extremely stylish couple holding two extraordinary puppets. They turned out to be Frank and Maisie Mumford, who, from the 1940s to 1970s, performed with their internationally acclaimed marionette troupe. Though Maisie died in 1985, Frank – now in his nineties – is living in the same tiny London mews flat they shared since 1946. He has lost none of his charm or humour and, with perfect recall, he explains: “My nearest sister, the youngest of three, was ten when I was born, so I was a loner. I grew up with Somerset Maugham and HG Wells’ books and started to create a world of my own.”

Recovering from mumps when he was six, he converted a Maynard’s sweet box into a miniature theatre and, fascinated by cinema, saved up for a Pathe Kid projector and started making films. “I cut a proscenium in the front and had curtains and cut figures out of magazines with hairpins to hold them.” But it was when his English/drama teacher gave him the American puppeteer Tony Sarg’s book, Marionettes and How to Make Them, that his life’s work took off. Originally billed as Master Mumford and His Marionettes – he played London’s Wood Green Empire at 14.

“I had a stand of puppets at the School Boys’ Exhibition at Alexandra Palace from 1933-36. I got a job at Edmonds of Wood Green in display and had a permanent puppet theatre, performing afternoon shows and special ones at Christmas to bring people in. I learnt and learnt and learnt with a captive audience. At about 15 I began to have friends who were professional sculptors, painters and musicians. When I was 16 or 17 we formed the first Puppet Productions and played all London’s small theatres.” From opera to ballet, nothing was beyond their scope.

In 1938 Maisie Tierney joined the troupe, but it disbanded at the outbreak of war in 1939. They married in July 1944, and that September Frank was taken prisoner at Arnhem. “She thought I’d gone for good,” he says. But on his release he joined the Central Pool of Artists and created the two-hour touring show Stars on Strings. After his demob in 1946, they developed a more practical two-handed act. With Frank making all the puppets, hand-carving their wooden heads, their glamorous, fast-paced act was born. “The puppets we’d been using were fine for small theatres. They were about 18” high with seven-foot strings, but to play a place like Hackney Empire, they needed to be bigger, about two feet tall. I designed a bigger head and scaled the body down and it worked.”

They played the Moss Empires’ circuit, top London nightclubs – including Edmundo Ros’ Coconut Grove – and variety shows and cabarets around the world. From the Moulin Rouge to the Casino de Paris, and from the London Palladium to the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, the Mumfords’ speciality act was there. Before a show the puppets had to be groomed and mechanically set. Roughly nine were used in a music hall or nightclub spot but between 12 and 30 might be needed for plays. Each of their four cabaret spots lasted about 15 minutes, “depending on the applause”, but the shows ran to an hour and 45 minutes.

Ideally the puppets had to be seen from about ten or 15 feet away. The lighting had to exclude the puppeteers’ hands and had to be very powerful, but Frank says proudly: “We had theatre craft, so people didn’t look at us. They applauded the puppets.” He worked constantly on improvements and even changed his shoes to black suede, to eliminate reflections.

A typical cabaret programme would include scenes of different pairs of puppets: two hippos doing a routine, two skeletons doing another, a bullfight, with a bull and a matador, a belly dancer with a man at her feet, Javanese dancers… and then there would be the delectable Zizi, their undoubted star. Introduced in 1947, Mademoiselle Zizi – modelled on Lana Turner and Gypsy Rose Lee – was an instant success. The diminutive chanteuse was always immaculate, with dresses – one designed by Schiaparelli and lined with her trademark shocking pink – made by Frank, who also made her jewellery. Her delicately carved fingers had painted red nails. “After a show in Juans les Pins, her measurements were given in a write-up as 36, 28, 36 and she was named ‘Miss Venus of the Cote d’Azur’,” Frank remembers fondly. But she was also labelled ‘Sex Appeal on Strings’ by the Manchester Herald, and later banned for kissing men in the audience at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Such was the allure of the Mumford puppets!

Indeed, those who fell under Zizi’s spell included another glamorous couple; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Frank cites a private party for the Duke’s birthday given by socialite Margaret Thompson Biddle in Paris as their most prestigious date. “Our agent said, ‘We’ve got a booking and we can’t send just anybody. We want someone with style’. She had a beautiful old house on the Left Bank and we did the show in the garden. Afterwards, out of the darkness, the Duke’s equerry emerged and said, ‘The Duke wants to see Zizi again’, so we had to unpack her. The Duke always looked haggard in photos but face-to-face he looked fantastic. He was about 50. Mrs Simpson appeared, too, in a Balmain dress. She wasn’t going to be left out.” The Duke rebooked them six months later for a party he gave in the same house for the Norwegian ambassador.

And at Christmas 1961 they did shows for the royal family, their friends and municipal workers in Monaco. “We arrived on le Train Bleu at 8am and were met by a chauffeur in a Mercedes saloon, which was ours for the week. They had a bijou throne room at the palace. Princess Grace hardly spoke, but Prince Rainier was absolutely easy to chat to. He was the one I had to go to for Zizi to kiss but after about ten shows he got fed up with it.” Later someone asked what Zizi thought of Princess Grace? The answer came: “Well, she’s kissed a prince but I’ve kissed kings.”

I, however, was not the first to unearth the Mumfords’ glittering past. The award-winning film maker Richard Butchins was introduced to Frank by a mutual friend, and finding that he still had all the puppets in his attic – where they’d lain lifelessly for years – and roll upon roll of archive film of their shows and TV appearances, decided to make a documentary. He hopes to finish it by September, depending on finance – the money has come via crowdfunding campaigns on indiegogo – but it hasn’t been easy. Butchins says: “All of their performances on British TV have gone because nothing was archived until the 70s. Basically, the late 40s, 50s and 60s is the part I’m particularly in love with but I’m looking for stuff from Spanish TV in the 50s, and German and Japanese TV in the 70s. I discovered about 20 minutes of film in the French national archives from the late 40s or early 50s, this beautiful black and white film, but they want an absolute fortune to use it.”

Frank describes this as a “smidgen” of their story, which he is documenting in a book, and is determined Maisie should not be forgotten. “It’s come about that it’s all about me, but Maisie contributed an enormous amount. During the bad times you get in showbusiness she was always terribly supportive. She was very beautiful and had charisma in bucketfuls. She had a wonderful personality, like sunshine. We spent 24 hours of every day together and fortunately we were very good friends.”

The renewed interest in their work has, for example, given Frank the chance to see old films he shot for the BBC for the first time. He says: “It’s fantastic, but tiring having to deal with my Beethoven effect.” His hearing may be lost but, thanks to Butchins, Frank and Maisie’s important contribution to the UK’s variety heritage never will be.

Mademoiselle Zizi and Fyodor are on display in the Theatre and Performance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Sadly, Frank died in 2014, and here’s his obituary in The Sunday Telegraph, also by Liz Arratoon

Pictures: Courtesy of the Frank Mumford Archive

This feature first appeared in The Stage in 2012