FROM THE ARCHIVES:Christmas is synonymous with pantomimes and pantomimes were synonymous with Maureen Potter for many years. Henry Kelly interviewed her at the height of her fame in 1974. – JOE JOYCE
MAUREEN POTTER would not be able to last as a straight actress. "The silence would frighten the life out of me. I'd be no use without an overture, trumpets, elephants, choruses, the lot. They all have to be there. Once, when Marie Keane left Denis Johnston's The Golden Cuckoo, I took over and I played Katie Fox in The Informerat the Olympia in 1959. But straight acting is not for me."
As it is, even the acting she does and so obviously enjoys gives her almost unbelievable stage fright. “I come off some scenes or acts and just go into the dressing room and vomit. I know I’m going to be bad.”
There has been plenty of stage fright and plenty of success in her career, that to date stretches from the 1930s in Britain and Ireland to this week’s opening of another Potter pantomime at the Gaiety in Dublin.
Maureen Potter was born in Fairview in Dublin and though she jokes about her age, and about not caring who knows what age she is, she doesn’t actually reveal the date. Her father was a commercial traveller who died when she was seven and her earliest childhood memory was of being banished to bed on Friday nights a little earlier than normally because the family adults played poker.
“Then as I grew up there were Sunday evening sessions of piano music and singing. You know the old style: sitting there waiting your turn and listening. Turning the pages of music. But it was great fun. George Crean, who was the local church organist, played the piano and my mother who had medals for the art of singing, sang songs. I sang, danced and did impressions. Dancing was my favourite. The day it came around for me to go to school I only agreed on condition that I could go to dancing classes at the same time.”
School was not far from home; across the wall, in fact, to St Mary’s National School in Phillipsburgh Avenue. She stayed only until the age of 12. “I went home for the summer holidays and never came back. I had done an audition for Jack Hilton near the end of school term and one day on holidays a telegram arrived offering me a job as “The Pocket Mimic” in the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Those were the days of the cine-variety : when you prayed for a good film to keep the show running for three weeks.
"I was the big candle on top of the birthday cake for the Royal's party in 1936. I came out of the top of the cake and sang Many Happy Returns, without any microphone. It's sad to see the death of cine-variety, but I think we could bring it back into all the Dublin suburban cinemas that are being closed down. It really could work."
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