What Ho! - Jeeves and Wooster say tinkerty tonk

Long before he played a grumpy maladjusted genius doctor on House, Hugh Laurie did a star turn as a dimwitted and hapless yet thoroughly likeable toff in the ITV television series Jeeves and Wooster.

Based on the stories of acclaimed author PG Wodehouse, the series follows the exploits of Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster (Laurie), and his valet (or 'gentleman's personal gentleman') Jeeves, played impeccably by Stephen Fry.

Laurie and Fry and Wooster and Jeeves

Fans of pre-House Laurie know that he cut his teeth as a wonderfully gifted comic actor - who can forget him as the idiot Prince Regent in Blackadder III. Stephen Fry is another great comic actor who also had roles in the Blackadder series.

Hugh Laurie - a talent for playing the upper-class twit

So when a very good friend of mine with impeccable taste in these matters recommended I check out the Jeeves and Wooster television series starring Fry and Laurie, and I duly tracked down the DVDs and immersed myself in the world of 1930s upper-crust England.

The series was a delight.

Set in 1930s England, Laurie and Fry seem born to the roles. Laurie excels at playing the haphazard yet well-meaning Bertie Wooster, while Stephen Fry is the master of the nuanced facial expression - a slightly pained look and raised eyebrow speak volumes in many a scene.


The best part of the series is the sparkling dialogue - I like that I have to listen closely so as not to miss a beautiful nuanced play on words or subtle yet insightful joke.

Wooster: "If you ask me Jeeves, art is responsible for most of the trouble in the world."
Jeeves: "It's an interesting theory, Sir. Would you care to expatiate upon it?"
Wooster: "As a matter of fact, no Jeeves. No, the thought just occurs to me, you know, as thoughts do."

Jeeves: "I'm sorting through these clothes, Sir. These are for repair, and these for discarding"
Wooster: "Oh, wait a second - this white mess jacket is brand new!"
Jeeves: "I assumed it had got into your wardrobe by mistake, Sir. Or else that it had been placed there by your enemies."
Wooster: "I will have you know Jeeves that I bought this in Cannes!"
Jeeves: "And wore it, Sir?"

Then there's the high production values - if you are a fan of the 30s you will be treated to a visual delight of beautiful cars, clothes and locations. In fact, I found that studying the attire worn by Bertie in the series has given me a much better handle on the details of men's clothing from the period.

The storylines centre around Bertie Wooster who is among England's "idle rich" class. He has a number of meddling aunts who wish to see him dutifully married, yet he spends his time clowning around with his pals from the Drones Club and getting into all sorts of scrapes from which Jeeves eventually extricates him, often involving rescue from an engagement to an unsuitable woman.

The witty-yet-understated dialogue and oh-so-Britishy-upper-class characters give this series a flavour that is immediately appealing and also immensely satisfying once you dive in to the first few episodes. The characters are, for the most part, extremely silly – from Gussie Fink-Nottle and his beloved newt collection to Bingo Little and his propensity to fall head-over-heels in love with every other girl he claps eyes on. Hapless Bertie is often called upon to help his various dim-witted friends get engaged or break an engagement, while Jeeves is in turn called upon to help Bertie out of the mess that predictably ensues from his hare-brained schemes.



A highlight of the series are the recurring scenes where Bertie is learning the latest and greatest popular tune on his piano, whilst singing along. Hugh Laurie actually has a great singing voice and the scenes of him hamming it up at the piano are brilliant.



There is an official soundtrack album, titled 'The World of Jeeves and Wooster', and it's a fantastic listen - IF you can get your hands on it. Original music by series composer Anne Dudley (including the wonderfully jaunty J&W theme tune) is interspersed with snippets of Laurie and Fry in character engaged in a witty repartee. There are also full tracks of Laurie singing classic songs from the era such as Nagasaki and Minnie the Moocher.

There are four seasons of Jeeves and Wooster, of which I have watched the first three. The first season I found a little slow, but it provides a great introduction to the characters. The second season really hits its stride, and I consider to be the best. The third season is good, but starts to feel a little like a caricature of itself - some of the secondary actors are replaced and the new ones seem to be overacting - and the humour becomes more overt and slapstick.

After watching the first 3 seasons I looked up the reviews for the final 4th season on Amazon and it mostly gets slated - it seems to get too far-fetched, silly and overly physical/slapsticky, which is a huge deviation from the genius subtley of the previous episodes. So, I decided not to sully my impressions of the series and will leave the last season unwatched.

I highly recommend the first 3 seasons though - they are well worth a watch and provide well-filmed, well-acted and well-written intelligent viewing - a nice antithesis to so much of the churned-out drivel on TV these days.

Thrills from 1912: riding the Scenic Railway at Melbourne's Luna Park

Last week my beau and I were in Australia for a swing dance event and had a free day to kill so we decided to head out to Luna Park in Melbourne to check out the fairground attractions.

When researching Melbourne for our trip I happened to read somewhere that Melbourne is home to the "oldest continually operating rollercoaster in the world". Well, that sounded like something worth investigating. I assumed (correctly) that the rollercoaster would be found at Melbourne's Luna Park, and so on the hot and sunny Australian Labour Day we headed to St Kilda beach to ride the rides.

The park is tiny by North American theme park standards (17 rides in total, including 'kiddie' rides), but we had a blast and went on just about everything. The highlight for us was definitely the old rollercoaster, which made us laugh when we found out it was called the 'Scenic Railway' - what a name for a supposed 'thrill ride'! It's the only original ride left, and was built in 1911 for the park's opening in 1912. The entire amusement park is actually contained inside the bounds of the rollercoaster's wooden track, with the famous 'Mr Moon' entraceway incorporated into the construction.

The entrance to Melbourne's Luna Park - through the mouth of 'Mr Moon'

Luna Park under construction in 1912

Modern day aerial view showing Luna Park in the right foreground, and the St Kilda beach and esplanade area

Unsuprisingly, the turn-of-the-century Scenic Railway doesn't go all that fast - it certainly doesn't produce the "heart-stopping" thrills promised by the Luna Park website. It is, however, a whole ton of fun, and thanks to diligent maintenance and restoration work this classic wooden coaster operates in much the same manner as it did when it first opened almost a century ago.

We rode it three times and loved the 'clickity clack' noise it makes as it goes around, as well as the somewhat bumpy ride! I can just imagine folks back in 1912 riding the coaster - ladies squealing in fear and gents' hats flying off as they go over the first big dip.

The Scenic Railway's claim to fame of being the oldest continually operated roller coaster in the world is indeed impressive. It was the only Luna Park attraction that remained in operation when the rest of the park closed during World War I. During World War II the park remained open but operated under blackout conditions.

As well as being the oldest continually operating coaster in the world, the Scenic Railway is also only one of two vintage coasters still in existence that require a brakeman to ride along with the passengers. The brakeman operates a giant lever to slow the carriage as it travels around the track. At Luna Park the brakeman stood up in the centre of the carriage in a 'surfing' type position as the carriage whizzed around - it was a funny sight to behold!

Carriage on the Scenic Railway - you can see the brakeman standing in the middle (click photo for bigger image)

Here you can see the giant brake lever used to slow down the carriage at certain points around the track (click photo for bigger image)

As far as my research shows, Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens is home to the other surviving brakeman-operated 'scenic railway' coaster still in operation, and originally built in 1914.

Fascinating History

As I mentioned, my beau and I laughed at a supposed 'thrill ride' having such a tame name as the 'Scenic Railway', but I've since learned this is itself a historic term that dates back to late 19th century amusement rides. These first rollercoasters had carriages on rails that were raised to the top of a slope by various means (such as horse drawn, pushed manually or even steam driven) and then they rolled the passengers past a series of backdrops painted with exotic scenes - Swiss mountains, Egyptian Pyramids, jungle scenes, etc. Hence they were known as 'Scenic Railways'.

Even the name 'Luna Park' is not unique - it's a popular historical name for an amusement park and is used by dozens of currently operating and defunct amusement parks that have opened on every continent since the turn of the century. Melbourne's Luna Park, however is reported to be the oldest 'Luna Park' still in existence.

Luna Park's designer and builder was T.H. Eslick, who had previously spent 14 years creating amusement parks all over the world including the first scenic railways in Europe and in Asia, and the great Durbar Exhibition of Old Bombay, created for the visit of King George V to India in 1911. The scenic railway at Luna Park built in 1912 is almost an exact replica on the one built for the Durbar Exhibition. Eslick's stay in India is also thought to be the inspiration for the Moghul/Moorish entrance facade and flanking towers built at Luna Park.

The park’s opening in December 1912 was an immediate success and drew large crowds. A main attraction at the park was live entertainment which included the Luna Park Band, high wire performances, performing animals, acrobats, trick cyclists, a troop of midgets, and the Swedish diver Miss Thelin, who dove into a pool from a 50 ft tower into a tub of blazing water with her clothes alight. Cirque du Soleil, eat your heart out.

There were also popular 'while-you-wait' photo studios for souvenier images for patrons to take home.

A cute couple photographed at Luna Park, possibly out on a first date. I can just imagine the guy winning his gal a teddy bear at the sideshow games.

At night the park was lit up with over 8,000 electric lights.

Luna Park at night in the 1940s

Other vintage rides which still exist at Luna Park include the beautiful Carousel, built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Co. of the USA in 1913, and the Ghost Train which dates from the mid-thirties (and was originally called the 'Pretzel'). Check out this web article written by Robert Lashmore about the interesting history of the Ghost Train ride. (My beau and I rode the Ghost Train ride twice and both times emerged laughing like crazy, it was so hokey).

Not So Tame After All?

Even through the Scenic Railway is laughably slow by today's rollercoaster standards and has a riding brakeman to control it en route, my research shows that its 97-year operating history has not been without incident. In 1980 a passenger was killed (I don't have any details on the incident - does anyone out there know anything?), in January 1985 there was a derailment, and in October 1987 two trains collided injuring 21 passengers.

I find it really interesting that the only incident reports I could find are all clustered in the 1980s, leading me to wonder if the danger was due to slack operator safety standards during the '80s rather than anything inherently dangerous in the ride itself, as it had been operating smoothly for the 73 years prior!

Other Luna Park Fun Facts

Luna Park was initially under the personal direction of the American James Dixon Williams who formed the Greater J.D. Williams Amusement Company. After Luna Park opened in 1912, J.D Williams returned to America in 1913, where he founded First National Films, which would later become Warner Bros.

One of the new sideshow attractions added in 1913 was called 'Aunt Jemima’s Washing Day', where a Negro woman was situated above a wash tub and fell in the water when a target was hit.

Luna Park was visited by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 (I don't know if she rode the Scenic Railway though - now THAT would have made a great picture. Hang on to your crown, Lizzie!)

Vintage film stock of Luna Park

Heritage film clips from Australian Screen show Luna Park in 1912 and 1913:

click here to see a 1912 film clip showing the Luna Park entrance

click here to see a 1913 film clip of people enjoying recreation in St Kilda - there are shots of the Scenic Railway in operation about halfway and three-quarters through the clip

Roll on 100, clickity-clack!

I'm really hoping the Scenic Railway will still be in operation for its 100th anniversary in 2012. Melbourne is only a short hop from where I live in New Zealand, and my beau and I are keen to pop over to Luna Park again and ride the Scenic Railway on its hundreth birthday dressed in period 1912 costumes - hats and hearts a-flying just as they must have done back in the day.

References

I trawled the web fairly extensively to dig up the info in this post. As well as the using Wikipedia and the specific links contained in the post, two great sources of information were:

• Article on the history of Luna Park by Catherine Woo,from the St Kilda Historical Society site.
• History of Luna Park PDF from the official Luna Park website