With the death of Stanley Baxter, Scotland has lost a singular talent
With mischief in his eyes and the sleekest pins in the business, the star of stage and screen was without parallel
With the death of Stanley Baxter, at the age of 99, Scotland has lost a singular talent, one whose comedic world was as distinctive as it was extravagant.
With television audiences peaking at 20 million, he was celebrated across the UK, but north of the Border, he will always be remembered as a giant of Scottish pantomime.
Along with Rikki Fulton, Jack Milroy, Johnny Beattie and Jimmy Logan, he was part of a generation born largely in the 1920s who built their reputations on the stages of post-war Scotland.
As the most flamboyant of pantomime stars, Baxter was part of a tradition that spanned a century and more.
When Still Game star Gavin Mitchell played an Ugly Sister at the Glasgow King’s in 2008, he was struck by the weight of that tradition.
Mitchell said: “You pull a shoe out and it's got 'SB' on it and you go, 'SB? Oh my God, Stanley Baxter!' You start thinking of the people who have walked on that stage before you: Jimmy Logan, Jack, Rikki, Stanley . . . it's mind-blowing.”
Baxter was a proud upholder of that tradition at the King’s theatres in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Indeed, he was instrumental in keeping pantomime alive in the Scottish capital after theatrical impresarios Howard and Wyndham sold its theatres in the 1960s.
With producer Bruce McClure, he persuaded the City of Edinburgh Council to step in to help support a pantomime circuit.
He was not interested in alternative panto or gimmicks. He wanted to overawe his audiences with glamour and spectacle, giving them magic, transformation and, above all, clothes.
With his arched eyebrows, high cheekbones and a look of twinkly mischief in his eyes – not to mention the sleekest pair of pins in the business – his costumes were without parallel.
Playing the Dame, he would appear resplendent in outrageously large hats and off-the-shoulder dresses, a riot of feathers and sequins or, in those moments of surreal panto excess, as a flickering candelabra with glittering tiara.
For Baxter, the costume itself was a performance. “It’s pure escapism, like a 1940s musical,” he once said.
Television cemented his status as a household name. As early as 1960, he was voted Light Entertainment Personality of the Year.
Determined to maintain high standards, he refused to spread himself thinly, preferring instead to appear in one-off Christmas spectaculars either for London Weekend Television or the BBC.
They were expensive to make, but audiences relished the extravagance – at least until the TV companies could no longer afford to foot the bill.
Using clever camera trickery, he would be seen in the guise of famous figures – and he would play virtually all the roles himself: the intellectual Malcolm Muggeridge trying to get sense out of an Ethel Merman who could only sing her responses; Sir John Gielgud getting his tongue around a convoluted bible reading; and singing stars ranging from Eartha Kitt and Marlene Dietrich to a ten-year-old Lena Zavaroni.
Drawing on famous films and well-loved television programmes, his portrayals were camp and ridiculous, yet also affectionate and rooted in reality.
So as not to appear cruel, he made it a rule only ever to imitate people when they were at the top of their game.
His only competitor in the field of mimicry was Mike Yarwood, but nobody could touch him for visual splendour.
So often seen disguised as other people, this private, introverted man was often able to go about his business unrecognised.
Yet, for all his association with light entertainment, much of his earliest professional work was in straight theatre.
He once described himself as “an actor with a point of view about society and life and the present time which he tries to slip in beneath a lot of frills and feathers and bald caps”.
After working as a child actor on Scottish radio and taking part in amateur dramatics, he joined the wartime Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), alongside Kenneth Williams, filmmaker John Schlesinger and the playwright Peter Nichols.
That experience persuaded him to abandon his intended career in teaching.
He made his professional stage debut in 1948 in Tyrone Guthrie’s landmark revival of A Satire of the Three Estates at the Assembly Hall in the second Edinburgh International Festival.
The Scotsman recalled his dramatic entrance and the “admirable way” he had delivered his lines as Correctioun’s Varlet.
The production appeared again the following year, this time with Baxter playing the Abbot and the Soutar’s Wife.
From there, he cut his theatrical teeth at the Citizens in Glasgow, in plays by Eric Linklater and James Bridie.
He scored big laughs as Launcelot Gobbo in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and, in a play called The Wise Have Not Spoken, he displayed what a prescient critic on The Scotsman called “the true comedian’s mask and gestures, mobile and insinuating; even his profile is an invitation to hilarity.”
Other theatre roles included a part in John Home’s Scottish tragedy, Douglas, with Dame Sybil Thorndike in the 1950 Edinburgh International Festival.
His roles in London’s West End included Dr Prentice in Joe Orton’s black comedy What the Butler Saw.
He regretted not doing more straight theatre, but a man with the comic gifts exemplified in Parliamo Glasgow, hilariously lampooning the speech of his native city, was destined to be remembered as one of the comedy greats.
Mark Fisher is a freelance theatre critic
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.