Michael Henry Flanders (1 March 1922 – 14 April 1975) was an English actor, broadcaster, writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann.
As a young man Flanders seemed to be heading for a successful acting career. However, he contracted polio in 1943 while serving in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and for the rest of his life was reliant on a wheelchair. He made a career as a prolific broadcaster on the radio and later on television. Moreover, he together with his old school friend, the composer Donald Swann, wrote successful songs in the late 1940s to the early and mid-1950s for revues in the West End of London. In 1956, they themselves performed some of these songs, along with new songs, in a two-man revue, At the Drop of a Hat. This show, and its successor, At the Drop of Another Hat, ran with occasional short breaks from 1956 to 1967 and played in theatres throughout the British Isles, the US, Australia and elsewhere.
During and after the stage partnership with Swann, Flanders pursued a many-faceted career, performing on stage, screen, radio, concert platforms and recordings. He wrote opera librettos, a children's book, a volume of poetry and the words of Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, a cantata about Noah's Ark.
Life and career
Early years
Flanders was born in Hampstead, London, the third child and only son to Percy Henry Flanders and his wife, Rosa Laura ("Laurie"), daughter of Charles O'Beirne, of Hastings. His father had a variety of occupations, including actor and cinema manager.
From 1936 to 1940, Flanders was a pupil at Westminster School, where his contemporaries included Peter Ustinov, Peter Brook, Tony Benn and Donald Swann. In his last term in 1940, he and Swann collaborated on a school revue called Go To It! He also wrote drama criticisms for the Oxford magazine Cherwell.|
In 1942, Flanders applied to join the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, and arranged small musical gatherings with other amateurs of music, including Gerard Hoffnung and Frank Hauser.
The resulting trio, "In the D'Oyly Cart" [sic], for three disgruntled Savoyards, was accepted by the producer Laurier Lister for his new show Oranges and Lemons. The revue and the trio were highly successful, and Lister commissioned further work from the pair for his next production, Penny Plain (1951). and "Surly Girls", with Adrian, Desmond Walter-Ellis and Jimmy Thompson as a trio of appalling St Trinian's schoolgirls.
The Flanders and Swann numbers in the two shows worked so well that Lister invited the pair to write much of his next revue, Airs on a Shoestring (1953). and again in London at the Royal Festival Hall in 1956 with Flanders as the narrator, Sir Ralph Richardson as the Soldier and Peter Ustinov as the Devil. The translation has held its place as the standard English version into the 21st century.
During the 1950s, Flanders consolidated his career as a broadcaster, on radio, and later on television, in programmes ranging from sports commentary to poetry readings, and including a two-year stint as chairman of The Brains Trust after it moved from radio to television.
At the Drop of a Hat
As established and successful songwriters Flanders and Swann were invited to lecture on their craft at Dartington International Summer School in 1956. Flanders found that his spoken introductions were as well received by the audience as were the songs themselves. He and Swann decided to give a show along similar lines in London. They took the New Lindsey Theatre for a limited three-week run; the New Lindsey, holding about 150 people, was situated outside the London West End theatre district. After each had spent two or three sleepless nights worrying, they reconsidered; The critic J. C. Trewin wrote, "I feel that even [[W. S. Gilbert|[W. S.] Gilbert]] might have applauded the intricate neatness of their numbers. ... I urge you to hear Mr Flanders as he explains the precise derivation of 'Greensleeves'." The show ran for 808 performances at the Fortune, until 2 May 1959.
In August 1959, Flanders and Swann took the revue to the Edinburgh Festival. On 8 October they opened in New York at Broadway's John Golden Theatre, playing there for 215 performances. In the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr wrote, "Whatever it is that runs through both these gentlemen's veins it makes them lively, witty, literate, ingratiating, explosively funny and excellent company for a daffy and delightful evening". After closing on Broadway they toured the show through 12 cities in the US, one in Canada and three in Switzerland. During 1962 and 1963, they revived the production in Canada and toured the British Isles, appearing in 17 towns and cities.
At the Drop of Another Hat
The second show followed the pattern of the first, with songs and monologues linked by comment and introductions by Flanders. It opened on 2 October 1963 at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, a much larger house than the Fortune (with 900 seats to the Fortune's 438). Once again the reviews were excellent. The Daily Express called the show "an instant success"; The Times called it "a delicious entertainment … an inimitable evening":
The duo played at the Haymarket until 21 March 1964, and after a break they toured the show in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and southern England, Finally, they toured the show in Canada and the US, concluding in a Broadway run at the Booth Theatre from 31 December 1966 to 9 April 1967. The two remained friends and continued to collaborate from time to time.
Michael Flanders was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1972 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.
Other work
During breaks in the schedule of the Hat shows, and after they had come to an end, Flanders performed on radio, television, stage, film and the concert platform. In 1962, he appeared at the Aldwych Theatre, London, as the Storyteller in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In 1970, he starred in the revue Ten Years Hard by Peter Myers; his performance was praised, but the show was not, and it closed within a month. He acted in the films Doctor in Distress (1963) and The Raging Moon (1971).
Flanders continued to broadcast on radio and television. On BBC radio he was the anchorman of the "Scrapbook" and "Battle for the Atlantic" series, and he was a regular on the quiz shows "Twenty Questions" and "Animal, Vegetable and Mineral". On television he presented the concert, opera and ballet series "Gala Performance". He published a book of poems, Creatures Great and Small, in 1964, and a children's book The Sayings and Doings of Nasrudin the Wise in 1974.
thumb|left|150px|[[Edith Sitwell (portrait by Roger Fry): Flanders was fascinated by her Façade poems.]]
For EMI Flanders recorded the narration of Peter and the Wolf with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Efrem Kurtz (1959). With Fenella Fielding he recorded Edith Sitwell's Façade poems with Walton's music played by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner (1972). Flanders had long been fascinated by Façade: "It is an extraordinarily difficult work – even an impossible one. There are times when you are just forced to babble, others when you are completely swamped by the orchestra. It really pushes you to the limits". With the Michael Sammes singers he recorded "The Little Drummer Boy", which was issued as a single disc and as part of a compilation EP, with introductions by Flanders, "The Christmas Story". He was the narrator on an EMI LP "Elizabeth the Great" (1963) celebrating Queen Elizabeth I, with Mary Morris as Elizabeth. He was an eloquent advocate of better access to theatres for people with disabilities, and later he interested himself in other campaigning issues.
Flanders died suddenly on 14 April 1975, aged 53, of a ruptured intracranial berry aneurysm, while on holiday at Betws-y-Coed, Wales. His ashes were scattered in the grounds of Chiswick House in west London, a place where he had often liked to sit in the afternoon during the final years of his life. The Michael Flanders Centre, a 75-place day care centre in Acton, London, was founded in his honour by Claudia Flanders and others.