PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Ena, the actress who lost her identity to a script
It was a shock to see the old battle-axe face again, if only in a newspaper advert. But there she was, in the Sunday Press, Violet Carson, reborn for a short spell. And it was a reminder that if a vote were taken on the strongest and most durable and memorable character in the whole of Coronation-street history, she would probably win by a mile. She represented the best of
it.
Violet Carson, actress, had become Ena Sharples, of Coronation-street, the greatest name in the history of British soap opera. And it hurt.
Life was pleasant for the actress who performed in plays on radio and TV for she was a pianist and singer, too. With these various talents, she was comparatively well known, a source of pride to her family, and reasonably happy; and then she was consumed. Her name was obliterated by that of a fictional character. She was swallowed by this character to such a degree that fiction became the reality and reality became lost to most people's minds, but not hers.
Granada TV protects Coronation Street as others do their diamonds: It is hidden away for safe keeping, its characters exposed to journalists seldom and reluctantly: The Street, for better or worse, is a large part of the station's image, and people in the South have a curious affection for this most Northern dramarama. They see it, one suspects, as Orwell saw Wigan. The fascination lies in discovering whether, beneath the grime, the skin is white: How close to being human are these alien flat-vowelled creatures?
Thirty years ago, Violet Carson was dancing ahead in her career, playing the Duchess of York in Richard III, blessed with such lines as:Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end; Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.
Ena is summoned to the newly-awakening Street where one man, Tony Warren, its creator, has had a vision. The vision is about to transform itself into flesh. No. 25 in the line-up for the role of Ena Sharples steps forward with a combination of words unknown to Shakespeare and his ilk:
"I am the caretaker at the Glad Tidings Mission. Yes, and there were two bad eggs. Are them fancies fresh? I'll have half a dozen, then; and no eclairs."
Shakespeare with all his power, ne'er matched Granada's hour. For though high telent might be praised, it requires high talent to appreciate it. Loot and the approbation of the masses lies in ordinariness and ordinariness is the stuff of all soap operas. It is their strength and their joy. The golden tap spewed forth its fortune. And splashing about in the froth was our bewildered actress from Richard III.
Violet Carson was in her seventies when Granada entrusted her to me. By their gracious acquiescence, withheld from so many, I walked to the front entrance of a bungalow tucked away at the back of a parish church on the outskirts of Blackpool. Ena Sharples and Violet Carson sat together in the one form before a small coal fire and the actress explained the character:
"I was branching out at the time. I did Willis Hall plays. I was playing Shakespeare and when
Ena cropped up. I did not want to know. I was getting out of the Northern scene. Not that I
despised it; I am fiercely North Country, being Mancunian; but I was moving. The magic of Shakespeare swept me off my feet. Then I'm back to 'Ee, by gum' in the Street. It trapped me. It made me, if you like: it has gone all over the world. But it has destroyed me, because nobody sees me or anything about me."
This revelation, when it was made known, did not please Granada over-much; but by then she was passing beyond its power to interfere. Too old to care, too precious to irritate. And yet she had some affection for the character.
I wondered at the time: If Violet Carson, charming, middle-class, whose immediate books in that small room were "A portrait of Jane Austen...... An Edwardian Summer," "The English Garden," and so on, met Ena in the street, would they exchange a nod, or would Violet assault Ena with her own stout bottle?
No, no, no, said Violet: she would have invited the old harridan in for a cup of tea. "She's a lady. Knows her manners. Pure gold. When they said she was difficult to play and they could not find anybody to play her, I said, 'Do not be ridiculous. I have lived with this woman all my life.' There is one in every street, every town, every country in the world. She is always there. She pontificates. She routs those who will not work. She praises those who will. She is there when there is a new baby; there if anybody is sick.
"We had one such woman next door when I was little. When anything was wrong, she was there. I said to the people at Granada, 'Why do you find this casting difficult?' They had 24 actresses down for the thing. It was ridiculous. I said I was too large for the part; that it was written for a little woman. It was not until afterwards that I found Tony Warren had based the character on his grandmother, a big woman. That is why the others had fallen down. I romped home. It was easy. I was back in my childhood with the woman next door; and that was it." Oh yes, she said; she was a bit like Ena. "I don't suffer fools gladly. I can not stand hypocrisy. I am a plain Jane, really, like she is. I speak my mind. I actually like household chores such as cleaning the fire-grate. But in life-style and outlook, she and I are poles apart.
"She is my creation, if you like. But once she is there, she is finished with. Here, I am just one of the villagers. I do not get different treatment. That is how I like it. It is an idyllic life. I am getting old and I dare not say that in front of my sister. She gets cross. Ena Sharples is still there, but now (in real life) they have destroyed so much of her environment. It seems they always get the wrong people to improve things; someone who does not understand; someone who has been to college. They become pale pink, which is almost worse than being violent red. Too many do-gooders..."
After 20 years of Coronation-street, everybody on set had been in and out of love except Ena; some, confusingly so. By now, Granada was referring to old times as BC - before Coronation-street. "If you can't find Violet's bungalow, just ask for the national monument," they said. I called to arrange a meeting by phone and did what so many others had done before me: I absent-mindedly called her Miss Sharples, and crumpled in embarrassment.
In a sense, the bungalow was to reflect the fact and fiction of her. The little room with its coal fire was the Ena part. The spacious expanse behind - a very large room with grand piano and arches and space with grace - the private woman she was: a woman "born under a lucky star" for whom everything, within reason, went right.
Pianist, singer, actress: almost too many talents; doing her I5 minutes for BBC radio for two guineas; Phil the Fluter's Ball with Jimmy O'Dea; perfect pitch in her music; appearing with cinema orchestras; making a name - the Violet Ca.rson name.
Eventually, Songs that Father Sang and Mother, Too, for radio. Was anything so redolent of an era? Appearing with Wilfred Pickles in his folksy ramblings... That Pickles show "became so popular that the legend arose that I was married to him. I do not think Mabel (Pickles's wife) ever got over it. The poor little man - he never even bought me a cup of tea, never mind anything else." Pickles had a reputation for taking care of his money.
It iwas rich in her mind, the past: her mother dying at 90, but, to that day, spreading her beneficial presence over the family house they had had since 1926. Her grandfather sitting in That Chair, down from Scotland to oversee the making of Mr McDougall's self-raising flour in a Manchester mill; her father dying at 77 - "because he had made up his mind to."
A lot of happiness there. Both sisters had marriages. Violet's was brief and she did not talk of it. The sisters ended with this idyllic companionship. A large garden at the rear of their home helped keep Violet safe from the great, demanding flesh of television's mass audience. Final scene: Sister attends electrician boring away with his drill. Violet stands by a portrait of Ena Sharples saying, "Me and her, the cause of all the trouble" - not, I thought, without affection.
Finally, flesh triumphing over fiction. For I looked around her gracious room, and in the small room beside it, and I looked everywhere I could without appearing to pry, and nowhere did I see a television set.
A little of Violet Carson had survived. But not for long. She died, and Coronation-street, with only the briefest of hiccups, went backwards into the future.
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
3 March, 2007