Back in the November of 2011, I interviewed Scottish actress Dorothy Paul about her memories of appearing in pantomime in Edinburgh, she was 73 years old at the time and about to come out of retirement after three years resting.
Dorothy’s last two Edinburgh pantos were Cinderella in 1999, at the King’s Theatre, which she returned to a year later for Dick Whittington, some 43 years after her debut in the Scottish capital at the long-gone but never forgotten Palladium Theatre in Fountainbridge, starring as Aladdin in their 1957 production of Aladdin. She recalled, “I was the principal boy and the first review I ever got in Edinburgh was from the Evening News, from John Gibson. Now, the funny thing about this business is that you look back and you only remember the bad things. You think, ‘Oh I got a rotten review.’ He said I was ‘wooden’. Then a friend of mine found another review in the archives that said, ‘The charmer of the evening was Dorothy Paul’. I don’t remember that one. You don’t remember good things. You only remember bad things, but it was a great pantomime.”
The Palladium panto, a Fountainbridge landmark until its demolition in 1984, was produced by Edinburgh-based theatrical impresario Fraser Neil.
“It was in the days of the Fraser Neil Players,” Dorothy explained. “Fraser Neil was a great man, he had a great big wardrobe of costumes which he hired all over Scotland. Just before we did that panto his warehouse got burned down and he lost everything. So he had to get all new costumes made for that show.”
She continued, “When I think back. We used to go treasury at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning to get our money. It was £12 a week and we’d do two evening shows and a matinee for that – it was hard work. Once we’d collected our money, a pal and myself used to go to the City Bakeries at Tollcross, which doesn’t exist now either, and get a 2/- 6d business lunch. That was the highlight of the week.”
With three show days, working on Aladdin with co-stars Willie Hannah and principal girl Irene Campbell was “a great time” but “hard work” the actress insisted, before revealing she could still remember one of her lines. She boomed, “The edict is that all must stay within the because the princess bathes. Who cares a pin, I don’t, I’m going to see her.”
Laughing, she added, “I also remember that I had marvellous digs in the West Port. There was a smell of cats up the stairs, but apart from that they were great folk.”
Brilliant, Liam. Xx