Harold Fielding

b. 4 Dec 1916, Woking, Surrey, Britain, d. 27 Sept 2003, Surrey, Britain. A leading maker of stage musicals through the 50s to the 80s, Fielding offers shown, or co-presented, a number of the Western End’s favourite displays. When he was a decade older he resisted parental pressure to try out the piano, and rather used the violin, learning in Paris with virtuoso Szigeti. By enough time he was 12, Fielding was himself a concert performer, touring like a assisting artist towards the diva Tetrazzini. When he is at his early 20s, the impresario who was simply showing him passed away, and Fielding overran the tour administration. In a brief time, he was showing a huge selection of concerts through the entire UK, including his Weekend Concert Series at Blackpool Opera Home, which endured for quite some time. He also installed a series known as Music For Thousands in collaboration along with his wife, Maisie. Among the performers showing up in his productions had been Richard Tauber, Sophistication Moore, Benjamino Gigli, Rawicz and Landauer, Jeanette MacDonald, Paul Robeson, Gracie Areas, as well as the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Following promotions in the favorite music field would consist of Johnnie Ray, Danny Kaye, Nat ‘Ruler’ Cole, and Frank Sinatra. In January 1949, while coming back from the united states after negotiating a agreement for the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra to go to Britain, Fielding was mixed up in famous pick-a-back surroundings crash. A light aeroplanes collided using the roofing of his Constellation airliner, as well as the inactive pilot dropped into Fielding’s lap. The Constellation produced a perfect getting, and, having survived that sort of crash, after that Fielding thought that traveling was the safest type of travel. With the past due 50s, with government-sponsored concerts impacting his business, Fielding considered the legitimate theater. He had currently collaborated with Charles B. Cochran and Jack port Hylton, one of is own organizations with Hylton leading to the initial ever world concert celebration at Harringay, London. In addition they promoted a traditional ballet season. Before Xmas 1958, Fielding released himself being a single manufacturer with a magnificent display of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Cinderella on the London Coliseum. Originally conceived for all of us television, Fielding combined pantomime material using the musical humor facet of the piece, and ensemble rock ‘n’ move superstar Tommy Steele as Control keys. Cinderella was accompanied by another Coliseum extravaganza, Aladdin, and after that Fielding resided a rollercoaster lifestyle – creating or co-producing lots of the Western world End’s biggest strikes, plus some of its biggest disasters. The Music Man, starring Truck Johnson, and Noël Coward’s Sail Away, led in 1963 to 1 of Fielding’s most fondly appreciated shows, HALF OF A Sixpence, a musicalization of H.G. Wells’ book, Kipps, starring Tommy Steele. Nevertheless, the achievement of HALF OF A Sixpence in London and NY paled in comparison to Charlie Lady (1965, 2, 202 shows), that was followed by many more lucrative productions in the form of Nice Charity, Mame, THE FANTASTIC Waltz, Show Vessel, I Love MY PARTNER, Irene, stage variations of the favorite films Hans Andersen and Singin’ IN THE TORRENTIAL RAIN (both with Tommy Steele), aswell as Barnum (Michael Crawford). At that time, Fielding’s 1971 Display Vessel was the longest-running to day with 910 shows (Hal Prince’s 1994 creation clocked up 951). Like all of the great showmen since Florenz Ziegfeld, Fielding was keen on making luxurious gestures. When Ginger Rogers found its way to the united kingdom to surface in Mame (1969), he made certain that the function made leading pages by carrying her from Southampton to London in a particular train filled up with pressmen, and an orchestra playing music from the present. There is also a portable cinema showing her outdated movies. The Ziegfeld guide would probably send out a shiver in the now-venerable manufacturer’s backbone, because Ziegfeld (1988), using a reserve by Ned Sherrin, was one of is own displays, along with Man Of Magic, You’re AN EXCELLENT Man, Charlie Dark brown, Phil The Fluter, Eliminated With The Blowing wind, Beyond The Rainbow, AROUND THE Twentieth Hundred years, The Biograph Lady, as well as the 1986 revival of Charlie Lady with Cyd Charisse, which didn’t arranged the London theatrical picture alight. He was reported to possess dropped £1.3 million on Ziegfeld, which sum increased to £1.7 million four years later on when Petula Clark’s American Civil War musical, Someone AS IF YOU, folded after only per month, making certain Harold Fielding Limited proceeded to go into voluntary liquidation. Since that time, understandably, Fielding is not a major power, partly because of ill wellness, although he was from the Western world End transfer of Mack And Mabel through the Leicester Haymarket Theater in 1995, which led to the present’s long-awaited London premiere. Over time, he provides presented a complete selection of entertainment, including revues, has, and variety displays featuring exceptional performers like the Two Ronnies (Corbett and Barker), Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, Peter Retailers, Benny Hill, Marlene Dietrich, Eartha Kitt, and Shirley Bassey, nonetheless it is perfect for his frequently lavish and greatly likeable musicals that he’ll be kept in mind. In 1986 he ‘exceeded’ on the chance to present the united kingdom edition of La Cage Aux Folles because ‘it wasn’t a family group show’, yet a lot more than a decade previously he previously been from the notorious ‘intimate musical’, Allow My People Arrive. A much-loved character, he is one of the custom of great United kingdom showman such as for example Hylton, Bernard Delfont, and Lew Quality. He risked his very own money instead of that of theatrical ‘angels’, and in 1996 received a Yellow metal Badge from BASCA (United kingdom Academy of Songwriters. Composers and Writers) in reputation of his particular contribution to Britain’s entertainment sector.