Ivor Emmanuel; baritone (Independent)
Hyfler/Rosner
Baritone of effortless voice
Published: 24 July 2007
Ivor Emmanuel, singer: born Margam, Glamorgan 7 November 1927; married
1951 Jane Beazleigh (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1964
Patricia Bredin (marriage dissolved), 1966 Malinee Oppenborn (one
daughter); died Malaga, Spain 20 July 2007.
Ivor Emmanuel had a moment of fame as the Welsh soldier who, in the
film Zulu (1963), rallies a handful of men of the South Wales
Borderers in their valiant stand against the four thousand warriors of
Chief Cetewayo at Rorke's Drift in 1879. As Private Owen, he inspires
the company with a spirited rendering of "Men of Harlech", the
regimental marching tune.
As the Zulu Impis advance wave upon wave, rattling their assegais
against their shields and chanting their blood-curdling war cries, he
turns to Stanley Baker with the nonchalant comment, "They've got a
very good bass section, mind, but no top tenor, that's for sure," then
bursts into song, the English words of which he had written specially
for the Paramount film.
The film, based on a story by John Prebble, cost Paramount about $1.5m
and had its world premiere in Johannesburg during the years of
apartheid. Emmanuel was among those who were appalled to learn that
the Zulus who had taken part in the film were banned from seeing it,
the Publications Control Board having deemed it "unfit for black
African consumption".
In Wales, the heroism of the South Wales Borderers at Rorke's Drift
(after which 11 VCs were awarded) has become something of a legend,
punctured only by the irreverence of the comedian Max Boyce, who
retells the story by making one of the soldiers say to Emmanuel, as
the Zulu fighters relentlessly resume their attack, "For God's sake,
Ivor, sing them something they can join in!"
Ivor Emmanuel was born in the steel town of Margam in 1927 and brought
up in Pont-rhyd-y-fen, the industrial village in the upper reaches of
the Afan Valley, where Richard Burton had been born the previous year.
Welsh-speaking and steeped in the eisteddfodic tradition, he sang in
chapels and village halls from an early age and, encouraged by his
family, soon set his heart on a musical career. He took singing
lessons and began to perform with local operatic companies, including
the very fine one which was based in Port Talbot in those days.
But like most boys of his time and place, he had to earn his living
from mining and at the age of 14 he went to work underground. His
family was shattered when, in 1941, a bomb was accidentally dropped on
Pont-rhyd-y-fen by an Allied plane in pursuit of a German bomber
during a Luftwaffe raid on Swansea. Both his parents, his grandfather
and his two-year-old sister were killed. The experience left an
indelible mark on him and it was not until a documentary programme was
made by S4C (Channel Four Wales) in 2001 that he was able to talk
about it in public.
After the war, Emmanuel was a frequent visitor to the West End, where
he was enthralled by the American musicals then taking London by
storm. At his audition for the chorus of Oklahoma! at the Royal
Theatre in Drury Lane Emmanuel sang "Some Enchanted Evening", trying
hard to make his light baritone voice sound as American as possible.
He spent a year with the show and then another with the D'Oyly Carte
Opera Company before returning in 1951 to the Royal Theatre as
Sergeant Kenneth Johnson in the smash hit South Pacific. Further
opportunities came his way in a production of The King and I at the
same theatre and in 1957 as the baseball-player Joe Hardy in Damn
Yankees at the Coliseum.
In 1958 Emmanuel turned his career into television with TWW, the
commercial company which had won the first franchise for Wales and the
West of England. Its most popular light entertainment programme was
Gwlad y Gân / Land of Song, in which he was given star billing with
the young singer Siân Hopkins, whose sweet voice and girlish freckles
chimed attractively with his resonant power and Italianate good looks.
The talent of this pair, despite their having to sing surrounded by a
cute kiddies' choir, made the programme, the first live bilingual
musical show to be networked from Wales, compulsive viewing.
When the show was taken off in 1965, Emmanuel went on to do summer
seasons in Blackpool, starring with entertainers such as Shirley
Bassey and Morecambe and Wise, and also found work on the Queen Mary,
sharing the spotlight with Max Jaffa. In the year following he went to
New York to play Mr Gruffydd, the fine, upstanding minister in A Time
for Singing, a Broadway musical version of Richard Llewellyn's novel
How Green Was My Valley, but it ran for only 40 nights, after which
his career in musicals was at an end.
Cabaret appearances and pantomime followed, in which his dancing and
acting abilities stood him in good stead. For TWW he fronted
programmes in which he met, sang and talked to local people in various
towns in Wales and the west of England. He proved an adroit
interviewer, his winning grin and easy, attentive manner bringing out
the best in the people with whom he chatted.
It was during a cruise in the Mediterranean in 1963 that he fell in
love with Spain. He bought a villa in the hilltop village of
Benelmadena, near Mijas, but the idyllic life of the wealthy
expatriate was not to be. His first two marriages failed, and in 1991
he lost £220,000 - his life's savings - when the Bank of Credit and
Commerce collapsed. His friends rallied round and a collection was
organised in Pont-rhyd-y-fen by his lifelong friend, Haydn Mizen.
Having decided to settle permanently in Spain, Emmanuel turned his
back on the world of showbusiness in which he had made his name,
exchanging it for a quiet life in the sunshine within sight of the
sea. Homesickness for Wales was gradually overcome and he eventually
lost touch with many of his erstwhile colleagues.
So complete was his disappearance from the billings that articles
began appearing in the Welsh press that referred to him in the past
tense. In 1998 Desmond Carrington spoke of him on BBC Radio 2 as "the
late Ivor Emmanuel", after which tourists started appearing on his
doorstep asking to see his grave. As late as 2002 there were messages
on the internet from fans anxious to know what had become of him.
Now that rumours of his death can no longer be exaggerated, Ivor
Emmanuel is remembered with affection and admiration, in his own
country and in the wider world, as the soldier who sang "Men of
Harlech" to such stirring effect in that effortless, mellifluous,
Welsh voice of his.
Not for nothing does the sign just outside Pont-rhyd-y-fen proudly
proclaim (with only slight exaggeration) that the village is the
"Birthplace of Richard Burton, Ivor Emmanuel and Rachel Evans".
Meic Stephens