Jack Doyle - Jack and Movita

Jack's life seemed to settle down somewhat after his marraige to beautiful Mexican actress, Movita,.....

 

  'The fact that Jack's stage act included his beautiful new wife gave him greater appeal, but now it was a very different kind of mass hysteria that greeted his every public performance. Though still one of the greatest sex symbols of his time, his union with Movita had become the standard-bearer for an idyllic and successful marraige. To the public at large this glamorous couple personified all that love and happiness should be. Theirs was a high-profile partnership accentuated by constant media attention and hero worship. To label them the Oliver and Leigh and Taylor and Burton of the late thirties and early forties would not be overstating their popularity:

    'We could not go into a restaurant without being mobbed. People would do silly things like grab one of my shoes as I was getting into a taxi. It was just incredible. We were so obvious - big Jack and little Movita. We had all our stage clothes specially made for us, right down to the shoes. I had a dress-maker, Len Pearson from Huddersfield, who used to make some very beautiful clothes. And I had a shoe-maker - such beautiful shoes and lovely turbans I used to wear.'

    People from all walks of life were fascinated by Movita. She became a trend-setter in much the same way Princess Diana did several decades later. Fashion-conscious women, even prostitutes, began wearing the turbans that were her stylish signature:

    'We were very, very popular and highly-paid. We were working extremely hard and Jack was behaving beautifully. There was no trouble until after war was declared. But even then we were still working as hard as ever and earning big money. Jack volunteered to rejoin his old regiment, the Irish Guards, as either an officer or physical training instructor, but was told, "No. You and Movita are doing more for the war effort by appearing and entertaining the troops." I remember everything so well. We were entertaining the troops for free, entertaining at hospitals and entertaining people in the subways, where Londoners sheltered during the bombing raids. We used to bring them food - fish-and-chips and things - and candy. We also sang for them and signed autographs. We did a lot of that. We did everything that people did during the war - anything to try and help. We were so much in demand that we sometimes did seven shows a day, by God! Two shows a day in the theatre - three when there was a matinee - and the rest was all entertaining troops and sick people. It was really exhausting. We also did a lot of appearances at factories to help boost the morale of the workers. They adored us wherever we went. Everyone used to gather round and mob us. It was almost unreal.'

    Shortly after volunteering to enlist, Jack took over The Cartwheel, a roadhouse in rural Buckinghamshire. In addition to it being a place of refuge from his legion of admirers in London, he regarded it as an ideal, easily-run business venture that would occupy Movita and other members of his family while he was away soldiering. He had written to the Irish Guards asking them to take him back because, as a neutral Irishman, he felt he should do his bit for the country in which he had made his name. When told he would not be required, he kept the Cartwheel for a while, doing impromptu cabaret spots there with Movita. They booked in other well-known artists, including the celebrated black singer-pianist Hutch. The Cartwheel, which lays back off the main London-Amersham road, was a charming venue complete with gallery and ballroom. Teas were served in the afternoons and dinners in the evenings, with top cabaret thrown in:

    'Jack had fancied a nice, quiet place in Buckinghamshire. It was lovely out there - very picturesque and countrified, with beautiful apple trees all around. But he soon got fed up with it because he liked London, the bright lights and plenty of people around him. He was too fond of the night-life, the glamour, the activity. But he tried, I guess.'

    Jack and Movita also rented a riverside cottage in Maidenhead, 'Wynnstay', from the Baroness de Sarigny. They looked on it as their country home and spent as many weekends as possible there during breaks from touring:

    'We had a woman servant who once worked for the Royal family. She was wonderful and looked after the place for us. We would go down to Maidenhead and she would have the tea ready for us and everything. But I remember one night, after we went to bed, I awoke and wanted to go to the bathroom. I couldn't get up - I was feeling too heavy and could not lift my body out of bed. I woke Jack and said, "Something's wrong with me. I want to go to the bathroom but I can't get up. I'm too heavy." He said, "Oh my God, so am I." Then I just passed out. What had happened was that we had left the gas fire on and it was leaking. It was the middle of the night and we had almost gassed ourselves. Jack managed to get up, drag me to a window and break it. Had I not wanted to go to the bathroom, we would have been dead. It was a beautiful old cottage, but I'll always remember it because of what happened. We decided not to stay there after that.'

   

Jack and Movita were happy together during the early part of the war, with hardly a cross word passing between them. According to her they were also earning a considerable sum - around €500 a week - from their popular double act. It was perfect harmony all the way, both on and off stage.
    Suddenly, things started to go wrong. First they met with serious financial trouble, allegedly as a result of the activities of their personal secretary Kathleen Look, described by the late Sir Atholl Oakeley in his book Blue Blood on the Mat as a 'Venus' and 'quite the most glamorous woman, outside the Ziegfeld Follies, that I have ever seen'.
    Movita uses no such superlatives to describe Miss Look:
    'Kathleen came with us wherever we were appearing. We appointed her because she had been a top promoter and her references were impeccable. She handled the finances, paid the bills and looked after everything. Somehow we always managed to get her a room from where she could work. We trusted her completely, but I soon noticed that whenever I happened to buy a fur coat, she would buy one, too. I used to say to Jack: "Kathleen must be well off." We were so naive and trusting that we didn't suspect a thing. Sometimes Jack would say to me: "Kathleen dresses very well, doesn't she? That fur coat must have cost a pretty penny. How does she do it?"
 

It's funny now, but we just did not realise. She was well-spoken and well educated and her mother was terribly, terribly Oxford. Jack was a trusting person and assumed Kathleen must have been rich. She was always very smartly dressed when she toured with us. If I bought a dress, she would buy one: it would all go on Jack's bill. Goodness knows how much she spent overall, but it must have been a fortune. He would give her so much to pay bills, but she never settled them. She was with us for a good while and was fiddling all the time. Jack never suspected a thing, so how would I?
    She was a thief, let's face it. She wrote all the letters and signed the cheques, so she knew what to do to keep the creditors quiet. The whole mess wasn't uncovered for ages because she had been fending off the creditors by paying them so much each week. But eventually they all got together and the pressure became so great that she had to confess. She couldn't do a thing - the game was up. She offered to pay them back at £5 a week, but it was no good. The creditors were pressing their claims and Jack was forced to go bankrupt because he still owed all the people he had already paid, or thought he had paid. He said: "What are we going to do? We can't call in the police because Kathleen will go to jail - and for what?" He did not have the heart to turn her in.'

    At Jack's public examination in February 1941 his liabilities were listed at £1,689, with no assets, and he agreed to pay over to his trustees whatever money he could for creditors. It takes only a simple mathematical equation to deduce that he could have cleared the entire debt in a matter of weeks with his and Movita's earning power. Granted he was still supporting his parents - for whom he had bought a new £500 terraced house in Greenford, Middlesex - and his living expenses were undoubtedly high, yet a short period of relative austerity would have salvaged his situation and his reputation.
    Bankruptcy signalled the start of a slippery decline which he would find hard to arrest. Movita remembers him suddenly receiving bad publicity and sinister threats:

    'The threats came after articles appeared in the newspapers saying Jack had refused to fight for England in the war. It was all so untrue, because he had volunteered to rejoin the Irish Guards and been turned down. And we had exhausted ourselves doing charity concerts to help the war effort. The stories in the papers were followed by anonymous letters saying, "If you appear at such-and-such a venue, you will be shot." We carried on for a while, because at first these threats did not worry him: Jack Doyle wanted to prove he wasn't afraid. But after a while, when they continued, he became concerned. He was scared I might get shot at or something. There were lots of threats - some even by telephone - but he never talked about them because he didn't want to alarm me. He was frightened for me rather than for himself'

Many thanks to Michael Taub, author of Jack Doyle: the Gorgeous Gael, for allowing us to reproduce excerpts of his book here. Many thanks also to his publishers Lilliput Press, Dublin.

Michael will be speaking at the Gala Dinner/Birthday Bash on the night of Jack's 100th anniversary of his birthday, as part of the Jack Doyle Centenary Weekend. The weekend events take place from Friday 30th August to Sunday 1st September.

Highlights of the weekend include:

·  A Boxing Tournament on Friday 30th August - organised under the auspices of the IABA Cork County Board. (Tickets available at the Commodore Hotel @ €10)

·  A gala dinner with guest speaker Michael Taub, author of 'Jack Doyle; the Gorgeous Gael.' Music by the 'Contenders' Saturday 31st August. (Tickets available at the Commodore Hotel €34.95)

·  Official opening of the Jack Doyle Mural on Saturday 31st August (pics below) - all welcome to attend.
·  The Jack Doyle Play with actor Luke Barry on Sunday 1st September. (Tickets available at the Commodore Hotel @ €5)

·  Guided Walking Tours and tours on the Cobh Road Train, Historical Workshops, street theatre, classic car displays, commemorative mass & subsequent ceremonies in Cobh's historical Promenade, guided tours of the Old Cemetery where Jack is buried and much more.