In October 1958 Beryl Price was sentenced at the Old Bailey to nine months in Holloway Jail. She and her husband Kenneth Price, lived at 15 Lyncroft Gardens, a house in West Hampstead, where they rented out rooms. They were in severe financial difficulties in March when she received a letter containing a £75 cheque. It had been delivered in error and was in fact a royalty payment intended for Dudley Pope, a successful author of naval stories who lived next door at No.13. The temptation was too great for Beryl, and without telling her husband, she opened a Post Office account in the fictious name of Gwen Dudley Pope, and then made three withdrawals of £10 each. When Dudley Pope failed to receive his cheque, the police were informed, and Beryl was arrested.
Beryl’s family and early career
Born in 1909 as Beryl Katie King, she was the daughter of estate agent Cecil Arthur King and in 1911, was living with her parents in Barnes. After studying at the Royal College of Music she became an opera singer, performing under the name of Joan Collier. By the time she was 28 Joan was a leading lady in the Sadler’s Wells and the Carl Rosa Opera companies. She received rave reviews in 1935 when she starred in a revival of the ‘Beggar’s Opera’ and appeared in three films in the 1930s. Then she made the front page in July 1938 when she collapsed while performing before BBC TV cameras at Alexandra Place. Having just begun her song, she fell backwards over a box and rolled on the floor. The announcer said Joan had been taken ill, but she may have just forgotten the box was behind her. After a break, she was able to continue performing.
Beryl did however have real health problems that threatened to destroy her professional life. Later that year, there are reports she underwent an operation to have a failing eye removed. Then she began to go deaf, and although her soprano voice was unaffected, being unable to follow the orchestra or see clearly in dim stage lighting, she was forced to give up her operatic career.
Kenneth William Price
Despite her problems, Joan continued to perform in stage shows and pantomime, but was out of work in 1953 when she met Kenneth William Price. He was aspiring comedian who performed as ‘Mike Norman’ and also managed acts using the name ‘Warwick Price’. We don’t know much about him as the court case concentrated on her background and not his, but in 1939 at the outbreak of WWII age 12, he was living with his parents in Liverpool where his father William was working as a wholesale warehouse clerk. The opening week of May 1941 saw the Liverpool blitz, described by locals as ‘Eight days of hell’, when repeated bombing raids caused huge damage to property in the docks area and great loss of life. William was killed on 8 May at Morris and Jones, a wholesale grocery and provisions warehouse, where he was fire watching.
Beryl and Kenneth, then a salesman in men’s clothing, were both living near each other in Camden Town, when they got married at St Pancras Registrar Office on 24 December 1954. She was 45 and he was 27, although on the marriage certificate he gave his age as 34, probably to help hide their large age difference. He helped Beryl get back on her feet and she played the piano and sang in the concert party he ran. They used their savings to buy the West Hampstead house with a mortgage, but the running expenses were high, and the income made from the lodgers didn’t meet the bills.
Beryl appeared in court wearing hearing aids and her husband told reporters he had opened a theatrical agency but hadn’t made much money as the acts he managed were not well-known. The judge Sir Gerald Dodson said, ‘This is a sad story. This lady, who has come within the category of Wandering Minstrel, has, for the time being, sung her last ditty.’ Even though Kenneth had paid back the money and Beryl pleaded guilty to forgery, the judge treated her harshly. The press was highly critical of the language he used and the severity of the nine-month sentence.
But in November 1958, Beryl won her appeal and was released after five weeks in Holloway. Kenneth drove to the prison and took her home to West Hampstead. Beryl told reporters that she had put on concerts for her fellow inmates and fully intended getting back to stage performing. Kenneth said he was planning a comeback for Beryl but first, they needed a holiday. If so, it was a short break – on 10 December and now using the name Joan Colyer (spelled with a ‘y’), Beryl appeared in a show at Islington Town Hall, described as ‘staged’ by Warwick Price and ‘featuring’ comedian Mike Norman – with Kenneth playing both parts.
Life after the court case
Despite her hearing and vision problems, Beryl made a successful return to performing, although her appearances were no longer in the West End but at suburban theatres. As ‘Mark Norman’ and ‘Joan Colyer’, they entertained the public for many years, at the start often appearing together. His last mention in ‘The Stage’ was in 1970 but her name continued to appear, albeit infrequently, until 1983.
The couple made an immediate attempt to raise money independent of their stage careers, by setting up a house cleaning service in 1959 that employed male, out of work actors. The agency was growing so fast their stage work was now confined to evenings only. The business may have continued under Warwick’s management; in 1970 an advert appeared for a ‘Yeoman Cleaning Service’ based at 27 Blenheim Terrace, his current address in St John’s Wood. What makes it likely to have been his enterprise, is the type of person employed, on the fringes of the entertainment world, such as young, out of work photographers.
‘Modern gimmicks’ and ‘Stars and Sequins’
In the early 1960s the couple’s professional paths increasingly diverged. Warwick continued to advertise Mike Norman shows in the professional press. He called himself a compere, a versatile and powerful comedian with ‘modern gimmicks’, (unspecified). Stag nights were his specialty and so far as travelling to perform was concerned, it was ‘distance no object’. In February 1963, his ‘A La Carte’ floorshow which featured Joan, was described as ‘pleasing after dinner audiences this season.’
Beryl continued to sing as Joan Colyer but diversified into stage production and made money. There are several mentions of two successful cabaret revues, ‘Stars and Sequins’ and ‘Tonight’s The Night’. In 1963 she formed ‘Colwood Productions’ with Elizabeth Ellwood, a talented musician living in Menelik Road West Hampstead, who provided the piano accompaniment for many if not all of their shows. Seasonal entertainments during the summer months or at Christmas provided lucrative opportunities, offering long runs rather than one-off performances and in 1966 ‘Tonight’s The Night’ appeared at Whitley Bay for 10 weeks.
Separation and changing tastes
By 1966 the couple were at 42 Fortune Green Road West Hampstead where Beryl remained and was living at the time of her death. Warwick was (on and off) at 95 Palmerston Road Kilburn and 4 Hillfield Road in West Hampstead, before moving to 27 Blenheim Terrace by 1967. There he applied for a license to run an employment agency hiring persons connected with the entertainment industry.
Warwick and Joan’s acts became increasingly out of step with modern tastes. In 1966 a Joan Colyer entertainment was described by a the local paper as, ‘once the bread-and-butter line of the small provincial theatres, now acquiring scarcity value.’
Both developed generally well-received shows based on old time music hall acts. But in 1981, when Joan presented ‘Let’s all go to the Music Hall’ at Tynemouth, she received a terrible review. Described as ‘awe-inspiringly awful’, the local reviewer said that the performance of the entire cast, on a scale of one to ten, would rate no higher than minus five. Of poor Joan, who made several appearances, ‘the least said about her singing the better’. The exception was the faithful Elizabeth Ellwood, who was praised for her playing. Clearly the show had issues but this seems to be a one-off review. It is countered by the last mention of Joan in ‘The Stage’, where her music hall troupe’s summer season at Littlehampton on the south coast, was praised as ‘remarkably successful’.
When Beryl died on 8 July 1994 in Fortune Green Road she was aged 84. She left just over £170,000, worth about £350,000 today. We have not been able to trace details of Kenneth’s life after 1970, but we are fairly certain that he died in April 1990, in Bristol.
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