the prop of props

‘I don’t know why they’ve chosen me for an interview,’ said George Hyam when we visited him at the Wembley studios recently. ‘I’ve had a very ordinary life.’

A very ordinary life, according to George, we discovered, involved assisting with the presentation of umpteen shows, touring the country with Tom Arnold and C. B. Cochran and now, as senior charge hand in the Wembley prop stores, ensuring that all the props required for the studios are ready bang on time and returned afterwards in good condition to the hirers.

George’s blood is a good theatrical red. His father was a stage carpenter. His brothers, Charles and Bert, work in the television studios also – the former at Wembley, the latter at Kingsway – and another works at the Covent Garden Opera House and has had the good fortune to tour the world with the Festival Ballet. There is a black sheep in the family, however; one brother is a chef in Southampton, but the Hyams prefer not to speak of him.

‘Tell us how you got started, George,’ we said, when we had finally wound our way through the prop stores and into his small office.

‘Oh, it’s such a long time and so many shows ago.’ (What a strange way to measure a lifetime.)

‘Did you always want to work in the theatre?’

‘Heavens, no. When I was demobbed in in 1918 I couldn’t get a job for six months so eventually when I had the opportunity of working for the stage I didn’t say no. I’ve never wanted to act, not me, but I wouldn’t leave the world of entertainment now for anything.’

‘What was your very first show?’

‘“The Naughty Wife”. I was a stage hand in that one. I went on the road with that company for three tours. As a young single man the life suited me well enough. There was very little opportunity to spend any money while we were away but when we got back to London, well, you can bet we made up for it.’

From ‘The Naughty Wife’ George joined the Nelson Key’s Company for ‘Polly with a Past’. For a time he worked with the Covent Garden Opera House as an electrician until the theatre called him back again for ‘Cousin from Nowhere’, ‘Our Cinders’, ‘Clowns in Clover’, ‘The House that Jack Built’ (Jack Hulbert was the star of these two), ‘Grand Hotel’, ‘Evergreen’ and ‘Helen’ – with Evelyn Laye as the leading lady. The old stagers will remember them well. George helped with them all.

‘I went on tour with Tom Arnold as his property master for a time,’ recalled George. ‘Then he wanted me to join him in a show called “All Women”, and by golly all women was the right word for it. I should have been the only man. Even the stage manager was a manageress. I turned that offer down.’

‘But, George, surely …?’

‘Not me. You can tell a man just what you think of him but when your boss is a woman, well …’

George joined the artillery during World War II – ‘That was no entertainment I can tell you’ – and afterwards he worked at Covent Garden again as a stage flyman for 10 years, which brings us – or rather him to 1955, and Wembley.

‘You’ve worked for the theatre, television and films, George. (He was at the Shepperton Film Studios for a short time in 1955.) Which medium do you prefer?’

‘Television every time. It has so much variety and interest. I enjoy the speed at which everything and everyone – including property men – must work. Our props here are hired daily and have to be returned within hours. In the theatre they are hired for the whole run of the show, which could be months or years – and they’re not returned very speedily either.’

We eyed the prop stores carefully. Behind a curtain of hot-house plants (were they plastic?) we saw rows and rows of chairs and beds; stacks of china and toys and piles of linen. ‘Have you ever been asked to provide a really impossible prop?’

“Nothing that we couldn’t make or hire.’

George has two children; his son is an engineer and his daughter a dressmaker. So on his side, anyway, the Hyam theatrical tradition is finished.

And is George finished?

‘I should have retired last year but,’ he set his jaw firmly, ‘I wouldn’t go, not while there’s life and work in me.’

‘Of such stuff,’ we decided, as we sidled past the hot-house plants on the way out, ‘is the world of entertainment made.’