David Heneker

David William Heneker, composer and lyricist: born Southsea, Hampshire 31 March 1906; married 1929 Ellen Hope (one son; marriage dissolved 1934), 1938 Gwenol Satow (died 1997); died Llwyndyrys, Gwynedd 30 January 2001.

David William Heneker, composer and lyricist: born Southsea, Hampshire 31 March 1906; married 1929 Ellen Hope (one son; marriage dissolved 1934), 1938 Gwenol Satow (died 1997); died Llwyndyrys, Gwynedd 30 January 2001.

Though he disliked the term "composer", which he considered too grand, David Heneker had to his credit as composer and/or lyricist several of the British theatre's greatest hits, including Charlie Girl, which ran in the West End for five years. At one time he had two shows running on Broadway, the French musical Irma La Douce, for which he collaborated on the English-language book and lyrics, and Half a Sixpence, for which he wrote the entire score. The latter was later filmed with its star, Tommy Steele, while another Heneker show, the acerbic satire of rock 'n' roll Expresso Bongo, was filmed with Cliff Richard.

Born in Southsea in 1906, he was the son of General Sir William Heneker and was set on a military career after attending Wellington College and the Royal Military School, Sandhurst. He joined the Army as a cavalry officer in 1925 and, with one brief break, remained in the service until 1948, although he had been drawn to a career in music ever since studying Noël Coward's score for Bitter Sweet while recuperating from a riding accident. He started songwriting as early as 1934, when he wrote the lyrics for "Just Call Me Cherie" (music by W.L.Trytel), sung by a dubbed Merle Oberon in the film Broken Melody.

After resigning his commission in 1937 to try running a hotel, he rejoined the Army in 1939 and worked in public relations at the War Office. In 1929 he had married Ellen Hope, the daughter of Rear-Admiral Herbert Hope, but the marriage was dissolved in 1934. Heneker and his second wife, Gwenol, the daughter of a judge, enjoyed wartime society life, and became close friends of the entertainer "Hutch", for whom the composer wrote "There Goes My Dream", a popular ballad that was also recorded in 1940 by the dance bands of Carroll Gibbons, Jay Wilbur, Joe Loss and Mantovani.

In 1942, Heneker had a comedy hit when Gracie Fields recorded his novelty number "The Thingummy Bob That's Going to Win the War" and in the film One Exciting Night (1944) Vera Lynn sang his ballad "There's a New World". After resigning his commission in 1948 to concentrate on a musical career, he graduated from playing piano in a public house to becoming a cocktail pianist and singer at the Embassy Club in the West End of London, where he performed for several years in his trademark white dinner jacket and red carnation while writing occasional songs - in the film Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) Jimmy Young sang a number Heneker wrote with Tommy Duggan, "If I Painted a Picture", and he contributed songs to the revue Cockles and Champagne (1954).

In 1956 he was seen on screen cast as a pub pianist in Joe Losey's Time Without Pity, but it was at the Embassy that he was spotted by the writer Wolf Mankovitz, who asked him to collaborate with Monty Norman and Julian More on the score for a satire on rock music and the shadier side of the music industry, Expresso Bongo (1958). It was the first musical for the actor Paul Scofield, who starred as the cynical agent of a rock star (James Kenney), and the show gave Millicent Martin her first big opportunity on the London stage. The songs ranged from rock parodies, so accurate that they could be (and were) taken seriously, to a hauntingly rhythmic beguine, "Time", sung by Hy Hazell. The critic Milton Shulman called it "the first successful adult musical since the end of the war", and it was filmed in 1959 (though in current television and video prints only one song remains).

On the strength of the Expresso Bongo score, the director Peter Brook hired Heneker, Norman and More to adapt the French musical Irma La Douce (by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre Breffort) for the London stage. With its setting of the Paris backstreets and its use of slang in the tale of a prostitute and her protector, it required careful handling, and More later wrote that

after several versions had been thrown in the wastepaper basket, we eventually hit on the right way to present Irma to English audiences: to avoid use of Bronx or cockney slang equivalents, so beloved of sub-titlers and so killing to Gallic atmosphere; to use instead a few French argot terms and to adapt the lyrics freely, in some cases creating completely new ones.

Irma La Douce opened in 1958 to positive reviews (Kenneth Tynan called it "a bold, blue evening"), and two years later it triumphed on Broadway with the same stars, Elizabeth Seal (who won a Tony Award), Keith Michell and Clive Revill. (Billy Wilder's film version in 1963 alas dropped all the songs.) Norman and Heneker worked with Mankowitz again on the musical Make Me an Offer (1960), a story of antique dealers for which they gave the star Daniel Massey a charmingly wistful number, "I Want a Lock-Up (In the Portobello Road)" and in which Sheila Hancock stopped the show with a comedy number, "It's Sort of Romantic", which had been written at the last minute as a front-of-curtain number to cover a scene change. The show won the Evening Standard Award as the year's best musical.

When Heneker and Norman decided amicably each to work on his own, it was Heneker's wife Gwenol, who had been reading H.G. Wells's Kipps in bed, who suggested to him that it would make a good subject for a musical. With a libretto by Beverly Cross, and Tommy Steele starring as the draper's assistant who briefly flirts with high society, Half a Sixpence (1963) was a great success, its score including the popular title tune, the prettily plaintive "She's Too Far Above Me" and the knees-up show-stopper (written the night before the show opened) "Flash, Bang, Wallop". The show won Heneker the Ivor Novello Award and, when it followed Irma La Douce to Broadway, Heneker became the first British writer to have two shows on Broadway both running for over 500 performances. In 1967 Half a Sixpence was filmed, with Tommy Steele recreating his infectious performance.

Heneker's longest-running show in London was to be Charlie Girl (1965), for which he collaborated on the score with John Taylor. The show is legendary for having survived a notably hostile reception from the press. Just two national critics - Felix Barker in the Evening News and Michael Thornton in the Sunday Express - praised the show. The other reviews ranged from dismissive to scathing, but shrewd casting and a resolutely escapist flavour gave it great public appeal, despite a score for which the word "serviceable" might have been conceived. A revival in 1986 had a more modest success, though it afforded the piquant pleasure of seeing Cyd Charisse and Dora Bryan perform a duet.

Though Heneker was to have no more smash hits, some of his best work lay ahead. Jorrocks (1968) had what many consider to be his finest score, and for Phil the Fluter (1969), based on the life of the Irish composer Percy French, he gave Evelyn Laye what was to become one of her trademark songs, "They Don't Make Them Like That Any More", a song which anticipates Sondheim's "Liaisons" ("In those days men gave orchids by the dozen, today they think forget-me-nots will do"). Heneker was reunited with Daniel Massey for Popkiss (1972), co-composed with John Addison and based on Ben Travers's farce Rookery Nook, and he collaborated with the young American Warner Brown for a musical about the days of silent cinema, The Biograph Girl (1981). Once asked how he kept a fresh approach, Heneker replied it was because most of his collaborators were young enough to be his children - or, in Brown's case, grandchildren.

His last London musical was Peg (1984), starring Sian Phillips and Ann Morrison and based on the Edwardian play Peg O' My Heart. In a generally cosy, nostalgic score, Morrison's solo "Manhattan Hometown" was one of Heneker's most powerful songs. Regarded as the most genial of collaborators, he was both versatile and adaptable and was one of the most popular members of his profession.

Heneker took a palpable pleasure in his work, and, in a concert tribute held at the Golders Green Hippodrome to mark his 85th birthday, he announced that he was still active, collaborating with Warner Brown on a concert musical based on the life of the opera star Nellie Melba, to be performed in Australia.

By Tom Vallance