Pat Phoenix - "It's The Elsie Tanner In Me!" - 1966

Lovely Pat Phoenix was a legend as the Street's Elsie Tanner. We've found an article written by her from The Weekly News, March, 1966. Pat and Elsie were, of course, already national figures by this time. Here are some extracts from the article...

IT'S THE ELSIE TANNER IN ME!

The trouble with me is - I'm a straight talker. I can't pay lip service. I've got to mean what I say. What's worse, now and then I can't resist a "grand gesture". When I see a scene building up, my sense of the theatrical gets the better of me.

Couple the two together and you can see why I spend a good half of my life up to my neck in hot water from one cause or another.

There was the time I was playing in pantomime and the manager added some extra matinee performances.

We all thought we should be paid for doing them. The manager dragged us all into his office and read us a long lecture on the ingratitude of actors.

They were fine when things were going well, he told us. But when a show was making a loss you didn't find any of them coming along and offering him a fiver.

I couldn't resist. I was carrying my unopened pay packet. My pay for the last week's show.

With a dramatic sweeping gesture I handed it to him. The wretch took it and kept it!

I managed to scrape together just enough money to pay the rent and then I was broke.

I'm the sort of fool who gets all hot under the collar about injustice and starts shouting about principles. Once it got me the sack.

I was playing for a company which changed management at the end of season.

The new managers got rid of the other actors but decided to keep me on.

I was highly incensed at what I thought was unfair dealing and said so in my usual forthright fashion.

After standing there like Joan of Arc delivering a lecture on loyalty, I found myself sacked with the rest of them.

On the other hand, I much prefer people to tell me the truth. It may hurt at the time but I appreciate it in the long run.

You can buy flattery but you can't buy the truth.

I lost a trusted friend recently. She told me a lie. It was over a silly thing really. But I'll never believe a word she says again.

I can't tell a lie even to save myself embarrassment. Sometimes I wish I could for my own sake. 

An actress friend usually wore very feminine hats. Then one day she arrived in one which, I thought, made her look dreadful.

She asked what I thought.

I tried to avoid answering, but she insisted, So I told her I didn't like it. It wasn't nearly as nice as the hats she usually wore.

She was a bit taken aback at first. But afterwards she thanked me and told me that at least she got the truth. She'd decided not to wear the hat again.

Usually in a situation like that I wreck something or knock my best china ornament flying or create some other diversion. I don't believe in offending people. I try not to answer, or find some little detail I can admire with easy conscience.

My mother usually tells me she wishes I'd kept my big mouth shut. Which is a bit much. It was her training that brought me up to abhor lies. She considers liars just about the worst thing in the world.

The way I think has a good deal to do with my mother.

Andy interrupts: There was one point about which Pat did allow herself a little lie though, as the article illustrates:

I was born at Portumna, Co. Galwey, though I came to Manchester as a small child.

In fact, Pat was born in Manchester. So, why the untruth? It all stemmed from Pat's mother, who thought Ireland sounded more romantic (or something) than Manchester. Pat put it in print in the first volume of her autobiography All My Burning Bridges.

More 1960s Pat soon.

1966 - Coronation Street In Australia...

Arrival in Australia: Pat Phoenix, Arthur Leslie and Doris Speed.

Coronation Street had been seen on-screen in Australia for three years, to avid response, and on 17 March 1966, Doris Speed, Pat Phoenix and Arthur Leslie (better known as Annie Walker, Elsie Tanner and Jack Walker to Street fans), together with the show's executive producer, Harry Kershaw, set out for "Down Under" to meet the fans on a three week tour. Granada Press Officer Norman Frisby was already there - having departed from England on 12 March. The tour came about via an invitation from the three Channel 9 stations which screened the show in Aus. - TCN 9 Sydney, GRV 9 Melbourne and NSW 9 Adelaide.

A wonderful first hand account of the trip exists in HV Kershaw's excellent book The Street Where I Live. First published to celebrate the show's 21st anniversary in 1981, an updated version was published in 1985 to celebrate the 25th anniversary.

Here's a brief extract:

The cynic might rightfully argue that the happy-go-lucky Lancashire bonhomie was now second nature to all "Coronation Street" artists but anyone looking down, say, at twenty thousand upturned smiling faces at the new City of Elizabeth and listening to their cheers of welcome could well have been forgiven for becoming a little 'difficult'. But Pat, Doris and Arthur stayed on an even keel. Not only did they carry out a gruelling programme, they each had time for the spontaneous gesture. I remember one morning in Adelaide, standing outside the Hotel Australia waiting with the party to move off on another well-filled day when a thirty-year-old woman pushed her way through the watching fans and nervously approached Pat Phoenix. Her mother, she explained, a great "Street" fan, was bed-ridden and, sorely disappointed at having missed a sight of her favourites, had asked if she might have an autograph.

'Where do you live?' asked Pat. The woman told her. 'Where's that?' Pat asked Rob Carless, our South Australian host. Five minutes away by car, said Rob. 'Come on!' said Pat and the surprised woman found herself being bundled into a limousine and driven home. Not that her surprise was anything to her mother's when, sitting up in bed she watched as the door opened and a glamorous, smiling Elsie Tanner popped her head round, said 'Hello, love! They tell me you're poorly!' and stayed for a chat and a cup of tea.

The secret of the tour's success was perhaps best summed up by a sardonic member of the Australian Press corps. We had been warned that the Aussie journalist was the most murderous of the breed but the trip was going so well we took our courage in both hands and agreed to a full-scale Press reception. The junket was held at the Great Eastern Hotel in Littlehampton in the hills above Adelaide and, after a wary start, artists, assassins and associates began to enjoy the boar's heads and barons of beef, the Foster's lager and the native (and excellent) champagne. At two o'clock in the morning I was buttonholed by a gaunt Pressman who pressed a glass of something-or-other in my hand and plied me with a few searching questions. Then he paused and looked at me.

'I'll tell you something!' he said. 'When we heard that you Poms were coming over we got out the knives and we sharpened them good. We were really going to carve you up!" His eyes flickered to Pat and Doris, fresh as the morning dew, Pat regaling one group with some tale of home, Doris holding court with another. And, between them, Arthur Leslie demonstrating to a bleary band of reporters the gentle art of opening a champagne bottle. 'But these bastards...!' the Pressman went on, his voice full of wonder, '... these bastards'd charm the birds from the bleedin' trees!'

Sadistic '60s - Part 1: Elsie Tanner At Knife Point...

Part two of our occasional series - Sadistic '60s, Savage '70s, Evil '80s, which highlights the dark side of The Street in our chosen decades.

Eeek! Poor Elsie Tanner had a troubled 1966. A series of anonymous phone calls led to the appearance of Mrs Moira Maxwell, wife of Robert Maxwell, who had died of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car whilst Elsie was in the passenger seat the previous year.

Driven mad by jealousy, Mrs Maxwell wanted bloody revenge.

Of course, the phrase "bunny boiler" was not coined until after the 1980s film Fatal Attraction, but Mrs Maxwell now definitely qualifies for the title.

Fortunately for Elsie, her old mate Len Fairclough arrived to save the day.

One of the interesting things about the photograph above, is the appearance of a flying duck on the far left.

It was one of those later used to such great effect for Hilda Ogden's "muriel".

And pity poor Elsie. A lesser woman might have been driven quackers by the stress of her ordeal with Mrs Maxwell.

But not our Elsie.

She flew straight on, searching for calmer waters.

Ena Sharples And The High Rise Photograph - The Details...

I had an e-mail the other day that said some very charming things about this blog.

Very appreciative indeed it was.

So, I chortled in reply:

"My dear! But of course - this is The Annie Walker, The Gatsby, The White Swan, The... er... Laughing Donkey of retro Corrie blogs. Nothing is spared, no expense spent, in our quest to bring you somethin' you might fancy 'avin' a bit of a read of every now and then."

And every word of what I wrote to my appreciative audience of one is absolutely true.

And so, in our great tradition of sheer ruddy brilliance, we bring you the full details of the Ena-Sharples-on-a-high-rise balcony-in-the-1960s photograph.

Ena found her tenure as live-in caretaker at the Glad Tidings Mission Hall threatened in 1966. So, where would she live now? In a high rise block, perhaps?

Photographer John C Madden took the high rise photograph of Ena. The so-called "slum clearances" in Manchester were well underway by the mid-1960s.

In Moss Side, the area near Cornbrook Street had begun its transformation in the early-to-mid 1960s. The first new high rise blocks were named after the old streets they were replacing - Pickford Street, Clifford Street and Grafton Street were commemorated as Pickford Court, Clifford Court and Grafton Court.

And so there in Moss Side it was that Violet Carson posed as high rise Ena. With the rest of the old neighbourhood still intact and the gloriously industrial-looking Hydes Brewery in the background, this was the ideal setting for Weatherfield, which, as you will recall, succumbed to a few high rise flats, but not many.

The wide, busy road in the Ena photo was Cornbrook Street. And it's absolutely vanished.

Ah, you screech, but Cornbrook Street still exists - so how could it have vanished? Well, actually, lovey, part of Cornbrook Street still exists. It used to continue on the other side of the junction with Chorlton Road and ran up to Moss Lane West.

The part of Cornbrook Street seen below Ena is now parkland and modern housing.

The religious-looking building in the photograph was St Bride's Church of England Primary School, and the street with the replaced roof tiles was Dudley Street.

The chimney pots and brewery on Moss Lane West can be seen in the smoggy distance.

It was a different world.