By Sears Eldredge

After their return to regular quarters, the “P.O.W. WOWS” continued their revues, one of which featured a new song by Bob Gale, “Some Day I’ll Come Back To You, Dear”:

 Someday troubles will be over,

One day right will conquer wrong.

Peace will come to stay forever,

And at last, we shall view,

All our dreams come true.^[i]

On Saturday, 10 September, Australian Medical Officer Charles Huxtable, as he had done many times, accompanied two patients from Roberts Hospital to see the Variety Show in The New Windmill Theatre (the same show that had been running prior to the “Selarang Incident”).^[1] There he saw Fergus Anckorn perform his “Egg Trick,” described here by Anckorn’s close friend, Norman Pritchard: 

He [Anckorn] did this show where he takes a handkerchief out of his pocket — silk handkerchief — stuffs it in his hand, opens his hand up: it’s not laying there. . . handkerchief has gone into the egg: the egg shell.  And he explains this to the audience tries to make them feel that [they’re in on it] . . .

But just in case you’re not quite sure, he breaks the egg into a tumbler . . . and the egg and yolk falls out. So – the egg trick.^[ii]

A marvelous trick, but the backstory about how the egg for this trick was obtained is even more remarkable: 

[Anckorn] saw the Jap Commander, who gave him a bit of paper to go to the store to get the egg he needed for the show. But when he got to the source of supply, the Jap had asked him how many he wanted. So, he just realized there was no number on the order. 

            So he says, “Fifteen” . . . 

And I thought he was going to do this egg trick every night for two weeks — with fourteen eggs. And Lester Martin, Gus, and I got a pin — each a pin — and totally took a section of the egg out — a section of the shell out large enough to get the yolk out, put it in a saucepan, and made a lovely omelet . . . which the three of us ate.  

And the next day after the show, the General pulled him in and asked for an interpreter.

            “What happened to the other eggs?”

So Gus said ([he] had to think pretty fast), “Rehearsals!” And he got away with it.^[iii]  

Back in the India Lines, I Killed The Count, opened on 17 September to tremendous applause. “Jack” Horner’s comic abilities in his Cockney character role almost stopped the show.^[2][iv]Searle’s interior setting with scrounged, or POW-made furniture, was much praised. The sketch of the set design in Searle’s IWM Art folder is done in red and black on brown paper.^[3] It shows a standard three-fold interior setting with a door in each wall. Notes on the sketch show how the setting could be constructed from a series of flats pinned together. And at the left of the sketch are notes listing the furniture and props required.

Toward the end of the month, another new theatre (“The Glade”) and concert party (“The Gladiators”) appeared with a production of Old King Cole performed by the S.S.V.F.^[4] POWs in the Southern Area.

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[1] Huxtable’s unpublished diary has been instrumental in recovering this history of entertainments in Changi..

[2] Horner was also passionate about theatre and the publication of his diary by his family has been an invaluable resource.

[3] The image was not made available for this blog.

[4] Singapore Straits Volunteer Forces.

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[i] Anckorn, F. collection, n.p.

[ii] Pritchard, Interview, 28.

[iii] Pritchard, Interview, 28-29.

[iv] Horner, Diary, 48, pb.

Note that all the documents in this series of blogs reside in Sears A. Eldredge Archive in the De Witt Wallace Library at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55105

Sear’s book, Captive Audiences/Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945, was published by Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014, as an open-access e-book and is available here: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/22