West End sex bomb who sacrificed stardom to be Mrs Ronnie Corbett
RONNIE CORBETT has returned to prime-time TV for the first time in 17 years in a new series called Ronnie’s Animal Crackers. Much of the first episode was filmed with his statuesque and charismatic actress wife, Anne, and their dog Basil (Baz).
The trio are inseparable. ‘ Let’s go and find Mum,’ Ronnie, now 82, murmured to Baz, and the camera zoomed in on Anne.
A remarkably handsome woman still, her silver-blonde hair is a vivid reminder of the dynamic sex bomb she was in her West End career in the Fifties and Sixties.
When she and Ronnie met, she was by far the bigger star. Anne Hart had a powerhouse singing voice and fabulous long legs that could dance up a storm. She was tipped to be Britain’s answer to both Hollywood’s Jane Russell and Broadway’s queen of the belters, Ethel Merman.
‘But I gave it all up when I married Ronnie,’ she says. ‘ David Frost had just given him his first big TV break in The Frost Report. My own mother was a wonderful home-maker, and I saw my role as creating an environment in which Ronnie could have the peace to do what he does best: bringing laughter into people’s lives.’
So when their children were born, she gave up work to be a full-time mum. ‘Some actresses combine motherhood with a career, but it seldom works,’ she says. ‘You have to decide what matters in your life. For me, Ronnie and our children came before the fame game. They still do.’
Anne was born in 1933, in Lambeth, South London, the third of six children. Her father, Marvin, was a boxer until he broke his elbows in a car crash.
After that, they struggled. ‘Dad dabbled — a bit of this, a bit of that. We were not well-off. Mum didn’t even have any tea towels.’
Nevertheless, her father refused to give up his 1928 Rolls-Royce, which he used to drive Anne to school. ‘I always say that when I write my book, I’ll call it Rolls-Royce But No Tea Towels,’ she jokes. ANN was also dyslexic. Being unable to read well, she began consciously trying to make people laugh. ‘That was the start of me as a performer,’ she recalls. She went to the legendary Italia Conti stage school and made her West End debut in the Christmas show Where The Rainbow Ends.
At 22, she was working with the great comedian Tommy Trinder in Sunday Night At The London Palladium, and four years later achieved stardom as the leading lady for three years with the Crazy Gang’s last two London hits, Clown Jewels and Young In Heart.
Her proud dad would walk into the Victoria Palace after curtain up, and his entry became part of the show as one of the Gang, Bud Flanagan, stopped the performance and said: ‘Evening, Mr Hart! We’ve got your daughter here. Now, say hello to your dad, Anne.’
As well as performing two shows a night with the Crazy Gang, she would also do late-night West End cabaret with the cross- dressing Danny La Rue. It was at one of these venues, Winstons, that she met Ronnie, then a young comedian, for the first time.
Anne had married a few years earlier (to a singer called John Padley), but the relationship soured and they had separated.
Even so, her f riendship with Ronnie Corbett started slowly.
She recalls: ‘ I think Ronnie thought I was a bit of a hard case. But not only is he highly intelligent, he is also extremely perceptive, and he soon realised that my brashness was a facade, and also that I suffered terribly from stage-fright.’
For his part, Ronnie says he was ‘totally bowled over’ by Anne. ‘She was — and still is — a stunning lady. I’d never felt a heart- stopping attraction like this ever before.’
But he remained a ‘ cautious suitor’, worried that his height — 5ft 1½ in — might put off this 5ft 8in statuesque beauty. So it was six years before he plucked up the courage to ask her out for a drink and an omelette at the Buckstone Club, where, between acting jobs, he had worked as a barman.
It was there that their courtship blossomed. It was there also, in 1963, that he met a portly actor named Ronnie Barker, with whom he was to go on to make television history in The Two Ronnies. After obtaining a divorce, Anne conceived Ronnie’s child — even though they were not yet married.
Ronnie observes that he never actually proposed to Anne, who interjects quickly: ‘ If he hadn’t married me, my dad would have been around with a shotgun.’
They had a quiet wedding at Lambeth Register Office in 1966.
But there was heartache ahead. Their baby, Andrew, was born with his heart on the wrong side of his body, and with several holes in it. He lived for only six weeks.
‘I don’t think either of us ever quite got over it,’ Anne says. ‘ We still think of him all the time.’
In due course, a daughter, Emma, was born and a second, Sophie, 12 months later. Anne and Ronnie are close to both daughters, and to their grandchildren: Tom Corbett, 24, an aspiring novelist, Tilly, 16, Dylan, 16, and Billy, eight, who is already a ballet dancer.
Anne remains fiercely protective of Ronnie and recalls how, during one of his recent performances, she heard him struggling with one of the gags, and shouted out to him from the wings. She said: ‘ You’ve gone wrong there, Ron. You’ve missed out the tag line.’
She recalls: ‘ With his genius for i mprovisation, he turned the moment to his advantage.
‘“That’s the wife!” he informed the audience. “You may as well come on, love, and check the rest of the act.” So I sat onstage and someone brought me a glass of white wine.’
On New Year’s Day 2012, when the whole family had gathered at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate his CBE, Corbett suddenly collapsed.
‘It was terrifying,’ Anne says. ‘He fell on top of me.’
Ronnie was taken to hospital and diagnosed with chronically low blood pressure. Anne then succumbed to double pneumonia and missed Ronnie’s Buckingham Palace investiture by the Queen.
Today, Ronnie has not a scintilla of doubt that he would not have achieved half as much without Anne. ‘What luck,’ he says simply, ‘to have won the love of such a wonderful wife as Anne.’
RONNiE’S Animal Crackers is on BBC1 tonight at 7.30pm.