Early Life

Kathleen’s parents married in Blackburn in 1891. Her mother, Alice Maud Parker was one of ten children, although three of them died in infancy. The family had roots in Blackburn and Preston going back several generations.  Kathleen’s father, Arthur Harrison, was originally from nearby Clitheroe, with hiss family having connections back in Yorkshire. Arthur was related to John Harrison, the clock maker whose timekeepers, now on display in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, helped revolutionise sea travel in the late eighteenth century. Like Alice, Arthur came from a large family, with five brothers and a solitary sister who killed herself one day in her flat above the Harrison’s family chemist shop in Clitheroe High Street. Although there were early and tragic deaths on both sides of Kathleen’s family, Alice and Arthur were to enjoy fifty-five years of a happy, devoted marriage. They had two children. Kathleen was the first to arrive, born on 23 February 1892. Younger brother Allan followed two years later. ​The choice of Kathleen as a name suggests Irish links in the family. Irish Catholics and English Protestants did not commonly intermarry in Lancashire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but some of the Parkers clearly broke this unspoken rule; Kathleen’s uncle Geoffrey, for instance, marrying Irish born Pat Latimer. ​Kathleen was born at home, 500 Whalley New Road, in a modest terraced house in the Little Harwood district of Blackburn. It was a typical mill worker’s two up two down. But Kathleen’s father, Arthur, had other aspirations for himself and his family. He was a talented artist and designer, had trained as a civil engineer, and had secured the post of Assistant Engineer to the Blackburn Corporation.  ​There was no theatrical background in the family on either side, although Arthur was said to be an excellent mimic. What is clear is that both parents were artistic, and both were avid readers; mother was very fond of poetry, particularly that of Lord Alfred Tennyson.  ​As it happens, there was one poet in the family. Kathleen’s mother cousin, Robert W Service, was the family member closest to being a celebrity. He had been born in Preston in 1874, but had left Lancashire, moving to his father’s home in Scotland and later emigrating to North America, where he became enormously popular as the poet of the Yukon; The Death of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee being two of his most celebrated works. Although the family were proud of the connection, in reality he had little do with the Parkers once he had left Lancashire. ​After a brief spell in Newport in Monmouthshire in 1895, Kathleen’s family moved to London in 1897. Arthur had been appointed as Assistant Borough Engineer for the Borough of Southwark, a prestigious post in a borough at the heart of South London. In 1900 he was promoted to Chief Borough Engineer, a role he held until his retirement in 1928. At the turn of the last century London was undergoing rapid and profound change, and Arthur saw himself as part of a modernising movement to transform the capital’s landscape. Trams and street lighting were becoming part of the London street environment; roads were being widened and some of the worst slum areas were being cleared, even if squalor and poverty were still very evident in a borough such as Southwark.  ​By 1897 Arthur had saved enough to put down a mortgage on a modest property, 12 Searles Road, just off the New Kent Road, and down the road from the newly constructed Tower Bridge. This was to be the family home for almost ten years. Alice and Arthur stayed in regular contact with their relatives, returning often to Lancashire. She remembered trips back to Preston, and of visiting Grannie Parker’s house in Powis Road from where she would wander to the docks to run around amidst the stacks of timber and of playing with her brother Allan on the sand dunes by Lytham. ​Kathleen had a happy childhood. In later life she would recall certain times and events – such as the celebration that greeted news of the lifting of the siege of Mafeking in 1900 during the Boer War, with the sounds of church bells ringing across London. She also had a clear recollection of finding a half a crown coin gleaming in the grass in Hyde Park at Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901. ​In January 1903, a month before her eleventh birthday, Kathleen was one of the first 84 pupils enrolled at the newly opened St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s Grammar School for Girls on the New Kent Road. The Church of England Foundation that financed the school also provided several innovations, including heating through hot water, ventilation via electric fans and electric light. Alongside nine classrooms, an Art Room, Music Room, Cookery and Dining Rooms, there were also Chemical and Physical Laboratories – all indicative of a forward-looking approach to girls’ education.  ​Under the leadership of the formidable headmistress, Miss Frodsham, girls were expected to learn and to achieve, and not simply prepare to be married off. Miss Frodsham was to maintain a keen interest in the progress of her former charges and kept up contact with Kathleen up to the 1930s, not always without embarrassment to Kathleen. ​At school Kathleen excelled in English and scripture, particularly enjoying Bible stories. When she was ten, she started reading Charles Dickens, beginning with Oliver Twist. She was gripped and terrified. Jacob’s Island, the notorious riverside area where Fagan’s child gang were based, still loomed large in local popular memory, despite most of it having been developed not long after Oliver Twist was first published. The book set off a lifelong enthusiasm for Dickens’s works, and throughout her career she frequently played parts in various adaptations of his work - including Mrs. Sowerberry in the 1948 film version of Oliver Twist.  In 1908, aged sixteen, Kathleen moved on briefly to Clapham High School after leaving St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s. She was not to be the only former student of St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s to go on to enjoy a successful acting career.  ​These included Liz Fraser, a wonderful comic actress (who once appeared with Kathleen, in the film On The Fiddle in 1961) and, more recently, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who memorably starred in Secrets and Lies.  From the early 1900s, with Arthur earning good money, the family were able to indulge their love of travel by journeying to France, visiting Brittany and Normandy and beyond. These holidays made a deep impression on Kathleen, and she remained a keen Francophile for all her life. On one of her early trips, she met Louise from St Efflam, a Breton girl of her age. They shared a love of the seaside, and they struck up a firm friendship, starting a correspondence that they maintained for over 70 years, interrupted only by two world wars. ​After nearly ten years the family left their home off the New Kent Road and moved into a larger house between Kennington Theatre and Southwark Palace, round the corner from where Charlie Chaplin once lived. By 1910, the family could afford to employ a live-in maid, Caroline Freeman, who became close to Kathleen. Meanwhile mother involved herself with different interests, particularly public health provision, and her circle of friends included Susan Turner, the matron of London Hospital over the Thames in Whitechapel. ​Mother took Kathleen to the Christmas pantomime and other plays, and it was as a 7-year-old, watching The Three Musketeers, that Kathleen made the decision that she was going to be an actress. ‘When the curtain went up and I got that waft of greasepaint across the footlights, I knew I wanted to go on stage.’  The desire that was awakened at this early age never left her throughout her childhood. A later defining moment occurred when, aged 13, she saw the legendary Ellen Terry on stage. Such was the impact of that performance, Kathleen’s future career was now decided, at least in her own mind. ​Kathleen was persistent about following her chosen path throughout her teenage years, despite the serious misgivings of her parents. She was obdurate, showing the sort of tenacity which is probably as important a key to success in acting as is ability. By chance, Kathleen’s mother had a tenuous connection with Helen Haye, a successful actor who had established a strong reputation as a performer of Shakespeare and Ibsen. She was to become a leading and influential actor on stage and screen over the next few decades. Usefully, she also taught at ADA (the Academy of Dramatic Arts, later to become RADA) the training school for aspiring young actors. ​Helen agreed to give Kathleen a private audition to see if she did have any talent. Mother was quite happy for the audition not to go too well so that Kathleen could drop her fanciful ideas, settle down and find herself a husband. In the event, Kathleen impressed Helen sufficiently for her to tell mother that Kathleen had a definite talent, and that she could recommend her to ADA. It was Kathleen’s first break. And so, on 6th September 1913, aged 21, Kathleen enrolled at ADA in Gower Street, for the sum of 12 guineas. ADA was establishing a strong reputation as a centre of creativity and excellence. Its emergence signified the growing respectability of theatre in the early years of the twentieth century. Kenneth Barnes, the principal, was at the helm from 1909 to the early 1950s and was very well connected to anybody who was anyone in the theatre. He was also regarded as very supportive of the young actors learning their trade.  ​Barnes had recruited George Bernard Shaw to work at ADA in 1912. Shaw was a radical socialist, and a friend and champion of Sylvie Pankhurst and the Suffragettes. As a playwright and a commentator, he had already had a marked influence on the development of British theatre - one that was to continue into the first half of the twentieth century.  ​ On arrival at ADA, Kathleen immediately made an impression on Shaw. Early on in her course Kathleen was cast as Eliza Doolittle in Shaw’s recently written and hugely successful Pygmalion, his famous study of class and of nature versus nurture. Shaw had impressed on Kathleen that playing working class characters was proper acting, and, of course, Eliza, the heroine of Pygmalion, was a defiant and proud Cockney flower seller. Of playing Eliza in Pygmalion Kathleen later commented: ‘that really was the beginning of a long line of Cockney parts.’ Kathleen threw herself into the role with gusto, but Shaw, watching her performance, found her too mannered and unconvincing. ​Shaw had a very deep impact on Kathleen’s development as an actress. ‘I owe an awful lot to him’ 4 He advised Kathleen to go to Chapel Street market by Lisson Grove and immerse herself in the life of the market traders, which she did, spending time there and at Covent Garden, as well as back in the Old Kent Road near where she grew up.  ​ It was the same advice that Shaw had given the previous year to Mrs. Patrick Campbell when she had begun rehearsals as Eliza, and whose performance was to be a sensation when Pygmalion opened in the summer of 1914. Although feted and adored, in 1940 she was to die in obscurity and alone in a little hotel in Pau in the French Pyrenees aged 75.  ​Kathleen herself, on moving to London, had been encouraged (with only limited success) to lose the Lancashire accent of her family and her background. As a young child growing up in Southwark, her accent became very London, while still retaining some Lancashire flat vowels. But at St. Saviour’s and St. Olave’s the school had emphasised the importance of ‘proper’ pronunciation, which meant the girls were taught to lose, as far as possible, any hint of working-class South London in their speech. Now, however, as a student at ADA, Shaw was advising Kathleen to immerse herself into those very accents and manners of speech…to learn to speak like Eliza before she received elocution. ​‘I used to go there [Lisson Grove] on a Saturday night when the barrow-boys and their customers got going.’ 4 She got to know the street traders, studying their conversations, their clothes, to the finest detail. ‘I studied unique hair styles of the market women – in a group of half a dozen I would probably find that everyone had a different hair style, handed down from her mother.’ ​Shaw was extremely demanding, particularly when it came to performing in plays which he had written. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he had a very deep understanding of acting, being a brilliant deliverer of lines. “He read all the parts far better than we could, it was all very discouraging,’ was the actor Nicholas Hammen’s later recollection of a visit by Shaw to a rehearsal of one of his plays14. Shaw’s insisted that the words the actors spoke were understood clearly by the audience and that inflection and timing were all-important. Kathleen also learnt that the first impression an actor created on stage, and the delivery of the first line, was all important. ​Kathleen’s time at ADA coincided with the breakout of the Great War in August 1914. From 1915 London was subject to Zeppelin bombing raids which resulted in civilian casualties as well as considerable material damage. The destruction caused by these giant airships hardly compared to the Blitz that was to follow some twenty-five years later, but the Zeppelins were a frightening foretaste of modern warfare for civilians. Such a deadly threat from the sky was an entirely new phenomenon. The raids made an indelible impression on Kathleen, and in later life she often recalled the fear instilled by the sight of Zeppelins approaching. ​Female students heavily outnumbered males at ADA during the Great War with young men volunteering or, from 1916, being called up for military service. Even after the end of the War, and well in to the 1920s, female students outnumbered male students by four to one. In practice this imbalance resulted in female students having to play male roles in studies and presentations. ​The most important event of the year in the ADA calendar was the public show, performed by the students at Wyndham’s, at which medals and prizes were awarded. It was the opportunity for each student to showcase their talent, although no one was guaranteed a part. Students and their teachers drew on a variety of classic and contemporary sources, British and European. There was some Shakespeare as well as light comedy and even mime. Miles Malleson, a young playwright invalided from the Army, wrote some short plays for the 1915 performance. Casting for the public show was especially important. ​As for Kathleen, a later account describes her day: Sir Kenneth Barnes …. didn’t know what to do with her when the annual matinée came round and the students were given a part in a West End theatre. In despair he gave her a small role ….. She was a riot. With practically no time at all, she made a deep impression…..’  ​Thus, on 30th March 1915 Kathleen made her first public appearance at Wyndham’s in ‘Op-O’-Me Thumb as Amanda Afflick. The play tells the story of a young laundry worker who falls in love with someone outside her social class. In 1920 the play was turned into a very successful film, Suds, with Mary Pickford playing the role of Amanda.  ​The Daily Telegraph review stated that: ‘Messrs. Frederick Fenn and Richard Pryce’s clever picture of humble life in London, ‘Op-o’-me-Thumb,’ gave Miss Kathleen Harrison an opportunity, of which she was quick to take advantage, of furnishing a delightful sketch of the imaginative and  pathetic little heroine, Amanda Afflick, a study which, by the way, earned for her the bronze medal given by Mr. Gerald du Maurier.’  ​The Times 31.3.15 gave a favourable review, commenting that it was ‘admirably acted by Kathleen Harrison in the principal part’ ​The Morning Post, with more qualified praise, commented: ’Miss Kathleen Harrison showed promise in ‘Op-o’-me-Thumb; she has at least the rare merit of “going for it,” even if she does not quite get there.’ Gerald du Maurier, a prominent member of the acting aristocracy of the era, had been enlisted by Kenneth Barnes to dispense awards. The du Maurier ADA bronze medal that he presented, was the first and only award Kathleen ever received during her entire career.  ​ Alongside Kathleen in the cast that day at Wyndham’s was Lillian Hall-Davis, who burst to fame in the 1920s, becoming Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite female lead in his early films such as The Ring. Her star was to fall as rapidly as it had risen, and she tragically committed suicide in 1933 aged 34. ​ On leaving ADA, Kathleen toured for the next three months with a small company. She also managed to secure the part of Belinda in Our Boys, a comedy short and her first film role. It was a good part in a film version of a long-running stage play, which has now been lost to view. Made at the Clapham studios, Our Boys was a relatively big production, and the director, Sidney Morgan, was impressed enough with Kathleen to offer her a role some years later in Almost a Gentleman. ​ In early 1916 Kathleen, as one of a small company, went on a tour including Cheshire, Yorkshire and South Wales. One of the plays they performed was a play first performed at the end of the nineteenth century, Merely Mary Ann. This was a very sentimental romantic drama involving a young woman cleaning a boarding house, who becomes the object of affection from one of the lodgers, despite the class difference between the lodger and the cleaner. ​ Touring with the company was not all plain sailing. One theatre’s management simply refused to pay up, despite the company having given its performance. This was not such an uncommon occurrence at the time, and Kathleen would later quote the experience as to why she became an early member of the actors’ union EQUITY in the 1930s. The episode also highlighted the general insecurity actors faced, even when apparently in employment. ​ Despite these mishaps, Kathleen had already established a reputation for portraying working class women with humour and pathos and as an actress who could hold an audience. She had been successfully reviewed in the leading newspapers, won the du Maurier bronze award and had already appeared in a relatively big budget film. Notwithstanding this promising start, her career was now to go on hold for the best part of a decade. ​