This Is Your Life: Cleo Laine

Cleo LAINE (1927-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Cleo Laine, singer and actress, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews while performing at the BBC Television Theatre.

Cleo, who was born in Southall, West London, began her singing career in dance halls in the early 1950s. Her big break came when she successfully auditioned for the band leader John Dankworth, who she later married. Cleo toured extensively with John's band while releasing her own recordings, establishing herself as an acknowledged name in the jazz world.

In addition to her concert appearances and recordings, Cleo developed a career as an actress, with her theatre debut in Flesh to a Tiger at the Royal Court Theatre before appearing in the musical Valmouth in the West End and, later, the opera Seven Deadly Sins in Edinburgh.

"Oh god!"

programme details...

Edition No: 199
Subject No: 200
Broadcast date: Tue 23 Oct 1962
Broadcast time: 7.55-8.25pm
Recorded: Mon 10 Sep 1962 8.30pm
Venue: BBC Television Theatre
Series: 8
Edition: 4

on the guest list...

John Dankworth - husband
Johnson Haigh
Ernest Mills - in audience
Eric Cluer
Phyllis Hadley
John Basman
Patrick Fulman
Ronald Duncan
Doris Hare
Gerald Lascelles
Sabu
Roy Castle
Sheila Hancock

production team...

Researchers: Nickola Sterne, John Dalzell
Writer: Nickola Sterne
Director: T Leslie Jackson
Producer: T Leslie Jackson

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

All That Jazz

covering all the notes

Family Life

keeping it in the family

John Dankworth

Sheila Hancock

Doris Hare

Screenshots of Cleo Laine This Is Your Life

Cleo Laine recalls her experience of This Is Your Life in her autobiography, Cleo, reproduced here with kind permission of the author...

Round about the end of June I was pregnant - and overjoyed. It didn't stop me from performing, continuing up to a few weeks before my daughter was born.

I was three or four months pregnant when I became the subject of a dreadful This Is Your Life that the BBC perpetrated on me.

The researcher must have had a bad day, when assigned the job. None of my family were invited on, no musicians from the days of The Seven; they just about squeezed John in at the end, and there were many guests who had nothing at all to do with me or my life. I did a lot of play-acting that night.

Graham Collier recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, Cleo and John: Biography of Cleo Laine and John Dankworth...

It must have been quite an effort, but BBC Television's This Is Your Life managed to make the Cleo Laine story sound supremely dull. Not one jazz musician was invited to speak apart from John Dankworth's brief appearance. From this 'life', one would hardly think she'd spent any time singing jazz at all.

Bob Dawbarn, Melody Maker, 27/10/62

Cleo: They based it on all the jobs I'd had - not particularly my musical career. Things like 'assistant hairdresser' - all that sort of thing. Gerald Lascelles was there because he'd recommended me to Lord Harewood for The Seven Deadly Sins when Lotte Lenya dropped out suddenly. There was someone from the Royal Court Theatre and two people I didn't know. They'd kidded the researchers they knew me and all I could do was grin wanly and shake hands! It all seemed stupid to me, they left out the Seven and they even left out my family.

However, given Cleo's workload, it may not be surprising that jazz got overlooked. It had, after all, been four years since she'd sung with John's band.

Series 8 subjects