Ivor Emmanuel

Jul 27 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT IS mocked now for being as much part of the Christmas festival as a silly hat and mince pie.

But who does not still feel a chill in the soul when the lone voice in the mission house replies to the mighty horde of chanting Zulus with, “Men of Harlech stop your dreaming, can’t you see their spear points gleaming? See their warrior pennants streaming to this battlefield...”?

Moments before that, Ivor Emmanuel, smiling and brave, spoke for all the chapels in all the smoke-dust valleys, when he said to Stanley Baker: “They’ve got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenor, that’s for sure.”

Of course, it’s not true. Emmanuel wrote new words to suit the occasion. Yet that moment in Zulu is one of the most moving in the history of cinema.

Emmanuel was brought up in Pontrhydyfen, a mining village near Port Talbot. Once his voice had broken, it was obvious that the boy was a fine tenor/baritone, but, like most of the others, he was destined to walk the worn path to the mine, where he dug underground.

But in 1941, one of our planes accidentally dropped a bomb on his village while chasing the Luftwaffe after a raid on Swansea. Young Ivor lost both parents, his grandfather and two-year-old sister, and he moved in with his Aunt Flossie

The tragedy left him bereft and he would take a wind-up gramophone to the hills, where he listened to the singing of Enrico Caruso. But he had a fine voice himself, as was heard in the Talbot Male Voice Choir.

However, he failed an audition with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and sought solace in a London pub with his old friend Richard Burton, who had been born in the village a year before him.

A couple of weeks later, Burton advised him to audition for Oklahoma! in Drury Lane. Emmanuel got the part.

From then on his career was a great success, with appearances on most of the big American musicals, TV appearances and summer seasons.

His records sold in substantial quantities and could always be found in those shops which sold Welsh ladies, wool rugs and bara brith (speckled bread).

Emmanuel married three times and had three children. He retired to Spain in the 1980s.

Ivor Emmanuel, singer, born November 7, 1927; died July 20, 2007.