Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday, if she was still alive
My mother was quite a star of screen and stage in the 1930s. She gave herself – or maybe some studio did – the stage name of Nancy O’Neil, which I suppose was a tad catchier than her real name of Nancy Smith. I didn’t know she’d been a star until I accidentally came upon a scrapbook of her press cuttings caringly put together by her younger sister Lorraine.
I was amazed to see pictures of a pretty, sweet young woman with sparkling eyes and a lovely smile. She was obviously quite something in those days; she did all the celebrity stuff (other than acting of course) like making ‘star’ appearances at carnivals and balls. She appeared altogether in around twenty films and half a dozen West End plays, always playing the lead. For a decade she never stopped working. The reviwers loved her. They made a big thing of her being an Australian, which is ironic really, considering the first thing she did on arriving in England was to get rid of her Australian accent (via RADA), and the second thing she did was to hardly set foot in her native country again throughout her life.
It’s a sad truth that our memories of our parents are of old people. My daughter could not believe the ‘rather grumpy’ old woman she knew was ever a ‘sweet young thing’. I never knew mum in her star days, so the person looking out from those old newspaper cuttings is unfamiliar to me too.
She was not a very happy mother. I think she only had her children (my brother and me) because it was what was done in those days. From the word go we were looked after by nannies and au pairs, and we were sent off to boarding school at 7 and 8 years old respectively. She had a mantra, which she repeated often, that ‘they couldn’t wait to get rid of us’. Today that sounds pretty cruel but again, it was the sort of thing they said (and to some extent thought) in those unchildcentric days.
Needless to say we had a spiky relationship, especially when she tried to tell me how to bring up my children. I always felt mum was a far nicer, gentler and more compassionate person than she allowed herself to be; or perhaps that prevailing fashion allowed her to be. Prevailing fashion said you suffered your children and the very worst thing you could ever do was spoil them; that’s ‘spoil’ as in praise, make much of, enjoy, and listen to. I used to pity myself for being her daughter but since having children of my own, I pity her that she did not allow herself to enjoy us more.
Still, she had a good life until my father died, and she got old. There are one or two of her films still floating about, which means she exists for posterity.
I remember playing tennis with her one day, a long time ago. I was still at the age when the older generation would sometimes give the younger generation the benefit of the doubt and let them win the occasional game. I hit the ball and it was in but she swore it was out. I presumed she would do the honourable thing but she absolutely wouldn’t. We stood there arguing for around ten minutes, while my father quietly looked on, and in the end as I remember I stormed off the court with the worst grace I could muster.
I guess that summed up our relationship. It’s a shame. It wouldn’t have taken much on either side. But that’s mothers and daughters for you.
Happy birthday mum.
