Zoë Wanamaker Talks about her Father, Throwing Up in the Wings, and Being Jewish

Guest blog post by Vera Litvin


Last week, Zoë Wanamaker shared stories about her father, her childhood and her experiences as an actor with a full house at the LJCC. A household name as Susan Harper in the BBC sitcom "My Family" and as Madam Hooch in the first "Harry Potter" film, Zoë has a long and distinguished career in film, TV and theatre.


The evening began with Zoë telling how her family had to move to the UK from the USA when her father, actor and director Sam Wanamaker, was blacklisted during the McCarthy witch-hunts. Zoë was three at the time, and it was only as an adult that she realised how much danger her father had been in.  He had decided not to return to the US when “he had been warned that he would be subpoenaed (to court),” she recounts. Zoë tells that her parents’ US passports were “rescinded” making them “stateless” for the next 10 years. Despite this, Zoë remembers her childhood in St John's Wood fondly, saying that it included lots of visits to the theatre, to galleries and an enjoyment of everything London had to offer. She considers herself “very lucky.”

Zoë's father, actor and director Sam Wanamaker (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Richard Eyre, who was interviewing Zoë, and who has directed her in several plays, pointed out that Zoë is a “natural sceptic and distruster of authority” like her father, with which she heartily agreed.  Zoë was touched when a member of the audience, celebrated make-up artist Walter Schneiderman, stood up and explained that he had worked with her father in his first British film “Give Us This Day,” and even handed her some photographs of her father which she had never seen before.


Zoë’s father, Sam Wanamaker is perhaps most well known as the founder of the Globe Theatre in London.  Zoë remembers how on “Sunday lunches the plans (for the Globe) would come out.”  At the time, Zoë admits she was rather “sceptical” of her father’s grand project.  Now, looking back, she deeply admires the “great degree of tenacity” he had to push his dream forward and she sits on the theatre’s Board as Honorary President.

Blue plaque to Wanamaker outside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

As a little girl, Zoë admits she wanted to be a nun – not because of any religious conviction – but because she liked the singing and found it very “glamorous.” “Judaism was never pushed down our neck.” Zoë explains, “My parents grew up with Judaism and rebelled against it and indoctrination in any form.” Still, she remembers her father would “occasionally feel guilty and then the cantor would go on the record player.”



Zoë’s parents, both of them actors, were not at all keen that she should enter the profession because of the insecurity and rejection involved. They tried to dissuade her, but Zoë decided that she wanted to act. She admits that she is still “looking for answers about acting” and that every acting job is a “challenge.” She describes the development of each character she plays as a “journey” in which the actor is “looking for clues.” She still gets stage fright, and has even on occasion been sick in the wings. But she finds acting, especially in the theatre, unbelievably exciting: “you can feel it if you have an audience, it’s a visceral thing.” For Zoë, working in the theatre is “an exciting event. You want people to enjoy it. It’s all about telling stories.”

Zoë Wanamaker (Image courtesy of Adrian Dell)

Anti-Fascist Footprints

Guest blog post by Lara Smallman

‘How do you normally celebrate a birthday?’ David Rosenberg, our tour guide for the morning asked us as we gathered outside Aldgate East tube. ‘With cake or a meal with friends perhaps…’ Well, not if your name is Oswald Mosley. When the political party he created - the British Union of Fascists turned four in 1936, he chose to mark the occasion in a somewhat more ostentatious way – with a rally through the heart of the East End, home to 60,000 Jews at the time.

Image courtesy of www.historyworkshop.org.uk

During last week's two-hour ‘Anti Fascists Footprints Walking Tour’, we discovered the back-story behind a man who may well have become leader of the Labour Party, but instead turned out to be Britain’s answer to Adolf Hitler.

We started off in what was formerly known as St. Mary’s Gardens, renamed Altab Ali Park in memory of a Bengali clothing worker who was killed in a racist attack in 1978. We learned how Mosley started his political career at the tender age of 21, becoming the youngest member of the House of Commons. He fell out with the Conservative Party over Irish policy of all things, and before long allied himself with the Independent Labour Party.  In 1929, perhaps because of his aristocratic roots, lack of staying power or hints of ultra-nationalism, Mosley was snubbed by Labour. Just one day later, he founded the New Party, later renamed the British Union of Fascists. For Mosley, it was to be third time lucky, so to speak.

David our guide pointed out the small cemetery in the corner of the gardens, and told us that a participant of a previous tour had an incredible claim to fame: One of the tombstones belonged to a relative of his, who had beheaded Charles I - not strictly relevant, but fascinating nevertheless.

The stunning stained glass panel on the top of St. Boniface’s German Church, made even more beautiful on a gloriously sunny day, caught our attention, and we made a pit stop outside for a quick Yiddish lesson from David. Ironically, Hitler’s bombs fell on the German Church during the War, and it wasn’t until the 1960s that it was rebuilt.

‘We’ve been to Church, now let’s go to Shul!’ We were led through side streets and up to Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, which stands alongside the site of the first Grodzinski bakery. It is surrounded on three sides by the East London Mosque, and is apparently the closest a synagogue comes to a mosque outside of Jerusalem. It is one of four synagogues still functioning in the area. There used to be over 150.

Back to Oswald Mosley, and the rise of Fascism. There were plenty of surprises during our tour. Firstly, Mosley was not the one to make the ideology a populist one. There was a groundswell of opposition to Jews long before the Battle of Cable Street, thirty years before in fact. The British Brothers League, equivalent to today’s English Defence League, openly intimidated the East End’s Jewish population around the turn of the century. The second surprise came in the form of Mosley’s original rejection of anti-Semitism, arguing that it wasn’t needed to promote Fascism. He was more a fan of Italy’s Mussolini than he was of Adolf Hitler. However, it wasn’t long before Mosley started pedalling the very rhetoric he had once rejected - that of Nazi Germany. Last but not least, Mosley’s bodyguard in the early 1930s was a Welterweight professional boxer, and a Jew by the name of Gershon Mendeloff, known to Mosley as Lewis.

By 1934 Mosley’s BUF Party had an impressive 500 branches across the country, and was busy planning three indoor rallies: One in Albert Hall (which would house 7-8,000 people), one in Olympia (for 15,000) and one in White City (for 23,000), which never actually went ahead. The Daily Mail, which openly supported Mosley’s Black Shirts, ran a competition offering tickets to the Olympia rally. All you had to do to be in with a chance of snapping up free tickets was to write what you liked about the British Union of Fascists. Several Communists entered, and won a few tickets, thereby gaining access to the rally. Once inside, they heckled Mosley and were, under his instruction, violently removed by the ever-present Black Shirts. The Fascists were exposed as a violent Party and soon the Daily Mail withdrew their support, as did most supporters. And so came the sharp demise of the British Union of Fascists.

As our tour came to an end, we passed Coke Street, birthplace to Paul Peratin MP, a Jew who was so horrified by the infamous Olympia rally that he joined the Communist party a week later, and became the architect of its anti-Fascist policy.

Posters detailing Mosley’s planned march were put up just ten days before the 4^th October 1936, giving the anti-Fascists very little time to coordinate a response. Despite the short notice, they collected an astonishing 100,000 signatures in two days. There were 60,000 Jews in the area. The remaining signatures came from socialist, anarchist, Irish and communist groups.

The Anti-Fascist movement's response to Mosley's advert: Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Over a quarter of a million demonstrators took to the streets to say ‘no’ to Mosley and ‘no’ to Fascism. For the people of the East End, the commemoration of choice was a mural in Shadwell, which was to be our last stop on the tour. We looked up and read the slogan: ‘Mosley shall not pass. Bar the road to British Fascism’.

Cable Street Mural: Image courtesy of www.cablestreet75.org.uk