By Carol Elliott
From Neyland to the National Stage: The Life of Cliff Gordon, born 1920
Cliff Gordon should have been born in Neyland, but his mother was unmarried and went to Llanelli to have her baby. Clifford Moses (later Gordon) was born on 11 February 1920 in Llanelli. He was the son of Martha Elizabeth Moses of the long-established Moses family in Neyland. His birth was out of wedlock, and in the strict moral climate of the time this carried a heavy social stigma. To shield the family from gossip and judgement, Martha left Neyland, and Clifford was born away in Llanelli.
At only a few months old, Clifford was adopted by his uncle, Charles David Moses, a fish packer, and came back to Neyland to live with him and his wife Minnie. As a child Cliff lived at 121 High Street and went to Neyland School. From an early age he displayed a love of performance, delighting classmates and teachers alike with his ability to step into character and make an audience laugh. One of the friends from his boyhood in Neyland was Gordon Parry, who would go on to become Lord Parry of Neyland; the two shared the same formative streets and schoolrooms and singing in the choir at chapel, and in later years Lord Parry would speak fondly of Cliff and those growing up years together in Neyland.
As a young man, the lights of the London Palladium called him at the age of 16 years. Clifford moved to London and entered the world of professional entertainment, adopting the stage name Cliff Gordon. During the Second World War he served in the army concert parties, bringing music, comedy, and variety turns to servicemen in need of diversion from the hardships of war. His talent and stage presence also took him to one of Britain’s most famous venues, the London Palladium, where he appeared as part of variety bills during those years.
On 17 August 1949, The Sketch, a distinguished British illustrated weekly, released a feature portrait of Cliff Gordon, capturing him in mid-performance as he read from a script. Known for its generous coverage of performers, society figures, and artists, The Sketch placed Gordon among the promising stage talents of his era.
In the post-war years, Gordon expanded his work into writing and producing. His BBC radio play Choir Practice, first broadcast on 7 March 1946, starring Ivor Novello, Glynis Johns, Emrys Jones and Mervyn Johns, was a warmly observed comedy of Welsh village life that found a wide audience. The radio play echoes those characters of Neyland and especially those who attended chapel! His BBC radio play Choir Practice was later made into a stage musical and then adapted for the 1953 film Valley of Song, which marked the screen debut of actress Rachel Roberts and many others.
In 1949, Cliff Gordon stepped into one of his few starring screen roles in the British “B” feature A Man’s Affair. Cast as Ted, a young colliery worker on holiday in the seaside town of Ramsgate, Gordon shared top billing with Hamish Menzies as his mate Jim. The light romantic comedy follows the two miners as they meet holidaying girls Sheila (Diana Decker) and Phyl (Joyce Linden), their easy flirtations interrupted by the interference of a slick local spiv.
Gordon’s role as Ted is good-natured, quick with a smile, and keen to make the most of his time away from the pit. Playing opposite Decker, he brings an affable charm that anchors the film’s easygoing tone. While the plot is simple, a tangle of misunderstandings and reconciliations, it allowed Gordon to show a relaxed, natural screen presence, quite different from his sharper stage persona.
Shot partly on location, A Man’s Affair doubled as a cheerful postcard for post-war Ramsgate, but it also gave Gordon the chance to lead a film cast, placing him front and centre in a working-class romance that reflected the optimism of late-1940s British cinema.
In 1953 Gordon created Memories of Jolson, a musical salute to the legendary Al Jolson. The show opened in Luton in June 1953 and toured across the country. Cliff Gordon is credited with discovering many artists and among the cast of this musical was a 16-year-old singer from Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, Shirley Bassey. Gordon gave her that first professional theatre contract, setting in motion a career that would become world-famous. The tour played major houses, including the Pavilion Theatre in Liverpool, the Metropole in Glasgow, Coventry, Salford, and the Wood Green Empire in London. When the season closed in December, Shirley Bassey recorded her first duet, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon”, with fellow cast member Eddie Reindeer in a London studio.
In September 1956, Gordon appeared in the West End production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood at the New Theatre, playing the postman Willy Nilly as well as other roles. Just two weeks into the run, Tatler featured an Emmwood caricature depicting narrator Donald Houston with Willy Nilly (Gordon) and Rev. Eli Jenkins (T. H. Evans), a playful portrait of the production in its early success.
Clifford never forgot his roots, often returning to Neyland to visit family, sharing tales from stage and screen and delighting everyone with impressions of those he had worked alongside. “Neyland has the best fish and chips in the world,” he once told my father, his second cousin.
But alongside the fame, music, and theatre, Cliff also faced moments that threatened to end his career. In February 1954, his life and reputation were thrust into the harsh glare of the courtroom. At Chester Assizes, he was charged with two counts of attempting to procure acts of gross indecency, alleged to have occurred in Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The accusations came at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Britain, an era when mere suspicion could be enough to destroy a career..
Gordon pleaded not guilty and took the remarkable decision to conduct his own defence. Over three days, the court heard evidence from two men, one a commercial traveller and the other a man who had known Gordon since boyhood. Under questioning, one admitted that no specific invitation to commit an improper act had been made. Gordon, for his part, alleged that in the second instance it was the witness, not he, who had made the suggestion.
In his address to the jury, Gordon did something few public figures of the time dared: he spoke frankly about his struggles with what he called “homosexual tendencies.” He told the court that he had spent much of his adult life fighting them, “to the detriment of my own career and my financial wealth.” In an attempt to “cure” himself, a reflection of the thinking of the era, he had voluntarily entered several hospitals. At the time he learned police wished to interview him, he was a patient in such a hospital; he left voluntarily and gave himself up.
He reminded the jury of his contributions to the arts and entertainment: from his first stage appearance at 16, through performances at the Palladium, the Windmill, and other West End theatres, to earning a weekly wage of £300 at the height of his career. He spoke of writing Choir Practice for Ivor Novello, of the film adaptation, and of the severe collapse he had suffered while appearing at the Folies Bergère revue in London.
On 18 February 1954, the jury found him not guilty on both counts. Mr. Justice Barry, ordering the acquittal, described it as “a very proper verdict in this case.” Gordon walked free, but the public trial had laid bare the private turmoil he carried, and the precarious position of gay men in Britain before legal reform.
Though he would continue to work after 1954, Gordon lived with those demons for the rest of his life. In his own words, they had brought “suffering and miseries” and an “anxiety too great to bear.” Yet, despite the risk and the stigma, he had met the accusations head-on, defended himself with skill, and left the court a free man, though not untouched by the ordeal.
Away from the stage, Gordon married Margaret Eileen “Peggy” Truman in 1961 in Kensington, London. The couple later settled in Hastings, Sussex. Cliff Gordon died in October 1964 at the age of 44, and Peggy died on 2 April 1997. They are buried together at Battle Cemetery, East Sussex.
Clifford Gordon’s story is that of a remarkable man — a son of Neyland who rose to national acclaim on stage and in the theatre, who met his accusers in court with unwavering honesty, and whose life still reflects the personal toll of fame in a less forgiving era.
In Neyland, family and friends remember him fondly as the lovable boy who left for London and the bright lights of the Palladium.
In 1953 the WI in Neyland wrote the following of Cliff Gordon:
It cannot be said that many sons or daughters of Neyland, as far as we know, have made a name for themselves on the stage or in films. Neyland audiences felt a special interest, however, in the success of a Neyland boy, Clifford Moses, to us, who took the stage name of Cliff Gordon.
While quite young, at the Neyland National School, and later, at the Pembroke Dock County School, Clifford showed an interest and facility in writing. He was also a very clever impersonator. After a short period as a child star, when he appeared at the London Palladium, through the interest of Mr. George Black, Clifford returned for a time to school, but the stage was always calling.
With his radio play, “Storm in a Teacup”, later called “Choir Practice”, he attained success, since the story had a sentimental appeal dear to most Welshmen. The singing of choruses, which formed a part of its appeal, was only part, from Handel’s Messiah, of its attraction for Neyland radio audiences. In many of the characters, I suspect, in many of the little incidents and petty squabbles, Neyland people recognised well-known characters and possible incidents. A conductor of a church choir who was at the same time an insurance agent was quickly recognised. Davies the Shop had his counterpart in Neyland’s “Davies the Co-op,” known to everyone by that name. Mrs Lloyd, the contralto, too, was well-known, though, I am glad to say, less proud and quarrelsome than the Mrs Lloyd of the radio play.
Listen to the video of his radio play “Storm in a Teacup” …. I wonder how many more Neyland characters you can recognise?
Link:
https://archive.org/details/cliff-gordon-choir-practice
Contributor: Carol Elliott