Chapter 21. Marilyn (reprise)
The final piece of the picture with Marilyn is a tragic one. Several years later (way into the mid 1990's), I was contacted out of the blue by the Garrick. They were putting together an evening's entertainment that was to celebrate 100 years of the Garrick, with one event from every decade. It was to be done in the hope of obtaining finance to totally revamp the theatre and much funding was needed. They chose Marilyn as their show for the 1980's decade, an honour indeed, for which I was stunned but very grateful.
They asked my opinion for a 10 minute or so segment, and I said it had to be the final song sequence 'Who Am I / Legend' which was the showstopper finale. But several years had gone by and Stevie Holt had now got married, moved away, had kids, and generally was not available any more to sing it for the night. So they said they had a great lady singer in mind. They would give her my number, and we would arrange to meet and rehearse it from there. Her name, it seemed, was Christine Adams. I didn't know of her.
Sometime in the next week, she rang me, we arranged a rehearsal at my house and she appeared at the door. To say I was stunned was putting it mildly. Not only was she one of the most gorgeous ladies I have ever before or since set eyes on, she sang like an angel and to say I was struck dumb with admiration, is only really telling half the story. To this day I don't know why I didn't have the sheer common sense to record her singing it, but I didn't... my loss.
We had a number of rehearsals at my house, and then we did the show on the night, with me playing the piano from the pits and therefore unable to actually see her performance, done incidentally with full costumes etc. The singing though was phenomenal, and, dare I say it, far better than Stevie, bless her, had ever done it. The girl was one of those natural singers that you only find once or twice in a lifetime.
Well it all went fine, and we went our separate ways. I bumped into her on three occasions after that, once at the Garrick, and once at 'Phantom of the Opera' when she informed me that she had contracted cancer, but it had all gone fine, and she was now on the mend again. I subsequently met her in, of all places, the checkouts at Asda not long afterwards with her new husband, Liam Sammon, who the more observant of you might remember sang chorus in Stag Version 2, along with his two brothers.
A little time went by and I saw or heard no more except that she was again fighting the cancer, which had returned. It was a few months after hearing that Alison Davis, by now a Garrick stalwart told me that Christine had died of the cancer. Such a loss! Again the whole of her performance was apparently videoed, because someone was taking orders on the night of the show. I of course, had said I would have one but regrettably it never materialised. When I asked about it after Christine's death no one remembered who it was that had been filming, or indeed arranging it. So the whole event was lost yet again.