Daily Mail, Friday, April 10, 1959, p3

The Queen Sees Sonnie Hale Comeback

The Queen and Princess Margaret went to their local theatre — the Theatre Royal, Windsor — last night to see a play which promises a new lease of fame, at 56, for Sonnie Hale.

It was The French Mistress, a farcical comedy with an English public-school setting in which he stars with Nellie Borgeaud, a 26-year-old brunette from Paris.

The author is Robert Monro. The name is short for John Robert Hale-Monro, which is the offstage name of Sonnie Hale.

And last night his play received its magic seal of royal support after four years' search for a London run.

That search is now over. The play has done so well at Windsor that the actor who dreamed of fame as an author all through his dazzling musical career with his former wife, Jessie Matthews, has had five West End offers and four film offers.

After 38 years

Jack Hylton has secured it for the London stage and plans to present it in the early summer. The film offers are still under negotiation.

The author will repeat his Windsor role in the West End as the headmaster who sets his school in an amorous turmoil by importing an unexpectedly young and attractive teacher from France.

It will be his first London stage appearance since he played Dame to Norman Wisdom's Aladdin at the Palladium three Christmases ago ; his first non-musical role in town since The Perfect Woman ten years ago, and his first chance of starring there in a play of his own.

But that chance, now likely to turn him into a successful playwright after 38 years on the stage, has been a long time coming.

" I wrote The French Mistress four years ago while I was playing in a Manchester pantomime," he told me last night. "Tom Arnold saw me try it out at Wimbledon and bought it for London.

" But the snag was finding a girl to play the schoolmistress. After 18 months the script came back to me.

" Then I tried it out again at Worthing. This time Jack Buchanan came to see it and offered me a tour in it. As I wasn't free he toured in it himself for ten weeks.

" Before the poor chap could do anything more about it he died. And back once more came the script to me.

" Then John Counsell read it and asked me to do it at Windsor. We opened the night after my other play, Nest of Robins, had been televised. Yes, things are really hapening at last.

" I've always had this writing itch. I don't think I'll ever be a great dramatist, but after 38 years on the stage I ought to know what makes the public laugh. "

The Stage, April 16, 1959, p18

'The French Mistress'

The Queen and Princess Margaret saw Sonnie Hale's play "The French Mistress", at the Royal, Windsor, on Thursday last, when Mr. Hale played the part of the headmaster who sets his school in a turmoil by engaging an attractive young French woman to teach languages. It is understood Jack Hylton has secured the play for West End presentation in the early summer, when the author will be seen in the cast once again.