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'Monsewer' Eddie Gray
Edward Earl Gray (10 June 1898 – 15 September 1969), who performed as Monsewer' Eddie Gray, was an English stage comedian. He appeared in music halls as a solo act and also as a member of the Crazy Gang. Gray was apprenticed to a juggler at the age of nine and became a technically proficient straight juggler. He gradually introduced a wry humour into his act, and was invited to appear with the comic double act Nervo and Knox in 1919. The three performers formed the original basis of the group of seven comedians who became famous under the collective name the Crazy Gang in the 1930s. When the Crazy Gang re-formed after the Second World War, Gray did not rejoin them. He pursued a solo career until 1956 when he once more became a regular member of the group for their last three shows, ending in 1962. After the disbanding of the Crazy Gang, Gray continued to work. Among his later appearances was that in the London production of ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evelyn Laye
Evelyn Laye (née Elsie Evelyn Lay; 10 July 1900 – 17 February 1996) was an English actress who was active on the London light opera stage, and later in New York and Hollywood. Her first husband, actor Sonnie Hale, left her for Jessie Matthews, earning much public sympathy for Laye. Her second husband was actor Frank Lawton, with whom she often appeared in stage productions. Early years Laye was born as Elsie Evelyn Lay in Bloomsbury, London, and known informally as Boo. Her parents were both actors and her father a theatre manager. Career Lay made her first stage appearance in August 1915 at the Theatre Royal, Brighton as Nang-Ping in ''Mr. Wu'', and her first London appearance at the East Ham Palace on 24 April 1916, aged 15, in the revue ''Honi Soit'', in which she subsequently toured. For the first few years of her career she mainly played in musical comedy and operetta, including ''The Beauty Spot'' in 1917 and '' Going Up'' in 1918. Among her successes dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Edwards
James Keith O'Neill Edwards, DFC (23 March 19207 July 1988) was an English comedy writer and actor on radio and television, best known as Pa Glum in ''Take It from Here'' and as headmaster "Professor" James Edwards in ''Whack-O!''. Early life Edwards was born in Barnes, Surrey, the son of a professor of mathematics. He had four brothers and four sisters. He was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School, at King's College School in Wimbledon and as a choral scholar at St John's College, Cambridge, where he sang in the college choir. Second World War Edwards served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, was commissioned in April 1942, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and ended the war as a flight lieutenant. He served with No. 271 Squadron RAF, based in Doncaster, who took part in the D-Day landings. His Dakota was shot down at Arnhem in 1944, resulting in facial injuries requiring plastic surgery, that he disguised with a large handlebar moustache that b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Askey
Arthur Bowden Askey, (6 June 1900 – 16 November 1982) was an English comedian and actor. Askey was known for his short stature (5' 2", 1.58 m) and distinctive horn-rimmed glasses, and his playful humour incorporating improvisation and catchphrases including "Hello playmates!", "I thank you" (pronounced "Ay-thang-yaw") and "Before your very eyes". Askey achieved prominence in the 1930s in the BBC's first radio comedy series ''Band Waggon'' and subsequently starred in several Gainsborough Pictures comedy films during the Second World War including ''Charley's (Big-Hearted) Aunt'' (1940) and ''The Ghost Train (1941 film), The Ghost Train'' (1941). His Novelty song, novelty recordings for His Master's Voice include "The Bee Song" (1938), a lasting part of his act. From the 1950s, Askey was a prominent television presence and made regular appearances on the BBC's long-running music hall programme ''The Good Old Days (UK TV series), The Good Old Days''. Askey was made an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Byng
Portrait by Allan Warren Douglas Coy Byng (17 March 1893 – 24 August 1987) was an English comic singer and songwriter in West End theatre, revue and cabaret. Billed as "Bawdy but British", Byng was famous for his female impersonations. His songs are full of sexual innuendo and double entendres. Due to the prejudices of the law and of the public at that time, Byng was a closeted gay performer. To have been out, would have been social and professional suicide. He was noted for his camp performances in the music halls and in cabaret. Byng made a large number of recordings, many of which have been transferred to CD. Byng was also a noted pantomime dame and appeared in over 30 pantomimes. Early life Byng was born on 17 March 1893 in Basford, Nottinghamshire. His father was a bank manager and his mother (whose maiden name was Coy)Richard Anthony Baker, ''Old Time Variety: an illustrated history'', Pen & Sword, 2011, , pp.155-157 was a former school teacher. They did not encoura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chesney Allen
William Ernest Chesney Allen (5 April 1894 – 13 November 1982) was a popular English entertainer of the Second World War period. He is best remembered for his double act with Bud Flanagan, Flanagan and Allen. Life and career Allen was born in Brighton, Sussex, in 1894, married Aleta Cosette Turner in Leeds in 1926 and died in Midhurst, West Sussex, in 1982. He began his career in straight acting, making his debut in stock at the Wimbledon Theatre, London, in 1912. Serving in Flanders in the First World War, he made friends with Bud Flanagan, and but they did not work together until 1926, touring with a Florrie Forde show called "Here's to You". As music hall comedians they would often feature a mixture of comedy and music in their act and this led to a successful recording career and roles in film and television. Flanagan and Allen were also members of the Crazy Gang and worked together in that team for many years. Flanagan and Allen's songs featured the same, usually ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Puss In Boots
"Puss in Boots" ( it, Il gatto con gli stivali) is an Italian fairy tale, later spread throughout the rest of Europe, about an anthropomorphic cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master. The oldest written telling is by Italian author Giovanni Francesco Straparola, who included it in his ''The Facetious Nights of Straparola'' (c. 1550–1553) in XIV–XV. Another version was published in 1634 by Giambattista Basile with the title ''Cagliuso'', and a tale was written in French at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the ''Académie française''. There is a version written by Girolamo Morlini, from whom Straparola used various tales in ''The Facetious Nights of Straparola''. The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florrie Forde
Flora May Augusta Flannagan ( Flannagan; 16 August 187518 April 1940), known professionally as Florrie Forde, was an Australian popular singer and music hall entertainer. From 1897 she lived and worked in the United Kingdom. She was one of the most popular stars of the early 20th century music hall. Early life and career Forde was born in Fitzroy, Victoria, in 1875. She was the sixth of the eight children of Lott Flannagan, a stonemason, and Phoebe (née Simmons), who also had two children from a prior marriage. By 1878 her parents had separated and Phoebe married Thomas Ford, a theatrical costumier in 1888. Forde and some of her siblings were placed in a convent. At the age of sixteen, she ran away to live with an aunt in Sydney. When she appeared on the local music hall stage, she adopted her stepfather's surname but added an 'e'. One of her earliest vaudeville performances was as a singer in February 1892 at Polytechnic Music Hall in Pitt Street. According to ''The Sydney M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pantomime
Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It employs gender-crossing actors and combines topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale.Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. "Pantomime", ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature'', Jack Zipes (ed.), Oxford University Press (2006), Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers. Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to the era of classical theatre. It developed partly from the 16th century c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elsie And Doris Waters
Florence Elsie Waters (19 August 1893–14 June 1990) and her sister Doris Ethel Waters (20 December 1899–18 August 1978) were English comic actresses and singers who performed as a double act. They are remembered for creating the comedy characters Gert and Daisy, and have been described as "the most successful female double-act in the history of British music hall and variety". Early lives and career They were born in Bromley-by-Bow, east London, the daughters of amateur singers Maud and Ted Waters–a funeral furnisher–who encouraged all their six children to learn musical instruments."British Comedian Elsie Waters Dead at 95", ''APNews'', 15 June 1990 Retrieved 10 November 2020 Elsie learned the violin, and Doris the piano and |
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