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The Bedsitting Room (play)
''The Bedsitting Room'' is a satirical play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus. It began as a one-act play which was first produced on 12 February 1962 at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury, England. ''The Bedsitting Room'' was then adapted to a longer play and Bernard Miles put it on at the Mermaid Theatre, where it was first performed on 31 January 1963 before transferring several weeks later to the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End. The production included a ''coup de théâtre'', when the character "Mate" (originally played in London by Spike Milligan) entered wearing a mixture of ragged military uniforms from across the centuries. Attached to his boots were long strips of canvas to which were attached pairs of boots. As he marched across the stage, the empty boots marched in time behind him. The play was considered a critical and commercial hit, and was revived in 1967 with a provincial tour, before opening at London's Saville Theatre on 3 May 1967.Scudamore (1985) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spike Milligan
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was an Irish actor, comedian, writer, musician, poet, and playwright. The son of an English mother and Irish father, he was born in British Raj, British Colonial India, where he spent his childhood before relocating in 1931 to England, where he lived and worked for the majority of his life. Disliking his first name, he began to call himself "Spike" after hearing the band Spike Jones, Spike Jones and his City Slickers on Radio Luxembourg. Milligan was the co-creator, main writer, and a principal cast member of the British radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show'', performing a range of roles including the characters Eccles (character), Eccles and Minnie Bannister. He was the earliest-born and last surviving member of the Goons. He took his success with ''The Goon Show'' into television with ''Q... (TV series), Q5'', a surreal sketch show credited as a major influence on the members of ''Monty Python's Flying Circu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rita Tushingham
Rita Tushingham (born 14 March 1942) is an English actress. She is known for her starring roles in films including ''A Taste of Honey'' (1961), ''The Leather Boys'' (1964), '' The Knack ...and How to Get It'' (1965), ''Doctor Zhivago'' (1965), and ''Smashing Time'' (1967). For ''A Taste of Honey'', she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, and Most Promising Newcomer at both the BAFTA Awards and Golden Globe Awards. Her other film appearances include ''An Awfully Big Adventure'' (1995), '' Under the Skin'' (1997), ''Being Julia'' (2004), and ''Last Night in Soho'' (2021). Early life Tushingham was born on 14 March 1942 in the Garston area of Liverpool, where her father was a grocer who ran three shops. She grew up in the Hunt's Cross district of the city. She attended the Heatherlea School in Allerton, the La Sagesse School in Grassendale (which later became part of St Julie's Catholic High School), and studied shorthand and typing at a secretarial school. She w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Todd
Brian Todd (15 December 1921 – 21 October 1992), known professionally as Bob Todd, was an English comedy actor, mostly known for appearing as a straight man in the sketch shows of Benny Hill and Spike Milligan. For many years, he lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Life and career Todd was born in Faversham, Kent. One of the stooges of television comedy, Todd was best known for his lugubrious expression and talent for slapstick, and was known to fellow comedians by the nickname 'Silly Todd'. Before working in television, Todd trained to be a dentist. The outbreak of the Second World War saw him enlist in the Royal Air Force, where he became a navigator stationed at RAF North Killingholme, Lincolnshire. He had ambitions of becoming a farmer—making money from cattle breeding, whilst working as a manager at London Airport. The farming business, once begun, failed and almost made him bankrupt. Meeting scriptwriters Ray Galton and Alan Simpson in a pub, he bluffed them into belie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marjie Lawrence
Marjie Lawrence (21 January 1932 – 16 June 2010) was an English theatre, film and television actress. She spoke the first words uttered on ITV. Early life Born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, Marjie undertook weekend acting classes from aged 12 at the Birmingham Theatre School. After completing her schooling, she was accepted to be trained at the Birmingham School of Speech & Drama on a three-year under graduate course. Career On graduating, she undertook work with George Dare's touring company in Norfolk, learning and acting in 36 plays over eight weeks. After the company returned to Bacton, she left the company with another actress and started working at the local sanitorium to earn enough money to afford the train fare to London. After leaving the hospital on finding out that most of the staff had TB, her former landlady introduced her to Lady Rawlinson wife of Sir Alfred Rawlinson, 4th Baronet at North Walsham, who employed her as a cook. Unable to cook, Marjie stay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Bluthal
John Bluthal (born Isaac Bluthal; 12 August 1929 – 15 November 2018) was a Polish-born Australian actor and comedian, noted for his six-decade career internationally in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. He started his career during the Golden Age of British Television, where he was best known for his comedy work in the UK with Spike Milligan, and for his role as Manny Cohen in the television series ''Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width''. In later years, he was known to television audiences as the bumbling Frank Pickle in ''The Vicar of Dibley''. At 85 he played Professor Herbert Marcuse in the Coen brothers' film ''Hail, Caesar!'' (2016). Early life Bluthal was born to a Jewish family in Jezierzany, Galicia, Poland (now in Ukraine). Due to anti-Semitism in Poland, his family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1938, when he was aged nine. He was educated at Princes Hill Central School in Carlton North and University High School in Parkville. He be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valentine Dyall
Valentine Dyall (7 May 1908 – 24 June 1985) was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series '' Appointment with Fear''. He was the son of the actor Franklin Dyall and the actress and author Mary Phyllis Joan Logan, who acted and wrote as Concordia Merrel. 1930s to 1950s In 1934, Dyall appeared with his father, actor Franklin Dyall, at the Manchester Hippodrome in Sir Oswald Stoll's presentation of Shakespeare's ''Henry V'', playing the roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Captain Gower, and a cardinal of France. He also appeared in one movie with his father, the 1943 spy thriller ''Yellow Canary''; Dyall's part was that of a German U-boat commander attempting to kidnap a British agent from a ship in the Atlantic, while his father played the ship's captain. In the same year he had a small role as a German officer in ''The Life and Death of Colonel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, a writer, and a landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only "the most significant theatrical figure of our time … utthe most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin". Humphries' characters have brought him international renown, and he also appeared in numerous stage productions, films, and television shows. Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Dame Edna Everage has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom – a gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Stark
Graham William Stark (20 January 1922 – 29 October 2013) was an English comedian, actor, writer and director. Early life The son of a purser on transatlantic liners, telegraph.co.uk, 31 October 2013 Stark was born in New BrightonRobert Seller "Graham Stark: Actor, author and director who graduated from music hall to the big screen" ''The Independent'', 31 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Temperance Seven
The Temperance Seven is a British band originally active in the 1960s, specialising in 1920s-style jazz music. They were known for their surreal performances. Career The Temperance Seven was founded at Christmas 1955 by students at the Chelsea School of Art, though the band mythologized its foundation as dating from 1904 at the fictitious Pasadena Cocoa Rooms, Balls Pond Road, North London. The three founder members were Paul McDowell (who originally played trombone), Philip Harrison (who originally played banjo) and Brian Innes (drums). Gradually the band evolved into a nine-piece ensemble with a light-hearted and humorous performing style, although they were all serious musicians. The name "Temperance Seven" was suggested by Douggie Gray, of the Alberts fame. The Alberts were cult figures in the art scene in the mid 1950s and were forerunners of the sort of humour that became Monty Python. (This was not the band's only link with Monty Python; see below). The Temperance Seven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Braden
Bernard Chastey Braden (16 May 1916 – 2 February 1993) was a Canadian-born British actor and comedian, who is best known for his appearances in UK television and radio shows. Life Braden was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and educated at Magee Secondary School, Kerrisdale, Vancouver. He produced plays on CJOR Vancouver in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He married Barbara Kelly in 1942, and they moved to Toronto the same year. They had two children, Christopher and Kelly Braden. Seven years later, he, his wife and two children moved to England. A third child, Kim, was born in London in 1949. He was the subject of '' This Is Your Life'' in 1991, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel outside the Aldwych Theatre. Braden died in Camden, London, aged 76, following a series of strokes. Career Radio In ''Breakfast with Braden'' (for the BBC, from January 1950) he played American serviceman "Brandon Marlow" (a caricature of Marlon Brando in ''A Streetcar Named Desire''). O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Secombe
Sir Harold Donald Secombe (8 September 1921 – 11 April 2001) was a Welsh comedian, actor, singer and television presenter. Secombe was a member of the British radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show'' (1951–1960), playing many characters, most notably Neddie Seagoon. An accomplished tenor, he also appeared in musicals and films – notably as Bumble in '' Oliver!'' (1968) – and, in his later years, was a presenter of television shows incorporating hymns and other devotional songs. Early life Secombe was born in St Thomas, Swansea, the third of four children of Nellie Jane Gladys (née Davies), a shop manageress, and Frederick Ernest Secombe, a commercial traveller and office worker for a Swansea wholesale grocery business. From the age of 11 he attended Dynevor School, a state grammar school in central Swansea. His family were regular churchgoers, belonging to the congregation of St Thomas Church. A member of the choir, from the age of 12 Secombe would perform a sketc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marty Feldman
Martin Alan Feldman (8 July 1934 – 2 December 1982) was a British actor, comedian and comedy writer. He was known for his exophthalmos, prominent, strabismus, misaligned eyes. He initially gained prominence as a writer with Barry Took on the ITV (TV network), ITV sitcom ''Bootsie and Snudge'' and the BBC Radio comedy programme ''Round the Horne''. He became known as a performer on ''At Last the 1948 Show'' (co-writing the "Four Yorkshiremen sketch" which Monty Python would perform) and ''Marty (TV series), Marty'', the latter of which won Feldman two British Academy Television Awards including British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance, Best Entertainment Performance in 1969. Feldman went on to appear in films such as ''The Bed Sitting Room (film), The Bed Sitting Room'' and ''Every Home Should Have One'', the latter of which was one of the most popular comedies at the British box office in 1970. In 1971, he starred in the comedy-variety sketch se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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