The Entertainer (play)
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The Entertainer (play)
''The Entertainer'' is a three-act play by John Osborne, first produced in 1957. His first play, ''Look Back in Anger'', had attracted mixed notices but a great deal of publicity. Having depicted an " angry young man" in the earlier play, Osborne wrote at Laurence Olivier's request about an angry middle-aged man in ''The Entertainer''. Its main character is Archie Rice, a failing music-hall performer. Years later, Tony Richardson, who directed ''The Entertainer'''s premiere season, described Archie as "the embodiment of a national mood ... Archie was the future, the decline, the sourness, the ashes of old glory, where Britain was heading". The first performance was given on 10 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. This theatre was well-known for its commitment to new and non-traditional drama, and the inclusion of a West End star such as Olivier in the cast caused much interest. Synopsis The play is in three acts, sub-divided into thirteen scenes. Some are set in ...
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Onward Christian Soldiers
"Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a 19th-century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed the tune.Sullivan, Marc"Discography of Sir Arthur Sullivan: Recordings of Hymns and Songs" 11 July 2010, accessed 9 September 2011 The Salvation Army adopted the hymn as its favoured processional. The piece became Sullivan's most popular hymn. The hymn's theme is taken from references in the New Testament to the Christian being a soldier for Christ, for example II Timothy 2:3 (KJV): "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Early history The lyric was written as a processional hymn for children walking from Horbury Bridge, where Baring-Gould was curate, to Horbury St Peter's Church near Wakefield, Yorkshire, at Whitsuntide in 1865. It was originally enti ...
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Max Wall
Max Wall (12 March 1908 – 21 May 1990) was an English actor and comedian whose performing career covered music hall, films, television and theatre. Early years Wall was born Maxwell George Lorimer, son of the successful music hall entertainer Jack (Jock) Lorimer, a Scottish comedy actor from Forfar, known for his songs and dancing, and his wife Stella (born Maud Clara Mitchison). He was born near the Oval, at 37 Glenshaw Mansions, Brixton Road, London SW9. In 1916, during a World War I air raid, Max and his elder brother Alex were saved from death by a cast-iron bed frame, but his younger brother Bunty and their Aunt Betty, who was looking after them, were killed by a bomb dropped from a German Zeppelin which also destroyed their house. Max and Alex went to live with their father and his family, whilst their mother went to live with Harry Wallace, whom she had met on tour. When their father died of tuberculosis in 1920, aged 37, their mother married Harry Wallace, and t ...
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Bobby Howes
Bobby Howes (4 August 1895 – 27 April 1972) was a British entertainer who was a leading musical comedy performer in London's West End theatres in the 1930s and 1940s. Biography Born in Battersea, Surrey, his parents were Robert William Howes and Rose Marie Butler. He started his career in revues, but his career was interrupted for the First World War where he soldiered on the Western Front. He suffered a German mustard gas attack but recovered and returned to the stage. He gained a career break-through with the role-reversal comedy ''Mr. Cinders'', based on the ''Cinderella'' pantomime, also featuring Binnie Hale, with whom he appeared on many occasions subsequently. He reprised his title role in Mr. Cinders in several different productions. In the 1930s, he was with Van Phillips' Four Bright Sparks whose vocalists included Billy Milton. Four Bright Sparks recorded at least 60 sides. He was a leading musical comedy performer on the West End in the 1930s and 1940s. H ...
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John Slater (actor)
John Slater (22 August 1916 – 9 January 1975) was an English character actor who usually portrayed lugubrious, amiable cockney types. Biography Slater's father was an antiques dealer. After attending St Clement Danes Grammar School in Hammersmith, Slater began acting in farce at the Whitehall Theatre. He first appeared on film in 1938, remaining active in the industry up to his death. He was a familiar face in British films of the 1940s and appeared in many classic films of the period, including ''The Day Will Dawn'' (1942, US title ''The Avengers''), ''Went the Day Well?'' (1942), ''We Dive at Dawn'' (1943), ''A Canterbury Tale'' (1944), ''The Seventh Veil'' (1945), ''It Always Rains on Sunday'' (1947) and ''Passport to Pimlico'' (1949). He was also a singer, and made three solo 78rpm records for Columbia in 1953 and 1954. The first of these was a cover of "(How Much is) That Doggie in the Window?", followed by "Travelling Alone", his own composition. The latter was rel ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ...
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Geraldine McEwan
Geraldine McEwan (born Geraldine McKeown; 9 May 1932 – 30 January 2015) was an English actress, who had a long career in film, theatre and television. Michael Coveney described her, in a tribute article, as "a great comic stylist, with a syrupy, seductive voice and a forthright, sparkling manner".Michael Covene"Geraldine McEwan was a great comic stylist" whatsonstage.com, 2 February 2015 McEwan was a five-time Olivier Award nominee, and twice won the Evening Standard Theatre Award, Evening Standard Award for Best Actress; for ''The Rivals'' (1983) and ''The Way of the World'' (1995). She was also nominated for the 1998 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for ''The Chairs''. She won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress, BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1990 television serial ''Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (TV serial), Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit'', and from 2004 to 2009, she starred as the Agatha Christie sleuth Miss Marple, in the ITV series ...
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Palace Theatre, London
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400. Richard D'Oyly Carte, producer of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, commissioned the theatre in the late 1880s. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and intended to be a home of English grand opera. The theatre opened as the Royal English Opera House in January 1891 with a lavish production of Arthur Sullivan's opera ''Ivanhoe''. Although this ran for 160 performances, followed briefly by André Messager's ''La Basoche'', Carte had no other works ready to fill the theatre. He leased it to Sarah Bernhardt for a season and sold the opera house within a year at a loss. It was then converted into a grand music hall and renamed the Palace Theatre of Varieties, managed successfully first by Sir Augustus Harris and the ...
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Stanley Meadows
Stanley Meadows (born 14 July 1931 in Stepney, London, England) is a British film and television actor. He graduated from RADA in 1955. Meadows made frequent appearances in British films and became something of a stalwart of British television series including ''Public Eye'', '' Undermind'', '' Randall and Hopkirk'' and ''Widows A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died. Terminology The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...'' (Eddie Rawlins). Filmography References External links * 1931 births Living people British male film actors British male television actors Alumni of RADA {{UK-film-actor-stub ...
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Richard Pasco
Richard Edward Pasco, (18 July 1926 – 12 November 2014) was a British stage, screen and TV actor. Early life Pasco was born in Barnes, London, the only child of insurance company clerk Cecil George Pasco (1897-1982) and milliner Phyllis Irene (1895-1989; née Widdison). He was educated at the King's College School, Wimbledon. He became an apprentice stage manager at the Q Theatre, before studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where he won the gold medal. He then spent three years with the Birmingham Repertory Company. Career One of his earliest screen appearances was as Teddy in '' Room at the Top'' (1959). His other films include ''Yesterday's Enemy'' (1959), '' Sword of Sherwood Forest'' (1960), ''The Gorgon'' (1964) and ''Rasputin, the Mad Monk'' (1966), all for Hammer Studios. During his lengthy stage career, which began in 1943, he worked with the Old Vic, the Royal Court, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Pasco played the part of F ...
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Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Olivier, Baroness Olivier, (née Plowright; born 28 October 1929), professionally known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English retired actress whose career has spanned over seven decades. She has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy and two BAFTA Awards. She was the second of only four actresses (as of 2020) to have won two Golden Globes in the same year. She won the Laurence Olivier Award for Actress of the Year in a New Play in 1978 for Filumena. Early life Plowright was born on 28 October 1929 in Brigg, Lincolnshire, the daughter of Daisy Margaret ( née Burton) and William Ernest Plowright, who was a journalist and newspaper editor. She attended Scunthorpe Grammar School
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