Does anyone remember Old Mother Riley played by Arthur Lucan?
Old Mother Riley
Very vaguely remember these old films being shown, wasn't it pantomine stuff?
I best know them in the story of Bela Lugosi's sad decline.
The declining drug addled Lugosi was stuck in England after a failed Dracula revival tour and had no money to get his passage home.
In order to raise some cash he starred in 'Old Mother Riley and the Vampire.' It regular features all time bad movie lists along with another Lugosi vehicle Plan Nine from Outer Space.
Old Mother Riley was an Irish washerwoman character. His wife Kitty McShane played Old Mother Riley's daughter, Kitty. I saw one a few years ago and last time was when I was a kid, some scenes are very funny, he had so much energy.
My dad bought a DVD box set of these a year or two ago, never heard of it before then. Haven't seen any as it didn't look too good.
This is it [h=51822]
Although his was a lot cheaper.
Apparently Danny La Rue played his daughter Kitty as well.
I used to love these old films as a kid. Haven't seen one for about twenty five years though so can't honestly recall if they're actually any good or not. I do remember a biopic with Brian Murphy and Maureen Lipman in it, that was very good.
"...Ya, the concept we're going for with Old Mother Riley is basically 'Mrs Brown's Boys' for the pre-war, black and white newsreel generation..."
- Anonymous time-travelling media arsehole
How depressing that nobody apparently remembers Old Mother Riley. Arthur Lucan was a brilliant comedian, with incredible energy, and the films that he and his wife, Kitty McShane, made often surprise with their surreal quality. Most notably in Old Mother Riley, Headmistress, which appears to have borrowed elements from Jean Cocteau's work. No, Danny La Rue did not play Kitty. And Brian Murphy and Maureen Lipman were not in a biopic, but a stageplay by Alan Plater, which opened at London's Theatre Royal, Stratford East. There is a self-published biography that came out many years ago and is just about impossible to find. I have the vague recollection that it was written or co-written by the guy who took over Arthur Lucan's act after his death, and whose name was, I think, Roy Rolland. I may be wrong.
Yep, I remember Old Mother Riley and Kitty (but not the Danny la Rue version)
Coincidently last week I stumped a workmate with my Mr Pastry impression too.
Quote: fasty @ December 10 2011, 5:38 AM GMTYep, I remember Old Mother Riley and Kitty (but not the Danny la Rue version)
This was probably a one-off.
Old Mother Riley was awful, desperately unfunny. It had negligible comedic nor cultural merit - which is why you never hear it being discussed or referenced by comedians or writers as a source of inspiration. The central performance was hackneyed and the writing vague to the point of being almost non-existent.
It was comedy founded on a single (erroneous) premise, namely that a man dressed as a woman is inherently funny. This is a particularly British delusion (see men raising money for Comic Relief, stag nights, British soldiers dicking about in revue shows), which probably points to some deep underlying character flaw in our national psyche. At its best this delusion produced the least-funny sketches in Monty Python, plus Dame Edna and Les Dawson/Roy Barraclough (Cissie & Ada). At its worst, Mrs Brown's Boys and the "lay-dees" in Little Britain.
Fortunately the Goons and, later, the emergence of the new post-war wave of comedy writers (notably Galton & Simpson) confined trash like Old Mother Riley to the history books. Old Mother Riley was always 'old hat' - there never really was a time when it was considered 'new hat'. It was derided even in its day. When the last remaining comics of the day bemoaned the death of music hall, Old Mother Riley was not what they meant.
But don't take my word for it, try sitting through 10 minutes of this without feeling the lids of your eyes become heavy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5k7sydsUs
Disturbing and faintly nasty? Definitely. Funny? Definitely not.
When Arthur Lucan died on or off stage, Bruce "Inspector Fabian" Seton took over for the rest of the performance.
The Alan Plater play must have been re-done on TV as I never saw it at the theatre.
Arthur Lucan died just as he was waiting in the wings to go on at the Tivoli Theatre, Hull, on May 17, 1954. His understudy, Frank (not Bruce) Seton went on in his place. As Old Mother Riley would have said, "I have my health -- I wish somebody else had it."
One of my fondest memories is of an April 1969 presentation by the British Music Hall Society at a pub at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. I went along with my friend, John Stuart, who had played opposite Kitty and Lucan in Old Mother Riley in Society and Old Mother Riley's Ghosts. The supporting act was the brilliant and extremely dirty Rex Jameson as Mrs. Shufflewick, "broad-minded to the point of obscenity." Closing the bill was Roy Rolland as Old Mother Riley. He had come down to London from the North of England, where he lived with his male lover, a manager of a Co-op Supermarket. Rolland was brilliant. It was as if Old Mother Riley lived again.
Quote: Tim Walker @ December 10 2011, 10:25 AM GMTOld Mother Riley was awful, desperately unfunny. It had negligible comedic nor cultural merit - which is why you never hear it being discussed or referenced by comedians or writers as a source of inspiration. The central performance was hackneyed and the writing vague to the point of being almost non-existent.'
Oh really????
What writers are you referring to?? Obviously not the ones I've been reading for my new book on Arthur Lucan, 'a comedian of genius'.
Leslie Halliwell (Double Take and Fade away, 1987) says that 'the brilliance of Arthur Lucan was never recognised in his own lifetime but now it shines through his ramshackle films'. As early as 1954, The Times, whose theatre critics had never been kind to Lucan and McShane, did in fact make amends in Arthur's obituary, speaking perceptively of 'the endearing, bemused old woman, who seemed to those who laughed at her antics to enjoy a life of her own.'
Roger Wilmut summed up the view of most serious theatre and film critics when he declared Old Mother Riley to be 'a magnificent creation' (Kindly Leave the Stage, 1985), and Rachel Low in her History of British Film (2005) captured the essence of that creation. 'With his wide acrobatic movements, tremendous but controlled waving of the arms, gesticulating with large, delicate and expressive hands, [Arthur Lucan] created a character of extreme subtlety. Servile yet aggressive, a little genteel but earthy when necessary, and occasionally exploding into unbridled fury, Old Mother Riley was an eager, helpful and independent type of woman, ready to stand up for herself.'
And there's plenty more, equally complimentary.
Is the problem 'men in frocks'? Get over it, it is an integral part of the entire history of European theatre, not just Brits!