Quote: Billy Bunter @ 12th September 2023, 9:27 PMThanks both. I have tonight splashed out and purchased the DVD off eBay from Music Magpie for £4.14 and free postage.
You devil you
Music hall and variety Page 7
Born 100 years ago last month (on 25 August 1922), Derek Roy was a variety comedian and mainstay of pantomime. In his later years he starred in the revue Light Up The Town at the London Palladium in 1964, appeared as Widow Twankey in the 1960 New Year's Eve TV presentation of Aladdin with Alfred Marks as Abanazar and was also in the 1950 film Come Dance With Me alongside Max Wall and Anne Shelton
But it was his late 1940s and 1950s radio shows from which Roy leaves his legacy for introducing future star comedians to the world. Roy's performance as Buttons in Cinderella at the Regal, Edmonton was televised by the BBC in 1947, which led to a radio series Hip-Hip-Hoo-Ray with regular guests Alfred Marks & Robert Moreton and scripts by Bob Monkhouse & Denis Goodwin. It also provided a writing opportunity and occasional appearance for a young Spike Milligan, who launched his first embryonic version of Eccles.
Another radio show, Happy Go Lucky saw Derek Roy team up with Ray Galton & Alan Simpson as his joke writers. A recurring skit in the programme cast various young wannabe stars, one of which was Tony Hancock. The rest, as they say, is history.
Roy was also the star turn and master of ceremonies of radio's Variety Bandbox, which featured early performances from Morecambe & Wise and Frankie Howerd while another Roy vehicle, Variety Ahoy, gave an early opportunity to Dick Emery.
Derek Roy died in Southampton on 15 March 1981 at the age of just 58.
Charlie Higgins (23 July 1892 - 5 February 1978) was a popular recording comedian in the 1930s. His first recording was made in 1930 and he released some 20 records during that decade. He played at the London Palladium three times and also appeared on radio and on the TV programmes Variety, Cabaret and Comedy Cabaret in 1938.
His first and most successful recording was With Me Gloves In Me Hand And Me Hat On One Side:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyo3AILksE0
while, in 1931, he recorded The Day I went to Wembley for the Cup-Tie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flvlsnYV7t4
He died on 5 February 1978 in Mill Hill, London. In his obituary The Stage described him as having a "unique style".
I always imagined Lonnie Donegan's Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour on the Bedpost overnight to be an original 1950s song.
Not so. From 1924 (with a slightly different title), Billy Jones & Ernest Hare (also known as The Happiness Boys): www.youtube.com/watch?v=U97g571eY1k
A gripe, now you have posted about The Happiness Boys, and previously did a post on The Andrew Sisters, Mitch Miller and Spike Jones (who I'm a big fan of), I thought you would have stuck with British artists - surely there are enough of our own without resorting to American ones?
The other thing is (and I know you originally said Variety, it always looks odd to me to see the thread title with "variety" - surely that must have a capital letter?
Aaron?!...............
Variety Jubilee (1943)
This morning (Sunday) at 7.20 -9.10 am on TPTV
As somebody has posted on the IMDb :-
"Variety Jubilee is a curious film with a thin story but it stands on its own feet as tribute to the music hall.
In many ways it is The Good Old Days with a plot. The plot is filled with acts from the stage. There are Cancun dancers, Minstrels, the daughter of Marie Lloyd plays her mother, Wilson and Keppel (No Betty.)
Some of the acrobatics might make you wince. There is a dancer who is thrown around like a rag doll. Rather highlighting that health and safety was lower part of the bill.
Variety Jubilee is worth watching for the old-time acts that have been caught for posterity."
Also has George Robey
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 17th September 2023, 12:32 AMVariety Jubilee (1943)
This morning (Sunday) at 7.20 -9.10 am on TPTV
Recorded it for future devourment.
My Radio Parade of 1935 DVD has arrived as well.
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 17th September 2023, 9:28 AMRecorded it for future devourment.
You're welcome.................
Born on this day (17 September) in 1880, Fred Godfrey, the pen name of Llewellyn Williams, was a World War I songwriter. He is best known for the songs Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty, recorded by Dorothy Ward in 1917 and later sung by Cicely Courtneidge in the 1962 film The L-Shaped Room:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Ggz-iAxsA (and, later still, sampled by the Smiths on their record The Queen is Dead)
and Bless 'em All, written in 1917 and a 1940s hit recorded by George Formby:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLCszmZK5hU
A fuller biography can be read here: www.fredgodfreysongs.ca/biography.htm
Between 1900 and 1953 he wrote over 800 songs and was paid just a few guineas for each song, generally selling his songs outright rather than receiving royalties.[
In 1930, he played in a variety act featuring his hit songs with Irish tenor Tom Finglass. The act was a success but Godfrey found it difficult to keep to the schedule and the act folded. In the late 1930s, his old-fashioned comic song style appealed to the likes of George Formby and Gert & Daisy while Max Miller's 1938 film Everything Happens to Me featured two of his songs including the title song.
Godfrey spent his last years living with his eldest daughter in the North London suburb of Pinner. He died in a London hospital on 22 February 1953 and is buried in Pinner New Cemetery. His will left £202
Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 17th September 2023, 12:32 AMVariety Jubilee (1943)
This morning (Sunday) at 7.20 -9.10 am on TPTV
As somebody has posted on the IMDb :-
"Variety Jubilee is a curious film with a thin story but it stands on its own feet as tribute to the music hall.
In many ways it is The Good Old Days with a plot. The plot is filled with acts from the stage. There are Cancun dancers, Minstrels, the daughter of Marie Lloyd plays her mother, Wilson and Keppel (No Betty.)Some of the acrobatics might make you wince. There is a dancer who is thrown around like a rag doll. Rather highlighting that health and safety was lower part of the bill.
Variety Jubilee is worth watching for the old-time acts that have been caught for posterity."
Also has George Robey
Not a bad story about 3 generations owning a theatre, with one of the leading actors Ellis Irving looking and sounding so much (apart from the nose) like Kenneth More, and they are right - although Betty is shown in the titles, she does not appear with Wilson and Keppel. And some of the speciality acts are very good - Slim Rhyder, comical cyclist and the way the three Ganjou Brothers threw Juanita around the stage is mind boggling. And was pleased to see Gus Ellen was on the bill, though he didn't sing this "hit" of his.........................
I shall look forward to watching it.
Yet another exciting addition to the line up to next weekend's Bognor Regis Punch and Judy Festival (see also The Rebel or the Punch and Judy Man thread https://www.comedy.co.uk/forums/thread/35251/3/ ):
Archie Andrews
Educating Archie was a BBC comedy show which was broadcast for nearly ten years between June 1950 and February 1960. The programme featured ventriloquist Peter Brough and his doll Archie Andrews and was very popular despite its unlikely central premise of a ventriloquist act on radio. Educating Archie averaged 15 million listeners, and a fan club boasted 250,000 members.
Archie's co-stars read as a veritable who's who of light entertainment including Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, Bernard Bresslaw, Hattie Jacques, and Bruce Forsyth - together with a young Julie Andrews as Archie's girlfriend. The role of his tutor was most famously played by Tony Hancock, the hero of the Bognor Regis festival. And it is this connection that brings Archie to Bognor. Each week Hancock would greet Archie with a weary "Oh, it's you again" and always replied to any put-down from him with "flipping kids".
Archie Andrews was created by master ventriloquial figure maker, Len Insull, and is one of the finest examples of his work. The Brough family sold the figure in 2005 to a private collector, who is making Archie available to make a rare public appearance.
With puppet shows taking place from 11am-5pm on both Saturday 30th September, and Sunday 1st October, the Bognor Regis Punch and Judy Festival, at the Royal Norfolk Hotel, Bognor Regis Promenade, promises to be a great weekend of the very best of traditional family entertainment.
Moving on from Peter Brough, a ventriloquist on radio whose career floundered somewhat with the intrusion of television cameras, Arthur Worsley (16 October 1920 - 14 July 2001) was a British ventriloquist who Roy Hudd described, in his Book of Music Hall, Variety & Showbiz Anecdotes, as "quite simply the very best ventriloquist I have ever seen.. and you really couldn't see his lips move" while he was also considered "the greatest ventriloquist in the world" by US tv show host, Ed Sullivan, who hired him to appear with what turned out to be the third and final appearance of Elvis Presley on his show, on 6 January 1957, a programme which was broadcast live and drew some 50 million viewers. He went on to appear on the show each year for the next ten years.
Arthur Worsley performed with his dummy, Charlie Brown. His unusual technique was that, rather than converse with the dummy, he left virtually all the talking to the dummy. Roy Hudd additionally recalled the occasion when, at a sound rehearsal, the producer gave the instruction "not quite clear enough, Mr Worsley. Could you put the dummy closer to the microphone..."
It is of course particularly difficult to speak the letter "B" without some movement of the lips. But, as you will see from the clip below, as part of the act, the dummy shouted the phrase "Bottle of beer" repeatedly with Worsley's lips remained motionless:
Quote: Billy Bunter @ 19th September 2023, 2:54 PMMoving on from Peter Bough, a ventriloquist on radio whose career floundered somewhat with the intrusion of television cameras, Arthur Worsley (16 October 1920 - 14 July 2001) was a British ventriloquist who Roy Hudd described, in his Book of Music Hall, Variety & Showbiz Anecdotes, as "quite simply the very best ventriloquist I have ever seen.. and you really couldn't see his lips move" while he was also considered "the greatest ventriloquist in the world" by US tv show host, Ed Sullivan, who hired him to appear with what turned out to be the third and final appearance of Elvis Presley on his show, on 6 January 1957, a programme which was broadcast live and drew some 50 million viewers. He went on to appear on the show each year for the next ten years.
The difference between Brough and Worsley cannot be quantified. Arthur supreme. Brough utter crap.
I have a very vague recollection of my parents taking me to the local theatre to see Archie Andrews when he was on tour, but we sat in the gods so couldn't see any lip movement
This is another very clever and talented vent - this sketch is sooooooooooo funny
Yes, had a good chortle over my morning wheatybangs at that. I remember Ray Alan from my childhood with Tich & Quackers as well.