COMEDY DOUBLE ACTS: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (8)

[This is the eighth in an occasional series describing British actors and performers who achieved fame in the theatre or in the movies.]

There was a long tradition in British music hall and American vaudeville of the double act, of two artistes of similar type but of uneven attainments sparking comedy from this imbalance. This translated well into the cinema and in my view the best of all double acts came from America (though Stan was English-born) with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Their hilarious escapades and close relationship lifted and warmed the hearts of several generations.

Laurel and Hardy

America kept up the tradition on TV with delightful cigar-smoking George Burns and Gracie Allen, forever scatter-brained. In the movies, the double act had mixed success. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were certainly popular but Crosby’s self-admiring persona was not always attractive to me. Slapstick Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made me laugh immoderately as a child (aged 7, I even obtained Lou’s autograph when he hosted a children’s party in honour of his young daughter in a Bournemouth hotel!) but Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were implausible buddies and the balance there was never quite right.

But this series is supposed to be about British artistes. The music hall tradition was powerful and no less than 3 double acts, Flanagan and Allen, Naughton and Gold and Nervo and Knox made up the original rib-tickling Crazy Gang, fixtures at the Victoria Palace theatre for about 30 years from 1931. The Northern comedians Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss trod the boards successfully after WW2 but the 1960s ushered in an edgier, more aggressive type of comedy, epitomised by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (“Pete ‘n’ Dud”) philosophising satirically over a pint of bitter or sat on a park bench.

The comedy duo that became a British national institution was Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, a seasoned music hall act which so captivated the BBC TV audience that their Christmas TV Special became an unmissable event. Bespeckled Morecambe’s tomfoolery carried the act as Wise was little more than an amiable feed. Their guests, including André Previn, Glenda Jackson and Shirley Bassey much enlivened proceedings.

Morecambe and Wise

Others tried to emulate their success but a discreet veil is needed to cover the rather dire efforts of Mike and Bernie Winters, Cannon and Ball and Little and Large. A Scots audience much enjoyed the impenetrable Glasgow patois of Francie and Josie played by Jack Milroy and Rikki Fulton.

In my view, even Morecambe and Wise were eclipsed by The Two Ronnies, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, whose TV show ran from 1971 to 1987. They were both the liveliest of performers but their greatest strength was in their verbal felicity and originality. I still laugh at the sketches where Barker asks Corbett for Fork Handles (misunderstood, the first of many, as “Four Candles”) at the hardware store and then the Mastermind spoof where Corbett, with hilarious inappropriateness, answers the previous question in the famous quiz. Ronnie Barker was also a script-writer and many gems emanated from him.

(see     
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz2-ukrd2VQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0C59pI_ypQ )

Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker

The ladies contributed raucously to this genre with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, although both now do their own thing. Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones (Alias Smith and Jones) were often in good form, raising many a  belly-laugh. There are now new kids on the bloc like Baddiel and Skinner and Reeves and Mortimer but these days I see so little UK TV I am not qualified to pass a judgment.

While these leading British artistes gave much pleasure, I still believe the first prize belongs to Stan and Ollie. Who can forget the pair trying to deliver a piano up a mountainous set of steps, or selling Christmas trees and getting drawn into manic escalating hostilities with unfriendly householder James Finlayson? Their fun had global appeal and their gentle personalities are best illustrated by their charming song-and-dance performance of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine in Way out West in 1937, never to be surpassed.

SMD

16.04,14

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2014