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Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era circa 1850 and lasting until 1960. It involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment.
Flanagan & Allen
British Music Hall classic: Flanagan & Allen sing “Underneath The Arches”
Read more Hobbledehoy posts about the British Music Hall
Video: Actor Tom Courtenay was first to sing “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter”
Herman’s Hermits’ pop hit “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” was originally sung by acclaimed actor Tom Courtenay in The Lads, a British TV play of 1963, and released as a single in the UK.
Most of us outside the UK are familiar only with Herman’s Hermits’ version, which rose to number one on the charts in May 1965.
Courtenay came to prominence as in actor in the early 1960s with a succession of films, including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the film adaptation of The Dresser (1983),
The song was written by another British actor, Trevor Peacock, who was also a song and screenwriter.
Timothy Spall: ‘the brutal, sinister world of my comedy heroes’
The actor’s new film – Stanley, A Man of Variety – echoes David Lynch and a dark Ealing classic. Here he tells why he chose to re-create the giants of music hall as ‘English noir’
Timothy Spall has often played characters that stick in the mind – from Barry in the BBC hit series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet to his award-winning performance as the great British painter in Mike Leigh’s 2014 film, Mr Turner. But Spall’s latest film goes several steps further.In Stanley,
A Man of Variety released in cinemas next month, he concocts a blistering string of recreations of several of the great comic variety acts of the past, including Max Wall, George Formby and Noël Coward. It is an extraordinary tour de force, but not a comfortable one to watch. Spall and his collaborator on the film, the director and writer Stephen Cookson, have a deeply unsettling argument to make and they do not hold back [… ]
Continue story at THE GUARDIAN: Timothy Spall: ‘the brutal, sinister world of my comedy heroes’ | Film | The Guardian
