Stanley Holloway

thumb|right|Holloway in 1974

Stanley Augustus Holloway (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English actor, comedian, singer and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady. He was also renowned for his comic monologues and songs, which he performed and recorded throughout most of his 70-year career.

Born in Essex, Holloway pursued a career as a clerk in his teen years. He made early stage appearances before infantry service in the First World War, after which he had his first major theatre success starring in Kissing Time when the musical transferred to the West End from Broadway. In 1921, he joined a concert party, The Co-Optimists, and his career began to flourish. At first, he was employed chiefly as a singer, but his skills as an actor and reciter of comic monologues were soon recognised. Characters from his monologues such as Sam Small, invented by Holloway, and Albert Ramsbottom, created for him by Marriott Edgar, were absorbed into popular British culture, and Holloway developed a following for the recordings of his many monologues. By the 1930s, he was in demand to star in variety, pantomime and musical comedy, including several revues.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Holloway made short propaganda films on behalf of the British Film Institute and Pathé News and took character parts in a series of films including Major Barbara, The Way Ahead, This Happy Breed and The Way to the Stars. In the decade after the war, he appeared in the film Brief Encounter and made a series of films for Ealing Studios, including Passport to Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Titfield Thunderbolt.

In 1956 he was cast as the irresponsible and irrepressible Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady, a role that he played on Broadway, the West End and in the film version in 1964. The role brought him international fame, and his performances earned him nominations for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In his later years, Holloway appeared in television series in the UK and the US, toured in revues, appeared in stage plays in Britain, Canada, Australia and the US, and continued to make films into his eighties. Holloway was married twice and had five children, including the actor Julian Holloway.

Biography

Family background and early life

Holloway was born in Manor Park, Essex (now in the London Borough of Newham), on 1 October 1890. He was the younger child and only son of George Augustus Holloway, a lawyer's clerk, and Florence May (), a housekeeper and dressmaker. He was named after Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and for his search for David Livingstone. There were theatrical connections in the Holloway family going back to Charles Bernard, an actor and theatre manager, who was the brother of Holloway's maternal grandmother. In his 1967 autobiography, Holloway dedicated a whole chapter to Henson, whom he described as "the greatest friend, inspiration and mentor a performer could have had".

In the early months of 1914, Holloway made his first visit to the United States and then went to Buenos Aires and Valparaíso with the concert party The Grotesques. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, he decided to return to England, but his departure was delayed for six weeks due to his contract with the troupe. At the age of 25, Holloway enlisted in the Connaught Rangers because of his previous training in the London Rifle Brigade. Later that year, he was sent to France, where he fought in the trenches alongside Michael O'Leary, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in February 1915. Holloway and O'Leary stayed in touch after the war and remained close friends. One such revue, Wear That Ribbon, was performed in honour of O'Leary winning the VC. The party included such performers as Jack Buchanan, Eric Blore, Binnie Hale, and Phyllis Dare, as well as the performers who would later form The Co-Optimists. Upon his return from France, Holloway was stationed in Hartlepool, and immediately after the war ended he starred in The Disorderly Room with Leslie Henson, which Eric Blore had written while serving in the South Wales Borderers. Holloway returned to London and resumed his singing and acting career, finding success in two West End musicals at the Winter Garden Theatre. Later that month, he created the role of Captain Wentworth in Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse's Kissing Time, followed in 1920 by the role of René in A Night Out. Following its provincial success, The Disorderly Room was given a West End production at the Victoria Palace Theatre in late 1919, in which Holloway starred alongside Henson and Tom Walls. Holloway made his film debut in a 1921 silent comedy called The Rotters.

From June 1921, Holloway had considerable success in The Co-Optimists, a concert party formed with performers whom he had met during the war in France, which The Times called "an all-star 'pierrot' entertainment in the West-end." It opened at the small Royalty Theatre and soon transferred to the much larger Palace Theatre, where the initial version of the show ran for over a year, giving more than 500 performances. The entertainment was completely rewritten at regular intervals to keep it fresh, and the final edition, beginning in November 1926, was the 13th version. The Co-Optimists closed in 1927 at His Majesty's Theatre after 1,568 performances over eight years.

In 1923 Holloway established himself as a BBC Radio performer. The early BBC broadcasts brought variety and classical artists together, and Holloway could be heard in the same programme as the cellist John Barbirolli or the Band of the Scots Guards. He developed his solo act throughout the 1920s while continuing his involvement with the musical theatre and The Co-Optimists. In 1924 he made his first gramophone discs, recording for His Master's Voice two songs from The Co-Optimists: "London Town" and "Memory Street". After The Co-Optimists disbanded in 1927, Holloway played at the London Hippodrome in Vincent Youmans's musical comedy Hit the Deck as Bill Smith, a performance judged by The Times to be "invested with many shrewd touches of humanity". In The Manchester Guardian, Ivor Brown praised him for a singing style "which coaxes the ear rather than clubbing the head."

thumb|left|alt=stage shot of two actors in mid scene dressed in historic war costumes|Holloway as Sam Small in Fine and Dandy with Leslie Henson

Holloway began regularly performing monologues, both on stage and on record, in 1928, with his own creation, Sam Small, in Sam, Sam, Pick oop thy Musket. Holloway also starred in a series of films for Ealing Studios, beginning with Champagne Charlie in 1944 alongside Tommy Trinder. After that he made Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and Another Shore (1948). He next appeared in three of the most famous Ealing comedies, Passport to Pimlico (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). His final film with the studio was Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953). and supported by the band leader Billy Mayerl. He made his Australian début at the Tivoli Theatre, Melbourne, and recorded television appearances to publicise the forthcoming release of Passport to Pimlico. Holloway wrote the monologue Albert Down Under especially for the tour.

1950s and 1960s stage and screen

thumb|alt=photo of three smiling men, standing together; the two on the outside are looking at Holloway who stands between them.|Holloway (centre) as Alfred P. Doolittle on Broadway in My Fair Lady, 1957

In 1954 Holloway joined the Old Vic theatre company to play Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Robert Helpmann as Oberon and Moira Shearer as Titania. After playing at the Edinburgh Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company took the production to New York, where it played at the Metropolitan Opera House and then on tour of the US and Canada. The production was harshly reviewed by critics on both sides of the Atlantic, but Holloway made a strong impression. Holloway said of the experience: "Out of the blue I was asked by the Royal Shakespeare Company to tour America with them, playing Bottom. ... From that American tour came the part of Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady and from then on, well, just let's say I was able to pick and choose my parts and that was very pleasant at my age." Holloway's film career continued simultaneously with his stage work; one example was the 1956 comedy Jumping for Joy. American audiences became familiar with his earlier film roles when the films began to be broadcast on television in the 1950s.|align=right| width=25%

In 1956 Holloway created the role of Alfred P. Doolittle in the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady. The librettist, Alan Jay Lerner, remembered in his memoirs that Holloway was his first choice for the role, even before it was written. Lerner's only concern was whether, after so long away from the musical stage, Holloway still had his resonant singing voice. Holloway reassured him over a lunch at Claridge's: Lerner recalled, "He put down his knife and fork, threw back his head and unleashed a strong baritone note that resounded through the dining room, drowned out the string quartet and sent a few dozen people off to the osteopath to have their necks untwisted." Holloway had a long association with the show, appearing in the original 1956 Broadway production at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, the 1958 London version at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the film version in 1964, which he undertook instead of the role of Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins that he had been offered the same year. In The Manchester Guardian, Alistair Cooke wrote, "Stanley Holloway distils into the body of Doolittle the taste and smell of every pub in England." Also in 1964, he appeared as Bellomy in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television production of The Fantasticks.

thumb|left|alt=publicity shot of elderly man and young female sitting between three poles|Holloway and Regina Groves in Our Man Higgins, 1962

Looking back in 2004, Holloway's biographer Eric Midwinter wrote, "With his cockney authenticity, his splendid baritone voice, and his wealth of comedy experience, he made a great success of this role, and, as he said, it put him 'bang on top of the heap, in demand' again at a time when, in his mid-sixties, his career was beginning to wane". His performances earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Following his success on Broadway, Holloway played Pooh-Bah in a 1960 US television Bell Telephone Hour production of The Mikado, produced by the veteran Gilbert and Sullivan performer Martyn Green. Holloway appeared with Groucho Marx and Helen Traubel of the Metropolitan Opera. His notable films around this time included 'Alive and Kicking' in 1959, co-starring Sybil Thorndike and Kathleen Harrison, and No Love for Johnnie in 1961 opposite Peter Finch. In 1962, Holloway took part in a studio recording of Oliver! with Alma Cogan and Violet Carson, in which he played Fagin.

In 1962 Holloway played the role of an English butler called Higgins in a US television sitcom called Our Man Higgins. It ran for only a season. His son Julian also appeared in the series. In 1964 he again appeared on stage in Philadelphia in Cool Off!, a short-lived Faustian spoof. He returned to the US a few more times after that to take part in The Dean Martin Show three times and The Red Skelton Show twice. He also appeared in the 1965 war film In Harm's Way, together with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.

Last years

thumb|right|upright|alt=tombstone inscribed to Holloway|Holloway's grave at East Preston, West Sussex

Holloway appeared for the first time in a major British television series in the BBC's 1967 adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, playing Beach, the butler, to Ralph Richardson's Lord Emsworth. The Guardian wrote, "his accent hovered quite unaccountably between mummerset and Mayo".|group= n After My Fair Lady, Holloway was able to get film roles in Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter (1968), which featured the 1960s British pop group Herman's Hermits, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Flight of the Doves and Up the Front, all in the early 1970s. His final film was Journey into Fear (1974).

In 1970, Holloway began an association with the Shaw Festival in Canada, playing Burgess in Candida.|group= n co-starring with Alastair Sim and Michael Bryant.

Holloway died of a stroke at the Nightingale Nursing Home in Littlehampton, West Sussex, on 30 January 1982, aged 91. Queenie was orphaned at the age of 16, something that Holloway felt they had in common, as his mother had died that year and his father had earlier abandoned the family. He married Queenie in November 1913. Upon the death of her mother, Queenie inherited some property in Southampton Row and relied on the rents from the property for her income. During the First World War, while Holloway was away fighting in France, Queenie began to have financial trouble, as the tenants failed to pay their rent. Out of desperation, she approached several loan sharks, incurring a large debt about which Holloway knew nothing. By the late 1920s, Holloway found himself in financial difficulties with the British tax authorities and was briefly declared bankrupt. In the 1930s, Holloway and Queenie moved to Bayswater and remained there until Queenie's death in 1937 at the age of 45, from cirrhosis of the liver. Of the children from this first marriage, John worked as an engineer in an electrics company, and Mary worked for BP for many years.

On 2 January 1939, Holloway married the 25-year-old actress and former chorus dancer Violet Marion Lane (1913–1997), and they moved to Marylebone. Violet was born into a working-class family from Leeds.