NORMAN WISDOM:Norman Wisdom, who has died aged 95, was almost the last in a great tradition of knockabout, slapstick English clowns, a performer who relied less on words than on an acrobatic physical dexterity to gain his laughs.
Engulfed by helpless, gurgling mirth, Norman Wisdom would subside to the ground as if suddenly rendered boneless: it needed someone only to look at him to make him fall down. Often, the person looking at him – and sternly, at that – was Jerry Desmonde, doyen of variety straight men, who represented the figure of authority in many of Wisdom’s hugely successful film farces of the 1950s and 1960s.
Wisdom was usually derided or ignored by the serious critics, but in his day he was adored by the public and because of its nature his craft travelled well – he was immensely popular in many countries, including Albania, where he was known as Pitkin, after the character he played in many of his films. If he had a penchant for tear-jerking ballads and crude pathos, this merely reinforces a feeling that his career was spent out of its correct time. He properly belonged to the earlier era of music halls, an appropriate setting for his body-comedy and sometimes mawkish sentimentality.
Norman Wisdom was born in Marylebone, London, in conditions of desperate poverty. As a boy he often had to walk to school barefoot, and when his mother left the family home he and his brother were disowned by their father. He was placed in a children’s home, from which he ran away when he was 11, and he started work as an errand boy at a grocer’s when he was 13.
When the second World War broke out, Wisdom joined the army and served in India. He made his first appearance as an entertainer with a comedy boxing routine at an army concert, and developed his musical skills when he joined the Royal Corps of Signals as a bandsman in 1943.
After the war his variety debut came at the old Collins Music Hall on Islington Green, north London, in 1945, and he started touring Britain in pantomime and summer shows. In 1948 he made his first West End appearance on a variety bill at the London Casino and became a star virtually overnight. "A star is born!" announced the Daily Mail,and the following week Wisdom went straight to the top of the bill at the Golders Green Hippodrome, north London.
His next date was a summer show with the magician David Nixon, and for this appearance he meticulously worked out the characterisation for which he became famous: variously known as Norman or The Gump or Pitkin – the enthusiastic, puppyish little man with the too-tight tweed jacket and the crooked cap. Attired as such, and with the later-familiar jerky gait and propensity for sudden collapses, he played a volunteer in the audience to help – and, of course, reduce to a shambles – Nixon’s magic act.
After further successes in the West End and elsewhere, he made his first Royal Variety Performance appearance in 1952, and his film debut, Trouble in Store, the year after. He also topped the "hit parade" with a song from the film, Don't Laugh at Me 'Cos I'm a Fool. A string of money-making films followed, including One Good Turn(1954), The Square Peg(1958) and The Bulldog Breed(1960).
Less notable, in commercial terms, were his stage appearances. Where's Charley?at the Palace, London, in 1958 went down quite well, but the Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowdwas a tremendous flop that never reached London after a Manchester tryout in 1963. Wisdom went to Broadway for the Tony-nominated musical comedy Walking Happyin 1966, and then to Hollywood. He appeared in The Night They Raided Minsky's(1968), which also starred Jason Robards, Britt Ekland, Bert Lahr and Denholm Elliott. It became apparent that Wisdom was valiantly trying to change his image.In 1969 he made a fairly sophisticated sex comedy, What's Good For the Goose. His public was not quite ready for that and his career as a top film comedian was over.
He continued to tour his one-man stage show very successfully, and had dramatic success in 1981 when he appeared in Going Gentlyon BBC2. Wisdom triumphed in a difficult role, winning a Bafta award. He also tried television but it was not his forte. He spent much of the 1980s in seclusion on the Isle of Man, though made something of a return in the 1990s. He appeared as Billy Ingleton in Last of the Summer Winebetween 1995 and 2004.
Wisdom was knighted in 2000, an honour many felt long overdue considering his contribution to the film industry. He announced his retirement from show business on his 90th birthday, in 2005.
He was divorced from his second wife, former dancer Freda Simpson, in 1969, and is survived by their children, Nicholas and Jacqueline.
Sir Norman Wisdom: born February 4th, 1915; died October 4th, 2010