The Green & the Greasepaint -Ireland & Hollywood *Mod warning 1st page*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVlF-vqePxg

Wilfrid was born in Dublin, Ireland on 22nd March 1912 to a father who was a cashier at a Guinness brewery, and a mother, Edith Marks, who was an opera singer. Wilfrid Brambell's first foray into acting was at the age of just two, entertaining wounded soldiers in World War One. As a teen, he had a soprano voice, and it won him medals at festivals, until his voice broke during an argument with an aunt! After leaving school, he became a reporter for The Irish Times, and started amateur dramatics at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Turning professional, he then moved to Dublin's Gate Theatre, then on tour with ENSA during the Second world War, and then into repertory theatre at Bristol, Chesterfield and Swansea. His London appearances included roles in Canterbury Tales and The Ghost Train (written by Dad's Army actor Arnold Ridley - Private Godfrey). His Broadway career was less successful, however, as the first night of the play Kelly was also the last. The advent of regular television programming in Britain brought Wilfrid regular roles on TV, not least in Arthur Askey's shows, plus many diverse roles such as in The Quatermass Experiment and as a tramp in No Fixed Abode. It was this last role which was seen by two British writers, and he was instantly signed-up for Galton and Simpson's new production The Offer, part of their Comedy Playhouse series of one-off TV plays. The comedy, about a retired rag-and-bone dealer and his son, was commissioned as a series and in 1962 what became the classic sitcom Steptoe and Son was born. By now, Wilfrid was in demand as an actor and appeared in many more roles, including films such as The Thirty-Nine Steps, Carry On Again Doctor, Dry Rot and as Paul McCartney's grandfather in The Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night. On a personal level, Wilfrid's wife Molly was found to have been made pregnant by a lodger and he subsequently threw her out, divorcing her on grounds of adultery. She died the following year. Many years later Wilfrid Brambell shared his Pimlico home with a male Chinese-born companion Yussof Ben mai Saman, to whom he left his fortune after his death in London from cancer on 18th January 1985.
Remembering The Banana Box: "[Wilfrid Brambell] was wonderful. Such a dapper, wee man. He used to wear a diamond ring, beautiful suits, starched collar and tie and and would have his hair slicked back...He was very funny off stage as well as on, and would tell the filthiest jokes - he just made a perfect Rooksby."

http://www.leonardrossiter.com/risingdamp/BiogsSupp.html

Recent archaeological excavations at the former SS church of St Michael and John have finally unraveled the last mysteries of the Smock alley theatre, the first post Restoration purpose-built theatre in Europe. The foundation stone was laid in 1662, by John Ogilby, Master of the Revels, and, despite a collapse in 1671 and 1701, and a ‘rebuilding in 1735’, it remained the most important theatre in Dublin until it closed its doors in 1788, claiming the title of ‘Theatre Royal’ for much of this period. The first play performed was Fletcher’s ‘wit without money’ and the succeeding historical records, which document the great characters involved, the students riots and general intrigue, provide a social history of Dublin society when theatre was an integral part of the life of all city dwellers.

Smock-alley Theatre catered a great deal for the taste of the day in the matter of ballad operas, or musical comedies. Henry Brooke's Jack the Giant Queller (1748) was an enormous success, but, as some of the songs were considered of a Jacobite and satirical tendency "it was prohibited after one night's performance."[1] This opera teems with old Irish airs. At the close of the year 1749, J. F. Lampe and Pasquali were engaged at Smock-alley; and the Charitable Musical Society, whose funds amounted to £300, engaged for that sum Lampe and Pasquali for a series of concerts. In 1750 this society had released 1,200 prisoners, whose debts and fees exceeded £9,000.

johnny_doyle wrote: »

Dublin born Cedric Gibbons designed the statuette used in the Oscars.

"English" actor Richard Todd was born in Dublin.

One of the first black English actresses to appear on the stage in Dublin was my Gt Aunt, Ida Shepley. She also did stints in Broadway and the West End. She had been trained by the daughter of one of the first black actors to appear in Ireland, Ira Aldridge, who appeared in Dublin in 1831.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Aldridge

CHAPTER III
WOFFINGTON
1742-1745

1

FACTS about the origins of Margaret Woffington (as she signed her-
self) are extremely hard to find. Legends abound. Even the sur-
name which she made famous has been declared to be one which she
adopted for stage purposes in place of the less interesting Murphy.
Her date of birth has been given as anything between 1713 and 1720.
She never produced any visible relatives except a widowed mother,
a devout Catholic, and a very beautiful, much younger sister, Mary,
"Polly". But the name of Woffington was not uncommon in
Dublin since 1675, and it seems probable that she was the daughter
of one Arthur or John Woffington, a journeyman bricklayer, who
died when she was very young, according to one account, by falling
off a ladder. If it be true that a Robert Woffington, a Vicar Choral
at St Patrick's Cathedral, was her uncle, neither ever acknowledged
the relationship. William Rufus Chetwood, actor, prompter and
dramatist, owner of a bookshop over Tom's Coffee-House in Covent
Garden, and a contemporary, staunchly claims that she was "born
of reputable parents who gave her a genteel education". When
Garrick, aged twenty-three, first saw her perform, in 1740, she may
have been four years his senior, or three years younger; but her
youth had been far from sheltered. It had been spent in dire poverty.
Her mother was said to have failed to pay the rent for a huckster's
shop on a Dublin quayside and descended to selling watercress in the
streets. Charles Lee Lewes, who became an actor when Woffington
was in her prime, believed that she had assisted her mother as a
street-seller. "I have met with more than one in Dublin who
assured me that they remembered to have seen the lovely Peggy,
with a little dish upon her hand, and without shoes to cover her
delicate feet, crying through College Green, Dame Street and other
parts of that end of the town. 'All this fine salad for a ha'penny!
All for a ha'penny! All for a ha'penny here!'" About 1727, a
French acrobat, Madame Violante, was performing in a booth-
theatre near College Green. Tom King, who acted in Dublin as a
beginner when Margaret Woffington was a leading lady, believed that
her stage career had begun as a baby, suspended in a basket attached
to the feet of Madame Violante in a rope-walking act. As a child-

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&docId=3597254

johnny_doyle wrote: »

Dublin born Cedric Gibbons designed the statuette used in the Oscars.

"English" actor Richard Todd was born in Dublin.

One of the first black English actresses to appear on the stage in Dublin was my Gt Aunt, Ida Shepley. She also did stints in Broadway and the West End. She had been trained by the daughter of one of the first black actors to appear in Ireland, Ira Aldridge, who appeared in Dublin in 1831.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Aldridge

Confronted with the persistent disparagement and harrassment that black actors had to endure in the antebellum United States, Aldridge emigrated to England, where he became a dresser to the British actor Henry Wallack. He gradually progressed to increasingly larger roles; by 1825, he had top billing at London's Coburg Theatre as Oronoko in A Slave's Revenge, soon to be followed by the role of Gambia in The Slave and the title role of Shakespeare's Othello. He also played major roles in plays such as The Castle Spectre and The Padlock and played several roles of specifically white characters, including Captain Dirk Hatteraick and Bertram in Rev. R. C. Maturin's Bertram, the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III (play), and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

By the 1830s, he had married an English woman named Margaret Gill, and earned the cognomen the "African Roscius". In 1831 he successfully played in Dublin, several locations in southern Ireland, Bath, and Edinburgh. Edmund Kean praised his Othello; some took him to task for taking liberties with the text, while others attacked his race.

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/ira-aldridge/

Successful black shows on the 1940s London stage included the musical 'Calypso', featuring the West Indian actor Edric Connor, and the stage play 'Deep are the Roots' starring Gordon Heath.
The Negro Repertory Arts Theatre was founded by Robert Adams and produced many plays including Eugene O'Neill's play 'All God's Chillun Got Wings', a play about an inter-racial love affair between a white woman and a black man, at Colchester in 1944.
In 1946 Ida Shepley appeared in the Unity Worker's Theatre revival of 'All God's Chillun Got Wings', and the first black British dance company, Ballet Negres was established.

Born in Crewe, England (UK) in 1908, Ida Shepley trained as a singer with voice coach Amanda Ira Aldridge, daughter of the great black actor, Ira Aldridge, before joining the radical company at Unity Worker's Theatre. Shepley was one of only two black actors in the company in this Unity production, so (as seen above) white actors playing black characters had to 'black up'.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/theatre_performance/features/black_performance/history/1940-1969/index.html