114 Facts About George Robey

Sir George Edward Wade, CBE, known professionally as George Robey, was an English comedian, singer and actor in musical theatre, who became known as one of the greatest music hall performers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

George Robey scored notable successes in musical revues during and after the First World War, particularly with the song "If You Were the Only Girl ", which he performed with Violet Loraine in the revue The Bing Boys Are Here.

George Robey starred in the Royal Command Performance in 1912 and regularly entertained before aristocracy.

George Robey was an avid sportsman, playing cricket and football at a semi-professional level.

George Robey made a successful transition from music hall to variety shows and starred in the revue Round in Fifty in 1922, which earned him still wider notice.

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In 1913 George Robey made his film debut, but he had only modest success in the medium.

George Robey's appearance brought him to the attention of many influential directors, including Sydney Carroll, who signed him to appear on stage as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1 in 1935, a role that he later repeated in Laurence Olivier's 1944 film, Henry V During the Second World War, Robey raised money for charities and promoted recruitment into the forces.

George Robey was knighted a few months before his death in 1954.

George Robey's father, Charles Wade, was a civil engineer who spent much of his career on tramline design and construction.

George Robey's mother, Elizabeth Mary Wade Keene, was a housewife; he had two sisters.

When George Robey was five, his father moved the family to Birkenhead, where he helped in the construction of the Mersey Railway.

George Robey began his schooling in nearby Hoylake at a dame school.

George Robey devoted his leisure hours to visiting the city's museums, art galleries and opera houses and gained a reasonable fluency in German by the time he was 12.

George Robey enjoyed life in the country and was impressed with the many operatic productions held in the city and with the Germans' high regard for the arts.

George Robey later claimed, apparently untruthfully, to have studied at the University of Cambridge.

At the age of 18 George Robey travelled to Birmingham, where he worked in a civil engineer's office.

George Robey learned to play the mandolin and became a skilled performer on the instrument.

George Robey joined a local branch of the Thirteen Club, whose members, many of whom were amateur musicians, performed in small venues across London.

George Robey's performance secured him private engagements for which he was paid a guinea a night.

George Robey swapped "Wade" for "Robey" after working for a company in Birmingham that bore the latter name.

In 1891 George Robey visited the Royal Aquarium in Westminster where he watched "Professor Kennedy", a burlesque mesmerist from America.

At a later rehearsal, George Robey negotiated a deal to sing one of the comic songs that had been written for him by Rogers.

George Robey's turn was a great success, and as a result he secured a permanent theatrical residency at the venue.

In early 1892, together with his performances at the Royal Aquarium and the Oxford Music Hall, George Robey starred alongside Jenny Hill, Bessie Bonehill and Harriet Vernon at the Paragon Theatre of Varieties in Mile End, where, according to his biographer Peter Cotes, he "stole the notices from experienced troupers".

Summer, George Robey conducted a music hall tour of the English provinces which began in Chatham and took him to Liverpool, at a venue owned by the mother of the influential London impresario Oswald Stoll.

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George Robey applied thick white face paint and exaggerated the redness on his cheeks and nose with bright red make-up; his eye line and eyebrows were enhanced with thick, black greasepaint.

George Robey held a short, misshaped, wooden walking stick, which was curved at the top.

George Robey later used the costume for his character, The Prime Minister of Mirth.

The outfit helped George Robey become instantly recognisable on the London music hall circuit.

George Robey next made a start at building his repertoire and bought the rights to comic songs and monologues by several well-established music hall writers, including Sax Rohmer and Bennett Scott.

At the start of 1894, George Robey travelled to Manchester to participate in the pantomime Jack and Jill, where he was paid £25 a week for a three-month contract.

George Robey did not appear in Jack and Jill until the third act but pleased the holiday crowds nonetheless.

On 29 April 1898, George Robey married his first wife, the Australian-born musical theatre actress Ethel Hayden, at St Clement Danes church in the Strand, London.

Pantomime enjoyed wide popularity until the 1890s, but by the time George Robey had reached his peak, interest in it was on the wane.

George Robey was inspired by the older comedians Herbert Campbell and Dan Leno, and, although post-dating them, he rivalled their eccentricity and popularity, earning the festive entertainment a new audience.

George Robey dressed as a caveman and spoke of modern political issues, often complaining about the government "slapping another pound of rock on his taxes".

George Robey signed a six-year contract in June 1904 to appear annually at, among other venues, the Oxford Music Hall in London, for a fee of £120 a week.

The management of the Oxford counter-claimed and forbade George Robey from appearing in any other music hall during this period.

George Robey was engaged to play the title role in the 1905 pantomime Queen of Hearts.

George Robey incorporated "The Dresser", a music hall sketch taken from his own repertoire, into the show.

George Robey was proud of his healthy physique and maintained it by performing frequent exercise and following a careful diet.

George Robey organised and played in many charity football matches throughout England, which were described by the sporting press as being of a very high standard, and he remained an active football player well into his fifties.

George Robey became associated with cricket by 1895 when he led a team of amateur players for a match at Turney Road in Dulwich.

George Robey played so well that Wrathall asked him to return the following Saturday to take part in a professional game.

That weekend, while waiting in the pavilion before the game, Robey was approached by an agent for Hull City A FC, who asked the comedian to play in a match that same afternoon.

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George Robey agreed, swapped his cricket flannels for a football kit and played with the team against Nottingham Forest as an inside right.

George Robey was signed as an inside forward by Millwall Football Club and scored many goals for them.

George Robey displayed a good level of ability in vigoro, an Australian sport derived from both cricket and baseball which was short-lived in England.

George Robey gained a reputation at the club for his comic antics on the field, such as raising his eyebrows at the approaching bowler in an attempt to distract him.

George Robey was asked to help organise a charity football match in 1907 by friends of the Scottish football trainer James Miller, who had died the previous year.

George Robey compiled a team of amateur footballers from the theatrical profession and met Miller's former team Chelsea Football Club at their home ground.

George Robey became a skilled craftsman of the instrument, although he never intended for them to be played in public.

George Robey was intrigued by the idea that a man as famous as Robey could produce such a "beautifully finished" instrument, unbeknown to the public.

George Robey was an artist, and some of his pen and ink self-caricatures are kept at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

George Robey was later hired by Edward's son, the Prince of Wales, who arranged a performance at Carlton House Terrace for his friend Lord Curzon.

In July 1912, at the invitation of the impresario Oswald Stoll, George Robey took part for the first time in the Royal Command Performance, to which Cotes attributes "one of the prime factors in his continuing popularity".

George Robey found the royal show to be a less daunting experience than the numerous private command performances that he gave during his career.

At the outbreak of the First World War, George Robey wished to enlist in the army but, now in his 40s, he was too old for active service.

George Robey combined his civilian duties with work for a volunteer motor transport unit towards the end of the war, in which he served as a lieutenant.

George Robey committed three nights a week to the corps while organising performances during the day to benefit war charities.

George Robey was a strong supporter of the Merchant Navy and thought that they were often overlooked when it came to charitable donations.

George Robey raised £22,000 at a benefit held at the London Coliseum, which he donated in the navy's favour.

Robey met filmmakers from the Burns Film Company, who engaged him in a silent short entitled "George Robey Turns Anarchist", in which he played a character who fails to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

George Robey has appeared sporadically in film throughout the rest of his career, never achieving more than a modest amount of success.

In 1914, for the first time in many years, George Robey appeared in a Christmas pantomime as a male when he was engaged to play the title role in Sinbad the Sailor; Fred Emney Sr played the dame role.

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George Robey was cast as Lucius Bing opposite Violet Loraine, who played his love interest Emma, and the couple duetted in the show's signature song "If You Were the Only Girl ", which became an international success.

George Robey made two films towards the end of the war: The Anti-frivolity League in 1916 and Doing His Bit the following year.

George Robey included a sketch based on his music hall character "The Prehistoric Man", with Daphne Pollard playing the role of "She of the Tireless Tongue".

George Robey returned to the London Hippodrome in 1919 where he took a leading role in another hit revue, Joy Bells.

George Robey played the role of an old-fashioned father who is mystified over the changing traditions after the First World War.

We do not want to see either Figaro or Othello; it is quite enough for George Robey to appear in travelling costume and to turn his eyes in crab-like fashion from one side of the auditorium to another.

George Robey declined a knighthood that same year because, according to Cotes, he was worried that the title would distance him from his working-class audiences; he was appointed a CBE by George V at Buckingham Palace instead.

On 28 July 1919, George Robey took part in his second Royal Command Performance, at the London Coliseum.

One of the show's more popular gags was a scene in which George Robey picked and ate cherries off St Helier's hat, before tossing the stones into the orchestra pit which were then met by loud bangs from the bass drum.

George Robey had a brief affair with one of his leading ladies and walked out of the family home.

George Robey made a return to the London Hippodrome in 1924 in the revue Leap Year in which he co-starred with Laddie Cliff, Betty Chester and Vera Pearce.

George Robey was much to their tastes, and his rendition of "My Old Dutch" helped the show achieve another long run of 421 performances.

The strike was unexpected by George Robey, who had signed the previous year to star in a series of variety dates for Moss Empires.

George Robey took the show to the provinces under the title of Bits and Pieces and employed a company of 25 artists as well as engineers and support staff.

George Robey returned to Birmingham, a city where he was held in great affection, and where he was sure the audiences would embrace his new show.

The Canadians were enthusiastic about George Robey; he was awarded the freedom of the city in London, Ontario, made a chieftain of the Sarcee tribe, and was an honorary guest at a cricket match in Edmonton, Alberta.

In early 1929 George Robey returned to South Africa and then Canada for another tour with Bits and Pieces, after which he started another series of variety dates back in England.

George Robey resented having to grow a beard for the role and disliked the French climate and gruelling 12-week filming schedule.

George Robey refused to act out his character's death scene in a farcical way and objected to the lateness of the "dreadfully banal" scripts, which were often written the night before filming.

Until 1932 George Robey had never played in legitimate theatre, although he read Shakespeare from an early age.

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George Robey made a substantial donation to the union, and the production went ahead.

Later that year, George Robey completed his final autobiography, Looking Back on Life.

At the start of 1935 George Robey accepted his first Shakespearean role, as Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1, which surprised the press and worried fans who thought that he might retire the Prime Minister of Mirth.

George Robey is one of the most intelligent and capable of actors.

George Robey never faltered, he had to take his audience by the throat and make them attentive at once because he couldn't play himself in.

Later, in 1935, Blanche Littler persuaded George Robey to accept Carroll's earlier offer to play Bottom, and the comedian cancelled three weeks' worth of dates.

George Robey was interviewed for The Spice of Life programme for the BBC in 1936.

George Robey spoke about his time spent on the music hall circuit, which he described as the "most enjoyable experience" of his life.

The usually reserved George Robey admitted that privately he was not a sociable person and that he often grew tired of his audiences while performing on stage, but that he got his biggest thrill from making others laugh.

George Robey declared a love for the outdoors and mentioned that, to relax, he would draw "comic scribbles" of himself as the Prime Minister of Mirth, which he would occasionally give to fans.

George Robey made his television debut in August 1938 but was unenthused with the medium and only made rare appearances.

George Robey felt that he should "be forbidden, by his own angel, if nobody else, to approach the ordinary microphone".

George Robey attributed the fall to his face mask which gave him a limited view of the stage.

Aware of demand for his act in Australia, George Robey conducted a second tour of the country at the start of 1939.

George Robey returned to England and concentrated his efforts on entertaining to raise money for the war effort.

George Robey signed up with the Entertainments National Service Association for whom he appeared in a wide range of shows and in his own one-man engagements.

George Robey would sometimes turn up unannounced to perform at hospitals, munition factories, airfields, anti-aircraft posts and other venues where there was an audience of just a few people.

George Robey's intentions were to gently poke fun at the "Little Englanders", but audiences thought that he was sympathising with Nazism.

George Robey's views became known in the press as "Robeyisms", which drew increasing criticism, but his Prime Minister of Mirth remained popular, and he used the character to divert the negative publicity.

George Robey starred in the film Salute John Citizen in 1942, directed by Maurice Elvey and co-starring Edward Rigby and Stanley Holloway, about the effects that the war had on a normal British family.

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That Christmas, George Robey travelled to Bristol, where he starred in the pantomime Robinson Crusoe.

In 1945, George Robey starred in two minor film roles, as "Old Sam" in The Trojan Brothers, a short comedy film in which two actors experience various problems as a pantomime horse, and as "Vogel" in the musical romance Waltz Time.

George Robey spent 1947 touring England, while the following spring he undertook a provincial tour of Frederick Bowyer's fairy play The Windmill Man, which he co-produced with his wife.

In June 1951, now aged 81, George Robey starred in a midnight gala performance at the London Palladium in aid of the family of Sid Field who had died that year.

George Robey took part in the Festival of Variety for the BBC in 1951, which paid tribute to the British music hall.

George Robey's wife sat at the side of the stage, ready to provide support should he need it.

George Robey died on 29 November 1954 at his home in Saltdean, East Sussex, and was cremated at the Downs Crematorium in Brighton.

News of George Robey's death prompted tributes from the press, who printed illustrations, anecdotes and reminders of his stage performances and charitable activities.

The radio personality Robb Wilton acknowledged learning a lot from him, and although he felt that George Robey "was not very funny", he could time a comic situation perfectly.