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Jack Tripp MBE (4 February 1922 – 10 July 2005) was an English comic actor, singer and dancer who appeared in seaside variety shows and revues and became best known for his many performances as a pantomime dame.
Born in Plymouth, Devon, Tripp was the only son of a baker, William Tripp, and his wife Lillian. At a very young age he attended dancing classes and entered tap dancing competitions; leading to appearances in local clubs where his was billed as Plymouth's Fred Astaire. When war broke out, Tripp joined up to serve in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Whilst in the army, he joined Stars in Battledress where he performed in Europe and the Middle East.
After the war, Tripp took up acting professionally and appeared as a singer and dancer in variety shows and revues. He made his debut in the West End understudying Sid Field in Piccadilly Hayride at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1946. Tripp was with the Fol-de-Rols concert party [1] for fourteen years, and this led to his own seaside show Take a Tripp.
Tripp is best known for his appearances as a pantomime dame in which he excelled. He appeared in at least 35 pantomimes wearing the most elaborate costumes. The Stage once described him as "the John Gielgud of pantomime dames". In 1982 he appeared in a television documentary The Pantomime Dame. [2] During the 1990s he often teamed up with Roy Hudd. In 1996 he was made a MBE for his "services to pantomime". [3] His last performance was in Mother Goose in Plymouth in 1996. His last stage appearance was in the revival of Sandy Wilsons pastiche 1930s musical Divorce Me, Darling! at the Chichester Festival Theatre in July 1997.
Off stage. Tripp was modest and quiet. He became disenchanted with modern pantomime and retired in 2000 in his home in Hove. On 10 July 2005 he was taken ill in his home and died a few hours later in the Brighton General Hospital. [4]
His lifelong partner on and off stage was Australian-born Allen Christie.
Douglas Coy Byng was an English comic singer and songwriter in West End theatre, revue and cabaret. Billed as "Bawdy but British", Byng was famous for his female impersonations. His songs are full of sexual innuendo and double entendres. Due to the prejudices of the law and of the public at that time, Byng was a closeted gay performer. To have been out, would have been social and professional suicide. He was noted for his camp performances in the music halls and in cabaret. Byng made a large number of recordings, many of which have been transferred to CD. Byng was also a noted pantomime dame and appeared in over 30 pantomimes.
Kenneth Connor, was a British stage, film and broadcasting actor, who rose to national prominence with his appearances in the Carry On films.
Dame Esmerelda Cicely Courtneidge, was an Australian-born British actress, comedian and singer. The daughter of the producer and playwright Robert Courtneidge, she was appearing in his productions in the West End by the age of 16, and was quickly promoted from minor to major roles in his Edwardian musical comedies.
Travesti is a theatrical term referring to the portrayal of a character in an opera, play, or ballet by a performer of the opposite sex.
A pantomime dame is a traditional role in British pantomime. It is part of the theatrical tradition of travesti portrayal of female characters by male actors in drag. Dame characters are often played either in an extremely camp style, or else by men acting butch in women's clothing. They usually wear heavy make up and big hair, have exaggerated physical features, and perform in an over-the-top style.
Roy Rene was an Australian comedian and vaudevillian. As the bawdy character Mo McCackie, Rene was one of the most well-known and successful Australian comedians of the 20th century.
Beatrice "Binnie" Mary Hale-Monro was an English actress, singer and dancer. She was one of the most successful musical theatre stars in London in the 1920s and 1930s, able to sing leading roles in operetta as well as musicals, and she was popular as a principal boy in pantomime. Her best-remembered roles were in the musicals No, No, Nanette (1925) and Mr. Cinders (1929), in which she sang "Spread a Little Happiness".
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. As a comedian, he mixed everyday situations and observations with comic absurdity. Apart from his music hall acts, he was a popular Christmas pantomime performer in the English provinces, where he excelled in the dame roles. He 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 (1916). One of his best-known original characters in his six-decade long career was the Prime Minister of Mirth.
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Wyn Calvin MBE OStJ, known affectionately as "The Clown Prince of Wales" and "The Welsh Prince of Laughter", was a Welsh comedian, pantomime dame, television and theatre actor, radio personality, television chat show host, after-dinner speaker, lecturer, philanthropist and newspaper columnist. He worked with numerous stars within the entertainment industry including Harry Secombe, Bob Hope, Christopher Biggins, Shirley Bassey, Frankie Vaughan, Vic Morrow, Bud Flanagan, Roy Hudd, Max Boyce, Morecambe and Wise and Ken Dodd.
William Hooper Frank John Dainty was a British comedian, dancer, physical comedian and pantomime and television star.
James "Jim" Gerald also known as James Gerald Diabolo was an Australian comedian, circus clown, acrobat, writer, director and troupe leader and filmmaker. He is generally regarded as one of the four leading post-World War I comedians to work the Australasian variety circuits, the others being Nat Phillips, Roy Rene, and George Wallace.
Clive Mark Rowe is a British actor, best known for his role as Norman "Duke" Ellington in BBC Children's drama The Story of Tracy Beaker. He also starred as Mayor Doyle in the Disney show The Evermoor Chronicles.
Nat Jackley was an English comic actor who starred in revue, variety, film and pantomime from the 1920s to the mid-1980s. His trademark rubber-neck dance, skeletal frame and peculiar speech impediment made him a formidable and funny comedian and pantomime dame. His later years were spent as a character actor in film and television, and appearing in pantomime. Jackley appeared in three Royal Variety shows, topping the bill in summer shows throughout Britain's seaside resorts and in London.
Nicholas Jeffrey Thomas is a British entertainment entrepreneur and an Olivier-award-winning theatre producer. He is founder, Chairman and joint-owner with his wife Sandra, of Qdos Entertainment Ltd (Qdos), whose subsidiaries include Five Star Collection Ltd, Adverset Media Solutions and Q Talent Ltd. In March 2021, Nick & Sandra sold HQ Theatres & Hospitality Ltd to Trafalgar Entertainment Group led by Sir Howard Panter and Dame Rosemary Squire, partnered with Barings, the global investment pension fund manager. In April 2021 Nick & Sandra Thomas sold Qdos Entertainment (Pantomimes) Ltd to Crossroads Live Holdings UK Ltd Live entertainment acquisition vehicle partnered in the US by Raven Capital Management LLC, and chaired in the UK by David Ian.
Glasgow Empire Theatre, known as the Glasgow Palace Empire until the early 1900s, was a major theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, which opened in 1897 on the site of the Gaiety Theatre at 31–35 Sauchiehall Street. It was one of the leading theatres in the UK chain of theatres owned and developed by Moss Empires under the chairmanship of Sir Edward Moss, who served his apprenticeship in Greenock and elsewhere.
Nicholas Wilton is an English actor and scriptwriter. He has appeared as Mr Lister in the BBC soap opera EastEnders as a recurring character; he has also appeared in Carrott's Lib, Fast Forward and Jackanory.
George Windsor Graves was an English comic actor. Although he could neither sing nor dance, he became a leading comedian in musical comedies, adapting the French and Viennese opéra-bouffe style of light comic relief into a broader comedy popular with English audiences of the period. His comic portrayals did much to ensure the West End success of Véronique (1904) The Little Michus, and The Merry Widow (1907).
Shaun Glenville was an Irish actor who specialised in pantomime performances - he would play the dame while his wife Dorothy Ward would play the principal boy. The music hall historian Christopher Pulling called him one of the 'grand comedians of the music-halls'. He had a successful 62-year career and played in over 40 pantomimes.
Henry Lytton, Jr. was a British actor and singer who after a career in film and musical comedy ended as a pantomime dame and Ringmaster of the famous Blackpool Tower Circus in Blackpool.