Charles Mathews was an English theatre manager and comic actor, well known during his time for his gift of impersonation and skill at table entertainment. His play At Home, in which he played every character, was the first monopolylogue and the defining work in the genre.
George Wild Galvin, better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall act, for his dame roles in the annual pantomimes that were popular at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from 1888 to 1904.
The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered in the US in 1955 and was produced in Britain the following year. It tells the story of the imperious Mrs St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under the care of Miss Madrigal, a governess, whose past life is a mystery that is solved during the action of the play. The work has been revived numerous times internationally, and was adapted for the cinema in 1964.
Raisin is a musical with music by Judd Woldin, lyrics by Robert Brittan, and a book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg. It is an adaptation of the Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun; the musical's book was co-written by Hansberry's husband, Robert Nemiroff.
George Alphonsus Cooper was an English actor and voice artist. He died in November 2018 at the age of 93.
Street Scene is an American opera by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book). Written in 1946 and premiered in Philadelphia that year, Street Scene is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play of the same name by Rice.
The Ghost Goes West is a 1935 British romantic comedy/fantasy film starring Robert Donat, Jean Parker, and Eugene Pallette, and directed by René Clair, his first English-language film. The film shows an Old World ghost dealing with American materialism.
Maria Charles is an English film, television and stage actress, director and comedian. She is probably best known for her TV performance as the overbearing mother Bea Fisher in the ITV sitcom Agony. Charles has also appeared on the stage in original West End productions including musicals by Stephen Sondheim, Charles Strouse and Sandy Wilson.
Florence Roberts (March 16, 1861/1864 – June 6, 1940 was an American actress of the stage and in motion pictures.
St. Clair Bayfield was an English stage actor, best known as the long-term companion and manager of amateur operatic soprano Florence Foster Jenkins.
Leonora Mary Johnson, known professionally as Nora Swinburne, was an English actress who appeared in many British films.
Up Pops the Devil is a 1931 American pre-Code comedy drama film directed by A. Edward Sutherland. The screenplay concerns an advertising man who quits his job to become a novelist, upsetting his wife and straining their marriage. The film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay is based on a 3-act play of the same name written by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich; the play ran on Broadway for 148 performances from September 1930 to January 1931 at the Theatre Masque.
Stepping Out is a play written by Richard Harris in 1984. It was produced in the West End, London, where it received the Evening Standard Comedy of the Year Award, and on Broadway, New York.
Elisabeth Margaret Welch was an American singer, actress, and entertainer, whose career spanned seven decades. Her best-known songs were "Stormy Weather", "Love for Sale" and "Far Away in Shanty Town". She was American-born, but was based in Britain for most of her career.
The Man from Toronto is a 1933 British romantic comedy film directed by Sinclair Hill and starring Jessie Matthews, Ian Hunter and Frederick Kerr. After an inheritance is left to them if they marry, an Englishwoman and a Canadian must meet for the first time to investigate the other - with comedic results. Matthews was considered a rising film star at the time of the production, and she quickly became one of Gainsborough Pictures' leading names.
Geoffrey Kerr was a British stage and film actor and writer during the middle of the 20th century.
Connie Ediss was an English actress and singer best known as a buxom, good-humoured comedian in many of the popular Edwardian musical comedies around the turn of the 20th century.
Willie Howard and Eugene Howard, billed as the Howard Brothers, were Silesian-born American vaudeville performers of the first half of the 20th century. They were two of the earliest openly Jewish performers on the American stage.
Florence Foster Jenkins is a 2016 biographical film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Nicholas Martin and Julia Kogan. It stars Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress known for her generosity and poor singing. Hugh Grant plays her manager and long-time companion, St. Clair Bayfield. Other cast members include Simon Helberg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Nina Arianda.
Molly Kerr was an actor, producer and playwright who was the first person to play the role of Bunty Mainwaring in Noël Coward's play The Vortex.
