Dan Leno
He developed a music hall act of talking about life's mundane subjects, mixed with comic songs and surreal observations, and created a host of mostly working-class characters to illustrate his stories.
[3] In 1862, Leno's parents and elder brothers appeared at the Surrey Music Hall in Sheffield, then performed in Manchester, Glasgow and Northampton later in the year.
[5] In 1864, at the age of four, Leno joined his parents on stage for the first time, at the Cosmotheca Music Hall in Paddington, under the billing "Little George, the Infant Wonder, Contortionist, and Posturer".
[3][6] When Leno was four years old, his alcoholic father died, aged 37;[2] the family then moved to Liverpool, where his mother married William Grant (1837–1896),[7][8] on 7 March 1866.
[11] In 1866, the family home in Marylebone was demolished to make way for St Pancras railway station,[12] and as a result Leno's sister Frances was sent to live with an uncle, while his brother John, who had occasionally performed with his parents, took full-time employment.
[13] Tired of surviving on little or no money, Henry left the clog dancing act to take up a trade in London, forcing Leno to consider a future as a solo performer.
[21] At the same time, Leno's clog dancing continued to be so good that in 1880 he won the world championship at the Princess's Music Hall in Leeds,[1] for which he received a gold and silver belt weighing 44.5 oz (1.26 kg).
[26][27] Although billed as "The Great Irish Comic Vocalist and Clog Champion" at first, he slowly phased out his dancing in favour of character studies, such as "Going to Buy Milk for the Twins",[10] "When Rafferty Raffled his Watch" and "The Railway Guard".
[29] Leno was a replacement in the role of Leontes in the 1888 musical burlesque of the ancient Greek character Atalanta at the Strand Theatre, directed by Charles Hawtrey.
[31] The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News praised Leno's singing and dancing and reported that: "He brings a good deal of fun and quaintness to the not very important part of Leontes.
[34][35] Their styles and appeal were very different: Leno's characters were gritty working-class realists, while Chevalier's were overflowing in romanticism, and his act depicted an affluent point of view.
[34][n 5] For his music hall acts, Leno created characters that were based on observations about life in London, including shopwalkers, grocer's assistants, beefeaters, huntsmen, racegoers, firemen, fathers, henpecked husbands, garrulous wives, pantomime dames, a police officer, a Spanish bandit and a hairdresser.
[39] Le Brunn also provided the incidental music for three of Leno's best-known songs that depicted life in everyday occupations: "The Railway Guard" (1890), "The Shopwalker" and "The Waiter" (both from 1891).
[43] Leno's depiction of "The Waiter", dressed in an oversized dinner jacket and loose-fitting white dickey, which would flap up and hit his face, was of a man consumed in self-pity and indignation.
[46] This was not a view shared by audiences or the critics, one of whom wrote: I am inclined to think "the cake" for frolicsome humour is taken by the dapper new-comer, Mr. Dan Leno, who is sketched as the galvanic baroness in the wonderfully amusing dance which sets the house in a roar.
On 9 May 1889 he starred for George P. Hawtrey in a matinee of Penelope, a musical version of a famous farce The Area Belle, to benefit the Holborn Lodge for Shop Girls.
[1] George Bernard Shaw wrote of one appearance: "I hope I never again have to endure anything more dismally futile",[55] and the English essayist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm stated that "Leno does not do himself justice collaborating with the public".
[56] In Sleeping Beauty, Leno and Campbell caused the audience to laugh even when they could not see them: they would arrive on stage in closed palanquins and exchange the lines, "Have you anything to do this afternoon, my dear?"
[1] Leno and Campbell's pantomimes from 1889 were Jack and the Beanstalk (1889 and 1899), Beauty and the Beast (1890 and 1900), Humpty Dumpty (1891 and 1903), Little Bo-Peep (1892), Robinson Crusoe (1893), Dick Whittington and His Cat (1894), Cinderella (1895), Aladdin (1896), Babes in the Wood (1897) and the Forty Thieves (1898).
[58][59] Leno appeared at Drury Lane as Sister Anne in Bluebeard, a character described by Wood as "a sprightly, somewhat below middle aged person who was of a coming on disposition and who had not yet abandoned hope"[60] The Times drama critic noted: "It is a quite peculiar and original Sister Anne, who dances breakdowns and sings strange ballads to a still stranger harp and plays ping-pong with a frying-pan and potatoes and burlesques Sherlock Holmes and wears the oddest of garments and dresses her hair like Miss Morleena Kenwigs, and speaks in a piping voice – in short it is none other than Dan Leno whom we all know".
[63][65][66] In 1897, Leno went to America and made his debut on 12 April of that year at Hammerstein's Olympia Music Hall on Broadway, where he was billed as "The Funniest Man on Earth".
Inside, the features included "Daniel's Diary", "Moans from the Martyr", two yarns, a couple of dozen cartoons and "Leno's Latest – Fresh Jokes and Wheezes Made on the Premises".
[76] He also made 14 short films towards the end of his life, in which he portrayed a bumbling buffoon who struggles to carry out everyday tasks, such as riding a bicycle or opening a bottle of champagne.
[78][80] In 1883, Leno met Sarah Lydia Reynolds (1866–1942), a young dancer and comedy singer from Birmingham, while both were appearing at King Ohmy's Circus of Varieties, Rochdale.
[81] The daughter of a stage carpenter,[82] Lydia, as she was known professionally, was already an accomplished actress as a teenager: of her performance in Sinbad the Sailor in 1881, one critic wrote that she "played Zorlida very well for a young artiste.
[92] They played for charity against a variety of amateur teams willing to put up with their comedic mayhem, such as London's Metropolitan Police Force; Leno's and his teammates' tomfoolery on the green amused the large crowds that they drew.
At the end of the run of Mother Goose in 1903, producer Arthur Collins gave a tribute to Leno and presented him, on behalf of the Drury Lane Theatre's management, with an expensive silver dinner service.
"[96] Frustrated at not being accepted as a serious actor, Leno became obsessed with the idea of playing Richard III and other great Shakespearean roles, inundating the actor–manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree with his proposals.
[97] Two days later, he was admitted into Camberwell House Lunatic Asylum, London,[98] where he spent several months under the care of Dr. Savage, who treated Leno with "peace and quiet and a little water colouring".
[100] Upon Leno's release from the institution in October 1903, the press offered much welcoming commentary and speculated as to whether he would appear that year in the Drury Lane pantomime, scheduled to be Humpty Dumpty.
