Some English Comic Actors of To-day

An Account of the Misanthropic Robey and His Most Conspicuous Rivals on the Comic Stage

HUGH WALPOLE

WHEN, a hundred years ago and more, Hazlitt wrote about the English Comic Actors, he had, it seems to us now, a magnificent field to choose from. How our mouths water over some of the performances he describes! How splendid some of the Bob Acres, Peter Teazles, Tony Lumpkins, Malvolios and Falstaffs must have been. Would they seem so to us if we could see them now? Would not we name them exaggerated, artificial, fustian, noisy? Perhaps not—but the old times are always better than our own, and the critic of 2020 may very possibly be exclaiming on platinum, or whatever the literary fodder of that day may be, for the vanished Charles * Wyndhams and Cyril Maudes of the Nineteen Hundred and Twenties.

In fact at this moment in the honourable year of 1921 we are, here in London, sadly in need of a great Comic. Actor. Or, to put it quite accurately, we have great comic actors but they are not, just now, to be found on the legitimate stage. The great comic actors in London at the moment are Sir Harry Lauder, George Robey, Leslie Henson, Nelson Keys and W. H. Berry. I do not mean to say of course that there is no fine comic acting on the legitimate stage. Cyril Maude has neglected for the moment his more delicate art in favour of a popular clowning demonstration, but Gerald Du Maurier is a great comedy actor, certainly the greatest of our time. This is not recognised universally at the moment because of the ease with which he acts: people say that he is then simply himself (as though that were an easy thing for anybody to be!). But one day some critic will come along and give us a history of Du Maurier parts showing how subtly and brilliantly one has been differentiated from the other.

We have many fine comedy actors—C. V. France is one, Holman Clark another, Arthur Whitby a third, Charles Hawtrey of course a fourth, and within the>last year or two there have been brilliant recruits to the stage of comedy in Ernest Thesiger, J. R. Roberts (whose performance in The New Morality the other day was an absolute masterpiece) and others. But a fine comedy actor is not of necessity a fine comic actor—the two arts are quite distinct and apart. Our actors in Comedy have not, with the definite exception of Ernest Thesiger, very strongly-marked personalities. I do not mean that Holman Clark or Arthur Whitby would not be instantly recognised the moment they stepped out before the London footlights; of course they would be. But they are all men in the true line of nature; they have no fantasy nor oddity in their persons. They are all of them humans whom one might meet at dinner any night of the week and not suspect any peculiarity in them.

The Comic Actor

NOW a great Comic actor is a man made a little askew. In America Frank Tinney and Raymond Hitchcock are such men. They exaggerate the normalities of other men. Comedy actors are there to give us the truth about life as Irene Vanbrugh and Athene Seyler (our only two great comedy actresses now that Marie Tempest has deserted us and Marie Lohr has taken to Snaith and Sardou) give it to us. But the men of Hazlitt's day plainly exaggerated life, driving it into another plane which ordinary mortals might sigh for with envy but should never attain. See Arthur Whitby as the clergyman in Mary Rose and you have a little cameo of truth that no one who has ever seen it will forget, but you might know his clergyman—you have indeed known him. But outside your dreams you have never known George Robey or Leslie Henson.

You do not wish to know them. You go to watch them as you go to the Zoo or the Opening of Parliament. They are abnormal. For this reason I am not quite right in including Sir Harry Lauder in my list of great comic actors. He is by far the greatest artist of them all, but the sketches he gives you are closely allied to real life, are indeed almost unbearable because of their poignant veracity.

Lauder's sniff—his wag of the kilt, his sudden opening of the eyes to stare at you like a bland baby who is doubtful of your honesty, his little chuckle of reassurance, his roaring laugh as he finally resorts to the things in which he knows that he can believe, his whisky, his girl and his tobacco, the real things of life, these revelations of his personality are too true and normal to make him a comic actor. He has the Raeburn, not the Hogarth touch.

George Robey is nearer Hogarth than any other actor of our time. Robey's reign, an immensely long and unfaltering one, seems now at last to be a little on the wane. Men do not seem to say as confidently as they once did: "We must go and see George Robey". They say—"What's Robey in? . . . Not much of a show, is it?"

He reached his top note in a War Revue called I fancy Zig-Zag at the Hippodrome. These War Revues were something very peculiar and in a way very tragic; they had a personality of feverish unbalanced excitement and abnormality that no entertainment has had I should imagine since the Waterloo Ball at Brussels and that no entertainment will have for many more years to come (I hope). It was odd and a little sinister to watch Robey with his cold and almost cruel personality conducting these revels. He effected it with wonderful verve and force; his energy is one of the most marvellous things about him. He is a stupendous worker, never slackens, never disappoints his audience by giving them a tame and half vitalized show—and there is no one on the stage to-day who has so obvious a contempt for his fellow beings.

He knows his job completely; he has been given, year after year, the poorest of poor material and always manages to make something out of it. His look of outraged propriety with its "Shur-up!" is a part of the national language. His eyebrows and his hat are his eternal gift to his countrymen—and yet he hates us all! I have sometimes fancied that it is this same contempt that has so much to do with his popularity. All of us know someone for whom we should like to feel contempt but can't —Robey shows us how. Supreme self-confidence, unfaltering arrogance; never failing vitality, these are his properties. Tenderness is a mood that he does not know, his humour is sardonic and hard; his technique is superb but rolls backwards and forwards with the relentless mechanism of the gates of life.

The poverty of the material on which he has to work is responsible I fancy for his recent decline in popularity. The affair "Johnny Jones" in which he has been appearing at the Alhambra is of so gross an imbecility that it is incredible that people should be found even to sleep through it. His personality has not yet been properly exploited, someone should write a part for him as St. Peter with the keys of Heaven. There's no one alive to-day who could deny the applicants with so ferocious and sardonic a pleasure.

Robey's Rivals

THE three men who are at this immediate moment his most prominent rivals are Nelson Keys, Leslie Henson, and W. H. Berry.

This year of 1921 may be said to be a "Nelson Keys" year just as 1917 and '18 were "Robey" years and 1918 and 1919 "Berry" years. Nelson Keys has taken his time. He seems to have arrived at the very top of his profession some years ago at the Palace Theatre when an ill-judged appearance at the Alhambra on a stage far too big for him and under inefficient management made people wonder for a moment how they had seen any talent in him at all. They wonder no longer. Mr. Cochran's handling of him at the Pavilion has been quite masterly.

Mr. Cochran, who is by far the greatest producer of eccentricities (he is no good at all when he has to deal with normalities) that we have had for many years, saw. that for the full presentation of Nelson Keys' gifts three things were necessary, Nelson Keys' own liberty, no intelligent competition and a stupid confrere. In London, Paris and New York he fulfilled all these conditions. I wish no harm to Mr. Hugh Wakefield when I say that his duties in the Pavilion Revue are somewhat inadequately performed. That is not his fault. He has not the daring impertinent personality and he wears his clothes as shabbily as I do. Of course Mr. Cochran knows this perfectly well. By the shabbiness of Mr. Wakefield is the exquisite smartness of Nelson Keys all the more strongly emphasized. On the same principle the entertainment when Nelson Keys is not there is dreary beyond words and the inclusion of M. Max from Paris in the last act of Andromaque (Ye Gods! Talk of "panem et circenses!") did not make it less dreary. One longs, one aches for Nelson Keys. It follows that when he arrives, no matter what his disguise may be—German, Spanish, Japanese or Betting Tout—we greet him with howls of pleasure. What he gives us is something quite marvellously finished and complete.

When he has presented us with his Japanese Juggler we want to wrap it up very carefully, carry it home and put it on our own mantelpiece as we would a fine piece of Ming. His delicacy is the delicacy of the artist in petto. If Lauder is the Raeburn and Robey the Hogarth of our stage, then there is something not entirely false in comparing the art of Nelson Keys with the Tailpieces of Bewick. Nor does his cleverness lie mainly, as some people suppose, in the brilliance of his various disguises.

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The best thing, in my opinion, that he has ever done was his sketch of a gentleman, drunk, but not too drunk, who is searching for a cab to take him home. An old theme this, but in Nelson Keys' hands or rather feet (because there is a very beautiful dance attached to it) it is a thing of finished genius. No step, no movement of body or hands but is needed exactly at that place and exactly in that time to fulfill the picture. And when the time has come to stop, he stops ....

Very far from this finished artistry is the talent of Leslie Henson. Leslie Henson is a.droll—that is he owes everything to his physical appearance and his vitality. He is the most restless figure on the British stage and also one of the most competent. His competence is not, as it is with George Robey, the result of an iron determination to get there— Leslie Henson is of course glad that he has got there, but I imagine that he would work with absolute thoroughness at whatever he had to do whether there were a public to watch him or no. Nor is it as it must be with Nelson Keys, a real artist's passion for completing in its final detail the beauty of the sketch upon which he is working. I do not think that Leslie Henson cares very much for Beauty—what he is after is Fun.

With his first onrush he seems to say to us: "Now here you have a rather dull collection of Chorus girls and young Tenors and an ass of a plot. Do let me see if I can't bring a little fun into it. I'm sure I can if I'm allowed to throw a few cushions about and pretend that this sofa is a motor car and myself an apoplectic general who can't get the damn thing to go." He is permitted of course, and the fun comes. He has, I am convinced, no principle in life beyond this; nevertheless his little sketches of the aforesaid general, of the terrified subaltern, of the bibulous sergeant-major, are admirably finished in their own way. He should be able, I fancy, to make a strong impression in pathetic parts, but this he has never, so far as I know, attempted. He bears a strong resemblance to one of the greatest actors of our time, the late Jimmie Welch, whose pathos was so much finer and surer than his humour.

There is finally W. H. Berry. I find it more difficult to write of Berry than of the others because of a violent prejudice in his favour. Thisprejudice is based very largely on a feeling (probably false) that he badly needs looking after. The other actors named in this little essay show no signs of weakness, nor do any of them wish for a closer acquaintance with their audience. Berry's stage is one long bewilderment; he is pushed into situations by younger, more scornful souls, looks about him, sings a little, dances a little, refuses to be discouraged but does beg the audience to tell him, out of their superior wisdom, what he is to do. Moreover, however tiresome his situation may be, he bears no malice against anyone. He is sure that no one means any harm against him. He has quite a good opinion of himself: he is fond of asserting his dignity. He is stout now and middle-aged, but he sees, when he looks around him, no one better than himself. He likes women—especially young women—and is sure that women like him. He is a trifle vain about his physical appearance and delights in gay waistcoats and large buttonholes. In fact he is very much of a Dog, but a bewildered Dog with something closely akin to the White Knight in "Alice"!

How can this trustful bewildered creature not appeal to us, especially when he sings delightfully,dances enchantinglyand has the jolliest horse-laugh of anyone in England. He again has been of late badly served with his material. The musical adaption of Pinero's "Boy" was done with skill and was excellently suited to him. Since then the things he has had to do have been for the most part vain repetitions. He is a fine artist, a most lovable personality. Indeed of the men whom I have named here he is the only one who attaches one's affections. May it be many years before he ceases to be presented to us in his latest embarrassment!