Biography
Bud Flanagan, born Reuben Weintrop (also known as Robert Winthrop) on 14 October 1896 in Whitechapel, London, England, and who passed away on 20 October 1968 in Kingston, Surrey, England, partnered with Chesney Allen, born William Ernest Allen on 5 April 1896 in London, England, and deceased on 13 November 1982 in Midhurst, Sussex, England. Together they ranked among Britain’s most cherished comedy-singing acts throughout the peak years of the 1930s and 1940s. Allen supplied the straight-man foil, projecting a polished, precisely dressed persona topped by a trilby, whereas Flanagan, the comic, appeared in an oversized, threadbare fur coat paired with a worn straw hat. As the offspring of Polish Jewish refugees, Flanagan secured employment at age ten as a call boy at the Cambridge Music Hall and delivered his debut stage turn at the London Music Hall in 1908, performing as the conjuror Fargo, the Boy Wizard. After prevailing in vocal contests backed by music-hall favourite Dora Lyric, the youngster resolved to head for America; at fourteen he was scrubbing dishes aboard the S.S. Majestic en route to New York. There he took jobs as a Western Union courier, newspaper seller and prizefighter billed as “Luke McGlook from England,” before teaming with Dale Burgess for a vaudeville double act that travelled across the USA and reached Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Returning to England shortly after World War I began, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery, encountered Chesney Allen fleetingly while stationed in northern France, and adopted his eventual stage name from a notably unpleasant, anti-Semitic sergeant-major named Flanagan. Demobilised in 1919, he collaborated with assorted partners and briefly drove a taxi in the early 1920s before replacing Stan Stanford as Chesney Allen’s associate in Florrie Forde’s revue and pantomime troupe in 1924.
Allen, whose father worked as a master builder, had been apprenticed to a solicitor before choosing the stage. Besides appearing in Forde’s productions he also served as her manager. When Forde elected to retire, the pair initially planned to pursue their primary ambition of becoming bookmakers, yet they accepted D.J. Clarke’s invitation for a week’s variety booking at the Argyle Theatre in Birkenhead in January 1931. Their reception proved strong enough—especially their handling of Flanagan’s own number “Underneath The Arches”—to earn immediate engagements at the Holborn Empire and the London Palladium. They returned to the Palladium for their inaugural Royal Variety Performance in 1932; Flanagan’s spontaneous call for “three cheers” for King George V and Queen Mary at the close established his enduring reputation as a fondly regarded “court jester.” Sharing that bill were the comic pair Nervo and Knox, whose later joint appearances with Flanagan and Allen, Eddie Gray, Caryll and Mundy, and Naughton and Gold during the Palladium’s Crazy Month revues gave rise to the celebrated Crazy Gang. The line-up shrank to seven when Billy Caryll suffered a fatal leg injury. Throughout the 1930s, while touring variety circuits and mounting their own vehicles such as Give Me A Ring, Happy Returns, Life Begins At Oxford Circus and Swing Is In The Air, Flanagan and Allen also featured—though usually billed individually—within the Crazy Gang’s popular revues Round About Regent Street, O-Kay For Sound, London Rhapsody, These Foolish Things and The Little Dog Laughed (1939). During World War II they performed for the troops under ENSA auspices in the revues Top Of The World, Black Vanities and Hi-Di-Hi, and continued their screen career in a string of comedy features occasionally punctuated by songs. The sequence, launched in the 1930s with A Fire Has Been Arranged, Underneath The Arches, Okay For Sound, Alf’s Button Afloat and The Frozen Limit, extended into the early 1940s with Gasbags, We’ll Smile Again, Theatre Royal, Here Comes The Sun and Dreaming (1944).
Chesney Allen’s deteriorating health ended the celebrated partnership in 1946; that same year Flanagan appeared in Robert Nesbitt’s revue The Night And The Laughter before rejoining the reconstituted Crazy Gang in 1947 for Together Again at the Victoria Palace. The production ran more than two years, and comparable later shows—Knights Of Madness, Ring Out The Bells, Jokers Wild, These Foolish Kings and Clown Jewels (1959)—likewise enjoyed lengthy runs that kept the theatre continuously occupied through the 1950s. In the final of those revues Flanagan premiered Ralph Reader’s “Strollin’,” an ideal complement to the catalogue of songs forever linked with Flanagan and Allen: “The Umbrella Man,” “Run, Rabbit, Run,” “Home Town,” “Hey, Neighbour,” “We’re Gonna Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line,” “Dreaming,” “Forget-Me-Not Lane,” “Music, Maestro, Please,” “Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones,” “On The Outside Looking In,” “The Oi Song” and, inevitably, “Underneath The Arches.”
Flanagan was awarded the OBE in 1959; after the Crazy Gang’s valedictory production Young In Heart closed in 1962 he devoted himself chiefly to his bookmaking and ancillary business concerns. Nevertheless, in 1968 he agreed to record Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner’s “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler” for the opening titles of the new BBC sitcom Dad’s Army. Although he died only weeks after the first episode aired, his voice remains audible in subsequent repeats. Following his own early withdrawal from performing, Chesney Allen became managing director of a theatrical and variety agency and briefly served as the Crazy Gang’s manager. He rejoined Flanagan for two further films, Life Is A Circus and Dunkirk, in 1958, and delivered a nostalgic turn at the 1980 Royal Variety Performance. He also participated in the cast recording of Underneath The Arches, the musical tribute to Flanagan and Allen that starred Roy Hudd as Flanagan and Christopher Timothy as Allen and opened at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre in 1982.
Allen, whose father worked as a master builder, had been apprenticed to a solicitor before choosing the stage. Besides appearing in Forde’s productions he also served as her manager. When Forde elected to retire, the pair initially planned to pursue their primary ambition of becoming bookmakers, yet they accepted D.J. Clarke’s invitation for a week’s variety booking at the Argyle Theatre in Birkenhead in January 1931. Their reception proved strong enough—especially their handling of Flanagan’s own number “Underneath The Arches”—to earn immediate engagements at the Holborn Empire and the London Palladium. They returned to the Palladium for their inaugural Royal Variety Performance in 1932; Flanagan’s spontaneous call for “three cheers” for King George V and Queen Mary at the close established his enduring reputation as a fondly regarded “court jester.” Sharing that bill were the comic pair Nervo and Knox, whose later joint appearances with Flanagan and Allen, Eddie Gray, Caryll and Mundy, and Naughton and Gold during the Palladium’s Crazy Month revues gave rise to the celebrated Crazy Gang. The line-up shrank to seven when Billy Caryll suffered a fatal leg injury. Throughout the 1930s, while touring variety circuits and mounting their own vehicles such as Give Me A Ring, Happy Returns, Life Begins At Oxford Circus and Swing Is In The Air, Flanagan and Allen also featured—though usually billed individually—within the Crazy Gang’s popular revues Round About Regent Street, O-Kay For Sound, London Rhapsody, These Foolish Things and The Little Dog Laughed (1939). During World War II they performed for the troops under ENSA auspices in the revues Top Of The World, Black Vanities and Hi-Di-Hi, and continued their screen career in a string of comedy features occasionally punctuated by songs. The sequence, launched in the 1930s with A Fire Has Been Arranged, Underneath The Arches, Okay For Sound, Alf’s Button Afloat and The Frozen Limit, extended into the early 1940s with Gasbags, We’ll Smile Again, Theatre Royal, Here Comes The Sun and Dreaming (1944).
Chesney Allen’s deteriorating health ended the celebrated partnership in 1946; that same year Flanagan appeared in Robert Nesbitt’s revue The Night And The Laughter before rejoining the reconstituted Crazy Gang in 1947 for Together Again at the Victoria Palace. The production ran more than two years, and comparable later shows—Knights Of Madness, Ring Out The Bells, Jokers Wild, These Foolish Kings and Clown Jewels (1959)—likewise enjoyed lengthy runs that kept the theatre continuously occupied through the 1950s. In the final of those revues Flanagan premiered Ralph Reader’s “Strollin’,” an ideal complement to the catalogue of songs forever linked with Flanagan and Allen: “The Umbrella Man,” “Run, Rabbit, Run,” “Home Town,” “Hey, Neighbour,” “We’re Gonna Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line,” “Dreaming,” “Forget-Me-Not Lane,” “Music, Maestro, Please,” “Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones,” “On The Outside Looking In,” “The Oi Song” and, inevitably, “Underneath The Arches.”
Flanagan was awarded the OBE in 1959; after the Crazy Gang’s valedictory production Young In Heart closed in 1962 he devoted himself chiefly to his bookmaking and ancillary business concerns. Nevertheless, in 1968 he agreed to record Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner’s “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler” for the opening titles of the new BBC sitcom Dad’s Army. Although he died only weeks after the first episode aired, his voice remains audible in subsequent repeats. Following his own early withdrawal from performing, Chesney Allen became managing director of a theatrical and variety agency and briefly served as the Crazy Gang’s manager. He rejoined Flanagan for two further films, Life Is A Circus and Dunkirk, in 1958, and delivered a nostalgic turn at the 1980 Royal Variety Performance. He also participated in the cast recording of Underneath The Arches, the musical tribute to Flanagan and Allen that starred Roy Hudd as Flanagan and Christopher Timothy as Allen and opened at London’s Prince of Wales Theatre in 1982.
Albums
