Biography
Born on 2 April 1890 in Helensburgh, Strathclyde, Scotland, and dying on 20 October 1957 in London, England, Jack Buchanan enjoyed a forty-year reign as one of Britain’s foremost stars of musical comedy, revue and film while also directing, producing, managing and choreographing with an easy, disarming manner. Early appearances in amateur productions and provincial music halls preceded his move to the capital, where he began as a chorus boy and understudy. Declared unfit for service when World War I broke out, he acquired dancing skills on his own and took a principal part in the touring company of the West End success Tonight’s The Night in 1915. Two years later came his decisive opportunity when he replaced Jack Hulbert in André Charlot’s revue Bubbly; another Charlot vehicle, A To Z, followed in 1921. There he introduced the enduring favourite “And Her Mother Came Too,” set to music by Ivor Novello and words by Dion Titheradge, sharing the stage with Beatrice Lillie and a youthful Gertrude Lawrence. He next ventured into management with the musical farce Battling Butler at the New Oxford Theatre, then sailed for New York alongside Lillie and Lawrence to join André Charlot’s Revue Of 1924 at the Times Square Theater. The Broadway engagement proved highly successful, and in 1926 he returned in a further Charlot revue, pairing with Lawrence on “A Cup Of Coffee, A Sandwich, And You”; the disc climbed to number 5 and remained his sole American hit. London welcomed him back that same year for a career highlight in Jerome Kern’s Sunny. Elsie Randolph became his steady stage partner in a string of buoyant musicals—That’s A Good Girl, Mr. Whittington, This’ll Make You Whistle—and their final collaboration, It’s Time To Dance, reached the stage in 1943. Additional New York appearances included Wake Up And Dream! opposite Jessie Matthews and Between The Devil with Evelyn Laye. Numbers such as “Who,” “Goodnight Vienna,” “I Think I Can,” “There’s Always Tomorrow,” “Fancy Our Meeting,” “Sweet So And So,” “Weep No More My Baby,” “By Myself” and “I’m In A Dancing Mood” were rendered in his characteristically light, fragile and quintessentially English manner. During the 1931 run of Stand Up And Sing at the London Hippodrome, film producer Herbert Wilcox spotted the very young Anna Neagle and launched her screen career by casting her with Buchanan in Goodnight Vienna. Buchanan’s own motion-picture work had begun in 1917 with the silent Auld Lang Syne, after earlier uncredited extra roles, and continued through comedies, light dramas and farces that included Yes, Mr Brown, Brewster’s Millions and The Gang’s All Here. His first screen musical, Paris, paired him with Corsican actress and singer Irene Bordoni; further entries comprised Monte Carlo, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jeanette MacDonald, together with several filmed versions of his stage triumphs. The 1953 MGM production The Band Wagon united the leading British and American song-and-dance artists when Buchanan joined Fred Astaire; their rendition of “I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan” and the inventive “Triplets” sequence with Nanette Fabray helped make the picture one of the studio’s most celebrated musicals and the summit of Buchanan’s achievements.