Biography
Born on 19 August 1893 in Richmond, Yorkshire, Thomas Charles Arnold died in London on 2 February 1969. For decades he ranked among the leading producers and managers of musicals and other opulent spectacles across the West End and provincial theatres. While still under thirty he took revues such as The Showbox and The Vanity Box on tour, along with Tom Arnold’s Circus and assorted variety bills, before staging Folies Bergere at the London Palladium in 1925. Between that year and the close of the 1930s he mounted musicals, revues and mixed bills at an extraordinary pace both at home and in South Africa and Australia, among them Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s One Dam Thing After Another, Charles B. Cochran and Noël Coward’s This Year Of Grace!, Vivian Ellis and A.P. Herbert’s Streamline, Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, and the hit Balalaika by Eric Maschwitz, George Posford and Bernard Grun.
In 1938 Arnold produced Henry V at Drury Lane, casting Ivor Novello in the title role. The partnership continued with a series of Novello musicals: The Dancing Years, first seen in the West End in 1939, followed by its regional tour and the 1942 revival; Arc De Triomphe (1943); Perchance To Dream (1945); King’s Rhapsody (1949); and Gay’s The Word (1951), which starred Cicely Courtneidge. Earlier he had overseen several of her vehicles, including Clowns In Clover, Full Swing, Something In The Air and Under The Counter.
Maintaining his habit of moving between contrasting fields of entertainment, Arnold presented Noël Coward’s unconventional revue-musical Ace Of Clubs in the early 1950s while also mounting large-scale ice shows such as Rose Marie On Ice at Harringay and Dick Whittington On Ice at Wembley, together with the customary Christmas pantomimes. He had already launched Tom Arnold’s Harringay Circus Annual in December 1947 and Latin Quarter at the London Casino in 1949. Throughout the remainder of the decade he balanced straight drama with other ventures, among them the Moscow State Circus.
August 1960 saw him revive Rose Marie once more at the Victoria Palace, this time with David Whitfield heading the cast. Three new musicals followed: the traditional Pickwick (1963) and Our Man Crichton (1964), plus the more ambitious Maggie May written by Lionel Bart and Alun Owen. He also arranged the West End transfer of the Broadway success Little Me, which provided comedian Bruce Forsyth with a prominent showcase. No further large-scale musical productions appeared after these, although Arnold maintained his yearly spectacles and received the OBE only weeks before his death in 1969.
His son, Thomas Richard Arnold, born in London on 25 January 1947, likewise entered theatrical management after schooling in Switzerland and at Pembroke College, Oxford. His credits encompassed ice pantomimes at Wembley Arena, West End engagements and touring productions featuring Danny La Rue, and stagings of The King And I, The Sunshine Boys and Peter Pan. Elected a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1974, he was knighted in 1990.
In 1938 Arnold produced Henry V at Drury Lane, casting Ivor Novello in the title role. The partnership continued with a series of Novello musicals: The Dancing Years, first seen in the West End in 1939, followed by its regional tour and the 1942 revival; Arc De Triomphe (1943); Perchance To Dream (1945); King’s Rhapsody (1949); and Gay’s The Word (1951), which starred Cicely Courtneidge. Earlier he had overseen several of her vehicles, including Clowns In Clover, Full Swing, Something In The Air and Under The Counter.
Maintaining his habit of moving between contrasting fields of entertainment, Arnold presented Noël Coward’s unconventional revue-musical Ace Of Clubs in the early 1950s while also mounting large-scale ice shows such as Rose Marie On Ice at Harringay and Dick Whittington On Ice at Wembley, together with the customary Christmas pantomimes. He had already launched Tom Arnold’s Harringay Circus Annual in December 1947 and Latin Quarter at the London Casino in 1949. Throughout the remainder of the decade he balanced straight drama with other ventures, among them the Moscow State Circus.
August 1960 saw him revive Rose Marie once more at the Victoria Palace, this time with David Whitfield heading the cast. Three new musicals followed: the traditional Pickwick (1963) and Our Man Crichton (1964), plus the more ambitious Maggie May written by Lionel Bart and Alun Owen. He also arranged the West End transfer of the Broadway success Little Me, which provided comedian Bruce Forsyth with a prominent showcase. No further large-scale musical productions appeared after these, although Arnold maintained his yearly spectacles and received the OBE only weeks before his death in 1969.
His son, Thomas Richard Arnold, born in London on 25 January 1947, likewise entered theatrical management after schooling in Switzerland and at Pembroke College, Oxford. His credits encompassed ice pantomimes at Wembley Arena, West End engagements and touring productions featuring Danny La Rue, and stagings of The King And I, The Sunshine Boys and Peter Pan. Elected a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1974, he was knighted in 1990.
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