Posted on 5th January 2010, here is a Youtube clip of Dennis singing the Song of the Vagabonds from the stage version of The Vagabond King. The still image of him at the end of the clip is interesting. It isn’t one I have seen before and it seems to be an early one judging from the hairstyle.
Some years ago, before my mother died, I was in Ulverston with my wife and we happened to come across the Laurel & Hardy Museum, purely by chance. On entering and paying I said that I was related to someone who had been in a film with Laurel & Hardy. There was a shout from behind the scenes and out popped the late Bill Cubin, the founder of the museum. He immediately asked if it was Dennis King I was related to and he said that he had been hoping to meet a lady he thought was still alive who used to be married to Dennis’s brother. “That’s my mother,” I replied!
In wandering round the museum we found Dennis’s signature in Stan Laurel’s Visitors’ Book although I cannot now remember the date of the entry or where Stan was living at the time.
I gave Bill details for contacting my mother in Birmingham and he did eventually do that, hoping to entice her to go to a meeting of the Sons of the Desert. My mother was pleased to see Bill but she declined the invitation. Luckily Bill did have his picture taken with my mother with both of them wearing the customary fezzes:
My mother told me that I was named after Dennis’s son, John Michael, but with the names switched round I became Michael John.
My first memory of Uncle Dennis is from when I was about 7 or 8. He visited the UK and there was a get-together at his mother and father’s house in Birmingham. I only have a hazy memory but it revolves around a piano with Uncle Dennis by the side of it, singing. I am told that he would have been accompanied on the piano by his sister, my Aunty Marie. That is all I can remember but it obviously made an impression on me.
At some stage I became aware of the scrapbook that my father kept about his brother. I was aware that Dennis was a star but I didn’t see any evidence of that until the fifties when Fra Diavolo was shown at a local cinema – The Alhambra on the Moseley Road in Birmingham.
The main reminder of Dennis when my father was alive was the hamper that arrived at Christmas from him. I pictured it coming from the States but it probably came from a supplier in the UK. It was full of things that we wouldn’t normally have (like tinned tongue!) and it was great fun to unpack and to consume.
I have an idea that Dennis visited my family home twice but I only really remember the last time. It was after my father died. Dennis came in a chauffeur-driven car. He was well dressed, wearing a hat, possibly a bowler. My mother invited him into our front room and he sat by the window almost where I am in the photo above. He commiserated over the loss of his brother, my father, and said how close he was to him when he was growing up, even walking him to infant school in Dennis Road, Moseley, Birmingham. I remember his imposing voice and his bearing and he left a lasting impression on me.
A story that my mother told many times was that Uncle Dennis turned up once unannounced in Birmingham when my family was living in Daisy Farm Road. This was before I was born and will have been during one of Dennis’s performances in London during the 1930s.
He arrived when my father was at work and surprised my mother not least because he was in a white Rolls Royce that belonged to Ivor Novello! I have always assumed that he was chauffeured from London although I suppose it is possible he drove. It must have impressed the neighbours no end!
I have been able to verify that Ivor Novello had a Rolls Royce but not that it was white but I have no reason to doubt my mother’s story.
A Google Image search on “Dennis King” reveals a photograph (and others) from a New York stage performance of The Searching Wind in 1944:
http://www.life.com/image/50491195
Searching on “Dennis King Jr” reveals a photograph (and others) from a stage performance of Kiss Them For Me in 1945:
http://www.life.com/image/50496208
My favourite, however, is this photograph of Dennis King Jr as Dr Hanover in Perry Mason in 1958 (from The Digital Deli website):
I have copied the image from the Digital Deli website into this blog entry only because it requires a lot of page scrolling to find it. I don’t want anyone to miss it!
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has Dennis King Jr’s birth details as 6th June 1921 in Birmingham, England. I must admit that I did not know that, suspecting that he was born in the States. He is recorded as having died on 24th August 1986 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
There are two other interesting items amongst the material sent to me by the New York Public Library (see previous entry).
One of them shows a copy of a portrait of Dennis by an English artist called Miss F. Enid Stoddard. Evidently she also painted the Prince of Wales and Mussolini! The item mentions that “Mr King has been in Chicago since Labor day of 1926 in the part of Villon in ‘The Vagabond King’.” so that dates it. Where is that portrait now, I wonder?
The other, an undated fragment entitled “Notes from luncheon with Dennis King” says:
“King played four weeks of ‘Benjamin Franklin’ through Pennsylvania, down as far as West Virginia. The one and a half hour dramatic lecture is called ‘Go Fly A Kite’ and is based on an enormous amount of research personally done on Franklin by King, who believes him to have been one of the most brilliant men in the history of the U.S.A.”
In 1999 I contacted the New York Public Library via email, having seen that they had material on Dennis. Obligingly, they posted me a bundle of relevant photocopies, all of which was of interest but one document stood out. It was a Players’ Bulletin from the autumn of 1971 that gives a selection of tributes from the Dennis King Memorial Service that took place on May 27th 1971.
Evidently Dennis was the 6th President of the Players from 1965 to 1970. When he stepped down due to ill health he became President Emeritus.
Perhaps it is in the way people talk about someone who has died that you learn things about them that you would not otherwise have known. The account of the Memorial Service for Dennis includes the following:
The Players Club was closed to allow members and staff to attend with friends of the family and the theatre.
Dennis joined the Players in 1943.
The Church was full and that would have pleased Dennis as he abhorred a half-empty house!
George Cooper spoke, Dennis’s oldest friend, who was at the Birmingham Rep. with him.
Dennis’s son, John Michael, sang “Abide With Me”.
Alfred Drake spoke of Dennis as a good companion, the expert pool player, the unique bridge player, the raconteur and the private man.
For Drake, Dennis was associated with elegance.
It is worth reproducing George Melville Cooper’s tribute in full:
I first met Dennis in England in 1914 when we both made our first appearances on the stage as two Footmen in The Return of the Prodigal. We carried on the leading man deposited him on the sofa and then left. We were both at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre – he was the call boy and I was a very junior member of the company.
One night he came to call me for my entrance and, looking over my shoulder into the mirror, he said: “Dennis King, you are going to be a star one day.” We all know how true that statement came to be.
He was a great man who did a wonderful job with his life.
It is comforting to know that there was someone to speak for Dennis from his days in Birmingham before he went to the States.
Calling him ‘Denny’, Peter Turgeon said the following:
He delighted in telling the story of his wife who was living in their home in the country. It was late at night and Dennis was away on tour. Mrs King heard prowlers down by the garage. She leapt out of bed, flung up the window and yelled, “Quick, George … get your gun and let out the dogs!!” The prowlers quickly fled. Later upon his return she recounted the experience to Dennis who in turn asked, “Why did you call out for George?” Mrs King answered, “Why, I never could have frightened anyone away by calling out for Dennis!”
On the opening night of Patriot for Me his son Mike made his way to Dennis’ dressing room after the performance and, in an amazed tone said, “Dad, you didn’t tell me you were going to play it straight!!” (Dennis had just given the best display of transvestism since Julian Eltinge minced across a stage).
In 1969 we were both in a picture written and directed by Gar Kanin. At a bachelor dinner at Jim Cagney’s someone asked Dennis what the part was like. He thought a moment and then answered, “You might liken it to the fart of a medium-sized mosquito!”
I particularly like to hear that Dennis was at James Cagney's!
From the Players present day website I notice the following interesting fact:
Three British actors have served as President of The Players: Dennis King, Lynn Redgrave and Michael Allinson.
Also, with some excitement I see there is a photograph on the Players website of Dennis, with other Presidents (top right), here.
