Fra Diavolo

This is the only fragment in my father’s scrapbook relating to Fra Diavolo, the film that Dennis appeared in with Laurel & Hardy.

There is a rumour in the family that a cousin has a specially taken photograph of Dennis with Laurel & Hardy on the set of the film during a break. He is having an English high tea with them, by all accounts. It was a photograph Dennis sent home to his family in the UK. Perhaps I will never see it!

As a result of putting some photographs of Uncle Dennis on flickr I have been in touch with someone who has a website dedicated to Fra Diavolo. You can find it at:

http://fradiavolo.heliohost.org/ 

You won’t be able to get straight in but you can easily apply for access (saying where you heard about it). The website has a very comprehensive list of Dennis’s film, stage and TV performances which relieves me of the need to do anything similar.

The creator of the Laurel & Hardy website has been following this blog and you will recognise some of his content from here. Via email he made the point to me that Dennis’s performance in Fra Diavolo is the main one he will be remembered for given the enduring popularity of Laurel & Hardy. I have no reason to question that given the evidence from this Youtube video:

Petticoat Fever 1936

Evidently Dennis was back in the UK in 1936 at Daly’s Theatre to appear in Petticoat Fever alongside Jill Esmond, as the cutting above shows. Previously running in New York for 8 months, according to the Daily Mail write-up, Dennis had proved to be “a novelty in the realms of farce”.

Jill Esmond was married to Laurence Olivier at the time. She had met him in 1928 and married him in 1930. Perhaps Dennis and Laurence met. They did have the Birmingham Rep in common, after all, Laurence having joined the company in 1926.

For Dennis, Petticoat Fever was a change from romantic musical comedy.

Of a production in the States, on March 5th 1935, The New York Times said:

Having worn the handsome tights of Richard Bordeaux last year, Dennis King is now wearing the cap and bells in an excellent farce by Mark Reed, "Petticoat Fever," which was played with great agility at the Ritz last evening.

I recall reading that Dennis acquired the UK rights for Petticoat Fever hence the London production but I’ve forgotten the source of this.

The only problem with this account is verifying it. It has proved difficult to find the London engagement in either Dennis’s or Jill Esmond’s biographic material. Could it be that it had a very short run, I wonder? I will continue to search for a separate record of it.

1940s onwards

Although my father’s scrapbook was a great source of interest for me, it did not contain much beyond the 1930s. What was there was undated. I could see that Uncle Dennis got older in the photographs and cuttings but I had no grasp of the nature of his continuing career.

It was only with access to the internet that it became apparent that he continued to work on the stage, on radio and on TV until just before his death in 1971.

The only promotional photograph tucked into the scrapbook was the one displayed above. It must have been sent to the UK by Dennis. On the back it has “Company of ‘Blithe Spirit’” and “Received April 21/42” handwritten on the back.

At sometime in the past I managed to establish that Dennis appeared in Blithe Spirit in 1942 in Chicago playing Charles Condamine. But it has proved difficult to identify the rest of the cast.

A modern day production of Blithe Spirit in Yorkshire describes it thus:

“Sharply witty and savagely funny, Blithe Spirit was Coward’s own favourite play, emerging from his imagination in just five days, and quickly becoming one of his most popular plays setting all manner of British box-office records.”

A Characteristic Pose

A cousin of mine told me that this was a pose that Uncle Dennis used often and that it ran in the family!

On the back of this photo is written, “Dennis King starred in “The Greatest Man Alive”. This dates it to the late 1950s; to an opening night of May 8th 1957, according to the New York Times, which started a review of the play with the words:

PROBABLY Dennis King likes to act. That seems to be the only way to account for his presence in a feeble jest like “The Greatest Man Alive!" which opened at the Ethel Barrymore last evening.

There is no indication of who took this photograph but it is from a batch that appears to have come from a theatrical agent.

Stop Press: A Radio Recording

Dennis with Tallulah Bankhead on The Big Show Radio Programme, February 18th 1951.

At the date of this entry (June 2009), this is a relatively new addition to YouTube and very welcome.

Durable King

A creased and yellowing full-page cutting, dated 1955, from the World-Telegram and Saturday Magazine has the heading:

Durable King

After 39 Years on the Stage, Dennis Retains His Enthusiasm for a Lusty Role

Based on an interview, it was written at a time when Dennis was the “alcoholic dame-crazed Judge Sullivan in Sidney Kingsley’s Lunatics and Lovers at the Broadhurst”.

It provides a few pointers to Dennis’s early life saying that he “got his first professional role in the touring Daddy Longlegs, Gilbert Miller’s first London production”. Also, it says that Dennis was married  to Edith Wright “35 years ago”, i.e. in 1920, just before he decamped to the States.

In the article, Dennis recalls his first New York audience when with John and Ethel Barrymore (the first of John’s four wives) in Claire de Lune. Off-stage, John greeted Dennis with, “I hear you can box” and invited him to have a go at him. In a brief exchange, Dennis says he won John’s respect and friendship with a straight left.

One other piece of information to be gleaned from the article is that Dennis was, at the time, “rated the best tennis player on the rolls of the Actor’s Equity Association”!

The photograph used above comes from the cutting described in this entry.

One of my Favourites …

This photograph, again showing signs of having been carried round in a wallet, is one of my favourites because it was sent by Dennis to his parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Dated July 24th, 1937, and postmarked Central City, Colorado, it carries the message: “ Not really grey! As ‘Dr Rank’ in ‘A Doll’s House’ by Ibsen.”