Norman Evans (11 June 1901 – 25 November 1962) was an English stage and radio comedian, best remembered for his sketches and programmes entitled "Over the Garden Wall".
Biography
Evans was born in
Rochdale
Rochdale ( ) is a town in Greater Manchester, England, and the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale. In the United Kingdom 2021 Census, 2021 Census, the town had a population of 111,261, compared to 223,773 for the wid ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated ''Lancs'') is a ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Cumbria to the north, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire to the east, Greater Manchester and Merseyside to the south, and the Irish Sea to ...
, and started his working life as a
commercial traveller, while also taking part in amateur dramatic groups. He gained a local reputation for his
after-dinner speeches, and decided to become an entertainer, initially appearing at local functions and
concert parties. In 1934 he was reportedly discovered by fellow Rochdale entertainer
Gracie Fields
Dame Gracie Fields (born Grace Stansfield; 9 January 189827 September 1979) was a British actress, singer and comedian. A star of cinema and music hall, she was one of the top ten film stars in Britain during the 1930s and was considered the h ...
, though in fact he had already been seen by impresario
Oswald Stoll
Sir Oswald Stoll (né Gray; 20 January 1866 – 9 January 1942) was an Australian-born British theatre manager and the co-founder of the Stoll Moss Group theatre company. He also owned Cricklewood Studios and film production company Stoll Pi ...
.
[ He had his first London appearance alongside a young ]Betty Driver
Elizabeth Mary Driver (20 May 1920 – 15 October 2011) was a British actress and singer, best known for her role as Betty Williams in the long-running ITV soap opera ''Coronation Street'', a role she played for 42 years from 1969 to 2011, app ...
, and gained a place on national variety tours, where he was an immediate success.[Roy Hudd and Philip Hindin, ''Roy Hudd's Cavalcade of Variety Acts'', Robson Books, 1998, , p.54-55] According to writer Michael Kilgarriff
Michael Kilgarriff (born 16 June 1937) is a British actor, author and pianist from Brighton. As an actor, he is well known for his rich voice and height. His film and television roles include ''The Dark Crystal'' (1982) as the General, and th ...
, his "broad boisterous comedy and warmth of personality swiftly elevated him to lasting stardom."[Michael Kilgarriff, ''Grace, Beauty and Banjos: Peculiar Lives and Strange Times of Music Hall and Variety Artistes'', Oberon Books, 1998, , p.101]
The act for which he is best remembered was "Over the Garden Wall", in which he played Fanny Fairbottom, a toothless hatchet-faced Lancastrian housewife gossiping over a garden wall. The caricature was reportedly based on his mother.[ The one-sided conversations would embrace local gossip, including scandal about the neighbours and personal medical complaints, including silently mouthing words deemed too rude to be spoken out loud, and accompanied with a range of facial contortions and glances round for supposed eavesdroppers.][
The routine provided the basis for a BBC radio series, ''Over the Garden Wall'' (at first called ''Meet Our Joe''), broadcast in three series, in 1942, 1948, and 1949/50, in which ]Betty Jumel
Betty Jumel (5 May 190114 October 1990) was a British variety hall entertainer and actress.
Early life
Betty Jumel was born Amy Ada Beatrice Grimshaw in Fairhaven, Lytham St Annes, Lancashire in 1901. She was only 10 years old when she made h ...
played the part of his neighbour,[ and for several films including one of the same title in which Jimmy James played the part of Evans' husband. It was also the inspiration for ]Les Dawson
Leslie Dawson (2 February 1931 – 10 June 1993) was an English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and pianist. He was known for his deadpan style, curmudgeonly persona, musical routines, and jokes about his mother-in-law and wife.
Early li ...
and Roy Barraclough
Roy Senior Barraclough (12 July 1935 – 1 June 2017) was an English comic actor. He was best known for his role as Alec Gilroy, the devious, mournful landlord of the Rovers Return in the long-running British TV soap ''Coronation Street'', an ...
's later Cissie and Ada
Cissie and Ada, in full Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Shufflebotham (or Sidebottom),Ada's surname is recorded both as Sidebottom and as Shufflebotham in various sources. ''The Guardian'' records it as Shufflebotham in "The Guide: Hard as Males" (9 ...
characters. Another famous stage sketch was "The Dentist" in which Evans played both patient and dentist, and in which he employed a large screen through which only silhouette
A silhouette (, ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouett ...
s could be seen.[
Evans became a very popular ]pantomime dame
A pantomime dame is a traditional role in British pantomime. It is part of the theatrical tradition of '' travesti'' portrayal of female characters by male actors in drag. Dame characters are often played either in an extremely camp style, or el ...
, considered to be "the greatest... since Dan Leno
George Wild Galvin (20 December 1860 – 31 October 1904), better known by the stage name Dan Leno, was a leading English music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era. He was best known, aside from his music hall a ...
",[Andy Foster and Steve Furst, ''Radio Comedy 1938-1968: A Guide to 30 Years of Wonderful Wireless'', Virgin, 1996, , pp.70-71] and was the only one in that role to receive top billing at the London Palladium
The London Palladium () is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in Soho. The theatre was designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1910. The auditorium holds 2,286 people. Hundreds of stars have played there, many wit ...
. He also toured with a stage show, "Good Evans", and made the first of a successful series of U.S. appearances in New York in 1949, followed by a season at the El Capitan Theatre
El Capitan Theatre is a fully restored movie palace at 6838 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, United States. The theater and adjacent Hollywood Masonic Temple (now known as the El Capitan Entert ...
in Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood ...
the following year and an appearance on the ''Ed Sullivan Show
''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the '' CBS Sunday Nig ...
''.[ He made three appearances in ]Royal Variety Performance
The ''Royal Variety Performance'' is a televised variety show held annually in the United Kingdom to raise money for the Royal Variety Charity (of which King Charles III is life-patron). It is attended by senior members of the British royal ...
s, in 1937, 1947, and 1951.[
In May 1955, Evans lost his right eye in a serious car accident while driving near Preston. The accident was caused after he swerved trying to avoid a black cat.][ His final summer season was at Butlin's Holiday Camp, ]Pwllheli
Pwllheli ( ; ) is a market town and community on the Llŷn Peninsula (), in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It had a population of 4,076 in 2011, which declined slightly to 3,947 in 2021; a large proportion (81%) were Welsh language, Welsh speaking. ...
in 1962. He wrote to Clarkson Rose, another top pantomime dame: "Working in a Butlin theatre is a terrific experience, and although I've not been too well, I've never been happier in my life".
Norman Evans died in November 1962, in Blackpool
Blackpool is a seaside town in Lancashire, England. It is located on the Irish Sea coast of the Fylde peninsula, approximately north of Liverpool and west of Preston, Lancashire, Preston. It is the main settlement in the Borough of Blackpool ...
,[Richard Anthony Baker, ''Old Time Variety: an illustrated history'', Pen & Sword, 2011, , pp.98-99] and is buried in Carleton Cemetery. The headstone of his grave is a low wall built from natural gritstone blocks. His epitaph (preceding birth and death dates) reads "His last garden wall".
Filmography
* '' Demobbed'' (1944)
* '' Under New Management'' (1946)
* '' The Calendar'' (1948)
* ''Over the Garden Wall
''Over the Garden Wall'' is an American animated dark fantasy television miniseries created by Patrick McHale for Cartoon Network. The series centers on two half-brothers who travel through a mysterious forest to find their way home, encount ...
'' (1950)
References
External links
*
Sample of Evans' act1950 film performanceBiography on Rochdale Council website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Evans, Norman
1901 births
1962 deaths
English male comedians
Male actors from Rochdale
Pantomime dames
20th-century English comedians
Comedians from Lancashire