September 9th 1921 - before pulling into Southampton, England (September 10th), the RMS Olympic made a stop to let some passengers off in Cherbourg, France.
Charlie Chaplin got a small taste of the reception that awaited him home in England after a 9 year absence.
An avalanche of reporters speaking both French and English asked him everything from: Why did you come over? Did you bring your make-up? Are you making films over here? to Are you a Bolshevik? What do you think of Lenin? Is it true you are going to be Knighted?
Charlie Chaplin did not speak French despite living in Switzerland for the last 34 years of his life (1953-1977).
As to the question of Knighthood, it would not occur for another 54 years (March 4th 1975)
Photo #2 British playwright Edward Knoblock crossed the Atlantic with him aboard the RMS Olympic.
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Remembering Stephen Lewis, merchant seamen turned actor and writer, who passed away August 12th, 2015.
Born in Poplar, East London, in 1926, he initially went to sea, before joining Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, where he made his West End debut in The Hostage, by Brendan Behan, in 1958.
He wrote Sparrers Can't Sing, a play performed in broad cockney with significant improvisation, which was adapted as a feature film in 1963.
According to Variety:
"…The film is based on a play that (Joan Littlewood) staged at the Theatre Workshop. She and the author of the play, Stephen Lewis, collaborated on the loose screenplay and Littlewood surrounds herself with most of the Workshop cast. She also operates almost entirely on location in the East End that she knows and clearly loves so well…Much of the dialog, which is rather salty, appears to have been made up off the cuff of the players. This shows up dangerously in the intimate scenes, but gives gusto to others..."
Stephen Lewis later found lifelong fame as Blakey in LWT's On the Buses, on television and in three movie adaptations by Hammer, which went on to be some of the most profitable British feature films of the early 1970s. He wrote 12 episodes of On the Buses with co-star Bob Grant, as well their segment for the 1972 ITV Christmas special, All Star Comedy Carnival, and IMDb lists him as a contributing writer for the anthology series Armchair Theatre (Thames/ITV) and Comedy Playhouse (BBC).
He reprised the character of Blakey in the On the Buses spinoff, Don't Drink the Water (1974-75), with Blakey having retired to Spain with his sister, played by Pat Coombs.
He popped up on British television over the years with the occasional cameo, and appeared in David Croft and Richard Spendlove's Oh Doctor Beeching (1995-97), and in 135 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine.
Unlike Bob Grant, who struggled with the legacy of his On the Buses stardom and subsequent typecasting, with ultimately tragic consequences, Stephen Lewis happily embraced his persona to the very end...and beyond.
(This image: 70s Time Machine. Other Background from IMDb, Variety and The Guardian)
See also:
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Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
The story of Globe Theatre started with William Shakespeare's acting company, Lord Chamberlain's Men.
William Shakespeare (baptized 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was a part-owner or sharer in the company, as well as an actor and resident playwright.
From its inception in 1594 AD, Lord Chamberlain's Men performed at Theatre, a playhouse located in Shoreditch.
However, by 1598, their patrons, including Earl of Southampton, had fallen out of favour with the Queen.
Theatre's landlord, Giles Alleyn, had intentions to cancel the company's lease and tear the building down.
While Alleyn did own the land, he did not own the materials with which the theatre had been built.
So, on 28 December 1598, after leasing a new site in Southwark, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage led the rest of the company of actors, sharers, and volunteers in taking the building down, timber by timber, loading it on to barges, and making their way across Thames.
Working together, the actors built the new theatre as quickly as they could.
The ground on the new site was marshy and prone to flooding, but foundations were built by digging trenches, filling them with limestone, constructing brick walls above stone, and then raising wooden beams on top of that.
A funnel caught rainwater and drained it into ditch surrounding the theatre and down into Thames.
The theatre was 30m in diameter and had 20 sides, giving it its perceived circular shape.
Structure was similar to that of their old theatre, as well as that of the neighbouring bear garden.
The rectangular stage, at 5ft high, projected halfway into the yard and circular galleries.
Pillars were painted to look like Italian marble, sky painted midnight blue, and images of gods overlooked balcony. It could hold up to 3,000 people.
By May 1599, the new theatre was ready to be opened.
Burbage named it Globe after the figure of Hercules carrying the globe on his back — for in like manner, the actors carried Globe's framework on their backs across Thames.
A flag of Hercules with globe was raised above theatre with Latin motto: 'totus mundus agit histrionem' ('all the world's a playhouse').
Shakespeare's plays that were performed there early on included:
Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.
Here, the Lord Chamberlain's Men enjoyed much success and gained the patronage of King James I in 1603, subsequently becoming The King's Men.
During a fateful performance of Henry VIII on 29 June 1613, a cannon announcing the unexpected arrival of the king at the end of Act 1 set fire to the thatched roof, and within an hour, the Globe burned to ground.
Everyone escaped safely, save for one man whose breeches reportedly caught fire. Two different songs had been written about it by the next day.
Globe was rebuilt by February 1614. The company could then afford to decorate it extravagantly, and it had a tiled roof instead of thatched.
However, by this point, Shakespeare's influence had lessened. He was spending more and more time back in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Disaster struck again in 1642 when the Parliament ordered the closure of London theatres.
In 1644-45, Globe was destroyed and the land sold for building.
In 1970, American actor and director, Samuel Wanamaker CBE (born Wattenmacker; 14 June 1919 – 18 December 1993), set up the Shakespeare's Globe Trust to pursue his dream of reconstructing the original Globe Theatre.
For what would be almost the next 30 years, he and his team worked and fought to obtain the permissions, funds, and research necessary for a project of this scope.
Historians, scholars and architects all worked together in their efforts to build the Globe in the same way Lord Chamberlain's Men did, down to the green oak pillars and thatched roof.
Their work and dreams were fulfilled when the new Globe Theatre opened in 1997, one street away from where original stood.
Globe stands today as a living monument to Shakespeare, greatest English playwright, home to productions of his plays and many other new ones every season.
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So back in late 2012, my wife and I auditioned for a local production of No Sex Please, We're British and were both cast. I played the old bank manager, Mr. Bromhead (I used stage makeup lol), and one of my lines referenced a play, George and Margaret, by Gerald Savory. And I did some Internet research and quickly discovered that this is a real play.
It was also around that time I decided to see how Inter-Library Loans worked, and so the very first thing I decided to see if I could find was a copy of this play. And sure enough, it was out there, they found a copy in a university library within the state.
What arrived was this old school "library edition" of the Samuel French script, published and printed in 1938 and long out of print.
Anyway, the lesson was that Inter-Library Loans are amazing and so I started using them a lot. I checked out plays consistently for three and a half years. So I read a whole lot of plays because I was able to check them out for free at the nearby public library.
I'm hoping to start doing that again.
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