I remember Old Mother Riley. The films used to be on TV quite often many years ago. There again, so did George Formby! At one time Gracie Fields was the highest paid performer in the world!
Old Mother Riley Page 2
Robbi,
You won't get a reply from Tim. He had a hissy fit a few weeks ago and did a flounce !
I'm with you.
My daughters wouldn't give Old Mother Riley the time of day but then, they rate Jimmy Carr so shows the extent of their comedic knowledge !
Welcome by the way.
Quote: fasty @ December 10 2011, 5:38 AM GMTCoincidently last week I stumped a workmate with my Mr Pastry impression too.
I hope you got arrested for it.
'You won't get a reply from Tim. He had a hissy fit a few weeks ago and did a flounce !'
I realised that, but I simply could not allow such a waspishly vituperative post to go unanswered.
Matters of personal taste are of course everyone's right but this bad-tempered diatribe flew in the face of matters of FACT, as my reply briefly demonstrates.
One of the dangers of the internet in general is that people can publish all kinds of misinformed tosh without checks or balances. But equally, those in possession of sound facts do have the right to reply.
So .. a couple more facts.
One reviewer described Old Mother Riley as 'the champion of the underdog, a hater of shams, a Valkyrie of the back streets.' And the comedian Charlie Chester said 'surely, Arthur was the greatest of us all.'
I don't think the reputation of the great Arthur Lucan has much to fear from Tim's 'hissy fit.'
Quote: Tim Walker @ December 10 2011, 10:25 AM GMTOld Mother Riley was awful, desperately unfunny. It had negligible comedic nor cultural merit - which is why you never hear it being discussed or referenced by comedians or writers as a source of inspiration. The central performance was hackneyed and the writing vague to the point of being almost non-existent.
It was comedy founded on a single (erroneous) premise, namely that a man dressed as a woman is inherently funny. This is a particularly British delusion (see men raising money for Comic Relief, stag nights, British soldiers dicking about in revue shows), which probably points to some deep underlying character flaw in our national psyche. At its best this delusion produced the least-funny sketches in Monty Python, plus Dame Edna and Les Dawson/Roy Barraclough (Cissie & Ada). At its worst, Mrs Brown's Boys and the "lay-dees" in Little Britain.
Fortunately the Goons and, later, the emergence of the new post-war wave of comedy writers (notably Galton & Simpson) confined trash like Old Mother Riley to the history books. Old Mother Riley was always 'old hat' - there never really was a time when it was considered 'new hat'. It was derided even in its day. When the last remaining comics of the day bemoaned the death of music hall, Old Mother Riley was not what they meant.
But don't take my word for it, try sitting through 10 minutes of this without feeling the lids of your eyes become heavy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5k7sydsUs
Disturbing and faintly nasty? Definitely. Funny? Definitely not.
The Alan Plater play is 'On Your Way Riley'.
I played Arthur in it at the Theatre Royal, York giving 'a bravura performance' according to the Guardian.
Well, if I don't blow my trumpet nobody else will.
Old Mother Riley was sublimely funny with the right script but (obviously) less funny with a 'less right' script.
Arthur Lucan, whose bones moved Old Mother Riley around, was a comedy dynamo and a consummate comedy performer.
To say or think differently is to disrespect one of our greatest comedy legends.
Advance Notice
Arthur Lucan - Old Mother Riley
A one-day conference celebrating the Life and Films of Arthur Lucan
and the centenary of his marriage to Kitty McShane
SATURDAY 12 OCTOBER 2013
LONDON CINEMA MUSEUM
www.cinemamuseum.org.uk
talks, discussions, exhibitions, film screenings
Speakers will include
Dr Anthony Slide
Prof. Jeffrey Richards
Prof. Steven Fielding
and Dr Robert Kenny
author of a forthcoming study, The Man who was Old Mother Riley
for further information contact Robert Kenny rvk2@le.ac.uk
Couldn't stand Old Mother Riley, but there are some good Kitty McShane stories, she was meant to be a right bitch by all accounts. Still it doesn't make up for the fact that OMR was about as funny as a fart in a spacesuit
Today, large numbers of exceptionally intelligent and well-informed people disagree with your view of Arthur Lucan.
Add that to the MILLIONS who adored him in his own day, and ask yourself, not what is the matter with Arthur, but what is the matter with you....???
Millions of people want to bring back hanging. Ask yourself not what you can do for comedy but what comedy has done to you. I blame Lucan for Mrs Brown and other unspeakable crimes....
Being from Hull I know of Old mother Riley, I used to go to the Skeltons cafe in Hull, which used to be the theartre in which he died, they used to be loads of memorabilia in there, I think it's now a Cooplands bakers, I haven't been in for years, so don't know weather it's all still there, I think I'll check it out next time I go into Town.
Are you telling me that Old Mother Riley was really a man?
Quote: beaky @ March 16 2013, 2:23 PM GMTAre you telling me that Old Mother Riley was really a man?
Kind of. He'd had the op, but it was in its infancy...
OUT NOW!!!
THE MAN WHO WAS OLD MOTHER RILEY:
THE LIVES AND FILMS OF ARTHUR LUCAN AND KITTY MCSHANE by Robert V. Kenny
Foreword by Anthony Slide
See it here; http://www.bearmanormedia.com/index.php?route=product%2Fproduct&filter_name=old+mother+riley&product_id=794
or on Amazon
LONDON CINEMA MUSEUM,2 Dugard Way (off Renfrew Road)London SE11 4TH
BOOK LAUNCH of "The Man Who Was Old Mother Riley" by Robert Kenny
Fri 31 Oct 2014, 19:30 ยท
http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/2014/book-launch-of-the-man-who-was-old-mother-riley-by-robert-kenny/