Bud Flanagan: Movies & Box Office

Bud Flanagan, born Chaim Reuben Weintrop on 14 October 1896 in Whitechapel, London, was one of Britain's most cherished music hall entertainers and comedians of the twentieth century. Of Polish Jewish heritage, his parents Wolf and Yetta Weintrop had fled persecution in the city of Radom only to be tricked by a dishonest ticket agent into travelling to London instead of the New World they had paid to reach. Growing up in a large family over a fish and chip shop and later a barber shop and tobacconist, young Reuben was drawn to the stage from an early age, working as a call boy at the Cambridge Music Hall by the time he was ten and making his debut as a conjurer performing as Fargo, the Boy Wizard, at the London Music Hall in Shoreditch in 1908. Fuelled by an insatiable sense of adventure, he stowed away on a ship at just fourteen years old, sailing to New York, working as a newspaper seller and telegram delivery boy, and harvesting wheat in Fargo, North Dakota, before joining a vaudeville show that toured across the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. His wandering days were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, prompting him to return to Britain in 1915 to enlist under the name Robert Weintrop in the Royal Field Artillery, where he entertained troops with singing and impersonations while serving in France. It was during his military service in Flanders that he first met his future comedy partner Chesney Allen, as well as the anti-Semitic Sergeant-Major Flanagan, whose surname he cheekily adopted as his permanent stage name. Forming the legendary double act Flanagan and Allen in 1926, the duo became fixtures of the British variety circuit, blending gentle humour with catchy melodies in songs like "Underneath the Arches", which Flanagan co-wrote with Reg Connelly, and the wartime favourite "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line." Both also belonged to The Crazy Gang, appearing at the inaugural show of the London Palladium in 1931, and Flanagan was awarded the OBE in 1959 by the Duke of Edinburgh for his contributions to British entertainment. His final recording, the affectionate pastiche "Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?" for Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner's sitcom Dad's Army, was cut just months before his death on 20 October 1968. Married to Anne "Curly" Quinn, daughter of Irish comedian Johnny Quinn, Flanagan was devastated by the death of his only son Buddy from leukaemia in 1956, an event that inspired the establishment of the Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Fund supporting cancer research at the Royal Marsden Hospital.