a ·
b ·
c ·
d ·
e ·
f ·
g ·
h ·
i ·
j ·
k ·
l ·
m ·
n ·
o ·
p ·
q ·
r ·
s ·
t ·
u ·
v ·
w ·
x ·
y ·
z ·
home
CRAZY GANG
"Well stripe me pink!"
Almost as bad - but not quite - as never being able to the capture the magic of great artistes on film is the ability to only just capture their magic on film but not really. Where we would love to see a full length variety showcase in colour of legendary stars such as Norman Evans, Nat Jacklin, Frank Randall or high-tide Chic Murray or Francie and Josie, what we get instead are grainy, black and white, out-of-context and frankly baffling extracts of said stars seen only on Looks Familiar or Attic Archives. Never was this more true than for the Crazy Gang whose powers of comedy were almost too great for one planet to hold.
Still, pointless hyperbole aside there are some remnants of the work of Flanagan and Allen, Nervo and Knox, Gold and Naughton and co-opted (although not 'official' member who eventually stood in for the retired Ches Allen) Monsewer Eddie Gray en masse that allow us to at least glimpse what those lucky people of The Good Old Days got to watch down the Victoria Palace or Metropolitan, Edgware Road; pranks, japes, jokes, routines, sketches and songs that some of us would happily leave penicillin behind to catch a glimpse of.
Live performance was their tremendous forte of course and stories abound about their uproarious performances. Denis Norden recalls the Gang handing out hot dogs to the audience during a performance of one of their variety shows, Spike Milligan remembered how they would often stand in the queue for their own show and stage fights amongst themselves before sitting in the stalls and loudly heckling the rest of the bill before being thrown out in time for them to do their spot. And Roger Lewis, in his magisterial tome The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers, recounts how the Gang booked the entire junior chorus of the Italia Conti Stage School to tap dance away in the offices of some poor sap who annoyed one of them just enough to warrant special attention. But due to their very nature nothing remains of these performances other than tatty overpriced e-bay items. Television came too late and if it weren't for the theme tune to Dad's Army, a loooooooooong forgotten TV showcase from 1953 and the dubious delights of Royal Variety Show couplings of Roy Hudd and Christopher Timothy or Bernie Winters and Leslie Crowther, then telly land might have never known them.
Strangely enough though, it is thanks only to that oft-criticised variety hybrid that is the Royal Command Performance that we have some proper stage footage of the Gang at their best. We see a post-war Palladium stage set as an upmarket enclosure at Ascot and who should emerge from the monochrome mist Stage Right but the boys themselves (this time sans the Monsewer) in ridiculously overblown drag. Charlie Naughton (our favourite, as it happens) steps forward and sings in his lovely gruff way; "A jockey in his riding things, said do you like the sport of kings, I shyly smile and said of course, so he got a groom to hold his horse!". Later Bud Flanagan in fur-trimmed majesty, croaked: "A chap I know in Tattersall's, talks and awful lot... and calls, those gentlemen who lay the odds, a sanguinely bunch of.snobs!" The added bonus to that verse being the ever-delightful skill of changing that double-entendre at the last minute. We love that.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with why we asked you all here today since what we're interested in here is the film career of the boys themselves. In various forms the Gang appeared in a variety of films but probably the first would have the original comedy version of ALF'S BUTTON which introduced the cinema-going universe to Nervo and Knox in 1930. But let's cut to the chase. The high-tide of Crazy Gang pictures was of course ALF'S BUTTON AFLOAT. Essentially the same as the former but on a boat it also starred Alistair Sim in what must have been his first proper screen appearance (apart from a frankly scary song in The Big Noise about being 'a great big businessman'). Pretty well documented in Creamguide (Films) both during our fantastically unsuccessful Channel 5 campaign and in the TVC Top 100 Films, all we need to say here is that it's brilliant.
Still and all the Gang did pop up elsewhere. In GASBAGS the pre-war fancy of Alf's Button was replaced by wartime shenanigans as the Gang drop into Germany to send up those naughty Nazis but before that came THE FROZEN LIMITS and its incomprehensible mixture of prospecting, drag, songs by Mounties and Bernard Lee which, inevitably, we've never seen. Apart from with the group Bud and Ches starred in the inevitable UNDERNEATH THE ARCHES and the over-winsome WE'LL SMILE AGAIN from 1942, THEATRE ROYAL in 1943, DREAMING in 1945 and variety showcase HERE COMES THE SUN from 1946. Naughton and Gold appeared in WISE GUYS and HIGHLAND FLING in 1936 and Nervo (who apparently couldn't read or write) and Knox done IN THE BAG and SKYLARKS also in 1936. The entire crew finally gathered again, this time with the Monsewer, in 1958 for LIFE IS A CIRCUS with Lionel Jeffries and Shirley Eaton.
However, by that time the magic was fading as fast as the group member's puff and the curtain was ringing down on the Crazy Gang, the greatest co-operative of comedy that ever was. And we at Creamguide (Films) are glad that at least we have the splendour that is ALF'S BUTTON AFLOAT to remind us of them. If only someone would show the bloody thing.
a · b · c · d · e · f · g · h · i · j · k · l · m · n · o · p · q · r · s · t · u · v · w · x · y · z · home
