Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom,[1] OBE[2] (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian, musician and singer best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring a hapless onscreen character often called Norman Pitkin.[3] He was awarded the 1953 BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles following the release of Trouble in Store, his first film in a lead role.
Wisdom gained celebrity status in lands as far apart as South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly in Albania where his films were the only ones with Western actors permitted to be shown by dictator Enver Hoxha.[4] Charlie Chaplin once referred to Wisdom as his "favourite clown".[5]
Wisdom later forged a career on Broadway in New York City and as a television actor, winning critical acclaim for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the television play Going Gently in 1981. He toured Australia and South Africa.[3] After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a hospice was named in his honour.[4] In 1995, he was given the Freedom of the City of London and of Tirana.[4] The same year, he was appointed OBE and was knighted five years later.[4]
Norman Joseph Wisdom was born in the Marylebone district of London.[6] His parents were Frederick, a chauffeur, and Maud Wisdom (née Targett), a dressmaker who often worked for West End theatres, and had made a dress for Queen Mary.[7] The couple married in Marylebone on 15 July 1912. Wisdom had an elder brother, Frederick Thomas "Fred" Wisdom (13 December 1912 – 1 July 1971).[citation needed]
The family lived at 91 Fernhead Road, Maida Vale, London W9, where they slept in one room.[8] He and his brother were brought up in extreme poverty and were frequently hit by their father who would pick them up and throw them across the room.[9]
After a period in a children's home in Deal, Kent, Wisdom ran away when he was 11 but returned to become an errand boy in a grocer's shop on leaving school at 13. Having been kicked out of his home by his father he became homeless and slept rough in London,[9] in 1929 he walked (by his own account) to Cardiff, Wales, where he became a cabin boy in the Merchant Navy. He later also worked as a waiter and page in hotels where room and board was supplied for the staff.[4]
Wisdom first enlisted into the King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster), but his mother had him discharged as he was under age. He later re-enlisted as a drummer boy[citation needed] in the 10th Royal Hussars. In 1930, he was posted to Lucknow, in the United Provinces of British India,[4] as a bandsman.
He rode horses, became the flyweight boxing champion of the British Army in India[4] and taught himself to play the piano, trumpet, saxophone, flute, drums, bugle and clarinet.[8]
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wisdom was sent to work in a communications centre in a command bunker in London, where he connected telephone calls from war leaders to the prime minister. He met Winston Churchill on several occasions when asked for updates on incoming calls.[8] Wisdom then joined the Royal Corps of Signals, and performed a similar military function at the unit headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Whilst performing a shadow boxing routine in an army gym, Wisdom discovered he had a talent for entertainment,[10] and began to develop his skills as a musician and stage entertainer.[5] In 1940 aged 25, at a NAAFI entertainment night, during a dance routine, Wisdom stepped down from his position in the orchestra pit, and started shadow boxing. Hearing his colleagues and officers giggling, he broke into a duck waddle, followed by a series of facial expressions. He later described the reaction as: "They were in hysterics. All the officers were falling about laughing."[11]
Wisdom later said this was where he first patented his persona as "The Successful Failure".[11] Over the next few years, until he was demobilised in 1945, his routine included his characteristic singing and the trip-up-and-stumble. After Wisdom appeared at a charity concert at Cheltenham Town Hall on 31 August 1944,[12] actor Rex Harrison came backstage and urged him to become a professional entertainer.[13]
After being demobilised Wisdom worked as a private hire car driver. Having improved his diction in the army, he also took a job as a night telephone operator.[8]
Wisdom made his debut as a professional entertainer at the age of 31 still calling himself "The Successful Failure". In the anonymity of small suburban music halls he built an act out of his shyness, his ability to fall and his multi-instrumental music skills and singing talent where the theatre band constantly changed key and he could never keep up until pulling out his virtuosity and beating them at their own game. One outstanding review in August 1946 read, "An unusual and most versatile comedian, Norman Wisdom, contributes two remarkable turns. He is an accomplished pianist, a pleasing singer, a talented instrumentalist, a clever mimer, and withal, a true humorist.".[14] His rise to the top was relatively fast. A very successful run at the London Casino in April 1948,[15] led to a summer season in "Out of the Blue" in Scarborough. Magician David Nixon was also part of the cast and the two worked together so well that they went on to continue the act on other variety stages starting at the London Casino in September 1948.[16] Christmas 1948 saw him in the pantomime "Robinson Crusoe" at Birmingham's Alexandra Theatre.[17] Wisdom had already adopted the costume that would remain his trademark: tweed flat cap askew, with peak turned up; a suit at least two sizes too tight; a crumpled collar and a mangled tie. The character that went with this costume — known as the Gump — was to dominate Wisdom's film career. A West End theatre star within two years, he honed his act into a star turn mainly between theatres in London and Brighton:[11]
I spent virtually all of those years on the road. You could keep incredibly busy just performing in pantomimes and revues. There was a whole generation of performers who learned everything on the stage.
Wisdom made his TV debut in 1948 and was soon commanding enormous audiences and had a small film role in A Date with a Dream released in the same year.