Norman Wisdom
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Sir Norman Wisdom, OBE (born 4 February 1915) is an English comedian, singer and actor.
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[edit] Early life
Norman Wisdom was born in the London district of Marylebone to Frederick and Maude Wisdom. His father was a chauffeur and his mother a dressmaker. After a difficult and poverty-stricken childhood he joined the 10th Hussars and began to develop his talents as a musician and stage entertainer. Wisdom’s mother left when he was nine, and he and his brother were left in the charge of their father. Wisdom ran away from home when he was 11, but returned to become an errand boy with a grocery store on leaving school at 13. Later he was a coal-miner, a waiter, a pageboy and a cabin-boy, before joining the army and seeing service in India. Leaving in 1946, he made his debut as an entertainer at the advanced age of 31 - but his rise to the top was phenomenally fast. A West End star within two years, he made his TV debut the same year and was soon commanding enormous audiences. By this time, he had adopted the suit that would remain his trademark - tweed cap askew with peak turned up, too-tight jacket, barely-better trousers, crumpled collar and tie awry. The character known as "the gump" was to dominate Wisdom's film career.
[edit] Film career
Wisdom made a series of low-budget star-vehicle comedies for the Rank Organisation, beginning with Trouble in Store in 1953. Their cheerful, unpretentious appeal make them the direct descendants of the films made a generation earlier by George Formby. Never highly thought of by the critics, they were very popular with domestic audiences, and in some notionally unlikely overseas markets, helping Rank stay afloat financially when their more expensive film projects were unsuccessful.
The films usually involved the Gump character in some manual occupation, in which he is barely competent, and a junior position to a "straight man" superior, often played by Edward Chapman. They benefitted from Wisdom's capacity for physical slapstick comedy and his skill at creating a sense of the character's helplessness. The series often contained a romantic subplot; the Gump's inevitable awkwardness with women is a characteristic shared with the earlier Formby vehicles.
By the mid-1960s, despite a move to filming in colour, Wisdom's commercial appeal was in eclipse. The obvious incongruity of a fifty-year old man playing the Prime Minister's grandson in Press for Time (1966) counted against him - though Wisdom's age was inaccurately reported for many years.
[edit] Later career
In 1966, Wisdom went to America to star on Broadway in the James Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn musical comedy WALKING HAPPY. His highly acclaimed performance was Tony nominated. He also completed his first American film as a vaudeville comic in The Night They Raided Minsky's. Any opportunites which might have opened up by this Stateside success were cut short when he had to return to London due to a family crisis. His subsequent career was largely confined to television and to touring the world with his successful cabaret act.
He won critical acclaim in 1981 for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the play Going Gently. On 11 February 1987 Norman Wisdom was the subject of Thames Television's This Is Your Life for the second time.
He became prominent again in the 1990s, helped by the young comedian Lee Evans, whose act was heavily influenced by Wisdom's work. The highpoint of this new popularity was the knighthood he received in 1999 from Queen Elizabeth II.
After he was knighted, true to his accident-prone persona, he couldn't resist pretending to trip on his way out off the platform.
[edit] A "Norman Wisdom moment"
On January 25, 2006, Nick Flynn, a visitor at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, destroyed three Qing Dynasty Chinese porcelain vases worth approximately £500,000. He claimed to have tripped over his own shoelaces and called the accident a "Norman Wisdom moment" (that is, a moment of extreme clumsiness), although he was later arrested under suspicion of causing criminal damage.
[edit] Popularity in Albania
Norman Wisdom is a well-known and loved cult film icon in Albania and was the only Western actor whose films were allowed in the country during the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Tony Hawks mentions this to much comic effect in his novel One Hit Wonderland when he is trying to secure an Albanian chart hit. He has been nicknamed "Pitkin" in Albania.
The archetypal Wisdom plot where the common working man gets the better of his bosses was considered ideologically sound by Hoxha. In 1995, he visited the post-Stalinist country, where to his surprise he was greeted by many appreciative fans and the then president of Albania, Sali Berisha.
On a visit in 2001 which coincided with the England football team playing Albania in Tirana, his presence at the training ground even eclipsed that of David Beckham.[1]
[edit] Retirement
Norman Wisdom announced his retirement from the entertainment industry on 4 February 2005. He intends to spend his retirement spending more time with his family, playing golf and driving around the Isle of Man, where he now lives (being a neighbour of John Rhys-Davies).
Sir Norman Wisdom has been admitted to hospital recently after he suffered an irregular heart rhythm. He was in hospital for a few days after his Doctors fitted him with a Pacemaker device to steady his heart beat. He is currently at home resting.
[edit] Trivia
- He is a supporter and a former board member of Brighton and Hove Albion F.C.
- In 1998, a newly discovered asteroid was named 17826 Normanwisdom (sic) in his honour.
- He claimed that his left leg is half an inch (1.25 cm) shorter than his right.
- Member of the Grand Order of Water Rats
- Communicates with his fans on his profile on imdb.com
- Considered a cultural icon in Albania
[edit] Filmography
- 1948: A Date with a Dream
- 1948-50: Wit and Wisdom (TV)
- 1953: Trouble in Store
- 1954: One Good Turn
- 1955: As Long as They're Happy
- 1955: Man of the Moment
- 1956: Up in the World
- 1957: Just My Luck
- 1958: The Square Peg
- 1959: Follow A Star
- 1960: There Was a Crooked Man
- 1960: The Bulldog Breed
- 1962: On The Beat
- 1962: The Girl on the Boat
- 1963: A Stitch in Time
- 1965: The Early Bird
- 1966: The Sandwich Man
- 1966: Press for Time
- 1967: Androcles and the Lion (TV)
- 1968: The Night They Raided Minsky's (The Night They Invented Striptease)
- 1969: What's Good for the Goose (Girl Trouble)
- 1970: Norman (TV)
- 1970: Music Hall (TV)
- 1973: Nobody Is Norman Wisdom (TV)
- 1974: A Little Bit of Wisdom (TV)
- 1981: BBC PlayHouse : Going Gently (TV)
- 1988: The 1950's: Music, Memories & Milestones (TV)
- 1992: Double X: The Name of the Game (Double X, Run Rabbit Run)
- 1994: Last of the Summer Wine (TV): episode "The Man Who Nearly Knew Pavarotti"
- 1998: Where On Earth Is ... Katy Manning (TV)
- 2000: Last of the Summer Wine (TV): episode "The Coming of the Beast"
- 2002: Last of the Summer Wine (TV): episode "A Musical Passing for a Miserable Muscroft"
- 2002: Dalziel and Pascoe (TV): episode "Mens Sana"
[edit] CDs and Vinyl
- I Would Like to Put On Record
- Jingle Jangle
- The Very Best of Norman Wisdom
- Androcles and the Lion
- Where's Charley?
- Wisdom of a Fool
- Nobody's Fool
- Follow A Star
- 1957 Original Chart Hits
- Follow A Star/Give Me A Night In June
- Happy Ending/The Wisdom Of A Fool
- Big in Albania - One Hit Wonderland
[edit] Books
- Lucky Little Devil: Norman Wisdom on the Island He's Made His Home (2004)
- My Turn: Autobiography (2002)
- Don't Laugh At Me / Cos I'm A Fool (1992) (two volumes of autobiography)
- Trouble In Store (1991)
Norman also played a big part in the Tony Hawks book, One Hit Wonderland. Tony and Norman had a top twenty hit in Albania in 2002 with a song called "Big in Albania" written by Hawks and Oscar winning lyricist Tim Rice.
[edit] External links
- Sir Norman Wisdom
- Norman Wisdom at the Internet Movie Database
- Sir Norman's final stage bow — BBC News
- "Sir Norman Wisdom launches Punk Career" - BBC News, 23 September, 2005
