Claude Hulbert

Claude Hulbert
Born Claude Noel Hulbert
(1900-12-25)25 December 1900
Fulham, London, England, United Kingdom
Died 23 January 1964(1964-01-23) (aged 63)
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Claude Noel Hulbert (25 December 1900 – 23 January 1964) was a British comic actor. He was the younger brother of Jack Hulbert. Like his brother, he was Cambridge educated and was a member of the Footlights comedy club as an undergraduate.

Hulbert began his professional career on the English stage. His first theatrical credit was in the London revue Fantasia in 1921. In 1924, he was quite successful in the George Grossmith-Guy Bolton musical comedy Primrose, which led to a string of musical comedy roles for him from 1925 to the 1930s, including Sunny, Oh Kay, Song of the Sea and Follow a Star. Hulbert also was a hit on radio, thanks to his spontaneous manner of delivery, along with his nervous excitability and hilarious stuttering. In 1939, he returned to the London stage in the farce, Worth a Million. Subsequently he was seen in Cole Porter's Panama Hattie (1943) and as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (1946), In the 1950s, he appeared in numerous farces and in repertory theatre. In 1959, he made quite a splash as Lord Plynne in Frederick Lonsdale's Let Them Eat Cake

Although popular, his motion picture career was less successful than his brother's. He began by supporting the Aldwych farceurs before being handed his first lead in a weak B-film with Renee Houston and Binnie Barnes, Their Night Out (1933). His most successful solo film of the mid-1930s being Hello Sweetheart (1935), like most of Hulbert's starring comedies, however, its ambition was strictly small-scale; it seemed that British studios simply didn't see him as a major star. His flagging career was helped with Wolf's Clothing (1936), which starred him as a dithering diplomat, and Honeymoon-Merry-Go-Round (1940), where he played a bumbling bridegroom who unintentionally becomes an ice-hockey star.

He became a very capable partner for Will Hay after the comedian decided he wanted to do without his famous "stooges", Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. Hay's two films with Hulbert, The Ghost of St Michael's (1941) and My Learned Friend (1943), were the most successful of his later vehicles. Hulbert's film appearances, though, became scarcer as the 1940s wore on.

Hulbert died in a hospital in Sydney, Australia, whilst ashore from a world cruise with his family.[1]

Filmography

References

  1. ↑ Jonathan Cecil, ‘Hulbert, Claude Noel (1900–1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

External links

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