The Times (24/Jan/1964) - Claude Hulbert
(c) The Times (24/Jan/1964)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Champagne (1928), Cicely Courtneidge, Claude Hulbert
MR. CLAUDE HULBERT
Mr. Claude Hulbert, the very British stage and screen comedian, has died at Sydney, Australia, on a round-the-world health cruise, as reported in later editions of The Times yesterday. He was 63.
As a comedian he was something of a specialist, and was one of a vintage line which was directlv descended from Bertie Wooster and was led by their chief exponent. Ralph Lynn. This was the chinless wonder brigade, elegant in appearance and affable in manner, well bred, well-to-do. and well intentioned, but absentminded and always a little weak in the intellectual stakes. Names such as Shakespeare, Napoleon, or Julius Caesar rang a faint bell in their subconscious, but they would have been hard put to is to say in exactly what connexion, for the old grey matter tended to move a trifle sluggishly under the well groomed hair. The breed is now dying out, but Mr. Harry Worth, upgraded from suburbia, would make an admirable recruit to their now failing numbers.
Claude Hulbert was inevitably overshadowed in his career by his elder brother Jack — a man of much greater buoyancy and exuberance — but both had their niche in British stage and film comedy of the thirties. Jack Hulbert bounded through his parts with unfailing zest; Claude approached his more quietly and obliquely, for the Wooster clan were never prone to excessive energy. Together the two Hulbert brothers belonged to a British film decade which was rich in comics with players such as Will Hay, George Formby, Gracie Fields, Cicely Courtneidge, Tom Walls and the Crazy Gang, whose comedy style was deceptively simple but magnificently effective. Today it seems in danger of becoming a lost art.
Claude Hulbert was born in London on Christmas Day, 1900. He was educated. as was his brother, at Westminster and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was a prominent member of the Footlights Club, and it was the Footlights Club which first brought him to the West End in His Little Trip at the Strand Theatre in 1920. His first appearance as a professional was made in rather more humble circumstances at the Alhambra, Bradford, in the same year, and he later toured provincial music halls for a short period before returning to London to appear at the Queen's Theatre in 1921. His first major success was at the Winter Garden Theatre three Years later as Freddy Falls in Primrose.
Thereafter be appeared in a number of successful stage comedies during the twenties, and towards the end of the decade he began to interest himself in both films and broadcasts. One of his earliest film appearances was under Alfred Hitchcock's direction in Champagne in 1929, but his screen career really started with film adaptations of the Ben Travers comedies. A Night Like This in 1931 and Thark in 1932 He appeared with his brother in Bulldog Jack in 1935, and continued successfully in films until 1939, when be reappeared on the West End stage at the Saville in Worth A Million. Towards the end of the war he had the good fortune to become a member of the Ealing team of film comedy makers, and from then on he continued to appear regularly on the stage, in films, in sound radio and on television.
Although his comedy style was restricted he showed marked versatility in the medium of its presentation. His gramophone duologues were highly successful before the war and he was equally successful on the air with his wife, Enid Trevor, and his brother Jack. Claude Hulbert was one of those comedians who spend their careers doing what appears to be very simple, while hiding from their audiences the fact that it is not.
