DEATH OF "G.G."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 9 (Supplement)

DEATH OF "G.G."

GEORGE GROSSMITH, DUDE

I A "grand old man" of the English theatre died on June 0. George Grossmitli was famous on stage and screen as the perfectly dressed dude (he used to say that in return for his education he had taught Frenchmen how to dress). For years he wa3 the perfect foil to the heartier fun of his constant fellowactor, Edmund Payne. As author of such songs as "Yip-i-addy" and part author or reviser of plays like the several "Bing Boys," "A Night Out" and "The Spring Chicken," lie knew his public; he was a thorough man of the theatre and one of the first actors to make good in tlie cinema. His book of reminiscences, "G.G." (1933), is very like its author on the stage in its light, casual, jerky, and amusing way. The son of George Grossmitli of the Savoy opera and scion of a family with a long theatrical record, George Grossmitli, third of the name in direct descent, was born in London on May 11, 1874, and went on the stage when he was 18. Less than a year later he had made his mark for the first time as Lord Percy Pimpleton in the musical comedy "Morocco Bound"; and a dude in musical comedy he remained for nearly the rest of his acting life. In 1894 he went for a time to the Gaiety of George Edwardes, for a part in "The Shop Girl"; i and after a few years of varied experience, he returned there in 1901 and appeared in musical comedy after musical comedy until he went to America in 1913. On his return he set up in management with Edward Laurillard; and the partnership, which lasted for some seven years, produced not a few successful plays, among them "Potash and PerL mutter" and "To-night's the Night." In 1916 George Grossmitli obtained a commission in the R.N.V.R., and served in it till the end of the war. His portrait in uniform, painted by his uncle, the comedian Weedon Grossmith, hung on the walls of the Royal Academy. In 1919, with Laurillard, he opened the Winter Garden Theatre, formerly the "Old Mo," Great Mogul, or Middlesex • Music Hall, in Drury Lane; and there and elsewhere, with Laurillard, and later with another partner, he continued to produce musical and other comedies. In 1931, on the retirement of Sir Alfred Butt, he was appointed managing director of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; but resigned in 1932 in order to devote himself to the cinema. In 1933 he fulfilled an old ambition by aeting Touchstone in the open-air theatre in Regent's Park.