VAUDEVILLE STARS

Waipa Post, Volume 41, Issue 3186, 9 August 1930, Page 6

VAUDEVILLE STARS

WHAT FAMOUS CELEBRITIES ARE DOING NOW. Not all music hall stars live beyond their incomes and find themselves in the evening of their lives reduced to comparative poverty (writes a London Sunday Express representative). Here is a list of top-of-the-bill performers whom I found living in happy retirement:—Harry Randall, R. A. Roberts, Arthur Godfrey, Ernie Mayne, Arthur Lennard, Charles Whittle, George Lashwood, George Gray, Gus Garrick, Marie Loftus. Six of them own bungalows at Brighton or Shoreham. In fact, most variety artists seem to nurse a hope of one day settling down "to live happily ever after in Sussex." Sometimes the slippered ease of retirement palls. "There are times when I have to fight the temptation to return to the footlights. I often think I retired too soon," said Mr R. A. Roberts, the quick-change artist, when I called at his picturesque house near Brighton. " I am happy and comfortable, but, laddie, at seven o'clock every evening I get restless. I would be in my dressing room at that hour making up for the show. Ah, laddie, and what an act it was ! "

A romantic story lies behind Mr Roberts' success.

" I began life as a clerk in a Liverpool office," he said, " and wanted to go on the stage. A senior clerk earning 30s a week spent a whole morning giving me advice on money matters. I put his principal points on paper, and the following week I made my first public appearance. I followed that clerk's advice throughout the 40 years I was on the stage. " It was sound advice, and the clerk who gave it to me was Sir Ernest Cassell, who died leaving millions of pounds. "When I began my stage career my best friend was a young man named Barker. He had stage ambitions, but I persuaded him to take up something else, as he was really not a good actor. "He took my advice, and became Sir Herbert Parker, the famous bonesetter. " Then there was a lad named Stoll, whom, when I was a clerk, used to go with me every morning to the post office to collect the letters and parcels. I can see him now staggering under a loaded mail-bag and solemnly assuring me that one day he would be a great theatrical financier. " Well, that man became Sir Oswald Stoll." I found Marie Loftus looking out to sea from her Shoreham bungalow, and humming, " I Am So Shy," which was one of the songs that made her famous. "Those were the days," she said, reminiscently. "Now I am just a memory of. v the public. In fact, many people thinli I'm dead. " Of course, I'm happy, but there is nothing to do, and I feel I must be doing something all the time." Arthur Godfrey, who made £IO,OOO from his sketch, " Me and 'Er," lives in a bungalow near Marie Loftus, and as a hobby he runs a beach club. " Funny thing," he said, " but I spent forty years in trains, and this bungalow is built of converted railway carriages.

" I put by for a rainy day," he went on, "and always travelled by bus or tram instead of taxi, even when I had made my £10,000." Ernie owns a prosperous hotel at Shoreham, but his wife confesses: " I cannot stop him from working sometimes. He gets restless and wants to see an audience in front of him and hear the applause." George Gray, of "Never Introduce Your Donah to a Pal," is enjoying retirement on £IOOO a year in the Channel Isles.

George Lashwood, the Beau Brummel of the halls, is farming in Worcestershire.

Charles Whittle invested the money he made by singing " Let's All Go Down the Strand" in property, and owns many houses in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Harry Ford, the comedian, bought a prosperous tobacconist business at Sutton, Surrey, and nearby at Merstham Alf Cruikshank owns an hotel.

I found Harry Randall living at Hendon, because " David Garrick lived there, and the prestige of the place must be kept up." " Mjany of us did well out of variety," he said, "but so many artists followed the bell on the racecourse too much. For myself, I made it a rule never to have a bet larger than 10s."