Everything about Will Hay totally explained
William Thomson Hay (
6 December 1888 –
18 April 1949) was an
English comedian,
actor and
amateur astronomer.
Private life
He was born in
Stockton-on-Tees,
County Durham,
England to William R. Hay and his wife Elizabeth but moved to
Suffolk at an early age.
Aside from his
day job as a comedian, Hay was a dedicated and respected amateur
astronomer. His personal observatory sat in his garden in Mill Hill, the dome very visible from the main Hendon Road. He became a Fellow of the
Royal Astronomical Society in
1932. He is noted for having discovered a white spot on the planet
Saturn in
1933 ; the spot lasted for a few months and then faded. He also measured the positions of
comets with a
micrometer he built himself, and designed and built a
blink comparator. He wrote the book
Through My Telescope in
1935. At his death, his telescopes were bequeathed to
University College, London, and are still used for teaching astronomy.
He was also one of Britain's first private
pilots and gave flying lessons to
Amy Johnson. He was a
polyglot and before entering the acting profession full time, was an accomplished translator - fluent in
French,
German,
Latin,
Italian,
Norwegian and
Afrikaans.
As a favourite trick for his friends, he'd write rapidly seeming nonsense on a blackboard, look at it thoughtfully for a minute with a puzzled expression, then turn the blackboard upside down and there would be a perfectly written statement of some kind. And he could take someone's dictation, and repeat the trick.
He married Gladys Perkins in 1907 but legally separated on the 18th of November
1935. They had two daughters and a son, Gladys Elspeth Hay (b. 1909), William E. Hay (b. 1913), Joan A. Hay (b. 1917) .
In
1947 he'd a
stroke which left him physically crippled. He died at his home in
Chelsea,
London after a further stroke in
1949 and is buried in
Streatham Park Cemetery,
London SW16.
Film career
He was trained as an engineer and joined a firm of engineers but at the age of 21 he gave up that profession for acting. He had a relatively brief screen career: by the time he made his first
film he was in his mid-40s and an established
music hall artist, and his last role came less than a decade later. But between
1934 and
1943 he was a prolific and popular film comedian. He was credited on several films as a writer or co-ordinator, and was arguably the dominant
"author
" of all the films in which he appeared, in that they were built around his persona and depended on the character and routines he'd developed over years on the
stage.
He worked at the British film studios of
Elstree, then
Gainsborough, then
Ealing; the Gainsborough period was the most consistently successful, particularly when he worked with the team of
Marcel Varnel (
director),
Val Guest and
Marriott Edgar (writers), and
Moore Marriott and
Graham Moffatt (supporting cast) - as on the railway film
Oh, Mr Porter! (
1937), his most fondly remembered picture with its catchphrase, 'The next train's gone!', spoken by Marriott as the decrepit old deputy stationmaster. Hay decided to break up the partnership with Moffatt and Marriott and was never quite the same again. He brought in
Claude Hulbert as his side-kick for
The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941).
The Goose Steps Out for Ealing (1942) was an effective anti-
Nazi piece of
slapstick, and, finally,
My Learned Friend (1943), again with Hulbert, was a masterpiece of
black comedy, which some regard as his best.
Radio career
The half hour weekly Will Hay Programme began in August 1944, and was broadcast live from the Paris Cinema, which still exists in a basement just off
Piccadilly Circus. There, St. Michael's schoolmaster Dr. Muffin (referred to by his students as Old Crumpet) barely kept a kind of order from his desk, perched slightly higher from his unruly students,
Charles Hawtrey who played the cheeky Smart (later to go on to the
Carry On films),
John Clark, a child actor who played the annoying swot D'arcy Minor (later to gain fame as
Just William), and an air force recruit, Billy Nichols, who on his days off played the really dumb schoolboy, Beckett. The series lasted about four months, and was prematurely cancelled, owing, it was said, to a dispute with the
BBC over scripts. But it found a continuing life on the music hall stage, at the top of the bill at London's
Victoria Palace.
The cast was brought together one last time for an all variety anticipatory celebration at midnight May 4, 1945 for the Royal Family and many military notables at a private function at the
Life Guards barracks in
Windsor, which featured the leading comics of the day. The war in Europe ended just four days later. This may also have been Will Hay's last performance prior to his illness, and his son Will Hay, Jr. carried on his father's act for a while.
Filmography
Further Information
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