Anthony Newley

Anthony Newley (1967)

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Love Is a Now and Then Thing   UK 19th 05/14/1960 (2 weeks) Tony   UK 5 07/08/1961 (12 weeks) Fool Britannia (Anthony Newley, Peter Sellers , Joan Collins )   UK 10 09/28/1963 (10 weeks)

EPs

Idle on parade   UK 13 05/14/1959 (4 weeks)

Singles

I've waited so long   UK 3 05/07/1959 (15 weeks) Personality   UK 6th 06/18/1959 (12 weeks) Why   UK 1 01/21/1960 (18 weeks) Do you mind   UK 1 03/30/1960 (15 weeks) If she should come to you   UK 4th 07/20/1960 (15 weeks) Strawberry Fair   UK 3 11/30/1960 (11 weeks) And the Heavens Cried   UK 6th March 22, 1961 (12 weeks) Pop Goes the Weasel / Bee Bom   UK 12 06/21/1961 (9 weeks) What Kind of Fool Am I?   UK 36 08/09/1961 (8 weeks) D-darling   UK 25th 01/31/1962 (6 weeks) That noise   UK 34 08/01/1962 (5 weeks) Pure Imagination (with Leslie Bricusse)   UK 84 02/20/2010 (3 weeks)

George Anthony Newley (born September 24, 1931 in Hackney , London , England , † April 14, 1999 in Jensen Beach , Florida , USA ) was a British actor , pop singer and songwriter who had two number one hits in his home country ( Why and Do You Mind? ) And had a 1963 Grammy for song of the year, What Kind of Fool Am I? , received.

biography

From drama school to film

Newley went to school in Clapton , a borough of London, until he was evacuated to Lancashire because of the Blitzkrieg . After the war, he worked briefly in an insurance office before becoming a 14-year-old student at the Italia Conti Academy , a renowned drama school in London. A little later he was discovered for the film. His first major role was as Dick Bultitude in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa (1948, together with Petula Clark ). In the same year he played alongside Alec Guinness the Artful Dodger in David Lean's film adaptation of Charles Dickens ' Oliver Twist . In 1955 he made his London theater debut in the Revue Cranks . By 1959 he could be seen in about twenty other films.

From the screen to the charts

In 1959, the actor became a pop singer when he played a pop star who was drafted into the army in the film Idle on Parade (based on the real story of Terry Dene ). For the film he wrote four songs, to which Joe “Mr. Piano “Henderson wrote the music. Newley's Decca Records released a single with two of these tracks, which hit the UK charts on May 1, 1959. A-side of the single was I've Waited So Long ; the song rose to number three. At the same time Decca also released an EP with all four songs, which also came to number 13 in the British charts.

A few weeks later he brought a cover version of Lloyd Price's Personality into the top ten. His next single was also a cover. Frankie Avalon was Why in December 1959 number one of the US charts accommodated. Anthony Newley repeated this with the song by Bob Marcucci and Peter de Angelis in Great Britain on February 5, 1960 . The single stayed at the top for four weeks. Not even three months later Newley's second number one followed as a singer; Do You Mind , written by Lionel Bart , was the hundredth number one in British chart history on April 28, 1960 , but was replaced by the Everly Brothers a week later by Cathy's Clown . Why? and If She Should Come to You Newley was also able to place in the US charts.

From pop singer to musical

Newley played the title role on British television in 1960, directing the short-lived series The Strange World of Gurney Slade . The concept of the series was that the protagonist was stuck in a television series - a real novelty at the time.

Among the well-known songs that Newley interpreted during this time, novelty songs such as a version of Strawberry Fair or Pop Goes the Weasel , which also made it into the US and British charts, were worth mentioning.

With Leslie Bricusse he wrote the musical Stop the World - I Want to Get Off! , in which he also played the leading role as Littlechap . This role earned him a Tony Award nomination for "Best Actor in a Musical". In 1963 , Newley and Bricusse won a Grammy for Song of the Year, What Kind of Fool Am I? which, however, could not quite build on the success of the years before. Gonna Build a Mountain and Once in a Lifetime were other hit songs from this musical. After premiering in Manchester in 1960 and running for 15 months in London, it premiered on October 3, 1962 at the Shubert Theater on Broadway - the first of 556 performances.

1964 followed the music for the James Bond film Goldfinger (together with Bricusse and John Barry ), whose title song was a hit for Shirley Bassey . Feeling Good , a hit for Nina Simone and later for the rock band Muse , came from the next musical by Newley / Bricusse, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd (1965).

As a film composer also a stage star

At the end of the 1960s he turned back to film. In 1967 he played alongside Rex Harrison and Richard Attenborough in the musical Doctor Dolittle , for which Bricusse contributed the script . For Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? Newley and Herman Raucher received the 1970 Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Original Screenplay of the Year. He also acted as director, actor, producer and composer for the film.

In 1971, Bricusse and Newley wrote the songs for the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's children 's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , which hit the big screen under the title Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory . The film music was nominated for an Oscar in 1972 . One of the songs from the film, The Candy Man , was featured in a cover version by Sammy Davis Jr. 1972 number one hit in the US. In 1972 Newley brought his next musical to the West End stage, The Good Old Bad Old Days , another collaboration with Bricusse.

In the 1970s he was mainly on stage in the USA, but also in his home country. In Las Vegas he was as big a star as Tony Bennett , Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra . He also wrote other film scores, for example in 1975 for Mr. Quilp or in 1976 for a television adaptation of Peter Pan with Danny Kaye and Mia Farrow . With Stanley Ralph Ross he was the author and composer of the stage show Chaplin about the life of Charlie Chaplin .

Anthony Newley played his last major role as a car salesman on the British soap opera EastEnders . But he had to give it up after a few months because his health did not allow any more shooting.

Achievements and Awards

In addition to the three number one hits as a singer and songwriter and the 1963 Grammy, Newley received numerous other awards. In 1960 the readers of the New Musical Express voted him the third best British singer. In 1977 he was named Male Musical Star of the Year in Las Vegas . The score for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was nominated for an Oscar . In the BMI database there are more than 150 songs to which he wrote music or lyrics. In 1989 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame with Leslie Bricusse .

Newley's singing style, with its distinctly British accent, was a major influence on David Bowie .

Private life

From 1956 to 1963 he was married to Elizabeth Ann Lynn; the marriage was divorced. He then married the later Denver clan beast Joan Collins in 1963 . The couple were married until 1971 and have two children, singer Tara Newley and actor Alexander "Sacha" Newley. Anthony Newley's third wife was former stewardess Dareth Dunn until 1989. He also had two children with her, Christopher and Shelby.

In 1985 Newley was diagnosed with kidney cancer and had one kidney removed. In 1997 the cancer attacked the lungs and a little later the liver . Newley died on April 14, 1999 in Jensen Beach, Florida, at the age of 67. After his death, the British press praised him as an “all-round entertainer and one of the nicest people”.

Filmography (selection)

• 1947: Dusty Bates
• 1948: Vice Versa
• 1948: Oliver Twist
• 1948: The Little Ballerina
• 1949: A Boy, a Girl, and a Bike
• 1949: Don't Ever Leave Me
• 1950: Highly Dangerous
• 1953: Top of the Form
• 1954: The Blue Peter
• 1959: Submarine - Submarines attack (Above Us the Waves)
• 1955: suicide mission (The Cockleshell Heroes)
• 1956: Panzerschiff Graf Spee (The Battle of the River Plate)
• 1956: XX unknown (X the Unknown)
• 1956: Port Africa (Port Afrique)
• 1957: Comrades of the Air (High Flight)
• 1957: Playing with Fire (Fire Down Below)
• 1958: The Man Inside
• 1958: No Time to Die
• 1959: Rivals under the Hot Sun (Killers of Kilimanjaro)
• 1959: Idle on Parade
• 1960: Let's Get Married
• 1963: The Gehetzte of Soho (The Small World of Sammy Lee)
• 1967: Doctor Dolittle
• 1968: Adieu, beloved November (Sweet November)
• 1969: Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?
• 1975: The Old Curiosity Shop
• 1975: Mad Wurst (It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time)
• 1985: Alice in Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland)
• 1986: Hell trip to Lordsburg (Stagecoach)
• 1987: The urchins (The Garbage Pail Kids Movie)
• 1992: Boris and Natasha - Dumber Than the CIA Allowed (Boris and Natasha)

literature

• Garth Bardsley: Stop the World - The Biography of Anthony Newley , Oberon Books 2003, ISBN 978-1-84002-274-2 .
• Donald Clarke (ed.): The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music , p. 312f., London 1989/1990, ISBN 0-14-051147-4 .

Web links

• Anthony Newley in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Anthony Newley - official website
• Biography with extensive discography
• Works by and about Anthony Newley in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Charts UK
2. ↑ Six weeks in Fländschwick and Kapprotsch in: FAZ of January 4, 2012, page 30.
3. ↑ David Heslam (ed.): The NME Rock 'n' Roll Years , p. 83, London 1992, ISBN 0-600-57602-7 .
4. ↑ Judy Harris on www.anthonynewley.com .
5. ↑ David Heslam (ed.): The NME Rock 'n' Roll Years , p. 87, London 1992, ISBN 0-600-57602-7 .
6. ↑ Frank Laufenberg , September 24 - Legends of Pop on SWR 1, online version viewed on May 21, 2007.
7. ↑ quoted from Laufenberg, ibid.