Freddie Frinton

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Freddie Frinton ; actually Frederic Bittiner Coo (born January 17, 1909 in Grimsby , Lincolnshire , † October 16, 1968 in London ) was an English comedian.

Life

Frinton was born illegitimate to the seamstress Florence Elisabeth Coo and grew up with foster parents. At the age of 14 he started working as a packer in a fish factory; There he was fired at the age of 16 because he kept his colleagues from work with jokes and parodies .

From then on he appeared under the name Freddie Frinton (the stage name he allegedly borrowed from the village of Frinton-on-Sea ) in small variety theaters . He married and had two children. At the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted, during the war he worked as an entertainer in the troop support .

He married for the second time in the summer of 1945 and had four more children, two sons and two daughters between 1946 and 1954. Frinton came in 1945 for the first time with Dinner for One in the Winter Gardens in Blackpool on; but he did not have the rights to the play and had to pay royalties every time he performed the play with his partner May Warden . In the late 1940s he had small roles in film; he starred in the comedies Trouble in the Air (1948), Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and in the musical Stars in Your Eyes (1956). He finally bought the rights to Dinner for One in the 1950s .

In the late 1950s he was discovered by the BBC , for whom he played as Freddie Blacklock in their first comedy series. He became a series star with this forty-part series called Meet the Wife, in which he played a goofy plumber. John Lennon immortalized this series in the Beatles song Good Morning Good Morning with the line It's time for tea and Meet the Wife ...

Peter Frankenfeld and director Heinz Dunkhase finally discovered him in Blackpool in 1962 , so that he appeared in Frankenfeld's show in 1963 with the Sketch Dinner for One . In 1964, Frinton moved to London with his wife and children. He played theater and did not refuse any role. On October 16, 1968, after a performance at home, he suddenly collapsed dead as a result of a heart attack . He was buried in Hanwell Cemetery in Ealing , Greater London .

Since 1972, Dinner for One has been broadcast annually on New Year's Eve in the third programs of ARD and ORF, and the different Swiss version has been broadcast regularly on Swiss television since 1989 .

media

  • Helmuth Rompa: Freddie Frinton and his "Dinner for One". From suburban comedian to cult figure. Documentary film (SDR), 45 minutes. Germany 1988.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ndr.de : Who are actually Freddie Frinton and May Warden? Article of December 18, 2017
  2. ↑ ovb-online.de : James' widow and her tiger article from December 31, 2013
  3. ↑ dw.com : The 50th anniversary of 'Dinner for One' Article from December 31, 2012 (English)
  4. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Freddie Frinton
  5. ^ Every year again , Swiss family, December 2019.
  6. ↑ schnittberichte.com : The 90th birthday or Dinner for One .
personal data
SURNAME Frinton, Freddie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coo, Frederic Bittiner (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English comedian
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Grimsby , Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1968
Place of death London