George Leonard Wallace

George Leonard Wallace (born May 16, 1918 in Walkerston , Queensland , † September 30, 1968 in Southport , Queensland) was an Australian actor and comedian .

Life

The son of comedian and actor George Stevenson Wallace , like his father, was already three years old on stage - he balanced as “Wee Georgie Wallace” on his father's hand and sang Go Wash to Elephant if you want to do something big . In his school days he performed as a pantomime, clown and singer during the holidays.

From 1932 he studied design at the Sydney Technical College in Darlinghurst , while also shooting the half-hour science fiction horror parody The Corpse Goes West . In 1937 he opened his own design studio. In 1941 he joined the army and in the following year traveled through Australia , New Guinea and New Britain as a troop supervisor for the Australian Imperial Force . In 1946 he was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant.

With former members of his entertainment troupe, he founded the Kangaroosters (later Kangaroos ), which debuted in 1948 with the revue Meet the Girls at the Theater Royal in Brisbane . The show, for which he worked as a text writer, arranger, stage painter and regular performer, was given about four thousand times before the farewell performance on Christmas Eve 1958. He then took over the role of his father in a show by Harry Wren .

In addition to this job, Wallace began a career in television. He appeared on ATN-7 ' Curtain Call and TCN-9 on Joe Martin's Late Show , where he said he felt out of place. Supported by Alec Kellaway , he started a late show with Guy Doleman on TCN-9 in 1959 , which ran for 45 weeks, and then took over the late show on BTQ-7.

In 1961 he started the show Theater Royal on BTQ-7 , which revitalized the closed vaudeville house on television. He wrote more than 2,500 skits for the show by 1967 and led it to success with actors such as Eddie Edwards , Dick McCann and Jackie Ellison . From 1962 to 1967, it was voted the most popular television show of the year by viewers for six years in a row. Wallace himself was honored with a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Actor in 1963 . After two strokes, Wallace died in Southport in September 1968.

Web links

• Raymond Evans: Wallace, George Leonard (1918–1968). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography . Volume 16, 2002 (English). 
• George Leonard Wallace in the Internet Movie Database (English)