Will Hay

William "Will" Thomson Hay (born December 6, 1888 in Stockton-on-Tees , England , † April 18, 1949 in London , England) was a British actor , comedian , occasional director , pilot and astronomer . A long period as a popular pre-war vaudeville artist was followed by a brief star career in film in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Life

Will Hay grew up in London and the Greater Manchester area and, in keeping with the family tradition, received an engineering education . On the side he learned an instrument at the request of his father (Hay chose the violin ), with which he played at parties and at private concerts. He earned his first money as an accountant and, taking up his father's tradition, in the mechanical engineering sector . From December 1907 until his death, he was married to Gladys Perkins, with whom he had three children (son Will Hay Jr. later starred in Good Morning, Boys ). In 1935 the marriage broke up and Hay spent the remaining years with the Norwegian Randi Kopstadt.

stage

Hay had developed a talent for small shows and humorous stories and made his debut on stage in 1909 with a teacher sketch. His appearances as an authority-seeking, but intellectually rather underexposed teacher - one of his sisters was a teacher in Scotland and used to amuse the family with funny anecdotes from everyday school life - should achieve the greatest laughs both on the stages of the music halls and later in the film.

In the decades that followed, Hay tinged around the country with some bizarre stage troops, including a black minstrel show . From 1918 to 1920 he was a member of Fred Karno's formation , which had previously produced Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel . From the 1920s, Hay also worked for the radio, initially under the pseudonym Charlie Kidd. As an established music hall great, his tours around the world took him to the United States in 1927 and to South Africa in 1928/29 . Its audience consisted of Boers (in South Africa) and shepherds (in Australia ), Maoris (in New Zealand ), trappers (in Canada ) and cowboys (in the United States).

Movie

It was not until late in 1933 that Hay turned to film. Here he embodied like his contemporary American comedian colleagues WC Fields and Leon Errol (and later the Frenchman Louis de Funès ) morally not entirely impeccable characters who fluctuate between silly and cunning and are nevertheless sympathetic to the viewer due to their all too human shabbiness. Hay played senior teachers, police officers, station masters, lawyers, captains, generally weighty but hopelessly incompetent authority figures who often owed their positions to coincidences, confusion, nepotism or even falsified letters of recommendation.

With Boys Will Be Boys , which is considered the first typical Hay vehicle, the comedian's fruitful collaboration with Michael Balcons Gainsborough Pictures began in 1935 . With this film he successfully adapted his stage-tested schoolmaster character, complete with doctoral hat and pince-nez, for the big screen. He also embodied teachers in the later comedies Good Morning, Boys (1937), Convict 99 (1938), Old Bones of the River (1938), The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941) and The Goose Steps Out (1942). (In the limit Convict 99 , the suspended beginning of the film teacher Hay-chief prison is suddenly as again, who addresses the seasoned inmates continually with "boys".) The comedies that came to theaters in 1937, were of Marcel Varnel staged , a skilled craftsman with a good sense of timing.

From 1936 to 1940, Hay formed a successful comedian trio with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt that coincidentally came together in the film Windbag the Sailor (1936). While the names of Hays film characters constantly changed (the first names were mostly Benjamin or William), the two actors played the same characters in the six films they shared: Moffatt played the fat and flippant adolescent Albert Brown, Marriott (who in real life was only three years older than Hay was) the lively, eccentric old man Jerry Harbottle. Despite great comedies like Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937) and Ask A Policeman (1939), Hay soon got tired of this teamwork, as the slapstick part of the films quickly began to obscure his real specialty, the linguistic wit.

For his last four films, Hay therefore moved to Ealing Studios in the early 1940s . He directed the last three works himself, together with Basil Dearden , another newcomer to director. With the black comedy My Learned Friend (1943), which is atypical for Hay , which was published by critics alongside Oh, Mr. Porter! is sometimes rated as his best film, the comedian ended his ten-year career in front of the camera on a high level.

In 1942, Will Hay enlisted in the Navy and held the rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve . His deteriorating health meant the end of his film career, but he stayed on the radio . From August 1944, a half-hour Will Hay program was broadcast live from the Paris Cinema in Piccadilly Circus every week . Sick of cancer , the comedian eventually retired into private life. Half-sided paralyzed since a stroke in 1947, Hay died two years later at the age of 60.

Other activities

An avid recreational astronomer Hay built a private observatory and wrote in 1935 an understandable even for beginners book entitled Through My Telescope . Hay also made a name for himself as a private pilot when he owned a self-made glider as early as 1910 . He later took part in various flight competitions and narrowly missed winning the King's Cup in 1928. He was able to apply his knowledge of astronomy and aviation as a teacher (astronomy and navigation) in the British Sea Cadet Corps in the second half of World War II.

Hay was also considered a language talent. In addition to English, he spoke fluent German, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Afrikaans and - in contrast to the act of breaking the wheel in Good Morning, Boys - also French.

Afterlife

In 1986 the asteroid (3125) Hay was named after him.

Filmography

• 1933: Know Your Apples (short film)
• 1934: Those Were the Days
• 1934: Radio Parade of 1935
• 1935: Dandy Dick (also script assistant)
• 1935: Boys Will be Boys (also scriptwriter)
• 1936: Where There's a Will (also script collaboration)
• 1936: Windbag the Sailor
• 1937: Good Morning, Boys
• 1937: Otto, put the brakes on (Oh, Mr. Porter)
• 1938: Convict 99
• 1938: Hey! Hey United States
• 1938: Old Bones of the River
• 1939: Ask a Policeman
• 1940: Where's That Fire?
• 1941: The Ghost of St. Michael's
• 1942: The Big Blockade
• 1942: The Black Sheep of Whitehall (also co-director)
• 1942: The Goose Steps Out (also co-director)
• 1942: Go to Blazes (propaganda short film)
• 1943: My Learned Friend (also co-director)

literature

• Boy's Cinema Annual 1938 , Issued from The Fleetway House, Farringdon Street, London, EC4. Pp. 21-24

Web links

• Will Hay in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/447228/index.html
• Publications by WT Hay in the Astrophysics Data System
• Obituaries for WT Hay in the Astrophysics Data System

annotation

1. ↑ Boy's Cinema Annual 1938, p. 22
2. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 10847