For other uses, see Crazy Gang (disambiguation)

Crazy Gang (disambiguation)

There have been several groups called "Crazy Gang" or "The Crazy Gang".*The Crazy Gang, a nickname for the Wimbledon football team of the 1980s and the 1990s*The Crazy Gang, a group of British entertainers formed in the 1930s...

.

The Crazy Gang were a group of British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 entertainers

Entertainment

Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...

, formed in the early 1930s. In the mature form the group's six men were Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan was a popular English music hall and vaudeville entertainer from the 1930s until the 1960s. Flanagan was famous as a wartime entertainer and his achievements were recognised when he was awarded the O.B.E. in 1960.- Family background :Flaganan was born Chaim Reuben Weintrop in...

, Chesney Allen

Chesney Allen

Chesney Allen was a popular English entertainer of the Second World War period. He is best remembered as part of the double act with Bud Flanagan, Flanagan and Allen.-Life and career:...

, Jimmy Nervo

Nervo and Knox

Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the original Crazy Gang. They started the stage careers as an acrobatic dancing team. They used this ability in many of the earlier Crazy Gang shows. Among their many routines, a slow motion wrestling act was developed into a humorous show stopper...

, Teddy Knox

Nervo and Knox

Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the original Crazy Gang. They started the stage careers as an acrobatic dancing team. They used this ability in many of the earlier Crazy Gang shows. Among their many routines, a slow motion wrestling act was developed into a humorous show stopper...

, Charlie Naughton

Charlie Naughton

Charles John "Charlie" Naughton was a Scottish comedian.He was a member of The Crazy Gang, and part of a double act with fellow Glaswegian Jimmy Gold...

 and Jimmy Gold

Jimmy Gold

Jimmy Gold was a comedian and part of the music hall act of Naughton and Gold. Later they became part of The Crazy Gang....

. The group achieved considerable domestic popularity and were a favourite of the royal family

British Royal Family

The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...

, especially King George VI

George VI of the United Kingdom

George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...

.

Formation of the Crazy Gang

Although George Black

George Black (Producer)

George Black was a British theatrical impresario who controlled many entertainment venues during the 1930s.Black was born in Birmingham. When young he helped his father set up some of the first permanent cinemas in Britain. In 1928 he took over the management of GTC which was a chain of...

 is often credited with the formation of the Crazy Gang, the start was more complicated. In 1931 three double acts (Nervo and Knox, Naughton and Gold and Billy Caryll and Hilda Mundy) were tentatively booked at the London Palladium

London Palladium

The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in London and the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety...

. This caused Black to consider cancelling one of the couples. Nervo and Knox had a technique of entering other acts and Black was persuaded to overcome the difficulty by letting this happen. The show, which was called "Crazy Week" opened on 30 November 1931. Other Crazy Weeks followed with Flanagan and Allen added. The name Crazy Gang was not used until 1937.

Composition

The members were: Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan was a popular English music hall and vaudeville entertainer from the 1930s until the 1960s. Flanagan was famous as a wartime entertainer and his achievements were recognised when he was awarded the O.B.E. in 1960.- Family background :Flaganan was born Chaim Reuben Weintrop in...

, Chesney Allen

Chesney Allen

Chesney Allen was a popular English entertainer of the Second World War period. He is best remembered as part of the double act with Bud Flanagan, Flanagan and Allen.-Life and career:...

, Jimmy Nervo

Nervo and Knox

Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the original Crazy Gang. They started the stage careers as an acrobatic dancing team. They used this ability in many of the earlier Crazy Gang shows. Among their many routines, a slow motion wrestling act was developed into a humorous show stopper...

, Teddy Knox

Nervo and Knox

Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the original Crazy Gang. They started the stage careers as an acrobatic dancing team. They used this ability in many of the earlier Crazy Gang shows. Among their many routines, a slow motion wrestling act was developed into a humorous show stopper...

, Charlie Naughton

Charlie Naughton

Charles John "Charlie" Naughton was a Scottish comedian.He was a member of The Crazy Gang, and part of a double act with fellow Glaswegian Jimmy Gold...

 and Jimmy Gold

Jimmy Gold

Jimmy Gold was a comedian and part of the music hall act of Naughton and Gold. Later they became part of The Crazy Gang....

 and sometimes 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray

'Monsewer' Eddie Gray

Monsewer' Eddie Gray was an English stage comedian who performed in Music Halls.He was born in Pimlico, London, as Edward Earl Gray. He became a professional juggler, but by the time he was twenty, he had extended to comedy...

. Essentially the gang comprised three double acts; Flanagan and Allen

Flanagan and Allen

Flanagan and Allen were a British singing and comedy double act popular during World War II. Its members were Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen...

, Naughton and Gold

Naughton and Gold

Naughton and Gold were a comedy double act, consisting of Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold.They started in the British Music Halls in 1908, and were still together as part of The Crazy Gang in 1960, becoming the longest period of two British comedians being in the same act...

, and Nervo and Knox

Nervo and Knox

Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox were part of the original Crazy Gang. They started the stage careers as an acrobatic dancing team. They used this ability in many of the earlier Crazy Gang shows. Among their many routines, a slow motion wrestling act was developed into a humorous show stopper...

 (with some input from Gray). They had all had entertainment success before the Crazy Gang but not of the same magnitude. It was natural for them to get together as they shared a similar style of comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 and worked on the same bills at theatres.

The gang appeared first in their own stage show Crazy Week at the Victoria Palace Theatre

Victoria Palace Theatre

Victoria Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in Victoria Street, in the City of Westminster, opposite Victoria Station.-Origins:The theatre began life as a small concert room above the stables of the Royal Standard Hotel, a small hotel and tavern built in 1832 at what was then 522 Stockbridge...

, which later became their adopted home, but then made several films. The first was O-Kay For Sound, in 1937 and the best remembered was their war-time film Gasbags (1940). They kept people entertained during the war years with their irreverent comedy style, and Flanagan and Allen's very popular songs also contributed to their success. All their films were directed by Marcel Varnel

Marcel Varnel

Marcel Varnel was a film director. He was born Marcel Hyacinthe le Bozec in Paris, France.Varnel started his working life on the Paris stage but soon became a director of musical comedies. In 1925 he moved to New York working as director in several Broadway operettas, musicals and dramas for the...

, the Frenchman who directed a long list of classic British comedies for Will Hay

Will Hay

William Thomson "Will" Hay was an English comedian, actor, film director and amateur astronomer.-Early life:He was born in Stockton-on-Tees, in north east England, to William R...

, George Formby and others. Moore Marriott

Moore Marriott

Moore Marriott was a British character actor most notable for a series of films he made with Will Hay in the 1930s.-Career:...

, who was a co-star of Will Hay, often turned up in their films and Eddie Gray their associate and equally crazy comic always did.

Later they made Life Is A Circus (1958), starring Shirley Eaton

Shirley Eaton

Shirley Eaton is an English actress.Eaton appeared regularly in British films throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and achieved notability for her performance as Bond Girl Jill Masterson in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger...

, in which Flanagan and Allen again performed their biggest hit, "Underneath the Arches

Underneath the Arches (song)

"Underneath the Arches" is a 1931 popular song with words and music by Bud Flanagan, and additional lyrics by Reg Connelly. It was one of the most famous songs of the duo Flanagan and Allen....

". Chesney Allen withdrew from live performances in later years due to ill health, though ironically he outlived all the others. The Gang made a television series The Gang Show in 1956. The Gang was understudied by Peter Glaze

Peter Glaze

William George Peter Glaze was an English comedian born in London. He hosted Crackerjack with Leslie Crowther in the 1960s and with Michael Aspel, Don Maclean, and Bernie Clifton in the 1970s...

.

Other acts who have worked with The Crazy Gang were Teddy Brown

Teddy Brown

Teddy Brown was an American entertainer who spent the latter part of his life performing in Britain. He was born Abraham Himmelbrand in 1900, and first played in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, but moved to the field of popular music in the 1920s.He was noted for his rotund appearance,...

, a very tall and enormously fat American percussionist. His speciality was to perform on the xylophone

Xylophone

The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...

. His other role was to be the butt of practical jokes by the Gang; at one performance Flanagan and Allen took to the stage each encased in one leg of Brown's trousers while Brown frantically called from the wings trying to get them back. His relationship to the main members was similar to that of Eddie Gray.

Another star who worked with the gang was the celebrated stage and film actor Stanley Holloway

Stanley Holloway

Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady...

 who often stood in for Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan

Bud Flanagan was a popular English music hall and vaudeville entertainer from the 1930s until the 1960s. Flanagan was famous as a wartime entertainer and his achievements were recognised when he was awarded the O.B.E. in 1960.- Family background :Flaganan was born Chaim Reuben Weintrop in...

 when he took time off for contractual reasons.

They were asked to do many Royal Command performances; their last was in 1967, and also did private performances for the royal family. Although they were most popular in Britain and countries like Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 they still have their fans in the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, as well as other English speaking countries.

Films

• Okay for Sound - 1937
• Alf's Button Afloat
  Alf's Button Afloat
  Alf's Button Afloat is a 1938 British comedy film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen, Jimmy Nervo, Alastair Sim and Peter Gawthorne. The Crazy Gang go to sea. It paradoies the 1920 novel Alf's Button by W.A...
  
  - 1938
• The Frozen Limits
  The Frozen Limits
  The Frozen Limits is a 1939 British comedy western film directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Jimmy Nervo, Bud Flanagan, Teddy Knox, Chesney Allen and Charlie Naughton a group of entertainers commonly known as The Crazy Gang...
  
  - 1939
• Gasbags
  Gasbags
  Gasbags is a 1941 British comedy film directed by Walter Forde and Marcel Varnel and starring The Crazy Gang.-Plot summary:The film brims with British comedy talent of the period. The Crazy Gang’s mobile fish and chip shop is accidentally tied to a barrage balloon and the gang is carried to Nazi...
  
  - 1941
• Life Is a Circus (1960 film)
  Life is a Circus (1960 film)
  Life is a Circus is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Val Guest and starring Bud Flanagan, Teddy Knox, Jimmy Nervo, Shirley Eaton and Lionel Jeffries. A down-on-its-luck circus use an Aladdin's Magic Lamp to try and save their business....
  
  - Filmed in 1958, released later.

Stage Shows

• Life begins at Oxford Circus - a revue at the London Palladium 1935
• Round About Regent Street - a revue at the London Palladium 1935
• All Alight at Oxford Circus - a revue at the London Palladium 1935
• Okay for Sound - at the London Palladium 1936
• London Rhapsody - at the London Palladium 1937
• These Foolish Things - at the London Palladium 1938
• The Little Dog Laughed - at the London Palladium 1939
• Together Again - at the Victoria Palace
  Victoria Palace Theatre
  Victoria Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in Victoria Street, in the City of Westminster, opposite Victoria Station.-Origins:The theatre began life as a small concert room above the stables of the Royal Standard Hotel, a small hotel and tavern built in 1832 at what was then 522 Stockbridge...
  
  1947
• Knights of Madness - at the Victoria Palace 1950
• Ring out the Bells - at the Victoria Palace 1952
• Jokers Wild - at the Victoria Palace 1954
• These Foolish Kings - at the Victoria Palace 1958
• Clown Jewels - at the Victoria Palace 1959
• Young at Heart - at the Victoria Palace 1960

note Chesney Allen did not perform with the Gang after 1945 and Eddie Gray was added to the cast in 1958

External links

• The Crazy Gang from the BBC Guide to Comedy
• TVCream's Crazy Gang Page
• The Crazy Gang - A tribute