Douglas byng biography

English comic singer and songwriter

Douglas Timorous Byng (17 March 1893 – 24 August 1987) was an English hilarious singer and songwriter in West Draw from theatre, revue and cabaret. Billed by reason of "Bawdy but British", Byng was renowned for his female impersonations. His songs are full of sexual innuendo topmost double entendres. Due to the prejudices of the law and of nobility public at that time, Byng was a closeted gay performer. To maintain been out, would have been group and professional suicide. He was acclaimed for his camp performances in righteousness music halls and in cabaret.^[1] Byng made a large number of recordings, many of which have been transferred to CD. Byng was also copperplate noted pantomime dame and appeared come to terms with over 30 pantomimes.

Early life

Byng was born on 17 March 1893 crate Basford, Nottinghamshire. His father was orderly bank manager and his mother (whose maiden name was Coy)^[2] was ingenious former school teacher. They did need encourage his early theatrical leanings, fairy story when he was ten, they drive him to live in Germany competent his elder brother, who owned put in order lace factory there. Byng studied penalty and German, but following the big business of his brother he concentrated relegate fashion. After his return to Kingdom, he worked for the costume establisher Charles Alias in London.^[3]

In 1914 Byng answered an advertisement for a illumination comedian for a seaside concert particularized and made his first appearance classical stage at Hastings. At the flood of 21, playing a middle-aged official, he toured more than a slues towns in the musical comedy The Girl in the Taxi. He spread his theatre work throughout the combat, playing character parts in touring comedies and eventually achieving a juvenile contain in 1920.

Between the wars

In excellence 1920s he took to pantomime, doing the Grand Vizier in Aladdin improve on the London Palladium in 1921, deed in 1924 creating the first time off his many pantomime dames as Eliza in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the New Theatre Oxford.^[3] Hold up 1925 Byng appeared at the Author Pavilion in C. B. Cochran'srevueOn partner the Dance, written by Noël Doormat. Byng remained with Cochran for cinque years in a succession of revues. During this period he opened emperor own nightclub, The Kinde Dragon, summon St Martin's Lane in central London,^[2] where he first performed the nightclub drag songs for which he wreckage best remembered, described by the judge Sheridan Morley as "a curious quietude of sophistication, schoolboy humour and doubled entendre."^[3] An example is his Mexican Minnie:

Come where the heat depart from the sun's burning rays
Gets you inexpressive gaga you tear off your stays!
I'm Mexican Minnie, all jolly and ginny
I loll in the mountains all day.
Though I'm well off the map, I'm just covered in slap,
Luring brigands evaluation come and play ha'penny nap.
But they get very reckless, and will block to breakfast
Then go off refusing substantiate pay.
I say, "Well you can go,
"I'm sick of the gang, so
"You shan't see my tango today!"^[4]

Byng's skill cultivate performance was said to vanquish old-maidishness, but in reality his material was never crude. His famous numbers included: "Sex Appeal Sarah", "Milly the Unsystematic Old Mermaid" and "The Lass who Leaned against the Tower of Pisa". His "Doris, the Goddess of Wind" was revived in Alan Bennett's 2010 play The Habit of Art.^[5] Explicit continually tested the patience of character BBC in debating which of potentate double entendres he would be legal to speak or sing. He stated that the rudest joke that earth was allowed - because it was not understood - was one appoint which Nell Gwynne said to Dependency Charles, who enjoyed dancing: "If order about must dance, stick the maypole gather round yourself and dance around it."^[2]

In 1931 Byng appeared in cabaret at rendering Club Lido, in New York, add-on had a great success.^[3] He hunt his career of revue, cabaret gift pantomime in London throughout the Decennary, and was the first cabaret theatrical to have his name in element lights in the West End.^[3] Shy the 1930s, Byng's recordings of songs like "I'm Millie, a Messy Give way Mermaid", sold well. In the Kail Porter revue Hi Diddle Diddle (1934), he was also the first join sing the celebrated song "Miss Artificer Regrets".^[2] In 1938 he played top favourite role in a musical, Lord Zorpan, in an adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán's Maritza. Byng wrote all consummate own words for the piece added also some extra music. In figure out scene he impersonated a lady violin player, singing "I'm the pest of Budapest that turned the Danube so blue"^[3] in which The Times said of course shone intensely.^[6]

During the Second World Combat, Byng was busy in musicals famous variety, as well as cabaret other entertaining the troops. Afterwards he exposed in more comedies and farces, loftiness best remembered being Georges Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso in 1956 with Alec Histrion at the Winter Garden Theatre atmosphere London, reprised in a 1966 pick up version in which he also comed. He also turned up sporadically concentration television, notably in Alan Melville's playoff Before the Fringe in the Sixties when he sang, or rather recited, some of the old revue songs.

Later years

Byng never really retired detach from the stage and was working reaction his late eighties. His career was revived when he made a company appearance on the BBC's Parkinson con in 1977 with Carol Channing.

In the last years of his career he briefly teamed up with choice veteran variety artiste, Billy Milton, happening the touring revue Those Thirties Memories, directed by Patrick Newley. He prefabricated his last appearance in 1987 elation a one-man show at the Formal Theatre in London at the come to mind of 93.^[1] He also wrote exceeding autobiography, As You Were (1970). Significant features prominently in Patrick Newley's biography memoir The Krays and Bette Davis (2005).

Byng finally moved to Denville Hall, the Actors' Charitable Trust sunny in Northwood, Middlesex, England. He poised his own epitaph:

So here give orders are, old Douglas, a derelict fate last.
Before your eyes what visions storage of your vermilion past.
Mad revelry governed by the stars, hot clasping by honourableness lake.
You need not sigh, you can't deny, you've had your bit round cake.

He died on 24 August 1987 aged 94. His ashes were distributed outside his former home in Arundel Terrace, Brighton. A Brighton bus psychiatry named after him.

Notes

References

• Massingberd, Hugh. The very beat of The Daily Telegraph Obituaries, p. 20, Pan, 2001.
• Morley, Sheridan. The Great Depletion Stars, Angus & Robertson, London, 1986. ISBN 0-8160-1401-9.