By Elliott West
“My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn’t take it out of my garden”.
Eric Morecambe
Introduction
As a lover of comedy, I would describe Morecambe and Wise as the British sonnet to Laurel and Hardy. An act that had gags galore, perfect comedy timing, and well-rehearsed. Friends for life, this comedy duo, dominated our television screens for many years and whose Christmas shows placed a very special present under the tree every year. The tall and lanky, pipe-smoking Eric and the short Eric with hairy legs and a long-running joke about an imaginary hairpiece that you couldn’t see the join. Eric’s paper bag trick, the rousing musical numbers and dancing off the stage to their unique signature tune, Bring Me Sunshine, a song written by Arthur Kent in 1966. They were the perfect comedy package, an act whose comedy inspired so many future comedians to tread the boards in their footsteps.
In this piece, I want to rewind the clock and delve into the historical archives, looking at the very early lives of Eric and Ernie and trying to capture the initial spark that would propel this act into future stardom. Comedy can never be created without natural and these two had bags of it, Eric was the comedian and Ernie was the brains of the act. A comedy formula that fused on contact, producing work that tickled the laughing organs into a wave of hysteria, causing an audience to roll around in laughter with tears in their eyes. This was a type of comedy that you couldn’t bottle, it was a one-off and ran off typewritten scripts like liquid gold.
The Early Years
If you looked up Eric Bartholomew’s education on the internet or in a reference book, you would be hard-pressed to find much information, other than he attended Lancaster Road Junior School and Euston Road Senior School. By his own admission, Eric wasn’t a scholar and subsequently didn’t learn much. Eric spent most of his time avoiding education and preferred ‘smoking anything he could ignite’. He preferred instead to spend his time at Mrs Hunter’s dance classes above the Plaza Cinema or the Jubilee Club learning his trade in entertainment.
This was Morecambe in the 1930s, a seaside Lancashire town that Eric would later take his stage name from. A bustling place in the Summer, the pier and theatres were the pulse of the community. The beating heart being the Arcadian Theatre which nowadays has made way for a Aldi supermarket. It was at these ‘pies and peas’charity shows that Eric began to shine. In 1937, aged 10, Eric attracted the attention of the local press, receiving a glowing write up in the Lancaster Guardian for an appearance with his dance partner Molly Buntin doing a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers style number at a fundraising bash for a new church at Cross Hill. So successful was the act that his mother Sadie persuaded him to create a solo act based around the American artist and impersonator Ella Shields,
Kitted out by his mother, Eric wore a tailcoat, beret, and trousers too short for him, carrying an oversized lollipop. He hated the act but the combination of impersonations of Fred Astaire and Bud Flanagan from the Crazy Gang was highly popular with the Lancashire audience and led to further auditions in Manchester and London and led to an audition with the bandleader Jack Hylton, aged 13 for his touring show, Youth Takes a Bow. Bartholomew quickly became the star of the show and got rave reviews in local newspapers. When the top billing changed, Ernest Wiseman was brought into the role.
Joined at the Hip
Ernie was everything that Eric wasn’t. He didn’t play the fool, he was an accomplished song and dance man. Someone who had already been on stage at Alexandra Palace on the BBC and was definitely a veteran at entertainment by then. So the cocky Ernie joined Eric and the two became inseparable friends. So close was their friendship they shared digs and railway journeys together and literally wouldn’t shut up. These private jokes would become their comical formula and in 1941, the duo got their chance at the Liverpool Empire. This was the birth of Morecambe and Wise and the audience didn’t even know it!
Their early act was based on Abbot and Costello but there was a problem. They were called Bartholomew and Wise, which sounded like a shop name. It was Bert Hicks, the husband of the American jazz singer Adelaide Hall who was touring with the show that gave Eric the lightbulb moment. Eddie Anderson, the black comedian who played Jack Benny’s butler on the radio had taken the place he was born as his stage name and so Morecambe and Wise were born.
