Fred Duprez: From Detroit to the Deep Blue Sea

Detroit born Fred Duprez (1884-1938) became a star of stage, screen, phonograph, and radio on two continents. He made his stage debut circa in 1899, and later left medical school for the theatre, appearing in vaudeville and with stock companies. While he acted in plays and musicals, his vaudeville and music hall acts usually consisted of stand-up routines and songs, many of which were captured on cylinder and disk in the early years of the 20th century, with titles like “Happy Tho’ Married and “I’m On My Way to Reno”. He also specialized in “Dutch”(German) and “Hebrew” characters. Like many a vaudeville comedian, he used a cigar in his act and was said to have a “card index of 10,000 jokes”. Duprez was most popular in London, and at a certain point England became his home, base, though he frequently made transatlantic voyages to dates in the U.S.  Duprez was one of the first radio comedians in Britain, and in 1933 began his successful career as a British film star, appearing in close to movies, often as American, German or Jewish characters.

Duprez also wrote the popular stage comedy, The Wife’s Family, which was filmed no less than five times (1931, 1932, 1933, 1941 and 1956). the plot of the farce is that a husband is going to surprise his wife with the purchase of a piano; she overhears and mistakenly thinks he’s talking about an illegitimate child. The 1931 British version was directed by Monty Banks.

Duprez’s daughter was stage and screen actress June Duprez. Fred was steaming back to England in late 1938 on the U.S.S. Herbert Hoover to look at rushes of her performance in the 1939 British film version of The Four Feathers, when he suffered a fatal heart attack. Fred Duprez’s wife (June’s mother) was Australian actress Florence Mathews, niece of Julia Mathews.

As I say, there are many audio and video clips of Duprez’s work on the internet, not just on Youtube but on the British Pathe site as well. Well worth checking out!