Norman Wisdom: The Successful Failure

Though he was a major star in Great Britain, here in the States movie lovers are apt to know Norman Wisdom (1915-2010) from just one film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1967). Born right around the time Charlie Chaplin was becoming famous, Wisdom’s life would have many parallels with Chaplin’s. His stardom was not on Chaplin’s scale, but he was born into horrible poverty, and developed a similar comedy character he played in a series of films over the course of many years.

Like Chaplin, Wisdom was a literal street urchin. Abandoned to care by an abusive alcoholic father, he was also turned out by foster parents for non payment, literally having to shift for himself when still a child. He worked as an errand boy for a grocer, and a porter in a hotel, then became a cabin boy in the merchant marine, and then a band boy in the British army, stationed in India. He learned to box competitively, and to play piano, trumpet, bugle, saxophone, flute, clarinet, and drums. He served in the signal corps during World War Two, and this is when he began his skills as a professional entertainer. In addition to his duties as a musician, he could sing, and do physical clowning. This is when he began to bill himself as “The Successful Failure”.

After the war he worked in music halls and pantomimes, and formed a loose partnership with magician David Nixon. Wisdom developed a character he called The Gump, whose attire included a suit that was too small, and a flat cap. Everything was worn sort of messed up. The cat was not straight, the tie was half untied, the collar was sticking up. By 1948, just three years after the armistice, he was getting booked in film and television.

From 1953 through 1966 Wisdom starred in a series of comedy films at the rate of about one a year, most produced by the J. Arthur Rank Organization, in which he played a ne-er-do-well who made a hash out of a series of menial jobs. His character was usually called Norman, and in addition to the slapstick there was usually a romantic subplot featuring a girl he wooed ineptly. He wrote the screenplays to many of these films, and even some of the theme songs. Thus he was in those ways a successor to Chaplin, though you might more aptly compare him to contemporaries like Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, and others. Unlike Chaplin, Wisdom was never an international star, not even Britain’s top star, but usually fared somewhere between #5 and #10 in the national rankings. Other than Britain and the other commonwealth nations, the country where he enjoyed the biggest fame was Communist Albania, due to the fact that his were among the few western films approved by leader Enver Hoxha. The plots of Widsom’s films usually showed him struggling under some mean boss, and this apparently read as anti-capitalist allegory to the dictator.

In 1966 and ’67, Wisdom tried his luck in America. He starred on Broadway in Walking Happy, a musical based on Hobson’s Choice with tunes by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. He also starred as the title character in a TV production of Shaw’sAndrocles and the Lion, with Noel Coward, Ed Ames, John Cullum, William Hickey, and Geoffrey Holder. Then came The Night They Raided Minsky’s, which also got him booked on Gypsy Rose Lee’s TV show, as well as The Ed Sullivan Show,The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson etc. He worked with George Abbott on another Broadway show Not Now, Darling (1970), but he failed to conquer the States.

In the home country, Wisdom starred in one last film What’s Good for the Goose (1969), and then a series of TV shows: Norman (1970), Nobody is Norman Wisdom (1973), A Little Bit of Wisdom (1974-76), and Just Wisdom (1986). From the mid ’70s to the end of his life he worked steadily in guest shots on sit-coms, variety shows, talk shows, game shows, and the like.

For more on the history of show business,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on classic comedy please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube. And stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.