[BITList] The wee man - Oxford DNB Life of the Day

[John Feltham]

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Lorne,  Tommy  [real name Hugh Corcoran]  (1890-1935), music-hall entertainer and comedian, was born on 7 December 1890 at 8 Fleming Street in the Cowcaddens district of Glasgow, the youngest of the six children of John Corcoran (1852/3-1917), a mason's labourer, and his wife, Mary Ann Gallagher (1854/5-1908). His paternal and maternal grandparents were Irish migrants to Scotland, the Corcorans eventually settling in Kirkintilloch, an industrial town in east Dunbartonshire. Although his parents moved to Glasgow in the 1880s and he was identified as quintessentially a Glaswegian comedian, Lorne retained close family ties with Kirkintilloch and claimed to have made his first stage appearance there at the age of five. He subsequently developed as a child entertainer, performing with such ensembles as the Port Dundas Court Juvenile Minstrels, where he honed his singing and dancing skills.

However, there was another side to the young Corcoran's talents. Academically gifted, his particular aptitude was for mathematics and science. During the early 1900s he became one of a select group of working-class Roman Catholic boys who won bursaries to St Aloysius' College, a Jesuit-run school in Glasgow with a strong teaching reputation. By producing a generation of professionals, academics and clergymen, St Aloysius' helped to shape the city's increasingly influential Catholic middle class. After he left school, about 1907, the St Aloysius' connection helped to secure his first full-time job as an apprentice chemist at the Steel Company of Scotland's Blochairn works in Glasgow.

The industrial career did not last. Determined to continue with performing, Corcoran spent his spare time in the highly competitive world of music-hall amateur talent nights or as one of the variety 'turns' that interspersed cinematograph shows. His emerging stage persona owed much to his tall, gangling physique, and he worked especially well alongside the contrasting figure of an apparently nimbler foil. After several shortlived partnerships he teamed up with Billy Wallace, forming the double act Wallace and Lorne, comedians and dancers. Originally known as Tom Lorne, he adopted the more familiar Tommy during or immediately after military service, some time between 1917 and 1920. He was already a professional music-hall artist by the time of his marriage, on 10 November 1914, to Mary Frances Ellard (b. 1895/6), daughter of Christopher Ellard, tailor. The couple went on to have three children: John (Jackie), Richard, and Eileen.

According to Lorne's own testimony Wallace and Lorne often played a gruelling six to twelve towns per week on the Scottish variety circuit  (The Era, 31 Oct 1925). Pantomime and revue offered more sustained performing opportunities and in 1915 the duo became associated with the productions of Harry McKelvie, manager (and later proprietor) of the Royal Princess's Theatre in Glasgow's Gorbals district. Possessing shrewd promotional abilities, McKelvie and his business partner Richard Waldon had become famous in the city for their lavish stage shows, aimed at working-class family audiences. McKelvie productions were distinctive as they absorbed elements from nineteenth-century 'Scotch drama', with emphasis on vernacular dialogue and ostentatiously tartanized set-pieces, including the ubiquitous kilted chorus girls. By 1915 the Princess's pantomime had become a local institution, running for a lengthy season of around twenty weeks.

With their Glasgow roots, eccentric characterization, and knockabout humour, Wallace and Lorne fitted easily into the tradition. Their partnership ended some time after the winter of 1915-16, almost certainly because Wallace had joined the armed forces, leaving Lorne as a solo act, appearing the following season in another touring McKelvie pantomime, Tom the Piper. His own term of military service commenced in 1917 when he joined the Royal Field Artillery and was stationed in India, along the north-west frontier. He continued to perform in army concert parties and later made the dubious claim of having been 'the first white comedian' to have played in Afghanistan  (The Era, 31 Oct 1925).

After demobilization Lorne renewed his professional connection with McKelvie and was cast as one of the principal comedians in the 1920-21 Princess's pantomime, Peter Piper. He was partnered with Bret Harte, a veteran entertainer who had achieved considerable success with his wife, Dora Lindsay, in a Glaswegian patter act. Harte's sense of timing made him the ideal feed for Lorne in their roles as impecunious but resourceful travelling showmen, and their rapport with the Gorbals audience meant that they soon became the pantomime's star attraction. Lorne established his professional reputation in three successive seasons at the Princess's, generating lucrative income for McKelvie along the way. His popularity confounded post-war predictions that a dual onslaught from Hollywood cinema and London musical comedy would kill the 'Scotch' pantomime tradition. In a review of Goody Two-Shoes, even the Glasgow Herald (18 December 1922), a stoutly middle-class and conservative broadsheet, enthused that Lorne's 'long proportions, quaint mannerisms and inimitable dialect are gems in the rich setting of this pantomine'.

The 1920s represented Lorne's golden decade. He acquired a London agent and became one of the most immediately recognizable comedians in Scotland. In addition to pantomime he toured in revue across the British Isles, playing up the 'Scotch' dimension in comically exaggerated highland dress, including over-sized Glengarry bonnet, short kilt and big brogues. In Scotland his catchphrases became common currency, especially the exasperated expletive 'in the name of the wee man!' or simply 'in the name ...!' Lorne recognized his potential earning capacity early on and in 1923 broke with the notoriously tight-fisted McKelvie. During the 1923-4 season he starred in Harry Roxbury's production of Goody Two-Shoes at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, impressing the Scotsman reviewer with his 'quaint, queer and clever' characterization (29 Jan 1924). It was also at the King's that he played his first dame role in an opulent 1927-8 production of The Sleeping Beauty. His feed was the Australian-born comedian W. S. (Billy) Percy, playing Muddles, the royal secretary, to Lorne's Queen Quibblina. The immediate bond between the two performers meant that their successful pantomime partnership endured until 1934.

The King's was run by Howard and Wyndham, an Edinburgh-based theatre management company that also had an interest in the Theatre Royal, Glasgow. For the 1929-30 season the company's managing director, A. Stewart Cruickshank, took Lorne back to his performing roots in Cowcaddens, where the Royal was located. Compared to the Princess's its pantomimes had a classier, less earthy quality, but in The Sleeping Beauty and subsequent Roxbury productions Lorne did not compromise his characterizations. He was soon breaking box-office records, and earning a huge weekly salary of more than £200. During the depressed years of the early 1930s the traditional pantomime themes of strength in adversity and the quest for good fortune had especial resonance for Scottish audiences, and Lorne's absurd but empathetic humour was regarded as an antidote to difficult times.

Lorne's success also created personal problems. Some biographers have suggested that pressure of work led to excessive drinking, and there can be no doubt of eventual conflict with Cruickshank over Lorne's share of Howard and Wyndham's profits. In consequence Lorne acted as his own promoter and manager during the 1934-5 season and attracted large audiences to his touring production of Cinderella. However, the physical effort of two shows a night, as well as financial responsibilities, caused his health to deteriorate. After Cinderella he went straight into revue at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, but exhaustion soon obliged him to enter a nursing home in the city. He developed bronchio-pneumonia and died at 11 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, on 17 April 1935. As obituaries reported, he had recently patched up his differences with Cruickshank, signing a contract to star in the 1935-6 pantomime at Glasgow's Theatre Royal. Both Cruickshank and McKelvie were pallbearers at an emotional funeral attended by some 3000 people at St Roch's Roman Catholic Church, Garngad, Glasgow. Lorne was buried alongside his parents at the Auld Aisle cemetery, Kirkintilloch.

Countless tall tales have been circulated about Lorne, some of them self-generated, others embellished by journalists. For instance the legend persists that Lorne sausage-a distinctively Scottish breakfast favourite-was named in tribute to the comedian's catchphrase, 'Sausages is the boys!'  (Shields). Because of the strength of Lorne's characterizations his identity as Hugh Corcoran faded into the background and numerous inconsistencies arose about his life in order that writers could match the man with his comic persona. Yet there can be no questioning the affection and respect he continues to inspire in Scotland, largely owing to his achievements in maintaining the integrity of popular 'Scotch' performance, especially the thriving genre of pantomime.

Irene Maver 

Sources  Daily Record (18 April 1935) + Glasgow Evening News (18 April 1935) + Glasgow Evening Times (18 April 1935) + Glasgow Observer (20 April 1935); (27 April 1935) + T. Lorne, 'My early trials', The Era (31 Oct 1925) + The Era (24 April 1935) + 'Goody Two-Shoes, Princess's pantomime', Glasgow Herald (18 Dec 1922) [review] + Glasgow Herald (18 April 1935); (22 April 1935) + 'Goody Two-Shoes at the King's Theatre', The Scotsman (29 Jan 1924) [review] + The Scotsman (18 April 1935) + J. V. McCabe, The history of St Aloysius' College, 1859-1999 (2000) + R. Busby, British music hall: an illustrated who's who from 1850 to the present day (1976) + A. D. Mackie, The Scotch comedians: from the music hall to television (1973) + J. House, Pavement in the sun (1967) + J. House, Music hall memories (1986) + Howard and Wyndham pantomimes 1888-1948, Howard and Wyndham Ltd (1948) + B. Peter, Scotland's splendid theatres: architecture and social history from the Reformation to the present day (1999) + G. Smith, The Theatre Royal: entertaining a nation (2008) + T. Shields, 'Now the Irish have cottoned on to the lure of the Lorne', Sunday Herald (10 Aug 2008) + U. Glas. L., Scottish theatre archive [assorted ephemera] + census returns, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901 + m. cert. [parents] + d. cert. [parents] + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives U. Glas. L., Scottish theatre archive
Likenesses  photographs, U. Glas. L., Scottish theatre archive · portrait, 1920-29, Falkirk Museums · photograph, 1904, repro. in McCabe, History (2000) · W. Lamb, bust, c.1932, William Lamb Studio, Montrose · cartoon, 1924, repro. in The Era (8 Aug 1924) · photograph, c.1928, repro. in Mackie, Comedians · photograph, c.1935, repro. in Glasgow Evening Times (18 April 1935) · photograph, 1920-29, U. Glas. L. [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £11,247 14s. 10d.: confirmation, 22 June 1935, CCI




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