[BITList] You didn't have to be, but

[John Feltham]

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Crazy Gang  (act. 1931-1962), comedians, came to prominence in the early 1930s. They comprised the double acts of Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen [see Allen,  (William Ernest) Chesney  (1894?-1982)], Jimmy Nervo and Teddy Knox [see Knox,  Edward Albert Cromwell],  [see below] and  [see below], and the comedy juggler and droll 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray [see Gray,  Edward Earl]. They first appeared together (minus Flanagan and Allen who joined in the following year) in a Crazy Week in 1931 at the London Palladium. For the next thirty years they appeared in a series of highly successful revues and films and became a regular feature of royal variety shows, enjoying a nationwide reputation for their original brand of comedy. Although they formed a distinct group, the members of the Crazy Gang maintained parallel careers as separate acts. Flanagan and Allen in particular enjoyed enormous popularity as sentimental elegists for the depressed 1930s and as wartime exemplars of the indomitable, irreverent British spirit.

Although Flanagan came to be seen as the animating spirit of the gang, its format and style were based on a type of comedy that had been pioneered by Nervo and Knox in the 1920s. In a series of shows, beginning with Young Bloods of Variety in 1925, Nervo and Knox, often working with Gray, had developed a style which gave an impression of spontaneous mayhem throughout the theatre, with performances spilling into the auditorium and constant 'interruption gags' in which the performers would intrude into other acts on the bill. This style informed the first Crazy Week, which began on 30 November 1931 at the instigation of George Black, manager of the London Palladium, and involved, along with Gray and Nervo and Knox, the double acts of Glaswegians Charles John  [Charlie] Naughton  (1886-1976)  and Jimmy Gold  [real name James McGonigal]  (1886-1967)  and the husband-and-wife act of Billy Caryll and Hilda Mundy. Caryll and Mundy adapted sportingly to the format but left the gang after the inclusion of Flanagan and Allen in 1932. Naughton and Gold proved immediately adept, having been working toward a similar style in their own extensive variety and pantomime career. The pair had first met on a Glasgow building site and had made their work experience the basis of a slapstick act, begun in 1908 and billed as 'The Comedy of the British Working Man'. Their routine was hardly innovative, but it was expertly timed. Perhaps their greatest asset, one that was exploited in turn by the Crazy Gang, was the comic resemblance of the bald, lisping Charlie Naughton to an overgrown, if rather accident-prone baby (Rene Cutforth memorably described Naughton as having the appearance of 'a hamster who's swallowed a tennis ball').

After the success of a number of Crazy Weeks and Crazy Months the group began, with Round about Regent Street in 1935, a series of revues, each running for about eight months, that filled the Palladium throughout the 1930s. All Alight at Oxford Circus (1936), O-Kay for Sound (1936), London Rhapsody (1937), These Foolish Things (1938), and The Little Dog Laughed (1939) were renowned for their high production values and the quality of the support acts and were significant in establishing in the public mind the Crazy Gang's unique blend of anarchic physical comedy, playful vulgarity, and musical whimsicality. The gang became famed for their beautifully timed slapstick (with Charlie Naughton frequently featured as the fall guy), their outrageous drag performances such as the popular 'Shadow of Eros' in which they appeared as rather matronly Piccadilly Circus flower-sellers singing 'Six Broken Blossoms', and the glowingly melancholic songs of Flanagan and Allen. The gang also gained a formidable reputation as on-stage and off-stage practical jokers. Jimmy Nervo was recklessly prone to setting various parts of Charlie Naughton's costume on fire and the gang would routinely sabotage other acts on the bill. On one occasion they dyed the face of their understudy George Lane an indelible red and blue after tampering with his make-up; on another they sent the trainer of a canine act due to support them on a quest round London after persuading her that her dogs needed to be fireproofed in order to appear on stage. The gang attempted to replicate their stage successes in several films, Okay for Sound (1937), Alf's Button Afloat (1938), Gas Bags (1940), and Life is a Circus (1962). While not flopping, these films were recognized as having been only partially successful in capturing the spirit of the gang's stage act.

After a wartime hiatus the Crazy Gang performed with continued acclaim under the aegis of Jack Hylton at the Victoria Palace. They now appeared without Allen, who had retired at the end of the war, although he continued to appear with the gang in royal variety performances and acted as their agent and manager, and Gray, who rejoined in 1956. Their revue Together Again opened on 17 April 1947 and ran for a record-breaking 1566 performances. This was followed by a series of shows, all of which enjoyed phenomenal runs of over 800 performances: Knights of Madness (1950), Ring out the Bells (1952), Jokers Wild (1954), These Foolish Kings (1956), and Clown Jewels (1959). Their final show, Young in Heart, ran for 826 twice-nightly performances from December 1960 until an emotional farewell on 19 May 1962. This final performance was commemorated by the poet laureate, John Betjeman, in his 'To the Crazy Gang' and was the subject of a moving tribute on BBC radio by Rene Cutforth. According to Cutforth, the audience were all agreed 'some of us in tears, that something English, human, and admirable had departed from this mortal scene'  (Green, 305).

With an unprecedented longevity at the top of their profession the Crazy Gang had managed the rare trick of articulating in comedy and song the solidarity and spirit of mid-century Britain. The particular affection in which they were held by their audiences was based on a shared sense of having weathered difficult times with a ready smile. Their popularity reputedly stretched to the royal family, for whom they performed fifteen official and several other unofficial royal variety performances. The influence of their anarchic, borderline surreal style, analogous to the contemporaneous American Hellzapoppin, can be traced in British humour in shows such as The Goons and Monty Python's Flying Circus, but they are probably most fondly remembered for their populist strain of heartening vulgarity and heartwarming sentimentalism.

David Goldie 

Sources  M. Owen, The Crazy Gang: a personal reminiscence (1986) + J. Fisher, Funny way to be a hero (1973) + R. Wilmot, Kindly leave the stage! (1986) + B. Flanagan, My crazy life (1961) + B. Green, ed., The last empires: a music hall companion (1986) + R. Busby, British music hall: an illustrated who's who from 1850 to the present day (1976) + R. Hudd, Roy Hudd's cavalcade of variety acts (1997) + I. Bevan, Top of the bill (1952) + R. Mander and J. Mitchenson, eds., Revue (1971) + The Times (9 Oct 1967) [Jimmy Gold] + CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1976) [Charlie Naughton] + The Times (12 Feb 1976) [Charlie Naughton] + b. cert. [Charlie Naughton]
Archives  FILM BFI NFTVA, news footage + BFI NFTVA, performance footage SOUND BBC WAC + BL NSA, 'The Crazy Gang: a celebration', T6225WR TR2 + BL NSA, oral history interview + BL NSA, performance recording
Likenesses  photographs, c.1937-1962, Hult. Arch. · C. Beaton, group portrait, photograph, NPG [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £4076-Charlie Naughton: probate, 9 April 1976, CGPLA Eng. & Wales