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;">Newley was born in the London working class district of
Hackney, the son of Frances Grace
Newley and George Kirby, a shipping clerk.[1] He was Jewish on his mother's
side.[2][3] His parents,
who had never married, separated during his early childhood, and he was brought
up by his single mother.[1] Newley was
evacuated during the Luftwaffe bombing of
London during the Blitz and was
thereby exposed to the performing arts when he was tutored during this time by
George Pescud, a former British music hall entertainer.[4]
Although recognised as very bright by his teachers back in London, he was
uninterested in school, and by the age of fourteen was working as an office boy
for an insurance company when he read an ad in the Daily Telegraph,
headed "Boy Actors Urgently Wanted". He applied to the advertisers, the
prestigious Italia Conti Stage School,
only to discover that the fees were too high. Nevertheless, after a brief
audition, he was offered a job as an office boy on a salary of only 30 shillings (£1.50) a week, but also
including free tuition at the school. He naturally accepted and his career was
to be launched. Whilst serving tea one afternoon he caught the eye of producer
Geoffrey de Barkus, who cast Newley as "Dusty" in the children's serial, The
Adventures of Dusty Bates.[citation needed]
[edit] Career
Newley's first major film role was as Dick Bultitude in Peter Ustinov's Vice
Versa (1948) followed by the Artful Dodger in David Lean's Oliver TwistCharles
Dickens story. He made a successful transition from child star to contract
player in British films of the 1950s (broken up by a short stint in the armed
forces), to a top-of-the-pops crooner in the 1960s. During the 1950s he appeared
in many British radio programmes and for a time appeared as Cyril in
Floggits starring Elsie and Doris Waters. But it was probably the
film Idol on Parade that changed his career direction the most. In the
film he played a rock singer called up for national service. (1948), based on the
classic
He wrote ballads, many with Leslie Bricusse, that became signature hits for
Sammy
Davis Jr., Shirley
Bassey and Tony
Bennett. During the 1960s he also added his greatest accomplishments on the
London West End
theatre and Broadway theatre stage, in Hollywood
films and British and American television. In the
1970s he remained active, particularly as a Las Vegas and Catskills Borscht Belt resort performer and talk show guest,
but his career had begun to flounder. He had taken risks that eventually led to
his downfall in Hollywood. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he worked to achieve a
comeback. He died of kidney
cancer at the age of 67, soon after he had become a grandfather.
[edit] Music
Newley had a successful pop
music career as a vocalist, which started in May 1959 with the song "I've
Waited So Long" a number 3 hit in the UK charts thanks largely to the exposure
it received as being featured in the film "Idol On Parade". This was quickly
followed by his number 6 hit "Personality" and then two number-one hits in early 1960: "Why" (originally a 1959 U.S. hit for
Frankie Avalon) and
"Do You Mind?" (written by Lionel Bart). As a songwriter, he won the 1963 Grammy Award for Song of the
Year for "What Kind of Fool Am I?", but he was
also well-known for "Gonna Build a Mountain", "Once in a Lifetime", "On a
Wonderful Day Like Today", "The Joker" and comic novelty songs such as "That
Noise" and "The Oompa-Loompa Song", and his versions of "Strawberry
Fair" and "Pop Goes the Weasel". He wrote songs that
others made hits including "Goldfinger" (the title song of the James BondGoldfinger,
music by John Barry), and "Feeling Good", which became a hit for Nina Simone and the rock band
Muse. With Leslie Bricusse, he
wrote the musical Stop the World - I Want to Get
Off in which he also performed, earning a nomination for a Tony Award for Best
Leading Actor in a Musical. The play was made into a (poorly-received) film
version in 1966,[5] but Newley was
unable to star in it due to a schedule conflict. The other musicals for which he
co-wrote music and lyrics with Bricusse included The Roar
of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd (1965) and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory (1971), based on the children's book by Roald Dahl. film,
The consensus of critics and fans rates "Pure Imagination", "Ain't It Funny",
"Love Is a Now and Then Thing", and "In My Solitude" at the top of the list.[citation needed] Amongst
the many compilations now available are Anthony Newley: The Decca Years (1959–1964), Once in a Lifetime: The Anthony Newley Collection (1960–1971), and Anthony Newley's Greatest Hits (Deram). When he
collaborated with Bricusse, they referred to themselves as the team of 'Brickman
and Newburg', with Newburg concentrating mainly on the music and Brickman on the
lyrics. Ian Frasier often did their arrangements and it has been suggested that
his contributions were more extensive than has been acknowledged.[citation needed] For the
songs from Hieronymous Merkin, Newley collaborated with Herbert Kretzmer.
The comedy album Fool Brittania, starring
Newley, Joan Collins and Peter Sellers
In 1963, Newley had a hit comedy album called Fool Britannia!, the
result of improvisational satires of the British Profumo scandal of the time by a team of Newley,
his then-wife Joan
Collins, and Peter
Sellers. Newley's contributions to Christmas music are highlighted by his
rendition of "The Coventry
Carol" which appears on many anthologies. He also wrote and recorded a
novelty Christmas song called "Santa Claus is Elvis". And there is a notorious
album of spoken poetry which has Newley appearing in the nude on the sleeve with
a similarly-attired young model.
In his later years as a mature singer Newley recorded songs from Fiddler on the
Roof and Scrooge. He enjoyed his final popular success onstage
when he starred in the latter musical which showed in London and toured UK
cities including Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester, in the 1990s. At the time of his death
he had been working on a musical of Shakespeare's Richard III.
In May 2010 Stage Door Records released a compilation of unreleased Newley
recordings entitled 'Newley Discovered'. The album produced with the Anthony
Newley Society and Newley's family contains the concept recordings for Newley's
self-penned movie musicals 'Can
Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?', 'Willy Wonka And The Chocolate
Factory' and 'Mr. Quilp'.
In recognition of his creative skills and body of work, Newley was elected to
the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.[6]
[edit] Acting
The short-lived 1960 ATV series, The Strange World of
Gurney Slade, in which Newley starred and also featured Bernie Winters,[7] continues to have a
cult following owing
to its postmodern premise that the Newley character is
trapped inside a television programme. Apart from a repeat of one episode on Channel 4 in 1992, it has not been
seen in the UK in recent years. The show's theme tune by composer Max Harris,
which was later utilised in the "animated clock" segments on the BBC children's
show Vision On, may be
better known today than the series itself. The piano figure prominent in the
recording was lifted (unacknowledged) from Mose Allison's song "Parchman Farm".
In March 1960, the British music magazine NME reported that Newley's latest film, Jazz Boat, had opened at London's New Victoria Cinema.[8]
Newley played Matthew Mugg in the original Doctor
Dolittle and the repressed English businessman opposite Sandy Dennis in
the original Sweet November. He also hosted
Lucille Ball on a
whirlwind tour of mod London in the Lucy TV special "Lucy in London." He
performed in the autobiographical, Fellini-esque and X-rated Can
Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?,
which he also directed and co-wrote with Herman Raucher. He performed in 'Quilp' (based
on Dickens's 'The Old Curiosity Shop'), for which he composed some songs ('Love
Has the Longest Memory of All'). His last feature role in the cast of the
long-running British TV soap opera EastEnders was to have been a regular role, but
Newley had to withdraw after a few months when his health began to fail.[citation
