Versatile performer remembered for playing lovable dustman

By both creating and playing a host of memorable characters, Stanley Holloway, who died on 30 January 1982, charmed audiences from Ealing to Broadway.

With his talents for comedy, voices and singing, Mr Holloway brought to life such enduring characters as Albert Ramsbottom and Alfred Doolittle in recordings, plays and more than 60 films.

His genial manner took him from small west end revues in the 1920s to an Oscar nomination some 40 years later.

And to underline his enduring popularity, his tale of one little boy’s run-in with “a lion lyin’ so peaceful” was recently re-recorded by ex-Pulp frontman, Jarvis Cocker.

Stanley Augustus Holloway was born on 1 October 1890 in Manor Park, London, and before making his west end debut in Kissing Time in 1919, he worked as a clerk in London, studied singing in Milan and served as an infantryman on the western front.

In 1921, he became a bit-part player and baritone singer for the Co-Optimists group that performed revues on stage and on film throughout the 1920s.

By the end of the decade, Mr Holloway had found a successful niche in the group as the singer and performer of comic monologues, creating well loved characters such as Sam Small and the Ramsbottom Family.

In the 1930s, on stage and on 12 inch record, he scored his first big success with his story about one particular member of the Ramsbottom family, Albert.

In Albert and the Lion , Mr Holloway described in deflated Lancastrian tones how Albert was swallowed by the lion at Blackpool zoo, creating a performance of undiminished popularity.

For the rest of the 30s, Mr Holloway worked in film, made further comic recordings and appeared in pantomime, before returning to the big screen towards the end of the war, where he made comic and cameo appearances in This Happy Breed, The Way to the Stars and Brief Encounter .

Into his late 50s and early 60s, his career was revitalised on film and on stage, where he played alongside Sir Alec Guinness in Ealing Comedies such as The Lavender Hill Mob and on stage as the gravedigger in Hamlet .

But it was as Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady that Mr Holloway secured his reputation, marrying comic timing with his resonant baritone voice to play the thoughtful dustman on Broadway, in the west end and in the 1964 film, for which he was Oscar-nominated.

He was married twice, first in 1913 and again in 1939, and before his foray into Hollywood he starred alongside Julian, his son from his second marriage, in the American TV series Our Man Higgins from 1962-3.

Mr Holloway continued to perform around the world, taking roles in George Bernard Shaw plays in America , and at the age of 87, touring Australia and Hong Kong with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, on stage, radio and film, and in comic, serious and singing roles, Holloway honed his versatility as a truly all-round entertainer.

And when he complained that he was being neglected during Broadway rehearsals for My Fair Lady, director Moss Hart told him, “Look Stanley, I have my hands full with a leading man who’s never starred in a musical before and a leading lady who’s never played the lead in a musical before. You’ve done both. So, if I don’t talk to you, you should take it as a compliment.”