Wisdom's mother left home when he was nine, and he and his brother
were left in the charge of a father. Wisdom ran away from home when
he was 11, but returned to become an errand boy with a grocery store
on leaving school at 13. Later he was a coal-miner, a waiter, a pageboy
and a cabin-boy, before joining the army and seeing service in India.
Leaving in 1946, he made his debut as an entertainer at the advanced
age of 31 - but his rise to the top was phenomenally fast after that.
A West End star within two years, he made his TV debut the same year
and was soon commanding enormous audiences. By this time, he had adopted
the suit that would remain his trademark - tweed cap askew with peak
turned up, too-tight jacket, barely-better trousers, crumpled collar
and tie awry.
Encouraged by the viewing figures, Rank signed him up and set him loose
in a department store in Trouble
in Store in 1953. They hedged their bets by throwing in Wisdom's
regular stooge, the supercilious Jerry Desmonde, the incomparable Margaret
Rutherford as a shoplifter, and a pretty leading lady in Lana Morris.
Rank clearly had a goldmine on its hands. Thereafter Wisdom was able
to turn out comedies at the rate of one a year. Most are fairly painful
now, but some show commendable originality, notably Man
of the Moment and, later, On
the Beat and A
Stitch in Time. Wisdom clung to black and white film as long as
he dared, and the eventual switch to colour in 1965 only proved how
right he'd been. It robbed his comedy of some of its simplicity and,
battling against poor scripts, Wisdom was out of films by the end of
the decade.
