Norman Wisdom was born in February
1915 into a family that fell apart when he was nine. His father was
violent and abusive and when his mother left in 1924, Norman and his
brother were left in charge of the family but after being thrown out
of their home, were placed into care. His father remarried but Norman
was never accepted back into his life and at the age of thirteen, Norman
and a friend walked from London to Cardiff to get a job down the mines.
From then until joining the army a year later, Norman Wisdom worked
in a variety of jobs including stints as a waiter, an errand boy and
a cabin-boy but with the army he started his life as an entertainer,
learning to dance, play a variety of instruments and develop the physical
comedy with which he would later become famous.
After leaving the army in 1946 and aged thirty-one, Norman Wisdom started
his life as a professional entertainer, appearing in variety shows throughout
Britain. It was during this time that he developed his trademark character
- a well-meaning but incompetent clown wearing a tweed cap with a turned-up
peak, an ill-fitting jacket and a pair of trousers just an inch too
short. The crowds throughout the country and particularly in the West
End wouldn't get enough of him and, with a ready-made audience, Rank
contracted him for a series of films starting in 1953 with Trouble In
Store.
Rank tried to ensure Trouble In Store was as close as they could get
to a guaranteed success by enlisting Norman Wisdom's regular straight-man
(Jerry Desmonde), a beautiful leading lady (Lana Morris) and a comedy
equal (Margaret Rutherford) and when the film subsequently became a
box-office hit, Rank ensured that Wisdom produce a comedy at the rate
of one a year, at least until the end of the decade. With his regular
character now named Norman Pitkin and often accompanied by the officious
Mr. Grimsdale (Edward Chapman), each Norman Wisdom comedy was very loosely
based on the template established by Trouble In Store, with Pitkin (or
equivalent) attempting to find love, impress his superiors and become
a success in his chosen field but through his own incompetence, always
managing to blow what chance he had.
The Early Bird Norman Wisdom stuck to black and white for as long as
possible but eventually moved across to filming in colour in 1966 for
The Early Bird but by then the public had tired of his comedy and the
film offers soon stopped coming.
It has long been a popular claim of bands that no matter how close
to the dumper they are positioned, they are still big in Japan. So Norman
Wisdom, not so popular in Britain in the late-60s, was finding fame
behind the Iron Curtain in Albania. During the many years of Communist
rule, Albania was ruled by King Zog and Stalinist dictator, Enver Hoxha,
a man who dismissed a cabinet minister by simply shooting him dead.
Hoxha, however, decreed that the films of Norman Wisdom were the type
of films that would best entertain his people as well as providing them
with a socialist parable on the plight of the proletariat and their
fight against the aristocracy. In Hoxha's view, Norman Pitkin was a
representative of the workers, struggling against capitalism, which
was embodied by the characters played by Jerry Desmonde and Edward Chapman
including the pompous Mr. Grimsdale.
How successful this was as unknown but the Albanians grew to love
Norman Wisdom's slapstick and following the fall of Communism, Norman
Wisdom (commonly known only as Pitkin) became increasingly involved
in charity work in Albania, particularly in raising money for orphanages
there. Indeed, such is his celebrity status there that on one recent
visit, which coincided with a visit to Tirana by the English football
team, Pitkin made an appearance within the stadium as the team were
in training. Oblivious to the football stars around him, the crowd cheered
and laughed as Pitkins tripped himself up, posed for photographs and
shouted, "Mr. Grimsdale!".
In 1995, Norman Wisdom received an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours
list and a Knighthood in 2000, failing to halt his career. He has since
appeared in Last Of The Summer Wine, Casualty and makes regular chat
show appearances, even at the age of eighty-eight. Age has not stopped
his charity work and he is still involved with Mencap on his adopted
home of the Isle Of Man.
Copyright © 2003 by Eamonn McCusker. Article reproduced courtesy
of DVD Times.
