Leslie Sarony born 22 January 1897

Leslie Sarony (born Leslie Legge Frye; 22 January 1897 – 12
February 1985) was a British entertainer, singer and songwriter.

Sarony was born in Surbiton, Surrey, the son of William Henry Frye, alias William Rawstorne Frye, an Irish-born artist and photographer, and his wife, Mary Sarony, who was born in New York City. He was christened as Leslie Legge Tate Frye at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Twickenham, on 5 May 1898. He began his stage career aged 14 with the group Park Eton's Boys. In 1913 he appeared in the revue Hello Tango.

In the Great War, Sarony served (as Private Leslie Sarony Frye) in the London Scottish Regiment and the Royal Army Medical Corps in France and Salonika, and was awarded the Silver War Badge.

His stage credits after the war include revues, pantomimes and musicals, including the London productions of Show Boat and Rio Rita. Sarony became well known in the 1920s and 1930s as a variety artist and radio performer. In 1928 he made a short film made in the Phonofilm sound-on-film system, Hot Water and Vegetabuel. In this film, he sang, interspersed with his comic patter, the two eponymous songs – the first as a typical Cockney geezer outside a pub, the second (still outside the pub) as a less typical vegetable rights campaigner ("Don't be cruel to a vegetabuel").

He went on to make a number of recordings of novelty songs, such as "He Played his Ukulele as the Ship Went Down", including several with Jack Hylton and his Orchestra. He teamed up with Leslie Holmes in 1933 under the name The Two Leslies. The partnership lasted until 1946. Their recorded output included such gems as "I'm a Little Prairie Flower". His song "Jollity Farm" was covered by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band on their 1967 album Gorilla.

 

                               

While the name of Leslie Sarony may have become unfamiliar to new generations by the 1970s, within the entertainment business he had become a living legend. He continued to perform into his eighties, moving on to television and films. In the 1970s he appeared in hit programmes including the Harry Worth Show, Crossroads, Z-Cars, The Good Old Days, and The Liberace Show, as well as the famous sitcom Nearest and Dearest. He took over from Bert Palmer as the senile Uncle Stavely ("I heard that! Pardon?") in the fourth and final series of I Didn't Know You Cared in 1979. Other appearances included Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV and Minder, and in 1984 he had a showy bit part as the Gatekeeper in Paul McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street. Also in 1984 he was on a television variety bill broadcast from Manchester.

Sarony did get to re-record some of his old hits with modern arrangements for an LP in 1980, and soon afterwards was awarded a Golden Tuning Fork by the Songwriters Guild of Great Britain for his lifetime’s achievement as a composer.

In 1983 Sarony appeared in his second Royal Variety performance. He also appeared as one of a number of elderly insurance clerks in the The Crimson Permanent Assurance segment of Monty Python's film The Meaning of Life.

 Leslie died of cancer in a London hospital 12 February 1985. Active almost to the very end, at 88 he was the oldest working actor on Equity’s books. He had been an ‘entertainist’ for over three-quarters of a century.  (Info edited from Wikipedia & Voices of Variety.com)

Here’s Leslie Sarony late in life – well into his 80s – in a TV appearance where he sings The Old Sow (a traditional folk song involving bizarre vocal effects that he made his own) and his classic Aint It Grand to be Blooming Well Dead.