Cholmley Gardens is a rectangular block of flats bordering Mill Lane, Aldred Road, Hillfield Road and Fortune Green Road.
Cholmley Lodge
The site was previously a large house set in extensive grounds, called Cholmley Lodge dating from 1813 and built for Thomas Walker who was there by January 1814. He was a senior legal officer with the title ‘Master of the Court of Chancery’. .jpg)
After several other occupiers, Dr Herbert Evans rented the Lodge in 1844 and later purchased the property but only lived in West End for a few months. He had been family physician to the artist John Constable and cared for his wife Maria, who died of tuberculosis in 1828, at the family home in Well Walk, Hampstead. Constable painted the doctor’s portrait the following year. Barrister Edward Thornton lived at Cholmley Lodge from about 1847 to 1852. He did a great deal to help the West End villagers, who presented him with a written testimonial and silver inkstand as an expression of their gratitude. He must have been a remarkable man, given the sacrifices involved in raising the money for such an expensive gift.
One of the last owners in 1874, was Scottish-born Captain Henry Wilkes Notman, under whom the estate took its final shape. He was a wealthy businessman and the managing director of several railway companies, including the South India Railway. Notman supported the West Enders in their fight to protect Fortune Green from the developers and contributed £100 to the fighting fund to save West End Green. He also gave £350 towards building the new Emmanuel Church in Lyncroft Gardens. For several years before his death at the Lodge in April 1914, Notman was rarely at home, as he travelled extensively on the Continent. In his will, the property and £106,451 (today worth some £9M) were left to his nephew, Arthur Clyne, a well-known Aberdeen architect. Arthur and his wife Isabel moved into the Lodge in 1914 and left for Surrey in 1919.
The estate was then put up for sale, but not before some residents tried to buy it as a park for the neighbourhood, suggesting it would be a fitting memorial to those who had died in the Great War. Hampstead Council declined to act and at auction, six acres of grounds and the old house sold for £18,000. Further efforts were made to save the property, until December 1922, when the Council approved Martin William Harvey’s application to build flats on the property.
Martin William Harvey
In 1922 Harvey was named as the correspondent in the divorce case of William Lee and his wife Annie Eveline née Rix. Martin became the stepfather to Annie’s sons Donovan (1900-1972) and Kerry Lee (1902-1988) who worked in his company Domiciles Ltd. They built Cholmley Gardens between 1924 and 1926. The electoral register for 1924 shows Nos.1 to 24; the following year 1 to 55 were listed and 1926 electoral registers show the flats complete, comprising Nos.1 to 165. The blocks surrounded a large communal garden area with tennis courts and garages. Originally, a putting green was also provided.
Harvey also built Berkeley Court a very large block of flats in Baker Street in 1929/30. In 1935 he went to court against Lloyds Bank and Eagle Star Insurance, the mortgagees of Berkeley Court, who wanted to sell the block for £520,000. He appears to have been suffering from some sort of cognitive problem when in 1944 he next posted leaflets saying Lloyds had robbed him and his ‘astral friends’ had sent him messages. He asked Winston Churchill to come to court to hear about the case. When Lloyds summonsed him for libel, he withdrew the allegations. Martin was living in Dolphin Square when he died visiting South Africa in 1949. Kerry Lee became a successful commercial artist and cartographer. Don Lee was an important engineer who helped the Allies with the Mulberry harbour used in the Normandy D-Day landings.
Cholmley Gardens flat numbers 1-61 are in 3-storey blocks with two flats per floor. The numbering omits 13. From 62 up, there are 4-storeys, still with two flats per floor. There are some exceptions to this, particularly in blocks 158-165, where there are three per floor, e.g. 164, 164A and 165. 
Cholmley Gardens in Fortune Green Road
Notable Residents
No.19
Percy Harry East, MBE (1879–1963) was a British civil engineer known for his extensive irrigation projects in Egypt and the Sudan. He initially worked on waterworks construction for the Birmingham Corporation (1897) and Carlisle Corporation (1904). East served with the Egyptian Ministry of Public Works from 1907 to 1926, supervising dam projects on the Nile. Commissioned in the Royal Engineers during WWI, he managed the water supply for troops in the Sinai Desert and was awarded the MBE for his wartime work. Later, he was a partner in the consultancy firm of Sir Murdoch MacDonald and Partners conducting work in Egypt. In 1947 he became a full partner with Sir William Halcrow and Partners. He lived in Cholmley Gardens from 1924 until his death on 21 April 1963. In probate he left £54,970.
No.22
The actress Peggy Crawford was born as Florence Louise Amelia Crawford on 9 October 1908 in Islington. She performed on stage from a young age and appeared as an extra or actress in numerous British film productions during the mid-1930s. In April 1925 Florence (Peggy) then aged 17, married Robert Charles Kennedy Russell. Known as Kennedy Russell, he was a successful composer and the musical director of the orchestra at the Capitol Theatre in Haymarket, which opened as a super cinema with 1,550 seats in February 1925. At the time Peggy was working there as a programme seller. At 57 Russell was much older than Peggy and had been married before. His divorce was not amicable, and one newspaper reported that special police protection was required when he and Peggy married at the St Martin’s Register Office as there had been threats of a hostile demonstration from his former wife; but nothing materialised. Five police men held back the crowd in the street to allow the couple to get into a car and drive away. Kennedy Russell and Peggy had two daughters and lived at 19 Haslemere Avenue Hendon until their marriage broke down in 1949. The following year Peggy married Cyril Marcus Leuw, a motorcar salesman from West Hampstead, and they lived at 22 Cholmley Gardens until at least 1957. Peggy died on 16 October 1995 in Harrow.
No.24
Lester Edward Donne and his wife Dorothy were here from 1924 to at least 1939. Born in New Zealand in 1896, Lester was the son of Thomas Edward Donne who worked for the New Zealand government and was living at 50 Kings Gardens in West End Lane when he died in 1945. Lester joined the Tank Corps in WWI and became a colonel in WWII.
No.25
In a long career Australian-born actor William Stratford Percy (1872-1946) played over 200 comic roles in musical comedy and opera. Willie Percy came to fame as the star comedian with Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company. This was a children’s troupe established in May 1880 in Launceston, Tasmania by James Joseph Pollard. The enterprise became a international entertainment phenomenon, run by various members of the Pollard family for about 30 years until 1905. After making early silent films in Australia, Willie toured in China, Japan, South Africa and New York. He moved to No.25 Cholmley Gardens in 1925 and was living there when he died on 19 June 1946 at New End Hospital. He wrote and illustrated several ‘Strolling Through’ travel books. Percy was cremated at Golders Green and left £2,315 to his widow Jessie.
Willie Percy in a 1897 photographic montage, of himself in six stage roles from the Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company.
No.30
Major Robert Drysdale-Smith MC was the assistant editor of the Ideal Home magazine for over 30 years when he died in Cholmley Gardens in May 1951. He was awarded the Military Cross in WWI and by 1940, was serving as a Commandant in the Pioneer Corps. Drysdale-Smith notably commanded the 185th Spanish Company. This unique unit was largely comprised of Spanish Republican soldiers who had previously fought in the Spanish Civil War and alongside the French Foreign Legion in Norway, before escaping to Britain. Under his command, the unit was stationed in Plymouth and integrated into the broader British war effort.
No.36
Singer Joan Armatrading was born in December 1950 on what was then St Christopher and Nevis in the Caribbean. Her parents and brothers moved to Birmingham where Joan joined them in 1958. Self-taught, Joan began writing songs at 14. She joined a repertory production of the musical Hair in 1968 and by 1972 she shared a flat in Cholmley Gardens with singer Helen Chappelle. Joan’s first album, Whatever’s for Us, was released that year. She had considerable success in the 1970s and 80s. Her biggest single hit was Love and Affection in 1976 which went to number 10.
Joan Armatrading (NPG, Andrew Catlin 1988)
No.39
A tragedy occurred in 1932. Alexander Godfrey Crosbie Collins was the son of Sir Godfrey Collins, Liberal MP for Greenock and the chairman of the publishing company, Collins, Sons and Co (today part of HarperCollins UK). In January 1925 Alexander married Violet Lilian Rosemary Harmsworth the daughter of Robert Leicester Harmsworth, a member of the family of newspaper publishers. Just before Christmas 1931 they moved into No.39 Cholmley Gardens, but the marriage had broken down and Violet left the flat for her parents’ home, Moray Lodge Campden Hill in January 1932. It was not an amicable separation.
On 18 April Alexander was packing to go on a visit to Glasgow with the two children and two nursemaids. About 8.45pm nursemaid Isabel McKee heard crying coming from the night nursery and she saw Alexander struggling to carry Horace aged almost six and Patricia just under two, from the bedroom into his car parked outside the flats. Isabel and Joyce Duvall, the other nursemaid, managed to get the boy away from Alexander who shouted ‘I am going to have my children’ before he carried Patricia to the car and drove off. Isabel phoned Mrs Collins and a neighbour called the police. Around 9.20pm Lucy Casser and a friend were walking across Hammersmith Bridge when they saw a tall young man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket climb over the handrail and throw himself and the child into the river. Collins body was recovered about an hour later, but the baby was never found. His car was parked nearby with a letter to Violet and a letter to his father. At the inquest held on 23 April after hearing evidence from the nursemaids and Violet’s brother, the verdict was ‘suicide while of unsound mind’.
No.48
Judge Walter Augustus Leopold Raeburn (1897-1992) was the son of Hermann Regensburg but changed his name when he signed up in 1915. He lived in Cholmley Gardens from 1925 to 1928. During WWI, Raeburn was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 9th Battalion of the Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment. He fought in the Battle of the Somme, where he was wounded on the very first day (1 July 1916) and spent two days stranded in No Man’s Land before being rescued. He spent the remainder of his recovery in an RAF rehabilitation unit. He became a barrister in 1922, a KC in 1947 and later a judge. He was the defence barrister responsible for securing a sensational acquittal during the 1964 Great Train Robbery trial. He represented John Daly, the brother-in-law of the heist’s mastermind, Bruce Reynolds. While 11 other gang members received historic sentences of up to 30 years, Raeburn successfully overturned the prosecution’s case of Daly’s fingerprints on a monopoly board found at the gang’s hideout, by arguing he had played previously in London with Reynolds.
No.51
Michael Morice was the stage manager of the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill Gate. In 1937 he married Harriet Marie Salinger (1912-1985) who had lived with her family in Cholmley Gardens since 1929. In WWII he served in Burma and in September 1943 he organized shows for the troops. Michael died on 28 May 1944 and was buried in the Kohima Cemetery in Northern India.
No.59
On the 15 June 1944 Gwladys Cox who lived in Cholmley Gardens with her husband Ralph, a barrister, and their cat Bob, wrote in her diary that they were in the middle of an air raid which started with a lot of gunfire behind their flat just before midnight. ‘We waited a long time for the All Clear. The raid went on all night and into the pre-dawn hours. We realised this was not a normal bombing raid. I watched the Doodlebugs sailing along from our bedroom window, like will o’ the wisps in the night’. She counted 18 V1s between midnight and 2am. Later she heard a German propaganda message saying, ‘England is trembling’. She wrote, ‘England is chiefly sleepy and tired from the broken nights and alarms’. ‘Goebbels kept his word. During the past week the bombing has got much worse again, not only rockets and flying-bombs, but piloted raiders as well. We have had several alerts, both day and night, and heard many explosions . . . although we realise it is Hitler’s last fling, it is nevertheless very unpleasant, for we are all utterly weary, and feel we do not deserve this flare-up, even if it is the finale’. As attacks on London intensified, Gwladys rejected an offer of evacuation to a friend’s shelter, writing, ‘Delightful of him, of course, but we feel obliged to decline. We cannot abandon our home! If it were bombed in our absence, there would be no one to salvage what remained, if anything’. Her wartime diary is now in the Imperial War Museum.
No.65
Albert Ferber (1911 to 1987) was a talented pianist from Switzerland. In 1937 he first visited England, and two years later moved to London permanently. Although best known as a concert pianist, Albert also worked in theatre and films. In the 1940s, he conducted orchestras for plays like The Beggar’s Opera and appeared as a pianist in the 1947 film The Mark of Cain. He also wrote music for two movies, The Hangman Waits (1947) and Death in the Hand (1948). He gave many concerts at Wigmore Hall in London during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1945, he had a successful audition with the BBC and later performed with Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Josef Krips and the Hallé Orchestra, and Ferber worked with Sir Adrian Boult. Ferber died in Cholmley Gardens in January1987.
No.70
Performer and producer Arthur Handel Elliot Gibbons died here on 17 August 1935 aged 64. He had been ill for several months following a motorcar accident. Early in his career he played everything from farce to comic opera, later producing 12 pantomimes and owning many touring companies. Gibbons was the manager of the Royalty Theatre at 73 Dean Street, from 1924. The same year he commissioned the building of the Duchess Theatre in Catherine Street near the Aldwych. Today, with about 500 seats, this is one of the smallest London theatres and is Grade II listed.
No.76
In 1938 the occupier of the flat was Doris Libetta Orna, a translator of French plays, which were performed on stage and television. In 1944 she was the Hon. Secretary of the Hampstead Anglo-Soviet Committee. The group were very active in generating public solidarity, organizing humanitarian aid, and raising funds for the Soviet war effort. She died in Flat No.164 on 26 August 1976. Her son Bernard Orna was an industrial designer.
No.77
In May 1972 German-born Kurt Sussapfel died in Flat No.77. He fled the Nazis, and in the 1939 register he was living in No.95 Cholmley Gardens. Kurt became naturalised in 1947 and worked as a publisher of the Berlitz language teaching books and left £100,288 (worth about £1.9M) when he died.
No.81
In 1926 Alan Keith changed his name from Alexander Kossoff; he was the uncle of Paul Kossoff, the guitarist with the band Free. Alan won a scholarship to RADA and worked as an actor on the West End and Broadway stage. By 1935 he was an established voice on BBC radio, and he also appeared in several British films, playing Americans because of his facility for American accents. In the early 1950s he presented music programmes for the BBC and in 1959 he devised the show Your Hundred Best Tunes, which he originally chose himself but were later voted for by the listeners. Alan ran the programme for an astonishing 44 years and in March 2003, aged 94, he announced his retirement. He fell ill soon after and the final programme was broadcast twelve days after his death. The family had lived in Cholmley Gardens since 1951 to Alan’s death in 2003. 
Linda Keith
Alan’s daughter Linda had a far from conventional life. In 1964, aged 17, she became a model and was photographed by David Bailey on numerous fashion shoots. Her best friend was Sheila Klein, who was dating and later married Andrew Oldham, the manager of the Rolling Stones. Linda was encouraged by Sheila to talk to the shy Keith Richards at a party, and he fell in love with her. Linda travelled with the Stones on their American tours and met Jimi Hendrix who she saw playing in Café Wa in May 1966 in Greenwich Village New York. She persuaded Chas Chandler to become his manager, and he brought Jimi to England. The relationship between Linda and Keith Richards ended in the spring of 1966. The following January he and Brian Jones wrote the song Ruby Tuesday about Linda. She now lives in New Orleans with her husband, record producer, John Porter.
No.85
John Hillaby, reporter, naturalist and writer lived in Cholmley Gardens from about 1950 for over forty years. In the 1950s John had worked for the New York Times and the New Scientist. He was a passionate and eloquent pedestrian who estimated that he had walked the equivalent of five times round the Equator. He loved Hampstead Heath where he walked every day and wrote several books describing his walking tours. In 1949, he published his first book, Within the Streams. His real impact on the literary scene came in 1964, when he published Journey to the Jade Sea, an account of his 1,000-mile walk with a camel train through northern Kenya to Lake Turkana. The book set the pattern for his later books, Journey Through Britain (1968), an account of his walk from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, Journey Through Europe (1972), an account of his walk from Holland to the Italian Alps and back to France. He was a frequent broadcaster on radio and TV. John lived in York for the last four years of his life and tragically suffered from osteoarthritis of the spine which rendered him practically immobile and he died in October 1966.
No.100
Squadron Leader Frank Leonard Chambury Butcher who lived in the flat from 1928 to 1933, had a distinguished military and philanthropic career. He served as an RAF pilot and instructor during the World War II era. His surviving military archive includes detailed training and flying logbooks from 1920 to 1945, alongside personal photograph albums detailing military projects, including the construction of the Mosul Bridge in Iraq by the 18th Indian Division Royal Engineers. Following his time in the RAF, he dedicated his life to humanitarian work. He moved to West Africa, where he served as the director of the Nigerian National Council for the Blind before establishing the West African Organisation for the Blind. Butcher was heavily involved in the successful international medical campaign against river blindness (onchocerciasis) and pioneered integrated school systems for blind children across Africa. For his services, he was appointed a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) and later worked as the clerk to the trustees for The Gift of Thomas Pocklington Trust for the Blind in England. He died in Bishop Stortford in 1954.
No.101
Naum Gabo Pevsner, the world-renowned sculptor and pioneer of kinetic art, lived in Cholmley Gardens from April 1937 until the outbreak of WWII, when he moved to Cornwall to be with Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. Naum’s wife Miriam said that his Perspex sculpture, ‘Construction in Space: Crystal’ was made at the flat in 1937. Born in Russia, Gabo had studied in Munich and Paris, and in 1928 he had taught at the Bauhaus. He emigrated to America in 1946, where he died in Connecticut in 1977.
Gabo and Miriam in their Cholmley Gardens flat (Tate, 1937)
No.107
Ernst Stern, the famous scenic designer was born in Bucharest in 1876 and went to Munich at the age of 19 to study under Franz van Stuck. He worked as a caricaturist for Jugend and Simplizissimus and began to contribute to political cabarets. He moved to Berlin in 1905 as illustrator on the satirical magazine, Lustige Blätter and in the same year began his historic collaboration with Max Reinhardt, with the famous production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The following year he was taken on by Reinhardt as artistic director, a position he held for 16 years. There followed a series of remarkable productions which made both men world famous: works by Shakespeare, the pantomime Samurun (1910), Faust (1911), the remarkable Miracle (1914), and Danton’s Death (1916). Between 1919 and 1929 Stern also worked for the German cinema, including films by Ernst Lubitsch. Before the advent of Nazism Stern was already famous on the London stage, designing Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet in 1929, followed by a series of spectacular musicals including Offenbach’s La Belle Héléne and White Horse Inn. In 1934 he settled in London where he lived for the rest of his life. He continued to design the plays of Shakespeare, especially for the actor Donald Wolfit, and popular musical plays. An artist of deep historical knowledge and remarkable imagination, Ernest Stern had a profound effect on 20th-century stage design. He lived in Cholmley Gardens from at least 1948 until his death in August 1954.
No.119
In 1928 a branch of Lloyds Bank was opened on the ground floor of Flat 119. When the first West Hampstead Library on the corner of Westbere and Sarre Roads was bombed the Council took out a five-year lease for £250 per annum on the flat. The library moved to its temporary home on 19 November 1945 and relocated to the present Dennington Park Road building in 1954. The Cholmley flat called The Old Library, was occupied by dMFK architects from the late 1990s until 2022, and now by Hyjan a property investment company.
No.123
Lt Colonel Roderick Laing, DSO and Bar, MC, lived here from 1930 to 1932. He was a distinguished British Army officer who served primarily with the Seaforth Highlanders. Commissioned in 1900, he fought in the South African War (1900–1902) before rising through the ranks to Captain in 1908 and holding an adjutant post at the outbreak of WWI. He attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and retired in July 1919.
No.157
Cyril Stapleton was a famous band leader who lived in Cholmley Gardens from about 1957 to 1965. He was born in December 1914 in Mapperley, Nottingham. A talented boy, he began learning the violin from the age of seven, and when he was 12 years old, he made his first broadcast from the local Nottingham radio station. To improve his technique, Cyril went to Czechoslovakia to study under the famous violin teacher, Sevcik.
Cyril’s early professional career found him playing in the pit orchestra of a cinema to accompany silent films. At 17 he won a scholarship to Trinity College of Music in London, and while there saw a newspaper report that Henry Hall was forming a dance band at the BBC. He passed the audition and started playing with the band, appearing in its first ever broadcast. He also appeared on some of Hall’s early 78s for Columbia, recorded in 1932. However, Hall eventually decided that Stapleton was too young, so he returned to Nottingham, where he formed his own band, playing at various local cinemas. Later he joined the Jack Payne Orchestra and toured in South Africa. He also appeared on some of Payne’s records for the Rex label in 1936. Back in London, Stapleton’s band was engaged at Fischer’s Restaurant New Bond Street, and at The Casino in Compton Street. His first broadcast with his own band took place in March 1939, and for a short while he played with the Jack Hylton Orchestra.
When WWII broke out, he enlisted in the RAF where he served for five years, initially as an air gunner. At the various places where he was stationed, he organised music for concerts and shows. During his last year in the RAF Cyril was stationed in Uxbridge where he became a member of the RAF Symphony Orchestra. This rekindled an earlier interest, and back in civilian life he decided to concentrate on symphonic music. At one time he was a member of three orchestras: the London Symphony, the National Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra. But having to keep playing the same classical repertoire started to pall, and in 1947 Cyril was back in Fischer’s Restaurant with his own dance band. He also started late night broadcasting, and one of his singers was Dick James, who later achieved fame and fortune as the music publisher for The Beatles.
His big break came in 1952 when the BBC Dance Orchestra became the BBC Show Band, and Cyril was appointed as the conductor. This was the BBC’s prestige band for playing popular music, employing the finest musicians and arrangers, and the first programme went out on the Light Programme on 2 October 1952. Several band members such as singer Matt Monro and guitarist Bert Weedon later had successful solo careers. Top British singers and major American entertainers such as Frank Sinatra and Nat ‘King’ Cole appeared as guests with the band. The Show Band Show was also seen in BBC Television broadcasts, making Stapleton even more of a household name. Cyril and the band appeared in the 1955 film Just for You as well as having chart hits in 1956 and 1957 with the Italian Theme and the Children’s Marching Song (Knick Knack Paddy Whack). The Show Band was broadcasting three times a week, but all this came to an end on 28 June 1957. Despite much criticism, the BBC refused to reverse its decision to shut it down. Cyril kept busy touring with his own orchestra, making records and broadcasting, and appeared around the country in theatres and dance halls. He made some records with Decca, and then in 1965 he was appointed an Artists and Repertoire Manager at Pye Records. In later years, while still an executive with the company, he was persuaded to return to making his own LPs. Towards the end of his life he started to tour again, with a large band, trying to re-create his success with the BBC Show Band.
In 1939 he married Marguerite Josephine Ingram, better known by her stage name, Beryl Orde, a music hall impressionist. They divorced in 1950 and Cyril married Sheila Shardlow, a former teacher and model, the following year in Paddington. He later moved to 6 Meadowbank, Primrose Hill where he died aged 59 on 19 June 1974.
Cyril Stapleton with his wife Sheila and children in Cholmley Gardens, 1957
No.164
In 1935 Fred Emney and his Canadian-born wife Hazel Wiles, lived here. The following year they had moved to 16 Clifton Court in Marylebone. Fred was the son of popular music hall comedian Fred Emney senior, and while watching his father perform, young Fred witnessed a tragedy. Fred senior slipped and fell during his entrance. Though he managed to struggle to his feet and finish the performance, he collapsed afterwards and was rushed to hospital. His internal injuries were severe, and despite two operations he died on 7 January 1917.
With little money to his name, Fred secured free passage to Canada aboard a cargo ship owned by his uncle. He carried a letter of introduction to Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood and was warmly received. Chaplin, delighted to meet the son of the famed Fred senior, whisked him off to a nightclub and assured him he would help launch his career in the movies. He instructed Fred to report to his United Artists studio the next morning, but he was refused entry. Fred was forced to make a living by boxing (badly) and playing the piano (very well). In San Francisco he spent four weeks in jail when he was mistakenly arrested for burning down a holiday camp.
In Toronto, Fred set to work writing a Christmas pantomime for Shea’s Hippodrome, and the result was a resounding triumph. What was meant to run for just two weeks stretched into a nine-week sensation. Impressed, the theatre owner assured Fred that he would always have work whenever he needed it. Fred had met a young lady, Hazel Wiles, and they married shortly after. By now, Fred was the top earner in Canada, being paid three hundred and fifty dollars a week. Jack Benny saw one of Fred’s shows. You’re crazy, he told Fred, to stay with this lot. You’re great stuff. Go to London or New York. That’s where the real money is and believe me, you can’t fail.
In the spring of 1930, Fred took Benny’s advice and returned to London. However, while agents remembered his father, they didn’t know Fred. He found it difficult to get work until he formed a successful double act with singer Irene North, but she became ill in 1933. Two years later Fred appeared in the film Brewster’s Millions (1935) alongside his great lifelong friend Jack Buchanan. They worked together on various stage shows and toured during the War. Fred continued to build his reputation throughout the 1940s and was given his own self-titled radio show on the BBC Home Service. Into the early 1950s he continued appearing on stage. In 1954, the BBC offered Fred an exclusive three-year contract and on 7 June, Emney Enterprises began on BBC television. With performers such as Deryck Guyler, Kenneth Connor, and Charles Hawtrey, Emney Enterprises ran for three series between 1954 and 1957. In Xmas 1958 he was asked by the Chipperfield brothers to be the ringmaster in their circus which he did for several seasons. During the 1960s, Fred remained a familiar face on stage and screen. In 1971, the Variety Club of Great Britain presented him with a special award celebrating his remarkable 55 years in the entertainment business. His final television role came in Men of Affairs (1974).
Fred retired to Bognor Regis. He was admitted to a local hospital on 23 December 1980 and died on Christmas Day, aged 80. His wife, Hazel, survived him by only a few years, passing away in 1983. Fred, and his well-known monocle and cigar, appeared in over 30 films.
Another occupant of flat No.164 in 1939 was Marcella Salzer (1912 -1968), a German-born actress and entertainer who was part of the vibrant Weimar cabaret culture in Berlin in the 1930s. She notably performed in Friedrich Hollaender’s cabaret revue Höchste Eisenbahn at the famous Tingel-Tangel Theatre. Marcella relocated to England, where she expanded her career across television, film, and theatre. In 1938, she starred in an early BBC television broadcast of the drama C’est la guerre and performed in her own televised one-woman entertainment show. Her notable film credits include International Revue (1936) and Stars in Your Eyes (1946). On the British stage, she performed in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie opposite actor Peter Noble and was associated with productions at the London Gateway Theatre. In 1947 she married the poet and writer Clifford Henry Dyment. Marcella died in Lambeth in 1968 at the age of 56.
No.165
In 1970 American singer Doris Troy married the percussionist from her band, Earle Chrysostom and she lived in Cholmley Gardens for several years under her married name in the early 70s. Doris was an R&B singer and songwriter who was born in the Bronx as Doris Elaine Higginsen and began singing in her father’s Pentecostal choir. She co-wrote and recorded Just One Look which reached the US Number 10 in 1963. The song has been covered by The Hollies, Linda Ronstadt, and Bryan Ferry. She was a backup singer for James Brown, the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield, Cary Simon and Nick Drake. In 1969 she came to England and signed with the Beatles’ Apple Records and released her first album the following year. Throughout the 70s she worked in England and was known to her fans as Mama Soul. After returning to America, she co-wrote with her sister, Mama, I Want To Sing, a musical based on her life which ran in both New York and London. Chaka Khan played her aunt in the London production. Doris died in her home in Las Vegas in 2004..jpg)
Doris Troy (Getty Images, Michael Ochs 1963)
Today, Cholmley Gardens is still a very popular place to live in West Hampstead.
Comments
Post a Comment