Tony Hancock

Anthony John Hancock, best known as Tony Hancock (May 12, 1924 – June 24, 1968) was a major figure in British television and radio comedy in the 1950s and 1960s.

Hancock's Peak Years

Working with scripts from Ray Galton and Alan Simpson the show lasted for five years and over a hundred episodes, featuring Sid James, Bill Kerr, Kenneth Williams and over the years Moira Lister and Hattie Jacques. In the radio series the James character would often be dishonest and exploit Hancock's apparent gullibility, rather than be the friend of the television series.

Related Topics:
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson - Sid James - Bill Kerr - Kenneth Williams - Moira Lister - Hattie Jacques

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Hancock was an enormous radio star. Like few others he was able to clear the streets while families gathered together to listen to the eagerly awaited episodes. His character changed slightly over the series but even in the earliest episodes "the lad himself" was evident. Later episodes were regarded as classics, even in their time. "A Sunday Afternoon At Home" and "Wild Man of the Woods" were top rating shows and were later released as an LP.

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"A Sunday Afternoon At Home" is not only among the very best of the Hancock ensemble pieces but it is also a near perfect evocation of those 1950s afternoons.

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Hancock's experiences were based in reality and on observation. From the "Look Back in Hunger" playlet in the East Cheam Drama Festival Galton and Simpson showed they were up to date with the British theatre. Were they mimicking or precursing Pinter with the sighs and silent pauses of these episodes? The pace of the episodes must have been groundbreaking in the days of fast talking Ted Ray, frantic Life with Lyons, et al. when every second of airtime had to be filled and "dead air" the cardinal sin.

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With Galton and Simpson cranking out scripts at the rate they did it is little wonder that continuity was not given top priority. Life in Railway Cuttings (incidentally it was Railway Cuttings that was mythical, not East Cheam itself, it is next to Carshalton) seems to vary as much as the house itself. Not only is Hancock either unemployed or a hopeless actor/comedian (here he is a popular radio star on a par with Ted Ray) but the dimensions of the actual house seem to change to accommodate the cast. In later episodes Railway Cuttings appears to be a two-bedroomed terrace, here it seems to have at least three bedrooms and Miss Pugh lives in. In other episodes she "comes round" presumably from her own domicile.

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Listeners at the time either did not notice or did not care. To be fair the ephemeral and non-commercial nature of the radio in those days meant that recordings were not available and the audience had to rely solely on their memory of who lived where or did what in which episode. There were not numerous repeats and reruns on other channels, cassette tapes were unknown and records issued irregularly. Certainly the domestic situation could only be described as strange. Hancock had the none/comedian job situation, Sid we assume was on the fiddle in some way. Bill is virtually unemployable, his relationship to the others and origins unexplained. Miss Pugh is Hancock's secretary, (who apparently has such a loose job description that she cooks Sunday lunch) although how she got paid or what she did for the unemployed Hancock is another of life's mysteries.

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Although many of the situations described are alien to us today (Late starting TV and Cinemas showing old films, shop shut, pubs closing early) the human reaction to unfavourable situations remains constant.

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Hancock's television career as star began in 1956, initially on ITV, but it was the BBC-TV version of Hancock's Half Hour (later Hancock) that established him in the medium.

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The classic Hancock characterisation referred to himself as "Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock" — being a larger-than-life version of Hancock's real self. In the TV series the regular cast was reduced to Hancock and James, allowing the humour to come from the interaction of the two men. James was the realist of the two, but also with an unpretentious personality who would puncture Hancock's pretensions. Hancock was to become anxious that his work with James was turning them in to a double act, and the last BBC series in 1961 was without James. Despite the contemporary criticism of Hancock, many consider this to contain the best of Hancock's BBC work.

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Two of the episodes of Hancock's last BBC television series are probably his best-remembered work. The Blood Donor, in which he goes to a clinic to give blood. This contains famous lines such as, "A pint? Why, that's very nearly an armful!" (The doctor's response: "You won't have an empty arm... or an empty anything!") Another well-known episode is The Radio Ham, in which Hancock plays a ham radio enthusiast who receives a mayday call from a ship in distress, but his incompetence prevents him from taking its position. Both of these episodes were later re-recorded for a commercial 1961 LP in the style of radio episodes, and these versions have been continuously available ever since. The original TV versions have since been released as part of VHS and DVD compilations, and the soundtracks have also (a little confusingly) been released on CD.

Related Topics:
The Blood Donor - Give blood - Pint - Ham radio - VHS - DVD

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Shortly before recording the original version of "The Blood Donor" Hancock was involved in a minor car accident. He was not badly hurt, but his confidence was shaken and he was unable to learn his lines, with the result that the recording was made with Hancock using teleprompters (TV monitors displaying the relevant sections of script) so that he could read the lines instead. Viewers of the programme may notice that he is not looking where, logically, he ought to be. Hancock came to rely on teleprompters instead of learning scripts whenever he had career difficulties.

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Hancock was the cause of two important milestones in comedy. The first was that he was the first TV artist of any genre to be paid more then £1000 for a single half-hour program. Second was the way that comedy was made.

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Up until Hancock?s TV series, every comedy show was performed live. In the Jimmy Edwards series 'Whacko', in which he played the Headmaster of a Public School, the scenes were intercut with shots of the school clock. This was because the studio only had one set of cameras, and the insert shot of the clock gave them ten seconds to move the cameras into position on the next scene. Temperamentally, Hancock's highly strung personality made this impractical, with the result that the programmes came to be pre-recorded, initially as telerecordings and later recorded on 2" video tape. The cost of this horrified the executives at the BBC, but they agreed to give it a try. All of a sudden, making a sitcom became more like making a film. The difference this made to the flow and continuity was immediately apparent, as well as the ability to do location shots. With a few years it had become standard practice to work in this way.

Related Topics:
Jimmy Edwards - Telerecordings - 2" video tape

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