KING TWIST: A PORTRAIT OF FRANK RANDLE.

NUTTALL, Jeff.

ISBN 10: 0710089775 / ISBN 13: 9780710089779

Published by Routledge,, London,, 1978

About this Item

First Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket. 8vo. pp ix, 139. Original publisher's green cloth, lettered gilt at the spine. With the small blind-stamp of John Michael Blundall (1937-2014) one of the world's leading designers, makers and performers of puppet theatre. Among many other things he created puppet characters in,'Supercar',n'Fireball XL5', 'Stingray' and 'Thunderbirds'. He was also a collector of books on every aspect of the theatre. ISBN: 0710089775 Fine in price-clipped, near fine dust jacket, with slight sunning at spine.

Seller Inventory # C55685

Bibliographic Details

• Title: KING TWIST: A PORTRAIT OF FRANK RANDLE.
• Publisher: Routledge,, London,
• Publication Date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0710089775
• ISBN 13: 9780710089779
• Binding: Hardback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

Born in Wigan in 1901 and a childhood friend of George Formby, who was later to become his chief rival, Frank Randle was one of the greatest music-hall comedians of all time. His theatre career started in 1916, when he appeared as an acrobatic artist under the name of Arthur Twist. It was not until the thirties, however, that he achieved his greatest popularity and notoriety as a comedian whose wild, manic temperament introduced a fresh note of invention into popular entertainment. For ten years he ran his own touring company, Randle’s Scandals, playing to enthusiastic audiences all over the country. He also made a number of shoe-string movies and was the star of Blackpool’s most distinguished summer-season show. During the early fifties his health declined and he died in Blackpool in 1957.
Originally published in 1978, Jeff Nuttall’s account of Frank Randle is both a portrait of a ‘very, very, funny man’ and the story of his own search as he pieced that portrait together by talking to Randle’s acquaintances, friends, colleagues and relations. What emerges from his narrative is a beautifully recorded analysis of the ways in which working-class values are expressed in popular entertainment and are thus ritualised by it. The image Nuttall builds of Randle also allows him to explore the perennial theme of the clown as outsider and, with the passing of Randle, he acknowledges the passing of a certain naïve optimism which Randle so expressively embodied.