People
Stanley Holloway
Acting · follow into films and chains
Biography
Stanley Augustus Holloway, OBE (1 October 1890 – 30 January 1982) was an English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist. He was famous for his comic and character roles on stage and screen, especially that of Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady. He was also renowned for his recordings of comic monologues and songs, which he performed throughout most of his 70-year career. Born in London, in his early years Holloway pursued a career as a clerk. He made early stage appearances before infantry service in the First World War. After the war he joined a concert party, "The Co-Optimists", and his career began to flourish. At first he was chiefly employed as a singer, but his skills as an actor and reciter of comic monologues were soon recognised. Characters from his monologues such as Sam Small, invented by Holloway, and Albert Ramsbottom, created for him by Marriott Edgar, were absorbed into popular British culture. By the 1930s, he was in demand to star in music hall, pantomime and musical comedy. In the 1940s and early 1950s, Holloway moved from the musical stage to acting in plays and films. He made well-received stage and film appearances in Shakespeare, and in a series of films for Ealing Studios. In 1956 he was cast as the irresponsible Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady, a role that he played on Broadway, in the West End and later on film, which brought him international fame. In his later years, Holloway appeared in television series in the U.S. and the UK, toured in revue, appeared in stage plays in Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S., and continued to make films into his eighties. Description above from the Wikipedia article Stanley Holloway, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Notable films
Where to start
Highlights from credits and KinoChain journeys.
Brief Encounter
Appears in a KinoChain journey
The Lavender Hill Mob
Appears in a KinoChain journey
Hamlet
As Gravedigger
Ten Little Indians
As Det. William Henry Blore
The Titfield Thunderbolt
As Walter Valentine
Passport to Pimlico
As Arthur Pemberton
The Way to the Stars
As Mr. Palmer
Snowbound
As Joe Wesson
Chains
KinoChain journeys
Public chains that pass through their films — or name them as a bridge.
The Melodrama They Never Let Us Keep
Rachel Morrison's Love of Your Life arrives as a reminder: the woman's picture was never a lesser form. It was grief, desire and colour, and the Europeans knew...
8 films
The Quiet Art of the British Character Actor
Eight films that celebrate the scene-stealers, the scene-setters, and the soul of British cinema: the character actors who make every frame richer.
8 films
The Heist Film Slips Its Own Cuffs
Seven robberies that treat the job as a pretext: for politics, for grief, for a formal joke. The loot matters less than what the filmmakers smuggle out alongsid...
7 films
Topics
Explore by topic
Related people
Collaborators & neighbours
Acted
Ten Little Indians
1965 · Det. William Henry Blore
The Titfield Thunderbolt
1953 · Walter Valentine
The Lavender Hill Mob
1951 · Albert Pendlebury
Passport to Pimlico
1949 · Arthur Pemberton
Hamlet
1948 · Gravedigger
Snowbound
1948 · Joe Wesson
Brief Encounter
1945 · Albert Godby
The Way to the Stars
1945 · Mr. Palmer
Champagne Charlie
1944 · The Great Vance